Death Before Breakfast

by George Bellairs

  ‘Mornin’, Con! The tube’s on your wheel. Call any time. …’

  He might have been the mayor of Willesden! Everybody seemed to respect or fear him.

  Outside, the police were still making enquiries along the road.

  A man in plain clothes was just entering a small baker’s shop and a uniformed policeman was talking to a rag-and-bone man with a mule hitched to the shafts of an old cart. He was all rags and bones himself, too.

  Littlejohn picked up the police car parked in August Street and was driven to The Yard. Cromwell was back with a lot of reports on visits to houses and shops. Nothing much. Nobody had seen the body before or after Mrs. Jump. Nothing unusual had happened on the night of the crime. A blank. Nothing at all. Except that a barber had told a policeman that Barnes owned half the property in the vicinity of July Street. The estate agents wouldn’t disclose it, but Barnes, perhaps soothed by having his hair cut, had from time to time, swanked about it. He was a bad landlord, judging from what other men had said confidentially in the same barber’s chair. No give; all take. His parsimony had reduced half the houses in June, July and August Streets to slum property from fairly decent places before he took them over. Probably whole streets at a time would be condemned soon and have to come down. The owners of property Barnes had managed to sell them through his estate agents’ ‘building society’ were now pathetically painting them up in the hope that the local authority wouldn’t be too hard on them when it came to choosing sites for demolition.

  ‘If it ’ad been Sammy Barnes as ’ad been murdered, I could ’ave understood it,’ the barber had confided.

  Littlejohn told Cromwell of his proposed trip to Sens with Luc, and rang down for ’plane bookings to Paris and back.

  ‘Meanwhile, old chap, there are one or two lines still to be followed. For some reason, that little chap, Peeples, – the one whose children you were quack-doctoring – is drinking heavily.’

  ‘Celebrating the disappearance of the whooping-cough.’

  ‘In whisky? First, it was beer. Now it’s something stronger and this morning he was doing it in solitary state, and half drunk. There’s something queer about him. He’s scared to death of Barnes. Whether he thinks Barnes can evict him from the house, or it’s more than that, I can’t say. It’s probably something else. Better put someone on Peeples’ tail to keep an eye on him.’

  Cromwell looked amazed.

  ‘I thought he was a very decent little chap.’

  ‘Because his children had whooping-cough?’

  ‘Right, sir. Anything else?’

  ‘Any news about passports to France – or anywhere else – issued to folk in the July Street locality?’

  ‘No news yet.’

  ‘When they send it in, you might follow it up. Find out where the holders of passports have travelled to lately. Say over the last two years. We’re interested, in particular, in France.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Barnes was at pains to tell me, in case we need him, that he’ll be having to-morrow off. He’s taking his wife for a breath of sea air to Eastbourne for the benefit of her health. From my brief study of their relations last night, I wouldn’t think he cares a damn what her health’s like, provided it doesn’t interfere with his business, whatever that might be. If he did, he’d treat her a bit more gently. Let’s see exactly what’s he’s up to. Have his car followed to-morrow if he takes his little jaunt.’

  ‘I’ll see to it, sir. Is that the lot?’

  ‘Sorry; not yet. There’s a room at the back of Barnes’s garage, which Sammy calls his den. There’s a lot of old junk in it, but there’s also a single bed of the camp variety there that seems too clean and in good condition. It might have been used recently. Perhaps Barnes might have taken our friend Jourin in as a lodger. There’s also a sort of manhole in the plaster-board roof of Barnes’s cubby-hole which probably gives access to a sort of loft between the ceiling and the main roof of the garage. Barnes seemed very anxious to get me away from the place. I didn’t see much interesting except the bed, on the ground floor. Perhaps you might make a chance to explore the contents of the room through the trapdoor in the ceiling. Do your best, old chap.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘I don’t want to start getting search-warrants, yet. They might scare off anybody up to jiggery-pokery. I’ll have to leave it to your ingenuity. I’ll be back to-morrow afternoon, I hope, unless something long and important turns up.’

  ‘Right, sir.’

