by Mark Hebden
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she was saying, happily making plans as they ate. ‘Above my office at the hairdressing salon there are rooms which would make an excellent apartment. It’s in the centre of the city and we could make it comfortable and interesting.’
After his house in the Rue Martin-de-Noinville, the office over Madame’s business had always been interesting to Pel. He’d often suffered fantasies, as he was shown upstairs to her office, that he was mounting to his mistress’ bedroom.
But three homes! Name of God, if he weren’t careful, he’d be a plutocrat!
‘It would be a wonderful place to use when you’re busy,’ Madame said. ‘Being over the business premises, it would always be aired and, when you were working late, it would save you having to go all the way out to Hauteville. I could simply move in and look after you.’
Oh, wonderful woman, Pel thought. What had he done to deserve such devotion?
‘Won’t it be a lot to look after?’ he asked uncertainly.
Madame’s mouth moved in a small smile. ‘We can have a housekeeper for Hauteville.’
Pel blanched. ‘A housekeeper?’
‘When I’ve finished a day’s work, I don’t feel like doing very much. And I’m sure you don’t.’
Pel was silent. After Madame Routy, the last thing he wanted was a housekeeper. He’d been thinking of Madame herself cooking his meals, pressing his clothes, putting out his slippers, being in his bed.
A housekeeper! He decided it needed the application of a certain amount of low cunning. However, he felt he knew quite a bit about low cunning. Most of his days were spent countering the activities of criminals noted for their low cunning, and because his own cunning was lower than theirs most of them ended in the jail at 72, Rue d’Auxonne. He decided he could work something out, given time.
Taking Madame home – Aimedieu following discreetly behind – he set off down the hill towards the Rue Martinde-Noinville. As he reached the Porte Guillaume, he turned off towards the railway station and the Hôtel de Police. He couldn’t bear going home without making sure the place was still functioning smoothly.
Darcy was still in his office, sitting by the telephone.
‘Found Duche yet?’ Pel asked cheerfully.
Darcy didn’t regard it as a joke. ‘Did you see him tonight, Patron?’ he asked.
Pel’s eyebrows rose. ‘Should I have?’
‘A man answering his description was seen in a car near the Relais St. Armand while you were eating there.’
Pel frowned. He was beginning to be irritated by the threat of Philippe Duche. ‘Who saw him?’
‘One of Nadauld’s uniformed boys off duty. He followed him in his car but lost him in the traffic.’
‘Nadauld’s boys would lose their right arms if they weren’t screwed on.’
‘It’s no joke, Patron.’
‘I didn’t imagine it was, Daniel. What do you propose to do?’
‘I’m switching Aimedieu to the search. From now on I’m sticking alongside you. Especially as Nadauld’s man thought he headed north out of the city.’
‘But I’m here, Daniel. In the city.’
‘At the moment, Patron. But you’re going out. North.’
‘I am?’
‘I’ve had Bardolle on the telephone again. He’s got an old boy out at Mongy he thinks we ought to see.’ He consulted a notebook. ‘Name of Gaston Jourjon. Known as Le Gaston. Does the ditching and hedging for the farmers whose fields border the Violette-Mongy-Mercourt road. He’s been doing it all his life. He hasn’t a television and doesn’t buy newspapers but has them given by neighbours after they’ve finished with them, and he’s just seen the picture of Dominique Pigny that appeared a week ago. He told Bardolle he saw her walking into Mongy two days before she was fished out of the sea at Beg Meil.’
Pel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Then if he saw her two days before she was found she must have decided to go to Beg Meil immediately afterwards.’
‘Unless she went unwillingly. This Jourjon says that when she passed him there was a car waiting up the road in a lay-by that had been waiting there on and off for three days. If what he says is true and there was a car there, perhaps it was waiting for her. And if that’s so, she probably wasn’t killed in Beg Meil but here. In which event, it’s not Beg Meil’s case. It’s ours.’
