by Mark Hebden
‘Where was he going?’
‘Home.’
‘Did he come often?’
‘He didn’t live here.’
‘But he came regularly?’
‘Perhaps once a week. About that.’
‘Can you remember the last time? Before the night he was killed.’
‘Yes. It was my birthday. He brought me some flowers. Wild flowers. It was a funny little gesture but it was well meant. They were already wilting and I threw them away the next morning. He left about midnight.’
‘What day was this?’
‘My birthday was the 12th. It was the day after. He was a bit late.’
‘And he didn’t come again until the night he was killed?’
‘No.’
‘Forgive me asking this question, Madame,’ Pel said. ‘But it has to be asked. What was your relationship with him?’
She seemed unperturbed. ‘We were friends. What else would we be?’
There were a lot of things they could be. Lovers. Partners in crime.
‘For your information,’ she said, ‘I’m retired. And in any case I didn’t go in for that sort of thing. Not even when I was in business. I arranged for other people to do it.’
Pel paused. ‘He got around the island a lot,’ he said. ‘Inevitably. He was a taxi-driver. Did he ever go any further? The mainland, for instance? Italy? Ferries run from here to Nice and from here to Galvi in Corsica.’
Beauregard answered the question. ‘Sometimes he went to the mainland.’
Madame Robles shrugged. ‘For spare parts for that old rattletrap he ran. Not for much else.’
‘He went around twice a month,’ Beauregard pointed out.
‘Surely he didn’t need all that many spare parts.’
Beauregard gestured. ‘He did errands for people about the island. Rochemare used him when he wanted things and there was nobody else. He ordered them by telephone and if they couldn’t be sent Caceolari went to fetch them. I got him to bring things for me. So did Fleurie. Or at least he did before he ran off with the Pinchon woman.’
‘Did he ever go to Corsica?’
‘Not that I know of. But he might have. The Vicomte imports a few things from there. He might have gone to pick up something for him.’
‘Did he talk about any of these places the night he brought you flowers?’
Madame Robles shook her head. ‘Not really. A little bit about those murders in Nice. The radio was going on about them. Just generally most of the time, though.’
‘And what about the last time? The night he was killed. What did you talk about that night? Apart from his wife?’
Madame Robles paused. ‘Nothing much. He seemed a bit worried.’
‘What about?’
She hesitated. ‘He didn’t say.’
It seemed to Pel that she wasn’t telling him all the truth and he would need to see her again. Perhaps without Beauregard, because he’d already decided that Beauregard was probably receiving hand-outs and wasn’t told things in case he passed the information on to the people who gave him his hand-outs.
Madame Robles was frowning. ‘He said he’d been to see someone,’ she volunteered.
‘About this thing he was worried about?’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘But he didn’t say what it was? He gave no hint?’
‘No. He could be pretty close-mouthed when he wanted to. He saw a lot that he shouldn’t. He went all over the island and was always coming on things.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Well, he knew about Fleurie and the Pinchon woman before anyone else. I knew that. He’d seen them together more than once.’
‘But he gave you no idea what it was this time?’
‘No. He just said something about going to see someone.’
‘Who was it?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘A lawyer?’
‘He certainly didn’t come and see me,’ Beauregard said.
Madame Robles shrugged. ‘I got on all right with him,’ she said. ‘He made me laugh. But I didn’t know anything about his private life.’
‘Did you ever go with him on his trips to the mainland?’
‘To Nice?’ She laughed. ‘With Caceolari? You have to be joking. He was a nice little man I was always pleased to see, but I wouldn’t go to Nice with somebody who dressed as he did. Blue suit. Hat that looked as if it were made of wood. White shirt. Black tie. No thank you. When I go to Nice, I go to enjoy myself. I have friends there.’
What sort of friends, Pel wondered. ‘What about his wife?’ he asked. ‘Do you know her?’
‘I’ve met her. She didn’t impress me much. It’s no wonder he liked to come up here.’
‘Did he often give you the impression that he was worried?’
