Pel Is Puzzled

by Mark Hebden

  The gold teeth glittered as Pissarro smiled. ‘If I find the winner has anything of ours on his machine,’ he said, ‘I can use it for advertising. And with Maryckx I feel we even have a chance of winning on our own. He’s a Belgian, and the Belgians know how to win the Tour de France. Eddie Merckx won it more times than anybody.’

  ‘Except Jacques Anquetil,’ Pel pointed out. ‘And he was a Frenchman.’

  ‘Maryckx is good, all the same.’

  To Pel bicycling seemed a difficult way of getting about – after all you didn’t have feet for walking or cycling, but for pushing the pedals of a motor car – but he still read the newspapers and he would have been less than human to know nothing of the Tour de France. ‘He’s nobody I’ve heard of,’ he said quietly.

  ‘No,’ Pissarro said. ‘He isn’t. But he’s the winner. Make no mistake about it. I’ve picked the winner three times running and this year I’m putting my money where my mouth is. We provided his machines and they’ve been tailored like wedding suits. Every weight-reducing dodge you can think of. Alloy wheel rims, tape instead of handlebar grips, rat-trap pedals, brake levers like slices of gruyère cheese. They cost money but we’ve got sufficient faith in Maryckx to back him to the hilt. Not that anybody knows who we are, of course, but they’ll ask all right when they see the name on his jersey when he wins.’ Pissarro stopped dead and smiled. ‘But, of course, you didn’t come here to discuss the Big Loop, did you?’

  ‘No.’ Pel was growing a little tired of the Tour de France and his answer was brusque.

  ‘I expect you’ve come about Cormon.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Pissarro tossed down L’Equipe, lowered his feet to the floor, and sat back. ‘What did you want to know?’

  ‘Chiefly what he did here?’

  Pissarro shrugged his huge shoulders. ‘He was my foreman,’ he said. ‘I don’t employ many people but he looked after things for me. He was good at his job, too. He was quite a nice type. Bit silly, mind you. All that stupid gambling—’

  He looked set for the day but Pel wedged a question into a chink in the diatribe. ‘Why would anyone want to kill him?’ he asked.

  Pissarro shrugged again. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you make here?’

  Pissarro smiled. ‘Nothing much,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s a living. Gadgets, I suppose you’d call them. Spare parts. Spare parts for vacuum cleaners. Spare parts for typewriters. Spare parts for televisions. Spare parts for bicycles. Plastic with a bit of metal spring and a length of wire. That sort of thing. Mostly other people’s gadgets. Anything that anyone wants manufacturing. We’re not bad at it.’

  ‘I believe Cormon was with you up to six months ago.’

  ‘That’s right. For about eight years. He was good at the job. In addition to being foreman, he was also my chief copyist.’

  ‘Copyist?’

  Pissarro gave a wide unembarrassed grin. ‘Other people’s things. Things that were brought in.’

  ‘For sale?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘You copied them?’

  ‘Of course. It’s business. Everybody’s at it. They weren’t patented things. Just gadgets. We sold them in the south. Sometimes in Belgium. Sometimes in England. They’ll buy anything there.’

  ‘Why did Cormon leave?’

  Pissarro gestured with a hand like a leg of lamb. ‘He said he’d had a chance to do better for himself. I was sorry to lose him but you can’t stop a man if he wants to do that.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Montbard.’

  ‘Where in Montbard?’

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

  ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘No. I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  Pel sighed. They were getting along at a great rate.

