Mannequin

by J. Robert Janes

  Would he ask Marie-Claire the same question? Had he already done so? she wondered. If so, then perhaps he had already discovered that she hadn’t been in the shop at all.

  ‘Why, what else but little things?’, she said, giving him a delicate and very shy shrug. ‘The girls and their problems—they do get jealous of one another from time to time, Inspector. The need for us to use better mannequins, the …’

  ‘The jewellery in the window, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Ah yes, the jewellery. Tonnerre … is this what you think? That he has supplied the shop? If so, you are mistaken. Marie-Claire is always searching for things that please me, Inspector. The jewellery suits—you can see I have an interest in such things.’

  A slender arm indicated the scattered bibelots, gold signets with hieroglyphs, clay tablets, bits of pottery, bits of gold, silver and bronze.

  ‘They’re lovely,’ he said, ‘as is the necklace you’re wearing. Mannequins?’ he asked suddenly.

  The girl … how much did they know? she worried and found the will to say, ‘Yes, but we don’t use them so much, Inspector. For the time being, we’ve decided to set the question aside.’

  The Bavarian got up suddenly and she saw him pass before her without a downward glance. He went over to the small round table, the one with the scattering of things picked up in the bazaars of Cairo and Alexandria in the summer of 1936. He searched, he paused, he picked up and put down, and at last he asked, ‘Could I use the toilet? I need to drain the battery. All this rain …’ He grinned as a schoolboy would but it was not a nice grin.

  ‘Yes, of course. Jeanne is in the kitchen and will show you where it is.’ Were the maid and he old friends? she wondered apprehensively. Had he spoken to Jeanne in the street that time before …?

  ‘Mademoiselle St. Onge,’ began Louis, ‘your relationship to the Sonderführer Kempf, please?’

  ‘Is he suspected of anything, of this … this robbery, this girl …?’

  ‘The girl. Yes, yes,’ said St-Cyr as if reminded of it and dismissing totally any question of Kempf. ‘The poor thing suspected nothing, mademoiselle. An advertisement in Le Matin. A call for mannequins. No experience necessary. Here … here, I have it on me somewhere. May I?’ he asked indicating the coffee table between them.

  ‘Mais certainement,’ she said and saw him quickly begin to empty his pockets. An invitation to the Jeu de Paume just like the one on her mantelpiece … a small pencil sketch of the … the girl. Was it really her—where had he got it? Where? A square pad of cotton—cotton! A card announcing the engagement of …

  ‘Angèlique Desrhieux and Captain Gaetan Vergès, mademoiselle,’ he said, looking at her with those priest’s eyes of his! Ah Jésus, cher Jésus, how much did they know of this affair and why was he trying to single her out and hold her here while the other one, he … he went through the things in her bedroom? Is this what he was doing, the one from the Gestapo?

  A cancelled ticket for the Métro, a …

  ‘Ah, at last,’ he said. ‘You must pardon me, mademoiselle. I’m not used to a dinner-jacket and find, alas, that its pockets are not as accommodating as those of my suit.’

  St-Cyr unfolded the torn little square of newspaper and, glancing over it to give her time to worry, finally handed it to her. This is the advertisement, mademoiselle. We’ve obtained photographs of the girl. Apparently she was asked to pose and to wear certain things.’

  ‘Photographs …?’

  Was it such a devastating revelation, so utterly unexpected?

  ‘Yes. Scattered all over the floors of an empty house.’

  Sickened, she tried to tell herself he was only bluffing but she couldn’t stop herself from trembling and this, why it shook the scrap of newspaper, telegraphing its little message to him. ‘Photographs …?’ She blanched. ‘Of what, exacdy?’

  It would only unsettle her more if he were to raise his eyebrows and shrug, so he would do so and claim the matter of little consequence. ‘Of this one and other girls modelling clothes as I’ve only just said, mademoiselle—jewellery like you have in the window of your shop.’

  ‘Girls …? Jewellery …? My shop …?’

  The deep brown eyes had rapidly moistened, the lovely red lips that had pouted only a few moments ago, now quivered.

  ‘Fourteen young girls, Mademoiselle St. Onge, all of whom were photographed in exactly the same poses and wearing the same things—things we believe came from your shop. The jewellery …’

  ‘Marie-Claire … She has purchased it for the shop! She was the one to find it. She has borrowed things from time to time. Dresses, skirts, blouses … I …’

  ‘What, mademoiselle?’

