Murder Most Merry

by ed. Abigail Browining

  Andre couldn’t help smiling at the Inspector. “You didn’t miss your sandwich tin?”

  “No. I was thinking about Francois and his present.”

  “And with money in your pocket you banished all your cares!”

  The Inspector hadn’t known Olivier Lecœur since childhood, but he had sized him up all right. He had hit the nail on the head. When things were black, Olivier would go about with drooping shoulders and a hangdog air, but no sooner had he a thousand-franc note in his pocket than he’d feel on top of the world.

  “To come back to Madame Fayet, you say you gave her a receipt. What did she do with it?”

  “She slipped it into an old wallet she always carried about with her in a pocket somewhere under her skirt.”

  “So you knew about the wallet?”

  “Yes. Everybody did.”

  The Inspector turned towards Andre.

  “It hasn’t been found!”

  Then to Olivier: “You bought some things. In the Louvre?”

  “No. I bought the little radio in the Rue Montmartre.”

  “In which shop?”

  “I don’t know the name. It’s next door to a shoe shop.”

  “And the other things?”

  “A little farther on.”

  “What time was it when you’d finished shopping?”

  “Close on midnight. People were coming out of the theaters and movies and crowding into the restaurants. Some of them were rather noisy.”

  His brother at that time was already here at his switchboard.

  “What did you do during the rest of the night?”

  “At the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens, there’s a movie that stays open all night.”

  “You’d been there before?”

  Avoiding his brother’s eye, Olivier answered rather sheepishly: “Two or three times. After all, it costs no more than going into a cafe and you can stay there as long as you like. It’s nice and warm. Some people go there regularly to sleep.”

  “When was it you decided to go to the movies?”

  “As soon as I left Madame Fayet’s.”

  Andre Lecœur was tempted to intervene once again to say to the Inspector: “You see, these people who are down and out are not so utterly miserable after all. If they were, they’d never stick it out. They’ve got a world of their own, in odd corners of which they can take refuge and even amuse themselves.”

  It was all so like Olivier! With a few notes in his pocket—and Heaven only knew how he was ever going to pay them back—with a few notes in his pocket, his trials were forgotten. He had only one thought: to give his boy a good Christmas. With that secured, he was ready to stand himself a little treat.

  So while other families were gathered at table or knelt at Midnight Mass, Olivier went to the movies all by himself. It was the best he could do.

  “When did you leave the movie?”

  “A little before six.”

  “What was the film?”

  “Cœurs Ardents. With a documentary on Eskimos.”

  “How many times did you see the program?”

  “Twice right through, except for the news, which was just coming on again when I left.”

  Andre Lecœur knew that all this was going to be verified, if only as a matter of routine. It wasn’t necessary, however. Diving into his pockets, Olivier produced the torn-off half of a movie ticket, then another ticket—a pink one. “Look at that. It’s the Métro ticket I had coming home.”

  It bore the name of the station—Opéra—together with the date and the time.

  Olivier had been telling the truth. He couldn’t have been in Madame Fayet’s flat any time between five and six-thirty.

  There was a little spark of triumph in his eye, mixed with a touch of disdain. He seemed to be saying to them all, including his brother Andre: “Because I’m poor and unlucky I come under suspicion. I know—that’s the way things are. I don’t blame you.”

  And, funnily enough, it seemed as though all at once the room had grown colder. That was probably because, with Olivier Lecœur cleared of suspicion, everyone’s thoughts reverted to the child. As though moved by one impulse, all eyes turned instinctively toward the huge plan on the wall.

  Some time had elapsed since any of the lamps had lit up. Certainly it was a quiet morning. On any ordinary day there would be a street accident coming in every few minutes, particularly old women knocked down in the crowded thoroughfares of Montmartre and other overpopulated quarters.

  Today the streets were almost empty—emptier than in August, when half Paris is away on holiday.

  Half past eleven. For three and a half hours there’d been no sign of Francois Lecœur.

  “Hallo! Yes, Saillard speaking. Is that Janvier? You say you couldn’t find a tin anywhere? Except in her kitchen, of course. Now, look here, was it you who went through the old girl’s clothes? Oh, Gonesse had already done it. There should have been an old wallet in a pocket under her skirt. You’re sure there wasn’t anything of that sort? That’s what Gonesse told you, is it? What’s that about the concierge? She saw someone go up a little after nine last night. I know. I know who it was. There were people coming in and out the best part of the night? Of course. I’d like you to go back to the house in the Rue Vasco de Gama. See what you can find out about the comings and goings there, particularly on the third floor. Yes. I’ll still be here.”

  He turned back to the boy’s father, who was now sitting humbly in his chair, looking as intimidated as a patient in a doctor’s waiting room.

  “You understand why I asked that, don’t you? Does Francois often wake up in the course of the night?”

  “He’s been known to get up in his sleep.”

  “Does he walk about?”

  “No. Generally he doesn’t even get right out of bed—just sits up and calls out. It’s always the same thing. He thinks the house is on fire. His eyes are open, but I don’t think he sees anything. Then, little by little, he calms down and with a deep sigh lies down again. The next day he doesn’t remember a thing.”

