She thought for a moment, then slowly shook her head.
“If monsieur is not offended, I think that perhaps I will keep it.”
Travers nodded gravely.
“I understand. But you will permit that I examine it more closely?”
She smiled at that and Charles was at once taking it off its nail. Travers polished his glasses and placed the picture beneath the light.
Quick, bold work, he thought, with a really masterly passage where the light came by the neck and chin. The portrait of some chance cabaret or country client doubtless, and executed for a few sous. Then the sitter had indignantly refused it as far from his conceptions both of himself and of a coloured photograph, and the painter had had it left on his hands.
Yet Travers was somehow fascinated, and by those grim associations with that white, emaciated face he had seen on that bare table at the Sûreté. Curious work, he thought, like that of a man who has yet to find himself. Crude in its background—
And then Travers was all at once fumbling for his glasses. As he slowly polished them, eyes blinking beneath the light, the two were watching him and wondering what had happened to make him frown to himself and shake his head.
“It is a picture I would like at some time to possess,” he all at once said. “If at any time you should wish to sell, it would be a favour if it was to me that you gave the opportunity to buy.”
He had spoken the stilted words, and yet the voice seemed distant and not his own. Methodically he picked up his hat, and yet he made no move to go.
“There is something that monsieur desires?”
Charles’s voice brought him somehow to himself.
“Yes,” he said. “I regret to change my mind but for an hour I shall need you at the hotel. After that you are free.”
He smiled a grave good night to Elise and slowly and thoughtfully made his way down the stairs. In a moment Charles was pattering after him. The taxi was waiting and in five minutes they were at the hotel. Once more the taxi was told to wait, and Travers went up to his rooms.
Bernice was not yet back, and he telephoned at once to Larne’s hotel. Larne had just that moment come in, they said, and the message should be delivered at once.
“Tell him that I arrive in five minutes, and that it is urgent,” repeated Travers, and hung up.
Next he wrote a message for Bernice, placed it where she could not fail to see it, and was nodding to Charles to accompany him downstairs again.
“You will remain here in the lobby,” he said. “If madame arrives, it does not affect the order. In half an hour I shall be back, and then perhaps there will be things that we have to do.”
Another minute and the taxi was taking him towards Larne’s hotel, and all that he could think of was one thing. Within an hour—or it might possibly be two—he would know for a certainty who it was that had murdered Braque.
CHAPTER XV
THE RUE VAGNOLLES
LARNE came forward, hand outstretched, but there was an obvious anxiety in his smile.
“How are you? It’s very nice to see you again.” And before Travers could say a word, “You’ve got some news for me?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t,” Travers said. “I want your help in a certain matter, that’s all.”
“Sit down,” Larne said. “What may I offer you? There’s a very excellent sherry.”
“Thank you, perhaps I will,” Travers told him. “And I’ll sit down for a minute or two. This talk, by the way, is extremely confidential.”
Larne poured out the two sherries and then drew up a chair to face him.
“Confidential? You mean that it’s nothing to do with all this deplorable business of the last few days?”
“Unhappily it has everything to do with it,” Travers said. “I hope for one thing that it will settle the whole matter up. But you won’t mind my referring again to your brother? I want to know, for instance, if you have any reason to suspect that there was any relationship between your brother and the model, Elise Deschamps.”
Larne looked puzzled, then a different look came over his face. It was as if he remembered, and then decided to again forget.
“I can’t possibly imagine anything of the kind,” he said. “But how does it affect all this business?”
“Well”—Travers thought things out for a moment—“perhaps I’d better be very blunt. You have been forced to admit that your brother was a connection of Braque, and this Elise Deschamps was a connection too. How deeply she was involved we—and there I mean the Inspector Gallois—didn’t realize till certain new information came to hand to-day. Some has only just reached me, and it’s what I’ve discovered for myself. That’s why I’m communicating it to you privately.” He smiled. “I’m afraid I’m becoming rather involved. What I want to say is this. If both your brother and the woman Deschamps were associates—and close associates—of Braque, then they should have been well known to each other.”
“It’s possible,” Larne said slowly. “But whatever was going on, I was unaware of it myself.” He looked up. “But what is this private information of yours?”
“Perhaps I’d better begin at the beginning,” Travers said. “You know how the woman—we’ll call her Elise—how Elise claimed to have become acquainted with Braque?”
“If I ever did know, I’ve forgotten it.”
“Well, she says her brother—who was the Moulins you knew at the Académie Poussin—gave her, or left behind, one of his pictures just before he disappeared. She offered the picture to Braque, just as one tries to sell a picture to a dealer, and he didn’t want it. He made certain other suggestions instead by which she could raise money. Then later he was interested very much in the picture but she wouldn’t sell it. All this is quite recent history, by the way.”
“A picture by Moulins,” Larne said reflectively. “Let me see. What was his other name? It’s on the tip of my tongue.”
