by Mark Hebden
This, he decided, was a watershed in his life. His wife seemed nothing like as nervous as he was. After all, he thought, she was a widow and, having been through it all before, doubtless knew how to handle the situation. He drew a deep breath and was just heading for the bed, when he heard a squeal of brakes nearby then a yell just outside. As he swung round sharply he heard running feet and something sliding down the steep stone-and-scree slope that led to the house.
Swearing under his breath, he turned to the door. Why did God have it in for him so? Not even on his wedding night was he going to be blessed with peace. Some drunk from the village was coming to create an uproar and disturb the emotional balance – delicate enough on any honeymoon, on Pel’s positively hair-trigger. He had been hoping against hope that for once in his life he would acquit himself well but he couldn’t imagine such a possibility with a horde of lunatics outside yelling their heads off.
The slithering footsteps stopped and they heard a thump, as if someone had fallen, and the sound of moaning. For a moment, Pel and his wife looked at each other in silence then Pel peered through the slats in the ventilator set in the door. He knew he ought to go and investigate, but he was seething with anger at the prospect.
‘Do take care!’
The way Pel felt at that moment, he thought, it was the intruder who would have to take care. He’d brought his pistol with him, as he always did, and he had a feeling that if it had been handy he might even have shot him.
He opened the door and peered out. The sky had cleared and in the light of the waning moon, he saw a man lying on his face at the bottom of the slope, his arms outspread, his head in shadow. With Madame, once more hurriedly clothed in her housecoat, peering out behind him, Pel stepped outside. The wind from the sea hit him like a knife.
Moving warily to the unconscious figure, he bent down and touched it, ready for tricks. He’d heard of idiots who made a wedding night chaos with their antics and it was just possible, despite their efforts to prevent it, that someone on the island had learned about their new estate. For a moment even, he wondered if one of his team had put them up to it. But, no, they wouldn’t dare. They knew Pel’s temper too well, though there was always Sergeant Misset, who was a fool. With his own marriage rapidly heading for the rocks, Misset liked to pester the girls in the typing pool at the Hôtel de Police and it was just possible he might consider it joke enough to pay someone to disrupt Pel’s honeymoon.
But, as the light from the door fell on the silent figure, he saw it was Caceolari, the taxi driver. He was dressed, as they’d last seen him when he’d brought them to the Villa des Roses, in shirt and trousers and rope-soled shoes, and there was a spreading stain on his back. Staring down, Pel realised that his own hands where he’d touched him were red and shining.
‘Open that door wider!’
There was an unexpected briskness in his voice and Madame didn’t hesitate. She had already learned that Pel engaged on police business was a very different man from the Pel who had nervously wooed and married her. Pel was a split personality every bit of the way, uncertain in his private life but more than confident in his professional one. She jerked the door wide and it was then that Pel saw that Caceolari’s shirt was soaked with blood.
‘Better find a towel,’ he said. ‘Something to use as a swab. He must have fallen down the slope. He’s badly hurt.’
Madame was just heading for the kitchen as Pel started to turn Caceolari on to his back. What he saw made him catch his breath and he held up his hand, stopping Madame in her tracks.
‘Don’t bother,’ he said. Someone had attacked Caceolari and they had made no mistake. There was a deep wound in his chest and he was already quite dead.
Three
The courtyard was filled with people. The story had got around quickly and at the top of the hill more people were standing with their mouths open, taking everything in. There were always people at the scene of a crime. They’d have appeared, Pel decided, if it had been committed in outer space.
