The Case of the Flying Donkey: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “It is foolish, perhaps, to have fear. There is something which I have forgotten. Charles, you will send a man—quick! He does nothing but observe what happens at the Villa Claire; who it is that comes and who goes. Ten minutes, perhaps, and I myself am there.”

  Charles appeared to have understood. Gallois turned to Travers. “My friend, it is necessary that you should accompany me, because you are a friend of M. Larne. But you will wish to see madame, your wife, and there are things I also must do. In ten minutes, then, I arrive at the door of your hotel.”

  Travers, glancing at the clock on the living-room mantelpiece, saw to his surprise that it was only a quarter to seven.

  CHAPTER V

  GALLOIS REVEALS

  GALLOIS drove the car and two of his men sat behind. There was no talking, for the wet paving-stones were dangerous, and Gallois kept his eyes on the road. The drizzle persisted and it was pitch-dark in that narrower road that led to the Villa Claire. Gallois, Travers already knew, must have come that way before, for he asked for no directions and it was near the Villa itself that he slowed down the car.

  A man suddenly appeared in the light of the lamps, then disappeared again. Gallois stopped the car and disappeared also into the dark, for the lamps were now switched off. In two minutes he was back again.

  “Nothing happens,” he said to Travers. “Everything is dark, and there is no one who comes or goes.”

  He switched the sidelights on, gave an order to one of his men, then motioned Travers to follow him. As they turned into the gate of the Villa, the lights were switched off behind them, but Gallois moved unerringly in the dark towards the door.

  He rang, but there was no sound of the bell. A moment’s wait and he rang again. A third time, and another wait, and he stepped back from the door.

  “There is no need to disquiet one’s self,” he said. “Show me, if you please, the window of the studio.”

  “All that next storey,” Travers whispered. “It’s too dark to see.”

  Gallois stopped and gathered a handful of gravel from the drive and threw it upwards. There was the sound as it hit the glass. He threw a second handful, hut before he could stoop for a third there was a sudden light. A curtain was drawn, the window was thrown up, and Larne’s head appeared. There was a furious anger in his voice.

  “Qu’est-ce qu’il y a?”

  “It is I—Travers. Something has happened and I’d like to see you.”

  There was a moment’s wait, and even then Larne’s voice came churlishly.

  “One minute and I’ll be down.”

  He opened the door, still in his painting-smock.

  “What is it?” he said curtly to Travers, making no move to let him in.

  “It’s Braque. When I went to see him, he was dead.”

  Larne shrugged his shoulders. “But, my dear Travers, that is no reason why I should be disturbed.”

  “Pardon, mon maître.” Gallois stepped forward, and quickly introduced himself. Braque, he said, was indeed dead, but he was also murdered.

  “Murdered? But when?”

  “An hour ago, perhaps. You permit that we enter?”

  Larne drew grudgingly back.

  “Gentlemen, by all means enter,” he said. “But I beg of you not to disturb me because someone is murdered. Whoever it is, it is of no consequence to me.” His voice was rising and his hands were quivering. “I work, and it is important that I work.”

  Then his hands fell and the shrug of his shoulders was one of weariness, as if a whole world had conspired against him, and it was useless to protest.

  “A quarter of an hour and I am at your service. Remain here, if you wish, or up above. It is the same to me.”

  “You are right,” Gallois told him humbly in English. “My friend, M. Travers, he has already explained, and it is an intrusion that we make. You permit that we follow you upstairs?”

  Larne led the way up and switched off the lights behind him. Just inside the door he placed chairs.

  “Messieurs, I work. Silence, I beg of you.”

  And at once he was at work again. It was dark where the two sat but a greyish-green light flooded the small area of the table, and dark screens seemed to hold that light in place. The subject was now easy to discern. The maid lay back in an attitude of sleep. The knife lay on her lap and trailing down the black of the dress was the skin of the potato she had been peeling. On the table before her was a cabbage, and turnips and onions, and a copper dish in which were more potatoes.

