The Case of the Climbing Rat: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  AFFAIRE SINISTRE À CARLIENS

  DRAME MYSTERIEUX À VILLA SABLONS

  L’ASSASSIN DE RIONNE FAIT ENCORE UN COUP

  MORTEL?

  Travers’s glasses were off and he was blinking. The murder of Rionne had apparently not been the simple thing for which Gallois had taken it. Whoever had killed Rionne had apparently struck again, and in his excitement Travers was getting to his feet and hooking on his glasses. Then, as his eyes shifted from the beach, he was vaguely aware that someone he knew was crossing the road from the Hôtel de Ville, portfolio beneath his arm. It was M. Aumade, the examining magistrate, and at that same moment, and with a look of surprise, he was recognizing the lean lamp-post figure of Ludovic Travers.

  CHAPTER VIII

  IS IT BARICHE?

  IF an hour previously Travers had been told that he would lunch with M. Aumade at his hotel, he would have regarded the prophecy as an excellent joke. What Travers did not know was that Gallois had given the examining magistrate so flattering an opinion of himself. Praise from the great Gallois was even more than praise, and Aumade had hailed the sight of Travers as a beneficent miracle. The inducement to lunch was to be followed by an invitation to run at least an eye over the case, and through Travers he hoped to excite the interest of Gallois.

  Travers’s first question was if there was really any connection between the two murders. Aumade ought to have said no, and that the headline in Travers’s newspaper was merely the sensationalism of the Press. What he did was to assume an air of mystery. At the moment one could not tell. That a place, hitherto so free from serious crime as Carliens, should now have two murders, was in itself a matter for thought. But throughout the meal he was giving an outline of what had happened and reinforcing it with copies of evidence from his portfolio. What Travers heard was somewhat disjointed, but it is given here in something of logical order.

  First, as to Carliens and its villas. These studded the lower slopes of the hills to the north of the town, and one arrived at them by roads which were not of the best, though good enough for light traffic. They were picturesque enough, too, and bore names that were picturesque, such as the Street of the Pines, the Old Terrace and the Lane of the Waterfall. The villas themselves were of all sorts: some quite tiny affairs and others handsome buildings with land and vines. The Villa Sablons was in the Rue des Pins, as select a spot as any, and was the property of a Lyonnais who let it furnished through an agent in Carliens. It was of a handy size for a family of no more than four, with a small front garden requiring practically no upkeep. On its right was a lovely grove of olive trees; on the other side were pins ombrelles and some handsome eucalyptuses, the latter overhanging the garden of the neighbouring villa, occupied by a Colonel Brassier.

  In March there arrived at Carliens a M. Georges Letoque, and he put up at the Hôtel de la Mer. He was a Swiss and well provided with money, for he opened an account at the bank for close on one thousand pounds, and later increased it by cash deposits to over three thousand pounds. Almost at once he hired the Villa Sablons for three months and installed himself there. A widow—Marie-Louise Dubois—was housekeeper-cook, but did not sleep in, and one day a week a jobbing gardener pottered about outside.

  M. Letoque, according to his passport, was born in Annecy of Swiss parents and was forty-two years old. His French was impeccable, and during the Great War he bad fought for France and received that wound in the leg from which he still limped. That last information came from Colonel Brassier with whom Letoque had at once become friendly. He was a fine-looking man with a dark beard and very expressive eyes, and his manners, by all accounts, were as charming as himself. Most of his life had been spent in Brazil, but he had returned to Switzerland on leave and now was taking a three-months’ holiday before his return to South America.

  His habits seemed to have been fairly simple and he might have been described as a man of the world who could also appreciate quiet. He could frequent the Casino and he could spend hours sitting on the beach. In the evenings he delighted to take his friends out to dinner, and in the day he would often hire a car and take solitary excursions into the countryside, of which he expressed himself as very fond. The Brassiers had introduced him to their friends, and at once he appeared to have become deservedly popular. Who should want to kill such a man seemed inexplicable. And as Aumade pointed out, the sole connection with the killing of Rionne was the fact that both had come from Switzerland to Carliens.

