Pel and the Prowler

by Mark Hebden

  His temper barely under control, the Chief delivered a lecture which, though he was well aware it was unfair, verged on the accusatory. But the comments from outside were beginning to get under his skin by this time and he was lashing out in all directions without much thought for whom he hit.

  Pel’s conference, which followed, was no different. It had started all over again, the questioning, the lists of names, the checking and the rechecking. Nobody had produced any information about bloodstains and all their suspects seemed to have alibis. Somewhere among them, Pel knew, one of them was false but so far they hadn’t found it. Nosjean had checked the suggestion of witchcraft and come up with nothing. There were a lot of people who knew a lot about it but none who knew what an H or an M or an N or a W might mean.

  The list of suspects was as long as your arm and included every possibility – even people like Bigeaud, the molester of women, and the owner of the Bar de la Renaissance, who by this time had admitted sleeping with Marie-Yvonne You. And it could still be someone they’d not even heard of, someone who was a stranger, a foreigner even. France was full of visitors, tourists, leftovers from other people’s revolutions, and people who preferred France simply because she was France.

  And 1940? What did it mean? Looking down the list of names that had come to the surface since the first murder, Pel had to admit that it couldn’t possibly mean much to many of them.

  For hours he sat with a dictionary. The most likely letter cut on the victims’ faces appeared to be an H and it had to have some significance. But what? To the Prowler, it seemed to represent vengeance. But for what? And what had 1940 to do with it? Not one of the victims could by the remotest stretch of imagination be blamed in any way for what had happened then. Could the marks perhaps have been an M – for Moussia, who was an oddity if ever there were one? Or even a crude J – for Josset? Could it be an H for Hélin who, they had established, went with prostitutes? He had admitted knowing Alice Magueri and finally Marie-Yvonne You, and, though he denied knowing the Guégan girl, there was a chance he was lying about it as he’d originally lied about Alice Magueri. At that moment in the absence of Judge Polverari, sick in bed with flu, he was being questioned by Judge Brisard who was trying to trip him up over Marguerite de Wibaux.

  But if it were Hélin, why? What had he to do with 1940? The De Wibaux girl wasn’t a prostitute – quite the contrary, as Hélin had good reason to know – which meant that if the women had been killed, as they believed, because they’d been assumed to be on the streets, then Marguerite de Wibaux must have been killed only because she’d been seen with Hélin, who was known to go with prostitutes and she’d therefore been assumed by the killer to be also of loose morals. But that implied that Hélin didn’t do it because he knew very well that Marguerite de Wibaux wasn’t of loose morals. They were going round in circles.

  ‘Didn’t the Parisians brand women who went with the Germans?’ Pel asked. ‘In the Liberation in 1944. They stripped them and marked their foreheads with swastikas. Could that account for “1940”?’

  ‘Others as well as the Parisians went in for branding scarlet women,’ Darcy said dryly. ‘Didn’t the Protestants do it in America?’

  ‘We haven’t many Americans here,’ Pel said. ‘They prefer Paris or St Trop’.’

  Nevertheless, Brochard was delegated to find out more about it because nothing, however small, could be missed. Meanwhile, the check on the male inhabitants of the Rue de Rouen district was still going on, though nothing so far had emerged.

  ‘It will,’ Darcy said with certainty. ‘You’ll see, Patron. It’ll come up eventually. Out of the ground when we’re least expecting it – like the mighty Wurlitzer.’

  They had discarded almost at once the idea that the new killing was a copycat murder. And the search for the weapon had turned up nothing, so they could only assume that the knife which had ended Gilbertine Guégan’s life was still in the killer’s pocket, waiting for his next victim.

  The printed sheet which had carried on its rear surface the message from the Prowler had been missed from seven post offices in the city alone. But no one had noticed it disappear and none of the people involved in the issuing of the sheet could possibly be involved, while not one of the men on their books could be proved to have owned a red felt-tipped pen or clothing which carried bloodstains. Only Hélin in fact had objected to having his clothing examined and they could even put that down to the monumental chip on his shoulder and his hostility to the Police. Nothing had been found at dry cleaners or laundries and there were no fingerprints on the message.

  There was one point that both Darcy and Pel noticed, however. For the first time they had a victim with two names which began with a letter with a curve in it. In every other case, one or both of the names had had initial letters which could be formed with straight slashes of a knife and might be mistaken for an H.

  ‘Unless,’ Darcy said, ‘it’s a crude G. After all, carving your initials on dead flesh in a hurry can’t be easy.’

  The pressure was kept up, and several public-spirited men put up a reward for information. Immediately, the Hôtel de Police was swamped with telephone calls from people eager to claim it. Someone had seen a man covered with blood in Aignay. Nobody else in Aignay had, however. Hotel registers were examined. Every pervert in the city was checked again. The usual hoaxers who thought it funny to burden the already over-burdened Police with false alarms, the clairvoyants who saw bodies in coal sheds, wood sheds, forests and cornfields, all had to be checked and all were proved to be false. Every postbag brought letters on all sorts of paper. Most of the anonymous ones turned out to have been sent by malicious neighbours.

