Mannequin

by J. Robert Janes

  ‘Hermann, we need to talk!’

  ‘Later. Somebody gave the SS and the French flics the anonymous nod, Louis, and they put paid to your engravers. Bang, bang.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Yes, dead, damn it! Accused of hiding Jews. Now do you understand?’

  The Press Club’s rätskeller had once been a wine cellar. Broad archways of red brick rose to a dirty white ceiling from which single light bulbs hung on long black cords above crowded tables and chairs. A roaring trade was in progress. There was much tobacco smoke, loud talk, argument, little liaisons—a hand up a skirt—and both French and German men and women. One happy family.

  A French girl was kneeling on the Sonderführer’s table with arms stretched out to the sides, balancing a stein of beer on her pretty head. Nice legs, no stockings—hell, they were as scarce as diamonds these days—beige skirt hitched above the knees, a tight little behind and rosy cheeks.

  It was le Blanc who gave the warning, Kempf who said, ‘Ah, Herr Kohler, it’s good of you to find us.’

  The stein teetered. The girl started to reach for it. Kohler swept the thing off her head and said, ‘Beat it! I have to talk to them, eh? Go piss in a barrel or something. You’re drunk. It’s too early for that.’

  His French was very good and at first she didn’t understand if this was what was really wanted of her and threw the Sonderführer an uncertain look.

  St-Cyr took her by the arm. ‘Pay no attention, mademoiselle. See that you get a couple of beers for my partner and a pastis for me, eh? Now cheer up. It’s really nothing. Put the drinks on the Sonderführer’s tab and have another for yourself. We’ve business. A few questions. Nothing complicated.’

  Unsteadily she fled. Kempf laughed. Le Blanc was uneasy.

  ‘So, mes fins,’ said Kohler, turning the back of her chair towards them and sitting down, ‘a few small words into the shells of your tender ears. Let’s begin with last Wednesday midnight and take it straight from there through Thursday. Who you slept with, where you slept. Give names, addresses and times. Be specific. You’re both under arrest.’

  Doucement, Hermann, go easy. It’s too early for such things, is it not? muttered St-Cyr to himself. Sometimes Hermann could be so impulsive.

  Kempf moved to find an inside pocket of his open jacket. ‘Don’t!’ breathed Kohler. ‘I want answers. Dead men can’t talk.’

  ‘But of course. I was only getting my cigarettes. Perhaps that one could assist’ He gave a nod.

  ‘Louis, see what he’s got inside the jacket’

  There was no gun, only a silver cigarette case that was beautifully engraved and signed With much love, Denise.

  Meunier had engraved the thing. Meunier.

  It was Kempf who grinned and asked, ‘If it’s not too much trouble, Herr Kohler, of what are we accused?’

  Hermann took out his bracelets and laid the handcuffs on the table. ‘Armed robbery and murder.’

  ‘He means it, Franz!’ hissed le Blanc warily.

  ‘Shut up, dummkopf! Robbery, Herr Kohler? Come, come, where’s the proof? Surely it’s within my rights to loan a certain lady the use of my car?’

  ‘Not in wartime. Look, I’ll be blunt. Your description and that of your little squeeze-box exactly fit those of the robbers. We’ve eyewitnesses who will swear to it. Photos as well.’ This last was not true, but what the hell? How were they to know?

  ‘Photos?’ blurted le Blanc—they were still speaking French. ‘That’s not possible.’

  Hermann grinned. ‘Then you tell me why it isn’t.’

  Kempf finally took a cigarette from his case and lit up. The Bavarian was making a nuisance of himself, the French flic with the moustache was simply studying the proceedings intensely. ‘There are no photos of us, Herr Kohler. I was not even near the Crédit Lyonnais at the time of the robbery and neither was my “concertina”, as you put it. We were on our way back into the city from le Bourget. Fräulein Schlaak had to be told something, since the reason for my absence was top secret and those were my orders.’

  ‘Yet you didn’t use your car for such a purpose?’ asked St-Cyr quitely.

