Murder on the Clifftops

by Betty Rowlands

  ‘I know how upset you must feel about losing Alain,’ she began.

  He sighed heavily. ‘It is a great loss, both professionally and personally.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Yes, I think you do.’ There was gratitude in his faint, sad smile. ‘What can I do for you, Melissa?’

  ‘For me, nothing, but for Alain’s mother, perhaps there is something.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the poor lady. I must visit her and present my condolences. She may be in need of advice – or perhaps financial help. I know Alain was more than generous to her.’

  ‘It wasn’t money I had in mind.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘She is absolutely convinced that his death was not suicide.’

  Bonard bit his lip and turned his gaze once more to the horizon. ‘I have to admit, I too found the police version very difficult to accept,’ he muttered. ‘But it seemed inconceivable that it could have been an accident.’

  ‘She doesn’t believe that either.’

  He looked startled. ‘What are you saying?’ Even as he spoke, she saw the dawning horror in his eyes. ‘Do you mean . . . ?’ He shook his head and made a movement with his hand, as if warding off some invisible threat.

  ‘She believes he was murdered.’

  ‘Murdered? Alain? Ah, no, no! Who would kill my dear Alain?’ His voice became as thin and insubstantial as a trail of smoke.

  ‘That is what she has asked me to try and find out,’ said Melissa, acutely aware of how absurd it must sound.

  ‘You? Why you?’

  Melissa felt her cheeks grow warm. ‘I know it sounds ridiculous, but the police officer wouldn’t take any notice of her – he just thought she was being hysterical. She thinks that being a crime writer makes me a detective as well. People often do,’ she added lamely.

  ‘So you are going to play Sherlock Holmes and go around with a magnifying glass looking for footprints? I hardly think you will find many on the rocks.’ His tone was gentle, almost indulgent; it was plain that he considered the whole idea farcical, but was too polite to tell her in so many words.

  ‘No, I wasn’t planning anything quite like that. The fact is, I sort of got conned into this.’ Briefly, she ran through the details of the morning’s interview with Madame Gebrec.

  ‘I see.’ Bonard nodded gravely. ‘Well, ask your questions, Melissa, but I doubt if I shall be able to help.’

  ‘How long have you know Alain?’

  ‘About five years. He came to work for my company in Avignon as an assistant in the overseas purchasing department. He very quickly became an invaluable member of the organisation and after two years I made him manager. He and I became . . . very close.’ Here Bonard broke off and studied his well-kept fingernails.

  ‘I . . . I’m not trying to pry into your personal relationship,’ stammered Melissa. This was becoming embarrassing; she wished she hadn’t started.

  ‘It’s all right.’ He transferred his attention to his gold wristwatch and began fiddling with the bracelet. ‘I confided to Alain my ambition to establish a school such as this. I had already made an extensive study of the various methods of language teaching, purely as a hobby, and run a few short courses from my home during the holiday season. Alain was fascinated by the scheme and when at last it became a reality, he asked if he could take an active part. He has been entirely responsible for the administration of the school . . . he will be very difficult to replace.’

  ‘Was there anyone who might have felt jealous or resentful of this appointment?’

  ‘Not that I am aware of. He was the one to approach me – none of my other employees expressed that kind of interest in the project.’

  ‘What do you know of his family history?’

  ‘Very little. His father was killed in the war and, so far as I know, his mother is his only living relative.’

  ‘I have several times noticed a certain . . . animosity between him and Dieter Erdle. As if Erdle knew something about him, or his background, that he did not want generally known. Have you any idea what it was?’

  Bonard shook his head. ‘You will have to ask Erdle that question, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that. By the way, did you know that Dora Lavender is claiming that a golf-club has been stolen from the boot of her car?’

  He frowned. ‘I overheard her say to her friend that she had lost something, but she has not reported it to me. What of it?’

  ‘It occurred to me that a golf-club can be a pretty lethal weapon.’

  Bonard’s jaw dropped. ‘Melissa! What are you suggesting?’

  ‘The boot of Dora’s car, where she keeps her bag of clubs, has a defective catch. Anyone could have opened it, stolen one of the clubs and gone after Alain when he left the house. You said he was in a distressed frame of mind, so he probably wouldn’t have noticed he was being followed. A single blow on the back of the head would have stunned him, might even have killed him outright.’

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean.’ Bonard’s look of amazement had changed to one of bewilderment. He licked his lower lip. ‘But the body was found at the foot of the cliff.’

  ‘He might have been standing near the edge and fallen after being struck. On the other hand, he wasn’t all that heavily built and a strong man – or woman, come to that – could have dragged him a short distance.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ He covered his eyes with a hand that shook. His voice was not quite steady as he asked, ‘Is there anything else you want to know?’

  ‘Just one thing more. Do you really have no idea at all why Alain left your office in such distress?’

  He made no reply, but the pain on his face told her what she wanted to know. ‘I mustn’t take up any more of your time,’ she said gently. ‘Do I have your permission to go up to the belvedere and look around?’

  ‘If you wish, but what do you hope to find? The police have already carried out a search.’

