Pel Under Pressure (Chief Inspector Pel)

by Mark Hebden

She was tall, almost as tall as Darcy himself, with a superb figure, neat ankles and wrists, and a long slender neck. She was dark, with a cloud of brown hair about her face and the most enormous eyes Darcy had ever seen. Not brown, like so many people with dark hair, but blue, fringed with huge dark lashes that slanted upwards at the corners. They seemed to fill the whole doorway.

  ‘Yes?’ she said sharply. ‘What can I do for you?’

  There would have been a time once, Darcy thought, when she could have done a lot for him. But not now. Darcy was an easy-going, free-wheeling sort of policeman, modern as a flying saucer, taking his pleasures where he found them and never without a girl. But his girls were natural, as modern as Darcy and free with their favours, but still spontaneous, uncalculating and happy. There was something missing from Marie-Anne Chahu’s lovely face, something that another man without Darcy’s experience might have missed, something that Lagé and Nosjean had missed. She was very much a woman and she wore her sex like a badge of office, but her features had hardened to a mask he’d seen before on women who abused trust and love. Her innocence, even the very essence of her womanliness, had vanished.

  He put on his best smile. He sometimes practised it in front of the mirror. It showed his strong white teeth.

  ‘Detective-Sergeant Daniel Darcy,’ he said. ‘Police Judiciaire.’

  Her eyebrows rose. ‘Police? How can I help?’

  ‘You’re Professor Foussier’s personal assistant, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ She spoke brusquely, as if she wished to be rid of him. ‘And I’m off-duty at the moment.’

  Darcy didn’t budge. ‘I shan’t take a second,’ he said.

  She studied him for a while, then she opened the door. ‘You’d better come in.’ She paused. ‘I was just going to make a couple of telephone calls. Please sit down. I’ll be with you in a moment.’

  She gave him a sharp angry look and disappeared through a door, beyond which he caught a glimpse of an enormous bed and decorations in pink and white. The door shut and he heard the telephone tinkle, then her voice came, quiet and too low to catch.

  While she was speaking, he took the opportunity to inspect his surroundings. The carpet was pale yellow, deep and expensive, and the furniture wasn’t the usual mixture of Louis XVI, Second Empire, Between-the-Wars Gothic and Post-War Cubic that he saw in the homes of most of the people he visited. There was a great deal of confort anglais here, deep chairs and settees and subdued lights. There was a television on a trolley that was doubtless wheeled in front of the settee when Mademoiselle Chahu was entertaining friends, and an expensive hi-fi equipment which was doubtless used to provide sweet music to go with the soft lights. He wondered who paid for it all.

  As she reappeared, Darcy got down to business. ‘I’m really wanting to see Professor Foussier,’ he explained.

  ‘This is hardly the place to ask,’ she said sharply.

  He smiled. ‘I went to his private office. The girl there said he permitted no one to make appointments but his personal assistant – you.’

  ‘That’s true, of course. But I’m off-duty. Didn’t she tell you that? I’m owed a few days.’

  ‘Is it impossible?’

  ‘Without his diary, yes. You could try his home.’

  ‘We have a drugs problem,’ Darcy said. ‘At the University.’

  She shrugged. ‘It happens all the time. We no sooner find one student than another starts. The Professor takes it very much to heart and watches the problem very carefully.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘There is at most universities.’

  ‘Foreign ones, too? Swiss? German?’

  ‘I’ve heard the Professor say there is. Most have someone keeping an eye on it, and the Professor keeps in touch with them, because the same names keep cropping up.’

  Darcy could well imagine.

  ‘He’s not only concerned with student welfare,’ she went on. ‘He’s made an extensive study of the use of drugs. In fact, he started by writing a thesis on it while a student himself at the Sorbonne.’

  ‘He must know a lot about it.’

  ‘Yes. This is why he insists on appointments. He’s so busy. He’s not only concerned with student welfare, he’s also interested in photography–’

  As Lagé had mentioned, Darcy remembered.

  ‘ – botany, shooting, ornithology, the history of Burgundy, Germanic and East European languages, motor racing, flying, navigation, engineering, finance and electronics. He’s an expert on electronics. In fact, he’s devised a system for his lecture hall where he can turn off the lights at the back while he’s standing at the front.’