  “Is he always asleep when you get back in the morning?”

  “Not always. But if he isn’t, he always pretends to be so that I can wake him up as usual with a hug.”

  “The people in the house were probably making more noise than usual last night. Who have you got in the next flat?”

  “A Czech who works at Renault’s.

  “Is he married?”

  “I really don’t know. There are so many people in the house and they change so often we don’t know much about them. All I can tell you is that on Sundays other Czechs come there and they sing a lot of their own songs.”

  “Janvier will tell us whether there was a party there last night. If there was, they may well have awakened the boy. Besides, children are apt to sleep more lightly when they’re excited about a present they’re expecting. If he got out of bed, he might easily have looked out of the window, in which case he might have seen you at Madame Fayet’s. He didn’t know she was his grandmother, did he?”

  “No. He didn’t like her. He sometimes passed her in the street and he used to say she smelled like a squashed bug.”

  The boy would probably know what he was talking about. A house like his was no doubt infested with vermin.

  “He’d have been surprised to see you with her?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Did he know she lent money?”

  “Everyone knew.”

  “Would there be anybody working at the Presse on a day like this?”

  “There’s always somebody there.”

  The Inspector asked Andre to ring them up.

  “See if anyone’s ever been round to ask for your brother.”

  Olivier looked uncomfortable, but when his brother reached for the telephone directory, he gave him the number. Both he and the Inspector stared at Andre while he got through.

  “It’s very important, Mademoiselle. It may even be a matter of life and death. Yes,
please. See if you can find out. Ask everybody who’s in the building now. What? Yes, I know it’s Christmas Day. It’s Christmas Day here, too, but we have to carry on just the same.”

  Between his teeth he muttered, “Silly little bitch!”

  He could hear the linotypes clicking as he held the line, waiting for her answer.

  “Yes. What? Three weeks ago. A young boy—”

  Olivier went pale in the face. His eyes dropped, and during the rest of the conversation he stared obstinately at his hands.

  “He didn’t telephone? Came round himself. At what time? On a Thursday, you say. What did he want? Asked if Olivier Lecœur worked there? What? What was he told?”

  Looking up, Olivier saw a flush spread over his brother’s face before he banged down the receiver.

  “Francois went there one Thursday afternoon. He must have suspected something. They told him you hadn’t been working there for some time.”

  There was no point in repeating what he had heard. What they’d said to the boy was: “We chucked the old fool out weeks ago.”

  Perhaps not out of cruelty. They may not have thought it was the man’s son they were speaking to.

  “Do you begin to understand, Olivier?”

  Did he realize that the situation was the reverse of what he had imagined? He had been going off at night, armed with his little box of sandwiches, keeping up an elaborate pretense. And in the end he had been the one to be taken in!

  The boy had found him out. And wasn’t it only fair to suppose that he had seen through the Uncle Gedeon story, too?

  He hadn’t said a word. He had simply fallen in with the game.

  No one dared say anything for fear of saying too much, for fear of evoking images that would be heartrending.

  A father and a son each lying to avoid hurting the other.

  They had to look at it through the eyes of the child, with all childhood’s tragic earnestness. His father kisses him good night and goes off to the job that doesn’t really exist, saying: “Sleep well. There’ll be a surprise for you in the morning.”

  A radio. It could only be that. And didn’t he know that his father’s pockets were empty? Did he try to go to sleep? Or did he get up as soon as his father had gone, to sit miserably staring out of the window obsessed by one thought? His father had no money—yet he was going to buy him a radio!

  To the accompaniment, in all probability, of a full-throated Czech choir singing their national songs on the other side of the thin wall!

  The Inspector sighed and knocked out his pipe on his heel.

  “It looks as though he saw you at Madame Fayet’s.”

  Olivier nodded.

  “We’ll check up on this, but it seems likely that, looking down from his window, he wouldn’t see very far into the room.”

  “That’s quite right.”

  “Could he have seen you leave the room?”

  “No. The door’s on the opposite side from the window.”

  “Do you remember going near the window?”

  “At one time I was sitting on the windowsill.”

  “Was the window open then? We know it was later.”

  “It was open a few inches. I’m sure of that, because I moved away from it, as I felt an icy draught on my back. She lived with us for a while, just after our marriage, and I know she couldn’t bear not to have her window open all the year round. You see, she’d been brought up in the country.”

  “So there’d be no frost on the panes. He’d certainly have seen you if he was looking.”

  A call. Lecœur thrust his contact plug into one of the sockets.

  “Yes. What’s that? A boy?”

  The other two held their breath.

  “Yes. Yes. What? Yes. Send out the agents cyclistes. Comb the whole neighborhood. I’ll see about the station. How long ago was it? Half an hour? Couldn’t he have let us know sooner?”

  Without losing time over explanations, Lecœur plugged in to the Gare du Nord.

  “Hallo! Gare du Nord! Who’s speaking? Ah, Lambert. Listen, this is urgent. Have the station searched from end to end. Ask everybody if they’ve seen a boy of ten wandering about. What? Alone? He may be. Or he may be accompanied. We don’t know. Let me know what you find out. Yes, of course. Grab him at once if you set eyes on him.”

