by Merry Murder
“What job?”
“He was linotype operator at La Presse in the Rue du Croissant. He was on the night shift. He always did night work. Runs in the family.”
“How did he come to lose his job?”
“I suppose he fell out with somebody.”
“Is that a failing of his?”
They were interrupted by an incoming call from the Eighteenth to say that a boy selling branches of holly had been picked up in the Rue Lepic. It turned out, however, to be a little Pole who couldn’t speak any French.
“You were asking if my brother was in the habit of quarreling with people. I hardly know what to answer. He was never strong. Pretty well all his childhood he was ill on and off. He hardly ever went to school. But he read a great deal alone in his room.”
“Is he married?”
“His wife died two years after they were married, leaving him with a baby ten months old.”
“Did he bring it up himself?”
“Entirely. I can see him now bathing the little chap, changing his diapers, and warming the milk for his bottle.”
“That doesn’t explain why he quarrels with people.”
Admittedly. But it was difficult to put it into words.
“Soured?”
“Not exactly. The thing is—”
“What?”
“That he’s never lived like other people. Perhaps Olivier isn’t really very intelligent. Perhaps, from reading so much, he knows too much about some things and too little about others.”
“Do you think him capable of killing the old woman?”
The Inspector puffed at his pipe. They could hear the people in the room above walking about. The two other men fiddled with their papers, pretending not to listen.
“She was his mother-in-law,” sighed Lecœur. “You’d have found it out anyhow, sooner or later.”
“They didn’t hit it off?”
“She hated him.”
“Why?”
“She considered him responsible for her daughter’s death. It seems she could have been saved if the operation had been done in time. It wasn’t my brother’s fault. The people at the hospital refused to take her in. Some silly question of her papers not being in order. All the same, Madame Fayet held to it that Olivier was to blame.”
“Did they see each other?”
“Not unless they passed each other in the street, and then they never spoke.”
“Did the boy know?”
“That she was his grandmother? I don’t think so.”
“You think his father never told him?”
* * *
Never for more than a second or two did Lecœur’s eyes leave the plan of Paris, but, besides being Christmas, it was the quiet time of the day, and the little lamps lit up rarely. Two or three street accidents, a lady’s handbag snatched in the Métro, a suitcase pinched at the Gare de l’Est.
No sign of the boy. It was surprising considering how few people were about. In the poor quarters a few little children played on the pavements with their new toys, but on the whole the day was lived indoors. Nearly all the shops were shuttered and the cafes and the little bars were almost empty.
For a moment, the town came to life a bit when the church bells started pealing and families in their Sunday best hurried to High Mass. But soon the streets were quiet again, though haunted here and there by the vague rumble of an organ or a sudden gust of singing.
The thought of churches gave Lecœur an idea. Might not the boy have tucked himself away in one of them? Would the police think of looking there? He spoke to Inspector Saillard about it and then got through to Justin for the third time.
“The churches. Ask them to have a look at the congregations. They’ll be doing the stations, of course—that’s most important.”
He took off his glasses for a moment, showing eyelids that were red, probably from lack of sleep.
“Hallo! Yes. The Inspector’s here. Hold on.”
He held the receiver to Saillard. “It’s Janvier.”
The bitter wind was still driving through the streets. The light was harsh and bleak, though here and there among the closely packed clouds was a yellowy streak which could be taken as a faint promise of sunshine to come.
When the Inspector put down the receiver, he muttered, “Dr. Paul says the crime was committed between five and half past six this morning. The old woman wasn’t killed by the first blow. Apparently she was in bed when she heard a noise and got up and faced the intruder. Indeed, it looks as though she tried to defend herself with the only weapon that came to hand—a shoe.”
“Have they found the weapon she was killed with?”
“No. It might have been a hammer. More likely a bit of lead piping or something of that sort.”
“Have they found her money?”
“Only her purse, with some small change in it and her identity card. Tell me, Lecœur, did you know she was a money-lender?”
“Yes. I knew.”
“And didn’t you tell me your brother’s been out of work for three months?”
“He has.”
“The concierge didn’t know.”
“Neither did the boy. It was for his sake he kept it dark.”
The Inspector crossed and uncrossed his legs. He was uncomfortable. He glanced at the other two men who couldn’t help hearing everything, then turned with a puzzled look to stare at Lecœur.
“Do you realize what all this is pointing to?”
“I do.”
“You’ve thought of it yourself?”
“No.”
“Because he’s your brother?”
“No.”
“How long is it that this killer’s been at work? Nine weeks, isn’t it?”
Without haste, Lecœur studied the columns of his notebook.
“Yes. Just over nine weeks. The first was on the twentieth of October, in the Epinettes district.”
“You say your brother didn’t tell his son he was out of a job. Do you mean to say he went on leaving home in the evening just as though he was going to work?”
“Yes. He couldn’t face the idea of telling him. You see—it’s difficult to explain. He was completely wrapped up in the boy. He was all he had to live for. He cooked and scrubbed for him, tucked him up in bed before going off, and woke him up in the morning.”