  Larne was sideways to where they sat, and already absorbed in his work. Greyish-green light came from his left and fell on the invisible canvas, and it was fascinating to watch his little paces backwards, his darting glances at the subject, and then the quick steps forward and the swift strokes and turns of this brush and that, and the sure dab of brush on palette.

  Gallois whispered, lips at Travers’s car.

  “In the rue Jourdoise I was an imbecile. You comprehend now why it was that one did not answer the phone? And why the door-bell does not ring? One disconnects the bells in order not to be disturbed.”

  Travers whispered back.

  “Everything is all right, then?”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders non-committally and slid back in his chair. A quarter of an hour went by, and another quarter of an hour, and almost a third before Larne stepped back and seemed to be making a final survey. Then he gave a nod or two and his voice came gently.

  “Alors, la petite, on peut partir.”

  At once she rose, stretched herself, then came sauntering across to the canvas.

  “One has worked,” she said, and in the laconic remark there was an immensity of praise.

  “And you also,” he said. “Now I call a taxi.”

  “You permit, perhaps.” Gallois was suddenly with them. “There is no need to call a taxi. M. Travers and I depart almost at once, and my car is at the service of mademoiselle. What is the address where she wishes to go?”

  “Rue Vagnolles,” she said, and still seemed to be regarding him suspiciously.

  “You will take a cup of tea?” Larne asked Travers.

  Travers shook his head. Gallois also refused.

  “I am myself fatigued,” Larne told the model. “While you wait, make a pot of tea for yourself and me. For me, one cup of thé Russe. There is a lemon in the cupboard.”

  She disappeared behind the curtain, giving a last inquisitive look at Gallois, whose eyes were now on the picture.

  “It is superb,” he was saying, and even his English was a kind of compliment. “Mon maitre, I have seen many of your pictures, but this is unique.”

  “M. Inspecteur is a critic?” Larne asked dryly.

  “He is a fervent admirer of yours,” cut in Travers. “You never knew it, but it was through him that I first came here, three years ago.”

  “A thousand pardons,” Larne said, and he said it handsomely. “You will forgive that rudeness, and that other rudeness of a few minutes ago.”

  “It is we who committed the rudeness,” Gallois said. “But, as you will know, I am the servant of the law. A man is murdered who has mixed himself with your affairs, and therefore we come to inform you of the matter. Now I have a request to make. You will do us the kindness to return with us and see this man who is dead? It is possible that you may recognize him.”

  “You speak English exceedingly well?” Larne said.

  “I read enormously, as they say,” Gallois explained. “English is a—what you say?”

  “Hobby of yours?”

  “That is it,” Gallois said gratefully. “But you do not answer my question that you return with us.”

  “Why not?” said Larne amusedly. “It’s a waste of time, but I have time now to lose. To-morrow I shall finish my work, but tonight I’ve done all I can do.”

  His cup of tea was brought in, and the model disappeared again behind her curtain. Larne drank standing. Gallois took advantage of the wait to look at the picture again, and it wa
s he who indicated to Travers the tiny signature of the dying donkey that had already been painted in the bottom right-hand corner.

  “And how long is it that you paint?” he said to Larne. “Two hours, and behold a masterpiece.”

  “M. Gallois isn’t perhaps aware of the Whistler story,” Travers smiled across at Larne.

  “Whistler?” Gallois had pricked his ears. “Your English master, you mean?”

  Travers told him the story of the action brought by the client of Whistler who claimed to have been grossly overcharged for a picture which had taken an hour or two of actual painting, but which, Whistler rightly claimed, had taken a lifetime of experience. Gallois, who had never heard the story, was delighted.

  “That is a story which is—what do you say?—which hits a nail on the head. M. Larne, he paints for only two hours, but in reality it is a lifetime that he paints.” He turned to Larne. “And now, monsieur, if you are ready we will depart. My men remain here on guard. There will be no need to close the house, unless you wish it, till your return, which shall also be in my car."