  Six

  The conference in Pel’s office was gloomy. The newspapers had the whole story now and they were wanting to know why it was possible in this day and age in a country as well-ordered as the Republic of France that a man could be murdered without the criminal being arrested within twenty-four hours. For the moment, they’d even forgotten Philippe le Bozec, the Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Defence who’d been found in the same bawdy house as one of the attachés from the Russian Embassy. The previous day they’d been demanding his head. Today, they appeared to be after the head of the man responsible for the running of the police. It was a line they always followed. It didn’t mean they believed in it or that anybody was panicking and that France was entering a state of anarchy and was likely to fall apart at the seams at any moment, but it nevertheless left Pel’s team a little low in spirits, because nobody, it seemed, had anything to report. They had all drawn blanks. They were even all wondering whether to hand in their resignations and join the fire brigade when Misset – Misset, of all people, who couldn’t have cared less if the Republic of France disappeared under a welter of criminality – set them going. He appeared at the door to indicate that there was a certain Brigadier Foulot, from St Symphorien, wishing to see Pel.

  ‘What about?’ Pel snapped. He didn’t like being interrupted, even when they were only sitting round wondering where to look next.

  ‘Cormon,’ Misset said. ‘This Foulot seems to have been one of the last people to speak to him. We were in the canteen when it came out.’

  Brigadier Foulot was a young man who looked a little like Sacha Distel. He was neat, smart and briskly alert, and Pel decided he was doubtless a wow with the girls at St Sym-phorien.

  ‘I was telephoned by Claude-Achille the night he died,’ he announced at once.

  Pel leaned forward. ‘Claude-Achille?’ he said. ‘Cormon? Did you know him well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well enough to be on first name terms?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Foulot gestured. ‘He was my cousin.’

  ‘It might have helped if you’d said that in the first place,’ Pel said acidly. He never liked people who were taller or better-looking than he was. ‘Go on. You spoke to him just before he died, I hear?’

  ‘Yes. He telephoned me at the station.’

  ‘You put it down in the book, of course, as all good French policemen do? So that there’s a record?’

  Foulot shrugged. ‘No, sir. I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Pel’s voice had the sharp edge of an assegai. ‘Everything’s supposed to go in the book.’

  Foulot remained quite unperturbed. ‘It was personal, sir,’ he pointed out. ‘Perhaps if I’d known what was going to happen to him, I might have put it down, but of course I didn’t know he was going to be dead soon afterwards.’

  ‘It’s three days now since he died,’ Pel pointed out, determined not to be thwarted of a victim. Madame Routy’s meal the previous night had been abysmal, and he needed a victim. ‘Why didn’t you report it before now? You must have been aware of what happened to him.’

  ‘No, sir, I wasn’t.’

  Pel glared. ‘You mean you live in St Symphorien, which is twenty kilometres from where he was killed, he was a personal friend of yours – a cousin, no less – and you’re a policeman with all the available machinery of information, yet you didn’t know anything had happened to him?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Foulot smiled. ‘I was in Geneva. I was due for three days leave. My wife’s Swiss and I took her to see her mother.’

  Pel scowled. When he was in his predatory mood he didn’t like being cheated of his victim.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What did he telephone about?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. He didn’t tell me. He just suggested that he wanted to see me. We arranged to meet at the Bar Domino at Fauverolles, which is about halfway between Evanay and St Symphorien, where I’m stationed. My wife wasn’t keen, because we were leaving early the next morning. But officially I was still on duty so I went. He didn’t turn up.’

  ‘What do you think it was all about?’

  Foulot scratched his nose thoughtfully. ‘Well, he’d
borrowed money from me in the past. Small sums. He always paid them back quickly but I knew he gambled and was sometimes short.’

  ‘Did he owe you anything?’

  ‘No, sir. That’s why I assumed he was after another loan. I just assumed he’d been let down by the horses again. When he didn’t appear, I went home, expecting him to telephone. But he didn’t. I went off duty officially at midnight and at six next morning I set off with my wife towards Pontarlier. I gather he was found about that time. By the time the news reached my station I was well south, and, of course, it didn’t appear in the Swiss papers. I didn’t learn what had happened until I got back last night. I thought I’d better report the matter.’

  Foulot hesitated. ‘I telephoned his sister immediately, of course. She said his boss – or, rather, his former boss, Pissarro, had been trying to get hold of him the night he died.’

  Pel turned to Darcy. ‘Did she tell you that? It’s not in your report.’

  ‘She said nothing about it, Patron.’

