The Case of the Flying Donkey: A Ludovic Travers Mystery

by Christopher Bush

  Then suddenly his hands sank and began to rise quiveringly to his shoulders. The repression of the last few minutes gave way to an extreme annoyance, but it was with himself that he was furious. English was inadequate, and from the French in which he upbraided himself, Travers gathered that he was an imbecile, the victim of an amazingly unfortunate chance, and that those who should have helped were cretins and incompetents.

  Then he turned apologetically to Larne, and was himself again.

  “It is for you that I am annoyed. I bring you all this way to see your brother, and he is not here. The fault, I assure you, is not all mine. But what can one do? For you to remain here is perhaps absurd. The car, then, is at your disposal, and it shall take you to Paris and your hotel.”

  Larne looked astounded.

  “But why shouldn’t my brother come back? Perhaps he changed his mind about Hortense and Bertrand and has taken them somewhere else.”

  Gallois shrugged his shoulders and began making his way out of the room. Downstairs it was icily cold, but he dosed the shutter over the broken window, and turned on the little electric fire.

  “Perhaps you will tell us more about this Hortense and this Bertrand,” he said to Larne.

  All Larne could do was to remind him once more that he knew nothing. Their name was Gurlot, and they had been engaged by Pierre and presented to himself as a kind of fait accompli when he arrived some years before at the Villa.

  “And when is it that this Bertrand becomes ill?”

  “About a year or more ago,” Larne said. “But you must still understand that I have no time to enquire into the affairs of domestics. That is the business of Pierre. I was told by Pierre that Bertrand was ill and his lungs were giving him trouble. From time to time when I had to speak to Hortense, I asked how her husband was. It was only a few days ago that I was told he was really ill. I told Pierre he ought to go where he could be looked after.” He thought for a moment. “That was it, and then the very next day after my arrival, Pierre mentioned the sister at Grenoble.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I am not callous, but it seemed to me an excellent arrangement. Then there—”

  He broke curiously off, with: “But that does not matter.”

  “You will pardon,” said Gallois, “but there are times when everything matters. You were about to say?”

  “Only this,” Larne said. “There was a little private trouble which M. Travers here happened to witness, but I received the impression that my hand was being forced. My brother certainly knew that I was intending to get rid of him, and what I thought was that he and Hortense had schemed to get away as quickly as they could for some reasons of their own.” His lip drooped. “I now appear to have been right, though what the reasons were, I still can’t tell.”

  Gallois made no comment but he got to his feet.

  “There is a garage here,” he said. “Let us see if there is anything which we can learn.”

  The wind still seemed to be rising as they made their way to where their car had stood. A few yards back the light of the torch showed a cave-like garage made in the dune on the level of the road. Its door was closed but unlocked, and a look inside showed that it was made of stout boards roofed with more boards and tin. Gallois went methodically over the floor with his torch and apparently found nothing.

  “A car has been in, and therefore out,” he said, and showed the marks of tyres. “But there is also a boat-house which one must examine.”

  A lock had been hanging on the garage door, and when he had closed the place up, he put the key in his pocket. Then, as he moved off in the darkness to the right, the ground began to fall away, and they had to move sideways through the soft sand till they were on the bank of a tiny creek. A flash of the torch showed that the tide was receding.

  But the torch showed no trace of footprints, and their own were already hidden by the shifting sand. Gallois shone the light ahead and there was the boathouse, its double doors opened and fastened back. A rowing-boat of medium size was moored there, but there was the space where another and larger boat had been.

  “Remain here, if you please,” Gallois said again, and made his way along the shelving bank. Then only his light was seen as he moved about inside the boat-house. For five good minutes he was there. Travers and Larne stood in the open with shoulders hunched against the wind, and the sting of the blown sand on their checks.

  At last Gallois was coming back.

  “There was a motor-boat,” he said, “but it has gone. Now we return to the house.”

