Gently French

by Alan Hunter

Hanson stared, his eyes rimmed. ‘Oh, come on now! What’s his motive?’

  ‘At a guess, I’d say Madame Deslauriers. As you were saying, she must be behind it.’

  Hanson did his famous impression of a man watching a giraffe turn into an elephant: then he came down on the tin-lid with his cheroot stub and mashed the stub into shreds.

  ‘It won’t work!’

  I shrugged. ‘It will. It fits the evidence better than the other way.’

  ‘Like hell it does. Just ask yourself this – why was Bilney here, if not to do Freddy?’

  ‘He would be here because he was sweet on Deslauriers.’

  Hanson hooted. ‘That’s so likely! And him leaving a note in his pad to tell his girl-friend he was on a job.’

  ‘It’s the sort of note he might have left a girl-friend. No doubt he would still have uses for Mavis. And the note troubles me a good deal less than Bilney’s turning up at Haughton unannounced.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Hanson said. ‘Big point taken. And the mob getting shopped – how about that?’

  ‘Call it part of the same deal. Malice towards Freddy. Followed by a knife when opportunity offered.’

  Hanson threw up his hands. ‘It stinks. And all this time the lady sits by smiling.’

  ‘She may not know, or not know all of it. Then she would behave in just the way she’s behaving.’

  ‘It still stinks.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Let’s give it a run-through my way. The evidence points to the sort of killer I’ve described. At least we have to try it from that view-point.’

  Hanson clawed his hand across his face. ‘Okay, you try it.’

  ‘First we know that Bilney was acquainted with Wicken. Deslauriers admits that she has met all the gang, and so through Wicken she could have met Bilney. It doesn’t have to follow that Bilney was her boy-friend, but it could very well follow that he was attracted by her. If he learned from Wicken that she was staying at Haughton he might have been foolish enough to come out after her.’

  ‘Him having such a sentimental record,’ Hanson said sourly.

  ‘Perhaps. But the lady has a lot of horse-power. And it squares with Bilney taking a room at the Three Tuns and bribing a waiter to smuggle her a message. A paid killer wouldn’t have run those risks, but they would be part of the fun for a roughneck Romeo. And Deslauriers was game. She didn’t want him next door, but he was welcome to stay around to brighten up the scenery.’

  Hanson sniffed. ‘Yeah, that sounds like her. A lover boy in every bush.’

  ‘So she sent him here, where he could nurse the phone and be available for romps. Bilney didn’t fancy sleeping here, but he wasn’t hiding, so there was no reason why he should. Even Freddy’s murder probably didn’t worry him, and may have given him a motive for staying on. Now he was free from competition and could expect a readier response from Deslauriers.’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ Hanson said. ‘I’m almost sold. But then why does Bilney finish up so dead?’

  ‘For the same reason that Freddy did,’ I said. ‘They were both Deslauriers’ lovers.’

  ‘You mean there’s a mad lover in the scene somewhere?’

  ‘For the moment I’m merely reading the evidence. It suggests that Bilney didn’t come here as a paid killer, but that it was his connection with Deslauriers that led to his death.’

  Hanson glared at Breckles. ‘Which side are you on?’

  Breckles looked flustered and rolled his shoulders.

  ‘Me too,’ Hanson said. ‘It’s a way of looking at it, but I always gag at demon lovers.’

  ‘And the mode of the killings?’

  ‘I’ll swallow them,’ Hanson said. ‘What’s wrong with some pro killings being messy? Bilney’s job may have been his first, and what happened here a tit for tat.’

  ‘That was never a pro job.’

  ‘You’re forgetting who paid for it. The lady could have ordered fancy trimmings. And I would sooner go along with that than with a leching Bilney and a demon lover.’ He hesitated, eyes suddenly small. ‘Or did you have a candidate in mind?’

  I let my face go blank. ‘Just someone in the know. Who is left-handed.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AN AMBULANCE AND two Wolseleys came up the track and halted smartly where Bilney had been parking the Viva. Hanson strutted out to take command, I strolled away down the rough meadow.

