by Mark Hebden
Pel sighed. He knew all about Didier Darras’ love life. He had listened to it from the days when Didier Darras was thirteen years old. He had regarded Louise Bray as his girl from the time when she had been in the habit of hitting him over the head with her dolls.
‘What’s happened to him?’ he asked.
‘He’s gone sour.’
‘With the police?’
‘He’s lost interest.’
‘He was pretty keen.’
‘Well, he isn’t any longer.’
‘I’ll have a word with him.’
Pel was just wondering if he could slip out for a beer, when Claudie Darel, the only female member of his squad, appeared. Pel smiled. Or at least his face changed gear to what passed as a smile. He didn’t smile easily and it made him feel strange, but everybody smiled when Claudie appeared. She looked like a rejuvenated Mireille Mathieu and, despite the fact that she was practically engaged to a barrister from the Palais de Justice, half the department was still in love with her.
‘What’s the trouble?’ Pel asked, on his best behaviour immediately.
‘A body’s the trouble, Patron,’ Claudie said. ‘At Puyceldome.’
‘What sort of body? Accident? Murder? Manslaughter?’
‘Nobody seems very sure, Patron. It was found walled up in a tower.’
‘Walled up in a what?’
‘A tower, Patron.’
‘I thought people stopped doing things like that in the seventeenth century.’
Claudie smiled. ‘Perhaps they did, Patron,’ she said. ‘It certainly seems to have been there a long time. It seems to be a skeleton.’
Three
Jean-Pierre Marceau, the painter, De Troq’s contact at the Théâtre des Beaux Arts, was surprised when De Troq’ sat down opposite him in the shabby little restaurant where he ate his meals. He looked at De Troq’ uneasily, guessing why he was there but uncertain what was going to happen.
De Troq’ said nothing. He ordered an omelette and a carafe of wine and simply sat there. With his neat frame, his air of arrogance, his well-cut clothes, his silence, he posed a threat without doing anything.
After a while he lifted his head. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘It’s Jean-Pierre Marceau, isn’t it?’
The painter nodded, keeping his eyes on his plate. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘We met in the theatre, didn’t we? That time when I was asking about hard drugs.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were on them. You’re still on them, I reckon. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know–’ De Troq’ was friendly and bland. ‘–I think we need a talk.’
The boy from the theatre looked nervous. ‘I know nothing,’ he said.
‘I bet you do. I want names.’
‘I can’t give you names.’
‘Who do you get it from?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You prefer to go to prison?’
‘It’s the pushers you’re after,’ Marceau bleated. ‘You can’t send me to prison for using the stuff.’
‘No, but you can always go to prison under Section 63 of the Penal Code. Non-assistance to a person in danger. Withholding information from the police means that all those kids who’re on drugs are put at risk – persons in danger. Thought about that?’
Marceau looked worried. ‘I can’t tell you. You know what that lot do to informers.’
‘I know what the magistrates do to people who withhold information. Where does it come from?’
‘The south. North Africa, I suppose.’
‘How?’
‘In a lorry, I heard. One end’s blocked off. It’s in there.’
‘Whose lorry?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who runs the operation?’
‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know.’
‘How did you get into it?’
The boy scowled then the scowl faded and he sighed. ‘I was at art school,’ he said. ‘But I wanted to be an actor. I always did. But they said I was no good. I even offered to work for nothing, I was so keen, but they still turned me down. In the end, I got a job as an assistant stage manager. Looking after props. Handing out the bouquet to the hero when he went on stage, to give to the heroine. Making sure Cyrano’s nose was on straight and his sword wasn’t stuck in the scabbard. Then I got a job as a scene painter. But no acting. I got depressed and then I was offered this dope.’
‘Who by?’
‘His name’s Sammy le Rapide. Speedy Sam.’
‘Why?’
‘He wears running pumps for a quick getaway.’
‘Sounds sense. What’s his real name?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where do I find him?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘Where do you pick up your fixes?’
