Bellringer

by J. Robert Janes

  The shorter of the two, but bigger across the shoulders, Duclos’s gaze was wary but then, at a sudden thought, he flashed a grin. ‘She paid me well, Inspector. Two cans of Libby’s pork and beans, one packet of Oxo beef-tea cubes, one of raisins, two packs of Lucky Strikes, two bars of chocolate, and some of the chewing gum those people eat. . . but me, ah, mon Dieu, I knew I shouldn’t have touched that stuff. I pulled a filling and the sergeant here had to yank the tooth. The pain. . . the blood. . . ’

  ‘Yes, yes, please continue.’

  ‘Some may think they want to see what the sun will bring them in the morning or in a few days, a week, or even a year or the years, but when they find out they go all to pieces if it’s bad. She was like that. A twist of hair.’

  ‘Untersturmführer Weber was putting the squeeze on her,’ said Senghor. ‘We were certain of it. One can always tell. Bamba took her into the woodshed while the rest of us worked and kept a watch.’

  ‘The sergeant told her she would only be with me, Inspector, but even then, it worried her. Is she afraid of men?’

  ‘What about the other internees? Did any of them see her going in there with him?’

  Talk. Had there been talk? ‘Some must have, the guards most certainly.’

  ‘The shed, then, and the basket. Get it and show me.’

  Made of dark-brown, tightly woven cane more than fifty years old, the basket was frayed around its rim and had doubtless been with Duclos throughout that other war.

  Taken from its skin bag, the contents were then emptied into it. Several polished bits of turtle shell; some tiny gourds, all quite different; a little piece of ivory with rows of holes as in a gaming board; a dead iridescent beetle, a wood-borer perhaps; a short length of copper wire badly coiled; a lion’s talon, the middle digit; a wooden spool without its thread, three brass cartridge casings, one from a Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance, the 1873, an officer’s gun. A Mauser 9mm Parabellum lay nearby, again from the gun of an officer. Had that one shot the French officer and Duclos then shot him?

  A British tommy’s .303 calibre was yet another cartridge casing. Fighting alongside them, or over ground once taken and then lost, Duclos would have had plenty of opportunity to add such things to his little collection. A sharpshooter’s cloth insignia, French Army and certain death if captured, lay beneath a gold wedding band and photo of a dead poilu, a French soldier. There was a scattering of shrapnel; one lens from a pair of eyeglasses; a bent compass needle; several teeth from a small animal, a monkey perhaps; then small, white bird bones; a spent shotgun shell being incongruously next to the dried, coiled bit of an umbilical cord. Several polished pieces of various woods in unusual shapes were also present, as was the cork of a champagne bottle, Moët et Chandon; three scimitar-shaped pieces of silver, each about five centimetres in length and strung together with finely-linked silver chain; a confirmation medallion; a piece of amber with an embedded fly and once the fob off some German officer’s pocket watch no doubt; a nurse’s cap badge, British and that other war yet again; a brass tunic button too; a small pocket-knife with Swiss Red Cross symbol and extended, opened pair of scissors; a tiny brass bell to ring the future or, if hidden on the person, give that one away. Ah, merde, had Colonel Kessler been to see these boys himself? Was this where his use of ‘bell ringer’ had come?

  There were several small scraps of tightly rolled wallpaper, a rooster’s beak and foot, the ebony carving of a naked woman with a child on her back, a gunflint, a twist of fine blond hair—Becky Torrence’s?

  Several short feathers from a chicken, beach pebbles, and bits of water-worn glass joined a few sou, some pfennigs, a one-mark bill from the time of the Kaiser and several centimes from Senegal, and beads, too—lots of beads from home.

  ‘A money shell,’ said the sûreté. ‘A cowrie once used in trade and found virtually all over Africa. Slaves were bought with them. Gold, ivory, and diamonds, too.’

  ‘It was stolen right after Christmas, Inspector. I’ve looked everywhere. I know I didn’t lose it. One of those ladies must have taken it, but unfortunately some of the British also came to consult me at about the same time, and for me to accuse a white woman. . . ’

  Overcoat pockets were dredged, and when he had it, the detective laid it on top of everything, porcelain-white to creamy yellow and with its rows of short, stubby teeth.

