Pel and the Predators

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Did she know about Dominique’s baby?’

  ‘She never said anything about it. But she might have found out.’

  ‘If she did, she’d assume it was yours, wouldn’t she?’

  Charnier shrugged.

  ‘She hit her sister on one occasion, didn’t she?’

  ‘She hit me on several.’

  ‘Would you say she’d go to greater lengths than that? If she found you and her sister were lovers.’

  Charnier hesitated and there was a gleam of malice in his eyes, as if he saw an opportunity to be rid of his domineering partner. ‘Yes, I would say that,’ he said. ‘She hit Dominique with the broom. She knocked her unconscious. She might well have had another go.’

  ‘He could have done it, Patron,’ Darcy said as they started up the car. ‘He doesn’t look much like the type, but you never can tell. And if the baby was his, he had a good motive.’

  Pel nodded. ‘So had his wife. And if she could hit her sister hard enough to knock her unconscious, she’d probably be prepared to do more if she found them together again.’

  ‘But she reported her missing, Patron.’

  ‘The oldest dodge in the world to establish your innocence.’

  ‘But how did she get her to Brittany?’

  ‘They’ve got a car. And women have been known before now to hide bodies. Her husband probably wasn’t unwilling to help her even. He’s clearly short of money and wouldn’t want to take on a baby. His wife could even have forced him, blackmailed him.’

  ‘And what about the white Mercedes Jourjon says he saw?’

  ‘Probably just a travelling salesman working the area who stopped in the lay-by to do his accounts.’

  ‘And the one in Brittany?’

  Pel shrugged. ‘There are a lot of white Mercedes around,’ he said.

  Thirteen

  The following morning a report came in of a sports and arms shop in Dole being raided. Someone had removed iron bars at the back, climbed through a window and removed a Mannlicher 7mm hunting rifle.

  Darcy climbed into his car and went with Aimedieu to have a look. The shop, with its sign ‘Arquebusier, Pêche, Armes, Coutellerie,’ was in the main street and for a second or two he stared through the window at the selection of fishing rods, knives, rifles and shotguns.

  ‘Some gun-crazy kid,’ the proprietor growled. ‘He’s probably out at this minute in the woods towards Rochefort looking for rabbits.’

  ‘With a Mannlicher?’ Darcy said. ‘They know better than that, mon brave. He picked a German rifle because the Germans have a tradition for making the best. What else went?’

  ‘Nothing. Just a telescopic sight. A Zeiss.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Darcy said. ‘Just a Zeiss telescopic sight. That and a Mannlicher give him the world’s best sniper’s weapon there is.’

  When Prélat, of Fingerprints, arrived, they went to work with the dusting powders. There was a large thumb print on the glass of the window where the intruder had entered and it didn’t take them long to identify it.

  Darcy looked at Prélat. ‘Philippe Duche,’ he said. ‘This one isn’t going to walk up to the Old Man’s car and stick his arm through the window to pull the trigger. If he’s got a rifle with a telescopic sight it means he’s looking for a place where he can take a long shot.’

  While Darcy was at Dole, De Troquereau was finally sorting out the case of the Indian Runners. At Cholley, he felt he was out on a limb, and he wanted to be involved in the case of Josée Celine – especially as Claudie Darel was involved, too. He had re-read everything he could find about Indian Runners and, finally deciding to try an idea he’d had, he returned to Boyer’s farm and persuaded Madame Boyer to open wide the main gate and leave ajar the gate to the field where the ducks had been housed.

  ‘What are you up to, mon brave?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve had an idea. Just leave it to me.’

  Packing into the back of his car two of the baskets with which she transported her ducks to market, he drove to Louisvillers. Gautherot regarded him smugly. He’d just had a meal and he was wiping his mouth with a red handkerchief.

  ‘I want to borrow your ducks,’ De Troq’ said. ‘For an experiment. There’s a type over at Chizeux who has some like them and I’m a bit suspicious. You’d better get in your car and come, too.’

  Gautherot was quite happy to oblige. It was quite clear he had no fears of De Troq’ proving his ducks were Boyer’s ducks. But as they passed the Boyers’ farm and De Troq’ drew to a stop, he pulled up alongside with an indignant look on his face.

