by Paul Halter
Owen chuckled.
‘Good Heavens, Achilles, how did you arrive at such an arcane and preposterous solution? You’ve really made everything unnecessarily complicated. The truth is simple. So simple it can be explained in a single word.’
‘In a word,’ I huffed, incredulous. ‘The whole impossible murder explained away in a single word?’
‘Absolutely. And I must confess that it was our ravishing visitor that gave us the clue several times.’
‘Me?’ gasped Miss White, stupefied. ‘How did I do that?’
Owen pointed to the statuettes on the mantelpiece.
‘Yes, you inspired me, my dear. In that respect you deserve to take your place among my muses, whose grace you share, if I may be permitted to say so. The grace with which you discreetly pulled a handkerchief out of your bag. Could you repeat the gesture? It might inspire my friend.’
When the young woman, still bewildered, had obliged, Owen took the small white square between his fingers.
‘The word is “handkerchief,” Achilles. A simple handkerchief, similar to the one Chloe used to wipe her tears, when she found herself alone for a few moments beside her husband’s body. You, Miss White, had gone to fetch her some brandy.’
‘And you want us to believe she murdered her husband?’ I retorted. ‘That she performed a diabolical stratagem with a small square of cotton?’
‘Chloe Cavendish didn’t murder anyone, Achilles—although she certainly intended to do so—but someone else beat her to it.’
Turning to Miss White, he continued:
‘I’m quite prepared to believe there was nothing more than camaraderie between Chloe and her childhood friend. Did she decide to kill her husband because she dreamt of perfect love with the jockey? Or to get her hands on the large insurance that he had bought after squandering his fortune? Perhaps both. In any case, she put aside whatever she had originally planned once she heard about the curse of the ancient Iraqi, which she was sure she could exploit. So she sent the strange messages and arranged for the three “accidents,” which were easy for her to do, as she was constantly in his company. What could be more simple than pushing him in the back, opening a cage, or striking a match? Three messages, then, to reinforce the idea of a curse up until the final “accident,” namely the murder she had prepared but could not now carry out. It was too much! It was as if destiny was thumbing its nose at her.’
‘Someone got there first? But who?’
Owen shrugged his shoulders, as if it were self-evident.
‘Why, her husband, of course. In fact, Jeremy Cavendish did indeed commit suicide, just as everyone thought at the outset. He was obviously unnerved by the threats and the incidents, but most of all he was overcome by remorse. Once he was alone after his brother had left, he must have started to brood over the deadly consequences of the fire he had started: two innocent victims burnt alive and his younger brother, who would never forgive him, disfigured for life.
‘As soon as she saw his body, Chloe realised that her husband had done her a very bad turn. By killing himself, he had ruined her plans. She could no longer get rid of him and pass it off as an accident. As everyone knows, suicide would automatically invalidate the insurance policy. When she pulled out her handkerchief to mop her tears, it was no doubt because she was about to say goodbye to all that money. But then she had a flash of inspiration: she got up, handkerchief at the ready, wiped her husband’s revolver clean of prints, and put it carefully back under his hand. The job was done. It would be proved that her husband hadn’t held the gun, and therefore he had been killed by someone entering by the open French window. That was before the absence of any prints on the flower bed gave the crime its supernatural overtones.’
After a brief pause, Owen turned to me and added, laconically:
‘You see, Achilles, one can indeed perform miracles with a small piece of cloth. As I’ve always said: simplicity is everything.’
THE SCARECROW’S REVENGE
“Tonight is All Hallow’s Eve,” thought Janine. But she really didn’t want to think about the dead….
