by Graham Ison
The Cold Light of Dawn
Graham Ison
© Graham Ison, 1988
Graham Ison has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1988 by Macmillian London Limited.
This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter One
The tall, spare figure of Colonel Pierre Matthieu strode purposefully along the beach. His erect military carriage belied his seventy-four years, and had been strengthened rather than weakened by service in places as disparate as Normandy, Dien Bien Phu and Algeria. He was every inch a leader. Every sinew implied a familiarity with command, with decision, and the personality of a man who possessed an innate knowledge of what to do in an emergency.
The sun was rising over the hills behind him. To his right was the sea. Far out, between the two arms of the cove, little boats bobbed up and down at anchor, their bare masts pointing to the sky like some strange and wintered maritime forest. To the south La Cruche d’Or Restaurant stood on its rocky headland, aloof like its owner, the formidable Madame Lebrun.
Behind him, on the road to the fishing port, café keepers, already astir, had started to set out their chairs and tables on the pavement, and in the roadway too. Some were planting colourful parasols in the little holes in the tables, but leaving them folded down for fear of tempting providence too much.
But Colonel Matthieu saw nothing of this. With a fierce Gaullist pride in his country, he resented the annual invasion of holidaymakers, predominantly British, who flooded his native Brittany; but had to accept, unwillingly, that it was helpful to the economy. As a consequence he did his best to avoid them. Religiously taking his morning constitutional at six o’clock, he stomped along the water’s edge, head down, occasionally deviating to avoid the large holes that the previous day’s sun-worshippers had dug in the sand as wind-breaks.
His greying Flanders hound, Idol, followed him at a distance of about three metres, keeping pace, occasionally stopping to investigate a piece of jetsam or a strange odour, but always returning to his proper station to the rear of the Colonel, pausing when he did, moving on when he did.
The Colonel knew, the moment he sighted the body, that it was dead. He had seen enough dead bodies in his lifetime to have developed an instinct for death. It lay face down, clad only in bikini briefs, the left arm thrown out above the head, carelessly, revealing the slight bulge of the breast. The chestnut hair was wet and tangled, and the tide, now turning, lapped gently at the shapely thighs, and left little puddles in the white sand around the body.
For a moment or two Colonel Matthieu gazed thoughtfully at the young woman, and then glanced at his dog. ‘Garde!’ he said gruffly. The dog, accustomed all his life to military commands, sat on his haunches beside the body.
Colonel Matthieu made his way to the telephone at the end of the esplanade, near the road that led up to the restaurant, and tapped out 17. The gendarme who received the call had been only minutes on duty, but became alert instantly. Not because a dead body had been found, but because the finder was Colonel Matthieu who barked out precise details of what he had found, where he had found it, and the circumstances. Then he added, automatically, a string of instructions to the policeman. Colonel Matthieu could not resist giving orders.
A little while later a van arrived containing two gendarmes. They walked down on to the beach where the Colonel and his dog waited. They looked sceptically at Idol who showed them his teeth and growled until silenced by his owner. Minutes later a small Peugeot police car arrived, a winking blue light on its roof, and the party was joined by the Maréchal des Logis-Chef, the non-commissioned officer in charge. The Chef saluted the Colonel, then took off his kepi and scratched briefly at his closely cropped head. Although infrequent, drownings were not unknown on this stretch of coast. People got into difficulties while swimming; they fell off yachts; they toppled off cliff tops; but usually the police were already aware that they were missing by the time that their bodies were eventually found. But no one had reported the absence of a shapely young redhead.
The Chef surveyed the scene, walking backwards and forwards and around; then he went to his car and made a call on the radio. For ten minutes or so the gendarmes stood around, chatting and smoking their foul cigarettes. Then a police photographer arrived and set up his apparatus, taking pictures of the body from every imaginable angle. The Chef issued a string of orders, and the gendarmes dragged the body clear of the water, which had now receded so that it lapped only the ankles, and turned it over. For a moment or two the gendarmes stared at it in reverent silence, one shrugging his shoulders with Gallic regret. They were not awed by death, which they had seen many times, but that a girl so attractive should be lying dead at their feet. Then a blanket was fetched and thrown over it.
One of the gendarmes started making notes. No police force in the world can take any sort of action without writing it all down. He took the Colonel’s personal particulars, despite the fact that the gendarme who had received the telephone call had already done so. And then he took a detailed statement of how and when and where the discovery had been made. He even injudiciously enquired the name of the dog, but the Chef tutted and waved his hand in a brief gesture of negation. He knew the Colonel, and he knew that the Colonel was starting to show signs of impatience with this petty officialdom. He also knew that the Colonel sometimes talked to Captain Courbet who was the Chef’s boss.
Another vehicle arrived — this time a van summoned specially from the mortuary. Two attendants carried a cradle-like stretcher across the sand and placed the body in it with all the ceremony of two men humping a sack of potatoes. Finally, the Chef saluted the Colonel and the gendarmes left.
