Death Set to Music

by Mark Hebden

‘No. Never.’

  ‘She says you did.’

  Chenandier’s calm vanished. ‘Then she’s a liar,’ he snapped.’

  ‘She’s pretty sure.’

  Chenandier sagged again. ‘Well, once. When I came home late. I was tired and miserable. I went up to her room to ask where my wife was. She made me some chocolate and we sat and talked. She was sympathetic. Perhaps she made something of it. Widows do, you know. They have vivid imaginations.’

  Madame Routy hadn’t, Pel thought. The only thing that appeared to cross Madame Routy’s mind was the way to switch on the television. He cleared his throat noisily and came back to the present.

  ‘You stayed up there, didn’t you?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘She says you did. Not once. Many times.’

  Chenandier’s eyes narrowed. ‘I think all women are damned fools,’ he said. He nodded. ‘Yes, I did. But she meant nothing to me. She was just a bit of fluff.’

  ‘She thought she was more than that.’

  ‘No. You know how women are.’

  Pel didn’t. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

  ‘They get things in their minds.’

  ‘Such as believing you said you’d like to get a divorce, but that your wife wouldn’t give you one?’

  ‘Did she tell you that?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘Well, I can only imagine that she’s got a very fertile imagination.’

  ‘Or a very good memory,’ Pel said. ‘She was the woman you mentioned? The woman who was your mistress?’

  ‘Yes. But it’s over now. These things do finish, don’t they?’

  ‘Have you told her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then why does she think it isn’t over?’

  ‘Women get some funny ideas in their heads. They can’t accept that an affair’s over unless they see you in bed with another woman.’

  Darcy returned to the attack. ‘Your wife’s jewellery, Monsieur? Have you any idea what there was? Can you give us a complete list?’

  Chenandier shrugged. ‘Of sorts.’ He went to the desk and, rummaging round in the drawer, produced a typed sheet of paper. ‘That’s a list she made out for insurance. I wouldn’t know if it’s complete. She was always adding to it, selling off odd pieces and buying others with the money. Odile might know.’

  Odile did.

  As they talked, the telephone went and Pel snatched it up. ‘Pel,’ he said.

  ‘Leguyader!’ The telephone sounded angry. ‘I’ve got that report on those clothes you sent up – Gervase Darcq’s.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, first of all, whose bright idea was it to send him in at the end of the day and then tell me to do a check when I couldn’t send him home? I was here all night, with him fast asleep in a blanket in the sergeants’ room. Whose idea was that?’

  ‘Mine,’ Pel said.

  ‘Oh!’ Obviously Leguyader hadn’t expected that reply. He’d clearly suspected it might have been Nosjean’s and had been hoping to be able to tear a strip off him. ‘Do you know I went without my dinner?’

  ‘So did I,’ Pel said. It wasn’t true, but he enjoyed goading Leguyader.

  ‘Oh!’ Leguyader said again. He seemed to resent Pel being able to match all his complaints. ‘Why?’

  ‘My housekeeper was watching television.’

  ‘Well, mine wasn’t,’ Leguyader retorted. ‘It wasn’t due to that at all. It was because I was working. And I couldn’t leave because we couldn’t turn that big lump, Darcq, out on the streets in his birthday suit. He hadn’t any other clothes.’

  ‘I know,’ Pel said calmly. ‘What did you find?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Leguyader seemed delighted that this time it was his turn to score a point.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Nothing at all. Just a lot of food stains. Who is this chap? Does he eat his food by throwing it at his mouth from arm’s length?’

  ‘He gets drunk a lot,’ Pel said patiently. ‘Perhaps that accounts for it.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing.’

  ‘No blood?’

  ‘Not a drop. Just old beer and wine stains. A few unidentified women’s hairs, blonde, brunette and red.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean a thing. He isn’t the type to brush his clothes much. Any of them his sister’s?’

  ‘Not one. And you might be interested to hear, too, that we completed the check on the cars. There was no blood there either.’

