The Case of the Climbing Rat: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  Aumade, still not without hope, began asking about the relationships between herself and Letoque. He had been merely a friend, she said, though a very kind friend, and when questioned she admitted that he had proposed marriage and she herself had toyed with the idea.

  “But at my age one does not marry again without a great deal of consideration,” she said. “Also I have no illusions about myself.”

  So much for Mme Perthus. So exasperated was Aumade that he omitted to give the usual thanks and it was with something of an acerbity that he warned her to hold herself at the disposal of the authorities. The door closed on her and he could express his feelings.

  “It is inexplicable,” he said, and his hands quivered as he raised them. “Everything has been anticipated.”

  Then he was using much the same words as Gallois had used that morning to Travers when discussing whether the accident to Charles had really been an accident after all. It was, he said, as if Mme Perthus had involved herself in a whole series of sinister happenings, which perhaps were going on around them still, and of which they knew nothing. He himself had a feeling of being in an atmosphere of alarm which recalled that time in the Great War when beneath his feet he had heard faint sounds and knew that somewhere below was an enemy mine.

  Gallois gave a mournful shake of the head and committed himself to nothing. Travers asked if anything had been discovered about that cousin at Toulon.

  Aumade revealed that she was present and was ordering at once that she should be brought in. She was a spinster, he said, and her name was Vincent.

  At the very first sight of her Gallois stirred with an interest. She was a woman of the age of Mme Perthus, but gaunt and thin lipped. Her small close-set eyes were coldly watchful and her face had the yellowish paleness of a nunnery. Her clothes were black and a religious medal hung from a thin silver chain around her neck.

  Her voice had a monotony behind which was a vicious calculating brain. What she said in that room does not matter except that she verified in each detail the evidence of her cousin, and when she had gone there was on uneasy quiet as though the room had been relieved of the presence of something chill and malignant. It was a moment or two before Aumade could speak, and again he was making a gesture of helplessness.

  “These women baffle me,” he said, and again his hands were raised quiveringly to heaven. “It is perjury. Lies—nothing but lies! And yet, how can we prove it?”

  Gallois shook a sympathetic head. “If these women have made up their minds to commit perjury, then you are helpless. As for this Vincent, there is no doubt whatever that she has been bribed. If necessary others will be bribed.” He smiled ironically. “Mme Perthus has made an alliance with a viper and that viper will not be afraid to sting.”

  “Yes,” said Travers with a considerable disquietude. “That cousin holds her in her hand, like this. If Mme Perthus has been forced to make her her heiress, then in my opinion Mme Perthus is not very long for this world.”

  “There are methods of dealing with vipers,” said Aumade grimly. “But about the conduct of this investigation what do you advise?”

  “One might try to create discord between the two,” Gallois said. “In a case like this everything is legitimate. Tell one of them that the other has said this, and out of that you will find something to tell the other. That might make a crack into which you can insert your lever. Then at last you may have them accusing each other of perjury.”

  “A slow business,” said Aumade with a gloomy shake of the head, and Gallois wondered if he was thinking about his vines.

  “And there is Mme Brassier,” went on Gallois. “She also might be confronted with Mme Perthus. There will be recriminations and accusations and something is bound to be let fall.”

  Aumade nodded once or twice then was getting to his feet. Gallois proffered the hand of sympathy.

  “Notify us at once,” he said, “when you need our services. Meanwhile if there is any action which it seems to us we might take without first consulting with yourself, will you give us permission? There is Mme Dubois, for instance, with whom I would like to have something of a private talk.”

  Aumade not only gave permission but made something like entreaty. And so ended that early evening. Gallois, as he walked back to the hotel, could comment with a cynical relief.

  “Our good friend Aumade has had an experience which is unusual for himself,” he said. “All the time this Perthus tells her admirable story I say to myself, ’Alas, my poor Aumade, you now experience what I myself experienced for months when the relative of the victims of Bariche preferred to say nothing and would make martyrs of themselves in order to conceal that they were the dupes of one so devilish as Bariche.’ I tell myself that here again is a woman who will never announce to the world that she has been a dupe and make of herself a public scandal. Rather than make admission even in confidence she pays an enormous price. She places herself at the mercy of this boa constrictor, this Vincent, who will squeeze and squeeze until this Mme Perthus is only a pulp.”

  Then he shrugged his shoulders.

  “But that is not our affair. That is the affair of our poor Aumade. Now he will have his hands full of inquiries; interrogations out of which will arrive—nothing. As for us, we still keep Bariche to ourselves.”

  A faint uneasiness came over Travers, as it always did, at these glimpses of the ruthlessness in Gallois.

  “Yes,” he said, “for the moment there is no need to tell Aumade about Bariche. But what was that special reference you made to Mme Dubois?”

  “At once,” said Gallois, “we take her to the bureau of the photographer and show her that photograph of Jules Helmont. After that it is not impossible that to-night we should sleep at Cannes.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  GALLOIS IS CARELESS

  OVER an apéritif the two had a quick conference, preparatory to that interview with Mme Dubois.

