Sandman

by J. Robert Janes

  Very well, I will, breathed Kohler to himself, dragging out the page he had torn from Madame Rébé’s register. ‘Over perhaps, but not as of last Thursday, madame. “The Vernet woman. Two hours. Two hundred francs. From two-thirty p.m. until four-thirty. A good session.” ’

  Ah no …

  He tossed a look at Louis and saw him give a nod indicating, Let her have it. ‘You knew Liline Chambert was pregnant and that your husband planned to divorce you and marry her, madame, and that you would lose everything—this house, all the money, the factories—but no one here knew you were also pregnant.’

  ‘I have nothing more to say. I have done nothing illegal. I am totally innocent.’

  ‘Then why, please,’ asked Louis, ‘is that dog of yours hanging out there?’

  ‘I DON’T KNOW, DAMN YOU! I DON’T! I DON’T!’

  What had begun in anger and rage had now turned into a disaster for Madame Vernet—St-Cyr was all but certain of this—but had that child really known who the Sandman was, and if so, why had she not left a name for them?

  The bedroom felt so strongly of her it was as if he could hear her crying out, I wanted to tell the préfet. I wanted to be alone with him just for a moment but was refused.

  She would have been afraid to tell anyone else but Andrée that she herself was in danger. She must have overheard something in the garden, in the folly perhaps at night, Madame Vernet out with the dog. ‘Kill her,’ he whispered, using words the woman might have said to Rébé. ‘Make it look as though the Sandman did it. I’ll take care of Liline. The girl will listen to me. She’ll have to. She’ll be no problem.’

  A triangle. The mistake in the cage of doves, the abortion, and the child still alive and free.

  Hermann was downstairs questioning the staff. For himself there was now that rare moment of reflection, a time too often denied.

  The press were demanding answers. Vernet was not a name or man to be trifled with, but in so many ways he typified the industrialist.

  Exactly four weeks after the armistice of July 1940 the Caudron-Renault Works had applied to the Ministry of Aviation to build hundreds of trainers for the Luftwaffe. To be fair, had they not stayed in business, their works would simply have been taken over and run by others.

  In August of that same year, the nation’s largest aero-engine plant, Gnome-et-Rhône, offered to supply engines and spare parts to the Luftwaffe. Orders for bomb components were filled by the Schneider-Creusot Works. The list was endless, and they, too—all of them—really could not have refused, but such eagerness. It was a tragedy and someday there would be a terrible reckoning.

  But for now, where was that child and what, really, did she know?

  He sat down at her desk and, taking the things from his pockets, carefully arranged them before the map of the city with its press clippings and locations of the murders.

  ‘She knew of the house on the rue Chabanais,’ he said, thinking of the coins from Occupied Europe and the used condom. ‘She knew Violette Belanger was the sister of Céline, whom the girls of her class all hated with a passion. “Father” Eugène Debauve thus knows of the child. He has a history of interference with young girls and, through the escort service he runs, must also know of Herr Hasse and that one’s problems, but is either of them the Sandman?’

  They had so little to go on. The giraffe is stolen during the first week of November, well before the murders. None of the schoolgirls will own up to it, thus tormenting Sister Céline even more. Are her visits to Violette increased?’ he wondered. ‘Later, on a dare no doubt, Andrée exhibits her courage by stealing the baby elephant. It is proof that they are “blood sisters”.

  ‘A note is left in the Arizona book. They’ll visit the library after they have proven beyond doubt that Nénette was the target. She knew it was a gamble. She knew of Madame Rébé and of her aunt’s extended visits to the clairvoyant. The Tarot cards gave meaning, the tiepin its proof. The clear crystal of quartz, bought in the shop next door and perhaps with the cards, must have been her crystal ball.’

  When he found the rest of the cards in a drawer, he found the little booklet of instructions that went with them and saw where the child had marked those meanings he himself and Oona had used.

  ‘We think alike in this matter,’ he said and sighed, but then laid out the death’s-head cap badge, the wound badges and medals, the tin pencil case and empty tube of paint.

