Pel and the Picture of Innocence

by Mark Hebden

  They spent the afternoon checking through records. There were no handy bank hold-ups, no major jewel robberies, no mail snatches, no missing drugs. Prélat appeared at the end of the afternoon, looking triumphant. ‘Maurice’s dabs, Patron,’ he said. ‘Just as you suggested. Léon’s, too, of course, and a few we identified as belonging to Bozon.’

  Pel pulled a face. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘they’re all dead so we can’t ask them how they came to be there. Anyone else?’

  ‘Nobody we’re interested in. I expect they all belong to customers. Most of them were on the showcases. I found Maurice’s and Bozon’s on the door of that old strong room.’

  Because he had stayed late at the Hôtel de Police, the following morning Pel was slow getting up. Stumbling to the bathroom, he rubbed his eyes then ran his fingers through his hair. There wasn’t much of it and for a moment he was struck by a sudden panic that what there was had disappeared during the night. He stared at himself with distaste. It was the cigarettes, he decided.

  After breakfast, all innocence, he wandered into the garden as if to make sure no one had run away with it during the night but in fact to snatch a quick drag at a cigarette. Yves Pasquier was near the hole in the hedge where they usually met.

  ‘When are you going to give up smoking?’ he demanded. ‘I gave up when I was nine. My father’s given up, too.’

  ‘You should both be very proud.’

  ‘My mother says she’s going to give up, too. My father says she’ll never do it. She won’t.’

  Pel decided that perhaps they could have a shed erected at the bottom of the garden where it was accessible to both families, so that the outcasts, himself and Madame Pasquier, could go there and smoke themselves silly. Thinking about Madame Pasquier, Pel decided the exile might not be too bad.

  Arriving at headquarters, he ignored the man at the desk as he gave him a cheerful good morning. The man at the desk stared at his back and made a rude gesture with two fingers. Darcy hadn’t arrived, so that Pel’s ill temper deepened. When he opened the newspapers Didier Darras had piled neatly on his desk, the first thing he saw was an article on lung cancer. Thoroughly depressed, he slammed the paper shut. He could feel the malignancies forming in his lungs already.

  Darcy appeared a moment later, bright and shining, his teeth glistening, his splendid profile in overdrive, on top of the world and apparently without a worry in his head. ‘I’ve been looking up Maurice in the files,’ he said. ‘I thought we might have a session on him today.’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Pel pointed out. ‘Let’s go out there and tear that house apart. So far we’ve just asked questions. Let’s go and make life uncomfortable for them. I feel like being rotten to somebody.’

  It was a grey morning with a suggestion of rain in the wind when they set off. As they drew into the drive of the Manoir de Lordy, the rain was thundering down.

  ‘Like a cow pissing on a flat rock,’ Aimedieu said, turning his collar up.

  With Aimedieu were Debray, Bardolle, Misset, Cadet Didier Darras and two uniformed men. They were met in the entrance hall by Cavalin who protested vigorously.

  ‘You can’t put seals on this place,’ he said. ‘Maurice wasn’t murdered here.’

  ‘You know your law,’ Pel admitted. ‘But what got him murdered was doubtless being planned here. We don’t intend seals but we do have a warrant. I’d be obliged if you’d stay in your office – accompanied’, he added, ‘by Detective Sergeant Aimedieu here.’ Just in case, he thought, the bastard had ideas of destroying anything.

  Sidonie Tagliatti arrived as they began to split up and, pink in the face with rage, was escorted back to her room and one of the uniformed cops placed outside the door.

  They didn’t find much, and certainly nothing to connect Maurice with the scrap of modelling clay found on his trousers.

  ‘Perhaps he picked it up by accident, Patron,’ Darcy said.

  ‘I find it hard to believe when Léon had the same stuff on his shoe.’

  Despite the disappointment, they managed to make life uncomfortable for everybody at the Manoir so that by lunchtime Pel was feeling much more relaxed. He and Darcy took their lunch in the bar at Lordy where the landlord’s wife produced wine that tasted as if it were suffering from metal fatigue.

