Bodies from the Library 3

by Tony Medawar

  He was silent, tapping the pencil against the table; and because I was busy forming a theory I made no comment. He viewed the case with sardonic eyes, sour and unsurprised.

  ‘Well, I want to speak to one other person,’ he said at length. ‘Then we shall have to go on a little errand I have in mind. François!—Send the proprietor in.’

  The gentleman came in wild-eyed, his moustache drooping like a dog’s ears. ‘Monsieur,’ he cried, before his stomach had preceded him through the door, ‘I beg of you, you must countermand that order that nobody is to leave! Several have tried to go, and your men downstairs stopped them. They demanded to know why. I said it was a suicide. There are reporters—’

  ‘Sit down, please. You need not worry; a suicide will enhance the reputation of your establishment. Is the medical examiner here?’

  ‘He has just arrived.’

  ‘Good. Now … Before coming here this evening, I consulted the files for some information about you—’

  ‘It is a lie, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Bencolin composedly. ‘Chiefly I want to know if there are any patrons here tonight who are unknown to you?’

  ‘None. One must have a card to enter, and I investigate them all: unless, of course, it is the police. I should be grateful if my compliment to you were returned.’ He was drawn up in offended dignity, rather like a laundry bag attempting to resemble a gold-shipment.

  Bencolin’s pencil clicked regularly against the table.

  ‘Your name, I am informed, is Luigi Fenelli; not a common patronymic in France. Is it true that some years ago the good Signor Mussolini objected to your running an establishment for the purpose of escorting weary people through the Gate of the Hundred Sorrows? Briefly, monsieur, were you ever arrested for selling opium?’

  Fenelli lifted his arms to heaven and swore by the blood of the Madonna, the face of St Luke, and the bleeding feet of the apostles that such a charge was infamous.

  ‘You give good authority,’ said the detective thoughtfully. ‘Nevertheless, I am inclined to be curious. Does it require a card, for example, to be admitted to the fourth floor of this establishment? Or is the soothing poppy dispensed, like the cocktails, by the courtesy of the house?’

  Fenelli’s voice raised to a shout; Bencolin’s hand silenced him.

  ‘Please!’ said the detective. ‘The information was mine before I came here. I give you twelve hours to throw into the Seine whatever shipment you have on hand. This leeway I grant you on one condition: that you answer me a question.’

  ‘Even the illustrious Garibaldi,’ said the other dramatically, ‘was sometimes forced to compromise. I deny your charge, but as a good citizen I cannot refuse to assist the police with any information at my command.’

  ‘How long has M. le Duc de Saligny been a user of opium? Don’t deny it! He has been known to come here.’

  ‘Well, then, within the last month, monsieur. I was shocked and grieved that such a fine young man—’

  ‘No doubt, no doubt. Did the woman who is now his wife contract any charming habits here also?’

  ‘Each,’ replied the manager loftily, ‘was very much concerned about concealing it from the other.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Who instigated this?’

  ‘You asked for one question, M. Bencolin, and I have answered you two. That is all I will tell you if they subject me to torture!’

  ‘Such a contingency is hardly likely. At any rate, I advise you become busy turning your fourth floor into a bar or a bagnio or something equally harmless … That is all, Fenelli.’

  When the manager had gone, I looked up from an ostentatious studying of the floor plan, and said: ‘May I ask how much of your information you’re concealing, Bencolin? This was the first mention of that angle: Saligny as a drug-taker.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s another pair of sleeves completely. I was not sure it had any bearing on the case. Now I am morally certain it has.’

  ‘How did you learn about Fenelli’s private parlour on the fourth floor?’

  ‘Saligny told me about it.’

  ‘Saligny told you about it?—You don’t mean Saligny, do you?’

  ‘Yes.’ With an injured and virtuous air. ‘Jack, find me a person in this whole affair who is acting rationally, and I’ll make you chief of detectives! Now in a moment we shall be invaded by the whole horde—I hear screamings and protestings out there—and I want you to accompany me on an expedition I have in mind. But first let us argue the case a bit. I am curious to get a layman’s reaction.’

