Bellringer

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘But you’re convinced Becky Torrence killed Caroline Lacy to protect herself?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘And that Nora Arnarson accidentally. . . ’

  ‘Or deliberately, in the heat of argument.’

  ‘Pushed Mary-Lynn Allan, not realizing that the lift gate was open?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Perhaps Cérès needs the sound of your bell.’

  Taken aback, she tossed her head. ‘Really, Chief Inspector, I am earnestly committed to obtaining the answers you need. Cérès can and will provide, but all must be in trine. None must doubt. Even Étienne, though the teachings of the Mother Church condemn what I do, still has the will to respectfully remove himself from the circle while listening with eyes closed, and I would earnestly suggest that you and Herr Kohler do likewise.’

  ‘But of course. It’s only that throughout this investigation we had been given to understand we should consult a ringer of bells. At first we thought this must be the brother who, in addition to those on Angèle, rings the one for vespers.’

  ‘And you rang one for Léa to bring your breakfast while I was there,’ said Herr Kohler. Opening the hessian sack he had brought from the chalet, he took out Bamba Duclos’s little basket and rang its bell to emphasize things further.

  ‘Duclos is nothing but an impostor, inspectors. The very idea that he could even begin to compete with my powers and cause me the slightest concern is ridiculous. The mere posturing of a fraud. I alone possess the ability to cross the threshold and, through Cérès, to reach those who have passed over. I who sit here before you in this circle of circles, bring back word from them. Words, need I emphasize, not only of endearment, but words that have been proven true and absolute.’

  ‘But there is only one bell that will work, isn’t there?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘And I have it here.’

  ‘My talisman. . . ’

  ‘Your gris-gris, madame.’

  Four-sided, it was as if two isosceles triangles had been placed base to base, thought Nora. In all, it was about three centimetres in length, by half that across, and was flat and no more than a few millimetres in thickness. Some kind of polished stone, perhaps, or enamelled surface.

  ‘An Art Deco pendant,’ said St-Cyr. ‘When first seen, I thought, as you have claimed, Madame Chevreul, that it was but a bit of costume jewellery of no consequence, for that is the impression a first and hurried glance might well give, depending on the lighting and circumstance. The chain, however, is of very fine, cubic silver links each of no more than a millimetre to a side.’

  He waited. He dangled it in front of himself.

  ‘A trinket, as I stated, Chief Inspector. A chain was needed and I took one I had.’

  ‘Élizabeth, surely there can be no harm in telling him?’ asked Brother Étienne.

  ‘So that he can make a fool of me?’

  ‘So that he can help you, I think.’

  ‘You see,’ said St-Cyr, ‘Colonel Kessler firmly believed that Cérès could give us the answers you claim she can. Why else his desperately shouting “a bell ringer,” as he must have, to the Kommandant von Gross-Paris when the telephone line to Paris began to fade after urgently requesting our presence? A man, I should add, who had, against his every effort, been hastily recalled to answer certain charges and face a court-martial.’

  There was shock and then a chilling and defiant silence, thought Élizabeth. None glanced questioningly at another, all eyes remaining on her. Everyone was waiting. Everyone would believe her an absolute fraud if she failed to go through with it.

  ‘Very well. It shall be as you insist, but the Arnarson girl is to leave the circle.’

  ‘She’s welcome to my chair,’ said Brother Étienne. ‘I’ll stand at the back.’

  ‘With her and where you belong, Étienne.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Arnarson, un moment s’il vous plaît,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Examine this talisman closely and give us your professional opinion.’

  Iridescently mauve and mottled, it was lovely in a curious way, and was backed by sterling silver, and as she held it, Nora couldn’t help but say, ‘I always wondered but could never get a close enough look because Madame dangles it in front of herself until séance contact has been initiated and then lets it and its chain coil into her left hand, which closes about it until again needed.’

  ‘And?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘It’s of alexandrite, a type of chrysoberyl from the Urals.’

  ‘Which was discovered, Hermann, in 1833 and named in honour of the teenaged boy who would later become Tsar Alexander II.’

