‘Sentiment has no place in a detective’s life,’ he said.
Assorted tin trunks lay toward the far end of the wagon, with the bundles of mouse-eaten dresses, a pseudo-Florentine velvet being uppermost, but nothing of value, so why keep them? Scattered … Had they been scattered about the floor of this wagon?
Cigarette ashes filled one of those metal ashtrays that were often found in cheap restaurants but there were no cigarette butts, of course.
Shelves held rescued wooden hoops and darts-Sophie Schrijen, Victoria Bodicker and Renee Ekkehard must have spent hours scouring the place for artifacts. Brand-new, hand-rolled papier-mache balls awaited painting but there were buckets of those that had been found and must have been stored somewhere dry, tent pegs too, and buttons in a fruit jar, lots and lots of those and an absolute fortune if taken inside the camp and sold to the other POWs. Scraps of tin too, and bits of string-even carpenter’s nails had been gathered to be wrapped, handful by handful, in bits of weathered canvas, each little bundle tied tightly, and so much for the searches by the guards at the gate of Arbeitslager 13 on return shy;. The nails and the buttons and such would have commanded shy; a price and been desperately put to use. Hadn’t Louis found two rose- shy;coloured buttons among the dross in Eugene Thomas’s shy; pockets? Of course he had.
There was even a beautifully honed, brand-new cutthroat razor parked discreetly behind a framed photo, sans glass, of a striptease artiste dans costume d’Eve, and ach, he’d best stop thinking in French. Nice, too, though, that photo, and well thumbed, but sacre nom de nom, just what had those boys been up to? To hide the razor and have it discovered by one of the guards would have meant certain death.
Beside this photo, there was an empty half-litre green bottle that had been drained of its marc or eau-de-vie. A toast? he had to ask. Had those committee members raised their glasses in salute to one another over what they had all but accomplished, or to something else, and had all of them been present? The three, thin-stemmed little glasses were of ice-clear Baccarat crystal and old, and obviously hadn’t been found anywhere near here, but stood in a row, shoulder to shoulder as if carefully replaced.
All were dry and smelled as if unused, but had they been washed and wiped clean, and if so, was that not why they’d been set in such a tidy row?
More and more this wasn’t looking good.
Threadbare, once brightly coloured carnival tapestries covered the makeshift tin-trunk bench Renee Ekkehard and the others had used for storage. Cigarette ashes had been dribbled on a far corner, but otherwise there was nothing to indicate that anyone had recently sat here, except for the smoothness of the covering, and, yes, someone in a hurry had tried to wipe those ashes away.
‘A suicide,’ he said, gingerly peeling back the covering and opening the trunk.
Coiled Manila hemp lay atop neatly folded canvas, the uppermost end of the rope having been yanked out so that its coils overlapped, and to the right of this, as if cast aside in a hurry, lay an open-bladed, worn-handled Opinel pocketknife, the French peasant’s constant companion. In just such little things were there answers. Trouble was, the colonel must have known all about it.
‘To be alone with the victim is always best for me, mademoiselle,’ said St-Cyr apologetically. ‘You see, patience is required and my partner often has little of it. Bien sur, I tell myself the Occupier invariably demands the Blitzkrieg of us both, but still there are times when the careful step-by-step is essential. And Hermann, you ask? He’s improving. Working with me has been good for him, not that he always listens. A member of the Gestapo shy;? you ask. That’s not his fault, by the way, so please don’t blame him for it or worry.’
She didn’t respond. She just lay waiting in the soft and flickering light of the lantern. ‘I need to get to know you,’ he said, packing his pipe, a habit so ingrained he could do it without a glance, the colonel having parked his pouch of splendid tobacco on a corner of the coffin before leaving.
‘Has he gone to the farmhouse as I said he should?’ asked St-Cyr, waving out the match. ‘Or has he gone to find Hermann? He hasn’t quite been telling us everything, has he? There has been no mention of Eugene Thomas’s anonymous letter, none either of trinitrophenol or of why its chemical formula should have been hastily written on the corner of a page in Victoria Bodicker’s school notebook.’
Still there was no response. ‘Ah, bon, then, mademoiselle, let’s begin with this rope. It’s curious only in that after the commencement of hostilities in September ’39 it would have become increasingly difficult to find. Perhaps the Fraulein Schrijen asked her father to obtain it, or the carnival owner or owners had wisely laid in a supply? I’m inclined to believe they must have, otherwise synthetic rope-rayon-from the factory would have been used. The choice, then, tells us little, except that something had to be readily available and of good enough quality. And never mind the roughness. My partner will have thought of that. It’s the knot that puzzles me. The origins of it go back through the centuries, don’t they? It’s one of the simplest and earliest of knots and yet … and yet where would history be without it?’
She seemed to relax, to know that at last she was in good hands. ‘Was archery not just a casual interest but a passion of yours the colonel has so far failed to mention? You see, mademoiselle, the inner part of the pads of your left middle three fingers bear such callouses. Repeated bouts of target practice aren’t easy on a girl’s fingers, even with the special glove that is usually worn. There are also feather cuts on the back of your right hand where the arrow has rested as you gripped the bow. A small sacrifice-it’s understandable. One also uses a knot like this, though, when fitting on a new bowstring. First the noose is pulled tightly, and then a stop knot is added to prevent its coming loose, but why did you double the rope? It made the knot so large your head would have been painfully forced aside and how, please, did you manage then to tie its stop knot? You would have had to grope awkwardly for the ends of the doubled line.’
Pipe smoke billowed and as he waved it away from her, he said, ‘This bowstring knot wasn’t tied while you were standing on that chair. It was prepared beforehand and was easy to feed through the rope’s loop once the doubled line had been thrown over the cross-pole above.’
She seemed not to want to respond, but to wait as if with breath held. ‘The noose was then placed over your head, mademoiselle, and tightened. Hermann may have concluded otherwise, but for now I have to tell you that I don’t think you were conscious of what was happening to you until suddenly awakening to it but even your beret, which would surely have been knocked askew, has been tidied, and why, please, would you not have worn a woollen ski cap on a night like that? The degrees of frost alone demanded it, and you were obviously an accomplished skier.’
She had kicked out. There were splinters of glass in the cable-knit grey woollen socks whose outer pair had been rolled down a little. Others were caught among the laces of her boots, just as the colonel had said.
Holding the lantern closer, St-Cyr searched among the shards. ‘Ah, Dieu merci, mademoiselle, something’s caught in the back of your left inner sock, at the top. As you were taken down in haste by the colonel, the outermost sock accidentally hid this little item.’
Chance, though rare, could often make all the difference.
Holding the drop earring up to the light, he marvelled at it, was curious, pleased, so many things. ‘A bit of costume jewellery one of the carnival’s performers must have worn. Had you been collecting these? The bezel setting is from the fin de siecle. A clear, sharp amethyst, mademoiselle, its brilliant well faceted. Nothing cheap, but still far cheaper than the real thing.’