‘What did Cling want at the Lac de Joux?’
‘Do you know it, sir?’
‘No.’
‘It lies in a valley above Rolle, which is about twenty miles from here. It is best to cross into Switzerland and go to Rolle, then up through Gimel to Le Brassus. The lake is in an isolated valley, much favoured for winter sport and some of the Geneva people have summer houses there for when it gets too hot on the lake of Geneva. The district is very beautiful and it is a peaceful spot for a day’s outing. According to Fleury, Mr. Cling didn’t go as far as the lake itself. He had evidently some object in mind, although he didn’t say so. He told Fleury to stop at several villages en route, which gave Fleury the idea that Mr. Cling was trying to put him off the real purpose of the little trip. Finally he told Fleury to pull up at the village of Avène, not far from Le Brassus, and said he was going to take a walk in the vicinity. He was away about three hours. Then, he ordered Fleury to return to Ferney. That was the most I ever heard of Mr. Cling’s excursions from here.’
‘Do you know Avène?’
‘I have never been there, but have heard about it. It was once almost deserted. A quiet place in a grassy spot in a little valley. A company from Geneva bought the whole village and the land for a distance around it. They constructed a clinic there, which consists of main buildings and a number of villas and pavilions for patients. It is more like a colony of wealthy people than a clinic. In fact, you wouldn’t think it was a clinic at all.’
‘For tuberculosis?’
Pflüger smiled gently.
‘Oh dear no, sir. For psychopathic cases. Wealthy people from all over the world. I believe there are several good doctors there. Specialists in mental complaints. Of course they tell me the patients aren’t exactly mad. There may be a few there, tucked away by their families in a spot where they will be kindly treated and cared for. The majority are there for treatment or seclusion in a pleasant place. The fees must be very large to support an institution and doctors like those.’
‘Is Dr. Vincent connected with it?’
‘No. The master is a surgeon. I got my information about it from the village grocer, whose brother was once an orderly at Les Plaisances—that’s the name of the clinic.’
Littlejohn felt at a loss. He obviously couldn’t go through the whole rigmarole of wringing from Pflüger precisely how Cling had spent all his spare time at Mont-Choisi. He thanked the butler and left him with a promise to return if he had any further questions to ask.
On the way back to the tram, Littlejohn decided that a good burglary, forgery, or even a murder conducted in straightforward fashion would be an immense relief. He even felt he preferred some of the professionals of the crime business to Cling. To think of crime at home in England was even relaxing. Here the antics of Cling were beginning to pall. First, to choose Littlejohn’s hired car in which to be murdered. Then, the divided interests between London and Geneva, followed by the discovery of the furtive affair in the sordid little room near Eaux-Vives. And now an excursion to a psychopathic clinic in the hills.
‘Where to?’
The conductor looked indignant.
‘Sorry, Geneva-Cornavin.’
He called on Lindemann again and gave him the ticket to Zürich and told him about Cling’s trip to Les Plaisances.
‘Perhaps it would be as well for you and I to take a run out to Les Plaisances after dinner, if you can spare the time, Superintendent.’
‘I’m quite at your disposal, Lindemann. In fact, had I been running the case at home, that would have been the next step.’
‘If you are free, we can dine on the way there. I know a very nice place on the lakeside at Nyon.’
It suited Littlejohn. He was beginning to wish there were handy Thames-side restaurants and expense accounts to match in which he could entertain collaborators with Scotland Yard.
‘We know Les Plaisances very well. A quiet, very respectable clinic with a first-rate staff. It costs a fortune to be a patient there, however. I wonder what Cling found there to interest him.’
‘I can’t help recollecting what the poor little henpecked Pfiffner at the hotel in the Rue Jacobi said. Cling’s companion might have been a nurse. Why would he say that? She surely didn’t turn up in uniform and, in mufti, there’s little to distinguish a nurse from any other woman.’
‘That’s right. And the way his wife shut him up when he mentioned it. It may be they’ve found out in some way. We’ll get him in whilst we’re discussing the rest of the case.’
Lindemann rang for an orderly and told him to send a car to 13bis Rue Jacobi and bring in Pfiffner.
‘He should be home again now. The day’s work’s finished.’
Lindemann laid the ticket to Zürich on the table between them.
‘And now, this. We’ve enquired and it was issued at the Gare de Cornavin ticket office. What do you think?’
‘Mme. Vincent suggested that Cling might have planned a trip to Zürich; one way by train and returning by plane, which takes only half an hour compared with a four or five hours’ train journey.’
‘Right. He was an ardent excursionist.’
‘But such a thing isn’t in keeping with Cling’s nature. The day he was murdered and the day following were working days for him. That is, he’d to spend at least part of them keeping an eye on Sir Ensor. Those were his instructions, however stupid Sir Ensor thought them, and Cling wasn’t the type to avoid them. Whatever else he was or proves to have been, he was a diligent officer. Why, when he had Sir Ensor’s safety on his mind, should he go scuttering on an excursion to Zürich and incur the expense of travelling one way by air? He was far from extravagant. He’d booked his rail ticket second class.’