  The lights of the returning car were seen, but he ignored them and made his way up the same steep path to the house. The room struck warm after the chill of the wind. Gallois smiled mournfully at Larne as he drew a chair to the fire.

  “There is no doubt, I think, that your brother has departed? But it is a strange departure. Not only does one go by car, one also leaves by boat, and that to me is inexplicable.”

  “It is to me,” Larne said. “It’s a nightmare. Either I’m mad or—well, the whole world’s mad.”

  Gallois nodded as if in agreement, then made for the phone. The receiver went to his car, then he was looking puzzled. Then he was pulling the flex which came up in his hand.

  Back went the receiver and he was making a gesture as if it was the phone he wanted to upbraid.

  “Now I think you agree that your brother does not return?” he said to Larne. “One does not cut the telephone when one merely absents one’s self for a time.”

  He glared at the phone again, then picked up the end of cut flex. He looked at it under his glass, and Travers came across and looked at it too.

  “It is some hours that it has been cut,” Gallois said. “There is a film of damp which makes a commencement of rust.”

  Then before Travers could get a close view he was angrily letting the flex fall.

  “All the same,” he announced, “there is an agreement. It is now ten o’clock, and it was at five o’clock, as I calculate, that they arrive here. It is at five o’clock that one informs me that one has seen the car, which makes apparently for Fécamp. They arrive but they do not unpack, as we agree, and at once they depart. I say ‘at once’ because it is some hours since the wire was cut, and one does not cut the wire till one is in the act of departing.”

  Larne was looking bewildered.

  “But they left at eight o’clock this morning! They must have been here long before five o’clock?”

  “They wish to conceal their tracks,” Gallois explained. “They make detours and they do not arrive here till it is almost dark. But of the arrival I am certain, and of the departure.” Once more his hands rose annoyedly. “Even while I am at your hotel to announce that your brother is here, he is not here. He has already gone.”

  “But why should he go?” asked Travers.

  “Because he became aware that he was being observed,” Gallois said. “He observed during the day that he was followed, and that was why he made the detours and why he succeeds that we lose the car. Then he arrives here and he thinks he is safe, but he observes that imbecile of a François, and he knows he is not safe. In the dusk he surprises this François and knocks him on the head. Then he cuts the phone and he departs, in order that he may be safe at some other place.”

  Suddenly he was turning on Larne.

  “This Bertrand Gurlot, he can drive a car?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Larne said. “But nothing I think I know turns out to be right.”

  “Perhaps, then, he drives the car and departs with his wife, and Pierre gives them money. Not all the money, but enough that will satisfy. Then Pierre takes the motor-boat himself.”

  “Yes, but why? Why should he run away like this?”

  “There is something which commences to be serious,” Gallois said, “unless your brother thinks that it is you who arrange to follow him, and that it is you who put François to watch. If that is so, then it is once more no affair of mine. Your brother deceives you, and he thinks you have discovered
this deception and that he robs you, and so he escapes. That, I repeat, is no affair of mine. Nevertheless, I wish to find your brother in order that he may tell us what he knows of this Braque, of whom he is an associate.”

  Larne was about to speak, but Gallois waved a hand.

  “That is one thing,” he said, “but there is also the other. If it is not from you that your brother escapes, then he escapes because of me. Not of me, Gallois, but of the law. That is why the affair acquires a seriousness, and why it is of a necessity that we should find your brother.”

  Larne shook his head.

  “I still refuse to believe that Pierre had anything to do with the murder of Braque. I can prove that he was elsewhere at the time—”

  Gallois broke wearily in. “M. Larne, no one accuses your brother of such a crime. Nevertheless, there may be complicities of which you are not aware. And there remains the fact that it is in a panic that your brother has left this house, and has separated himself from the Gurlots. And since what we discover may be of pain to yourself, return to Paris in the car, I beg of you, and leave us here to our examination. In the morning, I assure you, I will do myself the honour of informing you if there is anything we discover that concerns yourself.”

  Larne shook his head determinedly.