  Darcy pulled a face. ‘Wonder what they make it with,’ he asked. ‘It isn’t grapes.’

  The faux filets were tough enough to be bulletproof and the coffee tasted like being hit in the face with a wet football.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Darcy said gloomily. ‘If nothing else, it’s been a change from the office.’

  While his men were going through the house, Pel had a few words with Maurice’s wife. She made no bones about the fact that she’d grown tired not only of Maurice’s activities, but also of Maurice himself.

  ‘There were other men?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Of course there were. You don’t think I was going to sit at home twiddling my thumbs while Maurice went off with that stupid secretary, do you? You don’t even think he employed her as a secretary, surely?’

  ‘No, madame,’ Pel said. ‘I never did.’

  She gave a reluctant grin. ‘You knew our Maurice, didn’t you, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘I’ve had a few brushes with him in my time, madame.’ Pel paused, trying the 64,000 dollar question while she was in a good mood. ‘These other men. Could we have their names?’

  She gave them willingly enough. To his surprise, there were only three, one of them a politician.

  ‘I didn’t go to bed with them,’ she said quickly. ‘They were men. A woman needs men. She needs them around her. I suppose you’d say men need women. Maurice certainly did. And I knew he was up to something. All those trips to London he made. He’d spotted that bitch, Vlada.’

  ‘Can you give me dates?’

  ‘No. But I can tell when he turned up here. April 17th. It was my birthday. She was my birthday present. He met her somewhere and offered her a job as a secretary. Secretary, hah!’

  ‘And these men friends of yours?’

  ‘Don’t read anything into them, Chief Inspector. I said men need women. We had a few rather sweaty sessions, but I didn’t go to bed with them. Not them.’

  Pel caught the inflexion in her voice. ‘With somebody else perhaps?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  No, Pel thought, but that was what you were thinking. He wondered who the lucky man had been.

  ‘Georges Cavalin?’ he tried.

  ‘Him!’ Sidonie Tagliatti swung round. ‘I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.’

  It seemed almost as if she were protesting too much. Pel decided to try Cavalin.

  But Cavalin was as indignant as Sidonie Tagliatti had been. ‘I wouldn’t get fresh with Sidonie,’ he insisted. ‘Not even if I were interested. It would have been too dangerous.’

  ‘What about now? Now that Maurice isn’t around any more?’

  ‘I’m not interested in Sidonie,’ Cavalin insisted. ‘I’m more interested in the profits from his organisation. God knows what’ll happen now he’s dead. Sidonie wants to wind everything up. She didn’t approve of his activities, naturally. She came from a small town in Provence and small towns are notorious for their morals.’

  ‘What about the children?’

  ‘Away at school. Sidonie insisted. She wanted them as far from Maurice’s influence as she could get them.’

  ‘Is that what she said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To you?’

  Cavalin paused. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So she at least communicated her secrets with you?’

  ‘She liked to talk to me. She needed someone.’

  ‘And you were a shoulder to cry on?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it that way.’

  Pel did. Despite what he said, he suspected that Cavalin had been happily engaged with Sidonie Tagliatti whenever Maurice’s back was turned. Was he the other man she had hinted at? It gave the
m both a good reason for getting rid of Maurice.

  Vlada Preradovic seemed to be engaged in packing when Pel found her, and had her head inside a suitcase.

  ‘Leaving?’ Pel asked.

  ‘This place gets me down,’ she said. ‘Without Maurice it’s like living in a morgue. I’m off.’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t,’ Pel said.

  ‘You can’t stop me!’

  Pel looked at her mildly. ‘Before now,’ he said, ‘I’ve put people in a cell to stop them disappearing when I’ve said they can’t.’

  She glared at him. ‘I had nothing to do with what Maurice did. Or with him being killed.’

  ‘That’s something we have to ascertain.’

  ‘I wasn’t even there.’

  ‘You might know someone who was.’

  ‘I was going to London.’

  ‘Why not Paris?’

  ‘I don’t know Paris. I know London. London’s popping. I worked there for a while.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘For this family.’

  ‘Which family.’

