Gallois smiled patiently. “One admits that, but consider. The assassin—this man who knows your hotel, and your affairs, and who speaks no English— he arranges that he himself comes here at a quarter of an hour before, and he knows that by then Braque will be dead. Why then should he also arrange with Braque to see you here at six o’clock?”
But Travers was whipping off his glasses.
“I know! Braque hadn’t the faintest idea I was coming here. It was the assassin who wanted me here, to implicate me in the murder. He didn’t have the least idea that I had been to you.”
Gallois was prowling round the room again. Once more he slowed up by Travers’s chair.
“But an assassin who knows your affairs, knows also that one like yourself cannot be long suspected of murder. One makes enquiries, and voilà. There is perhaps another reason why you should come here?”
“I’ve got it!” Travers said. “It was so that I should discover the body. The assassin knew me well enough to know that I should at once inform the police. They would know when Braque was killed. They’d know it to a minute—”
“Precisely!” Gallois was not to be robbed of his own share of credit. “The assassin wished that we discover that Braque is killed at a quarter to six, because he has arranged for himself an alibi for a quarter to six.”
“Exactly. But why so despondent?”
“I am not despondent,” protested Gallois. “I am unquiet. Even if one discovers this assassin—of what use? If he establishes the alibi, it is no good that you and I know that without doubt he is the assassin.”
“We’ll jump that obstacle when we arrive at it,” Travers told him confidently. “But have you any suspicions yourself?”
“Who is the assassin?” He shook his head. “There is the good Cointeau who still does not emerge, as you say, from the wood. One still does not discover the client who confirms his alibi.”
“But why abandon my original suggestion— Pierre Larne?”
But at the very same second, while he waited for the answer of Gallois, he had the sudden idea that something was being concealed. Why should Gallois possibly have any suspicion of Cointeau? How could Cointeau possibly have known the Paris address and Travers’s affairs, unless he were hand in glove with his dead partner? And that implied that the simple, obvious Cointeau was a murderer of the most cunning type, and the world’s supreme actor as well.
“Pierre Larne,” Gallois was saying. “You perhaps have discovered something new?”
Travers was in an awkward position, as he explained. Larne had made certain confidences which he could not divulge.
“I can tell you this much,” he said. “Pierre is the parasite you described him, and Henri is breaking with him. I sympathize with Henri. He’s got a woman there looking after him, and her husband is ill, and I rather suspect some underhand goings-on between her and Pierre, so that altogether Henri hasn’t had the atmosphere he requires for work. Now this woman and her husband are going away, and I rather fancy the Villa will be sold.”
“Yes, but, my friend, why should we suspect this Pierre when you already assure me he has an alibi.”
Travers smiled suggestively. “Didn’t I hint that there might be underhand work going on? It’s the woman, Hortense, who’s the mainstay of the alibi. Also I’m betraying no confidences when I say that Henri suspects that Pierre is lying about the whole thing.”
Gallois shook his head. “These restrictions are difficult, not that I blame you, my friend. But is it not possible that you should at least hint something more?”
“Well, I’ll give you my ideas for what they’re worth,” Travers said. “I think Pierre was a member of the Braque gang. I suspect him of purloining his half-brother’s works, and I believe Henri is hushing the matter up. There, by the way, is another reason why Braque, as the seller, showed an interest in Larne’s work. And I may tell you that when I undid the back of the first of those pictures this afternoon, I expected to find some inferior work of Larne’s concealed behind it.”
“In Henri Larne I am not interested,” pronounced Gallois. “He was of interest if he could explain to us the connection between his pictures and Braque. Now that is perhaps explained, he ceases to interest us as far as concerns the assassin of Braque. But Pierre, he is different. The alibi does not matter provided we can prove some association with Braque. It is possible that the woman Moulins may reveal something.”
“Moulins?” Travers had forgotten the name.
“The woman Deschamps, whose real name is Moulins. If not, we may even confront her with this Pierre to see if she recognizes, but at the moment I would not resort to that. Through his brother he doubtless has influence, and it is necessary that I should give reasons to my superiors before advancing so far.”
“The Académie Poussin; mightn’t we get some possible information there about Braque?” suggested Travers.
“That exists no longer,” Gallois said, “but I am on the point of finding a certain Professeur Tagnier who visited there at the time of Braque. There is a business, my friend, with which you might employ yourself.”
Travers said he would be delighted to take on that much when the information arrived. Meanwhile, what?
“For the moment we rest,” Gallois told him. “There comes always a moment when it is necessary to think, and not employ one’s self. To-morrow perhaps we occupy ourselves with this Pierre.”
Then his hand fell on Travers’s shoulder and he was smiling affectionately.
“Before this affair is over, you will perhaps be very displeased with me.”
“Good heavens, why?”
“That is something which I cannot say, but you will see that it becomes true.”
Travers shook his head. “Don’t you believe it. What interests me more is to hear you talk about the affair being over.”
