Pel and the Predators

by Mark Hebden

  ‘What was?’

  ‘The old boy at the château. He was worth a fortune. When she got the job there, she suddenly realised what she was on to. She asked me to meet her so I arranged to see her in the woods across the road. But this type on a tractor saw me and I had to spin him a yarn about looking for cheap potatoes.’

  ‘Why did she want to see you?’

  ‘To tell me what she was doing.’

  ‘What was she doing?’

  Crussol made a sheepish gesture. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I must admit I thought she was on to a good thing, too. The old boy had taken a fancy to her. He said she reminded him of his first wife and started getting sentimental whenever she appeared with his food. He got her to read to him. Sometimes they talked. Then he complained about feeling cold, so she lay on the bed with him and held him to warm him up.’

  ‘An old man?’

  Crussol managed a nervous smile. ‘Nothing happened, but he boasted how good he’d been as a young man and she kidded him along. He said he was past it, but she told him he wasn’t and he started giving her things.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Money. He also gave her a necklet – that one in the picture you had – and started talking about wanting her. She said she was a virgin and wasn’t going to have any nonsense. She wasn’t, of course, and what’s a virgin, anyway? If you’re not the first, someone else soon will be. But then he offered marriage. He said he’d been married before and started whining about being lonely and sick of having Mademoiselle Thing – what’s her name? – Guichet – as the only woman in his life. Dominique said she’d marry him. It was a good idea, too. He was past it and was soon going to pop off, anyway.’

  ‘So how did she come to be pregnant?’

  Crussol gave a twisted grin. ‘That was me. She was going to tell him it was his. He’d never have known. It was a super idea. He said he’d change his will in her favour. He’d only just made one, it seems, but he said he’d make another. He was a pushover. He was so old. He asked how old she was, so she asked him how old he’d like her to be. When he told her, that was the age she said she was. She was pretty clever. Up to all sorts of tricks.’

  ‘Such as smuggling, for instance?’

  Crussol’s face fell. ‘How did you find out about that?’

  ‘Was it you who provided the brandy and got rid of the scotch?’

  Crussol looked sick. ‘It was nothing really.’

  ‘I doubt if the magistrates would think so. Go on about Arne. What else happened?’

  Crussol scowled. ‘She disappeared, that’s what. Some bastard got rid of her. Just when we were doing fine. You know what that old sock was worth? That damn’ great house. All that land. All likely to go to a cat’s home because he hadn’t a relative in the world. He’s got a quarry, too. The best stone you can get. I could have had all I wanted. When I hacked off toes, I could have just ordered a new block instead of trying to make a new foot and have it come out as if it were crippled. And space? I’ve always fancied doing something really big and there are rooms there thirty and forty feet high.’

  ‘So why did you kill her?’

  Crussol’s jaw dropped. ‘I didn’t kill her. Honest I didn’t! Why should I? She could have kept me in stone for the rest of my life and I’d lick anybody’s shoes for that. So why would I kill her? She was on her way to see me at Mongy when she disappeared. She must have been. She telephoned me. Here. She said she had something to tell me, but that she was telephoning from the house and had to be quick.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. She said she’d tell me when she saw me, so we arranged to meet.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I don’t know. And she never turned up so I never did find out. She said she’d found some old newspaper cuttings at Ivry. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Was she blackmailing someone? The old man?’

  ‘She might have been. She’d tried it before. She said we had to get on with things so we arranged to meet in the bar opposite. I told you I was there. I was. All evening. But I didn’t tell you why. She was why. When she didn’t appear I decided she’d got cold feet. Or met some other guy. It would have been just like her to do something stupid like that.’

  ‘What do you think it was she wanted to tell you?’

  ‘I don’t know. It sounded important. She asked me if I had a ring.’

  ‘Why did she want a ring?’