  ‘Grandfather will thank you, Inspector, as will my father.’

  ‘I think Caroline Lacy was about to return it,’ he said. ‘Now, show me what you do.’

  ‘I shake the basket, Inspector, and the things leap up to settle of their own accord.’

  ‘And in their arrangement lies the future. What was Becky Torrence’s?’

  The detective was pointing to the twist of hair but did he really need to know? ‘The thigh bones were crossed, Inspector. The twist of her hair was beneath them and the lion’s talon hooked overtop with the cock’s foot leading away to the spool of lost thread, which indicated a long journey. The empty gourds told of a terrible thirst, the eleven millimetre cartridge casing of the cold for some of those shells, they simply didn’t fire in that other war because of being stored for so long in a damp place. The sharpshooter’s insignia told of the loneliness among many others, the scimitars of demons.’

  Duclos had the look of one who absolutely believed he had the gift and the concern, too, for Becky Torrence.

  ‘She was shattered by what the sun had to say, Inspector. I tried to tell her that if she would come again we’d have another look, but she. . . She just turned and walked away without looking at anyone.’

  ‘Ah, bon, I’ll be in touch. For now let me keep the cowrie and borrow the twist of hair.’

  6

  Through the trees, the artistry of nature seemed everywhere. Vista after vista, thought St-Cyr, snow cascading from a branch, sunlight glistening, wind drifting. No wonder Monet, Manet, Pissarro, and the other Impressionists saw such things the way they did. If only time were available to enjoy them; if only Hermann, who couldn’t have cared less about such, could find him some pipe tobacco. Dried, ground nettles, herbs, carrot tops, and beet greens—no doubt available in various combinations in either of the hotels—would be of absolutely no use. Merde, but the craving just wouldn’t go away. Like an infernal itch, it was distracting when inner calmness and a quiet think were imperative.

  Several of the curious had gathered near the Chalet des nes. Though the victims were under guard, the resident questions, jeers, and demands would not be. The bodies would have to be moved and that meant, of course, the presence of this sûreté, but first a request to Herr Weber would have to be made, an order given by him since nothing could be done without the latter.

  Entering the casino was not difficult. Everyone was far too busy to take note of one lonely French detective, the invited guest of a then-to-be-absent Kommandant. The building was entirely different from the one he had known while recuperating here during the Great War and prior to the Americans using the Parc and its hotels for their hospital, yet the memories couldn’t help but come. Films had been shown in the theatre—this had been saved from the disastrous fire of 17 July, 1920. One couldn’t forget Charlie Chaplin in Police, Charlie frantically refusing to go along with his fellow robbers and protecting the damsel in distress.

  In The Floorwalker, the chase had been on escalators; in The Rink, on roller skates. Tears had freely run with the laughter these American ‘silents’ had brought. Senegalese had been sprinkled throughout the audience, Moroccans, Berbers. Algerians and Cochin Chinese, all in uniform as well as the others—all French citizens, members of the Colonial Army and united with the rest by that common bond of the front.

  But then had come the Treaty of Versailles and the occupation of the Rhineland and then that of the Ruhr, and with them charges that France had deliberately used its ‘black and yellow’ troops. One rape, one incidence of a brutal mugging would probably have been enough to set off the passive resistance of the Germans. The firm of Krupp
had even sent in an investigative reporter. While several unfortunate incidents had been uncovered, others had revealed coloured troops enthusiastically helping with the grape harvest. Yet the stigma of the ‘black terror’ had spread, and of course as time went on this stigma had only become worse.

  In 1937 the Nazis had ordered the compulsory sterilization of the ‘Rhineland bastards,’ the children of German women and these occupation troops, and now, of course, Herr Weber was free to take it out on the camp’s Senegalese.

  As God would have it, and He did do things like this, the Untersturmführer’s office was adjacent to the entrance of the theatre, the lineup to see Weber long but silent, and here, too, was none other than Becky Torrence.