  ‘You said Chizeux,’ he pointed out. ‘This is Cholley.’

  De Troq’ shrugged and climbed out of his car. ‘This’ll do just as well,’ he said.

  Outside Boyer’s farm, De Troq’ checked that the gates were open, then, with Boyer and Gautherot watching, he got Madame Boyer to help him open the baskets. For a moment or two the ducks remained where they were, only their lean dark heads visible above the edge of the baskets, like a lot of elderly Indian ladies peering myopically about them. Then, one after the other, they hopped out into the roadway and for a moment longer they clustered together, before heading in a bunch for the gate to Boyer’s farm. Quacking loudly, they vanished through the gate, across the yard and through the second gate, then, in a long line of tall brown waddling shapes moving at full speed, headed straight across the field to the shed where they’d been housed. One after the other they disappeared inside. De Troq’ looked at his watch. It was seven-thirty.

  ‘What time did you say you normally fasten up the ducks in their sheds?’ he asked Madame Boyer.

  ‘Seven-thirty,’ she said.

  Gautherot was standing by the car, his face red. ‘I’ll be over to see you,’ De Troq’ smiled.

  Pel had just received De Troq’s report when Claudie Darel appeared. She looked excited.

  ‘We’ve confirmed her, Patron,’ she said. ‘Absolutely. Without doubt. She is Josée Celine, née Joséphine Cellino. Twenty-three years old. Born in Caen, Normandy. Green eyes. Red hair.’ On Pel’s desk she laid a photograph of a young woman, well-made-up and pretty, and wearing her hair in a style which looked modern yet obviously wasn’t. Across the corner was a signature – ‘Toujours, Josée.’

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Paris. Agence Barbanic. It’s a theatrical agency. Books actors. They’ve got a collection of them and they say there might be more at the Musée des Théâtres.’ Claudie laid a thick wad of paper on Pel’s desk. ‘It’s all in the report, Patron. I’ve given a copy to Jean-Luc Nosjean. I’ve found the inspector who was involved in the original enquiries. He’s still alive. He’s seventy-five years old but apparently quite active. He lives at Talant. I’ll go and see him.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll both go and see him.’

  ‘I’ve also found a friend of hers who toured the provinces with her. She’s seventy-two years old—’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Another what, Patron?’

  ‘We seem to be wandering down Memory Lane a little lately.’

  Claudie smiled. ‘She’s got photographs taken during her theatrical career and Josée Celine’s in a lot of them. She’s digging out a selection for us because Grenier, of Photography, thought we might be able to compare them with photos of the skull from Drax. She remembers the rings she wore, too, and she says she did have a big diamond and she always wore earrings. Always. Big ones – as big, she said, as elephant’s tears.’

  ‘And Xavier Sirdey? What’s known about him?’

  Claudie smiled. ‘He’d be around eighty-five years old, Patron.’

  ‘Oh, name of God!’ Pel extracted a cigarette from the packet in his drawer, trying to pretend it was a throat lozenge, but he’d hardly put it to his mouth when Claudie flicked a lighter and lit it for him. His bad habits, it seemed, were overtaking him.

  ‘Well, if he’s alive,’ he said, ‘he’ll have to appear before the magistrates, despite his age. The law requir
es it. Have we any idea where he might be?’

  ‘At the moment, no. He seems to have sunk without trace. I’ve contacted the substation at Dismagnay, and they’ve enquired. Only a few people remember the case, of course, and none of them knows where he went to. He seems to have left the district soon afterwards.’

  Pel gestured. ‘Very well. See Nosjean. We can’t let it go. You and Nosjean had better stick with it. De Troq’ can help, too. He’s free now.’

  She looked pleased because Nosjean and De Troq’ were both young and good-looking and both were competing for her favours.

  The Chief’s interest remained casual. A body lost forty years before was hardly likely to stir the emotions much, especially since the man suspected of providing the body was more than likely also to be dead. The case of Dominique Pigny was different but Judge Polverari was still, despite the evidence of the waiting car, inclined to suspect a hit-and-run rather than a murder.

