The Case of the Climbing Rat: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  The waiter thought, counted on his fingers, then made it five weeks.

  Fournal’s questions thereupon seemed exhausted and he turned with a shrug of his shoulders to Gallois.

  “He had friends?” asked Gallois.

  “Not that I knew of, m’sieu.”

  “And did he ever talk over his business with you?”

  “No, m’sieu.”

  “That surprises me little,” said Gallois dryly. “But did he always remain in his room at the hotel?”

  “Sometimes, m’sieu, but if it was fine he would take a walk.”

  “Ah!” said Gallois. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And where did he walk?”

  The waiter explained that he had no idea. What perhaps he should have said was that the gentleman went out. It was his own personal opinion that he had a walk.

  Gallois sighed and waved a hand at Fournal to indicate that the witness was once again his.

  Fournal simply sent him off with the flea of the law in his ear. There was to be no talking about what he had seen and he must hold himself in readiness to be questioned further by the authorities. Travers had the idea that the blustering was merely to make time, and in truth there seemed precious little that Fournal or any one else could do. Fournal himself was realizing as much, but he looked profoundly wise for a moment or two, examined the body again, and then the mountain, having been in that much labour, produced the following conversational mouse.

  “I find it strange, this crime.”

  “On the contrary,” Gallois told him. “A man of the type of this Rionne always has enemies.”

  “Precisely,” said Fournal promptly. “And it was such a one who attacked him here?”

  “Attacked!”

  “But yes!”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders. “When you raised the body you doubtless saw his clothes at the same time. You observed, for instance, that he was in the act of urinating when the assassin came in. This assassin wore rubber soles or espadrilles, and before Rionne could turn his head, the knife was in his back. That, I think, is not attack. On the contrary it is simply assassination.”

  “And the assassin?” asked Fournal.

  “Who knows? Even before Rionne fell he had gone. One step and he was on the pavement, and on the pavement he was unobserved.”

  Fournal nodded respectfully. “All that is undoubtedly true, and you advise what?”

  Gallois looked surprised. “It is not for me to advise. But haven’t I already been told that you are inquiring into his history? Very well; out of that there ought to arrive a motive which will lead you to the assassin. There will also doubtless be a search of his room, and the assistance of the newspapers. And, since he seems to have been secretive about his affairs, why not photograph the face at once and display it everywhere, with a request for information? By that you may learn where he spent his time when he was not in the hotel.”

  Fournal whipped out his note-book, but Gallois was holding out his hand. “If we can be of service, do not hesitate to call on us at the Hôtel de France.”

  Fournal stared blankly. “You leave then, m’sieu?”

  “We also have business that is not unimportant,” Gallois told him enigmatically.

  Fournal followed them both to the exit, and saw a way cleared. To avoid the crowd Gallois cut through a kind of alley and almost at once was in the hotel yard. Half an hour later Travers had changed his quarters and he had heard all about Bariche and that rendezvous of the Wednesday afternoon.

  Dinner began at seven o’clock. Gallois and Travers had a preliminary apéritif on the veranda and the conversation turned on coincidences with special reference to Rionne. Gallois rounded off the discussion with something of amused contempt. The affaire Rionne was one which might have been specially arranged to suit the brains of Fournal.

  “An excellent man,” he hastened to add in his fluent English, “but without finesse. He is of the type that fills in documents in a handwriting that is superb, and after that—” He shrugged his shoulders, and then his expression changed and he was getting to his feet, for Fournal himself was coming in.

  “Messieurs,” he said and bowed. “M. Velot said I should find you here.”

  A sheet of paper was being placed ceremoniously on the table.

  “This is the record of Rionne received from Paris. The fingerprints have not yet arrived, but there is no doubt that it is the same man.”

