Death of a Shadow (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery)

by George Bellairs

  Lindemann raised his eyebrows.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He used to bring a woman here. I’m sure she wasn’t his wife. Or, his sister …’

  ‘We’ll discuss that later. Meanwhile, we’d better just examine the room. That will be all.’

  ‘What about when he comes back and hears that the police have been around in his absence?’

  ‘He won’t come back. He’s dead.’

  Mrs. Pfiffner’s face remained impassive.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it. He was never any trouble. But it leaves me with a problem, doesn’t it? What about his belongings? Somebody might have let me know. I’ve people always asking for rooms. If I’d known this one was becoming vacant …’

  ‘Wait for us down below. We’ll call on our way out.

  She shuffled off after giving the pair of them a despairing look as though their stupidity had landed her in a pretty fix.

  The room was a small one, neat and compact. The usual kind found in small hotels. An iron bed, a chest, a wardrobe, a worn arm-chair and a small tattered cane-bottomed one, and an old-fashioned shabby wash-basin with h. and c.

  Lindemann looked blankly around.

  ‘I suppose she’s completely tidied up this place and even gone to the extent of dusting off all the fingerprints. We’d better send our men along and see what they can find. Meanwhile, let’s look at what he left behind.’

  There was little of interest. A spare suit and an old raincoat and slouch hat in the wardrobe. They bore the name tags of a London store. A couple of ties and a crumpled nylon shirt in the top drawers of the chest. In the bottom one a soiled shirt, a pair of worn shoes, an empty chocolate box and a perfume bottle with a few drops of scent left in it. Littlejohn sniffed it. It brought back a recollection of the night when he’d found Cling’s body in his hired car.

  ‘I think this is the perfume I smelled faintly in the car when I found Cling’s body.’

  Lindemann then sniffed at the bottle as well.

  ‘You may be right. It must have belonged to his woman, the one he used to bring here with him. The faint smell of perfume you mention may have come from his companion in the car. On the other hand, his clothes, or rather his coat, bore the faint scent when his body was taken to the medico-legal institute. The doctor there remarked on it. It may have been there either from close contact with the woman or she may have jokingly sprayed some of it on him.’

  Somehow, to Littlejohn, it didn’t seem to tally with Cling’s way. The unemotional detective, frolicking about with an unknown woman among chocolate boxes and bottles of scent. And yet, as Bellin had said, Cling might have been a totally different person when he was off duty.

  ‘It looks as if someone called here after Cling’s death and gave the room a thorough turning over, Superintendent. I wonder what they were after. Papers, records, money …? In spite of Cling’s regarding this place as a pied à terre, he seems to have kept a mere minimum of belongings here.’

  ‘Just like he did in his London flat. It makes one wonder where his headquarters really were.’

  They finished their searches. Nothing.

  ‘I’ll send the experts along, then, although I don’t suppose it will be of much use. The next thing is to find the woman. Another needle in a haystack. Shall we go down and have another session with Mrs. Pfiffner?’

  She was waiting in state to receive them this time. She’d combed back her hair tidily and put on a clean white apron. There was a man sitting with her in her den. A little weasel of a fellow with a slight squint.

  ‘This is my husband. I sent for him. He works in the market. I thought I’d better have his support with the police questioning me.’

  Mr. Pfiffner, who was still in his working clothes, nodded and tried to put on an affable smile. He was a bit overawed by the police.

  ‘A pleasure, gentlemen.’

  His wife had already primed him, but he was embarrassed. He wasn’t married to Mrs. Pfiffner, who had assumed his name. On the run from a wife elsewhere, he’d fetched up in a room at 13bis and finally joined the concierge in an irregular union. Again plotting flight from his present partner, he was suffering from conflicting sentiments.

  ‘You cleaned up Mr. Cling’s room thoroughly?’

  ‘You mean Mr. Smith’s.’

  ‘Of course. You cleaned the room completely.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t believe in half measures.’

  Mr. Pfiffner nodded as though he understood.

  ‘What did you do with the rubbish you cleared out?’

  ‘Put it in the bins and the dustmen carried it off.’

  ‘All of it?’

  ‘Certainly. I hope you’re not suggesting I stole anything.’