Twelve
When they arrived at Mongy the following morning, Bardolle was waiting for them.
‘Le Gaston’s ready,’ he said.
Pel looked about him. ‘Where is he?’
‘At work. He wouldn’t stop. I don’t think he knows how to. He’s been at it all his life. Same thing, day after day, month after month, year after year.’
‘Couldn’t you bring him in?’
‘I’d have to club him, Patron.’ Bardolle levered his huge bulk into Darcy’s car and sank into the rear seat. The car immediately took on a heavy list to starboard. ‘I’ll direct you. It’s a lovely morning. It should be nice out there.’ It was clearly Bardolle’s enjoyment of his little diocese that made him such a happy man.
‘Who is this Le Gaston anyway?’
Bardolle shrugged his enormous shoulders. ‘Well, he’s a bit of a liar, but you can’t ignore what he’s got to say because of that. And he’s well known round here for not minding his own business.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘He’s a voyeur. Uses his job to creep about fields and watch youngsters romping in the grass.’
Le Gaston was busy at the side of the road. He was a small strong-looking old man with a face wrinkled by a thousand suns. His trousers were tied up with string and his cap sat at an unbelievable angle on the side of his head. Long before they were within hailing distance they could see his head bobbing up and down in the ditch. He had cleared the weeds and laid them in little piles along the side of the road and, further along, one of them was smouldering. He was now trimming the hedge, using a billhook to cut half-through the branches so he could bend them over and weave them round stakes he was hacking from the woods behind.
‘Every five years,’ he said. ‘It needs this treatment every five years. They get neglected.’
‘They prefer to pull ’em up these days,’ Bardolle pointed out bluntly. ‘They reckon a few large fields are easier to cultivate than a lot of little ones.’
‘No good for cattle,’ Le Gaston said. ‘They waste the grass. Besides, hedges cut the wind. Stop soil erosion. And when they go, the wildlife’s lost.’
Pel made his presence known with a cough. Le Gaston looked up, but he didn’t seem to think much of Pel and he didn’t stop.
‘They want to know about that girl,’ Bardolle said. ‘The one you told me about.’
Le Gaston gestured with his billhook. It almost removed Pel’s nose. ‘I saw her,’ he said. ‘Passed me on the road here, Walking. Good walker. Nice legs, too. Strong.’ He gave a little cackle. ‘And I never saw such a behind. Nor such a before, come to that.’
‘Where had she come from?’
The old man pointed. ‘Up yonder. Only place she could come from.’
‘What’s up there?’ Pel asked.
‘Leads through Arne,’ Bardolle said. ‘To Les Charmielles and Violette then back on to the main road.’
‘Hiker?’
‘She wasn’t no hiker,’ Le Gaston said. ‘I seen her before.’
His head was still down in the ditch, his arms going like a wasp’s wings, and Pel spoke plaintively. ‘Think he could manage to stop for a bit? I don’t enjoy talking to his backside.’
Bardolle fished in his back pocket and withdrew a flask. ‘They’ll usually stop for this,’ he said.
Le Gaston was no exception. He climbed out of the ditch, laid down his tools, took the proffered flask and had a good swig.
‘You say you saw her before,’ Pel said. ‘Where?’
‘Here. I live here. In Mongy. They won’t mend my roof and it’s leaking.’
‘Never mind your roof, you old ratba
g.’ Bardolle said. ‘When you saw her before, which way was she going?’
‘Both ways. I saw her come down the hill and once I saw her go up.’
‘So she must have come from somewhere on this road and was going back when she went the other way. Where would she be going the day you saw her?’
‘Mongy or Mercourt. It was the 15th of the month. I worked it out. I was down there alongside the wood. I take a fortnight to get to here from the curve down there. Always have. For twenty years. Musta been the 15th.’
Pel looked quickly at Darcy. ‘Six or seven days before she was fished out of the sea,’ he said. ‘And they reckoned she’d been in it for about that time. So she must have been walking down this road between twenty-four and thirty-six hours before she died.’
