by Mark Hebden
‘So why this meal you had together?’
‘She asked for it. I think she was in need of money.’
‘What for? To go to Brittany, for instance?’
Crussol pulled a face. ‘It would be like her. She was a bit mad—’
‘Mad?’
‘Spooky. You know: She did weird things and she didn’t have many ethics. She wouldn’t have recognised an ethic if she’d met one on the stairs.’ Crussol scratched his head. It dislodged a small fragment of stone that fell into his beer. He studied it for a second, took a deep drink and poured what was left on the floor. ‘I decided I was beginning to do all right,’ he went on. ‘My mother died a year ago and left me this place. Old Panique never seemed to stay anywhere for long but I thought she was beginning to fancy a bit of security and I was fond of her in a way. You know how it is. Perhaps I was getting broody. I agreed to meet her.’
‘How did she get to Mongy? Had she transport?’
‘She could drive, I know, because once last year she turned up in her sister’s husband’s car. She didn’t tell her sister and there was a hell of a row. But I didn’t see her with a car at Mongy so I assumed she’d come on the bus.’
Pel produced the photographs of the Lucie necklet. ‘Ever seen that before?’ he asked.
‘Is it valuable?’
‘Yes. It was found on her body.’
‘If you think I gave it to her, you have to be joking. I couldn’t afford a set of plastic beads.’ Crussol grinned. ‘My women have to take me as I am, without the additions of jewellery, jet flights to Florida, a château on the Loire and a summer home at St. Trop’.’
‘Was she wearing it when you saw her?’
‘If she had been, I’d probably have asked her to pawn it and lend me the proceeds.’
‘Did she seem happy?’
‘We had a smashing evening.’
‘The proprietor thought you were quarrelling.’
Crussol laughed. ‘That was nothing. We were always throwing things at each other. She was a dead shot. Once hit me on the head with a saucepan from across the kitchen. Iron one. Knocked me cold.’
‘What was the quarrel about?’
‘Me. I asked her to marry me.’ Crussol gestured. ‘I need someone to look after me. I never seem to get around to that sort of thing myself. I get absorbed in what I’m doing and forget to eat. It’s obvious. You’ve only got to look around. It was only a working arrangement I was thinking of, but I’d done the place up. Inside and out. I got the paint cheap from a garage. It’s for car bodies actually, and it’ll peel in time, but it looks all right, don’t you think? She didn’t think much of the idea.’
‘Was there someone else?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she say who?’
‘No. But there was a type she knew called Pineau – Paul Pineau. I thought it might be him.’
‘Know where he lives?’
‘No. But the girl she shared a flat with in Besançon might.’
‘Name?’
Crussol grinned. ‘Name of God, you are inquisitive, you lot. Déon or Léon. Héon, that was it. Odette Héon.’
‘Did you know she was pregnant?’
Crussol’s eyes lifted. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Poor old Panique!’
‘Was it you?’
‘No. We never – well, hardly ever. She was always keen, you see, and I seduce easily. But it was a long time ago. Over a year. I hadn’t seen her since until we met at Mongy.’
It seemed that Dominique Pigny had made the arrange-ment to meet by telephone.
‘For a change I’d paid the bill,’ Crussol said. ‘And it wasn’t cut off.’
She had had money and her clothes had looked good. Normally she wore jeans but on this occasion she’d been wearing what looked like an expensive dress for a change. Crussol had no idea where she had telephoned from or where she was living.
‘She wouldn’t tell me,’ he said. ‘She just said she’d got a job.’
‘What was it? What did she do?’
Crussol shrugged. ‘All sorts of things. She got into university but dropped out after a year. Then she did some modelling for me. She didn’t like it much, though. I work from the heart and I just set up the stone and let fly. And when I’m at work you could fire a howitzer in my ear. She didn’t like being made to look square either. “Head, neck, tits, bum,” she used to say. “Always a square block.” But if you see things as squares that’s how you have to cut ’em up, isn’t it? Then she used to complain that I didn’t give her enough rests. Perhaps I didn’t – I forget when I’m busy – and she used to howl that her leg had gone dead. In the end she threw a hammer at me.’ He gestured at the window. There was a broken pane. ‘I’ll have to put that in one of these days.’
