An elongated puddle, parallel to the wall, lay in the grass. Deep, it indicated a heavy load, and when that truck had finally got going again, it had skidded several times, but had that girl of the shoes managed to escape, only to be caught by the killer or one of the others who must have been with him?
When he had gathered up the necessary, he glanced behind the wall and found the charred, soggy remains of what must have been a poultice.
* A lever that locks all the doors if the van is threatened.
* Tracking prices during the Occupation is exceedingly difficult, for they changed from year to year and place to place, hence best estimates for October 1943 are used.
2
Coming to a grove of beech, St-Cyr immediately began to gather a few of the nuts only to stop himself. He was now to the south of the ruins and much nearer to the Chemin des Dames. From its lower heights, he could look back out over the flat valley floor to see Hermann and then the van, the ruins running east-to-west to catch maximum sunlight whenever possible, for the Cistercians always built their abbeys this way and with plenty of water, forest and field. He could even follow the line of the hollow, now full of rainwater, that must mark the top of the once much deeper, timber-lined channel that would have conducted water from the Ailette to gristmill, forge, brewery, latrines and sawmill, and the ponds in which the monks would have raised the carp they ate instead of meat. But they would not have used that water for everything. He was, he realized, near the spring they would have visited daily for their drinking water and cooking. He could even hear it.
Uphill of him, the sodden ferns revealed cobbles in places that had once paved the former path, but had that girl known of the spring, had she run this way knowing there might be a grotto in which to hide from those two in the van?
Nothing was broken, nothing flattened. It was as if she had deliberately avoided leaving any such trace, and when he came to the spring, it poured readily over a flat, grey slab of limestone the monks could well have left in place.
Pausing to drink as he would have done in 1914 or 1917 had opportunity allowed, he rested a hand on the slab. Surprisingly, it moved ever so slightly, but …
‘Did you even come this far?’ he had to ask, and only then saw that she must have slipped away to his left to enter somewhat denser forest uphill. But she wasn’t there either. Instead, a good twenty metres from the spring, the single frond of very healthy fern among many had been hesitantly grasped and its top broken. No others had been damaged, but he was all but certain she had stood where he now was. Having heard the first of the shots, she had sought comfort in that touch and then, as the second shot had come, had instinctively snapped the frond and known exactly what must have happened.
Not until he returned to the edge of the encroaching forest, and with his back to the Chemin des Dames, did he find any further evidence.
She had stood here and waited, not knowing if she, too, would be killed.
Two healthy young saplings of hornbeam had been deliberately trampled. Of the two killings, the first he had examined had been the closer. The second had been all but across the ruins to the north and by that peripheral wall, which could only mean that she had run that way first and then had used that wall to hide her coming back and around the ruins to here and the spring. ‘But why leave such a trace, mademoiselle, when you already knew the location?’ Hermann had gone all but right around the ruins of the church and remains of its outbuildings, had even had a look at the bodies, for he was standing by the farthest, holding a corner of the tarp, had forced himself to do it. But if she hadn’t been a decoy, then what better way for her to get through the controls and into Paris unnoticed than by riding in the back of a bank van? Unless he was very mistaken, she couldn’t have known that it was going to be robbed, nor that those two would even think to turn on her.
Still feeling her former presence, he heard himself saying, ‘Ah bon, mademoiselle, Joliot and his crew have finally arrived. The two who are with him can start looking for you in earnest then come back tomorrow with others and the dogs if needed. But if the killer didn’t shoot you, what then?’
Joliot’s faded dark-blue 1933 Peugeot 301 two-door didn’t have a firebox. Instead, having been fitted with a roof-top battery of fifteen-centimetre diameter metal tubes to hold the bottled producer-gas from the depot in Laon, it looked like a badly designed makeshift rocket launcher. One of the Russian ‘organs’ perhaps, their ‘little Kate’s’ from the tender song of such a girl, the banefully howling Katyusha.
When Hermann caught up with him, he said, ‘Yet another gazogène, Louis. That killer came in a heavily loaded one.’
