Death Set to Music

by Mark Hebden

  There seemed to be blood everywhere, soaked in a huge dried pool into the thick pile carpet, into the cushions of the elegant settee, on the curtains, on the walls, on the side of the piano. To say nothing of fragments of bone and shreds of flesh. It looked as though a lunatic had been at work.

  Pel didn’t like blood any more than the sergeant outside but he knew what he had to do. While Darcy remained outside, he picked his way carefully round the furniture, avoiding the dark stains, to stare down at the body. It was that of a woman about forty, though at that moment it was hard to say whether she were attractive or ugly, pleasant or a bitch, because her face and head were mere bloody pulp from which one eye stared in a squint up at Pel from among the stiffened tangle of dark hair.

  Darcy put his head round the door to the hall. ‘There’s blood here and by the front door, Chief,’ he said. ‘As well as on the step outside the french window. There’s also a little on the grass and the gravel of the drive. Then no more. It looks as though whoever did it went out through the french window, round the house and down the drive to the lane. He probably had a car there.’

  ‘Find out if anyone saw one around last night. And get the garages to keep their eyes open for bloodstained interiors. Whoever did this must have had it all over him.’

  ‘Right, Chief. By the way, her handbag’s in the hall.’

  ‘Check what’s in it. And let’s have the office making a check on laundries for bloodstained clothes. Have them check all cleaners and the dustbin people. There’s so much blood around, there must be some on the clothes of whoever it was who did it. Probably hair, tissue, and fragments of bone as well. Also check tradesmen. See if she had visitors – what sort of men she knew. And get another sergeant out here.’

  Darcy vanished and a moment later his voice came quietly from the hall where he was telephoning headquarters. When he returned, Pel was still staring at the body. It was naked except for a flimsy gown which was twisted about it and was covered with dried blood that had given it the consistency of cardboard.

  ‘Krauss’ on his way,’ Darcy said.

  ‘He’s not very bright,’ Pel pointed out.

  Darcy sighed. ‘We’ve got to have somebody, Patron.’

  Pel indicated the corpse. ‘Name?’ he asked.

  Darcy flicked his notebook open. ‘Camille-Jeanne Chenandier. Wife of Hervé Chenandier, wine exporter, of this address.’

  ‘Know anything about her?’

  ‘I’ve picked up a bit. She was a bit of a singer.’ Darcy nodded towards the stereo and the record of Rigoletto. ‘Not so hot really, but she’d sung in the chorus once or twice at the Paris Opera House before she was married. Since then she’d given a few recitals and done a bit of amateur work. Nothing more. The sergeant knows her. Always fancied she was better than she actually was, I gather.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘One daughter, Odile. She’s awaiting our attentions now if that sergeant’s worth his stripes.’

  ‘No other family?’

  ‘I gather not, patron. But there’s a brother. Also lives in the village. There’s a gardener as well, who doesn’t appear to have turned up this morning.’

  ‘Find them.’

  Pel sniffed. There was a dead smell in the air. It was a strange phenomenon he always noticed. It wasn’t the blood. It was just death. As if there were a decaying figure waiting in the corner of the room.

  While he stared, taking everything in, the other cars arrived – Minet, the doctor; Prélat, the fingerprint expert; the photographers; and Leguyader and his laboratory assistants, who were to go through the place with a fine toothcomb. They arrived in the hall in a bunch, heading for the salon as if they were going to a football match.

  They were a pretty motley bunch who ought to have got on well with each other, but, like all Frenchmen, they were arrogant and took themselves too seriously, and each belonged to a different political party, one of the fifty-odd million – one for every adult in France – that made up the political whole of the country. In the office they spent all their time arguing at the top of their voices so that they always appeared to be on the point of seizing each other by the throat, and they were all going full bore as they swept down the corridor.

  Pel stood in the doorway and stopped them dead. ‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘You’re not a lot of farmers. Just tread carefully.’