There was a long pause before Pel spoke again. ‘What about your wife?’ he asked.
‘She left me. She didn’t like square tits either.’ Crussol sighed. ‘It was a mistake from the beginning. She had hands like coal grabs and when she took her clothes off, she had feet like flippers.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Haven’t the foggiest. She threw the soup at me one evening and walked out of the door. I’ve never seen her since. I heard she’d set up house with a type in Limoges, but I don’t know.’
‘Did she know about Dominique Pigny?’
‘She’d gone long before Dominique moved in. I suppose it was my fault she left. I used to insist on her stripping off and sitting for me but in those days we couldn’t afford any heating so like old Panic she always ended up blue with cold. I used to have to uncoil her when she took a rest, she was so frozen. I ought to have noticed, I suppose, but you can’t spend all your time looking at the model to see if she’s all right, can you? They always seem all right until they fall off the chair in a dead faint. I suppose women aren’t as strong as men. She said she couldn’t go on. I suppose she couldn’t. She wasn’t very bright but she was a good looker and not bad in bed.’
There was another pause. ‘Have you ever been to Drax?’ Pel asked.
‘That place where there are those caves?’
‘That’s right.’
‘They found a body there, didn’t they? A million years old.’
‘Yes. Ever been there?’
‘No.’
‘How about Dominique Pigny? Had she?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Did she ever mention them?’
‘No.’
‘What happened after she left you?’
‘She worked in a shop. Selling clothes. For this Pineau type. Then she disappeared for a bit and took a shorthand and typing course. But she never worked at it. She decided she didn’t like office work. Then she tried a hospital, but she said everybody being ill made her miserable. She also worked in a bookshop. Once for a time she got a job looking after horses somewhere. But it didn’t suit. She was a bit of a drifter really. I thought if we got married, it would stop. But—’ Crussol sighed ‘—perhaps it wouldn’t. I expect I’d have made her unhappy. I usually seem to.’
‘Are you unhappy?’ Darcy asked. He spoke briskly, because Darcy had probably never been unhappy in his life. If anyone was master of his fate and captain of his soul Darcy was.
Crussol studied him as if he realised it. It was hard not to, because it shone out of Darcy’s spotless shirt and immaculate suit, out of his closely-shaven chin and neatly-cut hair and the strong white teeth that showed every time he smiled.
‘Sure I’m happy,’ he said. ‘Give me a block of stone and a chisel and I’m as happy as a kid on its pot.’
‘Think he did it, Patron?’ Darcy asked as they drove homewards.
Pel shrugged. ‘We’ll let Le Bihan sort that one out,’ he said. ‘It still seems to be his case.’
When they reached the office, Claudie appeared. She had edged forward another notch.
‘I’ve found a woman whose mother made hats here during the war,’ she said. ‘She lives in Tournus. I’ve arrange
d to see her tomorrow. For a time she ran a shop here for a Paris firm that had premises all over the country. They went bust during the war when material became hard to get, and she got married and stayed at home to look after her family. But, because she didn’t know what to do with them, she kept all the records. She’s still got the customer list in the cellar and she’s going to dig it out for me. It might take a day or two. She’s not as young as she was.’
‘A lot of people aren’t as young as they were,’ Pel said, thinking of Madame Caous and the ancient corpse they’d found at Drax. ‘In fact, we seem to be knee-deep in geriatrics.’
Eleven
Two days later, Le Bihan arrived in Pel’s office, his vast bulk looking like a badly set jelly in the heat.
‘Thought I’d like to see this Crussol type,’ he said. ‘I might be able to break him down a bit. Want to come along?’
‘It’s your case,’ Pel pointed out.
He took Le Bihan to lunch at the Central where Le Bihan, as Pel – with one eye on his expenses sheet – had feared, ate enough for three, before being sent on to Villiers with Aimedieu as guide and counsellor.
De Troquereau was still pursuing his enquiry into Madame Boyer’s missing ducks. Pel didn’t interfere. Like Nosjean, De Troq’ was one of Pel’s favourites and, because he was a baron, Pel liked to announce him, when they were working together, by his title rather than his rank. It made Pel sound like the head of the Sûreté.