‘What was he up to then?’
‘Doesn’t it seem that he was bolting? Quietly and carefully leaving the scene. First of all, he books a single to Zürich. If he hadn’t lost the ticket, we’d never have known he had decided to fly from Zürich. The first place one would think of in such a case would be Geneva airport. We’d find nothing there. If we decided to try Basle and Zürich airports, it would take more time and allow him to get farther away. That’s where his training as a detective came in. It also accounts for his buying his ticket to Zürich in advance. The clerk at the ticket office would forget him among the shower of tickets he’d issued to Zürich.’
‘But where and why was he fleeing?’
‘The why we’ll have to find out later. The where … I’d say New York perhaps. Is there a midnight plane to America from Zürich?’
A quick enquiry over the telephone.
‘No. The daily plane leaves around noon and calls at Geneva. There’s a nine o’clock jet to Montreal and Chicago in the morning, however.’
‘That’s it. His wife lives in Chicago.’
‘His wife?’
‘She ran away from Cling during the war and he always believed he’d get her back. Either he loved her very much, or else he regarded the recovery of her affections as a challenge to him. He didn’t divorce her, never remarried, never even cut her out of his will. She decamped with an American G.I. and they set up house in Chicago as man and wife. The G.I. died recently. Cling must have intended making another attempt. It’s just fantastic. She was a mere girl when she left him. Nineteen in fact, in 1941. Now she’ll be forty and, I suppose, completely changed. In fact, she has two or three children by her second husband, if such you can call him.’
‘It is fantastic. Almost too fantastic to be true. He might have returned to England from Zürich.’
‘To lose his job, as a deserter? Not likely. And suppose there’s something criminal at the back of it all. He’d be easily picked up there. My guess is Chicago.’
‘And he never made it, but got killed instead.’
‘Yes. That tallies, too. All was set for flight. Sir Ensor was safely out of the way for hours at the dinner and Cling was ready for his train to Zürich. But he’d lost his ticket. You can imagine his anger at the
hitch in his plan. In the quiet station in the evening after the day’s rush was over he might be much more easily recognised. He seized on a better plan of getting to Zürich. He’d just left Sir Ensor and me in the forecourt of the hotel and I’d parked my hired car right to his hand. He crossed to the garage and told a good tale. They handed him the duplicate keys. And, then, as he was settling in his stolen car for his journey, someone caught up with him …’
There was a pause.
‘You might ring up the Swiss Airways and find out if one of the places booked on their Chicago flight on the morning after Cling’s death was not claimed, and ask who booked it.’
‘I’ll do that right away.’
Lindemann gave the necessary instructions and asked for an urgent reply.
‘The idea of Cling’s flight also fits in with his behaviour in the matter of his rooms. In both London and Geneva, he seems to have gathered up his things, destroyed anything he didn’t need in the way of papers and records, and merely left the furniture and other useless odds and ends behind.’
‘That is right, Superintendent. But, whereas, according to you, his London flat was left undisturbed, someone thought he might have hidden or left behind something in his Geneva room and turned the place upside down in search of it …’
Further discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Ernest Pfiffner. He was accompanied by his wife who had insisted on keeping him company, because she asserted the police were arresting him for the murder of Cling. Explanations by the officers who’d called for him had been useless. She’d kept them waiting whilst she put on her best hat and frock and had then joined the party in the police car protesting vociferously all the way.
‘He’s so easily taken in and persuaded,’ she told the police when she and her lord and master entered, as though, somehow, the police were going to request little Pfiffner to oblige them by confessing to the crime and thus allow them to get on with some other jobs.
Lindemann at length got a word in edgeways.
‘When we saw you earlier in the day, M. Pfiffner, you suggested that Mr. Cling’s companion might have been a nurse. How did you arrive at that idea?’
Pfiffner looked alarmed. He began to stammer. His wife, however, was having none of it. She intervened and persisted in speaking in spite of the fact that Lindemann threatened that she’d have to leave the room if she didn’t shut up.
‘I won’t be quiet. It was me who told him. I suppose unless I tell you all about it, you’ll keep on pestering Pfiffner until he breaks down and confesses he killed the man himself. Well, he didn’t. I told him the woman was a nurse. I found it out from the papers in her bag.’
‘And how did you obtain the papers?’
‘She left her handbag in Mr. Smith’s room one day. They both went out together and I noticed she hadn’t her bag with her …’
‘Very observant of you.’
‘I don’t miss much and it was just one of those things. I saw she wasn’t carrying it.’
‘So you went up to the room and rifled the bag.’
‘I did not. I went up to the room to see if it needed tidying. I saw the bag on the bed where she’d forgotten it. She must have been upset about something. Women don’t forget their handbags like that unless there’s something wrong. I’d often wondered who she was and where she came from. And that’s all I looked at. Her papers. Then I heard somebody coming up the stairs, so I closed the bag and met her on her way back for it. She snatched it and hurried away.’
‘Her name?’
‘Albertine Durand. Nurse, Clinique Les Plaisances, Avène, Vaud. I must have told my husband. That’s why he remembered she’d been a nurse.’
