by Mark Hebden
‘Me, patron. It’s a long way for–’ Darcy nearly said ‘an old man like you’ but managed to change it at the last moment to ‘someone who’s as busy as you are. After all, it’s about as far as you can go in France from east to west. It’ll take two days. Perhaps three.’
Pel eyed him curiously, far from fooled. ‘You have an interest in Royan perhaps?’
Darcy grinned. ‘If nothing else,’ he said, ‘it’ll take me a long way from Goriot. But otherwise no, patron. I have no interest in Royan.’
He hadn’t either. He proposed to take his interest with him. He put it to Angélique Courtoise that evening as they ate. ‘Three days. On the coast. It’s not much of a place. All concrete because the Americans bombed it by mistake during the war. They did their best to put things right, though, and even the church’s concrete. There’s a good hotel I know near St-Georges de Didonne next door. Fancy it?’
She smiled. ‘What do you think?’
It proved to be a good break and they both enjoyed it. The beach club was closed, of course, because it was winter and you could hardly expect elderly ladies and gentlemen to try to touch their toes on the beach in a screaming wind off the Atlantic. But for the off-season months, for the local custom the Club Atlantique had been transferred to the basement of an old church at Bernon. It was a huge room, with a restored floor of sprung pine, and blazing with lights. Three dozen men and women, all past middle age and all corpulent, were gently swaying to the pounding beat of pop music from a set of amplifiers.
‘Up – and down – and up – and down.’
A woman in her twenties, with ‘Maybelle’ stencilled on her T-shirt across a splendid bosom, was shouting instructions at them and demonstrating how to do it without even panting or growing pink.
‘Press your knees together! It reduces the thighs. Clasp your hands and pull. It increases the muscles. Don’t forget we’re fighting the flab. Right, again: up – and down – and up – and down–’
It seemed ideal for coronaries.
Receiving Darcy’s message, ‘Maybelle’ halted the class and told them to carry on in their own way. They slackened off immediately she took her beady eye off them.
‘Dupont?’ she said. ‘That’s a pretty common name. And over seventy? He sounds a bit old. Most people of that age have the sense to stop this lark. You’d better have a word with Abd-el-Krim. He ran the class on the beach in the summer.’
Abd-el-Krim’s real name was Jean-Jacques Rabot and he undoubtedly got his sobriquet from the neat black beard and moustache he wore. He was young and as dark-skinned as an Arab – he probably even was an Arab – but he didn’t recall Dupont. However, the number 579 on the card they’d found took them a step forward. Rabot looked it up.
‘Last year,’ he said. ‘Name, Jean Dupont. I’ve got him now. He was a bit old for us and I don’t think he was really interested. He was on holiday and he liked to see Maybelle jumping up and down. I often caught him watching. I even caught him once round the back where the showers are. She was inside. He was a dirty old sod.’
‘Did he make any arrangements with any woman who might have had a husband?’
‘Well, there was a woman called Massières. She had a husband somewhere. She also had a shop in St-Georges. When she left, he left. Perhaps he followed her.’
They found the address of the woman, Helene Massières, who ran an expensive boutique in the main street. She was a blonde and a youthful fifty, with a good figure and no superfluous fat, and looked as though she spent all the time when she wasn’t selling clothes doing exercises or concentrating on slimming. In addition to looking younger than she was, she was also a super saleswoman, and before they knew where they were she had sold Angélique Courtoise a skirt and blouse. Darcy managed to project a question through a chink in the sales talk.
It stopped her dead and she answered shortly. ‘He was a nuisance,’ she said abruptly.
‘In what way?’
She seemed reluctant to talk. ‘In what way is a man a nuisance to a woman? He followed me the whole day.’
‘Was he in love with you or something?’
She gave Darcy a cold look.
‘But he stopped in the end?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
She hesitated again before speaking. ‘He met a woman from Dijon and transferred his attentions to her.’
