The Clubfoot Murders the Female Chorus Performer

The Clubfoot’s role in the murder of a female chorus performer turns a secret romance into a planned killing. In the film story Molina recounts to Valentin, the performer is struck by a car while reaching for a key from her German lover; the Clubfoot helps set the car in motion, and the young lieutenant witnesses the fatal outcome. The episode’s suspense depends on how an apparently intimate gesture becomes the occasion for an attack, then widens into an investigation that puts Leni under suspicion.

Context and Setup

The killing follows a visit by the performer to Leni’s dressing room. She tells the singer, whom she admires, that she is pregnant. The baby’s father is a German officer who loves her, and the two are arranging to marry. The performer’s expression clouds when she adds that she fears something else might happen, but she dismisses the concern as foolishness and leaves without explaining it. The story does not disclose what she feared; the later attack gives that unexplained anxiety a foreboding place in the sequence without resolving it.

Left alone, Leni wonders whether she could love an invader of her country. She notices flowers sent from the German Alps, an expensive gift that connects her private life to the wartime setting and to the German presence in Paris. Meanwhile, the pregnant performer walks through the dark streets toward the building where her lover is waiting. The juxtaposition makes Leni’s conflict over the occupation and the performer’s relationship with a German officer part of the same scene, though their circumstances are not identical.

The Attack

From an upper-floor window, the young German lieutenant smiles at the performer and throws her a key. It falls into the street, and she goes to retrieve it. The narrative has already introduced the threat in fragments: a shadow or hidden presence, the suggestion that someone is following her, and the distinctive sound of a step followed by a dragging foot. Valentin identifies the figure as the Clubfoot, and Molina confirms his appearance in the scene.

The Clubfoot sees a coupe arrive, driven by a man described as having a distinctive, menacing appearance. He gets into the car and signals the driver to speed away. At that moment, the performer is bent over in the middle of the narrow street, reaching for the key. The car strikes her and continues into the empty streets. The sequence links the Clubfoot to the attack through his presence, his entry into the vehicle, and his signal; the driver is the person at the wheel. The story presents the killing as deliberate rather than as a traffic accident.

The lieutenant has watched from above and rushes downstairs. He lifts the dying performer, who tries to reassure him that the baby will be born healthy and make its father proud. She dies before she can say more. Her last concern is for the child and its father, while the key that drew her into the street remains the small object around which the murder was arranged.

Investigation and Consequences

The next morning, German police call on Leni because they have learned that she was a friend of the dead performer. Leni knows only that the woman was in love with a German lieutenant. The police do not believe that this is all she knows and detain her for several hours. Her public standing as a well-known singer intervenes: a telephone order secures her release into custody so that she can perform that evening. The murder therefore reaches beyond its immediate victim, making Leni vulnerable to interrogation even though the account says she has no further knowledge to give.

After the performance, Leni finds another delivery of flowers. A young, high-ranking German officer approaches her in person, identifies himself as responsible for German counterespionage operations in Paris, and apologizes for the trouble she faced that morning. He says the flowers come from the Upper Palatinate, where he was born, and invites her to supper. This encounter does not establish that he is the lieutenant involved with the performer; the story distinguishes the young lover from the officer who approaches Leni. Its placement instead shows how the murder and investigation bring Leni into contact with German authority and deepen the tale’s intertwining of romance, occupation, and suspicion.

Narrative Function

The scene is told as part of Molina’s film narration to Valentin, not as an independently presented event in the prison’s main action. Its pacing delays the violence: first the performer’s unexplained fear, then the nighttime walk, the waiting lover, the dropped key, and the sound associated with the Clubfoot. That progression makes the key both a token of the couple’s meeting and the immediate reason the performer is exposed in the street. The abrupt attack breaks the promise of the marriage she had described to Leni.

The aftermath also shifts attention from the murder itself to its effects on others. The lieutenant is left with the death of the woman he loved and the child she believed would be born; Leni faces police questioning because of their friendship. Within the embedded story, the Clubfoot’s intervention is thus more than a single act of violence: it destroys the performer’s anticipated future and sets the next stage of danger for Leni in motion.