  The chief inspector had switched on the flashlight, under the beam of which she now held the pendant.

  ‘Chrysoberyl is very hard, and next in hardness after diamond and corundum,’ said Nora. ‘When cut and polished as this is, or simply uncut, it’s iridescent but dominantly emerald green in daylight or, as now, in artificial light, mainly reddish. Hence it was thought of as being magic. In daylight, the emerald, but at night the amethyst, this one of a pale pink to violet. Inspector, if you look closely at this mauve area, you’ll see that there are many parallel striations, all of which are very close and equally spaced. Those are minute cleavage planes—there are three sets of them and along the dominant one the stone can most easily be cleaved. They pick up the light, absorbing and refracting it and changing the colour, depending though on the source and nature of that light.’

  ‘A magical stone. Is it valuable?’

  Mary-Lynn wouldn’t have wanted her to look at anyone but Madame Chevreul. ‘It’s very rare and much sought after.’

  ‘Ah, bon, merci. For now please join the brother. A trinket, madame?’

  ‘Élizabeth, did I not tell you what was best,’ came that basso profundo voice.

  ‘All right, damn you, I purchased it because I fancied it. Was that a crime?’

  ‘Purchased when Art Deco was beginning to come into vogue?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Purchased after that husband of yours had passed over, leaving you a healthy estate?’ asked Hermann.

  ‘Really, inspectors, I do not need nor wish to answer that or anything else. This séance—’

  ‘But had best, madame,’ said Louis.

  ‘All right, that, too, is correct but I didn’t kill him as some have maliciously suggested.’

  ‘We’ll get to Madame Vernon soon enough,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Like your rings and bracelet, Léa Monnier saved this for you when the internment camp was first at Besançon in the old French Army barracks on the plateau above that town. Like many, you fell ill that first winter. The conditions were utterly deplorable and shameful to me as a Frenchman, some of whose fellow citizens were entirely responsible—open to the winter’s wind and weather, vastly overcrowded and with only three latrine pits outside and far too little to eat, but somehow she managed to nurse you back to health and all the while, and especially when your suitcase was searched on arrival and such jewellery would most certainly have been confiscated and a worthless receipt given, she hid them.’

  ‘In my bras, my step-ins, and inside of me,’ snorted Léa. ‘Was that a crime?’

  ‘As far as Hermann and I are concerned, not at all, but the pendant found a new use here. To induce a trance, the medium uses self-hypnosis and breath control. Chevreul, the nineteenth-century hypnotist, popularized the use of a pendulum. The subject to be hypnotized was told to concentrate on its gentle swaying.’

  ‘Inspector, really. How has this any bearing on your inquiry?’ asked Élizabeth. ‘How I reach clairaudience need not concern us.’

  ‘Were it not for one aspect, madame. The chalice, please, and a little water. No, I am not thirsty.’

  Dangling the pendant over the glass, he lowered it to just at and below rim level.

  ‘Écoutez bien, mes amies. Voilà, our Bellringer.’

  The tone was low but resonant enough and when some of the water was poured out,
and then a little more, the tone rose higher and higher until it was bell clear and beautifully resonant.

  ‘Yesterday, madame, when we first met, I asked of Chevreul. You said he was a distant relative.’

  ‘Of my husband’s, yes.’

  ‘So it was in keeping with his memory that you should use this stone as a pendulum to induce self-hypnosis since all others round the circle were to have their eyes tightly closed. Questions would be asked. If Cérès was there and could hear you, the bell would be rung.’

  This sûreté waited. He didn’t say a thing. He simply rang it one more time.

  ‘You questioned Jennifer Hamilton and Caroline Lacy at length prior to agreeing to let the latter become a sitter,’ said Herr Kohler.

  ‘I did. I was in my cabinet, in that room of rooms which you had the audacity to invade without my permission.’

  ‘First the palm readings,’ said Kohler, ‘the tarot, the Ouija board and crystal balls, but when the bell rang, it did so from inside that enclosure of yours, you signalling to them that each answer given had been accepted and that you were satisfied.’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘But then that pendant was stolen, madame, and you had to know who had taken it,’ he countered. ‘You needed it. You were desperate.’

