Pel and the Missing Persons

by Mark Hebden

  ‘I doubt it. I knew about them because I was his daughter.’

  ‘Your husband? Did he know about them?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Could he – or you – have mentioned them to anybody?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t. I was hoping they’d be mine when my father died and I kept quiet about them because there’s a cousin in Strasbourg with a reputation for being a bit quick off the mark and I was afraid that if he learned about them they might disappear.’

  ‘You mean he’d steal them?’

  She looked shocked. ‘No. Not that exactly. But you know what happens when people die. Relatives turn up. Small things vanish. My mother had a gold necklace she promised me over and over again. I never found it after the funeral.’

  Downstairs in the salon, while Prélat and the Forensic boys were going through the house, Pel got Claudie to make coffee and tried to question Quelereil-Dupont’s daughter.

  ‘I’d like to know more about your father,’ he said quietly. ‘It might help us clear up a lot of things. If his name was Achille-Jean Quelereil-Dupont, why did he call himself simply Dupont?’

  She was silent for a moment and her mouth tightened. ‘That was later. He preferred it that way.’

  ‘Did he once use his full name?’

  ‘Yes. His mother was one of the Quelereils. They own a lot of land in the Auvergne. They were very important and when she married – a Frederic Dupont, who was a lawyer in Périgueux – she felt it right to retain her old family name. Everybody approved. Including my father, who was their son. He used to feel it gave him class.’

  ‘And he was a barrister?’

  ‘Yes. He became quite well known. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He wasn’t on the bench. He prosecuted for a while. I still have his red robe. Then he decided he could do better in defence and changed it for a black one. When my mother died he bought this house.’

  ‘Because he was afraid of someone?’

  ‘A man called Lévêque. Georges Lévêque. He was charged with murder and my father was the prosecuting counsel. It was in Marseilles. Lévêque went to prison. There were relatives of his in court and they shouted that they’d kill my father. I think he bought this house because he thought they might try.’

  ‘Did they?’

  ‘No. Not as far as I know. But he was well known. Surely you’ve heard of the Marival-Midi swindle.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it, Madame,’ Pel said. ‘Though it was a bit before my time.’

  ‘Five financiers went to prison. He prosecuted in that case, too. Then he changed sides to defend a man who was accused of murdering the Countess de Perrenet. He got him acquitted.’

  ‘He must have been quite famous.’

  ‘I suppose so. It didn’t last long, though. He got involved in politics.’ Madame Chappe spoke unhappily. ‘He was wonderful at first. He was even thought brilliant. He earned a lot of money. But he gambled. He chased women. Then something happened. I don’t know what it was. I was quite young and I never really learned. Something to do with his clients, I discovered. But that was all. People didn’t come to him any more. He went down and down and seemed to have no money at all. But recently he seemed quite well off again.’

  Pel had got their man clear now. Quelereil-Dupont’s career had gone up like a rocket and, like a rocket, having reached its peak, had descended as quickly. Pel had seen him in court as a young cop and admired his skill. But he also remembered seeing him defending a Lyons gangster accused of a particularly ugly murder. He had got him off on a technicality and had undoubtedly made a lot of money from it, but Pel had noticed that the other advocates had avoided him like the plague, as though contact with him soiled them.

  Instinctively he reasoned it had something to do with his being dead on the motorway.

  As Yves Pasquier had said of the Count of Monte Cristo, you never knew with people.

  Nine

  ‘It produces a new angle, patron,’ Darcy said.

  ‘Not for being on the motorway,’ Pel said.

  ‘For being dead.’

  They had discovered that, in addition to the pieces of porcelain, a silver candlestick and other pieces of valuable silver were also missing, to say nothing of bearer bonds to the value of many thousands of francs, and possibly several thousand francs in cash. Because Dupont didn’t drive, he had been in the habit of going to the bank and extracting large sums of money, on which he drew when he needed cash. He had drawn out 50,000 francs the week before he had been found dead but there was no sign of it. They had also checked on the Meissen pieces. Not with the Museum of Fine Arts, which was closed, but with Nosjean’s girl-friend, Mijo Lehmann, who knew all about antiques. She confirmed what Madame Chappe had said.