  ‘No. What did you put in the bins?’

  ‘Dusty old wine bottles, odds and ends of paper, mostly from chocolate boxes and packets, and some old magazines and newspapers.’

  ‘No documents or written papers of any kind?’

  ‘No. Certainly not. I expected Mr. Smith to return and didn’t aim at trouble for taking away his private property.’

  Mr. Pfiffner grunted his approval just to show he was there and endorsing his partner’s ethics. He was a man of conscience, even if his feelings did run away with him sometimes.

  Lindemann paused.

  ‘Have you any questions you wish to ask, Superintendent?’

  ‘No. Carry on.’

  ‘Now about Mr. Smith’s lady friend. How often did she visit him?’

  ‘One or twice a week when he was living in his room. She never came near when he was away.’

  ‘Swiss?’

  ‘I’d say so. From these parts. They spoke French. His French wasn’t good. She mustn’t have known English.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘I’d put her down as a little over thirty. She was well preserved and neat. Mr. Smith’s fancy didn’t extend to young girls, like some I know. I respected him for that.’

  ‘She seemed respectable?’

  ‘If by that you mean he hadn’t picked her up off the street, yes. She was very self-possessed and, I’d say, if she was to run a home and family, she’d be very efficient. She gave me that impression.’

  ‘You saw a lot of her?’

  ‘Yes. He didn’t exactly introduce her to me, but when they came here together, they didn’t creep in as though they were doing something wrong. They walked in and I got quite a good look at her. She didn’t seem at all ashamed. She might have been calling on business.’

  ‘Perhaps she was.’

  ‘And perhaps she wasn’t.’

  Mr. Pfiffner laughed at his wife’s wit. A hollow, pathetic sound.

  ‘Now, tell me what she looked like.’

  Mrs. Pfiffner had to pause for thought about that one. She began to draw pictures in the air as though trying to conjure up a vision of some kind.

  ‘She was about my height, I’d say. And she had a small upturned nose. I remember that, because it was the only feature of a cocotte that she had about her.’

  Mr. Pfiffner jerked his head up and then buried his chin in his chest as though suffering from guilty memories of some kind.

  Littlejohn himself could think of many upturned, dainty little noses owned by very respectable women, but Mrs. Pfiffner’s standards must have been much more severe.

  ‘She’d dark brown hair. And one thing I particularly noticed was that there was a grey lock in the front of it. Some women have that done artificially for show, these days, but in her case it didn’t strike me as made-up. It looked as though she might have gone grey from shock.’

  ‘Go on, you’re doing very nicely.’

  ‘Thank you. A pointed chin and the bones of her cheeks were a bit high. Good complexion and healthy, although from where I was standing, all that might have been put on.’

  ‘Colour of eyes?’

  ‘I never got close enough. I’d say dark. Her type usually has brown eyes. I’d say brown.’

  ‘Did she look like
a manual worker, a seamstress, a factory worker? Or a shop or office girl?’

  ‘Certainly not a hand-worker. As for shop and office girls, they get themselves up like duchesses these days. She wasn’t that sort. Perhaps she was a teacher.’

  ‘A nurse perhaps?’

  They all looked at Mr. Pfiffner as he said it. His wife more than the rest.

  ‘What do you know about it?’ snapped his partner, and he shut up.

  But he did know quite a lot. During his recent visits to an eye clinic about his squint, he’d been attended to by a nurse whose qualities had made him revolt against those of the concierge. Not that he’d any hopes of setting up shop with his idol, but it had made him decide to run for it and make a better choice next time. Now, he retired within himself.

  ‘Did she use scent?’

  ‘If you’re referring to the smell of Mr. Smith’s room, she did. I got a whiff of it as she passed. Pretty strong and pretty expensive, I’d say. There were a few drops in a bottle I found on the floor and I put it back in a drawer. It was called Passion Flower. I remember it, because it seemed a funny name to me.’

  Mr. Pfiffner’s eyes slowly closed and opened again as though he were savouring the perfume above the aroma of anaesthetics and antiseptics in the eye clinic.

  ‘How did you know the name? There’s no label on the bottle.’

  ‘It was in a box that had got soaked with water. I found it under the wash basin. I threw the box away.’

