‘One would have thought you would have left well enough alone and kept out of trouble,’ he grumbled, referring to the murder.
‘But I have, Sturmbannfuhrer,’ replied Gabrielle earnestly. ‘Every night until five o’clock in the morning I sing for your troops. I do it out of loyalty and the goodness of my heart. They’ll have missed me. Personally I hope they will not be too upset and that their morale will still be cheered on by my recordings.’
Verdammt! how could she persist? ‘Don’t tamper with me, Mademoiselle Arcuri. It’s serious. You’ve been under surveillance for some time.’
What did he want from her? A full confession over dinner with her throwing up all over the place? ‘It wasn’t right of your people to have bugged my dressing-room at the club.’ They hadn’t been following her, too, had they?
Sauce dribbled from his fork. ‘Wireless signals were being picked up repeatedly and not just by Gestapo Paris.’
‘Pouf!’ exclaimed Suzanne-Cecilia. ‘Quelle folie, Sturmbannfuhrer! They found nothing – nothing, you understand, and yet they still persist in accusing me? Why did they not ask of the comings and goings I and our gatekeeper have heard at night? Oh bien sur, some do try to find a place to bed down. Are we to have thrown those poor unfortunates out at such an hour and in such terrible weather?’
‘Transients?’ he asked, bemused.
‘Exactement!’ she exclaimed, blood trickling from her broken lips as she cut into her venison. ‘Sometimes I have to remain in my surgery overnight. A zebra with bronchitis, a wart hog with appendicitis but is this a reason to accuse me of terrorism?’ She used her napkin to staunch the bleeding.
‘Those transients …’
‘How were we to know they had a wireless set? Ah maudit, Sturmbannfuhrer, please ask how many of your soldiers I have given conducted tours to? And then … why then …’ She caught a breath. ‘Ask, please, would I knowingly have taken them into a place where there was a hidden wireless set?’
‘Would I have reported the theft of my car and the presence of those explosives had I been a terrorist?’ asked Gabrielle earnestly. ‘The ones who stole my car must have been the same as had the wireless set.’
He ate in silence and he could see that they were worried they had offended him. He had to go carefully. Sympathies were running high, what with the constant attention of the press. Gabrielle Arcuri, particularly, had a tremendous following and not just here in Paris but all over the Axis world. Three women. Verdammt! what was he to do?
At least one of them had to be broken. That would then cause the other two to confess. With full confessions there could be no questions from von Schaumburg or any of the others. Short of this, the whole affair would have to be handled very carefully. Sonderbehandlung. Berlin would demand no less. An end to them.
He set his knife and fork down and took a sip of the Vouvray demi-sec that had been taken from the cellars of the Chateau Theriault not two weeks ago. ‘These days people are dropping out of sight all the time. Everyone questions where they’ve gone but no one dares to ask.’
He’d arrange it – was this what he was telling them? wondered Suzanne-Cecilia. Letting her anger get the better of her, she said bitterly, ‘Is it true what people say about Marguerite Vilmorin?’
More sauce was taken. Potato cakes were a side dish and he took another of these and some carrots and peas. ‘And what, precisely, do they say of that one?’ he asked and there was a lifelessness in his voice which made her shudder.
‘That … that when presented with what they were about to do, she bared her breasts herself and that her interrogator then talked of philosophy and music while he burned her breasts and ribs and then her vertebrae with a red-hot poker and questioned her for hours. That … that he then served her real coffee which she could neither taste nor feel since he had also torn out all her fingernails.’
Boemelburg threw down his knife and fork. ‘How dare you? Now either you co-operate or you go to Buchenwald where the axe will take that silly head of yours from your shoulders!’
She ducked. She cringed. She blurted, ‘Forgive me. I … I’m so ashamed. The meal …’
‘Quit being a faux jeton, madame! Use that brain of yours which is so capable.’
He was going to kill her.
‘Now have a little wine. Drink it down and Georges, here, will refill your glass.’
Dear Jesus help them.
Boemelburg oversaw the Bickler Unit, a school which trained informers and infiltrators who then penetrated the Resistance. Tshaya? wondered Gabrielle. Had Henri Doucette sent her to such a school or had he simply put her to work, she needing no training in those arts whatsoever?
And what of Nana? she asked herself. Could Nana hold out long enough to say the right things? Everything depended on her doing so. Everything …
‘Now look, you two, I’m giving you both the opportunity to avoid such treatment,’ said Boemelburg. ‘If we could trap the Gypsy perhaps things would be better for you.’
Berlin would be appeased – was this what he was saying? ‘Are you offering us a deal?’ managed Gabrielle.
‘Betray the Gypsy and you will let us go free?’ asked Suzanne-Cecilia. ‘But … but how could we possibly do such a thing when we do not even know him and have had no contact with him other than for me to be tied up in bed – yes, bed, Sturmbannfuhrer – while he boiled dynamite the terrorists had given him? The terrorists!’
She burst into tears and, shoving her plate aside, put her head down on her arms and wept.
He was having none of it. ‘Think of your Marguerite Vilmorin if you wish. Think of baring your own breasts. Those robberies were all targeted, madame, and well beforehand. He had help. Your friends can be connected to at least two of the robberies. More, if persuaded.’
There was silence from him. He took up the carving knife and fork. He … ‘They did say something about a meeting-place, Sturmbannfuhrer,’ blurted Gabrielle. ‘Those terrorists who stole my car talked of it with De Vries. A place where gypsies used to camp. A ruin near a forest, I think, but it’s all so hazy. I was terrified, you understand, and thought they were going to kill me.’
Tears streamed from her. Had he finally broken the two of them? ‘A ruin … A forest …’ he said.
‘Near Paris, I think.’
‘And what of your friend, Nana Theleme? Would she know of this meeting-place?’
‘Tshaya would,’ blurted Suzanne-Cecilia. ‘Ask her, why don’t you? Perhaps then you will find what you’re looking for!’
The stench of bitter almonds, of potassium cyanide, emanated from the corpse, from its folds and creases, its cavities especially. The skin was lividly pink and cold, the fingernails a midnight blue. ‘I didn’t poison him! I didn’t!’
The sound of Nana Theleme’s shrieks reverberated about the swimming pool. Gripped by the back of her neck and by the hair – drenched repeatedly and still on her hands and knees at the side of the pool – she tried to hold herself away from that thing but Herr Max was too strong for her. Her lips touched Hans’s chest. Her face was crammed into an armpit. ‘You betrayed him!’ shrieked Engelmann. ‘He kneiv you had betrayed him!’
She vomited, jerked, coughed and panicked as he yanked her up to shove her head under water again.
Hermann cried out, ‘Dead she’s useless, damn you!’
‘You … you …’ The echoes rang as bubbles burst from her nostrils and mouth and her eyes began to widen again in terror.