Death Set to Music

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Nothing wrong with having a pretty woman around, Chief. There are always plenty in the 007 books.’

  ‘You should stick to Maigret,’ Pel advised. ‘Less sex. Let’s go and talk to the girl.’

  When Odile Chenandier appeared, Pel pretended for a while not to notice her. Eventually he looked up and she gave him her worried stare.

  ‘Madame Quermel tells me your father was a meticulous person,’ Pel said. ‘Always exact. Careful with money. Always very precise. In everything he did. Would you say that of your father?’

  The girl studied him warily. She was dressed now in a vest bearing the words, ‘Chicago Red Sox’, across her breasts and a pair of faded frayed jeans that fitted skin-tight to her behind. She obviously tried hard to make herself attractive to the opposite sex and Pel had seen her more than once eyeing Darcy. But there was a lost sort of naivity about her that ruined her efforts, and curiously, it made him think of Nosjean. He repeated the question.

  ‘He was clever.’

  There was something in the way she spoke that made Pel lean forward. ‘Clever? How?’

  ‘In running his life. He always seemed in control of it.’

  ‘Something you envied.’

  ‘Yes. I never seem–’ she stopped and gestured helplessly.

  ‘How did you get on with him?’

  She sighed. ‘I loved him. I loved my mother. I wanted them to love me. But it didn’t seem to work out. My mother was always too busy and my father was–’ her hand flapped again in its curiously limp, hopeless movement –‘he was too busy, too.’

  She seemed so lost Pel hesitated before he flung his next question at her. ‘Did you know we found traces of blood on one of your shoes?’ he said.

  She looked startled. ‘Well, it was all over the place,’ she said with a shudder. ‘Up the walls. On the ceiling. On the door.’

  ‘You said you didn’t go into the room where your mother was found.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Then how did you get blood on your shoe?’

  Her eyes filled with tears and she gave him a frightened look.

  ‘You did go in, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you go in? Why didn’t you just telephone the police at once from the kitchen? It must have been obvious she wasn’t alive.’

  She hesitated then gave him an anguished look. ‘I wanted to see her,’ she said. ‘She’d always gone on so about being beautiful and how well she could sing. I wanted to see what she looked like now that she wasn’t beautiful and couldn’t sing any more.’

  Pel eyed her curiously. ‘That’s an unusual attitude, isn’t it?’ he said.

  She gave him a swift look, full of the high, hurt rage of youth that for a second almost transformed her plain features.

  ‘It wasn’t for me,’ she said.

  Pel studied her for a while. Her sallow skin was pink with anger and indignation.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘She never helped me much.’

  ‘Did anyone?’

  She didn’t meet his eyes but kept her gaze on the floor as she shook her head.

  ‘Had you no friends?’

  Her head shook again.

  ‘What about the gardener?’

  She lifted her head abruptly and the frightened look came back. ‘What has he said?’

  ‘He told us about you. How you made advances to him in his shed.’

  Her face crumpled. ‘He’s lying. It was him who made eyes at me. He wasn’t all that old and he–’ she shook her head and flapped her hands again in a lost, tragic little gesture ‘ – well, he was quite nice-looking. I used to like to be with him. Even when I was much younger. But there was never anything like that.’

  ‘He says you offered him money.’

  ‘No. Well – yes, I did. Once. His shirt was torn. You could see his skin through it. It was very brown. He looked strong. He said he couldn’t afford another, and I offered to buy one for him.’

  ‘He said you offered the money because you wanted him to make love to you. He said you threatened him if he didn’t.’

