The auburn hair that had been soft and long and had touches shy; of dark red was now worn much shorter, prematurely greying and had hastily been pinned into a bun. The eyes … they’d once been of the warmest shade of greenish-brown and lively too, were now faded, puffy-lidded and behind black-rimmed specs that made her look like a forty-seven-year-old tyrant.
The rosy cheeks were no longer firm and smooth but flaccid and pale. In waves, her voice broke over him.
‘Hermann … Hermann, is it really you?’ Ach, he had aged. Too many late nights, too much tobacco and alcohol, but was he also on an amphetamine-Benzedrine perhaps?
She was not tall, this woman who had been lithe, willow-shoot thin, quick-witted and quick on her feet. She was rounded in the shoulders, chunky in the hips about which an off-white smock-coat’s ties were bound, and though she hesitated, she couldn’t stop herself from saying, ‘I always knew you’d come back.’
‘Lucie, I need your help.’
‘When have you not?’ Was it really Hermann? That scar down the left side of his face from eye to chin-how had he come by such a thing? That graze across a brow to which she had clamped cold compresses to bring down a raging fever? A bullet, she tersely nodded to herself, but there was no longer that mischief she had seen in those blue eyes of his that were now faded, no laughter anymore. He was harried, desperate and obviously on the run again.
Kohler set the mortar and pestle she had been using aside, took them right from her as she heard herself telling the morning’s patients to please wait but a few moments. ‘An old friend.’
Deliberately he blocked their view by filling the doorway, knowing though that, like all who ventured here, they would strain to listen.
‘I haven’t much time, Lucie. I meant to come back after that other war. I really did.’
‘But didn’t.’
A floor-to-ceiling curtain shielded the dispensary from the audience and this he quickly drew, knowing also, of course, that now those waiting would begin to imagine what must be going on behind it. There would be talk, and talk was not good these days.
‘Evipan,’ he said, his voice kept deliberately low.
‘You’re one of the detectives Colonel Rasche requested. When I heard that you were actually in Kolmar, I …’
He touched her lips. Fondly he let that hand stray to her left cheek, and she heard him saying, ‘I’ve wanted to see you ever since that bastard Lutze came and took me away.’
Under arrest and dragged from bed, but a lie, of course, for in all those years since there had never once been a letter, not even a postcard. He had been a skirt-chaser-she had seen that right away. A breaker of hearts. Even then, she had had the sense not to try to fool herself when he’d come to her 21 February 1915, a Sunday, at 10.02 in the morning. Papa had been at church, she at her studies, the shop closed as Hermann had banged on the door and then had collapsed into her arms. Had God sent him to her? she had foolishly wondered. Liebe Zeit, he had been handsome, still was, but now …
‘What can I do for you this time?’
He took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket, laid it on the counter and unfolded it to reveal a 10cc ampoule, some two and a half centimetres long from base to tip.
‘Just tell me if taken orally in alcohol or straight up, would one or two be enough.’
‘To cause death-with no other drug in the system? But … but I thought Renee … the Fraulein Ekkehard had hanged herself.’
‘You knew her?’
‘Of course. Most come to the shop.’ Had it been murder after all as some were whispering? Why else would he have come?
Holding the ampoule under a light, she ran a thumb over its label and fine print. ‘One gram of Evipan dissolved in ten cubic centimetres of distilled water is a lot to down, even if needed, Hermann. Usually for intravenous injections before surgery, much less is used. From one-quarter to three-quarters of a cc of such a solution-maybe even as much as one and a half ccs, sometimes, but this …’ She closed her fingers about it. ‘If taken orally, it would, I think, not cause death but certainly sleep would come and it would be profoundly comatose. As to someone’s orally taking two of these, I don’t know what would happen. A lot depends on the age of the person, their state of health. Many factors.’
‘And intravenously?’
‘Surely no one with any sort of training would think to do such a thing unless the patient was …’
‘Death?’
‘Even then with the one gram, I doubt it, but … but with Evipan the rapidity of injection is, perhaps, the determinant.’
‘The more rapid the injection, the harder and faster the hit.’
How could the young man she had known, if but briefly, speak of such things in such a way? Had all innocence been lost?
As they went toward the front of the shop, they passed the litre bottles of Vittel and Hermann, he could not help but notice them and had to ask and harshly too, ‘How did you come by those?’
A mineral water from the springs at Vittel that was taken orally for the relief of gout, hepatic colic and other ailments of the liver, arthritis too. A still water with tiny amounts of bicarbonates and sulphates. ‘Victoria Bodicker always brings me some when she visits her mother at the end of each month. The bottles are only for show, of course, since everyone brings their own containers. I have four of the milk cans from a farm. She fills them for me.’
‘Get rid of it. Deny ever having it.’
‘And my customers? What of those who know I stock it for them? Victoria can’t have done anything. How could she?’
‘Don’t ask. You’re not involved. You know nothing of what she was up to. Deny it.’
There was frost on the windows and as they hurried by outside, people seldom bothered to glance in. It was always best these days to appear busy and bent on one’s destination.
At the kerb, though, a Wehrmacht Citroen sat idling. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.
Kohler felt her take him by the hand, felt the nervousness in her. ‘My partner.’
‘I meant the woman in the back.’
‘Lucie, forget I was even here. Remember always that for those of us in my line of work, friends are the hardest thing to come by. You’re one of them and I won’t rest until I’ve done all I can.’
Then Hermann was gone from her again, just like that, she standing out on the pavement. Gone this time, right out of her life? wondered Lucie, but knew she would simply have to wait and see.
One thing was certain. Renee Ekkehard had come back from a skiing party early in December wanting to ask what few unmarried girls like to ask but need to know. And as for Hermann, were he and his ‘partner’ on their way to Natzweiler-Struthof, and if so, why please, were they taking Victoria Bodicker with them?
Not until Goxwiller, just to the south of Obernai and in the shadow of Mont Sainte-Odile, did Herr Kohler, having floored the car nearly all the way, pull off the road. They were perhaps some forty kilometres to the north of Kolmar, felt Victoria, and there was now no longer any doubt in her mind as to where they were taking her.
St-Cyr had dozed off; Herr Kohler had said so little, it had been and still was all too evident that he dreaded their destination, but in spite of this he had been kind. He had asked if she was warm enough and, though tobacco was obviously in extremely short supply, had found, lit and passed back to her his only cigarette.
Now he broke out the lunch Yvonne Lutze had hastily thrown together for them. A vacuum flask of lentil soup; sandwiches for more than two, and of dried, smoked sausage, mustard and Munster wrapped, of course, in newspaper. Had Yvonne done it to remind her of what Renee had taken from the Lutze kitchen? If so, she silently asked, how is it that I could possibly have known of its contents?