  ‘All right, I was. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘But stolen when, madame?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘After their fourth visit. It. . . it was always kept on my dressing table with. . . with everything else of mine when not in use.’

  ‘Set down in haste?’ he asked, taking out his pipe and tobacco.

  ‘I. . . I was called away.’

  ‘To Herr Weber?’ asked Hermann.

  ‘Oui. Marguerite came to tell me I had been urgently summoned. Léa and Hortense went with me.’

  ‘And the interconnecting door between your bedroom and the other and its cabinet, was it locked?’ asked Herr Kohler.

  Ah, damn him, damn him. ‘Always but. . . but I may not have done so that one time.’

  ‘It’s as the goddess would have informed us, Louis. Even though her maid was still present, and that thing was pinched, Madame still agreed to allow Caroline to become a sitter.’

  ‘I felt it best so as to keep an eye on them.’

  ‘Yet it’s a puzzle,’ said St-Cyr, gesturing with that pipe of his, ‘since the thief from whom it has been recovered stole only items of virtually little use or monetary value.’

  Lighting the pipe, he didn’t take his gaze from her. ‘Mine was the exception,’ she said.

  ‘But Jennifer Hamilton didn’t know that, madame. Her kleptomania took over, and in the haste to have something of yours, she thought as we first had and you had claimed, that it was some inconsequential thing. But in that exception lies the solution to this whole matter.’

  ‘Caroline wanted to know what had happened to Madame Vernon’s husband,’ said Kohler, lighting himself a cigarette. ‘Jennifer encouraged her because Jennifer had been and still was, very much in love with that one.’

  With Marguerite Lefèvre.

  ‘Earlier, madame, you had banished Jennifer Hamilton,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Though she was very much in love with your maid, and that one no doubt with her, you told Marguerite Lefèvre to end the affair. Things were being stolen, albeit little things but far too many of them. There was rising discontent. You suspected Jennifer and sent her away, but then. . . ah, then, love found a means of returning.’

  ‘Jennifer encouraged Caroline to plead with you and Léa to let her become a sitter,’ said Kohler.’

  ‘Marguerite Lefèvre,’ asked St-Cyr, ‘did you, when asked by your lover and her new partner, allow them in to see Madame’s bedroom when she was called away to Herr Weber, and did Madame not soon discover what you had done in her absence?’

  There was no answer, only silence.

  ‘And from that point on, madame, since your reputation was fast falling,’ said Kohler, ‘you realized there could well be some benefit in encouraging Caroline, particularly if that goddess of yours found the answer to what that girl desperately wanted to know.’

  ‘You gave her the L’Heure Bleue presentation phial to cement things,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘Knowing full well that Caroline would show it to Madame Vernon and fan the flames, and that we would soon see through the lie you had told us,’ said Kohler, ‘because you wanted to draw our attention away from the Hôtel Grand and to the Vittel-Palace and that very woman.’

  ‘If you could prove, through Cérès, that Madame Vernon had killed her husband and we were convinced of it, that would be the crowning touch to a triumphant return,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘Laurence Vernon, inspectors,’ said Élizabeth. ‘I see that you have rightly dropped the de. I was certain she had killed him but knew not of her nor even what she looked like then, having only the present vestige to go on. The sûreté—’

  ‘Suspected Irène Vernon but couldn’t build an adequate case,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Such things happen more often than we would like, and she was and still is abundantly aware of her legal rights.’

  ‘Once I got to know Laurence a little in this life, in July 1920, he readily told me of his marriage and that he was worried his family might have got in touch with her.’

  ‘To tell her he had inherited a bundle, Hermann, from the estate of his mother.’

  ‘But the tables soon took it all, didn’t they?’ asked Herr Kohler.

  ‘He. . . he wanted a loan,’ managed Madame Chevreul. ‘He said he needed it, that his luck would change.’

  ‘But you refused,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘He became impossible. I left my room and went to the casino’s cercle to place a few modest wagers of my own.’

  ‘Having asked the management to chuck him out if he followed you,’ said Kohler.

