Sandman

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘There was a tiepin,’ she said. ‘It was bent and had been scraped or damaged. Nénette was convinced it was important, but I don’t know where she found it, nor do I think she really knew who had stepped on it or why. She was too secretive, Inspector. She really has told us very little.’

  ‘Because she was afraid?’ he asked, and saw them both exchange glances of alarm.

  ‘Afraid?’ managed the woman. ‘But of what, please?’

  ‘Of the Sandman. This I know, confessed the chef, ‘because last Friday before supper she told me he would strike again. “And very close,” she said. “So close, Kalfou, you will feel the breath of him, but he will make a mistake and will have to let that one go.”’

  But he hadn’t. He had killed her friend, though that killing had not been entirely like all the others.

  Kohler floored the Citroën. He cried out, ‘Giselle, I’m coming. Hang on, kid,’ and shot across the avenue de l’Opéra, the beam of unblinkered headlamps piercing the darkness to dance illegally over the pavement, lighting up the startled faces of pedestrians. All gawking, all caught, trapped—pinned in the centre of the road—a vélo-taxi … another … an autobus au gazogène, a lorry … ‘Ah shit!’ he cried, and slammed on the brakes.

  The car slewed sideways. A gendarme blew his whistle and the beam from the headlamps made the man choke as the car slid towards him. Then the Citroën’s traction avant grabbed paving blocks and tore down the rue des Pyramides to slew sideways again on the rue Saint-Honoré and come to a sliding stop.

  ‘Verdammt!’ he cursed and, leaving the headlamps on, bolted out and up the steps to the Church of Saint-Roch.

  Its massive doors were unyielding. Though he pounded on them, it made no difference. ‘Giselle,’ he said, biting back her name and all the good things he had planned for her, the escape from Paris before it was too late and everything about this lousy Occupation came to an end. The false papers he still had to get for her and Oona and himself, the race still to plan, the crossing over into Spain.

  And Louis? he asked, sucking in a breath as he ran up the passage Saint-Roch searching for another door … another door.

  Louis would have to come with them. Louis wouldn’t be allowed to stay in France, not with his name still wrongly embedded in the hit lists of certain Resistance cells. A mistake that Talbotte, the rotten son of a bitch, would be sure to use. ‘Ah merde, Louis … Louis, I need you.’

  He pounded on a door that must be near the altar. He heaved on it and threw his shoulder against it, wiped tears from his face. ‘Giselle …’ He coughed. ‘Ah, Christ, little one, what have I done to you?’

  Things Louis had said about the Saint-Roch came rushing back, a tour nearly two and a half years ago, a lecture on the architecture of the world’s ‘finest city’. ‘It is the paintings, the frescoes and the sculptures inside that are important, not the look of this place. It’s a monolith of stone, a city block deep and, yes, not so pretty.’

  The Assumption, the Nativity, the Purification of the Virgin and Return of the Prodigal Son …

  He pounded on the door and kicked at it. He cried out, ‘Debauville, I’ll kill you if you harm her.’

  Was she on her knees with that bastard saying prayers over her? Was she naked and freezing, a crucifix dangling between her splendid breasts, the black iron of it against the softness of her skin, her hands clasped, eyes closed, the dark lashes long and gently curving upwards a little? She was devout, had much to say about sin, her sins, was really not suited to the profession she had chosen. An innocent, though she did not like to think so. She had the nicest eyes, the clearest, most all-encompassing shade of violet. Jet-black hair and Ave Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tecum …

  She could pray for hours when she felt the need to be absolved from her sins. Her knees would be red, the scourge giving her the innocence of a child until temptation again led her to stray.

  When the torch beams of a Wehrmacht patrol, accompanied by several of Talbotte’s men, caught up with him, his knuckles were bleeding and all he could manage was ‘Kohler, Gestapo Paris-Central, the Sandman, I think he’s … he’s in there with …’

  He couldn’t say it. He saw her in the Red Room at Madame Chabot’s over on the rue Danton that first time, she innocently looking up at this giant from Bavaria who had said, ‘Kid, what the hell are you doing in a place like this?’

  He had fallen for her and Louis hadn’t liked the thought of it at all—still felt the affair suspect, saying under his breath, ‘You wait, you watch, mon vieux, and see if she doesn’t return to it.’