‘I seen a car too,’ Le Gaston said. ‘Up yonder. Parked.’ He took another swig at Bardolle’s flask. Bardolle hurriedly took it back, and picking up his tools again, Le Gaston gave them a gap-toothed grin. ‘Can’t let me tools get cold,’ he explained.
‘What sort of car?’ Pel asked as the old man climbed into the ditch again.
Le Gaston’s head shook violently. Surprisingly, it didn’t dislodge the cap resting over his left ear, which remained as firmly fixed as if it had been nailed there. ‘I don’t know no names of cars. Just a car. Will they mend my roof?’
‘ I wouldn’t,’ Bardolle said. ‘Not if I were your landlord. Listen, what colour was this car?’
‘White. Cream. That sort of colour.’
‘What was it doing?’
‘Just standing?’
‘Get the number?’
The old man cackled. ‘I can’t see things like that. But I see it more than once. Just standing. Near the big house. I seen it three days runnin’.’
‘Have you seen it since?’
‘It never came back after the last time I saw the girl.’
‘Anybody in this car?’ Darcy asked.
‘Man.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘Nobody sees me. I arrive as soon as it’s light and when I go, everybody’s already home. I’d go earlier if I had somewhere decent. Only my roof leaks.’
Bardolle frowned. ‘Listen, you old lunatic. Did you get us out here just to draw attention to your roof? I wouldn’t put it past you.’
As the interrogation limped along, Le Gaston offered little in the way of description. He had seen the girl and then, as it passed him, the car with a man in it and that was all.
‘When did it pass you?’
‘Soon after the girl passed me. She’d gone round the corner there when it came down.’
‘Did you see what happened?’
‘No.’
‘Did you hear anything?’
‘Brakes. I reckon he had to brake to miss her.’
‘Or because he hit her,’ Pel said. ‘What you heard was probably the tyres. What time was this?’
‘Late afternoon. Five. About that. I was in shadow.’ The old man looked up at the sun. ‘This time of the year the sun’s over the hill there. I was packing up. Cleaning my hook. Putting it in a sack. Police are fair fussy about wrapping ’em up. Say the kids might harm themselves.’ He gave a little cackle. ‘Any kid that comes round my faghook deserves all he gets. You could shave with it. Cut a man’s throat as easy as look at him. I wouldn’t mind cutting the throat of the type who won’t mend my roof.’
By the afternoon, a description of the car had gone out to all stations and substations for enquiries to be made at local garages, and Bardolle’s men were making enquiries in the villages to the north while Lagé, Misset and Morell were working round Arne, Les Charmielles and Violette. Nobody had seen the girl, but Bardolle turned up a woman who’d almost been knocked down by a speeding car at the end of the afternoon of the 15th as she crossed the main street of Mercourt just beyond Mongy and to the north of where Le Gaston had been working.
‘I had to jump for my life,’ she said.
She hadn’t got the number and didn’t know what sort of car it was but it was white and she thought it was the same as the local doctor drove. They discovered the local doctor drove a Mercedes.
Suddenly they were making a little progress and messages were put out to all forces and all garages and repair shops at the car they were looking for was a Mercedes that had been brought in on or around the 15th, 16th or 17th of the previous month requiring repairs consistent with it having hit someone.
In the meantime, Pel contacted Inspector Le Bihan to inform him that it looked very much as though the case was about to pass out of his hands.
‘Well, you’re welcome to it,’ Le Bihan said. ‘We’re certainly not getting very far here.’
However, he had one interesting item of news. One of the wealthy residents of Benodet, the next residential area to the west from Beg Meil, had reported a white car hanging about on the road that ran along the coast on the 16th of the month. She’d noticed it first because her small son was having a party that day and she’d thought it was the caterer bringing the food. She hadn’t known the make of the car but her small son had: It was a Mercedes.
