by Mark Hebden
Darcy frowned. ‘In that case, Patron,’ he said, ‘I think it’s you who ought to go and check this fisherman. You’d then be a long way from Arne. Take Geneviève with you. I’ll see that Aimedieu here’s within reach all the time.’
‘Geneviève isn’t going to appreciate that.’
‘She won’t know.’
‘In any case, I’m not sure I ought to take her anywhere with me with this hanging over me.’
‘She’ll wonder why if you don’t, Patron. Besides, I suspect that if she did know she’d prefer to be with you.’
Pel considered for a moment, then he nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Get Le Bihan to lay it on.’
‘Right, Patron. And take your gun. Just in case.’
Pel gave him a sad look. Even Didier Darras was a better shot than he was. ‘I’ll probably shoot myself in the foot,’ he said.
Darcy didn’t smile. He looked at Aimedieu. ‘How about you?’
Aimedieu patted his gun.
‘Just remember what it’s for,’ Darcy said.
Fifteen
Madame Faivre-Perret sounded surprised when Pel put the idea to her.
‘Don’t you want to go?’ he asked nervously.
‘Of course I want to go.’
‘You’re not too busy?’
‘Of course, but I’ll just ignore it. How are we travelling? In your car?’
‘A wheel will probably fall off and you’d end up under a bus. I think we’d better go by train. Anyway, driving all the way across France, we’d arrive worn out. I’ll arrange for a hire car to meet us. You won’t mind being on your own? What I have to do might take an hour or two.’
‘You’ve only to put me down near the shops and I can pass the time wasting my money. Then when you’ve finished, we can spend the rest of the day together.’
‘I thought we might arrange for a hotel at Benodet. It’ll still be quiet there. And they have some excellent restaurants in that area.’ Probably special treatment at low prices, too, Pel thought, if they could find one run by one of Le Bihan’s cousins.
Going home, he dragged out a suitcase. Madame Routy was still missing and there was a message for him to say she was still on her bed of pain. Clearly she was taking no chances of getting blown up or shot.
It took him all night to pack as he pondered again and again what to take. Twice he unpacked completely, afraid the clothes he had chosen didn’t show sufficient decorum or sufficient dash. Waking at dawn, he shaved to the bone then, climbing into his car – carefully avoiding the doors which had a habit of smearing oil over him – he drove to the Hôtel de Police to make sure it hadn’t fallen down during the night. Finally, leaving his car, he called a taxi and set off to collect Madame.
She was already at her premises in the Rue de la Liberté, like Pel briefing her staff, and when he turned up he was startled to see them all on the doorstep to wave them off. Pushing her hurriedly inside the taxi, he gave orders for the station, where he saw Aimedieu standing discreetly along the platform. The stationmaster knew Pel and made sure they got a first class compartment to themselves – just in case he ever took up crime and needed Pel on his side – and as they sank back, relieved, with the city sliding away behind them, Pel felt vaguely like some old roué off on a dubious weekend.
When they changed trains in Paris – Aimedieu still not far away – the difference in the weather was already marked. At Le Mans it was raining but at Rennes it had stopped. At Concarneau the rain had disappeared entirely and they began to hope for great things but within an hour a sea fret had come in from the Atlantic and it was possible to hear a foghorn going. Pel was driven to apologise but, to his surprise, Madame seemed quite able to adjust to an unexpected change in the weather. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘we’re not going to sit on the beach.’
While Pel was on his way to Brittany, Nosjean, assisted by Claudie Darel, had been occupying himself at Luxeuil. His enquiries were almost the same as those being pursued by Pel about Dominique Pigny but, since his victim had been dead for forty years, they were somewhat more nebulous.
Josée Celine’s old colleague and friend from the stage, Nicole Danger, now known as Madame Lazlo Frémion, lived in a small house filled from floor to ceiling with pictures of famous actors and actresses of the period just before, during and after the war, with whom she had appeared.
She was a stout little woman as round as a walnut, white-haired, bright-eyed and cheerful. She had once had a husband but they had parted on friendly terms and had never met since.
