‘Sophie Schrijen believed it would have been herself had she come out here on that Saturday afternoon.’
But is this person, if he even exists, now planning to deal with her and with Victoria, and if so, Inspector, then why did Eugene also have to die, or was his death simply a suicide, and if so, why then did he have that scrap of paper in his pocket?
The farmhouse’s Stube was warm, humid and stuffy. Wehrmacht laundry, grey and hanging over horizontal poles that had been strung from the ceiling timbers, all but hid the Kachelofen, noted St-Cyr. Two of the dogs stirred but were told to lie still by the colonel who, closeted at a bare plank table in boots, trousers, shirtsleeves and suspenders, looked grey and old and as if waiting for the inevitable.
‘An autopsy,’ muttered Rasche at news he had known he would have to hear.
The off-duty men had gone to bed. The two of them were alone and perhaps deliberately so, yet still the voice had best be kept low. ‘Traces of a sedative will be difficult enough to find, Colonel. She’s been here for just over a week now. We don’t even know if one was used, but if one was, there would have to have been sufficient to have made her very drowsy, but beyond that, we have little to go on.’
Rasche laid his empty pipe aside, ‘It’ll have to be done quietly and that is, unfortunately, something I can’t guarantee.’
The rheumy dark blue eyes were not evasive. ‘At lunch, Colonel shy;, you mentioned the university in Strassburg …’
The dark grey eyebrows arched. ‘You don’t know, do you? You can’t,’ he said and, reaching out to one of the dogs, began to gently stroke its muzzle and scratch behind its ears.
‘The library is famous, Colonel. Some of the earliest of medieval Germanic manuscripts, the very origins of Alsace and Alsatian …’
The big hands had spread themselves flat on the table. ‘Manuscripts? Ach, don’t talk such Quatsch, mein Lieber. Those books were all taken to Clermont-Ferrand during the Sitzkrieg when many of the professors and their students fled to shared facilities at the university there. Now the idiots cause trouble instead of lying quietly. They even refuse to return those damned books and as a result, the Gestapo in France want desperately to put an end to them.’
‘And at the University of Strassburg?’
‘There is now a new and approved staff.’
‘And the autopsies you told us were constantly being done there?’
‘Are being done on orders from Berlin.’
‘A cautious answer, Colonel. Is it that you really must go through the Konzentrationslager office to request one?’
Rasche pointed to his tobacco pouch and snapped his fingers for its return. He’d take a moment to pack his pipe. Maybe then this Surete would understand. ‘Certainly one can be fitted into the schedule at the university, but there will definitely be talk and that would not, I think, be conducive to your investigation. Schutzhaftlagerfuhrer Kramer is, as I have indicated, difficult at best. That goes with the job, of course, but he could, as is his prerogative, demand that the four who are left from those I delegated to help out here be taken to the quarry for questioning.’
‘And the Fraulein Bodicker?’
‘Could also be taken.’
‘But not the Fraulein Schrijen?’
Was this infernal partner of Kohler’s finally beginning to understand? ‘One must proceed carefully, Chief Inspector. Leave the autopsy for now. Do all you can and then I’ll see what can be arranged. Renee’s parents will, of course, have to be notified and will object most strenuously. After all, the fewer questions asked, the less the attention that will be directed at those closest to the victim.’
And at those who questioned her ‘suicide’ in the first place!
As the colonel watched, detective shoes were yanked off, wet socks wrung of their meltwater to be flipped over one of the crowded poles, the shoes placed upside down on the stove’s Kunscht, the little stone bench that was used for keeping things warm, even babies, so gentle was its radiant heat.
In bare feet, his overcoat, scarf and fedora hung up to dry if possible, St-Cyr rolled up his trouser legs. ‘A few questions, then, Colonel.’
Paris had also warned of this.
‘You’ve stated emphatically that we are not to question your two detectives, but could they have removed anything and not told you of it?’
Anything like a syringe or an ampoule-was that it, eh? Deliberately St-Cyr had made no mention of the Baccarat liqueur glasses and the empty bottle of marc Kohler would have found.
‘Did they go over everything thoroughly, Colonel, and if so, will Hermann, who is still out there looking, find nothing?’
‘They wouldn’t have looked beyond the Lach Tempel. For them, it was fitting enough that the girl had chosen such a place.’
The Temple of Laughter, the House of Mirrors.
‘The one is far too close to the SS,’ said Rasche, drawing on his pipe. ‘He constantly informs them of what I do, and they, of course, are a direct pipeline to Natzweiler-Struthof. The other helps him but augments his wages by taking money on the side. These days some things are best overlooked. It’s enough to know of them.’
‘Then who drove that girl out here? Who knew her well enough to get that close?’
Renee had a blanket pass to the Schrijen Works, and St-Cyr would have found it in her rucksack. ‘Lowe Schrijen’s daughter often telephoned my office. I would then hear Renee and Sophie discussing their little project. Perhaps a ride was organized, since Sophie found she was unable to come herself. Werner and Yvonne may have something when we get back to the house.’
A Schrijen lorry, would that be perfect, Colonel, wondered St-Cyr, especially since Sophie Schrijen believed firmly she could well have been the intended victim? ‘We’ll want passes to the Works, will want to question everyone deemed necessary.’
‘You’ll have them. As to your questioning …’
‘Colonel, you asked for us. You could just as easily have let the decision of your own detectives stand.’
‘I have my reasons.’
‘And I have no jurisdiction here.’
‘But Kohler has.’
‘Is it that you counted on his being tractable?’
‘Kohler? Ach, what are you saying? I needed someone totally free of influences here, someone who had been a POW himself. If one is murder, is not the other? Now go and find that partner of yours. It’s long past my bedtime!’
‘Hermann will find us. Besides, my shoes, my feet … A basin of hot water. Some soap, I think, and a cigarette, if you have any.’
And refuse to part with more pipe tobacco! ‘There’s no soap and I’m out of cigarettes, but Herr Goebbels, who smokes as many as sixty a day, assures us that pine needles are every bit as good as soap and also help with the rheumatism. Add a handful. It costs nothing. There’s a bowl of them in the kitchen by the stove.’
All of the tin trunks in the office wagon had been opened and gone through. ‘Nothing. Not a damned thing,’ swore Kohler.
Flea-market gleanings lay tangled in a biscuit tin, deep in the trunk that was farthest from the entrance to the wagon. Imitation pearls, diamonds, rubies and emeralds-all had been cleaned. Paste, most of them, but Marcasite too, and zircons: brooches, bracelets, rings and necklaces, the garish and not-so-garish, but had her killer found that drop-earring in this box and was that why Renee Ekkehard had had it in her hand?
Setting the lantern close, he dug deeply, yelped as blood rushed from the end of the middle finger of his right hand. ‘Ah, Christ!’ he panicked. ‘Sepsis?’ Puncture wounds were always the worst. A high fever, then delirium and no way of stopping it. Sulfa … would he need sulfa? Would it be of any use?