Dollmaker (8 page)

The Préfet launched into the coroner's preliminary report.

‘Time of death approximately 4 p.m. the old time, 1700 hours Berlin Time on the afternoon of Friday, the 1st of January. The force of the blow strongly suggests the assailant was a man in his prime. Both hands grasped the switch-bar and this is evident from the smearing of soot and grease. Gloves were, however, used.'

He paused to look at each of them in turn, nodding finally at the
Blitzmädel
to signify he would continue. ‘These gloves were of black leather, probably of light weight, that is to say, not insulated with a thick cotton liner.'

‘A moment, Préfet,' interjected St-Cyr. ‘How is it that the presence of such gloves was determined?'

‘Tiny shreds of leather were torn from the gloves by rasps of metal on the bar. These shreds were examined under the microscope, at a magnification of one hundred. I myself have witnessed them.'

It was Freisen who, rocking back in his chair, told him to continue. No diplomat when it came to the French, the C.-in-C. U-boats Kernével had allowed his impatience to show. He'd tolerate Kerjean's presence only for so long.

Ignoring him, the Préfet laid the report on the table and decisively pressed it flat. ‘They were dress gloves similar to, if not the same as those worn by officers of the Freikorps Doenitz when ashore and in uniform at this time of year.'

Ah
merde
, thought St-Cyr, how could they possibly tell from so little?

‘I wasn't wearing uniform,' said the Dollmaker. ‘I was in my spare coveralls and sheepskin jacket. The watchman will confirm this. We shared a cigarette and a few words about the weather.'

‘I have already asked him,' said Kerjean levelly. ‘He is not certain, Captain, if you wore gloves but thinks …' The Préfet lifted a cautionary finger. ‘… that perhaps the gloves were in the pockets of your jacket.'

‘Then he is mistaken. I would not gather kaolin while wearing them, since I have to use them on parade, yes? Nor would I wear them afterwards without first washing my hands.'

Kerjean sat back to survey him. The girl's pencil was poised. She hardly breathed. She was really very pretty but professionally intense like so many Germans. Did she have an interest in the Captain? he wondered and thought it likely. ‘But … but you did wash your hands? You apologized for the state of them? You grinned, Captain, and shrugged it all off, and Monsieur le Pennec, who speaks about as good French as you do yourself, poured water from his kettle over them and offered the use of his towel with apologies of his own, is that not so?' The Préfet looked at Louis and shrugged open-handedly. ‘The towel, my friends, was filthy but what can one say since it was the only one the watchman had?'

Verdammt!
thought Kohler. This thing …

Freisen turned to the Captain to confer earnestly and quietly. It was Kaestner who said, ‘I did not have my gloves with me. They were in my bag which was on the bed in my room at the hotel here.'

‘The gloves can then be examined,' grunted the Préfet as if it really did not matter.

Freisen leapt in. ‘They'll be torn. They're not new. This is crazy, Préfet. Crazy! You're mad.'

‘Mad or not, I aim to continue.'

Ah
Nom de Dieu
, thought St-Cyr, does Freisen also think the Captain guilty?

The Captain watched the Préfet with that same decisively piercing look as if through the periscope and Kerjean the enemy tanker.

‘The conclusion?' asked Kohler.

Were the Bavarian's eyes always so lifeless? ‘Ah yes, Inspector. The coroner concludes that as Monsieur le Trocquer stood near the inner rail of the spur, he was approached from behind and to his right. You yourselves found evidence of the Captain's having left the railway for the nearby moor some distance towards the pits.'

Shit, thought Kohler, he means to pin it on the Dollmaker even if the Captain didn't do it!

The Préfet continued. ‘The shopkeeper was challenged. He did not turn. He removed his glasses, isn't that so, Chief Inspector St-Cyr?'

Louis nodded curtly. The girl was ready to pounce again on every word. Her whole being was focused on the end of her pencil.

Kohler thought her perfect. Naked, she'd be absolutely delightful but probably kept it all locked up for some lucky guy.

‘The victim whipped off his glasses,' said Kerjean decisively. ‘No doubt he was planning to pocket them for safety's sake but …'

Again the girl waited. When the pause grew, she glanced up, giving the Préfet the fullness of her eyes.

