Pel and the Promised Land

by Mark Hebden

  ‘And this place?’

  ‘Bronwen lived here. Marie-Hélène came in to clean from time to time.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And this suited everybody?’

  ‘My father was happy. So, I think, was Marie-Hélène. Bronwen, no. But there was a man in Beaune, I believe. There was one in Auxonne and one in Lyons. There may have been others.’

  ‘Do you have names?’

  ‘No.’

  Which, Pel thought, was a pity because it was obviously a lead they would have to follow up.

  Auguste Raby-Labassat was still speaking, his voice quiet and angry. ‘She liked men. As much as anything because, since my father had no money, she couldn’t afford to indulge herself and these other men were willing to. She was quite good-looking. I believe she was involved in some business deal with one of them.’

  ‘What sort of business deal?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps over this place. My brother and sister always felt it should be sold.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘Did you always disagree on this?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Strongly?’

  ‘Yes.’ Auguste sniffed in his priggish way at the mention of his brother and sister. ‘Alain’s not got the sweetest temper. He once wrecked a car when he found himself hemmed in, in a parking lot. He slammed his car back and forth until he could get out, then deliberately drove at the car that had hemmed him in. It cost him a lot of money. Someone saw him and took the number of his car.’

  According to the inheritance laws, property in France had to be shared equally between all the children of a marriage. It was France’s way of breaking up the big estates and went a long way towards explaining why France had so many large crumbling châteaux no one wanted. Pel wanted to know more about Auguste’s wish to retain what seemed to him a white elephant.

  ‘You felt the family should hang on to the château?’ he asked.

  ‘I did. My brother and sister felt it should go.’

  Pel glanced about him at the bare walls and stone floors. ‘I imagine it wouldn’t be easy to sell,’ he murmured.

  ‘I was against it all the time.’

  ‘Supposing it were possible, would you still be against it?’

  ‘Yes.’ The answer was stiff. ‘Because I’ll be the next baron. When my father dies, the title comes to me. I know my brother sometimes uses the title, but he’s not truly entitled to it. I will be. And my wife is pregnant. I expect to have a son.’

  ‘You might have a daughter,’ Darcy said in a flat voice.

  ‘I doubt it. The Raby-Labassats have passed on their heritage from father to son for generations. This is the Raby-Labassat home. It’s the family history. It’s all here. I’ll take care of it.’

  Pel was inclined to wish him luck.

  While they were still prowling round the place, Auguste’s brother and sister arrived. They came separately and didn’t appear to like each other very much. Alain Raby-Labassat was a thin young man with long hair who ran a small electronics firm during the day and a rock group in the evening. He wore his jacket like a cloak and a denim cap that was peaked and flat-topped and made him look like Lenin arriving in Russia to organise the revolution. His only interest in his father seemed to rest on how much he was worth. He had always, it seemed, agreed with his stepmother about the house.

  ‘It’s worth nothing,’ he kept saying. ‘We should unload it. There’s still a little money left but this place’s draining it away all the time. The Old Man’s account’s like a tank with a leak in it. What’s in gets less every day. It’s our job to plug the hole. And that means selling this place.’

  ‘Does your father spend much on the upkeep?’

  Alain Raby-Labassat laughed. ‘Of course not. He does it himself. Isn’t he Monsieur Do-it-yourself? Unfortunately, his eyes aren’t what they were and his hands aren’t steady any more and what he does never lasts. The plaster falls out. The putty doesn’t stick. The paint’s streaky. The wood warps. One of these days he’ll kill himself falling off a ladder.’

  ‘Did you see much of your stepmother?’

  ‘Not all that much. Just occasionally. She tried to get me to help persuade the Old Man to get rid of the house. We all knew he hadn’t a cat in hell’s chance of getting much for it because nobody would want it. But at least it might have saved what’s left of the family fortune.’

