Pel and the Faceless Corpse

by Mark Hebden

  Nosjean shifted his position. ‘Come on, mon vieux, let’s have the truth. What were you doing up there?’

  Bique à Poux put on an innocent expression. ‘After rabbits,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Go near the house?’

  The old man’s eyes flickered. ‘No. Never.’

  ‘You sure? I was hoping you might have seen someone there – someone who hit Matajcek with a spade.’

  ‘I didn’t go in that direction at all. I kept towards Bussy-la-Fontaine all the time.’

  ‘All right. What else did you hear?’

  ‘I heard the voices, then I went away. I thought it was safer.’

  Nosjean decided the old man wasn’t telling the truth, but he’d arrived at the conclusion that he was going to get little more from him.

  ‘I’ll bring you some orange juice when I come again,’ he said.

  ‘I’d rather have brandy,’ Bique à Poux said.

  Pel listened carefully to what Nosjean had to report.

  ‘“I only did my duty”,’ he quoted. ‘That doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a gangster says just before he’s knocked off. I think we’d better have a look round that field. Get Lagé to help you, and round up a few men from the uniformed branch. You’ll probably find the gun. I’ll see you up there. Massu’s just telephoned to say Piot’s back. I want to see him about this girlfriend of his.’

  Piot was just pulling up on a tractor when Pel arrived at Bussy. He looked different in an old checked Canadienne, jeans and boots, not at all the city man he’d been when they’d first seen him.

  Seeing Pel climb out of the car, he immediately dropped from the tractor and gestured towards the house. They went inside, tramping the wet sand from the courtyard after them. The hall had a misty look of damp about it but there was a roaring fire in the kitchen. Without asking, Piot disappeared and returned with glasses and a bottle.

  ‘A touch of marc, I think, Inspector,’ he smiled. ‘Warms you up in this weather. Also loosens tongues, and I expect that would suit you. What do you want to know?’

  Pel fished out the photograph Madame Grévy had given to Darcy and laid it on the table alongside. If Piot recognised it he showed no sign. He went on pouring the brandy without pause, passed the glasses to Pel and Darcy and sat down.

  ‘Santé,’ he said.

  Pel lifted his glass, drank, then gestured at Darcy who pushed the photograph forward. Piot glanced at it and looked up with a quizzical expression.

  ‘Do you know this woman?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Am I supposed to?’

  ‘It was found here. Behind one of the chairs.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Madame Grévy.’

  Piot smiled. ‘So she finally got around to doing some cleaning,’ he said.

  Pel frowned. ‘Do you know her, Monsieur?’

  Piot smiled and shook his head. ‘Never seen her before in my life,’ he said.

  ‘Madame Grévy says she thinks she’s the woman who’s been seen here with you.’

  Piot smiled. ‘Not likely.’ He glanced at the photograph. ‘Mind, she’s not bad, that one. Did you ever see such legs?’

  ‘Madame Grévy said she found it down the back of one of the chairs after you’d gone back to Paris. You’d had a woman here.’

  Piot smiled. ‘Perhaps I did. But not this one. Perhaps it belongs to some English friends of mine. I lent them the house last summer. She looks as if she could be English. Some of those English girls –’ He saw Pel’s eyes still on him, flat and blank as a snake’s. ‘The only girl who ever came here, Inspector,’ he insisted, ‘was my secretary. We had an arrangement. I told you. But it’s over now.’

  Pel’s eyes were unwavering. ‘Nobody else?’ he asked.

  ‘My cousin perhaps. And that’s not her. And I’m afraid you can’t contact her, either. She’s been in the States for some time. Louisiana. There’s a lot of French spoken there and some French people still have relatives there.’

  ‘Name, Monsieur?’

  ‘Moncey. Madame Moncey. She’s a businesswoman. She runs a children’s clothing firm. They design and make baby clothes. She’s pretty good at it, too. Quite a head for business.’

  ‘You seem to like that sort,’ Darcy commented.

