Cynthia Manson (ed)

by Merry Murder

  “You say she heard someone running downstairs and then a door slam. The door of the house, I suppose. On which floor is the flat? The entresol. Which way does it face? Onto an inner courtyard— Just a moment, there’s a call coming in from the Eighth. That must be our friend of the telephone pillars.”

  Lecœur asked the new caller to wait, then came back to Javel.

  “An old woman, you say. Madame Fayet. Worked as charwoman. Dead? A blunt instrument. Is the doctor there? You’re sure she’s dead? What about her money? I suppose she had some tucked away somewhere. Right. Call me back. Or I’ll ring you.”

  He turned to the detective, who was now sleeping soundly.

  “Janvier! Hey, Janvier! This is for you.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “The killer.”

  “Where?”

  “Near the Rue Lecourbe. Here’s the address. This time he’s done in an old charwoman, a Madame Fayet.”

  Janvier put on his overcoat, looked round for his hat, and gulped down the remains of the coffee in his cup.

  “Who’s dealing with it?”

  “Gonesse, of the Fifteenth.”

  “Ring up the P. J., will you, and tell them I’ve gone there.”

  A minute or two later, Lecœur was able to add another little cross to the six that were already in the column. Someone had smashed the glass of the pillar in the Avenue d’Iéna only one hundred and fifty yards from the Arc de Triomphe.

  “Among the broken glass they found a handkerchief flecked with blood. It was a child’s handkerchief.”

  “Has it got initials?”

  “No. It’s a blue-check handkerchief, rather dirty. The chap must have wrapped it round his knuckles for breaking the glass.”

  There were steps in the corridor. The day shift coming to take over. They looked very clean and close-shaven and the cold wind had whipped the blood into their cheeks.

  “Happy Christmas!”

  Sommer closed the tin in which he brought his sandwiches. Mambret knocked out his pipe. Only Lecœur remained in his seat, since there was no relief for him.

  The fat Godin had been the first to arrive, promptly changing his jacket for the grey-linen coat in which he always worked, then putting some water on to boil for his grog. All through the winter he suffered from one never-ending cold which he combated, or perhaps nourished, by one hot grog after another.

  “Hallo! Yes, I’m still here. I’m doing a shift for Potier, who’s gone down to his family in Normandy. Yes. I want to hear all about it. Most particularly. Janvier’s gone, but I’ll pass it on to the P. J. An invalid, you say? What invalid?”

  One had to be patient on that job, as people always talked about their cases as though everyone else was in the picture.

  “A low building behind, right. Not in the Rue Michat, then? Rue Vasco de Gamma. Yes, yes. I know. The little house with a garden behind some railings. Only I didn’t know he was an invalid. Right. He doesn’t sleep much. Saw a young boy climbing up a drainpipe? How old? He couldn’t say? Of course not, in the dark. How did he know it was a boy, then? Listen, ring me up again, will you? Oh, you’re going off. Who’s relieving you? Jules? Right. Well, ask him to keep me informed.”

  “What’s going on?” asked Godin.

  “An old woman who’s been done in. Down by the Rue Lecourbe.”

  “Who did it?”

  “There’s an invalid opposite who says he saw a small boy climbing up a drainpipe and along the top of a wall.”

  “You mean to say it was a boy who killed the old woman?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  No one was very interested. After all. murders were an everyday matter to these people. The lights were still on in the room, as it was still only a bleak, dull daylight that found its way through the frosty window panes. One of the new watch went and scratched a bit of the frost away. It was instinctive. A childish memory perhaps, like Sommer’s boudin.

  The latter had gone home. So had Mambret. The newcomers settled down to their work, turning over the papers on their desks.

  A car stolen from the Square la Bruyère.

  Lecœur looked pensively at his seven crosses. Then, with a sigh, he got up and stood gazing at the immense street plan on the wall.

  “Brushing up on your Paris?”

