‘Sensational,’ rightly guessing this meant the whisky and not the mysterious phrases in English. ‘Doesn’t taste like whisky though.’ Third boom.
‘Not like that blended muck they give you in bars, no. Single malt, my dear boy.’
‘You aren’t English, are you?’ still feebly.
‘Certainly not. Or parish pump French either. A Norman, my boy, Norman as Maupassant.’
Castang took a swig to give himself countenance. He had got a frame of reference by now. He knew a wine-shipper down in Aquitaine, where they talked about Queen Eleanor, gave their dogs English names, sent the children to Cambridge to polish their accents, and were snobbish about the Rothschild family.
Monsieur Barde was tall and massive, with pale straight features and pale brown hair. He was surely sixty, and the hair dyed, but he didn’t look a day over fifty, and with excellent digestion. He wore a shirt with an open collar, a cashmere pullover the colour of a Victoria plum, riding breeches – beautifully cut. And boots which would cost two months of Castang’s pay. There was money in the family, one might say. Broad acres, pedigree cows, thoroughbred horses, all very Norman. And literature too. Who was Sam Weller, anyway?
Humbled by the boots and the whisky he felt like a stable-boy, being congratulated after the owner has had a good win at Cheltenham. This sofa was too low and the cushions too thick. And Monsieur Barde…standing in front of that fire, warming his behind and sipping at the single malt, whatever that was. All affable and patrician. Castang didn’t want to be towered over. He got up.
‘We’ve had a death in the neighbourhood.’ Parochial. He put his glass on a silver tray, presented no doubt by grateful foxhounds, and lit a vulgar, parish-pump Gitane with a filter tip.
‘You mean poor Sabine Arthur. Very sad indeed. And I’m in burglar alarms up to here, and I just hope they do me some good.’ He saw from the policeman’s civil-service facial expression that it sounded a bit too tittuppy. ‘Poor Sabine. She was an old friend. I was deeply distressed.’ He wasn’t pleased with ‘deeply distressed’, thought about it in a search for something better, gave it up. All those funereal phrases sound insincere.
‘But you haven’t had any trouble round here with housebreakers? Wealthy neighbourhood – looks tempting from the road.’
‘No. No. Not to my knowledge. I didn’t go to the funeral, I’m afraid. Should have. Smell of chrysanthemums affects me like ether. Felt guilty about it.’ So one saw. Why else all the excuses, and the emphasis on how deeply he’d been distressed.
‘Had any calls, from furniture dealers, or purporting to be such? In the last couple of months, say?’
‘Not that I know of. My housekeeper wouldn’t bother me with such. And if I want a dealer I go to the Quai Voltaire. Local people’s prices are too high.’
‘And you’ve never had a break-in? Can I ask the servants, whether they’ve seen people wanting to buy or sell things?’
‘Of course. Ring for tea by and by; ask what you like. But is this visit just a warning to look out for phoney dealers?’
‘The notary mentioned your name, as an old friend of the Lipschitz family.’
‘I see. The burglar after objects of art – that’s the accepted theory, is it?’
‘More or less. I’ve only just begun.’
‘Of course. Yes, well, Le Tarentais is a bit of an old ass, you know. Country notary’s business – nothing much to stretch the brains. Dear old gentleman but the grey matter gone a bit to seed, like a dandelion. True enough, Sabine was an old friend. I haven’t laid eyes on her in donkey’s years, that’s all. In the far-off glorious days of youth we used to sit up talking till all hours of the night,’ sentimentally. By the fireplace was a broad ribbon ending in a tassel: he pulled it and an electric bell sounded faintly.
‘She decayed, you know,’ said Barde. ‘Dusty little province this. I would myself, without effort.’
The door opened and the pretty maid stood waiting, well trained.
‘Tea, for two, would you tell Céleste, and would she help bring it because I want her… delicious crumpet,’ fruitily, as the door closed. ‘That catch-hold-of-me-bottom walk… Sorry, rather a sudden pull up, Sammy, ain’t it? Tony Weller.’
Janey, he’s being Dickensian again.