  One of the photographers put his head round the door and pulled a face. ‘Oh, mon Dieu,’ he said. ‘What is it? Crime of passion?’

  ‘At the moment it looks like a stormy night in a butcher’s shop. Don’t let’s have anything touched.’

  As they crept in, aware of Pel’s eye directed at them like the barrel of a shotgun, Pel spoke to Darcy. ‘Take a look round the place upstairs,’ he said. ‘First, though, what did the handbag show?’

  Darcy disappeared to the hall and returned to dump an expensive patent-leather handbag on the table. ‘All the usual,’ he said. ‘But there’s one interesting thing. A note. An assignation by the look of it.’

  He spread a small sheet of paper in front of Pel. It said in green ballpoint letters, ‘See you 10 p.m.’

  ‘Whose is the writing?’

  ‘I haven’t identified it yet. It’s not the girl’s or the housekeeper’s.’ He nodded towards the corpse. ‘Or hers.’

  ‘Find out whose it is,’ Pel said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘All the usual things women carry. Two handkerchiefs. Two lipsticks. Powder compact. Specs. Diary. A couple of kilos of small coins. Why do women always have so many small coins at the bottom of their handbags?’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘My girlfriends always do. I think they toss ’em in when they’re in a hurry shopping, and then forget ’em. They only remember ’em when the handbag gets too heavy to cart around. There are also two ten-franc notes. Around 50 frs altogether.’

  Pel studied the expensive hangings and furniture. ‘Not much for a woman as wealthy as this one seems to be,’ he commented. ‘Let’s go and see what the sergeant’s turned up.’

  There were two women waiting in a small room lined with books, both sitting in deep green-leather armchairs. The sergeant waited importantly by the door.

  ‘Got everything set up for you, sir,’ he said.

  Pel glanced at the two women waiting inside. They both looked nervous but calm.

  ‘Must have been quite an effort,’ he said, and the sergeant flushed.

  Standing by the desk, he stared about him. The room was as elegant as the salon where the body was. The books were all old, backed with leather and well marked with gilt, as though the owner collected them carefully. The two women were watching him intently, one of them a small neat woman with dark alert eyes, the other a girl in her early twenties with mouse-coloured hair and a sad agitated look that was mixed with wariness.

  ‘Names, please?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Quermel,’ the dark woman said. ‘Estelle Quermel.’

  ‘Madame? Mademoiselle?’

  ‘Madame. I’m a widow. I’m the housekeeper.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Madame Quermel shrugged, her face expressionless. ‘It means I did everything. Washed. Cleaned. Cooked. Made the beds. Even sometimes helped with the garden.’

  ‘It must be marvellous,’ the girl said heavily, ‘to feel so saintly.’

  Pel ignored the comment. ‘And you?’ he asked.

  The girl gave an almost imperceptible shrug and tears started to her eyes. ‘Chenandier,’ she said. ‘Odile Chenandier. Unmarried. And never likely to be.’ She directed a frightened glance towards the salon. ‘I’m her daughter.’

  Pel gestured. ‘I’ll see you separately.’ He looked at the girl. ‘We’ll have you first, Mademoiselle. Perhaps you’d come into the kitchen.’

  The girl followed him into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

  She wasn’t an ill-looking girl. She had good features but her skin was sallow and, like so many young people, she apparently didn’t believe
in make-up when a little would have worked wonders. There were times, Pel thought, when naturalism could be carried too far.

  She watched him warily, twisting her hands. ‘Why?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what, mademoiselle?’

  ‘Why my mother? Why was she killed?’

  Pel gestured. ‘That’s something we hope to find out,’ he said gently.

  The girl seemed to writhe inside her clothes. ‘But why her? Why should this happen to us?’

  Pel let her work it out of her system before he spoke. ‘Where were you when it happened?’ he said eventually.

  She answered him slowly, hesitatingly. ‘In my flat, I suppose. She was in her wrap, so I suppose it must have happened during the night.’

