Murder Most Merry

by ed. Abigail Browining

  “What’s that? What are you getting at?”

  “I assure you, Madame, your husband was dismissed from the Agence Argus over two months ago.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Which means that for these last two months he’s been going off to work every evening.”

  “Where else would he be going? To the Folies Bergère?”

  “Have you any idea why he hasn’t come back today? He hasn’t telephoned, has he?”

  She must have been afraid of saying the wrong thing, for she rang off without another word.

  When the Inspector put his receiver down, he turned round to see Lecœur standing behind him, looking away. In a shaky voice, the latter said:

  “Janvier’s on his way now.”

  He was treated as an equal. He knew it wouldn’t last, that tomorrow, sitting at his switchboard, he would be once more but a small cog in the huge wheel.

  The others simply didn’t count—not even his brother, whose timid eyes darted from one to the other uncomprehendingly, wondering why, if his boy’s life was in danger, they talked so much instead of doing something.

  Twice he had to pluck at Andre’s sleeve to get a word in edgewise.

  “Let me go and look for him myself,” he begged.

  What could he do? The hunt had widened now. A description of ex-Sergeant Loubet had been passed to all police stations and patrols.

  It was no longer only a boy of ten who was being looked for, but also a man of fifty-eight, probably the worse for drink, dressed in a black overcoat with a velvet collar and an old grey-felt hat, a man who knew his Paris like the palm of his hand, and who was acquainted with the police.

  Janvier had returned, looking fresher than the men there in spite of his night’s vigil.

  “She tried to slam the door in my face, but I’d taken the precaution of sticking my foot in. She doesn’t know anything. She says he’s been handing over his pay every month.”

  “That’s why he had to steal. He didn’t need big sums. In fact, he wouldn’t have known what to do with them. What’s she like?”

  “Small and dark, with piercing eyes. Her hair’s dyed a sort of blue. She must have eczema or something of the sort—she wears mittens.”

  “Did you get a photo of him?”

  “There was one on the dining-room sideboard. She wouldn’t give it to me, so I just took it.”

  A heavy-built, florid man, with bulging eyes, who in his youth had probably been the village beau and had conserved an air of stupid arrogance. The photograph was some years old. No doubt he looked quite different now.

  “She didn’t give you any idea where he was likely to be, did she?”

  “As far as I could make out, except at night, when he was supposed to be at work, she kept him pretty well tied to her apron strings. I talked to the concierge, who told me he was scared stiff of his wife. Often she’s seen him stagger home in the morning, then suddenly pull himself together when he went upstairs. He goes out shopping with his wife. In fact, he never goes out alone in the daytime. If she goes out when he’s in bed, she locks him in.”

  “What do you think, Lecœur?”

  “I’m wondering whether my nephew and he aren’t together.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They weren’t together at the beginning, or Loubet would have stopped the boy giving the alarm. There must have been some distance between them. One was following the other.”

  “Which way round?”

  “When the kid climbed up the drainpipe, he thought his father was guilty. Otherwise, why should he have sent him off to the Gare d’Austerlitz, where no doubt he intended to join him after getting rid of the sandwich tin?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “No, Andre. Francois could never have thought—”

  “Leave this alone. You don’t understand. At that time the crime had certainly been committed. Francois wouldn’t have dreamed of burgling someone’s flat for a tin box if it hadn’t been that he’d seen the body.”

  “From his window,” put in Janvier, “he could see most of the legs.”

  “What we don’t know is whether the murderer was still there.”

  “I can’t believe he was,” said Saillard. “If he had been, he’d have kept out of sight, let the boy get into the room, and then done the same to him as he’d done to the old woman.”

  “Look here, Olivier. When you got home this morning, was the light on?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the boy’s room?”

  “Yes. It was the first thing I noticed. It gave me a shock. I thought perhaps he was ill.”

  “So the murderer very likely saw it and feared his crime had had a witness. He certainly wouldn’t have expected anyone to climb up the drainpipe. He must have rushed straight out of the house.”