  Now to the tragedy itself. On the Tuesday morning, at eleven o’clock—the morning it will be remembered after the stabbing of Rionne—Mme Dubois was tidying up the bedroom at the Villa Sablons when she saw a man in the olive grove. There was nothing necessarily unusual about that because the grove was the property of some unknown from Cannes. What was unusual was the attitude of the man himself, who seemed to be entrenched behind the huge trunk of an ancient olive and keeping the house under observation. Mme Dubois was a person of a suspicious spying nature and instead of reporting to M. Letoque who was reading his paper on the veranda, she peered out herself. The man became aware of her and disappeared. He was a youngish man, dressed in grey, which was all the information she could give, for the olive tree was at least fifty metres off and her eyes were none too good. It was further indicative of her secretive nature that she did not mention the matter to her employer.

  So to the Wednesday morning. It was the custom of Mme Dubois to arrive at the villa at nine o’clock, for M. Letoque was a late riser and did not have his coffee till after she arrived. Near the villa she met a man who saluted her extremely courteously and said that the Grand Cirque Pertini was giving a few free seats for their final matinée of that afternoon. She was only too delighted to accept one, and then, before she could ask leave of absence of her employer, he astonished her by saying that he would not be wanting her that afternoon, though she should return at six o’clock to prepare dinner. As that fitted her plans to admiration she saw no reason to mention the circus.

  At six o’clock she returned and found M. Letoque lying dead on the floor of the salon. He had been shot twice—through the chest at close quarters and through the head at such point-blank range that the revolver must actually have touched him. Nothing had been stolen and nothing disturbed. Medical evidence showed that death had occurred at about half-past three, and at that time Mme Brassier—the Colonel and his daughter were bathing—heard at an interval of a few seconds two sounds, which might have been shots. She took them for backfires, common enough in cars descending the hilly roads.

  “And that roughly is all we know,” Aumade said. “You have heard nothing which has given you any ideas?”

  But M. Aumade was wholly unaware of Travers’s fertility as a theorist, and a question was coming at once.

  “Could the two men by any chance have been one and the same?”

  “Ah!” The gasp was one of admiration. “It was an idea which occurred to me also, and this morning I questioned Mme Dubois again. But first she was taken to the olive grove. The tree was found to be seventy metres away, and her sight, as she site said, was none too distinct. But she maintained that the man she saw and the man who gave her the ticket were not the same.” He shrugged his shoulders amusedly. “And why, do you think? Because the second man wore sunglasses and had a dark moustache, whereas she was positive—sight or no sight—that the man in the olive grove was clean-shaven and had no glasses, and their clothes, she said, were different. Nevertheless they were the same height and build, though the second man, she thought, was older than the first.”

  “The glasses and the false moustache alone would account for that,” Travers said.

  “Exactly. Still, as a witness she did her best. Otherwise I regard her as a person of most unsatisfactory character who had no scruples about spying on her employer or doing anything that would further her own interests. When you see her, I think you will agree.”

  “The offer of the tickets was genuine?” Travers asked.

  “That is what
is being discovered at this very moment,” Aumade told him. “Fournal is at Cannes making inquiries at the circus.” He glanced at his watch. “It is possible that there is already news from him at my office.”

  When the two arrived back at the Hôtel de Ville news was just being received from Fournal, and in a minute or two Aumade had the telephoned statement in his hand. That story about the circus management giving free tickets was utterly false. Since they conducted their own publicity they gave away practically no free passes at all, and such as they did give were always scrupulously checked. Nevertheless Fournal had personally seen everybody concerned, and all had alibis, even the bill-posters. There had been three passes that could have been used at the Wednesday matinée and all were accounted for. Therefore Mme Dubois had been given a perfectly ordinary ticket which could have been purchased in advance at the circus box-office or from one of the two agencies in Carliens. The opinion of Fournal was—and Aumade was inclined to agree—that it would be absolutely impossible to check up the purchaser. Not only had the man been so vaguely described by Mme Dubois, but there was nothing to prove that he had bought the ticket himself.

