Murder at Seething Wells (The Ralph Chalmers Mysteries Book 5)

by P. J. Thurbin

  “Hi Ralph. You’re a sight for sore eyes,” she said as she beamed at him from under a jaunty red beret. “I must say you look a bit the worse for wear.” Ralph leaned down and kissed her chastely on the cheek as she gave him an enthusiastic bear hug. It always took him a while to acclimate to being together again.

  “Just a lot of noisy people on the train. I’ll be fine as soon as we get away from this mob.” He gave her a half hug as the crowds swirled around them fighting to get through the narrow entrance to the Metro.

  “I got you a book of passes so you wouldn’t have to queue up with the great unwashed,”

  she shouted over the din as she handed him the bundle of tickets. “We want the Jardin du Luxembourg. It’s route B. See it’s across on the other side. Don’t forget to punch your ticket before we get on.” He could see that Katie had acclimatized to being in Paris and was happy to let her take charge.

  “Keep your hand on your wallet, Ralph. These guys will fleece you as soon as ask the time of day,” she called over her shoulder as they descended the crowded escalator strewn with cigarette ends and scraps of paper. Paris had not changed. Once in the carriage they stood packed shoulder to shoulder with matronly housewives clutching bags stuffed with groceries and some seedy looking types in scruffy suits. The grinding noise from the tracks screeching through the half open carriage windows made it impossible to talk. Katie just grinned at him, knowing how he hated being in crowds like that. “OK. This is us,” Katie said as she jumped onto the platform.

  Once out in the daylight Ralph began to relax and enjoy the smells and sounds of a quieter part of Paris. They were soon at Katie’s apartment and once they had climbed three flights of ornately carved stairs and closed the large wooden door Katie laughed.

  “So what do you think of my pied a terre?”

  “I’ll give you more than one foot on the ground if you keep that up,” he retorted, but Katie was relieved to see that there was more than a bit of humor in his voice.

  “By the way, did you find out anything about Li Mei?”

  “How about, ‘great flat’, or ‘it sure is good to see you’ before we get to the real reason you wanted to come over. But not to worry, not only did I find her, I’ve arranged for us to meet her for lunch tomorrow. Speaking of which, I knew you wouldn’t eat anything on the train so I made some soup for us to have here.”

  “That sounds great. I don’t suppose you have a cold beer as well?”

  It had been a long day. The combination of the cozy atmosphere of the flat and the warm soup had a soporific effect and they were soon dozing companionably on the overstuffed sofa in the small crowded living room.

  ***

  One thing that the French have got right is their petit dejeuner. As they sat outside at one of the myriad of cafes on the Rue Soufflot sipping their coffees and nibbling on crusty rolls and croissants while people rushed to work and the traffic roared past, it seemed a good place to be. There was something frenetic but at the same time reassuring about just sitting and watching this cosmopolitan city coming to life. Ralph could see why Hemingway found Paris so seductive.

  “I could get used to this,” said Ralph. “It’s amazing that the French look so healthy when everyone seems to chain-smoke and eat like there’s no tomorrow.”

  “It does grow on you. But there are quieter places just outside the city,” said Katie as she beckoned the waiter for their bill. A tall blond- haired young man in a regulation white shirt, black vest and apron, took the paper note and went through the ritual of

  pretending to dig into the leather pouch at his waist for change and feigned surprise as Katie raised her hand. “Merci, Madame,” he said with an automatic half smile as he turned to seat some new customers.

  “One of my colleagues at the University has some lions out at Chantilly and I get out there for a ride two or three times a week and at weekends. You can rent bikes at the station and there are miles of trails through the forest. What do you think?”

  “Sounds like a possibility,” Ralph replied as he retrieved his newspaper from among the scattered remnants of their breakfast.

  “But this morning I’d like to see the Sorbonne if we have time.”

  “No problem. We’re not meeting Li Mei until one. We have reservations at a little place she suggested called Le Devez.”

