Bellringer

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Cosy,’ he said of the room. She wouldn’t smile, wouldn’t say a thing, thought Marguerite Lefèvre. Men like this had wanted to use her often enough in the past and she was certain she knew exactly what he was thinking.

  The tent, the ‘cabinet’ that blocked the doorway into Madame Chevreul’s bedroom, was both circus and child’s playhouse, yet neither. From its inner sanctum, behind its dropped curtained doorway, the resident medium could conjure up anything she liked while the sitters pensively waited all but in darkness and with eyes tightly closed, holding hands in a semicircle around the table out front.

  ‘Wallpaper,’ he said. ‘That of flowers, birds, Chinese pagodas and sampans, glued and pinned to cloth. Louis could give you the makers even if from a hundred years ago, but where did they get it?’

  ‘They?’ she softly asked, blinking up at him but only once.

  ‘The blacks. The Senegalese.’

  Her French was Parisian and perfect, her age not more than twenty-five, though she would definitely, with the Brother’s help, keep that youthful complexion for years—the figure, too.

  Block printed and of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century design, the wallpaper had been patiently stripped from opulent walls, dried, coiled, smuggled in, and sold to Madame Chevreul or simply handed over in return for a favour.

  ‘The Hôtel de l’Ermitage?’ he asked, now fingering an uncoiled curl of the paper as if a silk chemise he would trail down a girl’s thighs before teasing off her step-ins.

  She must shake her head and shrug, felt Marguerite. He looked inside the cabinet, the tent, saw that the door to Madame’s bedroom was curtained off but easily accessible, saw the armchair she used, the throw rug on the floor, all such things, the luminescent gauze as well, the white ectoplasm that would appear to issue from Madame’s throat when in a trance.

  ‘Phosphorescent paint,’ he said, fingering the gauze now and smiling that smile of his, for, on drying, the gauze had been crinkled repeatedly to make it again soft and pliable.

  Curbs and crosswalks in Paris and elsewhere were painted with its whiteness to aide pedestrians during the blackout, thought Marguerite, but Madame wasn’t going to be happy with her for having allowed him in here. Madame was going to tell Léa to see that she was punished severely, but what Madame had still not realized, or perhaps she had, was that such a punishment could be exciting in itself. Une flagellation.

  And anyway there was nothing she could have done to have stopped him, a Gestapo.

  ‘Léa gets things from time to time,’ she said of the paint with a shrug.

  ‘In trade?’

  ‘Or by purchase.’

  ‘And if one of those guards asks for a little comfort?’

  Another shrug, but curt this time, would be best, the glimpse of a smile, now shy and defenceless. ‘Don’t you want me to gaze into my crystal ball?’

  This item was on another table, and of smoky quartz, about twelve centimetres in diameter. Damask-covered, the table would have seated two, with one chair against the wall that faced the tent.

  ‘You are a doubter,’ she said, her pulse quickening at the thought. ‘It’s best then to start with such a ball. Once that negativity has been banished, clarity will come. You will definitely be surprised by what I see. The instant I set eyes on you, I knew.’

  They read palms and tarot cards too, and the Ouija board, and places for each were set about the room. ‘Caroline Lacy and Jennifer Hamilton were interviewed in here, amongst all of this?’ he asked.

  ‘If Madame has said so, then it must be.’

  ‘Where’s the divan?’

  ‘What divan?’

  ‘The one the two of them sat on while holding hands and being interviewed.’

  No one had warned her of this, not Madame or Léa or Hortense, the cook. A lie would be best, then, but given with complete innocence and abandon. ‘We haven’t yet been open for business here, and are only now ready.’

  ‘But have to wait until things have been settled?’

  It would be so easy to seduce him. Men like Herr Kohler exuded a sexuality over which they had but little control, though, unleashed, would it all be one-sided as Madame continually insisted of men? she wondered, but thought not, for he had both an emptiness to those pale blue eyes of his and a light that was gentle and kind.

  In short, he was a man no woman should trust. ‘Please sit, Inspector. Let me gaze deeply into the ball.’

  He did so, she too, their knees touching, he even setting notebook, pencil, cigarettes, and matches to one side, but a banging at the door into the corridor saved him and he knew this, for he smiled that smile of his and said, ‘Maybe we’d better wait for another time.’

