Ellery Queen's Crime Cruise Round the World

by Ellery Queen

  The fact remains that Boussus—the big Boussus, as he was called—had left his flowering home on the square and arrived at the harbor about six in the morning, dressed in pajamas, his dirty feet in espadrilles, and a straw hat like a helmet on his head. He hadn’t shaved or washed. In a basket he was carrying a bottle of the rose wine of the island, a two-pound loaf of bread, a can of anchovies in piquant sauce, and a thick slice of roquefort cheese.

  Casimir, who had drawn up his nets at dawn, saw him board his ship, the Royal Girella, better known as The Mirrored Armoire. As on every night, the motor made a fuss before starting. While it was warming up, Boussus settled himself astern, under a striped red-and-yellow awning, opened his folding chair, made sure his boulter fishing lines were in order, and took out of the water the container of hermit crabs he was going to use for bait.

  A short time later the Royal Girella, not over six meters long (in the country they said twenty-eight shirt tails long), was cutting the silken water in the direction of Mèdes, at the extreme tip of the island.

  Boussus had his place to fish and he never changed it. The headland of Mèdes is a sheer rock, out of sight of all habitation. Barely twenty meters farther out a rocky peak emerges from the deep water.

  “My beach umbrella,” Boussus liked to say of this peak which provided his shade.

  Once there, exploring the sea floor through the transparent water, he let go the stone tied to a rope which he used as an anchor. He broke open the hermit crab shells, settled himself in his folding chair, and paying out his lines, started to fish.

  One thing is certain: at nine o’clock there were in his basket, which he kept covered with a wet cloth, about forty girellas, twenty orange sérans, five hogfish (more brown than red with their bristling spines), and three blue-and-green iridescent serres.

  The Porquerolles bottle of wine, always within Boussus’ reach, had been sampled often. The can of anchovies in piquant sauce was empty. The sun was already high. And the sea, without a ripple under the breezeless sky, rose in a swell that was smooth and slow, like the breast of a young woman sighing.

  Some residents of Porquerolles have mentioned two bottles of wine, others three. The fact remains that they found only one. Boussus had just pulled in one of his boulter lines on which two sérans were hooked. Bending over, he could see, at the bottom of the clear water, the rocks he recognized as clearly as a peasant who recognized the smallest details of his field—the shady holes, the algae, the schools of girellas as agile and silly as young goats.

  Not a soul was in sight. Not the faintest hum of a motor. No one on land or sea.

  And yet a voice suddenly called out, “Mimile!”

  Now, Boussus was not startled. He only said to himself, I knew it!

  No one, for 25 years, had called him Mimile. No one in Porquerolles knew that long ago it had been his nickname. And no one now was anywhere in his field of vision.

  Nevertheless, he slowly raised his head. His eyes, still shielded by sunglasses, scanned the landscape. And, like Cain in the past, he thought of nothing better than to stammer, “Where are you?”

  “Mimile.”

  One of the sérans slipped from his fingers. It was already lost because, pulled up from a depth of twenty meters, it would soon die and be found floating belly up.

  “Mimile.”

  At that moment there was a sound of lapping waves. From behind the rock that sheltered the Royal Girella, a flat-bottomed fishing boat—a bette, as they say in the south—appeared silently, with a man sitting alone in the middle.

  “It’s you,” declared Boussus.

  Did he, or didn’t he, say it? The fact remains that his lips moved and he had the illusion of speaking. Just as he had the illusion of leaning over and taking from a handy drawer a loaded gun that he always kept there.

  At this, the other one in his flat boat, who had rested on his oars and was drifting within a few meters of the Royal Girella, appeared to murmur in a hurt tone, “What are you afraid of?”

  “I knew you were going to come back.”

  “Because the newspapers said so? I still could have gone anywhere else.”

  “I knew you would come here. I knew you would find my address.”

  “Don’t shoot, Mimile.”

  “What do you want of me?”

  “I’ve come to say hi—to an old pal. Isn’t it natural, after all this time, to say hi to a buddy?”

