Dollmaker (6 page)

The youngest, a boy of seventeen, had the ever-moving, furtive gaze of one who has stood at death's door and been suddenly reprieved but for how long?

They had been playing a favourite board game,
Mensch ärgere Dich nicht
– Man, don't ‘shoot' yourself. All wore, at rakish angles, the dark blue forage cap with submariner's badge and the faded blue coveralls that rumour said had been modelled after the British Army's battledress for its ease of getting about, especially when firing torpedoes or their 88-millimetre deck gun.

‘Kohler to see the prisoner.'

The one with the beard took the stem of a cold pipe from between his teeth and got slowly to his feet. ‘Herr Kohler, ah yes. We've been expecting you. Obersteuermann Otto Baumann at your service.'

The accent was definitely of Lower Saxony and Bremerhaven most probably. Chief Helmsman of U-297 and no doubt one of the Captain's Watch Officers. As if to emphasize this to all and sundry, even though it wasn't dress-up time, the Ritterkreuz, the Knight's Cross, hung on the left breast pocket below the Atlantic U-boat badge. There were also two of the black-and-white wound badges and the underwater escape badge, this last signifying a real test of luck and skill and just plain guts.

‘Obersteuermann …'

‘Otto,
please
, Herr Kohler. Rank means certain things, yes, of course, but in the Freikorps Doenitz we prefer not to stand on ceremony.'

The U-boat Service … ‘Good. All I want is a few words with the Captain just to introduce myself and to make it clear my partner and I are on his side.'

‘We're not guarding him,' offered the boy tremulously. ‘We're looking after him.'

‘Then why isn't he playing?'

‘Because he's busy,' said Baumann unwaveringly. ‘Vati doesn't want to see anybody right now.'

‘Oh, come on now. How else can we begin to …'

‘Establish his innocence?' asked Baumann.

‘Yes.'

The Chief Helmsman pocketed a ring of keys that had lain on the table and picked up what was obviously the Captain's Luger. ‘It's loaded, I think,' he said non-committally. ‘It always seems to save argument. You tell him, Martin. Martin, here, is our Second Engineer, Herr Kohler. You wouldn't know it to look at him but he can make our electric motors whisper like a woman in heat and whose whispers, my friend, have saved our balls many times.'

The one with the clean-shaven, prominent jaw, wide lips, high, bony forehead and big hands still could not find the will to smile. ‘Herr Kohler, the Captain isn't to be interviewed without Special Officer U-boats Kernével being present.'

Verdammt
… ‘Do you mean to tell me we can't talk to Kaestner
without
Freisen being present?'

Baumann hefted the Luger. ‘Martin, be so kind as to ring up Base Kernével and ask the Kapitän Freisen to drop everything so that he can join us. That'll solve Herr Kohler's problem and we can get back to our game.'

‘But it's more than fifty kilometres …?'

‘Vati has no legal counsel, Herr Kohler,' offered the Second Engineer. ‘In the absence of one we, who owe our Dollmaker so much, are insisting all interviews be in the presence of our Special Officer.'

Shit! They had kicked the French
flics
out. Either the crew were making a circus of it or they were trying to save the Captain from himself. ‘Then while you're at it, ring up the Admiral and tell him my partner and I are off the case as of right now, eh? Then call le Trocquer's shop and ask the Chief Inspector St-Cyr to pick up two tickets for the evening train to Paris.'

‘Don't be difficult,' sighed Baumann. ‘Humour us. Vati's special.'

‘Piss off! You're keeping us from talking freely to the one who needs us most. He could have done it, my fines. We've evidence to suggest he damned well did!'

It was the Second Engineer who said levelly, ‘Then that is ample reason why the Kapitän zur See Freisen must be present. Please, it is but an hour or two, yes? It is not for nothing that we call our C.-in-C. Base Kernével the Bullet. He'll come, and when he does, you can talk to Dollmaker all you want.'

‘He did it, didn't he?' swore Kohler exasperatedly. ‘You bunch think the Captain slammed that shopkeeper so you want to give him every bit of help you can.'

Baumann shrugged, the boy wet his lips and nervously brushed the faded blond hair from his brow. The Second Engineer merely picked up the dice and shook them.

