Death Set to Music

by Mark Hebden

  Pel nodded. ‘What about the other checks?’

  ‘Nothing from the tails.’

  ‘What about the laundries?’

  ‘Nothing, Chief. I’ve checked them. And the cleaners. Nothing there either. Nothing’s been handed in that remotely resembles the clothes we’re looking for. I thought I was on to it for a minute when I found a pair of bloodstained trousers at a cleaners in the Rue Henri-Lapointe. But they belonged to a butcher who’d caught his thigh with his own cleaver. I also checked the dustbin people. They saw nothing either.’

  Pel looked at Darcy. Considering the time he’d wasted, he seemed remarkably cheerful. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Stop looking like the mother and father of God and tell me what else you’ve got. You’ve obviously found something to make up for all the things you didn’t turn up.’

  Darcy gestured and leaned back in his chair. ‘I’ve been in touch with the school,’ he said. ‘You remember we discovered Odile left rather abruptly at the age of fifteen. I found out why.’

  ‘Well? What do you want, spotlights?’

  Darcy turned a page of his notebook – slowly, because he believed in making Pel wait.

  ‘She attacked one of the staff,’ he said profoundly.

  ‘A pity more people don’t,’ Pel snorted. ‘I often felt like it when I was a boy. What was it for?’

  ‘The woman had been needling her. You know what she’s like. Awkward. A bit lost and wet. I imagine she wasn’t very bright or very popular either. It was in a cookery class. It was one of those schools. All the nicest young ladies, and they were taught all the right things. Never mind the baccalaureat, so long as they could sing and play the piano and knew how many courses to serve when their husband’s boss came home.’

  ‘For the love of God, spit it out!’

  Darcy smiled. ‘Seems she was about as good at cooking as she was at everything else, and this particular mistress was always after her. Eventually she upped and clubbed her with a rolling pin.’

  ‘Fairly conventional weapon,’ Pel said. ‘For a woman.’

  ‘Apparently, she was trying to hammer her head flat when she was dragged off. The next day her parents were sent for and she left.’

  ‘Did they tell the police?’

  ‘It wasn’t one of those schools.’

  ‘Probably doesn’t mean a thing,’ Pel said disconcertingly.

  ‘Patron, if she bashed this mistress, she probably also bashed her mother.’

  ‘And probably she didn’t, too. Find out anything more?’

  ‘The school doctor examined her. He decided she was a hysterical type.’

  ‘Is he a psychiatrist?’

  ‘No. Just a school doctor.’

  ‘Then he probably doesn’t know a thing about it.’

  Darcy eyed him. Pel was obviously in a bad mood. ‘One thing I like about you, Patron,’ he said. ‘You’re so encouraging.’

  Twelve

  The city sweltered in the heat. Even up on the slopes to the north, where you could get the breeze, there was no relief. The tar bubbled in the road and the farmers were beginning to complain about lack of water for their cattle. The Hôtel de Police grew more like a greenhouse every day and everybody was asking why it was that modern designers used so much glass – especially in an area where sunshine was by no means unknown.

  Cars left in carparks developed seats that were impossible to sit on. Mothers nagged at their children for no other reason than that it was too hot, and at Lignon a baker gave his wife a black eye for the same reason. In Darnay a bank cashier was worrying that an excess of affection provoked by the heat had landed her in trouble, because she and her boyfriend had made love the previous evening and they hadn’t been very careful. And in Talant, a young man wearing a shabby red tracksuit with broken zips bearing the word ‘Toulouse’ across the back, sat in his Deux Chevaux opposite a supermarket brooding over the fact that the supermarket, which he’d noticed backed on to an empty yard that wasn’t overlooked, would be an easy place to break into. The word ‘Toulouse’ on his back meant nothing at all because he’d never played for Toulouse at anything. He lacked the energy and will to go in for sport and he was on drugs, anyway, and always in need of money. The supermarket, he felt, would solve all his financial worries for a time.

  The vagrants, alcoholics, drug addicts and known nuts had been checked but, since there were no unexpected fingerprints in the Chenandier house, it seemed to rule them out at once; and in any case, to a man they all had alibis, having been curled up in lodging houses, pleading to get a bottle, or sleeping one off. As suspects, the vagrants, alcoholics, drug addicts and known nuts were a dead loss.

