‘Yvonne, meine gute Frau, the two detectives I was telling you about. Gentlemen, my housekeeper, Frau Lutze, yours too. It’s all been arranged. Ach, sit. Bitte, Yvonne, the Suppe. Beer for Herr Kohler, the Reisling for the Detektiv St-Cyr and myself. Werner had best come in. That stump … You know how the cold gets at it. Tell him he can watch the quay quite adequately from here.’
And that there are no secrets between them? wondered Kohler.
‘Gentlemen, we’ll eat and then we’ll talk.’
There was no doubt they were being bribed and that the meal could well lull questions that had best be asked, but St-Cyr knew he was pleased, for what was set before each of them was as it would have been in 1937, the last time he had worked on an investigation in Alsace. The soup, a puree of split peas, ham stock, onions, garlic and carrots, had been given a scattering of freshly grilled lardons and two twists round the plate of ground black pepper-real pepper! Individual saucers of sauerkraut steamed, adding a delicate sharpness and touch of juniper to the warm, full aroma, while blue-grey ceramic pots of deep yellow mustard and side dishes of Schniederspettel, a lightly smoked sausage of beef and pork seasoned with caraway, contributed their notes, as did the freshly baked peasant’s bread of stone-ground wheat and rye.
The Riesling was superb, its bouquet elegant, the first brush clean, crisp, not too dry or sweet, a trifle flinty perhaps but … ah, mon Dieu, to let its bouquet mingle with the other notes after all the years of the Occupation’s denial was to bring tears to detective eyes.
‘Kaysersberg,’ he said reverently. ‘The Schlossberg, Colonel. Granite is what lends the flinty taste. The slopes have a southern exposure, giving longer time on the vine and less risk of an early frost. It’s magnificent. I salute you.’
Kohler downed his soup, sausage and lager as if still in the trenches, whereas the Frenchman savoured each morsel. ‘Yvonne and Werner ran a very successful Winstub* between the wars. Werner has to shop around a good deal more these days, what with the rationing and all, but still manages splendidly.’
And if that wasn’t putting it mildly, what was? The big hands with their butcher-strong wrists ruthlessly broke bread, the colonel shy; every bit as tall as Hermann but wider in the shoulders and thicker through. With the warmth, he had unbuttoned shy; the field-grey tunic, had set formality aside. An Iron Cross First- and Second-Class were there, the Pour le Merite, the Military Service Cross also, and a silver wound badge for three or four wounds, all from that other war. No Nazi Party button, though, not even one of the phosphorescent swastika pins that were supposed to be worn during the blackout. Just an intensity that couldn’t quite be hidden, the look in those dark blue eyes swift and sharp to meet each sudden assessment of himself by either shy; of them, the robust nose flaring in challenge shy;, the forehead wide and strong, the hair an all but vanished grey-white fuzz, the ears big like the rest of him.
‘These suicides, Colonel … ’ began Louis, not realizing what he’d done, thought Kohler, for Rasche threw back his head as if struck and gruffly said: ‘Ach, mein Lieber, not while we’re eating. To honour the cook is to honour the meal.’
Louis begged forgiveness as he should, but what the hell was really going on in this cosy little nest? Werner Lutze spooned his soup as an Oberfeldwebel should while sitting directly behind shy; his former Oberst and on the bench that ran beneath the windows. The wife sat demurely at one end of the table, this Kripo at the other, with Louis opposite the source of these ‘suicides shy;’ and all three hosts assessing these two purveyors of justice from Paris with more than just a hesitant eye. Frau Lutze shy;-formerly Yvonne what? he tried to recall-had taken far less soup so as to be ready at a curt nod from her star border, while that husband of hers watched the quay in between stealing little glances at them and at his soup. All were anxious. Yes, that was it. Wary.
‘More soup, Herr Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter?’ asked Yvonne. ‘A little more of the sausage and sauerkraut. It is good, yes, that you should eat.’
The Alsatian argot, if one dared to call it that, had definitely been suppressed. ‘Bitte, meine gute Frau, I’m famished.’
She took his plate, left her own and disappeared behind the stove and into the depths of the kitchen. Kohler knew she would be trying to calm herself. ‘These suicides,’ Louis had said and she had sucked in a breath and momentarily been unable to lift the spoon from her plate, had forced herself not to glance at the colonel.
Returning, Yvonne found the will to softly smile as she set the soup plate in front of this detective from the Gestapo, quietly accepting his, ‘Danke,’ but quickly turning away. Earlier Otto had warned her that there were things they would need to know but others they must never learn.
Hans Otto Rasche was sixty-eight and well beyond the hoped-for retirement with full pension which would probably never be realized, given the way the war was turning. A man who desperately longed to simply go fishing.
Suicides, she silently said to herself as she stood watching these ‘guests’ of Otto’s. Ach, the lines in his face had deepened with the worry. There were also the blotches that the sun and age had given him, the scars from the shrapnel, too, those of the granite splinters as had Herr Kohler.
Knowing what he did, why had Otto agreed to help the Winterhilfswerk with the Karneval? Had it been but a moment of weakness in a man who must still show little of it? Had he been weakened by a pretty smile or a breath of that perfume, the softness of the young, a pleading entreaty to one who could be cold even to such gestures as the nearness of the woman he had once worshipped?
The Winter Relief was an annual collection that helped to finance the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, the Party’s Social Welfare Organization. Otto was not a member. Otto was invariably far too wary of such things. Ach, a generous donation, of course, to cover his back, but to agree to do what he had, there had to have been a substantial reason.
The soup plates were cleared, St-Cyr noting that the Baeckeoffe came in an earthenware terrine whose oval, iron strap and padlock could but have its memories for Frau Lutze. Down through the centuries here in Alsace, and in many parts of France, Mondays had been wash days, the noon meal prepared well before dawn and left to cook at the baker’s while doing the laundry at the wash house. Now, of course, she would have cooked it herself, but why, then, had she insisted on locking it, unless wanting those memories to come?
Taking a beautifully worked, wrought-iron key from her apron, the woman quickly kissed it as she must have done when still a girl. Deftly the lock came away to be set on a pewter saucer, the luting paste of bread dough baked brown having sealed in the juices that would otherwise have escaped.
Garlic, he told himself as the lid was removed to reveal a top layer of sliced potatoes. Leeks, he knew were there, onions shy; too, and carrots and cabbage, pork, mutton and beef, at least 1,500 grams of meat cut into cubes, the marinade of bay leaves, juniper shy; berries, white wine-at least a litre and a half of that-one pig’s foot, one bouquet garni, black pepper, salt, and still more garlic, the terrine filled with layer upon layer of potatoes shy;-at least two kilos of them-the meat and other vegetables interlayered, a slab of back fat first being placed on the bottom, then the whole covered with the liquid. And the cooking time? he asked himself and answered, Three to four hours at a medium heat. Magnificent and unheard of by most at home in France and here, too, probably.