“Soon—very soon, perhaps—it will be over,” Gallois said. “One more discovery like that which you make to-day, and we lay our hands on the assassins of Braque. You remember that I speak to you of the resemblance most strange that exists between me and M. Larne? Now there is something else that occurs to me. You tell me that M. Larne, he desires quiet for his work and he takes an action which is drastic and disembarrasses himself of everything. Soon also, my friend, we take our-selves an action which is drastic, though I do not know precisely when that moment arrives.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Travers said, puzzled though he was.
The hand of Gallois fell on his shoulder again.
“One other thing, my friend. M. Lame has finished to-day what is a masterpiece. This affair”—his lean fingers turned inwards to his breast— “and I feel it in the soul of me, will also be a masterpiece. The masterpiece of Gallois, and of you also, my friend.”
He was staying behind for some minutes, he said, in that place which was so congenial to his thoughts, and Travers walked back to the hotel in the dear frosty air of the February night. But his own thoughts were far from clear, and he found himself no part of those optimisms of Gallois.
“All these people are strange to me,” he told himself. “Even Gallois, well, as I know him and much as I like him, remains something different. Perhaps inability to speak their language fluently has something to do with it, but whatever it is, there’s always that feeling of not quite getting beneath their hides. Charles, for instance, one of the most attractive young fellows I’ve ever run across, and yet I can’t feel that I really know him. Then there was that scene at the Villa this morning, with Henri Larne and Pierre and that Hortense woman, and the squabbling, and the queer sort of undercurrent which you felt but couldn’t place. Still, perhaps the case is tying me down too much and getting on my nerves. Gallois keeps hinting at things I don’t see, and maybe he’s right. And that last hint of his was right too. There’s a time in every case when it’s good to lay off for a bit and do a little stocktaking instead.”
So when Travers woke the next morning he resolved to take things easy, and hold back till
Gallois rang or appeared. Then soon after ten o’clock there was a ring, but it was from Henri Larne. He would esteem it a favour if Travers could come along for only a minute or two. Travers thought it unnecessary to inform Gallois of his whereabouts for so brief a time and set off at once.
At the Villa a small van was being packed with luggage, and Larne himself was supervising the loading of the pictures. He looked ten years younger than when Travers had seen him last.
“The moving’s beginning, then?” Travers said.
“Most of it’s over,” Larne told him triumphantly. “I’m the only one left and these are the last of my things.”
“You’re going too?”
“Only to the Hôtel Coutance. But come upstairs. There’s something I want you to do for me.”
Travers refused so early a drink but accepted a cigarette. Larne had switched on the fire, and they sat talking for a few minutes about plans.
“Hortense and her husband have gone already this morning,” Larne said. “She has a sister near Grenoble and the air ought to do the husband good. Pierre is seeing to everything.” He smiled, but not too unkindly. “As it is the last function he performs for me for some time, he ought to do it satisfactorily. Almost at once I shall sell this place and everything in it. Which reminds me. I had a proposition yesterday from the American collector—a very charming man, by the way, and I’d have liked you to meet him. He suggests that I should go to America for a time.”
“But how delightful for you!” Travers said. “You think you’ll go.”
“I promised to send him a cable on his arrival,” Larne said, and seemed somewhat amused. “What he does not know is that I was there some years ago. I told you, if you remember, that when I saw no prospects here, I threw everything up and became a rolling stone—” He broke off with a wave of the hand. “That all belongs to the past. If I thought the creative impulses would be stimulated, I might try the experiment again.”
“If you’ll pardon me,” Travers said, “you might paint more, but I doubt if you’d paint better.”
“That’s more than generous of you,” Larne told him quietly. “But I feel I’m going to do both. I’m what you might call free for the first time for years.” He was suddenly getting to his feet. “But about this something I want you to do for me. I can rely on you?”
“I hope so.”
“Then it’s this.” Travers had not noticed the smallish picture that had stood near them with its back to the wall, and now it was being put in his hands. “Accept this from me, as what one calls a small token of esteem.”
Travers stared. “But, my dear fellow, I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Well”—he smiled lamely—“I’ve done nothing. Even if I had, the gift is out of all proportion. One day this will be exceedingly valuable.”
Larne shrugged his shoulders. “That, if you pardon me, I don’t agree with. It’s merely a study, as you see. Some people would work on it, but that’s not my way. I regarded it as what it is, and I’ve finished with it.”
The study was of a small table with a coloured cloth, on which stood an empty blue vase. The marguerites which lay by it were scarcely painted at all, yet even their charcoal stalks showed a perfection of placing. Travers liked the little study enormously and made no bones about admitting it.
“I hate to appear churlish,” he said, “but what on earth have I done to merit this marvellous present?”
“You honoured me with your confidences,” Larne said quietly. “Not only that. If I hadn’t also confided in you, I should never have painted that last picture. You didn’t know it, but you changed my whole outlook. I might even say it’s thanks to you that I’ve plucked up courage to rid myself of various encumbrances. That was what I thought this morning when Pierre’s car went off, and as soon as I knew it, I knew what I was going to do and I rang you up.”
“I accept the picture only too gratefully, then,” Travers said. “I still know I don’t in any way deserve it.”
He was still shaking his head diffidently, and Larne was watching him with quiet amusement.
