by Mike Ashley
The young man got up from his chair.
He had no poker face. The atmosphere about him was so desperately embarrassed that the fair-haired girl spoke.
“Leaving, Mr Winton?” she asked.
“Er – yes,” said Mr Winton. He seemed grateful for that little help thrown into his disquiet. He seized at it; he smiled back at her. “No luck yet. Time to get a drink and offer up prayers for the next session.”
(Look here, thought Jerry Winton, why stand here explaining? It’s not serious. You’ll get out of it, even if it does mean a nasty bit of trouble. They all know you’re broke. Stop standing here laughing like a gawk, and get away from the table. He looked into the eyes of the fair-haired girl, and wished he hadn’t been such an ass.)
“Get a drink,” he repeated.
He strode away from the table with (imagined) laughter following him. The sleek young man had lifted a moon-face and merely looked at him in a way that roused Jerry Winton’s wrath.
Curse La Bandelette and baccarat and everything else.
“There,” reflected the croupier, “is a young man who will have trouble with his hotel. Banco? Six mille. Banco?”
In the bar, which adjoined the casino-rooms, Jerry Winton crawled up on one of the high stools, called for an Armagnac, and pushed his last hundred-franc note across the counter. His head was full of a row of figures written in the spidery style of France. His hotel-bill for a week would come to – what? Four, five, six thousand francs? It would be presented to-morrow, and all he had was his return ticket to London by plane.
In the big mirror behind the bar a new image emerged from the crowd. It was that of the fat, sleek, oily-faced young man who had cleaned up such a packet at the table, and who was even now fingering his wallet lovingly before he put it away. He climbed up on a stool beside Jerry. He called for mineral water: how shrewd and finicky-crafty these expert gamblers were! He relighted the stump of a cigar in one corner of his mouth.
Then he spoke.
“Broke?” he inquired off-handedly.
Jerry Winton glared at his reflection in the mirror.
“I don’t see,” Jerry said, with a slow and murderous choosing of words, “that that’s anybody’s business except mine.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said the stranger, in the same unpleasantly off-handed tone. He took several puffs at his cigar; he drank a little mineral water. He added: “I expect it’s pretty serious, though? Eh?”
“If the matter,” said Jerry, turning round, “is of so much interest to you: no, it’s not serious. I have plenty of money back home. The trouble is that this is Friday night, and I can’t get in touch with the bank until Monday.” Though this was quite true, he saw the other’s fishy expression grow broader. “It’s a damned nuisance, because they don’t know me at the hotel. But a nuisance is all it is. If you think I’m liable to go out in the garden and shoot myself, stop thinking it.”
The other smiled sadly and fishily, and shook his head.
“You don’t say? I can’t believe that, now can I?”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“You should care,” said his companion, unruffled. As Jerry slid down from the stool, he reached out and tapped Jerry on the arm. “Don’t be in such a rush. You say you’re a boy Croesus. All right: you’re a boy Croesus. I won’t argue with you. But tell me: how’s your nerve?”
“My what?”
“Your nerve. Your courage,” explained his companion, with something like a sneer. Jerry Winton looked back at the bland, self-assured face poised above the mineral water. His companion’s feet were entangled with the legs of the bar-stool; his short upper lip was lifted with acute self-confidence; and a blank eye jeered down.
“I thought I’d ask,” he pursued. “My name is Davos, Ferdie Davos. Everybody knows me.” He swept his hand towards the crowd. “How’d you like to make ten thousand francs?”
“I’d like it a whole lot. But I don’t know whether I’d like to make it out of any business of yours.”
Davos was unruffled. “It’s no good trying to be on your dignity with me. It don’t impress me and it won’t help you. I still ask: how would you like to make ten thousand francs? That would more than cover what you owe or are likely to owe, wouldn’t it? I thought so. Do you or don’t you want to make ten thousand francs?
“Yes, I do,” Jerry snarled back.