More couldn’t be said.
‘Mes amis,’ shouted Joliot, who looked like a rake handle in stiff black tweed and a detachable snap-on collar that had been yanked at so hard Kohler could see that it had come loose. ‘Putain de merde, Jean-Louis and Herr Kohler, the fart-gas that wretched old china vase of ours insists on gave the carburettor a hiccup and stopped me cold on the road. Me, I was patching a tire whose inner tube only Picasso would want for the variety and design of its innumerable patches. Profound apologies. Emergency repairs take time and these old hands, they can only do so much when that Victor of Verdun insists I pay the official eighty francs for a new inner tube that will be useless if I can get it, instead of the eight hundred of the marché noir where the availability and quality are almost, if not quite, as they used to be. What have you two for me this time, eh? More trouble?’
So many china vases had been made with Pétain’s mug on them, the maréchal had acquired that epithet, thought Kohler, but it was Louis who said, ‘Just the two for now, Théo. We need you to pin down the time, but there may also have been another. Garde champêtre Rocheleau will be only too willing to show you where the first two are, and while you’re at it, Hermann and I will give the van another going over.’
‘Rocheleau, ah oui, oui, that one, he has the wife who is twenty years the younger and has not only ambitions for him but for herself. Me, I don’t envy him, even if she does have a figure fit for the gods and likes to display it. Father Adrien, their priest, simply lifts the eyes of despair and tosses the futile hand since the confessional, it is private and none of my business. No one comes here, Jean-Louis, yet suddenly there’s a robbery and two murders and we must have tourists who visit the Caverne du Dragon yesterday and happen upon the bodies when looking at the ruins here? Order is required, Herr Kohler. Order is what the Kommandant of Laon and others are insisting upon because of the robbery. Apparently having our police look after things is no longer any good, and even Herr Oberg in Paris is demanding that Vichy allow him to bring in good German police to oversee the whole 150,000 of the force, not just the 30,000 in Paris. Me, I happen to think they’re crazy but that the maréchal and those people he has with him in Vichy had better agree since there are bound to be further such incidents, and spring is coming, n’est-ce pas?’
Again the Allies and the invasion.
Boots, oilskin, hat, satchel and specs were adjusted, a hand lifted in salute as Rocheleau deferentially came to lead him away.
‘Joliot’s even wearing a two-franc Marianne, Louis, and the coins I’ve collected for you just aren’t the same.’
Back in 1940, the wearing of all such badges and pins, political or not, had been forbidden, but lately the young especially had taken to making protest buttons of the discontinued small coinage of the Troisième République. ‘Théo’s six granddaughters know well enough that the head of Marianne and the cloth cap she wears are symbols of liberty. As one of the Occupier, Hermann, I expect you to say nothing beyond telling him that it brightens up such an atrocious suit.’
‘Ach, no one but an idiot would ever challenge a coroner lest he find one looking over him.’
When they climbed into the back of the van, Hermann chose the bolted-down swivel chair she must have sat in and, opening the mégot tin,
found the butts and matches dry. ‘Junos from home, Louis, makhorka too.’
And taking out that last letter, dated 8 November 1942, from his Jurgen and Hans that had finally found its way to him two days ago, he read:
Vati, only the captains get tobacco made from the leaves. The others get the really strong stuff from the stems and because their clothing is so heavy and their boots often lined with felt, the scent clings and, though we can’t hear them at night, we can smell them.
‘Let’s try it, shall we?’ said Louis.
‘We’d only choke, but it does tell us our firebox operator’s been around. There are also Lucky Strikes and Camels from downed American aircrew, and Woodbines and Wills Goldflake from RAF aircrew. Dropped, probably, by Wehrmacht and picked up in bars frequented by those same boys.’
‘We’ll have to ask him.’
‘If we ever find him, and we had better. Rocheleau’s a problem, Louis. When a coroner even hints at something, we’d better listen.’
