De Clermont made a contemptuous noise. ‘Are you suggesting that I conspired with Josephine to kill her husband?’
‘No. I believe you had no intention of going to see your mistress that evening. Probably you had a rendez-vous for lunch the following day. But when you got back to the Ritz from your club dinner, full of drink no doubt, your infatuation – or your lust – was too strong and on a sudden whim you jumped into a fiacre and went to her house.’
‘You can prove all this of course?’ The colonel’s tone was still self-assured and mocking.
‘I think so. The doorman at the Ritz has made a statement and we’ve found the fiacre driver who took you to Impasse Louvain and whom you kept waiting for more than an hour.’
‘Even supposing I did go round to see Josephine, why should I have killed her husband and her mother?’
‘I’m quite sure you didn’t go there with the intention of killing anyone.’
‘Then I repeat, why should I have killed Hassler?’
‘Because of your violent temper. The same temper which has caused you trouble in the past; which led you to attack a fellow officer in the army so savagely that you were compelled to resign your commission. We’ve been checking on your past, Colonel.’ A shadow of discontent passed over de Clermont’s face, as though the memory of his resignation from the army still rankled as an injustice. Gautier went on: ‘You were unlucky that night at Impasse Louvain. At any other time Josephine Hassler would probably have welcomed you and her husband would certainly never have disturbed your love-making. But they had arranged a little trap for one of her other lovers that night, you see, and by sheer bad luck the trap was sprung on you.’
‘A trap? Another lover? What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I imagine that the scene was set for something like this. The Grand Duke Varaslav had arranged to call on Josephine after going to the Opera. Her mother had been put to bed with a sleeping draught and her husband was in his room waiting. Hassler was a man who dropped off to sleep easily so he had set his alarm clock to wake him in case that happened. The scheme was that he was to go down to the drawing-room and confront the grand duke in flagrante as it were. The grand duke wouldn’t like a scandal, so the poor husband would have to be compensated for his injured feelings. It isn’t a very original plot. I imagine they would be asking for a few hundred thousand francs; just the amount they needed to pay off their debts. That wouldn’t be much to a man of the grand duke’s wealth.’
‘Are you saying that Josephine Hassler would stoop to blackmail?’
‘She was desperate. I daresay she was trying to raise money from all her friends. Perhaps she asked you for some.’ Gautier could see from de Clermont’s expression that he had guessed correctly. He continued: ‘Unfortunately the grand duke, like you, grew impatient. He left the Opera at the interval and went to Impasse Louvain much earlier than Josephine had expected. She probably tried to persuade him to prolong his stay until eleven-thirty, the time when Félix would be making his entrance, but the grand duke was not that sort of lover. Once his craving had been satisfied he lurched off into the night and as for Félix Hassler, he actually had fallen asleep. Then soon afterwards you arrived. I don’t suppose it ever crossed Josephine’s mind to warn her husband. The plot to fleece the grand duke had misfired so there was no reason to turn you away. She may have thought that even if he did disturb the two of you by mistake, he could easily have been packed off back to bed. But when he did appear at the door in his night shirt you lost your temper. You may have even thought that you were going to be blackmailed or perhaps it was just injured vanity at being caught in the classic, undignified position. So you grabbed Félix by the throat and strangled him. You may have only wished to frighten him but in your drunken rage you were carried away.’
Colonel de Clermont stared at Gautier, obviously shaken. Gautier wondered whether in his mind he was living the horror of that drunken scene in the Hasslers, house and recalling the numbing realization that he had killed a man.
‘Josephine Hassler remained calm,’ Gautier said. ‘It must have been she who conceived the plan to set a scene which would look as though the house had been burgled and her husband killed when the intruders attacked him. You carried the body upstairs to Hassler’s bedroom. But when you began to tie up the old lady, she woke up so you stuffed cottonwool into her mouth to stop her screaming. You were not to know that she would swallow her false teeth and choke herself. Finally to complete the deception you tied Josephine Hassler to her bed and then just walked out of the house. It was all so simple: no witnesses, very little noise and no evidence to show that you had even been there that night.’
‘Exactly!’ De Clermont said quickly. ‘No evidence. Let us pretend for a moment that what you’ve said is true. Can you prove any of it?’
‘As I’ve told you, we have found the fiacre driver who took you to Impasse Louvain.’
‘What does that prove? I called on a lady friend. When I left she and her husband were both alive and well.’
‘The doorman of the Ritz will testify that your shirt was stained with ink.’
‘So he accuses me now, months after the murders and after he has read all about the trial in the papers and about the ink stains. Why didn’t he come forward before? And who is going to believe him anyway, a man dismissed from his job for dishonesty?’ De Clermont had regained both his composure and his arrogance. ‘And will you bring Madame Hassler into court again, Inspector, to accuse her if not of murder then of conspiracy. No, I think we can be sure that after one failure your superiors will never allow your case to go to trial.’