He had read all he could about ducks, and about Indian Runners in particular, and bearing it all in mind, had concentrated on egg producers instead of farmers who bred for the table. Finding one called Lucien Gautherot at Louisvillers, who had twenty-four Indian Runners among his flock, he was intrigued to notice his farm was only twenty-five kilometres from Cholley, where the ducks had vanished.
‘Where did you get them?’ De Troq’ asked.
Gautherot was a fat man with a florid face and most of his meals down his waistcoat. ‘Bought them in the market at Rimbeau,’ he said. ‘Month ago. Might have been five weeks.’
‘Pay by cheque?’
‘In a market?’
‘Know the type you bought them from?’
‘Never seen him before.’
‘Where did he get them?’
‘He said he bred them.’
‘Get his name?’
‘Why should I want his name?’ Gautherot was friendly enough but there was a sly too-clever look about him that De Troq’ didn’t trust.
Returning to Cholley, he found Madame Boyer feeding the chickens and what remained of her ducks.
‘If you saw your ducks again,’ he asked her, ‘could you identify them?’
‘Easily.’
‘Well, I’ve found some at Louisvillers. How about coming with me and telling me if they’re yours?’
Madame Boyer looked at the huge open car with its vast headlights, standing behind De Troq’.
‘In that?’
‘Why not?’
She stared at him, then her face creased into a vast smile. ‘Just let me get my coat.’
When she reappeared, she’d put on lipstick and her best dress and coat, and had a handkerchief tied round her head to hold her hair in place. She was obviously regarding it as an afternoon out with the aristocracy.
‘Mind going fast?’ De Troq’ asked.
‘Not likely.’ She very nearly said ‘With you, I’d have a go at anything.’
But, her hair blown by the slipstream and her cheeks whipped to pink by the blast, as they looked at the ducks over the wall of Gautherot’s farm, her face fell.
‘They’re Indian Runners,’ she said. ‘But Indian Runners all look the same. Like Indian Runners. I dare bet they’re mine but how can I be certain? They don’t answer to a name.’
About the time Madame Boyer was looking at the ducks in Gautherot’s field, Claudie Darel was taking tea with Madame Caous. The former manageress of the hat shop had produced nothing. The mice had used her records to make nests.
Madame Caous was delighted to see Claudie, who was presented with afternoon tea and cucumber sandwiches. ‘A la Grande Bretagne,’ Madame Caous pointed out. ‘They say that the Princess of Wales has them every day.’
‘So exciting,’ she went on as she pottered with the crockery. ‘Two police officials in so short a time. Though I’d never have dreamed you were a detective. You’re so pretty. I do hope that when you meet a criminal you’ll be sure to call one of your male colleagues.’ She patted Claudie’s arm. ‘I used to be pretty, too. Men used to run after me. Do they run after you?’
‘From time to time,’ Claudie said, thinking of Nosjean and De Troq’.
Madame Caous listened carefully to her requests but she looked a little puzzled. ‘Is this the same unfortunate that Chief Inspector Pel came to see me about?’
‘No, Madame. A different one.’ Claudie explained about the body at Drax. ‘We’re hoping we can find who she is so her relatives can claim her.’
‘Perhaps they won’t want to,’ Madame Caous said. ‘Perhaps, after all this time, they’ve lost interest. People do, you know. When they came to bury Voltaire, they found his heart was missing and it was supposed to have been mislaid in a desk drawer and sold to a junkman.’
She dug deeply into her memory. She could remember no names, but she could recall a girl disappearing some time during the war.
‘I seem to remember reading about it on my birthday,’ she said. ‘I was born on Ste. Sophie’s Day. May 25th. We’re so lucky in France. We have a saint for every single day, don’t we? And plenty of extra all-purpose ones no one has ever heard of that the Church can call on when they’re needed, such as St. Blaise for tonsillitis. I’m sure you’d find what you’re looking for if you look through the local paper about that time. I remember it said she’d probably been done away with because she had a large and expensive engagement ring on her finger. It was a diamond and I remember it because a policeman I knew – he used to come into the shop to see me and used to pretend he was checking up on things, but I think he was just checking up on me – he told me it had a stone in it big enough to choke a horse. Those were his words.’