  There was one other line to follow but Pel was far from keen. Not because he wasn’t meticulous at his job; just, quite simply, because he didn’t want to go to Paris – especially in a heat wave.

  He loathed the metropolis. It was too busy and too noisy, smelled too much of hot oil and petrol fumes, and there were so many Americans there these days it looked like the fifty-first state of the Union. There were also students everywhere you looked – all hairy and hot and a lot of them not very clean – and tourists all down the Champs Elysées and jamming the bateaux mouches until they bulged at the seams. Pel preferred Dijon any time.

  ‘Do you good to have a break, Chief,’ Darcy encouraged.

  Pel shuddered. ‘All those people,’ he said.

  ‘For God’s sake, Patron, there are people here!’

  ‘Different people. French people.’

  ‘Why not go and enjoy yourself? Have a few nights out on the town. Have a good meal.’

  ‘I can get a good meal here. A good Burgundian meal.’

  ‘Find a woman then. It’ll relax you.’

  Pel stared at Darcy, looking about as relaxed as a lion tamer in the Cirque d’Hiver going solo for the first time.

  ‘It’ll do you good, Chief.’ Darcy grinned. ‘You’re beginning to look as if there’s been a death in the family and some people actually manage to enjoy that sort of thing, you know.’

  Pel thought briefly of unmentionable sins. Sometimes his loins ached and he felt as eager as a buck rabbit, but he’d spent so many years backing away from women he felt he no longer had much about him to attract them.

  He sat in a soured frame of mind all the way north and left the train literally cringing at the noise of the city. Dumping his bag at a hotel, he went out immediately to eat before it was too late, his mind full of Darcy’s advice and half-wondering what bestial things he might do to pass the evening. But his mood was as lively as a graveyard and when he had one apéritif too many to cheer himself up, instead it only darkened the horizon even more, so that he drank an extra carafe of wine with his meal for a lift and ended up feeling like a Legionaire’s farewell to his mother.

  When he woke next morning, his brains felt as if they were slopping about inside his head every time he moved and someone was trying to kick his way out of his skull. Sadly, he stuffed himself with bismuth pills in the hope they’d help him recover and elected to get on with the job as fast as he could so he could go home.

  Just for luck he decided to check the Hôtel Meurice. It had a faded Second Empire look about it, redolent of dubious weekends and intimate dinners, and the pale green walls were plastered with theatre adverts – for the Lido, the Moulin Rouge, the Crazy Horse – and for tours to Versailles and Fontainebleau. The clerk was on the telephone when he arrived and he finally slammed it down with the air of a Napoleon after Austerlitz. He seemed to have won a major battle against someone in need of a room.

  The visit was a waste of time. There was no doubt that Chenandier had spent his week in Paris there. His name was in the register and they even remembered the urgency with which he’d left. His movements also checked exactly with what he’d said. He’d dined out every evening but Friday when he’d stayed in the hotel. Pel’s temples ached and he was disappointed because he’d been hoping to catch him out in a lie.

  ‘What about bre
akfast that morning?’ he asked, his elbow on the counter, his hand holding the side of his head in case it dropped off.

  The clerk stared at him. ‘Friday?’

  ‘Yes, Friday. The day he left.’

  ‘I don’t know, Monsieur.’ The clerk shrugged. ‘I didn’t see him. But he might have breakfasted out. He sometimes did.’

  ‘Is the hotel door closed at night?’

  ‘Yes, Monsieur. Locked about 1.30.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘6.00 in the morning. Anybody coming in has to ring. The porter had a quiet night.’

  ‘So Monsieur Chenandier must have been in?’

  ‘He must have been. In fact, I saw him Friday morning early, myself. Here in the hall. He’d been out for a newspaper and was complaining that the kiosk hadn’t got his usual one – a strike or something – and he’d had to buy something different.’

