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.
And his friend, his partner? she wondered. That one was even more so a hunter of the truth. A patriot even though the Resistance still had him on their list and had killed his wife and little son.
He had a new girlfriend in Paris, a chanteuse, a Gabrielle Arcuri whom he had met on a case at the time of his wife’s death, which only showed that war speeded such things up greatly and there still might be hope for herself.
But did St-Cyr feel guilty about it? Could this be used against him? His wife had been unfaithful, a German, a Hauptmann. Most Frenchmen would hate their women for such a thing, a patriot only more so. The wife had been a Breton. The mistress was a White Russian who had fled to Paris as a teenager at the time of the Revolution.
Herr Kohler had two women in Paris. A twenty-two-year-old former prostitute and a forty-year-old Dutch alien he had rescued and would shelter even though by rights she ought to be deported. His wife back home in Wasserburg was suing him for divorce so as to marry an indentured French peasant.
But could the Captain use the information in those dossiers? Could she somehow see that he got it without anyone else knowing?
The cigarette was from the American freighter, the Esther B. Johnson out of Charleston, South Carolina. The Captain had found her alone and drifting off Cape Hatteras and had used his last eel on her then had finished her off with the deck gun. 8,000 tonnes right to the bottom.
But first they had boarded her and had found such treasures everyone still got a laugh out of it. Lipstick and silk underwear for British girls her crew would never meet. Silk stockings, her captain’s wind-up Victrola and phonograph records, ah such records. Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Bing Crosby, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday and others …
They had returned in triumph with their loot stuffed into every nook and cranny, having spent all their torpedoes, eaten nearly all their food and burned up virtually every last drop of fuel.
August 7th of last year. She had been among the welcoming party that had crowded the Isère, the old wooden ship that had once taken convicts to Devil’s Island but now served as a tender to U-boats tied up to before finally slipping into the bunkers.
The band from the garrison had filled the harbour with the sound of the ‘Siegfried-Line’. There had been flowers and French girls too. Girls who gave themselves willingly to members of the crew and even had had children by them. No whores among them. Those the boys saved for later as a warm-up to the homecoming party in the Cafe of the Three Sisters which was now no more due to the bombings. Now the homecomings were not so nice and the parties had been moved here to Quiberon for safety’s sake.
The bombing raids had spoiled things in Lorient. The Happy Days of 1940 were long since over. One whole wall in the Bar of the Mermaid’s Three Sisters here was covered with photographs rescued from the other place, photographs of those who had been lost. Karl Jährmarker of U-192, Otto von Jacobs of U-200, Franz Kellner of U-187, all of them gone within the last ten days. One hundred and fifty-six men sunk ‘with man and mouse’, as the boys would say. And to dance in the presence of those photographs, while she waited for the Captain to show up, was a bad thing. Yet no one would take the photos down. They had a thing about it. They honoured their dead.
‘While fucking some drunken French girl in the toilets!’ she said bitterly. ‘Why is it that most men are so coarse they would even take turns?’
Not all of them were. The Captain seldom stayed long at these parties or at the Saturday-night dances. Oh for sure he would always put in an appearance unless something came up, but he preferred to keep to himself ashore and sought diversion elsewhere or with his dolls.
The cigarette was now down to its last but still she held it cupped in her hand and stared emptily at the thin trail of smoke until awakened to its threat. ‘The cigarettes should have all been used up by now. The detectives will have realized this but have said nothing of it.’
Ah damn, what was she to do? Would they discover she had kept a carton for the Captain so that he could dole them out as he saw fit? Cigarettes for the husband of that woman and cigarettes for the Préfet.
Crumbling the last of the cigarette to dust, she let the remaining flakes of tobacco fall into the toilet and stood a moment staring at them. The RAF had rained depth charges on the boat that last time in early November. U-297 had had a gaping hole in her bow, no deck gun – a British destroyer had rammed them in the North Atlantic some 1,327 kilometres to the south-west of Iceland and just outside the southern limit of the Greenland pack ice, but even that damage had not stopped the Captain from putting her on the bottom.
‘The Totenallee,’ she said in a whisper. ‘Death Row, that’s what they now call the final approach to Lorient.’
There had been panic aboard. Four had been killed. One had had his head crushed to a pulp. Gas had escaped from the batteries. Its deadly hiss had been heard all the time, the air choking … Sweat had run into their eyes as they had all looked up and had hung on in the darkness waiting for the next explosion. Dear God, why must it end for them this way? Obersteuermann Baumann knew it would. No one could escape that look of his, not any more.
She vomited. She gripped her stomach and, kneeling, threw up everything. Gasped, ‘Sweet Jesus, spare him.’
Kohler heard her gagging. The chain was yanked and he wondered what had upset her so much. Nerves of course. It didn’t take a donkey to see she had the hots for the Captain.
But there must be something else. The truth? he wondered.
Préfet Kerjean withdrew into that dark, brooding silence so typical of the Breton. The Captain remained intensely aware of everything around him. His very being evoked command.