  ‘The man in the car might have been watching the château,’ he said. ‘Some small housebreaker casing the joint.’ He pointed to the map spread on the table between them. ‘Where the car was parked must have placed the house well within view.’

  Following the Chief’s conference, Pel and Darcy made another journey to the Château d’Ivry. A small car was standing outside the main entrance when they arrived and they found a man inside talking to Bernadine Guichet.

  ‘This is Doctor Lecomte,’ she said. ‘He’s been to see Monsieur Stocklin. He thought he had a cold coming on.’

  So did Pel. His throat hurt and he almost asked the doctor to give him a quick once-over.

  Doctor Lecomte was a thickset man with heavy tweeds and a pipe as big as a lavatory bowl which poured out thick blue smoke.

  ‘The old josser’s all right,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Nothing much wrong with him except age.’

  ‘He’s old, doctor,’ Bernadine Guichet pointed out.

  ‘Name of Heaven, woman, these days people often live to be a hundred!’

  He shook Pel’s hand, crushing it in a vast fist like a coal grab. ‘Police, eh?’ he said. ‘Who’re you after? Old Stocklin? I expect the old rogue’s done a few shady things in his time.’

  ‘Any you’ve heard of?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Pure as the driven snow as far as I know. Priest says so, and he should know. I expect he’s got all his sins down on a list, though, ready to send with him to Heaven when he goes.’ Lecomte laughed. ‘He’s got a long wait, mind you. Barring accidents, he’s safe for a century.’

  Mademoiselle Guichet showed the doctor out and returned to offer tea to Pel and Darcy.

  ‘I notice Monsieur Stocklin’s window’s on the north-west side of the house,’ Pel observed as he polished off a biscuit. ‘Overlooking the road down to Mongy. I was wondering if he ever saw the girl, Dominique Pigny, walking down it.’

  ‘Why should he?’

  ‘We have reason to believe she was on that road when she was killed. Perhaps he could identify the pictures of the girl we have.’

  ‘I should doubt it,’ Mademoiselle Guichet said. ‘His eyes are too bad. But I’ll go and see if he’s awake.’

  She slipped from the room and was gone for a few minutes before returning. Silently, she held the door open.

  It was only a short walk along the corridor to Stocklin’s room. The bed was huge, old-fashioned and heavily canopied and the room had the stifling atmosphere of age. It was nothing they could smell because there was a strong odour of antiseptic, clearly an addition by Bernadine Guichet, but there was a mustiness, a staleness, a lack of fresh air, as if it were the cage of an ageing eagle that was too rarely opened.

  The old man was sitting on the edge of the bed in a dressing gown that had been fastened crookedly about him. He was thin and gaunt, with a long neck with a prominent adam’s apple, his head covered with a fluff of white hair, and he was peering narrow-eyed at a television with a screen as big as a cinema, which was roaring away in a corner of the room.

  Bernadine Guichet stalked across the room and turned it off. ‘You should be resting,’ she said. ‘And there’s someone to see you.’

  The old man whirled and stared at Pel and Darcy. His face was yellowish, with deep lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth as if he’d never been in the habit of smiling much. He looked as if he’d always known what he was about and even now, despite his age, the faded eyes had a sharp look of cunning and malicious humour.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he demanded. ‘I didn’t ask to see anyone. I never want to see anyone after that damned fool of a doctor’s been.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be out of bed,’ Mademoiselle Guichet said sharply.

  ‘I’m not a cripple,’ Stocklin growled. ‘I could play football if I wanted to. With you, if I felt like it.’

  ‘Not so much of that. Let’s have you back where you belong.’

  Slowly, she pushed him back into the bed. He stared at Pel and Darcy over her shoulder.

  ‘Who are they?’ he asked. ‘Crooks? I don’t like the look of them.’

  ‘I’ll tell you who they are when you’re properly in bed.’ She swung his legs in and covered him with blankets, the old man complaining all the time. Despite what she said, he seemed alert, though it was obvious from the way he peered at Pel that his eyes were bad.

  ‘Well, come on,’ he snapped. ‘Who is it? He looks a bad ’un, that one.’

  ‘This is Chief Inspector Pel, of the Police Judiciaire.’

