Pel and the Prowler

by Mark Hebden

  ‘No. Never.’ She paused. ‘Well, hardly ever.’

  ‘You did take men home from here?’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘Perhaps more than once?’

  ‘Perhaps. But I’m not a tart. I want a husband. You don’t get them by ignoring men.’

  ‘I appreciate that, Madame. But he had no reason to think you’re what he called you?’

  ‘No, he hadn’t.’

  ‘Did one of these men ever stay the night?’

  She paused and glanced at the landlord who hurriedly looked at the ceiling so that Pel immediately guessed he’d been one of the men himself. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘More than that perhaps?’

  ‘Yes. But there’s no reason why not.’

  ‘I’m not questioning your behaviour, Madame. That’s not why I’m here. I’m just trying to build up a picture of the man who attacked you to decide if he was the same one who attacked the other women.’

  She stared at him. She was sitting upright now and was obviously relishing being the centre of attention the following day when the bar opened. ‘And was he?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Pel said. ‘I think he was.’

  ‘Four,’ Darcy said. ‘And two mishits. Two in a row, in fact. And no messages. Think he’s losing his grip?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Pel said. ‘And I think there are no messages because he was in the habit of scrawling them after he’d done his stuff, not before, and on these occasions he was scared enough to bolt. In the case of Monique Letexier, he lost his cord and used his hands and she slipped from his grasp. In the case of the You woman, she startled him by going limp and falling down instead of struggling. It caught him off-balance and, when he fell with her, he decided it was safer to bolt. Next time he’ll be more careful.’ He frowned. ‘If Misset had been a bit swifter off the mark, he might have caught him. Or at least seen him and been able to give us a description. I expect he was standing in the shadows somewhere, having a quick cigarette. Even talking to a woman.’

  Darcy grinned. ‘You don’t suppose it could be Misset, do you?’ he asked.

  Pel ignored the comment. ‘Let’s have everybody above the age of eighteen in the Rue de Rouen area checked. There’ve been three here now – Bernadette Hamon and You and Letexier, with the Rue Devoin where Marguerite de Wibaux was found on the fringe of it. Get on to it. We’ll keep everybody on the streets as before. There’s only one way this is going to be cracked and that’s by catching him at it. Claudie had better share the job with someone else. We’ll get a woman from Lyons or Paris. But I suspect he’ll lie low for a bit after this. He’s probably had a big scare.’

  ‘Big enough to scare him off, Patron?’

  Pel frowned. ‘Nutters with obsessions don’t scare off easily,’ he said. ‘But they usually have enough brains to lie low when things become too hot.’

  Over breakfast next morning, Pel’s mind was busy. Madame was discussing the news she’d heard on the radio while he was dragging himself from bed but he hardly heard her. Madame Routy appeared – still miraculously clad in her white overall, so that Pel wondered what Madame did to make sure she wore it. Thumbscrews? A whip? The rack? It had taken him all his time at the Rue Martin-de-Noinville to drag her away from the television.

  She moved round the table and slapped down fresh coffee. ‘They arrested Paul Horgon in Paris,’ she announced. ‘It was on the radio.’

  Pel looked up over his spectacles. He couldn’t remember any Paul Horgon among his suspects.

  ‘He’s that actor,’ Madame Routy said.

  ‘Which actor?’

  Madame Pel looked up and smiled understandingly. ‘On the television. He’s in that series, General Hospital.’

  Light dawned. Despite the fact that he watched television only when he couldn’t find an excuse not to, Pel knew many of the actors. You had to be a moron not to know them. They occupied more space in the newspapers these days than world statesmen, while the pundits of the chat shows carried more weight than the President of France himself. Inevitably, Madame Routy would know Paul Horgon. Doubtless, she hadn’t missed a single beat of his heart since the series started.

  ‘It’s shocking,’ she said. ‘Arresting him like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, in front of everybody.’

  ‘What did they arrest him for? Surely you know.’

  ‘They say he assaulted a girl. One of the girls in the series.’

  ‘How did he assault her?’

  ‘How – ?’

  ‘With his fists? With an axe? With an iron bar?’