‘Not often. Sometimes. Chiefly when he was short of money. But everybody’s worried about that these days, aren’t they? There’s not enough of it about. Tourists are in short supply. Prices have shot up.’
And, Pel thought, the Russians are about to roll up the map of Europe and scatter atom bombs like confetti over the whole of creation. It was a gloomy prospect to a man newly entered into the state of wedded bliss.
Seven
De Troquereau arrived that evening. A room had already been unobtrusively booked for him in one of the smaller hotels.
To Pel’s surprise, Nice Police flew him over in a helicopter, which at least showed they were carrying out their end of the bargain, and he arrived full of energy and looking as bright as a stockbroker anticipating a profitable day. His handsome intelligent head turned to study the island, small, neat, his hair crisp and neatly cut. Though he claimed to be the impoverished son of an Auvergnat nobleman, he never seemed to be without money. Perhaps poverty was a relative thing, because his hair was always well-trimmed, his clothes were good and he normally drove a vast car with headlamps like lighthouses, enormous wheels and a flat old-fashioned bonnet secured by a strap. It looked as if it had once raced at Le Mans and probably had.
‘How’re things?’ Pel asked.
De Troq’ shrugged. ‘Same as always. Fighting crime. Darcy pulled in that type we thought was involved in the bank hold-up at Avallon. He was. He burst into tears and admitted it. Misset fell down on an arrest. And Nosjean’s in love again.’
Pel smiled at De Troq’s cool summing up. He liked to use De Troq’ at times to intimidate people. His car was enough to shake all but the most innocent and his title made people think Pel was head of the Sûreté from Paris. As an accompanying choreography, when he was addressed by Pel, De Troq’ had developed a small heel-clicking routine that made people think Pel was personal adviser on state secrets to the President of the Republic.
He had brought newspapers from Nice but, apart from the usual lechery, fraud and mayhem at home and the political fiddling and butchery abroad, they contained little of interest. As Pel had expected, the Ile de St Yves was so unimportant to the rest of France that the murder of a simple taxi-driver there hadn’t roused the slightest interest on the mainland where the press was still busy solving to their own satisfaction the murders in the Bar-Tabac de la Porte.
Taking him back to the Duponts’ house, where Nelly took one look at his handsome features and immediately showed unmistakeable signs of interest, they collected Madame and headed for Riccio’s restaurant in the belief that there what they had to say wouldn’t be overheard. Immediately they discovered some of the problems of living on a small island before the holiday season had got going. The menu was exactly the same as the previous evening.
‘No lobster?’ Pel asked.
‘No, Monsieur.’ Riccio was apologetic.
‘No mullet?’
Riccio shrugged sadly and they settled for swordfish again. After all it had been good, though Pel didn’t fancy eating it for the rest of his stay. ‘It might be a good idea to find somewhere else tomorrow,’ he murmured.
‘We have a car at our disposal,’ Ma
dame said quietly. ‘Two cars, in fact. The Duponts’ cars. Yesterday I saw them driving that old Diane.’
Pel capped it. ‘I saw them walking,’ he said. Though they ate much the same as they’d eaten the day before, even to charcoal on the fish, De Troq’ – who, despite his slight frame, had the appetite of a weight-lifter – never seemed to stop. Since all expenses were on the Vicomte de la Rochemare, it seemed, he said, a pity not to take advantage of it, and he appeared to be stoking up while it was free, for the next three years. Madame watched him fascinated.
As they ate, Pel explained what had happened and, to his surprise, Madame took all the horror out of it by describing as if it were a huge joke the Villa des Roses, the problems of fastening the doors, and the difficulties of taking a bath.
De Troq, had had a few difficulties of his own. ‘Nice head-quarters had to be pushed a bit,’ he said. ‘They were in a bit of a state. Those murders, of course.’
‘A gang job?’ Pel asked.
‘There was some problems over identification but they’ve discovered they were part of Tagliatti’s mob.’
Pel frowned. He’d bumped into Maurice Tagliatti once before in the Miollis murder. Not very seriously, though, and the death hadn’t worried him much. When gangsters got themselves bumped off he didn’t lose much sleep. It saved him a lot of trouble.
