Dollmaker

by J. Robert Janes

  She took the hand away from the flame and examined the gauze for scorch marks. Finding none, she said more loudly, for she knew he had come back, ‘Victor helped us with the records and the marriage certificates. He’s a good man, Inspector. Oh for sure his son came to place impossible demands on him but, please, Victor did not mean to do what he did and you must spare him so that he can continue to help others.’

  Sacré nom de nom, was she accusing Kerjean of the murder or only of the theft?

  The Chief Inspector went over to the sink to wash his hands and dry them. Without a word, he sat down and began to dress her other hand. So great was his concentration, he did not meet the look in her eyes until the job was done. ‘Three weeks, perhaps four,’ he said. ‘The dressings should be changed … ah, let’s say twice each day. More if you get them wet or dirty. Angélique will have to help you. She’s really very capable.’

  There wouldn’t be time and he knew it too, but would go on as if there would be out of kindness. ‘I should have told her the truth about myself, Inspector. That might have helped. I … I really don’t know. These days everything is so uncertain, so tenuous. Children can be made to tell others. The Captain and she were often alone discussing things. He was teaching her everything he knew about dollmaking, he was teaching her to identify the various types of bisque. He …’

  ‘Did Herr Kaestner ever suspect it?’

  ‘Never. I took steps to see that he didn’t. I had to, isn’t that so? When Johann first became interested in me, I kept my distance for as long as I dared but he was too persistent and would not take no for an answer. A man like that never does. Yvon had left me completely alone and it was obvious I was worried about my husband and not knowing what to do about it.’

  ‘Please, I know it must have been very difficult for you.’

  ‘Oh? Do you really understand how it was, how I felt when he kissed me, when he put his hands on my body – my nakedness, Inspector? I could not cringe. I could not in any way let him know how I really felt. I learned to cry inside.’

  Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! ‘How long has the affair been going on?’

  Her eyes leapt. ‘The affair – is that what you would call it?’

  Rebuked, he waited. He did not answer. ‘For over a year and a half I and my little family of two have had to live with it, myself hiding always in the arms of the enemy. There, does that make you feel any better?’

  ‘Of course not. Is Kaestner a Nazi?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  She would have to be told how serious things were. ‘I believe he must have been a good Nazi at first – even one of the hardliners – but now he has become very disillusioned. Like so many of our German friends, the Reich’s mounting losses are causing them to have second thoughts. This does not mean, madame, that honour if slighted cannot be reclaimed. Herr Kaestner is much revered by his men. In their eyes their chances of survival without him are zero; with him, but a little better perhaps, or as Herr Baumann feels, not at all, since nothing for that one can now prevent the inevitable.’

  ‘Johann is tormented by nightmares of failure, of dying encased in steel at the bottom of the sea, but when awake, he is the most totally alert man I have ever met. I sometimes used to wonder if he ever slept. Then when he did, I found out and had to stop him from screaming.’

  Angélique would have seen them in bed together, perhaps even naked. ‘Did he take a snapshot of you with him?’

  ‘To pin up in that cubicle he calls his “cabin”?’

  ‘You know that is what I mean and why I must ask it.’

  There was no place to pin up anything in a submarine but he would have taken it out now and then. The men would all have seen it and commented amongst themselves. ‘He had snapshots of myself and Angélique with him always, and yes, I think he was very much in love with me if ever such a man can truly love anyone. He wanted me to leave Yvon. He used to plan what it would be like for us after the war and I had to listen to it. Sometimes naked on the beach and with only the sun above us and the gentle sound of lapping waves; sometimes in bed with the softness of a breeze blowing among the curtains and the sound of gulls crying. He wasn’t going to go home right away, Inspector. We would live here for a time and in Paris while he built up the business. We would have everything just like it had been for his grandfather in the old days. It was a fantasy that terrified because if it ever came true, I could never have lived it, and because I knew increasingly that he was using it to hide his very worst of fears.’