  So much for the fingerprints, and other traces the room had once held. Gone to the city rubbish dump.

  ‘And that is all?’

  ‘Yes. I’d recognise her if I saw her picture.’

  ‘We’ll have to try to get one. When did you last see Smith?’

  ‘He was here last Thursday. He hadn’t stayed the night. He just came in and out again. He left about four o’clock. The woman wasn’t with him.’

  On his way to his death.

  8

  Mont-Choisi

  THE TECHNICIANS had rapidly done their work. Mrs. Pfiffner had not quite obliterated all the traces of Cling and his woman from the bedroom and, after a battle with the concierge about taking her fingerprints for purposes of elimination, the men sorted out several which tallied with those taken from Cling’s dead fingers. The woman’s prints were scattered among those of Mrs. Pfiffner on an empty chocolate box with an elaborate lid, which the concierge had kept aside for herself from the litter of the bedroom.

  The woman associated with Cling had never passed through the hands of the city police before and, therefore, neither her prints nor those of Cling were, so far, any contribution to the investigation.

  Whilst all this was going on, Littlejohn, having been established in a hotel as the guest of the Geneva police, took himself off to Ferney-Voltaire by tram for an excursion before dinner. As he was anxious to meet Mme. Vincent, Cobb’s daughter, he asked Lindemann to telephone her, introduce him and ask if it would be convenient for her to see him right away. She said she would be glad to meet any visitor from England, especially Littlejohn, of whom her father had recently spoken.

  Littlejohn found Ferney, a village of some size, about four miles from Geneva on the road to Gex. The tram stopped at the village centre and Littlejohn enquired the way to Mont-Choisi at the bookshop. It lay in the same direction as the château and he walked there in less than ten minutes.

  Mont-Choisi was like a small château itself, a spreading two-storeyed place, with a further extension like a small penthouse, erected on top. The house was surrounded by old trees and ornamental lawns and gardens. A pillared porch and a large front door. Littlejohn rang the bell.

  Cobb’s daughter received him in the vast drawing-room, fitted with two large crystal chandeliers and exquisite antique furniture, and gave him tea. Their conversation until they had broken the ice was of her father, England, Geneva … and then Cling was mentioned.

  Sir Ensor’s daughter didn’t resemble her father at all. She must have been approaching forty and looked entirely French. Dark hair and large dark eyes, oval face, straight nose and a good chin. If not exactly a beauty, very handsome. Later Littlejohn learned that Sir Ensor’s late wife had been a Frenchwoman.

  They spoke in English.

  ‘This has been a very upsetting affair for my husband and me. Cling was, as you know, staying here when the crime was committed. It was a new and very unpleasant experience for us to have a guest murdered.’

  ‘I’m sure it was. Did you see much of him?’

  ‘No. He had stayed here a time or two before when on duty with my father, but he was a stranger … one might almost say a recluse of a man. You couldn’t call him shy. Nobody with Cling’s personality could possibly be shy. He was too self-confident for that. But he only spoke when he needed to do so in the ordinary way of social politeness. Nobody seemed to learn much about him, except Pflüger, our butler, who got on very well with him.’

  ‘Cling stayed in the servants’ quarters?’

  ‘Strange to say, at his own request. He didn’t seem to wish to mix with us. I suggest you have a talk with Pflüger before you go. He may be able to help.’

  ‘I was going to suggest it.’

  ‘My husband is away at a medical conference in Paris and the children are back at school in Lausanne. I am glad to get a rest after this distressing affair. We had the police here for days and days. They carefully cleared out Cling’s belongings from his room. From what I hear, he hadn’t many and, such as they were, they proved of no interest to the Geneva police in their enquiry. There was one matter however, I must tell you about. I intended advising the police, but as they said you were coming here, I kept it for you.’

  She needed no questioning. She was very volatile and an amiable chatterbox, fluent with both hands and speech in a very charming way which would cause no boredom or annoyance. Now, she was obviously preparing something she thought very dramatic judging from the way she lowered her voice.

  She crossed the room to a small desk and took something from one of the drawers.

  ‘That,’ she said and placed it in Littlejohn’s hand.