By this time people had started to appear on the sand, some attracted by the activity and the blue lights, others who were intent on an early swim before the now rapidly rising sun became too hot for them. Colonel Matthieu regarded them testily and, growling at his dog, completed his walk. He reached the café and sat down, unfolding the newspaper he had bought on the way, and waited for the coffee and croissants which he had every morning for breakfast, while Idol sat at his feet, drinking from the bowl of water he too had every morning. Every now and then he would pause and glance up at the Colonel wondering if today was the day when he would be given some peanuts, but it was an event which happened rarely.
‘You are late this morning, mon Colonel,’ said the woman who kept the café.
‘Yes,’ said the Colonel.
*
The girl’s body lay in the mortuary at St Brouille for three days. For three days the gendarmerie waited for someone to inform them of a missing swimmer. No one did.
‘I see no alternative but to investigate this death, Givry.’ Captain Jules Courbet sat at his desk; he had come to the conclusion with reluctance. ‘Here we have the body of a beautiful young woman, arriving on our beaches, and no one claims her.’
‘Perhaps she is not from here, Captain,’ said the Maréchal des Logis-Chef hopefully. ‘Maybe she fell from a yacht in the Golfe de St Malo. There are many yachts in and out of St Malo.’
‘So you are now an expert on sailing, eh, Chef?’
‘It was a thought, that’s all.’ Givry spread his hands.
‘The tides from the Golfe de St Malo would not carry a body here,’ said Courbet. He glanced thoughtfully at the plaque on the wall, the plaque of the Yacht-club de St Brouille. The Captain was a sailing enthusiast — a fanatic, Givry thought. All his off-duty hours were spent working on his boat. Occasionally, Givry would say sarcastically, he even sails it. Courbet leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the middle distance, his fingertips together. ‘I think that body would have come from Le Roc Dent.’
‘But no one goes swimming from the Le Roc Dent, Captain. It is impossible to get into the water — it’s a sheer cliff face.’
‘But do not forget, Chef that there is a small beach, just to the east. It is possible to swim from there, but easy to get into difficulties. If that happened an ebb-tide would carry the body out, until it met the westward drift of the current, and the incoming tide would bring it in — here, in St Brouille.’
‘It is possible, Captain.’
‘But I am not an expert on tides, Givry. I just do a little sailing from time to time. We would have to consult an oceanographer who is an expert on this coast.’
‘But why, Captain? The girl was drowned swimming. She will have gone for a swim, got into difficulties — it is treacherous here at times.’
‘Why not go swimming from the beach here at St Brouille — why go all round to Le Roc Dent, eh?’
‘If she did,’ said Givry. ‘But why has no one come forward to tell us of this missing woman? It is three days, but nothing.’
‘And she was found at six o’clock in the morning,’ continued Courbet, as if Givry hadn’t spoken. ‘Which if my theory is correct, would have meant that she went off Le Roc Dent at about nine the previous evening. Almost dark. No one but a fool would go swimming from there at nine o’clock in the evening.’
‘Maybe she was a fool,’ said Givry. He made the same point again as he had made previously. ‘But why has no one told us of this missing girl?’
‘Perhaps she was alone here in St Brouille. Many people come on holiday by themselves, Chef.’
‘But, Captain, she must have been staying somewhere — even if she was alone in a hotel, she would have been missed. It has been in the newspapers, on the radio — on television, even; but not a word.’
‘It is a mystery, Chef — a mystery.’ He shrugged and stood up. ‘I suppose we shall have to seek a commission.’ He took his kepi from the top of the filing cabinet, flicked a speck of dust from the crown, and put it on.
*
The Procureur was called Philippe Jomard. Now fifty-seven years of age, he had been a rising star in his profession until coming to St Brouille twenty years previously. He had liked the little Brittany town and stayed, refusing all offers of promotion, and the transfers that would have gone with them.
He stood up, moving a wisp of grey hair from his forehead with one hand, extending the other. ‘My dear Captain Courbet.’ They shook hands. ‘You have doubtless come to see me about a certain young lady’s body which is an embarrassment to you, yes?’
Courbet nodded. ‘Three days, and no one has reported the girl missing.’
The Procureur seated himself behind his desk and took out his pen. ‘Well, then, Courbet, I suppose we had better start.’ He glanced up with a smile. ‘A requisition for an autopsy, eh? That is always a good place to start. We shall see what the good Doctor Vernet has to say first, then we shall consider what is to be done next.’ He signed the form in front of him and handed it to the gendarmerie captain. ‘Do you have time for sailing still?’
‘A little,’ said Courbet. ‘Unfortunately, dead bodies keep getting in the way.’
‘That’s life,’ said the Procureur, and laughed. He enjoyed a joke.
*
Doctor Henri Vernet started his examination by walking slowly round the body on the table. At a desk in the corner sat his secretary, a thin angular woman, who had worked with him for twenty years, and who knew his foibles, his preferences, and above all, knew his moods. Vernet peered closely in the mouth, and at the teeth. He looked at the nostrils, and surveyed the face for some seconds. Then he lifted the arms, examining the armpits, and studying the palms of the hands. Moving down the body, he searched every part, once taking a glass to inspect a scar on the lower abdomen. Then he scrutinised the feet, observing the soles, and probing between the toes. With a dexterity born of a lifetime’s practice, he turned the body on to its face, and started again from the head, first searching diligently in the hair, peering minutely at the scalp.