  ‘But then the money went missing and then there was the murder.’

  ‘Yes, but first there was the telescope and Victor paying us so many visits even the gossips got wind of it, and then there was Angélique and Yvon spying on things best left unseen. Oh, I finally awoke to the fact that each of the two people I loved more than anything else had, in their separate ways, watched me with my Nazi lover. I was certain of it – can you imagine how this has been for me, but,’ she shrugged, ‘what could I have done? Things had already gone too far by then. I was in too deeply with Victor, Préfet of the Morbihan.’

  She was still a very strong person because she had had to be. With luck perhaps they might survive. It didn’t bear thinking about. Luck was far too fickle. ‘Kaestner will come for you, madame. For the moment he may still be content to stall, hoping that his men will not find out. But once they do, there will be no turning back for him. Honour will have to be saved. Honour.’

  There was fatalism to the look she gave that troubled deeply.

  ‘Paulette will tell them,’ she said quite simply.

  ‘And Kerjean?’ he asked gently. ‘What of the Préfet, madame?’

  The sadness in her eyes only deepened. ‘Poor Victor, he tried so hard to help us and oh for sure, when he needed help for his son and the others, I had to help him in return. Risk piled upon risk,’ she shrugged. ‘That’s the way life is these days. The times, they are not normal but have they ever been? Isn’t it that life for most of us simply wavers from catastrophe to catastrophe with little pauses in between to make us think things are “normal”?’

  He found himself liking her immensely, a dangerous thing. ‘Your secret will be safe with my partner but if he does find out, madame, I will not be the one who tells him. Even I who know him far better than most, would not place that burden on him.’

  ‘Paulette will do that. Paulette.’

  ‘Did Kerjean steal the money?’

  She had known all along that it must come to this and that she would have to tell him. Friends could not always remain friends; helpers sometimes had to help themselves.

  ‘He borrowed it.’

  St-Cyr sat back and drew in a breath before pinching his moustache in thought. ‘If they ever find out, they will shoot him.’

  ‘They will shoot his family also,’ she said quite simply, ‘and then they will come here for Angélique and Yvon and myself, though I will be the last to get it and they will make me watch the others die.’

  ‘How was he going to pay the money back?’

  6,000,000 francs. She would have to say it plainly. Betrayal must not come with trappings. ‘There were things Victor could not tell me but I think he was expecting an airdrop – was praying for it to happen before it was too late. He was desperate.’

  ‘From the British?’

  Was it so impossible that Victor was up to his ears working with the Resistance? ‘The British, yes, of course.’

  Then it had not been the Sous-Préfet after all who had been working with the Resistance, but the Préfet.

  Nothing more could be said about it. The implications were far too desperate.

  ‘Monsieur le Trocquer, the shopkeeper, was not a nice man, Inspector. He always gave me to understand that he knew far more about me than he was willing to let on. He was envious of our fine house by the sea and scornful of our having come from Paris to live like recluses with a few rabbits and pigeons. He was even more scornful of what had happened to Yvon. But Johann was
always there if only in the shopkeeper’s mind. Monsieur le Trocquer was very afraid of him. Afraid that if he should make a mistake with the dolls, the Captain would have him arrested.’

  ‘It is what he knew about the Préfet that interests me, madame.’

  ‘Was he aware that Victor had “borrowed” the money? Is this what you mean?’

  ‘You know it is. You know I must uncover exactly what was said between them in that shop before Monsieur le Trocquer left it for the clay pits.’

  And a confrontation with the Captain that Préfet Kerjean had warned her about, ah yes. She knew this was what he meant and could only look steadily at him.

  ‘Angélique and your husband visited the shop the day before the murder, madame. A pair of candlesticks.’

  Her smile must be faint and whimsical. ‘She has far better taste, Inspector. I ought to know. I helped to raise her.’

  Merde, why would she not tell him? ‘The doll, madame. Kämmer and Reinhardt were the manufacturers.’

