Bellringer Read Online Free Page B

now completely clear of laundry, as were the staircase railings on either side of it. Trapped, the makeshift garment lay on the Art-Deco mosaic of the marble floor at their feet, where Neptune, in all his glory, was being enticed by golden-haired mermaids to take the waters.
    ‘Hermann, allow me.’
    Two lace-trimmed handkerchiefs had been refashioned. Repeated gentle washing, with water of stewed ivy leaves and then that of pine needles, had given it a scent both halfway between and all its own. The straps, however, were of cotton scavenged from a shirt-blouse. Instead of the usual clasp, a safety pin would have been used but such a valuable item had absented itself either through need or safekeeping.
    There wasn’t a sound, and how was it that nine hundred and whatever people could make themselves so scarce that not a one of them could be seen or heard? Had they climbed to attic garrets, gone into the cellars, or both? And if so, who had such a power over them that one’s orders were completely obeyed?
    Carefully folding the garment in half, Louis started out, their overboots left just inside the door as a sign of trust, perhaps, and a gamble at that.
    Room 3–38 was no different from the others they had been able to glance into as they’d passed by open doors. It, too, was devoid of occupants but otherwise crowded.
    ‘Hermann, a moment.’
    Ach, the cinematographer!
    ‘You start from the left, I from the right,” said St-Cyr. ‘Give the room the careful once-over.’
    Commit the ‘film’ of it to memory, then make the traverse in reverse. Photos, cutouts, maps, and such covered whatever wall space had been free. There was a lacrosse stick, two tennis rackets, an American football, quite worn and obviously used by male hands and boots, but. . . ‘ Mein Gott, the room’s tidy. What more do we need?’
    That, too, could not be allowed to pass. ‘What did the years in Munich and Berlin teach you? To concentrate only on the obvious and ignore the significant?’
    ‘Temper, temper. Don’t let all those missing girls unsettle you.’
    ‘ Ah, mon Dieu, is it not evident I want us to use the opportunity they have unwittingly provided? It’s curious, isn’t it, that only one of the occupants was sitting on her bed just prior to their leaving?’
    The beds were ex–French Army portable iron cots with straw mattresses, and there was a dent in the one Louis had noted. A game of solitaire had been in progress there, the cards laid out with a precision that defied reason.
    ‘An evident reason, Hermann, for this one couldn’t have been watching at any of the windows in use, could she?’
    Since the windows here wouldn’t overlook those sections of the park they’d had to cross. ‘These ones face north and northeast.’
    ‘ Ah, bon, Inspector. You’ve already learned something significant.’
    ‘And since she once played lacrosse, no one, and I mean no one, has dared to cut away any of that stick’s leather webbing no matter the need, or to borrow the hard rubber ball that is nestled in its crotch.’
    Two of the beds, one on either side of the door, were against that innermost wall. End to end, sets of two others occupied opposing walls, the area immediately in front of the floor-to-ceiling French windows being left as a sort of common space, replete with three fold-up, portable wooden-slatted café chairs and an upturned half-barrel as a table and reminder of what they’d once been allowed to partake of with pleasure.
    French and German magazines and newspapers were there—collaborationist and Nazi and obviously weeks and weeks old and cartoon-decorated in ridicule; an ashtray, too, but no cigarette butts.
    Storage was under the beds and in armoires that had been scavenged and to which shelving had been added. A pantry, a little kitchen. . .
    ‘That stove to the right of the window is French, Louis, a Godin. Asbestos paper has been stuffed around its pipe to seal it in and keep out the wind, but at night