Pel And The Touch Of Pitch

by Mark Hebden

  Henriot looked startled. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a fraud.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a fraud. No self-respecting terrorist organisation would have its ransom left in a poste restante box. It’s too dangerous. The post office would be full of cops. Besides, they’ve got Barclay’s title wrong. He’s not Junior Minister for Welfare. He’s known as Under-Minister for Health. They’d surely know that.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘What’s more, I suspect they’d run to a clean envelope and a decent sheet of paper not marked by greasy fingers. If only to indicate they were a responsible organisation, something they’re always keen to show. They’d have used a typewriter and they’d have sent it via the ordinary post, not stuck it in the door of a reporter of La Bien Public. At the outside, they’d have addressed it to the editor. Besides—’ Darcy wondered how he could put it ‘—if the people who sent this note really were some Leftist Freedom Movement and they were serious, they’d have sent the letter to Le Monde or one of the big Paris dailies, not to an unknown provincial paper like…’

  ‘Oh, would they?’ Henriot sounded piqued. ‘Thanks for the compliment.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But you must surely realise that.’

  There was a long silence ‘So what do we do?’ Henriot asked.

  ‘We’ll have it checked, of course. There may be the odd dab on it – in fact, it looks as if there is – and, if there is, whoever sent it is going to be in trouble if we can find out who it was.’

  ‘Can we use it? As a story?’

  ‘No, you can’t! Not without the permission of the DST. You can ask them, of course, but I’d advise you not to. They’re not the easiest people in the world to deal with. They might slap you in Number 72, Rue d’Auxonne, for being an accessory after the fact or something.’

  Lamiel arrived two hours later when the message was safely in the hands of Prélat of Fingerprints. He had just come back from Paris and was inclined to take the ransom note more seriously than Darcy, but even more seriously the fact that Darcy had acted on his own initiative.

  ‘You had no right to make decisions,’ he said.

  ‘I merely told him my opinion.’

  ‘You don’t offer opinions.’

  ‘All right,’ Darcy retorted angrily. ‘You offer one. Is it genuine?’ Lamiel frowned. ‘I doubt it.’

  Pel was thoughtful as he listened to Darcy in the Bar Transvaal. ‘It claimed to be from the Leftist Freedom Movement.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ Darcy agreed. ‘Neither, I suspect, has Lamiel. But he’s getting the computers red hot trying to place it.’

  ‘Who’s it addressed to?’

  ‘Henriot of Le Bien Public.’

  ‘Nobody else?’

  ‘Who else would they negotiate with? Barclay’s got no family and I’d hardly imagine a provincial architect’s office was worth much, even if Barclay is. I’m sure it’s a fraud. There’s always someone trying to jump on the bandwagon. Give too much publicity to a crime and there’s always someone who’ll have a go. There was that case in Corsica where half a million francs were paid out in a hurry and then the real demand came in for a million. There were a few red faces around after that.’

  ‘What’s Lamiel doing?’

  ‘Sweating on what Fingerprints find. Prélat’s found an incomplete dab and Lamiel’s hoping we’ll be able to place it.’

  They did.

  It wasn’t easy because the print was poor, but there was enough of it to identify the author and he ended up, nervous and on the verge of tears, sitting at Darcy’s desk facing Lamiel, his fingers twitching at the knees of his trousers.

  ‘Who’s behind you?’ Lamiel was demanding.

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘What organisation do you belong to?’

  ‘I don’t belong to any organisation.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I would if I were you,’ Darcy said flatly. ‘That’s Henri Guillon – Henri à Mi-Mât. Half-mast Harry. He wears his trousers above his ankles and jumps on every bandwagon that comes along. He did two months two years ago for claiming to have murdered a woman.’

  Lamiel glared at Guillon. ‘Is that true?’

  Guillon was frightened to death now. ‘Yes, yes,’ he gabbled. ‘I swear it on my mother’s grave.’