  The rain of rifle butts on all doors resounded within and when, at last, a terrified custodian reluctantly opened one of them, they poured inside and lit the place up until the high vault of the roof, the pillars, the paintings, sculptures and altar glowed. The Cross, the Virgin—Jesus nailed up there and Suffer the little children to come unto me …

  ‘A glove. A leather glove,’ said a flic from Talbotte’s nest, a viper. ‘The brown leather glove of a child, Monsieur the Inspector. Is it this for which you are searching while emptying the oceans of your eyes?’

  The glove was lying on the floor at the foot of the steps that led up to the altar; next to it were a candle on its side and a small pool of now-congealed wax.

  Giselle? he begged, and, picking up the glove, stared emptily at it.

  ‘The child?’ he asked at last. ‘Ah merde … The “priest” must really be the Sandman.’

  In the darkness of the child’s bedroom the amber and gold of the dragonflies on the stained-glass lampshade finally glowed, but still Madame Vernet did not see him. Unsettled, she touched the waistcoat of the porcelain frog below the lamp and turned sharply as the Meissen clock on the mantelpiece chimed 9.00 p.m., Berlin Time.

  ‘Inspector …?’ she said, but still St-Cyr wouldn’t let himself answer, nor had she seen him yet. He wanted only to study her for a few moments, to watch as she searched the map of the city the child had put up on the wall above her desk, the woman following the lines from press clippings to the site of each of the Sandman’s murders as if she could not stop herself until, at last, she had read again perhaps, This one is next.

  If anyone had wanted to kill her niece, there it was in black and white: Sunday afternoon, 10 January, the Jardin d’Acclimatation. I am certain of it. Her little friend would be away in Chamonix. Liline Chambert would be busy, a girl in great trouble, a tragedy.

  Alone in the Jardin, while she waited for Liline to return, the heiress would be easy prey.

  But Andrée Noireau had not gone to Chamonix and the girls had known Nénette would be followed.

  As he watched her, Madame Vernet let her gaze drop to the things he had laid out and, seeing the crumpled, empty tube of oil paint, hesitated before picking it up. ‘Liline, Inspector. She’ll be able to tell you where Nénette got this.’

  He did not answer and she silently cursed him for distrusting her, but where, please, was he? He had told them downstairs to send her up as soon as she had arrived home. Flustered and embarrassed, she had hardly had time to remove her coat and boots before climbing the stairs to pass by Liline’s room, and reach Nénette’s in this far corner of the house.

  ‘The pencil tin is from the same source,’ she said and heard her voice falter. ‘It … it was just some man Liline met at one of her drawing classes at the Grande-Chaumière. He gave them to her. A German, a holder of the Iron Cross First-Class with Oak Leaves and other medals. “He … he’s quite good,” she once said, “but in bad shape. He wants only to paint children—schoolgirls.” She … she took Nénette and Andrée to see his atelier in Saint-Germain and sat with them several times while they posed for him.’

  A German … The wound and tank battle badges, the Polish Campaign medal, ah merde …

  There, he could make what he liked of it, she thought, and perhaps the SS-Attack Leader Gerhardt Hasse had some answering of his own to do, since men, no matter how good as artists, should not just want to sketch s
choolgirls.

  Afraid of his scrutiny, embarrassed by it, she kept fingering the scratches on her left cheek while unconsciously her right hand touched that thigh as if for comfort. A forgotten woman, neglected by Vernet in favour of one so junior to her: Liline Chambert had been all but half her age.

  The thick, wavy brunette hair was tossed in anger at his continued silence. She took a breath and, not turning, touched the base of her throat.

  ‘Madame,’ he said at last, ‘where have you been?’

  How cold his voice was. ‘I won’t stand for this, Inspector,’ she said hotly. ‘You’ve no right to ask in such a manner. I … I had an appointment at my hairdresser’s, if you must know. Another power outage—they’re always having to save electricity these days or cutting it off to punish people. The dryer went off while I was under it. I decided to wait.’

  Perhaps, but then … ah then, he said to himself and, pushing in the plunger of the little roulette wheel, let the steel ball bounce round until it had found her number. A zero. The house would take all bets but those placed on that number.