  The Sonderführer’s look was cold. ‘We had a briefing to attend. The Graf von Stenglin had come straight from Berlin to inform us of the latest situation in Russia and to discuss policy. Monsieur le Blanc was joining Denise and myself for lunch at Maxim’s so I asked him to come along, but he waited in another room.’

  Was it all so clear and tidy? ‘What time was the briefing?’ asked Hermann, failing to hide the note of disappointment and not following up on how they had got to the aerodrome.

  Kempf drew on his cigarette and studied these two Schweine Bullen who had thought they had the world by the balls. ‘From 0800 hours until noon. We were,’ he said tiredly, ‘a little late for lunch.’

  The son of a bitch! ‘If you’re lying,’ said Kohler, ‘I won’t just have your balls.’

  Their drinks finally came. Le Blanc watched as the one called Louis tossed his off neat without even looking at it. Had the Sûréti noticed something, some small inflection or nervous habit? What really was going through that head of his? That the Occupation afforded opportunity and licence to pursue the dark side of human existence? That robbery and murder could have official sanction? Yes, yes, that was what he was thinking. Then he’ll find the girl Franz got to kneel on the table. He’ll ask of the waiters and discover that one of them was paid to act as a look-out to warn them of Herr Kohler’s arrival.

  It wouldn’t take them long to discover that the briefing had lasted but an hour and that the Junkers Ju 52 had been late due to bad weather but that even so, they had been free by 10.15 a.m.

  Then they’d find that the car to le Bourget had belonged to the Kriegsmarine’s press officer and that they had simply hitched a ride because Franz had wanted Denise to have his car for the day. Ah yes, but they still wouldn’t be able to discover the truth.

  ‘So, are we still under arrest, Herr Kohler?’ asked Franz. Merde alors, thought le Blanc, why couldn’t he take the arrogance from his manner?

  ‘Do you both play squash?’ asked Kohler. As sure as that God of Louis’s frowned on detectives, these bastards had been up to something and still were. Had they been fucking Joanne? Was that why the smart-assed smugness, or had they merely stolen the money?

  ‘Squash,’ said Kempf with a grin. ‘Michel lets me beat him but gives me a good run for his money.’

  Self-consciously le Blanc tossed his head a little to one side and shrugged.

  ‘Oh come now, Michel,’ snorted Kempf, looking at him. ‘I always knew you were better at it than I, but you know your place. You’re a realist and that is good. Does that one?’ he asked, turning to Kohler and pointing at Louis. ‘Or is he one of the stubborn?’

  ‘Hermann, leave it!’ hissed St-Cyr.

  ‘Of course, but if he asks around about you, Louis, I’m going to haunt him, and in any case, we’re not finished. Don’t either of you leave town. Clock in at 0700 hours on the dot to Sturmbannführer Boemelburg personally and provide him with a typed and signed itinerary for each day. We’ll want to contact you, so make it easy for us.’

  ‘Boemelburg …?’ began le Blanc, definitely not happy about it.

  Kohler stood up. ‘The Big Chief himself, schmuck. He’s a personal friend and old acquaintance of my partner.’

  Swiftly he retrieved the bracelets but left the beers untouched. ‘Louis, let’s take in a bit of the show. I need to forget what I’ve just had to deal with. My boys are dying because of crap like this.’

  Later they sat in the car discussing things in the freezing cold and darkness at the side of the Champs-Élysées, knowing Kempf and his friend had realized they would be followed and had slipped away.

  ‘Provins is only about 80 kilometres from Paris, Hermann. Kempf and le Blanc could have gone there under the assumed identities, hidden the cash, and come back easily under Kempf’s auspices using their own identities and no one really the wiser
. They could be using the Château des belles fleurs bleues. Vergès and his son might no longer be alive.’

  Uncomfortable at the thought, Kohler fiddled with a cigarette. ‘It doesn’t make a bit of sense having a man-shy thing like Marie-Claire de Brisson working with those two humpers. By rights that third set of papers ought to have been for Denise St. Onge, not her.’

  ‘Then is it that she asked Mademoiselle de Brisson to have those papers forged for her friends, Hermann, or is it that Mademoiselle St. Onge doesn’t even know of them?’

