Murder at Renard's (Rose Simpson Mysteries Book 4)

by Margaret Addison

  ‘What you’re saying, sir, is the girl’s a bit naïve. I daresay you’re right, and of course you know her better than I do, but I reckon she’ll be all right. It’s not as if this is her first murder case, is it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t, more’s the pity. It would seem that our Miss Simpson has got rather a knack for attracting murder wherever she goes.’

  Before Madame Renard’s interview could begin, Sergeant Perkins was dispatched to the shop to acquire an additional chair. Much to Rose’s relief, Inspector Deacon gave no sign that he considered her an interloper in the proceedings. Instead, while they awaited the sergeant’s return, he made much of shuffling the papers on the desk in front of him. He had risen on their entrance and remained standing as did Rose, who stood at her employer’s shoulder in the guise of some guardian angel. Madame Renard had seated herself warily in the chair opposite the inspector, her back as straight as a rod. She was perched right on the chair’s edge as if ready for flight.

  Waiting afforded Inspector Deacon an opportunity to scrutinise the woman before him. She had on a long, black velvet dress over which she had thrown a silk shawl seemingly effortlessly, which had the effect only of accentuating her foreignness. Despite its finery, it seemed appropriate in the circumstances, reminding him of funeral garb as it did. Small and petite, and anything between forty and forty-five, in complexion Madame Renard inclined to Mediterranean, her olive skin smooth and unlined, her eyes dark. He could appreciate that there was a certain presence about the woman that belied her diminutive physique. Even as she entered the room, he noted that she carried herself well. To the inspector, she epitomised the typical Frenchwoman. He had the impression also of someone consumed with a pent up energy, which he assumed usually presented itself in expressive and flamboyant physical gestures and loud exclamations. This evening, however, the woman’s demeanour was quiet. He imagined the energy bubbling under the surface, creating an inner turmoil. He knew the type well. The interview would more than likely proceed in one of two ways. The woman could be sullen and restive, fiddling with those great bangles of hers, but giving only monosyllabic answers. In which case the exchange was likely to be laboured and unfruitful. The inspector groaned inwardly. Conversely, there was also the possibility that Madame Renard might fly off the handle for little reason and become verbose. He knew the trick to achieving this was to touch a nerve or a subject on which the woman felt so strongly that she was unable to keep her emotions contained.

  The sergeant returned and the chair was put in place. Rose sat down next to Madame Renard and the policemen resumed their seats.

  ‘I understand that this is a very distressing time for you, Madame Renard, and that the hour is very late,’ began Inspector Deacon. ‘I shall try to keep my questions as brief as possible. It may therefore be necessary for me to speak to you again tomorrow.’

  The proprietor gave him the briefest of nods to indicate that she understood what he was saying. There then followed the preliminary routine questions regarding Madame Renard’s particulars, and Rose found her thoughts drifting off. She tried to visualise in her mind where this room was positioned in relation to the shop below. Were they directly above the kitchenette and storeroom, or above the storeroom and office-cum-dressing room? Perhaps part of their room edged over the shop floor itself. What a dismal little room this was. It felt intrusive to be in what was after all Madame Renard’s bedroom of sorts, even if it did also serve the function of a study. She stared at the dark red curtain and thought of the bath and sink hidden behind it, nudging shoulders with the mean little cooking facilities, if one could even call them that. She looked up at the walls and ceiling and saw signs of damp and peeling paint. Her eyes focused next on the desk before her, which constituted so effective a physical barrier between policeman and suspects. The desk itself was a poor imitation of the one downstairs in Madame Renard’s office, the latter piled so high with bills and correspondence that they had scattered on the floor when Marcel Girard had inadvertently knocked the desk while pacing the room …

  ‘Now, I should like you to tell me about the doors to your shop, Madame,’ the inspector was saying when Rose returned her attention to the conversation in hand. ‘There are only the two, I understand, the main entrance, which is the shop door facing onto the street and used by your customers, and the door at the back of the storeroom opening out onto the next street?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now, just to help me get this straight in my own mind, am I right in thinking that no one could have come through the main door this evening without being admitted by you or one of your staff, that’s to say a person could not just have walked in off the street?’

  ‘No, they could not. The door, it was kept locked. No one could enter unless they were admitted. The event, it was by invitation only, you understand? The door was opened to let each person in and they were only admitted if they had an invitation.’

  ‘And the guests? By that I mean your customers were allowed to have a guest or two accompany them, weren’t they? I assume these guests didn’t also have an invitation?’

  ‘No. It was not necessary. They accompanied the customers.’

  The proprietor gave the policeman a look which suggested that she thought he had asked a remarkably stupid question.

  ‘What would happen if someone were to claim to be a guest of one of your customers and the customer in question did not happen to be there?’

  ‘They would not be admitted.’

  ‘You are quite sure of that?’

  ‘Perfectly, Inspector.’

  ‘Right, let’s talk about this other door, the one in the storeroom opening onto the next street. Was it locked?’

  ‘But of course. Mary had to get the key to let everyone out. That door, it is always kept locked. My stock, it is stored in that room.’

  ‘And the key, it is kept in the kitchen under the sink, I believe?’