‘I can’t tell you that either. It’s always different.’
‘So how do you know where to be?’
‘The word gets around.’
‘And when is it to be?’
‘I heard tonight. But I’m not certain. I expect I’ll hear.’
De Troq’ shrugged and became silent. Finishing his omelette, he placed money under his plate to pay for the meal, smiled at Marceau, rose and left. Marceau sat in baffled, frustrated silence for a while, furiously smoking a cigarette, then, flinging down a note, he rose, too, and strode out of the restaurant.
Just as De Troq’ was stationing himself in a doorway across the road to watch Marceau leave the restaurant, Pel was arriving with Darcy in Puyceldome.
As they approached, the sun came out unexpectedly, picking up the colours of the ancient stone so that the old fortress-town stood up out of the plain like a huge pink wedding cake. It was broad-based and tapered to a point, so that the rooftops seemed to stand on other rooftops all the way up to the summit, the very peak, where the tower of the church clawed at the sky.
Turning off the main highway on to the winding road up the hill, Darcy’s car crossed a bridge over the river and began to climb so steeply it made Pel feel they were going to topple backwards. More turns followed, then the road ran along a ridge of hillside like the backbone of some giant animal. The turrets of Puyceldome appeared above them as if about to fall on them; there were more turns alongside a deep drop – The Cat’s Jump, Darcy said – then it ran up in a steep rise to the walls of the town and between tall narrow buildings, to debouch into the main square of the town, a surprisingly large space with a decorated well in the centre and surrounded by ancient buildings whose ground floors contained small shops tucked under an arcade supported by weathered stone pillars. As Darcy drew the car to a halt, Pel drew a deep breath, grateful to have arrived.
Seen more closely, the illusion of a wedding cake was shattered. The buildings were old and many of them were tumbledown. Here and there were square gaping holes where windows had disappeared. Other windows had been bricked up. A few of the roofs over the ramparts, so positioned that they were too difficult or too expensive to repair, sagged heavily and occasionally a wall was propped up by huge beams. At a distance, Puyceldome was magnificent. Close to, it looked its age.
But, unlike so many bastides, it was a living town, far from dependent on its gifte shoppes, restaurants and an odd establishment dedicated to not very skilful weaving or pottery. Puyceldome was a thriving town, on the main road from Dijon to Goillac, and was the centre of a farming community, many of its inhabitants commuting daily to Goillac for work.
The fact that the nation was on holiday was immediately apparent. In August, in every town that might attract holiday-makers – and in a lot of them that certainly would not – the party spirit had taken over. Loudspeakers were braying a day-long broadcast of pop music, while the presenters – usually the nearest supermarket after publicity – paid disc jockeys to keep up a non-stop run of jokes and laughter between the jingles advertising their wares. In the countryside, villages arranged communal get-togethers in the form of vast ba
rbecues, sardinages, suppers, dancing, fairs, discos, pig runnings, giant cassoulets.
Puyceldome was no different. The umbrella-shaded tables outside the bar of the hotel were full of people, and men were hanging long red-and-white banners from the old buildings. The notice-board outside the tourist office under the arcades was plastered with notices of dances and pageants in the villages around. Only the cars were tucked out of sight, stuffed with difficulty into small open spaces down the backstreets because the elders of the town had wisely seen the danger of their small, cramped and very beautiful centre becoming invisible behind a barrier of tourists’ vehicles.
The owners of the house where Le Bernard had found the body weren’t very impressed with Pel. They had expected someone tall and handsome who looked like a young Laurence Olivier or perhaps JR from Dallas.
‘Is he really a policeman?’ Ellen Briddon asked Darcy. She was a lot younger than her husband, blonde, shapely and very sexy.
Darcy grinned. ‘He is, madame,’ he said. ‘And one of the best there is.’
‘He doesn’t look much like one.’
‘That’s his strength, madame. It gives the criminals a sense of false security. They think he’s the man who’s come to mend the lavatory.’