‘He’ll still have to pay the penalty, Hermann. We can’t have him stealing evidence that is badly needed.’
‘Maybe a warning. At least let’s listen to him when he comes back.’
‘Rocheleau will only lie and accuse us of having stolen things if confronted by that Kriminalrat colleague of yours from Hamburg.’
‘Back off! His silence, even for a few days, might just give us the time we need. The bigger the issue, the lesser the other.’
It was an old argument, but perhaps the importance of something else should be emphasized. ‘Although from 1910, your mégot tin is almost as if brand-new.’
‘Bought from among the fleas of Saint-Ouen?’
‘Hopefully it will lead us to the seller who can then lead us to the buyer.’
‘There were also the keys to the van, and these.’
Coins and the charred corners of ID photos.
‘And this.’
Singed at its edges, scorched on the underside, the poultice held a sachet between the two layers of cloth. ‘Laid against a ragged tear in the skin, Hermann. Cloves, thyme too, and lavender, camomile as well probably. A temporary attempt until medical assistance, since a good deal of pus was leaking and the wound must have been badly inflamed. The cloves would have been for the pain, the thyme for its antibacterial, the camomile to readily soothe the inflamation and the lavender to offer both its stimulation and calming due to such a pleasant aroma.’
‘You should have been a herbalist monk.’
Since they were in a place where there would have been successions of them. ‘The sachet is first plunged into boiling water and then applied as hot as can be withstood.’
‘But not made up here, Louis. It couldn’t have been, not when in such a hurry, but did they bring her back to that truck and take her with them?’
‘That we won’t know for a while, but why the attempt to destroy it and the pocket contents of the others?’
‘Evidence someone didn’t want hanging around, not after the killings.’
‘And who was that someone, Hermann, since those items must have been seized and flung into the firebox?’
Trust Louis to always look beyond the obvious. ‘A boss who wasn’t happy and in one hell of a hurry, hence a forgetful firebox handler, but a killer who should never have taken what he did.’
‘But was she originally in the truck hitching a ride and then in the van?’
Merde, must Louis look beyond everything? ‘If so, that gazogène could never have kept up with it.’
‘Ah bon, précisément, since it had a gasoline-driven engine which would have put them at least an hour or more ahead of that truck.’
Scheisse! ‘Which was heavily loaded, and since they damn well couldn’t have known where that van would be taking her, did they happen to see it from the road to Laon, eh, since we went through a woods to get here?’
Apparently the small things did matter. ‘But why is she so important Berlin are interested, Hermann, or is she the reason at all?’
Some questions simply didn’t have ready answers.
‘Ah, Rocheleau, these shoes,’ said Louis. ‘Come up, squeeze in and point out exactly where and how you found them. They may be important.’
This Sûreté was going to have him dismissed, thought Rocheleau. Lackey to his Gestapo partner, he had even spread the rest of the satchel’s contents at that one’s feet. ‘The wife,’ he heard himself blurt. ‘Inspectors, you must …’
Already there were tears behind those Bakelite windows, thought Kohler, but the salaud would only blame Louis unless his partner took charge. ‘Might I remind you that it’s Chief Inspector St-Cyr and Herr Detektivinspektor Kohler of the Kriminalpolizei i.e., the Geheime Staatspolizei.’
‘Hermann, please, these are difficult times. Garde champêtre Rocheleau, like far too many others, had his wages frozen in the autumn of 1940. The wife, Eugène?’
Was further humiliation now to be demanded? ‘My Évangéline loves to dance and those, they are of her size or almost.’
Kohler couldn’t resist. ‘Isn’t dancing considered an affront to those million-and-a-half of your boys in our prisoner-of-war camps and the others that have been buried? Dancing is in the Third Reich, as is kissing in public, and exactly the same as your maréchal has banned.’
‘Ah oui, oui, mais …’
‘But dances are held each week near Corbeny, are they, in someone’s barn or forest clearing?’
‘Hermann …’
‘Louis, I can’t believe it. A thief, and now a rural cop who allows dancing. Gestapo Boemelburg will be demanding the maximum.’