  The SS-Attack Leader Gerhardt Hasse was an enigma, and it made one decidedly uncomfortable to finger these objects while looking at the photographs Hasse had taken of soup kitchens and schoolgirls. But what, really, did all these things tell him? The fob from an ear-ring, a condom. Pseudo-schoolgirls being ‘violated’ by soldiers in a brothel, all in the name of pleasure.

  That tiepin …

  He shut his eyes and willed himself to find answers before it was too late. Madame Vernet must have sat here just as he was doing. She must have gone through the child’s desk and her coat pockets, even to finding the key to the pencil drawer and opening it, but had Nénette been aware of this? Had that child trapped her aunt by deliberately placing things before her?

  Beefsteaks over an open fire … a coat whose lining was stuffed with leaves, a crucifix and a knitting needle …

  A note: I am alive and I will haunt you. Another: Je t’aime. She had found something. The tiepin. The Sandman would strike so close the chef would feel his breath.

  But had she really known who the Sandman was, and if not, would she now seek refuge with him?

  The housekeeper’s wavy dark auburn hair had recently been brushed; her cheeks were still pale but made more so by the lack of lipstick.

  ‘Nénette would not have wanted to see that dog killed, Inspector,’ she said to Kohler, her blue eyes earnest. ‘Oh, for sure she hated Pompon. We all did. The thing was always yapping, always peeing where it shouldn’t. But for her to have had a dog of her own in the house with that creature was impossible. We gave her the charm bracelet to help. She loved animals, especially horses. That is why she and Andrée so often went to the riding stables to watch the dressage or simply to see them being groomed.’

  Ah now, what was this? Was it too much to hope for? ‘Did she ever mention a stablehand, Julien Rébé?’

  The chef deferred to the housekeeper. Subdued and silent, the maid, a girl of eighteen, sat at the table opposite the housekeeper. The chauffeur had still not returned with Vernet.

  Hesitantly Madame Therrien tapped cigarette ash into her saucer. She would have to tell him. ‘Though it wasn’t allowed, that one, he would sometimes let them help him. Nénette said, “I always present him with two five-franc pieces. One is for drink, the other for his amusement, since his mother refuses to give him a sou and he is not paid very much.” She said he and the others used the manure piles in late summer and fall to cure the leaves for tobacco and tea. The heat from the decomposition does it.’

  ‘The red beech …’ said Kohler.

  ‘Yes,’ enthused the chef. ‘It’s really very good—there’s absolutely no taste, so it remains neutral when mixed with tobacco. Nénette managed to get me a little. A small present.’

  ‘The leaves of the currant bushes and mint also, Inspector. Leaves for the teas his mother would then serve to her clients as a “courtesy”,’ said Madame Therrien, causing him to wonder just how much she really knew of her mistress’s affair.

  ‘Then all three of you knew Julien Rébé’s mother was Madame Vernet’s clairvoyant?’ he asked.

  How polite of him, thought Kalfou, but said, ‘Madame always spoke very highly of the woman, Inspector. Who were we to question so many extended visits?’

  ‘Okay, so did those two girls consider Julien Rébé a friend?’

  Madame Therrien had a very positive but attractive way of shaking her head. ‘Not a friend, but friendly. A curiosity perhaps. Please don’t forget they had been sheltered. They were both very privileged, yes, but coming into their own and desirous of experiencing the world
.’

  Amen, was that it, eh? he wondered.

  ‘He let them watch a mare being bred, Inspector,’ she confided. ‘That was months and months ago. They peered through cracks in the walls and no one caught them. Nénette paid him fifty francs for the “privilege”.’

  Ah, Gott im Himmel, Louis should be here. ‘And did the girls tell you this?’ he hazarded.

  ‘Oh, mon Dieu, are you serious?’ she asked and flashed a rare smile that changed quickly to seriousness at memory. ‘Liline told me. Nénette confided most things in her.’

  ‘But not the identity of the Sandman?’

  ‘No, not that. That she kept to herself.’

  They fell silent. The fire in the stove hissed. The electric clock on the wall ground its way to 11.20 a.m. The maid had still not said a thing or looked up.

  ‘Could Julien Rébé have been following Nénette?’ he asked and saw Madame Therrien and the chef exchange hurried glances. Each began to tell him, only to stop for the other and then to clam up until pressed.

