Bellringer

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Mary-Lynn was pushed, Inspector, but was I the one who should have been?’

  From what he’d seen so far, thought Kohler, the English camp was better organized than the American, but bedlam still. They ate in shifts, all 1,678 of them, the dining room of the Hôtel Grand deafening: constant gossip in two languages, recipes, makeovers, hairdos and don’ts, the hair up in curlers, pins, bandanas, or turbans—this last the latest Paris fashion—housecoats on some, overcoats on others, and fingerless gloves. In all, it was the rule of the vulgar and the loud, and God help those who were refined or timid or simply wanted a little privacy.

  Lines of tables, placed end to end, ran parallel and between rows of those same Pavillon de Cérès honey-coloured marble columns that were nearly two storeys high. Cherubs with armorial shields were up there on the ceiling, a leftover from earlier days; chandeliers dripping crystal on Kentia palms in dark-blue Art Deco jardinières, the whole perhaps looking of the Otherworld or at least making the interned seem damned out of place.

  To the soup and bread, lumps of what appeared to be boiled mutton had been doled out, each table, each group left to fight over the division. Inevitably squabbles had broken out and rose above the general discourse, rocketing into fiercely slapped faces, savagely yanked hair, shrieks, and swearing not only coarse but equally in French and English.

  Bartering was everywhere. Since this was the only meal served by the Occupier, a daily ritual at 0700 hours Berlin Time, items from Red Cross parcels augmented the fare: luncheon meat and paste, milk powder, crackers, margarine, jam, marmalade. . .

  ‘Inspector,’ someone called out, ‘are Saint-Nazaire and Lorient in ruins? My daughters. . . ’

  ‘Don’t answer!’ snapped Weber. ‘The British bombed the hell out of those towns last night.’

  Because of the U-boat pens that would have remained virtually unharmed, but how had that woman known to ask unless one of the guards had told her?

  Weber knew the inmates who counted most for him as informants and would find out soon enough, but didn’t speak to any. Instead, he insisted on walking the narrow aisles between the chairs, and as he passed each back-to-back pair, these were immediately shunted closer to their respective tables.

  ‘It’s like this, Kohler,’ he said in Deutsch. ‘I can point a finger at any one of them or tap a shoulder, and that one must immediately get to her feet and leave the dining room to wait for me outside my office in the casino.’

  To illustrate, he began to pick and choose, sending at random fifteen, leaving soup to chill with opened tins or packets as the noise momentarily abated to muttered curses and warnings of ‘Don’t you dare steal my things.’

  ‘Meine Spitzel are many,’ he said of his informants, ‘but none of the others know exactly who they are, since I always send out more than needed.’

  And so much for his thinking none of those present would understand a word of Deutsch.

  ‘Is there anyone in particular you’d like to question?’ asked Weber.

  ‘Léa Monnier.’

  ‘An excellent choice. You must tell me what she reveals, then we’ll compare notes.’

  And if that wasn’t an uh-oh, what was?

  ‘There’s little I don’t know, Kohler, and well in advance.’

  Even two murders?

  ‘Inspector,’ sang out someone nearby, ‘you want to watch our Léa. She has it in for that partner of yours.’

  ‘He can’t be saying things about her past in France like that,’ said her neighbour, mutton dribbling grease on pudgy fingers, tired brown hair in curlers and faded pink housecoat over cardigan-padded shoulders. ‘She had to run from the coppers, did our Léa, when she left the Old Blighty for Paris.’

  ‘The Old Bailey?’

  ‘Blighty. London, for God’s sake!’ shouted the woman. ‘The prison came first, same as for the one she serves, apart from herself.’

  ‘The one who talks to the asteroid?’ he asked, startled.

  They’d teach Léa to lord it over everyone, thought Blanche Gilberte, formerly Blanche Whitehead from Surrey. ‘I’d watch that one too, if I were you, Inspector.’

  Cold corned beef was accidentally scattered as she gestured for emphasis. ‘Madame Chevreul?’ he yelled.

  ‘She’s not the one who led the mob,’ said a tablemate, shaking her head.

  ‘Which mob?’ asked Kohler. ‘The one my partner and I encountered yesterday or. . . ’

  ‘Another, Inspector? Another they’d best forget?’ asked Blanche.

