Pel and the Party Spirit

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Does it worry you?’

  ‘Oh, no. But it’s there.’

  Aimedieu’s ears had pricked. In the few years he had worked as a policeman he had come across some strange things but this was the first time he had come across a ghost.

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  ‘No. But I’ve heard it. A sort of high-pitched wail. I first heard it a couple of nights ago.’

  ‘Sure it isn’t just the wind? They say this place is undermined by underground passages. If the wind got in, there’d be a sort of wail, wouldn’t there?’

  Mrs Briddon was not to be denied her ghost. She’d set her mind on a ghost and she was determined to have one. None of her friends in Surbiton had a ghost.

  As they talked the Molière Players passed, heading for the bar. The company seemed to have swollen. In addition to Remarque, Béranger and Blivet, there were now three girls. The two who had disappeared on holiday appeared to have returned, plus one of those who had left earlier to seek her career elsewhere. Aimedieu supposed it hadn’t worked out and she’d returned to where she knew there was work.

  Two of the girls were not very prepossessing and looked as if they had been dressed from the old clothes basket of a charity organisation, at the very least from unwanted dresses out of the property basket. The third girl looked more organised and seemed quite good-looking. They interested Aimedieu. Having once wanted to be an actor himself, he wondered what made them tick. He excused himself to Mrs Briddon and caught them up.

  ‘Missing players back?’ he asked.

  Remarque gave him an uneasy look. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘About time, too. Came a few days ago. This is Odile Daydé and Mercédes Flichy. That one’s Henriette Guillard.’

  The Daydé girl was tall with thick eyebrows. She had short dark hair and a skirt like a Mother Hubbard down to her ankles, and wore what looked like green property jewellery. Mercédes Flichy had short reddish hair, full lips and glasses. They seemed to be in their middle twenties. The third girl, Henriette Guillard, seemed older, with jetty curls like a gypsy, and somehow seemed to possess a professional air the others didn’t have. The Flichy and the Daydé girls didn’t look like actresses, or even very sexy, and Aimedieu, who knew about girls, had always thought the one essential for a successful actress was to be sexy.

  ‘Do you wear glasses on stage?’ he asked Mercédes Flichy.

  It was Remarque who answered. ‘Of course not,’ he said quickly. ‘She’d look fine playing Juliet, or Roxane in Cyrano, with specs, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘Can she see without them?’

  ‘She doesn’t have to. She learns the moves. When actors have rehearsed the moves they can do them instinctively. She could do them in pitch darkness.’

  Aimedieu watched the group as they headed for the bar. As they disappeared inside, he followed them. Le Bernard was sitting outside talking to Serge Vitiello, the artist. They were discussing the show they were going to present.

  ‘Stilt walkers,’ Vitiello was saying. ‘Fire eaters. Medieval songs and dances. The tourists will lap it up.’ He gestured about him. ‘A few more banners, of course. Torches stuck in the walls. The holes are still there. They’ve been there for five hundred years so they should be all right.’

  ‘Even a ghost,’ Aimedieu said cheerfully.

  ‘A ghost?’

  ‘Madame Briddon says there’s a ghost.’

  Vitiello snorted.

  ‘She says she’s heard it moaning. It would round off your show beautifully if you could induce it to walk round the square clanking its chains.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  Le Bernard was not inclined to dismiss the suggestion so lightly.

  ‘There was some English prisoner brought here during the Hundred Years War,’ he said. ‘Some English milord.’

  ‘Didn’t that happen with one of their kings?’ Aimedieu asked. ‘They held him at Montrichard on the Loire, didn’t they, until they could raise enough in England to bail him out?’

  ‘This wasn’t a king. Just a milord. He was kept in one of the underground passages here. This place was riddled with them until they were all blocked up. He’s supposed to walk along the Rue Millerand. It used to be part of the battlements. He seems to have moved his area of operations, though, now. He’s been heard in the main square.’

  ‘Sure it wasn’t the wind?’

  ‘It wasn’t the wind.’ Le Bernard was indignant.

