“And Monique?”
“Ah, she is a true type of the femme aux hommes. She only lives and breathes in the loved man. You see, even as a young girl fresh from school she started an affair with Edmund, the wife did not exist for her in the strength of her passion, and it was that passion, so innocently undisguised, that first put the whole foul scheme into their heads. For you turned up, a young, eligible man, and they got panicky as they realised that she had only to marry for them to lose her money. If it were not you, it was only a question of time before it was someone else.”
“Solange, when did you guess? Did you not at one time think as I did, that De Tourville had got rid of his wife by foul means so as to marry Monique?”
“I certainly should have thought so if I had gone on the facts alone, but I went on two other things as well—my knowledge of types and my ‘feeling.’ ”
“I got my ‘feeling’ about that household. I couldn’t hide it from you, who knew me, and the person I got it with most was Thérèse. That he was of the type to fit in with her I knew—she is of the race of strong women, of the Mrs. Mannings and the Brinvilliers of the criminal world; he is one of the Macbeths. But the odd thing is this—if it had been he who was of the dominating criminal type instead of his wife, then he and Monique would have in all probability done as you suspected. She is no criminal as things are, but she is so completely the type of waxen woman that it would only have rested with the man to make her another Marie Vitalis or Jeanne Weiss. At first I thought as you did, and when I did not find Madame De Tourville in Switzerland, I thought it all the more, though I still couldn’t fit it in with their characters as I thought they were. Then I heard of the marriage with Monique, and I came back here determined to find out what was wrong. Monique’s failing health struck me as very suspicious, and gradually from one little thing and another I put the crime together.”
“What would you have done if Monique had gone on being ill? Given him away, or gone to him privately?” asked Raymond.
“The former, I think, always depending on what Monique wished. For if he could have gone on with it, it would have meant he was impossible to save. But I had hardly got all my facts, hardly tabulated her symptoms and watched them together, when his heart began to fail him, or to prompt him, whichever way you like to put it. I shall always be glad that it was so before I told him that I knew.”
“Then you did?”
“Yes, I should have told him earlier, of course, if I had seen no signs of relenting on his part, but I held out to the last minute, even at the cost of a little more physical suffering for poor little Monique, so as to give him the chance of saving his own soul alive. I knew that if ever it did come out, the knowledge that he had done so would be the only thing to save them both from madness.”
“And in his new intention—taking her away—you would have helped—you did help—knowing she was not his wife?”
“My dear, who was hurt by it?” said Solange. “When you have seen as many people hurt as I have, that will be your chief consideration, too. I have told you Monique is a grande amoureuse. Her life is bound up in him, and that was what I was out to save, not merely from his poison, but from the poison of his wife’s tongue. They would have lived very happily in South America, both have been virtuous, and the chief criminal—his wife—would have had the severest punishment possible in the loss of husband and money. As it is, Monique may die of her hurt.”
“Actually die of a broken heart? And in the twentieth century?”
“She may indeed, for she is not a twentieth-century type—she is eternal. At present she is very ill of it with papa and a hospital nurse in attendance, as you know. There is only one hope for her which may materialise, as she has at least the balm of knowing that Edmund relented of his own free will.”
“And what’s that?”
“That her need of love is greater than her need of any one particular lover. That sometimes happens, you know.”
“She’ll never love again,” asserted Raymond with conviction.
“I shall be more surprised if she can live without,” said Solange.
And the conversation wandered away from Monique Levasseur, and plunged—always in theoretic fashion—into the ways of love. Here Raymond refused to follow Solange, as he did in the psychology of matters criminal, and they parted company after an hour of arguing over the route.
Raymond was certain he was far more nearly right than Solange; she was only sure she was right for herself, though very probably wrong for the rest of the world. Yet a few months later it was proved that she had been right in her hope for Monique. A romantic Englishman, who attended the trial of the De Tourvilles, and “wrote up” Monique as the heroine, was one of the many men who proposed to her on that occasion, and he succeeded in persuading her into what was to be a very happy love-marriage.
DETECTIVE: KYRA SOKRATESCO
MISOGYNY AT MOUGINS
Gilbert Frankau
A CRITICISM ONCE LEVELED at the books that Gilbert Frankau (1884–1952) wrote about Peter Jackson is that he may have been too fond of his central character, and the central character was Frankau himself.
Although he wrote a few novels of crime, suspense, and espionage, including The Lonely Man (1932) and Winter of Discontent (1941; US title: Air Ministry, Room 28, 1942), as well as several short story collections that include mystery tales, including Concerning Peter Jackson and Others (1931), Wine, Women, and Waiters (1932), Secret Services (1934), and Experiments in Crime (1937), Frankau was famous mainly for his poetry, notably the volumes devoted to the experiences of World War I, and his once-popular novels set against the backgrounds of both the First and Second World Wars. He had been commissioned an officer in the British Army in 1914 and fought in some of the war’s bloodiest battles—Loos, Ypres, and Somme—but suffered from shell shock and was moved to a desk job in 1916 writing propaganda. He was married three times and, by his own admission, was involved with many other women. One of his children is the noted novelist Pamela Frankau.
