Bellringer

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Her lover?’

  How quick he was to say it. ‘Oui.’

  ‘Who must have gone through the curtain that hides the door behind that thing when Madame was no longer in conference with the goddess and was known to also be absent from her other rooms?’

  And on a visit to Untersturmführer Weber, was this what he meant, or was he just fishing?

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  ‘If you say so, then yes.’

  ‘Marguerite. . . ’

  ‘Hortense, ma chère, I had better tell him. Jennifer first came here alone, Inspector, and several times. Me, I read her future in my crystal ball. To begin, I used the smoky quartz, as I would have with you and for much the same reasons, but then it was the rose quartz and only after that the clear crystal, for her worries drive her to anxiety and one must search deeply for the reasons. Always I cleanse each ball before and after a reading. This washes away all evidence of former images, ensuring each new reading is uninfluenced by them. I also magnetize the ball by passing the hands over it, though never touching it. I burn incense: apple blossom to sharpen the symbolic visions if those are being received; lavender to release myself from my own past, which might hinder intuition; lilac to stimulate perception. With Jennifer there were so many things clouding the ball and troubling her innermost psyche, but before we could reach total clarity, she was taken from me, only to then return but with Caroline.’

  ‘Hand in hand, eh, and well after Jennifer’s having been hustled into the cellars here and telling the truth about that one’s past and Madame Chevreul’s?’

  Léa had come. Léa filled the doorway. Having heard what Kohler had just said, she was not happy.

  ‘Caroline was such a shy and repressed creature,’ continued Madame Chevreul, she and Brother Étienne having started in again on their lunch. ‘Trampled, Inspector, by that dreadful woman who had dominated every facet of her tender life.’

  The brother, having entrusted that very woman in total with enough datura to kill from six to twelve, was clearly haunted by the thought of what had been stolen—a third of it—but where, really, did he sit in things, this healer, this gossip, this courier of BBC Free French broadcast news, this bell ringer?

  ‘Your talisman, madame?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘My gris-gris—isn’t that what some would call it? A black who tells fortunes is better than me, Inspector? A man who is not only poor and uneducated but one step from the savage?’

  ‘Élizabeth, I must caution you.’

  ‘Étienne, please eat and then tend to the others. I’m sure we have kept you long enough.’

  ‘He stays.’

  ‘I think I had best, for the moment.’

  A generous morsel was taken, the dark goatee of this nothing monk given a hasty wipe with a napkin.

  ‘Laughter, Inspector,’ she asked, causing that napkin to be impatiently crushed in a fist. ‘Snide remarks? Whispers about my abilities? I who have done so much for so many and have freely given of myself? I who had as one of my most loyal and strongest of believers Colonel Kessler, the very Kommandant of this camp?’

  ‘Élizabeth, he was asking about your talisman.’

  ‘A mere trinket of no consequence, so please be kind enough to help yourself to the warm potato salad, Étienne. Time and again, Inspector, Colonel Kessler came to me, at first at the urging of Mary-Lynn Allan, though he knew, of course, of the interest in spiritualism in the camp, and even of some of its mediums, having paid a few visits to them out of curiosity.’

  ‘Ah, mon Dieu, Élizabeth, he was a doubter,’ muttered Brother Étienne, shovelling salad onto his plate.

  ‘Certainly, and certainly, like so many after that terrible war of 1914–18, he was curious but also, Étienne, Beate Kessler née von Hennig, his wife of thirty-seven years, having lost her father and two brothers in it, had long ago become a devout believer and practitioner. As you well know, it was really she who convinced him to find out more.’

  Knife and fork were lifted in a resigned gesture. ‘This is nonsense, Inspector. Élizabeth, repeatedly I have warned that what you claim is against the laws of the Church.’

  ‘Nonsense, is it, to reach those who have passed over, Étienne? To talk to them? Ask questions of import and be given answers? Doesn’t the inspector need to know why Colonel Kessler was so distressed and what he wanted desperately to ask that wife of his and their little maid?’

  ‘A girl, a child of twenty,’ whispered the brother. A forkful of the salad was taken, a bit of the bread brusquely torn off and used to mop up sauce that had been missed. ‘Continue, Élizabeth, if you must.’