  Ralph was slightly disappointed with the Sorbonne. It was in a pretty poor state of repair, and as Katie had said, it seemed to be falling down around itself. A shame really, Ralph thought, when it could have been quite a showpiece. The cold damp cubbyhole that she called her office reminded him that he didn’t have it so bad in his nice warm room overlooking the gardens at Kenry House.

  Emerging from the Metro at Alma-Marceau, they walked along the Avenue George V to the restaurant. He recognized the area from his student days when a weekend in Paris included a visit to the Crazy Lion Cabaret, a sort of cheaper student version of the Folies Bergere. He recalled lots of girls in scanty costumes and feathers posing on the stage and they were all called Lola, Yvette or Fifi. He wondered what had happened to them. No doubt all mums by now and leading respectable lives. Perhaps they were the ladies he had seen on the Metro clutching bags full of groceries sitting there with pursed lips, their blue eyes reflecting memories of romantic days. He was jolted back to reality when he heard Katie’s voice.

  “Ralph, this is Li Mei.”

  “Good to meet you, Mademoiselle Li.”

  She laughed. “Just call me Mei. I went to school in London and my parents are American.”

  “Ralph’s a bit old fashioned,” said Katie as they were shown to their table by a slightly obsequious waiter. Li Mei was dressed in a smart suit and was not as Ralph had imagined at all.

  “I come here for lunch often as the Embassy is just across the road,” Li Mei said.

  Ralph had expected someone older. He had put Stephen Chen at around 45. He knew that the Chinese women looked younger than they were but guessed that Mei was about 28. They all chose the Pan fried duck foie gras with pear brioche followed by medallion of monk fish in a sweet pepper sauce and were soon exchanging stories about life in England and Mei’s work at the Chinese Embassy. Li Mei was the first one to broach the subject of Stephen Chen’s death.

  “Strange, but I felt something awful would happen to Stephen.” Ralph was slightly surprised that she didn’t display more sadness when she mentioned her boyfriend’s name.

  “I was upset when my boss called me in and told me what had happened. He said the Embassy in London was trying to track down Stephen’s parents in Singapore, but it seems that they were no longer at the address shown on his records.”

  “I never met him,” said Ralph. “I spoke to some of his colleagues and they were all shocked and saddened by what happened.”

  “It’s nice of you to say that Ralph, but you don’t have to pretend for my sake. I know that poor Stephen was not popular at Kingston. He was so focused on being a success that he had little time for what you might call ‘the finer points of social discourse’.

  “So how did you meet Stephen, anyhow?” Katie asked. For once Ralph was glad that she could be counted on to get right to the point.

  “We met when he was working at the National University in Singapore. I had just started work at the Chinese Embassy there and they had called him in to discuss some field trials on a new vaccine that he was working on. It was a chance meeting in the elevator and Stephen asked me to go out for a meal. He was quite charming at first, but I felt that he really wanted to find out from me what the officials were saying about him. But I liked him, and he certainly knew his way around Singapore. I had only been there for a short time and it was nice to have a friend.”

  “Did he actually ask you to find out what the people at the Embassy were concerned about?” Asked Katie.

  “No, not directly. It was just a feeling I had that I was being used. So I did some checking up and discovered that he had been warned by both the Singaporean security peop
le and the Chinese officials to stop getting involved in political issues. I knew that they were considering arresting him under the Internal Security Act. He left Singapore and went to work at your University a few months later. My feeling was that he had to get out, although he told me that he had got this terrific offer from a big drug company and they were setting him up at Kingston near London. But of course you know where it is.” They all laughed.

  “Had you and Stephen been in touch since he came to Kingston?” Ralph asked. He was eager to move the conversation towards his real reason for wanting to meet Li Mei.

  “Yes. We spoke on the phone nearly every day and of course we emailed. Then Stephen came to Paris for the World Health Organization Conference. We had a whirlwind time when he was here and that was when he proposed to me. But I needed to think about it before I gave him my answer because some of the things that he said worried me.”