  ‘I was au pair to a Mrs Harding. I looked after the kids. They were horrible.’

  ‘Is that why you left?’

  ‘No. Maurice offered me a job.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘He had to meet people. He liked me to go along.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’

  ‘He turned up at the house one night.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘April. I flew back to Paris with him the next day.’

  ‘This Mrs Harding you worked for. How did Maurice come to turn up at their house?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was doing some business, I think.’

  ‘What sort of business?’ She shrugged.

  ‘He didn’t tell me,’ she said.

  Twelve

  By late afternoon, they were all beginning to feel low in spirits and the searchers were beginning to mutter. They had been sent into the attics to search in the corners and they were dusty, dirty and had backache from stooping.

  The little rooms under the roof were full of broken furniture, trunks, suitcases and hat boxes belonging to the de Lordy family. There were chairs without seats and chairs without legs, wash-hand stands, flowered bowls and jugs in which maids had once carried hot water upstairs for morning ablutions, old paintings, most of them nibbled at the corners by rats, rusting old guns. The cellars were the same, full of iron bedsteads, great iron hinges which had been removed from great wooden doors, picture frames, iron ladles and a crucible which appeared to have been used to melt lead.

  ‘For shot,’ Misset observed loudly to Didier Darras. ‘For those old guns upstairs. I once met a man who had one. He made his own shot. About a centimetre in diameter it was. He used to stuff powder down the barrel then put more powder and a cap in a little pan. When you pulled the trigger it went bang – a little bang as the powder in the pan went off – then BANG – a big bang as the explosion in the pan exploded the main charge.’ Misset looked puzzled. ‘He actually used to kill rabbits with it, too.’

  Didier indicated a tank of thick moulded glass. Inside it was a bundle of wires. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  Misset shrugged. ‘They use them for arthritis or for injuries to the feet and hands. I once had the treatment. A lorry ran over my foot when I was trying to arrest the driver who was drunk.’

  Didier had heard the story – from other sources, which claimed that it was Misset who’d been drunk.

  ‘Perhaps old de Lordy had it,’ Misset went on. ‘They fill it with water and stick anodes and cathodes in, then they shove your foot in and pass an interrupted low voltage through it. It makes the muscles move.’

  As he pushed things aside, trying in his inexperienced way to make a good job of the search, Cadet Darras listened with only half an ear to Misset who, instead of helping, preferred to talk. Anybody else would have told him to dry up but, being only a cadet, Didier Darras didn’t have either the authority or the confidence.

  Misset picked up a rusting boule from among the rubbish and tossed it up and down in his hand. ‘There are always boules,’ he said. ‘Everybody’s got a set of rusting boules in their cellar. I used to be a crack player. I could land the thing within an inch of the jack any time I wanted.’

  Didier Darras frowned, wondering how much longer he would have to endure.

  ‘I had a magnificent set once. Made by Favrel and Company at Bonnet-le-Château. That’s the place to get your boules. Seventy-four millimetres diameter. Seven hundred and twenty-five grams weight. Cost me ninety-nine francs fifty. And that was a few years back.’

  Occasionally somebody appeared from upstairs or from the cellars, with cobwebs in his hair, a smudge of dirt on his face, to ask a question or to produce for inspection something that might have some meaning to Pel.

  As they searched, Pel stared at a display of coloured photographs on a desk in the room Maurice had used for an office. Maurice with his children. Maurice on his yacht in Marseilles. Maurice at St Trop’. Maurice about to ascend the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Usually accompanied by a girl who looked as if she’d been plucked from a film studio. Maurice in nightclubs, wearing evening dress and surrounded by sycophantic aides. Maurice with other men who looked as though they were in the rackets, too. Maurice at race meetings and getting in and out of cars. One of them showed him climbing into a car that was recognisable as a Jaguar.

  He was still studying the photographs when Bardolle appeared. Bardolle was a thick-shouldered man, with a voice like a loud-hailer that he’d only just learned to subdue. He’d been a country cop and looked like a yokel but he had a shrewd mind and Pel had grabbed him for his team.