Well, Dijon was nearer home and there didn’t seem to be much point in hanging around so they went to the hotel Darcy knew. It was old-fashioned and, as there was a gale blowing off the sea, had a huge fire roaring in the grate. There were extensive grounds so they wrapped up well to walk round them. Angélique had a red scarf round her neck and her hair blew in the wind. Her nose was pink but so were her cheeks and she looked bright and cheerful.
‘Happy?’ Darcy asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Let’s go to the cinema when we’ve eaten.’
They took tea in front of the fire, then drove into town to a restaurant Darcy knew where they ate tripes à la mode de Caen with a local wine. Afterwards they went to the cinema. They didn’t even bother to enquire what was showing and sat in the back row, Darcy with his arm round the girl. Afterwards, they returned to the hotel and drank coffee and brandy.
‘Do you go out at nights much when you’re home?’ Darcy asked.
‘Only with you.’
‘What do you do when I’m not there?’
‘Wait until you are.’
‘Isn’t there anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
She looked gently at him. ‘The others pale into insignificance.’
‘Don’t you ever cheat a bit?’
‘No.’
Darcy paused, ‘I’m glad you came,’ he said.
‘So am I.’ She paused. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t think it will get me very far.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because I know you.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Darcy said slowly, ‘that these days you do. I’m not so sure I know myself.’
‘Is Goriot worrying you?’
‘A bit. But it’s not Goriot. It’s the effect that worrying about Goriot’s having on me that’s worrying me.’
She didn’t understand what he was getting at. For that matter, Darcy wasn’t sure he did himself. He saw her eyes were moist.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘I’m the matter.’
‘How?’
‘I know it will all come to nothing and I ought to back away from you. But I don’t want to. Life’s rotten, isn’t it? There’s no future, Daniel.’
Darcy felt guilty.
‘There are other men around,’ she went on. ‘Plenty. But no bells ring. Not even a little tinkle, and I’m used to hearing great resounding peals when I’m with you. I really ought to have been more careful.’
They climbed into the car next morning, not quite looking at each other and half-imagining that the other guests were watching them. Dropping Angélique outside the Faculty of Medicine at the University, where she worked, Darcy moved on alone, trotting round the aerobics and callisthenics clubs in search of Achille-Jean Quelereil-Dupont, better known simply as Jean Dupont. His quarry couldn’t have chosen a more anonymous alias because Jean Dupont must have been the commonest name in France.
He found him again at the Palais des Sports at Mirabeau. It was less a palace than a set of barns converted into a luxury complex. One of them was a huge hangar-like shed behind the central building, and from it he could hear the thudding of the beat music that always seemed to accompany physical exercise. People in track suits or satin shorts and T-shirts were moving about the entrance hall, heading down a corridor marked ‘Showers and Changing Rooms’. Among them was a blond young man with bulging muscles and teeth that flashed almost as brightly as Darcy’s own.
‘Come on,’ he was saying. ‘Hurry up! It’s the run next! Change your shoes and be back here!’
> ‘Okay, Tony.’ The man who answered was surreptitiously biting a bar of chocolate.
On Darcy’s right was an office and he was met at the door by a woman whose age he guessed to be around sixty. She was slim, expensively dressed and had once been beautiful. She had peroxided hair and a heavily made up face.
‘I’m Alicia Coty,’ she said. ‘Madame Coty. Do you wish to enrol for our courses?’
Darcy shook his head, put on his best smile and produced his identity card with its red, white and blue stripe. Her smile vanished abruptly.
‘Police?’ she said sharply. ‘What do you want? We’ve nothing here of interest to you.’
‘I think I’d better decide that, Madame.’ Darcy didn’t like being dismissed before he had even opened his mouth.
‘We have no criminals here. People come here to get fit or to become more attractive to the opposite sex. They pay a lot of money for it.’
‘So I imagine. I’m looking for information on a man called Jean Dupont. He was keen on your sort of activity and he might well have attended your classes.’
