Ten Little Herrings

by L. C. Tyler

  ‘And you think I am being truthful?’

  ‘Your behaviour has been very odd – your clumsy investigations, your even clumsier attempt to get back into the hotel you had got out of, your amazing ignorance of current affairs. But Monsieur Tressider says that you read only the Bookseller and Hello! magazine?’

  ‘And the book reviews,’ I said. ‘I read all the book reviews.’

  The inspector nodded.

  ‘It seemed to us that you were either being very, very clever or rather stupid.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I am being very, very clever,’ I suggested.

  He shook his head. ‘No, we ruled that out some time ago.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch,’ I said. ‘So is that it?’

  ‘Not quite. If Monsieur Proctor did push the cuttings under your door – and it was Monsieur Proctor who suggested we should search your room while you were otherwise engaged – then to what end? It also means that Monsieur Proctor has been collecting cuttings about Grigory Davidov for some time. Why should that be, I wonder?’

  ‘He claims to be a private detective,’ I said. ‘He claims to have come here looking for those Danish stamps. His client is a Mr H. C. . . . well, he’s a Danish bloke. He wants his stamps back.’

  ‘But that is clearly not the real reason,’ said the inspector. ‘The story about the stamps is an inept attempt to throw somebody off the scent. Perhaps he is trying to throw you off the scent, but more likely he is hoping ultimately to fool me. We have good reason to believe that his presence here too was linked in some way to Grigory Davidov’s stay. Gold, Davidov and Proctor seem to share a past. The question is: why was Davidov here?’

  ‘To buy stamps?’

  ‘Yes, he does seem to have been a genuine stamp collector. As I said, however, there have been a lot of threats against him. He usually travels with his own bodyguards – what do you call them? Do you still say “skinheads”? But they were not with him this time. Whatever he was doing here was something that he was not keen anyone should know about – even his own people. I do not believe that he came to buy stamps. He seems to have been quite embarrassed about his real reason for being here. And Monsieur Davidov was not a man who was embarrassed easily, I think.’

  ‘But Herbie Proctor knows the reason?’

  ‘Perhaps. If he was the person who slipped the press cuttings under the door. Monsieur Proctor claims, however, that the cuttings are not his. Could it have been somebody else?’

  ‘Herbie boy lied about my forcing him to read them. That being the case, there would seem to be only one way his fingerprints could get on the press cuttings.’

  The inspector nodded. ‘He is trying to divert my attention from something.’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘If I knew that,’ he said with a smile, ‘I suspect I would know all I needed to know, but as it is . . .’

  He shrugged. Shrugging was spreading in Chaubord like athlete’s foot in a school with one towel.

  I went to the bar, hoping to find coffee. There was no sign of either hot beverages or waiting staff. I was about to leave again when I noticed that the doorway through which I had planned to pass was occupied by a Danish child carrying a magnifying glass.

  ‘Hi, kid,’ I said in a friendly manner.

  In return he looked at me through the magnifying glass, probably making me appear size 120 (British) approx.

  ‘They arrested you,’ he said.

  ‘It’s called Helping the Police with their Inquiries,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t look as though you’d be that much help,’ he said.

  ‘Appearances,’ I said haughtily, ‘can be deceptive. What’s it to you, anyway?’

  He had put down the glass and taken out a small notebook.

  ‘I would like you to answer some questions,’ said the annoying child.

  ‘Clear off,’ I said. ‘I’m not your mother.’

  He made a note of this in his book.

  ‘Question one,’ he continued. ‘Did you murder Mr Davidov?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  The annoying child noted this too.

  ‘Question two: did you murder Mr Gold?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  Another note in the book.

  ‘Question three: do you know who did?’

  ‘Herbie Proctor,’ I said.

  The annoying child flicked back through his notebook, which (I noticed) already seemed quite full.

  ‘He says that you did,’ he said.

  ‘It’s an old trick,’ I pointed out. ‘Shift the blame onto some innocent party.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Trust me.’

  He noted this.

  ‘Question four,’ continued the child. ‘Did you see anything suspicious?’