  She shook her pretty head and touched the base of her throat. ‘I … I don’t know how she could possibly be involved in such a thing. Fourteen girls …? So many? What … what has become of them, Inspector? Lured by this … this advertisement to some house. What house, please?’

  Anger reddened her cheeks, sharpening the features.

  ‘For now the location of the house can’t be divulged, mademoiselle, but you can be certain someone scattered photographs of all of those girls.’

  All of them … ‘I don’t know anything of this! How could I?’

  ‘That’s exactly what my partner and I would like to know.’

  She dropped her eyes to the scrap of newspaper in her lap and read it silently.

  Wanted by a noted fashion house, girls of suitable ability … Hair of chestnut brown, eyes of the same …

  ‘My hair, my eyes,’ she said, desperate now.

  ‘And your ear-ring, I believe,’ breathed Kohler, dangling the thing in front of her face.

  ‘You … you had no right to …’

  ‘We have every right. Where’s the other one?’ he demanded.

  Furious with them, she raised a dismissive hand, tossed her head and all but shouted, ‘How could I know? One loses things like that all the time!’

  ‘Louis, do we take her in and lock her up?’

  The other ear-ring, Mademoiselle St. Onge, where might you have lost it, please?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Hermann, could I see this one, please?’ St-Cyr took the trinket and held it to the light, then found his reading glasses and put them on. The same,’ he sighed, the sadness all too clear. ‘Joanne,’ he said. The last one was very brave, mademoiselle.’

  As he unfolded a clean white handkerchief, stains of blood appeared against the cloth and dried little crumbs of it fell to the table to lie on the notice of engagement and others on the invitation to the Jeu de Paume and afterwards the supper at the Ritz.

  There was blood on the tiny scarab of turquoise that dangled by its thread of gold to match those that were around her neck and wrist. ‘Inspectors, I … I know that is mine—yes!’ she cried and hugged her knees to bury her face in them. ‘But … but I don’t know where I lost it’

  They stood over her, these two detectives. She could feel their eyes on the back of her neck and shoulders … Ah merde … merde, what was happening to her?

  ‘Hermann, see that she accompanies us to the Jeu de Paume.’

  ‘Like this?’ she cried out, looking up at them in tears. ‘How could I?’

  ‘Because you must,’ said St-Cyr. ‘Because perhaps to save yourself, we may have need of you.’

  ‘I didn’t do it!’

  ‘But you knew of it, mademoiselle, and for us, that is enough.’

  ‘He … he made me.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘No one. No one! I … I shouldn’t have said that!’

  ‘Hermann, take her. I can’t stand to look at her any more. I’m sorry.’

  They both heard Louis throwing up into the kitchen sink but when he came back, he was all right. ‘The paintings, Hermann, and then the supper, I think, if necessary.’

  ‘Shall I put the bracelets on her?’ The handcuffs …

  ‘No. She’s to appear as though free but must accompany us. We’re going
as her guests. Please inform her of this.’

  ‘What about Gabrielle?’

  ‘She’ll realize that I’ve been detained, Hermann—police work, always the work—and will meet us there.’

  The Jeu de Paume had once been a place for court tennis. Occupying the north-western corner of the Tuileries Gardens, it had, before the Defeat of 1940, housed contemporary works by foreign artists. Now it had become a legend that even the long arch of its glassed-in iron roof, blued with black-out paint, could not hide.

  In gallery after gallery there were oil paintings, charcoal sketches and watercolours in gilded, richly carved frames, superb pieces of sculpture, altar cloths, Gobelin tapestries, Savonnerie carpets, displays of estate jewellery and silver, diamonds, topazes, emeralds and rubies, porcelain and crystal.

  Everywhere there was the glitter, the animated gestures and loud talk of well-dressed men with fashionable women, old, young, the not-so-young, everywhere the smart uniforms and medals of the Occupier.

