Death Set to Music

by Mark Hebden

  He came back to his original line of questioning. ‘But you,’ he said. ‘You did go out?’

  ‘Not last night. The night before, I think. It’s hard to remember.’

  Pel’s eyebrows rose. ‘It’s only one day ago, Madame.’

  She gestured. ‘A lot’s happened, hasn’t it? It’s been a bit of a shock, all this. She must be getting the night before confused with last night.’

  ‘She seemed quite certain. What did you do last night?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you just didn’t sit in your room and stare at the walls, did you?’

  She frowned. ‘I watched television.’

  ‘And saw what?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, what did you see on television?’

  She frowned again. ‘It was a film. Yes. A film. L’Homme de Hong Kong.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘L’Homme de Hong Kong was three nights ago.’ Pel happened to know because his housekeeper, Madame Routy, was a television addict and he’d been driven from the house and been obliged by the rain to take refuge in a bar. He’d enjoyed the bar about as much as he enjoyed television.

  Madame Quermel was looking worried. ‘Then I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I always fall asleep, anyway, if I’ve had a tiring day.’

  ‘Had you had a tiring day?’

  ‘They’re always tiring when Monsieur’s away. She never likes – liked – being alone. She drinks – drank – a lot.’

  ‘I don’t think Madame’s drinking was bothering you last night,’ Pel said. ‘I think you went out.’

  ‘No! No!’

  ‘What if Odile’s prepared to swear? She’s admitted she spies on you.’

  She stared at him, on the point of tears.

  ‘You did go out, didn’t you?’

  She nodded silently.

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘A man tried to pick me up. I’m not used to men trying to pick me up.’

  Pel wasn’t so sure. ‘Where?’

  She hesitated before replying. ‘On the way to St Antoine. I have relations there. It upset me. I had to run.’

  ‘Did you report it to the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It was nothing. He didn’t persist.’

  Pel paused again to give her time to collect herself. ‘When you came in, had you recovered by then?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I had.’

  ‘So you’d be able to tell if there were anyone in?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head angrily. ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘Were there lights on? Didn’t you go and ask if there was anything Madame Chenandier wanted?’

  ‘No. My evenings are my own. And I use the back door. I saw nothing and heard nothing. There must have been lights on in the hall, I suppose, so she must have been in somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘No.’

  Pel frowned, irritated. Nobody ever seemed to keep their eyes open, he decided. As far as he could make out, the whole world except him went round with their eyes tightly shut. It was a wonder a few of them didn’t get bloody noses from walking into closed doors.

  ‘Didn’t you notice anything?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  With his own sensitive nostrils, it was beyond Pel why she hadn’t smelled death in the house, but he supposed other people weren’t so sensitive to smells as he was. Darcy often said they should put a collar on him and transfer him to the dog handlers.

  ‘Didn’t you hear music?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When did you hear about the murder?’ he asked.

  ‘From Odile this morning.’ Madame Quermel gestured. ‘When I came down, she was telephoning the police. I asked her why and she said “Take a look in the salon.” I went, thinking there’d been a burglary or something. I came away and was sick. Then you came.’

  ‘Didn’t you hear anything that suggested something was happening?’

  ‘I’m on the third floor and I sleep deeply. They’d have to drive a tank through for me to hear anything.’

  ‘Do you have a suite up there?’

  She gestured. ‘Madame Chenandier liked to call it a suite. It’s a bedroom and a sitting room with a bathroom along the corridor. If I want to make myself coffee, though, I have to come all the way down to the kitchen.’

  Pel was silent for a moment, staring at his fingers, then he looked up. ‘You said you were a widow, Madame,’ he said. ‘How long ago did your husband die?’

  There was a long pause, and Pel noticed that the breeze had increased and was moving the trees outside so that the sun through them was moving in small spots on the floor. One of the policemen outside was obviously having a surreptitious drag at a cigarette, because he could smell the smoke, which had somehow been wafted through the window.

  He repeated the question. ‘How long, Madame?’