‘Still – you can ask Céleste if there’ve been any hawkers. She’s a cranky old devil: if I wasn’t here she might refuse to say, or invent heaven knows what. Called Melanie really: Céleste is after Proust of course. But to go back to what we were saying – Sabine when young, dear me yes. Swiftness, supple phrase, the swallow’s wingtip, absolutely. A felicity of wit in that gentle voice. But she got old, poor dear.’
‘You knew Lipschitz too?’
‘Indeed I did. Can’t exactly say we were all students together – but we were contemporaries.’ Would put him at about sixty-five, thought Castang. Must be all the bottom-pinching keeps him young.
He must have had a mental arithmetic look, because ‘I was a lot younger really,’ added Barde, ‘but seems contemporary at this distance. Poor old Vincent.’
Why was he so overwhelmingly loquacious? They were always like that in these small towns – nobody to talk to.
‘Had talent; undoubtedly he had talent. All renounced for love of Sabine. Her roots were here in the countryside: she detested Paris, poor thing. And Vincent as poor as a church mouse. Had this thread of erudition, a taste for archaeology. Stuck to this small affair and worked it up, quite brilliantly I’m bound to say. Can’t think of a provincial museum more excitingly displayed. Oh, here’s tea; do praise it: the old dear will be ever so pleased.’ The corners of Castang’s mouth were turning down a bit. There was something about Monsieur Barde’s praise of others that was approval of himself… Provincial celebrities! Sabine had not been like that. Somehow it put him on her side. Simplicity, the navy blue pullover, the shabby trousers, and the alert eye that took things in.
The pretty girl brought in the tea with a hobbly but spry old witch to supervise while goodies got circulated: scones and things all very English. He took something to be polite. Barde, who as he explained – everyone would be interested – got up early, and lunched at twelve, and always did, and was busy with unspecified but energetic things concerned with horse and hound, sabred away at the honey and stuff. His mouth might be full, but it didn’t stop him talking, and supplying the answers too.
‘You’ve never had any phoney antique dealers here come to the door, have you, Céleste? I felt sure you hadn’t, or you’d have told me about that, wouldn’t you?’
Castang had a feeling of being carted. Bit of a dealer in fake antiques himself, this Barde.
‘Lipschitz was a bit of a disappointed man?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I don’t know – an impression. Childless couple too. This boy’s adopted from what they tell me. Sole heir, if I understood Le Tarentais aright.’
‘Yes?’ vaguely. ‘I saw little enough of them in these last years. Know what you mean, of course, that the boy was a disappointment – true, I think. Vincent didn’t talk of it, and Sabine was always an intensely secret person. I say though: you’re digging away at ancient history, aren’t you?’
‘Tidying,’ said Castang. ‘A good thing to check up on, when there’s an unexplained homicide, is to see whether anyone had a financial interest.’
‘Oh quite. Have another cup. Oh, nonsense, man.’
‘But this boy’s sole inheritor. No conflict of interest there.’
‘No, I suppose not.’ Castang had thought Barde would gossip, but he seemed disinclined.
‘I don’t know much about it. You should have asked old François dear old man, if rather a bore.’
‘Who?’
‘François-Xavier Martigues, Poet of Our Region. He was close to them. Took an interest in the boy and all that: I’m vague, myself. Sabine was very headstrong about it all, as I remember: dare say she came to regret her impetuosity.’
Not much use, this
Barde, as a source of information or even of gossip. He was nicely embedded in honey, and it gave him eternal youth, and he wasn’t going in for children, thanks. Noisy objects, tiring, tending to break china or come bursting in just as he had his hand up the parlour-maid’s skirt. Not that that was police business.
Very polite though; insisted that he take a cigar.
‘One last thing, by the way,’ said Castang. ‘You asked whether the burglar notion was the accepted theory. You might have had a faintly sceptical tone, saying that? I dare say I’m mistaken.’
Barde was looking surprised.
‘Don’t well see what else it could be. I’m not a policeman, naturally.’
‘You find it plausible, though? Good stuff in the house for example? Looked nice to me, but I’m no judge.’
‘Yes indeed. I’ve not been there in ages but Vincent had taste. Nothing outstanding perhaps, but good early china, some fine old country furniture, not to be sneezed at nowadays. Worth a pillager’s trouble, no doubt of it. They wouldn’t touch the Gallo-Roman stuff.’