Policemen were standing in a group near the body. Their uniforms were shabby and their belts and buttons unpolished. Two of them at least looked as though they hadn’t shaved and one of them was toying with his gun, which, even at a distance, looked to Pel as if it was inclined to be rusty. A doctor was bent over the body. He wore a straw hat on the back of his head and from beneath it fell long grey straggly hair that looked none too clean. His suit was unpressed and creased and the cuffs were frayed; on his feet he wore the canvas-topped shoes that everybody on the island wore. The whole bunch of them looked a little unsavoury and it seemed to Pel that they needed a good sergeant-major to liven them up. Surprisingly unterrified by all that had happened, Madame was in the kitchen making coffee for everyone, while Pel himself watched from the sidelines, missing nothing. At first he had been regarded with suspicion by the police as just another interfering holidaymaker who doubtless made a habit of slaughtering taxi drivers for fun, but later, when they had demanded his papers and his identity had become known, with some reverence as a man who had forgotten more about crime than the locals would learn in a lifetime.
When it had finally dawned on him what had happened, it had occurred to him that the obvious thing to do was call the police, but there was no telephone and he could hardly leave his new wife alone in a house where the doors didn’t lock properly when there might well be a criminal lunatic prowling around. In the end, his gun hurriedly stuffed into his pocket, they had set off together up the slope where, within a few hundred yards, hidden among the olives, they had discovered the cottage of a smallholder called Murati surrounded by chicken runs and garden.
It had taken a long time to get the police because the Muratis’ old van didn’t work and Pel had forbidden Murati to touch Caceolari’s battered vehicle, which was standing outside, in case it carried fingerprints. As Murati had finally departed – none too willingly – on a bicycle, his wife had ushered the Pels into the kitchen where she had produced a bottle of brandy and offered it round. The interior of the house was small and very ugly, with all the chrome fittings peasants loved so much, but at least Madame Pel was safe there, and after helping himself to the bottle even Pel began to feel happier and managed to slip away to prowl round the grounds. He found nothing and when the police arrived, everybody, including Madame, returned down the slope to the greater space and comfort of the Villa des Roses.
The police on the island were administered by a brigadier called Beauregard, who was obsequious, overweight, crafty-looking and, like his men, seemed as though he never stood close enough to his razor. At that moment, he was staring down at the body. ‘Il a cassé sa pipe,’ he observed to the doctor. ‘Kicked the bucket all right.’
The doctor looked up. He had a face that looked as if he’d been wearing it a long time and it was becoming a little threadbare. ‘I’d have said that was fairly obvious,’ he said tartly. ‘Who did it?’
‘God only knows.’
The doctor gave the brigadier a sour look. ‘I knew we had some important people on this island,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t know they were as important as that.’
As the brigadier and the doctor talked, Pel studied the Villa des Roses. It was clearly a fraud. The electricity had twice failed for an hour and the machinery which worked the pump in the well below the property had broken down so that all the water for the coffee was being transported from the smallholder’s place up the scree slope. Now that it was daylight, Pel noticed also that the gutterings were falling off and the one on the end of the building, he could see, would in a heavy rainstorm direct its contents straight into the bedroom, while, since all the rainwater would run off the slopes down the hill, the courtyard itself would inevitably be flooded and in turn flood the house. Obviously the place had been built in a hurry by a one-armed bricklayer and a boy with a fretsaw, and while it might suffice for hot weather it certainly wouldn’t do when it rained or the wind blew. In addition, the private beach which had been advertised turned out
to be a narrow-gutted oil-covered inlet into the cliffs filled with small boulders on which it would be quite impossible to lie or even sit down in the sun, and, as Pel had discovered while searching round the place for any signs of who it was who had killed Caceolari, it could only be reached by a hair-raising climb down a narrow path overhanging the cliff.
The police were still talking with the doctor as he sat on the verandah and drank a cup of coffee. The affair was none of his business and he was quite happy to leave it to someone else.
‘What shall we do?’ he asked his wife. ‘Go home?’
‘Oh, no!’ Madame was far less frightened than he’d expected her to be. ‘We’re on our honeymoon.’
‘Well, we can’t stay here. Even if we wanted to, the police wouldn’t let us. They’ll seal the place up.’
‘Perhaps we can find somewhere else. This place’s hopeless anyway. It’s my fault entirely.’
He took her hand and kissed it. Pel could be gallant with Madame even if he couldn’t with anybody else.
