In 1937 the Nazis had ordered the compulsory sterilization of the ‘Rhineland bastards,’ the children of German women and these occupation troops, and now, of course, Herr Weber was free to take it out on the camp’s Senegalese.
As God would have it, and He did do things like this, the Untersturmführer’s office was adjacent to the entrance of the theatre, the lineup to see Weber long but silent, and here, too, was none other than Becky Torrence.
The surgery was simply Room 3-54, noted Kohler, the audience a crowd at the door. Lisa Banbridge, the twenty-two-year-old, ponytailed brunette with the hazel eyes and degree from Duke University, was ready to give assistance. Candice Peters, the forty-year-old with the frizzy brown hair was still tidying herself-a rash under the arms, her worries of erysipelas having proved false. The soap she had paid plenty for had been bought on the black market in the Reich by one of the guards on leave and was to fault, though relief would come slowly and there was also the chagrin of having been taken to the cleaners.
Jennifer Hamilton stood beside him. Although the bed Mary-Lynn had used still held its fastidiously tidied array of last effects, they had the look of having been tidied again. Unfortunately Louis hadn’t given him the sequence. Now the suitcase, closed and flat, lay beneath precisely folded blankets and the two sheets each inmate would have been given every month in exchange for their others. Then came the pillow; next to these, the shoes and precision again, the one pair toe-to-heel behind the other; then the coats, folded with the arms tidily crisscrossed over the front, but here, too, they had that look, as if whoever had first done it hadn’t been satisfied, or perhaps some other compulsive had come along to redo the lot.
Out of spite? he wondered. Louis would have too.
Boils can be painful, the brother’s touch that of the sensitive, the naked bottom of Barbara Caldwell, the auburn-haired thirty-two- to thirty-six-year-old graduate from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee-rather nice were it not for the inflamed, now lanced and erupted volcano just to the left of the crack.
‘We have no secrets,’ said Jennifer softly, not looking up at him but still at the patient. ‘We can’t have. We know everything about each other. It’s been weeks and weeks, poor thing. She avoided asking Brother Étienne to deal with it, even the last time he was here.’
The brother didn’t waste time. Using a wooden mallet from that toolbox of his, he pounded a root, warmed it and its juices in a pot on the electric ring, added a goodly splash of cider vinegar and handful of coarse salt, then juggling the hot poultice, clapped it on her bum.
There was a yell, but he held her down. ‘You’ll thank me,’ he said en français. ‘Three times a day for the next four days, then once a day until the inflammation has completely disappeared. I don’t want that coming back.’
An appreciative sigh ran through the crowd.
‘What did he use?’ Jennifer whispered, still mesmerized.
‘Comfrey. The soldier’s friend. Louis would be able to tell you better, but I think it’s been in use since the Middle Ages.’
Lisa placed a towel over the poultice, then helped Barb to yank up her slacks but leave them unbuttoned. ‘Just lie there,’ she said. ‘Give it as long as possible.’
They looked at each other, these occupants of Room 3-54. Dorothy Stevens, the tall, thin, thirty-six-year-old brunette and graduate of Ohio State had bared her feet, the sores between the toes being a classic example of the usual fungal nightmare of communal living.
‘Who tidied that?’ asked Kohler quietly.
Ah no, thought Jennifer; he was pointing at Mary-Lynn’s things yet watching her so closely she could feel it. ‘Becky. I. . I think Becky must have. I saw her ducking out of here about four days after Mary-Lynn fell. When we passed in the corridor, she. . she said she was looking for Nora.’
This informant of Weber’s was panicking. Now a glance up at him, now away to the bed, then back up to him in doubt, the soft brown eyes furtive.
‘Was it tidied more recently?’ said Kohler.
Why had he to ask? ‘I. . I don’t know. It. . it looks the same to me.’
The scar had tightened on that chin of hers, the fair hair falling forward over a knitted brow. He’d have to ignore the others, felt Kohler. ‘Why was she looking for Nora in this room?’
Under such scrutiny Jennifer felt her stomach muscles tighten. Vomit began to rise. ‘Maybe she was looking for Caroline.’
‘Because Nora had been dogging the footsteps of the two of you, was that it, eh?’
So he had found that out. Again the muscles tightened, harder this time. Harder. ‘Nora thought Caroline might have been stealing things. I told her she was crazy but she persisted. Caroline had lost things too. One of the pink satin ribbons from her practice shoes, a pebble she’d kept because it was interesting. A trachyte porphyry, Nora had called it.’
She swallowed, but it didn’t go down well, noted Kohler. ‘Anything else?’
Had she winced? wondered Jennifer. Had that been what had caused him to ask? ‘A glass marble-a cat’s-eye. It had been her “shooter” in grade school and was, I think, the only thing she had left from home. Madame de Vernon kept throwing Caroline’s things out. Caroline. . ’
Swiftly she turned away to hide her tears in panic.
‘Inspector, how could you?’ seethed Lisa Banbridge. ‘You know Jen can’t have done a thing. None of us have.’
Candice Peters of the frizzy brown hair wrapped her arms about the girl. ‘That was cruel,’ she said. ‘And here we all thought you were different from Weber and the others. Jen has been holding in her grief terrifically. We’re all upset, but she was in love with Caroline. Love, damn you!’
‘Love,’ said another.
‘OK, OK, I’ll back off, but there are things I have to ask her. Nothing difficult. Just a few questions.’
‘Like what?’ asked Lisa suspiciously.
‘Like, what is the brother treating her for?’
‘Anxiety,’ sighed Brother Étienne, having used the rest of the comfrey to prepare a hot footbath for the case of athlete’s foot. ‘I should have thought that evident, Inspector. An infusion of lemon balm taken twice daily, morning and night, and with a little of the honey in that cough syrup bottle she’s still clutching, or hadn’t you noticed?’
‘The tea of France?’
‘Oui. You should try it instead of longing for tobacco. It relaxes the nerves, calms the heart, and is but a mild and pleasing sedative.’
‘Ask her if she left this room the night Mary-Lynn died.’
The eyes and nose were wiped, the look valiant. ‘I didn’t. Caroline left, as I told you, at about midnight.’
‘A terrible attack of asthma,’ said Lisa, still not convinced he was going easy.
‘I was afraid to accompany her because of Madame de Vernon. Caroline. . Caroline said she would be all right once she had found her cigarettes.’
‘You’d been having an argument-that right?’
‘A disagreement, nothing worse. We’d patched it up by the time she’d left.’
‘But hadn’t. Caroline had still been in tears and very upset.’
‘Was she?’ asked Jennifer.
‘And the photo that one had borrowed from Madame’s suitcase?’ demanded Kohler.
Did he really think she would have kept it when she had told him she hadn’t? ‘I burned it in the stove, like I said.’
Although in better control of herself, there was still anger. ‘But you only did that after Caroline had been killed.’
She mustn’t smile, felt Jennifer, must simply be firm. ‘Really, Inspector, I wouldn’t have done so before. We were to have taken it to the séance last night.’
All well and good and tough, was she? ‘You could have returned it instead.’
‘Could I?’
‘Caroline must have told you where Madame had hidden the spare key. Everyone else in that room of hers knew of it.’