“Maurice,” Travers said. “That’s what the sister said. Also I had occasion to see the picture, and it’s signed like that.”
“It’s signed ‘Maurice Moulins’?”
“Well, no,” Travers said. “Only the initials. But what I’m driving at is that his name was Maurice, not that it matters. But about that picture, which is really a sketch in oils or a quick portrait of a man. There it hangs in her kitchen, and she’s supposed to have been treasuring it for years as a memento of a dead brother. You remember that I told you he died in Algiers five years or more ago, and she was supposed to have had a letter about it.” He leaned forward. “Well, the keeping of that picture was all humbug. Maurice Moulins didn’t die five years ago. His body was washed ashore only a day ago.”
“Washed ashore!”
“Yes, and very near Fécamp. And now do you see the point?”
But Larne had got to his feet and was pacing restlessly about the room.
“But how on earth could a man like this dead Moulins have any connection with my brother, and going to Fécamp?”
“That’s what I want to find out,” Travers said. “It’s also what Gallois is now hoping to find out at Fécamp. You see, the whole thing does not hang together. Your brother and this Elise and Braque all mixed up in something shady, and to do with the pictures, and then the brother is found dead near Fécamp of all places. Excuse me if I emphasize that. The brother of Elise, and he also happens to be a painter! Things are getting beyond mere coincidence, and I think you must agree.”
Larne came back to his chair with a question.
“Yes, but are you sure it was Moulins who was drowned?”
“The sister herself identified him last night,” Travers said. “I’ve been trying to get you all day to tell you so.”
Larne’s head went forward between his cupped hands, and then as suddenly he had an idea.
“Yes, but what explanations did the sister give when the police interrogated her?”
“She said nothing,” Travers told him. “The police can’t get anything out of her.
All she does is stick to her original story. But, here’s the point.” He looked at his watch. “In another half-hour or so, she will be interrogated again, and much more closely. That’s why I came to you with the hope of getting private information. It could be kept private if you so desired it, but it would be a big weapon in our hands to know it.”
Larne shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
“But what information can I give?”
The smile of Travers had a sadness reminiscent of Gallois.
“Why do you think I’m doing all this unknown to the police? You told me certain things in confidence, which you didn’t wish the police to know. You were shielding your brother, and you and I might as well admit the fact.”
“I’ve washed my hands of him,” Larne said fiercely. “To-morrow night I sail for America. If he follows me there, then I shall tell what I know, and not before.”
“But consider,” said Travers earnestly. “If the police suspect—and I come here to say that they do already begin to suspect—that you are withholding information, they will request you to remain here till everything is cleared up. You don’t want that, and I think I can avoid it.”
“But what information can I give?” Larne asked exasperatedly.
“Information about Elise Deschamps,” Travers said quietly. “Information which will remain a confidence between you and me.”
Larne got to his feet, hands quivering.
“But I know nothing about the woman!”
“Sit down, please,” Travers told him gently. “Let me point out something. Was it not a curious coincidence that this woman who, I’m almost certain, knew your brother, should present herself here that evening as your model?”
Larne was looking interested, then shook his head.
“It is possible that she could have arranged it herself. But if she did, what difference does it make?”
“This,” said Travers. “It may establish the one fact which will be the end of all this business. The fact that it was she who murdered Braque.”
Larne stared.
“But she couldn’t! Unless the police have been lying?”
“How do you mean?”
“Wasn’t I informed that Braque was murdered at a quarter to six that night?”
“Braque was murdered at a quarter to six.”
“But I had her beneath my eyes from long before that till long after it!”
Once more Travers smiled sadly.
“Are you sure? Now you come to think things out, are you sure?”
“What do you mean?”
Larne was once more on his feet, hands quivering indignantly. Then he was turning away again. There was a chair in the far corner, and he made his way to it, and sat there, head bowed in his hands.
“Whatever I tell you will be between you and me?” he said at last.
“You have my word,” said Travers simply.
“Very well then.” He came back to his old chair. “The trouble is, I don’t think you’ll believe me.”
“You needn’t fear that,” Travers told him.
“But I can’t believe it myself. I never have believed it, even when I thought I had it worked out.” Then he was making a gesture of annoyance. “If we could go to the Villa, then perhaps it would be easier. But everything there has gone. That is what I have been busy about to-day—that and other things.”
“I remember the studio perfectly,” Travers reminded hint.
“Of course,” he said, surprisedly. “And you were there that evening. You remember how she pretended to be very tired, and said she had already given two sittings?”
Travers nodded.
“And then I said that she might refresh herself by making a cup of tea, and one for me also.” He was leaning forward impressively. “This is what happened. You departed, and I was anxious to begin. While the kettle boiled I explained to her the precise pose, and then she made the tea and brought a cup for me and one for herself. Hers she had in the very chair where she would pose. I sat for a moment by the easel, and I slowly drank my tea while I studied the light. It was an easy chair in which I sat. You remember it?”
