‘Hold them.’
‘She risked her life for me, Inspector. I hid. Coward that I am, I didn’t even go back to see if she was all right.’
‘Just returned later for your skis.’
He would have to be told. ‘They wrecked the bookshop and house, searching for something but must have gotten tired of waiting for me and … and took Claudette back to her place. Now I don’t even know what’s happened to her.’
‘Then we’d best find out, hadn’t we?’
‘Sophie lied to you, Inspector. She and Renee were deeply in love. It was a very tender and secretive thing, and it developed over time. Oh for sure, I was the only other one to know of it until Alain found out, and he must have. Renee would have panicked when he took her back to that room he had rented for her at the Natzweiler ski lodge. She would have tried to get away from him.’
‘But had she also been drugged, mademoiselle?’
‘I … I don’t know. How could I? It … it was wrong of Sophie to have implied that I must have known and that I might have had something to do with Renee’s death. It was a suicide, Inspector. Renee was dangerously depressed and Sophie certainly knew of this, as I did. That brother of hers is a sadist. Renee … Renee didn’t just see a man hanged three times. Alain proudly told her of the scientific experiments they’d been conducting.’
Experiments, Inspector, whispered Renee Ekkehard as if also present. And now what do you think are your chances of returning to Paris? What are those of your partner?
Out of the darkness of this crooked, narrow street that had seen the centuries, one light glowed a paltry phosphorescent blue.
‘Our air-raid shelter,’ whispered Victoria. ‘The shop isn’t far now.’
‘It’s at the bend,’ said St-Cyr, having switched off the headlamps some time ago. ‘Let’s leave the car here, mademoiselle, and continue on foot.’
‘Must I come with you? Is it really necessary?’
‘Those two detectives of the colonel’s will have heard the engine.’
He pointed to something up the street, the houses crowding closely on either side. Where things were not totally in shadow, there was light from the snow cover, but always there had been lamps in this street she had loved, the rue Madeleine of her childhood, the Madeleinestrasse. ‘Another car.’
‘Their Primastella.’
‘Claudette’s flat is on the second floor.’
He paused to peer into the car, muttered, ‘A suitcase.’ Listening first to the street, he shone a blue-blinkered torch briefly over the Chantilly lace maman had given Claudette years ago.
‘Closed, by order,’ whispered this Surete, ‘but not closed at all.’
The door hadn’t been smashed in. Claudette must simply have left it off the latch when she had run to the bookshop. Her broom had fallen, and there it was still lying on the pavement. No one had dared to touch it.
Gently he nudged the door and it swung in a little. Immediately Victoria felt the tiles underfoot and knew the staircase would abruptly rise. Step by step, and feeling his way, the Inspector paused at each to listen closely. No torchlight now. None. Always as a child she had been in such a hurry to climb these stairs.
‘Breathe silently,’ he whispered.
It took forever to reach the flat but here, too, the door was open.
‘Otto, what is happening to us?’ asked Yvonne Lutze. ‘You’ve both been keeping things from me.’
‘They’re not good. I’d be less the man I am were I to tell you differently.’
The Kachelofen’s firebox had been banked long ago, but all about her in the kitchen behind the Stube, the aroma of red cabbage and sausages mocked her. She would have to use the terrine to keep the meal warm for the detectives, would put the lid on, then the lock, wouldn’t look at Otto or at Werner, would simply take the key from her pocket and press it to her lips. ‘Did either of you kill that girl?’
‘Of course not.’
‘You both knew she was going out there. You both knew those three must have been up to something. Werner … Werner knew exactly where that notebook of Victoria’s was kept. How is it, please, that my husband knew you had best get it before someone else did?’
Still she wouldn’t look at him or at Werner. ‘Liebling, I gave it to St-Cyr and Kohler.’
‘Don’t you dare darling me. Genevieve is in danger of arrest and not because of any student demonstration.’
‘Arrest? Not yet. Not if cool heads prevail.’
The urge to shout was with her, but she wasn’t a shouter and he knew it. ‘Let’s see it through-is that it, Otto? Please don’t forget that child of ours doesn’t even know what’s been going on here or that it must threaten her life. You ask for detectives from Paris? You claim Renee’s death a murder, yet still you tell me nothing? Nor will you, Werner. Aren’t I your wife?’ she asked as he stepped from behind his colonel to look at her in that way he sometimes did, as though the two of them were one against all others.
She would never understand how he felt, thought Lutze, would always see him as his colonel’s Oberfeldwebel. ‘We think they were moving deserters through to the Vosges.’
What could have been plainer? ‘I knew it. I felt it. And now I’m broken. What you smashed when you deserted me, Otto, you’ve smashed again!’
The white milk jug, the crinoline from the Soufflenheim pottery was near, but she wouldn’t dash it on the floor, not Yvonne, thought Rasche. Not the girl he’d known. ‘You were aware that I had a wife I couldn’t divorce.’
A barren woman five years his senior, he had claimed. One he could barely tolerate. The daughter of a wealthy landowner, with lands she had inherited. ‘I came to know you for what you are, Otto. Now get out. Get out of my family’s kitchen, the two of you. Leave me to my memories of the daughter I held and taught to use this terrine.’
‘Did you leave everything you found in Renee’s room as I asked?’ demanded Rasche.
‘Renee’s room, Otto? Was it not Genevieve’s?’
‘Ach, just answer. Did you take anything from it?’
‘And if I did, what of it?’
‘No one must suspect that you did.’
Alone at last, she took down one of the biscuit cutters that hung in a row before her: the mayor, the priest, the schoolmaster, others too. With each of them the child had first admonished the biscuit for crimes committed and then had explained the sentence before apologizing and eating it.
‘They are so perfect, aren’t they, maman,’ Genevieve had often said as she had cut them out or sprinkled sugar decorations on them, sometimes chips of candied fruit. ‘How could such good citizens possibly do the bad things they do?’
A Jeu de massacre of her own.
‘Genevieve,’ she said and wept, only to feel Werner pull her round to let her bury her face against him.
‘Doucement, mon amour. Doucement,’ he said in the French he had sometimes used for Genevieve’s benefit. ‘Go easy. Don’t panic. Kohler and St-Cyr were not asked to come here without good reason.’
Little by little the eyes became accustomed to the lack of light in Frau Oberkircher’s flat. An armchair had been tipped over, a gramophone also. Bakelite recordings had been smashed.
‘Her Deutsche Grammonphon Platten,’ said Victoria, drawing in a breath as he pressed a finger to her lips. ‘Claudette …’ she managed, her voice seeming to shock the silence.
A cheek was touched, and only then did she realize St-Cyr had a cutthroat and not a gun.
He left her. At first she thought he must be close but soon realized that he must have moved well away from her, but he didn’t show himself against the leaded windows that overlooked the street below. He made no sound at all. Claudette, she silently cried. Claudette, forgive me.