  He rose and began to pace about, hands clasped behind his back, head bent forward. Mephistopheles smoking a cigar, several of him reflected in the mirrors around the walls as he passed up and down; a queer and absurd little figure in motion, but Paris’s avenger of broken laws.

  ‘You want me to name the man I think is Laurent?’ I inquired.

  ‘Hm … that would be deducing from insufficient evidence, at this stage of the game. You have not seen everybody here, nor one-fifth of the people who might be Laurent. I imagine that all our characters have not yet appeared … But proceed. You think you know the man who killed Saligny?’

  ‘The chances are I’m wrong, naturally. But I’ll have a guess.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The American, Golton.’

  Bencolin stopped abruptly and removed the cigar. ‘Tiens, this is interesting! Why? Do you have reasons, or are you guessing detective-story fashion?’

  ‘I give them to you for what they’re worth. Reason number one: Golton’s behaviour. It doesn’t ring true; it is overdone; it is a little too American. That byplay in the card-room, for example. It doesn’t seem possible that any man, no matter how drunk, should fail to notice such a shambles directly before him.’

  ‘An American should be the best judge of that, I confess. Still, the servant seems to have walked halfway across the room without … I wonder … No matter; go on.’

  ‘His behaviour, then. He sobered up remarkably fast, too, after telling that bit about Vautrelle being cut out by Saligny in madame’s affections. Reason number two: He says he met Saligny when he was returning from Austria. I may point out that it was from Vienna that Laurent escaped.’

  ‘If he is Laurent, he would be a lunatic indeed to tell you that voluntarily. Austria, moreover, has several cities besides Vienna.’

  ‘Reason number three: According to every bit of evidence we have, Saligny could not speak English. Yet according to what Golton told me, we have him speaking English quite well. More than that, we have Golton, who says he speaks no French, going about constantly with a man who speaks no English! How is that to be explained?’

  ‘Touch!’ said Bencolin, snapping his fingers. ‘You score there, certainly. Golton seems to have slipped up in that respect. However, it is hardly an indication that he is the murderer.’

  ‘You yourself have told me that Laurent is a genius as a linguist. Certainly, if Golton is Laurent, he is amazingly adept with the idiom.’

  ‘Now let us carry this on. What is Golton’s procedure? How has he contrived to kill Saligny?’

  ‘Let me ask a question. Do you subscribe to the theory that Laurent, in whatever guise, killed Saligny?’

  ‘Most emphatically yes … Proceed.’

  ‘He might very well have been the man whom Saligny proposed to entertain.’

  ‘He might, of course. Which way did he go into the card-room?’

  ‘By either door. He might have been there early.’

  ‘Yes. Now let me ask you,’ Bencolin suddenly leaned across the table and pointed his cigar—‘which way did he go out?’

  During the silence, while the detective stood motionless, I realized the significance of that remark, and I swore at myself for dropping into the trap. But there was a chasm at our feet much wider than this.

  ‘The murderer,’ I said slowly, ‘did not go out by the hall door—’

  ‘Because my detective was standing directly before it a few seconds afte
r Saligny entered the room from the salon-side, and he did not leave it until after the murder was committed!’

  ‘And the murderer did not go out by the other door into the salon—’

  ‘Because I myself was watching it from the time Saligny entered to the time we ourselves went in! In other words, we have a locked-room situation worse than any I have ever encountered, since I myself can swear nobody came out one door, and one of my most trusted men swears that nobody came out the other!’

  Still he did not move, but he looked as haggard as a man crucified.

  ‘I wondered,’ he said in a low voice, ‘how long it would take you to see that situation. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to these people even now. I examined the window immediately, you remember: forty feet above the street, no other windows within yards of it, the walls smooth stone. No “human fly” in existence could have entered or left that way … No place in the room for a cat to hide; I searched for that, too. No possibility of false walls, for you can stand in any door and see the entire partition of the next room. Tear open floor or ceiling, and you find only the floor or ceiling of another room; that way is blocked. Yet we know, in this of all cases, that the dead man did not kill himself … It is the master puzzle of them all.’

