Carnival (4 page)

The temptation to ask, ‘Does your former commanding officer enjoy hunting?' was there simply because each of the buttons depicted a different type of game.

‘Louis, this map on the wall … There are forty-seven green flags scattered throughout Baden, Württemburg, Alsace and Lorraine.'

‘The potash mines and factories near Mulhaussen, Hermann. The textile mills, and not just the one in question. Metal-­working plants too, as well as coal, lumber, sauerkraut, sausage, pâté and wine. Alsace has many things the Reich needs.'

And does he like trout fishing and to tie his own flies in winter, there being three superb flies embedded in a wine cork as a little reminder of retirement perhaps?

Gently brushing the buttons, bobbins and cloth aside, Louis teased the school notebook open and looked up. Does the name Victoria Bödicker mean anything to you? He silently asked.

Finding pen and paper, Hermann quickly wrote,
Frau Oberkircher did mention her. The daughter of a dearest friend, and something about a bookshop she often helped at when this Victoria had to be elsewhere.

Alsatian schoolteachers had been sent to the Reich in 1940–41 for indoctrination. This one had taken the personal progress record every French schoolteacher had to carry when going from school to school: the grading and comments of inspectors, no matter how damning, classes taught, days absent or late, even love affairs that should not have been allowed to interfere with one's career.

The thing had been stamped, too, by the Munich office, noted Kohler, but the girl had been chequered out of the profession, judged not indoctrinated enough.

Victoria's not French but British, he knew Louis was thinking as a faded, once brightly coloured papier-mâché ball was gently rolled across the blotter, a finger to the lips.

A carnival, Hermann. A booth, a game of
Jeu de massacre
where one tries to hit the bane of one's existence: priest, schoolteacher, butcher, bully, wife or sweetheart who has chosen another.

A Game of Massacre. ‘Natzweiler-Struthof, Louis. That's what it says beneath the red flag on that map. It's about forty kilometres to the southwest of Strassburg and up in the hills.'

Not just a prisoner-of-war camp, not just a stalag, but a
Konzentrationslager
under which were all forty-seven of those
Arbeitslagern
.

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, you must excuse my absence, but I've been to see if everything is as I requested. You've had a long journey and must be exhausted, poor fellows.
Mein Gott
, is it really­ you, Kohler? How have you been faring? Not badly, I trust? Busy, of course, as we all are, but
ach
, I do go on. Come … come this way, please. Inspector St-Cyr, would you be so kind as to bring my pipe, pouch and matches? A bit of lunch is in order even if we have to make do with the shortages like everyone else, but it'll give us a chance to get to know one another and in the course of it, why I can fill you in, as is my duty.'

Rasche had known the office was bugged and hadn't wanted Gestapo-Kolmar ears to hear what he had to say, thought St-Cyr, but had left the dossiers and the rest out for them to find and bring along, had known, too, that they would realize others were not to be allowed to listen in. A
Karneval
…

The house wasn't far from the
Polizeikommandantur
. Built in the late eighteenth century, it was on the left bank of the River Lauch and shoulder to shoulder with others of its kind. A railed porch, extending­ but five metres from one side to the other, was off the first storey, its plate timbers sagging. Another was off the second, yet another off the third. From there, the half-timbering ended in a steeply pitched, stepped and sway-backed roof from which a lonely dormer protruded.

‘Once the house of a tanner, Hermann,' said Louis as they got out of the colonel's car. ‘Look how beautifully carved the timbers and shutters are, the entrance also. Before the turn of the century, the tanners still washed hides in this river and hung them to dry in those attics up there.'

Narrow, railed walkways, placed to access each pair of houses, spanned the four-metre width of the river. Everywhere the snow had been cleared. The river ice looked thick enough for skating, and why not? wondered Kohler. Wehrmacht boys during their off-hours, probably. ‘
Soldatenheime?
' he asked of the nearby houses. Hostels for the troops.

‘I would have thought it obvious,' grunted Rasche as the perfume of wood smoke came to them.

‘Requisitioned?' persisted Hermann.

‘Kohler, you ask too many questions.'

‘Aren't detectives supposed to, Herr Oberst?'

