Pel and the Party Spirit

by Mark Hebden

  ‘A lot of people came,’ Le Bernard said. ‘From all over the place. They’ll come again on the twenty-eighth, I reckon. In fact, there’ll be more. They put on a play then about how Puyceldome was founded and about the defiance of the Comte de Goillac and his capture and torture by the King.’

  ‘Not exactly the thing to get people into a festive spirit.’

  ‘They were rotten actors, too. That’s why this year we decided on a medieval evening. It’ll be much better.’

  Police enquiries often produce nothing, and a lot of cops do a lot of legwork and get aching feet for nothing. But sometimes they pay off and a major enquiry takes a step forward – usually a very small step, but a step nevertheless.

  Darcy had put Claudie Darel on to enquiring about Maria Theresas and she came up with a result.

  ‘There were enquiries at antique shops and numismatists around thirty years ago,’ she said. ‘Nobody’s certain of the exact date but a lot of antique shops remember because it started a scare and pushed up values and collectors started selling what they possessed to get the best price they could. The police at Goillac remember it, too, but their records are in a mess. They put me in touch with a former sergeant, though. He retired ages ago but he made enquiries at the time because it was believed somebody was fixing the market. He found that enquiries had been made.’

  ‘Who by?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘They identified the enquirer as a type called Lulu Grande-Tête. Real name Laurence Luzeau.’

  ‘We know Laurence Luzeau,’ Darcy said. ‘That’s interesting. He was a demi-sel from Marseilles.’

  Claudie nodded. ‘That’s right. I checked. I also made a few more enquiries and found that the same enquiries he made were made again about six years later.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘This time it was a type called Lorick Lupin.’

  Darcy frowned. ‘Lupin? He was the bricky who was employed by Poulex to get into the tower. He went to America. Was he in on it, whatever it was? And whose coins were they?’

  As Darcy headed back to his own office, the telephone rang. ‘Type called Mauff,’ the man on the switchboard said.

  ‘Put him on.’

  The message was hardly cataclysmic, but it was important. It was from the younger Mauff and he was short and to the point.

  ‘The old man’s back,’ he said.

  ‘Married?’ Darcy asked.

  There was a short laugh. ‘He didn’t manage it.’

  Mauff senior was a bright little man, white-haired but with sharp black eyes that were full of mischief. There was little wonder, Darcy decided, that he expected to pick up a wife with money.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Alfred Fouché. He’s the type you’re looking for. Big chap. Almost two metres tall. Came from Caen in Normandy. Red-haired. That dark red you get up there. Big nose. He was a bricklayer. A good one too, but he used his mouth too much and was always stirring up union trouble. It’s always that sort who do. He’d be just the sort people would get in touch with if they wanted anything shady doing.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he’d been in prison, hadn’t he?’

  ‘Had he? What for?’

  ‘Theft. Pinching petrol. A lot. Over a long period. Later for assault. He beat up the foreman. He gave his wife a hell of a life.’

  ‘Is she still alive?’

  ‘She might be.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Same address, I imagine. Rue Trois Croissants, Neris. I haven’t heard she’s left. I bet you’ve got him in your records.’

  ‘I’ll look him up,’ Darcy said. ‘Know anything more about him?’

  ‘No. He just disappeared. We heard he’d gone south looking for a better job. He just vanished. About thirty years ago. We just assumed he was another like Lorick Lupin, who went to America.’

  ‘You knew Lupin, too?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We all worked together at one time or another.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Lupin? Why? Was he involved?’

  ‘He might have been.’

  ‘Little chap. Sharp as a knife. Brave. Once saved a kid from drowning in the Tarn at Trébas. Nobody could bully him, though a lot tried because he was only little. Built like a jockey. Good at his job though.’

  Darcy frowned. Somehow all these people, Le Bernard, Lorick Lupin and Alfred Fouché, all bricklayers or stonemasons according to what they were doing, were all part of the puzzle. He wondered how much.