  It was as if all the boredom of winter, the Occupation and the war had been set aside and everyone who was anyone in Paris was desperate for a good time. Old friends met, new ones were made. Lovers kissed and held hands or sipped the free champagne and smoked cigarettes in ivory or ebony-and-silver holders or chose from trays of canapés to loud exclamations, lots of laughter, the delighted oohs and ahs of dumbfounded browsers who had come for the gossip, the excitement, the fun, the titillation and the food, of course. Canapés au caviar—little rounds of unsweetened brioche toasted a golden brown, spread with caviar butter and heaped in the centre with black caviar sprinkled with chives. Paupiettes d’anchois Monselet—scrolled anchovies stuffed with the yolks of hard-boiled eggs on small rounds of toast, covered with anchovy butter. Shrimp, herring and smoked eel with mustard butter … pâtés, fresh oysters in the half-shell, bouchées … puff pastry stuffed with a paste of smoked, Norwegian salmon. Ah nom de Dieu! the flavour … To refuse such temptations, the price of honour, but one must. The city was starving!

  Everywhere there were the dealers, dour and serious, smug and secure in their assessment and mentally tallying their profits. Belgians, Dutch, French—yes, of course! thought St-Cyr angrily—Swiss and Norwegians—Italians. From all over Axis Europe they had flocked to haggle, to buy and cart home the plundered treasures of France, or to sell.

  Dismayed—taken aback by the wealth of art that had been assembled—he clutched Denise St. Onge all the harder by the left arm and felt an utter fool, utterly helpless.

  Never in his wildest imagination had he believed the theft so great, the rape so deep. ‘It’s the sale of the century, Hermann,’ he said, his voice but a desperate whisper.

  ‘The Einsatzstab-Reichleiter Rosenberg, Louis, with offices at 54 avenue d’léna and warehouses wherever they need them. The whole of the Leviton department store in the Faubourg Saint-Martin is being used as a storehouse!’

  There were stacks of paintings in addition to those that hung on the walls, stacks of everything. Set up by Hitler primarily to acquire works of art for the Linz Project, his pet dream of creating the world’s leading art museum on the banks of the Danube, the ERR handled mostly confiscated works of art. Jews, Freemasons, Communists and other political undesirables, all had to forfeit everything. So, too, uncooperative businessmen, industrialists, private collectors and dealers who refused to sell when they should or who had not listed all their valuables as required by law.

  Goering bought in bulk by the railway truckload, traded avidly, selling what he didn’t want for Karinhall, his huge country estate just to the north of Berlin. Others bought for the institutes of higher learning in the Reich and for its museums and galleries. Still others bought for themselves or sold, and always the dealers, anxious to burn up the grossly inflated new francs of the Occupation, bought so as to send the money home in the form of something tangible they could then flog to one of the Nazi bigwigs at a hundred per cent profit or more.

  ‘Rembrandt, Goya, Frans Hals and Rubens, Hermann. Not one canvas but ten or more of each.’

  ‘Degas, Manet, Sisley, and Cézanne,’ spat Denise St. Onge, desperately searching the crowd for help. ‘You can’t stop it! You can only join in.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said St-Cyr. ‘And isn’t that what you did, mademoiselle?’

  ‘I … I don’t know what you mean?’

  Frantically she tried to find a way out for herself. A Luftwaffe waiter, one of many, passed with a tray of champagne in tall glasses. ‘The Dom Pérignon, mademoiselle, the Piper-Heidsieck or the Krug?’

  She could throw it into St-Cyr’s face and run. ‘The Dom Perignon, please,’ she said.

  ‘Messieurs?’ asked the waiter.

  Louis shook his head, Kohler said, ‘It’s too acid for the stomach. Beer is my drink, his is pastis and the lady isn’t drinking because she would only have to visit the toilets and I would have to sit with her.’

  ‘Bâtard!’ she hissed. ‘Franz will be here and so will the Reichsmarschall Goering who is his cousin and mine! Yes, mine! you fools. Franz and I are cousins.’

  There were Luftwaffe guards at the entrance and at all other doors. There were Luftwaffe security officers everywhere. Hell, the Reichsmarschall’s air force handled all transport for the ERR to and from the Reich, thereby ensuring total control of all sales and a first look at all items.

  ‘A moment, mon vieux. Don’t let her out of your sight. I must find the one who purchased the forged papers,’ said St-Cyr.

  ‘The forged papers …?’ began Mademoiselle St. Onge. ‘For whom? What forged papers? Who has done such a thing?’