  The surgery was simply Room 3–54, noted Kohler, the audience a crowd at the door. Lisa Banbridge, the twenty-two-year-old, ponytailed brunette with the hazel eyes and degree from Duke University, was ready to give assistance. Candice Peters, the forty-year-old with the frizzy brown hair was still tidying herself—a rash under the arms, her worries of erysipelas having proved false. The soap she had paid plenty for had been bought on the black market in the Reich by one of the guards on leave and was to fault, though relief would come slowly and there was also the chagrin of having been taken to the cleaners.

  Jennifer Hamilton stood beside him. Although the bed Mary-Lynn had used still held its fastidiously tidied array of last effects, they had the look of having been tidied again. Unfortunately Louis hadn’t given him the sequence. Now the suitcase, closed and flat, lay beneath precisely folded blankets and the two sheets each inmate would have been given every month in exchange for their others. Then came the pillow; next to these, the shoes and precision again, the one pair toe-to-heel behind the other; then the coats, folded with the arms tidily crisscrossed over the front, but here, too, they had that look, as if whoever had first done it hadn’t been satisfied, or perhaps some other compulsive had come along to redo the lot.

  Out of spite? he wondered. Louis would have too.

  Boils can be painful, the brother’s touch that of the sensitive, the naked bottom of Barbara Caldwell, the auburn-haired thirty-two- to thirty-six-year-old graduate from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee—rather nice were it not for the inflamed, now lanced and erupted volcano just to the left of the crack.

  ‘We have no secrets,’ said Jennifer softly, not looking up at him but still at the patient. ‘We can’t have. We know everything about each other. It’s been weeks and weeks, poor thing. She avoided asking Brother Étienne to deal with it, even the last time he was here.’

  The brother didn’t waste time. Using a wooden mallet from that toolbox of his, he pounded a root, warmed it and its juices in a pot on the electric ring, added a goodly splash of cider vinegar and handful of coarse salt, then juggling the hot poultice, clapped it on her bum.

  There was a yell, but he held her down. ‘You’ll thank me,’ he said en français. ‘Three times a day for the next four days, then once a day until the inflammation has completely disappeared. I don’t want that coming back.’

  An appreciative sigh ran through the crowd.

  ‘What did he use?’ Jennifer whispered, still mesmerized.

  ‘Comfrey. The soldier’s friend. Louis would be able to tell you better, but I think it’s been in use since the Middle Ages.’

  Lisa placed a towel over the poultice, then helped Barb to yank up her slacks but leave them unbuttoned. ‘Just lie there,’ she said. ‘Give it as long as possible.’

  They looked at each other, these occupants of Room 3–54. Dorothy Stevens, the tall, thin, thirty-six-year-old brunette and graduate of Ohio State had bared her feet, the sores between the toes being a classic example of the usual fungal nightmare of communal living.

  ‘Who tidied that?’ asked Kohler quietly.

  Ah no, thought Jennifer; he was pointing at Mary-Lynn’s things yet watching her so closely she could feel it. ‘Becky. I. . . I think Becky must have. I saw her ducking out of here about four days after Mary-Lynn fell. When we passed in the corridor, she. . . she said she was looking for Nora.’

  This informant of Weber’s was panicking. Now a glance up at him, now away to the bed, then back up to him in doubt, the soft brown eyes furtive.

  ‘Was it tidied more recently?’ said Kohler.

  Why had he to ask? ‘I. . . I don’t know. It. . . it looks the same to me.’

  The scar had tightened on that chin of hers, the fair hair falling forward over a knitted brow. He’d have to ignore the others, felt Kohler. ‘Why was she looking for Nora in this room?’

  Under such scrutiny Jennifer felt her stomach muscles tighten. Vomit began to rise. ‘Maybe she was looking for Caroline.’

  ‘Because Nora had been dogging the footsteps of the two of you, was that it, eh?’

  So he had found that out. Again the muscles tightened, harder this time. Harder. ‘Nora thought Caroline might have been stealing things. I told her she was crazy but she persisted. Caroline had lost things too. One of the pink satin ribbons from her practice shoes, a pebble she’d kept because it was interesting. A trachyte porphyry, Nora had called it.’

  She swallowed, but it didn’t go down well, noted Kohler. ‘Anything else?’

