The Case of the Flying Donkey: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  “And the model Élise?”

  “Everything was as she tells us,” Gallois said. “She arrives at the bureau and she is sent to the Villa. There is only one thing. That woman at the bureau. There is something which says she does not tell the truth.” He made a gesture of indifference. “But that does not matter. It is this Pierre Larne whom it is necessary that we see.”

  “But you won’t be able to see him,” pointed out Travers. “I think I told you that he’s taking the two servants to an aunt of theirs at Grenoble. He started early this morning, but he wouldn’t do the journey in a day.”

  Gallois made another gesture of indifference.

  “Nevertheless, my friend, perhaps you will do me the favour of demanding M. Larne on the phone, and requesting an interview of only five minutes for yourself. There is no need to mention my name. Meanwhile I will perhaps drink the apéritif you have the goodness to offer.”

  Travers was fortunate in his telephoning. In five minutes he was back. M. Larne would see him at once.

  “Then we go at once,” Gallois said, “and it is I who will explain my arrival. And there is one tiling of which I must advise you, my friend. You will hear perhaps some things that astonish. Retain, nevertheless, I beg of you, a composure even when they are things which astonish. And leave here at the bureau a note for madame your wife, that tonight you return late.” He thought for a moment. “There is even a possibility that you do not return at all.”

  CHAPTER XI

  THE HOUSE ON THE DUNES

  GALLOIS had a fast, powerful car, with a special driver, and in less than five minutes they were at Larne’s hotel.

  “Remember that it is I who will speak,” Gallois whispered as they stepped out of the life. “I also will explain how it is that I am here myself.”

  Travers rang and it was Larne who opened the door.

  “I’ve brought a visitor,” Travers said, “and he’s going to explain himself.”

  Larne’s look had been curiously watchful, but now he smiled too, though the smile was forced and wary.

  “Come in, please. It’s nothing serious, I hope?”

  “It is nothing at all,” Gallois said, and in English. “I go to the hotel of M. Travers, and he decides that it is best that we see you. It is about your brother.”

  “My brother?” His eyes narrowed, then he made a gesture of indifference. “But sic down. And what may I offer you to drink?”

  “At the moment, nothing,” Travers said. Gallois refused too, being, as he said, in a great hurry. “We do not wish to take your so valuable time,” Gallois explained. “But what arrives is that M. Travers is a friend of you and of me also. There are confidences that you make to him, and when it is necessary that I question him, he refuses as a man of honour to divulge the confidences that you make. Therefore I say that we must come to you.” His shrug of the shoulders was almost abject. “I do not wish that you make confidences to me, but there are things which I say it is necessary for you to know.”

  Larne smiled, if somewhat ironically.

  “Well, what are these things that I ought to know?”

  “That your brother—your half-brother, if you will—was an acquaintance of the man Braque.”

  Larne looked at him as if he were mad.

  “An acquaintance of Braque!”

  “You are surprised, but nevertheless it is true. There are witnesses who will say that they saw them talk together, as if they had an understanding.”

  Larne shook his head. “Well, if you can prove that, there’s no more to say. But even if my brother was an associate of this man Braque, I am not responsible for the disreputable company he happened to keep.”

  “Nevertheless, we think it necessary that you should know,” Gallois said patiently. “There are questions that must be asked of him, and you, perhaps, can tell us where he is.”

  “Questions?” An annoyance came over his face. “But you can’t possibly imagine my brother had any tiling to do with the murder of Braque? I myself can prove that·” He broke off with a helpless wave of the hands. “Still, if you wish to question him, that is no affair of mine.”

  “M. Larne,” began Gallois, as if laying down the position once and for all, “as a painter you are a very great man, but as what I am, I also am not without importance. In affairs of painting I accept your word, because there I am a nobody. In matters of law, you also accept my word. I say you are not responsible for your brother, and I do not say that your brother is the murderer of Braque, because that would be absurd. But there is information which your brother can perhaps give, and therefore I come to you to ask where it is I can find your brother.”

  Larne got to his feet.

  “To-day I finished with my brother.” His lip drooped. “Our relationships have not been either happy or—what shall I say?—advantageous. Where he is at this moment, I don’t know. And, frankly, I don’t care—provided he ceases to be an annoyance to me.”

  Gallois caught the subtle innuendo.

  “M. Larne, I regret this interview, which appears to give you pain, and I assure you that when we have seen your brother there will be no more disturbance of yourself. But do you not know where it is possible that your brother should be?”

  With an exaggerated patience, which still appeared to mask a considerable annoyance, Larne began to explain. Pierre had been living on him for years and he had got him out of no end of financial difficulties, so that the worry of him had become a very real hindrance to work. Then there was also the Villa. Hortense was a good soul, and her husband, when he was in health, helped to make a ménage that had its comforts. Then Bertrand fell ill and that took from the comfort, and altogether Larne had been going through a worrying time.