  It was a single, second-class ticket to Zürich.

  ‘Where did this come from, madam?’

  ‘After the Cling tragedy and the police had tramped all over and generally disturbed the room he occupied, I felt it must be properly cleared out. We therefore took up the carpet this morning and sent it to the cleaners. That ticket was under the carpet, near the edge, just hidden. As you will see, it bears the date of Cling’s death. Had it not been for that date of issue, I’d have thought it might easily have been lost by someone else who’d occupied the room and lain there for some time. As it is, Cling must have dropped it and either he or the girl who tidied his room must have unwittingly kicked it under the carpet. That was how the police came to miss it.’

  ‘May I take this with me, please? I’ll see that the Geneva police get it.’

  ‘Of course. Poor Cling didn’t get to use it. My father told me he was an enthusiastic excursionist when off duty. He must have intended making a trip to Zürich, although it’s a fair distance from Geneva for a day trip. As a matter of fact, Cling couldn’t have done it and been back in time to meet my father after the conference closed for the day. It takes four or five hours to get from Geneva to Zürich by train. Perhaps that’s why he took a single only. He may have intended returning by air, which can be done in half an hour.’

  ‘Did you get any idea of Cling’s other excursions during his off-time here?’

  ‘No; but he may have told Pflüger. Perhaps you’d like to have a talk with him. It’s been his afternoon off, but I saw him returning as we were discussing Cling.’

  ‘That would be a very good idea. I must get back to Geneva for dinner and I’d like a word or two with Pflüger before I go.’

  ‘I’ll leave you then and you can talk with him here …’

  She rang the bell and bade him good-bye and by the time he’d thanked her Pflüg
er was there.

  Pflüger’s name sounded German, but he looked more like a Corsican. Smallish, thin and nimble, with dark sharp eyes and a hatchet face. He told Littlejohn what he already knew, that he’d once been a waiter at the Savoy. He also said, perhaps by way of a hint to Littlejohn, that when the children were home from school, madame always insisted on the exclusive use of English in the house.

  Littlejohn invited Pflüger to sit whilst they talked, which the butler did, but with some uneasiness. To him, it appeared to be like brawling in church for a servant to be seated in the salon. When Littlejohn, whom madame had invited to smoke his pipe, offered Pflüger a cigarette, he politely declined it, as though that were carrying a good thing too far.

  ‘I believe you saw quite a lot of Mr. Cling whilst he was staying here.’

  ‘Yes, sir. And I got on very well with him. His death has upset me very much.’

  ‘What did he do in his spare time, his off-hours, whilst he was here?’

  ‘He went out quite a lot. As I told the Swiss police, Mr. Cling was an intelligent man who took an interest in many things. For example, he was an enthusiastic follower of Voltaire. I was able to obtain permission for him to visit the château in Ferney, which is usually strictly private, as the owners live there.’

  ‘Where else did he go?’

  ‘He liked walking and often went for walks around. I didn’t of course, go with him. When Sir Ensor is here, I am usually busy. Mr. Cling also enjoyed a game or two of cricket with the young gentlemen here, who were very fond of him.’

  ‘And he didn’t tell you where his walks took him?’

  ‘Not usually. I never asked him. It was best to let him start the talking. He was a reserved man who didn’t open up much when questioned. If you let him talk as he wished that was the best way of conducting a conversation.’

  ‘Did he ever mention visiting Zürich?’

  Pflüger smiled patronisingly, as though he knew all about it.

  ‘You are thinking of the rail ticket. No. He never once mentioned Zürich. Once or twice he asked me the best way of getting to and from some place. He went to the château of Coppet where Madame de Staël once lived. When he returned he seemed to know all about it and her. A remarkable man for accumulating information. Another time, he made a trip to the Lac de Joux, above Rolle. He didn’t tell me he was going, nor did he mention it afterwards. Fleury, one of the taxi owners in the village, told me he’d hired him for the trip. It was one Sunday last autumn when he and Sir Ensor were here and when Sir Ensor proposed to stay indoors and do some work and he sent Cling off for the day. Cling didn’t much like it. He was keen on his work and had Sir Ensor not got angry or impatient about his being fussy, would hardly have allowed him out of his sight.’