Pel and the Predators

by Mark Hebden

  ‘She left just over a month ago. On the 15th of last month. Just walked out on us. I always thought she might. She was quite unreliable.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘She set off to catch a bus to Mongy.’

  ‘She never got there. Why did you insist she didn’t work here?’

  Mademoiselle Guichet looked at her brother who shifted uneasily on his feet. ‘She asked us not to let anyone know. She said she wanted to mind her own business. We didn’t argue. It wasn’t easy to get people to work here. She was different. She was odd – secretive. She never went into the village and she never told us where she came from or what she did in her spare time.’

  ‘What do you think she did?’

  Mademoiselle Guichet shrugged. ‘Men, I suppose. That’s usually the case at that age. I thought she might have been involved in something else, too – something dishonest – especially when she asked us not to let anybody know where she was. I didn’t like the idea of employing someone who might be involved in criminal activities, and I got the impression that there was a man and that she was hiding from him. We were just anxious to keep her here, despite her being so strange.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Pel snapped. ‘She’s been murdered. I made that clear.’

  Mademoiselle Guichet gestured feebly. ‘I thought some criminal might come. Something like that. I thought it was best to go on saying nothing.’

  ‘She wasn’t sacked?’

  ‘No. But she would have been.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Her job was to help in the kitchen and carry the food up here. To save my legs. Then I noticed she was staying longer up here than she need, and I discovered she was making up to him.’

  ‘The old man? How?’

  ‘How do women make up to old men?’

  ‘Inform me.’

  ‘She was telling him she was younger than she was, and he was too old and short-sighted to tell her age. He started to give her money.’

  ‘What for?’

  She shrugged, leaving the answer unspoken.

  ‘After she came,’ Hubert Guichet said, ‘he started sending me down to the bank at Mongy for cash. She showed me a dress he’d paid for. He probably gave her other things we never heard about.’

  Darcy held out the photograph of the Lucie necklet. ‘Such as this? She was wearing it when she was found.’

  Guichet frowned. ‘I don’t know. I never saw it before.’

  ‘These gifts,’ Pel said. ‘What were they in return for?’

  Bernadine Guichet’s voice was low as she answered. ‘Surely you can guess.’

  ‘He’s an old man.’

  ‘Even old men feel young at times. I’ve looked after a lot. You’d be surprised. Sometimes they seem to have six pairs of hands. She read to him. Once I found her lying beside him on his bed.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Holding him. She said he was cold. But she was close to him.’ Mademoiselle Guichet looked shocked. ‘I decided it was becoming dangerous, and thought she was after his money. It’s happened before with old men.’

  The old man’s voice broke in over the whispered questions and answers from the other side of the room. ‘When’s Sidonie coming back?’ he said.

  ‘Her name wasn’t Sidonie,’ Guichet said over his shoulder. ‘The Chief Inspector here says it was Dominique.’

  ‘She told me it was Sidonie. When is she coming back? She said she would.’

  Guichet began to pile pillows round the old man. ‘All these pillows,’ he said, clucking like an old hen. ‘One day you’ll turn over and drown in them.’

  The old man gave him a bitter look. ‘You said I should have them.’

  ‘You were complaining of rheumatism. It’s not necessary now. But, if you insist—’

  ‘I don’t insist.’

  Guichet frowned. ‘I never know where I am with you.’

  ‘What about Sidonie?’

  ‘She’s left.’

  The old man’s voice rose in a wail. ‘Sidonie understood me! She knew what I liked and what I wanted!’ A pair of faded eyes fell on Pel. ‘Why are the police here again? I don’t think much of the police. They couldn’t find a lost dog. I want Sidonie. She used to sit with me for hours.’

  ‘She also used to lie on the bed with you,’ Mademoiselle Guichet snapped.

  The old man’s whine grew sharper and brisker. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ he asked.

  ‘Perhaps even in the bed.’

  The old man cackled. ‘You’d love to know, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You’re a dirty old man.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’d have had you in here, too, before now, except that you’re not my type.’

  Mademoiselle Guichet looked furious and the old man cackled again. ‘And you’d have come, too, if you’d thought I’d marry you. You’d have been glad to get your hands on my money.’

