J. Janes - Dollmaker

‘Perhaps.’

They worked in silence, each taking a side of the tracks and retracing their steps to the fragments and beyond them to the Captain’s collecting bag.

‘An ammunition satchel,’ grunted Kohler, looking down at the thing. ‘Regulation issue. Kriegsmarine blue. Stores must be tolerant of heroes. Quite obviously he saw something up ahead and eased this thing aside.’

‘Yes, but what did he see? A broken doll on the tracks? The visitor sitting there or standing? Or both the doll and that person?’

‘Whatever it was, it caused him to make a little detour.’

‘And that detour could just as easily pin the murder on him.’

It was only as they retraced their steps and searched along the tracks well past the body, that they came upon an abandoned shed and found in the scant gravel nearby, the marks of a bicycle’s tyres.

‘Both coming and then leaving,’ murmured Kohler, running fingers lightly over them. ‘The leaving in haste, I think. The road is just beyond the shed. That’s where our friend the Préfet should have left the car and led us to the railway spur but decided not to.’

St-Cyr heaved a troubled sigh. ‘Then he knew of the cyclist but has made no attempt to remove the evidence.’

A strange man. One up to his ears in something. ‘There are no footprints,’ said Kohler. ‘Whoever pushed the bicycle into that shed, took the trouble not to leave any.’

‘Perhaps … but then, ah mais alors, alors , Hermann, were they removed later?’ There was plenty of bare rock, so the task would not have been difficult. ‘Was the owner of the bicycle the visitor?’

‘Or someone else? A fourth person.’

*

One by one the lanterns went out of their own accord and still there was no sign of the Préfet and the coroner. Only the sound of the breaking seas kept St-Cyr and Kohler company but this was soon muffled by dense fog that came in of a sudden and decided to stay.

Beaded mizzle broke on icy cheeks. Noses constantly dripped. Kohler wiggled his toes trying to find a particle of warmth. Far out to sea, the long lament of a fog horn sounded faintly.

‘That’s the one on the Île de Groix,’ commented St-Cyr grumpily. ‘A good ten kilometres. Dead flat and painfully mournful, as is appropriate!’

‘Let’s find that shed. Maybe it’s dry.’

‘Is Kerjean deliberately leaving us out here to stew in our own juice?’

‘Maybe the coroner likes to sleep in? Maybe he had to come all the way from Vannes, eh? Hours, Louis. It could take the son of a bitch all day to get here!’

‘ Nom de Jésus-Christ , Hermann, what is it this time? A photographer without a film? Some argument as to bills unpaid — a last job perhaps? Or is it that the Admiral Doenitz needs to be informed of recent developments and has demanded one of his photographers assist?’

These days there were always complications. Others always had to get in the way. ‘The shed, remember?’ snorted Kohler and when they found it, he held the door open and from some hidden cache among his inner pockets, offered a flask of peach brandy, though God knows how he had obtained it and one did not often ask such questions.

There were two upended wooden kegs that had once held sleeper spikes. These they used as stools, resting their backs against the bare cold boards and sharing a last cigarette in silence until Louis was moved to say, ‘Misery unites us.’

Kohler ran his eyes over the inside of the shed. It was nothing much. Bare pine poles clad with boards. Tarpaper on the roof, thank God. No leaks. Just room for a bicycle or two and, in a corner, lots of flattened, clean straw. No sign of sheep dung or any other such item …

‘Don’t even think of bedding down!’ seethed St-Cyr acidly. ‘You do and they will be certain to arrive.’

‘Hey, I thought that’s what you wanted?’

Did Hermann always have to grin at adversity?

The Bavarian leaned over the straw, and from a niche on one of the cross-timbers, plucked a package of cigarettes. ‘ Voilà , Chief. Lucky Strikes.’

‘Pardon?’

He pulled down a lower eyelid in mock salutation and rubbed his frizzy, fast-greying hair that was not black or brown but something in between. ‘Nineteen of them, my fine Sûreté flic . One is missing, in case you wondered.’

They lit up, savouring the blend of fine Virginia tobaccos. They drew in deeply and looked at each other for the longest time. ‘U-boat cigarettes?’ asked Kohler.

‘From an American freighter or a downed aircraft from North Africa? Could it be possible?’ suggested St-Cyr, examining the glowing end of his cigarette. Marvellous … They were absolutely superb.

Kohler shook his head. ‘A freighter. My gut tells me our friend the Captain left this little souvenir for the owner of the bicycle.’

St-Cyr drew in deeply. When the fog had arrived it had made him damned worried, for with it would come the rain to wash everything away. Now he found a contentment which, though he knew he ought to be wary of it, he welcomed. ‘Our Captain is turning out to be quite interesting.’

‘Aren’t the sinkings of twenty-seven ships and the deaths of five hundred and forty men interesting enough? Or the more than two years of surviving what must be a damned desperate war?’

‘Or the 6,000,000 francs? He seeks only the richest pockets of clay — is so anxious to get at them he arrives back from Paris and wastes no time in coming here. None at all apparently. He must have had a car at his disposal.’

‘An expert, and not just with the periscope.’

‘A dollmaker whose grandfather was famous for it.’

There was silver foil in the cigarette package and an aroma that was still so superb, Kohler had to have Louis sample it. ‘They come in cartons of twenty-four packs, I think. Maybe someone on one of the lifeboats handed them over after the Captain blew their ship right out from under them.’

‘Honour and courtesy on the high seas or the threat of U-297’s deck guns?’

Deep down in the straw there was a lady’s crumpled white handkerchief. So hard had the fist been clenched, the handkerchief had to be tugged at to open it but there were no initials and only the faintest trace of perfume. ‘Sandalwood, rosemary, lemongrass and bitter orange,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Something quite old and expensive, I think. A woman, then, who values herself, is valued by someone else, or both. Let me keep the cigarettes and this, Hermann. Let me add them to the tufts of coarse black wool from the tracks and the shards of bisque, particularly the one with blood on it. Say nothing of these to our Préfet or anyone else. Not for the time being. Let us have our own surprises.’

At a shout, they returned to the fog which was now so thick, they could barely make out the Préfet’s lantern.

Six men were with him and their shapes grew but slowly. The Sous-Préfet in his blue uniform, cape and kepi, the coroner looking more like a startled grey-brown mouse in a heavy brown tweed overcoat, scarf, no hat and seaboots, two photographers, one German, one French, the latter decidedly uncomfortable, the former quite content.

And two workmen in dusty, tattered blue denim jackets, black corduroy trousers with coarse black woollen pullovers and heavy wooden clogs, their black berets absolutely filthy, their expressions impassive. Had they seen so much, these two, nothing surprised them any more?

The workmen had a stretcher between them and both coveted it so much, the gnarled hand of one was placed firmly above that of the other.

‘Inspectors, if you will be so good as to tell these gentlemen what you want photographed, they will do their utmost while the coroner examines the body.’