  Étienne would use the bread like that and eat like a peasant! ‘Cérès was asked by him to contact Frau Kessler, Inspector, I having placed before the other sitters the wedding ring his wife had given him and the photos and letters from her that he had brought along. Initially he wanted proof, and asked things only his wife could have known. The name of their first dog? Mädy. The breed? A dachshund. The number of puppies in her first litter and why a new maid had been needed? Five. Their names? Johann, Käte, Christina, Jörg, and Erik.

  ‘After that, his doubts began to leave him. He did ask Cérès if his wife could give his former rank, the date and time of their wedding. A captain, she said, 15 June, 1906, a Friday at 1600 hours, the drawn swords of his hussars catching the sunlight as they had formed the archway over them and cheered. Fortunately his commanding officer had managed a small task for him to perform in Paris, but the couple didn’t stay at the Ritz, she said when asked. They had only had one evening’s meal there. Instead they had stayed at a small inn on the quai Voltaire, in the very house where Voltaire and Richard Wagner had once stayed. Across the Seine there had been a magnificent view of the Jardin des Tuileries, he having thrown the French windows open and stepped out onto the balcony every morning on waking. Visits to the Louvre, the theatres and galleries, shops, and gardens had occupied the fortnight they’d spent there and only on the last day had he had any diplomatic duties to perform. All such details poured from her in a rush of joy at being able to reach him, he dumbfounded at first, then shedding tears of joy himself and begging her forgiveness.’

  ‘Emmi Lammers hadn’t been the first of their house daughters, their maids, but the sixth,’ snorted Brother Étienne, giving a massive shrug.

  ‘And the colonel’s distress?’ asked the inspector, ignoring Étienne’s implication.

  She would like to let this sûreté wait, thought Élizabeth, but had better not since the look Étienne had given her had as much as said, I’ve done what I can to save you from yourself. ‘Cérès. . . Cérès was to ask her if she’d had any more visits since her last letter of 5 September of last year.’

  ‘Élizabeth. . . ’

  ‘You can think what you will, Étienne, but I know Frau Kessler was questioned by the Gestapo, first in her own home and well before the Americans came here to stay with us, and that this had been greatly troubling him. Visitors at such a time? Had the Gestapo seen over the house? he had asked her. Had they spoken to Emmi, this new maid? Had either of them been taken for a drive in the country—a drive when petrol is so short and automobiles reserved only for those with special permits?

  ‘They had stopped for tea along the way, Inspector, and had spent two hours over it. Tea, at a time of such shortages?’

  ‘Herr Weber, Inspector. Colonel Kessler was convinced the Untersturmführer had been contacting Berlin behind his back and saying things he shouldn’t have.’

  To the Reich Central Security Office. ‘And Emmi Lammers wasn’t the first,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘Young and pretty and needing a father figure—isn’t that what you think, Inspector?’ asked Élizabeth tartly. ‘Alone, despondent, and vulnerable, is what I would say, just as was Mary-Lynn Allan.’

  ‘The father, was he?’

  ‘Absolument! That is why he insisted Étienne take care of it.’

  ‘Élizabeth, your choice of words is shameful, and whi
le I must insist they are untrue, they can only lead you astray. Inspector, the colonel’s home was in Düsseldorf. Beate Kessler wanted to join her sister in Duisburg nearby, but he insisted she was far safer where she was.’

  ‘Then on 9 September of last year, Inspector, his words came back to haunt him.’

  ‘The RAF dropped the first of what have since become known, apparently, as “heavy incendiaries,”’ said Brother Étienne. ‘Fifteen-kilo bombs of solid or liquid phosphorous that do not explode on impacting the roofs of buildings but first penetrate below.’

  ‘The house was gutted, its walls all but collapsing,’ said Madame, seizing the moment with relish, which only caused the brother to raise his eyebrows in despair and say:

  ‘He went home on compassionate leave on 15 September to see where what had been left of them had been buried. Now, I really must get on with my patients.’

  ‘You told Mary-Lynn to eat parsley, Brother, and you brought her enough to do the job.’

  ‘He wasn’t the father, of this I’m certain.’

  ‘But that is not what you whispered to me, your confidante, Étienne.’