  “I’ve come all this way and I’m not going back till I know more. This is driving me crazy, and I’ve got to find something out.”

  It was to Travers that he had spoken, and Travers had a suggestion to make.

  “Stay at a hotel here—at Fécamp, I mean. There’s no need to worry yourself like this. You’re not responsible for your brother.” Then he had an idea. “I shouldn’t be surprised if you find the two Gurlots waiting for you at the hotel to-morrow morning with the car, and asking to be allowed to go back to the Villa. So you go to the town and get a meal and a good night’s rest.”

  Larne shook his head, then thought again and got to his feet. “Perhaps you’re right. I think I will go after all. There’s nothing I can do here?”

  “If you will have the goodness to answer one or two questions,” Gallois said hastily. “You suspect for some time, do you not, something that is secret between Hortense Gurlot and your brother?”

  Larne cast a quick look at Travers.

  “I’ve already told you I’ve suspected it.”

  “It is possible that this Hortense is—or was—the mistress of your brother?”

  Larne’s lip curled. “It is possible. But my brother was not a king of France. He should have had a better taste in mistresses.”

  “For myself, I have not the time for affairs of the sort,” Gallois told him, “and therefore it is not with authority that I speak. But this money that you give your brother this morning or last night—”

  “Last night.”

  Gallois nodded. “Your brother also had money before you pay him that sum?”

  Larne’s lip curled again. “He told me he hadn’t a sou. That may have been to get more out of me.”

  “Then that is all,” announced Gallois. “at Fécamp you will arrange a hotel, and in the morning I will do myself the honour of telling you what there is that we discover. But of that, I hope nothing. When everyone has disappeared, there is no one to interrogate.”

  He ushered Larne out and Travers went with them to the car. A gust of wind met them at the turn, and almost drove them back on their feet. Gallois halted.

  “At dusk, when one departs in the motor-boat, the sea is calm,” he said. “Now it is impossible that so small a boat should exist. It is with regret that I say it, but there is something, M. Larne, which one must not disregard.”

  Larne shook his head but said nothing. At the car Gallois uttered the most profuse of thanks, and added that he was a fool to have mentioned the danger of the sea. Perhaps Pierre had observed that for himself, and had already put in somewhere to land.

  The car moved off and its rear light disappeared round the bend. The voice of Gallois had at once a new alertness.

  “And now, my friend, to work. There are other things it is necessary to explain.”

  CHAPTER XII

  END OF AN EPISODE

  GALLOIS drew in his chair again to the fire. There were things to consider, he said, before they made another examination of the rooms. Then he was smiling at Travers in a curious, apologetic kind of way.

  “Did I not tell you, my friend, that you would be annoyed with me before everything was finished.”

  “Well, I’m not annoyed yet,” Travers told him. “But why did you remind me of that?”

  “Because there are lies which I am forced to tell,” Gallois said. “It is necessary that I deceive you, because it is necessary that I also deceive M. Larne. At the moment I do not wish him to know the truth. If you demand why, I tell you this. There are things which he knows, as you also are aware, and in order that he may tell us these things, it is necessary to act with finesse,”

  “He’s certainly told you more to-night than he’s ever done before,” Travers said, and still failed to see the point. “But just what were the lies you told?”

  “I did not know that Pierre and the Gurlots had arrived at Fécamp,” Gallois said calmly. “When the car makes this way for the coast, and is lost, then I imagine that it makes for some port of embarkation, and one watches the roads towards Le Havre and Boulogne. Then just before I arrive at your hotel I hear that a car such as we seek is seen at Yvetot, where a woman purchased goods in the shops, but this car is gone again before one can make sure. I say to myself that there are three ways which it may go, and I guess that it is Fécamp.”

  “Good lord!” said Travers. “Do you mean to say you brought Larne all the way here when his brother mightn’t have been here at all?”

  “Ah, but I stop at Rouen to enquire if there is more news, and I learn that I am right. Later I stop again, and I find the name of the house and that François watches.”

