J. Janes - Dollmaker

‘Don’t think of leaving,’ cautioned Baumann. ‘Not now. Not when you’ve just accused us of murder.’

‘I won’t. I’m only going to the cab. It’s on the seat.’

‘And this, my friend, is pointing right at your guts. It’s loaded,’ said Baumann. ‘Please don’t make me guilty of murder.’

At 7.30 a.m. Berlin Time, it was very dark and cold in the rain, and the hammering of the droplets on the backs of St-Cyr’s bare hands stung so much, the uneasiness within him only increased.

For some time now Victor Kerjean had remained silent. That he wanted his gun back and felt betrayed was all too clear. Now he poured gasoline into the Renault’s fuel tank while the Sûreté, who had his gun in a pocket, cupped hands about the nozzle and the opening so as to keep out the rain if possible.

There had been three jerry cans crammed into the tiny boot and only one of them had been full.

‘Jean-Louis, Hélène will only tell the Nazis about my son — they’ll make her. She’s done for anyway, isn’t that so? Let us take her back to the house. She can write a farewell to her husband and the child. Please, I beg it of you. The lives of too many others are at stake. Our work … The Germans won’t be staying long. The invasion will come.’

The refuelling came to an end. Hélène Charbonneau heard St-Cyr desperately trying to fit the gas cap on. At last he succeeded, then the two of them stood out there while she sat alone inside straining to hear what they were saying about her.

‘Victor, I have a murder to solve and until that is done, I cannot …’

‘You cannot ? You who call yourself a patriot? Oh mon Dieu, mon ami , don’t try to play the pious, big-city detective with me. Give me back my gun and let me present the truth to her.’

The jerry can was heavy and as a weapon it would be eminently suitable. Kerjean was quick, tough and muscular. The blow that had knocked him out had been lucky and totally unexpected.

Now it would not be so easy. ‘Potassium cyanide? How, please, did she come by it, Victor? Rat poison, is this what you are thinking as a way of explaining the coroner’s report which will have to be done?’

‘No one will care. Do you think Kaestner will? Hah! he wants her dead.’

‘And you, Victor?’

Why must Jean-Louis make him say it again? Was Hélène listening? Was that it, eh? ‘Me also, of course. There are my wife and my daughters, yes? And my grandchildren — I’ve eight of them, did I tell you? Eight. Four boys and four girls and two more on the way.’

‘Let us be patient.’

‘ Patient! ’ The jerry can slammed against the car and rang hollowly. ‘You ask for patience when time waits for no one?’

‘Kaestner may believe she has already taken the cyanide. To him, she has no other choice, and this may well be our only chance. But there is also my partner, Victor. Hermann will certainly have come up with something and until I have a chance to talk with him, no one is taking cyanide or shooting themselves, and that, my friend, is final.’

Kerjean turned abruptly away and in the darkness and the rain, and with his dark overcoat and cap, it was so very difficult to see him. St-Cyr hesitated. He heard the can hit one of the others. The tyre iron? he wondered. Was Victor reaching for it?

There was only the sound of the rain. Hélène Charbonneau held her breath for as long as she could. What were they doing out there? she asked herself. It was not fair — nothing was. Victor had been a good friend but now … now. Yvon knew things the Germans would want to know — Angélique did too — and what was Victor to do about the two of them? Kill them? she demanded.

Ah damn that lousy shopkeeper, she cried and clenched her fists. Ah damn Paulette. Why could that girl not have tried to understand that things weren’t as they seemed, that Angélique had been upset but hadn’t realized the truth?

She pressed the back of her bandaged left hand hard against her lips to steady herself. Victor was right. She should kill herself. It was the only solution. Dead, there might be a small chance for Angélique and Yvon. She had to think of them and that was what Johann had tried to tell her.

‘Victor …’ she heard the Sûreté saving. ‘Victor, please don’t try anything foolish. Let us find the husband and the daughter, then let us see where things lie.’

Only the rain gave answer, and when she rolled the window further down, the droplets struck her face.

‘Jean-Louis, I am warning you. As a section head of the Front de la Libération de la Bretagne , I cannot fall into their hands.’

‘You won’t. If I have to, I will shoot you. You have my word on it.’

The boot was closed.

‘Then let us find the father and hope the Captain is looking for him too, and will have the child with him.’

They got into the car but now Victor sat behind the steering wheel and the Sûreté was forced to get into the front beside him and she had to think, was it clever of Victor to have done this? And she had to sadly nod and say, Yes … Yes, it was.

‘We will try the Dolmen of Crucuno first, Jean-Louis,’ he said, ‘since it is much closer, and then, I think, The Tumulus of Saint-Michel.’

Three kilometres east of Plouharnel and the road to Quiberon, rain flooded the narrow, darkened streets of Carnac. Schultz spared the village little. Jamming the accelerator down, he gave the lorry all it had on the only hill worth mentioning in the whole of the Morbihan. All too soon, though, the beam of the headlamps cut an angry swath across the white-plastered front of a small hotel whose giant letters gave THE GRAVE OF THE DRUIDS — THE TUMULUS OF SAINT-MICHEL — and poured water off each of them.

Ah merde , sighed Kohler, not liking it one bit.

His own lorry soon screeched to a halt beside them and both raced their engines and trained the beams of their headlamps nakedly on the hotel in spite of the black-out regulations.

At last the portly owner got the message. Timidly the door opened and, on seeing that it really was the Germans, he stepped out to stand in the rain, shielding his eyes from the glare.

The maroon velour dressing-gown with its jade-green collar and cord had to have been left by some down-at-heel Count of Monte Cristo more than fifty years ago. The beige felt slippers were too big and didn’t even match each other. ‘Messieurs …?’ began the man doubtfully — at least that’s what he must have said but no one heard him.

His chubby cheeks were pale, the dome of his head bald, the ears rather small behind sidewhiskers and under the monk’s tonsure.

Schultz gunned the engine hard, then switched off but left the lights on. The other lorry followed suit. Silence now intruded, joining the incessant hammering of the rain.

‘He’s getting wet,’ offered Kohler.

‘So what?’ snorted Schultz.

‘You’re the Gestapo,’ murmured Baumann. ‘You do the honours, Herr Kohler. Tell him we’re tourists and haven’t got a lot of time. Tell him we’re sorry to have interrupted his sleep but that death waits for no one and he should have been up and at work anyway.’

‘The Préfet’s car isn’t here, Otto,’ hazarded Schultz.

It wasn’t. ‘Give me back my guns,’ breathed Kohler. ‘I don’t feel right without them.’ Verdammt , what was he to do?

‘And here we thought the Gestapo invincible and equal to every situation?’ quipped Baumann drily.

‘Piss off.’

The muzzle of the Luger jabbed him in the ribs. ‘Give him Schultz’s present. Maybe that will loosen his tongue.’

With the string bag of skulls dangling from his left hand, the Gestapo’s detective walked into the lights to stand in the rain and throw his shadow over the hotel.