‘Many thanks. Lot of help.’
‘Pleasure, dear man. Chap gets bored. Police make a nice change.’
Not everyone’s sentiment, maybe, but in this small-town world one could see what he meant.
TWELVE
Castang had taken one sandwich – cress and parmesan, nice – and no cake, and stood in no need of exercise. This country road was pleasant, though, on a late afternoon of still autumn sunshine, now westering. There would be a fine red fireball over there above the low hills crowned with woods. He wanted to shake off the stuffy feeling, a flavour of cigar and Barde’s faintly ignoble personality. He understood Sabine saying she had no real friends left. He strolled a way up the road with his hands in his pockets: not even a policeman would be insensitive to the smell of burning leaves and moist earth.
Hm. A quarter out here for the folk who’d got it made. Villas, mostly newish along this side. Double garages and immature trees. Hedges still thin, and a glimpse here and there of a swimming-pool. The other side older and bigger houses of a former era, not without attractions either. Paddocks, tennis courts. English gardens. Burglars or an antiques gang would have been busy along here, surely. Barde had said not, and he would know.
Countrified road with no pavements; a lane. Called rather grandly the Route des Crêtes – what summits? Those little hills? Or these villas, prosperous with their tall hedges and high gates and names like ‘Green Gables’. Successful undertakers as the notary said, big Mercedes cars. Grand piano belt, this. Somebody had made a lot of money carving up that terrain opposite: living out here had ‘standing’.
There was a soft noise of hoofs. He turned his head idly: a horse was being walked, a girl in the saddle wearing jeans and a sweater. Prettyish girl with fair hair down to the shoulders. He felt a fool, because she had to turn in at Green Gables, which he was staring in at open-mouthed, and he caught a haughty glance, cavalry to infantry, as she reached over to release the gate-latch. Daughter of the rich. She did not glance back, but he shuffled off shamefaced as though he had been caught peeping.
He had work to do anyway. His work on directories had given him the local house agents: he sat in the car and studied his notebook.
That was why it had seemed familiar! Pierre-Paul Thonon. Number Four, Place d’Armes. Private address, ‘Green Gables, Chemin des Cretes’… Trust a house agent to have made good money. He would twist Monsieur Thonon’s tail a bit, just to be spiteful!
He left the car on the faubourg outside the Hotel Central, where Lucciani would see it. He walked the few hundred metres to the old city gate. The Place d’Armes was the centre of the ‘old town’, a formal square in the severe manner of Vauban’s time, with an arched arcade spoilt by the self-advertising vulgarity of a row of shops. The Agence Thonon was one of them, inoffensive with the usual window full of typed cards and photographs of desirable residences, with agency shorthand about their insides. Within was a small office, with a secretary at a desk, architects’ plans and elevations on the walls, and two dinky dollshouse maquettes of what the new block of luxury flats, In This Exclusive Neighbourhood, would be like once it stopped being a hole in the ground.
None of this was very interesting: what he was staring at had caught his eye through the window: a heap of cars parked on the square. Vauban wouldn’t have cared for that, no, but more to the point was that one was a dark blue Peugeot with sheepskins on the seats. This cheered him up. It existed, and its owner would be back to pick it up if he hung about till six. Come to that…
The girl put down her phone and asked could she help him? He’d like to talk to Monsieur Thonon? Well, he was with a customer but wouldn’t be long. He didn’t mind waiting five minutes?
Castang, feeling lucky, didn’t mind five minutes.
‘Thought I’d catch him – isn’t that his car, the blue one?’
‘That’s right.’
A real little stroke of fortune, making up for all that time wasted tea-drinking with the bourgeois. He was to windward of a chap he wished to question. Ho ho, Thonon, dear old Popaul. He had too much experience to think everything was going to be this easy, but it was a breeze to sail under.
A fitful breeze. The man had parked there openly. And Sabine herself had told him about the energetic house agent. But at least the fellow had been there that evening. He’d be able to throw a little light on what Castang wanted to know. What had been Sabine’s activities that evening? Maybe movements? Maybe thoughts?
