Season of Snows and Sins

by Patricia Moyes

  “What do you know about it, M. Tibbett?”

  “Not very much,” Henry admitted cheerfully. “That’s why I came to see you. The little ones were young girls—perhaps boys, too, I don’t know. Ah, I see you can enlighten me. Boys, too?”

  Claudet nodded briefly. Henry went on. “These children were kept there to gratify the unusual desires of—well, important people. People who could not afford a scandal. People who were prepared to pay enormously for that elusive commodity—trust.”

  “I do not understand you, monsieur.”

  “I think you do. Somebody—perhaps several people—knew the identity of Frivolités’s clients. This person—or people—had a perfect blackmail weapon to hand, but did not use it. The clients believed, rightly, that if they paid enough, they would not be threatened. Unfortunately for them, somebody broke this trust. An honest person, who did not even consider personal gain by blackmail, but who went straight to the police.” Henry paused. Claudet had gone very pale. “Was that person you, M. Claudet?”

  “I do not intend to have my name dragged into—”

  “Of course not, M. Claudet,” said Henry patiently. “I thought I had explained that my interest in the matter is to be as discreet as possible. But if I do not have the facts myself…”

  “Very well.” Claudet reached a quick decision. “What I am about to tell you is in the strictest confidence. That is understood?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, you are right. It was I who exposed Frivolités to the police. The whole matter came to my notice through—a friend. That need not concern you. I reported it to a—a very senior police official. As his inquiries progressed, he grew more and more concerned at what he found. At last, he came to me privately and asked for my advice. It seemed that a number of very prominent men in public life were involved. The country was in a precarious state politically, and a scandal of that sort could have had grave consequences for France and her people. The men concerned had undoubtedly learned their lesson, and would never be so foolish again. I felt that the welfare of the nation was paramount. I agreed with the police official that Frivolités should be closed down quietly, on a charge of ‘use of premises for immoral purposes.’ The whole thing was managed with great discretion, and that was the end of it. And I don’t mind telling you,” Claudet added, with an almost noble defiance, “that I would do the same thing again in similar circumstances.”

  “And what happened,” Henry asked, “to the owner of the…enterprise?”

  Claudet frowned. “That was the only unsatisfactory aspect of the affair,” he said. “The woman who nominally owned and managed the shop was fined and given a heavy suspended prison sentence. That ensured her discretion, for she had only to step once out of line to find herself behind bars. However, the police were convinced that she was only a—how shall I put it?—a nominee. I doubt if she even knew enough to be a great danger. We never laid hands on the man—or woman—behind the whole unpleasant racket. Any attempt to track this person down threatened to involve some eminent public figure. It was an impasse, and has remained so.” There was a little pause. Then Claudet added, “I trust that your visit does not imply that this…this creature is becoming active again. On your side of the channel, perhaps.”

  “I hope not,” said Henry. He stood up. “Well, thank you very much, M. Claudet. You have helped me a great deal. I won’t keep you any longer—I know what a busy man you are.”

  “Just a moment, M. Tibbett.” Claudet spoke quietly, a man accustomed to exercising authority. “Please sit down.” Henry sat down. “I have been very frank with you. Now you will kindly be frank with me.”

  “I have told you—”

  “You have told me nothing at all,” Claudet pointed out, accurately. “You have used me to confirm what I believe was largely guesswork on your part. You have extracted information from me. Now—just what is your interest in the matter?”

  I could not resist a sidelong glance at Henry, to see how he would react to this. It was, after all, an eminently reasonable request, and since Henry had admitted that his inquiry was not official, he could hardly shelter behind the stockade of professional secrecy. I was beginning to feel considerable respect for Pierre Claudet. Very neatly, and giving the impression of admirable frankness, he had not only cornered Henry, but put him squarely in the wrong. I waited with some anxiety to see how Henry would return this beautifully placed ball.