  ‘They weren’t looking for a weapon. If that golf-club was used to attack Alain, the killer would want to get rid of it as quickly as possible.’

  ‘He might have thrown it over the cliff.’

  ‘Not if he was smart. He’d know that someone would have to go down there and recover the body and it could easily have been spotted. No, my guess is that he or she hid it somewhere in the undergrowth. That’s where I’ll start looking.’

  ‘Are you sure it wouldn’t be better to tell your suspicions to the police?’

  ‘Much better, if they’d take any notice of me,’ said Melissa with a grin. ‘From what I’ve seen of Officer Hassan, it would take more than a missing golf-club to prise him away from his suicide theory.’

  ‘Do you want to ask the students a lot of questions?’

  ‘If you have no objection, I’d like to know where everyone was at the critical time. Iris and her group are eliminated straight away, of course, and most of the others had appointments which would give them alibis.’

  ‘Alibis?’ He looked dismayed, as if the word conjured up a vision of a formal enquiry, with everyone being grilled about their movements and the happy atmosphere of his beloved school fouled by dark suspicions. ‘You will try not to alarm them?’ He glanced round at the groups of people on the terrace, by the pool, strolling in the garden. His student family, the men and women who were the living embodiment of his dream. ‘Already much damage has been done,’ he said sorrowfully.

  ‘I’ll be as discreet as I can,’ she promised.

  Melissa slipped out behind the house, through the gate in the perimeter fence and up the path leading to the belvedere. Looking at the tangle of bushes on either side, she soon realised that to make a thorough search of the undergrowth was out of the question. It was the kind of operation that needed a squad of policemen with metal detectors to carry out. Unless the hypothetical killer had been careless enough to leave part of Dora’s golf-club visible, her chances of finding it must be virtually nil. Just the same, she had made a promise and would do what she could to kee
p it.

  She reached the clearing where she had first seen Fernand. It was deserted; evidently, the work of repairing the safety barrier was complete. There was no sign of anything untoward: grass and a few bushes flattened by the weight of wood recently heaped on them; some traces of sawdust lying on the ground; nothing more. There had been no rain for several weeks and the earth was hard, barely showing marks of the tractor wheels.

  She decided that her best hope was to go up to the belvedere and see if she could find any indication at all that someone else had been involved in Gebrec’s death. It was unlikely; any obvious signs of a struggle would have been noted by the police. On the other hand, if foul play had not been suspected, even the overzealous Hassan might not have examined the spot too closely. It was worth a try.

  She was getting close to the river; the sound of the tumbling water increased steadily from a gentle rushing to an insistent roar. She felt a nervous spasm in her stomach as she passed the point where Fernand had led her from the path to show her his secret refuge. She wondered now, in cold blood, just how she had found the courage to undertake the terrifying trip along that narrow ledge and told herself that nothing would ever induce her to go near it again.

  Reaching the head of the path, she inspected the new safety barrier. It followed an arc some two metres from the edge of the cliff and was a simple structure of uprights and a double row of horizontals, about waist-high to a person of average build. The wood was roughly finished; Melissa ran a hand along one of the top rails, collected a splinter in her thumb and stood sucking it while considering the possibilities.

  Jack and Dieter had stated quite clearly that Alain Gebrec had been lying on the rocks below the belvedere. Therefore, if he had killed himself, he must have either climbed over or through the barrier somewhere near this point. The searchers had probably done the same as, from where Melissa was standing, only the middle and the far side of the river bed were visible. On the other hand, from a different vantage point they might have seen the body without having to go right to the edge. She was wasting her time; without knowing exactly where it had been lying, there was no means of identifying the spot from where it had fallen. Nor was there anything to be gained by a closer look but . . . all the same, as she was here . . . she might as well . . . before she knew what she was doing, Melissa ducked through the rails.

  As she straightened up, something caught her eye: a wisp of blue thread clinging to one of the tiny plants that somehow managed to exist in the thin soil on top of the cliff. She picked it up, laid it on the palm of her hand, and considered.

  Gebrec had been wearing blue slacks yesterday morning. If this thread had come from them, it could have happened in two ways. If he had crawled under the rails in order to throw himself off the cliff, then he could easily have caught his slacks on something and left the thread behind. If, on the other hand, someone had dragged his unconscious body after slugging him with Dora’s missing golf-club, there might be other shreds of cloth lying about.

  Keeping well away from the edge and steeling herself against a spasm of vertigo, Melissa searched for several minutes, but found nothing further. Then, remembering her damaged thumb, she went back and examined the top rail, exclaiming aloud in excitement as she found a second thread clinging to the rough wood. With a feeling of triumph she placed both threads inside a paper tissue, folded it carefully and put it in her pocket.

  Conscious that she had been crawling around in the hot sunshine for some time without a hat, she retired a short distance to the shade of some trees, sat down on a convenient boulder and tried to conjecture how Alain Gebrec might have spent his last moments. If he had indeed come up here determined to end his life, then he might have climbed over the guard rail, leaving a scrap of thread behind as he did so. Perhaps the second fragment had become detached at the same time and simply fallen to the ground where she had picked it up. From there, two or three strides would have taken him over the edge and into oblivion.