  Hortense would interrupt things. Hortense was always interrupting things, but Herr Kohler had also set one of those little phosphorescent lapel buttons the Nazis doled out to those in Paris and elsewhere who would wear them in the blackout and her hand had closed about it and his had closed over hers.

  ‘Ah, bon, ma chère mademoiselle. Bon,’ he said.

  ‘Actually it’s Madame Lefèvre, and my husband is in one of your prisoner-of-war camps. Which one, I’m never sure, for he’s a bit of a troublemaker and they seem to keep moving him around, but then. . . Ah, mon Dieu, he and I have been apart for so long now, I think we both must feel as two entirely different people, each perhaps having found their true self but due to circumstance of course.

  ‘Sacré nom de nom, Hortense, I’m coming! Please don’t break the door down with that fist of yours. You will only disturb Madame and her guests.’

  ‘And Léa, of course,’ muttered Herr Kohler, having at last released her hand. Would he have crushed it if she had resisted? she wondered.

  Steam rose from the baked eggs and cream that had only just given a first, well-savoured morsel. Alerted by the banging next door, the three of them had paused, Brother Étienne darting a glance at Madame Chevreul and then at Madame Monnier, they avoiding his questioning look of alarm.

  ‘Léa. . . ’ began Madame Chevreul, her knife and fork still poised.

  ‘Answers, madame. Answers!’ insisted St-Cyr. ‘A suffragette, Madame Monnier? A mob leader before the Great War and now again?’

  Dieu merci, the banging had at last stopped, thought Élizabeth, but it had to mean Marguerite had been forced to let Herr Kohler into that room of rooms. ‘Léa, you needn’t say a thing. Inspector, I won’t have this. Please show some respect if not manners. We are at our luncheon, late though it is. I told you and Herr Kohler not to listen to the harpies in this hotel. Whether Léa was a heroine of that cause or not has no bearing whatsoever now.’

  ‘But it has, madame. It has, and were you not a part of that cause as well? It was all about power, wasn’t it? Males dominating females to the point of not even letting women have the vote or as here in France where even a bank account or the freedom to travel without a father or husband’s sanction is still necessary, but now what do we have? Females dominating females. A suite of four rooms at the top of the heap when six are forced to share each of the other rooms? Three stoves with plenty of wood and even coal and a choice of foods most in the country, not just in this internment camp, have not seen since the autumn of 1940?’

  How dare he question her like this? ‘Men. Why can’t you all be like Étienne? Kind to a fault, gracious to every woman no matter how demanding or objectionable? Always considerate, always gentle and concerned, never hesitating for a moment, Inspector. Always valuing the very crucibles of humanity, for without us, where would you men be?’

  Ah, bon, challenged she had let past feelings and beliefs come swiftly to the fore. The eggs would become cold but could be reheated. ‘You never went home to England, madame? Why, please, was that?’

  He had taken an educated guess, but she would not demean herself by giving him so much as a dismissive gesture. ‘I was married, was I not? My first duty, under God and the law, if no other, was to care for my husband, a badly disabled veteran. Blind, wasn’t he?
’

  Who had died in 1919 and likely couldn’t have given her the Art Deco jewellery that had come into fashion in the 1920s, they being a time for unleashed gaiety and relief from that terrible war as well as for the breeding and sale of Percherons. ‘Bien sûr, but there are no photographs of the family you left behind, only those of the two friends who were arrested with you.’

  He hadn’t seen those of André, but how could he treat her this way? ‘We were force-fed. Tied, Inspector, each in her cell—bound hand and foot to those atrocious iron cots of the Old Bailey. Forced to suffer the indignity of male hands while a rubber hose was thrust, I tell you, thrust down our throats. One chokes, one vomits, one tries to catch the breath but thinks she is about to drown, and all the while it is men who are doing this to us, to God’s most delicate and intelligent of creatures? Men, I tell you. Men!’

  The eggs were definitely getting cold. ‘Surely there would have been a matron present?’

  ‘Inspector. . . ’

  ‘Brother, stay out of this. Let her do the answering.’

