J. Janes - Dollmaker

They were definitely not friendly. Grim-faced, stolid and silent, they were almost as apprehensive as himself. After all, he was Gestapo, was one of them, and mock trials, no matter how much of a joke they might claim them to be, were nothing to fool with should word get back to Berlin. Things could also go wrong. Ah Gott im Himmel , what was he to do?

Having searched and found no sign of Charbonneau, they wanted answers. They were about as much in the dark as he was. They genuinely needed to find out what the hell had been going on. Their Captain, their Vati, was being blamed for something he maintained he hadn’t done. Paulette le Trocquer had been gang-raped and murdered and the Inspector was saying their cook, the Obersteuermann Baumann, the Second Engineer and Erich Fromm were responsible. The girl’s mother had been killed. The money — some of it their own — was still missing.

‘Let’s face it,’ grimaced the prisoner, ‘that sweet little bit you guys nailed in the toilet would have told you everything, Death’s-head. The question is, why don’t you tell the rest of us?’

His head bent forward uncomfortably lest it hit the stone roof, the cook grinned and let his lark’s eyes dance over the prisoner. ‘We’re asking the questions. You are doing the answering.’

‘Then ask. Let it be between the two of us.’

‘Otto, he hasn’t understood.’

Baumann sighed. ‘We found the girl just as you did, Herr Kohler, the mother also. Now, if we didn’t kill them, who did?’

‘Your Vati?’

Baumann dragged out the key to the cell and waved it reprovingly. ‘He’s locked up. I myself saw him into the cell last night after his brief visit to the party.’

‘And there’s no other key? Don’t be a Dummkopf . Quiberon’s gendarmes would have had a spare. The Préfet …’

‘The Préfet,’ said Death’s-head, still grinning. ‘ Bitte, Herr Detektif. Bitte . Why would Préfet Kerjean release our Dollmaker when he believes him guilty of murder?’

‘I didn’t say he did. I only meant there could well have been two keys and that, given the opportunity, Fräulein Krüger could well have palmed the other one and passed it to the Captain.’

‘The Fräulein Krüger …? But … but how was she given that opportunity?’ asked Baumann.

‘Were there two cell keys hanging on the wall of that piss pot gendarmerie ?’ countered Kohler. He had got them talking. At least that was something.

Baumann thought about it. The Obersteuermann raked over the leaves of the past few days. The arrest, their demanding to take charge of Vati, the telexes to and from the Lion in Paris, the Préfet’s backing down. Kerjean had vehemently argued that the Dollmaker was his responsibility yet had let them guard the Captain, ‘ Ja , there may well have been two keys.’

‘Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. Question is, did she give that key to the Captain because I damned well saw him in a car outside that shop. He nearly ran me over.’

‘Yet you do not believe he killed Madame le Trocquer?’ asked Baumann. ‘Why, please, is this?’

‘Yes, why?’ demanded Death’s-head. ‘Why blame us when you know Vati was there?’

‘Because you bastards were looking for your money. You smashed the place up. The dollmaker wouldn’t have bothered.’

‘Unless,’ said Baumann, half in thought and half in doubt, ‘unless he had wanted to make it look as if someone else had done it.’

I.e., the crew.

‘Were all four of you always together at the last?’ asked Kohler, wishing he had fags to pass around. Tobacco was the great pacifier. ‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Not always,’ admitted Baumann cautiously. ‘But we were together when he found the girl on her knees and then found the mother.’

‘Before or after I did?’

‘Before. You were still looking for us in the rain. We went straight from the Club to the shop and in a hurry.’

‘No sign of the Captain?’

‘No sign of anyone.’

‘Would the Captain have killed them — did he have a reason, damn it?’

A reason … A reason … Herr Kohler had raised his voice and the passages had echoed it back.

Baumann threw Death’s-head an uncertain look. The lark’s glimmer vanished. Kohler caught the drift and said, ‘Schultz, you had better tell us about the doll Angélique Charbonneau left in that shop. Maybe then we’ll all understand why you wanted to find the pianist so badly. You were going to kill him, too, weren’t you, eh? You were going to shut him up before he spilled it all to the others.’ He indicated the rest of the men.

‘Otto, he’s lying. He’s just trying to get us rattled.’

‘Am I?’

Only the sound of the pianist’s symphony came to them and they listened for it to a man.

‘Death’s-head, the doll,’ said Baumann.

‘The woman dropped it on the tracks. I saw her backing away from le Trocquer. I heard him shouting at her.’

‘Good, that’s very good,’ sighed Kohler. ‘Now tell us the rest.’

‘She couldn’t speak. She was too terrified. Her eyes were on the bend in the tracks. We both heard that iron bar come down. I swear we did. Then it hit the rails as it was thrown aside.’

‘Where were you at the time?’

Damn Kohler. Damn the Lion for demanding that a detective be sent from Paris. ‘Among the stones of that alignment.’

‘Where was the pianist?’

‘Nowhere near. I didn’t see him, if that’s what you’re asking. I only saw the woman. She didn’t see me. Not once. I made sure of that.’

‘What about the Captain?’

‘Vati was still in the clay pits or in the watchman’s shed. Vati wasn’t anywhere near the site of the murder. I would have known, yes? From where I was standing, I would have seen him.’

That too was good, but Death’s-head still had the Walther P38 in a pocket, and that was bad. Kohler let his gaze move slowly over the men. He drew in a breath and nodded curtly at Baumann. So be it. ‘You’re lying, Schultz. The Dollmaker was there. During our second interrogation, Herr Kaestner told me he had overheard shouting, an altercation in French, and had seen the woman standing between the rails.’

The lark’s eyes didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Vati was only trying to protect her. He still doesn’t know I was there.’

Nor did any of the others until now. ‘Then that only leaves you, my friend,’ said Kohler.

‘And the Préfet, and the pianist and the woman,’ countered the cook, laughing at him. ‘If Kerjean is so sure Vati killed le Trocquer, why not ask yourself, did Kerjean not also want that shopkeeper dead?’

‘Did you see him there?’

Were detectives always so stupid? ‘If I had seen him, I would have said so right away.’

‘Providing you hadn’t killed the shopkeeper and were certain you wouldn’t be accused of it.’

Baumann interceded. ‘Vati says he and the woman never met in that shed beside the tracks, Herr Kohler, yet there was one of his cigarette packages in it and the woman’s handkerchief?’

Kohler spoke his thoughts aloud. ‘The Préfet let my partner and I find them all by ourselves. He denied there were any bicycle tracks yet he must have seen them …’

‘Forty on the Captain? Do I hear forty,’ quipped the cook. ‘I think the odds have just gone down to twenty on our Dollmaker, sixty on the Préfet, and ten each on the woman and her husband.’

‘But what about yourself?’ asked one of the crew.

‘Yes, what about the doll, Schultzi? Why that doll?’ asked another.

‘Yes, why that doll, Death’s-head?’ asked Kohler. ‘What was there about it that made you keep from the others that you had been there?’