Dollmaker

by J. Robert Janes

  He left unsaid that Hermann kept the gun until needed. A tremor passed through her. Fleetingly he felt the coarse, homespun wool of the overcoat she had put on to cover her nightgown. Subconsciously he plucked at it as memories of the railway bed and the places where her heels had dug in came rushing at him. The fragments of bisque, the droplets and stains of blood.

  ‘Please don’t think of leaving me, madame. He will only kill you, and if he does, the child will never believe the truth I will have to tell her.’

  ‘You’re cruel. You are heartless. She’s up there and we are down here, and he is …’

  ‘In between perhaps. If it is Herr Kaestner, we will never know until he is so close we can but do what instinct demands.’

  ‘And if it is the Préfet?’ she asked, a harsh whisper.

  ‘Victor will have to kill you too. He cannot afford to let you live. Not now. Not after what has happened. Myself also, I am afraid. The Resistance will demand it, and he will be only too well aware of this.’

  Perhaps it was some sound foreign to all those of the house and the storm that stopped them from breathing, perhaps it was only fear. Hélène Charbonneau reached out to him and he felt the trembling of gauze-wrapped fingers. ‘If it is Victor, he will have to kill Angélique also, Inspector. I can’t let it happen. I owe her mother that.’

  Ah merde …

  Try as he did to sort out all the sounds of the house – a shutter that was wanting to break loose, a slate … the hissing of raindrops in the fireplace, the distant pounding of the waves – St-Cyr could not pin down what had caused them to hesitate. ‘Victor won’t kill the child until he is certain he has you too, and even then that will not be enough, for there is myself he has to contend with.’

  ‘And Paulette,’ her words came sadly. ‘And Madame le Trocquer and …’

  ‘And your husband, madame, since he must now know far too much.’

  ‘Yvon will try to shield the child. She’s all he has.’

  ‘And if he is now up there with her, madame, what will your husband do to you?’

  ‘He will hand me over to the Germans. He will have no other choice.’

  ‘Then he will be turning in the Préfet too, and Kerjean must at all costs prevent that.’

  It was a dilemma. It was not fair. A shopkeeper, for heaven’s sake. A man everyone wanted dead anyway and now there were hearts to be broken, his own entirely because he knew without a shadow of doubt that even if she was innocent and he saved her, the single suitcase and the closed railway truck awaited her at the end.

  It was a tragedy so in keeping with the bleakness of the moors and the standing stones.

  He felt for something to use. A skull, a rack of charred and broken bones and a few flint scrapers came to hand. Then they both heard one word. ‘Maman …?’

  The child raced up the stairs, the woman broke away from him and followed … He tried to stop her. He hit the foot of the stairs and tripped – tripped and went down hard … hard … Then he, too, raced up the stairs until …

  Breath would not come fast enough. His chest was aching like hell. A shutter broke free. It swung in with a bang, then went out only to come in with a crash that startled him.

  Back and forth it went until finally, at a sudden, fierce gust, the window shattered. Glass flew across the hall. The musical rain of it was everywhere and he thought of her in a street of broken glass, and he wondered what she was feeling and thinking now.

  Caught on the stairs to the attic, she heard the rain of glass behind her and could not make her legs and arms respond. The street was dark, the torches bright. Adèle and she stood back to back, ringed by laughing, brutal men in brown shirts, black ties and swastika armbands. The torchlight touched the black and glossy peaks of their caps. Now up, now down, now tilted this way and that, some taller, many shorter, some swarthy, some thin … They jeered. They chanted. They made threatening gestures, then suddenly at a sharp command, they all shut up and the ring of torches came closer… closer … Jackboots … jackboots …

  Berlin, the night of 9–10th November 1938.

  St-Cyr found her at last but when he took her by the arms, the scream she gave was ripped right out of her to fill the house. ‘NICHT JUDISCH! NICHT JUDISCH!’

  Another window broke and she cowered on the stairs at his feet, weeping, ‘Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t tear my clothes off. Please don’t teach me a lesson. I’m not a Jew. Lots of people have hair and eyes like mine. We are visitors from France.’