  The sadness only deepened the lovely hazel of her eyes and he was at a loss as to how to make her tell him before it was too late.

  Again there was that smile and then a tiny shrug. ‘The Star of David, Inspector. The K is within the left-hand point, the R within the right and that is why she chose it and kept the doll of me a prisoner for later. Johann must have told her that the firm had been Jewish and since it was the only one among her dolls that bore that particular trademark, Angélique used it but …’

  ‘But what, madame?’ he asked gently.

  ‘But cut from yellow velvet a much larger star and, having pinned that to its breast, added the word stepmother.’

  Jésus, merde alors, how could the child have done such a terrible thing?

  ‘I …’ began Hélène Charbonneau only to suddenly stop herself.

  Had they both heard it, he wondered? The scrunch of tyres on gravel in the drive?

  For a second they looked at each other and held their breath. A sudden gust drew the flame of the candle out, but then it retreated to flutter normally.

  Both of them looked towards the front hall. St-Cyr swept his eyes around the kitchen. His clothes were hanging above the stove, his shoes by their laces … ‘Madame,’ he whispered.

  She could not move. Fear tightened her cheeks and darkened the look in her eyes. Like himself, she waited for some other sign that they were no longer alone.

  When nothing further came, St-Cyr pinched out the candle. ‘Say nothing,’ he croaked. ‘Stay right by me. If it is Herr Kaestner, he will go upstairs to your bedroom first. Let me find my clothes and get dressed. Put something on – anything dark so as to hide the whiteness of your nightgown. Boots … try to find some. We may have to go outside. He won’t harm the child.’

  ‘The child,’ she said. ‘The child …’

  Hermann … where the hell was Hermann when needed most?

  *

  Through the haze of tobacco smoke, and from across the crowded dance floor, Kohler and the cook could see Paulette le Trocquer sitting pensively at the flotilla’s bar. She was very pretty and of course there should have been intense pressure on her to dance, but now it was as if she had best be left alone. Her knees were together. The high heels with their studded rhinestone straps were spread so as to hook themselves into the lower rung of the stool. The glass of brandy to her right was still untouched, the stool next to her on the left was empty. Though the clamour for sustenance went on all around her, there were no offers.

  She was spoken for.

  The cook’s laughing dark eyes with their trace of insanity flicked over her and then returned as Kohler asked him if the Captain was back in the lock-up.

  The bushy dark brows furrowed, the Kaiser moustache was wiped with the back of a beery knuckle. ‘I just left him. No problem. Vati has had his bit of fun and will now sleep like a baby.’ Schultz hoisted the borrowed stein in salute.

  ‘Sleep? And not have any nightmares?’

  Was Herr Kohler so naïve as not to notice he was surrounded? ‘You’ve been reading things you shouldn’t, Inspector.’

  ‘Luminalette, eh?’ snorted Kohler, digging a hole for himself. ‘Six times a day if necessary? Your Captain’s so high-strung he could well have done something he might now regret. Why not help us? The odds against him are still too high but another possibility has entered the race.’

  Oh-oh, was that it?

  Kohler tapped the iron-bound drum of the giant’s chest. ‘You were at the warehouse on the morning of the murder, my friend. It’s only a pleasant little stroll across the moors to the clay pits.’

  Schultz removed the finger from his chest but did not break it. ‘So, I had stores to check and this makes me a suspect? Maybe you should have noticed when I clocked out, Inspector. By 1330 hours I was in Lorient and back at the bunker.’

  ‘A man like yourself? A man who has a vested interest in things? Come off it. You were in that shop on the day before, the murder. It wouldn’t surprise me if the autopsy shows our shopkeeper had pickled pork hocks, sausage and a whole lot of other goodies inside him. Working the black market is against the law, my friend. Our laws, never mind the French ones.’

  Ali Baba’s Cave had a logbook and detectives were always minding other people’s business and noticing that those who entered always wrote down their times of leaving. Glenn Miller’s band was playing something called ‘String of Pearls’. All around them the racket and the comings and goings went on and still the girl sat alone. ‘Okay, I forgot to write down when I left. I was in a hurry.’