“That doesn’t explain why he couldn’t tell him.”
“He couldn’t bear the thought of appearing to the kid as a failure, a man nobody wanted and who had doors slammed in his face.”
“But what did he do with himself all night?”
“Odd jobs. When he could get them. For a fortnight, he was employed as night watchman in a factory in Billancourt. but that was only while the regular man was ill. Often he got a few hours’ work washing down cars in one of the big garages. When that failed, he’d sometimes lend a hand at the market unloading vegetables. When he had one of his bouts—”
“Bouts of what?”
“Asthma. He had them from time to time. Then he’d lie down in a station waiting room. Once he spent a whole night here, chatting with me.”
“Suppose the boy woke up early this morning and saw his father at Madame Fayet’s?”
“There was frost on the windows.”
“There wouldn’t be if the window was open. Lots of people sleep with their windows open even in the coldest weather.”
“It wasn’t the case with my brother. He was always a chilly person. And he was much too poor to waste warmth.”
“As far as his window was concerned, the boy had only to scratch away the frost with his fingernail. When I was a boy—
“Yes. So did I. The thing is to find out whether the old woman’s window was open.”
“It was, and the light was switched on.”
“I wonder where Francois can have got to.”
“The boy?”
It was surprising and a little disconcerting the way he kept all the time reverting to him. The situation was certa
inly embarrassing, and somehow made all the more so by the calm way in which Andre Lecœur gave the Inspector the most damaging details about his brother.
“When he came in this morning,” began Saillard again, “he was carrying a number of parcels. You realize—”
“It’s Christmas.”
“Yes. But he’d have needed quite a bit of money to buy a chicken, a cake, and that new radio. Has he borrowed any from you lately?”
“Not for a month. I haven’t seen him for a month. I wish I had. I’d have told him that I was getting a radio for Francois myself. I’ve got it here. Downstairs, that is, in the cloakroom. I was going to take it straight round as soon as I was relieved.”
“Would Madame Fayet have consented to lend him money?”
“It’s unlikely. She was a queer lot. She must have had quite enough money to live on, yet she still went out to work, charring from morning to evening. Often she lent money to the people she worked for. At exorbitant interest, of course. All the neighborhood knew about it, and people always came to her when they needed something to tide them over till the end of the month.”
Still embarrassed, the Inspector rose to his feet. “I’m going to have a look.” he said.
“At Madame Fayet’s?”
“There and in the Rue Vasco de Gama. If you get any news, let me know, will you?”
“You won’t find any telephone there, but I can get a message to you through the Javel police station.”
The Inspector’s footsteps had hardly died away before the telephone bell rang. No lamp had lit up on the wall. This was an outside call, coming from the Gare d’Austerlitz.
“Lecœur? Station police speaking. We’ve got him.”
“Who?”
“The man whose description was circulated. Lecœur. Same as you. Olivier Lecœur. No doubt about it, I’ve seen his identity card.”
“Hold on, will you?”
Lecœur dashed out of the room and down the stairs just in time to catch the Inspector as he was getting into one of the cars belonging to the Préfecture.
“Inspector! The Gare d’Austerlitz is on the phone. They’ve found my brother.”
Saillard was a stout man and he went up the stairs puffing and blowing. He took the receiver himself.
“Hallo! Yes. Where was he? What was he doing? What? No, there’s no point in your questioning him now. You’re sure he didn’t know? Right. Go on looking out. It’s quite possible. As for him, send him here straightaway. At the Préfecture, yes.”
He hesitated for a second and glanced at Lecœur before saying finally, “Yes. Send someone with him. We can’t take any risks.”
The Inspector filled his pipe and lit it before explaining, and when he spoke he looked at nobody in particular.
“He was picked up after he’d been wandering about the station for over an hour. He seemed very jumpy. Said he was waiting there to meet his son. from whom he’d received a message.”
“Did they tell him about the murder?”
“Yes. He appeared to be staggered by the news and terrified. I asked them to bring him along.” Rather diffidently he added: “I asked them to bring him here. Considering your relationship, I didn’t want you to think—”
Lecœur had been in that room since eleven o’clock the night before. It was rather like his early years when he spent his days in his mother’s kitchen. Around him was an unchanging world. There were the little lamps, of course, that kept going on and off, but that’s what they always did. They were part and parcel of the immutability of the place. Time flowed by without anyone noticing it.
Yet, outside, Paris was celebrating Christmas. Thousands of people had been to Midnight Mass, thousands more had spent the night roistering, and those who hadn’t known where to draw the line had sobered down in the police station and were now being called upon to explain things they couldn’t remember doing.
What had his brother Olivier been doing all through the night? An old woman had been found dead. A boy had started before dawn on a breathless race through the streets, breaking the glass of the telephone pillars as he passed them, having wrapped his handkerchief round his fist.
And what was Olivier waiting for at the Gare d’Austerlitz. sometimes in the overheated waiting rooms, sometimes on the windswept platforms, too nervous to settle down in any one place for long?
Less than ten minutes elapsed, just time enough for Godin, whose nose really was running, to make himself another glass of hot grog.