  M. Aumade’s car was waiting, and in five minutes Travers had his first sight of the Villa Sablons. He stood behind the olive tree and recognized it as an admirable vantage-point from which to keep the villa under observation. He saw the veranda and the very chair in which Letoque had been sitting, and then he was seeing the room in which he had been found. There were the marks giving the outline of the body, and from his portfolio Aumade produced photographs, though they were scarcely necessary, for nothing whatever had been disturbed, and it required no great imagination to visualize the scene.

  To the right, as one entered the room, was an easy-chair, of typical English fashion. It was the only one in the room and was habitually used by Letoque. Across the room and facing it was one of those gilt spindly arm-chairs, and about it Aumade had something interesting to say.

  “This morning, in our reconstruction of the crime, we made the discover from marks revealed on the carpet, and which, if you take this glass I think you will still see, that the chair had been overturned and was then replaced where it is now. Bearing in mind that there were two shots, and taking into account their effects, what is your own opinion of what happened?”

  Travers slowly polished his glasses and frowned away in thought.

  “Well, Mme Dubois had been disposed of, and Letoque himself admitted the caller, whom he expected, shall we say. Possibly it was the very man who had given Mme Dubois the free ticker, but at any rate he placed that gilt chair and took his own usual seat opposite. What was actually said or what actually happened till the two shots there is no evidence to prove, but the moment came when Letoque leapt from his chair to make an attack, and was shot through the chest as he made it. The assassin had got to his feet and drawn back in alarm, and so overturned the chair. The impetus of his rush carried Letoque here to where he fell. Then the assassin saw he was still living and was taking no chances. He put the muzzle of his gun to his head and blew out his brains.”

  Aumade had been nodding in agreement, and for a moment nothing else was said. Travers had winced at the cold horror of that last imagined scene. Sinistre was indeed the word.

  Whoever it was that fired that second shot, he said to Aumade, must either have hated Letoque as no one ever hated before, or he was executing some pretty terrible revenge. But which way did the murderer leave the house?

  Aumade took him through to the back, where rough steps mounted between screening clumps of roses to a stony path that led up through the pines to the road.

  “No gun was found?” Travers asked as they came back to the salon.

  “No gun,” repeated Aumade, “and no finger-prints that are unaccounted for.”

  Then all at once he was giving a rather peculiar look.

  “You think the assassin is a man. You have some reason for thinking it must have been a man?”

  “Not necessarily,” Travers said. “One can scarcely imagine, however, a woman firing that second shot, even if it might have been the natural tidiness of a woman that put back in place the overturned chair.”

  Aumade nodded an agreement. “But does not the evidence seem to suggest that the assassin was some person known to Letoque?”

  “You mean, that was why he got rid of Mme Dubois who would have recognized the caller?”

  “Yes,” said Aumade. “I confess that was in my mind.”

  “I was wondering,” Travers said, “if one could tell from his clothes whether he had dressed to receive a man or a woman.”

  “That also occurred to us,” Aumade told him, “and all we could say was that the clothes he was wearing were as good as any he possessed.”

  “He knew many local women?”

  Aumade shrugged his shoulders. “As I told you, Mme Brassier and her stepdaughter introduced him to their friends. Perhaps I am unjust to call him a philanderer, but I have already admitted he was popular.” And then dryly: “More perhaps with women than men. With regard to one particular lady—Mme Brassier in fact—there may be developments.”

  Travers, rather at a loss, could only raise his eyebrows and give a nod as enigmatic as Aumade’s own.