  ‘Yes, damn you. Yes!’

  ‘But he persisted. He must have, Louis.’

  ‘Returning again and again to the casino, Hermann.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him. She did!’

  ‘Me?’ countered Irène Vernon. ‘At which casino, please, was I to have found my Laurence, inspectors? Me, in Paris and with hardly a sou to my name? Bien sûr, I received just such a letter but could travel nowhere without the cash to do so and did not even know where he was.’

  ‘Irène. . . Irène,’ interjected Brother Étienne, ‘I must tell them that is not correct. Though much younger and really quite chic for one so poor, you were there on the morning after the fire. You wore a light beige beret, a marvellous Hermès kerchief you had picked up somewhere, and a thin brown raincoat, secondhand, I thought at the time, but still very stylish, and you watched from among the gathering as I assisted my brother the abbot when he gave your husband’s charred remains the last rites.’

  ‘You fool,’ she said. ‘Why could you not have held your tongue?’

  ‘Because he’s a marvellous gossip, my dear Irène,’ said Élizabeth. ‘Inspectors, I didn’t attend the removal and identification of the body. It had but one arm and Laurence had also lost a huge amount at the tables. Everyone would have known who he was, and I had been seen in his company, so I simply left for Paris on the early morning train. Oh for sure, I suspected what she could well have done, but I had no proof and felt it best to absent myself.’

  ‘Let’s ask Cérès, shall we?’ said Louis.

  ‘Léa. . . Léa, tell them I’m innocent.’

  ‘With you, was she, in 1920?’ asked Herr Kohler. ‘Called her in for a little help—is that it, eh?’

  ‘Not at all, Inspector. We didn’t meet up again until Besançon in December of 1940.’

  ‘But did Laurence Vernon purchase that pendant for you, madame?’ asked Louis.

  ‘When he still had most of his new bankroll?’ asked Herr Kohler.

  Men! They would now be at her if she wasn’t careful. First the one and then the other, each baying for the sheer joy of it. ‘He became insufferable and made a terrible scene, begging me to return it to him
so that he could cover his bets. He had suffered to save France, he said, was a hero, but had no medals to show for it, just an empty arm.’

  ‘You first loaned him fifty thousand francs,’ shouted Irène Vernon. ‘Admit that you did or I will swear to it in court!’

  ‘Garce, he hated you! Frigid—that is what he said of you.’

  ‘Better that than une fille des rues, eh Madame? Inspectors, this impostor killed him. She hit him with an empty champagne bottle and then had a little problem only a fire could solve.’

  ‘A champagne bottle?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘Oui, peut-être, but that I wouldn’t really know. How could I? Oh for sure, I watched them from the foyer of the Hôtel de l’Ermitage where he was staying. As a couple, they attended the theatre, where séances were held each night, my Laurence even asking the medium to contact the comrades he had lost in battle, that. . . that woman egging him on. Then I found them on the terrace of the Grand and in the shops. That Alexander thing was from Boucheron at 175,000 francs. A pendant and a scheme of their own that was being hatched as they embraced. Bold, I tell you. Having sex in their rooms, his, then hers, and not just during the hours of five to seven before the first serving but afterwards also. Ah, mon Dieu, the things the maids told me. The noises she made, the sheets they then had to remove. A wealthy American veteran and a wealthy British girl, unmarried, I tell you. Oh, là là what a pullet for my Laurence to pluck, only she had the same thing in mind for him and had had plenty of experience!’

  There was silence, but was the outburst over? wondered St-Cyr. ‘And years later, Madame Vernon, you found yourself here again but with Caroline Lacy who needed to know the answer to what had happened to him.’

  He rang the bell.

  ‘She wouldn’t leave it because of that. . . that Jennifer Hamilton,’ quavered Irène. ‘What was I to have done? Allowed myself to be blamed for something I hadn’t done?’

  ‘And on the night of Saturday, 13 February,’ said St-Cyr, ‘Caroline slammed the door to Room 3–54 in your face.’

  ‘You had gone there to beg that girl to come back to you,’ said Herr Kohler.