  ‘There’s one other thing, too, we mustn’t forget. The medical career of Dr. Macready. He holds a good Scottish degree and his name’s still in the Medical Directory, as a registered practitioner. That means he’s not committed any misdemeanours which might get him struck-off. A clean record, in fact. He’s a history of good service and solid practice in Willesden district up to about seven years ago. Then he began to drink heavily and neglect his work. That was before his wife died, so it can’t have been her death which broke him up. I grant you, it might have been boredom or disappointment turned him to the bottle. But it may be something else. You might take this job over personally, Cromwell. Go down there and enquire. Ask that garrulous barber, for a start, if he’s been down there long enough to know the local history. What broke-up Macready’s life? That’s what we’d better try to find out. I think that’s all, thanks.’

  ‘Have a good trip, sir. What time do you leave?’

  ‘Two o’clock. I’ll be in Paris before four, I hope.’

  Cromwell went away to a quiet spot to sort out his many duties, then he joined Littlejohn again and they went out for lunch. The Superintendent was driven to London airport and was in Paris, as he expected, before four. It was dark when Luc found him at his hotel in the Boulevard de la Madeleine. They dined early and talked a long time, for they hadn’t met for years. Littlejohn was in bed and asleep before eleven.

  Chapter 8

  Sens

  The morning in Paris was dry and sunny and as they drew nearer their destination, the idea of fishing in the Yonne seemed reasonable after all.

  Luc had picked up Littlejohn early in his old car. He looked a bit older than when last they had met. His hair and the large moustache of which he was very proud, were greyer, but he was his old alert, humorous self. A smallish, thick-set, typically Gallic man, grown a bit fatter in his retirement in the valley of the Orne, where food was good and life was sweet. His mother had been Norman and he had inherited from her the property to which he had retired. His father had come from Arcy-sur-Cure, which made Sens and the Yonne his homeland.

  Luc wore the same kind of hat, soft and turned down all round, and shabby raincoat as in the old days.

  They made good going through the suburbs of Paris, Fontainebleau and the flat country of the Seine and Yonne valleys and, just before noon, they reached Sens. There Luc spent a lot of time trying to persuade Littlejohn to join him in a meal of the famous snails of Bourgogne, but he contented himself with the local ham, washed down with a Côte Saint-Jacques, a great but scarce rosé wine of the neighbourhood. They lunched at a famous hotel and Luc asked the landlord if he knew Etienne Jourin.

  The landlord, a Burgundian like Luc, looked first at the remains of the feast scattered on the table before the two detectives and then made a gesture of resignation with his shoulders, like one who from a feast of the gods is suddenly brought back to earth and dry bread.

  ‘I know of him, and he is nothing to be proud of. We are grieved that he should ever have been born in Sens. His notoriety brings us no credit; only shame.’

  ‘You knew him before he went to Paris and earned himself a reputation?’

  ‘He was born and brought up in Sens. His father was a worker on the roads, but Etienne did better for himself. He was apprenticed to Souquier, the jeweller – the shop’s still there in the Grande Rue. Then, he joined-up when war began and we heard he was somewhere in Savoy, in the Resistance. He returned a bit of a hero and went back to his old trade. Bu
t that wasn’t good enough for Monsieur Etienne any more. He went to try his fortune in Paris; and rare good fortune he got, too. In gaol. Then, he became quite a celebrity. Le Roi d’Argent, indeed. And now the police are after him for another big jewel robbery.’

  ‘I’m afraid they won’t catch up with him, either. He’s dead. He fled to England and was murdered there.’

  ‘You don’t say! I’ve been wondering what you were here for. I suppose you’re the police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the gentleman with you, he’s from the English police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you on your way to tell his mother?’

  ‘She lives here still?’

  ‘Yes. In a little street behind the cathedral. Rue des Petits Cochons. Anybody will tell you. She’s a very decent woman. Nobody holds it against her that she’s got a no-good son. The rest of her children are very respectable. Her husband was knocked down on the road and killed years ago. She’s written-off Etienne completely. I believe he was in town not long ago, and called on her. She showed him the door. She ought to have sent for the police. They were after him. Just like his cheek to turn-up here. Straight from crime to his mother. I suppose it might be considered natural to do that, but not after his record.’