  Her mouth had opened and her eyes had widened. She looked shocked. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No! I never asked him to make love to me!’ Her voice lowered as if she were ashamed. ‘I didn’t know how. I wanted so much for my mother to tell me how to attract men, but she never did. I thought she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen and all I wanted was to be like her. But I don’t think she ever really cared about me. She just regarded me as a nuisance. Because I wasn’t beautiful and I wasn’t clever. And she wanted all the limelight for herself.’ Now that she had started talking, she seemed unable to stop. ‘The only time a man ever came to see me – he was my cousin from Arles – she got him in the library and spent the whole afternoon talking and laughing with him, and in the end I went outside and left them to it.’ She raised her eyes to Pel and behind her wide, pale eyes, he felt he was looking into her soul. It looked desperately lonely, and for a moment her misery seemed to lift her features out of their drab nonentity.

  ‘I never asked him to make love to me,’ she said. ‘He was the gardener and I was the daughter of the house.’ She paused and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Though sometimes I wished he would.’ She gazed at Pel in agony. ‘Nobody’s ever made love to me, Inspector. Nobody’s ever wanted to.’

  Nine

  Because of the heat and the distance from the city, Pel didn’t fancy the long drive back and they decided to risk their digestion once more at the bar-restaurant in the village.

  The place was full of men in blue overalls and caps, all leaning on the counter over their drinks. A woman with two children and a man who, judging by the pamphlets spread on the table around him, was a commercial traveller for drinks, were eating at the plain, square, paper-covered tables. The girl behind the counter was still at it with the eye make-up and Darcy stared at her in amazement.

  ‘If she puts any more on,’ he said, ‘she’ll be top heavy.’

  At least there were tripes, but they’d been cooked without flair and, inevitably, Pel wished he’d chosen the chicken. By this time, the girl had noticed Darcy’s eyes on her and, after she’d served them, persisted in standing by their table talking. It irritated Pel because he wanted to think.

  ‘She seems to suffer from a cabbalistic fantasy that she’s got a fatal fascination for men,’ he observed when she finally disappeared.

  ‘She looks better when she smiles,’ Darcy said. ‘Women always do.’

  Pel grunted, thinking about Odile Chenandier. Just for a moment, he felt, it had been her unhappiness that had made her sallow features almost attractive.

  Chenandier himself had returned from the city when they got back to the house. He was wearing a lightweight checked suit and a pale blue shirt. Though he had no pretensions to good looks, he looked as virile as a bull and it was obvious what it was about him that attracted women.

  ‘Well, Inspector,’ he asked. ‘Arrested that brother-in-law of mine yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Pel said.

  ‘He’ll disappear.’

  ‘He’d better not.’

  Pel gestured at a chair and Chenandier sat down. ‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ he observed ruefully. ‘That you invite me to sit down in my own house.’

  ‘You can always stand,’ Darcy growled.

  Pel pulled his notebook forward. ‘This trip to Paris,’ he began.

  Chenandier smiled. ‘Back on that, are we? I was there. You can ask all my customers.’

  Pel didn’t mention that they already had. Somehow he didn’t like Chenandier. He was a smooth-looking man, and bringeurs – smoothies – were always anathema to Pel, who considered he himself had a face like the Phantom of the Opera, no style with his clothes, a social manner that would have disgraced a half-wit, and an acute shortage of money which always served to highlight all his other defects.

  ‘I thought I’d ask again,’ he said.

  Chenandier shrug
ged. ‘You’ll get the same answer, Inspector,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m no parlour hero. That takes some talent for lying and a great deal of skill in remembering your own lines. It’s easier to tell the truth, I’ve found.’

  Pel studied his fingernails for a while then, saddened at his own miserable lack of will, lit another cigarette. Any minute now, he thought, he’d drop dead with cancer of the lung. The way he smoked, in fact, it was a wonder everybody who came into contact with him didn’t drop dead of it, too.

  ‘This running you did,’ he said. ‘Was it because you were concerned for your health?’ He spoke as if he could appreciate how Chenandier might feel about such a delicate subject.

  Chenandier smiled. ‘Not particularly. I just liked to keep fit.’

  ‘You’re a strong man?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And, being an ex-para, pretty tough, too, I imagine?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Not given to cosseting yourself?’

