Dollmaker

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘That is a total of 250,000, Captain,’ said Louis.

  ‘The rest is in shares among the crew. The men of U-297 are solidly behind reviving a business that up to the Great War made the most perfect dolls in Europe. The Royal Kaestners.’

  ‘And after the Great War?’ asked Kohler, breaking his silence.

  ‘It was soon all destroyed but for myself, Inspector, who listened to the pleas of an old man and chose instead to go to sea.’

  ‘Did you kill that shopkeeper?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘I most certainly did not. I found le Trocquer lying on the tracks. I waited, yes, both there and then at HQ Kernével with my C.-in-C. with whom I had, as one of his captains, to confer.’

  ‘And I had to notify the Admiral,’ said Freisen tightly. ‘My advice was to go carefully. Johann felt that since he was the only one the watchman would have seen, he would be blamed. Now if you don’t mind, it is getting late. I must make out the daily dispatch to the Admiral. Fräulein Krüger, if you would be so good as to join me. I am afraid we must hurry, yes? I’ll dictate on the way. You can then transcribe and bring it to me for signing. Gentlemen.’ He indicated the cell door with an extended hand as he stood up.

  ‘The fragments and the head, Herr Freisen, might I keep them?’ asked St-Cyr.

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course. There can’t be any harm in that, can there?’ The C.-in-C. flicked a glance at the Captain, whose expression told him nothing. ‘For the moment,’ stammered Freisen uncomfortably. ‘Yes, that will be all right. Please do not lose them.’

  ‘Of that you may be sure,’ said St-Cyr. Hermann would have to find them a set of wheels. The Freikorps Doenitz would be unlikely to offer help of any kind; the Préfet even less.

  ‘Until tomorrow then,’ he said in his finest Sûreté voice.

  ‘At the same time, if the war does not interfere.’

  ‘And if it does?’

  It was Freisen’s opportunity for revenge. ‘We will let you know.’

  ‘Monsieur, this bus is finished for the day.’

  Vehemently the driver pointed to the Défense de monter and indicated the door. Kohler took in the pancaked Basque beret with its bird droppings on black wool and the cold, wet remains of a hand-rolled cigarette. The lips were thin, the face pinched. Stiff, grey whiskers emphasized a belligerent chin. The dark eyes were fierce. Acid exuded. So be it then.

  ‘Get out. That’s an order. Kohler, Gestapo Central, Paris. Don’t switch it off.’

  The scar on the giant’s face was terrible. ‘But…’ began the man.

  St-Cyr tried to squeeze past and only succeeded in getting his head round his partner. ‘Hermann, must you? Monsieur, we need it only for a little, yes? Transport. An important case. The murder of …’

  They meant it. There was no hope. Well, okay then. Good! ‘Le Trocquer,’ hissed the man. ‘That bastard deserved everything he got and you two deserve what you are taking!’

  He coughed and spat fiercely to one side, hitting the side window. Grabbing a filthy jacket, he tucked it under an arm, swept up the cancelled tickets, drained the fare money from its steel tubes, and squeezed past the two of them in a heated rush. ‘I fart at you!’ he shouted angrily. ‘I hope you obtain the king-sized headaches too and the influenza!’

  ‘Ah merde …’ began St-Cyr, suddenly worried they might catch it.

  ‘What was that all about?’ asked the new driver.

  The only passenger threw his eyes up to God in question and alarm. ‘I think we will find out soon enough.’

  It was twenty-five kilometres to the house near Kerouriec and the sun had all but set. Kohler tried to slam the thing into gear.

  ‘Double clutch it!’ seethed the passenger. ‘It’s like a woman, idiot. It needs to be caressed before being driven.’

  ‘Since when were you an expert on women?’

  St-Cyr shuddered as the gearbox complained. With a jolt, the unwieldy bus yielded. ‘We’ll take the road along the Côte Sauvage, eh?’ shouted the driver. ‘It’ll be shorter.’

  ‘There … there are no headlamps. The cliffs …’

  ‘Don’t panic. I know what I’m doing. Sit back and relax.’

