Dollmaker (11 page)

The house rose up from the grassy moorland perhaps one hundred metres from the shore and clustered pines. It had a narrow, older, taller wing to the left, one of two storeys with tall, thin chimneys and a circular dormer in the attic in which there was a spy-hole window the child must love.

The rest of the house was much more recent – perhaps three hundred years old, thought St-Cyr. Of one storey with flanking gables and an attic dormer dead centre.

Tall French windows were set below and equally spaced on either side of the front entrance. Above this entrance, at the end of the main hall, or off the largest bedroom, there was a small porch with a Louis XIV iron railing so that the mistress of the house could open those doors in summer and stand looking out towards the sea.

That sigh Kohler thought he knew so well came, prompting him to say tartly, ‘If not a return to some lousy patch of soil your ancestors might have tilled, then retirement to a place like this, eh? We're wasting time, Chief.'

A cinematographer at heart, St-Cyr gave another, deeper sigh. ‘Time is never wasted when atmosphere is absorbed. To understand a suspect or possible witness, understand the place and the surroundings in which he or she lives. Try to learn, Hermann, so that when this war is over you will have something tangible to take home with you.'

‘Piss off! We're here to stay in France for ever and you know it. Stalingrad means nothing. It's just a setback.'

The Sixth Army were surrounded and all but being annihilated. Hermann knew it only too well and was a realist but one must not argue with him now.

They pulled the bell chain in unison. From behind a black-out curtain came a shrill challenge as the door opened a little. ‘Who is it, please?'

‘Two detectives from …' began St-Cyr.

‘
Detectives?
You had better come in then.
She
did it. She
crushed
his head with a rock until the blood
spurted
from his nose.'

Ah
nom de Jésus-Christ
. ‘Of course. That is just as we have thought.'

The beam of a torch blinded him. Pushed from behind, he brushed the curtain aside and blinked.

Stunning, wide-set grey-blue eyes met his from under a cascade of light brown hair. The delicately chiselled face, with its lovely smooth brow and cheeks, was intensely serious.

‘
She's
in the kitchen. Use the bracelets. Have you guns? She might be difficult and will need restraining.'

Merde …
‘Your stepmother?'

‘
Yes!
'

‘
Angélique
, what have you been saying?
Pour l'amour duciel
, child, why must you do this to me? I
loved
your mother as a sister. She was my dearest friend.'

‘Madame …'

The woman dried her hands on the tea towel she held then didn't know what to do with it. inspectors … Préfet Kerjean warned me you would come, but tonight? After dark? So soon? I …'

‘
There
, what did I tell you?' spat the child, stamping a foot.

The woman was tall and in her late thirties or perhaps early forties, it was hard to say. Of Paris most definitely and proud of it. Defiantly her dark hazel eyes refused to retreat from the Sûreté's surveillance though conscious also of the Gestapo's.

The dark, almost black hair was long and loose and thick and a little untidy for she'd been busy but she'd not trouble to tidy it in front of them. The forehead was clear and smooth and wide, the eyebrows decisive. The dark eyes were serious and unwavering, the lips exquisite, the chin smooth. A very attractive woman who would keep her looks for a very long time if allowed.

‘You had best come in then,' she said at last, giving them a non-committal shrug. ‘Angélique, please go and watch the stew. We can't burn it.'

‘I won't.
You
can't order me around
any
more!'

‘
Angélique!
'

The child fled. In shock, the woman fought to get a grip on herself and at last succeeded. ‘I can offer little, Inspectors. There is some cider. It's really very good. She made it.'

St-Cyr shook his head. ‘We're not spongers. We know the times are hard.'

‘Then at least come in and sit by the fire. My husband … he isn't well. He …'

‘Has not yet returned?' asked Louis.

What was it about him she both liked and feared? His sensitivity? she asked herself as she started for the living-room, and found the will to softly smile for it could do no harm. ‘Yes. I'm afraid Yvon is really not himself. He's out in all weathers and at all times. This war, this place,' she gestured with a hand, ‘the stones … they've got to him. Even the curfew means nothing.'