  ‘Ever see him?’

  Le Bernard shrugged. ‘I’ve seen some funny things in my time.’

  ‘Ever see anything funny around here?’

  ‘What sort of funny?’

  ‘Well, if you saw Brigitte Bardot standing at the bar there, that would be funny, wouldn’t it? In the same way, if you saw a man carrying a bag with a big label on it – “Gold” – you’d consider that a bit funny, too, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Well, that’s something I’ve never seen,’ Le Bernard admitted. ‘In fact, you don’t see half the funny things you used to. In the evening, you don’t see anything at all. Everybody’s indoors watching Dallas on television. We can get it two nights a week here. Once from Paris. Once from Switzerland. The square used to be full of people in the evening – even in the winter. Talking. Arguing. Having fights. Kids playing. Not now. They all get square eyes watching the box. You never see anything. No cars. No dogs. Even they’re asleep in front of the television. I saw those actors come back the other night with one of their property baskets, and that’s about all. They had this basket and some sort of canvas painted to look like a street or something.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Three days ago. They said they’d been putting on a show at St Just. They had that Peugeot brake they run. The one that used to be white. They’d had a bit to drink and they were swearing because the basket was heavy. I expect they’d had a good night and picked up more dough than normal. In places like this people like to see a live show. It makes a change from television.’

  ‘Were the girls with them?’

  ‘Two of them. The other was off somewhere looking up books on medieval entertainment, they said.’

  ‘Do you often see them coming home?’

  ‘Now and again. When I’ve been to the bar for a game of dominoes. You get sick of television. I nearly didn’t see them, mind. The Rue Nobel, where they live, is darker than most. The light on the wall was broken by kids kicking a football about and it’s never been replaced. Nobody cares, you see, because these days nobody’s ever out at night. It’s the television.’

  Aimedieu grinned. ‘I take it you don’t like television much,’ he said.

  Eleven

  If nobody else had made any headway, Darcy had. Darcy was always the most dogged of Pel’s squad, and when he returned from Puyceldome he appeared in Pel’s office, as full of excitement as if he’d found the lost city of Atlantis.

  ‘We’re on our way, Patron,’ he said. ‘Lagés got the names of those firms who built along the clay streak.’

  Pel sat up. Darcy had the sort of energy which, if connected to the city’s electricity services, would have lit it up for a year. He made Pel tired but he also brightened his day with his enthusiasm.

  ‘Hubard and Company were the firm who did the brickwork for the supermarket at Rèze,’ he said. ‘Passoni Brothers did the work for the estate at Orvault. Up to half-way, anyway, then their development department was taken over by Hotners. I’ve asked them all to supply a list of every man who was employed on the building sites.’

  ‘A lot of them would be casual labour. I bet they were pleased.’

  Darcy grinned. ‘As it happens, their accounts departments have the names. They take them for tax purposes, even casual labour, and they’ve still got their old ledgers. They’ll take some finding but they’ll do it.’

  ‘I bet you had to lean on them.’

  ‘A bit. It can be done, Patron. I’ll get Claudie to help.’

  ‘Use young Didier, too. It’ll occupy his mind. It might even take i
t off Martin and that girl of his. What’s the next step?’

  ‘We sort out the carpenters and electricians from the lists we get,’ Darcy said. ‘Doc Minet thinks the guy we found at Puyceldome was either a bricklayer or a common or garden labourer. His hands were big and calloused, he says. In any case, he’d surely not be an electrician or a carpenter or a glazier or anything like that because there’s no electricity laid on in the tower and there’s no door – it was bricked up a couple of centuries ago, Le Bernard said – and no windows. That ought to narrow the field down a little, because the only thing that’s been tampered with is the stonework. So we’re looking for a stonemason or a bricky or something of that sort.’

  Darcy lit a cigarette and offered the packet. Pel shook his head firmly then weakly changed his mind.

