Pel and the Prowler

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Gaspar Magueri, Apart C, 113, Rue de l’Industrie.’

  ‘That her husband?’ Pel asked, showing it to Sous-Brigadier Boucher.

  ‘That’s him, sir.’

  It was three hours before Pel agreed to speak to the newsmen and what he told them was precious little.

  ‘This is three murders in fourteen days, Chief,’ Sarrazin pointed out. ‘Are they all by the same hand?’

  ‘They might well be,’ Pel said cautiously. ‘And you people can help a lot by putting out a warning. If it is the same hand, then it’ll be as well if women who have to be on the streets late at night have themselves escorted. Housewives shouldn’t open their doors unless they know who’s outside. And they should watch their children, especially teenage daughters.’

  ‘You think he’s a nut, Chief?’ Henriot asked.

  ‘I can’t tell you that until we have more knowledge, so don’t push it too much. We don’t want a panic.’

  By the time they returned to the Hôtel de Police they had a few more details to go on. Bernadette Hamon had been formally identified by Doctor Padiou, who had also intimated that Doctor Bréhard had recovered a little and was now willing to do all he could to help them. Doc Minet, haggard after a night out of bed, was insistent that the murderer was a man and that he was strong.

  ‘Same rope,’ he said. ‘Same bruises behind the neck to indicate where his knuckles dug in.’

  Prélat, of Fingerprints, had found nothing apart from the message. ‘I checked the handbag,’ he said. ‘The only prints on it are the owner’s.’

  ‘What about the window? He must have done it with his finger end. Didn’t he leave any dabs?’

  ‘It was done too fast, Patron. You can tell by the way the first stroke of the first letter – the S – runs into it. His finger never stopped. In the same way, it tails off after the 9 at the other end. You don’t get dabs from that sort of contact.’

  ‘Nothing round the message?’

  ‘Plenty where people – especially kids – have touched the glass, but nothing that’s new. And there’s no weapon to check. He took it away with him. He must have been waiting in the darkness and, as she passed, he stepped out with his length of cord and dragged her into the shadows before she could cry out. Then a quick scrawl of a few letters in the dust on the window and he was gone. One minute. That’s all it took. In an empty street at night.’

  By afternoon they had found Alice Magueri’s husband. He was a tall man who worked as a labourer, a man with strong shoulders and big, knotted hands. He had been born Gaspare Magueri just over the border to an Italian father and a French mother and had arrived in France soon afterwards when his father had taken advantage of his marriage to obtain employment in Nice. He had taken out naturalisation papers soon afterwards and the explanation for the slip of paper bearing the name and address came from the fact that Magueri and his wife had separated and he’d failed to keep up her maintenance payments. He had walked out on her three years before and was now living with a woman in the industrial area and she had recently found his address and intended bringing him before the courts.

  ‘I’d have taken the kids, too,’ he said. ‘But they preferred to stay with her. She’d have had my daughter at the game before long if this hadn’t happened.’

  It sounded like the usual sad story but Pel wasn’t convinced. ‘Why did the children prefer to be with her?’ he asked. ‘Did you beat them?’

  ‘No. Never. I swear on my mother’s grave – ‘

  ‘Did you drink?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘A lot?’

  ‘Well, sometimes.’

  ‘And when you were drunk did you knock your wife about?’

  ‘Well – I have done.’

  ‘Kids?’

  ‘I have done.’

  ‘What about money? Did you keep them short of money?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You like to drink and a labourer doesn’t earn that much money. Did you keep them short?’

  ‘Well – a bit. Sometimes.’

  ‘So it’s no wonder the kids favoured their mother. It was probably thanks to you that she went on the streets and, indirectly, because of that, that she’s dead.’

  Magueri’s jaw hung open. It was clear Pel’s logic was beyond him.

  ‘Know the Boulevard de Strasbourg-Ecole St Dominique area?’ Pel asked.

