Sandman

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘But there are no beds in this place, are there, my Hermann? Only les liaisons enchantées for those who do not wish to go with whores, even the very high-class ones.’

  6

  IN THE PRE-DAWN BITTER COLD AND DAMPNESS OF the Bois de Boulogne, the warmest place was next to the manure piles just outside the riding stables.

  ‘Did you sleep at all?’ grumbled Kohler, unable to light a cigarette. ‘Christ, why does it always have to be us, Louis? Couldn’t that God of yours smile on us just once?’

  ‘He’s too busy. He expects us to simply get on with the job.’

  ‘Giselle is convinced Debauville is still a priest, but me, I have to tell you that little pigeon of mine is not the same. When we got home to the flat, she prayed on her knees for a good hour—Oona told me all about it. Tears and entreaties to the Blessed Virgin to save her from a life of “consorting with the enemy and having unclean and lurid thoughts,” begging Our Father to forgive her for “engaging in wanton sexual activities of a depraved nature with a member of the Gestapo, a detective. A man old enough to be her grandfather”!’

  Hermann was in rare form and coughed.

  ‘I fell asleep. I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Her droning on and on beside the bed was hell. She’s even taken to wearing the little gold cross she had as a child in the convent school. She says, “I am going to improve myself, Herr Kohler, starting with you.” She’s off later this morning to consult her clairvoyant. Her “future must be divined”.’

  ‘Madame Rébé?’ hazarded the Sûreté, trying to light another match.

  ‘That’s the one. The rue de l’Eperon right next to the shop that sells crystal balls, bats, curses, rune stones and Tarot cards.’

  ‘Madame Vernet’s clairvoyant. President of the Society of Metaphysical Sciences.’

  Kohler cleared his throat. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘As positive as I can be at the moment, considering the lies and half-lies we have had to listen to.’

  When an orderly came looking for them, they followed him to the gamekeeper’s cottage. Having booted the custodian out, Old Shatter Hand was sitting in his shirtsleeves at the table before a roaring fire of, yes, chair legs and other furniture. The place was like a furnace and it was clear he had been here for some time. Clear, too, that the airwaves of Paris and the gossip lines had been vibrating into his ear. He wanted the truth and had been disturbed enough to have arrived early.

  ‘Avail yourselves of the coffee and cognac, gentlemen. There are croissants in that newspaper. Eat while you talk.’

  Ah, nom de Dieu, Talbotte must have told him something, thought St-Cyr, and that bit of news had upset him. The papers, too, no doubt.

  Unyieldingly, those stern blue eyes settled on them. ‘Everything. I’ll have it from you, St-Cyr, and then from Kohler as needed. There are only the three of us, so please speak freely. Nothing you say will pass beyond these four walls.’

  Berlin must have been after him, thought Kohler. Old Shatter Hand was close to retirement. Gestapo Mueller could easily have threatened to move the date up. An outraged citizenry, the threat of a revolt, et cetera, et cetera. A sadist to provide the spark. Ah, merde!

  Louis cleared his throat. ‘The Vernet child, if the report is true, General, is alive and was sighted in the rue Chabanais just before dusk yesterday. She dropped this glove.’

  ‘Why wasn’t she wearing it?’

  ‘She was probably picking something up off the street and was frightened.’

  ‘Of whom?’

  It was coming now and had best be gotten over with. ‘A defrocked priest, a pimp who uses the name Father Eugène Debauve.’

  ‘Debauve … I met him at the house of that wretched woman in the rue Chabanais. Is he not the Bishop’s emissary to the lorettes?’

  ‘No, General. He is the pimp of Violette Belanger, whose sister is a nun and teacher in the convent school the girls attended.’

  ‘He runs an escort service,’ interjected Kohler quickly.

  ‘He what?’ stormed von Schaumburg.