  ‘On none of ’em?’

  ‘None.’ Leguyader sounded delighted at the disappointment in Pel’s voice.

  Pel replaced the telephone quietly and stood for a while, staring at the instrument, deep in thought. He started to life abruptly.

  ‘Fetch Odile back.’

  She returned unwillingly, with her usual mixture of caution and aggressiveness, and Pel decided that, because of her parents, she knew only how to be hostile or wary and was totally at a loss in any situation that demanded anything else.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There was a ruby ring. A big one, worth a lot of money. And a treble row of pearls. She also had a sapphire necklace and an amethyst set – earrings, necklace, brooch, ring. There was a sapphire-and-diamond ring. An emerald brooch. A zircon.’

  ‘That the lot?’

  ‘No. There were others.’

  ‘Could you list them from memory?’

  ‘Yes, if necessary.’

  ‘You seem to know them well.’

  She frowned and the old agony appeared in her eyes again. ‘Of course I do. I was always looking at them, wishing I had some like them. She always said my skin wasn’t right for jewels, though. She said you had to have a flawless skin.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you sure you liked your mother?’

  ‘I loved her. I thought the world of her. I told you. But she didn’t like me.’

  ‘How about your father?’

  ‘He just laughed at me. And I think he was busy making eyes at Estelle Quermel.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Well–’ she moved her shoulders in a wildly indifferent shrug that showed her misery ‘ – she liked men, didn’t she?’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘She even made eyes at the gardener.’

  Pel decided that she was a prey to agonising jealousies, and tried to be gentle with her. ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.

  ‘She used to invite him into the kitchen, didn’t she? He was often in there. He was in there only this morning.’

  ‘He went for a coffee. He told me he was going.’

  ‘Then why did they have their heads together?’

  ‘Did they have their heads together?’

  ‘Yes. They were whispering.’

  ‘About what?’

  She looked puzzled, then baffled. ‘They were talking about motor car numbers,’ she said.

  ‘He seems to have a fixation about car numbers,’ Darcy said.

  ‘Well, I heard her say that 39 was the Jura, and then he asked her what was Paris and she said it was 75.’

  ‘Not very erotic stuff,’ Darcy observed.

  She flashed him a desperate, hurt glance. ‘It was probably put on when I came into the room,’ she said. ‘To hide what they were really talking about. You know how women are.’

  ‘No,’ Darcy said. ‘I don’t. But I’m beginning to find out.’

  When the girl had gone, Pel turned to Darcy.

  ‘Check on that malaria business of Chenandier’s,’ he said. ‘And the business of being at Dien Bien Phu. It shouldn’t be too hard. People who were there are usually proud of it. And what did he mean about Odile? When he stopped so abruptly.’

  ‘He seemed to have remembered something about her, Patron.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Find out what it was. Perhaps she’s on drugs or something.’

  ‘She doesn’t look as if she is.’

  ‘Find out where she went to school. Who her friends are. What she does with her
self. The doctor ought to be able to tell you about her father’s malaria. He might even know about Madame Chenandier’s lovers. Doctors often do. And while we’re at it, let’s have someone watch Chenandier. The next-door neighbour, too – Laye. He might turn out to be interesting.’

  ‘How about the Germains?’

  Pel frowned. ‘Germain’s never put in an appearance and, as far as I can make out, isn’t likely to, and Madame Germain didn’t know the other two families in the lane and didn’t want to. They just don’t fit into the picture. I think we can forget them.’

  ‘Right, Patron.’

  Pel looked at his watch. ‘Tomorrow, we’ll have another go at Darcq. For the moment, I’m going home.’

  ‘Already?’

  Pel avoided his eyes. ‘I have a report to get ready for Brisard,’ he said. ‘He sits on my shoulder like a vulture looking for food.’

  Hurrying out of the house, knowing perfectly well that Brisard’s report could be delivered by telephone without preparation, what Pel was really looking forward to was another meeting with Didier Darras.

