by Mark Hebden
Madame Routy – inevitably – had the television on, Equally inevitably, it was some idiot talking about the Tour de France and contained shots of hundreds of panting little men on racing bicycles, their corded legs pumping away like mad as they struggled through the mountains. There were plenty of ways, Pel decided, much easier than on a bicycle.
The sound was turned up to full so that Madame Routy could hear what was going on while she was in the kitchen. Before going upstairs to wash, Pel turned it down, but when he came downstairs again, he noticed she’d turned it up once more. It sounded like the barrage before the Battle of Verdun. It was no wonder the flowers in the vase that stood on top of the set were wilting.
The meal turned out to be a casserole – Madame Routy was a great believer in casseroles because she could toss everything into a dish with a few herbs, shove them in the oven and forget them. The meat tasted of old shoelaces, while the wine seemed to be fermented from paint stripper. Sauces were unknown. Pel sighed. In a country renowned for its food and in a province of that country that was supposed to be unsurpassed among all other provinces, he, Pel, had to have as a housekeeper the one woman who wouldn’t cook. It would be nice, he thought, if thunderbolts could descend and paralyse her.
Madame Routy seemed unaware of his smouldering hatred. ‘I’ll clear away later,’ she said. ‘I’m just watching the end of my programme.’
Madame Routy would be watching the end of something when the Last Trump sounded, Pel decided. Doubtless, she’d probably stand around to watch the end of that, too. Especially if it were in colour. It was going to be a terrible night.
It was.
Just occasionally, when there was nothing on television, Madame Routy went to visit her sister, though her disappearances were few and far between because she was an addicted watcher. If she’d lived in ancient Rome, she’d have spent all her time at the Colosseum watching the lions chase the Christians round the arena.
But this was one of the rare nothing-on nights, though, of course, since there wasn’t sufficient to keep Madame Routy glued to the set – and it didn’t require much – it meant also that there was also nothing for Pel to watch.
Gloomily, he stared at the set through the news. The wine growers were complaining again, he saw, and farmers were blocking the roads with their tractors as a protest against government food policies. There were forest fires to the north of the Côte d’Azur – there were always forest fires to the north of the Côte d’Azur at this time of the year; one expected them, like flies – and Philippe le Bozec, of the Defence Ministry, was beginning to look as if he were going to escape the results of his misdemeanours after all, as Pel had suspected. The newspapers had dropped him and now, it seemed, his colleagues in the House of Representatives, putting on a big show of being broad-minded – in case they were ever caught themselves, Pel decided – were being magnanimous and had announced that they did not intend to condemn him for his trip to the Paris brothel, which was, after all, they felt, only a human slip. That, if nothing else, ought to quieten his more difficult constituents who if they complained, would appear by contrast narrow-minded and bigoted.
Meanwhile, there was always the Tour de France, now half-run. Van der Essen and the Belgians, riding as if bound by a suicide pact, were still in the lead, and, despite the fact that as chauvinists the French yielded to few, there was little mention of local favourites save for Aurélien Filou, who was managing to stay among the leaders. Clam was nowhere and there was no mention at all of Pissarro’s man, Maryckx, or even of the team he was helping to support, Pis-Hélio-Tout.
For a while Pel gazed blankly at the screen. He was no cyclist but he enjoyed seeing other people sweat.
‘Riding a racing bike,’ the announcer was saying, ‘requires will power.’
To Pel it also seemed to require a lack of brains. Nobody in his senses would have subjected himself to such agony as the riders in the Tour de France did. They were arriving at a night stop in front of spectators who, happily appearing from bars and cafés with their drinks in their hands, watched them swaying in the saddles, ashen with fatigue and on the point of vomiting with exhaustion. The start next morning was at the Château de Virenais where the owner was using the Tour to put the château and the Louis XVI furniture it contained on the map. People who supported the Tour weren’t always devoid of self-interest.
