by Mark Hebden
The boy nodded. ‘I do. I read it in a history of the Wild West. Got it for my birthday. 480 pages. With pictures. You should have seen Annie Oakley. She was on a horse. It was hard to tell which was which.’
Pel was listening to the exchange with something akin to delight. He thought he might have found a friend.
‘Interested in gardening?’ he asked the boy.
Didier shrugged. ‘Not much,’ he said. ‘But it’ll be better than television.’
They went outside to the minute plot behind the house where Pel endeavoured entirely unsuccessfully to grow vegetables and flowers.
‘You a flic?’ the boy asked.
‘I suppose you’d call me that,’ Pel agreed.
‘FLIC.’ The boy grinned. ‘Fédération Lamentable des Imbéciles Casqués.’
‘Is that what they think about us?’
‘I don’t suppose it’s true.’ The boy studied the wilting marigolds. ‘They don’t do very well, do they?’ he said.
Pel shrugged. ‘I only grow them to give me an excuse to get away from the television,’ he admitted. A horrible thought occurred to him. Perhaps this child had worse habits than television addiction. ‘If you don’t watch television,’ he said, ‘what do you do with yourself?’
‘I play boules.’
‘Any good at it?’
‘Not very. But I like it.’
‘I’ve got a set,’ Pel pointed out. ‘Let’s have a game.’
Jules-Pierre Leguyader, head of the Laboratory and Forensic Science Department, had no great opinion of his fellow men. According to Darcy, he much preferred the corpses he dealt with and, among the denizens of the Hôtel de Police he had a habit of stirring things up just to show how much he disapproved of them.
The real cause, in fact, was that he was a painstaking man and considered that other men just didn’t bother enough, whether it was the detective presenting him and his laboratory with things to check or the grocer in the corner épicerie who couldn’t be bothered to stack his vegetables properly. Sometimes, Leguyader’s care for detail gave him indigestion and it certainly never improved his temper.
The sun was streaming through the window on to his bench, turning golden-bronze now as the evening came. About him the lab was silent because everybody had gone home except Leguyader, who was staring at the clothing spread in front of him with a very real distaste.
At least it was clean, he thought, which was something. It was one of the hardships of his job that much of the clothing that was brought in for examination was not clean. Often it was very dirty, sometimes bloodstained. It made Leguyader’s job more than ever distasteful at times. Especially when it showed nothing, as this clothing did.
He badly needed a drink and, feeling martyred, decided to take it out of Sergeant Darcy by ringing him at home. Unfortunately Darcy, possessing the temperament he did, was the last man in the world to be upset by Leguyader and he only irritated him further by the cheerful greeting he offered.
‘I’ve been through that clothing of Chenandier’s,’ Leguyader announced, gloomily frustrated. ‘There’s nothing. No blood. No bone. Nothing. Just a couple of hairs belonging to his wife.’
‘You could hardly condemn a man for that,’ Darcy said. ‘They could have got there as he kissed her goodbye.’
‘Would he kiss her goodbye? I understood he didn’t sleep with her.’
‘Well, you never know,’ Darcy said pointedly. ‘Happiness is as scarce these days as hen’s teeth and he might have gone mad.’
Leguyader sniffed. ‘It’s not enough to suggest he murdered her, though, is it? They’d probably been there for years.’
Darcy sighed. ‘Well, that seems to write Chenandier off,’ he said.
‘Unless he had some other clothes hidden away we don’t know about.’
‘Which we don’t. Thanks. I’ll tell the old man when he comes in tomorrow.’
Leguyader was conscious of having been unnecessarily terse and he tried to make amends. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
‘We could do with a break.’