  The record was a peculiar one. Rionne had first come under the notice of the police under his own name in 1920, when charged at Enghien with causing an abortion. He had been fined five thousand francs with imprisonment for two years. After that he had disappeared till 1933, when defendant in an action brought by a patient for injuries caused by his carelessness in a skin-grafting operation. That was in Luxembourg, where it turned out he had been practising for nine years under the name of Casimir Dufont. After his expulsion from the Principality he was heard of as recently as the previous February, when under his own name he was expelled from Switzerland for suspicion of drug trafficking. He had to resume his own name, Travers explained, because of the terms of the will.

  Fournal pompously produced from his pocket a copy of the will and other papers found in the dead man’s room at the hotel. There were medical diplomas, for instance, and even a bundle of letters from grateful patients, but nothing to indicate the identity of a possible assassin.

  “You have a public museum here?” Gallois asked jocularly. “If so, here are some excellent exhibits. Meanwhile the inquiry progresses?”

  Fournal said that M. Aumade, the local examining magistrate, was already employed about the case, and he requested a visit by M. Travers at ten o’clock the next morning at the Hôtel de Ville. He would also be honoured to meet Inspector Gallois.

  “Give him our compliments,” Gallois told him largely, “and say that without fail we shall be there.”

  But he seemed sardonically amused when Fournal had gone.

  “This Rionne is what you call a fleabite; he is not worth the trouble of an inquiry. M. Aumade discovers the assassin perhaps, who is some associate of Rionne in Switzerland and whom he has, as you say, double-crossed. Even then, what does it matter? You and I do not concern ourselves with affairs so trivial. In courtesy we call on this M. Aumade, and after that—? Eh bien, we await the afternoon of Wednesday, which promises a real occasion.”

  The second gong had long since sounded and he got to his feet.

  “As far as I am concerned,” Travers said, “I am of your own and Dogberry’s opinion.”

  “Dogberry?”

  Travers explained.

  “You will pardon if I make a note,” Gallois said delightedly. “At the moment, I also occupy myself with Shakespeare. And what was the opinion of this excellent Dogberry?”

  Travers gave it in French. Gallois chuckled enormously.

  “‘He thanked God he had disembarrassed himself of a rogue.’ And you also, my friend, and Madame your wife, have disembarrassed yourselves of a rogue. That makes the epitaph of this Rionne. The quotation, if you will excuse me, was superb. Sometime I shall also avail myself of it.”

  After dinner the talk turned to the Wednesday, and Travers ventured to remark that the Bariche affair might turn out to be something quite simple too. If the priest turned up and the information was given, the arrest of Bariche would follow and that was that. There would be, for instance, no thrill of a hunt.

  “It is nothing then that I should be able to vindicate myself?” asked Gallois with a reproachful sadness.

  “But of course,” Travers told him. “After what you have told me I shall be delighted.”

  The eyes of Gallois narrowed. “For my part, when I lay my hand upon this Bariche, it will be on a man who lives and has blood in his veins. To me this Bariche has been words on paper, and a heap, like this, of documents.” His lips curled in infinite disgust. “The Bariche of documents, the Bariche of what you call second-hand, as he is described to me by witnesses, who are
mostly fools.”

  Travers could not quite understand the last remark. Gallois explained it at some length. Bariche had not chosen his victims from the lower and less educated classes like Landru. Those were the classes that came forward at once to the police if they suspected a relative had been a victim; but the victims of Bariche appeared to have been of a superior class, whose relatives would do everything to avoid publicity. From these there were doubtlessly a dozen individuals who guessed that some daughter or female relative had been a Bariche victim, but who would never come forward with information to the police and so risk scandal in their own localities, and most of the information the police did possess had come only from the Auteuil fire and chance revelations arising out of it. There had also been third-party, or anonymous, communications by people not relatives of the victim. Those people had been the nosy-parkers and scandalmongers, who, when the Bariche affair first blazed out, suspected that the excuses given by relatives for the absence or disappearance of someone was not as genuine as it seemed, and that the someone might indeed be a victim of the new Bluebeard.

