Schultz and Baumann and the others were nowhere to be seen. She must have made a run for it and they had gone after her.
When Kohler found the girl’s scattered shoes on the walk that led to the lorries and staff cars, he realized she had done just that. She had waited, knowing what they wanted of her, and then had chosen her moment because they weren’t about to leave her alone and she had seen he could not stop them.
‘She knows too much,’ he said, and dragging on his overcoat, stuffed her shoes into the pockets and headed out along the coast road with the words of Madame Quévillon ringing in his ears. ‘The Côte Sauvage, Inspector. Caves that no one sees from atop the cliffs.’
Caves that could be used to hide contraband and to store goods for the black market. Caves that no one else would ever find.
‘The child,’ said Hélène Charbonneau — St-Cyr heard all of a mother’s yearning in her voice. ‘I must go to her. Please, you must let me. I have to tell her how it really was. I have to make her understand.’
‘Madame, please do not be so foolish!’ he hissed. They were in the study now and it was better here, for there was none of the flickering light from the stove. Here there were only a few hot embers in the grate. ‘If it is Herr Kaestner, he will be armed, madame. I have no gun. My partner …’
He left unsaid that Hermann kept the gun until needed. A tremor passed through her. Fleetingly he felt the coarse, homespun wool of the overcoat she had put on to cover her nightgown. Subconsciously he plucked at it as memories of the railway bed and the places where her heels had dug in came rushing at him. The fragments of bisque, the droplets and stains of blood.
‘Please don’t think of leaving me, madame. He will only kill you, and if he does, the child will never believe the truth I will have to tell her.’
‘You’re cruel. You are heartless. She’s up there and we are down here, and he is …’
‘In between perhaps. If it is Herr Kaestner, we will never know until he is so close we can but do what instinct demands.’
‘And if it is the Préfet?’ she asked, a harsh whisper.
‘Victor will have to kill you too. He cannot afford to let you live. Not now. Not after what has happened. Myself also, I am afraid. The Resistance will demand it, and he will be only too well aware of this.’
Perhaps it was some sound foreign to all those of the house and the storm that stopped them from breathing, perhaps it was only fear. Hélène Charbonneau reached out to him and he felt the trembling of gauze-wrapped fingers. ‘If it is Victor, he will have to kill Angélique also, Inspector. I can’t let it happen. I owe her mother that.’
Ah merde …
Try as he did to sort out all the sounds of the house — a shutter that was wanting to break loose, a slate … the hissing of raindrops in the fireplace, the distant pounding of the waves — St-Cyr could not pin down what had caused them to hesitate. ‘Victor won’t kill the child until he is certain he has you too, and even then that will not be enough, for there is myself he has to contend with.’
‘And Paulette,’ her words came sadly. ‘And Madame le Trocquer and …’
‘And your husband, madame, since he must now know far too much.’
‘Yvon will try to shield the child. She’s all he has.’
‘And if he is now up there with her, madame, what will your husband do to you?’
‘He will hand me over to the Germans. He will have no other choice.’
‘Then he will be turning in the Préfet too, and Kerjean must at all costs prevent that.’
It was a dilemma. It was not fair. A shopkeeper, for heaven’s sake. A man everyone wanted dead anyway and now there were hearts to be broken, his own entirely because he knew without a shadow of doubt that even if she was innocent and he saved her, the single suitcase and the closed railway truck awaited her at the end.
It was a tragedy so in keeping with the bleakness of the moors and the standing stones.
He felt for something to use. A skull, a rack of charred and broken bones and a few flint scrapers came to hand. Then they both heard one word. ‘Maman …?’
The child raced up the stairs, the woman broke away from him and followed … He tried to stop her. He hit the foot of the stairs and tripped — tripped and went down hard … hard … Then he, too, raced up the stairs until …
Breath would not come fast enough. His chest was aching like hell. A shutter broke free. It swung in with a bang, then went out only to come in with a crash that startled him.
Back and forth it went until finally, at a sudden, fierce gust, the window shattered. Glass flew across the hall. The musical rain of it was everywhere and he thought of her in a street of broken glass, and he wondered what she was feeling and thinking now.
Caught on the stairs to the attic, she heard the rain of glass behind her and could not make her legs and arms respond. The street was dark, the torches bright. Adèle and she stood back to back, ringed by laughing, brutal men in brown shirts, black ties and swastika armbands. The torchlight touched the black and glossy peaks of their caps. Now up, now down, now tilted this way and that, some taller, many shorter, some swarthy, some thin … They jeered. They chanted. They made threatening gestures, then suddenly at a sharp command, they all shut up and the ring of torches came closer… closer … Jackboots … jackboots …
Berlin, the night of 9-10th November 1938.
St-Cyr found her at last but when he took her by the arms, the scream she gave was ripped right out of her to fill the house. ‘NICHT JUDISCH! NICHT JUDISCH!’
Another window broke and she cowered on the stairs at his feet, weeping, ‘Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t tear my clothes off. Please don’t teach me a lesson. I’m not a Jew. Lots of people have hair and eyes like mine. We are visitors from France.’
‘Madame, it’s me, St-Cyr. Please … Here, let me help you up. Did they rape you in that street?’
She would not answer. Brutally she shrugged him off and continued on up the stairs and into the attic until, at last, the light from the stone lamps on the floor found her, and the dolls all waited.
There was no sign of the child. The blankets had been removed. Black antique lace lay smoothed over the cream silk cover of the chaise-longue and on top of this, the child had placed the birdcage in which the doll of her stepmother was held a prisoner.
Frantically St-Cyr tried to see if the child and Kaestner — it had to be the Dollmaker — were waiting to find out what they would do, but the black sheeting closed everything in and the mirrors only threw back the faces of the dolls.
In defeat, Hélène Charbonneau stepped over to the chaise-longue and when he saw her look down sharply, St-Cyr leapt to pull her back.
‘Ah, no,’ he said. ‘No, madame. I cannot allow it.’
‘Bâtard!’ she shrieked and tried to fight him off. He ducked. He reached down and snatched up the tiny white pill the Dollmaker had left for her in the saucer of a child’s tea set.
They heard his car start up.
‘He’s taken her with them,’ she wept. ‘He has left me the only honourable way out.’
‘But I have a murder to solve, madame, and until that is settled, no one takes potassium cyanide. Now, please, you must try to pull yourself together.’
‘For what? For the lesson he would teach me? What lesson, please?’
Even as he took her downstairs to her room, the cinematographer within him saw her standing on a railway platform with her small suitcase, waiting for a train to nowhere, and he knew he could not let it happen. ‘My partner will help us, madame. Please, you must find it in your heart to understand that Hermann, he is not like so many of the others. He’s different. He’s also a very good detective and very resourceful. He will help us. I know he will. He always has in the past.’