  She stared at him, her eyes suddenly cold. ‘What has that to do with this business?’ she demanded.

  Pel shrugged. ‘Probably nothing,’ he admitted. ‘But it helps me to get to know the people who live here.’

  She paused and he thought she wasn’t going to answer. ‘Four years ago,’ she said at last. ‘It was a road accident.’

  ‘Did you get on well with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you had a normal relationship?’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean the sort of normal relationship that exists between two people who love each other.’

  ‘Sexually? Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gave Pel an angry look. ‘It was excellent,’ she snapped.

  ‘I see.’ Pel nodded. ‘I’m sorry to have to ask such personal questions. I hope you’ve got over it now.’

  She frowned. ‘Yes, I have. I had to.’

  Three

  The doctor had gone, and only the laboratory assistants remained with the fingerprint man, with his black and silver powders, dusting the doors, the windows, the piano and any surfaces likely to hold a print, blowing, studying with a magnifying glass and taking photographs.

  Pel was wandering down the drive looking for bloodstains when Darcy reappeared downstairs.

  ‘You’ll not find any, Patron,’ he said. ‘I looked. The rain must have washed them away. It poured last night, remember.’

  Pel said nothing and stared up the drive, past the house and down the gravel path into the garden. It was well laid out, English in style but French in upkeep, the lawns shaggy and the flower beds sparsely populated. The garage and two ivy-covered outhouses along one side ended up near the stream. One was a woodshed where a lawnmower, tools and barrows were kept with two women’s bicycles, the other a small box-like construction where Pel found a bench with small tools hanging on the wall. There was a Nicolas bottle, half-full of wine, Le Bien Public, the local newspaper, an empty Gauloise packet, a chair without a back covered with a sack, and crumbs from a baguette which indicated that it was where the gardener ate his midday meal. The walls were whitewashed, with small pencilled notes scrawled on the one over the bench – obviously the gardener’s reminders to himself about tasks he had to perform – a name or two, among which Pel identified a local seed merchant, and a few telephone numbers. It covered a square metre of wall, and was clearly the result of years of scribbling memos.

  Pel studied them all carefully, then he rubbed his nose and went into the house to find Prélat, the fingerprint expert.

  ‘Anything?’ he asked.

  Prélat looked up. He was bald and thin-faced with rimless spectacles and looked like a professor. ‘Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘Just prints belonging to the family. The housekeeper. The daughter. The husband. The murdered woman.’

  ‘That all?’

  ‘There are a few smudges that loo
k like gloveprints, and two others we haven’t yet identified, but I’m told there’s a gardener and a brother who made a habit of calling.’

  ‘What about the cars?’

  ‘Same as the house. They belong to the owners and, by the look of them, they’re the only ones who drove them. There are a few prints on the outside but those could have been done by garage-hands, passers-by or even the man in the moon. The steering-wheel prints belong to the people who owned them.’

  Pel guiltily lit another cigarette and turned to Darcy. ‘Find anything upstairs?’

  Darcy looked exhausted. ‘No, Patron. I checked every inch of the bedrooms. There’s no sign of the money she drew.’

  ‘Better find which bank she used and check that she actually did draw it,’ Pel said.

  He rubbed his nose again, drew on the Gauloise and went through the usual motions of a drowning man coming up for air. Darcy watched him with interest, as he always did. Despite his cynical attitude to Pel, he had a curious affection for him and enjoyed seeing him in action.

  ‘What about the people next door?’ Pel asked. ‘Did they hear or see anything unusual during the night?’

  ‘I haven’t asked yet,’ Darcy said. ‘But why should they? She couldn’t have been expecting anyone; you don’t normally come down dressed in a see-through robe to answer the door. She was about to take a bath. The water’s still in the tub, with a bottle of bath essence on the side. There’s a nightdress laid out on the bed, too. That seems to fix the time of death pretty latish.’

  Pel nodded. ‘The gardener and that brother you mentioned: I thought you were getting hold of them.’

  ‘I’m trying.’

  ‘Try harder.’