  His sister, Philomène, the Baron’s daughter, held much the same views and they were intensified by the fact that, as she admitted, she was desperately in debt. She was a flat-chested young woman in a sort of string blouse that made her bust look like two oyster shells caught up in a net. She wore circular spectacles about the size of bicycle wheels. Her brother’s small fawn-coloured Peugeot had been nothing to write home about; hers was a battered Deux Chevaux painted a psychodelic pink with flowers. She was suspicious immediately of Pel.

  ‘You say you’re a policeman?’ she said.

  ‘I’m quite confident I am,’ Pel replied sharply.

  She insisted on seeing their warrant cards which she examined with great care, turning them backwards and forwards, as if she thought they were forged. Eventually she consented to answer their questions.

  ‘Getting rid of this place would make it possible for my father to help with my bills,’ she said. ‘I’m not married. I’m living in sin.’ She made the announcement as if she expected the sort of reaction that would have greeted the Second Coming. ‘My father disapproved of me because of that.’

  Pel had a suspicion that there was more to it than that.

  ‘All the same,’ she went on, ‘he sometimes gave me money. It was only when that damned Bronwen came that he grew tight-fisted. She influenced him against me. After all, my bills don’t amount to much.’

  ‘Too much,’ Alain snapped. ‘When this place’s sold, it won’t be just to pay your bills, believe me.’

  ‘It isn’t going to be sold,’ Auguste said.

  ‘Wouldn’t an estate agent’s fees for selling the place eat up what was left, anyway?’ Pel asked mildly before they came to blows.

  ‘Not,’ Alain said sharply, ‘if my father just walked away from the place. There’s no law that says you can’t. It’s far enough back from the road for things to fall off it without hurting anyone. It would just crumble. All he has to do is put a rope on stakes round the place with a notice – “Danger. Keep Out.” He’d be within the law.’

  ‘What do you reckon the place’s worth?’ Pel asked, a trace wistfully. He was a snob enough always to be impressed by grandeur, wealth and possessions. It had been his ambition as a young man to be so rich he would be able to bring his children to heel with the challenge, ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want my money?’

  Darcy had no hesitation in giving his answer. ‘To me,’ he said, ‘nothing. I wouldn’t have it thrown at me. You wouldn’t be able to move from the kitchen during the winter. The place’s huge and it’s falling down. The doors don’t fit. The windows are warped. There are patches of damp everywhere.’

  ‘Do you reckon the Baron could have killed his wife? For the life she was leading him?’

  ‘I reckon,’ Darcy decided, ‘that he couldn’t kill anything. Not even a rabbit.’

  ‘What do you think of the children?’

  ‘Not much. They’re a much better bet as suspects. Two of them are grasping and think only of getting their hands on the old man’s money. The other’s so bloody formal I expect he shakes hands with his mistress before getting into bed with her.’

  ‘They’re not what you’d call a close and happy family, are they? That young man, Auguste, seemed to be throwing out hints that his brother could be violent enough to have killed his stepmother.’

  ‘Not much point. He seems to have agreed with her. Perhaps Auguste did it himself and wants us to think it was Alain. At least, Bronwen was a threat to Auguste’s future with her wish to sell off the place.’ />
  ‘I’m interested in this Marie-Hélène Gaussac,’ Pel said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder what she’s expecting to get out of it. So far she seems to have been the only one who’s shown the Baron much loyalty. And there must have been something about her to have impressed him.’

  They found Marie-Hélène Gaussac at the cottage the Baron had done up, a hundred metres from the house. It was a tiny place but it looked as though it would be a great deal warmer in winter than the house. She was old, like the Baron, but without doubt had once been pretty. In her face was a calmness they saw in none of the Baron’s children. Somewhere around the place they could hear a hammer.

  ‘It’s Honoré,’ she said. ‘The Baron. He needs looking after all the time. It was obvious years ago he needed looking after. I’ve tried to do it.’

  ‘Did you love him, Madame?’