St-Cyr sat uncomfortably in the straight-backed, uncushioned chair the daughter had fetched from the tiny kitchen. No more funereal a bedroom could be imagined. Madame le Trocquer wore black lace over a black robe and nightdress. Exquisite black lace flowed from her withered, white-dusted, blue-eyed face like an ancient spider's tent to cover the ample double bed. Black pillows and cushions propped her up. She even wore a square of black lace over her head whose iron-grey and yellowish hair was like wire and braided into two tight pigtails that were tied with black ribbon. The hair was short, so the pigtails stuck out a little.

Having enjoyed her illness, she was now to enjoy her grief. A widow at what? he asked and put her age at sixty and a good ten years older than her husband.

He would try again. ‘The woman at the big house near Kerouriec, madame? Your husband and the Préfet argued. Her name was …'

‘Mentioned? Is that what you told him, Paulette?'

Dutifully the daughter stood with downcast eyes like a handmaiden across the bed from him. ‘Yes,
maman
,' came the whisper.

‘You little fool! Préfet Kerjean and your father were the best of friends. The woman was nothing to them.
Nothing
, so why should they have argued about her?'

Livid, Madame le Trocquer hunched her thin, bony shoulders. ‘It's cold,' she said spitefully. ‘There never was enough heat. That's why I
have
the arthritis. There'll be heat enough now, Paulette.'

‘Yes,
maman
.'

St-Cyr heaved a desperate sigh. ‘Madame, there was an argument. So violent was it, several items in the shop were broken. Your daughter has said she overheard Madame Charbonneau's name.'

‘That's all I heard.'

‘Yes, of course. It's enough for me to demand the truth.'

‘The house is by the sea and some three kilometres from the main road, Inspector. The bus does not always go to Kerouriec. The woman is from Paris. The husband was a famous pianist, though there is never much work for such as those. You're from Paris. How is it, please, that you do not know of him?'

Charbonneau … The Rachmaninoff and the Schubert. The Palais de Chaillot in mid-April 1940 with Marianne at his side, a rare evening out. She had worn the azure blue silk dress with matching high heels. She had looked even younger. ‘I do remember, madame. Yvon Charbonneau … the critics were most unkind to savage him. He was marvellous.'

‘Humph! Marvellous or not, he and that new wife and child of his elected to come here for the Duration to that house his Great Aunt Danielle foolishly left him some time ago. Such legacies only produce indolence. Now he no longer plays the piano but searches the megaliths for clues to the past while the wife, she …'

‘She
what?
' he asked.

Ah! the detective so wanted to hear scandal he was leaning forward in his chair and Paulette was nervously touching the base of her beautiful milk-white throat and looking pale. ‘People say she is the Captain's mistress, Inspector. Others say she is the Préfet's and since my husband was sometimes asked to deliver messages for either of those two, well …' She sucked in on her cheeks. ‘One cannot say what one will find.'

Was the woman naked, madame? Was she fornicating on the beach with the Captain perhaps, or the Préfet? ‘There was a doll?' he hazarded.

‘Not one from the shop. Paulette would have seen that it was missing. None are.'

‘But did you hear either of them mention this doll?'

The woman shrugged and kept her shoulders up tightly like the folded wings of a vulture. ‘I heard nothing, Inspector.
Nothing
! These old walls may not be much but they are soundproof, thanks be to God!' She crossed herself.

‘As is the room in the cellar?' he asked.

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘What room?'

Must they do this to her? wondered Paulette. ‘He knows,
maman
. The Inspector will have visited my little cubicle when I was upstairs here with you.'

‘Then perhaps he will understand that young girls who disobey their fathers need to be taught a lesson and that even though it can tempt a man to baseness, beauty means nothing and soon fades.'

Ah
merde
… Had the father abused the daughter or was it that the woman only suspected this?

‘Some money is missing, madame. A lot of money. Is there anything you can …'

‘Tell you about it? Only that it was a piece of foolishness. The Captain Kaestner may be good at U-boats but he's an imbecile at business. Reviving his grandfather's dollmaking has become an obsession. If you ask me, he uses it to take his mind off things.'

