Pel and the Party Spirit
Page 16
What pleased Didier, however, was the news that, because of the new demands on the team caused by the kidnapping, he was to do what he could to help. After today he would be picked up every morning at the Hôtel de Police by Aimedieu and driven to Puyceldome and then driven back in the evening. It sounded like a doddle.
Parking his scooter and seeing no immediate sign of Aimedieu, he allowed his gaze to fall on the stationery shop under the arcade. Putting his head round the door, he saw Bernadette Buffel behind the counter. She looked up and grinned.
‘Has that type been in again?’ he asked.
‘Which type?’
‘The actor type.’
‘Once. But Aunt Bernadine was here so he bought a packet of cigarettes and left. They’re in the schoolyard down the hill at the moment rehearsing for the medieval night. Come and have a look.’
Passing behind the counter, Didier was led through the living-room behind the shop to a window overlooking the valley beyond the ramparts of the town. He could see into the asphalt space in front of the village school. Gus Blivet had stilts strapped to his legs and was capering about – very skilfully, too, Didier thought.
‘He’s good,’ Bernadette said. ‘He’s done it before, of course. He told me he once worked in a circus as a clown.’
Didier became aware of her standing immediately behind him. As he turned, he found her face within a inch of his own and it was too much for a strong upright boy. Greatly daring, he gave her a peck on the cheek. She giggled, went pink and gave him a push.
‘You’d better be off,’ she said. ‘Before that chief inspector of yours catches you.’
Didier grinned. It was a doddle, he decided.
Aimedieu was inclined to think it was a doddle, too. He liked the idea of working on his own and he knew what the enquiry into the kidnapping could entail. There would be hours of leg work, everybody tense and in a bad temper, and Pel would be impossible. It was much more comfortable in Puyceldome.
He had already talked to everyone in the place over forty years of age and had thought that would be the end of it. Hearing about the kidnapping, he had expected to be withdrawn and sent to the ends of the earth to knock on doors and ask questions. Instead, he had been given a new set of instructions, a new set of enquiries, and told to get on with it.
On the other hand, Mrs Briddon was still alone and Aimedieu was beginning to grow nervous. She seemed to be growing more and more enthusiastic and had even informed him that she wasn’t looking forward to her husband’s return. She seemed, in fact, to be dropping strong hints that she wouldn’t mind setting up house with Aimedieu and he wondered if she’d ever considered how she’d manage on a cop’s pay. It was never enough to provide a life of luxury and he couldn’t imagine her in the tiny flat he occupied. Romantic France was fine when you were in England, but La Vie Bohème was a different thing when you were practising it in person.
As he walked towards her house, he saw Remarque, the leader of the Molière Players, climbing out of the old brake they used, his arms full of costumes.
Aimedieu nodded at the brake. ‘Does it go?’ he asked.
Remarque smiled nervously. ‘Oh, it goes well. It’s only the woodwork that’s beginning to look tatty.’
‘Does it have a wooden engine too?’
Remarque gave a sickly smile. ‘It’ll do for us. I’m teaching Daydé to drive.’
‘I thought everybody over the age of ten could drive these days.’
‘She’s been too busy to learn. She can start a car now and steer and change gear.’
‘She’s practically on the motorway.’
As Remarque went into the house, Aimedieu followed. Like Mrs Briddon’s salon, the actors’ rooms had become a regular calling place. They never seemed to welcome him but, on the other hand, they didn’t exactly push him out again either. It was almost as if they felt they ought to play safe and stay on the right side of the flics, and he wondered what they’d been up to.
Today they all seemed to be occupied with preparing for the medieval show in the square on the twenty-eighth. There were brightly-coloured costumes everywhere and the book Remarque had been seen carrying, The Middle Ages – Life and Entertainment, was lying open on the table, a mug of cold coffee standing on it. It had made a brown stain and was not at all what the library would appreciate, Aimedieu decided. Henriette Guillard was studying what appeared to be a book of medieval drama and was sitting apart. Somehow, Aimedieu had a feeling that she didn’t get on with Remarque and he wondered if he’d been trying to get her in a corner as he’d heard was a habit of his. Mercédes Flichy was reading a comic book. Alongside her, her spectacles rested on a copy of Le Bien Public. As Aimedieu appeared, she picked up the glasses and put them on. Around the newspaper, the table was full of used mugs, wineglasses full of sediment, and an array of dirty plates, some containing food.