  Kohler dragged out his bracelets and put one around her right wrist since she was right-handed and would hit first and hardest with that fist. ‘Now my own,’ he said. ‘Hey, they look good with your gloves. Maybe the two of us will start a new fad and the next owner of your shop can put some in the window.’

  ‘Who did he mean?’ she asked, pleading with her eyes. ‘Was it Marie-Claire …?’ She gasped and held her stomach. ‘Marie for Franz and Michel … ah no. No!’

  She swung hard. Kohler grabbed her by the wrist. She spat in his face and tried to knee him in the groin. He forced her left arm back and down until, in shock, disconcerted and wanting to keep their distance, the crowd around them cleared and a small space was left.

  She knelt on the floor at his feet, head bowed in despair. ‘Franz …’ she blurted. ‘Franz, please help me!’

  Kohler wanted to let her stay there so that everyone could see her but knew the scene would only bring trouble. ‘Get up. We’ll find a place for you to tidy your face, eh? and you can tell me all about it’ Louis … where was Louis?

  Several people passed in front of St-Cyr and for a moment his view of Marie-Clarie de Brisson was obstructed, then there she was again. Nervously she jotted down a last note, only to hesitate as if not certain she had written enough. The bared breasts of the painting … the hat with its red flowers … the shoulders … the expression of the woman … was it not one of, ‘He does not like what he sees of me?’

  The breasts were full and round but as to why the woman in the painting was partially disrobed, ah, who was to say? ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’ said St-Cyr pleasantly, the man on holiday.

  ‘You? Ah! Why … why are you here, Inspector?’

  Was it so terrible? ‘Why, to view the paintings like everyone else.’

  Her green eyes darted away to the floor, to the pad and pencil in her hands, to the painting on the wall … the painting. ‘It’s what men look at,’ she said sharply. ‘Please excuse me!’

  ‘A moment, mademoiselle.’ Their eyes met. She trembled. ‘Are you planning to bid on this one,’ he asked, ‘or on the other pieces for which you have made notes?’

  ‘I … I was just curious. It’s … it’s a thing I often do.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind my glancing over your notes.’

  She felt him tug the little notepad from her. She tried not to cry and wished he woul
dn’t spoil everything for her. Everything!

  The golden yellow mohair dress was perfect for her, sharpening as it did the rapidly misting eyes, the dark red hair with its pixie cut, the tenseness of cheek, chin and brow. ‘A Dürer,’ he said of the list, ‘a Cranach … the two Vermeers, a fifteenth-century, all but life-sized sculpture of Eve, the two Gobelin tapestries that are now hanging in the third gallery or was it the fourth? The painting by Manet of a girl and her mother at a railway station, this study of a woman done perhaps in …’ He examined the little card on the wall and said, ‘Yes, of course, in 1878.’

  ‘Inspector, what is it you want of me?’

  Her expression was one of devastation and he knew she didn’t wish him to spoil things for her. ‘Want? Why nothing for the moment. Will you be attending the sale?’

  ‘Yes, to …’

  ‘To record the prices or to bid?’

  ‘To record. It … it’s all I can do.’

  Excusing himself, he drifted amiably off through the crowd and she was left to stare at his broad back and shoulders until, at last, he was gone but then a woman stood close by and she heard her saying, ‘Ah, Sainte-Mère, it’s magnificent, isn’t it? The tone, the way the flowers are clustered in the hatband to one side, their colour offsetting everything. What will it fetch, do you think?’

  ‘I … I’ve no idea. Too much, probably.’

  ‘1,250,000, I think. Of the new francs, of course.’

  The woman was tall and in her late thirties perhaps, though it was hard to tell. Not blonde but hair of an exquisite amber. A gorgeous figure, a sheath of dark Prussian blue silk that shimmered. Diamonds at her throat and wrist, and violet eyes that were absolutely stunning and brought instant envy.

  ‘Gabrielle Arcuri,’ said the woman of herself, ‘and you?’

  The hand was cool and slender, the fingers long. ‘Marie-Claire de Brisson. Your perfume, it’s Mirage.’

  ‘I love it. But … but you must have some! I insist. Please, a moment. Here … hold my programme. Merci. This bag, it’s not my usual one. Tissues, keys … Ah, here I have it. Allow me to present you with a little sample. A very dear friend makes it for me and in return I advertise it a little. But … but your eyes, Mademoiselle de Brisson? Something has upset you.’