‘I had no room for a man in my life,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Not permanently. I had plenty of friends.’ She looked sidelong at them. ‘Admirers, too,’ she added defiantly. ‘But nothing to tie me down. I was always too busy.’
Taking out the photographs she’d obtained from Paris, Claudie laid them in front of her.
‘Do you recognise these?’ she asked. ‘They’re of the woman found in the caves at Drax.’
Madame Frémion stared at the pictures for a moment then looked up at them. ‘Was it Josée they found?’ she asked.
‘We think so.’
Madame Frémion drew a deep breath like a sigh. ‘Well, it’s a long time ago. A lifetime. But I ought to recognise them. I was her bridesmaid when she married Xavier Sirdey. He was older than her. A lot older. Was she still wearing his engagement ring?’
Claudie leaned forward. ‘There was no ring,’ she said.
‘Then someone must have taken it from her. She’d never have lost it. It was worth a fortune. It was his mother’s, he said, and when she got it she sat with her hand up and her fingers spread out all evening so that everybody could see it. A lot of good it did her. It turned out he was already married. At least my Lazlo didn’t do that to me.’ She pulled forward a picture of a handsome dark-haired man with a faintly eastern cast of countenance. ‘That’s him. He was in Manon at the time in Nice. The play, not the opera. I played Rosette. He was such a good-looking man and so honest. It was such a pity that after a couple of years I couldn’t stand him. Was she wearing her wedding ring? I was with her when they bought it in Paris. We were playing the Bobino at the time. Was she murdered?’
‘It seems so.’
‘Did Sirdey do it?’
‘That’s something we’re trying to find out,’ Nosjean said. ‘Can you describe him?’
She could. And did. He was tall, good-looking despite the glasses he wore. He also had a way with him. Enjoying the admiration of women, sharp-tongued, indifferent to other people’s opinions, he could, it seemed, have been quite a catch if only he’d been honest.
‘No wonder she wasn’t wearing her ring,’ Madame Frémion said. ‘If he did it, it would be just like him to remove it. He was like that – careful with money.’
‘Would you have a photograph of him?’
She shook her head. Sirdey had a thing about photographs, it seemed. He’d been in the Armée de L’Air during the Great War, and since men who had their photographs taken before a flight never seemed to return, they’d stopped using a camera and Sirdey had said he’d never got rid of the feeling.
‘There weren’t even any photographs of the wedding,’ Madame Frémion said. ‘Josée was disappointed but she went along with him.’
She produced a large brown envelope. ‘I’ve picked out some photographs for you. You said you wanted very clear ones and very large ones, and these are the best I could find. They’re portraits and publicity pictures. They were taken before she met Sirdey, but only a few months before. Will they help find him?’
‘They might,’ Nosjean said. Though he had grave doubts. By this time, he felt, Sirdey was doubtless also pushing up the daisies himself.
He studied the pictures. Here and there a well-known face appeared: Maurice Chevalier. Jean Gabin. Jean-Paul Sartre. Nicole Danger and Josée Celine had been on the fringe of the theatrical greats but never quite part of it.
‘It didn’t worry me much,’ Madame Frémion admitted. ‘I was happy. I sti
ll am. But Josée always wanted to be someone.’
‘She sounds a bit like Dominique la Panique,’ Nosjean commented.
‘Who’s she?’ Madame Frémion’s ears pricked. ‘I never heard of her. It’s a queer sort of name for an actress.’
They described the case of the girl dragged from the sea in Brittany and explained the similarity.
‘She sounds the same type,’ Madame Frémion agreed. ‘Josée liked men too much, and she was never very good at picking them. I decided Sirdey was a bad lot straight away. And he was.’
While they were at it, a visit to the area round Drax seemed to be demanded. The house where Sirdey had lived – within five kilometres of the caves – still stood in Dismagnay and, though the occupants had no knowledge of any murder forty years before, they knew of an old man who’d lived down the lane all his life. The old man remembered that just before the woman he’d known as Madame Sirdey had disappeared, he’d seen Sirdey struggling to get a large sacking-wrapped bundle into a van which was parked inside his drive.