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  The child consulted his notebook. ‘It doesn’t say.’

  ‘I saw Grigory Davidov talking to Jonathan Gold,’ I said.

  ‘Was either of them killing the other one?’

  ‘Not at the time.’

  The annoying child did not consider this worth noting.

  ‘Question five,’ he said. ‘Do you have any knives or poison with you?’

  This was clearly designed to catch me unawares.

  ‘Just the two large knives and a bottle of strychnine,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t strychnine,’ he said. ‘It’s too slow.’

  So, he did know a bit about detective work, then.

  ‘I would seem to be in the clear in that case,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but you should not leave the hotel,’ he said. ‘I may need to question you again. Oh, and if my sister asks you any questions, by the way, do not tell her anything. She is not a real detective.’

  Twenty-two

  When you are booking a holiday, the idea of staying in a small hotel seems quite attractive. Why pay for things like an indoor swimming pool and gym that you will probably never use? Why have a television with thirty channels, when you will only watch one? Who really wants a bewildering array of international breakfast items first thing in the morning? If Germans and Norwegians want cheese for breakfast, good luck to them, but a choice of bacon or kippers is good enough for normal people. All you need, after all, is a comfortable bed, a simple but nourishing breakfast and a good location close to whatever museums, beaches or bars you plan to visit. The sort of luxury provided by large five-star establishments is a complete waste of money.

  As your second day of captivity in a small hotel wears on, however, it does occur to you that a little five-star luxury would not go amiss. On day one, the fact that the television in your room provides only the local channels seems quaint and charming. On day two that news story about foot and mouth in the Auvergne is beginning to lose its initial interest. On day two you realize that you may as well linger over breakfast, because there isn’t much else to do. On day two you think you really might like to spend an hour on the rowing machine.

  It was during the bleak, empty hour after lunch that I ran into Georg Pedersen. Shortly after we had both arrived, when the hotel was still full of stamp collectors, I had spoken to him briefly. He seemed to be taking his incarceration better than most of the other guests. He was wearing an expensive-looking cashmere jacket with well-cut jeans and a soft cotton shirt – a slightly less formal version of what I imagine he wore daily at the embassy. His dark hair was cut short. His countenance was completely untroubled.

  ‘It’s a bad business,’ he said. ‘Have you heard whether the police are close to finding the killer?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose,’ he continued, ‘the surprise is that nobody managed to kill Davidov sooner. He has plenty of enemies out there. Some hate him because he has made a lot of money and nobody can quite tell how. The more perceptive hate him as a symbol of capitalism at its worst – the sort of capitalism that sucks the blood out of a community and then moves on. Yacoubabad hangs over him, even if nothing was ever proved. Then
there is what his oil company has got up to in Nigeria.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about him,’ I said.

  ‘It’s my job,’ he said. ‘I have to understand these things.’

  ‘What do you do at the embassy?’ I asked.

  ‘I am in the commercial section.’

  That seemed to be all the explanation I was getting. It struck me that Pedersen might have a more shadowy role, or that, equally, he might just be a First Secretary Commercial with a passing interest in the environment.

  ‘I would have thought,’ I said to him, ‘that you could have claimed diplomatic immunity and avoided all this?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I have phoned my ambassador, and he is anxious that we are seen to help the police with their inquiries. He did ask me whether I had in fact murdered either of the gentlemen in question, but happily I was able to tell him that I had not. Given that assurance, he felt that it was better that we stayed. We are in any case still waiting for our heavy baggage to arrive from Moscow, so we are as comfortable here as we would be at our flat in Paris.’

  ‘You’re originally from Nykøbing?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Both my wife and I. We travelled back from Moscow via Denmark, so we visited our respective families there last weekend. Jutland is pretty bleak in the winter, though. Fortunately, it is not as bleak as Russia.’

  ‘Did you talk much to Davidov?’ I asked.

  ‘Once or twice. And you?’

  ‘Once or twice,’ I said. ‘I spoke to both him and Gold.’

