The blitzkrieg, the isolation of the Breton coast and marriage to Yvon Charbonneau had saved her but only for the moment. She would have lived each day never knowing if and when she would be discovered. Never knowing when they would come for her.
‘Madame, please. Your secret is safe with me. I will do everything I can to keep it hidden, no matter the outcome of this investigation.’
‘It won’t be enough. Not after what Angélique did to me. Not after what has happened.’
‘Please tell me before it is too late.’
She slammed the kettle down. ‘I can’t! I won’t! I mustn’t! You’re the detective. You figure out what happened.’
Ah merde, she had burned both her hands. She still had one of them on the stove.
‘Paulette … Paulette …’ she cried. ‘Dear God, why did she have to do it to us? Why could she not have seen that Angélique was so unhappy?’
There was still no sign of the Captain and his keepers. A vocalist named Bonnie Baker was belting out a song called ‘Oh Johnny’, and the Bar of the Mermaid’s Three Sisters was jumping. It was slosh time.
Kohler found another cigarette and lit up. He’d take four more of the Benzedrine and that was it. They didn’t mix too well with alcohol.
Still ravishing in her tight black skirt and turtle-neck sweater, Paulette le Trocquer was dancing with one of the boys from U-297. Though a little tipsy, she wasn’t so far gone her eyes didn’t seek him out at the bar for reassurance.
‘She’s wary and that’s good,’ he grunted and tossed down the pills.
Bleary-eyed ratings, their middy-collars stained and rumpled, thought of home, slept sprawled over their tables or wantonly ogled the girls and threw lewd asides to their pals.
Several fights had broken out. When there were so few girls to go around, what else was there to do? No one had been seriously hurt but sailors were sailors. Beer flowed and was spilled. Brandy and wine, the rougher the better, were downed as well with no thought of the day to come. The rush to the heads was constant. There were line-ups, distractions in there, much ribald laughter and encouragement. Ah what the hell.
He felt like a grandfather on duty.
One torpedoman, caught in the clasp of his girlfriend, had hiked her skirt and slip up her backside to show his pals that the painted stockings on her legs stopped at generously firm thighs. No secret now. She was too drunk to notice the whistles and catcalls until, entangled in her underpants, she took a swing at her boyfriend and hit the floor. Puke all over the place and wallowing in it, she got up slowly, teetered and dashed for the toilets.
They gave her the run and they crowded in after her. Everyone heard the cheers.
‘Anblasten!’ (Blow tanks!)
‘Boot steht!’ (Boat steady!)
‘Boot steight langsam!’ (Boat slowly rising!)
And then, as the song came to an end and couples looked towards the heads, ‘Folgen!’ (Track!) ‘Feuerlaubnis!’ (Permission to fire!)
‘Rhor Los!’ (Launch!) There was a huge cry from the men in there and then, in chorus, ‘Eins! Zwei! Drei!’ (One! Two! Three!)
Pale and shaken, the shopkeeper’s daughter took the bar stool next to him and sipped his beer. ‘They are pigs,’ she swore. ‘Oh mon Dieu, what am I to do?’
‘Stick with me, I think.’
One by one the Captain’s keepers began to filter back into the party. They came via the front entrance and there were six of them. Baumann … the boy, Erich Fromm … the Second Engineer… and three others. Tough … Verdammt! were they the flotilla’s champions? They did not sit together but lost themselves among the tables.
The cook was the last to arrive and he stayed nearest the entrance, leaning against the wall in darkness like a petulant shadow.
‘Wait here,’ said Kohler. ‘A friend has just arrived.’
Taller and bigger than most, the detective headed straight across the dance floor and she watched with dismay as he dodged fluidly among the couples until, at last, he had reached the cook.
‘Death’s-head,’ she whispered distastefully, ‘you are not the reason I am here, idiot! The Leutnant zur See Huber has left me to take the telegraphist Elizabeth Krüger back to base, the Ensign Becker is sick. You can have your stockings back. I don’t want them.’
Gone were the promises of better things. When Herr Kohler’s beer was done, she asked for brandy and kept it near, for it would sting the eyes and she wasn’t going to give them what they wanted.
8
It was now perhaps three in the morning. The Chief Inspector was very worried. As he carefully spread antiseptic cream over the strips of gauze for her burns, Hélène Charbonneau could see that his mind, though concentrating on the task, was rapidly fitting the pieces of the murder together and leaping ahead to their inevitable conclusion.
At a sound — a loose shutter upstairs — he stopped so suddenly she felt the instant of alarm. He relaxed. He said, ‘I had best go and close it, madame. A moment, please.’ It would only shatter the window-panes if left — she knew this was why he hurried away.
‘He thinks I will remember Kristallnacht. He is conscious of my feelings and afraid I might panic’
A roll of gauze, a pair of scissors, a lighted candle on the kitchen table between them, and one already bandaged hand later, she had told him nothing further. He had not pushed. He had only been kind and was therefore a very difficult adversary. ‘He will uncover the truth,’ she said sadly, and reaching out, held her bandaged hand just above the candle flame. ‘Yahweh, I was never yours. As a family, my grandparents and parents had put You from us. I really didn’t think much about it — I was away at school so much and just like the others. But now You have come to reclaim us. It isn’t fair. Angélique never suspected it of me before Adèle was killed because the matter never came up. My maiden name wasn’t even Jewish because my grandfather had changed it. But of course it was all there in the records and of course I had to have help in hiding.’
She took the hand away from the flame and examined the gauze for scorch marks. Finding none, she said more loudly, for she knew he had come back, ‘Victor helped us with the records and the marriage certificates. He’s a good man, Inspector. Oh for sure his son came to place impossible demands on him but, please, Victor did not mean to do what he did and you must spare him so that he can continue to help others.’
Sacré nom de nom, was she accusing Kerjean of the murder or only of the theft?
The Chief Inspector went over to the sink to wash his hands and dry them. Without a word, he sat down and began to dress her other hand. So great was his concentration, he did not meet the look in her eyes until the job was done. ‘Three weeks, perhaps four,’ he said. ‘The dressings should be changed … ah, let’s say twice each day. More if you get them wet or dirty. Angélique will have to help you. She’s really very capable.’