  Magueri frowned. ‘That’s up near the university, isn’t it?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Yes, it is. I worked round there once. Near the Military Hospital.’

  ‘November 9th mean anything to you?’

  Magueri frowned again. ‘That’s soon, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is. You anything on your diary for that date?’

  ‘I don’t keep a diary.’

  ‘Did you kill your wife?’

  Magueri looked indignant. ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘To avoid paying maintenance,’ Darcy said. ‘It must be difficult keeping two women on one wage. They can be expensive.’

  ‘It wasn’t me!’

  ‘Where were you last night?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘My wife – well, the woman I’m living with – she works nights. She’s a cleaner at Metaux de Bourgogne in the Industrial Zone. She takes the car to get there so I have to stay at home.’

  ‘Anybody come to keep you company?’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Why not? It’s just possible there might be someone else who likes you enough to want to share your company.’

  Magueri gave them a sour look. ‘I was on my own,’ he said.

  When the news stories appeared, they came up to all Pel’s expectations. France Soir had deep headlines: THIRD MURDER. ANOTHER GIRL STRANGLED. France Dimanche had: IS IT A LUNATIC? THIRD GIRL MURDERED. Le Bien Public, as always, was more restrained: ANOTHER GIRL FOUND DEAD. TWO IN TWO DAYS. Cadet Martin had drawn a circle round them all.

  Well, it wasn’t too bad. There was a lot of speculation and a lot of digging up of background. Alice Magueri was described as a hard-working housewife parted from her husband – perhaps it wasn’t all that far from the truth – and there was a picture of Magueri himself and an interview in which he claimed he still loved his wife. Doubtless that was a figment of the imagination of some hard-working journalist a little short on facts. France Dimanche carried pictures of ‘the heartbroken Doctor Bréhard’ and France Soir one of Wolfgang Schwendermann, his spectacles gleaming in the light of a flash bulb, looking as if he were blind, clutching his copy of Racine and apparently putting out his hand to ward off the intrusive cameraman. Finally Hélin, all beard and hair and dirty shirt and described as the ‘fiancé of Marguerite de Wibaux’, had co-operated with a fanciful story of an engagement and a deathless love that had been going on for months – for which he’d doubtless made sure he’d been paid.

  Though French journalists were free to comment on any crime they were covering – and usually did – they were often deliberately taken into the confidence of the police and each depended very much on the others. But it gave them freedom to speculate and make suggestions, and sometimes they were wildly wide of the mark. For once, though, nobody had stirred up any panic and they had all printed the warning to women to watch where they went and who they went with, and there was no reference to any mutilations.

  The telephone was going all next day, with all the usual helpful people swearing they’d seen the murderer – some even claiming to have seen him at his work – and all the spiteful neighbours eager to accuse someone they didn’t like. They all had to be investigated but they all turned out to be false alarms. Though the panic had been contained, the Chief was still far from happy as he called a conference of all the officers and experts concerned.

  ‘We don’t want another Boston Strangler loose in this city,’ he said firmly. ‘We want him stopped. And fast. He’s the same sort.’

  He looked at Nadauld for his comments and
the Uniformed Branch inspector sat up.

  ‘I’ve got every spare man on the streets,’ he said, knowing what was in the Chief’s mind. You didn’t catch murderers, who lurked in shadowed doorways or on the bends of stairs, from inside a police car.

  Pomereu, of Traffic, offered to set up road blocks but they decided no useful purpose would be served because they wouldn’t find bloodstained clothing or hidden murder weapons. And it was clear the strangler had no intention of fleeing from the city so it was pointless looking for anyone trying to escape. All Pomereu could do was warn his men to watch for anything unusual.

  Inspector Goriot had set up headquarters in the gymnasium which had been filled with files, typewriters, telephones, card index systems, and a vast map of the city, on which there were three small red spots – one in the Rue Devoin, one in the Rue d’Enfer, and now one in the Rue Constance.

  The Chief looked at Pel.