  ‘No one crosses our Léa,’ said the tablemate.

  ‘Inspector. . . Inspector,’ someone called out, only to have everyone get to their feet as the sound of ‘God Save the King’ started up in English from the other end of the room, defiantly growing louder and louder until Weber shrieked, ‘Ruhe! Alles hinsetzen!’

  Silence. All sit. ‘Their stupid, stupid patriotism is the only recourse they have, Kohler, but they know I’ll cut off their hot water, their food, and even their parcels.’

  Yet who but Léa Monnier had ordered them all to get up and sing to stop a few from having it in for her? The Old Bailey and a mob, she and Madame Chevreul then having to leave the Old Blighty for the Continent.

  ‘Inspector. . . Inspector,’ came the urgent call again, ‘are they still serving le canard pressé at the Tour d’Argent?’ The woman had even dressed up for the morning’s dish-out.

  ‘Nothing’s changed,’ said Kohler with a grin. ‘It’s all the same for those with the money and connections, even the pressed duck.’

  ‘Paris,’ she said with longing, the accent perfect and of les hautes.

  ‘Have you people Wunderwaffen?’ asked another.

  The V-1s and V-2s, the Führer’s miracle weapons.

  Weber pointed at the woman and immediately she got to her feet in tears and left the room, knowing she would have to tell him which of the guards had said such a thing.

  An urgent voice rose up from four tables away, the woman in her late sixties and standing now in despair. ‘Monsieur le ministre de l’éducation nationale, un moment, s’il vous plaît. Someone has stolen my stamp.’

  Not my soup. Murmurs fled from chair to chair and table to table as Weber led the way from aisle to aisle.

  ‘Postage?’ asked Kohler, mystified by the illustrious title she’d given him.

  Puzzled, the woman began to tremble with indignation. ‘What is it you’re saying, Monsieur le ministre?’

  Would an understanding smile help? ‘A stamp for that letter you’ve been writing?’

  ‘It is not a letter. It is my date stamp, the one that I put at the top of every page in my exercise book. This is the ink pad for which Brother Étienne brings me the ink. Where is my rubber stamp?’

  ‘Kohler, leave it. She must be crazy.’

  ‘Isn’t having that ink pad illegal?’

  Weber went to snatch it away and it was passed from hand to hand until he backed off and shrieked, ‘You see how slack our former Kommandant was? Letting them keep things like that from which the stamps for false papers could be inked?’

  Devastated by the loss, the woman wept. ‘All the girls are being noisy and bad this morning, Monsieur le ministre. The Reverend Mother is going to be very angry with us, but if I had been allowed to start my page, she would have seen that I’ve been busy doing my catechism and not making trouble for her. Now. . . oh now. . . ’

  ‘She must think she’s in school, Kohler. School! Colonel Kessler had to be replaced. This is just one more incidence of his slackness.’

  Another dreamer, felt Kohler. Well, two of them. ‘Let her keep the ink pad and the stamp when she gets them back. We’ve trouble enough.’

  ‘You lot,’ he called out in English, ‘return them now.’

  A frizzy-haired ginger head was tossed. ‘Or else you’ll think it’s one of us who’s been stealing little things?’

  ‘Things like a small, oval seashell with teeth, Inspector?’ asked another.

  Or a yell
ow cloth star? Did they know of it as well, and if so, how the hell had they found out?

  ‘It’s one of those American bitches,’ said yet another, dangling a tinned sardine by its tail. ‘They’ve murdered their own, haven’t they? Girls with girls, eh? Oh là, là, Inspector, that Vittel-Palace is a hothouse.’

  ‘Lécheuses des chattes,’ roared another, to much laughter.

  Cunt lickers. ‘A lovers’ tiff, was it, this latest killing?’ shouted yet another. ‘Both of those girls were upstairs here in the Grand time and again.’

  ‘Both had plenty of chances to steal things, let me tell you,’ said another with tinned custard on her chin.

  ‘We don’t do things like that. We’d never steal from her or anyone else,’ said another, wiping a runny nose.

  ‘But she stole from Madame Chevreul, is that it?’ he tried.

  ‘Warned. . . The first was warned to be careful but failed to watch out, the other. . . Well, what was she doing in the Chalet des nes? Isn’t it verboten?’

  ‘Ja, ist verboten,’ said another, nodding furiously.