  “And waited outside to see what would happen.”

  Guesswork! Yes. But that was all they could do. The important thing was to guess right. For that you had to put yourself in the other chap’s place and think as he had thought. The rest was a matter of patrols, of the hundreds of policemen scattered all over Paris, and, lastly, of luck.

  “Rather than go down the way he’d come, the boy must have left the house by the entrance in the Rue Michat.”

  “Just a moment, Inspector. By that time he probably knew that his father wasn’t the murderer.”

  “Why?”

  “Janvier said just now that Madame Fayet lost a lot of blood. If it had been his father, the blood would have had time to dry up more or less. It was some nine hours since Francois had seen him in the room. It was on leaving the house that he found out who had done it, whether it was Loubet or not. The latter wouldn’t know whether the boy had seen him up in the room. Francois would have been scared and taken to his heels.”

  This time it was the boy’s father who interrupted. “No. Not if he knew there was a big reward offered. Not if he knew I’d lost my job. Not if he’d seen me go to the old woman to borrow some money.”

  The Inspector and Andre Lecœur exchanged glances. They had to admit Olivier was right, and it made them afraid.

  No. it had to be pictured otherwise. A dark, deserted street in an outlying quarter of Paris two hours before dawn.

  On the other hand, the ex-policeman, obsessed by his sense of grievance, who had just committed his ninth murder to revenge himself on the society that had spurned him, and perhaps still more to prove to himself he was still a man by defying the whole police force—indeed, the whole world.

  Was he drunk again? On a night like that, when the bars were open long after their usual closing time, he had no doubt had more than ever. And in that dark, silent street, what did he see with his bulging drink-inflamed eyes? A young boy, the first person who had found him out, and who would now—

  “I’d like to know whether he’s got a gun on him,” sighed the Inspector.

  Janvier answered at once:

  “I asked his wife. It seems he always carries one about. An automatic pistol, but it’s not loaded.”

  “How can she know that?”

  “Once or twice, when he was more than usually drunk, he rounded on her, threatening her with the gun. After that, she got hold of his ammunition and locked it up, telling him an unloaded pistol was quite enough to frighten people without his having to fire it.”

  Had those two really stalked each other through the streets of Paris? A strange sort of duel in which the man had the strength and the boy the speed?

  The boy may well have been scared, but the man stood for something precious enough to push fear into the background: a fortune and the end of his father’s worries and humiliations.

  Having got so far, there wasn’t a lot more to be said by the little group of people waiting in the Préfecture de Police. They sat gazing at the street-plan with a picture in their minds of a boy following a man, the boy no doubt keeping his distance. Everyone else was sleeping. There was no one in the streets who could be a help to the one or
a menace to the other. Had Loubet produced his gun in an attempt to frighten the boy away?

  When people woke up and began coming out into the streets, what would the boy do then? Would he rush up to the first person he met and start screaming “Murder”?

  “Yes. It was Loubet who walked in front,” said Saillard slowly.

  “And it was I,” put in Andre Lecœur, “who told the boy all about the pillar telephone system.”

  The little crosses came to life. What had at first been mysterious was now almost simple. But it was tragic.

  The child was risking his skin to save his father. Tears were slowly trickling down the latter’s face. He made no attempt to hide them.

  He was in a strange place, surrounded by outlandish objects, and by people who talked to him as though he wasn’t there, as though he was someone else. And his brother was among these people, a brother he could hardly recognize and whom he regarded with instinctive respect.

  Even when they did speak, it wasn’t necessary to say much. They understood each other. A word sufficed.

  “Loubet couldn’t go home, of course.”

  Andre Lecœur smiled suddenly as a thought struck him.

  “It didn’t occur to him that Francois hadn’t a centime in his pocket. He could have escaped by diving into the Métro.”

  No. That wouldn’t hold water. The boy had seen him and would give his description.