  He took his information back to Pel. ‘We’ve got him, Patron,’ he announced. ‘His name’s Alfred Fouché. Almost two metres tall. Heavily built. Big nose. Red hair.’

  ‘So what was he doing in the tower?’ Pel asked.

  Darcy shrugged. ‘Up to no good, I reckon. He had a record.’

  Fouchés wife was still alive. She was in her late seventies now and a little deaf but she had lost none of her bitterness at her husband’s disappearance, and was accordingly a little disconcerted to discover she had misjudged him for thirty years.

  ‘I just assumed he’d run off with another woman,’ she said. ‘Or that he’d died.’

  Well, Pel thought, he’d certainly died.

  ‘He went to catch a bus to go to work,’ she went on, ‘and just never came back. He was like that, mind you. Disappearing for a day or so at a time. He chased girls. He couldn’t keep it in his trousers. But this – murdered!’

  ‘We don’t think he was murdered, madame,’ Pel said. ‘We think he might have had a heart attack. He was a big man. Had he any history of heart trouble?’

  ‘No. But he was fat. Too fat. I was always telling him. What was he doing in that hole?’

  ‘We were wondering if you knew?’

  ‘Up to no good, I’ll bet.’

  ‘Did he give you any idea what he was doing?’

  ‘He said it was a special job. He was good at his work, I’ll admit that, and often did special jobs for people. They said he’d been seen repairing that tower at Puyceldome.’

  ‘That appears to have been the case. Did he mention exactly what he was doing?’

  ‘He said he’d been asked to do a job for someone. He didn’t say what it was. He stopped work on the site at Orvault so he’d be free and was lounging about the house for a day or two. He said he had to be free because he’d be called on at any time and that the money he was going to get made it worth while. Then he got a telephone call.’

  ‘Did you hear what was said?’

  ‘No. He spoke very quietly. I thought he was trying to hide it from me. That was why I was certain he’d gone off with a woman. I thought he’d taken time off work to be ready and was waiting for her, whoever she was, to telephone to say her husband had gone out, or was abroad or something and the coast was clear. Not at the time. But afterwards. That’s what I thought the telephone call was for. You know – “Okay, Alfred, now’s the time.”’ She frowned. ‘The only thing that puzzled me was that he went off in his working clothes with his tools. You don’t usually do that if you’re going to run off with a woman, do you? You put on your best suit and leave your tools at home. Then I decided that perhaps it was just camouflage so I wouldn’t suspect anything. After all, people running away from their wives do that, too, don’t they?’

  Pel had to admit that they did.

  ‘I never thought he was up to something fishy. But he might well have been. He was as good at that as he was at chasing women.’

  When they sat back and thought about it, it began to seem more clear. With his record and character, it seemed obvious that there had been something in the tower that had drawn Fouché there – either for himself or on behalf of someone else. And whatever it was – and it began to look as if it might be a stolen coin collection – it seemed he had been employed by Lulu Grande-Tête to handle it.

  He’d been used to remove stones from the top of the Cat Tower and somehow – and it began to look more and more like a simple heart attack – he’d died in there and, because he was so big, they
couldn’t get him out and had had to leave him there.

  ‘Perhaps they could have got him out,’ Darcy said. ‘But not without drawing the attention of the police to why they were there. So, for some reason, they simply bricked him up and left him.’

  ‘Intending to come back later?’

  ‘That must have been the case. But something prevented them and he remained there and the coins remained there.’

  ‘But they didn’t, did they?’ Pel said. ‘Except for one, they disappeared.’

  Fourteen

  That evening when Pel returned home, Madame Routy was watching the television. But for once she seemed to have little interest in it and Pel, assuming she was still worried about her nephew, Didier Darras, didn’t demand she turned it off.

  He tried to console her a little as he poured them both a drink. ‘I’m keeping an eye on him,’ he pointed out. ‘He’s not getting up to mischief.’

  ‘Is he doing his job properly?’ she asked. ‘His mother’s worried. She was proud of him in his uniform.’