  Down there by the pool was a different world from the shabby chalet with its busy policemen. All fresh growth, thrusting new reeds, tender-leaved alders and polleny willows. Water-hens foraged among the rushes; a handsome male grebe fished the open water; reed-warblers flirted among last-year’s reeds and made creaky, dripping comments. A world that couldn’t care less about the mind-ridden animals up the slope: the perverted, self-doomed animals who killed each other when they weren’t hungry.

  I lit my pipe and continued to stroll, switching my mind off for later. I came to an old, ruinous hide, sited to overlook the pool and the reed-beds. A trace of Clytie Gifford, no doubt. I squatted for some minutes on its crude bench. The grebe came close, and I spotted its mate seated haughtily on their sloppy nest. Then a true breath-catcher: reed-pheasants: two pairs, swinging musically through the fawn, dead stems. I sat as still as the rotting bench and let my pipe go cold in my mouth.

  What a hell of a place for Bilney to have come to: a hell of a place for him to die in!

  The pool, the lodging, were for gentle people, gentle as the birds and the tranquil trees.

  Yet here he had come, loutish, insensible, locked in some grubby prison of intent: basely living and basely dying, with his sneering eyes staring blind.

  What did he want? What did any of them want?

  There was nothing they were capable of receiving.

  In or out of the Scrubs, the Moor, they were prisoners, the key turned by their own hand.

  I got up angrily, disturbing the reed-pheasants and sending the grebe into an instant dive. I stamped back to the chalet, and stood watching policemen puffing their powder and flashing cameras.

  Two hours later they were through, and the corpse had already departed for town. The results were debatable, due very largely to the unhelpful character of the chalet. It was a bad place for dabs. The paintwork was rough and the metalwork corroded. Whether chummie had been careful with his break-in or not, there were no traces of latents round the forced window. Even Bilney’s dabs were found only once, some faint impressions on the bedroom door. And in the kitchen, and again in the Viva, were slight indications that wiping had taken place.

  Hanson received this intelligence with gloomy satisfaction.

  ‘At least it proves one thing – chummie was a pro.’

  I couldn’t contradict that. My enthusiastic amateur would scarcely have bothered with such refinements.

  ‘But what was he doing in Bilney’s car?’

  Hanson flipped his hand. ‘Seeing what he could nick. There was a car with no owner. Chummie just couldn’t help giving it a frisk.’

  ‘He didn’t rob the body.’

  ‘Maybe he was squeamish.’

  ‘I’m told the knife went in eleven times.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Hanson squirmed. ‘Then there’d be blood about, wouldn’t there? He wouldn’t be keen to get mixed up with that.’

  I shrugged and didn’t push the point; yet still it seemed a little odd. Chummie had finished his job and was on his way out, then he stopped to enter the blue Viva. Something obvious that took his eye? A clue that might have led us to him? Ah well: we would know one day, or know we didn’t need to know.

  I drove back to the Norchester H.Q. with Hanson and put through a call to Dainty. I got his assistant, Inspector Jason, a dapper young man with a cooing accent. Jason had no news for me. I told him my news; he listened with little dove-like murmurs. He liked the bit about the multiple stab-wounds and the blood pooled round the body.

  ‘Do you have a sus, sir?’

  ‘Not exactly a sus. There are two schoo
ls of thought going here. One says the killer is a pro from town. That’s the school you had better follow.’

  ‘The Super is betting on Whitey Ferrier, sir. We’ve had whispers from the snouts. Quarles set up a snatch for Ferrier last month and the job went sour. We made three arrests.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. ‘Great. But now we want whispers about a hard boy. He would certainly have been missing from the scene all yesterday. He uses a knife, and he’s far from stupid. Are you taking notes?’

  ‘Wait – yes, sir!’

  ‘Here is the thing that may catch him. He has probably had connections with the Quarles gang: enough so that Deslauriers would know how to contact him.’

  ‘Is she your sus for setting it up, sir?’

  ‘She’s my nothing. Just get me some action.’

  Jason cooed assurances, and I hung up. Hanson, who’d been listening, fingered his chin.

  ‘I’d say the lady was our next move,’ he said. ‘Maybe we could spare her some photographs of Bilney.’

  I rocked my chair and gazed over his head. ‘Would you have finished with Freddy’s car?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘She wants it back. And letting her have it would be a nice gesture.’