  Pel took a deep breath. ‘What time did he leave?’ he asked. The clerk considered. ‘Late. That night, when the story was in the papers. He rang down from his room for his bill and said he had to leave in a hurry. We had it ready when he appeared and he left in a taxi we’d called for him. He was in such a hurry he almost left his suitcase behind. It was only a small one – enough for a couple of shirts, a change of underwear, and perhaps a light suit – so it was easy to overlook. He had a briefcase, of course, and a small black case.’ The clerk frowned. ‘No, he didn’t have the small black case. I remember distinctly. I helped him into the taxi and put his luggage in with him. There were just the two. I must have been mistaken. I thought he had three when he came – a small black case as well.’ The clerk frowned. ‘But he couldn’t have. Unless he put it in the taxi himself and I didn’t notice.’

  Names, addresses and telephone numbers scrawled in his notebook, Pel took a taxi to the Bobino off the Rue de la Gaiété in Montparnasse. The office was open and he introduced himself and laid Chenandier’s ticket stub in front of the manager.

  ‘Was that issued here?’ he asked.

  The manager was inclined to be sarcastic. ‘It has our name on it.’

  ‘I’d still like to be sure.’

  ‘Then, yes, Monsieur. It was.’

  ‘When was it issued?’

  The manager indicated the date. ‘Then, Monsieur.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Had to be. Every ticket’s dated for the day of the performance it covers.’

  ‘Have you any idea whom it was issued to?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Would the usherette remember if the seat was occupied?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so for a minute. It’s almost a week ago. She probably doesn’t even remember last night. We don’t pick them for their ability to do mental arithmetic.’

  The manager was quite right. When Pel found the usherette she turned out to be elderly, indifferent and blank-faced. Blank-minded, too, Pel decided, wishing his headache would go.

  The booking office and the usherette at the Humeur proved to be exactly the same and, returning to the hotel, Pel sat on the bed and, pulling his notebook out, decided to try Luxe Hire Cars, Laye’s firm. It was a shot in the dark but he half hoped it might turn something up.

  It did, but not about Chenandier.

  The clerk at Luxe Cars was a brisk young man with a beard who wore padded shoulders so wide they seemed to hang down to his elbows. His name was Jean-Jacques Mille and he seemed to be well on top of the job.

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No Monsieur Chenandier’s been in this office in the last fortnight.’ He jabbed a spatulate finger at the hiring book in front of him. ‘It’d be there if he had. You tried Jacques Naboulet Hire?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘I wouldn’t. They’re not organised. Mind, I’m not surprised, with that dame they employ. How can you run a business when the clerk makes a habit of getting laid by the customers?’

  ‘Is that what happens?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Pel paused, lit a cigarette and offered one to Mule. ‘Where do your hire cars go to?’ he asked.

  Mule shrugged. ‘Mostly local. Some chap who wants to impress a girl. Somebody whose car’s broken down. Mostly short distances.’

  ‘What about last Thursday night?’

  Jean-Jacques Mille perused his book. ‘Just one long-distance. Kid by the name of Berthelo hired a car to take his elderly father to Rennes.’

  ‘And did he?’

  Mille looked at his book. ‘The mileage’s right,’ he said. ‘So I suppose he did. He drove himself. It was one of our big Peugeots. The green one. That’s a very fashionable colour at the moment, you know. British racing green, it’s called. Not that the British have a racing team at the moment. They can’t afford a racing wheelbarrow.’

  Pel had a feeling he was getting nowhere. He tried a desperate last shot. ‘Know Monsieur Laye?’

  Mille’s eyebrows rose. ‘Of course. He’s my boss. Well, one of them. The top one.’

  ‘Ever come in here?’

  ‘Sometimes. End of the financial year. If there are problems. That sort of thing.’

  ‘On his own?’

  ‘Usually. But not always. Sometimes he’s with–’ the clerk’s expression changed. He leaned across the counter to Pel. ‘Here, is she his wife – this Chenandier you’re asking about?’

  Pel blinked. His luck seemed to have changed. ‘Is she?’ he asked.

  ‘Aigunay-le-Petit? In Burgundy?’

  ‘That’s where my Chenandier comes from.’

  Mille smoothed his beard. ‘He came in with her sometimes.’

  ‘Laye did?’

  ‘Occasionally. I know her well. She uses us when she comes to Paris.’