  ‘We were suffragettes, you silly man. The worst of the worst to those ignorant boors. Léa, who was but three cells from mine, had just turned seventeen. Repeatedly she fought them. Repeatedly they savaged her and then laughed at her nakedness and despair. Laughed, I tell you, while they turned the hoses on her.’

  Brother Étienne urged caution and, reaching out to her, took hold of a hand but it was definitely not the time for calmness, felt St-Cyr. ‘Is this why you let her wear your jewellery when she leads a mob here?’

  ‘My jewellery? Léa, what is this he is saying?’

  ‘Drugged was she, Madame Monnier? Given a little more than a droplet or two of that tincture of valerian while having a nap before confronting my partner and me last night and leading us to the Pavillon de Cérès?’

  ‘Espèce de salaud, Madame was in the bath. I was only trying it on when the call came to lead that demonstration. We couldn’t have the Americans telling you we were to blame for the killings!’

  ‘Léa. . . ’ began Madame.

  ‘Élizabeth, I. . . ’

  ‘It is Madame Chevreul, please, and let us never forget it.’

  Brother Étienne had set his plate aside, the eggs still swimming in their sauce, but the parsley looking lonely. ‘Madame,’ said St-Cyr, ‘though you claim to sleep like a baby after every séance, Cérès doesn’t let you.’

  This sûreté was going to cause trouble unless stopped, thought Léa. ‘The goddess frequently insists that Mrs. Judith Merrill, my former employer at the time, still has things to tell Madame, Inspector. What it is like when one passes over, whom one meets and how one recognizes others. They were very close and always Madame is anxious for word even when in her sleep. To her great joy, her André is no longer blind, yet she tosses and turns.’

  ‘At the thought of his watching her?’

  Quick to seize his frightful little moment, felt Élizabeth, the chief inspector snatched the portrait photographs from her dressing table.

  ‘This one?’ he asked.

  ‘White arsenic,’ whispered Brother Étienne with caution, again reaching out to her, the eggs now like a raft between them.

  ‘A most unpleasant death, Brother.’

  Tears were rushing down Madame’s cheeks. ‘I knew, damn you. Immediately after Judith had taken it, I felt a loss that wouldn’t leave me. Weeks later, the return of the letters I had written to her from France only confirmed my worst fears, for Lord Merrill had chosen to include the death notice. Twenty-nine unopened letters, one for each year of her tender life, and nothing else but three puny lines of type in the Times and the lie of it: “Dead of an illness.” I hated him for what he had done to her, to all women. Is it any wonder, then, that we struck for our rights?’

  There had been those in France who had wanted the vote and a say in other matters that concerned their everyday lives, felt St-Cyr, but there had never been the collective will to organize as strongly as there had been in Britain. ‘And your family, madame?’

  Léa’s look was one of caution, Étienne’s that of heartfelt concern. ‘The father that I loved as a young girl does evermore had disowned me. Neither Nanny Biggs nor my two brothers who were much older than me would go against his will, those two especially since they stood to inherit my share of his estate.’

  Bankrupt then, and in 1914, a volunteer. ‘And now, madame?’

  This sûreté wouldn’t stop until he had uncovered everything. ‘Thanks to Colonel Kessler, we rule ourselves. Léa, please see what is happening next door.’

  A worry to be sure. ‘A moment, Madame Monnier. You have your sources, as does your mistress. Has anything been stolen in the Hôtel Grand since the deaths of either Mary-Lynn Allan or Caroline Lacy?’

  Was he ready for it, this grunt of a cow? ‘Nothing since the Lacy girl, the same for the Vittel-Palace.’

  ‘You have informants there as well?’

  ‘I hear things.’

  ‘Then Caroline Lacy was the petty thief—is this what you’re implying?’

  ‘Inspector, we were all but convinced of it,’ interjected Madame Chevreul.

  ‘But that is not what you claimed to my partner, madame. You told him neither Jennifer Hamilton nor Caroline Lacy could have been the thief.’

  ‘I was mistaken.’

  ‘You interviewed them in that other room, madame. They held hands, were never in here—had no access to this room and yet you are mistaken?’

  That Guerlain presentation box. Jennifer Hamilton must have told him differently. ‘Léa, please go. Hortense and Marguerite may need you.’