All the time he worked, he talked, sometimes half muttering to himself, so that his secretary’s practised ear had to strain to hear what he was saying, as her pencil moved rapidly over the pages of her notebook, recording his every word in her immaculate shorthand.
‘Good.’ He looked up and acknowledged the gendarme’s presence for the first time. ‘You have been to an autopsy before?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. It is inconvenient to have people fainting all over the place. It’s distracting.’
Again he turned the body. Then he walked across to the bench where his instruments were laid out and selected a scalpel. ‘Right,’ he said, glancing briefly at his secretary. ‘Incision — throat to pubis.’ Slowly, and with meticulous care, he opened the redhead’s body right down the front. The gendarme gulped, breathed deeply, and wished that he could smoke a cigarette, but he knew that that would send Doctor Vernet into a towering rage.
‘Vagal inhibition,’ said Vernet, in matter-of-fact tones. He noted the look of puzzlement on the face of the Maréchal des Logis-Chef. ‘It means that the woman was not drowned …’
‘But …’
Vernet held up a hand. ‘Just listen,’ he said sharply. ‘I do not expect you to understand the scientific details, but in drowning I would expect to find the lungs full of water — that’s putting it simply; there are other, more technical reasons for my conclusions. It will all be in my report,’ he added, off-handedly. The Chef opened his mouth again, but Vernet went on. ‘The first reaction would have been that she drowned while swimming, but that is not so. You may have thought,’ he said, with a sudden smile, ‘that because she was wearing a swimming costume — or half of one — that you had an ordinary accidental death, but someone who goes into the water in a swim-suit expects the water to be cold — they are expecting the shock. If the body had been fully clothed, well …’ He spread his hands. ‘Then maybe, yes.’
‘What are you saying to me?’ asked the Chef
‘I am saying that it is not what it seems, that you may have a murder on your hands.’ He paused. ‘But you are the policeman — not me. There was an English case which I’ve just been reading.’ He tapped a large volume on his desk. ‘The Brides-in-the-Bath case, in nineteen-fifteen. A man called Smith waited until his wife was in the bath, then he pulled her sharply by the ankles. When her head went under the water, the water rushed up her nostrils, killing her instantly. It is called vagal inhibition.’
‘Could it not have been an accident — this Smith man?’
Vernet smiled. ‘I think not. It happened to no less than three of his wives!’
‘It looks as though we will have to start an investigation.’
‘You are the policeman,’ Vernet said again. ‘I am only the pathologist; but first you will have to identify the woman. Unless you have done so already?’
‘No,’ said the Chef. ‘There is not even a report of such a woman missing.’
Vernet stood up, thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets. ‘My report, when it’s ready, will contain the approximate age — twenty-eight years, I should think — and a dental chart. There are a few other details —
the appendicectomy, and the fact that she has given birth to a child. Beyond that, very little. You have the briefs she was wearing — they may help. It is now your problem, my dear Chef.’
*
‘So we have a murder on our hands?’
‘According to Doctor Vernet.’ Courbet opened his briefcase and withdrew the pathologist’s report. Finding the place on the closely typed page, he said, ‘Vagal inhibition is the term he uses. It means that the woman did not drown.’
The Procureu, nodded. ‘I have heard of it before,’ he said. ‘A paralysis of the central nervous system?’
‘Exactly so.’
‘Does he say how he thinks it happened?’
Courbet proffered the report to the Procureur. ‘I have a copy of his report here for you.’
Jomard held up his hand. ‘I shall read it later. Perhaps you will just give me the salient facts.’
Courbet outlined what Vernet had already told the Maréchal des Logis-Chef, and now set out in greater detail in his report.
‘There is very little to go on,’ he said in conclusion. ‘A pair of briefs — the bottom half of a bikini — but who wears the top half around here?’
‘They have a label in them?’
‘No label!’
‘Ah, that’s good.’
‘Good?’
‘Of course. It shows intent on the part of the murderer to cover his crime. It convinces me that this is a murder.’
‘Perhaps they did not have a label to start with,’ said Courbet without very much hope that he was right. ‘But in any event it makes it harder to identify the woman.’
‘What an uninteresting world it would be, my dear Courbet, if everything was easy. Well, we had better start. Captain Jules Courbet …’ He spoke as he wrote on the form in front of him. ‘Of the Gendarmerie Nationale at St Brouille is hereby granted this commission rogatoire to investigate the death of an unknown woman whose body was found at …’ He paused and looked up, a quizzical expression on his face. ‘Six o’clock in the morning?’ Courbet nodded. ‘On Monday the twenty-fifth of August, and to bring before me such person or persons who may bear responsibility.’ He signed the form and fixed his official seal. ‘There, Courbet. Now sit down and have a glass of cognac, and we shall decide what is to be done.’