  ‘At least five hundred thousand francs,’ she claimed. ‘Possibly almost a million if they’re in good condition.’

  Nothing of moment had been found by Prélat’s fingerprint boys, beyond an immediate intimation that whoever had gone through the house had worn gloves. ‘There are smudges everywhere,’ Prélat said. ‘Somebody’s done a good job of ransacking the place and been into everything. Otherwise the only prints are Dupont’s, confirmed by prints off his razor, toothbrush, and so on, and a few which seem to belong to his daughter, confirmed by those on the coffee cup Claudie gave her. Nothing else. It looks as though the place’s been gone through by someone who knew what he was looking for.’

  Dupont’s other house in Dôle seemed to have been untouched. There was no sign of a break-in there and no sign of a search. Madame Chappe, who had made a point of visiting it regularly, could see nothing out of place. There were even valuable artefacts about that had remained untouched.

  ‘Why did he have the Meissen figurines at St-Alban?’ Pel asked.

  ‘He must have liked to have a few things there with him.’

  ‘It still doesn’t explain how he came to be dead on the motorway,’ Darcy said. ‘With head injuries and two broken legs. We know about the broken legs but the head injuries seem a bit odd and, beyond that, why was he there at all?’

  ‘The break-in could be sheer coincidence,’ Pel said. ‘Somebody noticed the house was empty and decided to do it. It’s a habit people have these days. On the other hand, it might have been done by someone who knew he was dead. And that seems to suggest they might even have had a hand in getting him drunk and putting him on the motorway. Someone who wanted him out of the way so they could remove the porcelain. Do you reckon his daughter could have taken it?’

  ‘She had a key, patron, and there was no sign of a break-in.’

  ‘Perhaps she needs money.’

  ‘She seems to have plenty, patron.’

  ‘People always want more. She certainly had her eye on the porcelain. What about her husband?’

  ‘He seems an indifferent sort of chap.’

  ‘Where money’s concerned nobody’s indifferent.’

  ‘No. There’s also this cousin she mentioned. Name of Jean-Jacques Richter. Comes from Strasbourg. Works on and off for a bookmaker. She suspects him of stealing other things. He liked to visit Dupont, who was his uncle, and she thinks he helped himself to things while he was there. He played the horses and was always short of money.’

  ‘Would you say she and her husband were the type to dump Dupont on the motorway?’

  ‘No, patron,’ Darcy admitted. ‘But you never know.’

  As Yves Pasquier had said, you never did.

  Pel frowned. ‘This money he had,’ he went on. ‘He made a lot when he was young, then gambled it all away. But now he seems to have been in the money again. Let’s find out where he got it. It might explain why he was on the motorway. I’ll see his daughter again. You stay here and keep Goriot from making a fool of himself. I want to know more about this Achille-Jean Quelereil-Dupont. After all, for a while he was one of the Chief’s Missing Persons and if we find out what happened to him, that’s one off his list.’

  Madame Chappe claimed to know no more than before about how he
r father had come to be on the motorway.

  ‘What were his interests?’ Pel asked. ‘What did he do with himself?’

  ‘He used to say that when you get to seventy-eight, you were too busy just living to do anything else.’

  ‘He must have had some interests.’

  ‘He liked his food.’

  ‘He must have done something else besides eat. Did he collect things of value?’

  ‘Not really. Just the porcelain. But he didn’t really collect that even. It was given to him in settlement of fees, I believe. Somebody who ran out of cash, or borrowed from him. It’s increased enormously in value, of course, since he acquired it.’

  ‘What about the pieces of silver? The candlestick and the other things?’

  ‘The same, I think. People he’d defended gave them to him. I never knew who they were.’

  ‘So if he didn’t fill in his time collecting, what else? I believe he played cards.’