  ‘He’s not doing anything he shouldn’t be doing,’ Pel said. He’d better not either, he thought darkly. Not while he’s working with me.

  The television was going on about a missing girl at Treffort in the Jura. She had gone out riding, it seemed, and her horse had returned without her. It had been carefully examined and, as there had been no sign of injury, it had been assumed that the rider, a girl called Sybille Junot, had been thrown. A major search was now being made along the route she normally took when she went riding.

  Switching off the set, Pel drowned his sorrows with a second large whisky and, having downed that, tried another. The result was indigestion and a bad night and he rose the next morning feeling as if he’d mislaid part of himself during the hours of darkness.

  When he reached the office, Darcy followed him into his room.

  ‘Type called Dunoisse telephoned,’ he said. ‘Inspector Charles Dunoisse from Guinchay. He said he was at school with you and knew you well.’

  Pel stared at him blankly. He had no recollection whatsoever of any Charles Dunoisse.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Help.’

  ‘What sort of help?’

  ‘He’s handling this business of the missing girl at Treffort. They’re thinking now that it wasn’t an accident. They’ve covered every inch of ground she’d have covered and searched the hospitals and they’ve found no trace of her.’

  ‘Pity the horse can’t tell them.’

  ‘They think now that it must be an abduction. He wants advice and help. He remembers we had the Rensselaer abduction here and he’s never had to handle one before. He’s hoping you can give him some advice. The girl’s parents are wealthy and, if it isn’t the sort of mindless murder we get these days, he’s beginning to be afraid that it’s a kidnap job.’

  ‘It’s an occupational hazard with the rich these days,’ Pel admitted. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘At the moment, nothing. They’re still searching. If they find her dead they’ll handle it their own way. But if he feels it’s a kidnap, he’s asked if he can come and see you.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because you’re Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel.’

  Pel gave Darcy a dirty look. Then he realised Darcy wasn’t laughing at him. He was just trying to indicate that Pel had built up quite a reputation for himself.

  ‘I’ll do what I can, of course,’ he said. ‘What else have we?’

  ‘Nosjean’s started to make headway again. They’ve got new descriptions of the girls and they think they’ve got the first names. They appear to be French, too, so that rules out foreign students travelling round France.’

  In fact, Nosjean and De Troq’ were searching among the lists of girls missing from home for two from the same area with the names they had, who might have linked up. So far they’d had no luck.

  Photofit pictures of the girls had been made from the descriptions they’d received and tried on the four drivers. But the drivers hadn’t looked carefully enough to be sure of the details – you don’t spend a lot of time looking at your passengers when driving – and they couldn’t be sure.

  ‘It’ll take years,’ Lagé said as the matter was discussed in the sergeants’ room. ‘Children these days don’t seem to enjoy being at home. What’s even worse is that not all parents report their disappearance. Some are even happy to see them go.’

  ‘My lot’, Misset said, ‘can go any time they like. I’m thinking, in fact, of sending them to play on the motorway. My wife, too. Her I’d like to clamp into the nose cone of a rocket and fire her off into outer space.’

  They were still arguing when Claudie appeared. Misset tried to engage her in conversation but she brushed him off and headed for Pel’s office.

  ‘Patron,’ she said. ‘Those coins! I’ve got them! They weren’t part of a collection. They were part of a large number that were due to go to Algeria. You’ll remember that thirty years ago was the time of that attempted coup by a group of generals against de Gaulle after he offered independence.’

  Pel remembered it well. He had been in Paris at the time and the mobs were on the streets led by students yelling their five-syllable slogan – ‘Algérie Française.’ Five syllable slogans – ‘Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh’ had been another – had been very popular with demonstrators at the time. Pel had gone out of his hotel to see what all the noise was about and, caught up in a mob of students fleeing down the Champs Elysées, had had to run like a hare himself to avoid being hit by the lead-lined capes of the pursuing police. Riot police didn’t stop to ask questions. They just lashed out.