  ‘What’s so special about an electronic device to switch the lights off?’ Darcy asked. ‘It’s just a more expensive way of doing something you’d normally do by running an electric wire round the room.

  She gave him a cold look. ‘It also works the projector and moves the curtains.’

  Darcy grinned. ‘And doubtless makes the coffee for the interval.’

  ‘It saves paying several men’s wages.’

  ‘Capitalist stooges,’ Darcy said placidly. ‘Robbing working men of their jobs. Everybody’s at it these days.’

  Again the cold look. ‘Lyons University has one. There’s one in Vichy and one or two even outside France. The Professor is also politically motivated. He’s a committed Communist, believes in it and doesn’t hesitate to make his views known.’

  ‘No wish to become a deputy?’ Darcy asked sarcastically.

  ‘He’s been asked to stand. He prefers not to.’

  All the same, Darcy thought, he’s quite a boy. He seemed to have spare time for everything. Darcy only seemed able to find spare time for girls.

  As he rose to leave, he caught sight of a painting on the wall. She saw his eyes on it.

  ‘It’s the Golden Mount,’ she said. ‘It’s a Buddhist temple. It’s over a hundred metres high. I bought it in Bangkok.’

  ‘On holiday?’

  She shook her head. ‘A Far East tour with the Professor. He was visiting universities there.’

  She was obviously glad to see the back of him. As he rode down in the lift, he glanced at his watch. It was well into the afternoon now and, leaving the building, he decided that if Marie-Anne Chahu had the day off and had had to make hurried telephone calls when he arrived they were doubtless to warn someone she was expecting not to arrive for a while.

  Wondering who it was, he went back to his car and parked further away where he couldn’t be seen from Marie-Anne Chahu’s window. Like Nosjean, Darcy sometimes had hunches.

  After a short wait, he saw one of the city’s leading citizens approaching. He was a man in his forties, fat and pale-faced, a man who sat on a committee that had been formed to watch the welfare of young people and make sure they didn’t fall by the wayside. Darcy grinned.

  ‘So that’s him,’ he said to himself. ‘Léonard Durandot, by all that’s wonderful!’

  Durandot entered the building warily, glancing about him like a burglar bolting from the scene of a crime into a street full of policemen. Since he lived in a large house near Messigny with a wife and four children, perhaps it was as well. It didn’t bother Darcy. He was just curious. A man had every right to have a mistress and, remembering Marie-Anne Chahu’s figure, Darcy felt he could hardly blame him. He just liked to know who was bedding whom. It often helped.

  Satisfied, he was just about to start his car when he noticed a girl approaching the building on a scooter. She was young, dressed in a skirt and striped blouse, and she had a pile of books strapped behind her on the pillion. She was so obviously a student, Darcy’s hand hesitated over the ignition key. In the last few days to Darcy students had come to mean drugs and he found this interesting.

  Perhaps he was mistaken and the man he’d just seen entering the block of flats had nothing to do with Marie-Anne Chahu. Perhaps his interests were elsewhere and quite innocent, and the building represented something else entirely. W
as the man they were after in there somewhere? Was Marie-Anne Chahu – the thought struck him with startling force – was she some sort of go-between for one of the gangs? It would certainly explain the expensive tastes.

  He watched the girl enter the building. She seemed remarkably in control of herself. She was pert, high-breasted, clean, dark-haired and almost danced along, and, acting on an impulse, Darcy left his car and went into the building and back to Marie-Anne Chahu’s flat. This time when she opened the door, she frowned at him angrily.

  ‘Thought I’d left my notebook here,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You haven’t.’

  He smiled. ‘Just thought.’

  ‘Is it something policemen make a habit of doing?’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Darcy said. ‘Just me.’

  As he returned to his car, he was frowning. He had been half-expecting to see the young student in the flat, looking guilty with money in her fist. Or at the very least Léonard Durandot, just unbuttoning his jacket. The flat had been empty of anyone but its owner.

  He was still frowning as he started his car. On the way back into the city, he stopped at the office of an estate agent he knew.