  The sky was turquoise, the sea opaline, with its slow and tranquil breathing, like the very rhythm of nature. The boats were now riding idly. The water rose and fell along the rocks, showing wet areas of green moss and shells.

  But it was the man in the flat-bottomed boat who showed the greatest tranquillity, even beatitude. For months, for years, Boussus had been wondering: “Will I recognize him when he comes?”

  A man 22 years old at their last encounter and lean as a stray cat. How long since then? Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years of penal servitude out there in Guyana.

  For months he had been checking all strangers who landed on the island and had asked himself, Does he look like Mauvoisin?

  Perhaps he now had only one eye. Or a broken nose, or cauliflower ears, or a gruff voice, or a crippled body.

  How would Mauvoisin act? As someone hateful, savage, impatient for revenge?

  But there was the man in the flat-bottomed boat saying simply, in a soft, half-shy voice, “Hi, friend.”

  With Boussus, trying to force a grin, mumbling, “Hi.”

  “You see? I came only to say hello.”

  There was no irony, no hint of menace. It was peace on earth or, rather, on sea.

  “You have a very pretty boat, Mimile.”

  Mimile was embarrassed, as he was when a pretty woman paid him a compliment. Did Mauvoisin know that, in the country, his boat was nicknamed The Mirrored Armoire? Did he know that only Boussus defended it against the jibes of people like Chief Skipper Grimaud, Pirate’s-Head-Tadot, and all the others at Maurice’s Golden Isles Café?

  “I fixed it up by myself,” he murmured.

  Boussus was large, fat, and soft, and his huge thighs forced him to walk in a straddle. He liked his comfort and his conveniences—which was why he had a striped awning over his boat’s stern, why he had rigged up a diminutive cabin with an armoire, some drawers, a mini-icebox, and some cushions.

  As they were saying on the island: “Weighted with all that heavy superstructure, the boat will sink like a stone. Besides, it’s no longer a boat. It’s a mirrored armoire.”

  Mauvoisin was the only one to admire it.

  “A very beautiful boat, Mimile. If we had only had it in the Mediterranean, in San Quentin.”

  Boussus was still distrustful. But no, it wasn’t the former Mauvoisin he saw before him, or the Mauvoisin he had feared.

  “Twelve of the most dangerous convicts have just escaped from Guyana and have tried to reach Venezuela in a rowboat,” the newspapers had printed.

  And then: “Seven of them have been eaten by sharks.”

  Finally: “Among those reported as having succeeded in reaching San Marguerite, exhausted, starved, without water for eight days, is Jules Mauvoisin, the killer of the cashier of the San Quentin Wire Works.”

  It was that very Mauvoisin who was now showing himself as gentle as a lamb. He was speaking without hate, almost with the sentimentality of a drunk. His hair had turned white as snow. His complexion, too, was white and his eyes were pallid—he looked very small and very thin in the middle of his baby-blue bette.

  “I am very happy, Mimile, that you ran off. I was always saying to myself out there, I hope Mimile got away!’ You have a beautiful boat. They say you own a pretty house on the square.”

  Boussus, himself like a sentimental drunk, felt his heart melting.

  “It’s true. It’s the prettiest one, Mauvoisin.”

  “Call me Jules.”

  “It’s the prettiest one, Jules. Last year I lined the kitchen walls with faience tiles. This
year I put flowers around the terrace. I’ve even fitted up a bathroom which I don’t use.”

  “You’ve done well, Mimile.”

  “You can’t imagine. . .I’m so lonely! I have to make my own diversions.”

  “Your garden has the best peach trees on the island.”

  “Yet I don’t like peaches!. . .You remember, Jules? The guy Mr. Michel? Well, no matter what I do, I can’t forget. I still feel his limp body in the sack.”

  “That was so long ago, Mimile.”

  “Well. . .and then, you see, there’s you. There’s you who I knew was breaking stones, out there on the road.”