  Had she winced? wondered Jennifer. Had that been what had caused him to ask? ‘A glass marble—a cat’s-eye. It had been her “shooter” in grade school and was, I think, the only thing she had left from home. Madame de Vernon kept throwing Caroline’s things out. Caroline. . . ’

  Swiftly she turned away to hide her tears in panic.

  ‘Inspector, how could you?’ seethed Lisa Banbridge. ‘You know Jen can’t have done a thing. None of us have.’

  Candice Peters of the frizzy brown hair wrapped her arms about the girl. ‘That was cruel,’ she said. ‘And here we all thought you were different from Weber and the others. Jen has been holding in her grief terrifically. We’re all upset, but she was in love with Caroline. Love, damn you!’

  ‘Love,’ said another.

  ‘OK, OK, I’ll back off, but there are things I have to ask her. Nothing difficult. Just a few questions.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Lisa suspiciously.

  ‘Like, what is the brother treating her for?’

  ‘Anxiety,’ sighed Brother Étienne, having used the rest of the comfrey to prepare a hot footbath for the case of athlete’s foot. ‘I should have thought that evident, Inspector. An infusion of lemon balm taken twice daily, morning and night, and with a little of the honey in that cough syrup bottle she’s still clutching, or hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘The tea of France?’

  ‘Oui. You should try it instead of longing for tobacco. It relaxes the nerves, calms the heart, and is but a mild and pleasing sedative.’

  ‘Ask her if she left this room the night Mary-Lynn died.’

  The eyes and nose were wiped, the look valiant. ‘I didn’t. Caroline left, as I told you, at about midnight.’

  ‘A terrible attack of asthma,’ said Lisa, still not convinced he was going easy.

  ‘I was afraid to accompany her because of Madame de Vernon. Caroline. . . Caroline said she would be all right once she had found her cigarettes.’

  ‘You’d been having an argument—that right?’

  ‘A disagreement, nothing worse. We’d patched it up by the time she’d left.’

  ‘But hadn’t. Caroline had still been in tears and very upset.’

  ‘Was she?’ asked Jennifer.

  ‘And the photo that one had borrowed from Madame’s suitcase?’ demanded Kohler.

  Did he really think she would have kept it when she had told him she hadn’t? ‘I burned it in the stove, like I said.’

  Although in better control of herself, there was still anger. ‘But you only did that after Caroline had been killed.’

  She mustn’t smile, felt Jennifer, must simply be firm. ‘Really, Inspector, I wouldn’t have done so before. We were to have taken it to the séance last night.’

 
All well and good and tough, was she? ‘You could have returned it instead.’

  ‘Could I?’

  ‘Caroline must have told you where Madame had hidden the spare key. Everyone else in that room of hers knew of it.’

  ‘But I didn’t. Bien sûr, there were things Caroline would tell me—lots of them—but there were also those she wouldn’t and didn’t.’

  And that was one of them. ‘What did you lose to the resident kleptomaniac whose speed of filching things reminded you of Houdini?’

  She mustn’t waver, felt Jennifer, must face up to him even if his partner had remembered that comment of hers and had passed it on. ‘Am I that person—isn’t this what you really want to ask?’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  The urge to rattle off two dozen items was almost more than she could bear. Lisa would be quick to add things, Barb, too, but she’d best use anger. ‘One of these.’

  Snatching at the blue Bakelite butterfly pin in her hair, she dragged it free and snapped off its spring-loaded alligator clip before handing the butterfly to him. ‘It was broken, but I had kept it because I only had this one left. Sure they were teenage, little-girl things, but I wore one when dealing to give that impression of innocence and naiveté. Women will do such things—you should know this as a man. Even though times were very difficult for the sellers, the paintings and antiques I was buying didn’t come easily.’

  She shrugged, forced a weak smile, and said, ‘They still asked far too much, but a touch of innocence was useful, and of course I emphasized the new home they’d be getting. What I did wasn’t illegal, Inspector, and what I finally paid was simply less than had been asked.’

  The sellers had been Jews and others on the run. ‘That why you stuck around until it was too late for you to leave France?’