He was eighty-seven years old – ‘Name of God,’ Nosjean said, ‘they get older! Any day now, we’ll turn up a relic of the Second Empire!’ – and hadn’t reported the incident at the time, for the simple reason that nobody had asked him.
There was one more call to make – in Talant, in the northern half of the city, where Inspector Bardu, Madame Caous’ old admirer, lived. Her description of him – tall and good-looking – still applied. He was seventy-five years old but he was upright and seemed remarkably fit, and they found him sawing logs at the bottom of his garden. He remembered the case of Josée Celine very well.
‘It was the biggest thing I ever handled,’ he said. ‘But we couldn’t pin it on Sirdey at all. We went through her belongings, of course, but there was nothing except a few letters that showed she was playing around. There was one from Sirdey accusing her of going with other men, and one she wrote to a man showing she didn’t give a damn. It said something about “I’ll meet you as usual Friday night after the show at the Hôtel Améon.” The Améon was an hôtel de passer. They let rooms by the hour, by the afternoon, by the night, by the day, whatever you wished. She was a cockteaser and probably deserved all she got, and if we’d found the body there’d have been no trouble. But we didn’t and now you’ve found it, he’s disappeared. It’s always the same, isn’t it? Things don’t change much.’
While Nosjean and Claudie were busy in Luxeuil, Dismagny and Talant, De Troq’, his Indian Runners safely disposed of, was making enquiries at a small hotel in Dole where, because of the hostility of the neighbourhood near Drax where he’d lived, Sirdey had stayed for some time following all the brouhaha of the police enquiries. His name, it appeared, had been changed on this occasion from Sirdey to Morot, and the landlady, who had been a girl working for her mother at the time, remembered him well.
‘Had you any idea he’d been involved in anything like this?’ De Troq’ asked.
The landlady sniffed. ‘I don’t think he was. After all the time I’ve been in the hotel business, I’ve learned to judge people, and he was a perfect gentleman. I used to serve him his breakfast in his room. I was only seventeen and pretty, too, and anything could have happened because his room was right at the back where you couldn’t hear a thing and there was a big double bed there. But he never attempted anything with me. I was sorry to see him go.’
Sixteen
Madame Faivre-Perret was quite happy to look around the shops while Pel drove off in the hired car and sought out the fisherman Darcy had discovered. Le Bihan had made enquiries for him and obtained his name – Charles-Louis LeGrèves.
He was a strong-looking man in his late thirties, swarthy as a gypsy with tight black curls. He wore a fisherman’s jersey and thigh boots, and there was a policeman standing alongside his boat.
‘To make sure the bastard doesn’t disappear to sea,’ the policeman explained. ‘Inspector Le Bihan’s instructions.’
LeGrèves took an aggressive attitude. ‘The whole fleet’s out except me,’ he said. ‘Heading for the Cornish coast of England. Your excuse had better be a good one.’
‘It is,’ Pel said. ‘It’s a murder enquiry.’
‘What stupid con got himself killed?’
‘It isn’t a him. It’s a her. Dominique Pigny.’
LeGrèves frowned, his eyes shifty. ‘I read about that in the papers,’ he agreed. ‘Who did it?’
‘Did you?’
LeGrèves glared. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But you did know her?’
‘No.’
‘She went to sea in your boat. How did that miracle happen?’
LeGrèves made an angry gesture. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘I did know her.’
‘Why did you say you didn’t?’
‘I thought you’d think I killed her.’
‘I still might.’
‘I didn’t do it.’ LeGrèves was noisily indignant. ‘There was nothing to kill her for. Except perhaps her cooking. She couldn’t cook to save her life. My engineer and deckhand said that if she stayed, they’d go.’
‘And did she stay?’
‘Yes. I got a boy to do the cooking and she looked after the engine. She was good with engines. But I didn’t kill her. In spite of her cooking. We were always good friends.’
‘How good? She was pregnant. Were you that friendly?’
