It wasn’t far. From the smokehouse, they would soon enough find, came an aroma that was hard to resist, from the stoves in the house, the perfume of seasoned beech. Schrijenhaus, Loweshaus or whatever Schrijen called it, was at the end of the road among spruce and pine and not like many in Alsace, not one of a cluster, but isolated. Half-timbered, one storey and an attic, it had a railed, narrow porch under the overhang of a steeply pitched and stepped roof across which moonlight, having broken fee of layered cloud, shone.
The house was at least a hundred years old. Nothing ostentatious, thought Kohler. Just solid comfort and tradition.
Down over the vineyards which crowded close, lay the Plain of the Rhine Valley, and well to the southeast, the carnival, the Kastenwald and Louis. To the west and here, too, at their edge, were the Vosges and a route through to France if one had the stamina and guts, and wasn’t the isolation perfect? No dogs had challenged him and that was a puzzle. No lights shone but that was normal these days. Schrijen’s black Mercedes had been parked in the drive shed next to the stables, but there’d been no sign of the tourer. Had the daughter gone out to the Karneval?
Most of the help would live a short distance away at the farmstead, but there’d been no dogs there either and no one had come out, though they must have heard the car. Had Schrijen given them a night off, they taking one of the horse-drawn sleighs into Kaysersberg or Kientzheim? Only the geese had given warning of this Kripo. Was Schrijen deliberately keeping the dogs close until needed?
That, too, was a worry. Behind the floor-to-ceiling black-out drape that hung just inside the front door, the entrance foyer was crowded with boots, coats, skis, trout rods, creels and hip-waders. Had Rasche been a frequent visitor, his secretary with him?
Anoraks, mittens, scarves, gloves and bleus de travail were here with rucksacks too. Father, son and daughter-it was almost too easy to tell them apart. Of all, the daughter’s was the most worn and it seemed clear enough that she must spend time alone hiking in the forest, but then he found, under an anorak, another worn rucksack, and yet another and had to ask, Renee Ekkehard and Victoria Bodicker?
No one had thought to remove them. Pruning clippers lay on a side table. Bundles of vine cuttings were in the wood box near the tiled stove, a freshened stack of sawmill slab-waste too. A man, then, who liked his comforts yet liked to get back to the land.
The corridor wasn’t long but in semidarkness with here and there a rack of staghorn beneath which were framed photos of past hunts, past harvests, too, les vendanges, and through the far door, light enough to see a cabinet with shotguns and sporting rifles under the shaggy head of a magnificent wild boar whose curved tusks gave warnings of their own.
Leather club chairs sat about the ample room with scattered throw rugs. Oil paintings of standing and reclining nudes hung between superb racks of antlers. Voluptuous girls; turn of the century-from a brothel? he wondered.
A plain, dark green, long-necked bottle of the Riesling had been uncorked. Two glasses lay on the pewter tray next to it, the one on its side and broken at the stem, with droplets of blood nearby on the cloth, and a spill of wine.
Another bottle, one of those pale, washed-out blue unlabelled things the French kept and had used for centuries was not on the tray. An eau-de-vie or marc and reminder of that wagon at the Karneval.
Schrijen, who had been watching him all this time, was sitting behind a plain wooden table, cigar smoke in the air and one old dog, an arthritic Doberman pinscher, on the floor at his feet, its sad eyes taking in this Kripo, only to then glance questioningly up at its master.
‘Well, Kohler, you continue to surprise me. Those two idiots won’t freeze to death, will they?
‘Generaldirektor …’
‘Lowe. Please grant me that. I’m at home here.’
‘Your daughter’s in trouble. Those two were told by you to follow her.’
‘To keep her out of it.’
‘Safe from herself?’
‘If necessary.’
Lead soldiers filled a nearby vitrine: shelf after shelf of the Kaiser’s uhlans-his cavalry armed with lances and a reputation that had, by 1914, made them legendary. Dragoons too, and horse-drawn artillery. ‘The Crown Prince Wilhelm’s hussars also,’ said Kohler. ‘The Death’s Head, though the name’s since been borrowed, hasn’t it?’ And hadn’t Sophie Schrijen had one of them in that desk drawer of her brother’s?
Its place in the vitrine had yet to be refilled and was glaringly empty, though it could have been filled so easily before this war. A symbol, then. A constant reminder?
‘Those were mine and then my son’s,’ said Schrijen, still watching him closely. ‘Alain was always allowed the only key, but one day lost it.’
‘Your daughter …’
Kohler had been through that desk. ‘Told the boy it must be in the secret hiding place he kept from all eyes but his own and that he had simply forgotten where that was.’
‘And the Death’s Head colonel that’s missing? She took it, didn’t she?’
Kohler could think what he liked, but would never learn that the boy had come upon his sister and one of the girls that had then been employed as housemaids, that Alain had seen the two timidly kissing in one of the barns, and had informed on them as was only right and proper. Nor would he learn that the girl had been taught a lesson she would never forget and had been sent to live with distant relatives. ‘That lead soldier was never found. Miata,’ he said softly to the Doberman. ‘It’s all right, dearest. Herr Kohler will put away the pistol he took from one of those men. You’ve no need to fret.’
‘Miata?’
‘It’s a Japanese family name. A visiting delegation of textile manufacturers from Kyoto came through early in ’29 when my friend here was newborn. One of them was quite taken with her and kept calling her Miata-san, Fraulein Miata. The name stuck, which showed how intelligent was my choice. Try as I did, though, I couldn’t get her to come unless I said Miata. She can hardly walk now. I should have her put down but can’t bring myself to arrange it. Alain needed our Alsatians at the quarry. Magnificent animals Miata tolerated but barely, but what can one do these days? I couldn’t refuse the boy.’
And no dogs to cause a fuss if deserters were being moved through to the west but he’d better be sure of it. ‘You’ve no hounds?’
Kohler indicated the boar’s head but did he think him a fool to have missed the trend of thought? ‘Not at present. We still hunt, of course. Now why don’t you take off that greatcoat and sit down? You’re making Miata nervous. That’s bad for her heart.’
There was an enlarged photograph of the daughter at the age of ten. A funeral, the kid grief-stricken, skinny and trying hard not to cry. The blonde hair had been braided into a diadem, the photo a constant reminder of her new and vastly increased responsibilities to the family. Nearby there was another of her in a shift, mortified and trying hard to smile while standing with her back up against the wall, her height being measured by some doctor who had his hands on her. The brother, in his underpants, was laughing at her.
There was a map of the vineyards, the house, farmstead and forest, including streams and a lake. Hunting trails were clearly marked, as were the locations of three Jagdstande, three hides.
‘Archery,’ said Kohler.
He and St-Cyr must have discovered that too. ‘My Sophie took it up for relaxation.’
‘As did Renee Ekkehard and Victoria Bodicker?’
‘Kohler, what have those men who were helping them been up to?’