  ‘All right, he was! Does that satisfy you?’

  Their voices had risen. ‘The parsley, Brother?’

  Ah, merde, this was not going well. ‘I gave it to her because she couldn’t face having a child here and out of wedlock. It had been a mistake, she said, a moment of weakness brought on by despair. She pleaded with me for help and I. . . May God forgive me, but I felt she could be suicidal.’

  ‘You couldn’t face up to the laws of the Church yourself, Étienne. Is this what you are admitting?’ asked Madame forcefully.

  The plate, the knife and fork and napkin were pushed away, the look one of resignation.

  ‘The greater sin must always take precedence, Élizabeth. Please try to understand that to prevent the one, I had to help the other.’

  She would reach out to him in comfort and forgiveness, she must! ‘As you now help me, mon chèr, whose only sin is to believe in both the God you serve unquestionably and the goddess whom I, alone, am able to reach.

  ‘Inspector, as the séances progressed, so did the questions. Colonel Kessler asked of the suitcase he had left in the cellars of their house. Had any of the visitors inquired of it? Beate Kessler told him one of them had looked the house over while the other had questioned her; Emmi Lammers, though, said that the suitcase, in spite of its having been seen, had not been lifted from its place on a top shelf and was now much safer.’

  ‘Under all the rubble of a burned-out house,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Élizabeth. . . ’

  ‘Other currencies, Brother? Gold coins, family silver, and pieces of jewellery?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea. He would certainly not have confided that.’

  ‘Especially since to hide such things from the Nazis and not declare them would have been against the law, but with memories of the mark at 4.2 to the American dollar in 1914 and at 4,420,000,000 to it at the close of 1923, a wise move, considering that the Reich was again caught up in a war that looked more and more as if it would also be lost.’

  Sex and money, Hermann would have said, and always some salaud lurking in the shadows to take advantage. ‘You were treating him for what, Brother?’

  ‘Rheumatism. It had plagued his knees since that other war.’

  As it had Hermann, to whom poultices of boiled, mashed horse chestnuts—a Russian remedy—had been applied by this partner of his when in search of a little peace of mind. ‘Madame, did Léa Monnier convey any of this Cérès dialogue to Herr Weber?’

  ‘Lea. . . ?’

  ‘Is one of his informants.’

  ‘Léa would do no such thing.’

  ‘But probably did, so now will you tell me when she left that séance the night Mary-Lynn was killed?’

  Oh dear. . . ‘Léa. . . Léa’s sciatica had started up again. Though she was needed, I had excused her from attending.’

  ‘And when you returned to your rooms here?’

  Before going downstairs again to try to reconnect with the goddess because of being worried about that girl’s safety, but one didn’t need to remind him of this. ‘She wasn’t in her bed. The toilets, I assumed.’

  ‘How long did you spend while trying to reconnect with the goddess?’

  Had he believed her? ‘An hour, two hours—three, perhaps—how could I possibly know?’

  Time enough, in any case. ‘Through self-hypnosis and breath control, Inspector, Madame Chevreul goes into a trance,’ said Brother Étienne.

  ‘While Léa Monnier is free to do as she had been ordered by Herr Weber, Brother?’

  ‘Ordered? But. . . but surely the Untersturmführer wouldn’t have wanted that girl to fall to her death?’

  The brother had been genuinely taken aback, Madame Chevreul’s knife and fork merely hesitating as if intrigued. ‘At the moment, it’s but one of several avenues since Madame Monnier has accused Nora Arnarson of having chased up the stairs after Mary-Lynn and, not realizing that the lift gate was open, of having tried to grab her only to have caused her to stumble forward and fall.’

  ‘That Arnarson girl, Inspector. I knew she disbelieved. I felt it right from the first—one always does. Time and again, at Colonel Kessler’s urging, I would try to reach Mary-Lynn’s father only to fail because of her friend.’

  ‘Yet you tolerated Nora’s presence?’

  ‘She had witnessed Colonel Kessler’s joy. I thought her doubts would have ceased.’

  ‘But in spite of this, finally had success.’