  “I think I know it pretty well already. Something’s just struck me. There’s a chap wandering about smashing the glass of telephone pillars. Seven in the last hour and a half. He hasn’t been going in a straight line but zigzagging— first this way, then that.”

  “Perhaps he doesn’t know Paris.”

  “Or knows it only too well! Not once has he ventured within sight of a police station. If he’d gone straight, he’d have passed two or three. What’s more, he’s skirted all the main crossroads where there’d be likely to be a man on duty.” Lecœur pointed them out. “The only risk he took was in crossing the Pont Mirabeau, but if he wanted to cross the river he’d have run that risk at any of the bridges.”

  “I expect he’s drunk,” said Godin, sipping his rum.

  “What I want to know is why he’s stopped.”

  “Perhaps he’s got home.”

  “A man who’s down by the Quai de Javel at half past six in the morning isn’t likely to live near the Etoile.”

  “Seems to interest you a lot.”

  “It’s got me scared!”

  “Go on.”

  It was strange to see the worried expression on Lecœur’s face. He was notorious for his calmness and his most dramatic nights were coolly summarized by the little crosses in his notebook.

  “Hallo! Javel? Is that Jules? Lecœur speaking. Look here, Jules, behind the flats in the Rue Michat is the little house where the invalid lives. Well, now, on one side of it is an apartment house, a red-brick building with a grocer’s shop on the ground floor. You know it?

  “Good. Has anything happened there? Nothing reported. No, we’ve heard nothing here. All the same, I can’t explain why, but I think you ought to inquire.”

  He was hot all at once. He stubbed out a half finished cigarette.

  “Hallo! Ternes? Any alarms gone off in your neighborhood? Nothing? Only drunks? Is the patrouille cycliste out? Just leaving? Ask them to keep their eyes open for a young boy looking tired and very likely bleeding from the right hand. Lost? Not exactly that. I can’t explain now.”

  His eyes went back to the street plan on the wall, in which no light went on for a good ten minutes, and then only for an accidental death in the Eighteenth Arrondissement, right up at the top of Montmartre, caused by an escape of gas.

  Outside, in the cold streets of Paris, dark figures were hurrying home from the churches...

  One of the sharpest impressions Andre Lecœur retained of his infancy was one of immobility. His world at that period was a large kitchen in Orleans, on the outskirts of the town. He must have spent his winters there, too, but he remembered it best flooded with sunlight, with the door wide open onto a little garden where hens clucked incessantly and rabbits nibbled lettuce leaves behind the wire netting of their hutches. But, if the door was open, its passage was barred to him by a little gate which his father had made one Sunday for that express purpose.

  On weekdays, at half past eight, his father went off on his bicycle to the gas works at the other end of the town. His mother did the housework, doing the same things in the same order every day. Before making the beds, she put the bedclothes over the windowsill for an hour to air.

  At ten o’clock, a little bell would ring in the street. That was the greengrocer, with his barrow, passing on his daily round. Twice a week at eleven, a bearded doctor came to see his little brother, who was constantly ill. Andre hardly ever saw the latter, as he wasn’t allowed into his room.

  That was all, or so it seemed in retrospect. He had just time to play a bit and drink his milk, and there was his father home again for the midday meal.

  If nothing had happened at home, lots had happened to him. He ha
d been to read the meters in any number of houses and chatted with all sorts of people, about whom he would talk during dinner.

  As for the afternoon, it slipped away quicker still, perhaps because he was made to sleep during the first part of it.

  For his mother, apparently, the time passed just as quickly. Often had he heard her say with a sigh: “There, I’ve no sooner washed up after one meal than it’s time to start making another!”

  Perhaps it wasn’t so very different now. Here in the Préfecture de Police the nights seemed long enough at the time, but at the end they seemed to have slipped by in no time, with nothing to show for them except for these columns of the little crosses in his notebook.

  A few more lamps lit up. A few more incidents reported, including a collision between a car and a bus in the Rue de Clignancourt, and then once again it was Javel on the line.