  ‘Though we know there’s a connection,’ Pel said, ‘it’s not yet obvious. The women didn’t know each other and each one’s friends didn’t know the others’ friends. There are only two links. The method of death. And one other.’

  The Chief didn’t ask questions. He knew about the mutilations but understood why Pel preferred to keep those to himself. Though Pomereu, Nadauld and Goriot were all experienced Police officers, it was always possible for something to leak out.

  While they were at it they covered everything else that had been happening – the break-ins, the burglaries, the threats, the fights and the frauds. None of these stopped for a murder, though it was true they tended to decrease for a while as the Police investigating the major incident appeared in larger numbers in areas where they were not wanted.

  But these crimes were dealt with in bulk, as statistics. The hit-and-run victim at Borgny had been identified as a Madame Bouchoneau who lived in the city but had been on a visit to her daughter. She was sixty-nine and had apparently just left her daughter to catch a bus home. There was no connection with any other crime and she had been identified by a silver necklace from which hung a small silver medallion bearing the words, ‘In case of death, please inform a priest.’ The village priest had been out at the time and when he had returned later in the evening, an intense young man with a pale anxious face and glasses, he had been too late to administer the last rites. Murmuring the usual: ‘May her soul rest in everlasting peace,’ he had hurried to the morgue and given his blessing there. Traffic was handling the case, asking for witnesses and telling garages to keep a look-out for a car with damage to the off front wing commensurate with having struck a pedestrian at speed.

  The Abrillards’ case was also still in the air. They didn’t expect to recover much of the money but there was always a hope they might find the stolen silver in an antique shop. Antique dealers had been warned and their association asked to spread the gospel elsewhere and a possible sighting of the thieves had been made in Vortheau, a village just across the Route Nationale 7, where a bar owner thought they’d eaten sandwiches and drunk a beer in his bar on the day of the robbery.

  ‘At least,’ Pel said, ‘they’re probably still around.’

  Things didn’t change. They simply grew more so. In the days of horsed highwaymen they could look for their criminals more or less in their own districts. Trains had made crime more wide-ranging, and now, with the aid of motorways and the internal combustion engine, a man committing a felony in Paris in the morning could be in Dijon by afternoon and by evening on the south coast and whooping it up in St Trop’.

  Seven

  Pel’s conference, which followed the Chief’s, covered a narrower field and was concerned only with the murders.

  Claudie Darel had provided coffee for anyone who needed it and they all got in each other’s way as they tried to find her a chair where she could sit to take notes. Claudie affected everybody like that. Half the Hôtel de Police was in love with her.

  ‘Same as before.’ As they got down to the facts, Doc Minet seemed worn down by the tragedy of death. ‘Same suffused face. Multiple ecchymoses of the conjunctivae and the skin. Damage to the cartilages of the larynx and the rings of the trachea. Subpleural haemorrhages on the lungs. Eyes bulging. Face cyanosed and swollen. In every case, the bruising at the back of the neck indicates he used both hands and the damage to the cartilage in the area of the voice box demonstrates the violence and strength of the attack. He’s right-handed, if that’s any help, judging by the way the flesh has been creased. He held the rope with his left hand and heaved on it with the right. She had no chance. The rope was deep in the flesh of the neck before she knew what was happening and she obviously would be unable to get her fingers under it to relieve the pressure.’

  ‘Same method in both cases?’

  ‘Same method. A length of rope. They were garrotted.’ Doc Minet sighed. ‘It wasn’t difficult because garrotting’s easy. You might be interested to know that the very first cops to be put into uniform wore high collars as a preventative, because they were not very popular and in the narrow alleys of those days it wasn’t difficult to slip a rope over the head and pull it tight.’

  ‘It seems it isn’t now either,’ Darcy growled.

