‘Fraulein, when were you last in Innsbruck? Come, come, we haven’t time to waste.’
He would think the worst of her now. ‘In the summer of 1938. Hiking. A fortnight. Blaise … Blaise Oberkircher took the train first and then I followed. Claudette … I think she always knew but never once said a thing, was simply content that we were happy as was my mother.’
But to have entered Austria in that summer was to have entered a nation that had only just been absorbed by the Third Reich during the Anschluss of 12 March. Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland crisis had remained very much in the news until 29 September when, after the Munich Conference, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had returned to London promising ‘peace for our time’ and waving a guarantee the Fuhrer had signed on the thirtieth.
Two teachers, two hikers. ‘You took a chance in going there, Fraulein.’
‘Blaise belonged to an international hiking club. I … Well, I simply tagged along.’
He dragged out her school notebook, quickly thumbed through pages until he had what he wanted.
‘“Is self-reliant and exceedingly capable,” mademoiselle. “As a student spent her summer holidays camping and orienteering.”
‘And then there is this,’ he went on. ‘ “Refuses to adhere rigidly to the dictums of the Ministry of Education. Looks for ways to enhance and enliven the learning experience? Children are happiest then,” she says. “Shouldn’t learning be among the happiest of experiences?”
‘ “Is far too rebellious,” one inspector has noted. “I’m not a monkey with a tin cup. If you want a robot, get someone else.”’
But those inspectors had all been French.
There were other things in the notebook, Victoria knew: “Smokes cigarettes; wears roll collars and Norwegian trousers, yet uses expensive perfume; is happy; is in love and lets it show,” and then … “Is engaged to be married. Is inclined to let misdemeanours pass. Stresses comprehension not the rote memorization, as demanded by the curricula. A love of each subject is, to quote her, the truest route to learning.”
‘Is rebellious, mademoiselle,’ said St-Cyr, putting it away for now, not mentioning anything else. ‘You were telling me about Alain Schrijen’s leisure activities in Kolmar.’
‘Der Goldene Adler is known for its Sonnenanbeterinen.’
Its habitual sunbathers of the female kind. ‘Gruppensex?’ he asked as Hermann would have done, and saw her suck in a breath and nod a little too quickly.
‘The men who frequent it watch them first and then … then choose the one or more they want to share.’
Hermann would also have asked, as would this partner of his, ‘Is it a rough house?’
She seemed relieved that he had asked it.
‘Personally I wouldn’t know, Inspector, but it’s rumoured that sometimes things have to be hushed up.’
‘Then is it true to say you’ve made a point of finding out all you could about Alain Schrijen?’
‘Only what his sister has told me.’
‘And no impressions of your own from the picnic the four of you had out at the Karneval in early November?’
‘None. He … he spent most of his time with Renee.’
The chief inspector did not say, You’re lying, mademoiselle. He simply dug deeper into that bureau drawer, lifting the neatly stacked lingerie out until she heard him suck in a breath and say, ‘Fraulein, what is this, please?’
The blouse Renee had worn to that party at Natzweiler-Struthof was torn and missing several of its sky-blue buttons. Though laundered, no attempt had been made to mend it.
‘Bloodstains are often among the hardest to remove,’ he said, gingerly unfolding it and then … ‘Evipan, Fraulein? Two ampoules lying side by side and cushioned, but leaving vacant what would not be noticed by most, the impression of a third?’
Each was of clear glass and contained an all but clear liquid, their slender necks thin and with a frosted necklace so that when snapped off, the spine would not splinter, but sometimes did, the name clearly given.
‘A hexobarbitone, Fraulein. Usually of the sodium salt. Slightly bitter but very soluble in alcohol or water. Given intravenously as an anaesthetic whose reaction is swift. Taken orally also, in capsule form or in a glass of schnapps or eau-de-vie. Within as little as fifteen minutes it causes a deep and comatose sleep of from two to four hours, depending on the dosage of course.’
There was panic in her.
‘I … I didn’t know she had those, Inspector. I swear I didn’t.’
‘Mademoiselle, let’s dispense with subterfuge. You have often been in this room. As we went from item to item, including the flacon of Mirage on that dressing table, or stood momentarily looking around us, you betrayed a familiarity your reflection in its mirror could not deny. Renee Ekkehard wasn’t just your friend who brought home the travel papers you would need to visit Vittel on the last Friday of every month. She was a fellow resistante.’
‘We weren’t moving deserters. We wouldn’t have done such a stupid, stupid thing. Ah, mon Dieu, Inspector, I’ve my mother to think of and … and I’d Claudette as well. Renee was simply very depressed and suicidal. She had seen things no decent human being could ever tolerate and had felt how hopeless her life was. I tried to tell her that she didn’t have to marry Alain but she kept on insisting that if she didn’t, she had only one other choice. She took it to save Sophie.’
‘Her lover.’
‘Alain found out about them-he must have. That … that is how I see it.’
‘Then think on it, mademoiselle. Think hard.’
He left her, left the bureau drawer open, the lingerie not replaced, the ampoules still lying there. Made her ask herself would two be enough?
Alone, the chief inspector sat at the table in the Stube, having still not gone to bed. Pipe smoke billowed from him so lost was he in thought, felt Yvonne, having come down the stairs as quietly as possible. Everything-all the bits and pieces of this investigation of theirs, this tragedy-was laid out before him. The two rose-coloured buttons that had come from that dress Renee had worn out to the Karneval last August. Snapshots, some torn, others not, of the wife and little son of Eugene Thomas were there. A wedding ring made of beautifully worked tin, the missing corner of that page from Victoria’s notebook. Chemical formulae and wouldn’t he have noticed that among Genevieve’s schoolbooks there were those that dealt with chemistry?
‘An anonymous letter,’ said St-Cyr, not looking up. ‘An earring, Frau Lutze. While the house sleeps or doesn’t, let us contemplate each of these items.’
He indicated the spread before him, asked, ‘Are Hermann and I to take them with us tomorrow when we go, as we must, to Natzweiler-Struthof to question Alain Schrijen and try to put an end to this matter?’
‘Please, I … I know so little …’
‘A second-class ticket for Strassburg for this coming weekend?’
The thirteenth and fourteenth of February to be precise and the second party Renee was to have attended at Natzweiler-Struthof.
‘Had she been told, do you think, that she had best come or else?’
An ultimatum. ‘I … I think so, yes. Yes, now that you mention it, I do recall her saying she had to go, that … that if she didn’t, Herr Schrijen’s son would be very angry.’
The pipe was companionably removed. ‘Ah, bon, you should have told us that before, shouldn’t you?’ he said en francais. A roll of bills, bound with a rubber band, was touched. ‘The Lagergeld Eugene Thomas was probably going to pay the assistant machinist for making this.’