The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau

by Graeme Macrae Burnet

‘I understand,’ said Manfred. His lunch was getting cold.

  ‘Of course there’s nothing unusual about a girl meeting a young man, but one detail puzzles me. She was spotted riding past the restaurant coming from the direction of Rue de Mulhouse. It struck me as odd that if she was going to meet this young man, why did he not wait for her outside the restaurant? Why would she have walked some distance in the opposite direction, meet the fellow and then ride off in the direction from which she had just come?’

  Manfred did not say anything. It did not appear that Gorski was inviting him to speculate on the matter.

  ‘Coupled with the fact that this young man, who is the last person to be seen with Mlle Bedeau, has not come forward, it suggests to me that there must have been some reason for keeping their liaison secret.’

  ‘I can assure you, Inspector,’ Manfred said, ‘that I do not own a scooter and do not even know how to ride one.’

  Gorski gave a little snort through his nose, as if acknowledging the punchline of a weak joke.

  ‘That’s not at all what I’m getting at.’ He offered Manfred a thin smile. ‘I’m simply asking those people who were in the vicinity to cast their mind back to the night in question and think about whether they may have seen anything significant.’

  ‘I didn’t see anything,’ Manfred said a little too quickly.

  Gorski raised a finger to silence him.

  ‘On the night in question, you were in here in the restaurant playing cards with Messrs Lemerre, Petit and Cloutier. At the end of the game, you left, at about half past ten, I believe.’

  Manfred shrugged. ‘I couldn’t say exactly.’

  Gorski ignored his comment. ‘Did you go home directly?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Manfred. He could see all too clearly where this was leading.

  ‘And your route home, took you along Rue de Mulhouse past the little park at the Protestant temple?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you can see what I’m going to ask you: Adèle left the restaurant only a few minutes after you and must have walked in the same direction to meet this young man. Just think carefully for a moment. Is it possible that you saw anyone, a young man, who might have been waiting for a rendezvous?’

  Manfred took his time. He had known as soon as he had seen Gorski what his answer to such a question would be. He shook his head slowly. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I didn’t see anyone.’

  Gorski pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t be of more help,’ said Manfred. ‘Perhaps they met in a café or at the boy’s apartment.’

  He assumed that the ordeal was over and Gorski would conclude proceedings with an apology for interrupting his lunch.

  ‘You know,’ he said, his tone suddenly more conversational, ‘I’ve been a policeman for twenty-three years. In my experience, when people say that they wish they could be of more help, they very often can be.’ He flashed Manfred his humourless smile. Manfred felt himself swallow. He told himself to hold Gorski’s gaze. After a few seconds, he looked down at his food. If he had nothing to hide, he would interpret Gorski’s remark as nothing more than a world-weary generalisation.

  Gorski did not budge from his seat.

  ‘On the previous night,’ he continued, ignoring Manfred’s statement, ‘you were also here. You drank a bottle of wine at the counter and left around ten o’clock.’

  ‘I couldn’t say what time it was, but yes, that’s correct.’

  ‘You’re quite a regular here, aren’t you?’ said Gorski.

  Manfred shrugged. It wasn’t a crime, was it? ‘I suppose you could say that.’

  ‘A creature of habit?’

  Manfred stared at Gorski, not sure what expression to adopt. Was he going to bring up the fact that on the day Adèle had last been seen, Manfred had, in a complete reversal of his normal routine, ordered the choucroute instead of the pot-au-feu and had a second glass of wine? Perhaps he had been told of the little compliment he had paid Adèle during the card game. Taken together, these actions could easily form a picture of a character who, around the time of the waitress’s disappearance, had been behaving strangely. Why else would the detective have mentioned that he had been described in this way? Manfred felt his cheeks begin to colour.

  ‘I don’t know if I’d say that,’ he said.

  ‘Well, everyone I’ve spoken to,’ he made a vague gesture with his hand, ‘has described you in the same way, as a creature of habit.’