  ‘Name of God!’ Lamiel’s voice was bitter. ‘Take him away. Charge him with wasting police time.’

  As Guillon vanished, Lamiel scowled and decided they were even going to have to let Georges Pouyet go, too. His alibi seemed to be sound – though alibis were sometimes not as sound as they seemed – and there was still Deputy Furet who had finally been found and was now under house arrest at Bourg-en-Bresse where he lived, because his alibi didn’t stand up. He claimed to have been driving from Marseilles north at the time of the kidnapping, but there was no proof and Lamiel was taking no chances.

  He had done his homework, however, and it turned out that, in addition to other insults, Barclay had once accused the Groupe Revanche Française of supporting terrorism. It was enough for Lamiel. He had all the officials rounded up and, although he had to release them all almost immediately, he had them all placed under surveillance in the hope that they might lead him to someone.

  The newspapers loved it. According to the opinion polls, the government had even gained a few prospective votes from the kidnapping. The rest of the news was much as usual – a murder in Marseilles of three men, which seemed to be a gang killing; a disaster relief organisation at Grenoble which had suddenly discovered it was a million francs short in its funds and was looking for someone to accuse; a hospital in Lyons which had reported 5000 sheets, 5000 pillowslips and 5000 towels missing; a wine scandal on the Rhône – but now basically the editors were directing all their attention to Barclay’s wealth. Perhaps, Pel thought in a burst of cynicism, the tax inspectors had him locked in the cellars of the tax office for non-payment of revenues. As the thought crossed his mind, he sat up, because people had been known to disappear because they were in difficulties financially. But that wasn’t all, because someone had discovered an entirely new angle to the case.

  ‘Missing Minister Wanted Out,’ was France Soir’s headline.

  ‘World Weary Minister’s Plea,’ said Figaro.

  It was a trivial story hinging on the fact that someone had heard Barclay proclaim his wish to put things aside, though no one knew why he had said it or to whom. It was enough, however, to set the press speculating. Barclay had been overheard saying ‘I’ve had enough’ at a reception in Paris and they’d decided he was finding politics too much for him. But was it politics, Pel wondered, or was it something else entirely?

  Despite Lamiel’s warnings, he was still unconsciously brooding on the kidnapping. Though Lamiel was still baffled by the absence of any claim from any terrorist organisation, it still remained a kidnap. It had been seen to be a kidnap. Barclay had been snatched from his car, bundled into another car and driven away. Lamiel’s opinion was still that they were bound to hear something before long, and despite the fact that the only ransom note that had arrived was a fraud, it was still possible that a genuine one might yet arrive.

  But, if it did, who paid it? The government? Pel couldn’t see that happening and Barclay had no family because he wasn’t married and his parents were dead. So who was going to cough up? His firm? Barclay was the firm. His other interests? It would take some doing to get all the people concerned with his financial affairs to come to some agreement to raise the sort of money kidnappers demanded. And, anyway, since Barday’s interest in those other affairs was largely only financial, though his presence wasn’t necessary, his money certainly was, and nobody was going to hand it over in a hurry. It looked to Pel as if the kidnappers had picked a very sticky subject.

  Twelve

  Pel was still frowning when Lagé appeared. He looked puzzled.

  ‘Patron,’ he said, ‘I’ve found something that
’s got me a bit baffled. I’ve discovered Arri’s car was in Courtois-Saint-Seine the night before he’s supposed to have died.’

  ‘Courtois?’ Pel looked up. ‘That’s where Barclay has a house.’

  ‘That’s right, Patron. There’s an old touch there called Boileau who used to be on the stage. Sous-Brigadier Linais who runs Courtois says she’s a bit of a character. Everybody knows her because they can always hear her singing.’

  ‘I suspect I heard her myself that night I was there. What about her?’

  ‘She told Linais she saw Arri’s car arrive in a hurry just before dark and Arri get out of it. At least, she assumes it was Arri because it seems to have been Arri’s car.’