  ‘I’ve always loved him. From the first day I saw him. He was so helpless. It was instantaneous and it’s never changed.’

  ‘But you married–’ Pel glanced at his notes, ‘–Marc-Marie Gaussac?’

  ‘Why not? The man I wanted to marry was pushed into marriage by his father with someone he didn’t love. She was a good woman. But she couldn’t look after him. She was a thin-blooded aristocrat – a De Gouchy. They’re not much, but she wasn’t a carter’s daughter, so it was all right.’

  ‘Would you have killed the new Baroness, Madame?’

  The old woman looked frankly at them and gave them a bright-eyed smile. ‘I could have,’ she admitted. ‘Often. But I didn’t. I just ignored her.’

  ‘And the future?’

  ‘I’ll go on looking after him just as long as I can and as long as he wishes me to.’

  ‘Is he worth much?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been interested. Nobody seems to know, anyway. A little, I think. Not enough, I know that. You’d have to ask him.’

  ‘Had the Baroness any money? Of her own?’

  ‘None at all. That’s why she married him. She thought he had.’

  ‘Please go on.’

  ‘They argued a lot. All the time, in fact. She was always trying to get him interested in some scheme she had. She was always thinking them up. There was the boutique thing. He lost quite a bit on that. Then she started a trout farm. But she didn’t know anything about trout and there’s already one at Blaine. Then the fish got a disease and died.’

  ‘Did you often see them arguing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No. She never came here.’

  ‘In the big house?’

  ‘No. In the grounds. Honoré tried to keep it from people. But you could always tell. She flapped her arms about. Like a Frenchwoman. Honoré never did. He was always controlled. More like an Englishman.’

  ‘What about the house? Do you think it’s worth anything?’

  ‘The pictures might be. And the furniture. There are some folios of drawings, too. Done by the first Baron. He was quite good and they must have some value. They’d raise a little.’

  ‘What about cash? Is there much of that?’

  She gave a sad smile. ‘Not very much. I don’t think he’s had a new jacket for years. I knit his jerseys.’

  As they left the Baron’s cottage, they stood staring at the big house. It was one of the large homes raised by honoured men of Napoleon I’s court. It was built of rich mellow stone and had a splendid view over the valley and the road from Brungèges to Lamergelle which crossed the road from Halévé below the house. The grounds at the back were far from extensive and the boundary wall was crowded up against the houses of the village and the church.

  But the garden at the front was large and attractive, falling away in its long terraces from the vast box hedge to the road. Originally, it seemed, they had extended across the valley but the Baron’s father had sold off a lot of land and had then made more money as a new road to Marcy had been thrust through. It had helped him to stave off the evil day of poverty with which the family were now faced. Unfortunately, the present Baron had no business acumen and virtually nothing left to sell off.

  It seemed a good idea to see the village priest. According to Sous-Brigadier Morelot, he was elderly and had known the Baron since he was a boy and would surely know something of the Baroness. He was a shrivelled old man with his grey hair cut en brosse and they found him teetering on top of a step-ladder above a small forest of candles before a statue of the Virgin Mary whose halo he was polishing with a rag and brass polish. He climbed down, put away his cloths, then knelt for a moment, his head bowed. As he rose, he smiled. ‘A prayer,’ he said. ‘One day I shall fall off those steps and I always make a point of thanking God that this was not the day.’ His smile grew wider. ‘Still, it’s always better to talk to God than claim He talks to me. When we talk to God it’s called praying. When we claim He’s talking to us, it’s called delusions.’

  When they told him about the Baroness’ being found, he bobbed his head and his lips moved. ‘Requiem aeternam,’ he said. ‘I am not surprised.’

  ‘Why not, Father?’

  ‘She was married to a good man but, because he wasn’t rich, she couldn’t remain faithful to him. However, life isn’t supposed to be easy and the Via Crucis is never a path of roses, so we must forgive.’

  ‘Was she a good churchgoer?’

