J. Janes - Dollmaker

‘Nothing. Vati had been accused. I knew he couldn’t possibly have done it. Like him, I merely waited to see what you and your partner would come up with. If Vati was to be convicted, I’d have come forward but admit it, Herr Detektif , you and the French judges would only have thought I was lying to protect him.’

The doll … what the hell had there been about that doll to make the cook so evasive and to make Kaestner pick up the pieces and refuse to yield them until certain he could not only do so but that the time was right?

It was Baumann who said, ‘Death’s-head, you had better tell us.’

‘Otto, there’s nothing to tell. It was just a child’s doll. A nothing doll. What else could it possibly have been?’

The look of death perceived sought him out. ‘Then why, please, did le Trocquer take it with him, and why, please, did he give it to the woman when it was the Captain he was going to see?’

Ah yes.

Trapped, Schultz flicked a glance to the right and left. He was near the entrance but perhaps four or five of the men were in the way behind him.

‘Don’t even think of it, Death’s-head,’ said Baumann. ‘When we went after Paulette, you were the first to go for her and the last to rejoin us. You could have gone back to the Club. You could have killed her to shut her up but about what, please? This you had best tell us.’

The cook was a big man but he was going to need help. Verdammt!

Kohler waited. Schultz tried to grin but succeeded only in wetting his lower lip. He would need a flying wedge to get him through that door, then the legs of a gazelle and the lungs of the damned.

‘I …’ stammered the cook. ‘Look, I was only trying to protect Vati. It… it was nothing. Nothing!’ he said, his voice breaking.

‘Take his gun,’ said Baumann.

It was now or never. Kohler launched himself from the cremation pit and threw himself at the cook, carrying him into the men behind. They fell, they fought. Fists pummelled him. He pushed, he grabbed a leg, an arm, a neck … A burning candle rolled away. They were in the passage … the passage. ‘Run,’ he gasped. ‘ God damn it, go while you can! ’

Seized from behind, Kohler was carried forward in a rush as they pelted after the cook. He bucked. He hit the stone walls and tried to stop the men, tried to shake loose of them in the darkness going down the tunnel … down it …

Someone cried out and fell. Others fell on top of the man and soon they were all shouting, all trying to scramble up and he was free and running … running towards the light of day, the light … Fog … was it fog?

Schultz was right behind him. The bastard had darted aside into one of the rooms and had tripped the others. Now the cook reached daylight and they slammed the door shut and threw their weight against it.

Breathlessly Schultz tried to fit the ancient key into the lock before it was too late.

Kohler did it for him.

The cook grinned hugely but he still had the pistol and now it was pointing the wrong way. There was fog everywhere.

‘Let’s find the pianist and the woman said,’ Death’s-head, catching a breath. ‘If they’re alive, I’ll tell you about the doll. If they’re dead, I won’t.’

‘And what about the Préfet?’

‘What about him, eh? You’re the detective. You tell me.’

St-Cyr stood still. The woman — he was certain it was her — took another patient, careful step. Only with difficulty did the bog relinquish her foot. It made sucking noises and of these she was very conscious.

He cursed the fog. He asked, God, why must You do this to me, a simple detective?

God only gave him the sucking noises and, over the open water in the middle of the fen somewhere back there behind him, the crying of the gulls and ravens.

A punt, he said. A body. Blood, death and torn flesh had drawn the birds. The woman no longer called out to her husband. She knew what awaited her.

There had been no sign of Kerjean. It was as if the Préfet had vanished from the face of the earth or had been swallowed up by the bog.

She took another step. Sphagnum squished. Water as black as strong tea and stinking of rotten eggs, bubbled up to icily swallow her boots. When she found the spiked and spindly trunk of a blackened spruce rising up from the peat, she ignored the pain in her hands to frantically pull it free — strained at it, tried so hard she had to rest.

She went on and he could not understand her doing so. The tree trunk only made her progress more difficult by catching on things. Twice she fell and stifled her cries by burying her face in the soggy moss. Once she went down so hard, she lay there between the mounds of sphagnum and leatherleaf and he did not see her for some time.

Then she pulled herself up and dragged the trunk free. Her long dark hair was awry with twigs, moss and mud, her face and hands bore smears of peat and blood, the bandages were gone, the coarse black woollen overcoat was soaking wet and very heavy yet she did not shed it.

Quite by accident or design she crossed the path but did not take it. instead, she stood off some distance straining to hear and see all that was around her. The fog swirled. He hid among the scattered cranberry and stunted spruce and saw her only now and then.

Satisfied that she wasn’t being followed, she made her way towards the road but always kept the path well to her left.

When she fell to her knees with a cry and cast the only weapon she had aside, he knew something was wrong. Frantically she dragged at the peaty muds. She dug her feet in, sat back and, stiffening her legs, pulled hard at the thing. He heard her gasp. She gave a ragged sob, then said not loudly, ‘Yvon, I never wanted this to happen.’

The bicycle’s rear wheel was so bent and twisted, it took all her remaining energy to pull and pry it free until at last, it stood above the surface of the bog.

He waited — everything in him said to go to her, that she needed help and comfort, but he could not do so.

Kerjean had approached from the other direction. He had hardly spent a moment in the bog. He had known the bicycle was there. He had not known she would find it.

‘An accident, Hélène,’ he said and his voice, muffled by the fog, had a judgemental finality to it that was only reinforced by the eerie crying of the gulls and the deeper, harsher cawing of the ravens. ‘I found it on the road. I thought it best to hide it here since your husband …’

‘Yvon, damn you. Yvon! ’

‘Since your husband intended to kill himself.’

‘ Why? ’ she asked, the word torn from her. Anguish, pain and disbelief were in her voice, hatred too. ‘Yvon had no reason to kill himself, Victor. He had every reason to live for Angélique’s sake.’

‘He tried to kill St-Cyr.’

‘You know that is not true. He was only trying to protect Angélique. Yvon didn’t even know about that damned doll until Monsieur le Trocquer confronted me with it. My husband didn’t want people to find out what his daughter had done to me. He … he was afraid the inspectors and others would see it and he couldn’t have that, could he?’

She was desperate. ‘Where is Jean-Louis?’ he asked.

‘Nowhere near. There are only the two of us.’

‘You should have taken the cyanide. It would have been better.’

‘Better? Better than what, please? Your hands on my throat? My face in the mud until I can struggle no more? I know too much. You cannot let me continue to live.’

‘Please don’t be difficult.’

‘You wanted Yvon to kill himself so you hid the bicycle you had smashed with your car. You let him crawl all the way out there to his boat. Was he badly hurt, Victor? Was he bleeding, damn you?’