‘The colonel’s detectives,’ said Kohler softly. It hadn’t taken a moment to decide, since photos like these were in every cop shop in the land and in France too, and each had its Polizeikommandantur number on the back along with the stamp and swastika. These were simply spares that had been, and were always kept in case false identity papers might be needed. Renee Ekkhard must have gotten them, and at some risk, too, but why tuck them in here unless watching for these two when in the street and before an audience?
Had Sophie Schirjen discovered she was being constantly followed and was that why she hadn’t gone out to the Karneval?
‘Herr Kohler, what is this, please?’
It was Frau Macher. ‘Ach, I was just trying to reach my partner but can’t seem to figure out how to use the telephone.’
The tisane was not of camomile, that gentlest of nervines, felt St-Cyr, nor was it of peppermint or verbena. It was of motherwort whose pungent aroma and astringently bitter taste would have been lessened by lavender and honey. A tisane, then, to gladden and strengthen the heart in the face of adversity. Leonurus cardiaca in the Latin, the remedy centuries old and a favourite of medieval monks, but a bookseller who knew her herbal.
‘Sip it slowly,’ said this Victoria Bodicker to the Fraulein Schrijen, the bookseller now the one with a hand on the other’s shoulder. ‘Take deep breaths. Yes, yes, that’s it. Inspector, you can see the way she is. Could the interview not be left until another time?’
The two of them were far from feeling easy. That neither wanted to be questioned was clear enough, but was it because each feared what the other might say?
‘Another time … ? Of course it’s possible, but my partner and I have only a limited amount of it and I’ve come on foot.’
The Stube they were in was directly behind the bookshop and gave onto a short, terra-cotta tiled corridor at the far end of which a heavily timbered and carved staircase rose steeply from a leaded window and rear door. On the limestone banquette of the tiled Kachelhofen, a grey tabby contentedly half-lifted sleepy eyelids to its mistress who was still tensely standing nearby with that hand firmly clamped on the shoulder of her friend-were things that desperate for them?
The Fraulein Schrijen sat with head bowed, clutching the cup and saucer in her lap, her blonde hair having fallen loosely forward over that shoulder and the other’s hand. ‘What did you find?’ she managed, not looking up but shuddering at the thought. ‘Please don’t lie to me, Inspector. I can’t take any more lies. I can’t! I sent Renee out to the Karneval instead of going myself. It was all my fault. Mine! Had I not done, I could well have been the one in that … that horrible coffin the colonel had made for her. I could, don’t you see? I could!’
The other was shattered by the outburst.
‘Sophie, please. It wasn’t murder. You mustn’t think that.’
‘Were you there, Victoria? Did you see her do it and not try to stop her?’
Tears … there were plenty of them, the hand of the bookseller tightening as if to stop the flood and give warning yet unable.
‘You know I wasn’t, Sophie. How can you even think such a thing?’
The bookseller’s deep brown eyes registered both concern and despair. ‘Inspector, Renee was very upset. She had seen a man hanged three times at Natzweiler-Struthof-that is how long it took for him to die, and when they had finally cut him down, one of them …’
‘Victoria, please don’t tell him. Please don’t. I … I couldn’t bear to have you do that.’
The tisane had spilled, the cup had rattled, a handkerchief was now being used, the skirt ineffectually dabbed at.
‘Then stop this craziness. No one would have killed her. Liebe Zeit, why would they?’
‘And Eugene, what of him?’ challenged the other.
‘Sophie, his death can’t have had anything to do with what Renee saw. I made her swear she wouldn’t tell another soul, not even yourself.’
Anxiously the hand that held her by the shoulder was grabbed and pressed against a cheek then kissed, the tisane again spilling. ‘Why didn’t she come back from the Karneval, Victoria? Why did she have to stay out there all night? That lorry was to have picked her up at about 5.00 in the afternoon. 5.00!’
‘What lorry? Meine Damen, bitte, let us take this one step at a time. Did the Fraulein Ekkehard ask you to provide a lift in one of the firm’s lorries?’
Why hadn’t he been told? Why had no one let him know? ‘Colonel Rasche telephoned the office to ask if I could arrange things. Renee had left the Polizeikommandantur by then to change and get her skis. He was going to give her a lift himself but had found he couldn’t. Something urgent had come up.’
The tear-dampened grey-blue eyes were puzzled by his also not having known what had just been said of the facts.
‘So a lorry was sent from the Works?’ he asked.
She would let him see her tears. ‘That is correct.’
‘And was it sent to pick her up that same day?’ he asked, she to touch the rim of her cup and no longer find the will to look at him.
Her voice was ashen. ‘The driver waited a good half-hour. He … he honked the horn several times but when Renee didn’t appear, he … he felt the colonel must have come by and taken her home. Colonel Rasche hasn’t told you any of this, has he?’
Alarmed, she looked questioningly up at her friend, before wincing and lowering her eyes to the tisane as if the truth were too hard to bear.
The shoulders were gripped, the hair brushed back into place, but it did no good. Instead, she said, ‘Renee wouldn’t have hanged herself, Victoria. Not even if Alain had shot that man, and I know he must have once they’d cut the poor soul down and turned him over so that the shot could be to the back of the neck as a further warning to the other prisoners.’
‘Sophie, please don’t cry. Renee didn’t love your brother. She was trapped. Afraid not to say she’d marry him, and terrified if she did. You know what they’re like up at that camp. You know the pressure that was put on her.’
‘So she killed herself, is that it?’ snapped the Fraulein Schrijen.
‘I know it’s hard for you to accept, but …’
‘A good Catholic, damn you?’
‘Sophie, I held her when she came back from that weekend at Natzweiler-Struthof. I tried to calm her just as I’m trying to calm you. Now drink that, please. Take all of what’s left of it. You’re overtired-exhausted. That father of yours has got you doing far too much. Ach, how can he expect so much of anyone, let alone yourself who has always to fill two pairs of shoes? Your mother’s and your own. You know it as well as I do. Go and lie down on the daybed in the kitchen. Leave me to talk to this one. You don’t always have to do everything.’
‘Are you sure?’
Disconcerted by the swiftness of the response, the bookseller hesitated and then found her voice and said, ‘Of course. Now leave us. Take an hour. Surely the Works can spare you for that long. Samson and I will wake you.’
Samson being the cat.
5
Ground wood was everywhere in the Pulping Shed, water everywhere, steam too, noted Kohler. Screens shook, pumps sucked, augers turned, pulley belts flapped and bounced as they spun and reached out warning everyone in sight to keep out of the way, but these sounds were as nothing to that of the debarkers. Each time a metre-and-a-half-long log of spruce was shoved into one of the tooth-wheeled strippers, the sound would begin with a crucifying chatter that instantly mushroomed into that of ten thousand demented woodpeckers, but there were six or seven of these Christly machines and hardly a moment’s reprieve. Already he had a splitting headache. Already he was right on edge.