  Nom de Jésus-Christ! Must God do this to them? Like all gazogènes, this one’s firebox would have to be fed and must nearly be out of fuel. Ruefully the passenger hung on and looked around at the slatted wooden seats that had seen decades of use. Rubbish was everywhere. Old vegetables lay on the floor, squashed beneath careless clogs. There were bits of paper – even a shawl of black lace that had been torn so many times, it had been left in silent tribute to public transport.

  During the day, cages full of chickens, ducks and piglets, destined only for the Occupier, would crowd the roof up in front of the tank that stored the wood-gas which powered the engine when it wanted to. Bicycles would be tied up there too, if they weren’t very good and the Occupier was certain not to steal them. Suitcases, bags of potatoes and seaweed, ah so many things. But the mess, the refuse? How low have we descended? he asked of the Occupation. Cruelly blatant posters cried out for silence. One never knew who might be listening. Spies were everywhere.

  Out over the sea towards Lorient the night was fast hurrying while down below them at occasional intervals, the land fell sickeningly to angry breakers and rocks that were anything but friendly. Oh for sure there were little coves, tiny fishing ports and bits of secluded beach where in summer one could perhaps have bathed in the nude with one’s new wife but …

  ‘How long has Baumann been with the Captain?’ he shouted – one could not talk normally.

  ‘I wish I knew. Death approaches yet he invests in a hopeless scheme. I’ve seen that look before,’ sang out Kohler.

  ‘In the trenches, yes, so have I. Did he kill le Trocquer?’

  ‘Was he even near the clay pits?’

  ‘He guards the Captain as one would a brother but is there a spare key to that cell?’

  ‘A spare key …?’

  ‘That stenographer-telegraphist, idiot. The one with the moon eyes for the Captain.’

  ‘Oh her. Perhaps. But Baumann and that Second Engineer guard the boy too, or hadn’t you noticed?’

  Kohler glanced questioningly into the rear-view but found he had to adjust the damned thing. For a moment the bus was left to navigate on its own. St-Cyr caught his heart as they headed for the cliffs. ‘Hermann …’ he began.

  ‘Hey, it’s okay, eh? It’s all in the driver, Louis. You should take lessons.’

  ‘If only you would let me,’ muttered the Sûreté’s little Frog under his breath.

  Kohler could see him scowling at the thought of having lost his great big beautiful Citroën to the Occupier. The car was, of course, parked in a locked garage nowhere near the courtyard of the rue des Saussaies in Paris, formerly headquarters of the Sûreté but now that of the Gestapo in France. No way would he leave it there and yes, a private lock-up too and the keys right where they belonged in a certain partner’s pocket. Keys … there it was again, the possibility of a spare key and the Captain locked up tighter than a drum, or was he? Ah merde …

  ‘You can drive us back,’ he shouted encouragingly. ‘Hey, I’m going to let you.’

  ‘Be quiet. Let me think in peace. I will close the eyes, so as to shut out the infamy of darkness that has found us on the road without headlamps, or had you forgotten the Wehrmacht must have removed them for security’s sake?’

  ‘Verdammt, this old girl is throwing enough sparks out behind to let the whole world know!’

  So she was.

  Just outside the tiny hamlet of Kerhostin, on the spit of sand that joined the once-severed island of Quiberon to the mainland, they ran out of fuel and were forced to smash up several of the seats. Chilled by sweat, St-Cyr cursed the blitzkrieg pace the Germans always demanded. No time for an apéritif and simple contemplation, no time even for a piss.

  ‘Don’t even think of it!’ snapped the driver. ‘I’m not stopping.’

  Kerjean’s
evasiveness was troubling, but did it stem from guilt or worry over something else? Something between himself and the shopkeeper – the contents of that missing briefcase perhaps? Or was it something Paulette le Trocquer and/or her mother could well have overheard and might at any time reveal to others?

  Victor had a son in the army. Had the boy been badly wounded and sent home, or was he in a POW camp in the Reich? If the former, Victor would want him out of France; if the latter, why, out of Germany for a fee of at least 100,000 francs, the going rate. Money would be needed. Had money been found?

  What was it Madame Quévillon had said to Hermann about the fishing boats? ‘Some leave never to return.’ For centuries Bretons in the north had been sailing to England to sell onions, other produce and lace, to smuggle also. But Vannes and the Morbihan were so much farther south.