He met her gaze with an emptiness of his own that said so much about where he really stood with the Occupier. ‘But the blow came, the glasses flew out of his hand. He collapsed and was carried forward and down by the force, thus striking his forehead on the outer rail, something that would most certainly have killed him had the other not done so.'

Louis took out the cigarettes and offered the Captain one but if he knew of the package and the shed, the Dollmaker was far too clever to let on.

Freisen, apparently, didn't even notice they were American cigarettes nor did the girl who refused with a shake of her pretty head and said a quiet, ‘Not when I am on duty.'

‘There is one other matter,' said Kerjean, saving the cigarette for later but noting its origin. ‘The briefcase he was carrying is missing.'

‘What briefcase,' demanded Kaestner swiftly. A rise at last? wondered Kohler.

There was a sigh from the Préfet. ‘That I think you know only too well. Of old brown leather and shabby, isn't that so? Nothing special because not only had he been a man of little means all his life, Monsieur le Trocquer had not cared much about his appearance.'

‘A moment, Préfet. How is it that this matter of the briefcase came to light?' asked St-Cyr.

It would not do to smile as the mackerel was pulled from the basket of sole to lie stinking on the cutting table. ‘The wife has said that before he left to catch the bus, her husband came upstairs to get the case. He was in a hurry and upset but did not say what was the matter or why he needed it.'

‘But you and the victim had only just had a violent argument?'

‘An argument? Ah no. A discussion perhaps. Yes, that's the way it was. The money was missing, isn't that correct? Monsieur le Trocquer was not forthcoming. I urged him to speak up so as to leave no suspicion in anyone's mind.'

‘But the daughter has told me several things were broken?'

‘The daughter? Ah, a few bits of glassware. Monsieur le Trocquer got in a huff and threw out a hand. It was nothing.'

But now you are afraid, thought St-Cyr, glancing at the Dollmaker and the Bullet. ‘The value, please?'

Nom de Jésus-Christ
, what did it mean, this attack? ‘A few francs.'

‘And the reason for his “getting in a huff”, Préfet?'

Jean-Louis was serious. ‘This I have already mentioned, Chief Inspector. The money, yes? Is time of so little value to you?'

‘Time is to murder what salt is to an open wound. One or both of you cried out the name of a Madame Charbonneau. This was heard by the daughter and the mother also, I believe, though that one steadfastly denies it.'

Exasperated, Kerjean blew out his cheeks and tossed the hand of inconsequence. ‘And the former, Jean-Louis? That little slut? Paulette le Trocquer would lie for the sheer pleasure of seeing if she could get you to believe her!'

‘What do you think was in the briefcase?' asked Kohler.

Startled by this new direction of attack, the Préfet's eyes narrowed swiftly. ‘The money? Is this what you two think?'

‘I'm asking.'

‘Then I do not know, Inspector. Since the Captain's money has been missing for some time.'

‘How long, please?' asked St-Cyr.

Would the two of them keep it up? wondered the Dollmaker. So far so good.

‘I … I can't be sure, but at least eight weeks. Its absence was discovered by Monsieur le Trocquer just before U-297 returned to the Keroman bunkers on the 5th November. Privately he accused his daughter of the theft. The girl still denies it and did so then.'

It would be best to shift the direction of attack. ‘Was the submarine badly damaged, Préfet?' asked Louis.

Again there was that swift, dark look from Kerjean. ‘Why not ask the Captain? Let him tell you.'

‘Perhaps I will,' said St-Cyr, moving the cigarette package until it was directly in front of him. ‘I want first to settle one thing, Préfet. Since you and Monsieur le Trocquer argued about Madame Charbonneau what, please, is your relationship with her?'

Me, a married man with six children, is that it, eh? wondered Kerjean. It was. Ah, Jean-Louis, how could you do this to me? ‘That is a private matter, Chief Inspector. I am not on trial here, nor am I under suspicion, or am I because of the word of a girl who wants only to escape the boredom of her little life?'

Why must he be so difficult? wondered St-Cyr, greatly troubled by him and saddened, too, at the thought that perhaps the Préfet was trying to protect someone or had done the killing himself. ‘It would help if you told us.'

Ah damn that girl Paulette. ‘Madame Charbonneau is a friend, that is all. I have many friends in the Morbihan. I make it my business to know the people with whom I may one day have to deal on matters of the law.'