  Elise Deschamps appeared, as pat as if she had been listening.

  “Perhaps M. Travers will go down to the car with mademoiselle and make the arrangements,” Gallois said. “Meanwhile, you permit, mon maître, that I use the telephone? It is not still disconnected?”

  Larne chuckled at that. Then as the door closed on Travers and the model, the voice of Gallois changed.

  “Quick, there is a question I must ask. You have worked with that woman before?”

  “Never seen her before in my life,” Larne said. “Why?”

  “And how was it that she came here?”

  Larne explained how he had rung the Models’ Club, which was the rendezvous and bureau of Paris models, and had asked for anybody of her type to be sent.

  “As you observe,” he said, with a nod at the picture, “the figure to me is comparatively unimportant. To me it does not matter whom they send. But what is all the mystery?”

  “There is no time to explain,” Gallois said. “When we arrive at the rue Jourdoise, then you will see. You will need a coat and hat, and meanwhile, since you have permitted, I will use the telephone.”

  Larne shrugged his shoulders and waved across at the phone. A couple of minutes, and he was turning off the lights behind him, and he and Gallois made their way out of the now empty house.

  The car circled and drew in at the rue Jourdoise the opposite way from that in which Travers’s taxi had entered it. Gallois was driving, with Larne alongside him, and Travers sat at the back with the model, Elise. The car slowed, and then stopped. Larne got out and Gallois followed him through the same door. Men were surrounding the car. Elise stared frightenedly.

  “Where are we? Why are we stopping here?”

  It was Gallois who was opening the door and answering that question. It was in French, of course, that he spoke, and his tone had a kind of dry courtesy.

  “We are all getting out. It will be necessary to wait here for a minute or two.”

  A look back at Travers and she got out. Two men closed in behind her. That empty junk-shop was now open and there was a light in it, and a gendarme stood at the door.

  “You will be so good as to wait there,” Gallois said to her. “I have business with M. Larne, and after that we will take you to the rue Vagnolles.”

  The drizzle and the mist must have made the surroundings unfamiliar, for it was only then she knew where she was. As the man’s hand fell on her arm, she drew back. Then there was a shriek. A hand was clapped on her mouth, and the shop door closed on her.

  “It is regrettable,” said Gallois, “but what can one do? Now we go upstairs.”

  The body of Braque had been removed, and Charles was the only occupant of the room. Travers caught his eye, and he answered with a quick, friendly smile. Then he was his unobtrusive self again, and when he fell in behind Gallois, it was as if Gallois had once more become possessed of a shadow.

  “This is the room of Braque,” Gallois told Larne. “It is here that he was killed. But before we see him, I would ask a foolish question. You sell at some time, perhaps, a picture to a client in Spain?”

  “In Spain?” He looked puzzled. “You mean, to a Spanish client?”

  “That is it,” Gallois said. “I did not make myself dear.”

  Larne shook his head. “Never to my certain knowledge. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that some Spaniard or other may not have come into possession of one of my pictures.”

  “Yes,” said Gallois disappointingly. “One buys and one sells again, and that is no concern of your own. It is something of which I did not think. But the name Braque: that is unknown to you?”

  Larne glanced at Travers. “I think I may say so. I’ve only known one person of that name in my life, and that was at an art school, twenty and more years ago.”

  “Braque may not be his real name,” Travers said.

  “His dossier is not yet complete,” Gallois said. “But something else that seemed droll to M. Travers and myself. This Braque was a dealer in pictures. Why then in his own house does he place such atrocities on the walls?”

  Larne had a look at the two pictures, then shrugged his shoulders amiably.

  “But why call them atrocities?”

  Gallois’ lean jaw sagged. He could hardly believe his cars.

  “The atrocities of to-day, my friend, are the masterpieces of to-morrow,” Larne told him amusedly. Then a tone of irony crept in. “Manet, Van Gogh, Gauguin—even, if you permit—myself, commence with what one calls atrocities. It is a word therefore that I hesitate to use.”