  On his way home, he drove on to the Langres road to call in at the Bar de la Frontière where Gervase Darcq made a habit of doing his drinking. It was a dark little place with wine-coloured walls, one painted with an enormous fading sign – BYRRH. Outside were a few shabby chairs under the chestnuts. Men in blue overalls were playing boules, their glasses on a table nearby, and an old woman, her heavy shopping bag on the ground alongside her, sat resting her feet and talking to the proprietress. Next to her, two children sat dangling their toes and listening to an argument developing between two elderly men, who were waving their arms and shouting at each other, curiously without disturbing the scene in the slightest.

  The sun had turned to bronze-gold and the shade was rich and deep. There was a smell of dust in the air, mingling with wine and coffee and the whiff of Gauloises. Pel studied the scene for a moment then went inside. The proprietor was leaning on the zinc counter watching the television with an uninterested expression on his face. He turned as Pel appeared.

  ‘Monsieur?’

  ‘Coup de blanc.’

  The white wine was poured and Pel sipped it cautiously. It was sharp and acid and he was convinced at once that he’d get indigestion. Gloomily he lit a cigarette then fished out his identity card and laid it down on the counter. The proprietor stared at it.

  ‘Police,’ he said. ‘I thought you were.’

  ‘Does it show all that much?’ Pel asked, startled.

  ‘No.’ The proprietor grinned. ‘But you’re a stranger and we don’t get many strangers. You might have been a commercial traveller, of course. But you haven’t got the right kind of car and you’ve got no samples case, so it seemed likely you might be the police.’

  ‘You’d never make a detective,’ Pel growled.

  ‘Why not?’ It was the proprietor’s turn to look disconcerted, as if he prided himself on his shrewdness.

  ‘You jump too much to conclusions.’ Pel drew wanly at the cigarette, promising himself it would be the last before his meal – though he knew perfectly well it wouldn’t. ‘I’m interested in one of your customers,’ he said. ‘Gervase Darcq.’

  ‘Oh, him.’

  ‘Why, “oh, him”?’

  ‘Well, he’s always in trouble, isn’t he? Some woman. Some woman’s husband. You’d be surprised the sort of people who get up to that sort of thing.’ The proprietor nodded to an old man watching the game of boules.

  ‘Him, too?’

  ‘Regularly. He’s been threatened more than once.’

  Pel’s eyebrows lifted.

  ‘It’s a dirty old world, isn’t it?’ the proprietor said. Pel drew a deep breath. ‘Gervase Darcq,’ he reminded.

  ‘Yes.’ The proprietor frowned heavily to indicate he was concentrating. ‘His sister – that woman who was murdered – she was at it, too, wasn’t she?’

  ‘At what?’

  ‘What we were talking about.’

  ‘How do you know? Did she come here?’

  ‘No. But he talked about her.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing much. Just that he was hoping to get money from her. He was always saying that. Especially when he was broke or on the cadge.’

  ‘Did he get money from her recently?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, he was in here the other night with a lot.’

  ‘Which night?’

  ‘Thursday, was it? The night she was killed. That night.’

  ‘How do you know he had a lot of money? Men don’t usually spread it out on the counter.’

  ‘Neither does he. He never has enough for that. But that night he did. He was drunk and he started counting it.’

  ‘How much did he have?’

  ‘More than I’ve ever seen him with before. There were several hundreds and fifties.’

  ‘Could you make a guess?’

  ‘About 2,000 frs. Perhaps three. He didn’t count it out loud and I was busy, but I keep my eyes open.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pel agreed. ‘You do. Does Darcq come in here often?’

  ‘He’ll be here soon if you’d like to wait.’

  Pel finished his wine. ‘I have things to do tonight,’ he said. The landlord hitched at his apron. It was stained where his stomach rubbed against the counter.

  ‘Well, you could catch him in the morning,’ he said. ‘He’s in here around seven for a coffee and croissant on his way to work.’

  ‘Every day?’

  ‘Every day that he hasn’t been at the booze the night before.’

