Bellringer

by J. Robert Janes

  Einar had been blazing mad, had sworn at her, a thing he had never ever done before, and had run off to join up, and later she had agreed to come to France.

  When the beam of the light found her, she blinked but didn’t lower the knife, could feel the blade already cutting into her throat.

  ‘Don’t, mademoiselle. Please don’t,’ said Louis gently.

  She was in one of the rooms, jammed between two bureaus, with knees up tightly and back against a wall. The Opinel was at the jugular and once cut, thought Kohler, how the hell were they to stop the bleeding?

  ‘I did try to grab Mary-Lynn earlier on the stairs but tripped and fell and she got well ahead of me. I heard her scream. I cried out to her in confusion and despair for I didn’t know what had happened, only sensed it, for when someone falls like that, they. . . Caroline did see me when I finally got to that gate to look down the elevator shaft but. . . but it could only have been a glimpse because the lights then went off again.’

  She wasn’t going to listen, felt Kohler. She had that ax leaning right beside her but must have told herself she couldn’t use it on anyone, not even to escape.

  ‘I’ll be shot, won’t I?’

  Louis had lowered the light and was now shining it toward the other side of the room and back a little.

  ‘Not if we can help it,’ said St-Cyr. Hermann wasn’t going to get any closer unless she could somehow be distracted. ‘The wallpaper, mon vieux.’

  ‘The Senegalese, Louis.’

  The light was now shining fully on that far wall. ‘With the dampness, it’s come loose and they’ve been peeling it off,’ said Nora, finding the will to faintly smile at the thought. ‘Madame Chevreul needed to decorate that tentlike cabinet of hers and Léa. . . Léa made them find her something no one would know of until seen. I’m not the only one who has broken into this place, but they’ve been into it lots and lots. They must have.’

  ‘Weber will only use it against them, Hermann,’ said Louis sadly.

  The flashlight blinked as flashlights will. ‘He’s on to me, isn’t he?’ she asked. ‘When I met Jennifer on her way down to the laundry this evening, she said Marguerite had told her he had received a telex from Berlin about me and that he’d been very excited by it and wanted to see me. I. . . I worked for our Intelligence Department, inspectors. They’d been canvassing the universities and said I might be useful.’

  A spy, thought Kohler. As if they didn’t have enough trouble already. The knife was still determinedly at her throat. She’d die if either of them moved.

  ‘Ever since I was little, my mom has always spoken to me in her own language. I did tell them that my accent would be far too off, that even the local patois I’d have to deal with wouldn’t cover that up, but they didn’t think I’d have a problem if I worked on it, not back then in ’41 when they needed people quickly and Vichy still had the carpet out.’

  ‘Mademoiselle, what. . . ’ began Louis.

  ‘Did I do? Look, I didn’t kill anyone. I was sent here to help us get an independent estimate of the size and grade of the deposits of aluminum the Compagnie des Bauxites de France are mining.’

  ‘The valley of the Argens, Hermann. The Département de la Var, near and at Brignoles to the east and northeast of Marseille.’

  ‘Where I handed my reports and field samples in, either to my boss or to our contact person.’

  ‘And the valley of the Hérault, in the Bas Landguedoc,’ said St-Cyr, ‘to the northwest of Montpellier.’

  Louis was obviously dismayed at what they were up against, but the girl seemed relieved to be finally telling someone.

  ‘I even went to Les Baux to see where it had all begun. I fell in love with your country, Chief Inspector, and was, I felt, doing something that would not only be useful to the war effort but to France as well.’

  Les Baux-de-Provence, a place of troubadours and knights, was about twenty kilometres to the north of Arles and a ruined hilltop town and ancient fortress where bauxite had first been discovered in 1821 and given that name.

  There was blood on her neck and she could feel it.

  ‘Aluminum equals fighter aircraft and bombers, inspectors. France has by far the world’s largest source of high-grade ore. The Germans haven’t nearly enough of their own and must get it from here and from Hungary.’

  ‘An earthy-red, chalky ochrous rock, Hermann.’

  ‘But not ochre, which has far more iron,’ she said. ‘Though formed in essentially the same way in tropical climates of the past, bauxite is a residual deposit caused by the chemical and physical breakdown of rocks that are high in alumina.’

