Mannequin (36 page)

Again there was that smile. ‘What do
you
think, Inspector? How else could we have found out about the money from Lyon? How else could we have got him to convince Madame de Brisson to help us so that we had them both? He
enjoyed
it! What man would not enjoy a naked girl who has a bag over her head and cannot identify her assailant?'

Merde alors!
what had happened to give her such ideas? wondered St-Cyr, greatly troubled by her. Had she been so possessive of Kempf, she had willingly gone along with things?

Sadly he knew this was how it must have been, otherwise Kempf would soon have gotten rid of her and found another.

Again Kohler filled the Chief in. ‘Eventually Marie-Claire de Brisson discovered what they were up to. She warned the neighbour's maid to stay away from the balcony for fear the girl would be killed. She made copies of some of the photographs without their knowledge and, after the house was emptied, scattered them for us to find.'

‘She had forged papers made for Kempf and le Blanc,' said Louis, picking up the thread of it. ‘She hid the money where they wouldn't find it, then wrote everything down so that when she killed herself in Dijon, we would find it on her body. She took a terrible chance they would discover what she was up to, SturmbannFührer, but they failed to do so until the end.'

‘Why wouldn't they have scattered the photos themselves, since their wish was to pin it all on the two droolers?' asked Boemelburg.

St-Cyr shook his head. ‘Everything was to point to the Château des belles fleurs bleues so as to gain distance from themselves. No doubt the photos were to have been left with Gaetan Vergès's body but …' he paused to look steadily at the prisoner, ‘but were destroyed at the country house, were they not, mademoiselle?'

Must he act like God? ‘Yes, I burned them in the kitchen. Franz was very angry when he found out but …' She shrugged. Those photographs, they were always such a worry to me. Something … ah, I don't know what, told me they would cause us trouble in the end and …' Her smile was again twisted. ‘I was correct.'

Boemelburg still couldn't leave things. ‘Why did Marie-Claire de Brisson wait so long, Louis? Why didn't she speak up?'

There was a sad shrug. The hand, with its forgotten pipe, lifted. ‘She didn't know of it until early last May, Walter, when she heard or saw her father returning from that house and then discovered the horror of what they'd been up to.'

‘The acid,' breathed Kohler. They had gagged that one and …'

She would force herself to face them through her tears.‘We … we had spread the girl out in the cellars and … and had tied her down. De Brisson … de Brisson left us in a hurry and … and then Franz said that it had to be done so as to make the motive clear. He … he took the acid bottles and … and he made Michel and me watch.'

‘The daughter then tried to kill herself, Walter,' said the one from the Sûreté gruffly.

She would try to smile at him again so as to tell him he had been right about her in this too. ‘But I saved her, Inspector, and I told her she could say nothing because if she did, I would swear that she, too, had been involved.'

‘You must have been very careful when going to and from that house,' he said, never leaving her eyes for a moment.

‘Careful? We had to be, but these days, Inspector, isn't it always best for others to simply turn away and say nothing?'

She had tried her best to condemn him as being a party to the Occupation but he would ignore it. ‘And Joanne?' he asked, lifting his eyebrows in question.

‘Joanne Labelle … Oh for sure, Inspector, that last one, she told us many times that you were a neighbour and that you and your partner would find and bring us to justice.'

‘Kempf or le Blanc took her upstairs to the tower room,' said St-Cyr. ‘Which of them killed her?'

‘Franz … after we … we had had one last quick session with her. She … she kept on telling us you would … Franz hit her several times. He … he hated her for saying this. When … when it was done, he signalled to me from the window. I was in the kitchen garden waiting for him to do so.'

‘You then went to find Gaetan Vergès whom Ie Blanc was holding in the cottage.'

‘Yes. Yes, Inspector. You see Vergès knew all about what we had been doing to those girls. We took him ether, we got him so very drunk—and them too, us also. Why else would he have turned away the very people who had helped him through the years? We made him watch us. We often left him alone with one of the girls and he would, in his drunken state, try to release them, but of course they didn't understand what he was doing and thought the worst. Later, he would realize what had happened and would rampage through the house, destroying everything in his desire for ether and his hatred of himself until, at last, he would fall into a stupor and live in filth.'