She tempered her manner to wariness and listened as he described what he knew about the man he was seeking.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we have health and beauty – that’s for women, of course. I run that.’
‘You’re an expert?’
She managed a stiff smile. ‘I should hope so. I own this place. We also have computerised fitness, nutrition analysis, rejuvenation and longevity training. He might have been interested in those if he was getting on in years. We have stretch and tone isometrics, therapy massage, tension-reducing aerobics–’
Is that the one where they jump up and down?’
‘Well, yes, a little. They also do toe-touching and torso swinging – to reduce the hips.’
‘Who conducts this class?’
‘Annie Albert. She’s a fully qualified instructor–’
‘Young?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you’d better check the names in that class. That’s probably where he was.’
Madame Coty stared at him hostilely, then she spoke slowly. ‘Why do you want this Dupont?’
‘I don’t want him, Madame. I just want to know about him. I want to know why he was found dead on the motorway on the 14th of last month.’
Her face went pink. ‘He’s dead?’
‘He is, Madame. You seem concerned.’
‘No! No!’ She suddenly seemed a great deal less hostile. ‘I know the man you want. He came here. But he was asked to leave the class.’
‘Ah! Why?’
‘Annie said he was a nuisance.’
‘I’d like to have a word with Annie.’
Annie Albert was an attractive woman in her late twenties, with a good figure and a surprising bust for a gym instructress.
‘He didn’t bother with the exercises,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he was interested in them at all. When he came into the class he just stood at the back moving his arms and bending his knees a little and nothing else. Everybody else was giving it all they’d got. You have to if you wish to make progress.’
‘Why was he here then, do you think?’
‘Well, he came with a woman called Guignard. Jeanette Guignard. She came from somewhere in the city. But she left. I think she objected to his attentions.’
‘Old? Young?’
‘Fiftyish.’
‘Well preserved?’
‘Not particularly. She hadn’t paid attention to herself. She was overweight.’
‘When she left, what did Dupont do?’
‘He joined the aerobics class. As I say, he didn’t do anything. Just watched me.’
‘You, of course, were doing the exercises?’
‘I led the class.’
‘Jump up and down a bit? That sort of thing?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why do you think he watched you?’
‘Because he was a dirty old man. I’m engaged. To Tony Sarcino. He looks after the male classes.’
‘The one who looks like a Greek god?’
Her serious face cracked in a smile. ‘He does a bit, doesn’t he?’ she said.
By this time she had clearly decided that Darcy wasn’t bad-looking himself and was much more friendly. She invited him into a room labelled ‘Instructors’ and offered him a coffee.
‘Have you been doing this work long?’ he asked.
‘No. But it’s not hard to learn. We’ve got cardio-fitness tests, sun lamps, therapists, nutritionists, steam baths, inhalation rooms, active mud.’ She grinned. ‘It’s all balls, of course. It does make you fitter, but a normal person who doesn’t overeat doesn’t need it – or grapefruit juice and brewer’s yeast. You don’t really need to wear yourself out keeping fit.’
‘Did Dupont try to molest you?’ Darcy asked.
‘He once put an arm round my shoulder. I told him pupils weren’t allowed contact with instructors – any sort of contact. It’s not true, of course. Some of the pupils are just friendly and it does no harm. He was different.’
‘What happened?’
‘He left. I told him of a place at Yon.’
‘What place is that?’
‘The Reggio Hall of Health.’
‘Same sort of place as this?’
‘Not as good.’
‘Why did you send him there?’
‘I heard one of the instructors goes in for the sort of thing he wanted. Barbara Valendon. She was here for a while. She tried to get her mitts on Tony. She got the push.’
Darcy wondered if Annie Albert had arranged it.
Ten
By this time, Sergeant Gehrer’s car was in the yard at the back of the Hôtel de Police, watched by the curious from windows and by a group of uniformed men who had just brought in one of the patrol cars.
