Fear made the boy dart his eyes away from him; embarrassment from those of the Fräulein Krüger. Nerves made him pick at a pustule. Some were bleeding.
‘I’m going to want to have a private little chat with you, my friend,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Death’s-head tells me you put all your money on the Captain. Right?’
There was no answer, only a rapid moistening of the eyes. No constriction of the swarthy throat yet but it would come.
The telegraphist stood uncertainly in the doorway waiting for him. ‘Well?’ asked Kohler.
Like a ramrod, the kid snapped to attention. ‘Jawohl, Herr Haupsturmführer Kohler.’
‘Good. Now save us both time by telling me why you think he killed that shopkeeper.’
A desperate look for help was thrown at Fräulein Krüger; a wary and uncertain glance down the corridor to where Baumann and the Second Engineer were both bored to death rereading the Christmas issue of the Völkischer Beobachter on whose front page the Führer had splashed a map of the Atlantic that was peppered with red dots.
‘… like drops of blood, the text had read. Each one marks the position of the sinking of an enemy merchant ship … January to 17 December 1942. Clang, clang and up periscope!
‘Well …?’ asked Kohler.
‘The … the Kapitän has … has ordered me to do so, Herr Hauptsturmführer.’
‘Kaestner told you to bet against his getting off?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘When did he do so?’
‘As … as soon as he heard Death’s-head was making book on the outcome.’
Verdammt! the bastard. If he really was guilty, Kaestner was making damn sure the kid would double his money, if not, he was slanting the odds so as to make a bundle himself. Half the crew had money on his head. A great joke if it wasn’t true and he got off scot-free.
He was also creating yet another smokescreen from behind which he could slip away. Who else would so blatantly admit to murder in such a fashion? He had to be protecting someone and he had known instantly when ordering the boy to bet against his getting off, that this detective and his Sûreté partner would try to see beyond the smoke to Madame Charbonneau.
He’s too sharp for us, grumbled Kohler testily. Louis … where the hell was he when needed most? Probably sawing it off or sipping pastis while poring over his bits and pieces of a broken doll.
Kaestner was grinning broadly; Freisen was frowning impatiently and rhythmically striking a pencil against the edge of the table as he rocked back and forth in his chair.
Unlike the previous meeting, the Captain sat alone with his back to the wall in which a tiny, barred window of meshed and frosted glass let in the last of the day.
Freisen sat opposite the telegraphist — the seating had all been worked out in advance. The C.-in-C. U-boats Kernével could better signal the telegraphist from there to pause if things got rough.
Another visit to the toilet? wondered Kohler.
Drawing out the only other chair, he sat down across from the Dollmaker and only then realized the chairs for Louis and the Préfet had been removed.
‘So, we begin it again,’ he said. ‘Start by telling me about your relationship with the pianist.’
Elizabeth Krüger could not hold back a faint smile. Flushed with elation, she did not dare to look up from her pad but waited for them to continue.
Kaestner rested his forearms companionably on the table and grinned good-naturedly. ‘All right, you win. Yes, he was there earlier. When I arrived at the clay pits, I found Yvon digging at the foot of one of the standing stones. We spoke briefly.’
Merde, he was being too co-operative. Ah damn, thought Kohler and asked cautiously, ‘How was he? In what state of mind did you find him?’
The shrewd grey-green eyes sought him out as they would a distant tanker. ‘Vague as usual and reticent — he is a very lonely man. Many creative types are really very shy and withdrawn. You will have found this out in your work, I expect?’
‘Just answer. Never mind playing around with my career.’
‘Of course. Sorry, but I wasn’t “playing around”, Inspector. Yvon Charbonneau spoke of the passage he was working on in his symphony — a major interlude, I gather. One needs always patience with people like that. I was in a hurry. I hope I didn’t upset him.’
The hypocrite.
Friesen handed cigarettes around to interrupt things and head off trouble. All but Elizabeth Krüger took one. ‘U-boat rations,’ grinned Kohler. ‘I always knew you fellows were being treated as well if not better than Goering’s fly-boys. The symphony?’ he asked, giving Kaestner a nod.
‘“The main theme had to be broken”, he said, “so as to give structure and attain greatness. The druids had not yet gathered among the standing stones.”’
‘The druids?’
‘Yes. Look, I can’t explain it any better. The symphony is Celtic, druidic, very brooding and like Wagner’s Tannhauser, I should think. Very of the Morbihan and the megaliths. Very bleak, uncomfortable, and unfriendly, if you ask me. Joyless because, poor fellow that he is, he is taking life far too seriously at the moment. The passage graves and dolmens are a daily thing with him, the alignments and even the single standing stones, the menhirs.’
Kohler set his cigarette aside and studied the smoke curling up from it as a chief druid might when about to explore a virgin’s womb or stab her in the heart. ‘Has he got a name for this “symphony” of his?’
Kaestner grinned inwardly as he sat back to survey this Gestapo gumshoe from Paris. ‘Veneti, what else? The last great tribe, yes? The one Caesar defeated in 56 BC and led into slavery.’
Louis hadn’t been the only one to hear the child’s tale. ‘But the stones are thousands of years older?’
‘As are most of the artefacts and bits of charred bone he finds but the Veneti worshipped at those stones as well, and if not, at least held them in awe and were respectful of them.’
The Dollmaker and the child must have talked it over several times. ‘And when you left the clay pits?’ he asked.
‘Did I see him then?’ countered Kaestner. ‘No. Of course not. He …’
‘He what, Captain?’
Kaestner drew on his cigarette and took his time, then tried to make apologies for accusing someone perhaps unjustly. ‘Look, Yvon, he … ah, he could have been out on the moor. Yes, of course. Hidden among the stones of that alignment. There are seven of them and they are all quite tall and big around. I didn’t see him when I came back along the tracks. I thought he had left but …’
Freisen noted the Captain’s shrug but said nothing and kept a weather eye on the Fräulein Krüger. Was he upset with her for telling the Captain something? wondered Kohler. She would definitely not have told her boss a certain detective had been reading a certain psychiatric analysis. ‘Would the pianist have had any reason to kill that shopkeeper?’
The thin lips were tightly parted in a grimace of thought. ‘He hardly knew him. Hélène … Madame Charbonneau never went into that shop. Yvon is … well the husband isn’t wealthy. In fact they’re very hard up these days. It’s a tremendous strain on him of course. He’s also very secretive and fanatically possessive of his finds until he has completed excavating them.’
‘And has finished listening to the music they give him?’
‘Yes, of course, if you want to put it that way.’ Why wouldn’t Kohler accept that the pianist had done it?
‘He has a map of the locations,’ muttered the Gestapo, lost in thought. ‘My partner saw it in his study. I gather it’s quite like the Führer’s map in that newspaper out there. “Hits”.’
‘But not all of them,’ came the wary answer.
And the pianist didn’t object to your ‘intruding’ on his find? thought Kohler. Well, we’ll see, shall we? ‘So you saw and heard no one. Is that right?’