  ‘I’ll bet you were, and now I’m going to lean on you,’ said Kohler. ‘Something went on in that shop before the murder. That girl over there has finally realized you are aware of it. Either you were there or you saw someone going into the shop. Whatever it was, it made you put yourself in position well before the murder. Sure you’ve been plying her with silk stockings. A sweet little piece of ass like that. Did you think I wouldn’t notice that cologne she’s wearing isn’t the bilge water you boys like to take to sea so that your iron coffins won’t always stink of farts and sweat and urine but smell like a brothel? You’ve had your eye on her for some time.’

  Schultz indicated the thugs from the torpedo and engine rooms. Baumann was there and so, too, were the Second Engineer and the boy.

  ‘She’s terrified,’ said Kohler levelly. ‘You leave her alone. You touch her and I’ll have you up on suspicion of murder.’

  ‘All right, I went into the shop on the day before the murder. What does that prove? A few things in trade for a few bits of sausage and candied fruit. Some silver-plated spoons to send home to my mother.’

  ‘With six millions missing? Good Gott im Himmel, don’t be a Dummkopf.’

  ‘As I left the shop, the pianist and his daughter went in. I hung around and watched them through the window. The kid had a doll but when she came out, the doll wasn’t with her.’

  ‘A doll?’

  Was it so surprising? The detective looked away across the room and said, ‘Ah, Christ, you bastards …’ One minute the girl had been there at the bar, the next, she was gone and her glass of brandy was still waiting for her to come back.

  In desperation the Bavarian’s gaze sifted the crowded dance floor. He heard the ribald laughter, the singing and then the shouting from the toilets.

  A girl was being helped into a chair at one of the tables. She had lost her purse but was too fuzzy-minded to remember where she had left it. Another girl was chugalugging a pitcher of beer to cheers from the men around her. Yet another was sprawled asleep with her mouth wide open and her head thrown back.

  Swiftly Kohler’s eyes returned to that empty stool, then he ran. Barging his way through, he hit the door to the toilets and stopped cold as couples lay entangled on the wet-tiled floor or stood against a wall or leaned over the sink. No stockings, no underwear, skirts and dresses hiked out of the way, blouses open and burst-buttons scattered. Trousers dropped. Couples going at it while others
watched and gave encouragement and the boys took turns.

  No sign of Paulette. Not here. Not here, he shouted at himself and ran outside into the rain, the wind and darkness.

  The club was not far from the cliffs of the Côte Sauvage. The sound of waves exploding against the rocks came to him. ‘Paulette!’ he shouted. ‘Paulette!’

  Gott im Himmel, what had become of her?

  Schultz and Baumann and the others were nowhere to be seen. She must have made a run for it and they had gone after her.

  When Kohler found the girl’s scattered shoes on the walk that led to the lorries and staff cars, he realized she had done just that. She had waited, knowing what they wanted of her, and then had chosen her moment because they weren’t about to leave her alone and she had seen he could not stop them.

  ‘She knows too much,’ he said, and dragging on his overcoat, stuffed her shoes into the pockets and headed out along the coast road with the words of Madame Quévillon ringing in his ears. ‘The Côte Sauvage, Inspector. Caves that no one sees from atop the cliffs.’

  Caves that could be used to hide contraband and to store goods for the black market. Caves that no one else would ever find.

  ‘The child,’ said Hélène Charbonneau – St-Cyr heard all of a mother’s yearning in her voice. ‘I must go to her. Please, you must let me. I have to tell her how it really was. I have to make her understand.’

  ‘Madame, please do not be so foolish!’ he hissed. They were in the study now and it was better here, for there was none of the flickering light from the stove. Here there were only a few hot embers in the grate. ‘If it is Herr Kaestner, he will be armed, madame. I have no gun. My partner …’