  But if he had been murdered? Perhaps he had been standing at that spot, gazing out over the river towards the mountains or maybe with bowed head, grieving for his lover. If an assailant had struck from behind, he would have toppled forward over the rail. What then? To make it look like suicide, the killer would have to get the unconscious – or possibly already dead – man across two metres of rough, stony ground. First, take the legs and heave them up and over; then grab the body by the arms or legs and drag it to the edge . . . no, that wouldn’t be practicable, that way the killer would be moving backwards and be the first to fall. He would have had to roll the body away from himself until he was close enough, with one final shove, to send it plunging down. To do a proper search, Melissa would have to follow his tracks and simulate that gruesome task.

  Swallowing hard, she crawled once more under the rail and inched forward, keeping her eyes on the ground as she went. The noise from below battered her eardrums until it felt as if a high-speed train was roaring through her head. All the nerves in her chest and stomach tightened into one solid knot that seemed about to burst out of her throat. She recalled Alain Gebrec’s warning that the edge was unstable in places; panic threatened to take over; she was on the point of abandoning the whole insane exercise when, almost at the very edge of the cliff, she spotted something that gleamed in the sun. She stretched out a hand and retrieved a small pearl button.

  Fourteen

  By the time Melissa reached the house, it was nearly a quarter past five. Iris and Jack were in the courtyard, talking to Philippe Bonard; everyone else seemed to have left.

  Iris hurried to meet her. ‘Got worried about you!’ she said reproachfully. ‘What kept you so long?’

  ‘Sorry, I forgot the time.’

  ‘Jack wanted to leave a message and take me back to the auberge. Wouldn’t go without you. You all right?’ she added, with a keen look.

  ‘Of course I am – why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘You look very hot. Should wear a hat in this sun.’

  ‘I’m quite all right, really,’ Melissa insisted.

  ‘But empty-handed, I see,’ said Bonard.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ She gave him an enquiring glance, uncertain as to how much the others knew of the reason for her absence.

  He gave a nod of reassurance. ‘I told our friends here the gist of our conversation – no doubt you will fill in the details. I presume your next unhappy task will be to inform Madame Gebrec that you have found nothing to support her contention?’

  ‘Not just yet. I’ve still got some other ideas to follow up.’

  ‘You will tell me if you learn anything significant? If I can be of any help . . . since we had our talk, I too have begun to have doubts. I should like to know for certain how . . . Alain died.’

  His voice wavered. Iris put a hand on his arm. Jack cleared his throat and looked from one to the other. ‘Perhaps we’d better leave you now, Philippe,’ he said. ‘We’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Bonard drew himself upright and shook hands with everyone, once again the courteous, attentive head of the establishment. ‘I wish you all good evening.’

  Back in their room at the auberge, Melissa took the tissue from her pocket and spread it with its contents on the table. Iris stared with her mouth open as she described how she had found them.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell Philippe?’ she demanded.

  ‘Because they might not have come from Alain’s clothing at all and I didn’t want to upset him unnecessarily.’

  ‘Where else could they have come from?’

  ‘Several places. Alain wasn’t the only person to wear blue yesterday. Fernand wears his bleu de travail every day and he must have handled that rail umpteen times – the threads could have come from him. And Dieter – I’ve seen him in similar clothes to the ones Alain wore yesterday, blue slacks and a white shirt. He might have lost those threads when he climbed over the rail during the search.’

  ‘He was wearing fawn slacks yesterday,’
said Iris.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Positive. Noticed when he came back in the afternoon, while he was talking to Rose. Her dress was almost the same colour, sort of café au lait, only hers had flowers on it.’

  ‘That narrows it down a bit, but we’d need a forensic scientist to establish whether the threads came from Alain’s slacks or not.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Iris sat on the edge of her bed with her chin in her hands. ‘What about the button?’

  ‘If Alain was murdered and pushed over the edge the way I figured, then it could easily have been torn off. On the other hand, it might have been loose anyway and just fallen off. It’s all very circumstantial.’

  ‘It’s a very ordinary button.’ Iris examined it thoughtfully. ‘Might not be from his shirt at all.’

  ‘The only way to find out would be to get the police to check it against the one he was wearing when they found him.’

  ‘You’re going to the police?’

  Melissa rewrapped the tissue and put it in a drawer. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  Iris gave her an appraising look. ‘Planning a bit more private sleuthing, are we?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Wish you wouldn’t. Could be dangerous.’

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ promised Melissa. ‘It’s just that I don’t want Officer Banana-Split Hassan to start harassing Fernand unnecessarily.’

  ‘Fernand? Why should he be involved?’

  ‘Hassan strongly suspected that he had something to do with Wolfgang Klein’s death. He was mortally disappointed when it was officially declared an accident and there’s nothing he’d like better than to find some excuse to start ferreting round and upsetting everyone with his “interrogations”.’

  ‘Philippe would hate that,’ said Iris, as if this was sufficient reason for leaving Hassan with his suicide theory for the time being. ‘Anyway,’ she said with a frown, ‘I don’t see how there could be a connection. It’s Germans that get Fernand’s goat. Now, if Erdle had been the victim . . .’