Carnival (7 page)

There had been little else in the pockets. A rag Monsieur Thomas had been using as a handkerchief, some notes he had been scribbling on a scrap paper—chemical equations, not written words. Two rose-coloured dress buttons had been picked up but where? A
mégot
tin had nothing in it, a last cigarette having been smoked down to its soggy end to be angrily thrust into a pocket.

‘There is rust on this rag. Earlier I had to break open your fingers to remove your wedding ring, but why the rust? A little of it is smeared on this photo, the first, I believe, that was torn. Ah! Permit me my magnet. A moment.
Sacré nom de nom
, did Hermann borrow it again? He never returns anything unless reminded. I tell myself it's not that he doesn't intend to, simply that his mind is elsewhere.'

Finding the magnet, he brushed it over the skin of the fingers, yielding little, the left palm a touch more, the rag still more.

‘Rust and iron filings,' he called out after having gone down the aisle to stand under one of the lights.

Along with the
carte d'identité
, there was the
Arbeitslager
's grey
Kennkarte
or ID. The
Dienstausweise
, a mud-brown card, allowed the victim to be on Wehrmacht property. An
Ausweis
and
Vorläufige Ausweis
were passes and temporary passes, the first allowing him to be in the administrative building's laboratory and in the cellulose plant and dye works, the second, to visit the carnival site. A
Polizeitliche Bescheinigung
, a police permit, authorized him to do general maintenance and paintwork there.

All of these last three pieces of paper had been signed by Colonel Rasche.

‘Eugène André Thomas, age thirty-two; born, Chartres, 2 February 1911; died, Kolmar, a mere three days after your last birthday. Hair brown, eyes brown, height 176 centimetres (5'9”), weight 72.6 kilos (160 lbs.) recorded after you were taken­ prisoner. Let's put it now at 56.7 (125 lbs.) give or take a kilo, but why the iron filings, why the torn photographs? Why commission a comrade to make such a ring unless you had loved your wife dearly and believed emphatically that she had reciprocated? Why the little bankroll—was it to have paid for the ring?'

Questions … there were always those and always far too little time.

‘In short,
mon ami
, everything says you took your own life out of despair. There are no bruises to indicate otherwise, no evidence of strangulation before the rope was used. Perhaps the coroner will have a different opinion, but I didn't find any skin under your fingernails, no hairs from an assailant either, just a little dirt and grease. Oh for sure, Hermann might have something—is that what you think? Then let me tell you, with Hermann one never quite knows what he'll come up with or how far he will go.'

‘Herr Kohler,
please
,' objected Jakob Dorsche.

‘
Ach
, give me a minute, will you?'

Just along from the toilet, a doorway opened into the upper offices. Like the mill, the room seemed to run on and on. Rows of desks showed lots of vacancies, but also those who nailed down specific tasks: plant maintenance, supplies, sales and accounting. It wasn't hard to pigeonhole them, most looking as if they'd been with the firm for years. Beyond these desks, filing cabinets and shelves to the ceiling held the pattern books, fabric samples and order books going right back to when the firm began, since places like this never threw anything out.

Enclosed offices were to the left.

‘Herr Kohler … '

‘Didn't I tell you to leave me be?'

Lying on two of the vacated desks, beside framed portrait photos of former occupants in Wehrmacht uniforms, were bouquets of red, artificial chrysanthemums just as in Paris's Père Lachaise. Elsewhere, wreaths of vine trimmings were with baby booties, on only one a freshly folded swastika.

Immediately to the left, and just inside the door, was the secretarial pool. Three were in the uniforms of the
Blitzmädschen
, the
Bund Deutscher Mädel
or BDMs, girls from home doing their duty. Two others weren't in uniform and had obviously been with the firm for years, whereas the oldest of the BDMs was now the supervisor and kept a stern eye on the younger two who, among other duties, were the
Postzensuren
who read the POW's mail, blacked it out and sorted through the
Personal­karten
, adding notes when needed. Every POW would have one of those damned cards on file. A head-and-shoulders photo, prints of both forefingers, assorted personal data and work history­, punishment too, the
Straf
.