The detective in “Misogyny at Mougins,” the beautiful Romanian Kyra Sokratesco, a friend of the Chief of the Secret Police of the Sûreté, appears in several short stories—the only series character created by Frankau (apart from Peter Jackson).
“Misogyny at Mougins” was originally published in Concerning Peter Jackson and Others (London, Hutchinson, 1931).
Misogyny at Mougins
GILBERT FRANKAU
I
MY WIFE WAS AWAY—and the limousine with her. The scenario of my new novel seemed to have struck a sex-rock. My Russian butler had developed his seasonal influenza. While, to cap all, it had been raining continually for three liquid January days.
“I have the cafard,” I told Kyra over the telephone. “The black cockchafer of despair gnaws at my vitals. Suicide beckons to me. But come over if you must.”
So she came over, on foot in a mackintosh; and I lit a wood fire for her; and the housemaid, deputizing for the butler, gave us an imitation of tea.
“Me, too,” she said, toasting her little wet feet at the wood fire; “suicide beckons. But I shall not commit it in your study. The ‘Hotel Tivoli’ at Nice will be the place of my hara-kiri. A female has to be in the fashion, you see. And there was another yesterday!”
“Surely not another!” My cafard left me.
“Yes, my friend. Another. That makes five since Christmas. And all women; all rich; all at dawn, and from the same balcony into the same street.”
“An epidemic,” I suggested, smiling a little at Kyra’s melodramatics.
“Of falling over balconies? Impossible. Either the devil is in that hotel——”
“A plausible theory——”
“Or else a maniac. A homicidal maniac——”
“Disguised as a page-boy——”
“Disguised somehow. And anyho
w it is my duty——”
“Say, rather, your pleasure, Kyra——”
“Only if you come with me, Gilbert——”
“And risk a scandal——”
“Pah! What is a little scandal? From Toulon to San Raphael, the gossips think the worst of us. Does it matter, therefore, if we carry the banner of our supposed passion a few kilometres farther, out of the Var into the Alpes Maritimes, into the pleasant city of Nice?”
The argument, with my wife, who approves of Kyra, at home, would have been unanswerable. With my wife away, however, I hesitated—until after breakfast next day, which was a fine one, as only a Beauvallon day can be a fine one after three of rain.
“Perhaps,” said Kyra, when I drove my little open run-about to her gateway, “it would be wiser to put a rug over the suitcases.”
“Wisdom,” said I, “is only another name for cowardice. Let gossip observe the suitcases.”
“So you have telegraphed to your wife,” she said.
As a matter of fact I had telegraphed to my wife, “Going Nice with Kyra, address ‘Tivoli.’ ” But the deduction annoyed me; and I drove in silence, by the sea-road, for the best part of ten kilometres.
“We have a liver this morning,” decided Kyra at the eleventh.
“We are a grass widower,” I retorted.
“Let us discuss our suicides,” retorted she.
So we discussed our suicides—all five of them. The Baroness Rosendahl, of Vienna. Mrs. Winser, of Cincinnati, Lady Frensham, of Hertford Street, Mayfair, W. Madame Lantresac, of Paris. And the last of the victims, Frau Direktorin Müller, of Berlin.
“A series of coincidences,” I suggested, as we chugged up the Esterels.
“Too remarkable for a series of coincidences,” opined Kyra. “However, let us suspend imagination till we arrive.”
We arrived, through Cannes, at midday; and the receptionist of that large and lavish hotel, the “Tivoli,” smiled upon us—with the porters cuddling our suitcases—when he heard our requirements. “A little apartment for the lady—and for me, une chambre.”
“Next door to Madame’s apartment, no doubt,” smiled the receptionist; and his mouth fell wide open at my answer: “But no. I would prefer it some distance away.”
“Tu vois,” I said to Kyra, as the lift bore us upwards. “We shall be worse than a scandal. We shall be conspicuous, eccentric!”
“What is more important,” retorted Kyra, “is that we shall be on the sixth floor.”
II
We all have our especial weaknesses; and because one of mine happens to be vertigo, I felt distinctly queasy by the end of the next half-hour. Six floors facing the Mediterranean Sea may not compare with a recessed skyscraper facing Park Avenue; but the “association of ideas” between the stone balustrade over which Kyra would keep leaning and the cemented courtyard below us made me very pleased with terra firma and lunch.
“They just overbalanced,” I said, while we were lunching. “And I don’t blame them. That balcony is a death-trap. The architect who built this hotel ought to be shot.”
“Mrs. Winser, of Cincinnati,” replied Kyra, “at any rate according to her photographs, was almost a dwarf. Five foot high at the utmost. The balustrade over which you disliked my leaning is three foot nine and a half.”
After lunch, despite protests, Kyra returned to the sixth-floor balcony, and studied it intently for a good half-hour. Then she borrowed a hundred francs from me; rang for the floor waiter, and asked the “open sesame” of all waiters: “You are an Italian, of course. From what part of Italy do you come?”
“Da Genova,” replied our man, who was square-headed and stocky, and almost light of hair.