  Piot smiled and shrugged. ‘That would be normal, wouldn’t it? I know a man in Marseilles who’s had three wives. They all look alike – blonde, busy, and as over-decorated as a Second Empire sideboard. I can’t imagine why he bothers to change them. But if you like one type, I suppose you go on liking one type. I’m not a male chauvinist pig, Inspector, who believes women should be seen and not heard, and that they should function only in the kitchen and in bed. I admire capable women. My secretary was exceedingly capable. So is my cousin. You can always ring up her firm to check what I say. I can give you the number. They’ll also tell you she’s in America. I’m not lying.’

  ‘Madame Grévy thinks the woman she saw wasn’t your cousin.’

  ‘Why does she think that?’

  ‘Because she shared your bed.’

  ‘My cousin is thirty-two and divorced. She is also very attractive. In fact, we’re third cousins, so I see no harm in taking her to bed.’ Piot paused. ‘I think I shall have to get rid of Madame Grévy if she makes a habit of gossiping about me. Which would be a pity, because her husband is very good at his job.’

  Pel suspected that Piot’s light-hearted banter was all put on and that he was carefully picking his way through the questions. ‘This cousin of yours, Monsieur,’ he said. ‘What’s her first name?’

  ‘Clothilde.’

  ‘Madame Grévy said you called her “Nadine”.’

  Piot smiled. ‘Why not? She had a Russian grandmother. She escaped from Vladivostok during the revolution and settled in Paris. She even likes to use her Russian background as part of her stock-in-trade. Moody. Mercurial. Sad. All those steppes. That sort of thing. I often tease her and call her Nadine or Nadya or Anastasia – any Russian name I can think of.’ Piot simled. ‘It’s really very simple, don’t you think?’

  During the afternoon it started to rain. Pel and Darcy stopped at St Seine l’Abbaye for a meal. It was cold and cheerless and the meal was indifferent.

  ‘I don’t know what French cooking’s coming to,’ Pel complained.

  ‘I’m told it’s even worse in Paris,’ Darcy said. ‘Now that the Americans have taken over. All hot dogs. You know what they’re like: It isn’t a meal unless it’s between two pieces of bread. He paused. ‘What did you make of this cousin, Chief?’

  Pel shrugged. ‘I’ve no doubt he’s got one. I’ve no doubt also that he’s had her in bed. And, finally, I’ve no doubt she’s in America. He’s far too astute to tell us something we could find out was wrong. But I think he was lying all the same. You’d better check her. You have the telephone number. And while you’re at it, check him.’

  At the Hôtel de Police, Nosjean was tapping a typewriter, slowly with two fingers, because like most policemen he’d never learned to type. As Pel passed him into his office, he rose and followed. He was still cold and tired and his clothes were soaked.

  ‘You look like a drowned rat,’ Pel said.

  ‘I feel like one, Chief,’ Nosjean said. ‘That rain! Mon dieu! Comme une vache qui pisse! If I’d stood with my mouth open in it I’d have drowned. We went through that field with a fine-toothed comb. We found no weapon. We also checked all the hedges in case it had been thrown away. There was nothing.’ He paused. ‘There was one patch that looked as though it might have been soaked with blood, though, but I can’t be certain because it’s been raining for days, you’ll remember, Patron. However, I took soil samples and passed them on to Leguyader. He’ll soon tell us.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ Pel commented.

  ‘Misset was up there,’ Nosjean went on. ‘He’s had a report about that tyre print he found. It’s what we thought, a Michelin ZX 145-15 – a perfectly ordinary part-worn tyre, with nothing to make it differ
ent from all the others except a chip out of the tread. As though it’s been cut by a stone.’

  ‘So to identify it we first have to find the car that carries it?’

  ‘Afraid so, Patron.’

  ‘And since there must be several million cars in France,’ Pel said bitterly, ‘four hundred thousand in Burgundy probably, that’s quite a job. We can hardly set up barriers and stop ’em all.’

  ‘It would be a small car, Patron,’ Nosjean said earnestly. ‘Renault. Diane. Deux Chevaux. That would narrow it down a bit.’

  Pel sighed. ‘You’d better ask around the garages,’ he said. ‘They’ll bless us. Darcy’s already got one query going. I don’t think we’re going to get far.’