  To continue the tennis analogy, Henry now played a well-judged lob. He said, “My interest is very simple, M. Claudet. I have reason to believe that…somebody…has had the idea of reviving this old scandal by means of blackmailing people who may have had some connection with Frivolités. I am anxious to put a stop to this, and I am sure you are, too.”

  Claudet considered for a moment. Then he said, “This—person. Is he the man we never caught, the actual owner of the enterprise?”

  “I can’t be sure of that,” said Henry.

  “But you know the identity of the blackmailer?”

  “Yes,” said Henry, “but at the moment I can’t prove it, so naturally I can’t make accusations. Meanwhile, M. Claudet, if anybody should approach you with demands for money—”

  “Me?” Claudet’s voice was as sharp as a whiplash. “Why should anybody approach me, M. Tibbett? My part in the affair was absolutely honorable. I have nothing to hide.”

  “I realize that, M. Claudet. Nevertheless—”

  This time it was Pierre Claudet who stood up. “I wish you every success with your investigation, M. Tibbett,” he said, “but I am unable to help you further. If you imagine that I will name the eminent men involved, you are mistaken; I did not do so six years ago, and I will not do so now. So I fear your visit has been fruitless.” He glanced at his watch. “I have to go now. I have a meeting at four o’clock. Good day to you.”

  When we were out in the street again, I said to Henry, “I’m glad that’s over. You did splendidly, darling.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I must say, I’d no idea you were such an accomplished liar.”

  “Liar?” he said. “What do you mean?”

  “Well—all that stuff about blackmail, and knowing who was behind it all, and—”

  “I wasn’t lying,” said Henry.

  “You—weren’t? You mean, somebody really is blackmailing eminent people about Frivolités? And you think it all has some extraordinary connection with Anne-Marie?”

  Henry smiled at me. “Just for the moment,” he said, “I’m not telling you or anybody else what I think. Just take it from me that I told Claudet no lies. Now—what was the name of the organization whose conference Sylvie was attending on the day of the murder?”

  The Federation of Women’s Guilds had its headquarters in a trim modern office on the Left Bank. The organizing secretary was a small, fussy woman with untidy gray hair who gave the impression of having been ten minutes late for an appointment several years ago, and never having caught up. However, she was keen to be helpful, and most interested when I explained that I wished to find out about the Women’s Guilds of France so that I could give a talk on the subject to my own Townswomen’s Guild at home. (This was no lie, either; I actually gave the lecture a few weeks ago.) Soon I was inundated with pamphlets, accounts of projects, welfare schemes, voluntary work, day nurseries, fund-raising, and so forth. It was quite some time before I managed to steer the conversation around to the annual conference.

  “Ah, yes. That is the highlight of our year, madame. It is held every April, here in Paris. Delegates come from all over the country to exchange views and report progress. We have some very distinguished speakers, too. This year, the conference was opened by Mme. Claudet—the wife of the minister, you know. Such a delightful woman, and so very interested in our work. We felt really honored, knowing what a busy person she is.” The secretary beamed complacently.

  I said, “Yes, indeed. For someone in her position to devote a whole day to a conference must be—” />
  She interrupted me. “Well, of course, she couldn’t stay the whole day. We quite realized that—we would not have expected her to. But she gave a most interesting opening address, and then stayed until midday listening to the other speakers. We had been hoping to entertain her for lunch, but unfortunately she had another appointment. Still, I think I may say that the conference was a great success. Now, I do want you to take a leaflet about our play groups for preschool-age children of working mothers…”

  Back at the hotel, Henry sat down on the bed and began to rub the back of his neck with his hand—a sure sign that he was deep in thought. He said, “She could have managed it.”

  “But she didn’t have her car,” I pointed out. “She had lent it to Chantal.”