Claudie frowned. ‘She wasn’t wearing it when she was found,’ she said. ‘Is he still living in this area?’
‘Oh, mon Dieu, he might have gone to meet his Maker long since! He was a very handsome young man.’
‘Do you remember his name?’
Madame Caous smiled. ‘I remember the names of all my admirers, my dear,’ she said. ‘Especially the good-looking ones. It was Marcel Bardu.’
Aimedieu returned in the evening after putting Le Bihan on the train to Paris, where he would have to change for Concarneau. ‘He can certainly drink, that one, Patron,’ he said. ‘He’ll sleep all the way to Paris and when he wakes up the inside of his mouth will feel as if it’s grown hair.’
‘Did he decide Crussol was the killer?’
‘No. just the opposite. But he could have been. That type’s got a temper.’
‘Did he throw something at you, mon brave?’ Pel asked mildly. ‘He often does, I believe.’
Aimedieu looked like a choirboy as he blushed. ‘Not at me, Patron. At the wall. His hammer. A heavy round stone thing. It had knocked a lot of plaster out. He was working on a thing called—’
‘Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.’
‘It looked more as if a safe had fallen on him from a second floor window and he was trying to lift it off.’
‘Squares,’ Pel said. ‘He believes in squares. What happened?’
‘He’d chipped off a toe he hadn’t meant to chip off. When we arrived he was still trying to decide whether to hack out a fresh foot, make the ones he’d got a bit smaller or give them four toes like Disney characters.’
While they were talking, Claudie Darel appeared. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks were pink with excitement.
‘I’ve found her, Patron,’ she announced at once. ‘Her name was Joséphine Cellino, known p
rofessionally as Josée Celine. She was an actress. Your Madame Caous was more useful than she realised.’
She explained what had been said then went on excitedly. ‘I went to Records but there was a gap of several years that I couldn’t understand until I found that a bomb had destroyed them.’
‘So?’
‘So I went back to the newspaper and dug out their files for May and June during that period of the war. And there it was: May, 1944. Josée Celine, aged twenty-three. Red-haired – red-haired, Patron! – and an actress. Somebody concerned with her appearance, someone who’d wear fashionable clothes. Last seen at Dismagnay near Drax, on or about the 14th of May. She was fairly well known and appeared in one or two plays – but nothing of importance – and a lot of musicals outside Paris. I think she was just a glorified chorus girl but she must have been clever – or shrewd – because she’d done well and when she disappeared she was supposed to be wearing an engagement ring with a diamond on it big enough to make her walk lopsided. “Big enough to choke a horse” was the phrase the police used at the time.’
‘She wasn’t wearing it when she was found,’ Pel pointed out. ‘And how did she get it? Chorus girls don’t have engagement rings of that calibre. She must have had a wealthy admirer.’
‘She did. She’d been living with a type called Xavier Sirdey. He was a wealthy engineer who had a house at Dismagnay. He was suspected of murdering her and disposing of the body.’
‘It looks very much as if he did. Go on.’
‘He claimed she left him. The whole district was searched and large areas were dug up, but nothing was found and it was impossible without the body to prove anything. She’d been through a form of marriage with this Sirdey but her relatives were suspicious and after she disappeared they found he’d already got a wife. He was charged with bigamy, which was the best that could be done but, without Josée Celine or any form of document, the case fell through. After that the thing seems to have been gradually forgotten and by the end of the year it had dropped out of the news completely.’
That evening Pel met Madame Faivre-Perret at the Relais St. Armand. Though Madame didn’t know it, Aimedieu was sitting in a police car just outside. It seemed a pity to Pel because the Relais St. Armand was where he and Madame had originally met and it held as much romantic appeal as anything could for someone as unromantic as Pel. However, with Claudie’s news about Josée Celine, his mind was far away and he barely heard what Madame was saying until she brought up the subject of housekeepers, at which point he sat bolt upright and began to take notice.