De Troq’ had fished out one of the newspapers he’d brought with him. ‘They’ve got their names now, though,’ he said. ‘Paul Richet, known as The Chinese, aged 42. Jean Epaulard, aged 23. Gérard Grimeaud, also 23. Jean Bernard, aged 19, known as La Petite Fleur. He was the runner for the gang. Marcel Bayon, 25. And Michel Cerbet, 39, known as Mick the Brick. It seems he used to be a bricklayer. Know them, Patron?’
‘Not to my knowledge, thank God.’
‘Covering all the usual interests. Pimping. Brothels. Protection rackets. It seems they were all at the bar when these three other types appeared in the doorway, one with the tommy gun, the other two with pistols. The landlord saw them coming in the doorway and dived behind the counter. Glasses, mirrors, bottles and chunks of bar went flying and when he lifted his head, four of them were dead. The other two were dead within an hour. No weapons have been found.’
Madame pulled a face and Pel had to apologise for their shop talk.
‘What about the three gunmen? Any identities?’
‘None at all. The police have their suspicions, of course.’
‘Part of another gang?’
‘Nobody knows yet and Tagliatti’s not around for questioning. He’s disappeared. His lawyer says he’s in Switzerland doing a bit of tax dodging. On the other hand, it might be because the police want to interview him over that murder in Marseilles two years ago – type called De Fé, Boris de Fé. He was part of the upper crust, I believe.’
Pel sniffed and De Troq’ continued enthusiastically. ‘All the same, his business dealings were somewhat open to question, it seems, and he allowed his name to be used by a couple of dubious Paris types as collateral for a two-million franc loan to purchase a group of petrol stations.
‘Wasn’t it accompanied by an insurance policy on De Fé’s life?’ Pel asked. ‘So that when he was murdered the loan was paid off and a type called Hoff and his friends became sole owners of the group.’
‘That’s the case, Patron.’
‘Was Tagliatti involved in that?’
‘The Marseilles police think so. There’s no proof, of course. There never is. And when the investigations got too close for comfort he went to ground. It won’t stop him operating, of course. There are such things as telephones. Catching these three with the tommy gun’s going to be tricky. Everybody has cast-iron alibis. Good ones, too. They can’t be faulted.’
‘Eye witnesses?’
‘Not one.’
‘What about the owner of the bar? And, from what I remember, there were other customers. And wasn’t there a barmaid who had hysterics afterwards? And what about the old dear serving at the cigarette counter?’
‘They swore they didn’t see any faces.’
‘Same old problem. Everybody scared to talk.’
‘They said they were strangers.
‘From where?’
De Troq’ looked up and smiled. ‘Here, perhaps?’ he suggested.
Pel was silent for a while and he noticed that Madame was watching with bright eyes. He could have sworn she was enjoying herself.
‘Caceolari,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going to set up a headquarters in Beauregard’s office. We’ll do all our business there. But–’ he paused ‘–we’ll not put anything on paper and we’ll not discuss anything there that we feel should be kept quiet. I don’t trust the people on this island. Among them Beauregard. I also don’t trust the telephone. It’s still a hand-operated exchange and the operator listens in and could well be in somebody’s pay.’
De Troq’ nodded his approval.
‘We shall make the Duponts’ house the real headquarters,’ Pel went on. ‘You’ll come for tea or coffee or a meal and we’ll discuss the real business then.’
Madame beamed. ‘Perhaps I can help. I learned shorthand when I was a girl. It’ll give me something to do.’
‘Very well,’ Pel agreed. ‘You can run the murder room.’
‘What’s a murder room?’
‘Normally it has typewriters, files, telephones, card index systems, dozens of clerks and policemen, and Inspector Goriot to see it runs properly. Here, there’ll be no files or card index systems. It’ll consist chiefly of the kitchen table and your pen.’