‘
Ach
, try to realize you're back in the Reich. Some were vacant, others donated, this one the rightful property of the family that built it.'

‘And the SS, Herr Oberst?'

‘Those people live elsewhere and have their offices in the former Préfecture.'

Complaining under their collective weight, the walkway's planks signalled approach, a parted curtain falling back into place while just downstream of them, a one-armed veteran of that other war looked their way from under a forage cap that telegraphed its memories, Rasche tossing the man a wave and a, ‘Good of you, Werner. Any visitors?'

‘
Nein
, Kommandant.'

‘
Danke
. That's my former sergeant-major, Kohler. Perhaps you remember Oberfeldwebel Lutze? Always loyal, always with his colonel's best interests at heart and his own, of course. Gentlemen, it pays to be careful these days. One never knows who is listening or watching.'

‘Lutze led the search party that arrested me, Louis. A rank little—'

‘Kohler, Kohler, why will you never learn? Werner was on your side and still is because I want him there.'

The
Stube
, the combination living and dining room, was warm, its aroma heady, the ample peaches-and-cream woman at the tiled
Kachelofen
about forty-five years of age: blonde and blue-eyed, the apron white, the long, layered bright red skirt colourful, it and the subdued waistcoat and pure white blouse with its lace-trimmed sleeves and bodice straight out of a storybook. Braids too!

‘Yvonne,
meine gute
Frau
, the two detectives I was telling you about. Gentlemen, my housekeeper, Frau Lutze, yours too. It's all been arranged.
Ach
, sit.
Bitte
, Yvonne, the S
uppe
. Beer for Herr Kohler, the Reisling for the Detektiv St-Cyr and myself. Werner had best come in. That stump … You know how the cold gets at it. Tell him he can watch the quay quite adequately from here.'

And that there are no secrets between them? wondered Kohler.

‘Gentlemen, we'll eat and then we'll talk.'

There was no doubt they were being bribed and that the meal could well lull questions that had best be asked, but St-Cyr knew he was pleased, for what was set before each of them was as it would have been in 1937, the last time he had worked on an investigation in Alsace. The soup, a purée of split peas, ham stock, onions, garlic and carrots, had been given a scattering of freshly grilled lardons and two twists round the plate of ground black pepper—real pepper! Individual saucers of sauerkraut steamed, adding a delicate sharpness and touch of juniper to the warm, full aroma, while blue-grey ceramic pots of deep yellow mustard and side dishes of
Schniederspettel
, a lightly smoked sausage of beef and pork seasoned with caraway, contributed their notes, as did the freshly baked peasant's bread of stone-ground wheat and rye.

The Riesling was superb, its bouquet elegant, the first brush clean, crisp, not too dry or sweet, a trifle flinty perhaps but …
ah
,
mon Dieu
, to let its bouquet mingle with the other notes after all the years of the Occupation's denial was to bring tears to detective eyes.

‘Kaysersberg,' he said reverently. ‘The Schlossberg, Colonel. Granite is what lends the flinty taste. The slopes have a southern exposure, giving longer time on the vine and less risk of an early frost. It's magnificent. I salute you.'

Kohler downed his soup, sausage and lager as if still in the trenches, whereas the Frenchman savoured each morsel. ‘Yvonne and Werner ran a very successful
Winstub
*
between the wars. Werner has to shop around a good deal more these days, what with the rationing and all, but still manages splendidly.'

And if that wasn't putting it mildly, what was? The big hands with their butcher-strong wrists ruthlessly broke bread, the colonel­ every bit as tall as Hermann but wider in the shoulders and thicker through. With the warmth, he had unbuttoned­ the field-grey tunic, had set formality aside. An Iron Cross First- and Second-Class were there, the Pour le Mérite, the Military Service Cross also, and a silver wound badge for three or four wounds, all from that other war. No Nazi Party button, though, not even one of the phosphorescent swastika pins that were supposed to be worn during the blackout. Just an intensity that couldn't quite be hidden, the look in those dark blue eyes swift and sharp to meet each sudden assessment of himself by either­ of them, the robust nose flaring in challenge­, the forehead wide and strong, the hair an all but vanished grey-white fuzz, the ears big like the rest of him.