  He was gazing hard at me. ‘You want us to give it to her?’

  I twitched a shoulder. ‘It’s been in my mind. Wondering what she intends to do with it. Who’ll be sitting behind the wheel.’

  ‘You mean she’s planning a skip?’

  ‘I don’t know that. But just now she lacks the number one requisite.’

  Hanson rasped his chin again.

  Five minutes later, I was sitting in the Bugatti.

  Or more or less in it.

  One’s first impression was of putting on a one-man roller-coaster: of sitting far too high and naked, and much too close to the shoulder-width wheel. The pedals were quaint but fairly available, the instrumentation on the light side; the gear-shift came to hand, though it felt grotchy, and one realized in a flash why the handbrake was outboard. That’s where the space was, not in the cockpit. The cockpit was strictly something to wear. At a guess, Louis Chiron was a short, wiry man, and his mechanic an under-nourished midget.

  I started the engine and let it roll while I got used to my surroundings. Straight ahead was the curved scuttle with a half-moon windscreen mounted above it. Then a mile of curved, tapering bonnet, secured by two leather straps, and finally the geometry of the out-rigged, narrow-tyred wheels with bicycle-type mudguards curling round them. Well, it was built to drive. I clonked off the handbrake and fed in some power. Ettore’s car took a bound across the M/T yard, screamed disapproval, then settled for a jerky, restive walking-pace.

  We made the street. By good fortune the teatime rush-hour was nearly over. I slanted the wheels towards the Ring Road and double-declutched cautiously through the gears. Soon we were doing a dyspeptic thirty and I was getting a bit of feel. Wind was fingering my hair and cooling the elbow I was trailing nonchalantly over the side. The wheel bothered me. It was giving me the impression that I had hold of the helm of the Queen Mary. Also the steering was surprisingly heavy, and less connected with direction than one might have supposed. I checked the brakes. In good time, they worked, though not as though they intended to waste any rubber. On the other hand the accelerator seemed set on a watch-spring, while the clutch came in like a Mills bomb.

  I reached the Ring Road, where the roundabout junction taught me some more about vintage steering. It taught me also that I was driving a car that would get more consideration than any ambulance. The last hell-bent commuters stood on their noses to let Louis Chiron go through, then happily fell into procession behind him as he cantered along at the legal forty. A classless society? Not among car-owners. The same thing happened at successive roundabouts. When I came to my turn-off the queue was solid behind me, while ahead stretched a relatively empty road.

  But now my moment had come. We cruised past the delimit signs. The road ahead was reasonably straight. I squeezed a little; Ettore’s car pricked up its ears and began to surge. There was an Escort behind me, and for a languid moment it seemed likely to cling to my tail; then it walked backwards in the rear-view mirror and disappeared behind some trees. Small fry. Up front, an S-bend. I jigged the reluctant brakes in good time. No other traffic. I went straight through, hugging the wheel in Segrave-style. A clear road. I let her scream. The needle drifted over the ton. My hair was getting torn out by the roots, my trailed elbow was trying to flap. Bryan de Grineau should have seen this. I could feel visible slipstream shaling off me. Le Mans, Brooklands, the great days: watch me drift the next bend.

  It was nearly my last. I hit it at a speed that the Lotus would scarcely have noticed. The next moment I was doing one of those celebrated fighting-the-wheel acts straight out of a pre-war Modern Boy. Now I knew why they had those wheels. I was losing the rear-end in gigantic hops. At each hop the tyres gave a baleful screech and spirted distress-signals of black smoke. The real McCoy. I steered-in, steered-out for it might have been the next hundred yards, and just when it seemed it was going on for ever, the car gave a brutal lurch and came back on course. A man’s car, keep it in. The tape on the wheel was sodden with sweat. I crept along at a painful sixty, waiting for the jelly to drain out of my arms.

  But strangely, I felt happier after that, as though now the car and I had got to know each other. So it didn’t handle like a Lotus – never mind: it still had the heart and sinew of a lion. The next firm bend I got right, putting her into it slower, coarser: a problem solved. I was learning. No doubt Chiron had had his troubles, too. We came through Wrackstead in a growling amble, nosing aside the peasant traffic. When we crossed the bridge I touched my horn: shrill trumpets blasted ‘Colonel Bogey’.