Since the crime had occurred on the back doorstep of the Villa des Roses, its owner needed to be investigated in case he’d been running a criminal empire from one of the bedrooms, but he turned out to be an inoffensive English writer who’d bought the land five years before, built the villa for a holiday home, and hadn’t been near the island for ages.
‘He got diddled,’ Beauregard said.
‘I’ll say he got diddled,’ Pel said. ‘Who was the builder?’
‘Guy from the mainland. In prison at the moment for fiddling. The English type’s still trying to get some of his money back.’
‘I imagine,’ Pel said dryly, ‘that it will take some time.’
Since the owner could be written off at once, inevitably the Duponts were next on the list and it gave Pel enormous pleasure to have them in front of him in Beauregard’s office.
‘Why have we been brought here?’ The wide encouraging smiles with which they had greeted Pel and his wife on their first evening on the island were conspicuous by their absence.
When Pel explained, Dupont exploded into tones of high dudgeon, as if he’d just been ejected by the police from a dubious night club. ‘It’s nothing to do with me!’ he said. ‘I’ve never been in trouble before! I’ve always been straightforward!’
‘Always?’ Pel asked silkily. ‘Would it surprise you to know I’m considering sueing you for false pretences over a little matter of the Villa des Roses?’
Dupont simmered down abruptly but it was pretty obvious that, apart from letting badly aired, crumbling houses to chief inspectors of the Police Judiciaire and their new wives, he was not in the habit of indulging in criminal activities.
‘Anybody else been in the house recently?’ Pel asked coldly.
‘Nobody.’ Dupont glanced at his wife. ‘We tried all last season to let it,’ he said sourly. ‘But the word seems to get around. There were no takers.
‘Which will doubtless account for the dampness of the beds,’ Pel said, ‘and the fact that nothing worked.’
‘It’s the salt air,’ Madame Dupont said. ‘Having the sea on both sides. You could always air the beds by heating big pebbles from the beach in the oven, of course, and putting them between the sheets.’
Pel waved them away. They each had their own car – when they weren’t being used by visiting chief inspectors and their wives, of course – had never called on Caceolari for transport, were obviously unconnected with t
he case and didn’t seem to know anyone who might have been. ‘I think you can go,’ he said.
They still hadn’t heard of the result of the autopsy on Caceolari and when they tried to find Doctor Nicolas, he was not at his home near Mortcerf, where they were greeted by the solitary occupant, a tatty-looking ginger cat, nor in the untidy surgery he ran in the Vieux Port. In the end they found him seated in one of the dozens of chairs set in rows outside the tourist bars near the harbour, with an empty glass in front of him.
He seemed to suffer like everybody else on the island except the Vicomte and his retinue from being unable to stand close enough to his razor, and a grey stubble darkened his cheeks. His moustache was stained yellow by the nicotine from the cigarette that hung permanently under his nose, and because it had the hollow sound of a grave about it, his cough was a warning to Pel that he ought to make another serious attempt to give up smoking. He didn’t think he’d ever manage it, of course, because he’d already tried everything but acupuncture.
What the old doctor considered to be an autopsy didn’t fit Pel’s idea of one. The most that appeared to have been done was the tracing of the path of the wounds with a probe.
‘There were four,’ Nicolas said. ‘Three at the back and one at the front. All done by a long-bladed knife no more than two centimetres wide. What Italians and vendettists call a stiletto.
Because the season had still not got going, the expanse of red, yellow and blue plastic chairs was not much occupied and they seemed lost in their centre. A few obvious holidaymakers clutched their beach umbrellas and sunbathing mats, their bags full of sunburn lotion, knitting and books. There were also a few youngsters along the harbour wall, all already as bronzed as Indians and wearing clothes that were remarkable chiefly for their raggedness. They seemed to work among the hired yachts and dinghies, and from their accents they were students who would be spending the summer pretending to work for holiday companies while, in fact, having a thoroughly enjoyable time whooping it up together.
Pel stared about him. It was a strange place to receive an autopsy report, and Doctor Nicolas was somewhat different from Doctor Minet who performed the duty in the city where Pel normally operated, who was precise, tidy and exact in details.