One of the
Postzensuren
was in her late teens, the other perhaps twenty, and like all others here, they would have used that toilet and must have crossed paths every day with Eugène Thomas, but neither would meet his gaze, both just kept on working as if petrified of him.

‘Herr Kohler,
please
. The laboratory is this way,' said Dorsche. ‘The Oberstleutnant Rudel has said that I was to take you there, not bring you here.'

‘Then I'd best pay my respects, hadn't I?'

The door to Rudel's office was just beyond the secretarial pool and tightly closed, its frosted glass bearing the name and rank in black Gothic scrip outlined with gilding.

Dorsche heaved a grateful sigh. ‘He's busy.'

‘He should be.'

Herr Kohler's knock should have broken the glass, but he didn't wait for an answer, simply barged in, sang out a good afternoon and then, ‘Kohler, Kripo Paris-Central, Herr Oberstleutnant. I thought I'd best drop by to let you know my partner and I have arrived and are already hard at work. Fräulein … ?'

Dorsche buggered off and left the door open, but there was a woman in the office. Rudel, though, didn't move or appear startled in any way. Instead, he took his time to assess this visiting Detektiv. Cigarette poised in the right hand, he let its smoke curl lazily upward. A designated area, was that it?

So this was Kohler, thought Rudel. A very ordinary, not-so-ordinary man. Paris had had a lot to say about him and that ‘partner' of his.

As if already bored with the interview, Rudel inhaled deeply, then let the smoke seep slowly from his nostrils. He wasn't SS, thank God, but among the awards on that neatly pressed field-grey jacket were a Spanienkreuz, the Spanish Cross, then the ribbon of the Medaille zur Erinnerung—the Commemorative­ for Spanish Volunteers—and a wound badge too, all from 1937 and the Revolution in Spain. Then the black wound badge of the Polish Campaign in '39, for one or two wounds; an Iron Cross First-Class too, and the ribbon of the
Winterschlacht im Osten
, the 1941–42 campaign in Russia and what was called the Frozen Meat Medal. Had he lost toes, a foot or leg? Not the ears anyway, nor the hands or any of the fingers. There was a Knight's Cross too, and Nazi Party badge, ah, yes.

‘It wasn't murder, Kohler. It was suicide.'

‘Karl, you know that can't be true!' shrilled the woman. ‘Two suicides in less than a week? Eugène wouldn't have—'

‘Sophie, Sophie …
Ach
, for once will you listen to me? I know you don't want to believe it possible, but he did take his own life.'

‘Your name, Fräulein?' asked Kohler.

So many things were in the look she gave. Still badly shaken by the deaths, but perhaps also not liking the thought of two experienced detectives from Paris being brought in, she stood over by the windows, was in better light than Rudel. About thirty or thirty-five years of age. A blonde with rapidly misting grey-blue eyes, the hair of shoulder length and not worn in the crisscrossing diadem of the secretarial pool but as an outdoors woman would, if somewhat loose and hastily tied.

The lips were perfectly matched, no lipstick though, but when together as now, under scrutiny, they twisted down a little to the right, subconsciously emphasizing a hesitant uncertainty that, like the grief and dislike of visiting detectives, couldn't quite be hidden.

‘The Fräulein Schrijen is the owner's daughter, Kohler.'

‘Granddaughter of its founder,' she said sharply.

A skier too, thought Kohler. The creases under the eyes were from the winter's glare, the cheeks and chin burnished by the wind.

‘Sophie has a hand in running the Works, Kohler,' said Rudel, who hadn't taken his gaze from this detective for a second.

‘In my brother's absence, I'm assistant general manager,' she said, still having not moved from the windows. The shirt-blouse was white but unbuttoned enough to reveal a fine gold chain and cross that was definitely not a Nazi symbol. The powder-blue jacket and matching skirt were Swiss. She would have had to travel there on business, would have had access to all the necessary permits, but exactly what was the relationship between these two who seemed barely to tolerate each other, and why had she no liking for visiting detectives, especially if upset by these ‘suicides'?

‘Two deaths in less than a week, Fräulein?' he asked.

‘Renée Ekkehard was a member of my
Winterhilfswerk
Committee.'