  It was a pity, Gallois said, that the matter of Jules Helmont had not been gone into before. Not that he had ever lost sight of it, but it had been Aumade who had dictated the course of the inquiry, and Aumade knew nothing whatever about the trapezist and the curious affair of Auguste, the little climbing rat. Fournal had been sent to the circus on the off—chance of finding the person who had given the free ticket, and it was a hundred to one against his ever having clapped eyes on Helmont at all.

  “Whoever it was that gave the Dubois woman the ticket, I cannot fit him in,” Travers said. “Call him X for convenience. Did X arrange for Letoque to be alone so that X could kill him, or was X the agent of a third person? As far as I’m concerned that seems the really vital clue.”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders.

  “If X himself killed Letoque what was the motive?” went on Travers. “Are we to go back to that original idea of both Rionne and Letoque being connected with that dope gang in Switzerland, and was X therefore the emissary sent to get rid of them both?”

  “All these problems I also consider,” said Gallois, “and therefore I wish to see this Dubois. If she does not recognize the photograph of Helmont, then perhaps it will be as you say. If she says that here is the man who gave her the ticket, then we arrive at something which is more a mystery than before. Why should this trapezist, this Helmont, kill Letoque? For months he is with the circus. It cannot be that he is an emissary sent from Switzerland.”

  “Well,” said Travers, “after Mme Dubois has seen the photograph we shall have two perfectly clear courses open to us. If she recognizes Helmont, then we go and see Helmont. If she doesn’t recognize him, then Helmont’s out of the question. We might still go to the circus and try and succeed where Fournal failed and find someone else who really gave the ticket.”

  At the name of Fournal, Gallois made a gesture of amused contempt, and at that moment Travers caught sight of the photographer coming towards them across the road. He greeted Travers with particular friendliness and made no bones whatever about going back to the shop. When Travers told him
in confidence that Helmont was certainly not a mysterious celebrity, he was perfectly willing to part with the photograph.

  “So, for the first time I see this trapezist without a mask,” announced Gallois, trying his English out on Lebrun. With much frowning he held the photograph to the light. “He is not without character, and he has good looks.”

  “Take it to the window, sir,” Lebrun said. “You can see it better there.”

  But Gallois was all at once looking at nothing in particular, and mournfully shaking his head.

  “Somewhere I have seen this man,” he said, “and yet perhaps not. There is something which refuses to come back.”

  His lean fingers were feeling the air, and his brow was furrowed in the effort of thought.

  “It is annoying when one is certain and yet cannot remember.” In the light of the window he pored over the photograph, then handed it back with a gesture of resignation.

  “Always it escapes,” he said. “But about this photograph. It will be possible to prepare at once an enlargement?”

  Lebrun said it should be ready first thing in the morning. Then he ventured on a question or two of his own. There was something fishy about the trapezist? Was that why he had rigged himself up in the mask?

  The slang had left Gallois slightly puzzled, and it was Travers who made the non-committal replies and stressed the importance of absolute secrecy.

  Then before dinner Gallois was ringing the authorities at Cannes and finding that the circus was leaving that night for Nice, where it would make a stay of two days. Then another idea came to him. He rang the Sûreté, and his lip had an ironic droop as he gave his brief report. There had been something after all, he said, in that anonymous communication from Toulon, and though, of course, it was incredible that Bariche could have survived the Auteuil fire, he considered it necessary to remain for a day or two to collect information which he hoped might prove not without interest.

  Even at breakfast the following morning, Gallois had no idea what the day was to produce. The irony with which he had rung the Sûreté overnight was to recoil, as it were, upon himself. It was to be a dramatic irony, with himself as the unconscious victim.

  But it was Charles who was really worrying him that early morning, and he was ready to admit that there was a certain irksomeness in his being out of things. So over the coffee he made his announcement. M. Travers and himself might have to be away that morning at the circus, and Charles might therefore do much worse than pay a visit to Lizou where Dr. Debran could remove the stitches. Charles found the prospect reasonably pleasing, but pointed out a difficulty. There was still the risk of hurting the feelings of both Dr. Debran and Gabrielle, who were doubtless imagining the party had been at Mariette and were now back in Paris. There was also the fact that in spite of having promised to write, not a single one of the three had ever sent a word.

  “Explain,” said Gallois ingratiatingly, “that M. Travers and myself were summoned to assist the law, since when we have not had a minute. Therefore you come to make our apologies and to announce that we return to Paris.”

  Charles made no more difficulties. Gallois discerned at once a rather too willing acquiescence.

  “But this time you do not hire a car to go to Lizou,” he said. “You will avail yourself of the autobus.”

  The two collected the photographs from the Rue des Alpes. The lens of the smaller camera must have been exceptionally good, for the enlargement was superb. Gallois was remarkably pleased, and then, as he nodded benignly, his expression was at once changing. He stared, then darted a quick look at Travers, but the eyes of Travers were elsewhere. Then Gallois was shaking his head, for he knew that what he had discovered—or had seemed to discern—was something utterly impossible. Then there was something else he was remembering—that stony track where Travers had met Helmont. Then once more he was shaking his head and preferring for the moment to regard the idea as fantastic.

