Dollmaker

by J. Robert Janes

  She was frantic. ‘He’ll kill Yvon because he will have to. He’ll kill Angélique. I know he will even though he likes and admires her very much. He can’t afford to let her live unless I kill myself and even then …’ She went to wring her hands in despair and only just stopped herself. ‘Will he fling her from the cliffs? Is that what he’ll do?’

  They had not mentioned the Préfet for some time. St-Cyr thought to do so. Victor had known of that shed yet had tried to hide the presence of the bicycle tracks from them. Had he known of the cigarettes the Captain sometimes gave the pianist? Had he used them? He also had every reason to want the shopkeeper dead and to then blame the Captain so as to hide behind that blame.

  But now? St-Cyr asked himself. What will he do?

  ‘Your husband, madame. Please, I must ask you to tell me truthfully. Did he kill Monsieur le Trocquer? You are hiding something from me. I sense it, yes? I feel it. I want so much to help.’

  Anger tightened all her features, making the tears glisten. ‘And I have already told you I saw no one out there at that place. No one, do you understand?’

  Had Charbonneau done the killing? Everything in her seemed to suggest he had.

  ‘Yvon Charbonneau overheard the two of you, madame. He heard the accusations and later removed the doll and tried to hide it. He watched as the shopkeeper died or he did it.’

  ‘And if he didn’t?’ she asked beseechingly.

  ‘Then until I get the four of you in a room, I am not going to know which of you killed him.’

  ‘Or even if it wasn’t any of us but someone else perhaps? Some member of U-297’s crew who would realize right away exactly the difficult position his Captain was in? A man who would say nothing about it to anyone and would keep his own counsel. A man who would then do everything he could to protect not only his captain and U-297’s reputation, but himself most especially.’

  ‘Did you see this man?’

  ‘I went out on to the moor but something drove me back to the railway. I… I sensed I was not alone and that it was not my husband who watched me as I took my bicycle from that shed and hurried away.’

  ‘Explain this, please, madame. You “sensed” another?’

  She gave him a look so naked he shuddered. ‘Yvon must never learn of it. He would only feel responsible. He would only blame himself for what happened.’

  ‘Please, madame, I must have your secret.’

  ‘I felt as I had in that street in Berlin on Kristallnacht. Instinctively I knew I would be raped and then killed.’

  The party was over, the dance floor empty and the chairs all upside down on the tables. There wasn’t a soul about. Badly shaken and drenched to the skin, Kohler stood alone. He tried to light a cigarette but … ah nom de Jésus-Christ! his hands shook too much.

  ‘I’m getting too old for this,’ he grumbled. ‘I’m cracking up.’ Louis and himself had been on the wrong side of the Occupying Authorities far too many times to let it happen again. Distrusted, despised and reviled by both the SS and the Gestapo in France and the fucking Resistance, they had best tread warily and overlook a few details.

  ‘Like a certain car that nearly ran me down,’ he said bitterly. ‘One of ours. Herr Kaestner. I’m certain of it. Question is, Who let him out of jail? Baumann and the others or Elizabeth Krüger?’ Had she had a spare key to slip the Captain? he asked himself and said, ‘Ah merde, she might have.’

  There hadn’t been time to get more than a glimpse of that car and oh for sure it would be impossible to prove that it really had been Kaestner, but … ‘He was alone.’

  Nature called and automatically he started for the toilets only to stop, to wonder if Death’s-head and the others had caught up with Paulette le Trocquer and had brought her back.

  Was she lying in there on that wet-tiled floor in a swill of puke, soggy cigarette butts and spent condoms? Had she been taken to some cave, or had she managed to get away from them?

  A pretty thing in her black leather skirt and turtle-neck sweater … he still had her shoes in his pockets and idly he drew them out only to realize what an idiot he was to even have them anywhere near himself if she was dead. If.

  The Gestapo would only seize on them and have him arrested for her murder no matter the evidence. The men of U-297 would all swear he had been after the girl. Louis would not be able to save him, not this time.

  ‘Don’t get yourself in such a panic,’ he said.

  The stage curtains were open and bunched at the sides. Carefully he set the shoes out of sight then sighed and said, ‘I’m going to have to do it. Louis isn’t with me.’

