The Provence Puzzle

by Vincent McConnor

  “I’ll go and meet M’sieur Tendrell.” Pouchet looked toward the Comte again. “Should I leave the dog here?”

  “Yes. Take off his leash.”

  Pouchet bent to unfasten the leash from Lautrec’s collar. “Would you care for a drink, Monsieur Inspecteur?” the Comte asked. “Calvados, perhaps?”

  Damiot laughed. “How did you know I prefer Calvados?”

  “I too have been learning things, Monsieur.” He pressed another section under the arm of his wheelchair.

  “Yes, M’sieur le Comte?” A woman’s voice, coming out of the air.

  “A bottle of our best Calvados, Madame Léontine. And a bottle of whisky for Monsieur Tendrell.”

  “Right away, chéri!”

  “Madame Léontine Guibert?”

  “Grand-mère brought Madame Léontine to Paris after my accident, and she’s been with me ever since. Feeding me. Always complaining because I never put more flesh on my bones, in spite of her cooking. She even makes these robes I wear…”

  He looked across the room. “Here she is!”

  Damiot struggled up from the fauteuil as he saw the aproned figure, short and plump, bearing a tray with bottles and glasses. “Madame Léontine…”

  “If it isn’t young Damiot!” Her eyes danced as she came toward them. “As handsome as ever! The last time I saw you, you came to sing carols for the old Comtesse. I gave you an almond cake and hot cider.”

  “I remember your almond cake. That was in the yellow salon…”

  “I’ve had the yellow salon restored,” the Comte interrupted. “All grand-mère’s furniture and her favorite paintings. I sit there many evenings, in the twilight…”

  As Madame Léontine rested her tray on the desk, Damiot saw that she was wearing an old-fashioned shawl. It was the color of that strand of crimson yarn Fric-Frac had picked up yesterday. “You look the same, Madame.”

  She laughed. “The hair is white and the legs aren’t so good…”

  “My doctor keeps an eye on her.” The Comte was uncorking the Calvados bottle. “Madame Léontine took care of me day and night after I was released from that last hospital in Paris.”

  “I’m still looking after him, grace a Dieu!” She stood, hands folded over her apron, watching the Comte with obvious adoration as he poured two drinks. “I’m seventy-eight but strong as I was at forty!” She picked up a glass of Calvados and presented it to Damiot.

  “Merci, Madame. Your cooking smells delicious!”

  “How could you know that, M’sieur?”

  “Yesterday afternoon you were preparing something with herbs and truffles. Was it chicken?”

  “Two chickens! For dinner.”

  “Smelled incredible…”

  “And it was!” The Comte laughed, filling the third glass with whisky. “Although Madame refuses to go near the electronic ovens I’ve had installed for her…”

  “Food tastes better when it’s cooked over a wood fire.” She picked up the glass from the desk and turned to face the dark entrance passage. “Whisky for the English M’sieur!”

  “Just in time, am I?”

  Damiot looked around to see Tendrell materialize from the darkness.

  “Monsieur Inspecteur—we meet again!” The Englishman accepted his drink from Madame Léontine. “Thank you, Madame.”

  Damiot rose from the armchair to shake his hand. “You knew all the time that the Comte was here!”

  “I also knew you were coming closer and closer to the truth. That’s why I told you to stay away from the Château.” He sat on a sofa near the desk, facing them. “It could only be a matter of time before you discovered my young friend.”

  Damiot sank into the armchair as Madame Léontine left the room.

  Tendrell raised his glass. “Cheers!”

  “Sami!” the Comte responded.

  “Sami…” Damiot took a large swallow of Calvados as he turned to the Comte. “How long has Monsieur Tendrell known you were here?”

  “More than a year,” Tendrell answered. “I trespassed one day to have a closer look at the castle, and Nick tried to kill me.”

  “Nothing of the sort!” The Comte laughed. “I sometimes hunt in my wheelchair along the edge of the forest, with Pouchet and Lautrec in attendance. But I only hunt for food—rabbit, wild boar, or pheasant. I stun them with another device I’ve invented. Lautrec guards them until Pouchet ties them up. One day I very nearly got an inquisitive Englishman!”