  “That did my lungs good. I had weak lungs, you know. The doctors had x-rayed me and wanted to send me to the mountains. So you see the outdoor work did me good.”

  Mauvoisin’s smile was as cold as the bottom of the sea.

  “You don’t resent me, Jules?”

  “What for?”

  He was so gentle, so full of magnanimity, that Boussus could not stop talking.

  “I’m going to confess the truth to you, Jules. I have a beautiful house, hundreds of thousands of francs in the bank, a beautiful boat, no matter what they say. Anyway, it suits me. And yet, Jules, I’ve never been happy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of you.”

  “Have I ever made you any reproaches?”

  “You never wrote to me.”

  “I could have. We have ways, through buddies. Why would I have made you any reproaches?”

  “You don’t know, Jules?”

  “I know everything.”

  “Everything?”

  In the face of such understanding, such kindness, the big Boussus felt like bursting into tears.

  “You see, when you come back from out there it’s like coming back from hell. You see things differently. You can’t imagine. . .” Jules’s voice diminished.

  He still had the gentleness of a saint out of a stained-glass window. And all this time, for years and years, Boussus had been haunted by the image of a grim avenger.

  “You remember everything, Jules?”

  “Everything.”

  “It was a Saturday—”

  “In November, yes. It was raining, windy. I was managing a small roadside garage about five kilometers from San Quentin. Because I couldn’t make both ends meet, I had opened a tavern next door, but in spite of it I was threatened with eviction. My wife, who was pretty, had gone to visit her sick aunt in Paris, remember? I wonder now if it really was her aunt—”

  “Well, Jules, since we are now like brothers, I can tell you—”

  “I suspected—but it doesn’t matter. Besides, afterwards she asked me for a divorce.”

  “I arrived at your home around six in the evening,” Boussus recalled. “I lived about two hundred meters away from you and I was doing handy work in the neighborhood.”

  It was unheard of! Boussus would never have imagined that the conversation would go this way. It was as if they were in heaven, where souls can evoke their earthly concerns with the utmost serenity.

  “When I came into your house, there were feet sticking out from a closet,” Boussus continued.

  “I’d just killed him,” Jules explained.

  “Beaten him with a monkey wrench.”

  “I used what I had at hand.”

  Thanks to this disembodied mood of Jules Mauvoisin, the most sordid details seemed to lose their vilest qualities.

  And yet—the wet road—the garage and the tavern—this poor Michel, the cashier of the San Quentin Wire Works, who had a wooden leg and was going about on his auxiliary motor-bicycle. . .It was not only Saturday, it was the thirtieth of the month. He had gone to the bank to bring back the pay of the thousands of factory workers.

  “Hi! Jules, could you see if there’s any water in my carburetor?” Michel had said.

  His motor-bicycle was coughing and he was afraid of a breakdown halfway up the hill.

  “Why don’t you go and have a drop of gin while I fix it, Mr. Michel?”

  Mauvoisin knew there were hundreds of thousands of francs, in bills, in the toolbox. Boussus had not yet arrived.

  Boussus didn’t actually see the tragedy—the blow with the monkey wrench on the cashier’s head, the further blows, the gesture of pushing the inert body into a closet. . .

  With as much serenity as his visitor, Boussus was now saying, “I saw the feet showing and you told me, ‘If you help me get rid of the body, it’ll be fifty-fifty between us.’”

  “We were young then,” Jules said softly.

  “We took the light truck and went over to the canal, after tying the body in a coal sack. It was limp. I could never forget that limp bundle.”

  “We were young then.”

  “Since then, each day while I fish with boulters, or spade my garden, or play cards at Maurice’s, I—”

  “It only shows you have not been out there.”

  “Maybe you don’t know the whole story, Jules.”

  “Out there we know everything.”

  “Including what I did afterwards? You see, I’m a blackguard, Jules, a scoundrel. Worse still, nobody knows that I’m one. I was waiting to tell you. . .your wife. . .”

  “Fernande?”

  “Well, yes. You see, even before—”

  “It matters so little.”