“That’s all right, then,” he said. “And now I’m hurrying you away before you change your mind.”
“Yes, of course,” Travers said. “You must be very busy.”
“And you? You’re busy too?”
“I’m merely a potterer,” Travers said. “Gallois is a very old friend of mine and I’m doing my best to help find out who murdered that scoundrel Braque. We’ve definitely found a connection, by the way, between him and that picture smuggling from Spain, but I’ll tell you about it some time later.”
He smiled and he remembered something else.
“I’ve promised to do something which might interest you. I shall probably be making enquiries from some old professor or other about Braque when he was at the Académie Poussin—now defunct, I believe.”
Larne halted, puzzledly.
“But why make enquiries there?”
Travers’s shrug of the shoulders was perfect Gallic.
“We suspect a ring of these smugglers. Why shouldn’t one at least of Braque’s confederates have been some old friend of his? A contemporary at the Academy, for instance.’’
Larne chuckled, and he was waving his hands with all the excited pleasure of remembrance.
“The Académie Poussin—what a place! Only about a dozen of us there in my time, and what a collection!” He shook his head. “There was Braque, fat and very unpleasant, and paying other people to do his work. Then there was a tall, lean fellow called—called—oh yes, called Letori. I could tell you the most scandalous story about him. Then there was a man called Moulins, who was undoubtedly mad. Used to drink like—”
“Moulins! A Moulins who used to drink?”
“Why, yes,” said Larne, staring in his turn. “Did you know him, then?”
“No,” said Travers. “But we’re up against a most amazing coincidence. You remember that model—Elise Deschamps—who was posing for you? Her real name is Moulins. Her father drank himself to death and her brother too. Both were artists.”
Larne’s face had gone pale and he seemed to be in the grip of some tremendous perturbation. A moment or two and he let out a breath, and was shaking his head bewilderingly.
“It’s uncanny,” he said. “I was the one who used to befriend that Moulins, and give him advice and try to pull him together. And there’s something else. Something about the other night.”
He was nodding gently to himself as he thought. Then he shook his head with a quick finality.
“No, I can’t tell you yet. But an idea occurs to me.”
“To do with the murder of Braque?”
“That I can’t tell you. I must have time to think. Perhaps I am wrong. I must he wrong.”
His hand was all at once gripping Travers’s arm.
“You will say nothing of this. It is dangerous to have a suspicion and not be able to substantiate it.”
“I quite agree,” Travers said. “There is only one thing. You owe a duty to the law, and as soon as your suspicion is more than a suspicion—and, by the way, I haven’t the faintest notion myself what it is you’re suspicious about—then you should inform Gallois at once.”
“I agree.” He nodded to himself determinedly, “in a few days, perhaps, I shall be sure. In the meanwhile we’ll forget all about it. All this business has pressed on my mind till it has driven me nearly crazy. Not this affaire Braque—that is nothing— though there also I have certain suspicions.”
“As you say, we’ll forget it,” Travers told him consolingly. “What you need, my dear fellow, is to get away from here and have a good rest at your hotel.”
Downstairs again, Larne recovered most of his good humour, and he waved a cheery hand as Travers’s taxi drove off. Travers had yet another mystery on his mind. That morning he had woke remembering that queer statement that Gallois had made, that before the case was finished with, he, Travers, would be very annoyed. What
that meant Travers had no idea, and now, not only was there that coincidence of the brother of Elise at the Académie Poussin, but—and Travers had no doubts, startling though the deduction was—there was Larne now of the opinion that Elise had been concerned in the murder of Braque. Concerned in it—that was all it could be, for Larne himself knew only too well that Elise could never have committed the actual murder.
At the first opportunity Travers stopped the taxi and rang up Gallois.
“You are fortunate,” Gallois said, “for I am this moment about, to go. But there is something which you do not understand?”
“I don’t follow you. What do you mean?”
“You are not speaking from your hotel?”
“No,” said Travers. “Larne rang me up, as I told you, and I’ve just been to see him. What I happened to discover was that the brother of the woman Moulins was at the Académie Poussin with Braque.”
There was a moment’s silence, then: “You are, sure?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Then listen also to this, my friend. You return now to your hotel and you find two surprises. One I will tell you now. It is that the woman Moulins proves that Pierre Larne was also an acquaintance of Braque.”
CHAPTER X
GALLOIS MAKES A MOVE
TRAVERS came literally bounding into the private sitting-room at the hotel. Bernice was reading before the fire.
“I got back much earlier than I thought,” she said. “And what on earth is that? You haven’t been buying pictures?”
Travers, tearing off the wrappings, explained. The picture was placed for Bernice’s inspection.
“Now I must say I like that,” she said. “It may be only a study as you say, but I do like it very much indeed. And the little flying donkey in the corner and all.”
“Larne is a queer chap,” Travers was saying, face still alight with the pleasure of that picture. “A really famous man and yet as unaffected as a nobody. If ever you make me write that book of reminiscences—”
“Oh!” broke in Bernice, and a rather strained look came over her face. “I ought to have told you that the valet has come.”
The Case of the Flying Donkey: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 11