  ‘I want to know who owns the Maison Joliet, the new block near the Place Wilson,’ he said. ‘There’s only one.’

  The estate agent gestured. ‘That’s the Charles Rolland Company, I think. Hang on, I’ll check.’

  He returned a moment or two later. ‘Yes, it’s Rollands’.’

  ‘Rented or owned?’

  ‘All rented. Unfurnished.’

  ‘I’d like to know who pays the rent on one of them. Will Rollands’ tell me?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. It’s a very discreet place.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Find out for me, will you? Number 27.’

  ‘It’ll take time.’ The estate agent smiled. ‘What are you after, you old ram?’

  Darcy smiled and tapped his nose. ‘Ring me at the office. I’ll be back in an hour or so.’

  Driving towards the city centre, he stopped again, this time in front of a car showroom. The space behind the glass was full of British cars, among them a Triumph 1500. For a while, he stood outside, staring at it, then he marched through the door and asked for the manager.

  ‘Monsieur Bazin’s in the bar next door, having a coffee,’ he was told.

  To Darcy’s surprise, the first person he saw in the bar was Emile Escaut, who was sitting in front of the zinc with a whisky in front of him. This time his trousers were a bright jade green and he wore a checked pink shirt, though he didn’t look any cleaner than when Darcy had first met him in the Rue du Chapeau Rouge near the body of Gilles Miollis. He was deep in conversation with the barman and didn’t notice Darcy, who took up a position by the door so that Escaut couldn’t reach the street without having to brush against him.

  Bazin, the manager of the car showroom, was an old friend of Darcy’s and the coffee he was supposed to be drinking turned out to be a large beer.

  ‘Coffee’s not much good,’ he grinned. ‘Not in this heat. What are you after?’

  Darcy smiled. ‘A Triumph 1500,’ he said.

  Bazin’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Want to buy one?’

  ‘No. I want to know if you sell many.’

  Bazin hoisted his face out of his beer and nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh, yes. Almost every day.’ He grinned. ‘Not many, mon brave. They’re a little expensive for ordinary people.’

  ‘Do you keep records?’

  ‘But of course.’

  ‘Who owns one with the registered number 2731-QT-21? Blue. White-walled tyres.’

  ‘I can find out.’

  ‘Do that. I’ll call in after I’ve had a beer.’

  As Bazin finished his drink and left, Darcy moved nearer to Escaut who saw him approach through the mirror behind the bar. He turned quickly, his face startled. Darcy smiled at him.

  ‘Bonjour, mon brave.’ He gestured at the whisky. ‘Expensive drink for a man of your means.’

  Escaut shrugged. ‘I treat myself once in a while.’

  ‘On Perdrix’s money?’

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘You know who I mean, my friend. Your girlfriend’s father.’

  Escaut frowned. ‘He doesn’t give me money.’

  ‘How about his daughter. Does she?’

  Escaut shrugged. ‘She has some.’

  ‘How much of it are you hoping to get your hands on?’ Escaut gave him a look of sheer hatred. ‘None. It’s hers. She does what she likes with it.’

  ‘Then what are you hoping to get out of it?’

  ‘Out of what?’

  ‘Living with her.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No?’ Darcy smiled, things beginning to click in his head. ‘Haven’t you ever hoped that Pappy would offer her hand in marriage?’

  Escaut frowned. ‘I expect we’ll get round to that in time.’

  ‘Unless, of course, Pappy pays up a substantial sum first to discourage you.’ Darcy leaned forward. ‘Didn’t someone do something like that with Alexandrine Bétheot, daughter of the head of the Pigues Pottery Group. Limoges way.

  ‘Did they?’ Escaut was studying his whisky as if he’d suddenly spotted a goldfish in it. ‘I don’t know.’

  Darcy gestured. ‘He had a daughter about the same age as your girl friend, who got herself caught up with some slob. He paid out quite a good sum to call him off.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Yes. It’s easy for people like that these days, of course. These wealthy chicks try to look as scruffy as the rest to show they’re egalitarian and Marxist. It makes them easy pick-ups. We have a file on the Bétheot case. Full of names. Guy by the name of Patrice Bourges, I think. Looked a bit like you, come to mention it.’ Darcy finished his beer and slapped Escaut on the shoulder. ‘Be seeing you, mon brave.’