‘You’ve a good memory, Madame Pfiffner, when you choose to exercise it.’
‘I know Avène. One of my friends was born near there. Also, I’ve heard of the clinic, Albertine Durand … Well … It’s not a hard name to remember.’
Probably she’d made a note of it somewhere.
‘And that was all?’
‘Yes. Should there be more?’
‘No. You can both go, thank you.’
‘What about getting home? We came to oblige you, you know.’
‘You can have the police car again. You’ll find it at the door.’
The telephone rang and Lindemann answered it. He turned to Littlejohn after he’d finished.
‘There was a vacant seat on the Chicago plane. It was booked in the name of Alexander Cling. He arranged to pick up the ticket at Zürich airport after sending the cost by post.’
‘That’s straightforward enough. It was the only sensible thing for him to do. Presumably, in his position in the police, he’d have no difficulty in obtaining a visa for America in his own name. It would have been folly to have masqueraded as someone else, even on a plane ticket. So, he left Albertine Durand in the lurch. I’d expect that if he’d gone to Chicago he was going to see his wife again. Cling never let up, did he?’
‘But what made him suddenly decide to go?’
‘That’s a thing we’ll have to find out. Perhaps we’d better make our trip to Les Plaisances and see Miss Durand—if she’s still there.’
9
Les Plaisances
IT WAS too late in the day for them to dine before making the trip to Les Plaisances and Littlejohn and Lindemann set out as soon as they got rid of the Pfiffners.
They made for Rolle by the new motor-road and then turned into the interior on the rising route to Avène. It was not a long way to Les Plaisances, but the route changed from vine-covered slopes to rocky defiles and then woods as they passed through Gimel spa. The curving road brought them to the pass through the hills and from there they could see Avène.
Les Plaisances lay in a fertile valley lit by the evening sun and had the appearance of a series of prosperous farms, which were actually the various pavilions, châlets and dormitories of the clinic. The headquarters were in a well-kept eighteenth century château approached through high gates and by a long path through parkland. There was no suggestion of prison or asylum restraint and the estate seemed to be bounded merely by tall hedges.
Work was still going on in the surrounding fields and men and women who might have been patients were walking leisurely about the buildings and meadows. The front of the château was laid out in formal gardens bright with flowers and there, too, people were strolling or sitting in the last of the sunshine, calmly and enjoyably, like visitors in a public park.
The police car drew up at the large main door and Littlejohn and Lindemann climbed the flight of five stone steps which led up to it.
A man sitting on a seat at the foot of the steps bade them good-evening.
‘Very pleasant here in the evening sunshine. Have you come far?’
‘From Geneva.’
‘If you happen to return to Paris, you might tell His Majesty that it is time I returned. There is work to be done and I have rested long enough. Tell him that Cardinal Richelieu sends his humble greeting, will you?’
Lindemann tugged at the bell-pull and an orderly in uniform answered the door.
‘Could we speak with the superintendent? We’re from the Geneva police.’
The man showed no sign of surprise. Perhaps it was a regular occurrence for people to call from strange places.
‘Dr. Binger is away, but his deputy, Dr. Fauconnet, will, no doubt, be pleased to receive you. Kindly wait in the hall.’
It was a fine place with a large staircase, ascending straight ahead and great windows overlooking the fields and distant hills. Three massive chandeliers, two of them partially lighted, hung from the high ceiling. Full length portraits and pictures on the panelled walls and comfortable chairs and settees scattered about and in front of the open hearth in which a log fire was burning.
It all gave the impression of an hotel-de-luxe, quiet, civilised and furnished in impeccable taste. There were guests sitting here and there, some reading, others chatting together. No suggestion of a mental clinic whateve
r, except that now and then some oddity manifested itself for a brief minute and was gone.
Littlejohn and Lindemann stood in front of the window admiring the view. A tall scholarly man in gold-rimmed spectacles touched Littlejohn’s arm.
‘You are being attended to?’
‘Yes, thanks.’
‘Admiring the view from here?’
‘Yes. Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Beautiful indeed.
A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view…’
‘I had England in mind when I wrote that, of course. But this will do. My name is John Milton. You may have heard of me.’
And he left them as quietly as he had come.
The orderly was back. Nobody but John Milton had taken any notice of the newcomers. Their good manners seemed to suit the place.
‘Dr. Fauconnet will see you.’
He led them to a heavy door in one corner of the hall, opened it, took them down a short passage and announced them. Beyond was a large room with a desk across the far corner. To travel the distance between the door and this desk over the noisy parquet flooring might have cut the average visitor down to size, but now Littlejohn and Lindemann were spared the ordeal. The occupant of the desk rose to meet them.
A small, lightly-built, dark sharp-featured woman, middle-aged and with grey hair. She wore heavy black-rimmed spectacles and was dressed in a tweed skirt and white blouse with a grey cardigan over it. She walked to greet them with a casual silent step and inturned toes, like a stalking leopard.
Death of a Shadow (An Inspector Littlejohn Mystery) Page 8