  ‘I think she had some idea of getting the marriage fixed up there and then. Perhaps she wanted me as a witness. Perhaps the old man was on his last legs and she wanted to make it legal before he popped off, so she could inherit everything.’ Crussol sighed. ‘She would have, too, you know, because he had no relations to object. None at all. He told her so. Name of God, with the kid that was coming, she could have pulled it off easy.’ Crussol looked on the point of tears. ‘She was certainly getting her value out of that kid. She made out it was Charnier’s, too, and that poor bastard coughed up as well.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I met him but he wasn’t around much, and when he was around he wasn’t much. The old man was the real prize. She was going to tell him that he had to make an honest woman of her. Then, after they were hitched, all we had to do was wait.’

  ‘You might have had to wait a long time, my friend,’ Pel said dryly. ‘I was informed by Stocklin’s doctor that he was good for another ten or fifteen years.’

  Crussol’s jaw dropped. ‘That would have been just my luck,’ he said. ‘I expect she’d have bolted with the loot, anyway, and left me holding the can. But I didn’t kill her. I swear I didn’t.’

  ‘Then if you didn’t, who did?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I did. I’d strangle the bastard. He robbed me of the rest of my life. I could have had all the stone I wanted. Stone’s expensive.’

  ‘So I hear.’ Pel indicated Jesus and Lazarus. ‘So how did you pay for that? It’s pretty big.’

  Crussol frowned. ‘Old Panique lifted one of the old boy’s rings. He had a few things left over from his first wife and when he gave her that necklet she was wearing, she watched where he got it from. He made her turn her back but she was as crafty as he was and pretended to be putting on some lipstick so she could watch him through the mirror. He has a cupboard alongside his bed. He keeps whisky in it. Old Panique brought it in occasionally for him from Mongy. Underneath where the bottle stands there’s a false bottom. You have to slide out a sort of shelf. The base looks solid but there’s this little space. She took the ring out one day when they’d knocked him out with a sleeping pill and I sold it and bought the stone.’

  Pel looked at Darcy. His head was pounding but the excitement of the case was making him feel better. ‘What about Jo-Jo la Canne?’ he asked.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘I’ve never even heard of him.’ Crussol looked panic-stricken. ‘I’ve been at work. Every day.’

  ‘He was shot at night.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t me. I don’t go around shooting people. Besides, I’ve been putting in overtime. Working late. People have been dying a lot lately. They do, you know. It’s a habit they have. I think there’s a plague going round. Probably the Black Death. Another old bastard today somewhere. I told you.’

  ‘Do you possess a gun?’

  ‘What do I want a gun for?’

  ‘Have you never had a gun?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Jo-Jo la Canne was killed by a gun.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t me. I faint at the sight of blood. I—’ Crussol stopped dead, then his face changed ‘—Dominique had a gun. At least she knew where one was kept.’

  ‘Did she tell you?’

  ‘Yes. It was the old man’s. He kept it with the jewellery. Do you think old Panique shot this Jo-Jo type?’

  ‘She’d been dead a long time when Jo-Jo was killed. I think you’d better come with us and make a statement.’

 
‘Look—’ Crussol looked panic-stricken ‘—I didn’t kill her. Or this damned Jo-Jo!’

  ‘No,’ Darcy said. ‘But, whatever the truth of that, you were involved in a conspiracy to defraud an old man.’

  ‘Yes, well – that’s different.’

  ‘Not in the eyes of the law. You could go inside for it.’

  ‘I can’t! Not now! There’s this stiff to box up. Some old guy they said had died suddenly.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll complain.’

  Crussol became still. He had picked up the heavy stone hammer. ‘You’re arresting me?’

  ‘We’re asking you to come to headquarters and make a statement.’

  ‘NO!’ Suddenly Crussol’s uncertain temper exploded. As he swung round, hurling the hammer, Pel ducked and the hammer hit the statue of Jesus raising Lazarus. A bottle followed, then anything Crussol could lay his hands on.

  Darcy made a grab for him and went staggering back with a fist in his chest that felt like a trip hammer and Pel reeled away blinded by a glancing blow on the cheek. But as Crussol made a dive for the door, Bardolle swung. His fist was about the size of a bag of coal and it caught Crussol at the side of the head with a thump that sounded like the crack of doom. Crussol jerked upright, stiff and straight, then went down like a felled tree, bringing down with him a wooden manikin, the table holding the bottles and dirty glasses, a curtain and the curtain rail it hung from, a wooden screen and a pile of books and newspapers. As he fell to the floor, the curtain fell over him like a shroud.