‘Didn't the fact that there had been a murder bother him?' asked Kohler.

For a moment she paused to look steadily at him, then said, ‘Yes, the death of that poor unfortunate man, this, too, has greatly disturbed him but there are no doctors here to deal with what troubles him, Inspectors. My husband is so utterly lost in the past, he can't or won't find his way back to the present. Unlike so many, he is not content to simply read of it and dream of better days and better food but must dig his hands into antiquity, cutting them repeatedly as he searches with the desperateness of a demented treasure-seeker who finds only old bones and bits of pottery when,' she waited for them to sit down, ‘when those same hands could so release our souls, the war would be banished if only for the moments he played.'

There was a grand piano in a deep, dark rosewood that glowed from among the clutter of easy chairs, sofas and lawn chairs, throw rugs, shawls, books – great stacks of them here, there and on shelves too – a stuffed red hen, a net bag of seashells, the tattered remains of a wasps' nest, a collection of butterflies, photographs both old and much more recent, little things, things of the seaside and summer. Dried wild flowers too.

‘It's lovely, madame,' enthused St-Cyr. ‘I commend you. Comfort is everywhere, contentment in simple things revered.'

‘I've changed little, Inspector. It's almost as Adèle left it.'

He arched his bushy eyebrows in question at the name and she nodded towards the stone mantelpiece above which hung an oil painting of two women on the beach. Both were sunbathing in the nude and looking towards the artist as if the one to say, Come and join us then; the other, Please, can we not have a moment's privacy?

‘Adèle is lying on her towel with her back to us,' she said. ‘Me, I am the one who is sitting and is not too happy about the intrusion.'

Both women had their long hair pinned up. Adèle Charbonneau had had a gorgeous posterior, one worthy of committing to canvas. Every supple curve was there, even a glimpse of a breast behind the arm upon whose elbow she had leaned to look back.

‘She was very beautiful,' said St-Cyr. ‘The daughter is very like her.' Marram grass encroached the sands on which the women sunbathed. Waves gently lapped a pebbly strand and beyond this, curled over and broke well offshore. ‘It is like the place I dreamt of when my second wife and I came to Quiberon for our honeymoon.'

‘It was lovely. It still is. Angélique and I … we used to go there sometimes in that first year but now … Well, you've seen how she is, I didn't kill Monsieur le Trocquer, Inspectors. It's monstrous of her to say such a thing.'

She wrung her hands in a gesture so instinctive of the futility of arguing with such a lie, it betrayed her innermost feelings for the child.

‘We did get on fabulously when Adèle was alive. Angélique was the daughter I never had but always wanted. My first husband was … was unsuitable, who's to say? Then Yvon and I … Did Préfet Kerjean tell you? We were married in the early fall of 1940, after … after the blitzkrieg had taken …'

‘The child's mother,' said Kohler, watching her closely.

‘Yes.' Was the look in his eyes always so empty? she wondered. Not cold or brutal – he was not like any other Gestapo agent Victor had ever come across – but Herr Kohler was to be watched all the same. ‘Don't misgauge either of those two,' he had warned her only this afternoon. ‘Keep your wits about you at all times. I'll do what I can.'

Poor Victor, he had so many, many worries not the least of which was herself.

‘Inspectors,' she would give them a tight grin, ‘I had best check the stew. Angélique does like to eat. Let us hope the trust I have in her good sense has not been misplaced.'

‘
Mein Gott
, Louis, she's one hell of a woman,' said Kohler when she had left them alone. Nearly always restless, he got up to study the painting. No connoisseur of art, but of female flesh, he ran his eyes appreciatively over Adèle Charbonneau's slender figure. Then he took to studying the new wife. The artist had even captured the dark burnished copper hues in her hair. Her tummy was tucked in, her long legs were crossed. The hands were demurely clasped above the right knee. Slender … a glimpse of a nice, plump breast … a good back, lovely neck and ears … She was sitting on her towel with her back to the sun, this woman the Préfet said was being fucked against her will by the Captain.