  ‘Where did it stop?’

  ‘Barclay’s house, Patron. It’s opposite hers.’

  Pel sat up with a jerk. This was one for the book. Immediately, he realised it was the very thing he needed to enable him to stick his nose into the Barclay kidnapping.

  ‘I think we ought to go out there,’ he said.

  The Chief listened carefully but he was inclined to be wary.

  ‘There seems to be some connection between the two cases,’ Pel pointed out, silkily determined to get his way. ‘I think I ought to see this woman and see what she knows.’

  The Chief was none too happy. Paris could be spiteful with provincials, but he was anxious to keep his diocese clear of mysteries and it seemed a lead in the Arri case. ‘Put a note in,’ he said. ‘I’ll pass it on to Lamiel. I don’t suppose he’ll read it but it’ll cover you and it’ll cover me.’

  Courtois looked different in the midday sunshine, glaring white instead of the yellow-bronze it had been when Pel had visited the place with the family group from Bois Haut. The brooding bulk of Barclay’s twelfth century mansion dwarfed everything else around.

  Madame Boileau was at her piano as they arrived. The window was open and the music was clear. They were shown in by a maid, a village girl in a grey dress and a pink apron. Behind her, a small dog with a bark like a tin trumpet went on yapping until she gave it a discreet kick up the backside that sent it scurrying to the rear of the house.

  The voice that had once been able to reach the back of a theatre gallery still had sufficient power to make the glass rattle in the windows. Madame Boileau turned out to be a plump sixty-year-old with ash-blond hair, a pink and white complexion that came out of a make-up jar, and enough mascara on her lashes to make them a public peril.

  L’amour est un oiseau rebelle

  Que nul ne peut apprivoiser,

  Et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle

  S’il lui convient de refuser…

  ‘Carmen,’ she announced. ‘The Habanera from Act I. It was thought up originally for Zulma Bouffar, whom Offenbach discovered singing risqué songs in a Cologne café, but it was eventually introduced by Marie Galli-Marié. Always one of my favourites.’

  She gestured to them to sit down and they found places in an over-decorated salon full of lace drapings, feathers, flowers, miniatures and what appeared to be acres of photographs of long-vanished singers.

  ‘My music salon,’ Madame Boileau said. ‘Here I feel at home.’

  She launched into a long spiel about her career, sang them a couple of songs from the Auvergne – ‘I’m an Auvergnat, of course,’ she said – and was about to launch into another long diatribe about her career when Pel decided it was time to get down to the nitty-gritty.

  ‘The car, Madame,’ he said. ‘The car you said you saw.’

  None too willingly she tore herself away from contemplation of her former glory. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘1111-AR-41.’

  Pel’s eyebrows rose. ‘You remember the number?’

  ‘Of course. A small Peugeot. Grey. With a dent in the back.’

  ‘That sounds very much like the one we’re interested in. Can you tell us what happened exactly?’

  She was more than anxious to do so. ‘I was here,’ she said. ‘Practising. I like to keep my voice pliant…’

  ‘The car, Madame,’ Pel urged.

  ‘Of course. The car. I saw it appear in the village street.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Late in the evening. The sun was still out but it was just going down.’

  ‘You’re absolutely certain it was the car we’re interested in?’

  ‘I wrote the number down.’

  She pushed across a sheet of music and there on the corner in pencil was the number, 1111-AR-41.

  ‘Why did you write it down, Madame? Surely you don’t normally write down the numbers of strange cars on your music?’

  She gave a tinkling laugh. ‘No, of course not. But I wished to show it to my husband. I was expecting him home. I have a similar car and my husband was using it to go to his office that day because his own had been involved in an accident and was at the garage. And, you see, there is an extraordinary coincidence. My car number is 1111-AP-45. It’s a Doubs number. We bought it in Besançon. I saw the car arrive and, as it was about the time my husband was due home, I assumed from the colour that it was him. Especially as I could only make out the first part of the number. And when it drove into the drive of the house opposite – Monsieur Barclay’s house – I wondered what on earth he was doing and why he didn’t drive immediately into our own drive as he usually does.’