  They told him. Kohler dragged out his notebook. ‘Records were not too forthcoming, General, but I did manage to pry the following out of them: Father Eugène, born 3 June 1883, the eldest son of the Debauvilles of Troyes. The family have extensive holdings and remain very wealthy. The son was drummed out of the Church and disowned by his mother twenty years ago for terrifying schoolgirls in the convent school where he was the Reverend Father. No sexual interference was proven, but apparently one of the girls hanged herself in the shower baths, using her sheet. Others then mentioned Debauville’s questions to them during confession. Red faces all round, I gather, and tears. Since then he’s managed to keep himself free of arrest.’

  ‘But not of the girls, we gather.’

  ‘The French!’ seethed von Schaumburg, hitting the table with a fist and sloshing coffee all over the place. ‘Bring the criminal in for questioning.’

  ‘The escort service he runs caters to officers from your forces,’ offered Louis blandly.

  Oh-oh. ‘It appears to be all above board,’ shot Kohler, ‘but I’d like to take another look.’

  ‘Discretion, Kohler. Discretion. Why is it I am always in difficulty with you two?’

  Gestapo Mueller had talked to him. Kohler was convinced of it and, digging deeply in a pocket, dragged out the badges the kid had collected. ‘There’s another matter, General. A death’s-head. Two of the gold wound badges. The Polish Campaign medal …’

  ‘Yes, yes, the SS-Attack Leader Gerhardt Hasse, a hero to Herr Himmler. An artist, a painter of children. Gestapo Paris’s Watchers are aware Herr Hasse has sketched those two girls on a number of occasions. Pay him a visit. Ask what you will of him. He’s not a well man.’

  Discretion again, thought St-Cyr ruefully as he took the badges and the medal from Hermann, but why, please, did that child include the trappings of the SS-Attack Leader unless to say, These, too, they are important?

  It was von Schaumburg who brought up the matter of the abortion and Liline Chambert’s affair, having been informed of them by Talbotte, no doubt.

  ‘Vernet,’ he said levelly, ‘is returning from Rouen this morning at my request. He’ll answer everything truthfully. He assures me the affair was brief, that the girl, being away from home and missing her father, put temptation in front of him and that he is much saddened by its result. Indeed, I do believe he wept when I informed him of the girl’s death.’

  In love with her, then, was he? snorted Kohler, inwardly ridiculing foolish older men with young girls until he remembered Giselle and had to swallow on a lump of croissant.

  It was Louis who said, ‘General, neither of the Vernets has been truthful. Though each espouses a kind regard for their orphaned niece, the child had planned with her little friend to run away and now is afraid to return to the house.’

  ‘Afraid?’

  ‘Yes, General. Plans for running away began in the first week of November, well before the Sandman murders. Liline Chambert had been ill—morning sickness. It’s my belief that it was this sickness which finally drove the child to make preparations to run away.’

  ‘And the Sandman?’ asked von Schaumburg.

  ‘A toy giraffe and then a toy baby elephant were stolen from the crèche of Sister Céline, the sister of Violette Belanger, one of the prostitutes at the house on the rue Chabanais.’

  ‘And Debauville’s pigeon?’

  ‘Yes, General. Sister Céline visits regularly, always pleading with her young sister to renounce the life. This the girl refuses to do and makes a mockery of the nun and the schoolgirls of the convent.’

  ‘Those visits are usually on the days the nuns help out with the soup kitchens.’

  ‘Two of the murders were near such kitchens.’

  ‘There are threads and threads to this thing,’ interjected Kohler apologetically.

  ‘Then just see that you keep the shuttles going,’ grunted von Schaumburg. Nuns, priests … ‘Is the child safe
for the time being?’

  Louis reached for the coffee. ‘This we really do not know, General, but if Debauville has her as a hostage, will an all-out search not cause her death?’

  ‘Is he the Sandman?’

  ‘This, too, we really do not know.’

  ‘He wears a black overcoat, Louis. There were threads of coarse black wool caught under Andrée Noireau’s fingernails.’

  ‘But not under those of the other victims. General, though there are blood-group difficulties with those other murders, this last one was still quite different.’

  ‘It was not a random killing, General. The child knew she would be followed. She and her little friend cooked up a plan to prove it. Nénette did not believe Andrée would be harmed.’

  ‘She thought that once the assailant discovered his mistake, he would let Andrée alone.’

  ‘What are you saying, St-Cyr?’