  Manfred could not help glancing around the room. He intensely disliked the idea that Gorski had been asking about him, asking everyone about him. He wondered what else they had said.

  ‘Is there something wrong with that?’ he said.

  Gorski pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. ‘Not at all.’ He leaned forward as if something had just occurred to him. ‘Let me ask you one question: did you notice anything unusual in the restaurant on Wednesday night?’

  Manfred gave this some thought, or at least attempted to give the impression that he was giving it some thought. He decided that this would be a good time to take a mouthful of food and did so. When he had swallowed, he shook his head.

  ‘Nothing I can think of,’ he said.

  Gorski looked a little disappointed.

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘It seems to me that in a place like this,’ he made a gesture with his hand to indicate that he meant the restaurant, ‘not a great deal happens. One night is pretty much like any other. Accordingly, when anything out of the ordinary does occur, no matter how banal it might seem to an outsider, it does not go unnoticed by the regulars of the establishment.’

  Manfred found Gorski’s manner of expressing himself quite irritating. He took the last sip of his wine. He would have liked to order a second glass, but after having done so the previous day, this would then be taken as a new habit and he would then be obliged to take two glasses of wine at lunch every day.

  ‘I’ve asked everyone the same question and received the same response. On the night in question Adèle had asked M. Pasteur if she could leave a little early. Before she left she changed her clothes and put on some make-up.’

  ‘You could hardly expect me to notice something as trivial as that,’ said Manfred.

  ‘Lemerre, Petit and Cloutier, whom I questioned separately, all noticed it and mentioned it unprompted,’ said Gorski.

  ‘Perhaps only one of them noticed and drew it to the attention of the others.’ Manfred felt this was a rather clever remark. Gorski tipped his head as if to acknowledge that this was a possibility. Manfred felt that he had won a small victory.

  ‘They sit by the door. They’re hardly likely to fail to notice a provocatively dressed woman,’ he added.

  ‘I didn’t say that Adèle was provocatively dressed. I merely said that she had changed her clothes.’

  Manfred stalled. He would do better to keep his mouth shut.

  Gorski allowed his previous remark to hang in the air for a few moments.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ he continued. ‘From their vantage point, they could hardly have failed to notice that Adèle had changed. But you, I think I am correct in saying, were standing at the counter adjacent to the hatch from which Adèle emerged. Following your own logic it seems even more unlikely that you would not have noticed this transformation.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t,’ said Manfred.

  Gorski clasped his hands in front of his face and tapped his forefingers together. Manfred had the impression that his ordeal was almost over.

  ‘You left the restaurant very shortly after Adèle, the precise time is unimportant.’ He adopted a puzzled tone, as if he was merely thinking out loud. ‘Did you see in which direction she walked?’

  ‘As I said before, I didn’t see her.’

  ‘And as you walked home did you see any young men, who might be waiting for…’ he picked his word carefully, ‘for a tryst?’

  ‘No.’ He was allowing his irritation to show. />
  ‘And if I were to ask you to accompany me to the station and sign a statement to that effect, that is what you would say?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Manfred. His course had been set since the first time he had spoken to Gorski. He could hardly change tack now.

  ‘Very well.’ Gorski slid his chair back noisily. ‘My apologies for interrupting your lunch.’

  Manfred’s wine glass was empty, but he dared not order another. He did not wish to appear as if his encounter with Gorski had disconcerted him. Pasteur continued to polish glasses behind the bar. He did not look in Manfred’s direction. Marie had her hand on the shoulder of the new waitress and was directing her to clear a recently vacated table.

  Seven

  GORSKI REGRETTED BRINGING HIS RAINCOAT. It was a warm, sunny day with no prospect of rain. He paused in the doorway of the Restaurant de la Cloche and lit a cigarette, his coat draped over the crook of his left arm. He walked along Rue de Hunigue until he reached the intersection. The police station was located a few minutes’ walk along Rue de Mulhouse, but Gorski had no desire to return there. Instead he crossed the street and continued along Avenue Charles de Gaulle. Most of the shops were closed for lunch and the streets were quiet. Gorski liked this part of the day. It was as if the town paused to draw breath for a moment, not that the pace of life in Saint-Louis demanded such a lull. Even so, Gorski strode along purposefully, as if to give the appearance that he was on his way to an important appointment.