  ‘Madame, it’s me, St-Cyr. Please … Here, let me help you up. Did they rape you in that street?’

  She would not answer. Brutally she shrugged him off and continued on up the stairs and into the attic until, at last, the light from the stone lamps on the floor found her, and the dolls all waited.

  There was no sign of the child. The blankets had been removed. Black antique lace lay smoothed over the cream silk cover of the chaise-longue and on top of this, the child had placed the birdcage in which the doll of her stepmother was held a prisoner.

  Frantically St-Cyr tried to see if the child and Kaestner – it had to be the Dollmaker – were waiting to find out what they would do, but the black sheeting closed everything in and the mirrors only threw back the faces of the dolls.

  In defeat, Hélène Charbonneau stepped over to the chaise-longue and when he saw her look down sharply, St-Cyr leapt to pull her back.

  ‘Ah, no,’ he said. ‘No, madame. I cannot allow it.’

  ‘Bâtard!’ she shrieked and tried to fight him off. He ducked. He reached down and snatched up the tiny white pill the Dollmaker had left for her in the saucer of a child’s tea set.

  They heard his car start up.

  ‘He’s taken her with them,’ she wept. ‘He has left me the only honourable way out.’

  ‘But I have a murder to solve, madame, and until that is settled, no one takes potassium cyanide. Now, please, you must try to pull yourself together.’

  ‘For what? For the lesson he would teach me? What lesson, please?’

  Even as he took her downstairs to her room, the cinematographer within him saw her standing on a railway platform with her small suitcase, waiting for a train to nowhere, and he knew he could not let it happen. ‘My partner will help us, madame. Please, you must find it in your heart to understand that Hermann, he is not like so many of the others. He’s different. He’s also a very good detective and very resourceful. He will help us. I know he will. He always has in the past.’

  ‘But this is not the past,’ she said bitterly. ‘This is the present.’

  The sea was boiling, and when he reached the last rung in a railing that led down the cliffs, Kohler realized a good portion of it had been torn away. The path ahead simply no longer existed. He tried to see if there was a way directly across the face of the cliffside but the rain was too hard, the wind too strong. It’s too damned dark, he said. Too dark. ‘Paulette!’ he cried out. ‘Paulette, it’s me, Kohler.’

  The wind tore the tops off the waves and flung spray far on ahead of them so that he was momentarily blinded and then totally drenched as they exploded.

  He gave it up. It was no use. And when, after perhaps an hour of being away, he got back to the Mermaid’s Three Sisters, he borrowed a tarpaulined Wehrmacht lorry, pausing first to rip the black-out tape from the headlamps. Paulette le Trocquer would not have an easy time of it. Baumann and the others could well do things in anger they might not do otherwise. Death’s-head was among them.

  Long after curfew, the streets of Quiberon were empty even of their hourly patrols. Water ran in rivers. Sewers overflowed. Hunched grimly over the steering wheel, Kohler peered ahead into the hammered ink. Pine branches skidded across the boulevard Chanard. A tattered poster from some cinema tumbled drunkenly away to hit the edge of the pavement and leap into oblivion. The engine faltered. He cursed himself and gave it the throttle. Away from the sea, rubbish swept by and he had to put the lorry into low-low and grind uphill until the flood
was behind him.

  When he reached the shop, it had long since lost its wreath. The door was ajar. ‘Ah merde,’ he said. ‘Why can’t things be easy for once?’

  Not liking it one bit, Kohler tried to wipe the water from the Walther P38, then gave the door a little nudge. Old door sills were always warping and jamming their doors, especially in France and in places like this.

  Softly closing it behind him, he forced the lock on and waited until he drew in the musty smell of things not so old and old and unwanted.

  He took a step and then another. The floor was littered with broken crockery and glassware. Cabinets and shelves had been toppled over – the cash counter was strewn with debris. A doll … another doll … a broken doll. He felt their faces, felt the jagged edges and knew they had all been slammed head first down on the counter. But why? he asked. It made no sense unless, so enraged at the loss of their money, the crew had destroyed the one thing that had offered hope and a future.