  Place du Trocadéro, the Etoile. The time was passing. It was practically broad daylight. People were up and about. Why hadn’t Francois called for help? Anyhow, with people in the streets it was no longer possible for Loubet to kill him.

  The Inspector was deep in thought.

  “For one reason or another,” he murmured, “I think they’re going about together now.”

  At the same moment, a lamp lit up on the wall. As though he knew it would be for him, Lecœur answered in place of Bedeau.

  “Yes. I thought as much.”

  “It’s about the two oranges. They found an Arab boy asleep in the third-class waiting room at the Gare du Nord. He still had the oranges in his pockets. He’d run away from home because his father had beaten him.”

  “Do you think Bib’s dead?”

  “If he was dead, Loubet would have gone home, as he would no longer have anything to fear.”

  So the struggle was still going on somewhere in this now sunny Paris in which families were sauntering along the boulevards taking the air.

  It would be the fear of losing him in the crowd that had brought Francois close to his quarry. Why didn’t he call for help? No doubt because Loubet had threatened him with his gun. “One word from you. my lad, and I’ll empty this into your guts.”

  So each was pursuing his own goal: for the one to shake off the boy somehow, for the other to watch for the moment when the murderer was off his guard and give the alarm before he had time to shoot.

  It was a matter of life and death.

  “Loubet isn’t likely to be in the center of the town, where policemen are too plentiful for his liking, to say nothing of the fact that many of them know him by sight.”

  Their most likely direction from the Etoile was towards Montmartre—not to the amusement quarter, but to the remoter and quieter parts.

  It was half past two. Had they had anything to eat? Had Loubet, with his mind set on escape, been able to resist the temptation to drink?

  “Monsieur le Commissaire—”

  Andre Lecœur couldn’t speak with the assurance he would have liked. He couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he was an upstart, if not a usurper.

  “I know there are thousands of little bars in Paris. But if we chose the more likely districts and put plenty of men on the job—”

  Not only were all the men there roped in, but Saillard got through to the Police Judiciaire, where there were six men on duty, and set every one of them to work on six different telephone lines.

  “Hallo! Is that the Bar des Amis? In the course of the day have you seen a middle-aged man accompanied by a boy of ten? The man’s wearing a black overcoat and a—”

  Again Lecœur made little crosses, not in his notebook this time, but in the telephone directory. There were ten pages of bars, some of them with the weirdest names.

  A plan of Paris was spread out on a table all ready and it was in a little alley of ill-repute behind the Place Clichy that the Inspector was able to make the first mark in red chalk.

  “Yes, there was a man of that description here about twelve o’clock. He drank three glasses of Calvados and ordered a glass of white wine for the boy. The boy didn’t want to drink at first, but he did in the end and he wolfed a couple of eggs.”

  By the way Olivier Lecœur’s face lit up, you might have thought he heard his boy’s voice.

  “You don’t know which way they went?”

  “Towards the Boulevard des Batignolles, I think. The man looked as though he’d already had one or two before he came in.”

  “Hallo! Zanzi-Bar? Have you at any time seen a—”

  It became a refrain. As soon as one man had finished, the same words, or practically the same, were repeated by his neighbor.

  Rue Damrémont. Montmartre again, only farther out this time. One-thirty. Loubet had broken a glass, his movements by this time being somewhat clumsy. The boy got up and made off in the direction of the lavatory, but when the man followed, he thought better of it and went back to his seat.

  “Yes. The boy did look a bit frightened. As for the man, he was laughing and smirking as though he was enjoying a huge joke.”

  “Do you hear that, Olivier? Bib was still there at one-forty.”

  Andre Lecœur dared not say what was in his mind. The struggle was nearing its climax. Now that Loubet had really started drinking if was just a question of time. The only thing was: would the boy wait long enough?

  It was all very well for Madame Loubet to say the gun wasn’t loaded. The butt of an automatic was quite hard enough to crack a boy’s skull.