  ‘He loved cards,’ she said. ‘He used to say piquet was the aristocrat of card games for two. But he liked people round him so he played more bridge than piquet.’

  ‘Regularly?’

  ‘Yes. With the man from the garage at St-Alban. And the undertaker, I think.’

  ‘And the stationer, we heard.’

  ‘I think that’s right. I expect Madame Mallard from the house opposite told you. She seems to know everything.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem a very esoteric way of entertaining himself for a man who, apart from his feet, appeared to be in pretty good shape and had had such an interesting life.’

  She hesitated, then blushed. ‘He used to like to go to health spas and health farms.’

  ‘Was he ill?’

  ‘No, he went for a holiday.’

  ‘A holiday? At a health farm?’ A holiday in a health farm to Pel would have been a step nearer the grave. He was terrified of such places, convinced that if all the ills he was sure he was assailed with didn’t develop there into galloping campaigns and finish him off, he would contract some sort of dreaded disease from another patient which would have the same effect.

  ‘Well,’ Madame Chappe said. ‘They weren’t holidays exactly. He liked to take a week or two off now and then and have everything done for him.’

  ‘At a health farm?’

  ‘They’ll accept you if you can pay. You don’t have to be ill or unfit. He seemed to like to go and just be looked after for a while.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he have preferred to come to you? To his daughter’s?’

  Madame Chappe’s face stiffened. ‘He didn’t seem to,’ she said.

  Pel’s eyes narrowed. ‘Did you get on all right?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘In a way?’

  ‘He could be difficult.’

  ‘What about your husband? Did he get on with him?’

  ‘Of course. But my father didn’t like Dôle. It’s a small town and he’d been used to bigger cities. He couldn’t walk very well. He preferred to sit around and that could be boring. And he had no friends here and we’re occupied all the time with the business. We have no children. But we didn’t quarrel. My husband wouldn’t permit it.’ Madame Chappe frowned. ‘Besides, I didn’t see him often enough for that. I offered him a home when Maman died but he insisted he was best on his own. I went to see him occasionally, but never without telephoning first. He had his reasons.’

  ‘What were they?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s just what he always said.’

  ‘But you always had a key to his house – to both his houses?’

  ‘In case of emergency, that’s all.’

  ‘Did he often go to a health farm for a holiday?’

  She blushed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he wasn’t ill?’

  ‘He had no problems, apart from the trouble with his feet which he’d had ever since he was a child.’

  ‘With flat feet he could hardly run about much,’ Pel said dryly. ‘Was it to slim?’

  She drew a deep breath, her face pink. ‘I think chiefly he liked to see women – young women – in shorts and vests. He liked women. My mother had a lot of trouble with him. When I was young, I had to warn him when she came from shopping. He was sometimes in one of the bedrooms with the maid. I was too young at the time to know what was going on. When I grew older, I refused to have anything to do with it. But it didn’t stop.’

  ‘So he went to these health farms to see the young girls?’

  ‘Some weren’t all that young. I found once he’d been dating one of the instructresses – a girl of twenty-two. But I also found he’d been going round with a woman called Bapt whose family owned a string of grocery stores. He was an oversexed old man.’ Tears came to Madame Chappe’s eyes. ‘My mother used to call him a randy old swine and she was right.’

  For a while Pel sat in silence waiting for Madame Chappe to collect herself.

  She sighed. ‘I was a bit ashamed of him,’ she said eventually. ‘There was a time when he made a lot of money from the law. But then he seemed to go downhill. He sold the house in Dôle and bought the one at St-Alban because it was smaller. But then he seemed to start making money again and when the house in Dôle came on the market again he bought it back again.’

  ‘How did he start making money again?’

  ‘I don’t know. There was some scandal. I told you. Not a public one. It was kept very quiet and I never found out what it was. He gave up law and he didn’t appear to have two centimes to rub together. But then he was suddenly in the money again. I never knew where I was with him.’

  ‘You’ve no idea what this something – this scandal – might have been?’