  St-Cyr hadn’t taken his eyes off her for a split second and Nora knew she couldn’t keep the acid from her voice. ‘You French, Inspector, are letting them take seventy to eighty percent not only of the mined bauxite but of the refined metal.’

  Whose smelters were in the Savoy, in the valleys of the Arve, the Isère, and the Arc, where plenty of electrical power was being generated. ‘You certainly got around.’

  ‘The Germans tried to control the price paid for the ore and metal. Vichy wanted more, of course, but what did the Compagnie des Bauxites do but worry they wouldn’t sell a thing and accept seventy-five francs a ton, which was far less than even the Reich’s Vereinigte Aluminium-Werke had offered. In 1941 Germany took 230,000 tons of ore. At four to one of metal that alone equalled nearly 60,000 of the refined, but Vichy also allowed the sale of 34,500 of that. In 1942, up until I was arrested and brought here, it was worse. The only problems the Germans were having were the distance to the Reich, the extreme shortages of railway stock—since they had stupidly shot themselves in the foot and had taken far too many locomotives and railway cars—and the lack of labour, since they had locked up far too many of the miners as prisoners of war.

  ‘Now, please let me die in peace. I didn’t kill anyone and I didn’t steal anything and I’ve no reason now to lie to you or to anyone.’

  ‘But you do know who the thief is.’

  ‘The klepto? Not really. I suspected Jen and then Caroline but never accused either nor told anyone else.’

  Her fingers were sticky, the blade not quite where it ought to have been, thought St-Cyr, but was she beginning to realize this?

  ‘That crystal-ball gazer?’ asked Hermann. Somehow he had reduced the distance to her by half.

  She would give Herr Kohler a faint smile for such an attempt, thought Nora, and would tell them both. ‘To me, Jen’s still head over heels with Marguerite, who may or may not give a damn about her anymore. I simply don’t know her well enough nor why they split up. Jen’s never said a thing about it, not to me and not to anyone else that I know of, nor has Marguerite.’

  ‘But Jennifer then took up with Caroline, Hermann.’

  ‘Leaving the other one homicidally jealous, Louis?’

  ‘Perhaps, but then. . . ’

  ‘Caroline really did want to find out what had happened to Madame de Vernon’s husband, inspectors. Jen. . . Jen was always encouraging her to.’

  ‘How much traffic goes back and forth from hotel to hotel?’ asked Louis.

  ‘Lots. Every day, and lots of overnights, too. If Marguerite’s been stealing things, tell her I hope that Indian Head penny brings her the luck my dad wanted me to have.’

  The flashlight went off and then came on, the wrist being caught, the knife hand pulled back, Hermann having grabbed the girl in a bear hug.

  Finally she stopped struggling and just let him hold her. ‘Ah, bon,’ said St-Cyr, ‘now we’d best get to work. We’ve company.’

  ‘ACHTUNG, ACHTUNG!’ came the call from Weber, given over a loud-hailer. ‘RAUS, ALLES! KOMMEN SIE! SCHNELL! SCHNELL!’

  ‘NICHT SCHIESSEN, KAMMERAD!’ yelled Hermann. ‘NICHT SCHIESSEN!’ Don’t shoot.

  ‘COME DOWN. IT’S ALL UP WITH YOU, KOHLER.’

  ‘Stall him, Hermann. Keep him occupied.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘There’s something I
have to do. Mademoiselle, come with me and don’t try anything other than what I tell you.’

  ‘Louis, I’m not hearing this, not from you. You can’t leave me and try to make a break for it in that cutter. He’ll have left at least two men holding that nag by the harness.’

  Hermann loved horses and would normally have used the mare’s name but it wasn’t a time to quibble. ‘Just tell him we’re not going anywhere until I have what we need.’

  Weber hadn’t come in force but could have and should have if he had been wanting to make a big show of things. Instead, there was the baksheesh-taking Oberfeldwebel whom Louis had encountered at the wood depot and one very recent, teenage recruit who had awkwardly slung his Mauser and, having taken the loud-hailer back, was now nervously manning the floodlight.

  It was blinding, and a forearm had to be thrown up to shield the eyes.

  ‘WHERE IS SHE, KOHLER?’