  He turned into a narrow side street where, a little further on, there was an inconspicuous bar called Le Pot. The name of the bar was painted in brown Germanic lettering above the door. A dark red Bar/Tabac sign was fixed to the wall with a rusting metal bracket. At night the sign was lit up, but during the day it would be quite possible to pass along Rue des Vosges without noticing there was a bar there at all. There were no windows save for two narrow oblongs of glass above eye level, which were for the purposes of ventilation only. The door was glass, but it was so plastered with posters advertising lottery tickets and various brands of cigarettes that it was impossible to see inside. The proprietor was aware that his bar was not particularly inviting, but the fact that, once inside, one could not be seen from the street, constituted a large part of its appeal.

  Inside, the bar consisted of one small square room. The walls were painted with a dark mustard wash and decorated with faded prints depicting scenes from Old Alsace. Around two walls was a maroon banquette, the vinyl of which was cracked and worn. In one or two places, foam stuffing spilled out. In front of the banquette, five metal tables were bolted to the floor. In addition, four wooden tables were arranged in the centre of the room.

  Gorski took a seat on the banquette and indicated to the proprietor with a little mime that he would take a pression. The bar occupied the wall opposite the door. On the right of this was the tabac area from which cigarettes, smoking paraphernalia and lottery tickets were sold. These two areas of the bar were separated by the wooden flap through which the proprietor accessed the bar. There were three beer taps, offering biere d’Alsace, a German weißbier and a dark ale. On the left of the bar was a stainless steel water bath, used to heat the hotdogs which were the only food served in Le Pot. The boiler was never turned off and it was from this that the bar got its characteristic aroma. The proprietor kept the lighting low, so that it was usually hard to tell whether it was day or night. In the late afternoon, however, if the sun was shining, two shafts of light penetrated the high windows and panned across the bar like the beams of a slow searchlight.

  There were three other customers in the bar. A man in a shabby suit sat on the banquette beneath the high windows reading a newspaper, a glass of white wine on the table in front of him. He looked vaguely familiar. This was a common occurrence for Gorski. His work brought him into fleeting contact with a great number of people and in a small town like Saint-Louis it was inevitable that he ran into them again. His predecessor, Ribéry, had been blessed with total recall of the names and faces of people he met, but Gorski possessed no such a talent. Still, it bothered him that he could not remember who the man was.

  Two men in workmen’s overalls stood at the bar. One of them looked at Gorski as he settled himself at his table. He probably recognised him. The previous day he had held a press conference at which he had given out the description of the young man seen on the scooter with Adèle. Gorski had been at pains to stress that the young man was sought only as a witness, but the papers had naturally chosen to cast the development in the most lurid light. Gorski’s picture had appeared next to the story in L’Alsace and in several other papers. He nodded a greeting in the direction of the man at the bar, who immediately looked away.

  The proprietor brought his beer. He was a short, swarthy man with the build of an ex-boxer. He had small beady eyes and a slack, unattractive mouth. Gorski had overheard regulars address him as Yves, but he never greeted him by name. Similarly, although he must have recognised him, the proprietor did not show any sign of knowing Gorski. That was his way. Some bars fostered an atmosphere of conviviality. Le Pot was not one of them. If you made a remark to the proprietor, he would pass the time of day, but otherwise customers were left to themselves.

  As Yves set his beer in front of him, Gorski asked him for a hotdog. Before he made his way back to the bar, he made a tour of the tables, wiping each of them down in the same unhurried manner. Gorski sipped his beer. It was pleasingly cold and crisp. His hotdog arrived on a paper plate. The meat was pink and flabby and disintegrated unpleasantly as soon as he put it in his mouth. He thought of Manfred Baumann tucking into his pot-au-feu or whatever it was he had been eating.