  “Frightened the devil out of me!” Tendrell gulped his whisky. “We became friends after Nick almost bagged me that day.”

  “I desperately needed someone new I could talk to evenings. I’d seen Allan drive past the gates many times and watched Jenny on her black mare. Pouchet had told me that she was his daughter. I was a complete surprise to Allan, but he was already like an old friend.”

  Damiot glanced at the artist. “So you’ve known all along about the monster?”

  “And begged Nick repeatedly not to continue with his little joke.”

  “Then you did see it Friday night from that hill?”

  “Of course! But I’ve denied seeing anything when it appears. Even to Jenny! I hope, Inspector, that you will persuade Nick to put an end to this ridiculous charade.”

  “Now, Allan!” the Comte protested. “I’ve been enjoying my public performances.”

  “The whole thing could so easily get out of hand. When you first had the idea, I thought it was amusing. Playing a joke on the villagers. But now I’m not so certain.”

  “Help yourself to that whisky, mon ami. And more Calvados for Monsieur Damiot.”

  Tendrell rose from the sofa and picked up the Calvados bottle from the desk. He filled Damiot’s glass as he talked. “My daughter, by the way, has no idea that the Comte exists. Although she’s getting terribly suspicious because of the evenings I spend away from the farm. Fortunately, we have only the one car, so Jenny can’t follow me.” Replenishing the Comte’s glass. “I suppose, one day soon, I shall have to tell her the truth and bring her to meet Nick.”

  “I look forward to that day! Meeting your delightful daughter…” The Comte picked up his drink. “Merci, mon ami.”

  “Inspector Damiot, I wish that somehow you could convince Nick that he mustn’t play this little game.” Tendrell filled his own glass to the brim. “He should destroy his monstrous toy!”

  The Comte stared at his glass, frowning. “Why must I destroy my beautiful monster?”

  “Because the thing is evil. Even though it’s only a clumsy contraption of cloth and metal!”

  “Clumsy? It’s nothing of the sort!” Lifting his glass to Damiot as he talked. “We designed it here in our laboratory. One of my assistants created the head, the wig came from Paris, and Madame Léontine made the costume.” He sipped the Calvados, then abruptly set his glass down. “Would you like to meet my monster, Monsieur Damiot?”

  “I would indeed.”

  “Splendid!” His eyes gleamed mischievously as he got to his feet. Standing erect, his waist was barely level with the top of the table desk. “You shall judge for yourself whether he is clumsy.” He produced two oblong metal objects from somewhere in his wheelchair. Snapped and shook one, causing it to shoot out into a curiously shaped crutch. “I designed these too. Collapsible and much lighter than any others.”

  Damiot saw that the crutch was made of flexible metal, jointed and shaped to support the arm. Like no crutch he had ever seen.

  The Comte snapped a second crutch into shape and slipped both of them up his voluminous sleeves before circling the desk. “I’ll be with you in a moment, Monsieur Inspecteur!” He crossed the room, moving awkwardly, followed by the mastiff.

  Under his long brown robe, the Comte appeared to have the muscular shoulders and torso of a grown man, but his invisible legs must be those of a child. This
was the boy Jenny Tendrell had glimpsed through the entrance gates! Damiot watched the stunted figure swaying from side to side until it vanished into the dark passage with the mastiff.

  Fric-Frac, left behind, came to sit at his feet.

  “So now you know the truth!” Tendrell murmured. “I’ve no idea what Nick was telling you before I arrived, but I must add that, in my opinion, he’s an authentic genius. Many of his inventions are already being produced by a corporation he owns in Paris. I think the idea of creating a monster amused him, after the long hours he spends with his colleagues on more serious projects…” The Englishman moved around the room, glass in hand. “But the whole thing’s become much too dangerous. I hope, Monsieur Inspecteur, that you’re able to make Nick put his toy away and forget it!”