As it happened, though Darcy didn’t know it, a break was on the way, because at that moment in the Place de la Libération in the centre of the city, Madame Marie-Ange de St Juste, who lived in an apartment overlooking the semi-circular parking lot opposite the Palais des Ducs, was in the process of watching a man studying the cars that were just beginning in the increasing heat to build up an inside temperature that would take away their owners’ breath when they returned to unlock them. The man wore a cap and a checked shirt and blue cotton trousers, and hardly looked the type to own anything as expensive as the big Citroën he was staring at. Madame de St Juste was an old woman and, because she was confined to her apartment but was still interested in what went on, she had always enjoyed studying the people who moved in and out of the palace opposite her room. Her window was a gazebo type that gave her a view of the square and the Rue Rameau as far as the Eglise St Michel, and her major joy in life was watching everything that went on.
Now, as she watched, the man in the flat cap moved from the Citroën to a Peugeot – from her window, Madame de St Juste had learned to recognise cars as well as she recognised her own family – and was studying it carefully. He stared at the front then at the back, then moved on to a Deux Chevaux alongside. He quite obviously wasn’t the owner of any of the cars and he quite obviously was more interested in them than he ought to be.
Her bird-like face against the glass, Madame de St Juste watched him for a little while longer, as he moved round a Ferrari, a British Maxi with a buckled fender and an American Dodge, and then began to study the French cars that were ranged in rows, red, blue, yellow, orange, all building up a temperature in the sun like pressure cookers. He was clearly up to no good and Madame de St Juste knew exactly where her duty lay.
Sitting in her window, unable to do much else but look – at the age of eighty-one there wasn’t much else you could do but look – she had often noticed things that other people missed, and on one occasion had even been recommended by the police for her alertness in spotting a man trying to break into the bar facing the palace. She glanced at the bar now and noticed a policeman standing in the doorway talking to the proprietor, for whom she had always had a fondness because on hot days he sent her up cold drinks when she telephoned. She glanced again at the man by the cars. He was still engaged in whatever it was he was doing and it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. The police recommendation had gone to Madame de St Juste’s head a little.
When Pel reached his office next day, he was feeling like a new man. With the aid of Didier Darras, he had left home with Madame Routy already showing signs of frayed nerves.
‘You must be a detective, too, when you grow up,’ she had urged over breakfast in that manner of silly women who hadn’t the foggiest idea how to talk to small boys.
‘I don’t want to be a detective,’ Didier had said firmly.
‘Good idea,’ Pel had agreed. ‘Much better to be a plain traffic cop, then you can enjoy sticking parking tickets on examining magistrates’ cars when they leave them where they shouldn’t.’
As he entered headquarters he was almost smiling. But not for long because Judge Brisard met him in the corridor and followed him into his office, demanding to know how the investigation was proceeding.
‘Slowly,’ Pel said shortly.
‘Too slowly, do you think, Inspector?’
Pel smiled. It looked like the smile on the face of a tiger. ‘If you’re not happy, Judge,’ he pointed out, ‘you could launch a police action yourself. A judge can.’
It was enough to make Brisard back off sharply and Pel marched down the corridor to his office, well content. Two small triumphs in a matter of an hour was something to crow about. First Madame Routy and now Brisard. In his efforts to avoid bureaucratic inertia in his area of authority, Brisard behaved sometimes as if someone had attached electric wires to his backside and kept giving him a shock. It was a pleasure to slow
him down. It only needed Nosjean to have his snotty nose rubbed in the dust and the day was complete. Pel was actually humming to himself as he headed for his office.
Nosjean stared after him, startled, as he swept past. ‘The Old Man sounds cheerful for a change,’ he said. ‘What’s that he’s whistling?’
‘My grandmother used to sing that as she rolled pastry,’ Darcy said. ‘Probably my great-grandmother, too. It’s Frou-frou.’
Nosjean looked awed. ‘That’s centuries old. Why’s he singing that?’
Darcy shrugged. ‘He’s probably never learned anything new since he was a kid.’
Nosjean stared in front of him, his mind going like the inside of a pinball machine. ‘Well, it could be all right,’ he conceded. ‘Hotted up and given a bit of decent backing.’
Pel had just taken his place at his desk when Darcy appeared.
‘We’re in luck, Patron,’ he said. ‘The uniformed boys have just this minute rung to say they’ve picked up the gardener.’