  Have I missed something? he asked. Something everyone else knows but me?

  It was not a happy thought, but he had to agree it could well be true. Louis might now know of it. Louis …

  The stairs were narrow and steep and as he went up them, the wind and the rain played havoc outside while he, himself, made no sound at all and hardly breathed.

  There was nothing but a shambles in the sitting-room. The smell of stale tobacco smoke still clung to faded fabrics touch alone identified.

  The kitchen was no better though smaller, but then there was the overpowering scent of really good perfume behind a closed door that opened only with difficulty.

  He touched spilled rouge on a littered dressing-table, said silently, Kid, I’m sorry I was too late. His stomach lurched and he fought down the sickness death now brought all too frequently in a rush.

  Wet through, his matches only disintegrated. A bedside lamp lay on its side. The shattered spine of its electric bulb warned him the cord had been ripped out and used, ah merde …

  Against the smell of the perfume was the stench of faeces and urine.

  He turned away and clenched a fist, sucked in a breath and cursed Boemelburg for not giving them a break. A day off even.

  Gagging, he threw up. Couldn’t have stopped himself. Gasped, ‘Louis … Louis, why the hell aren’t you here to take care of this for me?’

  Louis … Louis …

  When he found a box of matches among a heap of torn lingerie on the floor, he took two out and struck them simultaneously. The room was in chaos, the mattress had been flung up and out of the way.

  Madame le Trocquer’s grey-haired head had been jammed so hard between the coiled bedsprings, their flaking black and rusty barbed ends had torn the withered cheeks.

  Blood was everywhere beneath her head and on her face and lips. The frayed brown lampcord was wrapped so tightly around her neck, the flesh was puffy on either side of it. Her nightdress was torn down the back, a last attempt at escape.

  The wheelchair lay on its side behind the door – she’d been rushed in here hard and had been pitched out, then the chair had been flung aside.

  With a startled curse, Kohler shook the matches out and plunged himself back into darkness. The Captain was in jail, or was he really there? The Préfet had gone home to Vannes, or had he? Baumann and the others had been after the girl …

  The pianist was where? he asked. God alone knew. The Tumulus of Saint-Michel, the Préfet had said. A briefcase … Papers of agreement for the Captain to sign, perhaps a portion of the missing money, a show of good faith.

  6,000,000 francs … ‘The caves,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Paulette must have somehow gone over the edge of the cliff on that path I found.’

  Had she fallen into the sea? he wondered. Would daylight find her floating face down or washed up among the kelp and hanging from some rock? Boulders always made one hell of a mess of bodies. It didn’t bear thinking about. No, it didn’t!

  Finding candles in the debris was not easy but when he had them, Kohler forced himself to examine the girl’s bedroom.

  The crew would have been looking for their money. Hence the wreckage. Girl things were everywhere. Snapshots but only a few of them. Dresses, skirts and blouses but few of these as well.

  She hadn’t had much and what there was of it hadn’t been very good.

  ‘Then why was her door locked?’ he asked, seeing the splintered wood of the jamb and wondering where the girl must have kept the key.

  A box made of that paltry crap they called cardboard these days, had been ripped open and its parts flung aside, the red ribbon too. A box for dolls. The money? he asked. Was this where she had hidden it?

  Louis would have to examine the corpse and the room – the shop and the rest of the flat. The Frog was good at things like that. He’d talk to that … that poor woman and ask her questions only he could hear answers to.

  But on the surface it looked like the woman had held out for as long as she could and then had led them to the daughter’s bedroom and that cardboard box. She hadn’t been dead long. Maybe an hour at most, maybe half an hour.

  ‘Paulette,’ he said and went out into the rain and the wind. Louis was at the house by the sea but was there time to get to him? They both knew things the other desperately needed. Again he had to ask himself, Am I missing something?

  A final look up the darkened, rainswept street revealed a pair of headlamps suddenly staring at him.

  Blinded by them, he leapt aside.

