Alain Schrijen was standing next to the Obersturmfuhrer Meyer. At a sharp command from the latter, her handbag, coat, scarf and hat were brought from the first lorry and given to Herr Meyer, her scarf accidentally falling at his feet to be left lying in the road.
‘Mademoiselle …’ began St-Cyr, only to feel her hand grip his own.
****** In the summer of 1943 the shower-baths became part of an experimental gas chamber that would have held about twenty at a time.
10
From the depths of the woods came the cry of, ‘Halt!’ and then a burst of firing, from the road, a stillness as every man paused in what he was doing and the driver of the wagon looked up with hesitation at the man who was guarding him. Was there nothing he could do to stop the madness? wondered Kohler.
Dragged to his feet, forced to run on that bad leg, the wagon driver stumbled and lay prostrate. ‘My son …’ he babbled. ‘My Etienne …’
Struck in the back by the Schmeisser’s fire, he arched his spine, stiffly flung out his arms, coughed blood, clutched snow and lay still.
Meyer flung his cigarette away in disgust. ‘These black marketeers, Kohler. They will never learn.’
The urge to throw up was there but wouldn’t be wise. Maybe Meyer was forty years old, maybe ten years younger than the grey and stubbled driver of the wagon, but one thing was certain. As Head of the Political Department at Natzweiler-Struthof, he was independent of the camp administration and considered a law unto himself. Interrogations were always overseen and often personally conducted by Meyer. Hence he’d been on the road to the Textilfabrikschrijen not just to catch up with them but to interrogate Martin Caroff and the others and to take them back with him. Hence the hurry too. Had Deiss and Paulus sent him a little something?
They must have, hence Alain Schrijen’s helpless look, the lamb too, and ready for the slaughter if necessary, and Meyer taking in the two of them at a glance before saying, ‘That woman in your car, Kohler, is wanted for further questioning.’
‘She doesn’t know anything. She’s just a bookseller who once a month is allowed to visit a sick mother.’
‘Then why did you bring her to Natzweiler-Struthof?’
‘To hear what this one has to say about his fiancee.’
Meyer didn’t start shrieking, he simply smirked. ‘Really, I must insist, Herr Hauptmann der Kriminalpolizei. You see, we feel she has been a party to top secret information and therefore cannot be allowed to leave the camp.’
‘She’s with us. You don’t need to worry.’
‘If she knows nothing, her conscience is clear.’
Victoria Bodicker’s coat, hat and handbag were thrust at Alain Schrijen, the boy, the young man startled and now uncomfortably looking off toward the Citroen, for of course she knew far more than she was letting on and Alain Schrijen knew it too, but also what he had kept from this one when questioned himself at the camp, otherwise the whole can of worms would have had to be opened.
‘Untersturmfuhrer, I believe I gave you an order,’ said Meyer. ‘Please see that it is carried out.’
‘My scarf …’ blurted Victoria helplessly.
She had every reason to be sickened, felt St-Cyr. The scarf still lay at the Obersturmfuhrer’s feet but now not only was Alain Schrijen coming toward them, others of the SS were dragging the body of a teenaged boy out to the road.
‘Mademoiselle, was there anything in that handbag of yours that you wouldn’t have wanted Herr Meyer to find?’
‘I … I’m trying to think.’
‘Your papers … There wasn’t anything wrong with them, was there?’
‘Why should there have been?’
‘Please just answer.’
‘None, then. My compact, it … it has a small mirror.’
‘Which could have been used to see if anyone was following you-that is what he can and will claim.’
‘My cigarette case. It’s of silver and could have been used for the same purpose, I suppose.’
‘Given to you by whom? Come, come, mademoiselle, before Alain Schrijen reaches us, it’s best you confide everything.’
‘Blaise Oberkircher gave it to me on my birthday. Its … its inscription reads, “Victoria, our traverse has only begun.” And … and then there is “with much love” and his full name and the date, “27 May 1939.”’
The inscription wasn’t good and she knew it and need not be reminded. ‘A lipstick?’ he asked. Schrijen, though heading straight for them, seemed uncertain, his stride not the usual for an SS with more than enough support behind him.
Tersely the chief inspector repeated the question, but why had he to persist? ‘A lipstick, no. At least, I don’t think there was one.’
‘You seldom use it,’ he muttered, reminding her that he never forgot a thing and that Renee’s farewell note had been written in lipstick. ‘Anything else?’
‘An Opinel. Ah, no, I’d lost that. I’d set it down when we were last making up the packets of nails and … and forgot I’d put it on the table.’
‘In the wagon that was used as a field office?’
‘Oui. It … it was Mother’s and had been in our kitchen for years.’
Hermann had found just such a knife in the trunk from which the rope had come that had been used to hang Renee Ekkehard. ‘The colonel, mademoiselle, could he have taken it?’
‘Renee and Colonel Rasche had been tying the packets. Sophie and I had been counting them.’
‘And Eugene Thomas?’
‘Was standing at the drawing table with Raymond Maillotte. They’d been going over the schedules. Eugene had turned to ask Sophie something, but … but then didn’t. He … he just gave me the oddest of looks and turned quickly back to the table.’
Having seen Sophie Schrijen or the colonel pocket the knife, or had either of them? ‘And when was this? Come, come, mademoiselle. We haven’t much time.’
‘Before Christmas. A week, I think, or ten days. I … I can’t remember.’
Because you don’t care to? he wanted to demand, but asked, ‘Well after the party?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else? Women’s handbags invariably contain countless items yet you’ve had trouble mentioning three.’
‘Some sticking plasters. I always try to carry a few, though one can’t buy them easily now. Before the war, I used to help Mother parcel books in the evening to take to the post the next day. That brown paper we used was always sharp. I … I often cut myself.’
A creature of habit who has an answer for everything if pressed-was that how she was? Hermann had, of course, found a used sticking plaster in the drawer of Alain Schrijen’s desk, in the only corner his sister had set aside for herself, and Hermann had cut himself on the spine of an ampoule while searching through the jewellery.
‘Matches?’ asked St-Cyr as Alain reached the car.
‘Yes! But … but I’d no cigarettes and don’t use them often. Only when I …’ Ah, Sainte Mere, why had she let him make her say it? ‘Only when I feel the need.’
Cigarette ashes had been found on a corner of the tin trunk that the killer and Renee Ekkehard had sat on. ‘It’s stuck, Untersturmfuhrer,’ said St-Cyr of his side windscreen. ‘Ein Moment, bitte.
‘Photographs?’ he asked her.
‘I … I can’t remember.’
‘Not even one of Claudette Oberkircher’s son?’
Would that, too, be used to condemn her? ‘Of Blaise, yes. In uniform, but … but also the telegram Claudette received. It was she who came to tell me of our loss.’
Meyer was far from happy and could hardly wait until Alain Schrijen was out of earshot.
‘Kohler,’ he shouted, jerking up on the toes of his jackboots for emphasis, ‘what has been going on at the Textilfabrikschrijen of that one’s father? Kommandant Rasche asks Section IV in Paris for you and that French Schweinebulle to investigate what are clearly suicides? Prisoners are being given unheard of freedoms without proper security clearances and now … now those same men are being held in Straf? Straf, Kohler! And I receive no official notification of this and no request for any such clearance but must learn of it from Kriminalinspektor Serge Deiss and Kriminaloberassistent Herve Paulus? Seasoned detectives who investigated the deaths and concluded they were suicides? Detectives, Kohler, who had advised Colonel Rasche of this very fact and who, I must add, you saw fit to nearly beat to death!’