Momentary shadows from the lantern kept flickering over Renee’s reflection, St-Cyr knowing only too well that this could not be missed. ‘I had my reasons. I knew Werner hadn’t been able to find her. Instead … Ach, Oberfeldwebel Lutze, be so good as to enlighten him.’
You see how he’ll play it every way he can, Inspector, the girl would have whispered. He’ll bounce it off his sergeant, off the mirrors, too, that you’ve forced him to watch. Now a hard, if distorted glance at them, now a deep frown as some further thought comes, but notice, please, that he has completely forgotten to pack and light that pipe of his. And Werner? you ask. Werner feels his colonel is taking care of things but wonders why you made a point of saying neither yourself nor Herr Kohler had been armed. Were your weapons still at the house, in that grip of yours? he wonders. One that Frau Lutze must surely have gone through.
‘Ach, come, come, Werner, tell him.’
‘Jawhol, Oberst. The Untersturmfuhrer’s tourer had been parked well up among the ruins here and next to this wagon’s House of Mirrors. I felt that he might have trouble getting the car out, as the snow then was quite deep, and that he must have been in a hurry, since he is usually very careful with such things.’
Careful with that car, Inspector, she seemed to ask, or with murder?
‘He had gone into the woods after her,’ said Lutze, watching him closely. ‘On foot, Inspector, the girl on skis.’
It has to be asked, she seemed to whisper. Please don’t avoid it, Inspector. ‘And how, precisely, did you get here yourself?’
‘Our police van was the only spare vehicle,’ sighed Rasche. ‘From the woods Renee would have heard and most probably seen it, Alain Schrijen also.’
‘And what was she to have thought, Colonel. Die Grune Minna***** and immediate arrest?’
‘Ach, I admit, in retrospect, that I should have been more circumspect and given Werner the use of my own vehicle, one that girl would easily have recognized and come to without being alarmed.’
‘Of arrest, Colonel, but for what, please?’
‘For what I have since been forced to believe they might well have been up to.’
‘They?’
‘Those three girls to whom I had granted so much.’
‘And is that why you removed her toque and replaced it with her beret?’
‘Which the little fool had in her pocket.’
Sophie Schrijen, those grey-blue eyes of hers wary, had braided her hair as in the photo of herself at the age of ten. There had been recent tears-Kohler was certain of this-and just as certainly she was still extremely upset and terrified, probably, of what was to come and of what this father of hers could well do. After all, it wasn’t every day that two detectives were hired to beat another into submission, not every day a man you had worked with and trusted to fix up Karneval things deliberately climbed the wire to end his life.
Resilient she might normally have to be, but now she was like the proverbial eggs in a resistante’s carrier-basket as her bicycle was stopped at a control and her papers demanded.
The dress and full white linen apron were much like those of Yvonne Lutze, the neck-chain with its cross the same as when he had first encountered her. Even Miata sensed that she was far from self-assured and sorrowfully watched her as slices of oven-warm Kugelhupf gave off their aroma.
Stopping her from leaving, Kohler noticed the bandaged cut the broken wine glass had caused, then the shock the nearness of him brought, and as it passed through her, the instant of panic and revulsion.
‘What is it?’ she demanded.
‘Ach, forgive me, but I want to get something clear. What was so important at the Works that you had to send Renee Ekkehard out to the Karneval instead of yourself?’
‘Eugene was experiencing difficulties with one of the dye batches. One can’t shut down a Works like ours. It stops for nothing.’
‘And the problem?’
‘The strike-offs-swatches of coloured cloth Eugene had done. He couldn’t get any of them to match the shade Raymond had recommended. Dress fabrics are sometimes not easy.’
‘Printed patterns, Kohler, for summer wear.’
‘For next year’s season in Berlin, Vati. Why not tell him that?’
‘Liebling …’
‘The depth of colour wasn’t clean, Inspector, nor bright enough. Sharp outlines are necessary, otherwise the pattern becomes blurred. You can’t have a dye that bleeds. Consistency across larger areas-the blotches we call them-is also critical.’
Realizing that her cheeks had reddened under his scrutiny, she caught a breath. ‘We use synthetic dyes. Ciba-Geigy, Durand and Huguenin. They’re in Basel-others, too, when we can get them. I did go to the railway station to pick up some we were having sent from a supplier, but that didn’t take more than an hour. Eugene and I then worked on things until well after 5.00 that afternoon. 6.00 probably.’
‘While Renee …’
She winced, could not have avoided it. ‘Look, I don’t know who killed her or why. How could I?’
But still feel you could have been the victim yourself. Herr Kohler didn’t say this. Instead, he asked, ‘Would Victoria Bodicker?’
‘Have killed her? Ach, I meant to say, have known who did? I can’t see how. I telephoned the shop to ask if she would go out there but Victoria said that she couldn’t. Frau Oberkircher, her neighbour, was away and couldn’t fill in for her. A customer was coming to collect a book. An SS major.’
It had sounded so futile, felt Sophie. Herr Kohler would demand the name of the major and the title of the book.
‘Her brother-in-law’s funeral,’ she heard him saying of Frau Oberkircher.
‘I … I had to ask Renee to go. There wasn’t anyone else I could turn to.’
‘Couldn’t it have waited until the following day?’
That Sunday. She must force herself not to glance at Vati, must try to be calm and self-assured. ‘We had a deadline to meet with the Karneval, and still have, Inspector. As it is, not everything we need will be ready.’
‘The Jeu de massacre?’
Why had he chosen it? ‘That and the shooting galleries, the Hall of Mirrors also, and Wheel of Fortune.’
‘The Bottle Fish?’
The look she gave was swift. ‘That too, and … and the Ring Toss.’
‘Liebling, I know this is all very unsettling for you,’ interjected Schrijen, ‘but could Colonel Rasche’s secretary have been involved in something?’
‘Something illegal, Father? What, please?’
He’d say it gently, thought Schrijen, would go on as if Sophie hadn’t known a thing and would use gestures to soften the impact. ‘She took things into the Arbeitslager, Sophie. Only little things, of course. Bits of string, carpenter’s nails, buttons, bread from time to time and cigarettes. It was foolish of her, but …’
‘Of this I know nothing, Vati. Is Lagerfeldwebel Dorsche trying to blame me for something I could not possibly have had any connection with?’
‘Not at all, dearest.’
‘Then did Victoria give her things to take in there for her, since she didn’t have a pass to the Works? Well, did she?’
‘Your friends, Sophie …’
‘They were not my friends! They were associates. People with whom I had to work.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. Perhaps it is, though, that Herr Kohler can enlighten us further. One murder, if indeed it really was, and we’ll never know, will we, unless Kommandant Rasche agrees to an autopsy, which I very much doubt.’