Kohler breathed in deeply. The eyes were dark, the nose was prominent … It was all shit the Nazis spouted but one had to ask or else suffer the consequences. ‘She's not Jewish is she, Louis?'

Hermann had spoken in German but hadn't turned from the painting. A sigh would be best. ‘We're in Brittany, idiot. The Far Right, yes? The Church here calls the shots and if it doesn't, the people do. They would have got rid of her long ago.'

‘I was only asking. Hey, your German's pretty good. I'm pleased you haven't lost it.'

‘Nor have I, Inspector,' she said, causing poor Hermann to turn suddenly from the painting and self-consciously try to grin and shrug off his comment.

‘You speak it well,' he said, giving her that same empty look.

‘It was a part of my education. Adèle and I both spoke it and both of us visited Vienna and your country too, several times in the thirties when Victor was on tour.'

Touché
, was that it? wondered St-Cyr. Had she really had sex with the Captain against her will or even with it?

‘How's the stew?' asked Hermann and gave her such an unnervingly boyish grin, she had to grin in reply.

‘Fine. Angélique is becoming a first-class chef. It's her stew, not mine. If you like, we could spare a little. Please, she wants you to join us. She insists. We don't often have visitors. It does get very lonely.'

‘We haven't any ration tickets to leave you,' cautioned St-Cyr.

‘That doesn't matter. The rabbit wasn't living in hopes of a ticket and neither were the two pigeons. They are sacrifices on her altar of necessity and it was she who decided to end their simple lives. There's bread as well and honey or jam for dessert. We'll not wait for her father. Please don't mention him just now. Maybe later you can ask her whatever it is you need to know.'

‘And of yourself, madame,' he hazarded.

‘Of course. Whatever you need I will give but later, yes? Let us try to make things as they were before this lousy war. She's always been with adults. Tell us about Paris and what it's like now. Tell us about your work. Angélique is secretly itching to ask. Please don't disappoint her but be truthful. Lies instantly put her off. One can never lie to her. She is like truth in crystal, captured in a treasured paperweight.'

The copper pots and pans were hanging above the old black iron stove among the ropes of onions and garlic. The dishwater was warm but there was no soap. Instead, there was fine sand for the difficult spots, sphagnum moss for the others. It had been the child's turn to do the washing-up but Angélique had let him wash since he would not know where things went and ‘everything must be in its rightful place,' she had said. ‘Place is so important.'

Had it been a warning of things to come?

Harsh words had obviously been spoken in the kitchen just before supper. Because of these words, the child had insisted Hermann and himself stay to eat. Intuitively she had known that if she could not convince them one way, she could try another.

She was clever, and she was playing a very dangerous, very adult game, but also she was betraying that very trust the stepmother had placed in her.

Merde
, what were they to make of it? he wondered. ‘When will your father return?' he asked. The supper had been quite pleasant. After an initial awkwardness, the daughter and the stepmother had become quite animated – oh for sure the one had accused the other of murder but there had been laughter, and it had been easy to see that they had once got on fabulously.

‘Papa will come when he feels he can do no more. Sometimes, if the digging is good, he stays away for days. He digs
all
over, often in the most unsuspected of places.'

Ah
Nom de Dieu
, child, go carefully for your stepmother's sake, he begged her silently but she would have none of it.

‘There is a map in his study.
That
is where he keeps his things, his discoveries. Well, some of them. Others are in the barn with the bicycles.'

And now, he thought, you are making me feel very guilty at questioning you because, my dear Angélique, you need your stepmother desperately.

St-Cyr squeezed the handful of sphagnum and let the water drain away before wiping the sink clean. ‘It's perfect,' he said. ‘It even imparts a mild soapiness.'

‘It's my invention.
She
didn't want to use it at first but now she does.
She
even uses it as a sponge when she has her bath.
I
have to do her back!'

I'll hate myself if it was your father who killed that shopkeeper, he said to himself. Is it that you are so terrified of this, Angélique, you would blame the one person who loves you more than all others?