‘Got another actor?’ Aimedieu asked.
Remarque looked puzzled and Aimedieu indicated the plates piled on the table. ‘Seven,’ he said.
They stared at him then the expression on the face of the girl called Odile Daydé changed abruptly. She had been strumming expertly on a guitar and she slammed it down and snatched up one of the plates and sent it skidding into a corner of the room.
‘You fool,’ she snapped at Remarque. ‘I’ve told you before it shouldn’t be on the table!’ She transferred her angry glance to Aimedieu. ‘It’s for the dog,’ she snapped. ‘It’s a stray that wanders in.’
For a moment there was silence then she picked up the guitar and started plucking at it again.
Remarque stared at her. ‘It’ll be a lute on the night,’ he said to Aimedieu.
Henriette Guillard, who had been watching the exchange, turned her attention back to the book on the Middle Ages. She seemed to be learning the words of a song and occasionally she hummed part of a tune. It seemed surprisingly modern and her voice was nothing to write home about.
Béranger was filling bottles on a chair in a corner of the room. He appeared to be using paraffin.
‘Petrol bombs?’ Aimedieu asked cheerfully. ‘Going to start a revolution?’
There was another silence, again hostile, but Aimedieu had long since learned to ignore hostility. Béranger answered him.
‘For the fire eater.’ He spoke sullenly as if it were none of Aimedieu’s business. ‘Meths for immediate ignition, paraffin for the flame. It looks good. Bright orange-yellow with black edges and a bit of smoke. Fire eating was always a feature of medieval shows. Among unsophisticated people, it had the look of magic.’
‘Who’s doing it?’
‘I am.’
‘So am I,’ the Daydé girl said. ‘So keep out of the way or I’ll singe your eyebrows.’
‘It’s not a job for a girl,’ Remarque said.
‘Anything you can do, I can do, too.’
Remarque looked uneasy but he said nothing and Aimedieu decided he wasn’t a very powerful personality and that the Daydé girl, as he’d noticed before, invariably seemed to get her own way.
‘I hope you’re good at it,’ he said to Béranger.
‘I’ve done it before.’
‘Don’t you ever burn yourself?’
‘Not if you blow the paraffin out hard enough, keep the light away from your face and wipe your mouth after every go.’
‘You seem to be pretty expert.’
‘It’s a daily occurrence in a circus and Gus and I have both done our stints in circuses.’
Aimedieu looked at Remarque. ‘How about you?’
‘This is small stuff,’ Remarque said coldly. ‘I’ve been entertaining people all my life. Acting’s nothing. I told you, we were a big family and used to give shows. They were good shows, too, because we could all do something. Just the sort of stuff we’ll need for the show on the twenty-eighth. I can do sleight-of-hand, sing, dance, blow flames. All exactly what medieval strolling players did. I can even walk on my hands, and do handsprings.’
He started pouring white powde
r out of a chemist’s jar.
‘Cocaine?’ Aimedieu asked cheerfully.
Remarque gave him a sour look and didn’t answer.
‘Explosive then?’
‘It’s magnesium powder,’ Remarque snarled. ‘Gives a bright flash and a lot of white smoke. It’s very effective.’
‘Where did you get all these ideas?’
‘They’re in all the old books. You’ve only to use your head to realise what the magicians used in the Middle Ages.’
‘You seem to be very good.’
‘We find out. And then we practise. We’re practising now.’
‘And you’re in the way,’ the Daydé girl snapped. ‘We’re going to start juggling.’
Pel was doing a bit of juggling too. Only he was juggling with four major cases – a long-dead man found in a tower who ought not to have been there, two brutal killings and now a kidnapping. And so far they hadn’t made any firm steps in any of them.
