The rope was of dark brown hemp and had all the protruding hairs of such, but it wasn’t weathered, had been stored, probably in a tin trunk in one of the wagons. About sixty centimetres of it dangled from where it was doubly lapped over the cross-pole to form a loop through which the ends had been passed by a girl who had been determined not to fail, but had that really been the way it had happened?
The rope was of Manila hemp and common enough. Weatherproofed, it was flexible though still rough, and since when did a girl who wanted to hang herself not care about torn skin and rope burns too? Didn’t females who did this sort of thing invariably choose a silk stocking, though these days those were often too scarce. A lisle stocking, then, or slip, scarf or chemise-hadn’t he seen them all, especially the neckties of absent lovers. Whatever was at hand, but please make it soft.
The mirrors on either side of her must have showered their remaining glass as she had kicked out violently, and she must have done, for there was little of it left, but had her wrists been tied behind her back, or had she been able to grab the rope instinctively as she would have done?
Just why would a twenty-eight-year-old who had been out all night skiing hang herself?
‘There can only be one reason,’ he said, and felt it deeply, everything within him suddenly collapsing. Giselle and Oona … Gerda too, would be taken. Gabrielle and Louis as well. All would be rounded up if this thing was what he thought it might be and wasn’t handled properly.
‘She was afraid she’d be arrested,’ he managed. ‘She knew she would talk and didn’t want to.’
Or had her reasons been otherwise? Had she even killed herself?
Taking up the lantern, he stood on the box, was head and shoulders above the cross-pole and the walls, could now see over the rest of the House of Mirrors and the dark, if shattered maze of it. She hadn’t just stepped into any corridor, this secretary of the colonel’s. She had chosen one of the farthest from the entrance, had come in here as far as she could to hide her corpse for as long as possible, and that … why that could only mean she had wanted to give others in her Resistance group time to escape-was that how it had been?
Of medium height-she must have been-she had stood on that chair, but would still have had to stretch a little to flip the bend in the doubled rope over the pole. ‘She was left-handed,’ he said as if Louis was with him. ‘The bend is to the right of the pole. Instinctively the left hand tossed it up and over, then the right grabbed it while the left fed the two ends through and yanked down hard.’
The colonel’s knife had been razor sharp. Both ends of the rope had been cleanly cut as one, but was there anything else? he wondered. ‘Something,’ he muttered. ‘Some little thing to tell us it couldn’t have been a suicide, that Renee Ekkard hadn’t feared arrest, torture and decapitation.’
Because that was exactly what would have happened to her if she was mixed up in anything.
As the lid of the ‘coffin’ came away, the colonel gasped and quickly turned aside, the mirrors throwing the grimace he gave out of all proportion.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘It’s just that, having not seen her in some time, I’d grown accustomed to remembering her as she’d been.’
Less than a week ago, said St-Cyr silently to the victim. The colonel won’t understand my talking to you, Fraulein, but you do see that he must have been with you at least twice on that Tuesday? Once to cut the rope which is still tightly around your neck, and once to lay you out like this. ‘Colonel, the coffin. Its carpenter … ’
‘Ach, I had to go to the Textile Works to get him.’
‘Was she left alone in your absence?’
‘I stopped in at the Polizeikommandantur and sent two of the special constables with orders not to disturb a thing. My detectives followed, but those idiots claimed it was a suicide, and don’t be thinking you and Kohler are going to question those two. Just leave them out of it. The Wehrmacht guard was arranged later.’
Ah, bon, Fraulein, the colonel knows I’ve realized that by not accepting the conclusions of his own men, he has not only shut his mind to what they might have had to tell him, he has pissed off the whole station. Whispers … were there those about the two of you? Lovers … is this what the staff at the Polizeikommandantur had all been saying? That Sophie Schrijen’s brother, Alain, didn’t know what he was getting into by showing even the slightest interest in you?
She had lain here since, hadn’t even been taken to the morgue, as she should have been. ‘The knot is to the left, Colonel, and has slipped from below to above the larynx, as is consistent with her having stepped off the chair.’
Her face, once sharply featured, was livid and swollen. Sprays of dark blood spots were just beneath the slate-grey skin of her forehead. There would be more of them under the beret, over the scalp and beneath the soft brown hair that had been bobbed, and would curl outward at its ends, giving bounce to every step.
Blood spots lay under the skin beneath her eyes. They were showered over the freckled bridge of her nose and cheeks. Those once lovely lips were a dark, plum purple in the flickering light, her tongue all but bitten through. Snot, blood, saliva and fluid from the lungs had erupted to drain from the nostrils and right corner of her mouth, spattering that shoulder and the front of her ski jacket.
‘Rigor has left her, Colonel,’ said St-Cyr, watching him too closely. ‘She wasn’t tall, but a little taller than most. How far were the toes of her boots from the floor?’
St-Cyr had moved swiftly away from head to foot to look along the length of her at him. ‘Thirty centimetres at least. She dropped, didn’t she?’
‘Yes, yes, of course, but her neck wasn’t broken. Instead, the ligature slipped upward as it tightened, causing asphyxia. It took time, Colonel. Oh for sure, not much more than five or six seconds, but enough for her to have realized what was happening.’
‘She kicked out. Broken glass is caught in her socks and among the bootlaces. The chair … ’
‘Was in a corner, but could it have been deliberately placed there?’
‘I touched as little as possible.’
‘But your detectives must have and you are upset with me for mentioning it. Why, please, were you so certain her death could not have been a suicide?’
There must be no hesitation. ‘She had everything ahead of her, was happy and outgoing, believed firmly as many still do that the Reich would eventually win the war.’
‘But wears a beret which is very French and now illegal? The penalty, please, for doing such a thing?’
‘Look, I don’t know why the little fool should have-’
‘Colonel, this is a murder inquiry. Please simply answer.’
‘Six months of forced labour, or in the cells if too weak to work, and a fine of 150 marks.’
‘And within the former confines of the Reich?’
‘Its wearing is allowed, as it always has been.’
Only in Alsace, then, and Lorraine, had it been banned. ‘What was she really up to, Colonel, in spite of claiming faith in the Reich’s winning this war? Was she smuggling Wehrmacht deserters through to the Vosges so that they could be hidden in France with false papers or join the partisans? We both know the Russian front is no picnic and that desertion has become an ever-increasing problem. Ask Hermann. He’ll tell you the same thing.’
‘I’m sure he would.’
‘And the skis?’
‘She loved the forest, the quiet in winter, the sight of a fox, a hawk or even a few crows or ravens. “There are always three of those birds,” she used to say. It was something Celtic, she thought, something Gallic from a long time ago. They were always so silent. Suddenly they would be there watching her. Three goddesses of the supernatural who deliberately did terrible things to people, especially the innocent and the righteous. Silly of her to have believed in such rubbish. I told her some of the men used to shoot them for sport.’