  Madame Pel looked up again. ‘Sexually,’ she said quietly.

  Pel gave Madame Routy a disbelieving stare. Doubtless the fans of General Hospital were filling the gutters with their tears that the rotten black-hearted flics should dare arrest their hero, while the cries of woe from the producers worrying about viewers’ ratings were setting the pigeons whirring into the air. It was amazing how important a man or woman could become merely because they could sit in front of a camera and lay their personality on the line. Even politicians failed these days because they couldn’t do that.

  ‘I expect the Police had their reasons for doing it the way they did,’ he said. ‘And if he’s guilty I hope they put him away for a long time.’

  ‘They couldn’t!’ Madame Routy was shocked. ‘The series depends on him!’

  Pel stared at her in amazement. ‘Name of God, woman,’ he said sharply. ‘The damned man’s only an actor! There’ve been four murders in this city recently – all women! – and you’re mooing like a sick cow about somebody who prances about in front of a television camera who’s probably got the potential in him to do the same! You wouldn’t have uttered a murmur of protest if he’d been a train driver or a shop assistant – or, for that matter, a policeman!’

  Madame Pel, who’d been listening to the exchange with some amusement, decided it had gone far enough and that if Pel wasn’t halted in mid-flow he’d probably explode with his indignation. She gestured to Madame Routy to leave and gently chided Pel for his outburst.

  ‘You mustn’t talk to her like that,’ she insisted quietly.

  ‘But, mon Dieu, to talk about a man as if he had a special dispensation from the Almighty to attack people just because he’s a television personality—’

  ‘Pel!’

  Pel stopped dead, recognising the iron hand in the velvet glove. He collected himself. ‘Geneviève de mon coeur?’

  She smiled her quiet smile. ‘She’s a widow and she has nobody.’

  Only me, Pel thought, both of us living with daggers drawn in a perpetual state of vendetta. It made him feel ashamed and he decided, though he knew it wouldn’t last, to be nicer to the old trout.

  ‘I was a widow, too, Pel. I know how lonely it can be.’

  Pel felt so humble he wondered if he ought to throw himself at her feet. She changed the subject abruptly.

  ‘My cousin wrote that she’d like to come and see us,’ she said. ‘She’d like to bring the children. They’ve read about you and they’d like to meet you. She says she’ll bring us some plants to get the garden going.’

  It did what she’d intended. Madame Routy forgotten, Pel subsided into a rumble of uncertainty. He didn’t mind the plants because they didn’t run about or make a noise, but he wasn’t so sure about the children. Madame worked on him, however, and by the time he rose to go his equanimity had been restored. Madame waved him off as he climbed into his car.

  He had avoided lighting a cigarette so far, but now he put one in his mouth and lit it from the car’s cigarette lighter. It wasn’t, he tried to persuade himself, because he needed a cigarette – surely he could overcome that sort of thing – but because this new car of his had this simple device which meant he could light a cigarette without taking both hands off the wheel. He’d paid for it so he might as well use it. No good Burgundian would wish to waste something he’d paid good money for.

 
One of these days, he decided, he’d buy himself a new suit to go with the new car. Before he’d married, in the days when Madame Routy could never find time between television programmes to press his suits, they had all looked as though he slept in them. Now, with Madame to watch over him and jolly him gently into clothes that suited him, he was in danger of becoming the pride and joy of the Police Judiciaire. Then he remembered that he’d just bought a new car. Perhaps he’d better wait, he decided carefully. Until next year. Or the year after. Or perhaps even the year after that. One of these days, anyway.

  He was actually beginning to feel better about things when Nosjean appeared in his office and punctured his balloon at once.

  ‘It’s all off, Patron,’ he said.

  ‘What’s all off?’

  ‘The identity parade I fixed up for Florence Remaud. Judge Brisard says it can’t go ahead.’

  ‘Why? They had the tankard.’

  ‘It’s because Florence Remaud’s pregnant, Patron. What’s more, she’s making the most of it. They’ve got Maître Gaborais to represent them, and he and Judge Brisard were talking all yesterday afternoon. Judge Brisard says we’ll never be able to line her up. Gaborais would eat us whole. And we’d have the press of half France on our necks. Putting a pregnant woman on an identity parade. Endangering her unborn child.’