  ‘What, in fact, did the car do?’

  ‘It arrived very fast – which is another reason I thought it was my husband. He always drives far too fast – and turned into the drive there. If you look carefully, you can still see the wheelmarks where it swung round.’

  There were a lot of wheelmarks on the gravel opposite, but it was true one set seemed to have disturbed the surface more than the others.

  ‘When the driver got out and I saw it wasn’t my husband, I lost interest, though I wrote down the number to show him when he came home.’

  ‘Did you notice what this driver did?’

  ‘Yes, of course. He ran round to the back of the house, where the entrance is. He just left the car door open and vanished. I became intrigued again because he seemed in such a hurry. He came back almost immediately – still in a hurry so that I assumed there was no one in the house – climbed into the car and drove away.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Have you ever seen him since?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Had you ever seen him before?’

  ‘Never.’

  Pel gestured at Lagé who produced from his briefcase the blown-up copy of the photograph Darcy had obtained of Arri from the regimental museum of the 179th of the Line.

  ‘Would that be him, Madame?’

  Madame Boileau stared at the picture. ‘It might be,’ she agreed. ‘But he looks younger.’

  ‘He is younger, Madame. This was taken some time ago, when he was in the army.’

  Madame Boileau nodded. ‘He had the look of a soldier,’ she agreed.

  Leaving Madame Boileau thrashing away again at the piano, Pel got Lagé to drive down the street to the bar. The two old men he had seen before were still there, arguing fiercely in the heat about some triviality, and a third sat with his eyes closed and his chin on his chest, asleep or dead. Either way, no one seemed very interested. In the alley alongside, two more old men were playing boules.

  Pel ordered beers and tried the photograph on the landlord. It didn’t work.

  ‘He’s not from here,’ the landlord said.

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Pel said. ‘He’s from Valoreille. But it seems he paid a visit to Monsieur Barclay’s house the night before he was found dead at Suchey.’

  ‘Is that the type all that stuff was about in the paper?’ the landlord asked eagerly.

  ‘That’s the one. Do you know him?’

  ‘Never seen him before in my life.’

  The landlord’s wife, fetched from the kitchen and still wiping her hands on her apron, studied the picture gravely for a long time.

  ‘Kn
ow him?’ Lagé asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  They were making a lot of headway.

  The two old men playing boules and the old men arguing felt the same as the landlord: he was not from Courtois. It didn’t help much, because undoubtedly Jules Arri, ex-sergeant of the 179th Regiment, wounded at Dien Bien Phu and rescued by one Sous-Lieutenant Claude Barclay, who had received a gong for his bravery on that day, had undoubtedly been trying to see his benefactor, the man who saved his life and who had probably been responsible for the mysterious job that puzzled them so. And, by the look of it, it had been a matter of extreme urgency, though it had got him nowhere because at the time, it seemed, the house had been empty.

  Pel was deep in thought, debating what to do. The obvious thing was to go to Barclay’s house and check up there, to ask if they knew Arri and if so, to find out what had been so urgent about his visit. But he knew he was treading on dangerous ground. Barclay belonged to Lamiel and Pel had been warned off that case. He could well imagine Lamiel making a lot of song and dance about it, too, if he found Pel had been shoving his nose in. On the other hand, Pel was involved with Jules Arri and certain aspects of Jules Arri’s behaviour seemed to require explanation.

  ‘This is between you and me, Lagé,’ he pointed out. ‘Have you got that?’

  ‘Yes, Patron, I’ve got it.’

  Pel studied the old detective. Lagé looked a little like a bloodhound and he had some of the same qualities. He wasn’t likely to talk.