There was something else, too. For the first time since they'd told him about the murder, Jacquot could see that Basquet now realised it was no longer just a matter of keeping his wife from finding out about his mistress. It was the sudden, chilling realisation that he was a murder suspect.
'So you were in bed when your wife returned home?' continued Jacquot, keeping up the pressure.
'That's right. That's right,' stammered Basquet, reaching across to snap on a desk lamp in the gathering gloom. The pool of light that splashed across the desk made the rest of the room grow suddenly darker. Jacquot couldn't have wished for better stage management.
'Asleep?'
'Dead to the world,' Basquet's wife answered for him, leaning forward to put out her cigarette. 'And snoring like a lion. I had to sleep in our son's room.'
'And that would have been at what time, Madame?'
asked Jacquot, turning in his chair to face Basquet's wife.
'I'd say, oh, around eleven.'
'And you, Madame,' continued Jacquot lightly. 'Did you go straight to bed? After you returned from your dinner party?'
'I had a glass of warm milk in the kitchen, then went upstairs to bed.'
'To your son's room, you said?'
'To ours first. But it wasn't easy getting to sleep . ..' She gave a little laugh, smiled forgivingly at her husband, then twirled the ice in her glass.
But Basquet, Jacquot noted, did not return the smile. He was looking at his wife intently, a puzzled frown forming, as if he was trying to remember something, as if something didn't quite add up, the lines on his face thrown into stronger relief by the play of the light.
'So from eleven onwards,' continued Jacquot, registering Basquet's frown, his silence, 'you were both here, asleep? In different rooms?'
Madame Basquet nodded. 'That's correct, Chief Inspector.'
'Tell me, Madame,' said Jacquot. 'And please forgive the forthright nature of this question . . .' He paused, drew a breath, let the moment stretch into expectant silence. 'Tell me,' he continued at last. 'Did you know that Anais Cuvry was your husband's mistress?'
'Good God, man . . .' exclaimed Basquet, leaping to his feet, eyes wide with indignation.
'If you wouldn't mind, Monsieur,' said Jacquot, holding up a hand, but never taking his eyes off Madame Basquet for a second.
'But I do mind. I mind a lot,' spluttered Basquet, rapping his fists against the blotter on his desk. 'Coming here . . . coming to my home with these. . . with these outrageous allegations . .
'Yes, I did know,' came Madame Basquet's voice, quiet, resigned.
Her words stopped Basquet in his tracks. He turned and looked at his wife. Then, stunned, he reached back for his chair and lowered himself into it.
Jacquot knew how he must have felt. All that effort to keep it from her - here, this evening, and for however long the affair had been going on - and she'd known the whole time!
Jacquot pressed on. 'And how long have you known?'
'From the beginning, Chief Inspector.' She leant forward to put her drink on the coffee table, then sat back and composed herself. Calmly she returned Jacquot's gaze. 'What do they call it? Cinq à sept?' She gave another of her little laughs, a touch more brittle this time. 'I believe it's quite common. Men of a certain age.'
'And how did you feel about your husband's . . . activities?'
'So long as it didn't upset the status quo ... So long as the children didn't find out. . .' Céléstine shrugged, spread her hands. 'And she was nothing special.'
'So you knew Mademoiselle Cuvry? You met her?'
'No. I mean ... I know my husband. It is probably not the first time he has . . . strayed. And it probably wouldn't have been the last. It was just. . . not important. I'm sure you understand, Chief Inspector.' She waved her hand, as if at a fly. Inconsequential.
But Jacquot was not convinced by Madame Basquet's quietly dignified admission, nor by her calm acceptance.
There was something up ahead. He could smell it. Almost taste it. He pressed on.
'Tell me, Madame. Do you drive?'
Basquet's wife nodded, then looked perplexed - as though she couldn't quite see where this was headed, what Jacquot was getting at. She didn't have to wait long.
'Might I ask what kind of car, Madame?'
'A Citroen, a Xsara,' she replied.
Jacquot nodded.
'It might interest you to learn, Madame, diat a Citroen Xsara was seen on Avenue Corbusier. In Endoume, where the victim lived. Late last night. A man walking his dog reported seeing it.'
Of course it was a lie, but Jacquot had played the same game with her husband - the signature on the credit-card slip - and that had worked, so he saw no reason not to tiy it with Basquet's wife. Just a bluff, to unsettle her. That was all it was.
'And later a Citroen was seen on the Corniche road,' he continued. 'Parked on the flyover above Vallon des Auffes. Where Mademoiselle Cuvry's body was dumped.'
For a moment there was silence in the room as the implication took shape in their minds.
Céléstine Basquet shivered, pulled the sleeves of her cardigan around her.
'I can't imagine what you mean,' she began, but her voice faltered. 'If you're suggesting, Chief Inspector . . .'
'I think, Madame, you know exactly what I'm suggesting.'
'This is getting ridiculous,' began Basquet, but Jacquot could see that his interruption was half-hearted; the man didn't know what else to say, how else to proceed. Basquet knew something they didn't. Something about his wife. Something to do with their sleeping arrangements.