  ‘No.’ The word was bitten off and it was Pel’s impression that she did know but was not prepared to dredge it up again.

  ‘Were you by any chance afraid your father would remarry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because of his money?’

  ‘Of course. We’ve always hoped that when he died there’d be a little for us.’

  ‘He could have lived a long time.’

  ‘I know. We often thought we’d be old ourselves before he went.’

  ‘Who’ll get his money? You?’

  ‘There’s nobody else. Unless’ – tears came to her eyes – ‘unless he’s left it to one of these old women he chased. He might well have.’

  ‘Was there a lot?’

  ‘I think so. He’d started to boast about it. But I don’t really know. I never saw his bank statements. He kept them to himself.’

  ‘A lot of money is sometimes a good reason for getting rid of someone.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded, then looked up, startled. ‘Surely you don’t think–’

  Pel did think. Certainly the thought had crossed his mind. Madame Chappe appeared to be distressed by all that had happened, but Pel had been in the game long enough not to be surprised. The sweetest old women managed to poison their husbands or contrive accidents. Madame Chappe could well have done so too.

  ‘Of course not,’ he lied. ‘But there seem to have been other women in his life. Women he’d also boasted to about how much he was worth.’

  She nodded again and he went on quickly.

  ‘Could he have met someone at one of these places he went to who would wish him dead?’ he asked.

  Madame Chappe sighed. ‘I sometimes did,’ she said.

  Darcy’s worries didn’t go away, and Angélique Courtoise wasn’t slow to notice.

  ‘You’re thinking about that Goriot again, aren’t you?’ she said.

  Darcy nodded. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘He’s taken it badly that I’ve got Aimedieu back on my team.’ He paused, frowning. ‘I heard some funny things today. I think someone’s after me.’

  ‘Goriot?’

  ‘Someone.’ He managed a smile. ‘It’s a rotten world.’ He looked at her warmly. ‘Not you. If anybody isn’t rotten, it’s you.’

  She looked startled. ‘That’s unexpected.’

  Darcy grinned.
‘I’m getting sentimental. It’s a habit of men at my age. It must be the change of life.’

  As he studied her, she looked steadily back at him. ‘When we first met,’ she said, ‘you convinced me getting engaged was dangerous.’

  ‘It was to that chap.’

  ‘You said that, married, I’d be certain to need a lover. Someone to fill in the time when my husband was dozing in front of the television after a hard day’s work. You said I’d be pulsating with desire and reeking of perfume and my husband wouldn’t even notice, and that to avoid being completely frustrated I’d need to get out and meet someone else – you, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Would you feel the same way about the situation if you were the husband?’

  Darcy laughed. ‘Not if I were your husband.’

  ‘You’ve changed your tune a bit.’

  ‘I think I must be growing old. It’s a Pel syndrome. It must be infectious.’ Darcy paused. ‘All the same, my pad does seem emptier than it did.’

  ‘You need someone to support you when you wilt.’

  Darcy shrugged. ‘There are a few people I can fall back on.’

  ‘You can fall back on me.’ Angélique’s expression was just a shade wistful. ‘You’ve been falling back on me a long time, in fact. Goriot can’t harm you.’ She paused and looked anxiously at him. ‘Can he?’

  ‘There are a lot of things than can happen to a cop that he doesn’t expect,’ Darcy admitted. ‘One of them is people setting him up. A cop’s not only got to keep his nose clean, he has to be seen to be keeping it clean. And if someone suggests he isn’t doing so, it’s surprising how quickly people begin to believe it.’

  The following day Darcy approached Pel.

  ‘I think we ought to check on that Club Atlantique in Royan,’ he said. ‘It seems to be linked to our friend, Dupont.’

  ‘More than we thought, I suspect,’ Pel agreed. ‘He seemed to like health clubs.’

  ‘They might be able to come up with a reason why he’s dead. But it hasn’t a telephone number, so it’ll mean a visit.’

  ‘Who’re you suggesting?’ Pel asked.