  ‘I had a guy out there today looking at it,’ Darcy went on. ‘Name of Lourdais. Professor at the University. Faculty of Architecture and Building. He had a sniff round and he agrees with everything Le Bernard said. The place is exactly as it was built except for a bit of repair work here and there over the years. He said it was certainly opened at the top about thirty years ago, which is when our boy found himself inside. He can roughly tell the date of the repair work. Apparently mortar’s changed over the years.’

  Pel looked in admiration at his deputy as he paused for breath. There wasn’t much that Darcy ever missed.

  ‘He confirmed’, Darcy went on, ‘that the tower was fixed at the top at the time, because any other way would have caused it to collapse. But–’ Darcy paused for dramatic effect. ‘–there is certainly proof that somebody did try to open it at the bottom – our friend, Lorick Lupin, the missing bricklayer who vanished to America. Le Bernard had his facts clear enough. One bricklayer worked on the hole at the bottom. Two worked on the hole at the top, perhaps three, one of them the type who worked on the hole at the bottom. Lourdais could recognise different styles. Little touches laymen don’t notice. Le Bernard was dead right all along the line. We’ll find this guy in the tower, patron. There must be somebody who was employed by Hubards or Passonis or Hotners who can remember a beefy type with red hair and a big nose.’

  Nosjean was always different from Darcy and he was gloomy when he appeared in Pel’s office to make his report. The energy, the brains and the enthusiasm were there, but he’d always been a worrier and was inclined to be depressed by failure.

  ‘We seem to have lost them, Patron,’ he said. ‘They’ve sunk without trace. Lyons picked up a report that they’d been seen on the motorway near Villefranche but then they seemed to disappear. Some commercial traveller who heard the radio appeal told one of the motorcycle cops he met at one of the service stations. The cop immediately started a search but they’d vanished. I expect they got a lift and eventually moved away from the motorway. We’ve put out another all-areas bulletin asking for them to be picked up if seen.’

  ‘How are your enquiries going?’

  ‘Two came up, Patron. We decided the slide belonged to the girls we’re after and we found Vienne’s watch. They’d sold it, so we’ve got a description now, but it could fit hundreds of girls. They’re said to be hippies – it’s a term that’s been used by everyone who saw them – but it’s a pretty normal comment on anyone who doesn’t dress in a conventional manner. There’ve been several reports of hippies buying knives, but so far they’ve all turned out to be just ordinary housewives.’

  Pel offered condolences and encouragement, which was all part of his job, and Nosjean left, feeling less the failure he thought he was. As he reached the sergeants’ room Claudie Darel indicated the telephone.

  ‘Beaune police,’ she said. ‘They’ve discovered another knife sale. Only this time there were two, not one.’

  Nosjean snatched at the telephone. ‘Couple of girls,’ the cop in Beaune said. ‘Description matches the one you’ve put out. They bought butchers’ knives. Not one – two.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Droguerie Peche Moran. It’s in the main square.’

  Nosjean and De Troq’ shot off in De Troq’s big roadster at once. De Troq’ was supposed to be poor but, Nosjean decided as he clung to the side while De Troq’ flung the vehicle round the corners, poverty was perhaps a comparative thing.

  The knives had been sold on the third of the month and it had been a girl called Gabrielle Muchonne who had made the sale. She was a tall girl, with dark hair done up on top of her head, a splendid figure and endless legs which both Nosjean and De Troq’, being virile young men in spite of the fact that they were both engaged elsewhere, noticed at once.

  She described the two girls again for them. ‘Medium height,’ she said. ‘They came in late. One of them had fair wavy hair and one straight dark hair. Both of them wore it down to the shoulders and down the back. I didn’t like them very much.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There was something about them. I don’t know what it was. But they scared me somehow. One of them – the fair one – had thin lips and a tight mouth. Perhaps that was it. And the other had those artificial-looking eyebrows, like Marlene Dietrich had.’

  Nosjean and De Troq’ looked at each other. The girl’s words were exactly the same as those used by the drivers.

  ‘They were younger than me and smaller,’ she went on. ‘But there was something about them.’