  His talk with Baumann had gone pretty much as he had anticipated. If he was lying, he was hardly likely to admit to the fact unless confronted with irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Gorski was used to being lied to. People lied as matter of course and even when their lies were shown to be implausible, they were stubborn. Gorski understood the mechanism well. If, for example, his wife was to later ask him how he had spent his afternoon, he would, of course, omit any mention of his visit to this bar. What interested him was not so much the fact that someone lied, but how they behaved when they did so. Often people would reach for their cigarettes or became suddenly distracted by some irrelevant activity. They became incapable of maintaining eye contact. Women toyed with their hair. Men fingered their beards or moustaches. Gorski liked to question people in their everyday surroundings. Once a person had been dragged to the police station they were already disoriented and it became harder to discern whether their behaviour should be attributed to their unfamiliar surroundings or to the fact that they were trying to hide something. Gorski recalled that when he had visited Baumann at his apartment, he had, despite being initially reluctant to invite him inside, offered him coffee. It was a typical gesture – at once overcompensating for his previous hostility and attempting to postpone the start of the interview. Even at that point, when he had no way of knowing what Gorski’s visit was about, Baumann had behaved in a way that suggested he was uncomfortable.

  Often, when confronted with their lies, people feigned indignation. How many times Gorski had heard the phrases This is outrageous! and How dare you! or been idly threatened with legal action. He took such outbursts, if not as a sign of guilt, at least as an indication that the person in question had something to hide. Something perhaps completely unrelated to the object of his enquiry, but something nonetheless. Manfred Baumann had not done this. He was, Gorski suspected, too meek an individual for such a course of action. Neither had his demeanour betrayed much of his inner thoughts. He struck Gorski as the type who, for whatever reason, was accustomed to keeping a lid on things. He was repressed.

  On the other hand, the possibility that Baumann had not seen anything could not be entirely dismissed. People were unobservant, especially when going about their daily routines. They walked or drove to and from work, sat in the same offices and cafés every day without giving the least
thought to their surroundings. Often, when questioned, people were unable to describe the furniture or decor of places they visited regularly. Still, Manfred Baumann intrigued him. Whether he was lying or not, there was something in his manner that piqued Gorski’s curiosity. He was at once evasive and obsequious, as if he wanted to be liked or at least approved of.

  Nevertheless, it was a measure of how poorly the case was progressing that Gorski was spending so much time thinking about Baumann, who had, in all likelihood, nothing whatsoever to do with the girl’s disappearance. The case was of the worst sort. It was not even clear whether a crime had been committed. Yet the disappearance of a young woman always garnered press attention and the police were obliged to investigate, or at least be seen to investigate. Had it been a middle-aged man who had disappeared, someone like Manfred Baumann, for example, the case would not even make the ‘In Brief’ section of L’Alsace.

  Thus far, Gorski had been unable to form more than a rudimentary picture of the young woman whose disappearance he was investigating. Adèle Bedeau’s mother had died some years before and her birth certificate recorded no father’s name. Mme Pasteur was fond of her and plainly harboured maternal feelings towards the girl, but Adèle had revealed little to her employer. She was a good worker, punctual and polite, but little more. It did not seem to matter to her whether she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, chopping onions or waiting tables. She carried out whatever task she was allotted with the same world-weary air. Marie Pasteur described her as diligent. It seemed to Gorski that she was resigned. She simply didn’t care what she did. Her relations with her employers and the patrons of the Restaurant de la Cloche were cordial enough, but she did not ask questions, talk about herself or joke around with the other employees. She was entirely self-contained. And outside work, Gorski had discovered little more. The tiny furnished apartment she rented in a building on Rue de Jura could barely have revealed less. She paid her rent on time and her neighbours had little to say about her.