LeGrèves scowled. ‘So she was putting it across me,’ he said.
‘Was it yours?’
‘No. I hadn’t seen her for some time but she came down here about three months ago and stayed the night at my place. I even asked her to marry me. We got on all right. We never had a cross word except about food.’
LeGrèves’ friends seemed to think differently when Pel bought a beer at a nearby café. The fishermen, their clothes marked with salt, were sitting at old-fashioned marble tables and, like most Bretons, were close enough to give little away. But Pet was experienced enough to get them talking and soon discovered that LeGrèves had been seen arguing fiercely with Dominique Pigny.
When he returned to the Petite Annicke, LeGrèves was sitting on the foredeck in the sun, making a fender out of unroven coir rope. Le Bihan’s policeman sat alongside him, smoking and chatting.
‘When are you going to take this stupid con away so I can take my boat to sea?’ LeGrèves growled.
‘When I’m satisfied I haven’t any more questions for you. I’ve been having a talk with your friends in the bar there. They tell me it wasn’t all sweetness and light between you and Dominique.’
LeGrèves directed an angry glance at the bar. ‘That’s because I pick up more than they do.’
‘From fishing?’
‘No – yes.’
‘Make your mind up. I’ll ask you again: Did you kill Dominique?’
‘No I didn’t. But—’
‘But what? Had you reason to?’
‘I might have had. After all, she put one across me.’
‘What?’
‘A little business I did with her.’
‘What sort of business? Smuggling? French brandy across to Cornwall? Have you ever tried it?’
LeGrèves hesitated then he grinned. It changed his whole appearance and gave him a mischievous look. ‘Once or twice,’ he said. ‘We get in touch by radio and the Cornishmen meet us with whisky off Finisterre or Land’s End. Are you going to charge me?’
‘Smuggling’s a problem for Customs.’
‘Will you pass it on to them?’
‘No, I won’t. Was Dominique in it with you?’
LeGrèves lit a cigarette quickly and blew out smoke. ‘She fixed it. She was quite a girl.’ His scowl returned. ‘She knew where to get rid of it and she was also clever enough to bolt with the money while I wasn’t looking.’
‘Is that what she came for?’
LeGrèves looked puzzled. ‘Probably. I don’t know. She’d certainly got something else on. I don’t know what it was. She said she was going to the new
spaper office to look something up in their files. Who killed her? Do you know?’
‘I thought it might have been you.’
LeGrèves shrugged. ‘At the time she disappeared I wouldn’t have minded.’
Glancing at his watch, Pel decided he still had time to visit the newspaper office.
As he was shown into the library, he explained he was looking for a young woman who’d been asking three months before to see the files. Because not many outsiders asked for them, the librarian remembered Dominique Pigny well, especially when Pel showed her the copies of the photographs Madame Charnier had supplied.
‘She was looking for August, 1970,’ she said.
‘Would you know what it was she was looking for?’
The librarian wouldn’t and Pel sat down with the huge file and started working slowly through the sheets. It seemed a hopeless task but then he remembered that Odette Héon had said Dominique Pigny had cut the files with nail scissors while the librarian wasn’t looking and he started turning the sheets more quickly. On August 17th, the page had been defaced and the jagged edges showed where something had been cut out by small-bladed scissors.
The librarian was indignant. ‘They’re forbidden to deface the files,’ she said. ‘I wonder how she managed it?’
‘What I’m wondering,’ Pel said, ‘is what it was.’
There were other files and ten minutes later the librarian appeared with another bulky volume. Turning up August 17th, they found that what Dominique Pigny had cut out was nothing more than the report of an inquest on an elderly woman by the name of Simone Cochet, of 17, Rue Dupuy, who had been found dead at the bottom of the stairs by her daughter, Jacqueline.
‘Now why,’ Pel said aloud, ‘would she be interested in that?’
Returning to the city centre with a photocopy of the article, Pel found the police station, identified himself, and asked what was known of Madame Cochet. Records weren’t kept there but a middle-aged civilian clerk remembered the case.