  He turned round, and slouched across to the window, bent shoulders silhouetted against a faint glow from the street. There was a clamour of excited voices in the hall. Hands thudded at the door.

  I cried, ‘Bencolin!’ and leaped up. ‘Bencolin, do you realize—the boy who brought the cocktails! The only one who could have been in the room—alone with Saligny—hired by Fenelli to kill the informer!—’

  I was so excited that I did not at first understand his wry smile …

  ‘Likewise impossible, Jack,’ he answered softly. ‘Did you not hear him, how he protested that he could not help dropping the tray? How he kept his hands along the bottom of his jacket; did you not notice? The fingers of his right hand were amputated long ago.’

  V

  THE TRUNK FROM VIENNA

  It was two o’clock when Bencolin and I left the house. Sounds threw sharp, brittle echoes in the cul-de-sac of the rue des Eaux; there was a thin mist, and a wind blew from the river in the raw spring moonlight. The tops of apartment-houses were drawn against the sky as on glass, and a few windows were alight against their black walls. The rumble of a metro train swelled out of its tunnel and passed on the trestle over the rue Beethoven … distantly you could hear the motor of a cruising taxi.

  Bencolin’s car was parked not far from the Avenue de Tokyo. He had not spoken for some time, and when he climbed in at the wheel I asked:

  ‘Incidentally, where are we going?’

  ‘Put your hand down in the pocket of the door there,’ he said. ‘What do you find?’

  ‘It appears to be the handle of a rather heavy pistol.’

  ‘Precisely; put it in your pocket … Do you still want to go?’

  ‘Delighted, if I can contrive to hit anything.’

  ‘That was all I wanted to know; the thing isn’t loaded. Put it back where you found it.’ When he had got the engine started, he tapped his breast-pocket. ‘This one,’ he added absently, ‘is loaded.’

  We turned into the Avenue de Tokyo, a vast plain, with the parapet-lamps of the river marching away in curved lines to the right. Beyond them the high fretwork of the tower was printed spider-black against the moonlit sky. The river-breeze smelled of rain. Bencolin’s big Voisin roared past the Pont d’Iena, and one had a sensation as of wings.

  At length he volunteered, ‘We are going to the home of the Duc de Saligny.’

  ‘Oh … then why the gun-parade? That isn’t dangerous, is it?’

  ‘I have reason to believe that there are things in his house which a certain somebody will be very anxious to remove—if that person doesn’t get there before us. The address, by the way, is number 326 Avenue Henri Martin. Which means—’ He looked sideways.

  ‘That our friend Golton lives next door. But you have pretty well exploded my theory of the murder.’

  ‘Pardon, I didn’t say you were wrong. I said we must examine the evidence from all sides.’

  He relapsed into silence. I sat back and closed my eyes. From Paris you can get no distant vibration, no far heavy rumble of traffic such as one hears in London. When the siren of the flying car screamed, horns picked it up and answered as from a gulf. There was the rattle of a late tram in the pale glitter of the Place de l’Alma. We swerved to the left up the hill, and presently the grey Arch dawned among hooting taxis. A few drops of rain blurred the windshield … and the head of Saligny floated against the dark …

  The wan sheen of thoroughfares dwindled away; we were in a street of trees where the headlights showed flashes of budding green, but a black arch devoid of movement.

  Before the gate of 326 we stopped. Twin globes of light burned yellow on either side, and shone on the dark windows of the concierge’s lodge. Bencolin’s fingers clicked a tattoo against the glass.

  ‘’Sieur et dame!’ said a sleepy voice inside, ‘my felicitations—’

  When the iron gate swung back, we were looking into the sleepy face of a woman in curl-papers. The concierge was about to dart back in alarm when Bencolin intervened:

  ‘Prefecture of police. I must ask you to admit us.’

  He received the key from the babbling woman, and ordered her back into the lodge. We could hear her wailing, ‘Murdered! Murdered! I knew it—wake up, Jules!—’

  ‘Be silent!’ Bencolin snarled over his shoulder.

  Fitting the key into the lock of the house-door, he whispered: ‘There are no servants here. If I find anybody prowling, it will be necessary to shoot.’