  Henry shook his head. “She couldn’t have done it by car,” he said. “Not even the Alfa, if she didn’t leave the conference until twelve. But if the plane times are right, it could have been done by flying to Geneva and hiring a car there.” He picked up the bedside telephone. “Reception? Do you have airline timetables?… Good… Paris to Geneva and back…in the afternoon…can you find out and ring me back? Thank you.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “I mean—Sylvie, of all people. She’s so gay and so gentle…”

  Henry was not listening. He had taken out the small notebook which he always carried, and was making rapid notes. A moment later the telephone rang.

  “Yes?… Yes, I’ve got that…what time does it arrive?” He scribbled rapidly. “And Geneva to Paris?… Yes… Yes, thank you…no, I don’t want to make a booking…”

  He rang off, drew a line under the figures he had written, and said, “It’s perfectly possible. There’s a flight from Orly at one o’clock, getting in at ten to two. Plenty of time to pick up a hired car and drive to Montarraz. The return flight leaves Geneva at seven, and gets back to Paris at ten to eight. By nine o’clock, she could easily have been back in her apartment, waiting for Chantal. Pierre Claudet was away, with the manservant, and Sylvie herself told us it was the maid’s day off.”

  “And the phone call to Anne-Marie?”

  “Made from a call box on the way to Montarraz. It’s perfectly easy to disguise one’s voice on the telephone.”

  “But Henry—in heaven’s name, why? Frivolités…?”

  “Shut up,” said Henry. “I’m thinking.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AS HENRY HAS often remarked, it’s one thing to conduct an investigation from his desk at Scotland Yard, with all the facilities of a superbly organized police force at his fingertips—and quite another to get involved in these unofficial investigations into which his inquiring nose is always leading him. One thing we both knew from experience was that even officialdom could not extract from an airline a list of the names of passengers who had traveled on a particular short-haul flight six months previously—for the good reason that such records are not kept.

  There was a faint hope, however, that the car-hire firms at Geneva airport might be able to trace back a hiring made earlier in the year; so it came as no great surprise when Henry announced that we would be leaving Paris for Switzerland by the midnight train. Meanwhile, he said, we had one more job to do in Paris—and he asked the hotel switchboard to connect us with the Claudets’ private number. This time I picked up the telephone when it rang.

  “M. Claudet’s residence, good afternoon.” The voice was brisk and feminine.

  I said, “Is that Mme. Claudet’s maid speaking?”

  “Yes, madame. Can I help you?”

  “I hope that you can. I am a journalist from England”—all right, one has to tell fibs sometimes in this business—“and I am making a private inquiry into the Drivaz murder, for my magazine.”

  There was a short silence, and then the voice said, “I do not see how I can assist you, madame.”

  “You were working for Mme. Claudet at the time?”

  “No, madame. I started here in May.”

  “Oh.” This was a poser. “You don’t know how I could contact your predecessor? My editor wishes me to interview her, and would be prepared to pay for any information—”

  “I am sorry, madame.” She did sound genuinely regretful. “Perhaps I could…” I became aware of background noises—a door banging, a distant masculine voice. Speaking away from the telephone, the maid said, “Yes, monsieur…no, monsieur… an English lady…” And then there was a muffled silence, as if she had put her hand over the mouthpiece. A few seconds later her voice came back to me, crisp and clear. “Forgive the interruption, madame. I am afraid I cannot help you at all. Good-bye, madame.” She rang off.

  I turned to Henry. “Well,” I said, “that was an abysmal failure. The girl is new—only been there since May. And even if she did have a line on her predecessor, Claudet—I suppose it was him—stepped in and shut her up. I’m so sorry, darling.”

  To my surprise, Henry was smiling. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “It was what I expected, and I hope it will have the desired effect.”

  “And what is that?”

  “To stir things up,” said Henry.