And that was enough for Jacquot.
He slid his hand into an inside pocket and drew out the plastic bag, reached across and laid it on Basquet's desk. There was a dull clunk as the weighty silver-gilt letter- opener wrapped inside the bag came into contact with the wooden surface.
The effect was exactly as Jacquot had wished. Both Basquet and his wife stared at the object with horrified fascination, the gold handle and silver blade glinting in the light, a smear of blood still visible on the inside of the plastic.
'The murder weapon,' said Jacquot. 'You, of course, will have seen it before, Monsieur.'
But Basquet didn't speak.
Which Jacquot had expected.
'And so will you, Madame,' continued Jacquot, turning towards Madame Basquet, leaning his elbows on his knees. 'Last night. In Anais Cuvry's home. When you went round to confront her. After dinner. When your husband was asleep. To scare her off? To save your marriage? The letter-opener you snatched up when she refused to play ball. The same letter-opener that your husband bought for Mademoiselle Cuvry, a gift you couldn't have known about.'
Madame Basquet straightened her back, raised her chin, clasped her hands in her lap. But said nothing.
Jacquot turned to Basquet. 'I think, Monsieur, that you should call your lawyer.'
Basquet dragged his eyes from his wife, and looked blankly at Jacquot.
'My lawyer?'
'Or maybe your wife has her own?' Beside him, Gastal sniffed, sat back in his chair and pinched the creases in his trousers.
92
Tuesday
The Widow Foraque fed her two canaries, Mittie and Chirrie. Pouring seed into their bowls, changing the water in their cups, twittering at them as she did so, she waited for footsteps on the stairs.
He'd come home late the night before, long past midnight. She'd heard the key in the latch, the screech of the door, the scuff of his shoes across the tiled hall. She listened from her bed, lifting her head from the pillow so that she could bring both ears into play. And there it was, she was pleased to note, a lightness to the step. As she settled back, Madame Foraque decided her tenant was finally on the mend.
She was carrying the birdcages to the front door that Tuesday morning, for an hour or two of fresh air and sunshine, when Jacquot appeared at the foot of the stairs. She put down Mittie and Chirrie and placed her hands on her hips, four-square and confrontational
.
'So?'
'Happy birthday,' he said, and bent down to give her a kiss, not easy to do when she made no effort to offer her cheek.
'Who told you it was my birthday?' she asked, taking the small parcel he offered.
'You did. Last week. And the week before. And the week before that. Just like you do every year, Grand'maman.'
Madame Foraque shrugged off his reply, scrabbled to untie the ribbon, then wound it round her fingers; opened the wrapping, then folded the paper neatly, putting both in her apron pocket. Only then did she inspect the gift. Five cheroots from Tabac Delorme, also bound in ribbon.
'Have you got that Waterman yet?' she asked, lifting the cheroots to her nose and sniffing suspiciously. 'You look as if you have.'
Jacquot shook his head. 'Not yet, we haven't,' he told her. 'But you don't have to worry yourself. I have a feeling that our friend has moved on.'
'You have a feeling? Just a feeling?' Madame Foraque clucked disapprovingly. 'And that's supposed to make me feel better? A woman on her own? With a madman on the loose? Pppjff'
'You'll see,' replied Jacquot, heading for the door. 'Mark my words. C'est fini.'
And as he made his way down the sloping steps of rue Salvarelli, a sweet salt tang in the air, Jacquot knew he was right; knew in his bones, that bright Marseilles morning, that their man was packing his bags, or already gone.
First off, Jacquot decided, turning along rue des Honneurs, all the brouhaha over the de Cotigny killing would have unnerved him. All that press and TV coverage over the weekend. Suzie de Cotigny was too big, too important a name, to be ignored. Her murder would become a high-priority, high-profile case and the killer would know that Marseilles was no longer the safe billet he'd enjoyed so far. The heat would be turned up, all police resources directed at this one case, and he'd have to watch his step. Easier, if he was the transient Jacquot suspected, just to move on.
Secondly, if the Waterman was still hanging around, too cocky or confident to worry about increased police activity, then the Cuvry murder would certainly see him off. When they got their confession from Madame Basquet, currently residing down the street at police headquarters, and the press splashed the story saying how she'd tried to disguise it as just another Waterman kill, that would be an end to it. Killers like the Waterman hated copycats. Hated them. He'd move on for sure. Somewhere new - another city by the sea, on a river, beside a lake.
Not that they'd stop looking for him, of course. As far as the Judiciaire was concerned, a file remained open until the killer was apprehended. But that wouldn't happen in Marseilles, Jacquot knew. Not now.
One day soon, though, a call would come through from some other force - more murders, more drowned bodies. It was the way it went. As Jacquot had said to Solange Bonnefoy, sooner or later, wherever he happened to be, the Waterman would make a mistake.
And then they would have him.
Toulon. Nice. Biarritz.
Wherever he pitched up next.