  “I still wonder why she preferred me to you. I surely wasn’t handsome.”

  “Neither was I.”

  “I wasn’t rich.”

  “I wasn’t either. Maybe she just wanted a change.”

  “But afterwards, when you were arrested—”

  “It doesn’t matter any more.”

  “I swear it does, Jules! I acted like a swine, like a—I don’t know what. We had shared the seven hundred thousand francs from the toolbox—”

  “That was only fair.”

  “Not quite, since you killed Michel all by yourself. I only helped you put him in the sack.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “Except that, eight days later, when the cops began to look hard at you—”

  “I brought you my share and asked you to keep it for me during the inquiry.”

  “That’s when I began to be a real bad one, Jules. I had the seven hundred thousand francs. I wanted to keep Fernande for myself alone. I wrote the anonymous letter—it must have occurred to you that I was the one who had written it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t mind?”

  “It’s all so long ago.”

  “Just the same, it was I who wrote the Commissioner that you killed Michel with blows from a monkey wrench, that the towel you used to clean your hands with was buried in your garden, near a well, and that the wooden toolbox was burned in your garage where they found the ashes. I’m a blackguard, Jules, but I swear to you that since then I’ve not been any happier than you. Fernande walked out on me. They say she died two years ago in a hospital.”

  “Good for her!”

  “And myself. . .I live, of course. I get up in the morning, I go fishing, I eat bouillabaisse, I play cards, but all day and all night I’m thinking: This poor Jules, all that time out there.’”

  Is a prison really capable of changing a man that much? Jules was falling, if not into a trap, at any rate into acquiescence. He was nodding.

  “You’re a chum,” he asserted.

  “I’m a bad one, Jules.”

  “Bah! You see, I came only to say a short hello. But I’ll comeback from time to time.”

  “Where are you living? You’re not afraid they’ll take you back?”

  Jules pointed vaguely to the coast mountains and said, “Over there.”

  With this turn in the conversation, Boussus found himself thinking of a hammer he kept in the mirrored armoire for breaking the hard shells of the hermit crabs. If the flat boat came nearer—

  “It’s all so long ago,” Jules Mauvoisin was repeating philosophically.

  He was gentle. So gentle that
—

  Having for years read the newspapers in fear of learning that Mauvoisin, the convict, had escaped, having for months checked all strangers who landed at Porquerolles, having for so long—

  And now it was so simple, so pleasant, so easy!

  They say that our dreams, even the longest ones, last only a few seconds.

  Is the following, perhaps, a proof?

  Boussus opened his eyes and was amazed to find no flat boat around—nothing on the water as far as he could see, except a large, gray, light cruiser anchored in the bay of the Salines.

  The bottle of Porquerolles wine was almost empty. The can that had contained anchovies in piquant sauce was covered with flies. The cheese was gone. The last chunk of bread was drying in the sun.

  Now, for the first time, Boussus’ face fell, as when he was worried about his liver, and his eyes had the look of marbles that have rolled in the wet.

  Could it not have been a dream? Or was it true? That Jules had really returned in this—how to say it—this unearthly frame of mind?

  Boussus pulled a large red handkerchief from his pocket to clean his blurred sunglasses.

  He wondered.

  But no! There was no one. No boat. No bette!

  He leaned over to look back at the Mèdes rock and was about to feel reassured.

  It was, however, the right date. He had figured it out. Starting with the day of Jules Mauvoisin’s escape, he had had time, allowing for difficulties, to take a boat to France, to go to the north, and from there to track down Boussus and reach Porquerolles.

  He had figured this for so many years! Over and over again!

  All the rest was true—the feet sticking out from the closet, the limp body in the sack, the light truck, the canal.

  And, above all, the anonymous letter!

  Why had Boussus behaved that way? Frankly, he was beginning to have doubts about it now. Was it to have Fernande only for himself? Or to avoid sharing the 700,000 francs?

  He had been living ever since in anguish, in fear. Could it be that out there they were that well guarded?