Pel and the Missing Persons

by Mark Hebden

  ‘It wasn’t his heart,’ Darcy said. ‘At least, only in so far as it stopped. He was found dead on the motorway.’

  ‘What was he doing there? He didn’t drive.’

  ‘He wasn’t driving. He seems to have been drunk and staggering about and was hit by a car.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like him. Sure you’ve got the right man?’

  ‘Appendicitis scar? Kidney operation scar left side?’

  ‘That’s him, all right.’

  ‘Did he suffer from depression?’

  ‘Mon Dieu, no! Why?’

  ‘I wondered if getting himself hit by a car was a new way of doing himself in, and whether the whisky he’d drunk was to help him screw up his courage. After all there were lots of scars on his wrists as if he’d tried to open veins.’

  Doctor Billetottes laughed again. ‘They weren’t suicide attempts. They were accidents. I asked him about them. He told me he once had a property in the hills. Lots of trees along one border. He felt they needed lopping to let in some light and decided to do it himself. But he wasn’t very good at it and a bow saw’s not an easy thing to handle when you’re up a ladder. It’s a wonder he didn’t cut his hand off.’

  ‘Did he hit the bottle much?’

  ‘He liked a few drinks. Who doesn’t? But I don’t think he overdid it.’

  ‘He seems to have done this time,’ Darcy said.

  Eight

  The following day they heard Nadauld had died.

  ‘Septicaemia and shock,’ the Chief said. ‘His jaw was shattered. They must have been using explosive bullets.’

  He was grim-faced and wearing a dark suit, obviously on his way to see Nadauld’s widow. Within an hour the hat was going round. Nobody argued and everybody offered something because they knew it might easily be their own turn next.

  The Hôtel de Police was gloomy all morning. Nadauld had been an easy-going friendly man and the fact that he had died on the eve of his daughter’s wedding had made the tragedy worse. In addition, they were making no headway into the mystery of his wounding, or for that matter, the identity of the man on the motorway.

  The Hôtel Central was the biggest hotel in the city and stuck faithfully to the law demanding that guests should fill in a fiche d’hôtel, the little card indicating who they were, where they came from, what their nationality was, where they were born and why. What was more, it was unlike some of the smaller hotels in that passports or identity cards were demanded there so that details could be checked. It was part of the law of France but it was a law that was inclined to be forgotten when a hotel was busy.

  The manager was a tall portly man who didn’t like having the police making enquiries on his premises in case their presence got the place a bad name, but he always tried to help. It paid. This time, however, he could offer nothing. The books and files were extensive and they had them for ten years back, but though they’d had plenty of Jean Duponts passing through, they hadn’t one who fitted the description the police had. Jean Dupont, it seemed, had not been eager to be recognised.

  Then, with Pel scowling at a report on his desk from Colonel Le Thiel at the airport, unexpectedly they got the break they were waiting for.

  Doctor Billetottes telephoned. ‘Have you found the address of that chap, Jean Dupont, yet?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ Darcy’s answer was short. He had a feeling that Doctor Billetottes – and a few others too – had not been doing their job properly.

  ‘Well, I’ve just remembered something. I have a bit of a problem with prescriptions from time to time. I have arthritis in my fingers and the chemists complain they can’t read my writing. Nobody expects to read a doctor’s writing at the best of times, anyway, but arthritis makes it worse, and there was a query a few weeks back from the dispenser at the chemist’s in St-Alban. It was for a prescription for sleeping tablets. He couldn’t read the quantity and was checking up.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ve just remembered. He gave me the name on the prescription so I could check with my records. It was Jean Dupont. It was for the type you’re looking for.’

  Well, it wasn’t much, but it was another pointer, this time to the St-Alban district.

  The chemist didn’t know Jean Dupont but he remembered him once turning up for his prescription when it wasn’t ready. Dupont had pointed out his age – seventy-eight, he said – and complained it was difficult to get into town since he no longer drove a car. The dispenser had asked where he lived and had volunteered to drop the prescription in on his way home.

  ‘And you did?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the house?’

  ‘Name of “Vauregard”. Rue Poincaré. You can’t miss it.’

  Darcy made no comment because he’d missed many a place he’d been told he couldn’t miss. Being told he couldn’t miss somewhere was the best way he knew of making it disappear from sight for ever.

  ‘Where is it exactly?’

  ‘On the Beaucelles-St-Julien crossroads. It’s a red-brick place.’

  The house at the crossroads had a short drive dropping from the main road to a sunken garage beneath it. There appeared to be nobody at home. Since Dupont was a widower and was dead, Darcy didn’t really expect much in the way of family, but he had thought there might be a puzzled-looking gardener or a housekeeper, at least a daily help, wondering where the owner was. He tried the house on the opposite side of the crossroads. It was a much older house, built some time just after the First World War. It had peeling paint, an overgrown garden, and net curtains at the front window that twitched as he climbed from his car. When he knocked on the door, it was opened a fraction and a long nose was poked out.

  ‘I’m enquiring about Monsieur Dupont,’ he said.

  ‘He doesn’t live here,’ the owner of the nose pointed out. ‘My name’s Mallard. Madame Mallard. Elise Mallard. That’s his house. Across the road.’