“Perfectly.”
“Then in a minute it seemed to me that I had been asleep. Just a doze, perhaps, for I had spent an anxious day, and I have the facility to fall asleep in a moment. I glanced at the clock, which stood, if you remember, on the mantelpiece beneath my eye—”
“Behind the model’s back.”
“Exactly! I glanced at the clock and I had not slept for more than a minute, for she was still drinking her tea. After that I worked furiously, as you know, and it was only later that I felt a strange taste in my mouth.”
Travers nodded.
“It had to be like that,” he said. “I was sure of it. But there’s still something else. She drugged your tea and you slept till she had returned from the rue Jourdoise. She stopped the clock while you slept and when she returned she started it again. But if your brother arrived at the Villa at about the same time in the car, wouldn’t he have seen her?”
Larne was motionless for a long half-minute, then he nodded.
“Very well then, I will tell you. I think that the car which I heard was heard when I was almost asleep. I think now that it was my brother’s car which she—or both of them—used. And there is something even more strange. You will not believe it, but I will try to explain. When one wakes, one is not immediately awake. It is like the second or two when one begins to recover from gas after a tooth has been pulled out. Well, just as I was in the act of waking, I seemed to see my brother in the room and to hear him speak. Then I was really awake and I thought naturally I’d had a short nap and dreamed the whole thing.”
Travers sprang to his feet and glanced at his watch again.
“That’s everything I want to know. The woman will be examined at once. I may be there, and I may put a question or two to her which no one but myself and she will understand. Or I may question her later, when the police have finished, at her apartment in the rue Vagnolles.”
“You will be discreet?” Larne was asking urgently.
“I will be more than discreet,” Travers assured him. “Your name, you can rest assured, shall never be even mentioned.”
“You will tell me what happens?”
“Most decidedly I will,” Travers assured him. “And now I must hurry away. Inside ten minutes she ought to be under arrest and taken to the Sûreté. We know just where she is.”
Larne was still somewhat diffident.
“But what can you do without my evidence?”
Travers smiled. “The police have their own methods, which you and I aren’t allowed to enquire into too closely. And I promise you this on my word of honour. You’ll not be required to give evidence at her trial or at any time. As far as she’s concerned, you cease to exist. Is that good enough?”
Larne expressed himself as completely satisfied.
Travers gave the driver no order to hurry. His plans were not yet fully made, and before the hotel was reached again, he needed time for thought. And the speed of things had thrown him somewhat out of gear. He had formed a theory and he had hoped, but hopes had turned out incredibly better than his most optimistic anticipation and now he had to plan accordingly.
First, he thought, he must tell Gallois everything he had discovered. And there he paused. Gallois had set a fashion in secrecy, and it would do him no harm to be given a dose of his own prescription.
Charles reported that madame had arrived immediately after Travers’s departure. Travers said the note he had left would be sufficient to explain an absence, however long, and that he and Charles were off on an expedition. Meanwhile there was a brief phone-call to make.
It was Gallois whom he rang, and Gallois himself who answered.
“Ah, my friend, you have seen M. Larne?”
“Yes,” said Travers, “but I will tell you all about that later. And now—”
“You have found the answers to the questions? The q
uestions I gave to you last night?”
“Yes,” Travers said. “And I want you to do this at once. It’s a matter of extreme urgency. You understand? Extremely urgent and to be done at once. Arrest Elise Moulins and take her to the Sûreté.”
“Arrest Elise Moulins and take her to the Sûreté,” Gallois said as if to himself. “Very well, my friend. I have confidence in you to know that you have reasons. In fifteen minutes she shall be here. And you?”
“I shall arrive when I do arrive,” Travers said. “Don’t be alarmed if it’s not for some time. And don’t ring the hotel because I shan’t be here.”
He gave a quick good-bye and rang off. Then Charles was informed that they were going back to the rue Vagnolles, and by taxi.
But well short of that back street, Travers stopped the taxi and paid the driver off.
“Is there a way to come in at the other end of the street?” he asked Charles.
Charles was moving off at once and in three minutes was announcing that they had just turned into the rue Vagnolles.
“And where is number thirty-one?” Travers wanted to know.
Charles indicated a sign that jutted over the road about a hundred yards away. Travers also remembered that it was practically opposite the apartment.
“We will go closer,” he said, and began making his way towards it. And then all at once a car appeared in the street. It drew up at that side door, and Travers was grabbing the arm of Charles and drawing him back into the darkness.
“Watch,” he said, “and make no move. Whatever happens, don’t stir.”
Three men had got out of the car, and one disappeared through the side door. Through the dull windows the landing lights were seen to go on, but it was almost five minutes before the man appeared again, and with him was a woman who entered the car. In a flash the other two men were in, the car backed, and with a whirl of gears was gone again.
“There is another interrogation?” Charles said.
The Case of the Flying Donkey: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 18