“Can I offer you one, Monsieur le Commissaire?”
“No, thanks.”
Looking more embarrassed than ever, Saillard leaned over towards Lecœur to say in an undertone, “Would you like us to question him in another room?”
No. Lecœur wasn’t going to leave his post for anything. He wanted to stay there, with his little lamps and his switchboard. Was it that he was thinking more of the boy than of his brother?
Olivier came in with a detective on either side, but they had spared him the handcuffs. He looked dreadful, like a bad photograph faded with age. At once he turned to Andre. “Where’s Francois?”
“We don’t know. We’re hunting for him.”
“Where?”
Andre Lecœur pointed to his plan of Paris and his switchboard of a thousand lines. “Everywhere.”
The two detectives had already been sent away.
“Sit down,” said the Inspector. “I believe you’ve been told of Madame Fayet’s death.”
Olivier didn’t wear spectacles, but he had the same pale and rather fugitive eyes as his brother had when he took his glasses off. He glanced at the Inspector, by whom he didn’t seem the least overawed, then turned back to Andre. “He left a note for me,” he said, delving into one of the pockets of his grubby mackintosh. “Here. See if you can understand.”
He held out a bit of paper torn out of a schoolboy’s exercise book. The writing wasn’t any too good. It didn’t look as though Francois was the best of pupils. He had used an indelible pencil, wetting the end in his mouth, so that his lips were very likely stained with it.
“Uncle Gedeon arrives this morning Gare d’Austerlitz. Come as soon as you can and meet us there. Love. Bib.”
Without a word, Andre Lecœur passed it on to the Inspector, who turned it over and over with his thick fingers. “What’s Bib stand for?”
“It’s his nickname. A baby name. I never use it when other people are about. It comes from biberon. When I used to give him his bottle—” He spoke in a toneless voice. He seemed to be in a fog and was probably only dimly conscious of where he was.
“Who’s Uncle Gedeon?”
“There isn’t any such person.”
Did he realize he was talking to the head of the Brigade des Homicides, who was at the moment investigating a murder?
It was his brother who came to the rescue, explaining. “As a matter of fact, we had an Uncle Gedeon but he’s been dead for some years. He was one of my mother’s brothers who emigrated to America as a young man.”
Olivier looked at his brother as much as to say: What’s the point of going into that?
“We got into the habit, in the family, of speaking—jocularly, of course— of our rich American uncle and of the fortune he’d leave us one day.”
“Was he rich?”
“We didn’t know. We never heard from him except for a postcard once a year, signed Gedeon. Wishing us a happy New Year.”
“He died?”
“When Francois was four.”
“Really. Andre, do you think it’s any use—”
“Let me go on. The Inspector wants to know everything. My brother carried on the family tradition, talking to his son about our Uncle Gedeon, who had become by now quite a legendary figure. He provided a theme for bedtime stories, and all sorts of adventures were attributed to him. Naturally he was fabulously rich, and when one day he came back to France—”
“I understand. He died out there?”
“In a hospital in Cleveland. It was
then we found out he had been really a porter in a restaurant. It would have been too cruel to tell the boy that, so the legend went on.”
“Did he believe in it?”
It was Olivier who answered. “My brother thought he didn’t, that he’d guessed the truth but wasn’t going to spoil the game. But I always maintained the contrary and I’m still practically certain he took it all in. He was like that. Long after his schoolfellows had stopped believing in Father Christmas, he still went on.”
Talking about his son brought him back to life, transfigured him.
“But as for this note he left, I don’t know what to make of it. I asked the concierge if a telegram had come. For a moment I thought Andre might have played us a practical joke, but I soon dismissed the idea. It isn’t much of a joke to get a boy dashing off to a station on a freezing night. Naturally I dashed off to the Gare d’Austerlitz as fast as I could. There I hunted high and low, then wandered about, waiting anxiously for him to turn up. Andre, you’re sure he hasn’t been—”
He looked at the street plan on the wall and at the switchboard. He knew very well that every accident was reported.
“He hasn’t been run over,” said Andre. “At about eight o’clock he was near the Etoile, but we’ve completely lost track of him since then.”
“Near the Etoile? How do you know?”
“It’s rather a long story, but it boils down to this—that a whole series of alarms were set off by someone smashing the glass. They followed a circuitous route from your place to the Arc de Triomphe. At the foot of the last one, they found a blue-check handkerchief, a boy’s handkerchief, among the broken glass.”
“He has handkerchiefs like that.”
“From eight o’clock onward, not a sign of him.”
“Then I’d better get back to the station. He’s certain to go there, if he told me to meet him there.”
He was surprised at the sudden silence with which his last words were greeted. He looked from one to the other, perplexed, then anxious.
“What is it?”
His brother looked down at the floor. Inspector Saillard cleared his throat, hesitated, then asked, “Did you go to see your mother-in-law last night?”
Perhaps, as his brother had suggested, Olivier was rather lacking in intelligence. It took a long time for the words to sink in. You could follow their progress in his features.