She wasn’t sure whether Darcy was pulling her leg or not and she took another look at Pel. He certainly didn’t seem very impressive with his short stature, hair that looked like seaweed draped across a rock, and spectacles pushed up on his forehead. She had a feeling that Darcy, with his good looks, his smart suit, and the splendid white teeth which shone like the jewels in a Disney cartoon, would be a much better policeman. Especially looking as he did now, with his profile in top gear for her benefit.
At that moment she was low in spirits and a little depressed. Her husband, who was considerably older than she was and had never been as enthusiastic about the house at Puyceldome, was in a bad temper and was complaining that he’d never wanted to live there anyway.
‘And now the tower’s collapsed,’ he had growled. ‘It’s going to cost a fortune to restore it. We should never have bought the bloody place.’
Doc Minet, the police doctor, had already arrived and was conferring with Dr Mercier, the man who had been called by Le Bernard to inspect his discovery. Dr Mercier was, in fact, a psychiatrist from Goillac who happened to have a weekend residence in Puyceldome, but he was also a qualified medical man, and his conclusions were exactly the same as Doc Minet’s. Le Bernard’s discovery had been dead so long there was no great hurry.
‘Could it be medieval?’ Ellen Briddon was asking hopefully. Her husband had stamped off in a temper and she hadn’t a lot of friends in the area – it was different from Surbiton where she came from and she was hoping to collect a few more when the news spread.
‘I don’t think so, madame,’ Pel said.
‘Older than that? Didn’t George II – before he became King of England, of course, when he was Elector of Hanover – wall up his wife’s lover? He locked her up, too, for the rest of her life; didn’t he? They made a film about it.’
‘I don’t think it’s as old as that,’ Doc Minet interposed. ‘There’s a newspaper underneath him – Le Bien Public, which is published locally – and I don’t think they had newspapers round here as long ago as that. Certainly not Le Bien Public.’
‘Perhaps there are other bodies,’ Mrs Briddon offered. ‘They say Puyceldome’s honeycombed with passages. They run everywhere into the rock of the hillside. They used them for prisoners, or for keeping stores against a siege. Things like that. I was told there was a ghost.’
Pel looked at Darcy who recognised the sign. Pel wasn’t used to attractive foreign ladies getting in the way but he was too polite to shunt her off. Darcy did the necessary.
‘I think one of my men ought to have your version of the business, madame,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Aimedieu here will take a statement if you’ll be so kind.’
Mrs Briddon was delighted and allowed herself to be taken in hand. She looked at Aimedieu. He was young and good-looking and had a face as innocent as a choir-boy’s.
‘Perhaps we ought to go into the house,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee or a beer or something?’
Aimedieu had known Pel long enough now to have recognised the signs as well as Darcy and was willing to stretch the interview as far as possible. ‘A coffee would be excellent, madame,’ he said.
Pel watched them go and turned thankfully back to Doc Minet. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Inform me.’
‘Well, we’ll need to look more closely at him,’ Doc Minet said, ‘before I can be certain of anything. But I can say straight away that, judging by his clothes, he died more than twenty years ago.
Pel scowled. When people were found dead, he reckoned that if they could get on to things within an hour or two they had a reasonable chance of finding out what had happened. Months – even days – later, people forgot what they’d seen and how things had appeared. Most people didn’t see things, anyway. Most people could sit next to Brigitte Bardot or a man with a loaded shotgun without noticing. A year later they couldn’t even remember being there. Twenty to thirty years was beyond the pale. Half the witnesses would have died themselves by then, anyway.
Doc Minet gestured. ‘For what it’s worth,’ he said, ‘since our friend didn’t die last night there’s no point worrying about rigor mortis. That disappeared years ago. I assume there was air getting into that place and, with the heat here in the summer, he’s dried out until he’s virtually mummified. Flies have been at work on him, of course, and what’s left is just bones with the skin round them. We might find more when we examine him properly, but that’s the way it looks.’