The last riders came up the hill, en danseuse, standing on the pedals and pulling from side to side with their arms at the handlebars to gain thrust. They hurtled through the narrow pathway between the spectators, the publicity cars honking, the sweating police fighting to keep the crowd back. Names were scrawled on walls and a group of Clam supporters waved a flag bearing the legend “Courage, Jo-Jo! Allez, Jo-Jo!” In a last burst of speed one of the riders arrived suffering from cramps, his eyes empty, his expression dazed, and careered into the crowd. Picking himself up, he tottered away in a mincing pigeon-toed walk.
Pel watched the spectacle with a sour face, then, as the news finished, he reached for the newspaper to see what else he might watch. This, however, appeared to be the night when French Television had it worked out that its viewers, having recently been paid, would not wish to remain at home and therefore would require very little in the way of programmes. The studio seemed to have been left to the cleaners and the evening’s entertainment appeared to consist of a chat show, an hour of pop music and, of course, the Tour de France. The board had been cleared, it was obvious, to provide the great sporting public with a long discussion on the chances of the various competitors over the picture of sweating, straining men with whipcord muscles dressed in coloured shirts and funny hats and carrying little food bags over their shoulders. It sounded dreadful.
Sighing, Pel climbed into his car and headed for the city. Sometimes he enjoyed the city in the evening, especially when Madame Routy was home and watching the television. Cities never slept. Pel had once worked for a while in Paris and had rented a room in Montparnasse. On one side of him were a couple who had spent the whole night quarrelling and on the other side another who spent it making noisy love, while below, out of the window and across a yard, was a workshop where they spent the night sawing steel. What with the abuse from one side, the cries of delight from the other and the high screech from the yard below, Pel hadn’t got much sleep. It had put him off Paris for the rest of his life.
His own city was different. The buses and cars which normally filled the place had disappeared at this time of the evening and, apart from an occasional vehicle, the streets belonged to the strollers, while the golden stone of the Palais des Ducs had changed to violet. The narrow streets were slumbering, their tall fronts shuttered and Pel almost enjoyed himself. With a bit of a push, he felt, he might actually manage to do so.
As he reached the Rue des Forges, he stopped outside a tobacconist that was still open to sell postcards and souvenirs for tourists, and he remembered his decision to attempt to capture Madame Faivre-Perret’s wandering attention by trying to smoke a pipe.
The man behind the counter was helpful and produced a selection for him. Pel chose one that was large and knobbly, because it was the sort that iron-faced Englishmen smoked in films. The tobacco he chose was in a pale blue pack because he remembered that blue was a colour that Madame Faivre-Perret liked.
‘It’s a bit strong,’ the tobacconist suggested gently. ‘Is this Monsieur’s first pipe?’
By this time, Pel was faintly embarrassed and was itching to get outside. Snatching up his purchases he turned hurriedly, only to crash into a stand of walking sticks in the door-way.
‘I’ll have one,’ he blurted out.
He got out of the shop at last, the proud possessor of a pipe and tobacco, a walking stick and a flushed face. At least, he felt bitterly, Madame Faivre-Perret ought to approve of this lot.
Because he couldn’t bear to think of the French nation managing on its own without Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel on duty to look after it, he called in the Hôtel de P
olice. Nosjean was there, telephoning. So was Misset, reading the newspaper, and Pel guessed that he and his wife had had words and he had found it wiser to disappear for a while.
‘Jo Clam’s going to win,’ Misset observed.
‘Going to win what?’ Pel demanded, giving nothing away in the way of pleasantness.
Misset looked amazed at his ignorance. ‘The Big Loop, Patron,’ he said. ‘The Tour de France.’
When Pel returned home, Madame Routy had reappeared and, though Pel had been unable to find anything to watch, Madame Routy was clearly experiencing no such difficulty. It went on until midnight, leaving Pel a nervous wreck. By the time he left for the office the following morning, he decided he might as well give up trying to cut down his smoking. Under the circumstances, he might just as well lie back and enjoy it.