They’d dropped all their other enquiries temporarily. All the enquiries in the world didn’t bring back dead men, and a young girl in danger came first. Aimedieu could look after Puyceldome and Nosjean could look after Garcy. Didier’s hope of spending his time in Puyceldome near Bernadette Buffel’s shop had been blasted immediately and Pel would have liked to pull in De Troq’ too. But De Troq’ had said that the boy known as Gorgeous had been talking and, though he hadn’t any names, he was suddenly nearer to the supplier who had fed Speedy Sam. Knowing De Troq’, Pel guessed it wasn’t just an excuse to dodge work, so he left him to it and dragged in everybody else he could spare and lent them to Dunoisse to add to his own men. If nothing else, they had more experience than the men in Guinchay.
Lagé, Misset, Claudie, Debray and Brochard were all wearing their feet out making enquiries for Dunoisse while Darcy was permanently on the telephone. The rest of the squad – and it didn’t leave many – were looking after the city on their own. Pel knew that the word would soon get around and that there would be a rash of small crimes as petty crooks took advantage of the situation. But it wasn’t any use panicking. Panic helped no one. And he had to remember that there were other things to occupy his attention.
There were already three files on his desk, one now labelled Fouché, one Vienne, one Burges. Somehow, Pel had a feeling they were connected but he wasn’t sure how.
As he studied them the telephone rang. It was Dunoisse from Guinchay. He sounded tired.
‘They paid up,’ he said at once.
Pel frowned. ‘I suppose you can’t blame them. And the girl?’
‘She hasn’t appeared. They were expecting a message to go to some spot where they’d find her. But none came. Instead, a demand for another five hundred thousand came.’
‘Growing greedy, are they?’
‘It’s a pretty easy way of earning half a million.’
‘I’ll come to see you.’
Feeling like a man dragged four ways at once by wild horses, Pel yelled for Darcy and they drove down to Guinchay, Didier in the rear seat clutching a notebook.
Dunoisse was looking haggard. In front of him was a tape recorder. ‘They also sent a tape,’ he said. ‘And a photograph.’
The photograph of Sybille Junot showed her holding the newspaper in front of her. The date was clear and was that of the day before. Behind the newspaper they could see the top part of her body and her legs. She looked terrified and her shoulders and legs were uncovered.
‘The bastards have taken away her clothes,’ Dunoisse snapped. ‘She was wearing jodhpurs and a jersey when she disappeared.’
They studied the picture, looking for a clue to the girl’s whereabouts, but the background was a draped sheet that gave no indication of where it came from.
The letter setting out the kidnappers’ demands had been formed by cutting out letters from a newspaper. They had been stuck on a sheet torn from what appeared to be a notebook. It had holes along the top as if it had had a spiral binding, and the paper was cheap, pulpy and faded along the edge. Dunoisse had put it in a plastic cover.
Pel studied it. ‘The usual,’ he said. ‘But this one’s different in that it has a footprint on it. As if the paper was dropped and someone trod on it as they picked it up. Perhaps they were drunk. Or drugged. It’s not much, but it might help.’ He held it out to Didier. ‘See it reaches Leguyader. Tell him we want a report on it. See that Fingerprints see it, too.’
As Didier took the plastic envelope, Dunoisse lifted a finger for silence and, reaching across the desk, switched on the tape recorder. There was a whirring sound, a few clicks, then a thin frightened voice.
‘Papa. This is Sybille. I’m being held prisoner and they say you’ve got to pay a ransom or you’ll never see me again. Please help me. I’m frightened, Pappy. They say this is serious and they’ll telephone to tell you where to put the money. They say they want another five hundred thousand francs. That’s a lot of money, Pappy, but I think they mean what they say. Please help me.’
Pel sat quietly for a while as Dunoisse switched off the tape recorder. ‘Room with a high ceiling, the sound experts say,’ Dunoisse pointed out. ‘There’s a bit of an echo, it seems, and no outside sounds such as you might expect to hear from passing traffic. They’ve analysed it and checked. Somewhere where the air’s still – that is without passers-by or anything on wheels around.’