‘We could perhaps find a hotel,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll get a taxi–’
‘Unless that poor man’s taxi was the only one on the island. It might well have been. And I’d still rather have a house. It won’t be difficult The season hasn’t started. We’ll see the Duponts. They’ll fix something.’
‘They’d better,’ Pel said darkly. ‘And we’d better settle for somewhere in the village. I’ve just discovered that this place is two kilometres outside. You go along the cliffs, climb down a path which, I gather, is infested with adders, cross the beach, climb the other side, then walk along the road. Without a car it would take half an hour and we’d have to carry everything we ate or drank. And wine,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘is heavy.’
After a while, the brigadier disappeared. When he returned he was accompanied by a tall slender man who was immaculately dressed in a way that reminded Pel of an aristocrat prepared for the guillotine. He wore a silk scarf at his throat as if it were a cravat, and his shirt cuffs were frilled. From them emerged wrists so slight they looked barely strong enough to lift a cup of coffee. His neck was the same, stalk-like, supporting a large head which consisted of narrow cheeks, penetrating blue eyes and a large beak of a nose. The grey hair that surrounded it was over-long and seemed to have been artificially waved. Like everybody else, he wore the canvas rope-soled slippers.
Brigadier Beauregard, shifty-looking as ever, approached Pel. ‘We’ve a request to put to you, sir,’ he said.
‘Oh? What’s that?’
‘We thought you’d like to take over the case.’ Pel was startled. Recovering, he glared at the sergeant. ‘You’ve got another think coming,’ he said coldly.
Beauregard shrugged. ‘Well, there’s no detective force on this island. Just me and five men. That’s all. We decided–’
‘Who decided?’ Pel snapped.
‘I did,’ the man behind Beauregard said.
‘And who’re you?’
‘I am the authority on this island. Prosecutor, judge, jury, lawmaker. Everything.’ The tall man held out his hand. ‘I’m the Vicomte de la Rochemare. I own the island. I have a place over the hill, overlooking the Vieux Port where you doubtless arrived. When the brigadier’s in a dilemma he comes to me.’
‘Then,’ Pel said shortly, ‘you’d better think again. I have my wife here with me. I can’t just abandon her. Besides,’ he added as an afterthought, ‘I had intended to do a little fishing.’
‘I fear you’ll have to forget it for a little, Chief Inspector.’ Rochemare held out a telegram form. ‘I telephoned the Chief of Police in Nice who agreed to telephone your own Chief of Police, who agreed half an hour ago that we should have the benefit of your skill. This is proof in the form of a telegram.’
Pel almost snatched the piece of paper. He saw his own name and that of the Chief. He looked up at Rochemare. If looks could have killed, Rochemare would have dropped dead on the spot.
‘I’ve just got married,’ Pel snarled. ‘I’m on my honeymoon.’
Rochemare became all apologies at once, ‘I had no idea, of course,’ he said.
Somehow, Pel didn’t believe him. A man who obviously had a finger in every pie on the island would have known not only his identity within minutes of him landing but also why he was there. Vicomte or no Vicomte, he made his feelings very clear and demanded to speak to his Chief.
‘But of course, of course.’ The Vicomte gestured at Beauregard. ‘Arrange for the Chief Inspector to use the telephone.’
Pel glared. It was a damned odd set-up, he thought, when a brigadier of police, a sergeant no less, took his orders from a civilian.
While Rochemare graciously agreed to take coffee with Madame Pel, Pel and Beauregard stamped up the scree slope to the Muratis’ house. Beauregard didn’t beat about the bush.
‘We want to use your telephone to get in touch with the mainland,’ he said.
Murati looked alarmed. ‘Why not use your own?’
‘Because–’ Beauregard leaned over him ‘–because it’s too far away. That’s why.’
‘But the mainland! That’ll be expensive. Who’s going to pay? The police?’
‘Rochemare’s paying. He sent us.’
Murati still looked unhappy but it was obvious that Rochemare’s word was law on St Yves.