  They picked themselves up hurriedly, expecting another wild charge but, as Crussol threw off the curtain and rose, shedding books, newspapers and pieces of glass, his face fell as he saw where the hammer he’d thrown had landed.

  ‘Look what you’ve made me do!’ he wailed. ‘You’ve made me break those damned toes again!’

  Twenty-two

  Nosjean and Claudie Darel huddled over the table in the restaurant behind the Bar Transvaal. The dirty plates were piled to one side and the wine bottle contained nothing but dregs. Though Nosjean still kept slipping pieces of bread into his mouth, they had long since finished their meal but in their intense concentration on what they were saying they were totally unaware of the bored waiter watching them from the doorway.

  For a fortnight, Nosjean, Claudie and De Troq’ had been moving about between Paris and Lyons and between the Franco-German frontier and the Atlantic coast, making intensive enquiries. Though they had made progress it had been very, very slow.

  ‘After Dole,’ Nosjean was saying, ‘our friend Sirdey seems to have moved to Paris where he made money selling insecticide. He bought it from a firm that went bust, packeted it in small containers with a bright label and sold it as an aid to gardening.’

  ‘What about the woman he married?’

  ‘Twenty-three. Monique Duat. She divorced him because he was never at home. Pretty. Same type as Josée Celine. She couldn’t tell me much about him because she soon left him and he disappeared.’

  ‘And then?’ Claudie asked.

  ‘She thought he went to the Bordeaux area. He seemed to like to put plenty of distance between himself and his last resting place.’

  ‘Did he marry again?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But there was a girl called Lefèvre in Royan who married a man called Bigéard who could be him because she was twenty-three again like Josée Celine and Monique Duat.’

  ‘What happened to this one?’

  ‘She was found dead in her bedroom, with Bigéard’s gun alongside her. Properly licensed because he’d been dealing in precious stones, but he admitted he was having an affair with another woman. A verdict of suicide was recorded but there was so much ill-feeling for him in the town he decided to leave the district.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I don’t know. But the girl he was having an affair with came from Aix-en-Provence so it’s possible he moved there.’

  ‘Have you found her?’

  ‘No,’ Nosjean admitted. ‘She disappeared.’

  ‘Dead? Murdered, like Josée Celine?’

  ‘I’ve no idea yet. She wasn’t from that area and nobody knew much about her. But he made more money and moved again.’

  ‘Where to?’

  Nosjean grinned. ‘De Troq’s enquiring,’ he said. ‘He’s hard to keep up with.’

  While Nosjean, Claudie and De Troq’ struggled with their problem, Pel sat huddled in his chair doing his daily stint of reading the newspapers before going home. As usual they were all marked for his attention by Cadet Martin. There were the usual selection of murders, beatings-up and sexual attacks, even, he noticed, an attempt at rape by an 82-year-old man on a 55-year-old woman in a hotel in Amiens. Disgusted, he tossed the paper aside and sat for a moment in silence. His brain felt addled, his sinuses were painful, his eyes were red, watery and inflamed, and his head felt as if it were full of cotton wool. In addition, there was now a dark purple bruise on his cheek where Crussol’s swinging fist had caught him.

  The telephone rang. He snatched it up and was just about to snarl into it when he heard Madame Faivre-Perret’s voice. His expression melted until he looked like a dog begging to be stroked.

  ‘What are you doing at work?’ she demanded. ‘I gave you forty-eight hours, thinking you’d be in bed all the time but when I rang your home, Madame Routy said you hadn’t been there at all except for a few hours’ sleep.’

  Pel cowered. It was the first sign of the iron fist beneath the velvet glove. ‘There are things to be done,’ he said. ‘And I’m better. Nearly, anyway.’

  He tried to explain that people who got themselves killed didn’t wait for doses of flu in detectives to abate. She listened quietly and made him promise to go home early. Her concern pleased him enough to make him feel better.