  ‘Where else did you go?’ he asked.

  Her eyes passed furtively over the objects before her. ‘To my clairvoyant. Is that so wrong, please? Madame Rébé is president of the Society of Metaphysical Sciences. I … I went to consult her about my niece.’

  ‘And?’ he asked, joining her at last. She gave a shrug.

  ‘I am to bring her a few items. Things that are the child’s and typify her nature. Her tooth-brush, too, and the piece of soap she last touched.’

  Uncertain of him, she tried to smile and read his mind in the light from those dragonflies. What could he see of me? she wondered. Are all my secrets so naked before him?

  ‘Where, please, can we find this Madame Rébé?’

  Ah, damn him! ‘Look, she has nothing to do with any of this … this …’ She gestured dismissively at the map and the rubbish on the desk. Her brown eyes glared at him fiercely. Every facial feature was sharpened by the light and the tension in her, the high cheekbones, the lips that were twisted up a little to the right, producing now a timorous and uncertain look.

  ‘Please, we may need the clairvoyant’s help, madame, isn’t that so?’ he said, not taking his eyes from hers. ‘Ah! I’m not averse to consulting them myself from time to time. My first wife was very committed to the practice and would not undertake any business venture without first the consultation.’

  Had he deliberately made reference to that wife so as to make her wonder why the woman had left him? Might she then forget herself, if but for a moment? The bastard.

  ‘She was a dress designer and had a little shop of her own, madame. My long hours and continued absences, these she simply could no longer take. Women need love. In marriage, it’s expected. Now please, Madame Rébé?’

  Cochon! she wanted to scream at him. She wished she could slap his face so hard they would hear it downstairs. ‘Numéro 10, rue de l’Eperon.’

  It was in the Sixth, in Hermann’s quartier and but a stone’s throw from the house of Madame Chabot on the rue Danton and the flat he shared with Giselle and Oona on the rue Suger. A small world.

  ‘And the atelier of this German artist?’

  ‘This I … I do not know. Ask Liline. She’ll tell you.’

  ‘Ah! I wish it were possible, but you see, madame, the girl has left for the south. A hurried trip. Didn’t your husband tell you?’

  ‘Bâtard, he tells me nothing and you know it! Why distress me so? Are you all the same, you flics?’

  ‘The same? Ah no, madame. No, there are differences.’

  She turned away, she turned back. ‘I don’t know what you want with me. I’ve done nothing.’

  ‘Then you have nothing to fear, have you?’

  Her eyes darted down over the rubbish, and when they momentarily hesitated at the tiepin, he asked, ‘What is it, please? Do you recognize something?’

  ‘No. No, I … I just can’t understand why that child had to pick up everything she came across. It’s shameful. It’s disgusting and unsanitary.’

  But useful.

  His mind made up, he took hold of her by the elbow, and when she heard his voice, his words, she shuddered inwardly and did not know what to do or say. ‘Madame, please accompany me to the morgue. There is something I must show you.’

  She could not bring herself to look at him. ‘Honoré, the … the chauffeur, he … he will be having his supper. He …’

  ‘I am sure he won’t mind, but if you wish, I could telephone the Kommandantur for a car.’

  Ah merde, merde, why must he do this to her? ‘Antoine is the one you want, not me. Bien sûr, he’s still in Rouen—he has an excuse, eh? Always he has an excuse.’

  In the foyer, with the maid assisting, St-Cyr handed Madame her boots, first checking the soles until he had what he wanted and had inserted the bent pin of the turquoise-and-silver stud into the hole he’d discovered.

  ‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ he muttered to himself, not looking up at her. ‘She stepped on this.’

  The morgue was far from quiet. Scratchy strains of that pre-war classic, J’ai deux amours, ‘Two Loves Have I’, filled the entrance hall as the desk clerk logged in their names. Finches twittered in the distance of the autopsy room, singing along with Edith Piaf, as only she could render, before the war, that bittersweet longing for what had now become the France and Paris of other years.

  ‘He’s been in there since dawn,’ seethed the man on the desk. ‘One attends, one rewinds that cursed Victrola of his, and if I hear that goddamned song again I am going to personally put him on ice!’