  ‘Did he stay long in the town?’

  ‘I can’t say. It might have been a rumour. Then he went south. Picked up a woman, I heard, and went off with her. He arrived here in a car, dressed-up to the nines and throwing his money about. Stayed at the best hotel, too. It’s years since he was here before and only a few recognised him. He said he wanted to see his mother again. In any event, nobody would betray him to the police. He’s a sort of local hero. He trades on his war record and the fact that nowadays people seem to admire the Arsène Lupin sort of thieves with plenty of cheek. It’s disgusting!’

  ‘Well, thanks, Monsieur Close. I think perhaps we’d better go and have a word with his mother.’

  It was a sunny November afternoon as they stepped out into the main street. Sens is normally a bustling little place, but to-day was a saint’s festival and it was busier than ever. Roundabouts and booths in the little square, cheap jacks hawking their stuff under the walls and in the very porch of the magnificent cathedral. Customers of the cafés in the side-streets were sitting in the open, enjoying their apéritifs in the burst of bright weather. Children playing were still dressed in summer clothes.

  Rue des Petits Cochons was one of a number of shabby, narrow alleys running from the back of the cathedral. Groups of women standing at doors, children playing on the uneven pavements. Luc asked where Madame Jourin lived. One of the women indicated a house across the way.

  Something seemed to have happened already at the Jourin home. A small knot of women, some of them with babies in arms, were gathered, gossiping in the middle of the street opposite the house. They eyed the newcomers inquisitively.

  ‘Police! ’ said a voice.

  Madame Jourin’s was like the rest of the crowded tenements there. Narrow fronted, with the paint peeled from the woodwork. There was a pervading smell of drains and from a house nearby emerged the strong aroma of cooking onions.

  ‘Shall we go in?’

  Luc knocked at the door discreetly. A tall gangling peasant of a man, who hadn’t shaved for days and whose eyes were red, opened it. He gave Luc and Littlejohn a cursory look and seemed to know at once who they were.

  ‘Is Madame Jourin in?’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Enter. We thought you’d call. Last time it was the men in uniform. Now it’s the flics. We can’t tell you anything.’

  ‘May we see Mme. Jourin, please?’

  ‘I said come in.’

  A dark, narrow place, smelling of old stone and decayed woodwork. A step down into the living-room. Beyond, another door, presumably to the sleeping quarters and the kitchen.

  A large hearth with an iron cooking-stove. Old furniture scattered here and there. A plain wooden sideboard. Faded photographs of years ago hanging on the walls. A crucifix over the sideboard with a little holy-water stoop beneath it. On the sideboard, a jam-jar of faded wild flowers in water green from a need of a change.

  At the bare wooden table in the middle of the room a plump little old woman with a large stomach was preparing a meal. A mixing-board, a small pile of fresh bones, onions and the smell of garlic. Her hands were covered in flour. On one corner of the table, a bottle of wine, half-full, and two coarse glasses with the dregs of drinks in them.

  ‘Police,’ said the man.

  Judging from the attitudes of the pair of them, the old woman and the peasant had been quarrelling. She gave him a nasty look.

  ‘What of it? The fellow from the gendarmerie’s been here already to let us know he’s dead.’

  ‘You might show some sorrow.’

  ‘I ought to be glad. Better dead and in God’s peace than carrying on the way he has done since he came back. Disgracing the family.’

  She put her hands on her hips and the row looked like starting again.

  ‘I know you admired him. You were always on his side. …’

  She turned to Luc and Littlejohn and then pointed at the man.

  ‘He used to say Etienne had been led astray. I ask you. Is a man led astray unless he wants to be? He’s Etienne’s brother, in case you don’t know. I’m his mother. The boys always ganged-up against me and now, he thinks because Etienne’s met his death through the life he’s been leading, I ought to rouse the street with my lamentations.’

  Luc was trying hard to get a word in edgeways.

