‘Untersturmführer Weber was putting the squeeze on her,’ said Senghor. ‘We were certain of it. One can always tell. Bamba took her into the woodshed while the rest of us worked and kept a watch.’
‘The sergeant told her she would only be with me, Inspector, but even then, it worried her. Is she afraid of men?’
‘What about the other internees? Did any of them see her going in there with him?’
Talk. Had there been talk? ‘Some must have, the guards most certainly.’
‘The shed, then, and the basket. Get it and show me.’
Made of dark-brown, tightly woven cane more than fifty years old, the basket was frayed around its rim and had doubtless been with Duclos throughout that other war.
Taken from its skin bag, the contents were then emptied into it. Several polished bits of turtle shell; some tiny gourds, all quite different; a little piece of ivory with rows of holes as in a gaming board; a dead iridescent beetle, a wood-borer perhaps; a short length of copper wire badly coiled; a lion’s talon, the middle digit; a wooden spool without its thread, three brass cartridge casings, one from a Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance, the 1873, an officer’s gun. A Mauser 9mm Parabellum lay nearby, again from the gun of an officer. Had that one shot the French officer and Duclos then shot him?
A British tommy’s.303 calibre was yet another cartridge casing. Fighting alongside them, or over ground once taken and then lost, Duclos would have had plenty of opportunity to add such things to his little collection. A sharpshooter’s cloth insignia, French Army and certain death if captured, lay beneath a gold wedding band and photo of a dead poilu, a French soldier. There was a scattering of shrapnel; one lens from a pair of eyeglasses; a bent compass needle; several teeth from a small animal, a monkey perhaps; then small, white bird bones; a spent shotgun shell being incongruously next to the dried, coiled bit of an umbilical cord. Several polished pieces of various woods in unusual shapes were also present, as was the cork of a champagne bottle, Moët et Chandon; three scimitar-shaped pieces of silver, each about five centimetres in length and strung together with finely-linked silver chain; a confirmation medallion; a piece of amber with an embedded fly and once the fob off some German officer’s pocket watch no doubt; a nurse’s cap badge, British and that other war yet again; a brass tunic button too; a small pocket-knife with Swiss Red Cross symbol and extended, opened pair of scissors; a tiny brass bell to ring the future or, if hidden on the person, give that one away. Ah, merde, had Colonel Kessler been to see these boys himself? Was this where his use of ‘bell ringer’ had come?
There were several small scraps of tightly rolled wallpaper, a rooster’s beak and foot, the ebony carving of a naked woman with a child on her back, a gunflint, a twist of fine blond hair-Becky Torrence’s?
Several short feathers from a chicken, beach pebbles, and bits of water-worn glass joined a few sou, some pfennigs, a one-mark bill from the time of the Kaiser and several centimes from Senegal, and beads, too-lots of beads from home.
‘A money shell,’ said the sûreté. ‘A cowrie once used in trade and found virtually all over Africa. Slaves were bought with them. Gold, ivory, and diamonds, too.’
‘It was stolen right after Christmas, Inspector. I’ve looked everywhere. I know I didn’t lose it. One of those ladies must have taken it, but unfortunately some of the British also came to consult me at about the same time, and for me to accuse a white woman. . ’
Overcoat pockets were dredged, and when he had it, the detective laid it on top of everything, porcelain-white to creamy yellow and with its rows of short, stubby teeth.
‘Grandfather will thank you, Inspector, as will my father.’
‘I think Caroline Lacy was about to return it,’ he said. ‘Now, show me what you do.’
‘I shake the basket, Inspector, and the things leap up to settle of their own accord.’
‘And in their arrangement lies the future. What was Becky Torrence’s?’
The detective was pointing to the twist of hair but did he really need to know? ‘The thigh bones were crossed, Inspector. The twist of her hair was beneath them and the lion’s talon hooked overtop with the cock’s foot leading away to the spool of lost thread, which indicated a long journey. The empty gourds told of a terrible thirst, the eleven millimetre cartridge casing of the cold for some of those shells, they simply didn’t fire in that other war because of being stored for so long in a damp place. The sharpshooter’s insignia told of the loneliness among many others, the scimitars of demons.’
Duclos had the look of one who absolutely believed he had the gift and the concern, too, for Becky Torrence.
‘She was shattered by what the sun had to say, Inspector. I tried to tell her that if she would come again we’d have another look, but she. . She just turned and walked away without looking at anyone.’
‘Ah, bon, I’ll be in touch. For now let me keep the cowrie and borrow the twist of hair.’
6
Through the trees, the artistry of nature seemed everywhere. Vista after vista, thought St-Cyr, snow cascading from a branch, sunlight glistening, wind drifting. No wonder Monet, Manet, Pissarro, and the other Impressionists saw such things the way they did. If only time were available to enjoy them; if only Hermann, who couldn’t have cared less about such, could find him some pipe tobacco. Dried, ground nettles, herbs, carrot tops, and beet greens-no doubt available in various combinations in either of the hotels-would be of absolutely no use. Merde, but the craving just wouldn’t go away. Like an infernal itch, it was distracting when inner calmness and a quiet think were imperative.
Several of the curious had gathered near the Chalet des Ânes. Though the victims were under guard, the resident questions, jeers, and demands would not be. The bodies would have to be moved and that meant, of course, the presence of this sûreté, but first a request to Herr Weber would have to be made, an order given by him since nothing could be done without the latter.
Entering the casino was not difficult. Everyone was far too busy to take note of one lonely French detective, the invited guest of a then-to-be-absent Kommandant. The building was entirely different from the one he had known while recuperating here during the Great War and prior to the Americans using the Parc and its hotels for their hospital, yet the memories couldn’t help but come. Films had been shown in the theatre-this had been saved from the disastrous fire of 17 July, 1920. One couldn’t forget Charlie Chaplin in Police, Charlie frantically refusing to go along with his fellow robbers and protecting the damsel in distress.
In The Floorwalker, the chase had been on escalators; in The Rink, on roller skates. Tears had freely run with the laughter these American ‘silents’ had brought. Senegalese had been sprinkled throughout the audience, Moroccans, Berbers. Algerians and Cochin Chinese, all in uniform as well as the others-all French citizens, members of the Colonial Army and united with the rest by that common bond of the front.
But then had come the Treaty of Versailles and the occupation of the Rhineland and then that of the Ruhr, and with them charges that France had deliberately used its ‘black and yellow’ troops. One rape, one incidence of a brutal mugging would probably have been enough to set off the passive resistance of the Germans. The firm of Krupp had even sent in an investigative reporter. While several unfortunate incidents had been uncovered, others had revealed coloured troops enthusiastically helping with the grape harvest. Yet the stigma of the ‘black terror’ had spread, and of course as time went on this stigma had only become worse.