Excursions to view the megaliths — the ‘druidic’ stones — were common and recommended the picnic lunch or moonlight supper. Bathing was not encouraged and most certainly not recommended except for those sites where the ruins entered the sea and the currents allowed of safety.
Marianne and himself had spent their honeymoon here. Her choice of location. He had looked forward to their exploring the megaliths. Four days between cases and hardly time to get to know each other better.
As he plodded up the rue de Lille, St-Cyr vowed not to tell Hermann how disastrous that honeymoon had been. He’d never hear the end of it if he did. Marianne had had a severe allergy to scallops, discovered on their very first night — God did things like that to detectives. Robbed them of simple pleasures. Her family’s farm was inland near Ploërmel, well away from the fruits of the sea, so no one could have blamed her for not knowing. ‘Yet she tried her best to make our visit enjoyable,’ he said. ‘The poor thing. Life isn’t fair.’
She had been absolutely lovely and of a very quiet, gentle nature, with soft blonde hair and large blue eyes just like that young girl in the dining-room. A woman so lonely in Paris, she had succumbed to the attentions of the Hauptmann Steiner.
Love? Had it really been love? he asked himself and fortunately could not answer since the shop was now in view.
A nothing place — one could see it at a glance. Faded letters — second-hand goods. Teacups and teapots, probably. Bits of glassware and china, old lace, costume jewellery and dolls, yes, dolls. Yet the place had so little of the look of prosperity, he was forced to wonder why the Captain would have taken on such a partner.
When he rang the bell there was silence. When he rapped on the window of the door, he widened a crack that had been there for ages.
At last a figure appeared behind the wreath, a blurred shadow in black wool with a slim waist, flared hips and a left hand whose fingernails had just been painted.
‘Monsieur?’
The sill was warped. The door came unstuck … ‘Pardon, madame. I am the …’
‘It’s Mademoiselle Paulette, monsieur. My father …’
The door began to close. ‘A moment, please!’ He leaned on it. ‘I am the Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Sûreté Nationale. A few questions to help us with the investigation. Nothing difficult. I promise.’
‘The Sûreté? Was he so important? I … I never knew. He … he never said. What’s he done then, eh? Come, come, Monsieur le Sûreté, let us have the evidence of it!’
‘Nothing that we know of but it’s interesting his family should think he had been up to something.’
‘I didn’t steal the money!’
‘Then you have nothing to worry about. Now, please, a few questions, that’s all.’ He’d leave the money for a little.
The shop was musty and cramped and not very tidy either. One by one the girl switched on a scattering of table lamps and the light within a tiny carousel which soon began to rotate with the convection and threw its shadows over an array of seated dolls who all seemed to be watching the proceedings intently from their shelf. Exquisite clothing on them. Perfect in every way and far, far better than anything else in the place.
‘Mademoiselle Paulette, may I …?’ He took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, having opened his overcoat, and she saw that he was about fifty or so years of age and that he wore a light brown suede vest whose buttons looked as if ready to burst. An old vest, and much loved.
‘Mademoiselle Paulette, on the day your father was killed — please, I am sorry to have to mention it but …’
She trailed a fingertip across the glass countertop through the beads of summer and gave him such a disconcerting look, he was forced to rephrase his question. So, that was good, she thought, and she had put him on the defensive. It was marvellous what one could do to men if one was pretty.
‘When did your father leave the shop to find the Captain Kaestner? It’s a long way to the clay pits, mademoiselle. One has to ask how he managed to get there.’
She would smile softly at this teddy bear of a detective and she would gaze frankly at him and choose her words most carefully. Yes, that would be best. ‘My father left the shop at just before noon, Inspector, so as to catch the autobus au gazogène to Lorient. He said he had business to attend to and that I was to mind the shop and see to mother. She’s ill. She’s been ill for years. She’s in a wheelchair and can’t get about. Someone always has to take care of her.’
As you should — he wanted so much to say, to chastise the impish look in those china blue eyes, to wipe the smart-assed cheekiness away. ‘Don’t play with me, mademoiselle,’ he said severely.
‘I’m not. He told me not to pay any attention to Préfet Kerjean, if that one should return.’
‘Pardon?’
Was the detective so caught off guard? ‘They had an argument, Inspector. Lots of shouting. The Préfet was very angry and threatened my father with all sorts of things including …’ She paused to search him out and touch the beads again. ‘… including the asking of the tax officials to look into his accounts.’
Ah merde, the money …? Had she been ten leagues ahead of him? ‘They argued?’
‘Violently. Several things were broken. Mother heard them shouting and very nearly came down the stairs in her wheelchair. The brakes are broken.’
‘And yourself?’
‘I heard them too.’
The girl was no more than twenty years of age. The black woollen dress clung provocatively to every feature even though she was in mourning.
There was a Peter Pan collar of white cotton with a bit of pale blue embroidery. Nothing special. Practice needlework perhaps for a girl who obviously would care little about such skills.
‘Exactly what did they argue about?’ he asked cautiously.
Again she would gaze frankly at him. Again she would run her fingertip through the beads, touching them one by one as if they were those of a fecundity meter. ‘Madame Charbonneau,’ she said and shrugged. ‘That’s all we heard.’
‘Madame Charbonneau?’
Was it so puzzling? ‘Yes. The big house that overlooks the sea near Kerouriec. She’s a friend of the Captain’s. Well, he … he fancies her but she’s married and has a little girl.’
The urge to shake some manners into this … this budding fille de joie was almost too much to bear for St-Cyr. Sporting herself like this when she should be …
‘Are you certain that is all you overheard?’ he asked harshly.
Her answer must be modest — shy like a schoolgirl whom a priest was instructing. ‘She’s a friend of the Préfet’s too, Inspector. A good friend, if you know what I mean.’
The bitch! ‘So, they argued. Where were you? In the shop, outside or upstairs?’
‘I was in the cellar at the back. That’s where he puts me from time to time. At least, that is where he used to put me but no more, I guess. Is he really dead?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Good! Then as soon as mother goes I can begin to have a life of my own. Aren’t you going to light your pipe?’
Ah Nom de Dieu, de Dieu, he thought, this one, like so many Breton girls he had come across over the years in Paris, was heading straight for the streets. ‘Yes, I will light my pipe and stay awhile, I think, and you will answer my questions both truthfully and succinctly since my partner is from the Gestapo and no doubt now on his way to find us.’
‘The Gestapo …?’
‘Yes!’
The Mégalithe was just that, thought Kohler grimly. A great barn of a place. Stone Age in its outlook and with glass display cases in the upstairs hall, of all places. Stone axes, flint arrowheads, shards of primitive pottery and a couple of skulls whose teeth, due to the coarse diet of rock-ground wild grains and chewing leather, were blackened stumps. Ugh!