  ‘Yes, I’m aware of that,’ Darcy said. ‘I want to find out something about him.’

  The woman behind the door looked the sort who’d make sure she knew everything and Darcy suspected the net curtains had often twitched as Dupont left or returned home.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  What Darcy wanted to know was how Dupont had met his death, but he suspected Madame Mallard couldn’t supply the answer to that.

  ‘Were you a friend of his, Madame?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Speak to him much?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Know what he did with himself?’

  ‘He came and went.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He didn’t live here all the time. He had another house somewhere, I think.’

  ‘Know where?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What else did he do?’

  ‘He played cards.’

  Darcy glanced through the window. Dupont’s house was a good distance away. ‘You could see?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve got good eyesight.’

  More than likely a good pair of binoculars, too, Darcy thought. ‘Whom did he play with?’

  ‘There was Maninko. He’s the butcher from the village. He’s a Pole. And Georges Serral, who keeps the stationer’s. There were others. Rollin, the undertaker from St-Saôn, was one.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘I saw his car. It has his name on the side. In small letters. What’s happened to him?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Darcy explained. ‘He was found dead on the motorway.’

  ‘Shot?’

  ‘Why should he be shot, Madame?’

  ‘That’s what happens, isn’t it? Gangsters throw bodies out of cars.’

  ‘Was he a gangster?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. But he knew a few. Maninko told me.’

  ‘Did any doubtful characters ever visit him?’

  ‘None I ever saw.’

  ‘So why should he be thrown out of a car on the motorway?’

  ‘
I didn’t say he was. I asked, that’s all. He didn’t drive himself. He always took a taxi. He was well off.’

  ‘Which taxi?’

  ‘It was always a different one. I think he didn’t want people to know what he got up to.’

  ‘What did he get up to?’

  ‘Something, I bet. Or what was he doing on the motorway?’

  That was what was bothering Darcy. ‘Had he any relatives round here?’

  ‘I think he had a daughter.’

  ‘Know her name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how do you know about her?’

  ‘Everybody knows.’

  ‘Did he tell people?’

  ‘Only the people he drank with and played cards with at the bar.’

  ‘So how do you know?’

  ‘It gets around. I heard it at the grocer’s.’

  ‘Does she know her father’s dead?’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘Well, have you seen her around?’

  ‘No. He didn’t have visitors. Except his card-playing friends.’

  It took some time to identify the daughter. Darcy went to see Dupont’s ‘card-playing friends’, but they knew remarkably little about him. He was, it seemed, a tight-mouthed man who never talked about himself and it did nothing but add to the mystery.

  All Rollin, the undertaker, knew was that Dupont had a daughter. He thought her name was Zoë, but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘What about her surname?’

  ‘Don’t know it. He always just called her Zoë. Serral, who runs the stationer’s, might know.’

  Serral didn’t know but he added a little more. ‘I think she married a man who runs a big ironmonger’s in Dôle.’

  It was another step forward and Maninko, the Pole, supplied the last link. ‘I think it’s in the Main Street,’ he said.

  A telephone call to the Dôle police provided the answer.

  ‘Chappe,’ they said. ‘Thomas Chappe. It’s the biggest ironmonger’s in the town.’

  ‘Home address?’

  ‘Hang on.’ There was the sound of rustling pages and murmuring voices, then, finally, the answer. ‘Thomas Chappe, 7, Rue Pasteur.’

  It seemed to indicate a visit to Dôle.

  ‘Not Dupont,’ Madame Chappe said. ‘Not Jean Dupont. His name was Achille-Jean Quelereil-Dupont.’

  ‘Ah!’

  It was quite a mouthful and it suddenly wasn’t hard to see why they had not been able to find out much about the dead man.

  Madame Chappe didn’t seem surprised at her father’s death. She was small and fat and was alone, because her husband was working late with his staff stock-taking at his shop.

  ‘It could have happened any time,’ she explained. ‘He was old.’

  ‘He didn’t die of natural causes, Madame,’ Darcy explained. ‘He died of injuries he received on the motorway.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘He didn’t drive.’

  ‘He wasn’t driving. He seems to have been walking.’

  ‘But he hated walking!’

  He told her what they knew and watched her expression change to bewilderment. ‘Why would he be wandering about on the motorway?’ she asked.

  ‘Did he make a habit of drinking?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘He had been drinking. There was a high level of alcohol in his blood. He’d been drinking whisky.’

  ‘Well, he liked a whisky. But he didn’t drink much.’

  ‘We’ve checked the villages along the motorway in the area where he was found. Did he know people in Mailly-les-Temps or Ponchet?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He had a house at St-Alban, which isn’t far away, and, apart from holidays, he didn’t travel much. He liked to go to the bar to play cards or dominoes. Sometimes two or three friends came in to play. As far as I know, that’s it.’

  ‘Could he have been visiting somebody?’

  ‘I can’t imagine whom.’

  ‘Would you have a key to his house?’

  ‘I insisted on having one in case something ever happened to him. It seems now that something has.’