  ‘Profoundly so. At 0200 hours on the night of 26 September, 1918, the sky over that battlefield to the northwest of Verdun was filled with flame and the deafening roar of the American artillery barrage. Men who had never been in battle and were soaked to the skin and cold from having had to wait in the open in their trenches for more than a week soon found themselves advancing uphill through dense fog and machine-gun fire.’

  ‘The east bank of the Aire River and just to the east of the Forêt d’Argonne, Inspector,’ said Brother Étienne. ‘The First American Army, Thirty-Fifth Division. Mary-Lynn Allan’s father was killed on the twenty-sixth, Madame de Vernon’s husband wounded on the twenty-ninth but at Cierges-sous-Montfaucon, which is about five kilometres to the northwest of that hill, the advance of the twenty-sixth having been against Montfaucon itself, on which stood a heavily defended barracks.’

  ‘Their luminescent compasses failed,’ continued Madame Chevreul. ‘There was so much buried metal in that old Verdun battlefield it threw them off. When she spoke to Captain Edward Bruce Allan, Cérès said he had told her he lies buried beneath the tank he had destroyed. A knoll was to his right, Inspector, another to his left, the true bearing on a line of sight of 42 degrees to the south, southwest or 222 degrees from north. He and his men had been advancing up the defile between those knolls when the mustard gas was encountered, causing the men to panic further, but then. . . then out of the fog and not ten steps away, the muzzle of that German tank appeared, it immediately firing at them, the shell exploding in a cloud of shrapnel which cut the air, instantly killing his sergeant and two others, he seizing their grenades even as they fell, Sergeant Davies crying out to him, “Don’t, Cap,” but it was of no use.’

  ‘Élizabeth. . . Élizabeth,’ began Brother Étienne, gesturing at the impossibility of reasoning with her, only to be ignored.

  ‘He lies about three kilometres to the south-southwest of Montfaucon, Inspector, near the foundation of a ruined barn. The defile is, of course, much overgrown. Bracken covers the knolls, but there are two cedars on the one and a young oak on the other, each with the strength of many. Armour plate and tank treads cover him and these are to be found beneath a metre of thrown-up earth. A digging machine will have to be used. Mere pick and shovel will not suffice.’

  And never mind the use of a compass! thought St-Cyr. ‘Any unexploded gas shells?’

>   ‘A danger to be sure, but Cérès didn’t say. Ah, pardonnez-moi. He didn’t say to Cérès.’

  ‘Nor tell you, madame, that the tank would have been American, for the Wehrmacht, throughout that war had so few, they had had to use captured ones when available, though not, I think, in that battle, and as for the poisoned gas you say was used, it was the Americans who fired it at the Germans then, not the other way round.’

  ‘The confusion of battle is always terrible.’

  ‘But as a nurse and an ambulance driver, you and Léa Monnier would have heard plenty of what the front was like and would have driven over past positions of it many times, and certainly after that war, the bereaved sought solace in spiritualism right through the ’20s and well into the ’30s.’

  Millions had died, so many of them between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. ‘Comfort, Inspector. News of loved ones, a word or two. Those are what I bring. Colonel Kessler was convinced I possessed that rarest of gifts.’

  ‘Whereas Bamba Duclos, though he doesn’t appear to often contact those who have passed over, will do so if pressed as he reads the fortunes of present lives and is a charlatan?’

  ‘That black told Mary-Lynn that I would never be able to get Cérès to reach her father or find where he lay buried, that only if she believed totally in his powers—his!—could he read her future in that little basket of rubbish.’

  ‘But he did read it?’

  ‘And kept it from her because he saw her falling down a deep, dark well but couldn’t understand this because there were no such wells that he knew of in the camp.’

  ‘How is it, please, that you knew of this, madame?’ Brother Étienne had taken to folding his napkin again and didn’t look at either of them, having done all he could to protect her from herself.

  ‘Léa told me,’ she said.

  ‘Léa who is so loyal she would find out for you?’

  ‘Oui.’

  To shout for Louis would do no good, felt Kohler, to try to back away and through the medium’s cabinet to reach him but a bad gamble. Léa Monnier didn’t just fill the corridor doorway to this room of rooms; behind her, a mob had silently gathered. Broomsticks, mallets, pots, ladles, and knives were in hand, hair in the eyes of some, chewing gum in the mouths of others, fags clenched between the lips of still others.