  ‘Ah, yes, Gold,’ said Pedersen. ‘Why was he here, do you think? He was not a stamp collector.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘People do come to the Loire in the winter. Mr Gold may have just wanted to visit the chateaux off-season when there were fewer people around. He did of course have links with environmental groups. He had spoken at a number of conferences in Europe. He had strong views as to what should happen to people like Davidov.’

  ‘You know that?’

  ‘Yes, I know that. It is part of my job.’

  ‘In the commercial section?’

  ‘Oh yes, certainly – in the commercial section,’ he said.

  Pedersen’s comments about Gold’s links with environmental groups were interesting, though they only confirmed things that had been said during one conversation that I had had with Gold. It was not conclusive but it added to a picture that was already developing in my mind. I was beginning to think that I knew who had killed Gold and (though, on the face of it, it seemed impossible) who had killed Davidov. It wasn’t a matter of new evidence – just of having gone round the track so many times that I had ruled out everything else. If I was right, then I could be reasonably certain nobody was coming after me.

  Anyway, I had my own problem to solve. If my contact was Gold or Davidov, then (as I’ve said) that was that. But what if it was Brown? In that sense, Elsie’s discovery that his stay at the hotel had been long planned was interesting. I couldn’t quite believe that it was Proctor, but the mysterious object he had hidden could well be the mysterious object that formed part of my instructions. Taylor had had plenty of opportunities to make himself known to me and had done nothing. Jones was the one I knew least well. I decided to seek him out.

  Like most of the guests, Jones led a peripatetic life, migrating, as one room become intolerably boring, to another that was briefly more interesting. I found him sitting out on the terrace, bundled up in an overcoat and scarf. The overcoat looked as if it might have been expensive when it had been bought ten or fifteen years before. It was well cut, but (even to my eye) slightly old-fashioned. The colourful new scarf, possibly purchased expressly to brighten it up, made the coat seem even more faded. At the same time, the well-cut coat made the red scarf look cheap. It was fortunate that he had decided not to wear a hat. Jones had either not shaved that morning or had shaved badly with an old razor. Grey stubble appeared patchily across his chin and up one cheek. He looked unhappy.

  ‘So,’ I said, taking the chair beside him, ‘we’re still stuck here.’

  This made him even unhappier. ‘And who’s paying?’ he asked. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘The police are paying for the hotel,’ I said, ‘as long as we have to stay here.’

  ‘I know that, but where’s my ticket home?’ he said. ‘I had a booking on a train the day before yesterday. That ticket’s no good now. I’m going to have to buy another one. Who’ll pay for it, eh?’

  I made what I thought was a sympathetic smile.

  ‘You can laugh, but it’s not funny,’ he said. ‘You’re probably working, aren’t you?’

  I had not done any actual writing for months but I nodded. Writers are used to deluding themselves that all sorts of things are ‘work’ – searching the Internet for references to themselves, checking their Amazon ranking, blogging, making coffee. I’d done a few of those. I was working.

  ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I don’t even have my pension now.’

  I decided I had better ask why, even though I suspected I might be in for a long explanation. I was. It was an unhappy story, but not uncommon these days. He had worked all his life for the same company, making parts for motorcars. He had dutifully paid into a company pension scheme, and had, year after year, watched his older colleagues go off to a comfortable retirement. There are few good reasons for working in much the same job for forty years, day in, day out; but as Jones got older himself, the pension scheme had seemed a reasonably sound reason. He too would retire, early if possible, and enjoy a comfortable old age. Then, when he was sixty-four, the company had folded. A foreign firm had stepped in to rescue the operation, but not to shore up the pension scheme. It was too late to go anywhere else or do anything else. You could say his bitterness was not unreasonable. I raised my eyebrows when he told me the name of the company. He seemed unaware of the coincidence. Or perhaps, having let it slip, he didn’t wish to draw my attention to it.

  ‘So, have you bought any stamps?’ I asked. ‘Or were you here on any other business?’

  ‘Other business?’ he asked, puzzled.

  We looked at each other. There was no conspiratorial wink, no hint of recognition.

  ‘OK, I just wondered,’ I said.