‘He cut the bullet that killed him, mademoiselle,' said Louis. Why didn't he shoot himself?'

‘Because he refused to let us get away with things that easily, and because Franz said we would have to make it look like a suicide anyway.'

‘And Tonnerre?' asked Louis sharply, his patience all but gone.

‘We gave him ether and when he was out, Franz made me soak a pad and … and hold it over that horrible face. I wanted to, do you understand? I
wanted
it an to end!'

They were silent for several moments and she didn't know if they were done with her. Then the Sûreté asked, ‘The bodies of the other two girls, Mademoiselle St. Onge? Please, we've been able to account for only twelve of them.'

‘Buried at the farm in … in the kitchen garden.'

Now it only remained for them to ask why the teller had had to be killed and this information she would give quite readily. ‘Franz said the teller had to be killed. We didn't argue. I … I knew the teller would recognize Franz, since he had seen us on more than one occasion going upstairs to Monsieur de Brisson's office.' She shrugged. ‘It had to be done, that's all there was to it. Now I would like a cigarette. May I have one, please?'

Ignoring her, the Sturmbannführer, signalled to the one called Kohler to read through her statement, while the one called St-Cyr fiddled uncomfortably with his pipe and finally put it away.

Troubled, he still had matters to settle.

‘On the day of the robbery, Mademoiselle St. Onge, what exactly did you do?'

‘I … I followed the girl as I usually did with the others until I was satisfied they were alone. I … I saw Madame de Brisson about to warn her. I panicked. I hurried to the house and … and waited but then … why, then the girl came. I couldn't believe it, but there she was at the door.'

‘And then?' he asked so quietly she knew he was following every step.

‘I … I calmed her fears. I gave her a little wine—she said she had only just had a cup of coffee, that a boy across the way had … Ah no, the forged papers …'

‘Paul Meunier,' acknowledged St-Cyr curtly. Marie-Claire de Brisson couldn't have caused the deaths of the engravers. The banker must have called in the alarm. Madame de Brisson must have become aware of her daughter's visits to Paul Meunier and finally told her husband of them … ‘And then?' he asked.

‘Michel came but he was very late and the girl wanted to leave. I …'

‘Please, the truth, Mademoiselle St. Onge. Joanne was uneasy. She knew she had been followed—isn't that correct?'

‘Yes, but I … I was able to convince her that … that pretty girls often thought such things and that if she stayed, why she'd be sure to get the job.'

‘Had you not been there to answer the door and welcome her in—had it been le Blanc or Kempf, mademoiselle—what would she have done?'

Again there was that twisted smile. ‘They all needed the presence of a woman to reassure them—isn't this what you wish me to say, Inspector? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
Me,
I welcomed them in.'

‘Le Blanc finally arrived and …?' he asked, unruffled.

‘We began the session.'

‘The session … Is that what you called it?'

She didn't answer. He asked her again.

‘Yes.'

Louis thought for a moment, then sadly asked, ‘And how did you feel as you greeted each of those girls?'

Was it so important to him? ‘Very excited but … but terrified also—afraid that it would all go wrong and the police would come. Fear and sex, Inspector? Is it not fear that sometimes heightens sexual arousal? The fear of discovery, the fear that others are watching as you gratify yourself with another, with a girl who can't escape and must submit, sometimes with a man also and that girl, the three of us—oh I knew Franz and Michel and then de Brisson, too, watched me as I had sex with those girls and with one of them but this … this only seemed to make it all the more exquisite and it pleased Franz to watch me. Don't you see, I couldn't have kept him otherwise?'

‘Two days, Louis, and then she walks,' breathed Boemelburg. ‘No trial, no judge, no priest. The less said the better. Kempf came of a good family.'

There could be no argument. Absolutely none. Gestapo Mueller would demand it.

Two days … Shattered by the news, she couldn't stand when released and had to be helped from the office. Heavily sedated, she lay on an iron cot in one of the cells in the cellars of the rue des Saussaies but even then her wrists and ankles were securely shackled so that she couldn't try to kill herself.