93
The body of Suzanne Delahaye de Cotigny, in a shiny mahogany casket furnished with sturdy brass handles, was released to the Delahaye family at mid-morning and taken from the city morgue to the airport at Marignane by a firm of undertakers. Suzanne's brother, Gus, supervised proceedings, watched by Max Benedict who'd followed in a cab from the Nice-Passedat.
So far as Benedict could see, Delahaye handed out tips to nearly everyone he came into contact with that morning - the concierge at the front desk, the busboy who brought round his rented Mercedes, the two medical orderlies who wheeled the trolley from the back entrance of the morgue to the undertakers' limousine, and undoubtedly, though Benedict was unable to confirm this, to the undertakers at the airport after the body had been loaded onto the family jet, possibly even to the Immigration officials who dealt with the paperwork and cleared the casket for the journey home.
From Marignane, Benedict followed Delahaye's Mercedes back to town and the Nice-Passedat where the tip-happy Wall Street broker joined his parents for lunch on the terrace.
It was the first time that Benedict had seen the older Delahayes since their arrival three days earlier. Either they'd stayed put in their room or they'd managed to evade him. Like his son, Leonard Delahaye wore a black suit and tie, while his wife wore a narrow black dress and jacket, black shoes and pillbox hat. Benedict sat three tables away, close enough to see the dishes they were served - a slice of foie gras and toasts for Gus Delahaye, a simple green salad with quails' eggs for his mother and a small steak frites for his father - but not close enough to overhear their conversation, an occasional, whispered affair. The brother drank his customary bourbon and branch but his parents made do with mineral water. They rarely looked up from the table, either at each other or at the waiters who attended them. Benedict sensed an air of unsurprised despair in the way they held their forks - in the American manner - and in the way they sipped their drinks, as though they had somehow always known that it would come to this. How Suzanne had disappointed them once again, albeit for the last time.
An hour after their lunch a chauffeur-driven limousine, as black as their suits, drew up at the front of the Nice-Passedat and the Delahayes were taken to the Cathedrale de la Major for the funeral service of Hubert de Cotigny. Max Benedict watched them pull out of the hotel forecourt, then waved up a cab and followed at a discreet distance.
The roads around the cathedral were packed, the city's finest turning out to bid farewell to their friend and their colleague, a sway of black umbrellas to protect against a blazing sun. Benedict watched it all from the back seat of his cab - a milling swarm of the great and the good in tails and frock coats, top hats and dress uniforms, sashes, gloves and veils making their way through the cathedral doors. He waited there in the dusty heat until the service was over and he watched as the two grieving families reappeared - Delahaye Senior with a stooped Madame de Cotigny on his arm, Mrs Delahaye with her son, de Cotigny's daughter with her husband - followed by the pall-bearers, de Cotigny's casket hoisted onto their shoulders and draped in a rippling tricolore.
Across town, at the Saint Pierre cemetery, ahead of the cortege, Benedict paid off his cab and took up position on a rise of headstones some fifty metres past the intersection of Allee du Japon and the Grande Allee, the main cemetery concourse where his man at the Nice-Passedat had told him the de Cotignys kept their family mausoleum. Pulling a pair of Leica binoculars from his pocket Benedict scanned the miniature faux Greek temples and Palladian palaces, the Gothic towers and arabesque tents that faced the Allee.
It was not difficult to identify the de Cotigny mausoleum, nothing less than a miniature chateau with witch-hat turrets and marble battlements, its wrought-iron doors wide open, its grassy bank strewn with wreaths. Above the doors, between lowered and furled banners, was the family name, the letters boldly carved in capitals but spread with yellow lichen.
Ten minutes later, Benedict watched the hearse turn through the gates, enter the walled cemetery and lead a column of black sedans between the shadowing lime trees to the family plot. It was immediately clear that there were fewer people here than at the church and, as the guests stepped from their plush back seats, Benedict raised his binoculars and scanned the faces. There the Delahayes, there a weeping Madame de Cotigny now supported by her granddaughter, and gathering around them a smaller circle of family and friends.
Slowly, the casket was drawn from the back of the hearse and four frock-coated undertakers took a handle each. Carrying it slung between them, they slow-stepped to the mausoleum where a Monsignor in papal red gave the final blessing and the casket passed into the darkened crypt. A minute or two later the pall-bearers trooped dolefully back into the sunlight, one of them securing the mausoleum doors, another presenting the tricolore that had adorned de Cotigny's coffin to his mother.
It was over. As simply and as finally as that. Car doors slammed, engines started and ten minutes later the only thing that moved on Saint Pierre's Grande Allee were the le
aves of the lime trees, rustling their own indistinct adieus.
Stepping out onto Grande Allee, Benedict made his way back to the cemetery gates, pausing only briefly to note the flattened grass outside Hubert de Cotigny's final resting place, the mourners' wreaths and the messages of farewell.
Outside the cemetery he cast around for a cab and knew it didn't look good. Most of the traffic was heading north into the suburbs. In order to find a ride back to town he would have to cross the road for the southbound flow. He was trying to decide how best to do this when a grey city cab slid out of the line of traffic and pulled up at the kerb. In the back seat he could see a woman lean forward with money for the fare.
Jacquot and the Waterman Page 38