  Outside, he halted in the doorway of the car showroom and stared back at the bar. Almost immediately, Escaut appeared, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Pausing in the doorway, he stared to right and left, then hurried off. He seemed alarmed and Darcy smiled. He enjoyed alarming people like Escaut.

  Lighting a cigarette, he entered the showroom. Bazin met him.

  ‘That was easy,’ he said. ‘It belongs to a Mademoiselle Marie-Anne Chahu.’

  ‘Did she pay for it or did someone else?’

  ‘Dieu, how would I know?’

  ‘Can you find out?’

  ‘I expect so. It’ll be in the files in our accounts department.’

  Darcy smiled. ‘Show me the way to your accounts department.’ he said.

  Darcy was still smiling as he drove back past the University but, as he turned into the Boulevard Gabriel, he saw the young bright-eyed, high-breasted girl he’d seen entering the Maison Joliet an hour before. As she sailed past him he made a forbidden U-turn and followed the scooter past the University buildings standing like the white hip-bones of some huge dead monster on the bare slope. At the Faculté de Droit she parked and vanished inside. Following her, Darcy saw her wave to the porter.

  ‘That girl,’ he said. ‘Is she a student?’

  The porter smiled. ‘Yes, Monsieur. A good one, too. Nadine Weyl. She works hard and enjoys university. She’s the sort we need. She’s from Metz. Poor but brainy.’

  Darcy walked slowly back to his car. There seemed to be a lot of intriguing angles to the Marie-Anne Chahu business, he decided.

  Eleven

  Professor Foussier lived at Francheville, hard under the edge of the Plateau de Langres, where the fields run in long mellow folds and the villages have a lost look as if they’ve been dredged up from the seventeenth century.

  It was a place of old houses, with an ancient church alongside the stream. Behind it lay the presbytery and to one side, just beyond the churchyard, was what had once been the home of the Seigneurs of Francheville. The Seigneurs of Francheville had never been wealthy and their home had not been a château, but it was large and it
had the beauty of old age. Professor Foussier had bought it ten years before when the previous owners, beggared by their excesses, had had to sell.

  As the car drove through the huge iron gates and crunched luxuriously up the gravelled drive, Pel looked about him enviously. As a boy in Vieilly he had worked as a gardener’s assistant in just such a house as this. They were shown in by a girl in a grey dress that was discreet enough not to offend the girl by branding her a servant but let it be well and truly known that she wasn’t a member of the family. The interior of the house was efficient and colourful, and Foussier’s wife went with it. She was no longer young but was still full of beauty, and there seemed a formidable strength of character in the bright black eyes and strong chin. Pel had heard of her. She had one of the finest collections of pressed flowers in France, if not the whole world.

  Foussier was not at home and Madame Foussier tried to explain. ‘He’s a very busy man, Inspector,’ she said. ‘He’s obviously been delayed. He never normally misses appointments. He’s surprisingly humble about that sort of thing.’

  Pel struggled not to show his irritation, something he never found very easy. It was Saturday and Saturday was supposed to be a day of rest when half of them were off-duty. They never were, of course, and certainly not that Saturday, with all the enquiries that were pending. Only Misset, complaining that he was bringing up a clutch of children who never saw their father, had chivvied Pel into allowing him to be free.

  Foussier’s wife realised he was angry and tried to put things right. ‘My husband finds the strain a little too much at times,’ she said. ‘And occasionally he goes into retreat. What I mean is he goes flying or sometimes disappears for a day or two. Sometimes from here. More often when he’s on one of his trips abroad. In the early days, my husband’s assistant, Marie-Anne Chahu, used to telephone me in alarm, wondering what had happened to him. But he was just recharging his batteries, that’s all, going somewhere he wasn’t known and walking – or reading, or merely thinking. Perhaps that’s where he is now. He’ll be here soon.’

  It didn’t please Pel to think that the man he’d come to see was probably floating about among the clouds. He managed to control his temper. ‘I was hoping to ask your husband about a man called Nincic, Madame.’