The telephone was in the kitchen and they had to remove the carcass of a chicken Madame Murati had been plucking, feathers, dirty plates, and a cat which was sleeping on the telephone wire. Beauregard asked for the operator and gave instructions. Not a number, Pel noticed, just instructions.
‘And look slippy,’ he said. ‘The Vicomte’s in this.’
He slammed the telephone back. ‘She’ll ring back,’ he announced.
As they waited, he turned to Pel. ‘I knew a Pel once, Chief,’ he said. ‘He was a policeman, too. Avignon, I think it was.’
Pel didn’t like people relating him to other policemen. He felt he was unique. ‘Sure it wasn’t Aix?’ he asked.
‘That’s it, Chief! Aix.’
‘Sacked for corruption,’ Pel said shortly. ‘Got away with half a million francs. Had an “in” on half the bordels in the city.’
Beauregard’s expression didn’t alter. ‘The Vicomte’s all right,’ he said encouragingly.
Pel said nothing. He wasn’t often involved with the gratin but he felt he could handle them.
‘Family came from Aquitaine.’
Pel ignored the observation. In Aquitaine the upper crust talked a lot about Queen Eleanor who’d married Henry of Anjou who became King of England, and even tried to pretend to be related. They gave their dogs English names, claimed to know the Kennedys and the Onassis family and sent their children to English universities for their accents.
The telephone call was slow coming through so they used the time to question Murati and his wife. They hadn’t heard a thing they considered at all unusual. Just the braking of a car and shortly afterwards a second. Then they’d heard shouts and one of the cars had started up and left in a hurry. Thinking that perhaps the new occupants of the Villa des Roses were having visitors, they had taken no notice because holidaymakers often had noisy parties and they’d not realised what had been happening until they’d been wakened by Pel.
The telephone rang. It was the Chief. Considering him guilty of the basest treachery, Pel let him have it loud and clear. The Chief listened silently then he asked quietly, ‘What does your wife say?’
Pel stopped in mid-tirade. ‘I haven’t asked her,’ he admitted.
‘Perhaps you’d better. If she has no objections, I can’t see why you have.’
Pel suddenly wondered if the Chief had known his wife before he had, but he dismissed the thought quickly.
‘We’ve had this request through Nice,’ the Chief went on. ‘They’re fully occupied. Six murders in one go. You’ll have read about them. That’s enough to fill anybody’s day. And since you’re there, they thought you might be able to sort thi
ngs out before the trail goes cold.’
‘I’m supposed to be here for a fortnight,’ Pel snorted. ‘What happens if it takes longer?’
‘Darcy can hold the fort here. We can doubtless arrange something. It won’t come off your leave, so in effect it’ll be an extra holiday with pay, won’t it?’
‘A working holiday,’ Pel snapped. ‘And there’ll have to be a few arrangements made here for our comfort.’
‘See that they’re made. If they want you, they’ve got to make things easy. If they don’t, you up sticks and come home. You’ve got the sort of reputation these days that allows you to behave like a prima ballerina.’
Pel’s eyebrows shot up. A modest but ambitious man, he hadn’t realised he’d become that well known. Perhaps he’d do well to avoid embittering his declining years with too many signs of disapproval.
‘See that Nice gives you all the help you need,’ the Chief insisted. ‘They’ll pay all expenses with this Vicomte de la Rochemare, of course. He made the request.’
A little dazed to find he was important enough for VIP treatment, Pel returned to the Villa des Roses. The Vicomte and Madame Pel were busy with coffee, though as the door opened the Vicomte was holding Madame’s hand and leaning forward in a way that suggested he was practised at all the social arts. Doubtless, Pel decided, he was an accomplished seducer and obviously he didn’t consider he’d overstepped the mark because he didn’t let go in a hurry, while Madame clearly found his charm to her taste and didn’t seem to find anything odd about it.
Pel announced stiffly what had happened and agreed that it might be possible if his wife agreed. Rochemare was all apologies and smiles.