  The door to the toilets was stained and cold. Of cheap wood and flaking, greasy white paint, it yielded all too easily for comfort. The sour stench of splashed urine, bad drains and cheap perfume rushed at him. There were no stalls, just an L-shape to the room with the men’s urinal trough to the right, the sink down at the bend and …

  When he found her right at the back of the room, Paulette le Trocquer was slumped and kneeling with her head over one of the toilets. Her knees were apart, the toes that had fought so hard for purchase and escape were slack against the hard, wet floor. Her skirt lay two metres from her next to the wall beside the sink, the slip and underpants and stockings were scattered in the slime. The turtle-neck sweater – soaked right through by the rain – had been pushed up to her armpits. Hairs stuck out from beneath it. Her brassière strap had been cut and now its ends hung loosely at the sides, the skin so bluish white and grey and cold, he had to force himself not to turn away.

  How many had gone at her? he wondered sadly. Had they made her drink brandy and beer, a half-and-half on top of wine – was that why the toilet? Had they even bothered? One girl and six or eight men. Death’s-head for sure. The boy Erich Fromm and others. ‘Yes, others,’ he said. ‘They’d have held her,’ and reaching down into the toilet, gently lifted her head by the hair thinking to pull her out only to realize he had better not.

  ‘Louis … Louis … ah nom de Dieu, mon vieux, why aren’t you with me?’

  Bruises marked those places she had struck – the outer thighs, the buttocks and knees also.

  Others marred the back of her neck – thumb-marks, fingermarks as she had been shoved face down and held, not throttled. She had thrashed her legs and had tried so hard to stop it from happening. An hour … had she been dead an hour?

  When he saw himself in the fog of a cracked and peeling minor, Kohler was taken aback. He could still feel her hair and how cold it had been. He knew he must not touch her again yet he wanted to cover her. She looked so forlorn and lonely in that mirror, a kid … just a kid.

  Outside, in the rain, it was still dark. His two sons were dead at Stalingrad and suddenly he wanted to be with them at home in better times, but the girl was dead and so was her mother.

  It was nearly thirty kilometres to the house by the sea and when he reached it in darkness still, no amount of banging at the front door could arouse the occupants. ‘Louis,’ he cried out. ‘Louis, it’s me.’

  The wind took his words and flung them up at the eaves and into the hammering rain.

  9

  The beam of the torch flashed round at timbered posts and scattered straw. The shed beside the railway spur was empty. There was no sign of the child nor of Yvon Charbonneau. Kerjean was grim and gave the shrug of a policeman thwarted by the odds and fate.

  ‘Hélène, I am so sorry. A night like this … I had hoped at least for Yvon. The alignment, the clay pits, the treasures he uncovered when digging up the briefcase … I had thought he might have returned since he was not at any of the other places.’

  He shook the water from his cap and cape and shone the torch momentarily up into St-Cyr’s eyes. ‘Ah, pardon,’ he said. ‘A bitch of a night, eh, Jean-Louis? At this time of year one tries to force the dawn but the sun remains in bed for as long as it wishes.’

  It was now 6.30 a.m. Berlin Time, 5.30 the old time and still two and a half hours before there would b
e light enough to dispense with torches. When Kerjean, in the little Renault the Germans had allowed him to keep, had picked them up at the house, there had been no chance to let Hermann know that, contrary to all protestations, the Préfet had headed for Lorient and this shed, discounting entirely that the Sûreté had advised most strongly a visit to Quiberon. No chance, either, to tell Hermann that someone else could well have seen the murder or committed it. Someone from U-297’s crew perhaps … Merde, this case, he said to himself. One must go so carefully, especially when unarmed and without back-up.

  Kerjean forced a smile that was both awkward and uncertain. ‘Still we are together, eh? I’m glad I did not stay in Vannes to rest up as your partner insisted, but turned around when I got there and came straight back. Angélique will be all right, Hélène. Come now, you must not worry. Herr Kaestner …’

  ‘He’s desperate, Victor. He’ll do something. He has to,’ she said.

  ‘Now listen, the less he does, the better off he is. A man like that, he is like the cobra in the basket, isn’t that so? One goes carefully past or does not move at all but never … never, Hélène, does one allow the hypnotism of the self, eh? Never.’