  ‘Were you in all evening?’

  ‘Yes. I stayed in writing letters. To friends, you know.’

  ‘Male or female?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Were there many?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I see them?’

  She gave him a startled look. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just a check, that’s all. If there were a lot as you say, that would be reasonable proof that you were in.’

  Her eyes fell. ‘I haven’t got them,’ she said. ‘I posted them this morning before you arrived. There’s a box in the lane.’

  Pel rubbed his nose thoughtfully. ‘Did you hear no sound at all last night?’ he asked.

  ‘You can’t hear a thing from my flat.’ The girl looked nervous and on edge. ‘She was playing opera on the stereo, anyway, so I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Did she often play records on the stereo?’

  The girl gave him a worried glance. ‘Only opera. She was mad about opera. She sometimes went to Paris to hear it. She was always going on about singing there.’ Her eyes filled with tears and, despite her aggressive manner, Pel suspected she was frightened and lost.

  ‘It was all show really,’ she said. ‘All this opera.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It was just to impress people. I think she’d long since forgotten all she ever knew. She was really a very ordinary person.’

  Pel thought for a moment. ‘Who found her?’ he asked.

  The girl stirred and gave him another scared look, her eyes filling with tears once more. ‘I did. I came in this morning. My flat has a separate entrance in the drive and a door into this part of the house. I was going into the city and I was in need of cash. I never seem to have any. My father’s a bit tight with it and keeps me short. As I reached the door I heard the stereo clicking and thought she was in here. Then I saw the blood and then her. So I stopped where I was and went to the kitchen to telephone the police.’

  ‘Was this before or after you posted your letters?’

  ‘Before.’ She shook her head. ‘No, after.’ She gave a forlorn gesture. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Did you go into the room where she was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Around eight o’clock.’

  ‘See anything unusual?’

  The tears welled up again and the muddy skin grew pink. ‘I’d have said my mother with her head smashed in was unusual, wouldn’t you?’ she said with an unexpected show of spirit.

  Pel had meant footprints or disturbed furniture but he shrugged and didn’t pursue the subject. He lit a cigarette slowly and drew the smoke down to his socks. His relations, when he bothered to visit them, which wasn’t often, said he smoked so much he smelled like a Paris taxi. He waved away the blue wraiths round his head, fighting to get his breath as the acrid Régie Française tobacco clutched him by the throat, and watched the girl for a while. She was managing to hold back the persistent tears and so far there had been no expressions of sorrow, but Pel suspected she wasn’t half as tough as she tried to make out and was terrified.

  ‘Were you fond of your mother?’ he asked.

  She stared.

  ‘Some daughters aren’t.’

  She blinked. ‘Yes, I was.’

  ‘Did you share things with her?’

  She sighed. ‘Not much,’ she admitted. ‘She was – well, she wasn’t interested in the things I was interested in. I didn’t like music, for instance. I didn’t like her friends. But – well–’ she gestured.

  ‘But you got on all right?’

  ‘Are you suggesting – ?’

  ‘I’m suggesting nothing, Mademoiselle. I just wish at this stage to know where people were and who they were with.’

  She sighed again. ‘I was alone. I told you. I don’t like being alone.’

  ‘Wasn’t Madame Quermel in?’

  ‘No. Nor the night before! I watched her leave from my window.’

  ‘Do you often watch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The narrow shoulders moved hopelessly. ‘Seeing people go out – you know – it’s not much fun being alone.’

  ‘Are you often alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘From choice?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do you have your own flat instead of sharing your parents’ home?’

  She gave him an agonised glance. ‘Girls don’t always want to be in the same place as their parents, do they?’

  ‘Some do.’

  She shrugged again and became silent and he wondered how much her loneliness came from her attempt to live like other girls, and how much because her parents preferred her out of their hair. She was an uninspiring sort of girl but it seemed to Pel that it would only require someone to be interested in her to change her enormously. He’d seen it happen before.