  Eight

  The rain went on all evening. Pel played Scrabble in the kitchen with Didier Darras because Madame Routy was still in a bad temper. The neighbour had been round complaining that his greenhouse had had a pane broken and she’d had to fend him off. What was more, she still hadn’t forgiven them for dodging out when she’d cooked dinner for them.

  Since the television was blaring away, at Didier’s prompting they started playing Scrabble at the top of their voices, betting matches on each score. As it grew riotous, in retaliation Madame Routy turned up the television. Inevitably, they started shouting louder and louder until, in the end, the man from next door arrived to complain.

  ‘And him a policeman, too,’ he said to Madame Routy while Pel hid in the kitchen, pretending to be out.

  Misset was at home with his wife, listening to her going on about their increasing family. ‘Three already,’ she announced. ‘My mother says you ought to be more careful.’

  ‘Your mother has never had the experience of being a man and in bed with a beautiful woman like you,’ Misset said gallantly, and his wife’s nagging changed to a beam of pleasure.

  Lagé was at the hospital, keeping an eye on Matajcek. Normally he was at home with his wife. He made model aeroplanes and his wife and son helped him. Krauss was asleep. He put the television on the minute he arrived home and promptly closed his eyes, while his wife went across the road to where her daughter lived, and spent the evening there.

  Nosjean had spent the evening with Odile Chenandier. She lived in a little flat over a shop in the Rue Bossuet. Whenever Nosjean was feeling low and put upon, or when his girl-friend had thrown him over – which seemed to happen with great regularity – Nosjean went to see her. She remained as shy as she’d been when he’d first met her, but he had a feeling that he was bringing her out of herself. To the sensitive Nosjean this was a triumph, and her delight when he arrived always made him feel two metres tall.

  She made him coffee and they went for a walk under the trees in the Place Wilson. On the way back, he leaned towards her to kiss her. Immediately she turned her head away.

  It was disappointing because, since Nosjean had put off asking Catherine Deneuve’s younger sister for a date when she was off-duty, he felt frustrated and virile as a bull, and he went home with steam coming out of his ears, wondering if he smelled.

  Darcy spent an uncomplicated evening with his girlfriend, Josephine-Heloïse Aymé, and now, at five a.m. the next morning he was lying awake. Alongside him, Josephine-Heloïse Aymé was making soft little snuffling noises that were as well-bred as she was. She came from Normandy and still had in her some of the beserker Scandinavian blood that had peopled the province hundreds of years ago. It made their evenings together warm, passionate and at times somewhat gymnastic.

  At that moment, however, Darcy’s mind was less on Josephine-Heloïse Aymé than on Marie-Claire Jacquemin. Recalling the map in her office, he remembered something that he’d passed over at the time without thinking much about it. There were words on it, written in a German hand. ‘Hier’ and ‘Die beste Möglichkeit’, and, remembering the miles he’d tramped across Bussy-la-Fontaine since the enquiry had begun, it suddenly dawned on him that the crosses on the map matched the places where Piot had turned the earth over with his digger. It suddenly seemed important and he began to climb out of bed.

  The girl stirred.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked sleepily.

  ‘I’ve got a job to do.’

  ‘Now?’ She snapped into alertness like a startled deer. ‘First thing in the morning?’

  ‘I have to,’ Darcy said. ‘I’ve got to see this dame.’

  ‘Which dame?’

  His words triggered off an explosion of anger, and for a while he listened to the tirade, gesturing one-handed as he attempted to dress and protest at the same time.

  ‘She’s involved in this business at Bussy-la-Fontaine,’ he explained.

  As he moved to the next room, she followed him. She was small with red-brown Norman hair and a high white forehead, and her temper was working up to full throttle.

  ‘I’m a cop,’ Darcy said. ‘It’s my job. I’ve just thought of something.’

  ‘I’ll bet you have!’

  Complaining all the time, she followed him about the room as he collected his belongings. Listening stoically, he pulled his tie straight and put on his jacket, but his explanation only produced another tirade which grew shriller and angrier as he moved towards the door. As she reached for the metal breadbasket which stood empty on the sideboard, he began to run.