  Travers raised his glass. “Well, here’s luck on Wednesday and hoping your priest turns up.” Then he was smiling and shaking his head. “I wonder if you will pardon me—I should say, understand me—if I put forward a point of view. Do you know what I think would be the ideal thing? That on Wednesday you should receive information which would allow you definitely to convince your superiors that Bariche is alive, but that you should not be able to lay your hands on him.”

  “You mean that he should escape?”

  “Wait a moment,” Travers said. “I don’t know that I did mean that, but let him escape if you like. Anything provided you do not see him before you ultimately lay your hands on him. Think of the thrill you’ll have in being absolutely certain Bariche is somewhere and not knowing who he really is. That waiter there, for instance, might be Bariche, or that man just coming in—the lame man with the black beard. You might even sit down with Bariche at the same table and not know him.”

  Gallois shook his head. “There are times, my friend, when I might enjoy a sensation of the kind, but in the case of this Bariche—no.” His eyes turned dreamily away and he was smiling with an infinite sadness. “What you call the thrill will come for me when I approach my superiors and I say: ’Permit me to present M. Bariche, who was dead, but by some drollery has decided to come alive again.’”

  After dinner Velot, who loved a gossip, made a third with them, and later Madame joined them. It was getting pretty late when in came a resident who was a stranger to Gallois.

  “The circus was good?” Velot called to him.

  “It was superb.”

  “And Auguste? He had recovered from his indisposition?”

  Auguste also was superb, he was told. Then Gallois had to admit to Travers that Velot had dragged him to the circus and Madame was announcing that, after all she had heard, she would certainly go to the next day’s matinée. Then at last Travers and Gallois made a move for bed.

  “Before I forget it,” said Travers as they went along the corridor. “Might I be somewhere on hand on Wednesday? I’ve plenty of time to spare, so if you like I’ll drive you to Toulon in the car. It will be nice to see Charles again too.”

  Gallois said he would be delighted to accept the offer and Charles would be delighted to see Travers, of whom he was an admirer.

  Travers smiled. “I wonder what he’s actually doing in Nîmes, while you’re away?”

  The smile of Gallois was almost a chuckle. “Whatever he does, my friend, there is one thing of which we are certain. It is not the museums or the antiquities with which he occupies himself.”

  But what Charles was actually doing at that very moment was nothing at all, at least, actively; and what he was doing passively, so to speak, would never have been guessed in a hundred attempts by either Gallois or Travers. The nearest they might have come at it would have been to say that he was in bed. As a matter of fact Charles, at the moment, was within eight kilometres of Carliens, lying unconscious on a bed, and in his head was a wound in which there had been put no less than twelve stitches.

  How it came about was this. Charles contrived after all to be in a position to leave Nîmes on the Sunday night, though he had intended going on the Monday morning, which would ensure his not running up against Gallois, for whose discipline he had the profoundest respect. But at that conference at Nîmes he had become friendly with the son of a certain dignitary at Toulon and as this son was returning to Toulon late on the Sunday night, Charles accepted his offer of a ride.

  Now he had always had a hankering after things mechanical. He might indeed have been described as a born driver, with work and Paris giving him few chances of driving. During the journey that Sunday night an idea had come to him to spend his two days in touring the countryside. But first he got into touch with the Toulon police, in order to make sure that there was definitely no more news about the priest, and from them he learned that Gallois was in Carliens.

  He then hired an old, but quite serviceable, two-seater from the garage, to be returned in two days’ time, and late that Monday afternoon he set off for Hyères. Near the town he looked out for a kind of by-pass short cut, which his friend had told him would avoid the suburbs, and bring him out farther along the coast road. He found it, as he thought, but in any case it was a glorious evening, the car was going well and he was in his element. Then he began looking to the right for a sight of the sea, and was puzzled that no sea was in sight, and soon he knew he must be on the wrong road and with no map.