  Hélène Charbonneau was beside herself with worry over the child and her husband and could no longer find the heart to look the Chief Inspector in the face. Everything was going wrong. Everything.

  Prisoners of the house and the storm, they waited. There was now no sense in leaving the house and trying to hide. No sense in anything.

  St-Cyr drew in a breath. Somehow he had to convince her to tell him everything. ‘It is a race now between the Captain and his crew, madame. Herr Kaestner must at all costs keep the truth of his love affair from the men. They, in turn, must find it out to discover why their money went missing and why their Dollmaker paid so little attention to its absence.’

  Her voice was bitter. ‘He has taken Angélique as a hostage. That is why he has left me no choice. Don’t you see that if I do not kill myself, he will have to hold Angélique until I do? It’s the only way.’

  It was now nearly 5 a.m. Berlin Time. They had been over things again and again but in spite of what had happened, he found the woman still reticent. She had been there at the time of the murder – yes, of course – and had heard but sworn she had not seen the killing. Le Trocquer had confronted her with the doll when she had caught up with him on the tracks after having left her bicycle in the shed. He had told her in no uncertain terms exactly what he intended to tell the Captain and had thrust the doll at her as evidence.

  Aghast at what Angélique had done, she had backed away in terror and had tried to plead with him for her life and that of the child and her husband but he would have nothing to do with her. ‘You are all finished. Finished!’ he had cried.

  Stunned by his hatred, she had stumbled back and had fallen. She had then backed away from him on her hands and seat and, still not knowing what to do, had stood in despair and had heard the switch-bar as it had hit the rails.

  There had been no sign of her husband nor of the Captain, she had said and had sworn she wasn’t lying. ‘The tracks … the bend in the line … I dropped the doll. I had cut my hand rather badly and when I went forward to see what had happened, I could hardly find the will to put one foot ahead of the other. You must believe me. You must! I only saw that he was dead. I did not kill him! I didn’t! I didn’t!’ she had shrieked.

  ‘And then?’ he had asked gently. He had not reminded her that she had left the tracks and gone out on to the moor.

  She had buried her face in her bandaged hands and had wept. ‘I … I stepped on his glasses. I heard the glass disintegrate under my shoe. He … he made no sound but I kn
ew he never would again because I had seen a boy lying just like him in that street in Berlin. Adèle … Adèle and I had got out of the car to help the boy but … but the Brown Shirts, they … they wouldn’t let us touch him. I had seen others too,’ she had said, ‘on the road that day from Paris.’

  ‘Did you and Herr Kaestner ever use that shed?’ he asked, startling her back into the present.

  ‘In which to have sex?’ she blurted, looking up and across the kitchen table at him.

  The grief in her eyes was almost more than he could bear. ‘You know that is what I mean, madame.’

  ‘Then never!’

  ‘Yet you knew it well enough to leave your bicycle there.’

  Must he keep on badgering her like this? ‘Only because Johann had told me of it and that Yvon often left his bike there. I had never been to the clay pits before. I had to ask my way several times. Someone might remember.’

  ‘And you never saw your husband or Herr Kaestner there on that day?’

  ‘Never. I touched nothing but the glasses. I left the doll exactly where I had dropped it – I panicked, yes? and I ran in tears, not knowing what to do or what was to become, not just of myself, but of Yvon and Angélique whom I dearly loved and still do.’

  Her distress only made the sincerity of her appeal all the more convincing. He wanted so much to believe her but she could well be protecting the husband.

  ‘Madame, your husband’s bicycle. Was it in that shed?’

  It was a question she ought to have anticipated but found difficulty answering and had to take her time. ‘N … no. Yvon … Yvon must have … have left it somewhere else – up by the standing stones perhaps. I did not see him. He … he could well have gone home.’

  ‘But, madame, we know he didn’t? He picked up the doll.’

  ‘Yes … yes, he did, didn’t he?’

  ‘Kaestner gave you and your husband lots of time to get clear. That can only have meant he was not protecting either of you but giving himself time to decide how best to deal with the matter.’