‘She would always snicker and ask him what had gone on out there, implying mischief even with Sophie Schrijen, of all people, or with Renee or Victoria. The Idioten didn’t know.’
‘What?
‘The boss’s daughter? The Kommandant’s secretary? Our guards … we were always under guard. We’re not fools, are we?’
‘And if there was mail?’
‘It would be so blacked out, Eugene would be driven to despair. He was far too sensitive. Behind the wire one can’t be, can one?’
‘So when the anonymous letter came, he went over the edge?’
‘That is how we see it, yes.’
The tourer had leather seats and a heater that not only cleared the windscreen of its icy fog but kept the hands and feet warm. Sophie Schrijen drove carefully through Kolmar’s streets, avoiding cyclists and pedestrians, an excellent driver, thought St-Cyr, but was she also taking her time so as to impart yet a further confidence?
It wasn’t long in coming.
‘Eugene would never have killed himself, Inspector. Paulette and he had grown up in Chartres on the same street. Having to move to Issy-les-Moulineaux welded them together. Both had come from family bankruptcies. First her mother died, then his parents. They had no one else, were totally dependent on each other and happy, I’m certain. Very happy. A love like that is hard to find.’
She did not give it pause, but slowed the car further.
‘One of the Postzensuren was particularly vicious. She had been very fond of one of the junior sales’ staff, who had been killed in action, and was taking it out on Eugene-we all knew this, but nothing was done about it. Like other such girls, she has now probably taken to placing advertisements in the newspapers. Young man wanted … Old man, what does it matter so long as it’s a man and she can find a lover? Lonely like most of them, she is also bitter.’
‘And with his mail?’
‘It was the most heavily censored of all but you see, we had a slight advantage. After everyone had left the office, Eugene could sometimes find his postcards and take down what Paulette had written before that girl got at it. That way he only had to contend with what Vichy’s censors had blacked out. His despair was a total fabrication. The girl never knew-I’m sure she didn’t-and I don’t think any of the men of his combine did either. For him to have said anything to them about my unlocking that office door would have been far too risky for me. He was totally selfless, Inspector. A very dedicated worker and the truest of friends, and he taught me a great deal about things at the Works. The chemistry and mechanics of the process, you understand. Without him as my teacher, I don’t know what I would have done.’
The chemical equations and formula on that scrap of notepaper …
‘I’d never even been in the Works for more than an hour at a time before this war made it necessary for me to take over as its assistant manager. Vati-my father-hasn’t the patience or time to teach me, a girl, a woman with no technical training or mind for chemistry. I had to have help.’
And had become dependent on Thomas. ‘And when this anonymous letter arrived?’
Karl must have given it to Kohler. ‘Eugene would have been badly shaken, of course. It … it would have been totally unexpected. The girl would have gloated over it and made some comment when he came out of Oberstleutnant Rudel’s office after having read it, but Eugene must have known it was nothing but lies. He must have!’
Or had he? wondered Sophie. Had that Postzensure discovered he had been reading his mail and taken care of the matter in her own way? ‘A friend or relative in Paris could easily have written that letter for her, Inspector. She has a sister in Paris, a translator at the Kommandantur on place de l’Opera. Their father is an ardent member of the Party.’
6
Between the root cellar and the barn-board latrine, across a distance of perhaps fifteen metres, St-Cyr found that the snow had not only been trampled flat. It had been stained and splashed by human waste which had been emptied, bucket by bucket, from the pit into rusting sheet-iron barrels on wooden sledges that had been pushed and drawn by ropes.
Behind, and parallel to the low-roofed latrine, the washhouse was in the adjacent ground-floor corner of the barracks block, its windows small and grimy and stuffed with rags and straw where broken and not. One man, a Russian, stared out from the floor above the washhouse. It was impossible not to notice him, but was he pleading for some awareness of their plight, wanting to know the truth about the chemist and Renee Ekkehard, or simply hoping for a delivery of potatoes?
Sophie Schrijen had driven into the Arbeitslager without so much as a word of challenge or nod. The gates had simply been flung wide at the tourer’s approach, but if she could enter that way, could she not just as easily leave like that taking others with her unnoticed?
‘We had a slight advantage,’ she had said of Thomas’s reading his mail, but by not informing the members of his combine, by in effect deceiving them, had he not betrayed their confidence and would that not have had repercussions for him had they found out?
‘This case, this investigation,’ he said, turning away from the Russian without so much as an indication of having acknowledged his existence since to do so would not be wise and he was probably being watched himself, and yet … and yet one must turn back.
The Russian now pressed a hand flat against the glass, his fingers splayed. One must touch the brim of one’s fedora in salute. One must.
Again it was damp in the root cellar. It was fiercely cold, still stank to high heaven, and when the lights came on, the first sight of the potatoes was not of their number but of a pinkish-grey to yellowish-purple-brown frozen, glistening mush where the rotten had been trampled or split in half to be left geode-open on the tiers.
‘Leave me. I’ll come to the gate when I’m finished, but if you see Herr Kohler tell him to wait, then come and get me at once. Don’t let him down here.’
‘Jawohl, Herr Oberdetektiv.’
The guard closed the doors, and since Hermann wasn’t available to talk things over, why … ‘One murder, one suicide, or two of the former,’ he said to the second victim, his breath billowing. ‘You see, since Sophie Schrijen made it possible for you to steal a look at your mail, did your friendship not also extend to hiding what my partner and I greatly fear that committee of hers was up to? Bien sur, she would have begged you not to tell anyone and she now wishes to distance herself from Renee Ekkehard and in no uncertain terms to warn the bookseller in front of this police officer that it is only herself who will speak for the two of them. She also hints that perhaps the Fraulein Bodicker knows more of Renee Ekkehard’s death than that one is letting on. And early in December, you ask? That party at Natzweiler-Struthof? Is it that Renee Ekkehard betrayed not only herself but the others of that committee? Isn’t that why Sophie Schrijen knows perfectly well the girl’s death was murder? Isn’t that why those two detectives the colonel doesn’t want us talking to have been following her, and isn’t that why she and Victoria Bodicker now fear they are to be next?
‘She gambled, didn’t she, when she interrupted my questioning the bookseller to reveal so much? It was almost irrational of her and certainly desperate. She accused that brother of hers of being not only brutally cruel but impulsive, claimed that either he or her father would have taken care of the matter-a “suicide,” but made sure that my partner and I would have to visit the quarry to question him. So I must ask, in our absence, has she laid the groundwork for yet another suicide, that of the bookseller, and would that then distance herself sufficiently?’