‘Where was he?’
Darcy grinned and gestured to the window. ‘Right there. In the city. In the Place de la Libération. Some chap who’d never heard of Chenandier pulled him in on suspicion of trying to steal a car. And fair enough, after all; he’s got a record for that sort of thing.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘Where Darcq was: below. Sweating it out. I had a little preliminary chat with him. Leaned on him, you might say. He didn’t have much to offer so I decided to leave him for you, Chief. He’s tougher than he seems. He’s naturalised, by the way, I’ve discovered. But only recently, so you might say he’s a bit naive as far as France is concerned. On the other hand, he’s not such a fool as he pretends, either.’
Pel gestured. ‘Let’s have him out at Aigunay. I’ll talk to him there. It’ll be better. If he knows anything, it’ll probably worry him.’
‘Right, Chief.’ Darcy reached behind the door and, pulling out a suitcase, placed it on Pel’s desk and slid a sheet of paper across. ‘The clothes Chenandier had in Paris,’ he said. ‘And Leguyader’s report. Negative. Negative. Negative.’
Pel frowned. ‘No trace of anything?’
‘Nothing at all.’ Darcy leaned on the suitcase. ‘I’ve rung the hotel in Paris, by the way. They identified the suits. They say they never saw him in anything else. And Sergeant Lagé telephoned all the restaurants and business acquaintances he mentioned. They all vouch for him.’
He began to open the suitcase and Pel watched him sourly.
‘What now?’
Darcy flung the lid back.
‘Notice anything, Patron?’
‘Well, go on. Don’t keep me in suspense. What?’
Darcy lifted up a sweater. It was heavy and ugly and made of wool. ‘Pretty warm for the time of the year, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘Even for the north. And somehow not quite Chenandier. His tastes are slicker. He might have been tight with money, but he doesn’t seem to have kept himself short. He has monogrammed underwear, I noticed.’
He was lucky, Pel thought. Pel still wore wool next to the skin. When it was winter, his blood needed to be kept going round all those little veins and things, and when the wind blew off the mountains of the Jura or the Vosges and the snow came, it actually seemed to congeal. He was often ashamed of his woollen underwear and prayed that he’d never be run over and killed, so that he’d be undressed at the mortuary by someone who knew him. They’d never stop laughing.
‘It doesn’t go with him,’ Darcy said, indicating the sweater.
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Something about him. He’s no chicken but he’s very much with it. I bet the girls like him.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘People in the know can tell.’
‘And you’re in the know?’
Darcy grinned. ‘I’m a fornicologist,’ he said. ‘I go in for it a lot myself. I dare bet a meteorologist can smell another meteorologist a mile off. And a metallurgist a metallurgist. I bet he’s a fornicologist, too.’
‘Go on,’ Pel said, impressed in spite of himself.
Darcy responded with enthusiasm. ‘As a connoisseur of earnest-minded virgins of good character,’ he said, ‘I know what they like to see.’ He hoisted up the sweater again. ‘And this isn’t it.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘It’s not Paris wear. If I’d been going away for a week in Paris, I’d have taken something smarter than this. There’s nothing more embarrassing than this sort of thing when a girl’s watching you shining-eyed from the pillow as you undress.’
Pel stared broodingly at Darcy, wondering why he hadn’t the same knowledge as his sergeant. God, he felt, had designed him specifically as a woman-queller.
‘Perhaps he didn’t go to Paris for the sort of thing you go for,’ he said. ‘And perhaps he feels the cold. I do. I have thin blood. It’s something in the system. I think I should drink more red wine. They say it’s good for the circulation.’
Darcy hadn’t finished yet. He produced a folder which he laid in front of Pel. ‘Seen these, Patron?’ he asked.
Pel looked at the folder as if it might bite. ‘What are they?’
‘Dirty pictures. I found them in Chenandier’s room.’
Pel opened the folder. He’d never had much time for eroticism. He’d seen too many naked women – mostly very dead – to have any feelings about uncovered female flesh.