  “Something on your mind?” Travers was asking as they came out of the shop.

  Gallois smiled dryly. “There is an anxiety, perhaps, about this Mme Dubois, and if she will recognize him. Always one is anxious when one holds in the hand a clue that may be of importance.”

  Mme Dubois was to prove the exactness of Aumade’s description. Everything he had mentioned about her was easily enough discernible: the suspicious looks, the obvious wonder if there was some profit to be made, and behind everything the dull peasant sort of mind that is satisfied with its own powers and confident of the gullibility of others.

  “You have seen this man before?” asked Gallois, showing the enlargement.

  She did not know, she said, and was waiting to hear what was behind it all.

  “This was not the man you saw behind the olive tree?”

  She repeated, parrot fashion, what she had told Aumade, and how her eyes were none too good and the man had been a fair way off.

  “Then was this the man who gave you the free ticket for the circus?”

  She shook her head. That one had a moustache and wore glasses.

  Gallois smiled with an immense patience. When at last he had induced her to describe the kind of moustache, he sketched it in on the original photograph and also added the glasses. As far as Mme Dubois was concerned he had wasted his time. What she was far more interested in was whether either of the gentlemen knew of a decent family who would care to employ her, now that the Villa Sablons was empty.

  “There is one employer to whom I would offer her with satisfaction,” Gallois said, as they walked back to the car. “And that is to the cousin of Mme Perthus. As for what she tells us about this Helmont, she is, as Aumade says, an imbecile. It is better, I think, that she should be ignored. For my part, I think this Helmont may have given the ticket and perhaps at Nice there will be something we discover for ourselves.”

  At the circus, Gallois decided to employ no artifices or circumlocutions. He did not exhibit his credentials, it is true, but there was an authority in the way he was asking for Pertini himself, and almost at once he and Travers were being shown into a handsome motor-caravan which served as the headquarters of the circus proprietor. Pertini was a little bright-eyed man with a skin that was very dark and a moustache that was snow white, and his manners were deferential to the point of obsequiousness.

  “I did not wish to announce myself,” Gallois said, putting the credentials back in his pocket, “because I prefer that this visit should be confidential. Publicity of the wrong kind is good neither for the person concerned not for the circus as a whole. Now I will ask you to be so good as to look at this photograph. Do you know who the person is?”

  Pertini looked considerably surprised and admitted at once that it was M. Jules Helmont of the Helmont troupe of trapezists.

  “It is possible to bring him here without attracting undue attention?” asked Gallois.

  Pertini went to the door at once and called to someone to request M. Helmont to be so good as to come.

  “There is nothing serious?” he asked Gallois in a state of much perturbation. “I cannot possibly imagine M. Helmont doing anything that would bring him into trouble with the law.”

  But Helmont was already mounting the steps. He cast the mildest of looks around him as he came in, though he could not conceal a quick surprise at the sight of Travers. Travers thought it as well to pretend something of surprise also. Gallois was already speaking.

  “I am Gallois, Inspector of Police. You are Jules Helmont, the trapeze artist employed in this circus?”

  “A votre service, m’sieu l’inspecteur.”

  The voice was almost gentle, and nothing could have been more calm than his manner. He seemed politely surprised, though interested, when Gallois began describing briefly the murder of Letoque, but his eyes narrowed when it was announced that a witness had sworn that at the time of the murder a man of the exact description of himself had been seen in the neighbourhood of the Villa Sablons.

  Gallois paused for an answer. Helmont looked
blankly at Pertini, whose shrug of the shoulders was a gesture which indicated only too well that the witness who had stated such things was an utter fool. Helmont’s lip drooped.

  “It is absurd,” he said. “It is absurd because it is impossible. At the time you mention I was miles from Carliens. I was in the mountains in my car.”

  Gallois smiled with almost a gratification.

  “In order that this evidence which I have mentioned may be erased as incorrect, will you give the names of two witnesses who could prove you were not at Carliens?”

  The gesture of Helmont announced that nothing would be more easy.

  “Well?” said Gallois and waited.

  Helmont grimaced. “Unfortunately, I know them but I do not know their names. If I saw them again I could easily recall myself to them.”

  There was a tap at the door and a man looked in. M. Helmont was wanted on the telephone at the box office.

  “You will excuse me for a moment?” Helmont asked.

  Gallois bowed charmingly and off Helmont went. Pertini was at once cutting in with questions, only to be deftly edged on one side. In the five minutes of Helmont’s absence it was the circus itself in which Gallois was interested, and about which he had so many questions to ask.

  “To resume then where we left off,” Gallois said to Helmont. “You are absolutely sure you will be able to furnish me with the witnesses I request?”

  “Absolutely certain,” Helmont told him.

  Gallois smiled with enormous satisfaction.

  “That will be admirable. All that remains to do is to inspect your papers.”

  “That unfortunately is impossible,” Helmont said regretfully. “My papers have been either lost or stolen.”

  Gallois surveyed him with mournful, sympathetic eyes.

  “That is unfortunate, as you say. You reported the loss to the necessary authorities?”

  Helmont made a gesture of even greater regret.