  So he waited at the cross-roads till a passing motorist advised him to go on to Gevrol-les-Vignes. Five kilometres short of the town he had a nasty puncture and found when he had fixed on the spare that he had no pump with which to blow it up. Dusk was already in the sky before another motorist came to his help. Happily the car lights functioned well and then at a fork he took what was obviously the road to Gevrol, only to be on the wrong one. When he saw the lights ahead and imagined them to be those of Gevrol they were only the lights of Lizou.

  The descent was steep and the road still rough from the spring rains, and exceedingly tortuous. Then when he was on the outskirts of the tiny town and the precipice that had been to his right had shrunk to a mere slope, a huge camion came suddenly hurtling round the bend. Its lights were in his eyes and at once it seemed to be on top of him. As he wrenched his steering-wheel right, it caught his bumper and pitched him to a gap in the broken-down stone wall. Without pausing, the camion roared on. The car trembled for a moment on the edge, struck the fallen stones again, then toppled down the slope.

  But at the foot of the slope on a plateau that ran alongside the gorge was a cottage occupied by a roadman who at the moment was absent. On his return two hours later he found the car in his garden and the unconscious Charles in it. A hundred yards away was the nearest house, which was that of a Dr. Debran. That, as far as Charles was concerned, was fortunate. The doctor had been in the Colonial service and was still a sufferer from recurrent malaria. That Monday night he anticipated an attack and was already dosing himself with quinine. If the accident had taken place a day later he would have been unable perhaps to stitch the cut in the skull, though Gabrielle, his sister, would certainly have attempted it herself.

  Beyond dents and minor breakages the car sustained practically no damage at all. Altogether then it was what one might call a remarkably lucky accident for Charles. If—as Gallois was later forced to wonder—it was an accident at all.

  CHAPTER V

  AT THE RENDEZVOUS

  M. AUMADE, the examining magistrate who was undertaking the inquiry into the murder of Rionne, was a man of charm and affability, and Gallois was to be impressed by his industry and talent. He saw the two in his private room where Gallois introduced Travers, much to that gentleman’s embarrassment, not only as a friend but a famous expert of Scotland Yard.

  M. Aumade expressed himself as doubly honoured. With so m
uch talent, he said, they should soon arrive at the murderer of Rionne. There might even have been a twinkle in his eye as he added: “There is also our excellent confrère Fournal, who, I believe, is known to you.”

  Gallois permitted himself a smile. “The excellent Fournal will stay with you. As for us, unhappily, we must both leave to-morrow.”

  “A matter of urgency?” Aumade asked regretfully.

  “Yes,” Gallois said. “An affair which I regret at the moment I am unable to confide to you.”

  “Well, there may be time yet,” Aumade said confidently. “But first of all some rather boring business must be settled.”

  What he immediately wanted was a complete official statement by Travers. Among other things the English trustees of the will would have to be notified of the death of Rionne. But it was all tedious work and it was not until an hour later that Aumade was asking Gallois if he had formed any new opinions about the murder.

  Gallois asked if he might speak frankly.

  “We have almost a complete history of the man,” he said, “thanks to the statement of M. Travers, and his record. He committed some professional crime and left England probably to avoid arrest, but resumed practice in Luxembourg where we imagine him going more and more down the social ladder until even his professional skill is impaired and he bungles a case. Then he goes to Switzerland, from where he is forced to request money from his former wife. Even though he obtains it he becomes an associate of drug pedlars and perverts. He is expelled from there, and now, almost at once, we find him here.” He gave a shrug of his shoulders. “What then should we conclude?”

  Aumade pulled a wry face. “These are many things one could conclude. Your own deductions are—What?”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders again. “That he arrived here with all the secrets of the gang. In their opinion it was dangerous for him to retain those secrets. Someone or other was sent from Switzerland and—voilà!”

  “The secret then of this murder lies in Switzerland?”