  Maybe fifteen metres still separated them. Shoulder-high mountains of furniture were on either side, Louis and the girl now well behind, Weber just inside the front entrance, the Oberfeldwebel to his right, but that Schmeisser and the stance spoke of the Russian Front and absolutely no desire to return to it.

  Reinecke had been his name, and even from here the shrapnel scars below the helmet were clear enough. Louis and the girl would be caught in the crossfire—was that really what Weber wanted, having drawn his Polizei Pistole? Dead they could give no answers and Berlin-Central wouldn’t give a damn. Indeed, they’d be pleased, and Weber must know it too.

  ‘Kohler. . . ’

  ‘Ach, there’s no problem, Untersturmführer. The little imp is with my partner.’

  ‘That slut is wanted, Kohler. Wanted!’

  To duck would not be wise. ‘Liebe Zeit, Untersturmführer, admit that we saved you a hell of a lot of trouble. Those woods are probably infested with partisans who would only have welcomed her and smeared egg on your face in Berlin.’

  Kohler still hadn’t moved. Beyond him, behind the front desk, St-Cyr and the girl were hurriedly searching for something. ‘Komm’ here, Kohler. Now!’

  A grin would be best. ‘I’ve twisted an ankle. You’ll have to be patient.’

  ‘Your gun, then. Toss it out.’

  Weber would shoot Louis first—was that it? ‘Ach, my hands are full. Look, there’s really no problem.’

  ‘Where did she get that ax you’re holding?’

  ‘This? It’s a leftover from that other war and branded right on its handle. Probably the ax was rusty as hell when she found it but it’s been beautifully cleaned and is as sharp as a razor.’

  ‘That monk. . . He threw it over the wire to her, or one of the blacks sold it to her.’

  Weber couldn’t have discovered that his safe had been broken into, or maybe he had and that was why he’d brought so few with him. ‘We’ll have to ask the brother and those boys, Untersturmführer, but didn’t you tell me you knew everything that was going on around this camp? Who was meeting who and where and why, and who would be attending that séance on the night of the thirteenth and where they’d go afterwards before they climbed that staircase. A bell ringer. . . wasn’t that what Colonel Kessler said over the telephone to the Kommandant von Gross-Paris? You did listen in, didn’t you?’

  ‘IT WAS A SUICIDE, KOHLER. A SELF-MURDER!’

  ‘You knew Nora Arnarson and Mary-Lynn Allan would be attending that séance with Colonel Kessler and you knew you had to pin something substantial on him. What better than the suicide of the young woman he’d made pregnant?’

  ‘She jumped, Kohler. He drove her to it, and that is among the charges Berlin-Central will be presenting at his court-martial.’

  Louis had best be ready. ‘Then the key to that padlock must have been stolen from that board on the wall behind your desk.’

  ‘STOLEN RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY VERY EYES?’

  ‘If not, Untersturmführer, then who the hell opened it other than you?’

  Weber and the others were coming for her, thought Nora, panicking. Herr Kohler hadn’t been able to stall them any longer. There was now no hope unless she could make a run for it, but how? Boxed in, she and the chief inspector were behind walls and walls, having gone beyond the front desk through crowded office after office frantically searching until, at last and on the floor at their feet, the beam of his light had settled on two dusty registers.

  The fake marbling of their heavy covers sickened her but not just because of the time needed to look through them. Someone had stolen the leather jackets such books would always have. Shoe repairs? she wondered. Boots, gloves. . . would it really matter why the Senegalese had stripped them off or that they would have even been under guard? They’d been doing all the heavy labour and would have carried the registers in.

  ‘There are strongboxes, too, Inspector.’

  The registers had been on top of them, and both of the two boxes had been broken into.

  ‘Ah, merde,’ swore St-Cyr, dismayed by the thought. ‘The house detectives,’ and flinging up the lid of each, he found the empty holsters that should have held two of the Lebel Modèle d’ordonnance 1873s just like his own.

  ‘Say nothing of this, mademoiselle. Nothing, do you understand?’

  Nora knew she had to nod but that his mind must be in a turmoil, for if the Senegalese had stolen them, and they must have, it could only have been for one reason.

  The register he handed her was thick and heavy. There were pages and pages of names, dates, room numbers, signatures, amounts paid, and far too little time.

  Shoulder-to-shoulder, they began.