  ‘Only that the killing may have been made to look like the work of the Sandman.’

  ‘By whom?’

  It would be best not to say too much until certain. ‘General, we have a child, an heiress, who wished to run away from the home she loved and who then began to track and record the Sandman’s killings. She insisted she knew who he was but would reveal this to no one but the préfet, in person and in private. This request was refused by her uncle. Either she does know who it was and the Sandman set out to silence her and made a mistake, or it was not him at all and she was being followed by someone else, but this person she must have known at least a little.’

  ‘Two villains?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A brush with the truth or mere speculation? wondered von Schaumburg, turning to gaze raptly into the fire and add another chair leg. ‘A black cloak,’ he mused. ‘I did see something. That is why I was here early. It was a nun. I’m certain of it and that, gentlemen, is why I did not connect the two events.’

  ‘A nun?’

  ‘The child was running towards the cage of doves—yes, they are doves, Kohler. I don’t think she could see very well.’

  ‘She didn’t have her glasses,’ prompted Louis. ‘The other one was wearing them.’

  ‘She went behind the cage and out of sight and that is when I saw the nun some distance behind her. The sisters of the cloth do not come to this place. Everyone knows of the “doves of peace” and their revulsion at the shooting of them for sport. Now that I think on it, she was striding angrily towards the cage and must then have entered it. I took no more notice and, indeed, let the matter pass from me.’

  ‘The stables,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Could this “nun” have come from them?’

  ‘How exactly did she “stride”, General? Angrily, yes, but …?’

  The stables … a man wearing the cloak of a nun … Was it possible? wondered von Schaumburg, cursing age and what it did to the reflexes and the eyes. ‘Stride? Entirely like a man—quickly, determinedly and with no time to lose. Please see that he is apprehended before nightfall. I’ve an agitated citizenry on my hands, a press who are fomenting trouble by crying out for blood, and a préfet who is pestering my ears and demanding a thorough enquiry into your handling of this matter. If Berlin hears any more from him through the SS of the avenue Foch, you will be on your own and without the protection you now enjoy. I do hope I have made myself clear.’

  Ah merde, the SS of the avenue Foch …

  Kohler grabbed two croissants and stuffed them into his pockets. One never knew when they’d eat again.

  The doves were everywhere and fluttering madly above them as Gilbert Amirault, the custodian, ruefully waited for the detectives to tell him what they were after. Both played their torches on the floor between the nesting boxes where Andrée Noireau had once lain.

  ‘Manure,’ said the one called Kohler at last, towering formidably above the cone of his torch beam, his ragged, scarred cheeks unshaven. ‘There was horse manure on the floor, Louis. Boot-scrapings. I know there was.’

  ‘Of course there was, but you’ve terrified him,’ cautioned the Sûreté, and, taking the custodian aside, said, ‘Monsieur, please try to remember. The assailant may have come from the direction of the stables. We really do not know yet exactly where the girls went before setting out this way. They may have thought the one who was following them had suddenly lost them. It is at least one and a half kilometres from the Jardin d’Acclimatation as the crow flies, but not a straight traverse for others. Those girls would have crossed the route de Neuilly and would most probably have taken one of the riding trails.’

  A crumpled ten-franc note was straightened and pressed into the custodian’s hand to help things along. ‘They would have been seen by others. Once on the riding trail, their steps would eventually have brought them to the riding circle behind the stables. But did they lose the one who had been following them, and did he then come at them from the riding stables wearing the heavy black cloak of a nun or something so similar it gave that impression?’

  ‘This I … I cannot say, Inspector. I saw only a dark blur, nothing else. My back was usually to the path that leads from here to the stables. Perhaps the General …’

  ‘He has seen such a thing. I wanted only confirmation and now must ask for your silence in the matter.’