‘Men don’t go in for this sort of thing when they’re happy with their wives,’ Darcy pointed out.
‘Perhaps he wasn’t all that happy,’ Pel said. ‘Despite the way he behaves. They don’t mean a thing.’
‘Maybe not,’ Darcy said. ‘But it isn’t quite the picture he was trying to give us of himself yesterday, is it? Think he had something going with Quermel? After all, she looked after his clothes, and that’s a job that could lead to complications.’
Pel nodded thoughtfully. ‘Especially,’ he agreed, ‘if it entailed calling her into the bedroom for consultations while his wife was out. Let’s go and see the gardener.’
Eight
The gardener, a dark man, tall for one of his race and not very old, spoke a curious French that was hard to understand. He was sitting on the sack-covered chair by the littered bench in the little shed where he took his meals behind Chenandier’s house. A uniformed policeman leaned on the whitewashed wall where he’d written his pencilled reminders.
As Pel appeared the Italian rose, but the Inspector waved to him to sit down again.
‘You Giacomo Albertini?’ he asked.
‘Si, Signore.’
‘Naturalised, I understand.’
‘Si, Signore. I married a French girl and took out papers.’ The Italian shrugged. ‘But she die two years ago and I sell the house and move in with a family in Bazay.’
‘You were trying to steal a car.’
The Italian looked worried. ‘No, Signore. I cannot.’
‘Why not?’
‘I cannot drive.’
Pel frowned. ‘You’ve got a motobicyclette.’
‘I haven’t a licence to drive a car.’
‘Doesn’t mean you can’t drive one.’
‘No, Signore. I promise you.’
The Italian twisted his hands but it didn’t pluck at any of Pel’s heart-strings. He’d seen it too often. ‘You were going to steal something from one then,’ he said. ‘You were looking for one that was unlocked.’
‘Why should I, Signore?’
‘Because you’ve got a record for that sort of thing.’
The Italian shrugged. ‘No, Signore,’ he said. ‘It is not that.’
‘Then what were you doing?’
‘I just like cars.’
‘What sort of cars?’
‘All sorts.’
Pel’s eyes flickered. ‘What sort of car has Monsieur Chenandier got?’ he asked.
‘A Merc.’ The Italian answered immediately. ‘A Mercedes like Signor Laye.’
‘You like cars enough to steal them?’
‘I tell you, Signore, I cannot even drive.’
‘My car’s out there,’ Pel said. ‘Can you see it?’
‘Just, Signore.’
‘What sort is it?’
‘I don’t know.
‘You like cars, but you can’t recognise mine?’
The Italian’s expression was cool. ‘It doesn’t look a very exciting car, Signore,’ he said.
Pel frowned. The Italian was right. It was the sort of car a hard-working, underpaid, chronically sick police inspector might own, while crooks, thieves and layabouts owned big Citroëns, Peugeots and Mercs.
‘What were you doing if you weren’t going to steal anything?’ he said.
‘Looking at the cars, Signore. That’s all.’
‘Which part of the cars?’
‘The number plates.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m interested in them. I always have been. I have never a car of my own so I look at other people’s – how they’re made, how fast they go, where they come from.’
‘I’m still surprised you haven’t a car of your own. People as keen on them as you seem to be usually manage to acquire one somehow. Why did you disappear?’
‘I thought they’d think it was me.’
Pel glanced at Darcy. ‘Think what was you?’
‘Madame. I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t kill her.’
‘How did you know she was dead?’
‘The papers say so, Signore.’
‘Not until the morning afterwards. You disappeared the night before. You weren’t in your lodgings for breakfast. Your landlady told the police so.’
The Italian looked worried. ‘Then perhaps I hear someone say so.’
‘Who?’
‘I do not remember, Signore.’
‘Sure you weren’t responsible for it yourself?’
The Italian’s eyes widened. ‘Oh, no, Signore! Madonna, no!’
Darcy leaned on the little bench beneath all the scrawled pencil messages. ‘You have a record,’ he pointed out. ‘There was an assault case.’