  It wasn’t Jules, however, but Gonesse, the detective who’d been to the scene of the crime. While there he had received Lecœur’s message suggesting something might have happened in the other house in the Rue Vasco de Gama. He had been to see.

  “Is that you, Lecœur?” There was a queer note in his voice. Either irritation or suspicion.

  Look here, what made you think of that house? Do you know the old woman. Madame Fayet?”

  “I’ve never seen her, but I know all about her.”

  What had finally come to pass that Christmas morning was something that Andre Lecœur had foreseen and perhaps dreaded for more than ten years. Again and again, as he stared at the huge plan of Paris, with its little lamps, he had said to himself, “It’s only a question of time. Sooner or later, it’ll be something that’s happened to someone I know.”

  There’d been many a near miss, an accident in his own street or a crime in a house nearby. But, like thunder, it had approached only to recede once again into the distance.

  This time it was a direct hit.

  “Have you seen the concierge?” he asked. He could imagine the puzzled look on the detective’s face as he went on: Is the boy at home?”

  And Gonesse muttered, “Oh? So you know him, too?”

  “He’s my nephew. Weren’t you told his name was Lecœur?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Never mind about that. Tell me what’s happened.”

  “The boy’s not there.”

  “What about his father?”

  “He got home just after seven.”

  “As usual. He does night work, too.”

  “The concierge heard him go up to his flat—on the third floor at the back of the house.”

  “I know it.”

  “He came running down a minute or two later in a great state. To use her expression, he seemed out of his wits.”

  “The boy had disappeared?”

  “Yes. His father wanted to know if she’d seen him leave the house. She hadn’t. Then he asked if a telegram had been delivered.”

  “Was there a telegram?”

  “No. Can you make head or tail of it? Since you’re one of the family, you might be able to help us. Could you get someone to relieve you and come round here?”

  “It wouldn’t do any good. Where’s Janvier?”

  “In the old woman’s room. The men of the Identité Judiciaire have already got to work. The first thing they found were some child’s fingerprints on the handle of the door. Come on—jump into a taxi and come round.”

  “No. In any case, there’s no one to take my place.”

  That was true enough up to a point. All the same, if he’d really got to work on the telephone he’d have found someone all right. The truth was he didn’t want to go and didn’t think it would do any good if he did.

  “Listen, Gonesse, I’ve got to find that boy, and I can do it better from here than anywhere. You understand, don’t you? Tell Janvier I’m staying here. And tell him old Madame Fayet had plenty of money, probably hidden away somewhere in the room.”

  A little feverish, Lecœur stuck his plug into one socket after another, calling up the various police stations of the Eighth Arrondissement.

  “Keep a lookout for a boy of ten, rather poorly dressed. Keep all telephone pillars under observation.”

  His two fellow-watchkeepers looked at him with curiosity.

  “Do you think it was the boy who did the job?”

  Lecœur didn’t bother to answer. The next moment he was through to the teleprinter room, where they also dealt with radio messages.

  “Justin? Oh, you’re on, are you? Here’s something special. Will you send out a call to all cars on patrol anywhere near the Etoile to keep a lookout for—”

  Once again the description of the boy, Francois Lecœur.

  “No. I’ve no idea in which direction he’ll be making. All I can tell you is that he seems to keep well clear of police stations, and as far as possible from any place where there’s likely to be anyone on traffic duty.”

  He knew his brother’s flat in the Rue Vasco de Gama. Two rather dark rooms and a tiny kitchen. The boy slept there alone while his father was at work. From the windows you could see the back of the house in the Rue Michat, across a courtyard generally hung with washing. On some of the windowsills were pots of geraniums, and through the windows, many of which were uncurtained, you could catch glimpses of a miscellaneous assortment of humanity.

  As a matter of fact, there, too, the windowpanes ought to be covered with frost. He stored that idea up in a corner of his mind. It might be important.

  “You think it’s a boy who’s been smashing the alarm glasses?”