  “He won’t listen to you?”

  “No, indeed!”

  “What about the murders of those two girls?”

  “Nick had nothing to do with their deaths.”

  “How can you be so positive?”

  “You saw him! It would be physically impossible.”

  “With Pouchet’s help, he might have reached that field across from here in his wheelchair.”

  “Nick has killed no one! He could never get down to the village in his wheelchair, to that alley where the Jarlaud girl was found.”

  “Pouchet has a car.”

  “Nick did not kill Lisette Jarlaud. I know that for a fact.”

  “Do you?”

  “I was with him that night. We spent the evening together. I didn’t arrive home until long after midnight. Pouchet had to help Nick to bed and it was necessary for me to drive rather carefully.”

  Damiot was distracted, as the Englishman talked, by a whisper of sound from the passage. A monstrous figure loomed out of the dark. Damiot recognized the great head with lank black hair hanging down to the huge shoulders. A long, multicolored cloak, not unlike the Comte’s robe, swaying with the body in an awkward rhythm that made the strange figure seem even more ominous.

  Fric-Frac growled.

  Tendrell turned and saw the approaching figure. “Ah! The famous Courville monster! In person…”

  As the towering figure came closer, Damiot realized that the face was a skillfully painted mask with black holes for eyes, hollow waxen cheeks, and a crimson slash of mouth.

  Tendrell set his empty glass on the desk. “Startling, eh?”

  “Amazing!” Damiot jumped to his feet and crossed the room with Fric-Frac growling at his heels. “No wonder the villagers thought this was real!” He circled the slowly moving figure as Pouchet and the mastiff followed the monster out of the darkness.

  Now the tall figure began to sink slowly toward the floor.

  Fric-Frac barked.

  Damiot stepped back, away from the collapsing monster. “This is what happened Friday night on the terrace!”

  The figure shot up again to its full height.

  “There you are!” The Comte’s voice, muffled, from under the cloak. “Tall as a giant or flat as a pile of rags. Pouchet?”

  The old man stepped forward. “Here I am, M’sieur le Comte.”

  “Take this thing off me!”

  The old man lifted the cloak away as it began to collapse again.

  Laughing, pleased with what he had done, the Comte lunged free of the contraption. “That wasn’t clumsy, was it? The figure’s designed on the principle of a toy I used to have when I was a child. A simple mechanism lifts the head and shoulders.” He circled the desk on his crutches and climbed into the wheelchair as he explained. “That’s why the monster never appears in bad weather. It could be torn apart by the wind and damaged by rain.” He reduced his crutches to their original size and returned them to their compartments in the wheelchair.

  Damiot watched Pouchet carry the collapsed figure away through the passage. “Your trick has been a great success, Monsieur! This monster you created did not, however, kill those two girls.”

  “That’s quite obvious,” Tendrell observed, refilling his glass. “But the question remains—who did? And why, Monsieur le Comte, did you play this trick on everyone?”

  “Because of the stories Pouchet heard in the village about a monster lurking in the Château. That gave me the idea.”

  “And when did you hear about this monster?” Damiot sat in the armchair again as Fric-Frac returned to stretch out at his feet. “Who was the first to tell Pouchet about it?”

  “I’ve asked him that myself, but he doesn’t remember. It was after the death of the first girl that he told me what the villagers were saying.”

  “You never heard it prior to her murder?”

  “Never.”

  “So there is no ancient legend about a monster in the Château?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Certainly I’d have known about it when I was a child. One of the servants would have told me, even if the family hadn’t. I did of course hear tales of criminals tried here, in our courtyard, before they were hanged in that field where the first girl was murdered…”

  “I heard similar stories when I was in school,” Damiot interrupted, “but nothing about any monster.”