‘Hermann, surely you know, as I do, that were garde champêtre Rocheleau to have arrested those involved, he would not only have been hated by everyone in his district, those who had information would be reticent to impart it. Eugène, please point out for us exactly where and how these shoes were found.’
Ten or even twenty years of hard labour, wondered Rocheleau. Is that what this Gestapo would demand? Squeezing past the boxes, the litter and all the rest, he laid the shoes on the rubber mat that was also under Herr Kohler’s. ‘She must have been sitting in this chair and quickly pried them off when the van came to a stop and she realized what those two were going to do. She then leaped between them when the door was unlocked and opened.’
‘Liebe Zeit, Louis, we’ve got ourselves a detective.’
‘Hermann, we could perhaps be missing something. Let’s make allowances and overlook the indiscretions, but was there anything else, Eugène? A suitcase perhaps?’
‘A handkerchief. This one. She tried to hide it under the mat. Me, I noticed a corner.’
Smudged, trod on yet bone dry, it had obviously been given up regrettably, and when smoothed out, revealed an embroidery of tulips, daffodils, crocuses and hyacinths. ‘Perfect, Hermann. Done at the age of ten. Silk thread from the colonies. Java perhaps, but prior to this war since it’s now under the Japanese.’
There was also a name, an Anna-Marie Vermeulen, but he wouldn’t remind Rocheleau of it, felt St-Cyr.
‘And yet he would have kept that knowledge from us to satisfy the urges of his wife, Louis?’
‘Hermann, again I must insist these times, they are …’
‘Not the best, eh? Then maybe I should ask him why he attempted to steal not just one of those bundles of one hundred of the 5,000-franc notes, but five of them for a total of 2.5 million? Obviously he’s got someone he wants to impress but had better be careful when spending it, or was he going to stuff them all into a glass jar like most of your peasants? A man with a 2.5 million-franc jar, eh, and not just a 200-franc one or even a 1,000? Ten tins of sardines as well, two coils of smoked sausage, six half-kilos of the coffee that Évangéline of his must have a longing for like the rest of us. Two handfuls of the truffles for the omelettes those eggs would have made had he ta
ken any. Not one but two rounds of the Brie de Meaux. Eight weeks in the curing, isn’t that right, my fine one? Me, I did sample it but only to be certain it wasn’t fake like so many that are flogged on the marché noir you French insist on having even though it’s illegal. Detectives have to do things like that and you’d better not forget it.’
Such a storm probably wouldn’t help but it had been good of Hermann not to mention the missing bottles of wine. ‘Eugène, please return to your fire. Brew up some more of the tea. Coroner Joliot and the men who are with him will welcome it, as will we.’
Only when he had left, did Louis point out the impression inside each of the shoes. ‘Monnier, Hermann, the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Made to measure, but definitely not to hers.’
And taking a small, packed-down wad of newspaper from each of the toes, unfolded these and said, ‘Le Matin, but dating from 20 August of last year.’
‘And with a name like a Netherlander. A submarine?’
One without papers or with false ones.
‘And no suitcase, Louis. Either she never took it with her when she went to that van, or they must have taken it back, but in their haste, forgot the shoes.’
It was Joliot who said, ‘Both killed most probably between 1000 and 1600 or 1700 hours, Wednesday, 29 September. The one hit first on the forehead with this. There are even scraps of skin.’
Questions … It was a night for them, thought St-Cyr from behind the wheel of the van. Pitch-dark except for the regulation slits of the headlamps, it was taking forever to get to Paris. Basically they were sticking to the N2, but Hermann, in the Citroën which had no governor, would speed up only to realize he had gone too far and that the dim red twinkling of his taillights might be necessary on an otherwise empty road. And of course they were travelling through country that had been brutally fought over during the Great War, the Germans loving to shell things so much, Laon had all but been destroyed, Soissons’s thirteenth-century cathedral having had its nave cut in half and tower obliterated.
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