  ‘I never have.’

  Pel looked up and blinked. ‘Then why do you wear such heavy sweaters, Monsieur?’

  Chenandier stared, frowning. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You did when you went to Paris. Or at least, you took one with you. Why would that be?’

  Chenandier smiled. ‘That’s Madame Quermel. She looks after me a bit. She packs for me. She thinks I’m a little boy. And Paris is north.’

  ‘Not that far north.’ Pel studied him with his dark sad eyes. ‘Yours was a very warm sweater.’

  ‘I suppose it was. But I don’t make a habit of wearing it. I don’t like that kind of sweater. But because I don’t make a habit of wearing it doesn’t mean I don’t possess it. It’s what you might call an insurance. I get recurrences of malaria. But I don’t believe in letting it stop me doing what I have to do. I simply go slower, put on warmer clothes and dose myself well. You’ll remember I told you: I served in Indo-China.’

  ‘That was something you could be proud of,’ Pel said.

  ‘I was. I still am. It wasn’t our fault that we failed. It was the high-ups.’

  ‘It usually is when things go wrong,’ Pel said, thinking of Judge Brisard and the Procureur.

  He glanced at Darcy. It was an arrangement they often had. When Pel gave Darcy his special look, it was for Darcy to take over the questioning to allow him to get his own thoughts in order.

  Darcy jumped in with both feet. He enjoyed questioning and considered himself good at it. He wasn’t, of course. No one, Pel felt, was any good – except Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel. Darcy lacked subtlety, though he complemented Pel perfectly by doing all the horsework so that Pel could do the thinking, and now he went at it like Margueritte’s cavalry at Sedan. He slapped the dirty pictures they’d found on the table in front of Chenandier. ‘Know anything about these?’ he asked.

  Chenandier studied the pictures without changing his expression. ‘Oh, you found those, did you? They don’t make me a man with homicidal tendencies.’

  ‘Whose are they?’

  ‘Mine.’

  ‘Where did you get them?’

  ‘They were given to me in Paris. Some time ago.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘A customer. Revolting man. But, like relatives, you don’t choose the people you do business with.’

  ‘Mean anything to you?’

  ‘The pictures? Not much.’

  Darcy seemed to be getting nowhere and Pel wondered what he was aiming at. Trying to prove to Chenandier he was frustrated enough to find a mistress, he assumed.

  ‘What was the relationship between you and your wife, Monsieur?’ Darcy asked.

  Chenandier shrugged. ‘The same as most people when they’ve been married twenty-five years. We got on but the gilt had rubbed off the gingerbread a bit, I suppose.’

  ‘What does that mean? Did you love her?’

  ‘Yes. At least as much as she loved me.’

  ‘Can you enlarge on that?’

  Chenandier looked at Darcy. ‘How old are you, mon brave?’ he asked and Darcy answered without thinking.

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘By the time you’re forty-nine you’ll realise that marriage isn’t sitting cosily holding hands in front of the television or reading a book while your wife knits. All with odd moments of high sexual ecstasy.’

  Pel saw that Darcy had lost the initiative and needed rescuing before he got another flea in his ear. ‘Did you still make love to your wife, Monsieur?’ he asked, joining in briskly.

  ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘Even though you hated her?’

  ‘I didn’t hate her.’

  ‘I’ve heard you did.’

  Chenandier lost his composure for the first time. ‘Who told you that? Odile?’

  ‘Never mind who. Did you hate her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But there was something that – shall we say, displeased you?’

  Chenandier thought for a long time before answering. ‘Well, I suppose you’ll have to know eventually, Inspector,’ he said. ‘She had men friends.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I found out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The usual way. I noticed a difference in her manner to me. I was suspicious. Comme mari, je ne suis pas aveugle. As a husband I’m not blind. She stopped being interested in me and I became suspicious. Then I found letters. Once I came home unexpectedly and found her here with a man.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No. I gather he was someone she’d met in Paris. He worked for a car hire firm and she’d hired a car from him or something. She did occasionally. She used to get them to run her home when she’d been drinking. Then she used to bring them in and they stayed. They always seemed to be car hire people. They’re like car salesmen – a pretty flashy lot, I suppose. Always young and a bit slick. She had them here and in Paris and sometimes when she went to the South.’