  ‘And then there’s Madame de Vernon,’ said her neighbour. ‘Possessive. Keeping that little piece of goods all to herself? Billing the parents in America a fortune for a career that never happened?’

  ‘Our Léa had to fix a time and date but first Madame Chevreul had to interview the ballet student and her lover seven times, Inspector. Seven!’

  ‘Kohler, I really must insist,’ said Weber.

  ‘Ach, du lieber Gott, not now, Untersturmführer.’

  Again the singing started up with ‘Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.’ Again Weber had to shriek, and then. . . then from a far corner, a lone woman standing, came a voice and ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’

  The entire dining room listened. They all stopped eating, some of them even cried, and only when the hymn had ended and the one with the golden voice had sat down did the ones nearby Kohler start up again.

  ‘That Nora Arnarson, Inspector, she’s going to have to watch herself. Speaking out like that against Madame Chevreul when so many of us believe and welcome what that amazing woman is capable of. Cérès is very angry, and when Cérès gets angry. . . Well, you’re dealing with the gods.’

  ‘She’s a dark one, that Nora,’ said a neighbour. ‘Turns up in most unexpected places. Having a look about our hotel, asking a lot of questions like where that little ballet dancer and her lover have been.’

  ‘Watching our Kensington’s Ten Golden Blonde Girls while they practice their routines so as not to forget them. Caroline Lacy loved to do that too, and then talk for hours if she could get one of the girls to listen to her.’

  ‘And what about Madame de Vernon, eh?’ asked another. ‘Insists on seeing Madame Chevreul five times herself. Five, I’m telling you, Inspector. Argues with Madame and our Léa. Doesn’t want her ward to hear what Cérès has to say.’

  ‘About what?’

  Blimey, but that had got him going! ‘Urgent business. I’m sure if you ask, our Léa will be only too glad to tell you for a price.’

  Cold Kam was thumbed from a tin bearing that name, the meat pink and laced with fat. ‘They didn’t exactly get on, Inspector,’ she said, wolfing the morsel.

  ‘Monsieur le Ministre,’ came the urgent but now distant cry in French. ‘I have my date stamp and ink pad. I have!’

  Distracted, Weber turned away.

  ‘Wallpaper?’ hissed Kohler at one. ‘Why did your Léa ask the Senegalese to get her some and where the hell did they get it, if not from the Hôtel de l’Ermitage?’

  Instantly heads were bowed, soup earnestly taken, crumbs sought, a sardine fished from its tin as oil dribbled down pudgy fingers that then had to be licked to avoid the waste.

  ‘All right, damn it. What was stolen from Madame Chevreul?’ he asked, leaning over the table to pluck the tin away as objecting fingers lunged for it in panic only to be hastily withdrawn.

  The bulging throat rippled, the watery blue eyes found his at last.

  ‘Her talisman.’

  ‘Ah, bon, merci. Now, enjoy the rest of your breakfast.’

  There was no sign of Léa Monnier who had obviously ordered up ‘God Save the King’ and done a bunk. Out in the foyer, some carried handbags that had never left them since they’d been taken into custody in December of 1940; others had sewn purses and tied these around their waists as in the Middle Ages. Most wore the signs of underfeeding, the lack of minerals and vitamins, the skin dried and cracked, the joints sore. All were cold and often yawning or coughing up their lungs, and halitosis, with or without their fags, depending entirely on fortune.

  That seashell, that yellow star, that date stamp. . . Kohler knew he couldn’t leave it. ‘Has anyone escaped?’ he asked.

  Weber was taken aback. ‘From here? Where would they go?’

  ‘I’m just asking.’

  Had Kohler found out something he shouldn’t? ‘No one has escaped. I would be the first to know and put my pistol to the back of her neck. Those hills and forests are frozen. Without adequate clothing, she’d be but food for the elements or the wolves. Ask any of the Senegalese. They’ll tell you. We often seem to lose one or two from the wood-gathering details.’

  ‘I thought so. I just felt I’d best ask since that partner of mine will. He’s a damned nuisance at times. Always the obscure, the less than obvious, but he’s French so one has to make allowances.’

  Ach, and speeches now? ‘Kohler, when you find Frau Monnier and are done with her, send her to me.’

  ‘But what about the rest of the camp? Aren’t we going to see it?’