  The old man scowled. ‘I don’t like the police,’ he said. ‘Especially anyone called Pel. There was a man called Pel who cut up his wife in 1880 and burned her in the kitchen boiler. My father told me about her. What’s he want?’

  ‘He’d like to talk to you.’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t like to talk to him.’ The old man gave a malicious chuckle. ‘I don’t think much of the police. They couldn’t catch mice. What’s he after?’

  ‘He wondered if you could identify some photographs. Where are your reading glasses?’

  The old man peered at the table alongside his bed. ‘I had them a minute ago. They were here.’ His hand groped among the objects on the table.

  ‘You’ve lost them,’ he snarled at Mademoiselle Guichet. ‘With your everlasting tidying.’

  The search ended with him cursing and thrashing about like a wounded whale under the blankets, and by the time they’d decided the spectacles had been lost the bed looked as though someone had played football across it.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ Stocklin shouted at Mademoiselle Guichet. ‘One day I shall probably shoot you.’ He looked at Pel. ‘I could,’ he pointed out cheerfully. ‘I’ve got a gun. She doesn’t believe me because she doesn’t know where it is. I keep it hidden. Together with my late wife’s jewellery. I’ve got a secret place she doesn’t know about because if she did she’d probably remove the jewellery for her own use.’

  Bernadine Guichet looked at Pel and raised her eyes to the ceiling in despair.

  ‘What’s his memory like?’ Pel asked quietly.

  ‘Good, when he wants it to be. Abysmal when he isn’t interested. Why?’

  A thought had occurred to Pel and he leaned over the old man. ‘Do you remember a murder case during the war?’ he asked. ‘An actress called Josée Celine.’

  The old man’s eyes flicked open and he stared at Pel. Then he nodded. ‘Yes, I remember the case. I was near Vercors at the time.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘I was with the Resistance. What else would I be doing in those days? She was a pretty little thing, I remember. I once saw her on the stage. She disappeared, didn’t she?’

  ‘They’ve just found her again.’

  ‘They have?’

  ‘She was living with a man called Xavier Sirdey.’

  ‘Did he do it?’

  ‘That’s what we think. They couldn’t pin it on him then because there was no body, and now there is he’s disappeared.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know anything about him.’ The old
man cackled. ‘But he was clever, that one. She was a bitch, I heard. Going round with other men. And the police were as stupid then as they are now. They never caught him. He laughed, I bet.’ His face suddenly went blank and he heaved over in bed. ‘I’m tired now. I want to go to sleep. Go away. I don’t like policemen.’

  As he subsided, still muttering, Pel put the photographs back in the brown envelope, uninspected.

  ‘He wouldn’t know her, anyway,’ Mademoiselle Guichet said quietly as she led the way from the room. ‘He’s partly deaf and as you can tell he can’t see very well.’

  In her private quarters her brother had cleared away the tea things and was sitting at the table in a striped apron, cleaning a silver candelabra. As they entered, he rose and produced a bottle of marc.

  ‘I’ve got a grandfather getting on for that age,’ Darcy said as they drank. ‘Thank God I don’t have to see him often. Is he always like that?’

  Guichet grinned and set about the candelabra again.

  ‘Sometimes he’s worse. He pretends a lot. He couldn’t possibly remember the things he says he can.’

  ‘Does he get out of bed?’

  ‘He’s not supposed to,’ Mademoiselle Guichet said. ‘But he does. You saw him.’

  ‘Who looked after him before you?’

  Mademoiselle Guichet shrugged. ‘A variety of people. None of them stayed. He has too much of a temper. He’s sly and shifty and pretends to be ill when he isn’t. It makes it hard work. I keep thinking we’ll have to have a change soon but the thought of him being on his own stops me. He’d have great difficulty finding anyone to look after him.’

  ‘Has he no relatives?’

  ‘None we know of. None he knows of.’

  Pel studied the big rooms. ‘Where did his money come from?’

  It came from business but the Guichets didn’t really know what business because Stocklin was no longer involved in it, though he still drew income from his land which amounted to around three thousand hectares. Everything round the house, including the farm and more land higher up the hill, to say nothing of a stretch of woodland looked after under contract by a garde forestier. There were also quarries at Chantenoy.