‘Anything more you can tell us?’
‘Big guy,’ Doc Minet said. ‘Probably a fat one, too. He seems to be wearing overalls so he certainly wasn’t put there when the tower was built. Perhaps we can find something on him that might help to identify him.’
Pel stared at the wreckage of the tower. ‘So how does he come to be bricked up in there?’ he asked. ‘He obviously wouldn’t brick himself in.’
Minet smiled. ‘You’re asking something,’ he said. ‘I’ll need a little more time to answer that.’
‘Is his neck broken? Is his skull smashed in? That would be murder, wouldn’t it?’
Minet smiled at Pel’s impatience. He was older and fatter than Pel and inclined to move more slowly. ‘There are no obvious wounds,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. After twenty-odd years it would be difficult to spot them at first go. But there appear to be no smashed limbs, no broken neck, no crushed skull. I’ll tell you better when I’ve had him out on the slab.’ Minet shrugged. ‘On the other hand, I think he must have been put in there. He certainly didn’t wall himself in because, quite apart from the fact that it’s not something that people usually do, there appear to be no tools in there. No trowel. No sign of old cement.’
‘Then it must have been murder.’
‘Unless it was an accident and somebody was frightened enough to prefer to keep quiet about it and walled him up so he wouldn’t be found.’
Pel’s frown deepened. ‘I think’, he said slowly, ‘that we need to know what was happening round here about that time. Can we find a mason, Daniel, who can tell us something about this place? Perhaps also a historian. There must be one. This sort of place always has some Nosy Parker who knows what happened fifty years ago.
As it happened, their historian was right there beside them. Nobody knew more about Puyceldome than Le Bernard. At some time or other he had probably worked on every building in the little town. But he was still a little shocked – not by the collapse of the tower, or even by the discovery of the body, but by the fact that here was something he had known nothing about.
‘How did they get him in?’ he asked. ‘There’s been no entrance to the tower for around fifty years.’
‘Somebody got him in,’ Darcy pointed out.
Le Bernard had
no doubt about that. ‘He looks to me as if he’s been there a long time,’ he agreed.
‘When was that tower last opened?’ Pel asked.
‘Well, thirty-odd years ago,’ Le Bernard said, ‘Lucie Croissard, who owned the place, fancied putting a staircase in – everybody who buys the shitty place seems to want to put a staircase in. But she didn’t. The type she chose to do it told her that if she wasn’t careful the tower would collapse.’
‘It seems he was right,’ Darcy commented dryly.
‘Thirty years ago,’ Pel said. ‘Let’s say, in fact, 1959. Who had the house then?’
‘Lucie Croissard. But about 1959 she bought a smaller house and let this one to a couple of youngsters. But they left and she decided to sell. I reckon she was glad to be shot of it. It was bought by a type from the south. He didn’t stay long. Name of Callin or Caillas or something. I forget his name. They got me to block up a hole at the top of the tower. He’d tried to open it. For a staircase, they said. The usual. He didn’t want a special job. Just a patch. That’s what they got. You can see it. He also got me to fill up the vents at the top of the tower. I did. You can see where I did it. I wondered why, and decided they’d buried all their rubbish in there. The refuse collectors were on strike at the time and people were getting desperate, so I thought that was what it was.’
Le Bernard lit a cigarette. Inevitably it set Pel off and he lit one, too.
‘It was a hot summer, that one,’ Le Bernard said. ‘There was a plague of flies in Puyceldome.’
Well, there would be, wouldn’t there, Pel thought. With a body disintegrating in the tower. The blowflies would find it without any trouble – they always did – and they’d breed in their millions. It ought to have drawn attention to the body, in fact. But no one would notice the smell because the tower was tall and narrow and would act like the vent of a drain, carrying the smell high up above everyone’s head to where it would be borne away by the breeze that blew almost permanently across the town.
Le Bernard looked at the body under the tarpaulin he had provided. ‘I reckon it was him,’ he said.