  ‘I never stop, Patron.’ Darcy was unperturbed. He’d been deflecting Pel’s ill humour for so long it never even touched him now. ‘But it’s not all that easy. They’ve both disappeared. The brother lived in the village here but he’s not been seen this morning at all. The gardener’s an Italian who settled here with his sister in 1965. They both married and the gardener was widowed. He lives in Bazay. I got the local boys to enquire and it seems his landlady said he wasn’t in his lodgings last night or for breakfast this morning. His neighbours haven’t seen him either.’

  ‘They never have,’ Pel muttered. ‘I expect, like everybody else, they were going round with their eyes shut. Find him. And while you’re at it, check the housekeeper’s relations. She’s supposed to have some in St Antoine. See if she was with them when it happened. She says she was but I don’t believe her.’

  He watched as Prélat packed up his bag and moved out of the room to make an assault on the rest of the house. The body was still on the floor. Pel grimaced.

  The veins and arteries of a human being contain a surprising amount of blood, but Camille-Jeanne Chenandier seemed to have possessed more than her fair share. It was everywhere, sticking to the paintwork, smearing the walls and doors, even splashing the ceiling, to dry sticky and scarlet-black. The place seemed to have been decorated with it, and the sweet sickly smell assailed the nostrils. Considering how much there was, it was incredible that there were no fingerprints, no marks beyond smudges and smears that seemed to indicate gloves.

  ‘It makes you want to throw up, doesn’t it?’ Pel said. He glanced at Darcy. ‘If you were going to do someone in, Darcy, how would you do it?’

  ‘Not this way. Too messy. And too dangerous. You’d be covered with blood. Whoever did this must have it all over his clothes.’

  ‘Or her clothes? It might have been a woman. What did you think of the daughter?’

  ‘Surly piece. Seems to have suffered a bit from neglect.’

  ‘Did you ask her?’

  ‘No, I asked the housekeeper.’ Darcy smiled, his large white teeth flashing. He was a handsome young man and Pel knew he spent most of his time off duty popping in and out of bed with any pretty woman he could find. ‘She’s not bad,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got the morals of a buck rabbit,’ Pel growled. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said that the mother didn’t get on with the girl.’

  ‘Nothing unusual in that these days.’

  ‘This was different.’

  ‘How many ways of not getting on are there?’ Pel raised his eyebrows. ‘Check her clothes. All of them.’

  ‘Right, Patron. Housekeeper, too?’

  ‘Yes. But don’t go at it like a lunatic. Use a bit of discretion. Just try to get them off her without an argument.’

  Darcy grinned. ‘I wouldn’t mind, since you mention it,’ he said. He pushed across a photograph. It showed an attractive dark-haired woman with good shoulders and a slender neck. It was not merely a formal photograph but a portrait designed to bring out the sitter’s beauty to the utmost.

  ‘Who’s this?’

  Darcy nodded at the body. ‘Must have been quite spectacular in bed,’ he said. ‘It seems the daughter always regarded it as a personal tragedy that she didn’t take after her.’

  ‘Did the housekeeper tell you that, too?’

  ‘Yes. There are a lot of other photographs like that in her boudoir upstairs. She seemed to fancy herself.’

  ‘Probably had a lover somewhere,’ Pel mused. ‘Go on about the daughter.’

  ‘Not clever. Bit sullen with her parents.’

  ‘Aren’t they all?’

  ‘I’m not,’ Darcy said. ‘I’m the apple of their eye.’ He pushed another photograph across. ‘Seems she took after her father. That’s him.’

  Pel studied the photograph. It was an indifferent picture, and showed a man who was tall, strong-looking but far from handsome.

  ‘Looks like a potato,’ Pel said flatly. ‘Ugly enough for an Englishman. Any more on the daughter?’

  Darcy glanced at his notebook. ‘She’s always considered it a dirty trick that fate had her born looking like her father instead of like her mother. Seems it was obvious that was the way it was going to be even when she was small, and Mammy decided not to have any more in case they also took after Pappy.’

