‘And what was her response?’
‘That each facet of the Phantom Queen could and did take that form, and that to harm any was to harm all and bring down her wrath upon us.’
‘You’re a patient listener. You must have been, to have remembered it.’
‘When Werner told me her cross-country skis were missing, I knew this was where she must have come but did nothing. I waited too long. I know it, and freely admit it.’
So now we learn a little more, Fraulein Ekkehard, and are to be reassured that your colonel really did think well of you and that, though you both may or may not have been lovers, he did consider you as a daughter. But is it the truth, that business of his having done nothing? If a lover, or father figure, surely he would have come after you, especially if there were other reasons like your helping deserters to escape?
‘Colonel, why not set the lantern over there? If Hermann has finished with the location of the crime, he’ll be looking elsewhere. Leave him to it and go to the farmhouse where the guards are billeted. Warm yourself. We’ll find you when we need you. It may be a long night.’
Was this sympathy from a Surete? ‘The location of the crime … You believe it really was murder.’
‘It’s too early to say, but instinct tells me she wasn’t alone. Was she left-handed?’
‘Ach, the knot. Yes, but it never affected her work and no one thought anything of it.’
But must have if murdered. ‘That papier-mache ball, Colonel. Why was it among the items on your desk?’
‘We’d been practising, the two of us, the last time we were here.’
‘When, please?’
And again a stickler for detail. ‘The Wednesday before she died-27 January. Among the throw-booths the committee were having restored, there was one that Renee was particularly pleased with. The village bailiff, schoolteacher, old maid, that sort of thing. Though not quite completed, she insisted she take out some of the figures and we try our luck to much laughter and good fun, and in the course of this, I must have forgotten it was in my overcoat pocket.’
A game of Jeu de massacre. ‘And the booth?’
‘Is stored in one of the other wagons. Three of the men I’d assigned to help were here on the Thursday and Friday, with their guards.’
A carpenter, glazier, assistant machinist, fabric designer and the chemist, Eugene Thomas. ‘Which three?’
‘The firm’s assistant machinist was finishing work on the chain-drive and other things, the carpenter and fabric designer busy with the booth and painting, I think. Their tasks varied so much, I … well, I saw no need to take note of them. It’s all written down in the duty roster they kept.’
‘Then for now that’s sufficient. A little of your splendid tobacco, though, if you can spare it.’
St-Cyr had already gone back to work, having moved the lantern to the other end of the coffin, but would he be asking himself why the knot had been tied that way?
Of course he would. He’d see that particles of sawdust and flecks of old paint and gilding from the lid had fallen and would wonder why her eyes hadn’t been closed, but would he understand the strength of will it had taken not to do so, the need that had driven him to return after the second suicide and remove the lid so as to be alone with her? To think, to decide, and finally to telex Gestapo Boemelburg in Paris for detective help.
Closing the door on Louis and the body, Rasche stepped away from the wagon. ‘Renee,’ he said, and finding his cigarette case, lit one and let the tobacco smoke and breath billow from him. So deep was he in thought, he didn’t look up at the stars or moon, Kohler noted from the shadows. Instead, the colonel concentrated on a wagon some twenty metres from the edge of the Kastenwald. By eye alone Rasche followed a trail of footprints to that very wagon-mine, Colonel? Its door isn’t closed, but what have I done with the lantern, eh? Doused it? Covered it with one of those mouldy costume dresses the Winterhilfswerk Committee must have gathered and rolled into bundles as if they hadn’t quite known what to do with them? A wagon they had then cleaned and fixed up as a field office, but when?
Kohler was nearby, felt Rasche, but wasn’t making a move and must think the worst. Would nothing remain sacrosanct? Would he and St-Cyr insist on going through her personal things? The lingerie that bastard Alain Schrijen had given her on Christmas Eve? The things she had brought back and kept from that damned party at Natzweiler-Struthof?
Would they discover that she hadn’t always worn the field-grey uniform of a Blitzmadel but had sometimes been allowed to cheer the office up with a gaily flowered frock, high heels too, the shoes purchased in Paris in the autumn of 1938 from the Galeries Lafayette and inexpensive because she had spent nearly all of her money on that wristwatch she’d found in Breguet’s, at 28 place Vendome. A fortune it had cost her and far more than needed for timing downhill runs or laps in the pool as she’d claimed.
And when, please, had those ladies of the Winterhilfswerk Committee first gotten the idea of fixing things up here, Kohler? Have you thought of that yet? Early September of last year, mein Lieber, but have you asked yourself why I would have agreed to allow such a thing? A wagon that becomes their campaign headquarters and a place for prisoners of war? Men who, through the camp’s Mundfunk (mouth radio), knew very well that terrible things were happening at Natzweiler-Struthof and not just things like hanging.
Abruptly Rasche parked his unfinished cigarette on the uppermost step of the wagon and started for the farmhouse.
Kohler watched him stride away without a moment’s hesitation, then went back to the wagon, closed the door, and relit the lantern. Louis would find him when he was good and ready.
The wagon had everything and must have been pure heaven to the POWs. There was a stove with a supply of wood-scraps from the coffin, sawn and broken-up branches from the Kastenwald, so a little foraging had also been allowed. There was even a cast-iron frying pan, a saucepan, kettle and saltshaker, knives, forks and spoons. Liebe Zeit, the paradise Rasche had sanctioned but why had he done such a thing?
Three chairs, similar to the one the girl had used, were around a table. Elsewhere, a drawing board gave plans and sketches of the booths the crew had been working on, a duty roster, the schedule and a completion date of 6 March, with ticks against those items that had been completed: a bottle-throw in which wooden hoops were tossed, a paper-mache ball-throw, not yet the Jeu de massacre but one with can-can dancers which, if hit, would automatically lift their skirts to much laughter; a shooting gallery also, with squirrels, hares, roe deer and wild boar, all linked by a chain drive that would flip them back up into position after being hit. Pheasants too.
Days, weeks, months the repairs and refurbishing had taken those boys that had been borrowed from that textile works, not all of them at once, but while here having the time of their lives.
The roster listed only the first names. Eugene was three down and after Martin and Gerard, and before Henri and Raymond, these last two being singled out and responsible for the Wheel of Fortune.
Among his chores, Martin had been repairing popguns that fired Ping-Pong balls, but other such guns had been found and brought in and were leaning against a corner. ‘Six lever-action Winchester repeating air rifles,’ Kohler heard himself saying. BB guns that fired a copper pellet that was but a shade more than two millimetres in diameter. There were tins and tins of these pellets, found God only knew where, but most probably by Lowe Schrijen.
Target shooting had always been a favourite of such travelling fairs. Gerda and he had had a time of it, competing with each other. Had she been seventeen that first time?