  ‘Saturday 17 July, 1920,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Madame Élizabeth Chevreul, the Château de Mon Plaisir near Mortagne-au-Perche in Normandy.’

  Nora had the Vittel-Palace’s register, he the Grand’s, he having set the flashlight between the two books so that it shone toward each of them and both would have as much light as possible. If worse came to worst, she knew he would douse the light, push her to the floor, and draw his weapon.

  Built in 1899, the Vittel-Palace had opened in 1900 for the season on 1 June. Page after page had to be turned just to find the right year. Nora knew she couldn’t do it fast enough. Often pages stuck together, whole clumps of them. The dampness. . . A gap. Page after page of nothing but empty spaces and blue lines. In 1915 the French Army had turned Vittel and its Parc Thermal into a huge hospital for their wounded. In July 1917, the first trains of American wounded had arrived, the French having decided to turn it over to them. By August 1918 there had been more than 1,300,000 doughboys in France.

  Her heart sank. There was no Madame Chevreul, not in the Vittel-Palace’s register. Not that she could find in the weeks prior to 17 July, 1920, and right after it; nor was there in that of the Grand. She could have stayed in any other of the hotels in town.

  Instead, there was a Mademoiselle Élizabeth Beacham who, having arrived on 1 July to “take the three-week cure,” and having paid fully for it, had stayed at the Grand in a suite of rooms on its top floor only to have left in a hurry on the morning of the eighteenth.

  She had used her British passport.

  ‘Vernon, mademoiselle. A Laurence Vernon. Please hurry.’

  Floodlight bathed the jumble of things that had been shoved and heaved aside nearest to a door that had somehow been hastily shut. Louis was in there with the girl. Louis. . .

  Had it all come down to this? wondered Kohler. The years of working together, him out here with Weber’s pistol at his back and the Oberfeldwebel about to let off a burst from that Schmeisser?

  Nora could hear them clearly, as could the chief inspector whose hand had gently but firmly come to rest on her left shoulder, his flashlight having been extinguished.

  ‘Tell them to come out, Kohler!’ shrieked Weber.

  ‘So that you can have them shot for resisting arrest?’ yelled Kohler angrily.

  A silence intruded, Nora’s heart hammering, the chief inspector catching a breath.

  ‘Ach, Unte
rsturmführer,’ said Herr Kohler, ‘since there are two keys to each of those padlocks on that board of yours and no one could have borrowed one without your knowledge, or so you have repeatedly claimed, who did you give one to the Chalet des nes to, or did you open it yourself like you must have the other one?’

  ‘I didn’t open anything!’

  Abruptly Weber fired twice into the ceiling above, showering plaster chips and dust as the sound reverberated and the smell of cordite came.

  ‘Hermann . . . ’ blurted the chief inspector from behind the still-unopened door, his voice a torn whisper. ‘Ah, mon Dieu, mon vieux, why didn’t you let me know how serious things were?’

  Nora felt him shudder at the thought of what must have happened, but then he dragged out his revolver and she heard its hammer click once on the half-cock and then on the full, sounds she had known since childhood.

  ‘You to the floor at my feet, mademoiselle. Me to deal with them, but please don’t try to run. Give life every moment you can.’

  Kohler could see that the kid with the floodlight had pissed himself, but the Oberfeldwebel had anticipated that, with one good shove from him, the kid would have dropped the light, so there was nothing for it. ‘Was it Jennifer Hamilton you gave that key to?’ he demanded of Weber.

  ‘Jennifer would never have killed Caroline, Inspector,’ whispered Nora.

  ‘She was desperate, mademoiselle. Alone and terrified,’ said St-Cyr, ‘but we still don’t know that he actually gave her that key.’

  ‘Kohler. . . ’ began Herr Weber.

  ‘Jennifer told you everything, didn’t she, about Colonel Kessler and her roommate Mary-Lynn Allan?’ shouted Hermann. ‘Where the couple had been or were going, who they had been with or would be, and what he had given her.’

  One couldn’t help but feel triumphant, felt Weber. ‘One teases, Kohler. One offers a little reward and then withdraws it. Fräulein Hamilton was so afraid I would renege on my promise to let her go home to that flat of hers in Paris, she begged me to use her. Begged, Kohler, and often went down on her knees.’