  ‘Yes. And if you are thinking one of my customers got the key and let in some accomplice through the storeroom, you are wrong, Inspector. The key, where it is hidden, it is not obvious.’

  ‘So what you are saying, Madame, if your scenario is correct, that’s to say someone was let in, it could only have been done by one of your staff?’

  ‘Or by a member of your family?’ piped up Sergeant Perkins. ‘Your son perhaps? I’ll wager he knew where you kept that key. I daresay even that Monsieur Girard had a fair idea, didn’t he?’

  There was an awkward silence. Rose stole a sideways glance at her employer. The proprietor had not turned around to face the sergeant, and yet the woman had been clearly affected by the interruption. She might well have forgotten that the sergeant was there, positioned out of their sight, as he was. Or perhaps it was what he had said that had disturbed her so deeply. Madame Renard had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, yet they were not still. There was a nervous movement to them which betrayed her emotions, accentuated by the slow jangling of the bangles, which created an odd music in the stillness. Madame Renard looked down at those hands as if she were trying to entreat them to be motionless.

  Rose, who knew her employer well, and was fully versant with how she was likely to react given almost any situation was nevertheless perplexed. This was not because of what the young and rather tactless sergeant had said, for the inspector had implied as much. It was rather how the proprietor was reacting, not only in this interview, but to the whole situation. Madame Renard was a woman who expressed herself in dramatic and flamboyant gestures, who threw up her arms and spoke in exaggerated terms on almost every subject. Why, look how she had reacted when informed that Lavinia could not attend the fashion event. She had said something along the lines that it was a disaster, no less than a catastrophe and that her reputation would be ruined. All nonsense of course, because at worse it had been an inconvenience and something of an embarrassment. And yet with a murder on her premises, and the victim a member of her staff no less, her reaction had been remarkably subdued. One would have b
een forgiven for expecting histrionics on a grand scale. If Rose had been asked before how she anticipated Madame Renard would react in the event of such an occurrence, she would have said that her employer would be wailing the place down and literally tearing out her hair. She would certainly not have expected that she would be sitting quietly as she was now, albeit clearly agitated. One could put it all down to shock, of course. Perhaps everything was yet to register clearly in her mind. Perhaps the histrionics had merely been postponed or deferred, and when they did materialise they would be even more dramatic than could ever be imagined.

  ‘What exactly are you suggesting, Inspector?’ asked Rose, more to break the silence than anything else. ‘There was no need to unlock the storeroom door. We were all in the shop when Sylvia was murdered. Or are you proposing that one of us unlocked the door during the course of the evening to admit the murderer?’

  ‘We are looking at all possible avenues, Miss Simpson. That is just one of many we must consider. At this stage we want to know only if such a thing would be feasible.’

  ‘I suppose it would be. But it’s rather unlikely, isn’t it? For one thing, Monsieur Girard was going backwards and forwards between the storeroom and the shop all evening. If the murderer did come in that way, he would be taking an awful risk of being discovered, unless of course Monsieur Girard was the person who unlocked the door for him. You had better talk to Mary. She’ll be able to tell you whether the storeroom door was unlocked when she tried the key.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Simpson, for your words of wisdom. We will naturally be speaking to Miss Jennings in due course, and of course Monsieur Girard himself. Now, if you don’t mind,’ the inspector paused to bestow on her a particularly stern look, ‘I would be grateful if you would refrain from interrupting for the rest of this interview. Otherwise I will have no alternative but to ask you to leave.’

  ‘In which case I would refuse to answer any more of your questions,’ said Madame Renard.

  This was so unexpected that without exception they all turned to stare at her.

  ‘That is of course your prerogative, Madame. But I don’t think I need to tell you that you would be taking a very grave risk if you refused to answer our questions. By that I mean the conclusions that we would be bound to draw from your refusal to answer would not be favourable. If you are innocent of this murder, you would not be going the right way to make us think so.’

  ‘You think I murdered Sylvia? That is ridiculous!’

  A flush of colour appeared on Madame Renard’s neck and crept up across her face. Her eyes which had been dull and half veiled by drooping lids and heavily blackened lashes, opened wide and bright. For a moment she even looked as if she might get up and wave her arms about, but presumably on reflection she thought better of it. Her attitude of listless, sullen indifference was replaced by an animated being. This was the Madame Renard with whom Rose was better acquainted. She had been concerned by her employer’s withdrawn and dispirited state. Really, she should have been pleased at the change. Instead she felt inexplicably afraid.

  Having provoked a reaction, the inspector showed no signs of relinquishing his advantage.

  ‘We must investigate every possibility and until we have eliminated a person from our enquiries, they remain a suspect,’ Inspector Deacon said rather coldly. ‘Now, I should like you to tell me about Miss Beckett if you will, Madame. What sort of an employee was she?’

  ‘Sylvia … ah, she was the sweetest of girls. My customers, they were very fond of her.’

  ‘Indeed? I was told she could be difficult and uncooperative.’

  ‘I do not need to ask from whom you heard such stories.’ The proprietor paused to glare at Rose, who herself coloured visibly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter who told us,’ said the inspector rather abruptly. ‘Are you saying it wasn’t true?’