  Later they sat in the car, sharing a cigarette and trying to get warm as they studied the map of the Bois. Two thoroughfares formed a broad X. To the north of its intersection, and in the V of its arms, lay the whole of the Jardin; directly to the south was the riding circle, which surrounded a horseshoe-shaped pond beside which were the dressage grounds and jumps onto which the stables backed. Three riding trails merged tangentially with the circle. To the south, cutting through the woods near the clay-pigeon shoot, a trail came out to cross the route de Madrid. This trail then left the circle half-way round and turned off to the north to pass through another woods and finally behind the Jardin before turning southwards to the circle to merge with its western side. It was all neat and tidy and splendidly laid out for maximum pleasure and variety, quiet rides through the woods alternating with the more open ones. Just to the west of the Jardin, the riding trail passed the buildings that housed the equestrian society of Paris.

  ‘Is he a stablehand, Louis?’

  ‘We’d best check.’

  ‘Let me. I won’t be long.’

  Hermann strode off into the darkness. Frost from their breath had formed on the inside of the windshield and St-Cyr scraped at this to clear it and opened his side window a crack. The child would freeze to death in this weather without her overcoat of insulating leaves and sealskin boots and mittens. What had been going on in that house to drive her out? ‘No one is going to murder you,’ the chef had said in the folly last night, and just before this, ‘Your aunt has still not returned from the hairdresser’s and another visit to that clairvoyant of hers. It’s safe … Your uncle stays in Rouen.’

  The child had confided to the chef that the Sandman would strike again. ‘And very close,’ she had said. ‘So close you will feel the breath of him, but he will make a mistake and will have to let that one go.’

  Had she been lying about its being the Sandman? he wondered. Had the murderer of Andrée been even closer?

  She was the sole owner of the Vernet interests. Her uncle and guardian was having an affair with Liline, a student and dear friend, the daughter of an employee who would be dependent on Vernet—Mademoiselle Chambert would have worried terribly about this, ah yes.

  The girl lived with them in that house. The child looked up to her.

  ‘Madame Vernet knew of the flat in the rue d’Assas and of the boy, the homosexual Liline supposedly visited. She must have also known of Nénette’s plans to run away, and certainly she knew of the map that child had put up in her room, the notation of where Nénette believed the next killing would take place and when.’

  He thought to take out his pipe and tobacco pouch but had his hands deeply in his overcoat pockets, and did not want to relinquish touching the child’s little m
ementos.

  ‘Nénette was aware of the house on the rue Chabanais. There was a condom in her change purse. There were coins from right across Occupied Europe. Had she been inside that brothel to visit with Violette Belanger? Is that where the coins came from, and the condom?’

  ‘From one of the coffee cans,’ he said and sighed. ‘Debauve told Giselle he had found Nénette’s glove in the street, but is he the Sandman? Does Violette know the child is on to him? Was the fob from that ear-ring a part of her schoolgirl costume?’

  And then, fingering the giraffe, ‘Nénette knew she would be followed on Sunday. The nuns went out two by two to search for Andrée, and this Nénette and her little friend would have anticipated. Sister Céline was accompanied by Sister Dominique, but were they in the Bois from three-ten to three-twenty and near the stables? Had those two nuns become separated?’

  And then, heaving an impatient sigh, ‘Hurt and angry Sister Céline may well be with her students, but to follow Nénette Vernet so often the child becomes acutely aware of this does not make sense, and certainly that nun could not have sexually violated the other victims.’

  Five murders, all of girls of about the same age, four done with a sharpened Number 4.5 knitting needle, the last with an unsharpened Number 4. Each of those needles would have been about thirty centimetres long. The nuns knitted sweaters and scarves, et cetera, for the prisoners of war, and Violette would have been aware of this.

  When Hermann finally returned, St-Cyr said, ‘Debauville must have realized Madame Morelle and her husband would betray him. He anticipated the husband’s telling you he would take Giselle to the Saint-Roch and that Madame Morelle would give you the address of the escort service, but did he then betray them both, Hermann, by claiming he had found that child’s glove in the street outside the brothel?’

  ‘Tit for tat, eh?’ Kohler switched on the ignition and let the car idle a moment. ‘Madame Morelle uses a clairvoyant. Madame Vernet uses one, too—you told me this yourself, eh? Perhaps it’s the same one, but guess whose son is a stablehand and was supposed to be here on Sunday afternoon but turned up late and hasn’t shown up since?’