  ‘I … I went to see him,’ she confessed, reaching for the reassurance of her cigarette. ‘It was on Monday morning. Nénette had not come back from walking the dog. I suspected she might have paid the riding stables a visit.’

  ‘And had she?’

  Herr Kohler would not always be so gentle, but it was appreciated. ‘Julien Rébé was not there, nor was Nénette, Inspector. His employer was in a rage and said that of late the boy had been increasingly absent. “I give him a job,” he shouted, “and this is how he repays me? Now he’s here and I can count on him for the half-measure of sweat perhaps, but turn my back and voilà! he’s gone. A magician, eh?” He thought the boy must be having an affair with one of the girls in the children’s restaurant, in the … the tearoom.’

  ‘But he was watching for Nénette and was following her, was that it?’ he asked and saw all three of them duck their eyes away and swallow tightly.

  ‘If he has killed Andrée, Inspector,’ said Madame Therrien softly, ‘I shall never forgive myself.’

  ‘Nor I myself,’ said the chef, all choked up. ‘Nénette did say she was being followed—yes, yes, I admit it. But I did not discover who it was or think that it might have been that one.’

  At last the maid found her voice, but barely. ‘Madame is pregnant, I think, but … but it cannot have been the monsieur because I … I have overheard her saying on the telephone, “I have to get rid of it. You’ve got to help me.”’

  Again he wished Louis was with them. ‘And to whom was she speaking?’ he asked so gently the girl realized he would not tell the monsieur she had been listening in.

  ‘To … to a woman named Violette. Madame Vernet has insisted on a meeting. This they … they have arranged for last Tuesday at noon. Apparently no other time was suitable.’

  ‘In the Café of the Turning Hour?’

  They would all hate her now, Kalfou and Madame Isabelle … all of them for not having spoken up earlier and given warning. ‘The Brasserie de Tout Bonheur. It … it is on the rue Vivienne near the Bibliothèque Nationale. I made a point of going there, just to see it from the street, you understand.’

  She saw him nod, saw him pass round more cigarettes, and when her fingers touched his, he telegraphed an urgency that frightened.

  ‘Did Nénette ask you to do that for her?’

  ‘Liline … Liline did so. She … she said she wanted to know for sure that … that things were being taken care of. She knew of the meeting but … but was afraid to go herself.’

  Shit! ‘What things?’

  ‘She … she did not say, monsieur! Please, you must believe mé!’

  ‘Élène, why did you not come to me with this?’ demanded Madame Therrien only to be stilled by an upraised forefinger.

  Kohler gave them a moment, then sighed as if the life had suddenly gone from him, and said quite simply, ‘So Madame Vernet made arrangements not for herself but for Liline Chambert?’

  The girl shut her eyes and hastily crossed herself, begging God’s forgiveness. ‘Yes. That … that is how it must have been. The abortion for Liline, monsieur. Liline!’

  She broke down and the others tried to comfort her as he left the room on the run to call up the main staircase for his partner and then to go into an urgent huddle with him that could not be heard in the kitchens.

  ‘Louis, Madame Vernet went to see Violette to arrange the abortion. Debauve was probably present to lay down the rules. Fifty thousand francs …’

  ‘Two hundred thousand at least, but why risk going to Violette and Debauve, who would be certain to ask for more whenever they felt like it?’

  He had a point.

  ‘Why, indeed, Hermann, unless Madame Vernet knew they would never come back at her.’

  ‘No blackmail, then, because she could blackmail them. Ah Gott im Himmel, Louis, does that woman know who the Sandman is?’

  Debauve.

  A sickening thought. ‘If she does and she has used it also in this matter, only God can answer for her.’

  Had she made certain Liline Chambert would die, had she tried to have her niece killed?

  ‘House arrest,’ breathed Kohler sadly. ‘Nothing official. I’ll say it’s for the family’s protection from the press. I’ll ring von Schaumburg and ask him to arrange it. She isn’t to leave until we tell her to. I’ll also ask for two of the grey mice to sit with her at all times. They’re not to let her out of their sight.’

  The grey mice, the Blitzmädel from the Reich. Stenographers and telegraphists. ‘Vernet might object.’

  ‘He won’t, not if we tell him what we think is true.’