  ‘Victor, a moment, please,’ cautioned St-Cyr. ‘Is Herr Kaestner aware that you borrowed the money to allow your son and several others to escape?’

  ‘Hélène …?’ managed Kerjean, startled. All the fears of just what such a thing would mean were in the look he gave her.

  ‘I had to tell him, Victor. I had no other choice.’

  ‘Herr Kaestner cannot possibly know, Jean-Louis. No one knew but myself and …’

  ‘And who, Victor? Who?’

  Ah damn Doenitz for demanding that a detective be sent from Paris. Any other would have suited but no, it had to be Jean-Louis and his friend.

  ‘All right, so I put the squeeze on that shopkeeper. That doesn’t mean I killed him.’

  ‘I didn’t say you did. I asked who else might know you had borrowed the money.’

  ‘Only Hélène, my son and his friends, and … and perhaps Paulette – that girl, Jean-Louis. What am I to do, eh? Run while I can? Hélène, did you not think of the consequences? Did you not consider my family, myself, the others … others whom I must protect?’

  He had said too much and apologized. ‘Paulette and … perhaps her mother, Jean-Louis. I … I really do not know. It was a dilemma for me. So much money was required. A fortune. I could not let my son and his comrades be taken. As it was, things were difficult enough. That cave in which they hid. The Côte Sauvage … Few knew of it but …’ He shrugged to indicate the futility of it all. ‘… but I could never be certain they would not be discovered. I had to feed them and keep them quiet. They could not show their faces – strangers still stand out in little places like Quiberon. All through the summer I sweated and the only thing that kept me going, apart from the hope of seeing my son safely away, was you, Hélène, and the walks we had, the friendship of two lost souls from such totally different backgrounds.’

  There was little they could do and oh for sure it really was one hell of a dilemma. Hélène Charbonneau reached out to the Préfet and, startled by her gesture, Kerjean gently took her bandaged hand in his. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I had hoped and prayed you and your little family would be safe and that someday soon, Yvon and you … well, madame, you know how I felt. I … I hated seeing Herr Kaestner take advantage of you but …’ He shrugged again. ‘… neither of us could object.’

  ‘But did Herr Kaestner realize this?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘Please, I must slip right into his mind so as to think like him. He knew of the telescope, Victor – Angélique would have shown it to him. He’d have looked through it on several occasions.’

  ‘He knew of my visits, Jean-Louis. He … he misinterpreted them as did others, the local gossips.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but did he not use those visits and then the real reason for them to force Madame Charbonneau to continue in his company? Did he know, Victor, and in knowing, keep that knowledge to himself and use it for his own ends? When he finally learned of the missing money, he was not overly concerned, yet it had supposedly been missing for at least eight weeks, though the loss was not revealed to him until the 5th of November when U-297 returned from duty.’

  ‘One of the sardiniers did not return on the 3rd of November,’ said Hélène Charbonneau. ‘Johann would have learned of this on the 5th – everyone knew by then. Victor, you yourself had to investigate. The German authorities wanted arrests. You had to pacify them as best you could.’

  ‘And Kaestner simply put two and two together,’ breathed St-Cyr, ‘and added your little tête-à-têtes on the beach or at the house. But,’ he paused to search her out, ‘did he know of it right from the start? Your stepdaughter, madame. Please, I realize it is very difficult for you to answer, but would she have told Herr Kaestner of Préfet Kerjean’s interest in that telescope?’

  ‘If she did, I … I cannot hold it against her.’

  ‘What will he do, Jean-Louis?’ asked Kerjean, aghast at what lay before them.

  ‘He will take everything in, Victor. He will coolly analyse the situation and then he will make his move but, please, the sardines migrate north and the season here is late. In summer there would have been a few fishing boats – yes, of course – but not the fleet of twenty-six you wanted to watch so closely. You were worried about Herr Kaestner and his relationship to Madame Charbonneau. Too much was at stake and you could not afford to have anything go wrong. You called, you walked, you talked and finally you realized you had best take her into your confidence since she was already indebted to you and could be trusted.’