  Madame returned from Paris, full of gentleness as she saw the strain in Pel’s face. Madame Routy got a mouthful that staggered her when she attempted to tell him to wipe his feet. When Leguyader tried to be funny, he, too, was slammed down with a speed that startled him. And while Darcy’s teams continued with their enquiries, while the city’s inhabitants locked their doors at night, while Claudie Darel and the woman from Lyons trudged their lonely patrols, watched by the rest of the squad, Pel and Darcy – now with Nosjean to help – went again and again through the reports.

  ‘“Ah”, Patron,’ Nosjean said, looking up.

  Pel looked up. ‘“Ah”?’

  ‘Monique Letexier. She said he said “Ah”. But that somehow it was different from the way most people say “Ah”. Does it mean anything?’

  ‘What might it mean? How many ways can you say “Ah”?’

  Nosjean shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Patron,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t know. And this letter he carves on their cheeks. Now that we’ve had Gilbertine Guégan, it doesn’t seem to stand for their names any longer.’

  ‘That was a doubtful starter from the beginning,’ Darcy said. ‘How could he know their names before he killed them? They came from different parts of the city and he doesn’t seem to have chatted them up first.’ He tossed down the papers he was going through and rose to his feet. ‘I’m going to have another talk with the Letexier girl, and the You woman,’ he said. ‘You never know. They might have remembered something important.’

  But he didn’t sound very hopeful.

  Nineteen

  When Pel called on Doc Minet for his report on Gilbertine Guégan, the old man was tired and dispirited. As he pushed the folder across he sighed and opened a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘I thought you’d given up,’ Pel said.

  Doc Minet shrugged. ‘I’ve started again. This sort of thing makes you.’ He managed a twisted smile. ‘I had an aunt once who always had a cigarette in her mouth, even when she was preparing meals. I never saw her knock the ash off so I can only think it fell in the food. But she must have stirred it in well because nobody was ever ill. Perhaps it’s less dangerous than people would have us believe.’

  Pel closed the folder and leaned forward. ‘What makes an obsessive murderer?’ he asked abruptly.

  Minet shru
gged. ‘I’m not a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Surely you know?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ Minet shrugged. ‘Usually they’re people who never grow out of boyhood ideas. They can be perfectly normal in other ways, though. Charming. Warm. Kind. Unobtrusive. Law-abiding. Usually over-serious, mind you, or resentful, and hot-tempered over imagined grievances. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Go on. Anything else?’

  ‘Politically vehement but also usually politically naive. Unstable. Self-centred. Often in a depressed state. Unbalanced opinions. And tricky. Very tricky.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘They can seem simple and kind but that’s because they’re also cunning and can put on an act.’

  Pel paused. ‘What causes them to become like this?’

  ‘Hereditary genes as a rule. It’s there in the blood. Usually there’s a trace of it in one of the parents, but it can miss a child, of course, and appear in the grandchild so that its parents, knowing nothing of their own parents’ aberrations, are startled to discover their child’s an oddity. It usually lies dormant through the early years, then starts because of something traumatic that’s happened, or even for no clear reason at all. But not always. Perhaps it’s just that he had problems with his relations with women. In some people the sex drive’s strong enough, if no other outlet’s available, to drive them to rape.’

  ‘There’s been no rape.’

  Minet gestured. ‘Perhaps he’s incapable. Perhaps he suffers from frustration and works out his frustration in this way. Perhaps he’s a homosexual even, working out a grievance against women. How do we know? Despite what the psychiatrists say, we still don’t know a lot about the workings of the mind. The psychiatric boys think they know but, in my opinion, half the time they need as much study themselves as the people who lie on their benches.’

  The old man sighed. ‘And it’s true to say,’ he went on, ‘that many people with psychiatric problems would probably never have had them if they hadn’t first been told about them or read about them somewhere in a book. Psychiatry’s like gardening: plant the seed and it can take hold and multiply until a perfectly normal human being can discover he has problems he’d never dreamed about. And if that’s what psychiatry does, then it has little real value, and a psychiatrist’s no better judge of a man’s state of mind than anyone else. Especially since patients in mental homes soon learn how to handle them. Anyone who wants a quick release is usually bright enough to learn to give the answers that will expedite it. Because they can’t break out, they soon realise they can get out by convincing the people in charge of them that they’re safe. There’s far too much written and said these days about mental illness and people can grow infatuated with their symptoms. Perhaps when I retire I’ll spend my time writing about it.’

  ‘Are you going to retire?’

  ‘I’m getting to that age.’

  Pel hesitated because the old man seemed weary. ‘Do you have a list of city psychiatrists?’

  Minet heaved himself from his chair and took down a book from a shelf. ‘If you’re looking for a list of oddballs,’ he said, ‘you might also try the social workers and the university Social and Psychological Department. Everybody knows that every generation’s in a worse psychological mess than the one before it and I dare bet there are more psychiatric cases at the university than there are anywhere else.’

  It was a sweeping statement. On the strength of it, Pel decided, Doc Minet ought to be admitted with Didier as an honorary member of the Society of Bigots. It would be nice to have some company.