  ‘There was a lot of dirty business going on at the time,’ he agreed.

  ‘Yes, Patron. And a large sum of money in gold coins went missing. Two million francs’ worth of it. From the airfield at Goillac. It was stored secretly in a hangar. It had been collected by representatives of the rebel generals and was to have been flown to Algiers to be used to finance their operations and bribe local leaders. The police found out all about it later. Instead, it was snatched. There was no violence. The gang were lucky and they’d got somebody on the inside.’

  Pel frowned. ‘A bullion robbery? Who did it?’

  Finding out involved nothing more than going to Records – those pieces of paper covered with writing Darcy had warned Didier about – and there it was, proof. It had all been written up thirty years before and it was now available for the new generation of cops to study and use.

  Darcy was intrigued. ‘It was Lulu Grande-Tête. Laurence Luzeau himself. There were four of them. The cops handling the case worked it out. They must have hidden it in the tower at Puyceldome.’

  ‘So if they did, why didn’t they come back later and take it out?’

  ‘They couldn’t, Patron. They were dead. You’ll remember. Lulu and one other, a type called Georges Pulot, were wiped out in a shoot-out in a Marseilles bar soon afterwards.’

  ‘Because of the robbery?’

  ‘It was thought it was a gang feud, but the police couldn’t find anyone who wanted them dead so they scrubbed that idea. They never did find out who did it. I expect it was the types who’d raised the money for the generals. They were a ruthless lot if I’ve read my history correctly.’

  Pel nodded. ‘Go on. You’re doing all right.’

  ‘The police tried to pick up the remaining two members of the gang but one of them, Pierre Pirioux – known as Peter the Painter – was killed in a fishy car crash. They thought he’d been forced off the road at high speed. The last one, name of Sammonix, they pinned down in America six months later but by then he was in hospital in New York, dying of cancer. He was dead within two months. That’s why, I suppose, no one ever found out what happened to the loot.’

  Darcy smiled. ‘Goillac’s very interested, by the way, Patron. They’re intrigued by all the enquiries we’re making. They hastened to point out that if we recover the money, it’s theirs.’

  ‘That’s wh
ere they’re wrong,’ Pel said sharply. ‘If we find it, it’s ours! At least, until someone decides what to do with it! And the credit’s ours, too. It would look nice in our statistics, and Goillac’s done nothing spectacular to include it in theirs.’

  Darcy laughed. Pel was never one to let any kudos slip away to anyone, else. He was quite indifferent to how it affected him, but he was well aware how much a few trumpets and drums helped the morale of his men, and he never allowed anyone else to snatch what was theirs.

  ‘I reckon’, he said, ‘that Lulu, or Caillas – the type who bought The Cat House from Madame Croissard – wanted somewhere quiet and safe to hide the loot and lie low for a time. The Cat House was available and was perfect. In those days there weren’t many tourists and Puyceldome’s way off the main road hidden among the hills. They didn’t have to raise much cash either. Just enough for a deposit – and it wasn’t a lot for a place in Puyceldome in those days – and then a monthly sum to the loan company. In fact, they only paid one monthly sum because then they disappeared.’

  Darcy grinned. ‘No wonder they got away with it,’ he went on. ‘I expect whoever collected the coins and parked them at the airport ready to be flown out thought the thieves would bolt and put a watch on airports and ports, hoping to pick them up there. Instead, they stayed in Puyceldome right under their very noses. And they could hardly call in the police or make much of a fuss because it was illegal money that was to be used against the established government of France, so that any investigations had to be done by themselves. And, not having the facilities we’ve got, they never found it. The police only learned about it after the generals’ rebellion collapsed and the generals were arrested and put on trial. But neither they nor the people who raised the coins ever found out what happened to them. Nobody did. Until now.’

  It was possible to obtain photographs from Marseilles of the men who had been shot in the bar. Darcy took them along to Madame Croissard.

  ‘Recognise any of them?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  It wasn’t the reply he’d expected and he decided she was now so old she needed a little prompting.