  ‘I needed to watch the patrol boats and how they checked the fishing boats. I could not depend on others. There were also the comings and goings of the submarines. Their routine was constantly being altered. They were always met and guided in but I could never find exactly where it would happen or how many boats would go out to them. If he knew of the security leak then Herr Kaestner is as guilty as myself of its breach, though I doubt very much he realized the full extent of things until after the 5th of November. Now, please, a moment yourself.’

  Kerjean took out the Lebel Model 1873 six-shot revolver the Germans had allowed him with only six cartridges. ‘One for me,’ he said. ‘For you the cyanide, Hélène. It … it is the only thing left.’

  ‘Then let it keep for a little, eh?’ said St-Cyr.

  Sadly the Préfet shook his head. ‘Others depend on me not to tell the Germans what I know, Jean-Louis. As a section head in the Resistance, I must take this final responsibility.’

  ‘Victor, don’t, please,’ begged the woman.

  The beam of the torch faltered. The gun wavered, now towards the floor, now towards them but to one side and then … ‘A moment, Victor,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Let her step outside. I’ll tell the Germans she and I went along the tracks to the alignment to look for her husband – perhaps he called out to us. Yes… yes, that will suit. You were checking the shed. We heard a shot …’

  ‘People will think I killed le Trocquer,’ said Kerjean sadly. ‘They will not understand that the Dollmaker has simply won another victory. He has chosen to sacrifice security so as to trap me into revealing everything I know to their SS and Gestapo.’

  ‘A moment! Let her step outside.’

  ‘Yes … yes, of course. Forgive me.’

  She turned and stopped and bowed her head in grief and said, ‘Victor, bless you for trying to help us. May you be with God.’

  The sound of the hammer as it was placed on the half-cock came to St-Cyr. ‘The torch, Victor.’

  ‘The torch …?’

  St-Cyr took a step. The gun went up, a fist came in and up hard … hard under the chin. The shot shattered the confines of the shed. The woman shrieked and ducked her head.

  Out cold and flat on his back, Kerjean lay on the straw. ‘I must not make a habit of this,’ said St-Cyr ruefully. ‘Please, I am really very sorry, but I simply could not
let him kill himself.’

  ‘I did not want him dead.’

  She was frantic. ‘But you must admit his death would have helped you greatly.’

  ‘I … I don’t know what you mean?’

  ‘Madame, I think you do. Now let us find my partner and get this business settled before someone really gets hurt. There still may be a chance, slim though that is.’

  Just beyond the turn-off to the house, the standing stones of Kerzerho were close, grey-green and drenched, tall and damned unfriendly. No more than two or three metres apart, and some just as high, they had been set out in awesome rows perhaps four thousand years ago. The stones cut across the main road to Plouharnel – there were 1,129 of them – and the noise roared up from among them like the chant of ancient savages.

  ‘Turmluk ist frei. Boot ist raus!’ Hatch is free. Boat is up! ‘Ich hatt’ einen Kämmeraden.’ I once had a comrade.

  The shouting and the singing fell off at last and the two lorries stared at each other through the rainswept darkness of the lonely road where history watched and engines throbbed.

  ‘Ah merde,’ breathed Kohler. It was Death’s-head and the others, and for all he knew, the tarpaulined back of the lorry held the rest of the crew.

  ‘It must,’ he said to himself. ‘The noise was too loud to have been coming just from those four in the cab.’

  Without taking his eyes from the driver, he reached across the seat to drag towards himself the string bag of skulls he had gathered from the pianist’s study. He had searched the house for Louis, for a sign of anyone, and finding none, had taken the skulls but was now not so sure it had been a good idea. ‘The stones won’t like it,’ he said. He was not superstitious, not really but …

  ‘All right, you bastard,’ he said, finding the cook grinning at him from behind the other windscreen, ‘I’ll defy the gods and their druids and give you my little present. I’ll see what you do.’

  Perhaps three metres separated the two lorries. A door opened and one of them got out into the rain to hang on and steady himself. Dishevelled, and doubtlessly stinking of puke, piss and beer, the boy Erich Fromm wavered, then drew himself up and took a step towards the other lights. He paused to wipe the rain from his face and to stare myopically at the Gestapo who had come to arrest him for his part in the rape and murder of Paulette le Trocquer, to say nothing of her invalided mother.