Dollmaker Read Online Free

afternoon, the old time, as I have said.’
    â€˜Perhaps an hour before dusk and almost exactly twelve hours before reporting the crime.’
    Light from one of the lanterns etched Kerjean’s shadowed cheeks and watchful gaze. ‘Who was this other person, Préfet?’ asked Louis severely.
    The one called Kohler was now out of sight behind himself. To shrug would be stupid, thought Kerjean, but he would do so anyway. ‘I do not know. I only got here this afternoon, Jean-Louis. I have barely had time to find accommodation for you and your colleague.’
    â€˜My partner and my friend.’
    â€˜If you say so.’
    â€˜I do!’
    â€˜Good. Then if you have no more need of me, Chief Inspector, I will see if I can find the coroner and a photographer.’
    â€˜Good! That is exactly what we need and the next time you lead us to a murder, Préfet, be so kind as to use the most direct route. I think you will find your car is much closer and the walk across the moor, though edifying, an utter waste of our time.’
    Normally the diplomat even in the toughest of situations, Louis had let things get the better of him. Kerjean merely nodded curtly then turned abruptly away to vanish into the moor.
    â€˜Louis, who the hell is he trying to protect?’ hissed Kohler, not liking it one bit.
    â€˜I don’t know, my old one. I wish I did. We worked together on several things before the Defeat of 1940. Always I have found him absolutely forthright and efficient but then, ah what can I say, I did not have a partner such as yourself.’
    â€˜Sorry.’
    â€˜Don’t be. We will find things out now because he has made it imperative!’
    â€˜6,000,000 francs are missing.’
    â€˜Six?’
    Kohler quickly told him that the Captain had entrusted the shopkeeper with so much. They set to work, were very thorough. Some fifty metres beyond the fragments, Kohler found where the Captain had swung his satchel of clay aside. The bag was still there on the edge of the embankment. ‘We walked right past it, Louis. Kerjean said nothing of it.’
    â€˜Yes, but from here, Hermann, could the Captain not have left the tracks to strike overland to the site of the murder?’
    It was all so dark but for the lanterns. Dark and eerie. The wind wouldn’t stop. There was the feel of rain in the air. They found a boot print, a smear of the white clay and then another and another, then no more of them. ‘Did he kill the shopkeeper, Louis? Is that what Kerjean wanted us to see? He and that watchman spoke Breton. I couldn’t understand a word but am certain the bastard could speak French as well as I can.’
    Which was pretty good for one of the Occupiers, most of whom couldn’t understand more than a few words and couldn’t have cared less, since the French willingly ran things for them. But, then, Hermann had been a prisoner of that other war from 1916 until its Armistice and had used the opportunity to learn a cultured language. Which was entirely to his credit and fortunate, since that was the way one found things out. Well, sometimes. Besides, how else was he to have conversed with his little Giselle and his Oona?
    â€˜Hey, if it makes you feel any better, I can’t understand Breton either,’ confessed St-Cyr.
    â€˜Even though Marianne was one of them?’ Uncomfortably Kohler offered a cigarette. ‘Sorry, Louis. I shouldn’t have reminded you, should I?’
    â€˜Of my dead wife? My second wife?’ retorted St-Cyr. ‘She never spoke Breton at home, even to our son, since to do so would have been to admit of that shameful ignorance the rest of France have tarred such people with. Which reminds me, if I can do so, I had best pay her parents a visit.’
    â€˜They’ll only blame you and you know it. Why punish yourself?’ The Resistance in Paris had accused Louis of being a collaborator – still did for that matter