Free Deadly Jewels by Jeannette de Beauvoir

lost.
    But he hadn’t given up. He hadn’t given up yet.
    Not until the currency plummeted. It had taken a mere five months—five months!—in 1923, for that hundred thousand marks to not be enough to buy the family a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread! As long as the money had been there, there was a future.
    Not anymore.
    And so Hans’s father took out his service revolver and killed his wife, killed Gerhardt, and killed himself. Hans had been away, on an overnight hiking trip with a friend. He came back to dried blood spattered across the rose-printed wallpaper of the family living room, to the stench of decaying bodies, to his life over.
    He was only sixteen.
    And all because of the powers, the French and the Belgians, the Americans and the Canadians and the British. They had killed his family as surely as if they’d held his father’s gun in their dirty multinational hands.
    But by 1923 Adolf Hitler had organized the SA, and there was a place for Hans in the new order. A decent place. A place with a future. And he embraced it with all of his heart.
    â€œPeterson! Get a move on! Lorries here!”
    Crates, heavy crates. Hans had volunteered to stay and help move whatever it was into the vault. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had arrived yesterday, examining the square, the building, the cellars. “Where does that tunnel go?”
    â€œInto the sewer system, sir.”
    â€œMake sure it’s blocked off.”
    â€œRight away, sir.”
    Hans watched as the RCMP corporal scurried to get the iron ordered. Good luck with that: all the country’s iron was needed for the war effort. It would be a makeshift affair. That was good. And he’d be sure to be on the work crew. He’d be sure to have access.
    Whatever this was, it was going to be important.
    Drinking one night with the corporal—Maurice, his name was—beer and messy reminiscences. On the cop’s part, not on Hans’s. Finding secrets, that was what it was all about. Finding secrets that he could use. Finding secrets that would allow him to take a peek inside the mysterious crates loaded into the vault. There were rumors of all sorts of things, gold and riches beyond belief, because the Brits were running scared. It was only a matter of time before Germany could take the British Isles, and even the English knew it. Who knew what might be in those crates?
    Hans was going to find out.

 
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    I think that maybe Patricia screamed. I know for certain that I did.
    My spotlight went clattering to the floor, but she kept hers trained on the bones. A stronger woman than I was. I took a deep breath, picked mine up, shook it, and found that it wasn’t going to work. “Merde!”
    â€œJust use your headlamp,” she said.
    â€œThat means I have to keep looking at it.”
    â€œYes, well, there’s that,” she murmured distractedly. She was already pushing one of the crates aside, moving forward.
    â€œWait,” I said. “What are you doing?”
    â€œLooking at it.”
    I forced my gaze back to the skull, which had fallen back slightly from the rest of the body. Well, that would happen, wouldn’t it? After a while, when the rodents had had their way with your body, and time had passed, there wouldn’t be much reason for your head to stay attached anymore, would there?
    The bones weren’t the pristine white that one imagines when one thinks of skeletons—not that I’ve ever spent a lot of time thinking of skeletons, come to that—but browned and dirty and certainly not intact; some of the smaller bones were scattered around willy-nilly. “You didn’t see this before?” I asked Patricia.
    She shook her head and her headlamp swept a beam of light across the dark room. “No. I only got as far as the doorway. I saw the crates and the hatbox, and that there were a couple more rooms, but Dr. LaTour was with me and I didn’t want