  A man had turned in the alarm on the engravers. No doubt he had spoken fluent French. But had Denise St. Onge been the one to warn her lover there might be trouble?

  Kohler recalled the photograph on her mantelpiece of her and Kempf and how the hat of the banker’s daughter had cast its shadow behind the couple to spoil the snapshot. In just such little things were there sometimes answers.

  ‘Did Mademoiselle de Brisson lie to me about being in the back of the shop with Mademoiselle St. Onge?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘Was her employer and friend watching the street for the robbers or following Joanne, or both?’

  ‘Then why scatter the photographs if you’re a part of it?’

  Why indeed. It was a problem.

  Kohler lit the cigarette and took two deep drags before sharing it. ‘Was that teller silenced, Louis? Did he recognize the Sonderführer from an earlier visit with Mademoiselle St. Onge, a visit perhaps to put pressure on the banker to extend her shop more credit?’

  It was a possibility, but an idiot could have hit the teller at that range.

  Again they came back to the woman in the street. Had she felt Joanne a threat and followed her simply for this reason? If so, then there might be no connection to what had been going on in that house, only its final interruption.

  ‘An amateur photographer,’ said Kohler. ‘A good one but one who, on the surface at least, hasn’t used her cameras since before the Defeat and in any case takes only sweetheart photos because …’

  A cloud of cigarette smoke filled the air. ‘Because “To forget is to survive.” Our Mademoiselle de Brisson said this to me at the shop and now you have supplied the answer as to why she said it.’

  ‘But if sexually abused, why the desire to abuse and kill girls who want to become mannequins and then, only those with chestnut hair and deep brown eyes?’

  ‘To do to others what she herself has had to endure, Hermann. To get back at what has happened—it’s common enough, but is Mademoiselle St. Onge aware of her friend’s abuse and using it in some way? The girls, that house …?’

  ‘Or to extend her credit at the father’s bank?’

  ‘Yes, the bank, or is it that the daughter herself has warned the father that if he shuts down the shop of her friend, he ends her own silence?’

  There were other problems. The presence of the jewellery in the shop window; similar things among the bric-à-brac of Mademoiselle St. Onge’s flat—hieroglyphics, tablets, seals … Egyptian things—she had often loaned clothing from the shop to the banker’s daughter.

  ‘So, what about the drooler?’ asked Kohler, clearing a patch of frost to stare out at the street. ‘Do we write him off as being completely innocent?’

  St-Cyr heaved a troubled sigh. ‘The drooler, ah yes, Gaetan Vergès and his fiancée, Angèlique Desthieux. It’s still possible the drooler could have waited upstairs until the initial photographs had been taken and Joanne was then completely naked.’

  ‘The poor kid.’

  ‘A mannequin with chestnut hair and deep brown eyes,’ said St-Cyr of Angèlique Desthieux, ‘whose career ended abruptly when someone threw acid into her face. She had a business agent, one Albert Luc Tonnerre who fell in love with her in spite of her betrothal to Gaetan Vergès.’

  ‘Did the drooler know him?’

  ‘Most probably.’

  Then that’s one more reason for us to visit the Château,’ breathed Kohler, lost to old memories of that other war, to unparalleled suffering and what it had done to decent men. Changed their whole personalities, made some men hate so much they would …

  ‘There is another reason,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Monsieur Vergès senior had a number of paintings in that house. Were they stolen and is this not why the house was emptied so quickly?’

  ‘The auction … the invitation to the Jeu de Paume and the Ritz.’

  ‘And afterwards, on the morning of the 1st, the banker’s daughter quietly leaves Paris for Dijon and the home of the drooler’s ex-fiancée.’

  They had both avoided one thing, and Kohler knew he would have to mention it. He started the car—he’d give it a moment to warm up. Christ! It was nearly eight o’clock. ‘One of the victims died of acid burns, Louis.’

  ‘Ah yes, but the acid was deliberately not thrown in her face. It was poured on the rest of her. That’s what puzzles me.’

  Silenced by the thought, they drove slowly to the Palais Royal and round past the Bank of France to leave the car in the rue de Valois which was even darker than the Champs-Élysées.

