‘But this is not the past,’ she said bitterly. ‘This is the present.’
The sea was boiling, and when he reached the last rung in a railing that led down the cliffs, Kohler realized a good portion of it had been torn away. The path ahead simply no longer existed. He tried to see if there was a way directly across the face of the cliffside but the rain was too hard, the wind too strong. It’s too damned dark, he said. Too dark. ‘Paulette!’ he cried out. ‘Paulette, it’s me, Kohler.’
The wind tore the tops off the waves and flung spray far on ahead of them so that he was momentarily blinded and then totally drenched as they exploded.
He gave it up. It was no use. And when, after perhaps an hour of being away, he got back to the Mermaid’s Three Sisters, he borrowed a tarpaulined Wehrmacht lorry, pausing first to rip the black-out tape from the headlamps. Paulette le Trocquer would not have an easy time of it. Baumann and the others could well do things in anger they might not do otherwise. Death’s-head was among them.
Long after curfew, the streets of Quiberon were empty even of their hourly patrols. Water ran in rivers. Sewers overflowed. Hunched grimly over the steering wheel, Kohler peered ahead into the hammered ink. Pine branches skidded across the boulevard Chanard. A tattered poster from some cinema tumbled drunkenly away to hit the edge of the pavement and leap into oblivion. The engine faltered. He cursed himself and gave it the throttle. Away from the sea, rubbish swept by and he had to put the lorry into low-low and grind uphill until the flood was behind him.
When he reached the shop, it had long since lost its wreath. The door was ajar. ‘Ah merde,’ he said. ‘Why can’t things be easy for once?’
Not liking it one bit, Kohler tried to wipe the water from the Walther P38, then gave the door a little nudge. Old door sills were always warping and jamming their doors, especially in France and in places like this.
Softly closing it behind him, he forced the lock on and waited until he drew in the musty smell of things not so old and old and unwanted.
He took a step and then another. The floor was littered with broken crockery and glassware. Cabinets and shelves had been toppled over — the cash counter was strewn with debris. A doll … another doll … a broken doll. He felt their faces, felt the jagged edges and knew they had all been slammed head first down on the counter. But why? he asked. It made no sense unless, so enraged at the loss of their money, the crew had destroyed the one thing that had offered hope and a future.
Have I missed something? he asked. Something everyone else knows but me?
It was not a happy thought, but he had to agree it could well be true. Louis might now know of it. Louis …
The stairs were narrow and steep and as he went up them, the wind and the rain played havoc outside while he, himself, made no sound at all and hardly breathed.
There was nothing but a shambles in the sitting-room. The smell of stale tobacco smoke still clung to faded fabrics touch alone identified.
The kitchen was no better though smaller, but then there was the overpowering scent of really good perfume behind a closed door that opened only with difficulty.
He touched spilled rouge on a littered dressing-table, said silently, Kid, I’m sorry I was too late. His stomach lurched and he fought down the sickness death now brought all too frequently in a rush.
Wet through, his matches only disintegrated. A bedside lamp lay on its side. The shattered spine of its electric bulb warned him the cord had been ripped out and used, ah merde …
Against the smell of the perfume was the stench of faeces and urine.
He turned away and clenched a fist, sucked in a breath and cursed Boemelburg for not giving them a break. A day off even.
Gagging, he threw up. Couldn’t have stopped himself. Gasped, ‘Louis … Louis, why the hell aren’t you here to take care of this for me?’
Louis … Louis …
When he found a box of matches among a heap of torn lingerie on the floor, he took two out and struck them simultaneously. The room was in chaos, the mattress had been flung up and out of the way.
Madame le Trocquer’s grey-haired head had been jammed so hard between the coiled bedsprings, their flaking black and rusty barbed ends had torn the withered cheeks.
Blood was everywhere beneath her head and on her face and lips. The frayed brown lampcord was wrapped so tightly around her neck, the flesh was puffy on either side of it. Her nightdress was torn down the back, a last attempt at escape.
The wheelchair lay on its side behind the door — she’d been rushed in here hard and had been pitched out, then the chair had been flung aside.
With a startled curse, Kohler shook the matches out and plunged himself back into darkness. The Captain was in jail, or was he really there? The Préfet had gone home to Vannes, or had he? Baumann and the others had been after the girl …
The pianist was where? he asked. God alone knew. The Tumulus of Saint-Michel, the Préfet had said. A briefcase … Papers of agreement for the Captain to sign, perhaps a portion of the missing money, a show of good faith.
6,000,000 francs … ‘The caves,’ breathed Kohler. ‘Paulette must have somehow gone over the edge of the cliff on that path I found.’
Had she fallen into the sea? he wondered. Would daylight find her floating face down or washed up among the kelp and hanging from some rock? Boulders always made one hell of a mess of bodies. It didn’t bear thinking about. No, it didn’t!
Finding candles in the debris was not easy but when he had them, Kohler forced himself to examine the girl’s bedroom.
The crew would have been looking for their money. Hence the wreckage. Girl things were everywhere. Snapshots but only a few of them. Dresses, skirts and blouses but few of these as well.
She hadn’t had much and what there was of it hadn’t been very good.
‘Then why was her door locked?’ he asked, seeing the splintered wood of the jamb and wondering where the girl must have kept the key.
A box made of that paltry crap they called cardboard these days, had been ripped open and its parts flung aside, the red ribbon too. A box for dolls. The money? he asked. Was this where she had hidden it?
Louis would have to examine the corpse and the room — the shop and the rest of the flat. The Frog was good at things like that. He’d talk to that … that poor woman and ask her questions only he could hear answers to.
But on the surface it looked like the woman had held out for as long as she could and then had led them to the daughter’s bedroom and that cardboard box. She hadn’t been dead long. Maybe an hour at most, maybe half an hour.
‘Paulette,’ he said and went out into the rain and the wind. Louis was at the house by the sea but was there time to get to him? They both knew things the other desperately needed. Again he had to ask himself, Am I missing something?
A final look up the darkened, rainswept street revealed a pair of headlamps suddenly staring at him.
Blinded by them, he leapt aside.
Hélène Charbonneau was beside herself with worry over the child and her husband and could no longer find the heart to look the Chief Inspector in the face. Everything was going wrong. Everything.
Prisoners of the house and the storm, they waited. There was now no sense in leaving the house and trying to hide. No sense in anything.
St-Cyr drew in a breath. Somehow he had to convince her to tell him everything. ‘It is a race now between the Captain and his crew, madame. Herr Kaestner must at all costs keep the truth of his love affair from the men. They, in turn, must find it out to discover why their money went missing and why their Dollmaker paid so little attention to its absence.’