Pel Is Puzzled

by Mark Hebden

  Seven

  It was their first break and Darcy immediately started searching through the records to find out what it was that Claude-Achille Cormon had been doing approximately eleven years before, that had resulted in him being winged by a police bullet.

  There was another break soon afterwards when Montbard Police telephoned.

  ‘That enquiry your sergeant was making about manufacturers here,’ the voice in Pel’s ear said. ‘There’s one we think he might have missed. Accessoires Montbard. It’s small. Only about twenty people employed there. Owned by an Englishman called Robinson. It’s not strictly a manufactory, but on the other hand perhaps it ought not to be left out. If you care to call here, we’ll direct you to it.’

  Suddenly they seemed to be galloping along, because within an hour Darcy had turned up Claude-Achille Cormon in the records. ‘Two years for attempted safe-breaking in Lyons,’ he announced. ‘Eleven and a half years ago. That must be when he disappeared for a while. Old Minet’s guess was a good one.’

  ‘Go on,’ Pel said. ‘Where?’

  ‘Office of Produits Merçage. He worked there. They make electronics. There was an attempt to get into the safe but something went wrong and the police stumbled on it. The thieves tried to escape and Cormon was winged. He got away but was picked up several weeks later.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Pel observed. ‘After that, I suppose, he went to Pissarro’s.’

  ‘Looks like it, Patron,’ Darcy said. ‘But hang on, there’s more. He’d worked originally for Cornus’ Safes. He was an expert on locks. That’s the reason he was at Produits Merçage. To open the safe. It was a Cornu.’

  While Pel’s enquiry was moving ahead, Nosjean’s seemed to have come to a stop.

  De Troquerean, having dispensed his knowledge and helped Nosjean to understand something of what he was doing, had returned to Auxerre with a distinct understanding that he was available for further consultations if necessary. Unfortunately, his chief in Auxerre naturally preferred that he should be in Auxerre and if Nosjean wished to confer it would be necessary to arrange it by telephone and drive up the motorway and meet him.

  However, although Nosjean had got no nearer to discovering who had removed the panel from the church at St Sauvigny, he had at least discovered something of the methods of the men who had robbed the châteaux of their treasures. Though no one had seen them, to judge by what had disappeared, it was obvious they had arrived by car – more than likely a reasonable-sized station wagon to enable them to remove their loot – had parked it somewhere handy under the trees where it wouldn’t be seen, and completed the journey on foot across the park to the château of their selection. They had entered by different windows, but their methods were always the same. They seemed to know which windows were secured with latches and, using a 30-millimetre drill had bored a hole beneath the latch and lifted it through the hole by means of a screwdriver. At Boureleau, they had actually effected their entrance on the second floor, one of them making his way up to a decorative ledge that ran round the building by means of a hooked rope secured among the more-than-convenient protuberances in the stonework. Having bored the usual hole and opened the window, he had then descended to the ground floor and opened a side door, and whoever had been with him had made his way inside with him and removed four excellent Boulard chairs and a small portrait of the owner’s ancestor by Greuze.

  Madame de Saint-Bruie had been more than helpful. ‘You’ll never find the chairs again,’ she had said cheerfully, her husky voice vibrant with self-confidence.

  ‘But, surely, they carried the estampille and the master’s personal signature?’ Nosjean pointed out.

  ‘It makes little difference. They’d have them disguised in a matter of days. They get rid of the gilt to reveal the original unvarnished wood, remove the medallions, or oval backs, recarve the arms, obliterating all the floral decoration, do the same with the back – though they would probably preserve the centrepiece in this case – then reupholster with a faded length of authentic 18th Century tapestry.’

  ‘It makes it difficult, doesn’t it?’ Nosjean said with a wry smile.

  She smiled back. ‘It does rather. It’s very convenient for thieves that the nobles of the 18th Century were a gregarious lot who liked to build their châteaux within reach of each other. In those days, of course, it was a day’s coach ride when they went visiting. Nowadays, it’s only a matter of an hour or so in a motor car. It makes it possible to visit the lot in one day and make your plans accordingly. It’s even worse further north. The area round Versailles, Fontainebleau and Marly is literally studded with châteaux, and they’re all filled with haute époque furniture by Louis XV’s craftsmen.’