  ‘Tell us some more,’ De Troq’ suggested. ‘What exactly was it that frightened you about them? There are plenty of people with thin lips and plucked eyebrows who aren’t frightening.’

  Gabrielle Muchonne thought for a while. ‘I think it was the way they insisted on having the knife points made sharper.’ She picked up a knife from a display stand alongside her. ‘Try the point. You can’t get one much sharper than that. I couldn’t think what they wanted them for.’

  ‘No mention of barbecues or anything like that?’

  ‘No. But they said they were camping and didn’t use forks so they weren’t interested in knives without points. I suppose that was something else that frightened me about them.’

  ‘What did they buy in the end?’

  ‘Butchers’ knives.’

  ‘Could you show us? Exactly.’

  They moved around the display stand. There were several trays, all containing single-edged, pointed knives in various sizes.

  ‘Which did they buy?’

  She picked up two of the knives and laid them down on the counter.

  ‘We’d like to take these away with us,’ Nosjean said. ‘We’ll give you a receipt. We’d like them as evidence.’

  The girl looked concerned. ‘Were they used for that murder on the N6?’

  ‘We think so.’

  The girl looked at them, impressed. They were a handsome couple, Nosjean dark and looking like Napoleon on the bridge at Lodi, De Troq’ fair, his hair neatly cut, his features immaculate, and bearing the air of someone who knew he was important, as only a baron – even an impoverished baron – could.

  ‘They asked me to sharpen them,’ she said. ‘I told them they were already very sharp. But the fair one insisted on them being sharper.’

  The knives, she said, had cost ninety francs.

  ‘I got the impression’, she went on, ‘that ninety francs was about all the money they possessed. They priced them very carefully and rejected the most expensive ones. And when the fair-haired girl took her purse out of her shoulder bag, I didn’t see any more money inside it.’

  ‘You didn’t think to tell the police?’

  ‘Not at the time.’

  ‘Did you tell your employer? Surely you must have had some ideas about what they intended to do with the knives.’

  The girl looked on the verge of tears. ‘We’ve always been told that the customer is always right and that it’s not our business to question why people want the things they buy. I read in the papers about the murder – I don’t read the papers much – but when I heard the radio appeal it dawned on me that the two girls the police were looking for might be the two
girls who bought the knives.’

  ‘They might indeed.’

  ‘And then I noticed one of them called the other Gabrielle. The same name as mine.’

  ‘Gabrielle’s a pretty common name,’ De Troq’ said.

  ‘We’ll ask at youth hostels,’ Nosjean suggested. ‘They always insist on having names. They might have a description.’

  ‘Unless they gave false names and called themselves Catherine Deneuve or Brigitte Bardot. Girls do.’

  As De Troq’ suggested, the name wasn’t much to go on, but the two knives they had brought away from the hardware store were.

  ‘They fit the casts we made of Vienne’s wounds perfectly,’ Dr Cham said. ‘They were knives exactly like these two.’

  ‘Which means that the girls who bought the knives’, Nosjean said, ‘were our girls – the ones we want. They bought them with the express intention of committing murder for money and offered sex as a means of getting drivers off the road. Four of those who stopped got away with it. One because he looked too tough to handle, the others because they said they weren’t interested in the offers they made. Vienne was perfect. A man with a good-looking car, a man who might have money on him. He was tempted by the sex they offered and drove off the main road to the secluded spot where he was murdered.’

  ‘Fine,’ De Troq’ said. ‘The only problems now are, Where are they? and Who are they?’

  Without knowing where the two girls they were seeking had come from, it was almost impossible to trace them from a Missing Persons report, and so far they had no idea where in France the girls had lived. The only thing they had with certainty were the descriptions, the fact that they had bought two sharp knives in Beaune and that early the following day they had obtained a lift with the driver of the Nicolas truck and then with four other men, one of whom had been Vienne.

  ‘It seems to me,’ Nosjean said thoughtfully, ‘that if they bought the knives in Beaune late on the afternoon of the third, then they wouldn’t leave the town that night. They’d leave next morning.’

  ‘In which case where in Beaune did they spend the night?’