  ‘One day,’ she said, ‘I’ll be there to look after you.’

  Please God, Pel thought. As soon as possible.

  Putting the telephone down, he sank back in his chair. The rings under his eyes made him look like a giant panda but the eyes themselves were bright and his brain was active. All the time his mind kept coming back to the fact that Jo-Jo la Canne had been shot, that old Stocklin had claimed to have a gun, and that Dominique Pigny had told Crussol where it was kept.

  Had Crussol got hold of it somehow? Had Dominique Pigny? And if it were Crussol, why would he murder Dominique Pigny who was going to provide him with all the things he needed from old Stocklin’s money? Or had he persuaded Jo-Jo la Canne to kill her and then somehow got hold of the gun to shoot Jo-Jo? Jo-Jo’s death seemed to be explicable but not Dominique’s, because she held the key to the crock of gold. And why would Stocklin have to alter his will if there were no relations? If there were no relations, why make one at all? And why had no one seen the white Mercedes sitting in the lay-by on the road from Arne to Mongy? It must have stuck out like a sore thumb. It just didn’t make sense. It seemed important to go to Arne again.

  Darcy was uneasy. He knew Philippe Duche was in the area somewhere, and he put on an operation that looked like a Para raid, with Bardolle’s men everywhere.

  ‘You make me feel stupid, Daniel,’ Pel protested.

  ‘You’d feel stupider if you stopped a bullet,’ Darcy growled.

  Driving up to the château, they were surprised to find the entrance covered with black draperies embroidered with silver tears.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Guichet said as he let them in. ‘Night before last.’

  Pel looked about him at the drawn curtains. ‘A bit unexpected, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘I thought he was good for a long time yet.’

  Guichet shrugged. ‘I think the doctor was taken by surprise. He was pretty old. Eighty-seven last May. Older than we thought. We found out as we went through his papers looking for his birth certificate.’

  ‘What happened?’ Pel asked. ‘Heart?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t move very fast, and he liked his whisky. He also liked feather pillows. He seems to have d
runk too much, turned over and smothered himself.’

  Inside the house was a smell of flowers and candle-grease and there were candles burning in the hall.

  ‘I’d like to see him,’ Pel said.

  The old man was lying in the coffin with candles burning at head and foot. Automatically, Pel took the sprig of rosemary from the bowl of holy water and made the sign of the cross over him.

  Bernadine Guichet appeared, silently as a ghost. ‘It was a bit sudden,’ she said.

  ‘Who found him?’

  ‘I did.’

  Pel stared at the dead man. His mouth was twisted in a rictus of a smile so that his waxen features had a look of cunning glee on them – as if he felt he’d defeated them all.

  ‘I came in with his coffee and roll yesterday morning,’ Mademoiselle Guichet said, ‘and there he was. We called the doctor straight away. There was no argument. After all, Doctor Lecomte had been treating him for years. He issued a certificate at once. In this weather, you have to get on with it, so we contacted the undertakers at once.’

  ‘Chevalliers’?’ Pel asked. ‘Of Châtillon?’

  ‘Yes. How did you know?’

  ‘Guessed,’ Pel said, thinking of the irony of Gérard Crussol about to act as pallbearer to the man whose fortune he’d hoped to acquire.

  ‘Were you fond of the old man?’ he asked.

  Mademoiselle Guichet shrugged. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘He was difficult, but he was old, and in my experience old people suffer a lot and don’t complain. I think he’d fallen out of bed during the night. Doctor Lecomte found bruising on his shoulders. But he didn’t ring and he didn’t call out so he must have got back on his own. Perhaps he’d hurt himself and that’s why he got out the whisky.’

  ‘Who gets this place now?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I expect his lawyers will know. He said he’d left me a little for looking after him, but I don’t know how much.’

  Pel frowned. ‘He told me he had a gun. He offered to shoot you, in fact.’

  ‘He was always saying that. I think he was a rough man in his youth. He liked to boast about women – and about men he’d fought with.’