  Mademoiselle Guichet gave an angry snort. ‘Marriage isn’t possible at your age!’

  ‘You don’t know my family.’

  They didn’t have to go to Doctor Lecomte to confirm what Bernadine Guichet had said. The tractor driver at the farm agreed that he’d taken the station wagon for two days’ work on it at Mongy and that he’d seen the Guichets about the place all the time during those days and the days before.

  Pel was silent as they headed for the car. His head was beginning to ache and he decided it was the concentrated thinking he was doing. He was even beginning to grow a little tired of Dominique Pigny. She never quite seemed to come to life and he still wasn’t sure what she’d been like. But, if nothing else, they’d learned that she’d been at the Château d’Ivry and that when she’d left on the 15th, the day Le Gaston had seen her, she’d not intended to stay away long.

  ‘It’s obvious old Stocklin likes women,’ he said.

  ‘All men like women,’ Darcy said. ‘The old ones over a cup of coffee. The younger ones in bed. It’s a natural phenomenon.’

  Pel frowned. ‘Was she blackmailing him, do you think? He was giving her money and she’d tried blackmail before.’

  ‘It seemed to me,’ Darcy said, ‘that if he gave her the money, he gave it freely.’

  ‘Then was she blackmailing someone else?’

  ‘If she was, then that’s who must have killed her. It couldn’t have been the Guichets because when she was killed they were at the Château and they couldn’t possibly have been away without being missed for two days – which is what it must have taken to cart her to Beg Meil and dump her in the sea.’

  Pel frowned. And, he reminded himself, despite knowing its number and its owner, the white Mercedes they were seeking, the white Mercedes which had carried Dominique Pigny’s body to Brittany, still hadn’t turned up.

  However, it was about to.

  Nineteen

  At lunchtime at the Relais St. Armand, between the hors d’oeuvres and the coq au vin, with Aimedieu gloomily sucking his teeth in his car outside and thinking of tinned mince, Pel chose to be funny to Madame Faivre-Perret.

  ‘I’ve found the perfect place for Madame Routy,’ he said cheerfully as he sat back. ‘Old boy out at Arne. Watches television all day, isn’t fussy what he eats, and doesn’t care whether the place’s clean or dirty. She could feed him on casseroles and watch with him.’

  Madame smiled. ‘I’ve got plans for Madame Routy,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’ve found somewhere for her to go.’

  Madame was smiling. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve found somewhere.’

  ‘Where? North Pole? South Africa? Siberia?’

  Madame smiled. ‘She can look after us.’

  Pel dropped his fork. ‘Look after us!’ The thought of Madame Routy pursuing him into married life was enough to make an Ethiopian go pale. ‘Not Madame Routy,’ he said in shocked tones.

  ‘Why not?’ Madame asked mildly. ‘Housekeepers are hard to get these days and we’ll need someone to run the place.’

  ‘She can’t cook! And she
’ll watch television all day!’

  ‘She’d better not.’

  ‘You don’t know her.’

  ‘All to the good.’ Madame seemed quite confident. ‘I shall be able to handle her better.’

  Pel headed back to his office, feeling his future had been blighted. The thought of Madame Routy running his marital establishment was enough to destroy the confidence of the strongest man. Within weeks, she’d be back to her old habits and more than likely have Madame Faivre-Perret cowering, too. On the other hand, he had to admit, Madame Faivre-Perret seemed to have hidden resources. And if she could run an establishment like Nanette’s she must have courage. To charge the prices Nanette’s charged she had to have courage.

  He arrived back at the Hôtel de Police feeling much better. Perhaps, he thought, Madame Faivre-Perret would be able to handle Madame Routy after all. You never knew, it might be Madame Routy who would be doing the cowering. After so many years of strife with her, the idea pleased him, and he actually smiled to himself. But as he reached his room, his self-satisfaction died at once. His department was in uproar. The white Mercedes they’d been seeking for so long had finally turned up – by accident.