  Nosjean had talked at length with every one of the occupants of the flats where Marguerite de Wibaux lived and with the neighbours of Bernadette Hamon and Alice Magueri. Nobody knew anything, not even the students who had virtually lived in Marguerite de Wibaux’s pocket. Marguerite de Wibaux had gone out without saying where she was going, something that seemed significant because more than likely she could have been with Fred Hélin, while the fact that her flatmate, Annie Joulier, had been with Aduraz seemed to provide a good opportunity for Hélin to expect to get into her room and into her bed, and a good reason for him to be angry if he didn’t.

  Several sets of fingerprints had been found on her car – Sergent’s and every one of the other girls’ – but these were smudged and old and were largely overprinted by others which had been identified as Hélin’s. Annie Joulier, who had shared a room with her, had said she had had several boyfriends but was not promiscuous and had not been with other men since she had met Hélin. Questioned about where Marguerite de Wibaux could have been on the night of the murder, she could only think she had been with him.

  The radio had been pounding out rock music and they had had to persuade her to turn it down as she spoke to them.

  ‘She was upset all day,’ she had said. ‘Fred was standing her up and I think she went to see him. She wanted to get married and he didn’t. I think they quarrelled and she drove around in her car. Or sat in it and wondered what she should do. She’d often wondered if she shouldn’t finish it between them.’

  It was a different version of the affair from Hélin’s.

  ‘Perhaps she told him it was over,’ Pel suggested, ‘and he was furious because she had money and there were doubtless perks he didn’t want to lose.’

  ‘Is it enough for murder, though, Patron?’ Darcy asked.

  It didn’t really seem so. And it certainly didn’t explain the other two murders which had obviously been done by the same hand.

  Normand, the owner of 69, Rue Devoin, and Roussel, the painter who stored his equipment in the outhouse behind the hostel, had both been checked. Normand had been in Switzerland at the time and Roussel had been watching a film on television in the bosom of his family and had not only been indignant to think he might be a suspect but had even gone so far as to complain that the occupants of the hostel had more than once stolen his paint to do up their rooms.

  ‘Not the girls,’ he had admitted. ‘It’s not the sort of thing girls do. But those other types could. Especially that Moussia. I think he picks the lock. I once found a tin of paint upset.’

  Since there was a gap of nearly ten centimetres beneath the door, it was, Brochard suggested, just as likely to have been done by a cat chasing a rat.

  It was decided to have everybody in the area of the murder questioned and Goriot was preparing a notice
to householders, which was to be posted about the city and given to the newspapers.

  ‘Do you know of any man who was missing during the hours between 10 p.m. and one a.m.?’

  The dates followed.

  ‘Do you know of any such man who can’t explain where he was? You are being appealed to because, though this man might be part of your family, he is a danger to the public and even to you. He might kill again. He is in need of treatment and it is your duty to report him for your sake and for his.’

  Goriot had made it sound as if they just wanted to be helpful, not shove anybody behind bars, but there was no other way of appealing to a family or a wife with suspicions.

  Turning to the second murder, that of Bernadette Hamon, they discussed Bréhard and Padiou and the other doctors at the hotel; as well as Charier, and the plumber and the metalworker who shared the yard with him; Josset, the man who had allowed Bernadette Hamon to park her car behind his house, and all her neighbours. Only one of them had looked at all dubious and that was Josset, a fat man with thick spectacles and wet red lips who was known to enjoy picking up girls in bars, even to follow them, but there was no proof of any molestation and you couldn’t arrest a man because he’d got wet red lips any more than you could because he’d got a wooden leg.

  There wasn’t much else, and they could see no connection whatsoever between Magueri and Bernadette Hamon or Marguerite de Wibaux, none between Hélin and Bernadette Hamon or Alice Magueri, none between Moussia and Bernadette Hamon and Alice Magueri, none between Josset and Marguerite de Wibaux or Alice Magueri. That was the thing that baffled them. There had to be a connection.

  They had drawn a blank with the customers at the Bar des Chevaux, though it had been noticed that Josset was a regular there, as was the plumber and also, curiously, Roussel, the painter, whose equipment was stored at the back of the house in the Rue Devoin where Marguerite de Wibaux had lived.