  “It was a child’s handkerchief they found,” said Lecœur curtly. He didn’t want to be drawn into a discussion. He sat mutely at the switchboard, wondering what to do next.

  In the Rue Michat, things seemed to be moving fast. The next time he got through it was to learn that a doctor was there as well as an examining magistrate who had most likely been dragged from his bed.

  What help could Lecœur have given them? But if he wasn’t there, he could see the place almost as clearly as those that were, the dismal houses and the grimy viaduct of the Metro which cut right across the landscape.

  Nothing but poor people in that neighborhood. The younger generation’s one hope was to escape from it. The middle-aged already doubted whether they ever would, while the old ones had already accepted their fate and tried to make the best of it.

  He rang Javel once again.

  “Is Gonesse still there?”

  “He’s writing up his report. Shall I call him?”

  “Yes, please. Hallo, Gonesse, Lecœur speaking. Sorry to bother you, but did you go up to my brother’s flat? Had the boy’s bed been slept in? It had? Good. That makes it look a bit better. Another thing: were there any parcels there? Yes, parcels, Christmas presents. What? A small square radio. Hadn’t been unpacked. Naturally. Anything else? A chicken, a boudin, a Saint-Honoré. I suppose Janvier’s not with you? Still on the spot. Right. Has he rung-up the P. J. ? Good.”

  He was surprised to see it was already half past nine. It was no use now expecting anything from the neighborhood of the Etoile. If the boy had gone on walking as he had been earlier, he could be pretty well anywhere by this time.

  “Hallo! Police Judiciaire? Is Inspector Saillard there?”

  He was another whom the murder had dragged from his fireside. How many people were there whose Christmas was going to be spoiled by it?

  “Excuse my troubling you, Monsieur le Commissaire. It’s about that young boy, Francois Lecœur.”

  “Do you know anything? Is he a relation of yours?”

  “He’s my brother’s son. And it looks as if he may well be the person who’s been smashing the glasses of the telephone pillars. Seven of them. I don’t know whether they’ve had time to tell you about that. What I wanted to ask was whether I might put out a general call?”

  “Could you nip over to see me?”

  “There’s no one here to take my place.”

  “Right. I’ll come
over myself. Meanwhile you can send out the call.”

  Lecœur kept calm, though his hand shook slightly as he plugged in once again to the room above.

  “Justin? Lecœur again. Appel General. Yes. It’s the same boy. Francois Lecœur. Ten and a half, rather tall for his age, thin. I don’t know what he’s wearing, probably a khaki jumper made from American battle-dress. No, no cap. He’s always bare-headed, with plenty of hair flopping over his forehead. Perhaps it would be as well to send out a description of his father, too. That’s not so easy. You know me, don’t you? Well, Olivier Lecœur is rather like a paler version of me. He has a timid look about him and physically he’s not robust. The sort that’s never in the middle of the pavement but always dodging out of other people’s way. He walks a bit queerly, owing to a wound he got in the first war. No, I haven’t the least idea where they might be going, only I don’t think they’re together. To my mind, the boy is probably in danger. I can’t explain why—it would take too long. Get the descriptions out as quickly as possible, will you? And let me know if there’s any response.”

  By the time Lecœur had finished telephoning, Inspector Saillard was there, having only had to come round the corner from the Quai des Orfèvres. He was an imposing figure of a man, particularly in his bulky overcoat. With a comprehensive wave of the hand, he greeted the three men on watch, then, seizing a chair as though it were a wisp of straw, he swung it round towards him and sat down heavily. “The boy?” he inquired, looking keenly at Lecœur.

  “I can’t understand why he’s stopped calling us up.”

  “Calling us up?”

  “Attracting our attention, anyway.”

  “But why should he attract our attention and then not say anything?”

  “Supposing he was followed. Or was following someone.”

  “I see what you mean. Look here, Lecœur, is your brother in financial straits?”

  “He’s a poor man, yes.”

  “Is that all?”

  “He lost his job three months ago.”