As they closed the cell door, it was nearly 5.00 a.m. Berlin time 4.00 a.m. the old time. ‘Come on, Louis. Let me buy you a drink,' said Kohler.

‘With what?' asked the Sûreté, startled.

Kohler showed him two fat wads of 1000-franc notes. ‘Goering will never miss it. Hey, he gets to keep the art work and the money. Fair's fair. These are for expenses. Take one and shut up about it!

‘One … ah yes,' said St-Cyr, and splitting the wad into four parts, tucked it away to be returned in total to the bank in Lyon. ‘Dédé,' he said. ‘The money can never bring Joanne back but the boy will get the new bicycle she promised him if she got the job.' It would have to come out of his wages but the prices, the black market …

‘Don't be a sap. We'll borrow a bike. I know just where to find one.'

As they crossed the place Vendôme, the ice was treacherous. ‘No one in their right mind should attempt to ride a bike in this weather, Louis. Think of it as saving a life, eh? Or avoiding an unfortunate accident!'

Luftwaffe Security Paris had the best bikes in town. Stolen of course. Requisitioned. They borrowed two just in case Louis might need one to replace the one he had lost on another case. They wheeled them through the empty streets which glistened at every rare blue-shaded lamp as if in a place of magic.

Gabrielle Arcuri had just finished her last set when, with the bicycles safely tucked away in the courtyard behind the Club Mirage, they stood at the bar. Without a word she joined them. She didn't ask how it had gone. She simply touched Louis's hand and let her warmth extend to both of them.

They drank in silence, glasses raised to the New Year and an uncertain future.

Two days later the guillotine fell. There were only the Sturmbannführer and St-Cyr as witnesses. Each signed the papers releasing the body to the parents.

Outside the Sante's walls, Boemelburg paused as he was getting into the back seat of his car. ‘I almost forgot, Louis. See that Kohler gets this, will you? Read the other one, enjoy yourselves on the coast and keep out of trouble.'

Alone, St-Cyr watched as the car, probably the only one in Montparnasse at that moment, drove slowly down the boulevard Arago. It reached the rue de Faubourg Saint-Jacques and turned northward towards the Val de Grâce, the military hospital where, perhaps, it had all started, this affair of the mannequin.

He glanced down at the pale yellow telex and saw immediately that it was from Army Headquarters Eastern Front. Hermann's two sons were missing in action and presumed dead.

The other slip of paper contained something about ‘dolls' in Brittany but he found his eyes were giving him trouble.

Stuffing the thing away, he started out on foot but soon stopped and found a match. As long as there was hope, Hermann would be okay. He couldn't bring himself to tell him the news. He knew that eventually he would have to, but who was to say? Maybe the boys were still alive? Maybe another telex would arrive, cancelling the original.

‘For now let him sleep with his little Giselle and his Oona,' he said aloud and to no one but himself. They would catch the evening train to Brest, then they would make their way south along the Breton coast to Lorient. They would certainly not take the car. ‘The submarine pens, the air-raids every night, the coast in winter!'

As he looked up with moistened eyes to that God of his in question at this new trick of fate, a pigeon huddled on a window sill. ‘We are but soul mates in this world of Yours,' he said, identifying closely with the pigeon. ‘Fellow passengers in this lousy Occupation.' Suddenly its wings flapped madly and it fell a metre or so, caught by a foot, a snare …

Flapping, the thing was dragged up and into the flat without the shutters opening more than a few centimeters. In his mind's eye the cinematographer saw the neck being wrung, the thin little body twitching even as the feathers were being ripped from it.

Lorient,
he read.
Dollmaker arrested in murder of shopkeeper. Most urgent you send experienced detective immediately. Fragments of bisque doll not—repeat not—his.

Dollmaker … a member of a U-boat's crew? An important member—yes, of course. Otherwise Admiral Doenitz would not have intervened. The engine room perhaps? The cook, the armourer, the sonar operator or navigator? Someone who made dolls to while away the hours and was vital to the sinking of Allied shipping.