Others helped. Others held her under too. ‘She’ll drown this time,’ cried St-Cyr. ‘Idiot, why must you do this when she may not even be involved?’
Held back, restrained and at gunpoint, all he and Hermann could do was to object. Suddenly her legs began to thrash, her arms to give those final spasms. Evacuating herself, the stench of this was mingled with that of the cyanide and the pool’s chlorine. Yanked up and out, she tried to breathe but couldn’t seem to and began to black out only to be hit hard on the back.
Vomiting water, choking, coughing, she lay in her swill, fighting desperately for air.
Engelmann screamed at her to tell him everything.
‘Herr Max …’ began Louis only to see rage cloud the visitor’s eyes as he flung the woman down to charge at him.
‘Bastard!’ shrieked Kohler.
Ah nom de Jesus-Christ! Engelmann had torn a pistol from one of the SS. He was going to shoot Hermann …
‘Put that down.’
Jackboots came together at attention, here, there and all along and around the pool.
‘General, this is idiocy. That woman knows nothing,’ seethed Kohler, straining at those who held him.
St-Cyr … St-Cyr and Kohler again. Must they always bring trouble? wondered von Schaumburg. ‘There are rumours, whispers, Herr Engelmann, that the city’s drinking-water supplies are to be poisoned and if not those, then the food that is being rationed and that, also, of every officer under my command and that of the General von Stulpnagel.’
‘General, this woman knows everything!’
‘And you?’ asked the Kommandant von Gross Paris icily. ‘What of yourself who let the Gypsy out of jail and who is still responsible for him?’
‘Herr Himmler will hear of this!’
‘He already has. Not fifteen minutes ago I spoke with the Fuhrer.’
The greatcoat’s shoulders and back betrayed none of von Schaumburg’s advanced years. Taller, bigger even than Hermann, he looked at Engelmann with scorn. ‘Gestapo,’ he said scathingly. ‘SS idiots. What did you think you were doing by releasing a man like that? Safe-cracking is a criminal offence and Paris is not your jurisdiction. Let these two handle it and then ask the questions of them if any are left.’
Himmler would be furious. A Prussian of the old school, a pious bachelor and hypocrite, von Schaumburg was still a power to be reckoned with, and through him, the High Command.
Engelmann wiped water from his face. Released, Louis reached Nana even as Kohler did, and together they helped her to a chaise.
Though it took her time to find her voice, and she was still in agony and very weak, she managed to say, ‘General, let me have some dry clothes. I will tell you everything.’
Coffee came with little white tablets Gabrielle and Suzanne-Cecilia thought at first were saccharin but then as Gestapo Boemelburg, still watching them, held his breath, they hesitated and thought the worst. Each of them set the tablet carefully aside with a spoon. They both said a faint, ‘Merci,’ to Georges who had served them and turned to gaze emptily into the fire which threw its heat at them in the grand salon.
Georges thrust the poker more deeply into the coals. Georges tidied things. Boemelburg swirled cognac. A cigar was brought and lighted for him using the poker.
The veterinary surgeon shuddered at the sight of that thing. ‘Cigarettes?’ asked Georges, his voice startling them both. The chanteuse quickly shook her head, the other one quavered, ‘No … No, I … I had to give them up due to the shortages and … and do not wish to start again.’
‘Why not be reasonable?’ chided Boemelburg gregariously. ‘No one will ever hear of it, I assure you. Help me and, in turn, I will help you both. You have my word.’
How kind of him. ‘If we can, we will,’ said Suzanne-Cecilia, setting her coffee aside untouched. ‘But you might as well consult the pages of je suis partout for their address. Neither of us know where the Gypsy and his woman are hiding.’
‘But … but Mademoiselle Arcuri said they could be holed up in some ruins, in a forest near Paris? A former encampment of the gypsies?’
Georges had not left the room. Georges stood with his back to the innermost wall, the ever-present but ‘unseen’ butler.
An Alsatian, Gabrielle told herself. Somehow she found her voice. ‘Je suis partout publishes the whereabouts of those the authorities are looking for. That was all she meant, and you must know of it in any case.’
The brandy glass was lifted in signal. Georges immediately disappeared. Flames curled about the poker. Scales of iron were flaking from its cherry red surface. A cup rattled, a saucer fell, Suzanne-Cecilia crying out, ‘Ah no …’ as it struck the carpet and bounced, but did not break.
‘Now listen, you two, my patience is gone,’ said Boemelburg.
‘It is to be the poker now?’ shrilled Suzanne-Cecilia in despair. ‘Is this what you want?’
She ripped open the front of her dress and pulled down the brassiere. Angrily Boemelburg shrieked at her to cover herself. ‘Don’t be such an idiot! Just give me answers!’
Georges came back to say, ‘She was right, Sturmbannfuhrer.’
Boemelburg snatched the newspaper from him and when he had read the notice, he thrust it at Gabrielle.
‘Those wishing to find Tshaya, companion and accomplice of the safe-cracker known as the Gypsy, need … She paused to look up at them. ‘Need hunt no further than the garret at the head of the stairs in the house at 15 rue Nollet.’
The newspaper was a weekly but published on Fridays, today then, the twenty-second.
‘Henri Doucette will have seen this by now,’ she said, dismayed by the thought. ‘If he should get to her before you do, Sturmbannfuhrer, what will he do to her for disobeying him? Will she be alive long enough to tell you where Janwillem De Vries is?’
‘Tshaya,’ said Nana Theleme, her jet black hair now braided, her voice still far from strong. ‘I first met her in 1914. I met Janwillem then, too, General. The kumpania of her father was at a bend in the Guadalquivir among the cork oaks and junipers. There were some sheep – merinos of ours – and my uncle had ridden out with my cousins and some others to settle the matter.’
She was clutching at straws, thought Engelmann. She coughed. Her throat was sore. Her lips and the left side of her face were badly swollen. ‘Forgive me,’ she said.
They waited. Von Schaumburg had insisted she be allowed to speak. Louis was grim and clearly felt she would have to tell them everything. She had that look about her and stood facing Old Shatter Hand, her eyes never once leaving him.
‘Even at the age of nine I recognized the hold Tshaya had on Janwillem but I wanted him too, and I told myself I would take him from her.’
‘How old was Tshaya?’ asked St-Cyr.
Stung by the interruption, she glared at him, her eyes smarting. ‘Seven, I think, but one can never tell with those people because they live entirely in the present.’
‘And this incident?’ asked von Schaumburg.
Again she lost herself in memory. ‘To understand what happened, General, is to understand the harshness of Cordoba. The heat is so great, the sun refuses to relinquish its hold on life. Distant among the foothills of the Sierra Morena a bluish haze remains. The olive groves seem everywhere, and there is the soft but heady scent of them and of juniper and sage, of sheep and horses, too, and it mingles with the heat to sharpen the silence.’
‘You’re a terrorist, damn you!’ seethed Engelmann. ‘We have the proof!’
‘The what?’ she countered sharply, not turning to face him but painfully choking. ‘General, your people don’t really know if I’m a terrorist or not. Janwillem sends me a gun to implicate me further and succeeds with this one because, when I bring it to him, he doesn’t give me a chance to tell him. He just shoves my head under water and tries to drown me!’