  “That was a lucky hit of yours,” Travers said. “And was that all the lies you told?”

  “No,” said Gallois. “François arrived to find the house dark, and he saw also the garage which was closed.” He shook his head. “He is an imbecile, that one. He shows his torch everywhere so that all the world can observe, but he does not show it inside the garage and remark the car has gone, or that it has not gone. It is about half-past eight, and there is always no light from the house, and then suddenly he is struck on the head, and when he awakes, he is tied at the arms and feet. But he disengages himself, and it is soon after then that we arrive.”

  “But if there was no one in the house, who struck him on the head and tied him up?”

  “That we do not know,” Gallois admitted. “But what I say is this. Before François arrived, either the car or the motor-boat had already gone. But as it was necessary for the party to divide themselves, one of them returned. But he could not take the car or the boat because of François, who would have heard. So he waits an occasion and hits this François on the head, and while he is unconscious, he departs with the car or the boat.”

  Travers had only half heard, for he had been doing some quick thinking of his own. He was filling to see, for instance, how those particular lies and concealments would help to loosen Larne’s tongue and make him reveal all he knew or suspected about Pierre. Yet Larne certainly did know a good deal. He had confessed as much by hints and signs that morning at the Villa when there had been that queer scene with Pierre and Hortense.

  “You still do not understand?” Gallois was saying.

  “Yes,” prevaricated Travers. “I think perhaps I do.”

  “Then we will go upstairs,” Gallois said, and at once led the way.

  He made for the room with two beds, and examined again the one that was rumpled.

  “It is your opinion that someone has been upon this bed?” he asked Travers.

  “I’d say there’s no doubt about it,” Travers told him. “There’s the depression on the pillow where the head was.”

  “Then
who was it that was on the bed?”

  “Bertrand,” said Travers promptly. “He needn’t have been, as ill as was made out to Larne, but he was tired after the long journey, and he lay on this bed and rested.”

  “That is also my opinion.”

  At once he was going down the stairs again, and now he made for the kitchen. The plates on the dresser were examined and the contents of the drawers, and at last he and Travers were agreed that two people only had eaten and drunk, while the third—Bertrand—rested upstairs.

  “We arrive then at what one calls the end of an episode,” Gallois announced. “It remains to reassemble the pieces and make them into one. But first, a question. Is it your opinion that Pierre was the assassin of Braque?”

  Travers shook his head. “I don’t think he was. Although his brother won’t tell you the details, I believe he can prove that Pierre was at the Villa at the time.”

  “Then who remains?” Gallois asked himself. “There is Cointeau, perhaps. That client who establishes his alibi does not yet arrive. There is the woman Moulins, but she has an alibi which is more than perfect. And who else is there?”

  A peculiar look accompanied the question, as if he awaited the answer only in order to refute it or to give some answer of his own.

  “There is no one else,” Travers said. “Those are the only people with whom we’ve come into contact.”

  “Ah,” said Gallois, and raised a dramatic finger. “There is yet another. There is this Bertrand, whom we have never seen!”

  Travers stared, then all at once, was polishing his glasses.

  “You’re right. As you say, there’s this Bertrand, whom neither you nor I have ever seen. We don’t know just how ill he was. All that tale to Henri Larne might have been a carefully thought out plot. It almost certainly was.”

  “Then we arrive at this,” Gallois said. “The Gurlots and Pierre were associates of Braque. Pierre knew that the patience of his brother would be soon exhausted, and he decides that he will make money from this gold-mine of which Braque is the owner. From Braque he discovers everything, and then he makes his plans. I suspect that this house was arranged, and the murder was then arranged also. While Pierre has his alibi, Bertrand does the murder and takes also the money with which to work the gold-mine. If anything is discovered about Bertrand, then Pierre and Hortense swear to an alibi for him also. Then they arrange that Bertrand shall be very ill and M. Larne agrees that he goes away. Pierre profits from the occasion to obtain more money from his brother, and this morning they all depart.