Five equally spaced beads surrounded the setting, a beautifully worked rope of silver encompassed its bottom edge. ‘The stem’s expanding filigree is symmetrical and instantly focuses attention on the droplet but, please, had you found it, or did someone hand it to you in a last gesture? You see, as the rope tightened, so did the fist that held this.’
‘The knot, Louis. I have to see it.’
Harried, Hermann stood in the doorway with the falling snow behind him. ‘What is it?’
‘Trouble.’
Not taking time to explain, he pushed past to stand over the victim, grasping the edge of the coffin with one hand to steady himself and then flinging something down at her chest.
‘Verdammt, Louis … ’
Five neatly tied little canvas bundles now lay on her blood-spattered jacket.
‘Medicinal iron,’ he went on. ‘They must have been carting things behind the wire for those boys. Ach, that’s fine enough if one can get away with it, but are all of those knots the same as the one that’s around her neck?’
Hermann often jumped to conclusions. ‘None of those men were here on that weekend according to … ’
‘Ja, but who the hell was it who asked for two dumb Schweinebullen shy; to dig him out of the shit? There’s a cutthroat parked behind a photo. Escape, Louis. Were those boys that committee had working for them planning a little something of their own?’
A cutthroat …
‘That scrap of paper … ’
The trinitrophenol.
‘Either this one tied those little bundles with the idea of smuggling them into the camp, or whoever did also hanged her.’
‘But used a different knot, Hermann. The chair … ’
‘Didn’t skid, but was carefully positioned so as to make it look like she had kicked it away. I went back to check after I found those little bundles. The son of a bitch was right-handed just as is a certain colonel who could well have tied knots like those in his sleep!’
‘Hermann, listen to me, please. Renee Ekkehard was hanged using a bowstring knot, Eugene Thomas with one that was exactly the same as are around those little bundles.’
‘An arbour knot?’
‘Oui, oui, as is used by a fisherman, bien sur. Single strand and very fast, both in the tying and the holding. Two loops, the first a little larger than the second, the working end being passed three times through the smaller, after which that loop is tightened by pulling on the side of the larger. A slip knot is then formed, which is, perhaps, as old if not older than the bowstring knot this girl must have known well how to have used but can’t have, Hermann. Can’t have.’
Callouses and feather marks were indicated.
‘We’re going to have to tell him what he already must know, Louis, that it really was murder. If he so much as gets a hint of our not doing so, we’ll never see Paris again.’
‘Then let’s take our time. Let’s flesh this killing out as much as possible.’
‘Was she drugged?’
‘That’s what I want you to find out.’
‘Then maybe I should tell you that I’ve already found the glasses and the empty bottle.’
‘Ah, bon, but look further. Leave me with her for a little longer.’
Caught by the mirrors, reflected, magnified, stretched or collapsed to a pinpoint, the lantern’s flame gave many lights. And all around her from on high, the garishly painted masks grinned, laughed, cried, threatened or frowned at Hermann as he hesitated, and all around her were the murals of entrapment, terror, murder and then judgement, retribution and public execution with an ax.
It wasn’t good, that cutthroat Hermann had found. It was terrible. They both knew it, Hermann lifting a tired hand to indicate that he would do as asked, even to softly closing the door behind himself.
None of the rest was good either, but why, really, would it not have been possible for the men behind that wire to have simply obtained the nails surreptitiously from the Schrijen Works?
Too many men, Renee Ekkehard seemed to say. Too closely watched and harshly punished. The risk from here would have had to be taken.
‘By all three of you on that committee, or only by yourself?’ St-Cyr heard himself asking.
Were the bundles not clearly visible to your partner, Inspector? Is that not evidence enough if that was really what they were for?
‘Then perhaps you would tell me why you concerned yourselves with their welfare, given the terrible risk of your doing such a thing? Colonel Rasche found himself in a very difficult position, didn’t he, mademoiselle? He had signed and stamped the pass that allowed you to come and go freely at the Works. After hours, during them-it didn’t matter, did it? A blanket pass. You had planned to visit Strassburg this weekend and he had okayed that-he must have for you’d purchased the second-class return ticket I found in your rucksack, with your papers. A skiing party at Natzweiler-Struthof, Sophie Schrijen told my partner, a visit also with your parents. A personal matter, Colonel Rasche has said of this last, but where, please, does Sophie’s brother Alain fit into things, a boy who is stationed at Natzweiler-Struthof and answerable to the Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer Kramer?’
He gave it a moment. ‘Exactly what did you see that sickened you so much the Oberstleutnant Rudel believes it drove you to suicide? The deaths of innocent men, mademoiselle? Prisoners of war? Resistants? N und Ns?’
A drop-earring and a bowstring knot after a night of skiing …
‘A little earth is frozen to the soles of your boots. You skied but walked when necessary and were, I believe, as exhausted as the colonel has stated, when you returned here early on that Sunday morning.’
But did I go to the east? Was I really conducting Wehrmacht deserters through to France?
‘To the west, in the Vosges, the earth would have been buried under deep snow; to the east, over the Valley of the Rhine, which is far more populated, the snow is thinner, even in a winter such as this, the hills of the Black Forest excepted, of course.’
To the east, then, she seemed to sigh as if satisfied.
‘This watch, mademoiselle. Since when does a secretary, or even an outdoor’s girl like yourself, carry a man’s pocket watch? Oh for sure, it’s nothing but the best, though not new and made in Switzerland before that other war. A Baume et Mercier, but a watch, mademoiselle, of the kind one is perhaps loaned while one’s own timepiece is in for repairs? There are several of the notations watchmakers invariably inscribe inside the back, after each little visit. The number of a replacement part, sometimes the plus or minus of an adjustment so that it can be further modified …’
Did the colonel know of it, having gone through my pockets before you did? she seemed to ask.
‘He must have. Your rucksack also. There is something else.’
Digging a hand into the latter, St-Cyr drew out the carefully folded pages of Kolmar’s Morgenseitung of Friday, 29 January, in which she had wrapped the lunch she had then taken with her on the following day. ‘Several sandwiches. Dried, smoked sausage, mustard and Munster, mademoiselle, the absence of all of which Frau Lutze must have been well aware of yet has so far said nothing shy;. A vacuum flask of lentil soup as well, and enough for two.’
My killer and myself-is this what you are now thinking? she asked. If so, Inspector, then why, please, would a man I had helped guide to freedom kill me? Admit it. If my death really is murder, you are looking for someone else, someone who, if I was really smuggling deserters out of the Reich, must have found out about it and then had to put a stop to it, but silently. No arrest, no accusations, nothing like those. Simply a ‘suicide’ because of ‘something I had seen.’