His bitterness increased when he reached his office. On the desk was a note from Nosjean.
‘Manoire de Marennes near Armur broken into,’ it stated. ‘Oedon work table, Carlin guéridon table and pair of Rose vases stolen. Gone to Paris to check.’
Yelling for Darcy to keep an eye on the office, Pel headed for his car. Crime was changing, he decided. Rape, murder and theft had been around a long time. Inflation had brought in a few new ones.
Driving down the motorway towards Marennes, he wondered if Nosjean would find anything in Paris. Nosjean was no fool and he hadn’t wasted time. He’d got his suspicions of the two men in Paris and he’d left Marennes to the local police and headed straight for the capital to check on them before they could sort out alibis and hide their loot. If they’d done the job, the chances were he’d find it.
Deciding to try his pipe, he stopped in a lay-by to light it. At least, he thought, it would stop him smoking cigarettes. Ten minutes later, the floor of the car was littered with matches and, dragging at the pipe with enough effort to make his eyes stick out, he decided he’d packed it too tight. Loosening the tobacco, he tried again and this time seemed to be doing well enough to start the engine. As he drove out of the lay-by on to the road, he turned his head to see if anything was coming and the pipe crashed into the window. It almost tore his teeth from their sockets, filled his eyes with flecks of tobacco, and covered him with burning cinders.
He prevented the fire from spreading but ten minutes later, his jaws aching, he decided he might have been wiser to choose a smaller pipe, and ten minutes after that, that smoking a pipe while driving was one of the most difficult things he’d ever attempted. Aware of aching neck muscles, a sour taste in his mouth and sheer physical exhaustion from trying to draw smoke through the tightly-packed tobacco, he decided to fall back on a cigarette. Pushing the pipe in his pocket with relief, he lit up a Gauloise.
As he was about to climb back in the car, he saw the walking stick on the rear seat, and taking it out, he tossed it into the woods at the side of the road. He had not gone more than four kilometres when he found his pocket was on fire. This time the pipe went after the stick.
Picturesque and medieval, Armur, with its great round towers with their conical caps dominating the River Raçon, had always been a favourite of Pel’s. The château was a bit like the one at Sémur where an ancestor of the great Bussy-Rabutin had been governor. One of the towers there had a crack in it that seemed to run down the whole wall but it had been there as long as Pel could remember. As a child he’d always expected it to fall down, but it was still standing, a tribute to the strength they put into things in the Middle Ages.
He found the police at the Manoire de Marennes bewildered by the crime. They knew nothing about Oedon or Carlin tables or Rose vases, and couldn’t imagine why anyone should want to steal what had always appeared to them to be just so much old furniture and pottery.
‘They say they were as valuable as a deposit in a small town bank,’ the inspector in charge said. ‘It’s a château classé, of course, so obviously someone came and had a look first, because they’ve stolen the only valuable things in the place.’
The owner, who did some of the guide work, was equally bewildered. ‘We only tried to do the house up because we felt it right not to let it fall into decay,’ he said.
His wife, a small plump woman with blue hair, was in tears. ‘We didn’t have much that was valuable,’ she said, ‘but we bought a few things to make the rooms look full and it seemed to be such a success. How were we to know the things they stole had any value? They were here when we came. We bought it furnished. I don’t suppose the previous owners were aware of the value either.’
‘When was the last time you had people round the place?’ Pel asked.
‘Last weekend. A few come in the week but not many outside August.’
‘Could you say whether any of them acted suspiciously?’
‘Of course not. They were just ordinary people interested in an old château. It hasn’t much history. The chevalier de Marennes was born here but he never did anything except get himself guillotined during the Revolution. It’s about the only story we have, so we try to make the most of it. Most of the furniture was his.’ She sniffed. ‘So was the stuff that disappeared.’
‘Could you describe any of the people who came round?’