  ‘In a lock-up garage at Dampierre,’ Darcy said. ‘The police there have drug problems and when they put on a snap search for hidden caches in warehouses, sheds and garages, there it was. The number’s correct. It’s the dentist’s all right and it has a damaged headlight and wing.’

  Pel was adjusting quickly from his mood of euphoria to one of immediate alertness.

  ‘Who owns the garage?’ he snapped.

  ‘Type called Grassart. He’s straight and has no record. He’s a pensioner and has a row of garages he lets off to add to his income. Somebody rented one and paid him for four months, saying he’d come back with his car that night.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘Same as we got from Le Gaston. White suit, blue shirt, white tie.’

  ‘Anything inside the car?’

  ‘An empty can of de-icer, a notepad, a dirty duster, a pair of sunglasses, a red crayon pencil, and a set of Michelin maps in a plastic envelope. All the owner’s. There was also a map that isn’t his – of the Grandes Routes de France, with circles on it round Mongy, Arne and Benodet, and a route marked in the red crayon across country from Arne via Avallon, Orléans, Le Mans and Rennes, avoiding all main roads.’

  ‘Fingerprints?’

  Darcy grinned and Pel guessed he was saving the best bit for last. ‘In addition to the owner’s and his wife’s and daughter’s, they found dabs which have been identified as belonging to one Marie-Josephe Danot, also known as l’Aixois because he was born in Aix-en-Provence, and as Jo-Jo la Canne because he broke a leg as a young man – or had it broken for him by some of his friends in Marseilles – so that he has to use a walking stick. Heard of him?’

  Pel sniffed. ‘Demi-sel,’ he said. ‘Small-time crook. Gangster and racketeer in and around Marseilles. Involved in protection rackets and a few other things.’

  Darcy nodded. ‘Worked at one time with the Berlioni gang. Suspected of the murder of one of the opposition, Antonio Latoni, known as Tony the Tout, and also of the killing in Toulon of one Marie Topin, a prostitute. They were both gang murders and the Marseilles police were certain Jo-Jo did them both but could never pin them on him.’

  Pel frowned. ‘Did he know Dominique Pigny?’

  ‘We’ll know that better when we find him. His mother lives in Rochefort. I’ve contacted police headquarters and asked them to keep an eye on the house.’

  Pel sat down slowly in his chair, and pushed his spectacles up on his forehead. They nestled among the thin hair at the front of his skull like two pigeon’s eggs in a very sparse nest.

  ‘Jo-Jo la Canne,’ he said slowly. ‘He killed her and took her in the car and dumped her in the sea at Benodet so that the body turned up with the tide in Beg Meil. But why?’

  ‘She was pregnant, Patron.’

  ‘By Jo-Jo la Canne?’ Pel shook his head. ‘She doesn’t seem the sort who goes with him. And he doesn’t seem the sort who goes with her.’

  Late in the afternoon, they learned two new facts. The damage to the Mercedes found at Dampierre was consistent with causing the injuries from which Dominique Pigny had died and the boot showed traces of blood. Doctor’s records showed it to be the same group as Dominique Pigny’s – which supported the theory that she’d been killed near Arne and taken the same night to Benodet to be dumped in the sea. Doubtless Jo-Jo la Canne had driven throughout the night, clearly wishing to put as much distance as possible between himself and the scene of the crime, but, because he’d arrived after daylight and was noticed by the mother of a small boy giving a party, he’d been forced to wait all day in and around Benodet until darkness to get rid of the body in the sea. The second fact, equally important but more unhelpful, was that Jo-Jo la Canne had not been seen near his mother’s house in Rochefort.

  Pel was thoughtful. He was still working on the theory that Dominique Pigny, despite her oddness and her undoubted dishonesty, didn’t go with Jo-Jo la Canne. Jo-Jo was a vicious type. So far, Dominique just seemed a little unbalanced, a type who would do anything for a laugh or for money, or to irritate the more formal people of the world.

  ‘We seem to have established,’ he said, ‘that she was walking down the road from Arne past the spot where Le Gaston was working and that Jo-Jo was waiting for her. He couldn’t have been waiting to pick her up because he’d been there three days in succession. So where was she going? And why was she going there? And why did Jo-Jo la Canne run her down and kill her? What was his interest in the affair?’

