Dollmaker by J. Robert Janes

not. I had no reason to but it’s interesting you should think to try and put the blame on me. You who are on such familiar terms with her, Captain. You who do not go home on leave to see your family but spend all your free time making dolls or visiting the wife of another.’
    Kaestner sprang. So swiftly did he lunge at him, Kerjean had only time to grip him by the wrists as the Captain’s hands closed fiercely about his throat.
    The table went over. The girl shrieked, Kohler rammed the two of them, sending them into the wall. ‘ Enough !’ he shouted.
    Choking, plum-red in the face and clutching himself by the throat, the Préfet sat on the floor slumped against the wall. ‘ Bâtard! he raged. ‘You’ve been fucking that poor woman against her will. Admit it! Fucking her, you bastard! Forcing her! Le Trocquer found out and tried to blackmail you into forgetting about the money or giving him more time to find it.’
    Merde , thought St-Cyr, what have we now? Kaestner backed away as if struck. Freisen said, ‘Johann, is this true?’
    The girl tried to find her pencil and pad.
    â€˜A glass of marc , I think,’ breathed Kohler, ‘and some coffee. Louis, ask the Obersteuermann to see that we get it and are not disturbed otherwise. No one is leaving.’
    â€˜I… I must.’ Embarrassed, the girl looked so helpless.
    Kohler gave her a nod. ‘Take a few minutes. Here, have one of these. You’re due it.’
    Fortunately no one had stepped on the cigarette package and when she timidly took one, her big blue eyes glanced uncertainly at him before flicking warily to the Captain.
    You sweet thing, thought Kohler. That’s just what I figured you would do.
    Freisen had noticed her reaction too and so had the Préfet.
    Louis was pleased but chose to hide this by brushing himself down and finding his chair. And when the coffee and the brandy were brought in steaming mugs, he asked Baumann for enough tobacco to fill his cherished pipe. ‘It helps me think, and that is something we all must do.’
    At a nod from his Vati, the Obersteuermann yielded up his tobacco pouch and muttered in German, ‘It is okay, yes? I have another somewhere.’
    St-Cyr wondered if they were going to have to take on all fifty-two members of the crew.
    French toilets were always filthy but the boys from U-297 had made this one spotless, which only proved – yes it did, thought Elizabeth Krüger – that the French were inferior.
    Yet I cannot stop myself from shaking, she said and bit a knuckle.
    It had been clever of the Captain to have done that – a desperate move, yes, of course. But he was like that. He took chances. He assessed things coldly, rapidly, thoroughly, then, having weighed up each situation, struck when and where least expected.
    The Préfet, fool that he was, had blurted out his feelings for this Madame Charbonneau who spoke German so perfectly, the Captain liked to visit her. A touch of home.
    The Préfet had as much as confessed to the murder. Now everyone would think he had done it. Yes, everyone. So, good. Yes, good.
    But me? she asked, nervously drawing on the cigarette and wishing that the Captain would see how she felt about him. ‘I, Fräulein Elizabeth Krüger, Special Assistant to the Kapitän zur See Freisen, am afraid.’
    Toilets did that to one sometimes, made them confess things best left unsaid. Had he really been fucking the Frenchwoman against her will or with it? Did it matter so much to herself? It could not last in any case. No, it couldn’t.
    The dossiers of the two detectives had not been good. Herr Kohler, in spite of having two sons missing in action at Stalingrad and presumed dead, had a reputation for going against authority. He was no Gestapo, no Nazi though a member of both by force of circumstance.
    And his friend, his partner? she wondered. That one was even more so a hunter of the truth. A