  “I created my monster to keep the villagers away from here, but unfortunately, the first time I showed him down in the courtyard nobody saw him. I had Pouchet light the monster from behind with a lantern, but there was nobody to see. The following night I played the tape of a tolling bell, certain that the sound would attract someone’s attention. Pouchet saw a car pass on the road and, after a moment, drive back. The driver got out and stood close to the gates. So I made the monster move up and down. The fellow ran to his car and sped away. He must have been from the village, because the following night, Pouchet reported that several people were gathered outside the gates. We did our performance for them and they departed in a hurry! The next night it rained, so we didn’t give them another show until the first clear night.”

  “With an equally gratifying reception!” Tendrell exclaimed.

  “This time there must’ve been a dozen villagers watching,” the Comte continued. “Allan, of course, knew what I was doing from the start. He was on the hill last Friday night when you turned up. What did you think, Monsieur, when you saw the monster?”

  “I was certain that the murderer had arranged it, whatever it was, to confuse and frighten the villagers.”

  The Comte laughed. “You are quite right as to my purpose, but I am not the murderer.” Motioning toward the bottles on the tray. “Help yourselves, gentlemen!”

  “No more, at the moment.” Damiot glanced at his unfinished drink as Tendrell picked up the whiskey bottle to refill his own glass.

  “I would never kill anyone, Monsieur Inspecteur,” the Comte continued. “My passion is for life. I am interested only in living!”

  “Why did you let people think you had died?” Damiot asked quietly. “After your accident.”

  “Grand-mère started that rumor to save me from having to meet people. She told some reporter in Paris that I had died, and he printed the story. This was after I had had several unfortunate experiences. One day, on the street, I heard a woman call me a monster! Grand-mère and I constantly discussed my future. She knew how difficult it would be for me to face strangers. Unlike the great Lautrec, I had no wish to ease my despair in absinthe or bury myself in the soft, impersonal world of prostitutes. It was grand-mère who, before her final illness, suggested I build a high wall around this family estate, install whatever laboratories I might require for my work, and establish a private world of my own. Madame Léontine prepares my favorite dishes, and Pouchet is my guardian, confidant, and friend. I am a reasonably happy human!”

  Tendrell perched on the arm of the sofa, nursing his whiskey. “The villagers, of course, would think you quite mad if they learned you were living here. That you had tricked them with your monster…”
r />   “They are the mad ones! Believing in a monster.”

  “They are superstitious!” Damiot protested. “Foolish! And, of course, ignorant. Many of them…”

  “Ignorance makes fools of men.”

  Tendrell nodded. “Ignorance—stupidity—that’s what is wrong with the world! There should be one Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not be stupid!’”

  Damiot got to his feet. “I wish, Monsieur le Comte, that you would not show your monster to the villagers again.”

  “Ah! But I plan to have him make another appearance tomorrow night. If the weather clears.”

  “I too wish you wouldn’t, Nick.” Tendrell rose from the sofa’s arm. “When ignorant people are frightened they become violent animals, and the villagers at this moment seem ready to explode. They talk of nothing but those murders and the monster in the Château. My daughter hears them every time she goes shopping…”

  “I agree with Monsieur Tendrell.” Damiot moved closer to the desk. “It would be wise to put an end to this joke. I suggest that you destroy the Courville monster!”

  “Not just yet, Monsieur Inspecteur. And you won’t tell anyone, I trust, what I’ve revealed to you tonight?” He frowned, suddenly childlike, as though he were about to have his wonderful toy taken away. “You won’t report to the local gendarmerie that I’ve played a trick on their friends in the village? Won’t tell them that I’m here in residence at the Château?”

  “No, Monsieur le Comte. Nick… I will not tell anyone. Inspector Bardou’s the one who must find the murderer—or murderers. Not I…”

  “Monsieur Inspecteur!” The Comte frowned. “You must have some theory about the murderer…”

  Damiot shrugged.

  “It has to be one of the villagers!” Tendrell exclaimed.

  “I suspect,” Damiot finally answered, “that whoever started the rumor of a monster in the Château de Mohrt may be the murderer…”

  * * * *

  The rain had stopped before Damiot came to the edge of the village. He slowed his car as he reached the Auberge.

  None of the windows were lighted. Perhaps Aurore had gone to bed.