  “Why? What sort of things? Was he involved in something illegal or dangerous?” Katie asked.

  “I don’t know if they were illegal, but they certainly sounded a bit dodgy. He told me that he intended to get rich out of his work with the pharmaceutical company. I think it was called Kramer. He said that he had let word get out that he was near a breakthrough in developing the new vaccine and that Kramer, as well as a Chinese company and some other people he had contacted in Singapore, had promised to give him money and he said there was a lot more where that came from. He also said that he hadn’t told the University anything about the payments from the Chinese company.”

  “But what was he going to do once he got the money from these people? Presumably he would have to disappear, or at least hide somewhere?” Asked Ralph as he finished his dessert.

  “Stephen wanted to get his parents out of the poor part of Singapore where they lived and over to France. It was his dream that they would all live on the French Riviera. When he asked me to marry him I’m afraid that I did a little checking up on him at the Embassy. I was shocked to discover that his troubles in Singapore were very serious. It seems that he had been working there with an English scientist, a Dr. Miller.”

  Ralph jumped in before he could stop himself.

  “Ryan Miller?”

  “Yes. That’s the name. But how did you know this?”

  “That’s not important,” Ralph said. “Just go on with what you were saying about Stephen and Ryan Miller.”

  “What had they done that was so bad?” Asked Katie.

  “They were working on this SARS virus vaccine. From what I learned, they had recruited 100 people from migrant families that the government was holding in quarantine because they had some sort of influenza with the SARS symptoms. Well, it seems that 80 of them died within a week of being given the vaccine. It was all hushed up and the families were given some small amount of compensation. Stephen and Dr. Miller argued that they would have died anyway and the vaccine was not at fault, but I’m not so sure.”

  “What happened to Stephen and Miller then?” Ralph asked.

  “Well rumor of a flu epidemic can cause a panic in such a tightly packed area as Singapore. So the agency that had set up the trial, the people at the NUS and Stephen and his friend Miller were all warned to keep quiet about the whole affair and no further proceedings would be taken against them.”

  “Did you confront Stephen with all of this once you found out?” Asked Katie.

  “Yes. He said that it had all been exaggerated by the competition to discredit his work. Then when I asked him why he had tried to create a panic with his paper at the WHO Conference abut a pending flu pandemic and by raising the issue of terrorist gangs using the virus to threaten governments, he said that he was not the only one who sold their scientific knowledge to make money. He said that by broadcasting the fact that he was near a breakthrough it would flush out those people that wanted the vaccine and that they would either pay him to get his research data or pay him to stop work. Either way he would get rich. He was confident that he could make money from the big pharmaceutical companies, governments and terrorist groups by playing one off against the other.”

  “So do you think that one of those groups was involved in his murder?” Ralph asked. He could see that May was right and that she had been spot on in identifying three groups that had a strong motive for killing Chen.

  “I don’t know. All I do know is that Stephen had been staying at my apartment while he attended the WHO Conference and after he told me about his involvement in the trial that killed all of those people and how he planned to play one group off another just to get rich quick, I asked him to leave. We had a big row and he stormed out. He left in such a hurry that he forgot to take some of his papers. I’m afraid I never got around to sending them on. And that was the last I time I saw Stephen.”

  Ralph could see that it had been exhausting and emotionally draining for Mei as she told her story, although she had remained calm and controlled throughout. He could not get over the fact that Ryan Miller had worked with Chen and not mentioned it to either him or the police. He wondered about the papers that Chen had left in her apartment and if they might shed any light on his murder, but he didn’t want to alarm her by asking more questions. Having settled the bill and getting a silent nod of ascent from Katie, he invited Mei to join them that evening.

  “I never managed to see Phantom of the Opera and I know it’s on at The Palais Garnier,” said Katie. “Why don’t we pick up some tickets and then we can all relax and behave like real tourists?”