  ‘I don’t think she will any more,’ Pel said. ‘Did she come in often?’

  ‘No. Not often.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘I don’t know. You don’t ask the boss where he’s taking his own cars – or his girlfriends.’

  ‘And you? Did you ever have occasion to drive her anywhere?’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What do you mean, what happened?’

  Pel stared blank-faced at Mille. ‘I mean, what happened?’

  Mille shrugged and grinned. ‘Well, she – well, you know – she was one of those.’

  ‘She made passes at you?’

  ‘I’ll say.’

  ‘And you?’

  Mille shrugged, suddenly cautious. ‘I’ve got a girl.’

  Thirteen

  Sergeant Nosjean was at Aigunay-le-Petit, sniffing round in the fields across the stream from the back of the houses in the Chemin de Champ-Loups when Pel arrived back from Paris.

  Nosjean felt weary, because he’d had a bad night, too. He’d been to Marsonnay to see Barbièry, the timetable expert, as Pel had suggested, and found he wasn’t in. On the way back his car had broken down so that, already late for his date, he’d taken a taxi home. It had cost him a fortune and he’d been too late, anyway, because his girl had already gone out in a huff, and when he’d enquired at the office about getting his money back on expenses, he’d been informed he should have used a bus.

  Now, searching the fields beyond the Chenandier house, he was suffering from acute depression. The long grass hid all the usual rubbish you found in fields in summer: signs of picnics. Paper. Old bread. Plastic containers. Used contraceptives. From the number of those, you’d have thought that people spent every minute of their lives going at it like ferrets, though, judging by the number of evenings Nosjean had to work, it seemed it was never going to be his luck to need one.

  However, he had found a can in the bottom of the hedge that smelled as if it had contained paraffin; and among the withered grass on the edge of the field, the remains of a fire, its ashes pasty grey after the recent rains, which at least seemed to indicate it had been burning before or during the night of the Chenandier murder, because there’d been no rain since.

  Deciding to take a c
loser look, he was poking about with a stick when he came up with a small charred object which he studied carefully before stuffing it into a plastic bag. He felt sure Pel would only sneer at it, but at least he wouldn’t be able to complain that he hadn’t been thorough. Poking about a little more, he found two or three welded lumps of plastic and decided that perhaps he’d better keep them, too.

  Then, trying to think ahead to all the questions Pel would be certain to ask him, he walked slowly round the remains of the fire. It lay in a small hollow surrounded by willows and he got one of the uniformed men to stand beside it while he went to the Langres road and then the Chemin de Champ-Loups.

  ‘What are you up to, Sergeant?’ The policeman was grinning, and obviously considered Nosjean was still wet behind the ears.

  ‘Just trying to think of everything,’ Nosjean said huffily.

  The policeman continued to grin, so Nosjean retaliated by indicating the petrol can. ‘Better get that down to the fingerprint boys,’ he said.

  This time it was the policeman’s turn to frown. It was a hot afternoon and it wasn’t at all unpleasant there under the trees, while it was a long walk back to the station and a longish drive in the heat to the city. He didn’t fancy it at all.

  ‘Now?’ he said.

  Nosjean noticed that his smile had vanished. ‘Yes,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Now. There might be something on it.’

  As the policeman disappeared, grumbling, Nosjean noticed he was being watched from the edge of the dip by the Chenandier girl. She had large, anguished eyes that gave her face a startled vulnerable look. Her skin had a sallow meridional appearance, but she was slim and her figure wasn’t bad, and he saw she wasn’t wearing a brassiere because he could see the shape of her breasts quite clearly through the T-shirt she wore, and they were full and firm.

  ‘You still looking for clues?’ she asked shyly.

  Nosjean blushed. He blushed at almost everything and it bothered him in front of girls. ‘That’s my job,’ he said.

  She edged a little closer, moving with a curiously humble manner, a little like a spaniel that expected to be scolded, and, looking at her again, Nosjean decided she wasn’t half as bad as Darcy had suggested. As appealing as a pile of sand, Darcy had said, but Darcy went in for flashy pieces with bleached hair and his tastes and Nosjean’s tastes were very different.