  Pel was due to see Madame again that evening to discuss the plans for their future. With the certainty that Duche was still at large, Darcy was none too keen, but as it happened the matter was resolved very simply. During the afternoon Pel began to feel off-colour so that even the cigarettes he smoked tasted foul, and in the end he called on Doc Minet on the excuse of asking if anything more had turned up on Josée Celine and persuaded him to have a look at him.

  ‘It’s bog spavin,’ Doc Minet said, his plump face amused. ‘It’s a disease in horses.’ Minet’s eyes danced. ‘You’ve obviously got a cold coming on. If I were you I’d go home and get into bed.’

  Convinced he was dying, Pel telephoned Madame to say what had happened. The concern in her voice made him feel it was almost worth dying.

  ‘Go to bed,’ she said. ‘With a hot water bottle.’

  He found Madame Routy had grown tired of being ill and, convinced that it was now safe to emerge, had returned and was watching the television. The noise brought on a splitting headache of the sort reserved for sufferers from sinusitis.

  ‘Turn that thing down,’ Pel said.

  ‘I’m just watching the end of this,’ Madame Routy said.

  She was always just watching the end of something. If she’d lived during the Revolution, she’d have been sitting by the guillotine, knitting herself silly as she watched the last of the day’s batch of aristocrats being topped.

  ‘I think I have pneumonia,’ Pel snarled. ‘I’m going to bed, and if it disturbs me I shall come downstairs and kick the front in.’

  About the time that Pel was sinking into unconsciousness, a young business executive was making love to a woman in large brand-new six-cylinder Peugeot 604 which he’d driven just inside a small ride in the Forêt de Diviot near Sombernon. He had a wife of his own age who was kind, good, devout and hardworking, but she was dull and the young man liked fun and the idea of making love to another man’s wife – especially a woman whose husband held a position of great wealth and importance – was exciting to him. She had telephoned him that afternoon that her husband had flown to Toulon on business and wasn’t due back until the following morning.

  The young man had dressed in his best suit – the one he kept for weddings, dinner parties, meeting important businessmen and seducing women. He was a powerfully-built young man who prided hims
elf on his masculine virility, and as they combed out and buttoned up, he was feeling very pleased with himself. It had been a pleasant evening out, paid for by the woman, who was eager for excitement because she felt she was growing old and had little time to waste, and he was quite prepared now to go home to his loving, hardworking, dull wife, who thought he was on his way back from Paris after a business trip and wasn’t expecting him until midnight.

  It was with a feeling of satisfaction that, chattering cheerfully, he climbed behind the driving wheel of the big Peugeot, started the engine and put it into reverse. Pleased with himself, he swung the wheel with a certain amount of panache to show what a devil he was and put his foot on the accelerator, so that the big car swung round in a swift half-circle to face the road. Unfortunately, in his self-satisfaction, the young man was showing off and was a little too enthusiastic. Just as he was about to apply the brakes preparatory to engaging forward gear, he felt a bump and a crunch and the car came to a stop, one of the rear wheels in a half-obscured ditch that bordered the road.

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ he said.

  Climbing out of the driving seat, he took a torch from the pocket and went to the rear of the car. The ditch was deep and full of leaves and small branches that were a relic of winter gales. The car was resting with its chassis on the bank and, angry at his carelessness, he grasped the bumper and lifted. But the Peugeot was too heavy even for his strong shoulders. He strained until he began to think he might rupture himself then, still angry with himself but certain he could overcome the problem, he climbed back into the driving seat and, putting it into forward gear, pressed the accelerator. There was a screaming sound as the wheels revolved.

  The woman gestured nervously. ‘Try it more slowly,’ she said.

  He tried it more slowly. It made no difference.

  ‘You drive it,’ he said. ‘I’ll push.’

  As she slipped into his place, he climbed into the ditch and put his shoulder against the car. When nothing happened, she increased the pressure on the accelerator and as the wheels spun, twigs, dead leaves, grass and wet soil were flung over the young man’s splendid suit.