  Louis would talk to Madame Lemaire and her maid, leaving the Gestapo half of their partnership to speak to the neighbours on the other side of that empty house, then they would both have a few quiet words with the banker and his daughter.

  ‘Inspector—Madame, she is still at her supper. Could you …?’

  ‘Come back a little later?’ asked St-Cyr. ‘Ah, no, Mademoiselle Nanette. Murder seldom allows the luxury of such lapses and it is, I fear, your murder I’m worried about.’

  ‘Mine? Ah no. No!’

  He slid into the vestibule, into that tired remnant of a once proud house and touched a finger to his lips as she sat on the little bench Madame Lemaire used when putting on her over-boots or simply resting after coming in from the street. ‘Please, it’s best we talk and that you give me straight answers.’

  Moisture made her large blue eyes all the clearer, reminding him again and poignandy of Marianne, his dead wife. ‘Nanette, why didn’t you tell me that on the night the furniture was taken from next door, you went outside to see whose firm it was? You couldn’t have seen this from the windows above the street.’

  The darkness … the black-out. He would pry the answers from her now and she would have to tell him. Then he would despise her and not ask his friends if they could find a position for her in their shop when Madame passed away. ‘The noises, Inspector, I … I was worried so I …’

  ‘When you heard those lorries, you took your life into your hands. Did you not realize how dangerous it was to go out there?’

  Her eyes were wiped with her fingers. ‘No one saw me. I … I was careful.’

  ‘Were there really four men and were they all French?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No women?’

  ‘No. Ah … Perhaps. I … I can’t really say. Forgive me, but I can’t.’

  ‘Did they say anything to each other? Come, come, there is very little time.’

  ‘Only that they must be careful not to make much noise, that they must look as if they were simply doing a job. They … they had papers to … to prove who they were and why they were there. One of them said this to the others and warned them to let him do the talking if the police or the Germans came by.’

  More forgeries … the papers would have been taken from the firm’s warehouse in Saint-Denis. St-Cyr drew in an impatient breath. The girl must be made to realize he wasn’t happy with her answers. ‘Did that one have a name?’

  She shook her head. ‘They said so little and I … I was afraid to stay too close to them.’

  He would have to let it be but had to ask, ‘Has Madame ever mentioned the name of that firm?’

  There was a startled look he would not forget. ‘They … they …’

  ‘Well, what is it?’

  ‘Dallaire and Sons used to do all the moving business for the houses of the Palais Royal. Madame, she has told me that when Monsieur de Brisson and his wife and daughter moved in ten years ago, it �
� it was they who did the moving.’

  And now you’ve trapped yourself, thought St-Cyr, because, ma chère Nanette, you didn’t ask this of your employer until after that house had been emptied. ‘What made you ask her? Come, come, you saw something else. I know you did. Was it then or earlier? Much earlier? People coming and going, a girl …’

  She gave a nod and took a deep breath. ‘The cat. I … The cat came to the window-doors of my room. I … I let it in.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Late last spring.’

  ‘The cat of Madame de Brisson?’

  ‘Oui. It wanders. I …’

  How pale she was and so preoccupied she didn’t even hear Madame Lemaire asking for her. ‘You were lonely and frightened,’ he said. Her eyes were downcast, the lashes long and damp. ‘You took the cat in for a little company, Nanette, and Mademoiselle de Brisson came for it.’

  ‘She had seen me looking out my windows while holding it. She demanded that I return it. I did so.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And she told me never again to step out on to the balcony to retrieve it or anything else. She … she has said she would report me to the authorities if I ever went out there again, and … and that she would tell them I was illegally in the city. Illegally when I have worked for Madame these past five years and am a good girl!’

  There was a sudden rush of tears that made him want to comfort her but he must not do so.

  ‘Could Mademoiselle de Brisson have felt you had seen something you shouldn’t have in the house next door?’

  The apron was used to blow her nose and wipe her eyes, making him ask himself, Why must God remind him of how unhappy Marianne had been? The long absences, the loneliness of the house at 3 Laurence-Savart. The feeling of still being a foreigner trapped in the big city never knowing if he would return alive from yet another murder case or robbery.