  ‘What other business could I have?’ he asked.

  ‘None, I guess,’ I said lamely.

  Well, I’d given him a chance to reveal himself if he was my contact. Either he was playing it very cool or he was a stamp collector who had probably begun to think I was slightly odd in the head. I mentally chalked up a cross against his name and wondered how quickly I could escape. There was, I knew from past experience at the hotel, a danger he would start talking about stamps and not stop. Ever.

  ‘No, I was just buying stamps,’ he said. ‘Actually, I looked, mainly. No money now, you see. I just bought one or two. I collect European stamps – German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish and so on.’

  ‘But not the ten-kroner puce, eh?’ I said with a smile. It was a good line to sign off on. He was supposed to chuckle. I was supposed to stand, allowing me and my sanity to make a graceful exit.

  He did not chuckle. ‘Yes. I wish I’d been at that flea market. Whoever bought the stamps probably had no idea what they’d got hold of.’

  ‘I bet they do now, though,’ I said. I stood up anyway.

  ‘I’m sure they do. And they’ll probably keep quiet about it. The only people who’ll make money out of the affair in the end will be the lawyers.’

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘I suspect it will all end up in court.’

  ‘Probably,’ he said. ‘Still, it would be good to have one of those stamps as my pension fund. Do you know, by the way, what was the most expensive item sold at a stamp auction?’

  I guessed we all knew that. I sank back into my chair. I wondered whether I could still escape if I got the answer right. ‘The Swedish three-skilling yellow,’ I said.

  He smiled sadly and shook hi
s head. ‘Not by a long way. That went for a mere 2.87 million Swiss francs. A cover bearing both the one-penny and two-penny Mauritius “Post Office” stamps sold for 5.75 million. 5.75. Plenty of people think it’s the treskilling yellow, but they’re way out.’

  ‘I’ll do my best to remember that,’ I said, trying to stifle a yawn.

  Then I got lucky. Without warning, Jones got to his feet. ‘God, I hate being cooped up here,’ he exclaimed suddenly. ‘I hate being cooped up anywhere. I just hope they let us go today.’

  I agreed that would be good, and watched him march off abruptly into the hotel. Perhaps his swift departure had had to do with nothing except the cold out there on the terrace.

  He had of course just revealed a perfectly sound reason for disliking Davidov – maybe sound enough for a murder. But, as I say, I did not really suspect him of murder. And the strangest coincidences often have the simplest explanations.

  Twenty-three

  Sod all (pardon my French) seemed to have changed at the Vieille Auberge since it had been built a hundred and fifty years ago, when France had still had an emperor in Paris and a number of kings in exile. There is, as my old dad always used to say, no substitute for quality, and the fake beams would have looked as crap then as they did now. The architect had clearly been a fan of the Middle Ages, and had successfully incorporated into his design most of the worst aspects of fourteenth-century life. Between meals there was not much to do except sit in the gloom and wait patiently for the Black Death.

  In reception, tucked away as far as was possible, sat the one concession to the twenty-first century – a single computer for the use of the guests, with American software and a French keyboard. I sat down with the intention of checking my emails, and then another thought occurred to me. It was time to check out Davidov a little more thoroughly. I located Google, typed ‘Grigory Davidov’ and hit the return key.

  I found myself (Google informed me) on page 1 of about 395,000. Google told me that this had taken it 0.23 seconds (smug git). There was plenty on Davidov out there – including a lot about his career to date and his ambitions for the future. There was much speculation that his money had initially been made in activity that was more or less criminal. He had links with the Mafia. The Russian authorities were belatedly investigating him – hence perhaps his recently announced desire to move the centre of his operations to London. He had acquired a house near Holland Park but had not yet moved into it. He had expressed his admiration for a number of football teams that he had hoped to buy. I drifted from site to site as one does, ending up in YouTube, where I had been directed to a video of Davidov speaking to a group of businessmen at some fund-raising event. This led to another video of Davidov leaving a hotel, being barracked by some nice young people who held placards bearing the word ‘Yacoubabad’.