  ‘Think she was hiding it?’

  ‘She didn’t strike me as the type to hide things, Patron.’

  Pel frowned. ‘Well, Pissarro never mentioned to me either that he’d been trying to get in touch with Cormon the night he died. He didn’t strike me as the type to hide anything, either.’

  Pissarro was in the garden of his home at Daix when Pel and Darcy pinned him down. It was a new house, smart and modern, its name carved on a block of slate set into the gate post – Ker Boukan. Despite the newness of the building, the garden had a well-established look about it and Pissarro was pruning roses with a horn-handled knife. He seemed startled as Pel sailed into him and eventually held up his hands in protest.

  ‘Steady on, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise it was that important.’

  ‘A man’s been murdered,’ Pel snapped. ‘Don’t you call that important?’

  ‘I mean I didn’t know my small part in it was important.’

  Pissarro clipped at a rose and stuck it in his buttonhole, then snapped the knife closed and slipped it in his pocket. ‘Perhaps I should have told you I tried to get in touch with him. But I didn’t. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ Pel said.

  ‘Well, I’d read he’d died in curious circumstances and I began to wonder if he’d failed to pay some of his gambling debts and that the heavies had moved in. I didn’t want to be involved.’

  ‘When did you try to get in touch with him?’

  ‘The night he died. I was afraid of being involved in the murder.’

  ‘Nobody said it was murder until two days ago when Le Bien Public were given the information. It was in the other newspapers today for the first time.’

  ‘No,’ Pissarro agreed. ‘They didn’t mention it. I’d better tell you how it happened.’

  ‘I think you had,’ Pel said.

  Pissarro gestured to a folding chair in the shade. ‘Actually, he didn’t come to me and tell me he’d got a new job,’ he said. ‘I sacked him. I didn’t tell you that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Pissarro shrugged. ‘Speak ill of the dead,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think it mattered and I didn’t want to do him any unnecessary injustice.’

  ‘Why did you sack him?’

  ‘He was always in debt and kept disappearing from work – to raise funds, I thought. I decided I couldn’t go on like that. Sometimes I have to be away and I need someone to look after the place who’s going to be around. So I told him he’d have to go. He wasn’t very happy about it but we didn’t part on bad terms. I slipped him a little bonus and he knew he’d been wrong and that he could get another job easily enough. As he did, of course. Quickly, and at better wages than I gave him.’

  Pel’s eyes glittered expectantly. ‘Where? We haven’t been able to find out yet.’

  ‘In Montbard, he said.’

  ‘None of the places we’ve been to.’ Pel scowled. ‘You haven’t told us yet why you tried to get in touch with him.’

  ‘I’m coming to it.’

  ‘Was it by telephoning or personally?’

  ‘Personally. I thought it was best that way.’

  ‘Why was it best that way?’

  ‘I wanted him to come back. He was a skilled man and skilled men are hard to get these days. The youngsters just won’t be bothered. I missed him. As a foreman he wasn’t a lot of use because of his disappearing acts, but he was still a very good instrument maker. I thought I’d try to get him back. I went to see him. His sister told me he was out. I’d heard he found Montbard was a long way to go every day, so I thought he might be glad to come back here. But I didn’t want to go crawling and I thought that, since he was out, I’d let him stew a little longer. Another day or so. Then I read in the paper that he was dead. So I just never did see him.’

  Darcy leaned forward. ‘Did you ever try to get in touch with him by telephone?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘Somebody kept telephoning him. His sister took the call once and was told that the caller would ring back. Was that you?’

  ‘I never telephoned him at all as far as I can recall.’

  ‘Who did?’

  Pissarro shrugged. ‘Not me’

  Darcy sat back and eyed Pissarro quietly. ‘Was he afraid of something?’ he asked.

  Pissarro pulled a face. ‘I don’t know. He might have been.’

  ‘Why might he have been?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know that he was. I said he might have been. Someone appears to have murdered him, so perhaps he had something to be afraid of.’