‘It stayed until after dark,’ Le Bihan said. ‘There was a man in it. Dark. Sunglasses. Light-coloured suit, blue shirt. She thought he was nervous or a burglar studying the house. It stayed there most of the day and only disappeared at lunchtime. It wasn’t there the next day.’
That night a dentist from Lyons called Bastien telephoned to say that he’d heard of the police interest in a white Mercedes and would they perhaps be interested in his? He gave its number and said it had been stolen on the 12th of the previous month, which was just before Dominique Pigny had disappeared and immediately before a white Mercedes had turned up in the lay-by on the road from Arne. It was, he considered, about time he got it back.
The number went out and under the circumstances, with Dominique Pigny fixed more firmly in their diocese, it seemed a good idea to see Madame Charnier’s husband, who appeared to be the one person who might have a motive for murder.
Taking the view that, faced with his formidable wife, Charnier might be inclined to be reticent, they decided he would be better interviewed at his work. He was employed by a small manufacturer of agricultural implements and appeared in the dusty waiting room wearing an overall which seemed to swamp him but somehow seemed to go with his personality, as if he’d been swamped all his life by something or other.
He was a thin man with glasses and the look of a frightened hamster. Quite clearly, he had been dominated by the women in his life. His mother originally, without doubt, now his wife, and, at some point, her sister.
‘I’ve never owned a white Mercedes,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t mind. It might stop my wife going on about the old Peugeot I run.’
‘Do you ever go to Benodet or Beg Meil in Brittany?’ Pel asked.
‘I’ve never been there in my life,’ Charnier said. ‘My wife’s always going on about it. You’d think it was paradise. She used to live in Brittany and go there as a girl for August and she thinks we should.’
‘You knew Dominique Pigny, I believe.’
‘She was my sister-in-law. She’s dead. It was in the paper.’
‘She was pregnant. Was the child yours?’
Charnier seemed uncertain how to answer and Pel decided it might easily have been.
‘You slept with her, didn’t you?’ he said.
‘Who told you?’
‘Your wife.’
‘She would.’ Charnier shrugged. ‘Well, yes, I did. But it was her fault, not mine. She was always going on about it. Saying I was ineffectual. My wife did a bit, too, and one day I sort of went mad and thought I’d show them I wasn’t.’
‘Did you kill her?’
Charnier gave a bleat of protest. ‘No, I didn’t! There were times when I felt I’d like to, mind. She was a troublemaker if ever there was one. Always coming to my home and stirring it up. All the same—’ his eyes suddenly became far away ‘—I’ve never regretted it.’
‘Why?’
Charnier shrugged. ‘Well, you know—’
‘No, I don’t know. Inform me.’
‘Well, my wife – well, she and I – there was nothing to it. No grand passion. She just let me do what I wanted and never seemed to join in at all. She looked like Joan of Arc going to the stake.’
‘And Dominique Pigny?’
‘She was different.’ For a brief moment, Charnier’s eyes lit up. ‘She believed in enjoying it. My wife seemed to think it was sinful or just for having kids, that sort of thing. Dominique said it should be fun and, name of God, she made it fun. They say you hear bells when you experience real passion. With my wife I didn’t even hear a tinkle. With Dominique it was if all the bells in Notre Dame were going. My wife had gone to look after her aunt. The old witch was always going on about being ill and needing someone to look after her – that family were born troublemakers – and Dominique happened to be staying with us and said she’d look after me. Holy Mother of God, she did, too!’
‘When was all this?’
‘Over a year ago.’
‘Then why did you hesitate when I asked if the baby was yours? Have you seen her since?’
Charnier hesitated. ‘About three months ago. End of April, beginning of May. My wife was looking after her aunt again and I was looking after myself. She turned up on the doorstep grinning all over her face. “Sidonie’s away, isn’t she?” she said. I asked her how she knew and she said she’d telephoned her aunt who’d told her. She was on her way somewhere. Lyons, I think she said. She wanted somewhere to sleep.’
‘Did she sleep with you?’
