Free Mannequin by J. Robert Janes Page B

Kohler? Having lost her two children during the blitzkrieg and had her husband murdered while under interrogation by the French Gestapo, she had had no other choice. But war makes instant friends and lovers just as quickly as it separates them. Hermann was a good man, and perhaps he did love her a little, if one could call it love, for he was home so seldom and Giselle … why Giselle did require attention.
    The girl was amazingly beautiful but sat woodenly staring up at the stage, unconscious of the looks she was getting from the crowd, remembering how it had been and wondering what the future held. Ah yes.
    To be blonde, blue-eyed, tall, slender and forty years of age was not to covet Hermann Kohler or get jealous of Giselle le Roy, though sometimes those sorts of feelings intruded. One was only human and yes, of course one worried for that same future. At any moment the rifle butts could come even at Hermann’s door. Giselle and herself could well be dragged away and ‘deported’.
    One must live for the present and accept the situation as it was.
    The two detectives had drawn a sketch of the quadrangle of the Palais Royal and its environs and were deep in conversation over it. Hermann was in his element, smoking, tossing glances up at the stage, grinning, drinking beer, thinking that he would like to get a hand between a pair of legs up there, yet all the time his mind was flitting back and forth, recalling little things, projecting on into the future.
    Jean-Louis always questioned everything. A thinker, he was not at all interested in the naked girls who kicked their legs above his head. She knew he longed to be alone with his pipe and tobacco, his little furnace, so as to examine the disappearances and murders from as many angles as possible. One so committed, he lived only for each case, especially this one. A cuddly man, Giselle had once said and laughed delightedly at the thought of seducing him, for men over fifty made good lovers sometimes, and the girl had thought it might be ‘very interesting’ to compare the two detectives in such a way.
    St-Cyr traced out Joanne’s route from the Bourse station of the Métro westward along the rue Quatre Septembre towards the bank which was on the other side of the street. Then back again and south down the rue de Richelieu past the Bibliothèque Nationale to the Théâtre du Palais Royal in the north-western corner of the quadrangle.
    She had picked up the final letter and had, at 1.15 or 1.20 p.m., entered the garden and gone into the shop of Meunier the engraver.
    Then finally she had walked out of the garden and around to the rue de Valois to knock at the door of that house.
    â€˜For three days she’s kept a prisoner, Hermann. Three days of … ah, I can’t bring myself to think of it. Then suddenly they leave and the house is emptied.’
    â€˜The photos are then scattered either by one of the kidnappers or by someone else,’ said Kohler grimly.
    â€˜But the photos only tell us so much. The rapes aren’t shown, but were they photographed?’
    â€˜For someone else to view?’ breathed Kohler, watching him closely. ‘Someone who wasn’t present?’
    St-Cyr nodded curdy and passed a smoothing hand over the rough sketch map he had drawn. Oona van der Lynn was very still, and when he looked across the table at her, he saw her flinch, saw moisture rush into her lovely eyes.
    Giselle le Roy was tense and pensive—ashen, so much so that the paleness of her fresh young cheeks contrasted sharply with her jet-black hair.
    â€˜A sadist, Hermann? A psychopath—one with money enough to hire those who would do his every bidding?’
    â€˜A man and a woman …’ said Kohler, lost in thought.
    â€˜Madame Lemaire’s maid, Nanette, heard the crying not just of Joanne, but of others,’ said St-Cyr.
    Kohler told him of Renée Marteau’s body and that the former mannequin had