  “In what you say there is a justice,” admitted Gallois. “To be original is to be a fool—according to the fools.”

  Larne chuckled.

  “My dear Travers, why is it that you never brought M. Gallois to see me before? I think that he and I are going to be friends.”

  “Mon maître, you are too amiable,” Gallois told him delightedly. “But we must not talk of ourselves. This model who presents herself to you. This Elise Deschamps, as she calls herself. What would you say if I assured you that she was the mistress of Braque?”

  “Mon dieu, non!”

  “Mais, si. We commence enquiries and we learn many things. He is friendly with her, which is perhaps natural when she is a model and he is a dealer in pictures. There is the occasion, as you say, to meet each other and become acquainted. Then a few days ago he buys furniture for a bedroom, furniture very chic, very comfortable. You remark, too, the gramophone that he buys so that she pass the time when he is not here. But it is strange, is it not, that it should be she who comes to you this afternoon?”

  “It’s more than that,” Larne said. “It’s inexplicable. It must be some amazing coincidence.”

  Gallois raised a finger and his voice lowered impressively.

  “One question I ask, and only one. You commence to work at half-past five. From then, till we arrive, she is beneath your eye?”

  “The whole time,” Larne said. “I never had my eyes off her.” He remembered something. “Wait a moment.” Then he shook his head.

  “What was it that you thought?” Gallois asked him.

  “It was nothing. You asked what happened after we began work, which would really be at just after half-past five. What I thought of was something that happened before we began. She was tired and made a cup of tea for herself and me. That’s when I remembered she wasn’t actually under my eye, but that was, as I said, before I began to work.”

  “I understand,” said Gallois, already moving towards the far door. “One look at this Braque and in ten minutes you will be back at your studio.”

  “First I must eat,” Larne said, “and so you see there will be no need to derange you and use your car. I shall dine at the Petite Musette, and then a taxi, and—voilà.”

  Braque’s body lay on the kitchen table, legs resting on the back of a chair. The doctor was at work on it when Gallois a
nd his inevitable shadow, Charles, came into the room. Gallois merely waved a hand. Larne came close and looked down.

  He shook his head and was turning away. Then he looked again. His hand went out and covered the short imperial. Then it covered the mouth too, and he was motionless while he looked. Then he turned away, shaking his head perplexedly.

  “I don’t see why you should believe me, but this is the Braque who was a student with me at the Academie Poussin. The Braque I mentioned to you just now.”

  All he could tell about Braque, and himself, was this. He had studied at the Poussin from 1914 to the end of 1915, and Braque had been a fellow-student. Braque’s parents were supposed to be well off, and he was an idler. Then Larne served in the trenches till the Armistice, after which he decided not to return to the school, for his father had died and there was no money available. He had heard nothing of Braque, and in any case he had always been on bad terms with him at the school.

  “But why should he become a dealer?” asked Gallois.

  Larne smiled. “He had spent his money, perhaps. Also he was one who did not commence by painting atrocities. That was something at which he gradually arrived.” He turned to Travers. “Was there ever a dealer who could also paint? Not in your experience or mine. Very well then. Everything is plain. When one cannot paint one can always become a dealer.”

  A mournful smile passed quickly over Gallois face, and then he was moving back to the door.

  “For to-night, that is all. You stay long in Paris?”

  Larne explained that he had left the South only because of the commission for the American collector.

  “Then one does not see the picture again?” asked Gallois in consternation.

  Larne said he might see it at any time up to four o’clock the following afternoon. It was a deeply gratified Gallois who showed him out of the room and ushered him all the way down to the pavement.

  It was Charles to whom Gallois addressed himself when he came back.

  “Everything is arranged?”

  “Everything.”

  The eyes of Gallois narrowed. “Ensure, mon petit, that all is perfect. One mistake and there is something I should not bring myself to pardon.”