It had been spoken like a good cop, yes, of course, but … ‘And the husband of this woman, Préfet,' asked St-Cyr, ‘is he a friend also?'

Prepare yourself then, Louis. Prepare yourself my fine little buzzard from Paris. ‘Both Sous-Préfet le Troadec and myself have many times returned him to her, Chief Inspector, and
that
is the extent and the beginning of my friendship with them. They are lost, yes? Like so many who ran from the invasion of 1940, they cannot find the will or courage to return to Paris. Like all great artists, Monsieur Charbonneau seeks in the things around him the inspiration for his work and the reason for his being. He “hears” a symphony he wishes to write. Who am I, a simple policeman, to question such as him? But when the weather is very bad and I find him out in it digging for bits of pottery and old bones or flint axes among the megaliths, I take him home to his wife and daughter.'

‘You did it,' said Kaestner flatly. ‘You killed that shopkeeper.'

‘I did not. I had no reason to but it's interesting you should think to try and put the blame on me. You who are on such familiar terms with her, Captain. You who do not go home on leave to see your family but spend all your free time making dolls or visiting the wife of another.'

Kaestner sprang. So swiftly did he lunge at him, Kerjean had only time to grip him by the wrists as the Captain's hands closed fiercely about his throat.

The table went over. The girl shrieked, Kohler rammed the two of them, sending them into the wall. ‘
Enough
!' he shouted.

Choking, plum-red in the face and clutching himself by the throat, the Préfet sat on the floor slumped against the wall. ‘
Bâtard!
he raged. ‘You've been fucking that poor woman against her will. Admit it! Fucking her, you bastard! Forcing her! Le Trocquer found out and tried to blackmail you into forgetting about the money or giving him more time to find it.'

Merde
, thought St-Cyr, what have we now? Kaestner backed away as if struck. Freisen said, ‘Johann, is this true?'

The girl tried to find her pencil and pad.

‘A glass of
marc
, I think,' breathed Kohler, ‘and some coffee. Louis, ask the Obersteuermann to see that we get it and are not disturbed otherwise. No one is leaving.'

‘I… I must.' Embarrassed, the girl looked so helpless.

Kohler gave her a nod. ‘Take a few minutes. Here, have one of these. You're due it.'

Fortunately no one had stepped on the cigarette package and when she timidly took one, her big blue eyes glanced uncertainly at him before flicking warily to the Captain.

You sweet thing, thought Kohler. That's just what I figured you would do.

Freisen had noticed her reaction too and so had the Préfet.

Louis was pleased but chose to hide this by brushing himself down and finding his chair. And when the coffee and the brandy were brought in steaming mugs, he asked Baumann for enough tobacco to fill his cherished pipe. ‘It helps me think, and that is something we all must do.'

At a nod from his Vati, the Obersteuermann yielded up his tobacco pouch and muttered in German, ‘It is okay, yes? I have another somewhere.'

St-Cyr wondered if they were going to have to take on all fifty-two members of the crew.

French toilets were always filthy but the boys from U-297 had made this one spotless, which only proved – yes it did, thought Elizabeth Krüger – that the French were inferior.

Yet I cannot stop myself from shaking, she said and bit a knuckle.

It had been clever of the Captain to have done that – a desperate move, yes, of course. But he was like that. He took chances. He assessed things coldly, rapidly, thoroughly, then, having weighed up each situation, struck when and where least expected.

The Préfet, fool that he was, had blurted out his feelings for this Madame Charbonneau who spoke German so perfectly, the Captain liked to visit her. A touch of home.

The Préfet had as much as confessed to the murder. Now everyone would think he had done it. Yes, everyone. So, good. Yes, good.

But me? she asked, nervously drawing on the cigarette and wishing that the Captain would see how she felt about him. ‘I, Fräulein Elizabeth Krüger, Special Assistant to the Kapitän zur See Freisen, am afraid.'

Toilets did that to one sometimes, made them confess things best left unsaid. Had he really been fucking the Frenchwoman against her will or with it? Did it matter so much to herself? It could not last in any case. No, it couldn't.

The dossiers of the two detectives had not been good. Herr Kohler, in spite of having two sons missing in action at Stalingrad and presumed dead, had a reputation for going against authority. He was no Gestapo, no Nazi though a member of both by force of circumstance.