  Then he decided to break with Pierre, and he admitted that he had paid him off. Hortense had wished to get away, and it had been arranged that she should go to a sister near Grenoble where the air might do Bertrand good. They had practically no private possessions, and Pierre had that morning taken them to Grenoble, and he had also taken his own few belongings. The car, which had been shared by the brothers, had been given to Pierre as part of the final settlement. Pierre had also been entrusted with a certain sum of money which a Grenoble bank would disburse as a small pension for Hortense. Larne, with a grimace which had its humour, admitted that at the moment he had left himself extremely short of funds. Not that he regretted it at all. For the first time for months, he felt himself an absolutely free man.

  “That will excuse my apparent ill-humour,” he said. “It was an unpleasant shock when you came here to begin these troubles with my brother all over again.”

  “Unhappily we do not yet commence to tell you about your brother,” Gallois said. “But at this moment he will be perhaps, where?”

  Larne shrugged his shoulders.

  “He did not inform me of his intentions. Between ourselves, he was not in a very talkative mood when we parted. What I should imagine, though, is that he would spend the night somewhere near Dijon. Bertrand oughtn’t to stand a longer journey than that.”

  “Sit down, I beg of you.” The tone of Gallois had all at once a dry officialdom. “What I have with regret to tell you is that—”

  “There’s been an accident?”

  Gallois smiled sadly.

  “No accident has arrived. But when I am informed that your brother is an acquaintance of Braque, I at once have him under surveillance. An agent is dispatched to request that he sees me but this agent arrives to see him depart in a big car. He does not stop this car but he asks for instructions. How it arrives I am not permitted to inform you, but we find this car of your brother again. But it is not at Dijon. It is not in the direction of Grenoble that he travels at all! It is in the direction that is opposite! It is near Fécamp that he is last seen.”

  Larne had been staring, mouth agape. His face flooded an angry red, and again he sprang to his feet. His hands were raised furiously to heaven, then he let out a deep breath and was sinking despairingl
y back in his chair.

  “He deceives you, this Pierre,” Gallois said apologetically.

  “I was a fool,” Larne said bitterly. “I ought to have known he’d be up to some trick.” Then he was staring again at Gallois. “But why near Fécamp? What on earth should he be doing there?”

  Gallois spread his hands.

  “Perhaps this Hortense has a sister there also. Perhaps she arranges this with Pierre.”

  “It’s inexplicable to me,” Larne said. His face brightened. “Still, I accuse him of nothing. It will be for Hortense to make a complaint.”

  “It is also no affair of us,” Gallois assured him. “That he deceives you is not a concern at all. But you understand, do you not, why M. Travers, who is your friend, insist that I convey to you the information.”

  He got to his feet, and his little bow had both courtesy and gratitude.

  “Once more we apologize that we use your so valuable time, and we beg that you excuse us. And now we depart for Fécamp.”

  “But why?”

  It was the turn of Gallois to look surprised.

  “But it is still necessary that one should find your brother and question him about Braque. If he go to America, or China, or it matters not where, it is still necessary that he should be questioned.”

  “I suppose it is,” Larne said slowly. “But there is a favour I would like to ask. I would like to confront him myself. If he has robbed me of money, then I have a hold over him. And there is still the question of Hortense.”

  “It is possible that we shall request that he returns with us to Paris,” Gallois told him. In the same moment he had an idea. “But there is room in the car if you prefer to accompany M. Travers and myself.”

  Larne’s face lighted for a moment, then fell.

  “Unfortunately I couldn’t. If you could wait for half an hour, perhaps?”

  “But, why not?” Gallois told him. “It is necessary that we eat before we depart.”

  Larne shook his head fiercely.

  “I can’t eat till I know the truth. There’s something behind all this.”

  “But we shall eat, and it is better perhaps that you eat also,” Gallois said. “It is the truth that is often—what is the word?—uneatable.”

  “Unpalatable,” suggested Travers. Gallois had seemed to refer to him, and be took it for a cue.

  “I’m most distressed about all this,” he said to Larne. “And I’m glad you’re coming with us. Perhaps there’ll be some perfectly simple explanation after all.”

  They came back to the hotel at the prearranged time, and found Larne waiting. At once the car moved off, Travers in front with the driver and Gallois at the back with Larne. In half an hour the outer suburbs were being passed, and at half-past eight they were through Pontoise and making for Gisors.

  It was a dark night and blustery. The wind had shifted and was rising, and before morning, Gallois said, there would be rain. He and Larne talked little, and then not about that matter that was bringing them to Fécamp, so that Travers pricked his ears when there was a mention of Hortense.

  Gallois had apparently asked for information about her. What with the noises of the car and the wind, Travers gathered little, except that it was Pierre who had engaged her through an agency, and it was always he who had arranged her and her husband’s affairs, Larne himself being merely a kind of final judge in the matter of decisions or disputes.

  But they were then in the outskirts of Rouen, and there the car stopped and Gallois disappeared for ten minutes. Of where he had been he said nothing, though he remarked that once they were through the city, half an hour’s fast travelling would bring them to the journey’s end. But they stopped first at Yvetot, where Gallois once more said he had a brief appointment, and when the car moved on again, it took the northerly road towards Sr. Valery.