‘These suicides, Colonel … ' began Louis, not realizing what he'd done, thought Kohler, for Rasche threw back his head as if struck and gruffly said: ‘
Ach, mein Lieber
, not while we're eating. To honour the cook is to honour the meal.'

Louis begged forgiveness as he should, but what the hell was really going on in this cosy little nest? Werner Lutze spooned his soup as an Oberfeldwebel should while sitting directly behind­ his former Oberst and on the bench that ran beneath the windows. The wife sat demurely at one end of the table, this Kripo at the other, with Louis opposite the source of these ‘suicides­' and all three hosts assessing these two purveyors of justice from Paris with more than just a hesitant eye. Frau Lutze­—formerly Yvonne what? he tried to recall—had taken far less soup so as to be ready at a curt nod from her star border, while that husband of hers watched the quay in between stealing little glances at them and at his soup. All were anxious. Yes, that was it. Wary.

‘More soup, Herr Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter?' asked Yvonne. ‘A little more of the sausage and sauerkraut. It is good, yes, that you should eat.'

The Alsatian argot, if one dared to call it that, had definitely been suppressed. ‘
Bitte, meine gute Frau
, I'm famished.'

She took his plate, left her own and disappeared behind the stove and into the depths of the kitchen. Kohler knew she would be trying to calm herself. ‘These suicides,' Louis had said and she had sucked in a breath and momentarily been unable to lift the spoon from her plate, had forced herself not to glance at the colonel.

Returning, Yvonne found the will to softly smile as she set the soup plate in front of this detective from the Gestapo, quietly accepting his, ‘
Danke
,' but quickly turning away. Earlier Otto had warned her that there were things they would need to know but others they must never learn.

Hans Otto Rasche was sixty-eight and well beyond the hoped-for retirement with full pension which would probably never be realized, given the way the war was turning. A man who desperately longed to simply go fishing.

Suicides, she silently said to herself as she stood watching these ‘guests' of Otto's.
Ach
, the lines in his face had deepened with the worry. There were also the blotches that the sun and age had given him, the scars from the shrapnel, too, those of the granite splinters as had Herr Kohler.

Knowing what he did, why had Otto agreed to help the
Winterhilfswerk
with the
Karneval
? Had it been but a moment of weakness in a man who must still show little of it? Had he been weakened by a pretty smile or a breath of that perfume, the softness of the young, a pleading entreaty to one who could be cold even to such gestures as the nearness of the woman he had once worshipped?

The Winter Relief was an annual collection that helped to finance the Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, the Party's Social Welfare Organization. Otto was not a member. Otto was invariably far too wary of such things.
Ach
, a generous donation, of course, to cover his back, but to agree to do what he had, there had to have been a substantial reason.

The soup plates were cleared, St-Cyr noting that the
Baeckeoffe
came in an earthenware terrine whose oval, iron strap and padlock could but have its memories for Frau Lutze. Down through the centuries here in Alsace, and in many parts of France, Mondays had been wash days, the noon meal prepared well before dawn and left to cook at the baker's while doing the laundry at the wash house. Now, of course, she would have cooked it herself, but why, then, had she insisted on locking it, unless wanting those memories to come?

Taking a beautifully worked, wrought-iron key from her apron, the woman quickly kissed it as she must have done when still a girl. Deftly the lock came away to be set on a pewter saucer, the luting paste of bread dough baked brown having sealed in the juices that would otherwise have escaped.

Garlic, he told himself as the lid was removed to reveal a top layer of sliced potatoes. Leeks, he knew were there, onions­ too, and carrots and cabbage, pork, mutton and beef, at least 1,500 grams of meat cut into cubes, the marinade of bay leaves, juniper­ berries, white wine—at least a litre and a half of that—one pig's foot, one bouquet garni, black pepper, salt, and still more garlic, the terrine filled with layer upon layer of potatoes­—at least two kilos of them—the meat and other vegetables interlayered, a slab of back fat first being placed on the bottom, then the whole covered with the liquid. And the cooking time? he asked himself and answered, Three to four hours at a medium heat. Magnificent and unheard of by most at home in France and here, too, probably.