  We entered a dark hallway which smelled of flowers. I could hear Bencolin’s steady breathing. He guided my arm across towards the vast curve of a stairway, down whose railing moonlight shone from a window. A rug slipped under my foot on the hardwood floor … We reached the top of the staircase; Bencolin turned, cloaked and weird against the moonlight. He nodded towards a door at the other end of the second floor. There was a thread of light under the sill.

  When he put his right hand softly on the knob of that door, his left was inside his breast-pocket. He threw the door back.

  A man sprang round to face us. He was standing in the middle of a room fully lighted, though the shutters were up. There was a great canopied bed nearby, and you noticed at its head a woman’s blue fur-trimmed slippers … The man was small, with thick red hair, and when his mouth opened in surprise it disclosed many missing teeth. He had the cut of an overweight athlete. Bencolin closed the door.

  ‘Hello, Girard,’ he said. ‘I had hardly expected to find you here. Turn out those lights, and lower your voice—’

  ‘M. Bencolin!’

  ‘Quite; what are you doing here?’

  ‘I am the monseigneur’s most personal servant,’ said the man called Girard. He wagged his head, and grinned proudly. ‘I have been with him for over a month. I was preparing the bridal—’ he leered and rubbed his hands.

  Bencolin whistled. He gestured towards Girard. ‘Formerly,’ he explained, ‘the hero of Auteuil; a jockey I have put my money on in preference to the horse … Dame de Trefles, three to one, Girard up …’

  ‘But overweight, monsieur. I have been out of the game for some time. See …’ He lifted a tawdry affair of red roses, shaped like a horseshoe, and inscribed in white roses with the legend, ‘Bonne chance’ …

  ‘My tribute; it brings good luck.’

  Bencolin stared at him speculatively.

  ‘You’re up late, Girard.’

  ‘Yes, but—monsieur, why are you here?’

  ‘I want you to turn out those lights; then tell me about your new position.’

  The room went dark. The puzzled, suspicious Girard hung the wreath around his neck and stood gesturing in a vague glow from over the transom.

  ‘Why—monsieur, I do not understand this. But whatever
M. Bencolin says, I will do without question. I used to know M. de Saligny in the old days; once I rode his filly Drapeau Bleu. But then, you know how it is, I could not make the weight; rubber suits, blankets, diet, roadwork, still I could not make forty-six; you know—no, no! … I went to Marseilles. At last, in that despair, you know, I returned. I sought out M. de Saligny, but of course he did not remember me. “A bit of work round the stables, monsieur,” I pleaded. “Ah, Girard,” he said, “you speak like a man of education, though not of intelligence. Can you use a typewriter? And give my stable a workout if I am not able to do so?” “But certainly, monseigneur,” I say. “I have hurt myself,” he explained, and I went into a frenzy of grief—monseigneur, the great horseman! “I cannot use my hand well; therefore I shall dictate my correspondence—” Et puis voilà!’

  He drew a long breath. ‘And this lady that he has married, I would die for her! She is so lovely; if anyone sought to—’

  The sentimental soul paused. Bencolin inquired:

  ‘Monseigneur had much correspondence?’

  ‘Oh, yes; he is very prominent. And he receives many things—that trunk—you can see how everyone likes him—’

  ‘What trunk?’

  ‘Why, the trunk that arrived two days ago. It was comical, you know. He had been in Vienna, and when he sent on his trunks one was misdirected. It wandered about from one address to another, and was returned to his hotel in Vienna. It had no name on it, but they recognized it, like that!’ There came a snapping of Girard’s fingers. ‘And they sent it on to him—’

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘Why, in his study—’

  Bencolin said very slowly, ‘Is—it—possible? …’ There was a silence, among the night-creakings of the house. The horror of an unknown thing jumped back to a vital force when we heard the tone of his next words.

  ‘Girard, don’t ask any questions. Do exactly as I tell you. Go to your room now, and whatever happens don’t stir out of it! There is, or will be, somebody in this house—’

  ‘Who, monsieur?’

  ‘A killer,’ said the detective. He opened the door softly. Against the faint moonlight I could see that he had a pistol in his hand.