Leaning inside was a tall man wearing spectacles. He was examining the damage to the windscreen with a magnifying glass. Watched by the Chief, Leguyader from Forensic, and Pel, he stretched a tape measure from one of the holes in the hood to the front seat. He was Judge Castéou’s husband and Madame Pel had done her stuff by inviting him and his wife to supper. To Pel’s surprise they had got on quite well together. It was always a surprise to him when people got on with him. He didn’t expect anyone to get on with him, and most of the time he was right.
Castéou had arrived promptly and had insisted on examining both the car and the body, and had spent two whole days with Cham and Leguyader.
Nadauld had then been buried with the ceremony to which his rank entitled him and all the precise cadences of the Latin responses of the Mass. There had been the usual sad-faced relatives, including his wife, his daughter and her new husband, and the inevitable group of grim-faced policemen – the Chief, huge and sombre; Pel, small and grey-faced; Darcy; Nadauld’s sergeant, Gehrer, with a huge bandage over his eye; Nadauld’s successor, Inspector Turgot. The slow funeral ceremonies had followed like a sad pavane with the women wearing black veils, then the Dies Irae, part of the mass for the dead, and finally the dismissal, as the congregation got ready to depart.
Castéou removed his head from inside the car and straightened up. ‘It will take a few days,’ he said. ‘I have a few ideas, a few suspicions, but I can’t be sure yet. I take it we have the bullets and the fragments of bullet that have been found.’
‘I have them,’ Leguyader said. ‘They don’t amount to much. We didn’t find more than one. Perhaps the others are in the upholstery of the car. Or on the grass near the guardroom. We’ve searched but we’ve produced nothing yet.’ He frowned. ‘But four men were hit so there must be something somewhere.’
Castéou nodded. ‘I think we’ll find the answer,’ he said. ‘It’ll take time but we’ll get there.’
With Darcy away, it seemed a good idea to see Madame Chappe’s husband. Pel had a feeling that Madame Chappe had been telling the truth about her interest in the porcelain jesters but her husband was another matter.
As it
happened, Edmond Chappe seemed to be all she claimed for him. He was an earnest-faced man, stooping, with a moustache and thick spectacles, and he explained that he didn’t get on very well with his father-in-law.
‘He came here occasionally,’ he said. ‘But he never wanted to stay. I don’t honestly think we wanted him to, either.’
‘Did you know the value of the porcelain figures he had?’
‘Of course. My wife always hoped they’d come to her. He said they were to be hers but he liked to keep them and she was satisfied with that.’
‘They were worth a lot of money.’
Chappe smiled. ‘We’d have converted them into money straight away. Things like that belong in collections and I was always terrified one of them would be broken. That would have meant the loss of thousands of francs straight away. They were a pair and, while individually they were worth around four hundred thousand each, together they were worth a lot more.’
Vincent, the expert, had a small antiques shop further along the street. It wasn’t open but a telephone call from Chappe enabled Pel to meet Vincent on the premises.
‘Of course I knew the value of the porcelain,’ he said. ‘I never get to handle things like that these days. Antiques have become big business with too many whizz kids in the game. But I knew their value. It’s in all the books.’ He produced a thick volume and indicated a picture of the porcelain jesters. ‘Identical pair,’ he said. ‘Meissen. Made by Handler. This gives them a value of three hundred thousand each five years ago. Five hundred thousand each would be nearer the mark now.’
‘The Chappes say they’d have sold them if they’d been theirs. Would you have done the selling for them?’
‘I don’t suppose so. I’m not important enough. But I’d be on hand with advice to make sure they weren’t done.’
‘What would you get out of it?’
‘I told them I didn’t want anything but Zoë said I’d have to take a commission. There would be plenty over, of course, even if I did. We had a working arrangement but, of course, that was a long way in the future. Her father seemed a fit old man and nobody expected him to die.’
Unless, Pel thought, he had been helped on his way.