The five minutes dragged but he didn’t mind. He had five or six agents on his list and this might have been the last call, if he hadn’t taken that little stroll down the road. And it might so easily have been somebody else come to hustle Sabine: an architect, or a builder, or someone from town planning. Or a man about a dog.
A loud busybee noise on the pavement made him look. A Japanese motor scooter with gay paint; agreeable toy. A girl in a scarlet trouser suit added to the colour scheme and the notion of agreeable toys: she came in on a high wind.
‘Dad there, Marianne?’
Popaul’s daughter. Hell, he’d been slow! The girl on the horse… Castang remained turned towards the window, vastly interested in Japanese motorbikes. He’d been caught once that day.
‘He’s got someone. Oh, only old Sallebert worrying about his sewer pipes, but there’s…’ Meaning cough, meant for him, so he paid no attention. Even if she did recognise him – what importance had that?
‘Oh, it’s nothing much. To pick up my eiderdown from the cleaners – such an awkward big parcel, and it’s on his way home. You won’t let him forget, Marianne, will you? He’ll grumble, but I don’t care – here’s the ticket. I’ll fly, then.’ And whizzed out, still with the high wind.
Accelerating like a mad thing, apparently intent on kicking the clutch to ribbons: teenage girls! Imagining it was a Harley Davidson. Bourgeois Miss of about nineteen. Nice, though. He felt indulgent. Small coincidence number two: they generally came in threes, like aeroplane accidents. Still a bit fat, spotty and awkward, but would be really pretty one of these days, mm. The detective daydreamed of lecheries, and woke to find Popaul on deck.
‘Ciao then, and I’ll give you a buzz as soon as I hear… sorry to have kept you – would you like to come in?’
‘Oh, Monsieur Thonon, Martine dropped in and I wasn’t to forget to ask could you pick her eiderdown up from the cleaners?’
‘Oh, blow her old eiderdown; why can’t she do it herself?’
‘Too big, she said, to go on the back of the bike.’
‘Oh nonsense, she’d only to ask for a bit of string. Too big and also too lazy. Sorry,’ with a quick easy smile to Castang, ‘these domestic hitches… Do sit down,’ picking up a pipe and beginning to fill it. ‘Advice on bringing up daughters is free, or haven’t you any?’
‘Not officially,’ pushing his card across the desk, getting a laugh round the corner of the mouth which was getting the pipe to draw. He glanced a
t the card, didn’t look fussed.
‘Well,’ leaning comfortably back and wedging the pipe between firm white teeth with two gold crowns, ‘what’s your problem then, or is the card to get the price reduced?’
Castang embarked on a vague tale, about burglaries and bourgeois houses with exterior signs of wealth like tennis courts; along the Chemin des Crêtes, for example. Thonon listened with no sign of haste or impatience. The description was right as well as the car: ‘prosperous’, youngish but formal in a middle-aged way. Dark suit, gold cuff-links, subfusc tie, and the Homburg hat hung upon a hook.
‘Nothing much,’ he said. ‘An outbreak of break-ins – sorry, not trying to be funny – a few years ago. Two or three houses suffered loss and damage. An enterprising locksmith did good business afterwards with deadlocks and pressure pads and stuff. What took you out there?’
‘I was talking to a Monsieur Barde.’
‘Oh, I see. Bit of an old woman. Supposed to have an erotic picture worth a lot, Boucher or Fragonard or something. Probably a fake; he’s a bit of a fake himself. His house bristles with electronic alarms and whatnot. Don’t know that I’d put much faith in them. Might discourage an amateur, and at least you avoid the damage and the vandalism. Not that I’ve anything much worth pinching. If I had, I think I’d have more faith in a couple of lights left burning, maybe a radio on low.’ He smoked the pipe with small even puffs, and didn’t seem to be getting tense, despite the transparent silliness of Castang’s story.
‘Did you by any chance know Madame Lipschitz?’
‘Who got slammed by an intruder? Certainly I did. And of course I knew that this was the real subject of your interest, Inspector.’
‘News gets around.’
‘What d’you expect? – Place this size. Just surprised to hear that the PJ were dragged in on it. Something fishy?’
‘Not as far as I know. Judge making a slight fuss. We mostly do get called, you know, when there’s a homicide. It’s more than just another burglary.’
Lake Isle Page 8