  We were lucky enough to get a couple of couchettes on the night train, sharing a four-berth compartment with a couple of dour French businessmen. As the express roared and rattled its way through the night, I lay sleepless on my upper bunk, thinking about Sylvie Claudet, about Chantal Villeneuve, about Giselle Arnay and Michel Veron, about Jane Weston and Anne-Marie Drivaz. In the faint glow of the blue night light I could see Henry on the opposite bunk, sleeping peacefully. I thought of all the other journeys which we had made, hurtling our way across Europe in pursuit of information, or criminals, or to try to save a life—always impelled by Henry’s unquenchable passion for justice. Perhaps it’s easier for a man to be so single-minded. Of course, when I thought about Anne-Marie, I longed to be able to bring her, with her baby, out of the gloomy cloisters and into the sunshine, but when I thought about Sylvie, and Jane, and Chantal…well, to put it mildly, I wondered if I was really cut out for the role of an Erinys.

  By the time we arrived at Geneva in the early hours of the morning, I had fallen into a restless sleep, in which I dreamed that I was wide awake, still in the train and lying on my bunk, but on the opposite bunk, instead of Henry, was Chantal—lying there and staring at the ceiling. I kept on asking her, “What actually happened, Chantal? What actually happened?” But all she would reply was, “Oh, you are silly.”

  Then, suddenly, I was in the dark corridor of the convent at Charonne. At the far end of it, there was a woman walking away from me, and I knew it was Sylvie. Then I saw that she was being followed by a man—a dark, sinister figure, slipping from shadow to shadow after her. I knew she was in terrible danger, and I ran to catch the man, to stop him—and as I grabbed him and he turned to face me, I saw that it was Henry. I must have called out his name, because I woke myself up. Henry was lying on his bunk, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the ceiling. He held out his hand to me across the compartment and said, “It’s all right, darling. Don’t worry. I’m here. Were you having a nightmare?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to take his hand. Looking at him, I felt frozen and frightened. He said, “It must have been a bad dream. You’re looking at me as though you’ve never seen me before.”

  I snapped out of it then and made myself smile back at him—but the feeling of tingling fear and revulsion took a long time to fade. Less and less did I relish the errand which had brought us back to Switzerland.

  We arrived in Geneva in time for an early breakfast at an old-fashioned café near the station. It was all just as I remembered it from previous visits—the tall gray houses; the café tables with checked gingham cloths covered for each new customer by a crisp white paper mat; the waitresses looking permanently pregnant, for they wore, under their frilly white aprons, bulky leather purses on straps around their waists. Above all, there was the smell which characterizes a city—in this case, milky coffee, fresh bread, and cherry jam, with faint ov
ertones of the kirsh and prunelle with which some Swiss workmen like to start their day. When we had finished breakfast, we took a taxi to the airport, to begin our inquiries at the self-drive car-hire counters.

  Once again we were hampered by the lack of any official backing. Henry could not simply produce his identity card and demand to see the company’s files. We had to resort to guile, and it was not very easy. For a start, we picked the smallest of the three companies advertising cars for hire, shunning the big international concerns and choosing the local firm. Then Henry went into his impersonation of a fussy, indecisive but demanding British tourist—just the sort of difficult but not impossible customer who provides a challenge to a conscientious receptionist.

  First, he demanded to know the exact procedure for hiring a car. The girl explained politely that formalities were minimal—she needed only to see his valid driving license and, in the case of a foreigner, his passport. Henry at once handed over the documents. The girl scrutinized the license carefully to check that it was, indeed, valid—and then flipped open the passport to compare the two signatures. She handed the papers back with a smile.

  “Thank you, monsieur. That is quite in order.”

  “But if the hirer is Swiss, you don’t have to see his passport?” asked Henry fussily.

  “No, monsieur. Of course, Swiss driving licenses carry a photograph of the holder, which makes them a surer form of identification. In fact, British licenses are just about the only ones without photographs—so we compare the signature. Now, which model of car do you wish to have? When you have decided, there is a form to be filled in, and you pay the daily hire rate and a deposit. The kilometer rate is, of course, paid when you return the car—according to the distance you have driven. And of course, you receive your deposit back. Here is a list of the cars we have available, with the different rates.” She handed us a brochure.