  On the way back, they stopped for a beer at a bar at the top of the hill leading down to the city. There were alterations going on at the back that covered the counter with dust. Even the beer tasted of dust.

  ‘Well,’ Pel said, hoisting his face out of his glass. ‘I suppose you could say we’ve made a bit of progress. Cormon might have been afraid of something, and that might have been the reason he telephoned his cousin, Brigadier Foulot, and arranged to meet him at Fauverolles. Perhaps he was worried about something.’

  ‘All the same, Patron,’ Darcy said, ‘it doesn’t tell us much.’

  ‘What do we know about Pissarro?’

  ‘Nothing much. Seems straightforward enough. Been in business for fifteen years or so, now.’

  ‘Wealthy?’

  ‘Appears to be.’

  ‘Let’s have him checked. Get Misset on to it. Let Nosjean handle the art thefts. Tell Misset to see Durois of the Chamber of Commerce. Tell him we need his help. He’ll know Pissarro. If he doesn’t, he’ll soon find out.’

  ‘What if he asks why?’

  ‘Tell him we’re a bit concerned about something that might bring the Chamber of Commerce into disrepute. No need to go into details. It’ll be enough to get him moving.’

  When they reached the Hôtel de Police, Doc Minet was waiting for them. He had a sheaf of papers and a bundle of photographs in his hand.

  ‘Report,’ he said as he handed them to Pel. ‘In full. It’s exactly what I told you the other day, but in medical jargon so obscure no one can understand it, least of all the court that will have to try the case when it comes up. However–’ he shrugged and smiled cheerfully ‘—convention says that’s the way it must be done, so there you are. There’s just one thing—’

  Pel lowered the report and pushed his spectacles up on his forehead to look at Minet.

  ‘–I found something very interesting you might like to hear about.’

  ‘If it’s interesting, of course I’d like to hear about it.’

  Minet fished among the papers and began to read. ‘…the body of a fully-developed male, a hundred and seventy-five centimetres long, weight about eighty-three kilos, overweight but not obese. Organs in good condition—’

  ‘What is all this?’ Pel demanded.

  Doc Minet smiled. ‘Wait. Wait. You’ll learn. Knife wound under base of skull. Width one and a half centimetres, leng
th eleven centimetres.’ Sort of wound a hunter delivers to an injured animal. Known in some parts of the world as the hunter’s thrust. He was not dead when it was delivered but he would be immediately afterwards. Time of death: Can’t be exact, but I can pinpoint it within five hours.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ Pel growled.

  ‘Very well, let’s say between 11.30 and 1.30 on the morning he was found. This man was shot.’

  Pel lifted his eyes, lowered his spectacles to his nose to stare through them at the doctor.

  ‘I thought you said he died from a knife thrust.’

  ‘He did. He was shot some years ago. In the shoulder.’

  ‘War wound? No—’ Pel frowned ‘—he wasn’t old enough.’

  ‘It was hard to find,’ Minet went on. ‘Because there were extensive burns and at first it was missed, because of the puckering of the flesh and the skin under the action of the flames. In fact, this area of the torso hadn’t been much harmed but the puckering of the skin made it look like an extension of the burns. There was a star-edged scar, the size and shape of a half-franc piece, near the right shoulder. The bullet had lodged in the left clavicle and smashed the bone. Whoever extracted it was not a trained surgeon and the fractured clavicle was allowed to knit as it liked. It was in a pretty bad state. It was about eleven years old.’

  ‘Which indicates?’

  Minet gave a beatific smile. ‘What it indicates to you, mon brave,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t like to guess. To me it indicates some gang fracas or a police bullet in – say – a hold-up. There’d be no other reason for the bullet to have been extracted with such a lack of skill or for the fractured clavicle to knit as it did. He was shot doing something dishonest and, because it was dishonest, he couldn’t go to a surgeon, so the wound was attended by someone lacking in skill. Your Claude-Achille Cormon, in my opinion, my friend, was at some time on the wrong side of the law.’