Dollmaker (44 page)

‘Inspector, what has happened to her children? It really is not like her. That old mill.… She might have gone there. The beams in the floor above, they are still sound. There are ropes — I myself keep taking them down for fear the boys who swing from them and climb too high might have an accident but a woman in great distress … a woman who was so close to the mother who directed her life, a mother who would know all about painting caves …?'

‘I'll go there now.'

‘No, I will go with you. If she has hanged herself, I will never forgive myself. I shall resign as mayor and take the blame for not having put a stop to that husband of hers.'

He would probably kill his pigeons too. He had that look about him.

St-Cyr tried to open the door to the mill but it wouldn't budge. He threw a shoulder against it — nearly knocking the wind out of himself. He ran around to the side to gaze up at the gaping hole of a once-glazed window.

Lazily a heavily knotted rope swung from an ancient timber inside. ‘Madame …' he began, desperate now. ‘Madame, you had nothing to fear from me.' Thoughts of the two children came. What would they do without their mother? Relatives … would there be someone to take them in?

It was Hermann who hoisted him up and by degrees got him through the window, but Louis paused up there.

Pialat threw Kohler a frantically questioning look.

The Sûreté's hand earnestly motioned to them for silence. ‘Leave him,' croaked Kohler. ‘Let him have a look.' The cinematographer had taken over.
Verdammt
another killing!

The rope swung gently, and in the shaft of sunlight from the opposite window, it hung from the centre of the timber and stretched all but to the floor. Mill dust stirred and eddied. The inside of the door had been braced with the heavy cross-timber once used to secure it in earlier times of strife.

There was rubbish — the broken machinery of past times, what could not be reused elsewhere. A few pulley wheels, some old straw … a few of the baskets that had been used to collect walnuts but were now beyond repair.…

Alone in the centre of the floor, at the end of that rope, she sat on a small tier of wooden blocks and every time the rope she gripped so tightly came towards her, she rhythmically sent it back but maintained a tension on it that greatly troubled the détective in him.

If ever a woman had sat in debate over killing herself, it was this one.

‘Madame,' he said, as gently as he could. ‘There is no need. We are here now and will protect you.'

Somehow she awoke to his presence but said nothing, only gazed up at him as if still not sure there was anyone there. ‘The door, madame. Please open it.'

Pialat called out, ‘Juliette,
ma chère
, it's me, Alain. Please, you must open the door and tell them what you know. The children … where are they?'

‘Monsieur
le maire
…?' she blurted and searched desperately for words. ‘But… but I know nothing, Monsieur
le maire.
Nothing.'

‘The children?' he repeated earnestly.

‘The children,' she echoed. ‘Ah … Getting clover for the rabbits, I think. Your pigeons … I have forgotten. Forgive me.'

Pialat did not turn away. He shook himself and clenched his fists. Suddenly he gripped his mouth to stop himself from vomiting, shed tears of relief for her and could not help but let them fall.

Verdammt
, thought Kohler, what have we here?

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copyright © 1995, 2002 by J. Robert Janes

Cover Design by Linda McCarthy

978-1-4532-5192-8

This edition published in 2012 by
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/Open Road Integrated Media

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