‘Sophie, you weren't responsible.'

Turning quickly away to avoid looking at either of them, she said, ‘I
was
, Karl! It was me who asked her if she could check on things at the
Karneval
.
Me
, Karl. I … I was too busy and couldn't leave. I couldn't!'

She was now all but in tears and could well have been hanged herself had she gone out there—was that it, eh? wondered Kohler. Quite obviously Rudel knew that was what she was thinking, but one had best ask, ‘This
Karneval
, Fräulein?'

‘This other suicide, damn you.
Ach
, why don't you call it that, since everyone else is but me? A girl of twenty-eight who had all of her life before her
hangs
herself for no apparent reason, nor gives any indication of being depressed or suicidal? She
plans
to go skiing at Natzweiler-Struthof, has been
invited
to another party there with friends from Strassburg?'

‘When?'

‘This coming weekend. I … I don't know all of the details. How could I? Only that everyone needs a bit of fun these days. Now if you will excuse me, Karl. I have work to do.'

‘She's not happy, is she?' said Kohler when she had left, not closing the door but giving views of a secretarial pool and its
Postzensuren
who had obviously listened in.

‘Don't be tiresome, Kohler. Both were suicides. The colonel's secretary had seen things at Natzweiler-Struthof she couldn't stomach; the other one—our chemist who ran the lab—had just discovered that his wife had been repeatedly breaking her marriage vows. Here … Here, you can take the letter we received from Berlin. Don't lose it. Now get out. Do whatever it is Colonel Rasche expects, but don't bother me again. I, too, have work.'

Hermann still hadn't found his way to the laboratory where three large rooms were separated by glass partitions above the workbenches. Two technicians in white lab coats were busy in the adjacent room. One was repeatedly ironing a swatch similar to the sample of fabric the colonel had left on his desk at the
Polizeikommandantur
, the other conducting a water-repellency test. Now a fine mist for a half-minute, now a close examination of the result—the beading of the water probably but girls in their late teens and temptation? wondered St-Cyr, for if ever a prisoner of war had had a cosy little nest, it had been Eugène André Thomas. Here there would at once have been immense relief from the crowding of the other POWs with whom he had to live and take his meals, then, too, the female company that had been denied the rest of the men, cleanliness too.

The technicians were Alsatian and very businesslike. Engrossed in their tasks, they were trying their best to take no notice of this Sûreté.
Bien sûr
, the colonel had said Thomas had trained them well, but had there been more than that? Such close contact on a daily basis must have produced something, but their questioning had best be left until later.

The Executive Offices were just beyond the laboratory. He had all but collided with a very well-dressed woman who had angrily rushed past him, failing entirely to hide her tears.

‘Sophie Schrijen,' he muttered. The name, in typed letters on white pasteboard, had been taped to her office door beneath the Gothically lettered brass of an Alain Fernand of the same surname, her brother, the office next to it being that of her father, Yvan Léonard (Löwe) Schrijen, General Manager, Chief Executive Officer, and Owner, but had the Fräulein Schrijen been close to either of the victims? Had that been why she had been so upset, or had it simply been the presence of two unwanted detectives?

Carefully he began to arrange the contents of Thomas's pockets on the section of workbench the prisoner had used as a desk. The ID and other papers went to the left, then in an arc, the rag, the cash, the
mégot
tin and wedding ring, with the postcard text face up at the top of the arc, and the pieced-together snapshots following, especially the one of little Paul at the age of six months.

The two rose-coloured dress buttons were found and placed directly below the tin, along with the scant remains of a last cigarette. ‘Rust,' he said, and drawing in a deep breath, looked slowly over the contents, trying to get a better fix on the man in his laboratory, his little kingdom, for that would have been precisely what at least some, if not all of his fellow prisoners would have felt.

‘Ah, the formulae,' he muttered, and finding the crumpled scrap of paper, smoothed it out. Printed lines showed that it had been torn from the corner of a page. Victoria Bödicker's notebook? he silently asked, seeing as the colonel had left it out on his desk at the
Polizeikommandantur
and had been reluctant to part with it at lunch but had said that Eugène Thomas had been working on a new dye batch.