“A pleasant city,” said Kyra. “Of the most intelligent inhabitants. I have many friends in Genoa.” And in three minutes she had her Italian talking, as only a pretty woman can.
It was a tragedy, he said. Worse—it was bad for the albergo. And everyone of the belle signore on his floor, too. The English lady had had number six hundred and seven; and the American lady this very apartment. He remembered the American lady particularly. Yes, it was true. This Signora Vinser had been a very short lady. Yes. That was right. She could not have fallen over the balustrade. She must have climbed on to it. And the German lady, she was short and fat, too.
“Indeed,” went on our waiter, “they were of a type, all five of them. What type? How shall I describe it? There are so many such here in Nizza. You see them everywhere, and every season. We call them ‘the comfortable ones.’ They dance; but they do not gamble. They read the papers, and go for a little walk on the Promenade des Anglais, and after lunch they sleep for an hour or two, and in the evenings they play the bridge.”
His hundred francs he pocketed with a “tante grazie,” but no servility; adding, just before he left us: “But yes. The newspapers reported rightly. All five were quite alone when it happened. Because in each case it happened almost at the same moment. Just as the sun was rising, between five and six o’clock.”
Alone with me, Kyra fell Kyraish; and smoked three of her Rumanian cigarettes without a word.
“I am at a disadvantage,” she confessed after the third one. “Were we in the Var, the police would tell me everything. Here, in the Alpes Maritimes, there is nobody. I am a poor lone damsel. And I am baffled. I think I shall make you take me home.”
“Without sending for the manager of the hotel, Kyra? Surely you will do that? In all the best detective stories——”
Whereupon, furious, she told me first to tache my lingura; and then to ring for the chambermaid, who came smirking, and was presented with another of my hundred-franc notes.
The chambermaid proved less sympathetic than the floor waiter. “What would you?” she said. “All rich women go a little crazy in their fifties. It is just the bad luck that we should have had five of them on this sacred sixth floor.”
“You think they were all crazy, then?” said Kyra.
“The German lady was. Undoubtedly. She told me that she believed in spirits. And the American lady, too, she believed in them. Especially in her husband’s. He was killed in France, she told me. So his spirit could not get back to America. ‘I have come to find him,’ she said once. ‘He needs me. Of that I am very sure.’ ”
“And the others?” asked Kyra.
“Of them I know nothing. I was not here when they suicided themselves. But the night porter, who is my cousin, he told me that the lady from England used to talk to herself. He heard her doing it—the night before it happened, when he was taking her up in the lift.”
The chambermaid, my hundred-franc note tucked in her apron pocket, went out still smirking. “There remain for cross-examination,” said I, “her cousin, the night porter; and, if my hundred-franc notes last us, the valet-de-chambre.” But just as I said this, the telephone rang to say that a gentleman who would give no name particularly wanted to see Miss Sokratesco; and a minute or two later, who should come in on us but our friend the Chef de la Sûreté, imagined in Toulon.
“If I intrude on pleasure,” said our friend, “pray forgive me. But this hotel is being watched; and when your arrival was reported, I naturally concluded——”
“Your conclusion is an accurate one, Chief,” admitted Kyra; and she added, laughing: “If it is necessary to save any reputations, the telegraph office at Sainte Maxime——”
“That also,” interrupted the Chief, “has been reported.” And he permitted himself a guffaw.
“But this is no time for guffawing,” he went on. “Affairs are serious. And international. I break no confidences when I tell you that the Frau Direktorin Müller was a personage in Germany; and that Paris is perturbed, more than perturbed, about this succession of apparent suicides. Paris thinks we have a murderer, and a very cunning one, to deal with. The whole of the
Sûreté has been mobilized.”
“As far as one can gather,” I broke in, “without results.”
The Chief, whose temper is of the best, did not resent the interruption. Neither, to my surprise, did he deny its truth.
“We are in black darkness,” he admitted. “All five crimes, if crimes they are, seem motiveless. Neither jewels nor money are missing. We can trace no love-affairs. With the exception of the Baroness Rosendahl, who divorced the Baron nearly twenty years ago, all the victims are widows. They appear to have no children. In no case do their fortunes pass to one particular individual. Three lived on annuities. Madame Winser’s money will be divided among no fewer than twenty-seven relatives; Frau Müller’s goes mainly to charity. And after the most careful, indeed the most exhaustive inquiries, we are positive that no human being could have been anywhere near them when their deaths occurred.
“And what is more,” added the Chief, “we can trace no common contact, except——”
“Except,” put in Kyra, “the floor waiter——”
“Who only comes on duty at seven in the morning; and a young man who gives dancing lessons here, by name Auguste Roux.”
Auguste Roux, of whom the Chief then produced a perfect brigade of photographs, appeared to be the usual type of French dancing boy. He had the mouth of a rabbit; and his forehead indicated a similar brain power. The police had examined him that morning. All five of the dead ladies, he admitted, had been his clients. All five had taken their lessons privately. They had paid his usual fee, and been tres gentilles with their pourboires. He himself always left the hotel after the dancing. He could therefore throw no light on the mysterious deaths.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 103