  Now they could smell the sea. The wind too was more blustery, and on the coast it would be a gale. At St. Valéry the car turned sharply left and every now and again (he sound of the breakers could be plainly heard. Then suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, Gallois had the car stopped, and he himself took the wheel.

  To Travers it seemed that they were now on some side road. Now and again on the right the lights of the car revealed the melancholy sight of empty chalets and bathing-huts, and more than once in the distance could be seen the reflection of lights in the water and the faint glow that meant a town. On the left the ground rose in sandy dunes, with clumps of pines and small woods. Then suddenly the car was turning left and inland, and Gallois was driving at a mere crawl and peering ahead. Then he seemed to see the something for which he was looking, for he drew the car to a halt and switched off the lights. In the pitch-darkness that was all at once on them it was hard to see a hand before a face.

  “We’ve arrived?” asked Travers.

  Gallois, already getting out, announced that they had indeed arrived. A voice came startlingly from near by.

  “Qui est la?”

  Gallois whipped out a torch and flashed it. Travers discerned the figure of a man, and then Gallois was turning the torch on himself.

  “C’est moi—Gallois. Qu’est-ce qui est arrivé?”

  The man burst into a flood of explanations. He had been attacked, he said, and he was whipping off his cap and showing his head. Gallois moved forward into the dark and was apparently making an examination. The man began to talk again but Gallois checked him quickly.

  “Remain there, gentlemen, if you please,” he said. “In a minute I return.”

  He disappeared in the darkness with the man. Travers, hand on the car as if to retain his bearings, peered ahead and saw nothing. To what he judged was the west was the sound of the sea, but the lights of the town had gone, and he knew that the car was now behind the dunes. Then he stooped, and with eyes more accustomed to the dark, could see a kind of serrated blackness against the gloom of the sky. There was the scent of the pines and the soughing of the wind among the trees.

  “Where on earth has Gallois brought us to?” Larne said peevishly.

  But the flicker of a torch was seen ahead, and Gallois reappeared.

  “Follow me, gentlemen,” he said. “And remember always that it is I who ask the questions.”

  They followed close at his heels in the shifting sand, and then almost at once they were on a path. There was a hand-rail where the path mounted steeply, and then as Gallois once more flashed his torch, Travers could see that they were at the back of a tiny villa. The man who had hailed Gallois from the dark, was standing by. Gallois focused his light on the door, then knocked.

  There was an echo from within the house, and in a minute Gallois knocked again, and stooped with his ear to the door. Then he shook his head, motioned for the man to remain where he was and beckoned for the two to follow. The force of the wind met them as they emerged through a gate to the side of the house, and once more in the distance Travers caught a glimpse of the lights of the town.

  They came to the front door, with its path that seemed to lead down to the sea. Gallois flashed his torch again, and its light revealed the pink of the walls and the deep blue of the shutters and of the door. From inside the house there was never a crack of light.

  Gallois knocked and listened.

  “Remain here, if you please,” he said again, and once more was moving off in the dark.

  “What’s happening?” whispered Travers to Larne. “Isn’t your brother here after all?”

  “Why should he be here?” Larne whispered fiercely. “This is like a nightmare. Why doesn’t Gallois tell us what he’s doing?”

  His hand fell on Travers’s arm.

  “Did you hear that?”

  Travers listened, breath held, and heard nothing but the swish of the trees and the soughing of the wind. The scent of the pines was very strong, and they seemed to be all about him.

  Gallois reappeared. He had sent the man for the tool-bag of the car, he said, so that an entrance might be forced. When that tool-bag came, Travers hel
d the torch and the man got to work on the fastening of a shutter. A pane was broken and the window hoisted. Another minute and he had opened the front door.

  The light was on, and Gallois was telling the man to search downstairs. He himself made for the stairs at the end of the short passage, and soon his steps were heard in the rooms above. When he came down he was shaking his head, and nothing seemed more sure than that the house was deserted.

  For a minute or two he walked restlessly from room to room, like a man who fails to see a clear way ahead, then all at once he made up his mind.

  François was the name of the man, and Gallois was asking him if he had discovered who it was that had let the house. François spread his palms and regretted there had been time for nothing. He was going on with something else, but Gallois cut him short, and once more Travers had the feeling that there were things which Gallois was wishing to keep very much to himself.

  “Go, then, and find out,” he said. “The car will take you to the town and there is a telephone here by which you can report.”

  Then he was beckoning to Larne and Travers to follow him up the stairs. A bathroom and lavatory were there, and he pointed out the basin that had been used and the towel that was wet. Of the two bedrooms, one had a double bed, and the other had two single beds. All were made up ready for occupation, but one of the single beds was somewhat rumpled.

  “They did come here?” Larne asked.

  “But obviously,” Gallois said.

  “Then where are they?”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders.

  “Perhaps they’re coming back again,” suggested Travers.

  Gallois whipped open an empty drawer or two and made no comment.

  “They’ve taken all their belongings?” asked the mystified Larne.

  “Or else they did not unpack the belongings which they arrive with,” Gallois said. “They arrive, and they eat, and then all at once they depart.”