  His eyes wandered to his brother, and he had a vision of what Olivier might well have come to if his asthma hadn’t prevented him drinking.

  “Hallo! Yes. Where? Boulevard Ney?”

  They had reached the outskirts of Paris. The ex-Sergeant seemed still to have his wits about him. Little by little, in easy stages, he was leading the boy to one of those outlying districts where there were still empty building sites and desolate spaces.

  Three police cars were promptly switched to that neighborhood, as well as every available agent cycliste within reach. Even Janvier dashed off, taking the Inspector’s little car, and it was all they could do to prevent Olivier from running after him.

  “I tell you, you’d much better stay here. He may easily go off on a false trail, and then you won’t know anything.”

  Nobody had time for making coffee. The men of the second day shift had not thoroughly warmed to the case. Everyone was strung up.

  “Hallo! Yes. Orient Bar. What is it?”

  It was Andre Lecœur who took the call. With the receiver to his ear, he rose to his feet, making queer signs that brought the whole room to a hush.

  “What? Don’t speak so close to the mouthpiece.”

  In the silence, the others could hear a high-pitched voice.

  “It’s for the police! Tell the police I’ve got him! The killer! Hallo? What? Is that Uncle Andre?”

  The voice was lowered a tone to say shakily: “I tell you, I’ll shoot, Uncle Andre.”

  Lecœur hardly knew to whom he handed the receiver. He dashed out of the room and up the stairs, almost breaking down the door of the room.

  “Quick, all cars to the Orient Bar, Porte Clignancourt.”

  And without waiting to hear the message go out, he dashed back as fast as he’d come. At the door he stopped dead, struck by the calm that had suddenly descended on the room.

  It was Saillard who held the receiver into which, in the thickest of Parisian dialects, a voice was saying:

  “It�
�s all right. Don’t worry. I gave the chap a crack on the head with a bottle. Laid him out properly. God knows what he wanted to do to the kid. What’s that? You want to speak to him? Here, little one, come here. And give me your popgun. I don’t like those toys. Why, it isn’t loaded.”

  Another voice. “Is that Uncle Andre?”

  The Inspector looked round, and it was not to Andre but to Olivier that he handed the receiver.

  “Uncle Andre. I got him.”

  “Bib! It’s me.”

  “What are you doing there, Dad?”

  “Nothing. Waiting to hear from you. It’s been—”

  “You can’t think how bucked I am. Wait a moment, here’s the police. They’re just arriving.”

  Confused sounds. Voices, the shuffling of feet, the clink of glasses. Olivier Lecœur listened, standing there awkwardly, gazing at the wall-map which he did not see, his thoughts far away at the northern extremity of Paris, in a windswept boulevard.

  “They’re taking me with them.”

  Another voice. “Is that you, Chief? Janvier here.”

  One might have thought it was Olivier Lecœur who had been knocked on the head with a bottle by the way he held the receiver out, staring blankly in front of him.

  “He’s out, right out, Chief. They’re lugging him away now. When the boy heard the telephone ringing, he decided it was his chance. He grabbed Loubet’s gun from his pocket and made a dash for the phone. The proprietor here’s a pretty tough nut. If it hadn’t been for—”

  A little lamp lit up in the plan of Paris.

  “Hallo! Your car’s gone out?”

  “Someone’s smashed the glass of the pillar telephone in the Place Clignancourt. Says there’s a row going on in a bar. I’ll ring up again when we know what’s going on.”

  It wouldn’t be necessary.

  Nor was it necessary for Andre Lecœur to put a cross in his notebook under Miscellaneous.

  —translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury

  MURDER UNDER THE MISTLETOE – Margery Allingham

  Murder under the mistletoe—and the man who must have done it couldn’t have done it. That’s my Christmas and I don’t feel merry thank you very much all the same.” Superintendent Stanislaus Oates favored his old friend Mr. Albert Campion with a pained smile and sat down in the chair indicated.