  Climbing into his car, he headed for the Department of Social Service. The director was a thin-faced man who looked as though he were in need of help himself.

  ‘We have a number of people on our books suffering from obsessive emotions,’ he admitted. ‘None of them are likely to be murderers, though.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ Pel said. ‘I’d like a list.’

  ‘You can’t go along and question these people, you know. They’re often on a knife edge. They’d be upset for days. It would take my people all their time to get them straight again.’

  ‘Which would you rather have?’ Pel asked acidly. ‘One or two of your customers upset for a bit and your workers a touch overworked, or another woman dead in the city?’

  The director gave him a shocked look but he agreed to get out a list for him.

  The psychiatrists in private practice took roughly the same view but it didn’t stop Pel getting his lists. It was surprising what Pel, who was far from prepossessing, could do when he chose to. Most of the psychiatrists were tall, handsome, languid men noted for their calmness and charm, while Pel was short, indifferent-looking and eccentric, and because of his temper, bigotry and obsessions, might easily have been considered as a case by any one of them. But before he’d finished, he’d bullied them all into dipping into their files.

  Finally, he went to the university and called on the resident psychiatrist there. He was a young doctor called Mahé who was refreshingly cheerful and didn’t seem to take his job too seriously. He appeared, in fact, to feel it was just a more cushy way of making a living than working a practice or patrolling the wards of a hospital.

  ‘Of course modern students are susceptible to strains,’ he admitted. ‘More than ever before. Modern life causes strain and it’s increased for students by the fact that they have to pass their examinations. Sometimes exam results are the only way of getting a job and for a lot of them these days there won’t be a job even then, degree or no degree. That doesn’t help. They’re a funny lot, anyway. They believe in nothing these days. Je m’en foute – I don’t give a fuck: that’s their favourite expression, and they all seem to want to avoid the adult rat race that comes after university. When you ask them their ambition they say it’s to be put in a satellite circling the earth.’ Mahé grinned. ‘Most of it’s show-off, of course, and because they’re young, but you have to face it, most of them are struggling on grants and they don’t see a lot of dolce vita.’

  ‘Are they all the same?’

  ‘Name of God, no! A few, with wealthy or indulgent parents, have a wonderful time dashing about in cars, but even some of those fall into what you might call depressing company.’

  Like Marguerite de Wibaux, Pel thought.

  ‘Some of them sail through it, though. They come here determined to have a good time and they make sure they have it. And they’re sometimes the ones who get good results, because they don’t exhaust themselves with their studies. Even a few of the bright ones decide that educational slavery’s not what going to university’s about – which it isn’t, of course – so they do their own thing. They don’t have the clubs and societies here like they do in some countries – and the club centre doesn’t amount to much more than a few rooms with a bar, a ping-pong table, a notice board with an appeal for digs or free lifts to Paris, and a record player for the surboums on Saturday nights. But if they’re level-headed, they manage to enjoy life and have a wonderful time and end up with good second-class degrees. They’re often the ones who get the best jobs and turn out to be the best, most-balanced citizens.’

  Doctor Mahé smiled. ‘But there are, of course, the clever ones who come up hoping for a first-class degree because they feel they ought to have one, or because their parents are pushing them, and sometimes they ruin their health getting them. Sometimes, even, they don’t get them, because they work too hard and pass their peak before the examination. Finally, there are the other two classes – the geniuses, to whom nothing’s any trouble, and those who’ve just scraped into university and find it all too much for them. A few fall in love. A few fall out of love. A few get into debt. A few fall ill. A few change their minds. There are dozens of permutations.’

  ‘Do you have any names?’

  Mahé gave him the names without a murmur and Pel ran his finger down the list. There wasn’t one he recognised. He offered his own list but Mahé shrugged.

  ‘Moussia,’
he said. ‘I know him. Everybody seems to know him. A show-off. A boaster. Compulsive chaser of girls. Insecure childhood, I’d say, and it makes him aggressively self-assertive, but, as far as I know, nothing more.’ He glanced again at the list. ‘The others –’ he shrugged ‘ – I don’t know them and they’ve not asked to see me. With one exception.’

  ‘Oh? Who?’

  ‘Hélin.’

  Pel sat up. Judge Brisard had subjected Hélin to hours of questioning in which, so Pel had heard, thanks to Hélin’s quick brain, Brisard had come off considerably the worse. But he’d had to let him go in the end because, like the Police, he’d been able to find no real reason to hold him, and his alibis had been too tight. Perhaps Mahé knew of things which so far had eluded the Police.

  ‘What’s his background?’ he asked.

  Mahé smiled. ‘Unusual,’ he said. ‘He was under supervision as a young teenager. Always in trouble with the Police or his school. I don’t know the details but eventually he pulled himself together and began to do well at school. He’d left it almost too late, though, and he had to flog himself to death to get into university. But he’s clever and he made it.’ Mahé paused. ‘Unfortunately, it changed him into a cynical young man with a house-sized chip on his shoulder. If he could only get a good job and –’ Mahé smiled ‘ – a decent girl who had some influence on him, he could become a useful citizen.’