There wouldn’t be time and he knew it too, but would go on as if there would be out of kindness. ‘I should have told her the truth about myself, Inspector. That might have helped. I … I really don’t know. These days everything is so uncertain, so tenuous. Children can be made to tell others. The Captain and she were often alone discussing things. He was teaching her everything he knew about dollmaking, he was teaching her to identify the various types of bisque. He …’
‘Did Herr Kaestner ever suspect it?’
‘Never. I took steps to see that he didn’t. I had to, isn’t that so? When Johann first became interested in me, I kept my distance for as long as I dared but he was too persistent and would not take no for an answer. A man like that never does. Yvon had left me completely alone and it was obvious I was worried about my husband and not knowing what to do about it.’
‘Please, I know it must have been very difficult for you.’
‘Oh? Do you really understand how it was, how I felt when he kissed me, when he put his hands on my body — my nakedness, Inspector? I could not cringe. I could not in any way let him know how I really felt. I learned to cry inside.’
Ah nom de Jésus-Christ! ‘How long has the affair been going on?’
Her eyes leapt. ‘The affair — is that what you would call it?’
Rebuked, he waited. He did not answer. ‘For over a year and a half I and my little family of two have had to live with it, myself hiding always in the arms of the enemy. There, does that make you feel any better?’
‘Of course not. Is Kaestner a Nazi?’
‘What do you think?’
She would have to be told how serious things were. ‘I believe he must have been a good Nazi at first — even one of the hardliners — but now he has become very disillusioned. Like so many of our German friends, the Reich’s mounting losses are causing them to have second thoughts. This does not mean, madame, that honour if slighted cannot be reclaimed. Herr Kaestner is much revered by his men. In their eyes their chances of survival without him are zero; with him, but a little better perhaps, or as Herr Baumann feels, not at all, since nothing for that one can now prevent the inevitable.’
‘Johann is tormented by nightmares of failure, of dying encased in steel at the bottom of the sea, but when awake, he is the most totally alert man I have ever met. I sometimes used to wonder if he ever slept. Then when he did, I found out and had to stop him from screaming.’
Angélique would have seen them in bed together, perhaps even naked. ‘Did he take a snapshot of you with him?’
‘To pin up in that cubicle he calls his “cabin”?’
‘You know that is what I mean and why I must ask it.’
There was no place to pin up anything in a submarine but he would have taken it out now and then. The men would all have seen it and commented amongst themselves. ‘He had snapshots of myself and Angélique with him always, and yes, I think he was very much in love with me if ever such a man can truly love anyone. He wanted me to leave Yvon. He used to plan what it would be like for us after the war and I had to listen to it. Sometimes naked on the beach and with only the sun above us and the gentle sound of lapping waves; sometimes in bed with the softness of a breeze blowing among the curtains and the sound of gulls crying. He wasn’t going to go home right away, Inspector. We would live here for a time and in Paris while he built up the business. We would have everything just like it had been for his grandfather in the old days. It was a fantasy that terrified because if it ever came true, I could never have lived it, and because I knew increasingly that he was using it to hide his very worst of fears.’
‘But then the money went missing and then there was the murder.’
‘Yes, but first there was the telescope and Victor paying us so many visits even the gossips got wind of it, and then there was Angélique and Yvon spying on things best left unseen. Oh, I finally awoke to the fact that each of the two people I loved more than anything else had, in their separate ways, watched me with my Nazi lover. I was certain of it — can you imagine how this has been for me, but,’ she shrugged, ‘what could I have done? Things had already gone too far by then. I was in too deeply with Victor, Préfet of the Morbihan.’
She was still a very strong person because she had had to be. With luck perhaps they might survive. It didn’t bear thinking about. Luck was far too fickle. ‘Kaestner will come for you, madame. For the moment he may still be content to stall, hoping that his men will not find out. But once they do, there will be no turning back for him. Honour will have to be saved. Honour.’
There was fatalism to the look she gave that troubled deeply.
‘Paulette will tell them,’ she said quite simply.
‘And Kerjean?’ he asked gently. ‘What of the Préfet, madame?’
The sadness in her eyes only deepened. ‘Poor Victor, he tried so hard to help us and oh for sure, when he needed help for his son and the others, I had to help him in return. Risk piled upon risk,’ she shrugged. ‘That’s the way life is these days. The times, they are not normal but have they ever been? Isn’t it that life for most of us simply wavers from catastrophe to catastrophe with little pauses in between to make us think things are “normal”?’
He found himself liking her immensely, a dangerous thing. ‘Your secret will be safe with my partner but if he does find out, madame, I will not be the one who tells him. Even I who know him far better than most, would not place that burden on him.’
‘Paulette will do that. Paulette.’
‘Did Kerjean steal the money?’
She had known all along that it must come to this and that she would have to tell him. Friends could not always remain friends; helpers sometimes had to help themselves.
‘He borrowed it.’
St-Cyr sat back and drew in a breath before pinching his moustache in thought. ‘If they ever find out, they will shoot him.’
‘They will shoot his family also,’ she said quite simply, ‘and then they will come here for Angélique and Yvon and myself, though I will be the last to get it and they will make me watch the others die.’
‘How was he going to pay the money back?’
6,000,000 francs. She would have to say it plainly. Betrayal must not come with trappings. ‘There were things Victor could not tell me but I think he was expecting an airdrop — was praying for it to happen before it was too late. He was desperate.’
‘From the British?’
Was it so impossible that Victor was up to his ears working with the Resistance? ‘The British, yes, of course.’
Then it had not been the Sous-Préfet after all who had been working with the Resistance, but the Préfet.
Nothing more could be said about it. The implications were far too desperate.
‘Monsieur le Trocquer, the shopkeeper, was not a nice man, Inspector. He always gave me to understand that he knew far more about me than he was willing to let on. He was envious of our fine house by the sea and scornful of our having come from Paris to live like recluses with a few rabbits and pigeons. He was even more scornful of what had happened to Yvon. But Johann was always there if only in the shopkeeper’s mind. Monsieur le Trocquer was very afraid of him. Afraid that if he should make a mistake with the dolls, the Captain would have him arrested.’
‘It is what he knew about the Préfet that interests me, madame.’
‘Was he aware that Victor had “borrowed” the money? Is this what you mean?’
‘You know it is. You know I must uncover exactly what was said between them in that shop before Monsieur le Trocquer left it for the clay pits.’
And a confrontation with the Captain that Préfet Kerjean had warned her about, ah yes. She knew this was what he meant and could only look steadily at him.