  ‘Standing still? That’s dangerous?’

  ‘That’s the way Judge Brisard says we have to think, Patron, because that’s the way Gaborais will argue. There’s another thing, too. She’s dark. When she was seen by the Abrillards she was fair. Abrillard said so. So did the antique dealer in Chagnay. So did Mijo Lehmann.’

  ‘It was a wig.’

  ‘I know that. You know it, Patron. Doubtless, so do Judge Brisard and Maître Gaborais. But we didn’t find a wig and nobody saw her put it on or take it off. When Judge Brisard had them in his office she was as dark as I am and Mijo Lehmann says she wouldn’t dare identify a dark pregnant woman as a fair slender woman. Abrillard says the same. We’ve lost her, Patron. Judge Brisard doesn’t think it’s worth putting her in court even. Remaud’s got to go up before the magistrates on his own.’

  Pel shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suspect they’ll lie low for a bit after this, anyway. I don’t think for a moment they’ll give up crime. They’ll just try something else, somewhere else. In this job you have to console yourself with the thought that, even if it isn’t obvious, like a strong laxative we’re probably doing more good than we realise. And there’s always our friend, the Prowler.’

  Sixteen

  Indeed there was. By this time, the murderer had picked up a few more nicknames – Les Griffes, Claws; Saise-Gorge, Grab-throat – but, for the moment things were quiet again as Pel had suggested they would be.

  Unable to bring Florence Remaud before the magistrates, Brisard had had to concentrate his efforts on Georges Remaud but Maître Gaborais, being on the fly side, advised Remaud to plead not guilty to stealing but guilty to receiving and, because it was his first known offence, he was bound over and with his wife walked out of court past Nosjean and Pel with a large smile on his face.

  ‘It’s a wonder they didn’t give him a couple of thousand francs from police funds,’ Nosjean said bitterly.

  He seemed so downcast Pel took him for a drink, and because it was handiest, he chose the Hôtel Centrale. As they pushed through the swing door, they ran into what appeared to be the panic to end all panics. Gau, the manager, the under-manager and two assistant managers, to say nothing of the housekeeper, the receptionist and a few other officials were in a huddle in the entrance hall, all apparently blaming each other.

  ‘A check should have been kept,’ Gau was saying in a whisper that was as near to a shriek as it could get.

  ‘But we were instructed to give him all he asked for,’ one of the assistant managers protested.

  ‘There should –’ Gau spotted Pel and Nosjean standing in the doorway and shooed everybody away. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said urgently. He was looking pale. ‘You’ll have heard what’s happened? We just telephoned the Hôtel de Police.’

  As they talked, Darcy appeared. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  ‘I got a message that somebody was wanted urgently.’

  Gau tried to explain. ‘He isn’t Henri Bayetto at all,’ he said.

  ‘Who isn’t?’

  ‘The man who claimed to have won the lottery.’

  They were about to sit down when he ushered them out of the hall. ‘Under the circumstances,’ he said, ‘it might be better if it isn’t made too public. I’ll find a room for you and send in something to drink.’

  It turned out to be champagne. ‘Just the thing for a fatal illness, an operation, or conducting an enquiry at the Hôtel Centrale,’ Darcy grinned.

  When Gau reappeared he was carrying a businessman’s attaché case with a label on the handle stating it belonged to one Henri Bayetto.

  ‘From the safe,’ he said. ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘I doubt if that presents a lot of difficulty,’ Darcy said, fishing in his pocket and producing a bunch of keys.

  ‘He went out yesterday morning,’ Gau went on. ‘And he hasn’t come back yet. Then an hour ago I received a warning from a friend of mine at the Hôtel de la Poste at Lyons. He said they’d had a man there posing as Henri Bayetto, the lottery winner, and he’d left without paying his bill. He’d deposited an attaché case with them, believed to contain money, but they’ve just opened it because they heard the same thing had happened in Marseilles, Avignon, Valence and Bourg. It contained nothing but waste paper.’