  Yet from here they had sailed in their simple craft to Portugal, Morocco and Mauritania to collect langoustes, the spiny-lobsters which they then had stored in tanks at Concarneau and other places.

  It was something that would have to be checked out. That blind spot on the railway spur, that shed and the bicycle tracks … the denial of these.

  And a violent argument. The threat of tax assessors and a girl who heard only one name but was certain of it.

  ‘But if you ask me,’ the girl Paulette had said, ‘it’s a queer enough thing for a man to want to make dolls, let alone to make them of people he knows, especially if they are from around here and can be identified by others.’

  By the Préfet, he asked, or by the husband of Madame Charbonneau? and knew now that this was what Paulette had meant.

  ‘Merde,’ he murmured sadly, ‘that girl had best be careful lest the odds of her surviving equal those of the U-boat crews.’

  4

  ‘The house near Kerouriec …’ began St-Cyr. ‘It’s magnificent, Hermann. Grey granite block that faces the sea and softly glows in the pitch darkness while the sound of breakers is constant. All of the shutters are open but the black-out curtains pulled. Not a sliver of light escapes.’

  ‘Quit going on about it. Let’s get this over with. I’m hungry and tired.’

  ‘And impatient. A moment, please, my old one.’

  They had walked up the road from the bus and now stood beside a granite pedestal on which, in addition to its bronze sundial, there were several seashells and pebbles, and the bleached remains of a gull. ‘The child,’ murmured Kohler, fingering the collection.

  ‘Yes. Is she the one to check for escaping light? If so, then her stepmother is willing to place great trust in her and is very astute. It is a thing most parents fail to do.’

  The house rose up from the grassy moorland perhaps one hundred metres from the shore and clustered pines. It had a narrow, older, taller wing to the left, one of two storeys with tall, thin chimneys and a circular dormer in the attic in which there was a spy-hole window the child must love.

  The rest of the house was much more recent – perhaps three hundred years old, thought St-Cyr. Of one storey with flanking gables and an attic dormer dead centre.

  Tall French windows were set below and equally spaced on either side of the front entrance. Above this entrance, at the end of the main hall, or off the largest bedroom, there was a small porch with a Louis XIV iron railing so that the mistress of the house could open those doors in summer and stand looking out towards the sea.

  That sigh Kohler thought he knew so well came, prompting him to say tartly, ‘If not a return to some lousy patch of soil your ancestors might have tilled, then retirement to a place like this, eh? We’re wasting time, Chief.’

  A cinematographer at heart, St-Cyr gave another, deeper sigh. ‘Time is never wasted when atmosphere is absorbed. To understand a suspect or possible witness, understand the place and the surroundings in which he or she lives. Try to learn, Hermann, so that when this war is over you will have something tangible to take home with you.’

  ‘Piss off! We’re here to stay in France for ever and you know it. Stalingrad means nothing. It’s just a setback.’

  The Sixth Army were surrounded and all but being annihilated. Hermann knew it only too well and was a realist but one must not argue with him now.

  They pulled the bell chain in unison. From behind a black-out curtain came a shrill challenge as the door opened a little. ‘Who is it, please?’

  ‘Two detectives from …’ began St-Cyr.

  ‘Detectives? You had better come in then. She did it. She crushed his head with a rock until the blood spurted from his nose.’

  Ah nom de Jésus-Christ. ‘Of course. That is just as we have thought.’

  The beam of a torch blinded him. Pushed from behind, he brushed the curtain aside and blinked.

  Stunning, wide-set grey-blue eyes met his from under a cascade of light brown hair. The delicately chiselled face, with its lovely smooth brow and cheeks, was intensely serious.

  ‘She’s in the kitchen. Use the bracelets. Have you guns? She might be difficult and will need restraining.’

  Merde … ‘Your stepmother?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Angélique, what have you been saying? Pour l’amour duciel, child, why must you do this to me? I loved your mother as a sister. She was my dearest friend.’

  ‘Madame …’

  The woman dried her hands on the tea towel she held then didn’t know what to do with it. inspectors … Préfet Kerjean warned me you would come, but tonight? After dark? So soon? I …’

  ‘There, what did I tell you?’ spat the child, stamping a foot.

  The woman was tall and in her late thirties or perhaps early forties, it was hard to say. Of Paris most definitely and proud of it. Defiantly her dark hazel eyes refused to retreat from the Sûreté’s surveillance though conscious also of the Gestapo’s.