It was the daughter who hesitantly confessed, ‘Everyone knows their chances of survival are less than two in ten now. U-297 has been through a lot, Inspector, and very nearly didn't make it home the last time.'

The woman gave the daughter a scathing look. One could hear her shouting, You little fool! Why not tell him everything then? That those men are using you!

The girl dropped her hands to her sides in defeat at that look and stood with eyes downcast waiting for the rebuke.

It was not long in coming. ‘Well, tell him then, since you're so proud of it. A boy of seventeen, Inspector, a
first
time for that one, I believe.'

Jésus, merde alors
, did they hate each other so much? Fists were clenched, a foot was stamped. Tears rushed into the girl's eyes. ‘I didn't do
anything
with him! He … he was dancing with Renee when … when suddenly the drummer hit the cymbals and … and Erich went all to pieces and began shrieking for his mother.'

The girl wiped her eyes with her fingertips, then used the back of a hand for her nose. ‘Some of the others held Erich and pulled his pants down. Their … their Chief Engineer gave him a needle to calm him. He … he wasn't allowed to go home on leave this time.'

‘He still pisses himself,' seethed the woman acidly. ‘He says he's not going back to sea but everyone knows he'll have to, otherwise they will shoot him.'

And those are the kind of friends your daughter seeks, thought St-Cyr. War made instant friends and lovers, often turning young girls and housewives wayward because there was little future for them and the Occupier had everything, as well as being handsome and exciting and from faraway places.

‘The Captain saved them by taking the boat well below its maximum diving depth,' said the girl softly and not looking at him. ‘They got stuck in the bottom muds and the RAF rained depth charges all around them for more than an hour.'

‘Where?'

It was such a gently given question. Was the detective so sensitive a man? ‘Off Lorient, on their final approach after being nearly two and a half months at sea. The men now call the Bay of Biscay the RAF's playground. U-297 was already very badly damaged. They … they didn't think they could dare to go so deep but the Captain, he … he insisted it was their only chance.'

A man of steel then. A Dollmaker.

‘The money, madame. The 6,000,000 francs.'

Must they come back to that? ‘It was to be used in large part to purchase and improve one of the faience works. My husband kept it in one of the cardboard shipping boxes they use for the dolls. He refused to let the Crédit Municipal keep it. Taxes … he was worried about their having to pay taxes on it.'

‘And the Préfet threatened to bring the tax collectors.'

‘If
she
says so,' the woman indicated the daughter. ‘For myself, I heard nothing, as I have said.'

‘Yes, but what do you think became of the money?'

Fiercely she darted a look at him. ‘How should I know? I can never leave my bed or chair.
Never!
Perhaps someone broke into the shop and stole it, perhaps my husband took it to Quimper on one of his so-called “business” trips and lost it there. Who's to say?'

‘Quimper?'

‘Yes. That is where the dolls are made. The faience works. Did you not listen to me? They are then sent to Paris to be clothed.'

‘But … but I thought the Captain made them?'

‘Only the first ones, the prototypes. He makes the head and then the mould, isn't that so? And from the mould, fifty or so copies are made and fired. One of the faience works in Quimper allows the use of a kiln. The heads are then painted, given hair and eyes and attached to their bodies before being shipped to Paris for completion. In time, the Captain hoped it could all be done here in Brittany but, though we are good at making lace, we apparently lack the necessary imagination for fancy clothes.'

Whores
was what she meant, and loose women.

St-Cyr glanced over his notes. Visits to Quimper and Paris would most probably be necessary but would there be time, and would they turn up any answers?

‘The child of Madame Charbonneau …' he began.

‘It's not hers, it's the pianist's. A girl of ten. Her mother died when she was seven and a half.'

‘In the blitzkrieg?'

Was it so terrible? ‘Yes. A Messerschmitt took her.'

Ah
Nom de Dieu
, the poor thing. ‘Would the child have a doll perhaps?'

Did the Inspector think she was such a fool as not to realize which doll he meant? ‘All girls of such an age have dolls they used to play with when little.'

‘Yes, of course. How stupid of me. Did the child and her stepmother ever visit the shop?'