Gautier knew the man was right. The evidence he could produce was not enough to force the hand of those members of the government who had been reluctant in the first place to put Josephine Hassler on trial and who must have been relieved when she had been acquitted. He had made the trip from Paris to the Chateau d’Ivry with a vague, undefined hope that a confrontation with Colonel de Clermont might produce, if not a confession then some admission which could be turned into evidence. Realizing now that he could gain nothing by prolonging the interview, he turned towards the door.
‘We shall see about that, Colonel,’ he said, and left the room.
As he crossed the hallway towards the front door, he noticed that as on his previous visit, the door to the drawing-room was slightly open and the same faded woman stood watching from the room beyond. As he came up level with the door, she opened it wider and beckoned him.
‘Do you want me?’ he asked enquiringly.
The woman placed a finger on her lips to silence him, reached out to catch the sleeve of his coat and pulled him towards the open door. He followed her into the drawing-room.
‘What is it?’ Gautier asked.
She had the crushed, nervous look of an animal or small child that has been persistently ill-treated. Apart from that and the premature lines of age in her face, she could have been pretty. Her clothes were drab and colourless and her hands, he noticed, were coarsened by work.
With a furtive, secretive air she crossed the room and produced from behind a settee where it had been hidden, a cloth bag. Bringing it to Gautier she opened the bag and pulled out a man’s crumpled dress shirt.
‘Look!’ She smiled maliciously.
Gautier took the rolled up shirt and shook it out. Its starched front and both of the cuffs were liberally stained with what looked like ink.
‘He brought it back from Paris on the day after that woman’s husband was murdered,’ the woman said.
‘Are you certain?’
‘Oh yes. He unpacked his own suitcase after coming back from Paris that time, which made me suspicious. So I checked his linen and found that one of his dress shirts was missing. That same evening I watched from my bedroom and saw him go out and hide something in a pile of rubbish that was to be burned the following morning. I waited until it was dark and then went out to see what it was and I found this shirt.’ She looked at Gautier anxiou
sly. ‘That will be enough evidence won’t it? I mean your scientists will be able to prove it was the same ink.’
‘Why did you keep the shirt?’ Gautier asked her. ‘You would not even have heard of the murders at the time.’
‘If he went to so much trouble to destroy it, then I guessed it might be connected with something discreditable. So I hid it just in case I might one day be able to use it to harm him. Then when I read in the papers about that Hassler woman’s trial, I knew he must have been involved.’
‘Why didn’t you go to the police as soon as you knew?’
‘He would have been suspicious if I had tried to leave the house. I never go out except to church on Sundays. So I just waited, knowing you’d come back.’
Gautier folded the shirt carefully and began putting it back into the cloth bag. The woman watched him and he found himself wondering at the depth of her hatred for her step-father.
‘Will that be proof enough?’ she asked him again.
‘I would think so, added to the other evidence which we have to show that he was at the murdered man’s house.’
‘He has to be destroyed,’ the woman said slowly. ‘All his life he has used other people, dominated them, destroyed them. Now it’s his turn. It’s God’s justice.’
Gautier was standing with his back to the drawing-room door as he put the shirt away and suddenly he noticed a look of terror in the woman’s eyes as she looked past him. He spun round in time to see the door, which had been slightly ajar, closing quietly.
‘My God!’ the woman shouted. ‘It was him. He heard everything!’
Leaping across the room Gautier pulled the door open and ran into the hall, getting there just in time to see de Clermont disappear into the study and slam that door behind him. He followed with the colonel’s step-daughter close behind him, but when they burst into the study the room was empty.
‘There!’ The woman pointed towards a door at the far end of the study which, since the windows were all closed, could have been the only way by which the colonel could have left the room.
‘Where does it lead?’
‘Only to the gun room.’
When they reached the door it was locked. Gautier lifted up his fist to hammer on it; before he had time to strike a single blow, a deafening report came from the room beyond, followed by a sound that could have been made by a body falling.
The colonel’s step-daughter screamed. After a few seconds a little blood trickled under the door and across the floor of the study.
XXI
GAUTIER DID NOT return to Paris until the following afternoon. The suicide of Colonel de Clermont had meant much for him to do. He had sent for a doctor, called the police, informed the local authorities. His statement and that of the colonel’s step-daughter had been taken and formally attested. So he had stayed overnight in the village of Toussaint and caught the mid-day train to Paris.
In his office at the Sûreté, he finished writing the report which he had started the previous evening at Toussaint and on which he had worked during the train journey. It was a concise account of all the information he had assembled which together showed that de Clermont had been involved in the Impasse Louvain affair, the statements he had taken from the former doorman of the Ritz, the fiacre coachman and the colonel’s step-daughter and finally the vital evidence of the ink-stained evening dress shirt.
When the report was finished, he took it in to Courtrand. He had sent the director a long telegraph the previous afternoon in which he had set out the circumstances of de Clermont’s suicide, so the report he knew would not come as a total surprise. Even so he fully expected to be greeted with a burst of anger because not only had he disobeyed Courtrand’s orders but he had proved him wrong.
Instead to his surprise Courtrand received him courteously. ‘You’ve finished your report already? Excellent! And I can see that it’s as comprehensive and precise as usual.’ After flicking through the report Courtrand added: ‘You’re to be commended, Gautier, for the way you have solved this difficult crime and salvaged the reputation of the department.’
