This one was tougher than even she, herself, believed. ‘Then all along you’ve known Renee Ekkehard must have told him?’
‘She must have, mustn’t she? I didn’t know for sure, since Renee always maintained she had been so drugged and terrified, she couldn’t remember.’
‘But the thought was clear enough?’
‘Afterward, yes. In the weeks following that … that “party.”’
‘And the Fraulein Schrijen, did she also know of it?’
‘That brother of hers and her father would have made her abundantly aware of it as they found out everything they possibly could. Why else would Sophie now deny we were close friends, Renee especially?’
‘And yet you still maintain that Renee Ekkehard’s death was a suicide?’
How could it possibly matter to him now in these last few moments? ‘That is for you and Herr Kohler to decide.’
Still he didn’t look up at the stars. ‘That wasn’t what I asked,’ he said, and she knew he was impatient with her.
‘Then oui, oui, Monsieur l’Inspecteur premier. Un suicide, n’est-ce pas? Tres tragique et tres regrettable.’
‘Louis, don’t be so hard on her. Think about those men. Planning to escape from a place like this under cover of darkness is one thing, in broad daylight another. Oh for sure they would have taken one of the cars-the tourer-but …’
‘Not the other car,’ sighed the chief inspector, now turning away at last to look up at the stars.
‘They couldn’t have,’ said his partner. ‘If Schrijen didn’t show up at the fete, the whole thing would have been off. They had to let him leave in that sedan of his and believe emphatically that his daughter was following right behind him.’
‘Two cars, Hermann, when petrol is rationed and in such short supply?’
‘Inspectors, Sophie wouldn’t have gone with her father. She had to avoid his questions and would have found any excuse to follow him. The need to stay all day at the fete, the need to drop by the Lutze house first to collect Renee …’
‘Then those boys must have been planning to take one of the lorries, Louis.’
‘There were two of them in the garage for servicing when I was there, Hermann.’
‘And they’d have had the schedule at that garage pinned down, but though they’d been harvesting solder and dyeing scraps of cloth, they couldn’t have made uniforms for all twelve of that combine. At most, only two of them would have been in uniform and even with those, the greatcoats they’d fashioned or stolen, the caps, the trousers and boots, would have been enough.’
‘Eugene and Raymond,’ said Victoria sadly. ‘Eugene as an officer.’
‘Maillotte would have driven the lorry, Louis. Thomas would have gotten into the tourer with Sophie.’
‘Who wouldn’t have helped them, Inspectors. Once Sophie had realized what was going on, she would have thought only of Renee and of what must happen to her if they succeeded.’
‘Thomas would have had the cutthroat, Louis. Timing would have been everything. Schrijen would have to catch a glimpse of that daughter of his in his rearview as the gates were being opened.’
‘He’d see the “officer” beside her,’ said St-Cyr.
‘And think it Karl Rudel perhaps, though Sophie would have been in a fluster and trying to figure out what to do,’ said Kohler.
‘Lowe Schrijen would also see the lorry, Hermann.’
‘It would probably have had to slow momentarily outside the Lagerkuche so that the others could scramble into the back and pull the tarp back down. Maybe there would have been two brief pauses before the gates. One thing’s for sure, those boys would have had it all figured out.’
‘And?’ asked St-Cyr.
‘They’d not have detonated anything here.’
‘Because they couldn’t have, Hermann, not without jeopardizing the rest.’
‘The assassinations, mademoiselle,’ sighed Herr Kohler. ‘Those they planned to hit at that fete you three had dreamed up.’
‘Lowe Schrijen having invited the Gauleiter and others; Colonel Rasche also,’ said St-Cyr.
Then everything needed-at least some of it, felt Victoria-must now be at the carnival. If only she would be taken there, if only she could reach that one wagon before anyone else did: the Jeu de massacre. ‘Eugene and the others must have discovered we were bringing people through, Inspectors, and that Sophie would then take them to the farm in her brother’s tourer. On the day of the fete’s opening she would have had to turn to the northwest, off the main road into town in order to get to Kaysersberg. Her father would no longer have been able to catch glimpses of the tourer behind him.’
‘But would have had to hurry on,’ said Herr Kohler.
‘Thomas was to have cut her throat soon after they reached that turning point, Hermann.’
‘Those boys who were helping you, mademoiselle, wouldn’t have taken it kindly your using them as cover while getting others to freedom. Even Thomas would have felt it.’
‘But once at the farm, they would have put as much distance as possible behind them, Hermann. They’d have split up, some going west, others north or south, but all into the depths of the Vosges, even though it’s winter.’
‘Having stolen the father’s collection of sporting rifles and shotguns, mademoiselle,’ said Kohler, ‘and so much for your having tried to make their miserable lives a little less miserable.’
What they had said was true. ‘Sophie wouldn’t have gone with any of them as a guide, not even Eugene, Inspectors, and they must have known this. She would never have left Renee to face things but would have tried to stop them, they knowing they would have had to kill her or be taken.’
Assuming, of course, that Renee Ekkehard would not have been hanged, and that Eugene Thomas would not have refused to cut Sophie’s throat and was still alive. A foolish, foolish gamble all the same, felt St-Cyr. Desperate as all such attempts must be, and invariably doomed to fail.
As they passed the Xanthate Shed, identifiable simply by the rankness of its stench of rotten eggs, Kohler couldn’t help but recall how Raymond Maillotte, the test weaver and fabric designer, had been chalk-white and terrified of being sucked into the rotating blades that had reduced the sheets of pure soda cellulose to the dust that had coated him.
Outside the Steeping Shed there was the smell of caustic soda, overlain like everything else by that of carbon disulphide. Here he couldn’t help but think of how Gerard Leger, the glazier and no doubt leader of that combine, had stood at the far end of the shed and watched as Henri Savard, the carpenter and coffin maker, had panicked at the thought of being deliberately pushed or accidentally slipping into the steeping tank to which he’d been assigned by Lagerfeldwebel Jakob Dorsche.
At the Pulping Shed, the noise of the debarkers was sufficient, and here he remembered Martin Caroff, the Breton, neck deep in a soggy mush of ice-cold wood pulp, the assistant machinist bellyaching about a cracked grindstone.
Caroff had been the source of Renee Ekkehard’s Celtic/Gallic mythology and carver of Boudicca for a Wheel of Fortune, but just what the hell had Lowe Schrijen done with those boys?
At the far end of the administrative block, the colonel’s two-door Juraquatre was parked in darkness next to the entrance to the head office.
‘Mademoiselle, a moment,’ said St-Cyr. ‘The ampoules you’re carrying. Please hand them over.’
‘Must I, Inspector?’ she asked, wincing at the loss.
‘Louis …’
‘Merde alors, Hermann, we can’t have her falling asleep. Even that much Evipan wouldn’t kill you, mademoiselle, but drugged you will be of no use, only a pronouncement of guilt.’
‘But I’d have been in dreamland, wouldn’t I, Inspector, and soon in the Land of Everlasting Life those ancient peoples believe in?’ she said, pressing them one by one into his hand.
Armed SS crowded the dimly lit staircase and the foyer above, their weapons cradled as they parted to let them pass. Most were young and in belted greatcoats under steel helmets, some of them not much older than the boy they had shot, but men who looked at her with an emptiness that filled her with dread.