  Faintly uncomprehending, Nosjean made enquiries round St Sauvigny and the villages surrounding the châteaux but was able to discover remarkably little. Nobody had seen anybody suspicious, but that was not considered unusual, because the owners of the châteaux spent their weeks in Paris and only their weekends – when they weren’t skiing in winter or water-skiing in summer – at their country homes.

  ‘It makes it reasonably easy,’ Madame de Saint-Bruie observed loudly. ‘Especially when they’re so disinterested in that part of the national patrimony they possess they don’t even know its value – or even, often, what it is. For the most part, young man, many of them wouldn’t miss what they own and it’s only when they learn the immense value of the things they’ve been looking at all their lives without interest that they set up a howl.’

  ‘You don’t seem to like them,’ Nosjean grinned.

  She gave him a cold look. ‘They don’t deserve to own such beauty,’ she said sharply. ‘Personally, I’d allow every thief in the business to take what he wants – provided, of course, that he’d bothered to study the subject or read it up in the Journal du Garde Meuble.’

  ‘Which is?’

  She drew herself up, strong, colourful and oozing personality. ‘The Bourbons, young man, appalling though they were, spent an incredible amount of money on the royal furniture, and Louis XIV and his minister, Colbert, devoted an extraordinary amount of energy to ensure that it was all catalogued. The book came to an end only in 1792 when the Revolution arrived. And that iconoclastic lot simply dispersed it all, much of it to America.’

  ‘Even in those days?’

  She beamed at him. ‘Even in those days. Waggonloads went to Poland, especially when some of the Revolutionary officials saw money in it for themselves and started feeding Versailles, Fontainebleau and Marly with furniture from other sources, all of which was sold as royal furniture. Some of it’s been returned, of course, when tastes changed and Victoriana or the Style du Métro came into vogue. But it’s been so dispersed now, it’s not difficult for anyone with an expert knowledge and a good wood carver to sell a fake as genuine or appraise a genuine article worth stealing.’

  ‘Could you?’

  ‘Couldn’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have nothing—’ a strong languid arm gestured at the interior of the shop ‘—of this sort at home?’

  Nosjean’s parents were far from poor but they were largely self-made and he suspected that most of what graced their salon would come under the heading she so contemptuously described as Style du Métro.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘But of course,’ she said. ‘I have a house full of treasures. But, then, it’s my job isn’t it?’

  Nosjean was deep in thought as he headed for his car. He had already worked out the modus operandi of whoever it was who was busily denuding the châteaux and churches of the area of their treasures. Some expert – an antique dealer, a graduate of Arts-Déco or merely someone who was just an omnivorous reader of books on antiquities – made the rounds of the châteaux, probably visiting several in a single weekend. Since it was no longer possible to take photographs inside, and since the photographs that were sold were careful, since the robberies of the Sixties, to avoid showing details, it was clear th
at whoever was doing the rounds was either using a hidden camera – which was always a possibility in these days of minute Japanese gadgets – or was an artist who could make a quick sketch of important items. Perhaps the expert was accompanied by the artist, in which case there were at least two of them on the game and two were quite enough, provided they were strong, to remove the objects that had disappeared. On the other hand, having done their job, the experts probably left the rest of it to cracksmen, who, armed with an illicit photograph or a drawing, whichever the case might be, then did the dirty work, appearing with a vehicle large enough to remove what they were after. And, as Madame de Saint-Bruie had said, a journey which in the great days of the châteaux had taken a whole day, now took no more than an hour or so and the thieves could be at the other end of France before the alarm was raised.