  ‘We’re sorry to call at an inconvenient time, Madame Jourin, but we’re anxious to ask you one or two questions which might help us to trace Etienne’s murderer.’

  ‘I’m a god-fearing woman, monsieur, and God will avenge the wrong. He doesn’t need a lot of inquisitive detectives to help Him.’

  ‘We’re only doing our duty, madame. We deeply sympathise with you. We’ve come all the way from Paris to see you. I hope you’re going to help us.’

  ‘There’s nothing much I can tell you. He wouldn’t listen to what I had to say, and this is the result. I told him he was no son of mine. What his father would have said, I don’t know. He was a sensitive man. It would have killed him.’

  She cast her eyes towards one of the photographs of a heavily bearded man, who looked more scared than anything else.

  She had a tired, lined face and hard dark eyes. A woman who had obviously endured a lot in life and had fought her way through it somehow. She looked at the meal she was preparing and then at her two visitors.

  ‘I suppose I’d better listen to what you have to say. Otherwise you’ll be here all afternoon and there’ll be no dinner. My daughter and son-in-law will be here before long, and they’ll expect feeding whatever’s happened to her brother. What did you want to know?’

  ‘When did you last see your son?’

  ‘In the Spring. From what he said, he’d spent a spell in prison for something somebody else had done since last he saw me. Somebody else I I’ve heard that tale before. He said he was going south. Arrived in a car, like a lord. I told him he was no son of mine. He laughed. Offered me money. “Buy yourself something”, he said. I threw it back in his face. I suppose he was on his way to the Midi, where there are plenty of fools with money to steal from.’

  ‘Did he stay with you whilst he was in Sens?’

  ‘Not he. He was too high-up in the world to want his old bed in his mother’s house. He was flaunting it in the best hotel in town. He had a woman with him, too, I was told. He was always a petticoat-chaser. This one, they told me, was like a duchess. He didn’t bring her here to see me, I can tell you. I’d have shown her the door. He’s still married to the girl he wed just before the war. Although he’s not lived with her since the day he left for Paris. She’ll never divorce him. She’s a good catholic, that girl. She’s gone home to her mother in Auxerre.’

  ‘
And the last you saw of him was in Spring?’

  ‘Yes. He was travelling to Lyon, he said. He’d call on his way back. I told him not to trouble unless he was prepared to mend his ways. He mustn’t have been prepared, because he never called again.’

  Littlejohn let Luc do all the talking. They understood each other. In fact, Littlejohn had never collaborated with anyone whose methods – if such they could be called – were as similar to his own. He listened to the questions and answers, now and then casting an eye on Jourin’s brother, sitting listlessly at the table, drinking another glass of wine. Outside, the crowd had increased. Word had gone round that the Paris police were with Madame Jourin. Some of the women kept passing the window and trying to see what was going on inside. Conversation was brisk and loud.

  The room was hot and stuffy. The iron stove was purring and ready for the dinner.

  ‘Did your son ever write to you, Madame Jourin?’

  ‘Once or twice. I can’t read and write properly. Bernard – that’s the one sitting there drinking wine, in spite of his grief – Bernard used to read them to me. Then, I put them on the fire. I never answered them, except once. Etienne put some money in a letter and I sent it back. It was written from somewhere in Paris. I don’t know whether it ever reached him. I don’t much care so long as I wasn’t made to keep it.’

  Bernard was drinking, his close-set eyes roving over the edge of the glass. Littlejohn caught his shifty glance. He knew the money had never reached Paris!

  ‘You didn’t keep any of the letters, you say.’

  ‘No.’

  Bernard lowered his glass. He seemed to think this was a matter on which he could, at last, make himself heard.

  ‘He sent a postcard from London. My little daughter, Lise, kept it because she’d never seen a picture of London before.’

  ‘When did that come?’

  ‘About April this year. I know because it’s Lise’s birthday in April and she asked for it as a birthday card.’

  ‘Is it here?’

  ‘No. It’s at home. I live in Avallon, and I’m only here for the day. The Avallon police told me about Etienne and I came on the first ’bus in case I was wanted. It seems I wasn’t.’