  When Pel reached home, Didier Darras was sitting on the front step. He smiled immediately, and as Pel found himself smiling back, he realised it was something he hadn’t done for a long time. It felt odd. As if his face had gone soft.

  ‘Feel like a game of boules?’ he asked.

  The boy grinned. ‘Thought you might like to take me fishing.’

  The river was twenty kilometres away and they went in Pel’s car which they parked under the trees. There was a line of men along the bank, somnolent over their rods in the sunshine. Everywhere you looked in France – even in Paris under the Pont Neuf – there were fishermen somnolent in the sunshine. A French heaven had to include fishermen in the sunshine. Further along, downstream, there was a small plage with cabins for changing, swings and seesaws, where stout and elderly Frenchmen did callisthenics under the eye of an instructor.

  ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to swim?’ Pel asked as they sat down among the reeds and put out their rods.

  ‘I’d rather fish.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘All those kids.’

  ‘Don’t you like other children?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Don’t you get lonely?’

  ‘I get on all right with me.’

  Pel saw what he meant. So did he.

  The boy was pulling things from his pocket and laying them on the grass alongside his rod. ‘Know anything that’ll dissolve chewing gum?’ he asked.

  ‘Sorry. Why?’

  ‘I’ve got some in my pocket. It’s all mixed up with string and a pocket knife.’ He nodded at a girl hurrying past towards the plage. ‘That one’s all right,’ he observed. ‘You ever been married, Monsieur Pel?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Never got round to it.’

  ‘How about Tante Annabelle? – Madame Routy.’

  Pel shuddered and Didier went on. ‘Mind, you’d have to do something about that television, though.’

  There was a pause then the boy went on casually. ‘You solving any mysteries at the moment, Monsieur Pel?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pel hesitated, wondering if young ears would like the sound of murder. ‘Somebody was killed,’ he said. ‘At Aigunay-le-Petit.’

  Didier shrugged, indifferent. ‘I read about it in the paper. Blood everywhere. I expect she had a boyfriend. Next-door nei
ghbour, perhaps.’

  Pel nodded. It was an idea.

  Ten

  Pel was at the Bar de la Frontière early next day. The morning sun was silver rather than the gold of the previous evening and gave an entirely different quality – joyous instead of calm – to the outlook. The routiers, leaning against their lorries to exchange news and cigarettes, nodded to him as he passed, and the proprietor recognised him at once and gestured with his head for him to go to the end of the zinc counter away from the other customers. Expecting information, Pel followed him away from where his wife was dispensing coffee, croissants and bread. The proprietor gestured again with his head.

  ‘The big chap with the moustache,’ he said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s one.’

  ‘One what?’

  The proprietor gave him a disgusted look. ‘What we were talking about last night. Goes at it like a ferret.’

  Pel stared at the customer in question. ‘You must live an entertaining life here,’ he said.

  The proprietor grinned. ‘Not half,’ he said. ‘Have this on the house. What would you like? Coffee?’

  ‘No. Coup de blanc.’

  ‘This time in the morning? You’ll get a liver.’

  ‘I need to keep my strength up.’

  The proprietor poured the wine and Pel sipped from the glass, frowning and trying hard to avoid lighting a cigarette. He managed to resist for about three minutes, then he sighed and fished out the packet. He had just lit up when Gervase Darcq appeared. He was looking better this time. His face had recovered its colour and he had shaved. He took his coffee and croissant at the bar and Pel saw the proprietor’s head move in a faint nod. Darcq turned and saw Pel.

  ‘You looking for me?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Darcq sat down alongside Pel, dipping his croissant into his coffee.

  ‘Again?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Pel said unemotionally. ‘Again.’

  ‘I didn’t do it, you know. More like Hervé Chenandier.’

  ‘He thinks you did it.’

  ‘He would.’

  ‘There was no love lost between you?’

  ‘That penny-pinching salaud? That salopard? That snake, that Judas, that betrayer, that pimp, that leech, that backstabber?’

  ‘I take it you don’t like him.’