She was in the village cemetery in Gondeville, not far from Cognac. Standing in front of her mother’s grave, she surveyed the bleak surroundings as she prepared to place a pot of chrysanthemums there. The bright yellow stood out in contrast to the grey gravestones ranked like so many petrified ghosts. No, she really didn’t want to think about the dead; about one in particular… the man who had made her suffer so much and whose detestable presence continued to plague her. His remains lay in the same cemetery, not thirty metres away, beneath a granite headstone engraved with the accursed name Antoine Dupuis 1922-1966. The inscription flashed before her misty eyes and a lump came into her throat. Despite her religious beliefs, she couldn’t bring herself to stand in remembrance of the man whom she had married five years earlier. To her mind, it would have been blasphemous to pay homage to his memory. She had never thought she could hate someone so much, even after his death. A sudden breeze caused the nearby cypress trees to quiver and tousle her blond locks. Shuddering, Janine sensed a glacial hand on her shoulder, as if reaching out from beyond the grave. She let fall the chrysanthemum pot, which broke at her feet, and burst into tears. She would never be able to drive him out of her mind… his memory would haunt her until the end of her days.
A short while later she was walking up the path to the family farm on the outskirts of the village. The visit to the cemetery had distressed her more than she had expected. She felt Antoine’s presence everywhere, in the slightest shape or silhouette, like the sinister scarecrow guarding the small garden opposite the front door of the farm. She swallowed hard, rubbed her eyes, and strode determinedly into the huge living room, to be greeted by shrewd looks from her father Gaston and her uncle René. Their eyes, full of sadness, gleamed in the gloomy interior. They knew how she was suffering.
A few days later, in the huge rustic room which served as lounge and dining area, René Roussel was seated alone at the table, eating his breakfast. At the very moment the clock on the wall chimed eight, he heard the sound of a Citroën 2CV coming to a stop outside the front door. The familiar figures of his friend Lambert Lesage, a retired policeman, and his grandson Daniel, a handsome fair-haired young man, appeared on the doorstep. Beckoning them in, René remembered they had planned to go fishing that morning in the pond near the woods. He offered them a libation, which they politely refused, but they gratefully accepted the offer of coffee. A few minutes later his wife Maria arrived with the steaming cups. After thanking her, Lambert observed:
‘Lousy weather. You can hardly see your hand in front of your face. I had to use the headlamps to drive here. But I don’t suppose it’ll bother the fish much!’
He laughed at his own joke, but when nobody else did he went on:
‘Are you coming along, René?’
‘No, sorry, not this time.’
‘What about your son?’
‘He’d been planning to go out with some friends, to play boules or archery, but in this weather….’
Lambert stared hard at him, frowning:
‘Is everything OK, René?’
René shook his head, looking solemnly at Daniel, and explained:
‘Janine’s not herself… She had a bad nightmare….’
‘Still because of him?’ growled the young man, clenching his fists.
‘Of course. Who else?... Last night, she even imagined he was the scarecrow in the garden—.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ said Daniel. ‘I thought the same thing myself as we were driving up. They’re as like as two peas.’
‘—a homicidal scarecrow, who attacked Gaston with a pitchfork.’
‘Poor girl… May I see her? Is she already up?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied René, taking out a packet of cigarettes. ‘So far I haven’t seen anyone this morning. Not Janine, nor our Marc, not even Gaston, who’s normally an early riser. Curious, that….’
; ‘René,’ interrupted Maria brusquely, ‘be so good as to smoke outside, if you don’t mind. You know Marc hates the smell of tobacco when he gets up.’
Her husband shrugged his shoulders and went outside, muttering to himself. Before the door closed behind him, his visitors could hear: ‘Children in charge…World upside down,’ and other snatches. But when he reappeared five minutes later, he was as white as a sheet. He stared at each of his friends in turn and stammered:
‘Gaston… dead… stabbed with pitchfork… just in front of that damned scarecrow….’
A few days later, in the lounge of the Hôtel du Parc in Jamac, two men were discussing the tragic death. One of them was Commissaire Pierre Legrand, a small man with bushy eyebrows, whose worried look was no doubt the result of the bewildering case which had landed in his lap. One of his colleagues had informed him that the renowned British criminologist Dr. Alan Twist, a specialist in impossible crime, was in town. Legrand had immediately sent a message to the detective at the Hôtel du Parc, where he was staying, asking for his help. Twist had replied that he would be more than happy to lend a hand, but only on condition that it was an exceptionally difficult case. The commissioner assured him he need have no doubt on that score.
