Dollmaker Read Online Free Page A

– and had left a bomb for him which his wife and little son had inadvertently tripped a month ago almost to the day. She’d been coming home to him from the arms of her German lover who’d been sent to the Russian Front. The woman unrepentant, no doubt. Still defiantly independent and proud of it, as most Bretons were. ‘Look, I really am sorry I mentioned it,’ said Kohler.
    â€˜So am I.’
    â€˜Why didn’t the Captain return for his satchel?’
    â€˜Perhaps he was too shaken and forgot it,’ offered the Sûreté.
    â€˜Then Kerjean really did leave it there for us to find.’
    â€˜Perhaps.’
    They worked in silence, each taking a side of the tracks and retracing their steps to the fragments and beyond them to the Captain’s collecting bag.
    â€˜An ammunition satchel,’ grunted Kohler, looking down at the thing. ‘Regulation issue. Kriegsmarine blue. Stores must be tolerant of heroes. Quite obviously he saw something up ahead and eased this thing aside.’
    â€˜Yes, but what did he see? A broken doll on the tracks? The visitor sitting there or standing? Or both the doll and that person?’
    â€˜Whatever it was, it caused him to make a little detour.’
    â€˜And that detour could just as easily pin the murder on him.’
    It was only as they retraced their steps and searched along the tracks well past the body, that they came upon an abandoned shed and found in the scant gravel nearby, the marks of a bicycle’s tyres.
    â€˜Both coming and then leaving,’ murmured Kohler, running fingers lightly over them. ‘The leaving in haste, I think. The road is just beyond the shed. That’s where our friend the Préfet should have left the car and led us to the railway spur but decided not to.’
    St-Cyr heaved a troubled sigh. ‘Then he knew of the cyclist but has made no attempt to remove the evidence.’
    A strange man. One up to his ears in something. ‘There are no footprints,’ said Kohler. ‘Whoever pushed the bicycle into that shed, took the trouble not to leave any.’
    â€˜Perhaps … but then, ah mais alors, alors , Hermann, were they removed later?’ There was plenty of bare rock, so the task would not have been difficult. ‘Was the owner of the bicycle the visitor?’
    â€˜Or someone else? A fourth person.’
    *
    One by one the lanterns went out of their own accord and still there was no sign of the Préfet and the coroner. Only the sound of the breaking seas kept St-Cyr and Kohler company but this was soon muffled by dense fog that came in of a sudden and decided to stay.
    Beaded mizzle broke on icy cheeks. Noses constantly dripped. Kohler wiggled his toes trying to find a particle of warmth. Far out to sea, the long lament of a fog horn sounded faintly.
    â€˜That’s the one on the Île de Groix,’ commented St-Cyr grumpily. ‘A good ten kilometres. Dead flat and painfully mournful, as is appropriate!’
    â€˜Let’s find that shed. Maybe it’s dry.’
    â€˜Is Kerjean deliberately leaving us out here to stew in our own juice?’
    â€˜Maybe the coroner likes to sleep in? Maybe he had to come all the way from Vannes, eh? Hours, Louis. It could take the son of a bitch all day to get here!’
    â€˜ Nom de Jésus-Christ , Hermann, what is it this time? A photographer without a film? Some argument as to bills unpaid – a last job perhaps? Or is it that the Admiral Doenitz needs to be informed of recent developments and has demanded one of his photographers assist?’
    These days there were always complications. Others always had to get in the way. ‘The shed, remember?’ snorted Kohler and when they found it, he held the door open and from some hidden cache among his inner pockets, offered a flask of peach brandy, though God knows how he had obtained it and one did not often ask such questions.
    There were two upended