“All right. See a doctor.”
“What?”
“See a doctor,” Davos repeated coolly. “A nerve tonic is what you want: pills. No, I’m not wise-cracking. “He looked at the clock, whose hands stood at five minutes to eleven. “Go to this address – listen carefully while I tell you – and there’ll be ten thousand in it for you. Go to this address in about an hour. No sooner, no later. Do your job properly, and there may be even more than ten thousand in it for you. Number two, Square St Jean, Avenue des Phares, in about an hour. We’ll see how your nerve is then.”
La Bandelette, “the fillet,” that strip of silver beach along the channel, is full of flat-roofed and queerly painted houses which give it the look of a town in a Walt Disney film. But the town itself is of secondary consideration. The English colony, which is of a frantic fashionableness, lies among great trees behind. Close to the Casino de la Forêt are three great hotels, gay with awning and piling sham Gothic turrets into the sky. The air is aromatic; open carriages clop and jingle along broad avenues; and the art of extracting money from guests has become so perfected that we find our hands going to our pockets even in sleep.
This sleep is taken by day. By night, when La Bandelette is sealed up except for the Casino, the beam of the great island lighthouse sweeps the streets. It dazzles and then dies, once every twenty seconds. And, as Jerry Winton strode under the trees towards the Avenue of the Lighthouses, its beam was beginning to be blurred by rain.
Square St Jean, Avenue des Phares. Where? And why?
If Davos had approached him in any other way, Jerry admitted to himself, he would have paid no attention to it. But he was annoyed and curious. Besides, unless there were a trick in it, he could use ten thousand francs. There was probably a trick in it. But who cared?
It was the rain that made him hesitate. He heard it patter in the trees, and deepen to a heavy rustling, as he saw the signboard pointing to the Avenue des Phares. He was without hat or coat. But by this time he meant to see the thing through.
Ahead of him was a street of fashionable villas, lighted by mere sparks of gas. An infernally dark street. Something queer, and more than queer, about this. Total strangers didn’t ask you how strong your nerves were, and then offer you ten thousand francs on top of it, for any purpose that would pass the customs. Which was all the more reason why . . .
Then he saw Davos.
Davos did not see him. Davos was ahead of him, walking fast and with little short steps along the dim street. The white beam of the lighthouse shone out overhead, turning the rain to silver; and Jerry could see the gleam of his polished black hair and the light tan topcoat he was now wearing. Pulling up the collar of his dinner-jacket, Jerry followed.
A few yards farther on Davos slackened his pace. He peered round and up. On his left was the entrance to a courtyard, evidently the Square St Jean. But to call it a “square” was noble overstatement; it was only a cul-de-sac some twenty feet wide by forty feet deep.
Two of its three sides were merely tall, blank brick walls. The third side, on the right, was formed of a tall flat house all of whose windows were closely shuttered. But there was at least a sign of life about the house. Over its door burned a dim white globe, showing that there was a doctor’s brass name-plate beside the door. A sedate house with blue-painted shutters in the bare cul-de-sac – and Davos was making for it.
All this Jerry saw at a glance. Then he moved back from the cul-de-sac. The rain was sluicing down on him, blurring the dim white globe with shadow and gleam. Davos had almost reached the doctor’s door. He had paused as though to consi
der or look at something; and then . . .
Jerry Winton later swore that he had taken his eyes off Davos only for a second. This was true. Jerry, in fact, had glanced back along the Avenue des Phares behind him and was heartened to see the figure of a policeman some distance away. What made him look quickly back again was a noise from the cul-de-sac, a noise that was something between a cough and a scream, bubbling up horribly under the rain; and afterwards the thud of a body on asphalt.
One moment Davos had been on his feet. The next moment he was lying on his side on the pavement, and kicking.