The answer was a wail of misery. ‘You don’t really see them. All I remember was a small boy who wanted to climb on the beds. His mother had to take him out. And an old man with one leg who was very fat and had to be helped up the stairs. It made the tour terribly slow.’
‘Nobody else?’
‘No.’
‘Nobody trying to take photographs?’
‘No.’
‘Make drawings?’
‘No.’
‘Nobody suspicious?’
‘None that I saw.’
The theft had been discovered by the gardien that morning. Near the front of the house, a buttress formed a narrow chimney against the front porch and someone wearing rubber-soled shoes had pushed himself up it, using his feet and his back, until he had reached the top of the porch. There, a thirty-millimetre hole had been drilled and, following the usual pattern, a latch had been lifted with a screwdriver. The screwdriver had been left behind by mistake but the inspector shook his head.
‘No fingerprints. They used gloves.’
The furniture had been carried down two flights of stone steps, out through a side door and across a narrow lawn to a belt of trees. Scrapes in the soil indicated the route, which led to the road about two hundred metres away, and a small pool of engine oil indicated that some sort of vehicle had waited on the road there.
‘They carried it piece by piece across the lawn, into the wood and on to the road,’ the inspector said. ‘It must have taken them half the night.’
‘And nobody heard?’
‘Nobody.’ The inspector shrugged. ‘The stairs were of stone and the family slept in a small private wing at the other end of the house. They didn’t have a burglar alarm, and they heard nothing. It’s pretty lonely countryside round here, and nobody else seems to have seen anything either. They didn’t even know anything had gone until the maid arrived and found the door unlocked.’
Because of the warm dry weather, there were no footprints and no tyre prints in the lay-by where the car had stood. There were all the usual things that normally littered lay-bys – paper, bottles and contraceptives – but nothing that could give a clue to the identity of the thieves.
Not cherishing the idea of going back to the tearful owner, Pel elected to leave that part of the enquiry to the local police and decided, though he didn’t feel it would do much good, to visit Madame de Saint-Bruie, as he’d promised Nosjean.
He found her shop without difficulty. Marie-Joséphine Lehmann was at her table waiting for customers – far from beautiful, but with a splendid figure and, with her wide mouth and large almond eyes, full of charm. Pel approved silently. Nosjean’s girlfriends all came in the same pattern. Neat, clean, intelligent, efficient, modest. Darcy’s were different. Neat, clean, intelligent, efficient, but with a certain self-
confidence – even sauciness – that stamped them as knowledgeable and aware of what went on in the world.
He introduced himself and she immediately suggested he should see Madame de Saint-Bruie.
‘She’s just gone to lunch,’ she said. ‘She went early. Perhaps you’d like to join her. She likes company. She’d be pleased to see you.
Pel could see no reason why not. In fact, with Madame Faivre-Perret still apparently consigning her aunt to the soil, he felt a little defiant. If Madame Faivre-Perret couldn’t manage to be around, he decided, then it would have to be Madame de Saint-Bruie.
He found the restaurant without difficulty, explained who he was looking for and was directed to a table in the corner. There was a young attractive woman sitting by the window and he was just about to pull back the chair and introduce himself when the waiter indicated the table next door.
Madame de Saint-Bruie looked up at Pel, her green eyes flashing behind her spectacles, her wild brilliant red hair swinging. She looked gaunt, and the bangles on her wrists, the long earrings, and the long necklaces clanked like an iron foundry as she gestured.
‘Sit down, Inspector,’ she said. ‘I’ve already met your so efficient young assistant. What a splendid young man he is! Quite enamoured of my assistant, Mijo. I might add she was quite taken by him, too. It’s so rare one finds a policeman with manners.’
Pel blushed.
‘I know what you’ve come about, of course. The general increase in the price of antiques due to inflation is the cause of it all. It’s the desire to have something that will increase in value. It encourages frauds and thefts, though I fear some people are going to be disappointed in years to come with what they’ve bought.’