He came to a bend but there was still no sign of open fields or houses. He worried about approaching trains, for he’d had no schedules to guide him and had simply found this thing on a siding and had pushed it on to the main line.
‘Ah merde …’ he said and let the lever drift up of its own accord at the sight of splashed white paint on walls where giant letters still ran: the V-for-Victory … the Croix de Lorraine, the symbol the Resistance had adopted … and then … then the shrill slogans of bitterness: LAVAL AU POTEAU! (Laval up against the wall!); LA GUILLOTINE POUR PÉTAIN!; VICTOIRE! LIBERTÉ!
NOUS SOMMES DES TRAVAILLEURS INVOLON-TAIRES POUR L’ALLEMAGNE! (We are involuntary workers for Germany!) This slogan stretched on and on around a broad bend. The handcar speeded up. Suddenly he had to be away from the place. Suddenly he was terrified of a lonely meeting here with those who would still accuse him of gladly working for the Germans, those who did not want to understand that he had had no choice just like them … NOUS LES AURONS! (We’ll get them!) was splashed on both sides of the tracks.
With a sigh of relief, he reached the last of the warehouses and was soon passing through farmland, which like almost everywhere else in Brittany was a patchwork of tiny fields. Low stone walls or hedgerows of stunted hawthorn and bracken separated them, the landscape bleak, its whitewashed cottages with their pink or blue-grey slate roofs stark and tiny on a treeless plain.
He was glad Hermann hadn’t seen the slogans. When it came, as surely as it would some day, the war’s end would bring a vendetta equal to or surpassing the one the Germans had initiated in June 1940. Right against Left, Fascist against Communist, businessman against competitor, shopper against shopkeeper, neighbour against neighbour, husband against wife. The anonymous letters the Germans encouraged were still far too much in use, the public denunciations too, and the secret ones, those whispered into the ears of the SS and the Gestapo. ‘Hatred only breeds hatred,’ he muttered sadly. ‘They have turned us into a nation which betrays itself only too willingly.’
The news from Stalingrad was a disaster for the Germans. One hundred thousand men — the whole of the Sixth Army — were surrounded and about to be annihilated. The news from North Africa, where massive Allied landings had raised such hopes, was little better for them. It was only a matter of time until the invasion came and slogans like those appeared everywhere.
Now he was in open moorland too poor for farming. Finally he reached the spur that serviced the clay pits. With all the delays — things no one in a hurry who knew the way would experience — it had taken just under forty minutes to run that gauntlet and cover the six or so kilometres.
He was rhythmically pushing the hand lever down and letting it effortlessly rise of its own momentum, when he noticed white leaflets blowing across the tracks. Like tiny flocks of Bonaparte gulls, they lifted and settled only to rush on again. Momentarily some were caught against a rail or among the tall grass and bracken but were soon plucked away.
Dropped off target by the RAF during the bombing raid, they gave in German and then in French the rates required to insure the lives of U-boat crews. 5,000 marks per man — 100,000 francs; 260,000 marks for a crew of fifty-two. In francs, some 5,200,000 (£26,000), all at the official rate of exchange which one simply did not use because it was impossible to do so and no one would be fool enough.
Per tour of duty … ‘“If they should last so long,”’ he read aloud. ‘“Similar notices are being delivered to all families and loved ones of the German U-boat personnel, Keroman Base Lorient. We have their names and home addresses in the Reich. No doubt these same loved ones will soon be writing to demand of these same young men why their Führer and their Admiral have placed their lives at such terrible risk.”’
War took many forms and the leaflets were but another of them. More subtle, yes, than guns and bombs but, like the denunciations, effective in their own way.
Scrap paper was, however, always useful for notes if blank on one side, as these were, if not, then suitable for the stove and a faint suggestion of warmth and light. Foraging, he gathered several, stuffing them into his overcoat pockets, sometimes in wads as thick as bundles of 1,000-franc notes. Yawning hugely, he blinked to clear his eyes of sleepiness, and said, ‘I mustn’t take any more of those damned pills,’ and wondered if he, too, wasn’t becoming addicted.
When he reached the shed, he could hardly keep his eyes open — it was all this fresh air and exercise, the sun …
There was a man’s bicycle leaning against the inside wall next to the door, black and much muddied and with a metal seat that was naked of all padding and polished smooth by wear.
The bicycle was padlocked twice. Woven through both the front and rear spokes and the pedal-sprocket, a sturdy chain not only made theft difficult by its added weight, but ensured much inconvenience to the would-be thief.
It had not been requisitioned by the Occupier because its tyres no longer had inner tubes but were ingeniously stuffed with strips of old leather. Short lengths of rusty baling wire bound the tyres to their rims. Much-used wicker baskets were mounted front and back, and there were two shabby saddlebags as well.
‘The pianist …’ he said, yawning hugely and so suddenly he was caught off guard and had to pause. His heart was racing. ‘Easy, mon ami. Go easy, eh?’ he said to himself and shunned the pills.
Lifting the bicycle over to the far wall, he moved the hay aside and buried the thing. A few places needed tidying. He stood back and stretched as he looked it over — yawned again. On first sight, the shed would appear quite empty, the bicycle gone.
Only after a moment or two of consternation and panic would Charbonneau realize what had happened. ‘And by then I will have him right where his wife lay on the straw with the Dollmaker.’
Or had it been like that on the day of the murder?
He didn’t think so. The woman had been warned by Préfet Kerjean that there might be trouble. Both of them knew the husband and the Captain would be at the clay pits. The Préfet and the shopkeeper had argued violently.
Between the time the Captain was seen leaving the clay pits and the time of the murder there could not have been time for lovemaking.
A doll’s head had been broken, a hand had been cut.
Otto Baumann had delivered the Captain’s message to the Charbonneaus two days before the murder. Paulette le Trocquer knew far more than she was willing to let on. A packet of American cigarettes had been left on a timber over there. The tightly crumpled ball of a woman’s handkerchief had been pressed down into the hay. The smell of its perfume had been good and definitely not cheap and not that girl’s, not yet.
Softly closing the door, St-Cyr put the latch on and started out.
Why had the pianist returned to the scene of the murder? Was Charbonneau so desperate or such a fool he thought he could get away with it unnoticed?
Or was he so obsessed with the findings of his labours, he could not leave them?
Alone beneath the sun and drifting cloud, the grey and lichen-encrusted pillars of the megaliths stood well beyond the site of the murder and their alignment on high, overlooking everything. Tall, and weighing several tonnes — feats of engineering would have been required to raise them — they appeared omnipotent, inducing doubt and fear.
Wind played among the bunched grasses at their feet. The iodine and salt-fish smell of the sea was everywhere and when he stood directly opposite them, he saw that none were out of line and that the tallest of the seven stones was nearest the tracks yet still some forty metres from them.