Gautier found it difficult to conceal his astonishment. There seemed to be no limits to Courtrand’s flair for the unexpected. All he could do was ask: ‘And what happens now?’
‘Ah yes, what indeed! That’s a problem which has been exercising my mind ever since we received your telegram. And not only my mind. The minister and even more important personages have had to be consulted. The suicide of this Colonel de Clermont stops us from bringing him to justice.’
‘And Madame Hassler?’
‘She has already left France for London where, they say, she will shortly be marrying an English milord. Madame Hassler is indeed a problem. If we attempted to bring her back and made fresh charges, there would be a public outcry. She won a lot of sympathy for herself at the trial.’
‘I can see there would be legal difficulties in putting her on trial alone,’ Gautier remarked.
‘Precisely. So there will be no trial.’
‘At least we can issue a full statement of what has happened to the press.’
‘That’s exactly what I would have liked to do,’ Courtrand said, ‘but I have been instructed that there can be no statement.’
Gautier was astounded. ‘In that event no one will ever know that the case was solved!’
‘The matter has been taken out of my hands, Gautier. I can tell you in confidence that no less a personage that the president himself has decided that no useful purpose would be served by issuing a statement. The case is to be officially and finally closed, the dossier filed away.’
‘But that’s unfair!’ Gautier protested. ‘Unfair on all the people who have worked on the case and unfair on the reputation of the department.’
Courtrand opened his two hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I agree with you entirely. I was very angry about it. But sometimes the public good dictates that we cannot say all we know, even if it means that the world at large thinks we have failed. It’s something which we as servants of the State must learn to endure.’
Gautier knew there was nothing to be gained by arguing. What Courtrand had said was in principle true, although he suspected that the decision to close the case might have been made not by the president but by Courtrand himself. To publish the facts of the case would be to admit that the rash public statement which Courtrand had made in the early days of the case denying that Josephine Hassler could in any way be implicated in the murders, had been wrong. A man of his vanity would not easily make such an admission.
The interview was over but as Gautier made to leave the room, Courtrand remarked: ‘You’ve done yourself a lot of good by the way you handled this case, Gautier. It’s been noted in the highest places.’ He smiled as he added: ‘And, of course some of the credit will fall on me; for picking you as exactly the right man to put in charge.’
Walking back home from the Sûreté, Gautier felt a sense of relief as the frustration which had been building up inside him almost since that first Sunday when he had been called to Impasse Louvain, ebbed away. The fact that the case was to be closed without the truth ever being made known did not irritate him as much as he expected. He had the personal satisfaction of knowing that the crime had been solved, the ends tied up, and that was enough.
For a few days or with any luck even weeks, he would have time to live his own life and disentangle his own problems. He told himself that he would have to do something about Suzanne. He felt no anger, no jealousy for what she had done, only pity for the misery which her sense of guilt was causing her. Even so the situation that had been created was impossible to live with and he accepted that it was he who must take the initiative and change it.
A vague plan was forming in his mind. Part of Suzanne’s feelings for him may have been atrophied by the familiarity of marriage and by his neglect of her, but something must remain which could be aroused. Words would be useless and he must show her by his actions that he still had need, if not of
a passionate love, then of her affection and companionship. He might make a start that very night, insist that she go out to dine with him and afterwards they could drop in at her parents’ home. Suzanne might need persuading but if there were even a trace of her affection left for him, that should not be difficult.
When he let himself into their apartment and found it in darkness, he knew intuitively that his good resolutions had come too late. Suzanne had left a note for him, propped up against the clock that had been a wedding present from her god-father. The note read:
Chérie,
I cannot bear to stay on watching you suffer and knowing what I have done to you. So I am leaving, but not to go and live with him. I have taken only my clothes because everything else belongs to the husband.
Forgive me,
Suzanne.
P.S. All your linen has been washed and ironed.
Gautier crumpled the note and threw it into the empty fireplace. Then looking for something to drink and finding only a bottle of Calvados, he poured himself a glass of it and sat down to think. Another man might have rushed after his wife, gone to her parents’ home, demanded his rights, but that was not his style. Either Suzanne would return of her own accord, beg his forgiveness and they would be reconciled, or the marriage had crumbled and fallen apart irretrievably. His mood was one of fatalism.
The only problem was the present. The prospect of spending the evening alone in the apartment, with or without the solace of drink, called for a greater effort of will than he was able to make. Some inner force, a compound of pride and remorse and stubbornness, prevented him from going to Claudine. It was too late in the evening to look for the companionship of friends at the Café Corneille; by this time they would be at home with their wives.
Drearily he began in his mind to plan his evening: a lonely aperitif in some café on the Boulevard St Germain; a meal in a modest restaurant; a couple of beers in some place where there would be music, a caf’conc perhaps, with its vulgarity and laughter; afterwards if he was drunk enough to forget discrimination, he might stumble off to a hotel de rendez-vous with one of the many girls that all these places offered.
The Murders at Impasse Louvain Page 16