  ‘Do you think you could accompany me to St-Alban to check the house?’

  ‘It’s late.’

  ‘It ought to be done. We’ll make sure you’re brought safely home.’

  Madame Chappe looked dubious. ‘Oh, well, all right. I suppose I’d better. Could we call at the shop on the way and warn my husband where I’m going?’

  For a woman who had just lost her father, Madame Chappe didn’t seem much moved. She showed no signs of grief and it puzzled Darcy, who used the drive from Dôle to get to know more about the nebulous Achille-Jean Quelereil-Dupont. He wasn’t helped by the fact that Madame Chappe let out information only in small driblets.

  ‘Had he always lived at St-Alban?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That house at St-Alban wasn’t his only house.’

  ‘So I’ve heard.’

  ‘He had another. In Dôle. A bigger one. He bought the one at St-Alban a long time ago and went to live there for a time.’

  ‘Why did he do that? Family problems?’

  ‘He felt it was safer.’

  ‘Safer than what?’

  ‘Being at his house in the city where everybody knew him.’

  ‘He was hiding?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was afraid.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘A man.’ Madame Chappe drew a deep breath. ‘A man he prosecuted. He was sent to prison for twenty years.’

  Darcy stared at her. ‘Your father was a barrister?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Well, at least they’d finally managed to find out who ‘Jean Dupont’ was.

  It was dark when they reached St-Alban, bitterly cold and raining, the roads reflecting the reds, greens. and yellows of the neons which sparkled in a dazzling display of jewels as the windscreen wipers swept the water away in waves.

  Pel, whom Darcy had telephoned, was waiting for them, sitting in a car, looking frozen under his knitted carapace of woollen garments. The car was driven by Claudie Darel who’d been brought along to help if Madame Chappe became at all upset.

  The house looked typical of an old man’s home. It was shabby through the indifference of someone unconcerned with the looks of the place and Madame Chappe seemed to feel she ought to apologise.

  ‘I was always going on at him to get new furniture and curtains,’ she said. ‘He bought it furnished and he said it wasn’t worth changing things at his age, that they’d last his lifetime and, besides, it was too comfortable and he was too old to bother. Anyway, what are you looking for?’

  ‘Something that might explain why he was on the motorway at midnight,’ Darcy said.

  She pushed her key into the lock, opened the door and switched on a light. Pel and Darcy were about to step inside after her but she didn’t move. Glancing past her, Pel saw the drawer of the hall stand was on the floor.

  Madame Chappe turned and stared at them, her eyes wide and shocked. ‘I think someone’s been in here,’ she said.

  ‘I suggest,’ Pel said to Madame Chappe, ‘that you stand quite still and don’t touch a thing.’

  There was a small salon just off the hall and the door was open.

  ‘Anything missing that you can notice at first glance, Madame?’

  ‘No.’

  Darcy pushed past her. The room, which looked over a secluded overgrown garden, had clearly been turned over by an intruder. Papers were scattered on the floor and drawers had been pulled out of a chest near the door.

  Madame Chappe stared at it all for a moment, then her hand went to her mouth. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘The porcelain!’

  Darcy closed the door. ‘What porcelain, Madame?’

  But Madame Chappe was heading for the stairs as she spoke. Quelereil-Dupont’s bedroom looked much like the dining-room. Drawers stood open and a cupboard was agape.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Mad
ame Chappe was almost in tears. ‘They’ve gone!’

  ‘What have gone, Madame?’

  ‘He had two pieces of porcelain. He said they weren’t worth anything. But they were. I know they were.’ She gestured at the cupboard. ‘That’s where he always kept them.’

  ‘Did he know they were valuable?’

  ‘Of course. He pretended they were worthless but I knew they weren’t. I looked them up. They were Meissen and they dated back to 1739. They were made by Johann Kandler and I think they were worth a lot of money.’

  Her hands went out to move things for a better look but Pel stopped her.

  ‘Please stand still, Madame,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch anything.’ He turned to Claudie Darel who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Get on the radio, Claudie. Get Fingerprints and Forensic out here.’

  As Claudie vanished, he turned again to Madame Chappe who was still staring at the wreckage in the bedroom. ‘Now, Madame! These pieces of porcelain. Can you describe them?’

  ‘They were Chinese in style,’ she said. ‘And they looked Chinese. They were supposed to be court jesters and they had big laughing mouths. They were in bright colours.’

  ‘And they were worth a lot of money?’

  ‘Five hundred thousand francs, I was told.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘I got an expert to come and look at them.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘His name’s Vincent. Paul Vincent. He runs an antique shop in Dôle. He’s a friend of ours.’

  ‘Is he trustworthy?’

  ‘Of course he is.’

  ‘Why did you get him to give you a valuation?’

  ‘Because I felt they should be somewhere safer than in that cupboard. In the bank, for instance.’

  ‘Were you hoping to have them eventually?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Do you collect porcelain?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’d have sold them as soon as they came into my possession.’

  ‘No feeling of them being a family heirloom?’

  Madame Chappe sniffed. ‘No.’

  ‘Who else knew about these pieces of porcelain? Apart from this Paul Vincent. Anybody?’