  ‘Do you know any names?’

  ‘No.’ Chenandier shook his head, reasonable and understanding. ‘But eventually they became – well–’ he stopped and raised a twisted face ‘ – I often thought she’d find herself in trouble.’

  ‘And you, Monsieur?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘How did you feel about her?’

  Chenandier shrugged. ‘I tried to go on loving her. I tried to understand, because I’m away a lot and I knew it must have been lonely. But it worried me, of course.’

  ‘Naturally. But you didn’t hate her?’

  ‘Not hate.’

  ‘What then?’

  Chenandier’s shoulders sagged. ‘She became like a weight round my shoulders, Inspector. That damned opera. The fact that she once sang in Paris. I grew sick of hearing about it. She was so unintelligent, Inspector. And that silly child she presented me with.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘She’s so pathetic, Inspector, she seems to have no life in her.’

  It was a classic case of a man successful in business and in his personal life expecting his children to be exactly the same. ‘Perhaps she needs encouraging,’ Pel said.

  Chenandier shrugged and Pel sniffed. ‘In any case,’ he went on, ‘lots of people suffer from those things and manage to live with them.’

  ‘It was the men, I suppose, chiefly.’ Chenandier gestured with his hand in a weary sort of way. ‘I knew she had them in as soon as I went to Paris.’

  ‘Was it because you were having women in Paris? Which came first?’

  ‘I haven’t said I had women in Paris.’

  ‘But you did, didn’t you?’

  Chenandier nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Pel leaned forward. ‘The night in Paris, the one you can’t account for, the next to the last night. The night your wife was murdered. Were you with a woman?’

  Chenandier nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you went to the Bobino.’

  Chenandier was unperturbed. ‘I did both.’

  Pel frowned. ‘Wh
o was this woman you were with? Your mistress?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have a mistress?’

  ‘I have had. Not any more. It’s over.’

  ‘Who was it then – this woman you went with?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve told you. I had too much to drink. I was thinking about my wife. Life was becoming intolerable. I walked. Doing a lot of thinking. And a lot of drinking, too, I suppose. I met this girl and went home with her.’

  ‘And you don’t know her name?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Or where she lived?’

  ‘No.’ Chenandier looked up. ‘Look, Inspector, I can see the way you’re thinking. But it wasn’t me. I didn’t do her in. It could as well have been her brother. He was just the sort. Or–’ Chenandier stopped dead then went on in a wondering voice ‘ – or Odile,’ he said.

  Pel leaned forward. ‘Why Odile?’

  Chenandier gestured. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Why should Odile want to murder her mother?’

  ‘She didn’t like her.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Enough to commit murder?’ Pel said. ‘This kind of brutal murder?’

  Chenandier shrugged. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. It was just silliness, really. Poor Odile. We didn’t get on. She had a quick temper like my wife. But it was just something that crossed my mind – something I remembered – something – it was nothing.’

  Pel wrenched the investigation back to where they’d left it.

  ‘Did you always go with a woman when you went to Paris?’

  Chenandier shrugged. ‘No. It depended on how bad things had been. If they were bad, I picked someone up. They didn’t argue with me as my wife did. They were even sometimes kind.’

  ‘Were there other women? Here, in this area of France, for instance?’

  ‘No. Only when I went away. I don’t believe in fouling my own nest.’

  ‘What about Madame Quermel?’

  Chenandier shrugged. ‘Her? Not likely.’

  ‘She’s not bad-looking. You must have noticed her.’

  ‘I’d noticed her. But it was too close to home.’

  ‘So you never tried anything with her?’