  The dark, almost black hair was long and loose and thick and a little untidy for she’d been busy but she’d not trouble to tidy it in front of them. The forehead was clear and smooth and wide, the eyebrows decisive. The dark eyes were serious and unwavering, the lips exquisite, the chin smooth. A very attractive woman who would keep her looks for a very long time if allowed.

  ‘You had best come in then,’ she said at last, giving them a non-committal shrug. ‘Angélique, please go and watch the stew. We can’t burn it.’

  ‘I won’t. You can’t order me around any more!’

  ‘Angélique!’

  The child fled. In shock, the woman fought to get a grip on herself and at last succeeded. ‘I can offer little, Inspectors. There is some cider. It’s really very good. She made it.’

  St-Cyr shook his head. ‘We’re not spongers. We know the times are hard.’

  ‘Then at least come in and sit by the fire. My husband … he isn’t well. He …’

  ‘Has not yet returned?’ asked Louis.

  What was it about him she both liked and feared? His sensitivity? she asked herself as she started for the living-room, and found the will to softly smile for it could do no harm. ‘Yes. I’m afraid Yvon is really not himself. He’s out in all weathers and at all times. This war, this place,’ she gestured with a hand, ‘the stones … they’ve got to him. Even the curfew means nothing.’

  ‘Didn’t the fact that there had been a murder bother him?’ asked Kohler.

  For a moment she paused to look steadily at him, then said, ‘Yes, the death of that poor unfortunate man, this, too, has greatly disturbed him but there are no doctors here to deal with what troubles him, Inspectors. My husband is so utterly lost in the past, he can’t or won’t find his way back to the present. Unlike so many, he is not content to simply read of it and dream of better days and better food but must dig his hands into antiquity, cutting them repeatedly as he searches with the desperateness of a demented treasure-seeker who finds only old bones and bits of pottery when,’ she waited for them to sit down, ‘when those same hands could so release our souls, the war would be banished if only for the moments he played.’

  There was a gra
nd piano in a deep, dark rosewood that glowed from among the clutter of easy chairs, sofas and lawn chairs, throw rugs, shawls, books – great stacks of them here, there and on shelves too – a stuffed red hen, a net bag of seashells, the tattered remains of a wasps’ nest, a collection of butterflies, photographs both old and much more recent, little things, things of the seaside and summer. Dried wild flowers too.

  ‘It’s lovely, madame,’ enthused St-Cyr. ‘I commend you. Comfort is everywhere, contentment in simple things revered.’

  ‘I’ve changed little, Inspector. It’s almost as Adèle left it.’

  He arched his bushy eyebrows in question at the name and she nodded towards the stone mantelpiece above which hung an oil painting of two women on the beach. Both were sunbathing in the nude and looking towards the artist as if the one to say, Come and join us then; the other, Please, can we not have a moment’s privacy?

  ‘Adèle is lying on her towel with her back to us,’ she said. ‘Me, I am the one who is sitting and is not too happy about the intrusion.’

  Both women had their long hair pinned up. Adèle Charbonneau had had a gorgeous posterior, one worthy of committing to canvas. Every supple curve was there, even a glimpse of a breast behind the arm upon whose elbow she had leaned to look back.

  ‘She was very beautiful,’ said St-Cyr. ‘The daughter is very like her.’ Marram grass encroached the sands on which the women sunbathed. Waves gently lapped a pebbly strand and beyond this, curled over and broke well offshore. ‘It is like the place I dreamt of when my second wife and I came to Quiberon for our honeymoon.’

  ‘It was lovely. It still is. Angélique and I … we used to go there sometimes in that first year but now … Well, you’ve seen how she is, I didn’t kill Monsieur le Trocquer, Inspectors. It’s monstrous of her to say such a thing.’

  She wrung her hands in a gesture so instinctive of the futility of arguing with such a lie, it betrayed her innermost feelings for the child.

  ‘We did get on fabulously when Adèle was alive. Angélique was the daughter I never had but always wanted. My first husband was … was unsuitable, who’s to say? Then Yvon and I … Did Préfet Kerjean tell you? We were married in the early fall of 1940, after … after the blitzkrieg had taken …’