Overhead the beam of the lighthouse wheeled again. Jerry, reaching Davos in a run of half a dozen long strides, saw the whole scene picked out by that momentary light. Davos’s fingers still clutched, or tried to clutch, the well-filled wallet Jerry had last seen at the Casino. His tan topcoat was now dark with rain. His heels scraped on the pavement, for he had been stabbed through the back of the neck with a heavy knife whose polished-metal handle projected four inches. Then the wallet slipped out of his fingers, and splashed into a puddle, for the man died.
Jerry Winton looked, and did not believe his own eyes. Mechanically he reached down and picked up the wallet out of the puddle, shaking it. He backed away as he heard running footfalls pound into the cul-de-sac, and he saw the flying waterproof of a policeman.
“Halt there!” the law shouted in French. The policeman, a dim shape under the waterproof, pulled up short and stared. After seeing what was on the pavement, he made a noise like a man hit in the stomach.
Jerry pulled his wits together and conned over his French for the proper phrases.
“His – this wallet,” said Jerry, extending it.
“So I see.”
“He is dead.”
“That would appear obvious,” agreed the other, with a kind of snort. “Well! Give it to me. Quick, quick, quick! His wallet.”
The policeman extended his hand, snapping the fingers. He added: “No stupidities, if you please! I am prepared for you.”
“But I didn’t kill him.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Man, you don’t think –?”
He broke off. The trouble was that it had happened too rapidly. Jerry’s feeling was that of one who meets a super-salesman and under whirlwind tactics is persuaded to buy some huge and useless article before he realizes what the talk is all about.
For here was a minor miracle. He had seen the man Davos stabbed under his eyes. Davos had been stabbed by a straight blow from behind, the heavy knife entering in a straight line sloping a little upwards, as though the blow had been struck from the direction of the pavement. Yet at the same time Davos had been alone in an empty cul-de-sac as bare as a biscuit-box.
“It is not my business to think,” said the policeman curtly. “I make my notes and I report to my commissaire. Now!” He withdrew into the shelter of the dim-lit doorway, his wary eye fixed on Jerry, and whipped out his notebook. “Let us have no nonsense. You killed this man and attempted to rob him. I saw you.”
“No!”
“You were alone with him in this court. I saw as much myself.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Good; he admits it! You saw no one else in the court?”
“No.”
“Justement. Could any assassin have approached without being seen?”
Jerry, even as he saw the bleak eye grow bleaker, had to admit that this was impossible. On two sides were blank brick walls; on the third side was a house whose door or windows, he could swear, had not opened a crack. In the second’s space of time while he looked away, no murderer could have approached, stabbed Davos, and got back to cover again. There was no cover. This was so apparent that Jerry could not even think of a reasonable lie. He merely stuttered.
“I do not know what happened,” he insisted. “One minute he was there, and then he fell. I saw nobody.” Then a light opened in his mind. “Wait! That knife there – it must have been thrown at him.”
Rich and sardonic humour stared at him from the doorway. “Thrown, you say? Thrown from where?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Jerry. The light went out. Again he stared at blank brick walls, and at the house from whose sealed front no knife could have been thrown.
“Consider,” pursued his companion, in an agony of logic, “the position of the knife. This gentleman was walking with his back to you?”
“Yes.”
“Good; we progress.” He pointed. “The knife enters the back of his neck in a straight line. It enters from the direction where you were standing. Could it have been thrown past you from the entrance to the court?”
“No. Impossible.”
“No. That is evident,” blared his companion. “I cannot listen to any more stupidities. I indulge you because you are English and we have orders to indulge the English. But this goes beyond reason! You will go with me to the Hotel de Ville. Look at the note-case in his hand. Does he offer it to you and say: ‘Monsieur, honour me by accepting my note-case’?”
“No. He had it in his own hand.”
“He had it in his own hand, say you. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Jerry broke off, both because the story of his losses at the Casino must now come out with deadly significance, and because they heard the rattle of a door being unlocked. The door of the doctor’s house opened; and out stepped the fair-haired girl whom Jerry had last seen at the Casino.