  ‘The girl had her moments, like everyone, when she was not on top form as you English say. She could be a little rude sometimes. When this happened I took her aside and had a quiet word with her. The girl, she was receptive.’

  ‘Was she indeed? I am glad to hear it. I understand she was very fond of your son, and he of her.’

  What? Non! Who has told you such lies?’

  Madame Renard looked indignant. Her eyes blazed and she leant forward in her seat so that she appeared to loom over the desk towards the inspector. Any moment now, Rose thought, she is going to wag a finger at him.

  ‘It was a mild flirtation that is all. My son, he is a very handsome man and of course he has the good prospects, yes. He could have any girl he likes and he will set his sights high. Higher than poor Sylvia. Jacques, he was pleasant to the girl, nothing more. I am not saying she did not read more into it than there was. She was that silly sort of girl who attributes serious intentions where there are none. She went about with idle young men whose idea was only to amuse themselves. I will not speak ill of the dead, Inspector.’ Madame Renard paused a moment before, having started on a subject on which she had very strong views, she did just that. ‘Poor Sylvia was not at all a satisfactory girl when it came to boys. She was young and pretty and very popular with men. She was one of those girls who get themselves talked about.’

  ‘I see. But your son, he was not particularly fond of her, you say? It has been suggested to us that you were afraid Miss Beckett and your son had formed an attachment.’

  ‘Nonsense! I have told you he did not like the girl.’

  ‘You said no such thing. Isn’t it correct that your main reason for securing your son a job at Harridges was to get him away from the clutches of Miss Beckett?’

  ‘No! He needs to learn the trade.’

  ‘Shall I tell you what I think, Madame Renard? I think your son and Miss Beckett were very fond of each other. I also think that you did not consider the girl to be good enough for him, your words I think, and did your best to distance them from one another. Unfortunately for you, Monsieur Renard came to the fashion event this evening and saw Miss Beckett wearing a dress which, I have been reliably informed, made her look like a princess. He was so taken by her appearance that he uttered an exclamation that was sufficiently loud that it made people turn around and stare at him.’

  ‘That is not right. He was not fond of her. She … yes, as I have said she may have been fond of him, but what girl wouldn’t have been? But she was not going to marry Jacques. My son, he could see the sort of girl she was. Pah! She gave herself airs and graces that one. The way that she glanced around my shop as if it were already hers; I saw it in her eyes. The way she put her nose in the air and looked at the mannequins and the displays. I could see what was going on in her mind. She was thinking, when this is my shop, I shall put this there, I will have different mannequins, I will sell only couture, I will be mistress of this shop that is what she thought. She was a simple girl. She thought she was too clever for me, but no, I saw through her, her “Madame” this and her “Madame” that. I see what she is after. She would not get it, my shop … my son. She would not get them at all.’

  All the while she had been talking, the proprietor’s voice had been rising in both volume and pitch. Her tone had begun measured, but as she had worked herself up into more and more of a state, her words had come out tumbling over each other until she was speaking very fast indeed. Rose thought the whole thing the most awful spectacle. More than once she had been tempted to put out a hand in an attempt to stem the flow. She knew, however, from bitter experience it would not have done any good. Madame Renard was determined to have her say, and nothing would stop her. If possible, Rose did not wish to draw any more attention to Madame Renard’s outburst. In particular, she did not want the policemen to realise how alarmed she had been by it. Far better to pretend it was a regular occurrence and that the proprietor meant nothing by it. It was only words after all.

  ‘Over my dead body,’ added Madame Renard, as if to avoid any lingering doubt regarding how strongly she felt on the matter.

  ‘Perhaps it would
be more apt to say over her dead body,’ said Inspector Deacon quietly.

  Behind them Rose heard the sergeant suppress a chuckle.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The colour that had risen so vividly in Madame Renard’s cheeks disappeared, replaced by a chalky pallor. The eyes that only moments before had been alert and bright, became dull and clouded. The hands went back in her lap, clenched tightly together and held fast, as if she were afraid that they had a will of their own. She sat there with her head bowed, as if she knew she had said too much. Looking at her now, Inspector Deacon was certain that he would obtain little more information from her this evening. She would hold him alone responsible for goading her into a temper, so that her words had come cascading out of her mouth almost of their own accord, with little thought given to what she was saying.

  ‘I would like you to tell me something, Madame,’ said the inspector after a while. ‘We are particularly interested in the time between Miss Beckett returning to the dressing room in that silver gown of hers, which seems to have sparked such a reaction, and when the woman screamed drawing everyone’s attention to the fact that the curtain was alight.’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything, Inspector. I saw nothing. Lady Celia, she was very angry. She clawed at my arm. Look, you can see the bruises where her fingers dug into my flesh.’ She pushed up the sleeve of her dress to the elbow reveal two angry black smudges on her forearm. ‘It was not my fault if the girl, Sylvia, chose to defy my orders. Yet to hear her talk you would have thought that I’d worn the dress myself. I did my best to stop her making a scene. That woman, Lady Celia, yes? She spoke so loudly, everyone could hear. I saw nothing because I was trying to placate her.’