‘Herr Kohler, please,’ objected Jakob Dorsche.
‘Ach, give me a minute, will you?’
Just along from the toilet, a doorway opened into the upper offices. Like the mill, the room seemed to run on and on. Rows of desks showed lots of vacancies, but also those who nailed down specific tasks: plant maintenance, supplies, sales and accounting. It wasn’t hard to pigeonhole them, most looking as if they’d been with the firm for years. Beyond these desks, filing cabinets and shelves to the ceiling held the pattern books, fabric samples and order books going right back to when the firm began, since places like this never threw anything out.
Enclosed offices were to the left.
‘Herr Kohler … ’
‘Didn’t I tell you to leave me be?’
Lying on two of the vacated desks, beside framed portrait photos of former occupants in Wehrmacht uniforms, were bouquets of red, artificial chrysanthemums just as in Paris’s Pere Lachaise. Elsewhere, wreaths of vine trimmings were with baby booties, on only one a freshly folded swastika.
Immediately to the left, and just inside the door, was the secretarial pool. Three were in the uniforms of the Blitzmadschen, the Bund Deutscher Madel or BDMs, girls from home doing their duty. Two others weren’t in uniform and had obviously been with the firm for years, whereas the oldest of the BDMs was now the supervisor and kept a stern eye on the younger two who, among other duties, were the Postzensuren who read the POW’s mail, blacked it out and sorted through the Personal shy;karten, adding notes when needed. Every POW would have one of those damned cards on file. A head-and-shoulders photo, prints of both forefingers, assorted personal data and work history shy;, punishment too, the Straf.
One of the Postzensuren was in her late teens, the other perhaps twenty, and like all others here, they would have used that toilet and must have crossed paths every day with Eugene Thomas, but neither would meet his gaze, both just kept on working as if petrified of him.
‘Herr Kohler, please. The laboratory is this way,’ said Dorsche. ‘The Oberstleutnant Rudel has said that I was to take you there, not bring you here.’
‘Then I’d best pay my respects, hadn’t I?’
The door to Rudel’s office was just beyond the secretarial pool and tightly closed, its frosted glass bearing the name and rank in black Gothic scrip outlined with gilding.
Dorsche heaved a grateful sigh. ‘He’s busy.’
‘He should be.’
Herr Kohler’s knock should have broken the glass, but he didn’t wait for an answer, simply barged in, sang out a good afternoon and then, ‘Kohler, Kripo Paris-Central, Herr Oberstleutnant. I thought I’d best drop by to let you know my partner and I have arrived and are already hard at work. Fraulein … ?’
Dorsche buggered off and left the door open, but there was a woman in the office. Rudel, though, didn’t move or appear startled in any way. Instead, he took his time to assess this visiting Detektiv. Cigarette poised in the right hand, he let its smoke curl lazily upward. A designated area, was that it?
So this was Kohler, thought Rudel. A very ordinary, not-so-ordinary man. Paris had had a lot to say about him and that ‘partner’ of his.
As if already bored with the interview, Rudel inhaled deeply, then let the smoke seep slowly from his nostrils. He wasn’t SS, thank God, but among the awards on that neatly pressed field-grey jacket were a Spanienkreuz, the Spanish Cross, then the ribbon of the Medaille zur Erinnerung-the Commemorative shy; for Spanish Volunteers-and a wound badge too, all from 1937 and the Revolution in Spain. Then the black wound badge of the Polish Campaign in ’39, for one or two wounds; an Iron Cross First-Class too, and the ribbon of the Winterschlacht im Osten, the 1941-42 campaign in Russia and what was called the Frozen Meat Medal. Had he lost toes, a foot or leg? Not the ears anyway, nor the hands or any of the fingers. There was a Knight’s Cross too, and Nazi Party badge, ah, yes.
‘It wasn’t murder, Kohler. It was suicide.’
‘Karl, you know that can’t be true!’ shrilled the woman. ‘Two suicides in less than a week? Eugene wouldn’t have-’
‘Sophie, Sophie … Ach, for once will you listen to me? I know you don’t want to believe it possible, but he did take his own life.’
‘Your name, Fraulein?’ asked Kohler.
So many things were in the look she gave. Still badly shaken by the deaths, but perhaps also not liking the thought of two experienced detectives from Paris being brought in, she stood over by the windows, was in better light than Rudel. About thirty or thirty-five years of age. A blonde with rapidly misting grey-blue eyes, the hair of shoulder length and not worn in the crisscrossing diadem of the secretarial pool but as an outdoors woman would, if somewhat loose and hastily tied.
The lips were perfectly matched, no lipstick though, but when together as now, under scrutiny, they twisted down a little to the right, subconsciously emphasizing a hesitant uncertainty that, like the grief and dislike of visiting detectives, couldn’t quite be hidden.
‘The Fraulein Schrijen is the owner’s daughter, Kohler.’
‘Granddaughter of its founder,’ she said sharply.
A skier too, thought Kohler. The creases under the eyes were from the winter’s glare, the cheeks and chin burnished by the wind.
‘Sophie has a hand in running the Works, Kohler,’ said Rudel, who hadn’t taken his gaze from this detective for a second.
‘In my brother’s absence, I’m assistant general manager,’ she said, still having not moved from the windows. The shirt-blouse was white but unbuttoned enough to reveal a fine gold chain and cross that was definitely not a Nazi symbol. The powder-blue jacket and matching skirt were Swiss. She would have had to travel there on business, would have had access to all the necessary permits, but exactly what was the relationship between these two who seemed barely to tolerate each other, and why had she no liking for visiting detectives, especially if upset by these ‘suicides’?
‘Two deaths in less than a week, Fraulein?’ he asked.
‘Renee Ekkehard was a member of my Winterhilfswerk Committee.’
‘Sophie, you weren’t responsible.’
Turning quickly away to avoid looking at either of them, she said, ‘I was, Karl! It was me who asked her if she could check on things at the Karneval. Me, Karl. I … I was too busy and couldn’t leave. I couldn’t!’
She was now all but in tears and could well have been hanged herself had she gone out there-was that it, eh? wondered Kohler. Quite obviously Rudel knew that was what she was thinking, but one had best ask, ‘This Karneval, Fraulein?’
‘This other suicide, damn you. Ach, why don’t you call it that, since everyone else is but me? A girl of twenty-eight who had all of her life before her hangs herself for no apparent reason, nor gives any indication of being depressed or suicidal? She plans to go skiing at Natzweiler-Struthof, has been invited to another party there with friends from Strassburg?’
‘When?’
‘This coming weekend. I … I don’t know all of the details. How could I? Only that everyone needs a bit of fun these days. Now if you will excuse me, Karl. I have work to do.’
‘She’s not happy, is she?’ said Kohler when she had left, not closing the door but giving views of a secretarial pool and its Postzensuren who had obviously listened in.