  St-Cyr gave the attendant a curt but understanding nod and, turning to lead Madame Vernet to a bench against the wall, said flatly, ‘Please wait here until summoned.’

  Quickly he left her, but saw her shiver suddenly and pull the mink coat more tightly about herself. A coat that was now worth nearly one million francs, such was the need for fur on the Russian Front. That same coat, in the fall of 1940, would have fetched no more than sixty-five thousand francs.

  She’d keep on ice of her own. Ah yes and, cruel though that might seem, these things, they had to be done.

  Hernand Belligueux was tidying up and took no immediate notice of him. Why should he? Weren’t coroners indispensable? The Victrola-grinder was pale and painfully distressed—his feet must be freezing after thirteen hours in the cold room with barely time out to piss. Birdseed, harvested by the coroner in the wild throughout the fall, since none was available in the shops, was being doled out to the half-dozen finches in the ornate cage at his elbow.

  Belligueux was nearly seventy years old and had been a bachelor all his life. That alone should make one wary of him. Slight, not tall, he was fastidiously dressed—waistcoat, shirt with sleeves carefully rolled up, and tie were all but covered by the tenth or twelfth white lab-coat he’d worn that day. From its pockets his notepads bulged. He would wash his hands and dry them as the need arose; sometimes he used gloves, most often not. The heart, lungs, livers, kidneys and stomachs would all have been opened and specimens taken for further examination. Nothing would be left to chance. Both corpses were shrouded under clean white sheets.

  The thin red ribbon of the Légion d’honneur was pinned to the lapel of his lab-coat; below it, the yellow and green of the Médaille militaire. A patriot.

  ‘Paris in winter is for the Boches, Jean-Louis,’ he grumbled in acknowledgement at last. ‘They deserve it. But, please … Ah! it’s good of you to come, though in future I must ask that you wipe your shoes, eh? lest you track snow on my floor and cause unnecessary labour.’

  He motioned to the attendant to clean things up, and quickly. He examined the palm of his left hand as if plotting exactly how best to say what had to be said, but did not, as was his custom on such occasions, remove the horn-rimmed glasses that only served to enhance the acid of his gaze and tongue.

  ‘I thought detectives who ordered autopsies were to be pr
esent during them so as not to cause me to repeat myself?’

  ‘Apologies, Coroner. The pressures of the investigation.’

  ‘Pah! you people. At least have the courage to admit the matter was too delicate!’

  The precisely trimmed goatee and hair had been dyed black. A nonsmoker, when virtually everyone else was dying for tobacco, he would not tolerate its use in his presence. But he was good, the best, and through the years had always looked where others had missed things.

  ‘Well, I suppose I had better fill you in so that I can get to my supper—you have eaten, I take it? That is soup on your moustache? If it’s not, then please don’t come a millimetre closer. The flu this winter is terrible, our gift to the Boches from which one trusts they will all succumb.’

  Only he could have said it unscathed. Even the hardest of Nazis were afraid of him because, in addition to all else, he was driven to gaze into their eyes before telling them exactly what diseases they suffered from and would, quite naturally, die of.

  ‘First, the child,’ he grumbled, not bothering with his notes. ‘She suffered from tinea and if, as I have been given to understand by Préfet Talbotte, her little friend now wears the beret and scarf of this one, she, too, will come down with it. So much, eh? for the good sisters forcing the child to bathe under a sheet so that God would not see her naked, but one has to wonder why the evidence on her scalp was missed.’

  Tinea, barber’s itch and other such fungal infections of the skin were endemic, picked up in the public baths, schools and churches, the cinemas, too, and yes, the hairdresser’s. Half of Paris had suffered at one time or another and had been in agony, what with no wholewheat or potato flour with which to dust the bedsheets so that one could at least roll around in it for relief.

  ‘Her scalp,’ he said, damning the nuns just in case they really were to blame. ‘Two circular patches her comb has often worked on. Her underarms and seat. The child has had it for some time and has, no doubt, prayed constantly that the good sisters would not discover her affliction and force upon her a sulphurous shower bath. Or is it,’ he asked suspiciously, ‘that she was being punished and was required to bear the penance of such an affliction?’