  When Travers first clapped eyes on the dead Letoque he saw only the head, for the rest of the body was covered. The wound had been washed and cleaned, but Travers took only a hurried glance at the grizzly photographs that had been taken before the extraction of the bullet. One thing his eyes could not avoid—the contortion of agony still in the features of the dead man. But when the head was turned and he saw the unwounded side, he was suddenly frowning. Somewhere or other he had actually seen the dead man, but where he could not for the life of him remember. Then he was shaking his head. He had met him perhaps in the streets in Carliens, and the face in some peculiar way had impressed itself on his mind.

  Travers saw the clothes and gave a sniff at the faint odour of scent.

  “He was something of a dandy,” Aumade said. “His hair and beard were pomaded too.”

  “But did you not say that he was lame? It was a limp, I believe?”

  He raised the sheet to show the scar, which was more of a white discoloration, just below the knee-cap.

  Travers looked down at the face again, still slightly puzzled by where he had seen the man, then he went closer.

  “Aren’t the eyes a strange colour for that colour of hair? You’d have expected brown eyes.”

  “Ah!” said Aumade. “A thousand pardons. I forgot to tell you what apparently you have already observed for yourself. The head and beard are dyed.”

  Travers took a glass and examined the scalp.

  “I wonder,” he said, “if there is any possible means of removing this dye, so that we can obtain a photograph as he normally was.” Then he was shaking his head. “But I am afraid not. It is sure to be an ordinary bismuth solution that he used. All the same, the fact that he dyed the hair at all shows that he had something to conceal. The hair of a man of his age ought not to be turning grey, and it’s just as easy to bring back hair to a light shade as to turn it black.” He had been moving aside the sheet. “His normal hair is fair, as you see.”

  “Yes,” said Aumade. “After all, one does not need to dye what will not be noticed.”

  “You are making inquiries about his passport?”

  “There should be news about that this afternoon,” Aumade said. “For my part, I am rather disposed to think the hair was dyed out of vanity.” He gave a chuckle as he opened the door and courteously waved for Travers to go through. “If every dandy was a criminal we should have to build several new gaols.”

  In the ante-room he was informed that Fournal was back from Cannes. Travers at once began taking his leave. If M. Gallois was returning to Paris, he himself would like to return to Carliens, and observe the admirable investigations which were being conducted. No one would be more welcome, Aumade told him, and M. Gallois too if he would be able to
return. Meanwhile it was himself who was grateful.

  Now if he had known Travers better Aumade would have been aware that for some minutes here had been something on Travers’s mind. It was four o’clock, and the first thing that Travers did was to try and get hold of Gallois on the ’phone. The reply was that he was not expected again till after six o’clock. Travers had been ’phoning from the Hôtel de France and there he had a brief talk with Velot, after which he set out for Toulon. He drove fast and after parking the car outside the Place de la Liberté, he had only just time to take a seat facing the Syndicat building as the clock struck six. Gallois was already there, standing patiently and inconspicuously. A few minutes and he went inside; two or three minutes and he reappeared, and as the dock struck the half-hour he was deciding evidently to give it up. A hundred yards on Travers caught him up. What he was going to do, he said, was to ring the Sûreté and find out if any communication had been received there from the informer.

  A quarter of an hour later he was with Travers again and shaking his head despondently. All he could suggest was finding an hotel for the night.

  “A drink first, I think,” counselled Travers, and indicated a suitable spot across the road.

  “This is a day of fatigue,” said Gallois, when he was able to stretch his long legs beneath a table. “Never in my life do I feel so tired. And you—how did you pass your day?”

  Travers told him and Gallois was at once professionally interested. He had read the papers, he said, but only for what they were worth.

  “And so our good friend Aumade is again being kept from his vines,” was his comment. “Who is this Letoque, do you think? Another member of the gang who came from Switzerland with Rionne and has been killed for the same reason?”

  “There are far more unlikely things,” Travers told him us the drinks arrived. There was a long whisky-soda for Gallois and a quick one for himself.