  Nosjean was as much in need of a break as Pel and Darcy had been and eventually it came. From his enquiries he learned that nobody identifiable had been seen at any of the break-ins, no groups of two that were noticeable. In most cases the owners were not even present and the gardien, who knew little of the value of the treasures beyond what was in the guide book he used for his spiel as he conducted parties round in summer, had heard no one and seen no one. However, a small boy had noticed a yellow Volkswagen Passat estate car parked outside the church of St Sauvigny. He was a bright child and had noticed the car because he’d never seen a Passat estate before and had stopped to look at it.

  ‘See the driver?’ Nosjean asked.

  ‘No. But I later saw it move off. It was driven by a man in overalls wearing a cap. He had a lot of hair. It stuck out.’

  Other people had seen this man in overalls, Nosjean remembered.

  ‘Did you see anything of note?’ he asked. ‘Anything inside it we could identify? A torn seat, for instance. Something like that.’

  ‘The back seat was down and there was a blanket inside. A grey blanket.’

  ‘A blanket that could be used to cover something?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Anything else? Tools? Anything of that sort?’

  ‘I didn’t notice. But I saw a sort of clipboard thing with a list on it.’

  ‘Could you read it?’

  The boy smiled. He wore spectacles. ‘Not at that distance,’ he said.

  ‘‘Could it have been a list of objets d’art? – paintings, statuettes, that sort of thing.’

  ‘It might have been. On the other hand, it might have been a shopping list. Except that they don’t usually carry them on clipboards.’

  Nosjean thanked him, feeling that at least he’d made some headway, and promptly visited the châteaux that had been robbed and enquired if a yellow Passat estate had been seen there at any important time.

  The gardiens, owners and car park attendants were unable to help him, but a few enquiries at bars in the villages nearby turned up the fact that a yellow Passat estate – which Nosjean realised was quite big enough with the rear seat lowered to carry away four chairs or a commode if necessary, to say nothing of a picture or a set of plates – had been noticed outside the bar in the village of Drive close to the Manoir de Boureleau around the time it was robbed.

  ‘Number?’ he asked.

  But, of course, nobody had taken the number. There had been no need to, so nobody had.

  ‘Was it local? Or from somewhere else? Like Paris?’

  Once again he drew a blank, but at least someone had again noticed that the rear seat had been down. Nosjean felt he was making headway, even if it was slow headway.

  Eight

  Montbard was at its best when Pel arrived with Darcy early in the morning. Despite the steelworks that existed there, it managed to look like every other small Burgundian town – grey, worn and enduring.

  The police station was down a sidestreet near the bridge, its tricolour floating over its flat front, and the sergeant at the desk produced a large envelope which contained a street map.

  ‘The inspector who saw you the other day,’ he said, ‘apologises that he can’t be here. He had to go out to a shooting at Charleville. We’re not sure yet whether it’s accidental or not and he had to be there. The map shows the position of the factory. It’s on the outskirts of the town.’

  The ‘factory’ consisted of a large construction with a small attachment at the end which seemed to be the office. The sole occupant of the office was a girl in her late twenties who informed them that, yes, they had had a man called Claude-Achille Cormon work there.

  ‘He’s dead, though, now,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pel said gravely. ‘We have. We’re the Police Judiciaire. That’s why we’re here. We’re trying to find who killed him.’

  The girl, he noticed, was looking at Darcy not at him. Quite obviously she liked what she saw and her eyelashes were going like wasps’ wings. Glancing from the corner of his eye, he realised that Darcy, who hadn’t been behind the door when cheek was handed out, was studying her with unabashed approval. In fact, they seemed to have taken to each other straight away and it made Pel feel suddenly old and lonely. Something, he decided, would have to be done about Madame Routy, preferably through the means of Madame Faivre-Perret.

  ‘What was his job here?’ he asked. ‘This Cormon, I mean.’

  She shrugged. ‘Just an instrument maker, I think,’ she said.

  ‘Wages?’

  She looked in a file and told them. It didn’t seem much. Pel looked sideways at Darcy. ‘I thought he was getting twice what he got at Pissarro’s place,’ he said. He looked at the girl. ‘This is his total wage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Overtime?’