Freisen was perturbed and, unlike the Captain, betrayed a sour disposition. He and the Captain had used the interlude to exchange a few words in confidence. None the wiser, the C.-in-C. U-boats Kernével was not happy.
Dollmaker would go his own way as in everything else. That’s what it took to survive and he was a survivor most certainly.
The girl waited tensely. Unable to lift her eyes from the pencil and pad, she knew the Chief Inspector was looking her over slowly and that … Ah what is it that troubles you so, Fräulein Krüger? wondered St-Cyr. Love rejected, truth denied or something you yourself have hidden? A spare key to this cell perhaps? A little something you can slip to the Captain if necessary?
‘So, let us begin again,’ he said magnanimously the peacemaker. Relighting his pipe, he puffed happily away to show that there were no hard feelings and that it was all just routine.
Kohler smiled inwardly but remained outwardly impassive. Apart from Kerjean, none of them could possibly know what Louis was really like.
‘A matter of blackmail …’ began the Sûreté.
‘It’s impossible. I wouldn’t have stood for it. He wouldn’t have had the guts. A shopkeeper? Le Trocquer? Most certainly not!’
Louis tossed the hand of dismissal. ‘Good. Then let us turn to something else. The fragments of bisque you collected, Captain? Since they are the proof the Admiral wishes us to see, might we not examine them?’
Kaestner gave him a curt nod and, digging deeply into a trouser pocket, brought out a crumpled white handkerchief and laid the ball of it before him.
No one moved to open it, most notably himself.
‘The bisque is French,’ he said at last. ‘Though it might be from a Bru doll or a Steiner, I am inclined to believe it is from a jumeau.’
‘Perhaps the most successful of our dollmakers,’ breathed the Sûreté and, setting the pipe aside, reached for the handkerchief and began to unravel it.
Kaestner watched him like a hawk, noting every nuance no matter how insignificant, thought Kohler, but at the same time, recording the reactions of everyone else. He seemed to have antennae even in his fingertips which favoured the edge of the table and tapped out the Morse of a keyed-up nature.
But even this outward sign of agitation could simply be to put the Gestapo’s Bavarian detective off. Verdammt, what was it with him?
St-Cyr spread the fragments. Some were up to two centimetres across, others but a few millimetres. ‘There are some shards of blue glass?’ he said, looking up and across the table while reaching for his pipe.
‘The eyes – an eye,’ said the Captain. ‘Blown glass, not enamel, though it was sometimes used. The doll had dark blue eyes and almost certainly thick blonde hair.’
‘Human hair?’
‘Or dyed mohair. Angora, silk and the wool of Tibetan goats were also used at various times. Inspector …’
‘It’s Chief Inspector.’
Again there was that nod, this time of acquiescence, thought Kohler, though Kaestner must wonder why the Gestapo’s French counterpart exceeded him in rank.
‘Why not ask how it is I know those are not from one of my dolls, Chief Inspector?’
Louis drew on his pipe in thoughtful contemplation of the Captain and the fragments. Kohler could hear the question running through the Sûreté’s mind: As in the sinking of Allied shipping, so in the making of dolls, Captain, is there that same inner search and demand for perfection?
The answer came with that little nod Louis sometimes gave, Yes, it is as I thought.
‘The white bisque my grandfather was famous for, Chief Inspector St-Cyr, was known as Parian. The name is taken from the marbles that are found on the Greek island of Paros. The heads and sometimes the other body parts are made of a hard paste and it is this that makes it possible to capture great delicacy and detail.’
Like a conjurer willing to challenge the doubts and snide remarks of all who would question his making dolls, the Captain produced a small head and set it carefully on the table between them.
‘Ah mon Dieu,’ sighed St-Cyr softly. ‘Hermann, it is absolutely exquisite.’
‘A girl of ten,’ came the Bavarian’s stony reply, ‘with light brown hair.’
‘It’s real hair,’ said Kaestner. ‘It’s her own. Angélique and I agreed on this.’
The child was looking down at something that intrigued her greatly. The expression was one of wonder and fascination. It was obvious her little mind was racing but what was far more important was that the Captain had captured the look. It typified the child. It was of her, and this is what made the head come to life so well.
The softly red and very natural lips were parted slightly, the aquiline nose was pinched as breath was held and one could see this clearly.
‘Touch her,’ said the Dollmaker. ‘Go on. She won’t bite, though she’s very capable of doing so!’
He could laugh, this captain and when he did, it was with the conjurer’s delight. He had proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that not only was he a master sculptor but that the fragments were definitely not his and beneath him.
‘It is the same as in the dolls I saw at the shop,’ said St-Cyr greatly humbled.
‘And that, Herr Chief Inspector, is why I insist on only the finest kaolin. It occurs in pockets. Nature saved those small places from the ravages of minute traces of leached iron which would stain the clay and spoil things for me by giving it a faintly pinkish cast. I then produce my own slurries and refine the clay by settling and decanting. I work only with the finest clay, which is that below one micron. I mix it with ground feldspar and some other things, yes? then knead it and finally steep it in water before using.’