Dr. Twist was as thin as the policeman, but that is where the resemblance stopped. He was very much taller and very much less agitated. Thoughtful, almost dreamy eyes looked out above a magnificent ginger moustache and a beaming smile.
‘A man killed by a vengeful scarecrow? That’s certainly out of the ordinary,’ he declared jauntily as he took out his pipe.
‘That’s putting it mildly,’ moaned Commissaire Legrand, slumped in an armchair. ‘Wait until you hear the details and just what makes it an “impossible” crime. It was a bit of luck that an ex-gendarme, Lambert Lesage, was on the spot at the time, for he was able to preserve the evidence—in the form of footprints on the wet soil. It had rained heavily the previous night until about two in the morning, which is roughly when the murder took place, according to the medical examiner. After that, there had been a couple of small showers which had blurred the victim’s footprints, although they did remain clearly discernable. They started at the front door of the house and went as far as the scarecrow, a distance of about forty metres. I must stress they went in one direction only. Gaston Roussel was lying face down at the scarecrow’s feet, stabbed in the back by one prong of a pitchfork. The weapon had been part of the scarecrow’s paraphernalia from the start—and had always had a menacing air about it. And some of the straw which had been used to make it was scattered all around.’
‘As if there’d been a fight?’ asked Dr. Twist happily.
‘Yes,’ sighed Legrand. ‘Gaston Roussel was in his pyjamas, but had also put on a jumper and an oilskin. At eight o’clock in the morning his brother René went out to smoke a cigarette. It was quite foggy, so he didn’t see the fallen victim at first. What drew his immediate attention was the scarecrow, which was now wearing the working clothes of the late Antoine Dupuis, ex son-in-law and sworn enemy of the victim since his divorce from Janine, his niece. René went straight over to the scarecrow—some forty metres, as I said—and was horrified to see the body of his brother lying on the muddy ground at its feet. He turned back towards the house to give the alarm, leaving two sets of his own clear footprints. According to the experts they were recent and had not been blurred by the rain showers, as had those of the victim himself. Also according to those same experts, the two sets of footprints were genuine. What I mean is free of all trickery, such as someone walking in them to conceal his or her own footprints. And they were the only footprints inside a radius of forty metres around the scarecrow, where the wet soil would certainly have shown the footprints of anyone else who might have ventured out during the night.’
Dr. Twist stroked his chin:
‘And there were no firm spots inside the perimeter, which could have taken someone’s weight?’
‘No, apart from an old willow tree and the water pump opposite the farm door. But they’re both more than thirty metres from where the body was found.’
‘The facts are astonishing enough,’ observed Twist, ‘but they’re a long way from proving there’s a vengeful scarecrow.’
A cunning gleam appeared in the policeman’s eye.
‘I haven’t told you everything, my friend. That same night, at around one o’clock in the morning, Janine had a terrible nightmare. She dreamt that her late ex-husband, Antoine Dupuis, had come back to haunt her and had taken on the appearance of the scarecrow. And he’d fought with her father Gaston, who’d come to her defence. When Antoine stabbed Gaston with the pitchfork, Janine awoke screaming, which woke the rest of the house up. René, Gaston and young Marc came quickly to her bedside to calm her. Only Maria, René’s wife, who’s a bit hard of hearing, stayed in bed.’
‘A premonition, no less!’ chuckled Dr. Twist, puffing happily on his pipe. ‘A premonitory dream about revenge from beyond the grave, which comes to pass a few hours later in the form of an impossible crime. Right up my street! But at this stage, Commissaire, I think it would be useful to tell me more about the protagonists, and in particular about the strange animosity between our “scarecrow” Antoine Dupuis and the Roussel clan….’