  ‘Do you know where Madame Quermel goes?’ he asked.

  The girl’s shoulders moved again. ‘She’s got some relations somewhere around. Perhaps she’s got a fancy man as well. You know what widows are like.’

  She seemed to sag in the chair again. She shot a frightened glance at Pel, as though worried she’d said too much, and he noticed she was watching Darcy with a desperate sort of look – as if, Pel thought, he were the last man in the world and she were the last woman. He suspected that she’d found her plain features and sallow skin a great drawback and that, instead of allowing her personality to develop to compensate for the drawbacks, had merely retreated into a shell of loneliness. He decided to let her go for the time being.

  ‘I think I’ll have a word with Madame Quermel now,’ he said.

  She looked faintly disappointed, as though she enjoyed men’s company – any man’s company – and was loathe to be put aside. ‘Is that all?’ she asked.

  ‘For the time being,’ Pel said. ‘But I shall doubtless come back to you.’

  Madame Quermel was small and well-shaped and, even if nervous, seemed in possession of herself, with a self-confidence and attractiveness that was entirely lacking in the girl.

  ‘What do you know of Madame Chenandier?’ Pel asked.

  Madame Quermel shrugged. ‘As much as anybody knows of the people they work for. In some things I knew a lot. In others, nothing at all.’

  ‘Did she have men friends?’

  She shrugged again. ‘It’s not my place to say.’

  ‘To me it is.’

  She hesitated. ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘I think she did.’

  ‘Lovers?’

  ‘Why else would she have men friends?’

  It was a point. ‘Did anyone visit her yesterday?’ Pel asked.

  ‘I didn’t see anyone.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  Madame Quermel considered. ‘Much the same as she always did when Monsieur was in Paris. Got up late and spent a long time dressing. Then she went into the city. I’d asked for money for housekeeping and she said she’d have to go and get some from the bank. She stayed in the city for lunch and came back in the late afternoon, but I think she’d had some wine and she went up to her room and fell asleep. When I asked her for the money later on in the evening, she said her bag
was upstairs but that she’d see I got it this morning.’

  ‘She told you she’d drawn the money from the bank?’

  ‘She said so.’

  ‘She couldn’t have given it to you and you’d forgotten?’

  ‘I should hardly think so. They lived well and laid out a lot of money for food.’

  ‘There was no money in her handbag,’ Darcy pointed out. ‘It was in the hall, open. There were about fifty frs, that’s all.’

  Madame Quermel shrugged. ‘Then I don’t know what she did with it,’ she said. ‘Unless she hid it among her clothes somewhere upstairs.’

  ‘Check, Darcy.’

  ‘Right, Patron.

  Pel turned again to the housekeeper. ‘And last night?’ he said. ‘Did she entertain anybody?’

  Madame Quermel gave another shrug. ‘She might have done.’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘My room’s at the top of the house.’

  ‘But you were in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pel paused for a moment. ‘Odile said you were out,’ he pointed out quietly.

  She looked disconcerted for a moment, but she recovered quickly. ‘I suppose she’s been spying.’

  ‘Is that what she does?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think she thinks I’m after her father.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ The answer came sharply, angrily. ‘But she gets some funny ideas in her head. She probably wasn’t even in.’

  ‘She said she was writing letters.’

  ‘Who to? She has no one to write letters to. No boyfriends. Hardly any girlfriends.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Madame Quermel shrugged. ‘You’ve only to look at her.’ The words were spoken with the contempt of an attractive woman for someone who was graceless, gauche and lacking in charm.

  ‘And these letters she says she was writing?’

  ‘She’s always saying things like that. She’s writing letters to her friends. She’s meeting friends in the town. That sort of thing. It’s all a pretence to hide the fact that no one shows any interest in her.’

  Pel paused, thinking. Over the years he had developed a marked ability to judge characters and he’d suspected at once that Odile Chenandier’s claim to be writing letters hadn’t sounded quite honest. It would need checking.