  He produced what appeared to be a desk diary. ‘I found it in the chest of drawers in Maurice’s bedroom,’ he said. ‘It seems to be for telephone appointments. Telephone numbers and so on. I’ve been trying a few of them. They all seem to be perfectly normal but there’s one here that crops up several times in the last four months. 70421-6666. The entry in the diary just gives a time and then ‘G’ and the number. It appears three or four times from April onwards but then he stopped using the number, as if he’d got it off by heart, and just wrote down the time and the letter ‘G’. I tried ringing it, Patron, but I got nowhere. Enquiries say there’s no such number. I wondered if it’s a foreign number. Maurice would be able to speak to a Belgian. I got Enquiries to ask. There’s no such Belgian number either.’

  ‘A minute!’ Pel swung round and snatched up the picture of Maurice outside the nightclub. ‘That’s a Jaguar,’ he said, indicating the car. ‘A British car. It belongs to a Geebee. An Englishman. A Rosbif. Let’s have it out of the frame. There might be something hidden by the surround. It might show the car number. If it does, we ought to be able to learn who the owner is.’

  Bardolle’s big hands had the photograph free in seconds. It had been cut down to fit the frame and the car number had been lost. On the back were the photographer’s stamps but they’d been cut into, too, and all they could see was:

  NOIR

  TRAITS

  RRIAGES

  DUSTRY.

  Below in a different colour was another incomplete stamp.

  the property of

  must not be

  acknowledgement

  Below that was yet another stamp which, this time, appeared to be complete:

  For reorders quote Ref. No. B2835-3

  ‘Taken by a professional photographer,’ Pel observed. ‘They always stick those things on the back. I expect the first word’s his name. Charles Parnoir – Denoir – Renoir – something like that. Portraits. Marriages. Industry. To indicate that he does any kind of photographic work from industrial pictures to marriages and portraits. The next one’s the stamp they put on to cover themselves for copyright. This photograph is the property of Charles Parnoir – or whatever – and must not be published without acknowledgement. The last one’s in case anyone wants to order extra copies. Go t
hrough the telephone directory, Bardolle. Find a photographer with a name that ends like that. When you find him, ask if they’ve still got the negative. You have the reference number there.’

  Ten minutes later, Bardolle returned. ‘Got them, Patron,’ he said. ‘It’s the Studio Lenoir, 4, Rue Chanoine-Bordet. They looked up the number. The photograph was taken in April, and they think they ought still to have the negative.’

  There was a message waiting for Pel when he arrived at the Hôtel de Police the following morning. Ring Studio Lenoir.

  ‘A man called Mariotte just telephoned,’ Didier Darras announced. ‘He said they’d got the negative you asked for.’

  ‘Telephone him,’ Pel said. ‘Tell him to hang on to it. I’m on my way.’

  Mariotte turned out to be the owner of Studio Lenoir. He was an enormously fat man who seemed to be in a permanent sweat. It wasn’t the weather because the day was beginning to show signs of winter, but he seemed nevertheless to be steaming gently.

  ‘What’s it all about?’ he asked.

  ‘Identification chiefly,’ Pel said, giving nothing away. ‘Have you got the negative?’

  ‘Better than that. We’ve got about fifty.’

  Pel’s eyebrows lifted and he explained. ‘We always have a man doing the nightclubs. People like to be photographed having a good time. It’s a source of income and we keep a lookout for anybody important and flash them arriving or leaving. We go round the tables, too. Intimate photographs. You know the sort of thing. Funny hats. Paper serpentines and so on. We have the contract to cover this place. Every Saturday night and all big occasions or affairs.’

  ‘Do well at it?’

  ‘On the whole. Some buy. Sometimes they don’t want to know. Sometimes, even, they try to buy the film, especially if they’re with somebody who’s not their wife.’

  ‘Ever tried blackmail?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘We could make a good job of it if we did.’ Mariotte grinned. ‘Of course we don’t know who’s with his wife or some other dame. We just take the pictures of any likely looking party and get the names from the club management and send them a copy. Some panic. Some don’t.’