  “That would be lovely. You two have been very kind to come to see me. Then tomorrow you must allow me to show you around the Embassy. The architecture is marvelous. And then we can take a walk in the Tuileries Garden in this wonderful October sunshine. It might be our last before winter sets in.”

  “Great. Where shall we meet tonight?” Asked Ralph.

  “Why not come to my apartment. It’s just two down from the Embassy building. Number 15 Avenue George V. You can see it just across the road from the restaurant. I have to get back now as the police are coming round to check on a break-in at my apartment yesterday afternoon. Whoever it was ransacked my place.”

  “How awful,” said Katie. “Did they take anything?”

  “Just my laptop and some cases of odds and ends that I had brought with me from Singapore, family photos and that sort of thing. I expect the thieves have thrown it all in a rubbish dump somewhere once they found it was of no value to them. Still c’est la guerre,” she laughed and shrugged her thin shoulders.

  They said their goodbyes and Mei again thanked Ralph and Katie for their kindness and said that she was looking forward to seeing them later. Katie grasped Ralph’s hand and they walked towards the Metro.

  “What a nice girl,” said Katie.

  “Yes. And how she could get mixed up with someone as sinister as Chen I can’t imagine. The man was certainly up to a lot of tricks. Sailing close to the wind can be a dangerous game. But at least she is out of it now. You know, I’ll have to tell Linham about this as I’m sure she hasn’t said anything to the French police. Withholding evidence in a murder case is a criminal offence. It will put a whole new light on Linham’s investigations into Chen’s death and who might have been involved. I’m pretty certain he’ll want to pass it on to his counterparts at Europol.”

  “But tonight we can forget about all that and enjoy a night out on the town,” said Katie.

  Just then they heard the emotive wail of police and ambulance sirens. Ralph had a feeling that something bad had happened as they ran back to the corner of the Avenue George V where a large crowd was gathering.

  “What’s happened?” Katie asked an older man standing next to her.

  “A young Chinese girl was shot as she was going into her apartment.”

  They both knew that the girl was Li Mei.

  _________________

  Chapter 10

  Ralph always found his visits to see Inspector Linham unnerving. Perhaps it was the notion that the police were the i
nterface between the might of the law and ordinary people or some hidden feelings of guilt or unexposed misdemeanors from the past. The fact that the Inspector was always polite and friendly in some bizarre way made him feel worse. The office was stuffy and he tried to make a space on the Inspector’s cluttered desk for a mug of hot sweet tea that Sergeant Wilson handed to him.

  “Good morning, Professor Chalmers. Thanks for taking time from your busy schedule to come in. So, tell me about this new information on the Stephen Chen case.” The Inspector leaned back in his chair and waited for Ralph to explain about the phone call he had received from him earlier.

  “As I said on the phone Inspector, shortly after my friend and I left her near her flat, Stephen Chen’s girlfriend, Li Mei was shot. I thought that since the French authorities aren’t involved in Chen’s murder here, it seemed that going to them would only complicate matters. That is why I phoned you instead.”

  “Strictly speaking, I suppose you should have at least reported that you were likely the last ones to speak to her before she was killed, but I doubt it has any real relevance. Probably best to keep out of it, knowing what a hash they can make of things. But I do appreciate your letting me know. In any event, I’ve spoken to Europol and our counterparts in the French police and explained that you were in Paris anyhow on personal business and you only contacted the girl to offer sympathy because of Stephen Chen’s death. I hope I was correct in my assumption?”

  Ralph’s appreciated Inspector Linham’s covering for him, but he could see that the Inspector might be less than pleased if he thought that he had set out to deliberately question Li Mei about Chen. He realized that it could possibly be seen as interfering in a police investigation. He decided that the best thing to do was to tell the Inspector everything that had been said over lunch in Le Devez. The Inspector listened intently to his story and there was a heavy silence before he spoke.