Elizabeth Krüger waited for them to continue. They were like two men who would challenge each other constantly but first must feel the other out. And the head of that child? she asked herself. It was so beautiful it brought tears into her eyes, for the stepmother was so very beautiful too. Dark-haired and dark hazel-eyed, that one, and how is it, please, she asked herself, that he can remember them both so clearly during the months at sea of never knowing if he would return? The months in which, for a few brief moments each day if he could get them, he would close himself off in his tiny cubicle separated only by … that thing? Working on its blank with fine sandpaper and a jeweller’s file so as to get the mould exactly right, then touching up the eyes, the lips. The stepmother too – oh yes, he had made a doll of that one before he had ever made one of the child.
The one from the Sûreté spoke, startling her and causing her to panic and blurt, ‘A moment, please!’
‘Captain, there is no blood on any of these fragments?’
‘Blood? Why should there be? The body was nowhere near them.’
‘You saw the body?’
‘Of course I saw it but not from where I found the fragments, and only later.’
The Préfet could not help but watch him closely and hang on every word. Kohler pitied Kerjean. He was up against a formidable adversary but what was worse perhaps, was that the Préfet knew it only too well.
The girl softly blew her nose. ‘The start of a cold, I think,’ she said, blushing. ‘Please forgive me. You may continue.’
Why must innocent young girls always wear their hearts on their sleeves? wondered St-Cyr sadly. She was pretty enough but no match for the Captain, who would want someone not only very beautiful and sophisticated, but also very intelligent and creative in her own right. Ah yes, most certainly.
‘There was blood on one of the fragments I found, Captain,’ he said. ‘Whoever dropped the doll had cut themselves on the gravel of that railway bed. Why is it that you washed these off, please? That is a matter of destroying evidence, a matter for the courts. Hermann, please make a note of it.’
If he thought to disturb the Captain, Louis was sadly mistaken, thought Kohler. The bastard was just too decisive, too intent.
There was a brief grin. ‘All right, I washed them off but only to examine them. I didn’t think. Is there harm in that?’
Louis laid his pipe aside in the ashtray the girl had slid his way. Kohler could hear him saying to himself, Men like you never stop thinking, Captain. Even your C.-in-C. questions your saying such a thing.
He gave another sigh and let his fingers trickle away from the fragments. ‘Not unless you were trying to protect someone, Captain.’
‘Who?’
Préfet Kerjean did not look up. Freisen silently swore and then finally said, ‘Out with it, Johann. That is an order.’
The Captain shrugged. ‘There was no one with the fragments when I came along the tracks from the pits. I was hurrying. I did hear someone up ahead but could not see who it was. An argument. Two men … in French.’ He looked at the Préfet and said. ‘Why not ask him?’
Kohler thought Louis would ignore the inference and nodded inwardly when he did.
‘French? What did they say, please?’ asked the Sûreté.
‘I couldn’t tell. A challenge perhaps.’
; ‘And then you found the body, Captain, yet you did not immediately go for help? You waited almost twelve hours?’
The table-edged Morse stopped. Suddenly there was a brief pause and then a decisive tap. ‘Chief Inspector, I knew I would be blamed. I hadn’t done it. Indeed, if I wanted to recover our money why, please, would I kill the one man who could help us get it back?’
‘“Our money?” Please explain this, Captain.’
Fräulein Krüger hesitated. Kohler knew the point of her pencil had just stabbed itself through the paper.
The Captain heaved an impatient sigh. ‘Very well, if that is what you wish. I’m not alone in this venture. I myself put up …’
‘Is this necessary?’ demanded Freisen. ‘It really has no bearing …’
‘Everything has bearing, Herr Freisen. That doll’s head, those fragments – blood not on them. Twelve hours of delay you yourself were a party to.’
‘Verdammt, the French! How dare you?’
Louis paused, Kohler could see him impatiently debating whether to answer. ‘I dare because in murder, Herr Freisen, that is so often the only way to uncover the truth. Now, please, allow the Kapitän zur See Kaestner to explain since he is the one we are here to interview.’
And you have set them at each other’s throats by down-grading the C.-in-C. to Mister and using the Captain’s full rank, thought Kohler, pleased.
Kaestner budgeted a tiny smile of understanding and threw the girl the briefest glance as if to say, Relax, Elizabeth. Everything will be all right. You will see.
‘As Captain and Managing Director, I invested 100,000 marks. Each of my officers came in for 25,000 of their hard-earned savings. That makes 200,000 except for …’ He paused. ‘… my Obersteuermann who sees in the venture a place for 50,000 of his carefully hoarded savings. You must remember, gentlemen, that none of us can send our pay home. It all has to be spent in France, yes? so the venture offered not only an avenue of investment we could control but also a very good chance to multiply that investment many times over. No one is making dolls at present, and certainly none of such high quality.’
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