  ‘Am I forgiven?’

  ‘Of course and as always, but never covet what can never be yours.’

  A hand was touched, a cheek given a decisive peck.

  ‘Now, eat your lunch,’ said Léa. ‘Don’t let this vache spoil things. Hortense will only be upset if you do.’

  The boot-snatcher, the ‘cook,’ had flung the door wide. Fists doubled, she came on in, reminding one of a difficult birth: no fault of the child’s, none of the mother’s, simply circumstance that had governed everything since.

  She wasn’t just off a butcher’s block in some poverty-stricken London lane near the East India Dock; she was swift, deceitful, loyal to her mistress, and one hundred percent determined.

  ‘You are not to be in here unless Madame has given the permission!’

  The rush of breath was fierce. ‘Even though I’m from the Gestapo?’

  ‘One of those? Pah! Briefcase men with nothing better to do than to interfere in the lives of others. Get out and we will discuss it in the corridor after I have locked the door.

  ‘Marguerite, has he interfered with you?’

  ‘Jésus, merde alors, I only wanted my fortune read.’

  ‘Your fortune? It’s a zéro. One can see this at a glance.’

  ‘I was about to read it for him,’ said the dove with utter innocence, ‘but now have no need since he is convinced. Desperate, ma chère Hortense.’

  ‘What did you try to take from him?’

  ‘A button.’

  Hurriedly crossing herself, the cook turned away to close the door, giving herself a moment to swallow.

  ‘A button is nothing,’ she said, her back still to them. ‘Buttons go missing all the time. They are necessary.’

  It rang when he spun it on the Ouija board. Only when it had stopped did he say, ‘This one’s not necessary.’

  ‘She is not the thief, monsieur. She simply took it to tease.’

  ‘You will forgive me?’ asked that one, stepping close to brush against him and finger his lapels, the clean, sweet smell of her and of lavender all too clear.

  Hortense was now behind him, so good, yes good, thought Marguerite. ‘We read people in here, Inspector. We come to know all their secrets and desires.’

  ‘Right now I want some answers.’

  ‘To what, please?’

  Hortense tapped him on the le
ft shoulder. ‘It is to me you are to speak. To me,’ she said.

  The other one let go of him but not before giving him a tiptoed brush against each cheek and the lightness of a brief embrace.

  ‘Merci,’ Marguerite whispered, leaving him perhaps with the lingering thought of more to come if he would but forgive her.

  ‘How much do you star-gazers rake in a week? And don’t be telling me this room hasn’t been up and running since you got here and probably well before that circus in the Pavillon de Cérès downstairs.’

  The cook’s off-blond hair of fifty-five years looked as if self-cropped before a broken mirror, the bags beneath uncompromising grey eyes sagging to hard-cleaved pale cheeks and unpainted, grimly set lips.

  ‘Any fool could see that it must have taken us months and months to organize.’

  ‘Open a year, then?’ he asked. She was getting the measure of him, was not as tall as the dove but at least twice as wide and ten times as strong.

  ‘A year? It means nothing.’

  ‘Simply that Jennifer Hamilton and Caroline Lacy were interviewed in here by Madame Chevreul, but there’s no divan.’

  ‘There was for them. They sat before that.’

  The tent, the cabinet. ‘With the curtain drawn and Madame inside?’

  ‘Questions needed to be asked, answers given.’

  ‘First the palms, Inspector,’ dared Marguerite, ‘then the tarot cards and my crystal ball, and only after those, the Ouija board and Hortense, and finally le cabinet de Madame Chevreul, médium des médiums.’

  ‘Madame Chevreul sitting in judgement of them behind that screen?’ he asked.

  ‘Things had been stolen. Little things,’ said Hortense. ‘So many we were all wondering who was doing it.’

  ‘But then Madame’s talisman vanished and wonder of wonders, things turned ugly, is that it?’

  Hortense would tolerate no more from her, thought Marguerite, but Herr Kohler would demand it. ‘Jennifer couldn’t have stolen anything, Inspector. It’s simply not in her nature, not after what I have seen of it in my crystal ball. That, however, could only mean Caroline Lacy, her. . . her little companion.’