  Darcy had the attaché case open now. It was packed tight with neat bundles, and they found themselves staring at a surface of brand new 100-franc notes.

  Gau’s face fell. ‘It’s not waste paper,’ he said, reaching hurriedly for the case. ‘My God, this could destroy us! We’d better return it to the safe at once!’

  Pushing his hands away, Pel leaned forward and carefully withdrew one of the 100-franc notes from the rubber band that was holding it to the top of its pile. Underneath was nothing but neatly-cut plain paper. Gau’s jaw dropped again.

  ‘It is paper!’ he whispered.

  His eyes swept frantically over the packed wads, trying to calculate if there were enough of the notes topping the piles to pay Bayetto’s bill. Darcy guessed what was in his mind and, taking the note Pel had withdrawn, held it up to the light.

  ‘Don’t build up too many hopes,’ he said. ‘Even these are forgeries.’

  Gau’s jaw clicked down again. ‘Name of God!’ he breathed in agony. ‘Merciers’, the jewellers, asked if we could vouch for him and I said we could! So did Demanges’, the tailors. He even bought an antique silver cigarette case from a dealer in Ferry-le-Grand.’

  ‘Which, doubtless,’ Darcy said dryly, ‘he’s already sold in St Seine l’Abbaye to raise some ready cash.’

  Gau clutched his throat. ‘He’s been buying on credit as if there’s no tomorrow. They’ll sue us.’

  It wasn’t hard to decide that ‘Bayetto’, like most people with criminal inclinations, was working to a pattern and was moving across the country from south to north, using big hotels in departmental capitals, and after remarkably few telephone calls from Gau’s office he was eventually turned up at the Hôtel du Centre in Chaumont. Only another five minutes were required to contact police headquarters there and half an hour and another bottle of champagne later, a telephone call was received to say that he’d been picked up, that there was another attaché case full of paper in the hotel safe, and that ‘Henri Bayetto’ was, in fact, one Maurice Jouhandeau, a printer from Nice. He had cut the paper on his firm’s guillotine and forged the 100-franc notes himself. He was sick of scratching for money, he said, and had decided to have one good blow-out whatever it cost him. It looked like costing him a stay in jail but, according to the Police in Chaumont, he didn’t seem worried. He’d had his blow-out and was prepared to pay the price.

  It was
only a small incident, really, but the two bottles of champagne had cheered Nosjean up and lightened the day a little at a time when light relief was badly needed.

  There was still no sign of the Prowler, however. He had vanished into thin air again. The nightly watch continued nevertheless and Claudie was still doing her patrolling through the dark streets. She had now been joined by a woman officer from Lyons and, though so far they hadn’t produced the Prowler, between them they had brought in three molesters, one of whom they’d never heard of and didn’t possess a record.

  They continued to wait. A man was brought in for shooting his workmate because he worked too hard, and finally they found the driver of the hit-and-run car which had killed the old woman in Borgny weeks before. Despite the lapse of time a suspicious repair shop foreman had remembered Nadauld’s instructions and had reported a car brought in for a new headlight. The owner had turned out to be the very priest who had pronounced his blessings over the body of the victim, on whose neck, by an irony, they had found a necklace carrying a medallion bearing the words: ‘In case of accident, call a priest’. Hurrying home from a meeting, he had been driving too fast and had failed to see her. Such was his horror and fear, he had not dared to stop and, though knowing perfectly well that his first duty should have been to attend a dying human being for whom he was responsible, he had spent the rest of the evening sitting in his car in the woods near Borgny, praying and trying to pluck up courage to return to his presbytery. The magistrates would inevitably decide that, while he might be forgiven for his panic, he would still have to pay a fine hefty enough to make the next few years of his life pretty spartan.

  By this time a lot of people were beginning to think that, like the Remauds, the Prowler had disappeared from the area. If he were operating in someone else’s territory, then the ball was out of their court for the moment. If he should turn up in Lyons or Marseilles or Paris or Toulouse or Amiens, they were ready with the details, but nothing happened and slowly they relaxed and the Chief’s conferences reverted to normal. Had he, like Jack the Ripper in London, died? Even the press seemed to have forgotten him.