Beside the door the brass name-plate read, “Dr Edouard Hébert,” with consulting hours inscribed underneath, and an aggressive, “Speaks English.” Behind the girl, craning his neck, stood a bristly middle-aged man of immense dignity. His truculent eyeglasses had a broad black ribbon which seemed to form a kind of electrical circuit with the ends of his brushed-up moustache.
But Jerry Winton was not looking at Dr Hébert. He was looking at the girl. In addition to a light fur coat, she now wore a cream-coloured scarf drawn over her hair; she had in one hand a tiny box, wrapped in white paper. Her smooth, worried face, her long, pale-blue eyes, seemed to reflect the expression of the dead man staring back at her from the pavement. She jerked back, bumping into the policeman. She put her hand on Dr Hébert’s arm. With her other hand she pointed sharply to Davos.
“That’s the man!” she cried.
M. Goron, prefect of Police, was a comfortable man, a round, catlike amiable sort of man, famous for his manners. Crime, rare in La Bandelette, distressed him. But he was also an able man. At one o’clock in the morning he sat in his office at the town hall examining his fingernails and creaking back and forth in a squeaky swivel chair whose noise had begun to get on Jerry Winton’s nerves.
The girl, who for the tenth time had given her name as Eleanor Hood, was insistent.
“M. Goron!”
“Mademoiselle?” said the prefect politely, and seemed to wake out of a dream.
Eleanor Hood turned round and gave Jerry Winton a despairing look.
“I only wish to know,” she urged, in excellent French, “why we are here, Dr Hébert and I. And Mr Winton too, if it comes to that.” This time the look she gave Jerry was one of smiling companionship: a human sort of look, which warmed that miscreant. “But as for us – why? It is not as though we were witnesses. I have told you why I was at Dr Hébert’s house.”
“Mademoiselle’s father,” murmured M. Goron.
“Yes. He is ill. Dr Hébert has been treating him for several days, and he had another attack at the Casino to-night. Mr Winton will confirm that.”
Jerry nodded. The old boy at the table, he reflected, had certainly looked ill.
“I took my father back to our hotel, the Brittany, at half-past eleven,” the girl went on, speaking with great intensity. “I tried to communicate with Dr Hébert by telephone. I could not reach him. So I went to his house; it is only a short distance from the hotel. On the way I kept seeing that man – the man you call Davos. I thought he was following me. He seemed to be looking at
me from behind every tree. That is why I said, ‘That’s the man,’ when I saw him lying on the pavement with his eyes open. His eyes did not even blink when the rain struck them. It was a horrible sight. I was upset. Do you blame me?”
M. Goron made a sympathetic noise.
“I reached Dr Hébert’s house at perhaps twenty minutes to twelve. Dr Hébert had retired, but he consented to go with me. I waited while he dressed. We went out, and on the doorstep we found – what you know. Please believe that is all I know about it.”
She had a singularly expressive voice and personality. She was either all anxiety or all persuasiveness, fashioning the clipped syllables. When she turned her wrist, you saw Davos lying in the rain and the searchlight wheeling overhead. Then she added abruptly in English, looking at Jerry:
“He was a nasty little beast; but I don’t for a moment believe you killed him.”
“Thanks. But why?”
“I don’t know,” said Eleanor simply. “You just couldn’t have.”
“Now there is logic!” cried M. Goron, giving his desk an admiring whack.
M. Goron’s swivel chair creaked with pleasure. There were many lights in his office, which smelt of creosote. On the desk in front of him lay Davos’s sodden wallet and (curiously) the tiny round box, wrapped in a spill of paper, which Eleanor Hood had been carrying. M. Goron never spoke to Jerry, never looked at him; ignored him as completely and blandly as though he were not there.
“But,” he continued, growing very sober again, “you will forgive me, mademoiselle, if I pursue this matter further. You say that Dr Hébert has been treating your father?”
“Yes.”