Read Online Bellringer by J. Robert Janes - Free Book Online Page A

German, a Sturmbannführer, a Major Karl Something-or-Other.’
    ‘She liked older men, Inspector. She felt more at ease with them,’ said one of the others—which one, Kohler wasn’t sure.
    ‘Oh for God’s sake, Nora, she wanted a father figure,’ said Marni.
    Springtime in Paris, thought Kohler, but one of the SS, which meant, of course, the avenue Foch and Karl Albrecht Oberg, the Höherer-SS und Polizeiführer of France, an acquaintance Louis and he wished they’d never had to meet. ‘Couldn’t the Sturmbannführer have lifted a finger to stop her from being sent here?’
    ‘He refused,’ said Jill flatly. ‘There were plenty of très chic Parisiennes to take her place.’
    ‘Begged him to do something, did she?’ asked Herr Kohler.
    Again that rush of warmth came and though she wanted it to continue, Jill fought it down, yet he had the nicest of smiles. Soft and warm, kind and considerate—boyish, too.
    ‘Well?’ she heard him ask, and had to smile softly in return and say, ‘That and other things like offering to marry him.’
    A sigh would be best and then another smile, thought Kohler. ‘But he was already married and had kept that little secret from her?’
    Ah mon Dieu, that look of his! ‘And now you know why she despised herself.’
    The timing had been perfect, but had Jill caught him off guard? wondered Marni.
    ‘That why the séance attempts to contact her father?’ he asked.
    Even with that terrible scar from the left eye to the chin, he was adorable, thought Marni. Shrapnel? she asked herself. A fencing sword? but that couldn’t be possible with one such as this. He was far too down-to-earth and would be accustomed to bullets. ‘The attempts, Inspector. There were more than one of them. Five actually.’
    The others hadn’t moved. ‘At fifty American dollars a crack?’
    He was making her flash a grin, thought Marni, knowing the others would be thinking the very same thing, especially Jill—that to be alone with Herr Kohler, to feel those hands of his, would be to live that dream. ‘At two hundred and fifty, one-fifty, one hundred, and then fifty. Madame Chevreul offered to continue on an installment plan. Mary-Lynn blamed herself for the séance failures and had become convinced her dad must have known all about her affair with the Sturmbannführer.’
    ‘Even the most intimate of details,’ interjected Jill, watching for the effect of her words.
    ‘And definitely not approved of,’ said Marni, tensely watching him now, the tip of her tongue touching the crowns of her teeth.
    ‘The dead looking down on the living—that it?’ asked Herr Kohler.
    ‘Love, yes, as I used to know it,’ said Jill.
    Louis should have heard her! ‘And she was feeling sick the night she died?’
    It couldn’t be avoided, thought Jill, and certainly Herr Kohler would know all about such things anyway. ‘I had found her being sick one morning about a month ago.’
    ‘OK, so every young lady needs a bit of company now and then and the Sturmbannführer couldn’t have done it by mail. Did he pay her an extended visit?’
    It would be best to be harsh. ‘We don’t know who the father was,’ said Jill, ‘only that it definitely couldn’t have been him. She wouldn’t tell us.’
    ‘She was afraid to,’ said Nora. ‘You knew she was, Jill, and so did I. Sure, she was looking for a father figure. That’s why she was friendly with Colonel Kessler, the former Kommandant. She had never known her own dad, Inspector, and had always regretted this.’
    ‘Brother Étienne said he would find something for her,’ added Jill quickly.
    ‘And did he?’
    ‘We were never told,’ said Jill.
    ‘Holy bitter, Indian brandy, juniper or yew leaves. . . ’
    And Marni again, thought Kohler.
    ‘But also aloes and canella bark,’ she went on. ‘Rhubarb and nitrous ether; an emmenagogue in the hope the uterus will contract and get rid of the problem.’
    Becky was looking positively ill, but what the hell