  ‘Did the parents get on?’

  Darcy shrugged. ‘Nobody heard them quarrelling. But nobody saw them billing and cooing either.’

  Pel turned and stared down at the body. ‘Get rid of it,’ he said shortly. ‘Then let’s go and have some lunch.’ He sighed.

  ‘I’m still ten years off my pension and when I’ve finished I’m going to grow tomatoes, stay in bed in the morning and eat at regular hours. In the meantime, I suppose I’ve got to endure. Come on.’

  There were several reporters outside the house: Henriot, Pel noticed, from Le Bien Public; Fiabon, who represented France Dimanche and Paris Soir; and Sarrazin, who was a freelance and made Pel’s life a misery ringing him up at night – usually when he was in bed.

  ‘Anything to tell us, Inspector?’ Sarrazin asked.

  ‘Nothing you don’t know already,’ Pel said. ‘Sergeant Darcy will give you name, place, time and anything else we have. Next of kin, religion, favourite flowers, nature of grandmother’s rheumatism. I expect it all helps.’

  ‘Who did it, Inspector?’

  ‘I wish I knew.’

  ‘Don’t you have any suspicions?’

  Pel shrugged. ‘Not worth putting down on paper. We haven’t been at it long enough. So don’t go making guesses or I’ll make sure you get nothing else.’

  There was a little restaurant at the other end of the village, close to the school. Pel and Darcy sat on the terrasse over an apéritif and asked what was on the menu.

  The proprietress didn’t seem too sure. ‘We’ve got some veal stew,’ she said.

  ‘That’ll do,’ Darcy said.

  ‘On the other hand we’ve got some fish.’

  Pel looked interested. Fish was good for a man with an indifferent stomach and he always felt his stomach was so indifferent it was a menace. ‘I’ll have the fish,’ he said.

  ‘Only,’ the proprietress went on, ‘it’s gone off. Of course, there are tripes–’ Pel
looked hopeful ‘ – but I think my husband’s put his mark on them. He likes tripes.’

  So do I, Pel thought wistfully.

  In the end, they settled for the veal stew and it was brought out to them by the proprietress’ daughter. She had good legs and a good waist but was hen-toed from wearing high heels, and had so much black make-up on her eyes the lashes kept sticking together.

  ‘Did you ever see such a behind?’ Darcy grinned.

  Pel sipped his wine thoughtfully as he ate, thinking about Madame Quermel. Her waist was good, too, and her bust and behind were well rounded. Coldly, factually, he wondered if she was mixed up with whatever had been going on in the Chenandier household.

  ‘That housekeeper,’ he said, and he noticed that Darcy looked up interestedly. ‘Think she had something going with Chenandier?’

  Darcy gave a huge shrug that seemed to lift his shoulders to the level of his ears. ‘She’s got a good enough figure and a pretty enough face.’

  ‘She’s a widow, too. They sometimes miss what they’ve had, don’t they?’

  Darcy had his eye on the girl again. She was drinking a cup of coffee just inside the bar, making a noise like a fire hydrant every time she took a mouthful. ‘I’ve always found widows more than eager,’ he agreed.

  ‘I expect you know,’ Pel growled.

  Darcy poked at his veal stew. ‘Well, you know these lonely women. They have a habit of finding their way into a man’s bed and, when they do, the least he can do is make them feel at home.’

  Pel sniffed coldly. ‘What else do you think about her?’ he asked.

  Darcy shrugged and smiled. ‘Well, she’s not very old,’ he admitted. ‘And it would be difficult not to notice her.’

  ‘For you perhaps,’ Pel said. ‘What about upstairs? Anything missing?’

  ‘Nothing I could see. Just the jewels the sergeant suggested. At least I didn’t find any.’

  ‘When did Chenandier leave for Paris?’

  ‘Four days ago. It was a five-day visit. He went fairly regularly, it seems, selling wine to foreign exporters. He bought it in bulk and sold it in the north.’

  ‘Cheap stuff?’

  ‘It went mostly to London. In hogsheads.’