  ‘She tried to be at first. But where she came from they were not Catholics and she soon gave up.’

  ‘Did she come to Confession?’

  ‘At first.’

  ‘Did she tell you anything we should know?’

  ‘Nothing I’m permitted to pass on. The Confession is a closed book.’

  ‘And the Baron?’

  ‘The same applies to him. You ought to know that, my son.’

  Pel nodded, accepting the rebuke.

  The old priest obviously didn’t wish to offer opinions but it was plain enough that, though he had not liked the Baroness, he had never felt anything but warmth for the Baron. Not because he was a particularly good churchgoer, but because he was quite simply a good man who had always accepted his responsibility towards the villagers.

  The Baroness, he felt, had made no real attempt to become absorbed in French life or to belong to the village. The only faults he could find in the Baron were his vagueness, his total inability to make a repair satisfactorily, and the wine he served.

  ‘He makes it himself,’ he said. ‘It looks like the liquid you get when you empty a car radiator. He also produces marc. When he dies the licence will die with him. And perhaps it will be as well. I think you could fuel a blow lamp with it.’

  Seven

  The day was warm so they retired for a meal to the bar alongside the garage on the main road. It gave them a splendid view of the ochre-coloured façade of the house, with its half-dozen spear-like cypresses sharp against the deep blue of the sky.

  Two men were playing boules on the forecourt of the bar and there was a whiff of Gauloises in the air. But the bar believed in the fashionable new cuisine and the vegetables were hot but not cooked, the meat tasted like old wellington boots, and the wine went down like paint stripper. As they dolefully contemplated the remains of the meal, a car drew in and a man climbed out and approached them. He was burly, red-faced and noisy, and his smile seemed to contain more teeth than he could possibly ever use.

  ‘I’m Emile Jaunay,’ he said. ‘I’m Maire of this place. I believe you’re police.’

  Pel left it to Darcy to acknowledge the fact.

  ‘Is it true that the woman who was found at Vieilles Etuves is the Baroness?’

  ‘Nothing’s been proved yet,’ Darcy said coolly.

  ‘But you think it is her?’

  ‘It’s possible. Why are you interested?’

  Jaunay called for a beer and sat down at their table without asking their leave. ‘I’m only interested,’ he said, ‘because, as Maire, I ought perhaps to call on the Baron. I’m just trying to confirm. I wouldn’t like to put my foot in it.
I’m a builder and I’ve done jobs for him – and for her, too – and I knew them pretty well.’

  ‘Did you get paid for the jobs you did?’ Darcy asked.

  Jaunay gave a nervous laugh. ‘I see you’ve heard about the family finances. Yes, I got paid. They were only small jobs. Repairs. That sort of thing. They were sometimes slow but they always coughed up. They wouldn’t have found me willing a second time if they hadn’t.’

  ‘Did you know the Baroness well?’

  Jaunay flapped his hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘A little.’

  ‘Ever see her with another man?’

  ‘Oh, you’re on to that one, are you?’ Jaunay smiled. ‘No, I never did. Though I’ve heard the story. I heard she’d got one.’

  ‘No idea who it could have been?’

  ‘None at all. Well–’ Jaunay sank his beer, ‘I’d better be off. Things to do. Thanks for the confirmation. I’ll try to see the Baron later. I expect he’s pretty low at the moment.’

  ‘I have a suspicion,’ Pel remarked, ‘that it won’t make much difference at all to him.’

  Jaunay frowned. ‘No. Not really,’ he said. ‘They didn’t get on. At least, he’ll have some peace now. If you want to know more about the Baroness, try Gilliam. Wyn Spencer Gilliam and his wife. They’re English and I think she visited them occasionally.’

  Gilliam turned out to be a painter, a tall, handsome ex-British army man who said he had spent a frustrating career in uniform dying to put colour on canvas but never properly able to do so until his retirement. He spoke excellent French and claimed to love France.