‘They’re amateurs,’ Pel said thoughtfully. ‘They allowed her to say too much. Professionals get their prisoners to read a short sentence from a paper. So short, people like your experts have nothing to go on.’
‘There isn’t anything, anyway,’ Dunoisse pointed out.
‘There might have been,’ Pel said.
Sixteen
Nothing – not even a kidnapping and two murders – could stop the August party spirit. It had to continue because the whole of France was on holiday and gaiety was rampant. The children had to be amused, the place was flooded with foreigners, and the village parties continued, while the preparations for the medieval night in Puyceldome continued unabated.
It rained several times before the night of the show and there was even a howling thunderstorm the day before. The long faces at Puyceldome were reflected in the long faces of the tourists and campers in the area who had bought seats for the outdoor supper.
But during the morning it brightened up. There was still a cold breeze but the skies cleared and the long tables were erected round the square with confidence. A group from Goillac – guitars, trumpet, electric organ and drums – drove into the square with their van and began to set up their stalls. In the hotel, Madame Plessis was shrieking at the maids, and the barman, a cigarette drooping from his lip with two inches of ash, was polishing glasses as hard as he could go.
As Aimedieu crossed the square, he saw Remarque appear from the Rue Nobel where the actors lived. Aimedieu had long since promised to take Ellen Briddon to the medieval night – not as a guest at one of the long tables, because a cop’s pay didn’t run to luxuries of that sort, but as a spectator. He was very much aware that the whole of the enquiry into the man found in the tower now rested on his shoulders, but he felt no one would object to him partaking in the roistering. Puyceldome was his patch and, you never knew, he might bump into someone paying for his drinks with a Maria Theresa or a Napoleon.
Remarque looked worried enough to draw Aimedieu’s attention.
‘What’s up?’
‘Guillard’s left. She’s let us down.’
Aimedieu wasn’t surprised. He’d always felt that she was a cut above the rest. ‘Why did she leave?’
‘Slight disagreement. Heard of a better job.’
‘What will you do?’
Remarque didn’t seem to hear him at first but then he came to life and turned. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘we’ve got it all worked out. We’ll be all right. Daydé will play the lute and Mercédes will sing the songs and do the dancing. We’ve found one or two she can manage and she’s been practising. Daydé can join in and, when she
isn’t dancing, she’ll do a bit of fire eating.’
‘Don’t set yourselves on fire.’
The square was hung with long red and yellow banners bearing crosses, wild boars and the local coat of arms. A carpenter was just finishing boarding over the top of the well in the centre of the square so that it could be used as a raised stage. More men were hanging extra flags, pennants and oriflammes about the old buildings, while a flat screen of canvas mounted on a wooden frame and showing a medieval castle that might well have been part of Puyceldome was being shoved into place by a slight young man with a straggly beard in the doorway of the Mairie.
A girl appeared alongside Aimedieu. She was pretty and he couldn’t understand why he’d never seen her before because he wasn’t one to miss a face or a leg or a nicely curved bosom.
‘Are they still putting on the playlets?’ she asked.
‘They’re certainly putting on something.’
‘I thought they’d have to give up when we left.’
Aimedieu’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Were you part of the Molière Company?’
‘For my sins.’
‘You’ll be Eloïse then, who left with Richard.’
‘No, I’m Colette and I left with Camille.’
Aimedieu frowned. ‘You were the girls who went on holiday?’
‘No, we didn’t. Camille decided to get married. She’s in Lyons. I telephoned her last night. I got a job as a teacher at the drama school in Dijon.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Jean-Paul Remarque was too fond of backing me into dark corners. They drink too much. They probably use other things, too.’
‘Drugs?’
‘You tell me.’
‘You with Henriette Guillard?’
‘Who’s she when she’s at home?’
‘She’s one of them. She’s just left.’
‘I don’t blame her. Did he try to get her in a corner, too?’
Aimedieu grinned. ‘Are you going to pay them a call?’
‘Not likely. I’ve just come to collect my belongings. I left them at the hotel.’ She looked shrewdly at Aimedieu. ‘Anyway, what business is it of yours?’