  ‘He may have answers of his own to give.’

  ‘Then we’ll let him have his say and hold the rest in reserve. We’ll keep the two of them apart for as long as possible.’

  ‘He’ll hate her.’

  ‘She must hate him.’

  The armchairs were big and deep and white and draped with white, crocheted throws. The floor was white, the walls were white, the ceiling, too, but there was gold in gilded frames and trumeaux whose mirrors tossed things back and forth, laying down detail upon detail. The plaster bust was of a seer who did not judge; the Grecian torso was of a naked young man who would remain headless, faceless and armless now forever.

  St-Cyr sucked in a breath and released it slowly. ‘In an instant Mademoiselle Chambert comes to us, Hermann. This room is not only filled with her but with the tragedy she had to face.’

  When Vernet found them, the first thing he saw was that they were sitting in those chairs, the next, leaning against the ivory candelabrum among its draped strands of clear glass beads, a 20-by-20-centimetre black-and-white photographic print of Liline in that other room, the tenement on the quai du Président Paul Doumer.

  ‘Inspectors, what is the meaning of this? Have you no sense of decency? How dare you force me to meet you here?’

  Caught in the mirrors, the image of him—quite perfectly dressed in a blue serge business suit and tie, ah yes—bounced back and forth across the room, incensed.

  ‘Please sit over there by the windows, monsieur,’ said the Sûreté, indicating a chair. ‘Light streams in, leaving few shadows. It will be better for us.’

  ‘Where is Nénette? Why haven’t you found her? Just what do you think you’re playing at?’

  They did not answer. They sat in those armchairs and all they did was wait for him to be seated where told.

  He closed the door behind him. He was tall and not unhandsome. He was far more wealthy and powerful than anyone Liline Chambert could ever have aspired to had she been of that mind. But he was vulnerable and knew it.

  Still, there was no harm in trying. ‘I demand an all-out search for my niece The Wehrmacht have tracking dogs. Let them use them.’

  ‘But … but those are very vicious animals, monsieur,’ said Louis, aghast.

  Irritably Vernet passed smoothing fingers across his brow. ‘They’ll be kept on the leash. Don’t be an
idiot!’

  Kohler had to tell him. ‘All the same, monsieur, the child will be terrified.’

  ‘And is she not already terrified enough? Is it that you want this … this Sandman to silence her? Is it?’ he demanded.

  His voice had not quite risen to a shout, but the agitation it implied would have to suffice for this simple suggestion to be made: ‘Perhaps if we allow them to release the dogs, they will corner him for us, Hermann,’ said St-Cyr.

  Kohler tossed his head in doubt and shrugged. ‘Perhaps but then there’s Julien Rébé to think of, and we wouldn’t want his throat torn out before he sings.’

  Ah, damn them, damn them! Furiously Vernet tossed a hand. ‘Look, I know nothing of this Rébé. Who is he?’

  The truth at last, was it? ‘A stableboy, monsieur,’ said the Sûreté. ‘Your wife’s lover. The father of her unborn child.’

  ‘Her what?’

  ‘We told you to sit down,’ offered Kohler. ‘We were only trying to be kind.’

  ‘The slut! I’ll kill her.’

  ‘Ah, no, monsieur,’ cautioned the Sûreté. ‘You will assist us in every possible way so that the scandals of her sordid affair and of your own here in this room, and with a girl under your care whose parents trusted you, can be hushed up as much as possible.’

  Was it music to his ears? wondered Kohler.

  No sigh escaped Vernet. He refused to sit down but forced himself to consider Liline’s last moment and to softly swear, ‘Things should never have come to this. What do you want of me?’

  A touch of sadness, one of remorse perhaps—yes, yes, that would be welcome, but the industrialist had decided to fight back and would most definitely attempt to extricate himself. ‘Everything, but only the truth,’ said St-Cyr, not taking his eyes from Vernet. ‘The time for lies and half-lies is over.’

  They would push until they were satisfied but what, then, would they do? ‘Very well, begin.’

  Could bankruptcy have affected him more? wondered Kohler and thought it unlikely. The threat of a scandal and of ridicule still stood foremost in his mind. Or had Vernet been up to even more mischief?