‘Of course. The Roussel brothers, René and Gaston, run an agricultural business which they inherited from their parents. The farm houses the entire family: René, his wife Maria and their son Marc who’s twelve years old: Gaston, the older of the two brothers, was nearly sixty and effectively the head of the family. He married late and his wife, Mathilde, died of lung disease shortly after bearing him a daughter, Janine, on whom he lavished all his affection. When she was twenty years old, she fell in love with Antoine Dupuis, a man twice her age who had just left the army, whom she married over the opposition of the family—particularly of her father. But eventually the two men became friends and Antoine Dupuis, enterprising and hardworking, joined the business. René even gave him part of his land. The newly-wed couple moved in under the family roof. Everything went smoothly until Janine fell for a young man in the village as passionately as she had come to detest her husband, whose pathological jealousy she could no longer stand. Things got worse after Antoine beat the daylights out of his rival, who left the village shortly thereafter. Janine obtained a divorce, but Antoine, instead of following his rival’s example, stayed where he was—as the legal arrangements previously made by his father-in-law allowed him to do. Bitter and filled with hate, he proceeded to ruin their lives, particularly Janine’s, whose treachery he hadn’t forgiven. He chased away any young man who came courting. Relations between the military man and his ex-father-in-law were just as execrable, on a personal level as much as a professional one, for their affairs were inevitably intertwined. But bad health finally put an end to the intolerable situation. In the space of a few months, Antoine Dupuis fell victim to stomach cancer. On his deathbed he told Janine that his ghost would return to haunt her for the rest of her days. Successfully, as you might say. All the foregoing events date from two years ago, since when poor Janine’s life has been one crisis after another as she senses the vindictive presence of her ex-husband in every shadow.’
Dr. Twist nodded solemnly. After a thoughtful silence he asked:
‘Is she pretty?’
‘Yes, indeed. A ravishing twenty-five-year-old blonde.’
‘And no Prince Charming has come along since then?’
‘Well, yes. Daniel Lesage, the gendarme’s son, who came with him the day the body was found.’
‘Ah, yes. The one who observed that the scarecrow looked like Janine’s ex-husband.’
‘That’s the one. They’re planning to get married soon. But, notwithstanding all the mystery, I haven’t lost sight of the inheritance. And what Gaston will leave will be quite a pretty sum. The land alone is worth a small fortune.’
‘Divided between his brother and his daughter, I imagine?’
‘No. He made a will. It all g
oes to Janine.’
About a kilometre outside the village, a strange tree, which reminded Dr. Twist of a baobab, marked the turn-off to a dirt road leading to the Roussel farm. Its exotic appearance was accentuated by the bright sun shining in a cloudless sky. As they drove up, the detective noticed several large sheds to his right, followed by the farm itself. Its façade consisted of large blocks of yellow stone pierced on two levels by ten windows and a glass-fronted door, opposite which stood a large weeping willow bordering a small pond and a dilapidated water pump. Beyond was a vegetable garden guarded by the famous scarecrow. And beyond that were nothing but pastures separated by barbed wire fences.
As soon as they arrived, the commissaire led Dr. Twist to the scene of the crime.
‘You see,’ he said to his companion, ‘it’s completely open space. How could any would-be murderer have approached the body and returned without leaving any prints?’
‘But the culprit is there,’ replied Twist with a mischievous smile, pointing to the scarecrow, now reduced to its frame of branches and twigs held in place by iron bands. ‘And you say it was wearing the late Antoine Dupuis’ working clothes?’
‘Yes. They looked like the old combat fatigues he always wore, together with a khaki peaked cap. According to all the witnesses, it wasn’t wearing them the day before. Dupuis’ clothes were on a rack in a little-used shed behind the house because nobody had thought to throw them out. You know how it is on a farm: nobody ever throws anything away, lest it might come in useful some day. That’s why bric-a-brac is always piling up.’