  Outside, his back to the door, he heard the breadbasket rattle against the panels and stood listening intently for a minute as the sound of anger died away. His mouth widened into a grin, and he stared at the closed door with the crafty grin of a fox interrupted in its maraudings.

  Picking up his car from the street outside, he drove towards Dôle. It was a clear day for a change, with the cloud breaking up, so that the soggy fields and the clumps of woodland stood out in sharp contrast.

  The journey proved a dead loss. Marie-Claire Jacquemin was in Paris at a conference.

  ‘She goes once a month,’ Danielle Delaporte said. ‘This is the day.’

  She was doing some filing in Marie-Claire Jacquemin’s office and she perked up considerably at Darcy’s appearance.

  He indicated the map on the wall.

  ‘That map,’ he said. ‘Are there any other copies?’

  ‘Yes. Probably a dozen. We had them done on the copier.’

  Darcy frowned. ‘Why that many?’

  ‘Monsieur Piot asks for them occasionally.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He says they get dirty and torn.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He uses them, I think. I don’t know what for.’

  ‘Can I have a copy?’

  Darcy drove back in a detour towards Orgny. Since Dôle had produced nothing, perhaps Orgny would. As he climbed, occasionally he saw a hare in the fields, and he drove with the window open, sniffing the cold fresh air and trying not to think of Joséphine-Heloïse Aymé. That was the worst of women, he felt. There were too many of them.

  As he turned into the long drive down to Bussy-la-Fontaine he almost ran into Grévy, the garde. He was driving the digger and, pulling it to one side, he waited for Darcy to pass.

  Darcy stopped, however, and climbed out of his car.

  ‘The boss awake yet?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Grévy’s large impassive face stared down at him. ‘He gets up early, like me.’

  ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Building a dam. Down behind the Bois Carré.’

  ‘Another dam?’

  Grévy’s big shoulders moved. He had a gift of answering without speaking.

  ‘I thought the boss did all the digging,’ Darcy went on.

  ‘I do a bit, too,’ Grévy said. ‘It was my idea that we bought our own digger. It’s a Poclain. Previously, everything up here was done by contractors. Monsieur Heurion understood things, but he wasn’t a practical man.’

  ‘And Piot is?’

  Again there was that slight movement of the shoulders that meant either yes or no.

  ‘How do you know where to dig?’

  The shoulder
s moved again. ‘He marks the map.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How else but with a cross?’

  ‘And when you’ve dug it up, you tick it off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does he then telephone his works at Dôle and tell Mademoiselle Jacquemin to cross it off on her map, too?’

  ‘Has she got a map?’ Grévy’s face was blank.

  ‘In her office,’ Darcy said. ‘Hanging up. It’s covered with crosses, and some of them are ticked off.’

  Grévy shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said.

  ‘Does he telephone her?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Why not? He’s still her boss. The telephone comes through my place so we can answer it when he’s away. Sometimes, when we’ve forgotten to put it through to the house, I’ve picked it up and heard him.’

  ‘I thought they’d broken with each other.’

  Grévy’s shoulders moved again. Yes or no. He wasn’t saying.

  ‘Do you think they still see each other?’

  Once more, yes or no. Darcy knew he wasn’t going to get a straight answer.

  He waved and went back to his car. The digger’s engine roared and it lumbered past him. At first Darcy thought it was going to crush the wing of his car but Grévy knew exactly what he was doing and it rumbled past at no mean speed, missing by a centimetre or two.

  Darey stared after him. Grévy was an enigmatic man. Was it just through being alone so much? Or did he have secrets? Did he know more about Piot’s business than he allowed? He’d persuaded Piot to buy the digger. Was he somehow involved, too?

  Darcy lit his first cigarette of the day and, climbing back into the car, drove down towards the house. The sun had just come up through the trees and he knew it was almost too early to call on people. But at this time of the morning he felt he had an advantage.

  Madame Grévy was at a table outside her back door trimming vegetables, in her coat. She looked up, saw it was Darcy, frowned and went on with her work.