  I parked the Bugatti in the hotel forecourt, where it sat simmering like a contented cat. The time was between tea and dinner and the Barge-House had an unpeopled air. Dutt was in the lounge, reading an evening paper. Through the open french windows he had a view of the lawn. At the bottom of the lawn, decorating a sun-bed, lounged Mimi, Madame Deslauriers.

  I nodded to Dutt and took a seat by him.

  ‘The lady looks lonely down there.’

  Dutt gave me a slow grin. ‘Not so lonely, sir. She’s been having a teatime chat with Bavents.’

  ‘How many does that make?’

  ‘It makes three. She had him up in her room again this afternoon. He was in there for nearly an hour, but he didn’t come out looking very chuffed.’

  ‘Was he happier at teatime?’

  ‘Not so as you’d notice, sir. But with all that hair it’s hard to tell. My hunch is the lady wants him to do something which he isn’t very keen on.’

  ‘I’d have thought she could talk him into anything.’

  ‘Yes, sir, you get that impression. And as a matter of fact I got round to wondering just how well they do know each other.’

  I leered. ‘You did, did you?’

  Dutt had the grace to turn pink. ‘Not like that, sir! What I mean is whether they’d met before she came here.’

  A shrewd point. ‘What was your conclusion?’

  ‘Well, sir, I don’t know about a conclusion. But I did give the University a tinkle to find out Bavents’ home address.’

  ‘And that was?’

  ‘Chelsea, sir. Vought Street, Chelsea. His father keeps The Peacock pub. That’s a few blocks away from Upper Cheyne Row, but not outside the lady’s district.’

  ‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘So they could have met.’

  Dutt looked pleased. ‘It’s on the cards, sir. If you ask me the lady has a taste for pubs, so she could have spent an evening in The Peacock.’

  ‘And now she wants him to do something he doesn’t fancy.’ I gazed down the lawn at the recumbent Mimi. She was draped elegantly in the evening sunlight, gazing at nothing through tinselly-framed sun-glasses. ‘Has Bavents used the phone?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, sir.
I’ve been keeping an eye on the phone.’

  ‘Has he been out?’

  ‘Don’t think so, sir. Not since yesterday afternoon.’

  I hesitated. ‘He was out then?’

  ‘Yes, sir. If you remember, I couldn’t check his statement. I’d say he went out after they finished serving coffee, and it was after you came back when he returned.’

  It was indeed. I did quick arithmetic. It must have taken me an hour to find Mimi’s launch. In half that time Bavents could have driven to the chalet, hidden his Mini and forced the window. And Friday evening too he had been at liberty . . . while there were plenty of chef’s knives in the kitchen! Dutt was eyeing me thoughtfully.

  ‘Does that fit in, sir?’

  I nodded and briefly brought him up to date. Dutt listened stolidly. I sketched Hanson’s theory without bothering to throw in comment. Dutt wrinkled his nose.

  ‘I like Bavents better, sir. Those rough boys are all for keeping it simple.’

  ‘Where is Bavents now?’

  ‘He’s in the kitchen. Do you want me to fetch him out for you?’

  I shook my head; first things first. I rose and went down the lawn. Mimi received me with a melting smile and was gracious enough to remove her sun-glasses.

  ‘You are back, my friend! Was the day tiresome?’

  I took the Bugatti’s key from my pocket. It was a custom-made, gold-plated key, attached to an enamel badge by a snake-chain. Not to be mistaken. I let it dangle. Mimi’s green eyes fixed on it covetously.

  ‘Ha! You have brought me Freddy’s car.’

  I gave the badge a flip. ‘I’ve brought it from town.’

  ‘But for me, huh?’

  ‘Perhaps. At the moment it is just part of Freddy’s estate.’

  She sat up on the bed. ‘But he has left it to me! You will find it is so in his will.’

  ‘I haven’t seen his will.’

  ‘But yes, it is true! You have only to ring up Freddy’s solicitors.’

  I flipped the badge again. ‘Of course, if you have seen it . . .’

  ‘It is the same. I shall have the car.’

  ‘But if I could have your word for it?’