  “Did you say accompanied?” asked Olivier anxiously.

  “Why not? It’s possible. Anything’s possible. Of course, it may not be him. If it is, we’re half an hour late. It was a small grocer in the Rue de Maubeuge whose shopfront is open onto the street. He saw a boy snatch a couple of oranges and make off. He didn’t run after him. Only later, when a policeman passed, he thought he might as well mention it.”

  “Had your son any money?” asked the Inspector.

  “Not a sou.”

  “Hasn’t he got a money-box?”

  “Yes. But I borrowed what was in it two days ago, saying that I didn’t want to change a banknote.”

  A pathetic little confession, but what did things like that matter now?

  “Don’t you think it would be better if I went to the Gare du Nord myself?”

  “I doubt if it would help, and we may need you here.”

  They were almost prisoners in that room. With its direct links with every nerve center of Paris, that was the place where any news would first arrive. Even in his room in the Police Judiciaire, the Inspector would be less well placed. He had thought of going back there, but now at last took off his overcoat, deciding to see the job through where he was.

  “If he had no money, he couldn’t take a bus or the Métro. Nor could he go into a cafe or use a public telephone. He probably hasn’t had anything to eat since his supper last night.”

  “But what can he be doing?” exclaimed Olivier, becoming more and more nervous. “And why should he have sent me to the Gare d’Austerlitz?”

  “Perhaps to help you get away,” grunted Saillard.

  “Get away? Me?”

  “Listen. The boy knows you’re down and out. Yet you’re going to buy him a little radio. I’m not reproaching you. I’m just looking at the facts. He leans on the windowsill and sees you with the old woman he knows to be a moneylender. What does he conclude?”

  “I see.”

  “That you’ve gone to her to borrow money. He may be touched by it, he may be saddened—we don’t know. He goes back to bed and to sleep.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’m pretty sure of it. Anyhow, we’ve no reason to think he left the house then.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Let’s say he goes back to sleep, then. But he wakes up early, as children mostly do on Christmas Day. And the first thing he notices is the frost on the window. The first frost this winter, don’t forget that. He wants to look at it, to touch it.”

  A faint smile flickered across Andre Lecœur’s face. This massive Inspector hadn’t forgotten what it was like to be a boy.

  “He scratches a bit of it away with his nails. It won’t be difficult to get confirmation, for once the frost is tampered with it can’t form again in quite the same pattern. What does he notice then? That in the buildings opposite one window is lit up, and one only—the window of the room in which a few hours before he had seen his father. It’s guesswork, of course, but I don’t mind betting he saw the body, or part of it. If he’d merely seen a foot it would have been enough to startle him.”

  “You mean to say—” began Olivier, wide-eyed.

  “That he thought you’d killed her. As I did myself—for a moment. And very likely not her only. Just think for a minute. The man who’s been committing all these murders is a man. like you, who wanders about at night. His victims live in the poorer quarters of Paris, like Madame Fayet in the Rue Michat. Does the boy know anything of how you’ve been spending your nights since you lost your job? No. All that he has to go on is that he has seen you in the murdered woman’s room. Would it be surprising if his imagination got to work?

  “
You said just now that you sat on the windowsill. Might it be there that you put down your box of sandwiches?”

  “Now I come to think of it, yes. I’m practically sure.”

  “Then he saw it. And he’s quite old enough to know what the police would think when they saw it lying there. Is your name on it?”

  “Yes. Scratched on the lid.”

  “You see! He thought you’d be coming home as usual between seven and eight. The thing was to get you as quickly as possible out of the danger zone.”

  “You mean—by writing me that note?”

  “Yes. He didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t refer to the murder without compromising you. Then he thought of Uncle Gedeon. Whether he believed in his existence or not doesn’t matter. He knew you’d go to the Gare d’Austerlitz.”

  “But he’s not yet eleven!”

  “Boys of that age know a lot more than you think. Doesn’t he read detective stories?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course he does. They all do. If they don’t read them, they get them on the radio. Perhaps that’s why he wanted a set of his own so badly.”

  “It’s true.”

  “He couldn’t stay in the flat to wait for you, for he had something more important to do. He had to get hold of that box. I suppose he knew the courtyard well. He’d played there, hadn’t he?”

  “At one time, yes. With the concierge’s little girl.”

  “So he’d know about the rainwater pipes, may even have climbed up them for sport.”

  “Very well,” said Olivier, suddenly calm, “let’s say he gets into the room and takes the box. He wouldn’t need to climb down the way he’d come. He could simply walk out of the flat and out of the house. You can open the house door from inside without knocking up the concierge. You say it was at about six o’clock, don’t you?”

  “I see what you’re driving at,” grunted the Inspector. “Even at a leisurely pace, it would hardly have taken him two hours to walk to the Gare d’Austerlitz. Yet he wasn’t there.”

  Leaving them to thrash it out, Lecœur was busy telephoning.

  “No news yet?”

  And the man at the Gare du Nord answered, “Nothing so far. We’ve pounced on any number of boys, but none of them was Francois Lecœur.”