  ‘We don’t do it. We’re more experimental than anything here. We’re not rushed like other places.’

  ‘Who runs the place?’

  ‘It belongs to Doctor Robinson. He’s English. Doctor Clive Robinson.’

  ‘What’s he doing in France?’

  She shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. Still, if I were English, I’d live in France, wouldn’t you? All those fogs and things.’

  ‘Where’s Doctor Robinson now?’

  ‘He lives at Rambillard.’

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘There’s a lake there. He’s crazy about sailing.’

  ‘Who runs this place when he’s not here then?’

  She looked blank. ‘It runs itself. More or less. I answer the telephone. He rings up from Rambillard and turns up here every week for a day on Wednesdays. Jean-Pierre looks after it for the rest of the time.’

  ‘Who’s Jean-Pierre?’

  ‘Jean-Pierre Rivard. He calls himself works manager. She beamed at Darcy. ‘Actually he’s just a sort of foreman.’

  ‘We’d like to speak to him,’ Pel said.

  She led them through the workshop. She had a wiggle that would fry a man’s eyeballs at fifty paces and it was quite clear Darcy had noticed. In the workshop, there were half a dozen long benches, with drills, lathes and soldering equipment, at which men, girls and women worked. Stored at the end was sheet metal, wire, plastic sheeting, a metal guillotine, stamping machines and shelves full of screws and springs.

  ‘What we do isn’t very big or important,’ she said. ‘We don’t even have a canteen because it would cost money to run it. There’s a little bar along the street where people can get meals if they want them, but I’ve noticed lately that they’ve all started to bring their lunch in boxes and eat at their benches. Saving money, I suppose. It’s an easy place to work for, and that’s all right with me. It gives me plenty of time off.’

  Darcy was quick to take the hint. ‘We’d better have your name,’ he said. ‘We shall probably need to be in touch again.’

  ‘It’s Elodie Guillemin.’

  She also gave her telephone number – just in case – and Darcy wrote it down on the edge of the newspaper he was carrying.

  Pel watched the manoeuvrings sourly. Darcy had a deft touch when dealing with females. Pel’s efforts seemed to be tho
se of someone clodhopping around in sabots.

  Jean-Pierre Rivard seemed incredibly young. Bright-eyed and breezy, he seemed to be barely out of school, but he was brisk and didn’t seem to feel the need to refer to any higher authority. He obviously did his stint of work like everybody else, however, his position as manager notwithstanding, and when they found him he had his head down, shaving off a piece of plastic with a sharp-pointed knife.

  ‘Experiment,’ he pointed out. ‘Specifications from the Boss.’

  ‘What is it?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘Switch.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Something he’s busy with. We’re always getting things like this to work on. Prototypes. Then he develops them for what he wants.’

  ‘Did Claude-Achille Cormon work on this sort of thing?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Secret stuff?’

  ‘No. He did the same work as everybody else. He turned up asking for a job as an instrument-maker and, as the Boss experiments a lot with electronic gadgets requiring precision, skill and a sound knowledge of instrument-making, he got the job.’

  ‘Was he good at it?’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘Ever in trouble?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘Did you know he’d been in prison? For attempted safe-breaking.’

  Rivard laughed. ‘It wouldn’t have made much difference. We’ve got nothing here worth stealing. The safe doesn’t contain money. Only gadgets that we make.’

  ‘What sort of gadgets?’

  ‘Well—’ Rivard indicated a bench full of what looked like small squares of plastic to which were riveted strips of metal ‘–these are television switches. It’s an idea of the Boss’. Nothing new. Just an improvement on the ones in general use. They’re less likely to go wrong, that’s all.’ He gestured at another bench where a girl in overalls was watching them with interest. ‘She’s assembling cut-outs for electric irons. We mould the pieces here, assemble them, and sell them to Roupnel Electric. We also have a small photo-processing lab for films, because we do a little work on projector switches. They’re pretty complicated. You know: ahead, reverse, slow, stop. Even a few more on the better-class ones.