  ‘The Hôtel de la Providence—is this what you’re after? Those people don’t matter. They’ll all be gone as soon as the Sonderkommando comes from Berlin to check their passports and papers more thoroughly than they’d like. Colonel Kessler overlooked far too much, but now it’s all to be taken care of.’

  Don’t interfere. A special commando from the SS, the boys who ran the concentration camps and were the worst of the worst.

  Blacked-out, the Vittel-Palace waited in the early morning with a hush so deep St-Cyr knew he couldn’t help but feel its collective anticipation. In spite of the lack of daylight, every window facing the Parc Thermal had been crowded at the first cry from one of the lookouts who had heard the distant sound of sleigh bells. Gathered in the freezing cold, they also stood out on the balconies, but would Brother Étienne be allowed in? they whispered. Would the change in Kommandant not stop forever the visits they desperately needed even though it was a Sunday and he’d only just been here on Friday and really wasn’t due back again until next Wednesday?

  ‘He’ll know how worried and afraid we are,’ said one. ‘He’ll reach out to us and pull us to him. Oh, I’m so glad he told us he’d come back today. I do hope he’s brought the poultice for my knee. Every night’s been an agony. I don’t sleep. I can’t. The pain is terrible.’

  ‘He’ll dry my tears and pat me on the back. He’ll tell me everything is going to be all right, that now with two detectives from Paris here, we needn’t be so terrified. He’ll see to my hands. More cracks have opened. This morning they were bleeding but he’ll have an answer. I know he will.’

  ‘My gums. . . ’

  ‘My period. . . ’

  ‘You should have listened to me, Yvonne.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything like that! Brother Étienne said I should wait, that it’s probably just the lack of food, of vitamins and minerals, and that he would be bringing me one of his tonics.’

  Ah, merde, this crowd, thought St-Cyr, the sleigh bells sounding, a collective sigh rising as it would also from the Hôtel Grand. ‘Mesdames et mesdemoiselles, permit me to see Brother Étienne.’

  ‘Let the Inspector through, girls. Let him see the one who gives us hope and belief in ourselves.’

  Perfume, sweat, soup, farts, canned fish, lavender, orris root, and woodsmoke—all such smells assailed St-Cyr as he pushed through to the rai
ling.

  ‘Don’t touch the iron, Inspector,’ warned someone. ‘Your skin is warm and will stick to it.’

  There were no lights on the cutter whose bells now jangled with increasing loudness, the softly falling snow making visibility clear enough, but one could have heard a pin drop when those little bells ceased their ringing. Snow-covered, a heavy fur rug was thrown back and a hooded head bared. ‘Mes chères,’ came the basso profundo from below, the arms thrown wide, the sadness and concern immediately evident. ‘Another violent death, I’m told. Our precious little ballet dancer. Who would have done such a thing? Had her suffering not been enough? You will all be brokenhearted. When I left our cloister this morning, and the brother abbot informed me of this latest tragedy, I told myself that somehow I must find a way to ease your pain. Angèle did that for me, wise as she is. She stopped on the road as we came down from the hills and there. . . there in the distance was a doe and her fawn. A sign, I tell you, mes chères amies. A sign. Spring is coming. The little one was at the teat and could hardly stand, and the mother had to wait as your Étienne walked gently towards her until, finally, the teat was left and the two delicately picked their way into the forest, and do you know what? Angèle, she came towards me without my whistling. Two miracles in as many moments. May the great blessings of the Father who watches over all be with you.’

  Two of what appeared to be bulging burlap sacks were offloaded to be later carried toward the hotel.

  ‘He comes here first this time, Inspector,’ whispered someone. ‘The British camp will be jealous, but on his next visit he’ll go there before he comes here. Oh, he sends shivers right through me. He’s the gentlest of beings. Intently he listens to every word that is said and intuitively knows and understands exactly what is needed.’

  ‘A massage. My ankles. My feet. Some of his cream,’ said another.

  ‘His very touch is like a balm, Inspector. Pure magic.’

  ‘Pure love, if you ask me. He cares. He really does.’

  ‘And always there is that smile of his, now warm, now gentle, now bright.’

  ‘He has the most sensitive eyes, Inspector. They never look through you, only with you. Empathy is what he has. Concern.’