Pel and the Prowler

by Mark Hebden

  It was only a small point but they were looking for small points which could provide a common denominator and there didn’t appear to be any, except that all three women were dead and all three had cuts on their cheeks. Since the murders had all occurred at night, they could reasonably assume the killer had a daytime job which left him free in the evenings.

  ‘He could be a well-adjusted man working at an ordinary job,’ Doc Minet said. ‘And still be a psychotic pervert suffering from schizophrenia. Unless he’s caught, his obsession will drive him to kill again.’

  ‘One last thing,’ Pel said, handing round the report on the muttered telephone call to the police on the night of Marguerite de Wibaux’s death, and the photographs of the two crude messages written near the bodies of Bernadette Hamon and Alice Magueri. ‘Messages. Received on the dates of the murders. “Les Français maudits,” “1940” and “Stras-St D Nov 9,” which appears to mean the corner of the Boulevard de Strasbourg and St Dominic’s School on November 9th. Do any of them have any meaning for any of you?’

  They didn’t, of course. Cryptic messages left by criminals rarely did. Or, at least, not by themselves. Together they might sometimes suggest something. But this time Pel was faced with a row of blank expressions and all he could do was arrange with Darcy and Inspector Nadauld to have a watch kept on the front of the Ecole St Dominique and the Boulevard de Strasbourg up to and beyond the date of November 9th.

  Pel was frowning as the conference broke up, wondering what sort of man the killer was. Normally people killed because they were scared – a disturbed burglar, for instance; even sometimes unintentionally, by hitting someone harder than had been intended. Human beings were an unstable lot who reacted violently to stress.

  But these murders had not been by burglars. They weren’t for gain, nor did they appear to be for vengeance. Human beings seemed to have few strong emotions these days, apart from occasional cases of someone having been thrown over by a lover. Which led Pel to sex.

  ‘It’s a pity there isn’t just one gender,’ he growled. ‘It would mean a lot less murders.’

  Darcy managed a smile. ‘It would also mean a lot less fun,’ he pointed out.

  Deep in thought, Pel didn’t hear him. Most sex murders, he knew, were because one or the other partner in a marriage was unfaithful. The only other type of sex murders were those committed by deranged people who usually preyed on women or children, and these provide the worst crimes and the saddest type of victim. In many cases even they could be avoided because sex deviates usually became known early to the police and usually even had a record. But that didn’t prevent psychiatrists declaring them cured as they made their decisions by some social dogma or psychiatric rule, when everybody knew that in psychiatry there were no rules.

  They were just about to leave the office when Leguyader of the Lab. appeared with a sheaf of papers. He was making a lot of fuss but Leguyader was always a great one for making a fuss, and it took him ten minutes to explain that all the victims had been killed by a method known as thuggee.

  ‘Knotted cord round the throat,’ he said. ‘Drawn taut from behind. You’ll have heard of thuggee, of course.’ Leguyader was a great one for airing his knowledge and it was generally believed in the Hôtel de Police that he spent his evenings reading encyclopaedias so that he could trot out the next day what he’d learned in the hope that his colleagues would imagine the knowledge had been stored in his head ever since youth.

  ‘Thugs,’ he went on, ‘were roving bands of fanatical murderers and robbers in central and northern India. Their murders had a religious basis with the victims regarded as sacrifices to the goddess Kali. They operated with dacoits, another form of armed robbers. Their suppression was brought about by a Captain Sleeman of the British Bengal Army. Being British, they made him a general.’

  ‘The British like to reward high principles,’ Pel said sarcastically. ‘And they’re great ones for organising things. Look at the way they don’t arm their Police so they can’t shoot people in traffic jams.’

  Leguyader glared. Pel returned it tit for tat.

  ‘And we don’t have any interest in India,’ he snapped.

  ‘We did,’ Leguyader reminded him. ‘Until 1748 when the British kicked us out.’

  ‘They’re well-known for their bossiness,’ Pel agreed. He leaned forward. ‘Right then, if he’s a thug, do we look for an Indian? Because I’m not aware that we have many here. And why does he cut their faces? Is that a sign of thuggee also? What about these mutilations, in fact? Doubtless you’ve had thoughts on those also?’

  Leguyader had and he was in no way put out. ‘They look like letters,’ he said. ‘They were done by a sharp instrument.’

  ‘Scalpel?’ Pel was thinking of the doctors involved in the case and the people at the Faculté des Médecins who might have known Marguerite de Wibaux.

  ‘Knife, I’d say,’ Doc Minet said. ‘Small and pointed. And very sharp. It’s impossible to be certain, though, and it could have been a scalpel.’

  ‘And what are they? Do they have any significance?’

  Leguyader pushed his way in again. ‘They seem to be a crude letter,’ he said. ‘An H, or an M or a W. Even perhaps an N. In three cases it could be the initial letter of the Christian name of the victim. M’s the thirteenth letter of the Semitic alphabet, twelfth in the Greek alphabet, eleventh in the Etruscan, twelfth in the Latin and the fourteenth in the early Slavonic. It was used by the Romans to mean a thousand.’

  Pel glanced at Darcy, who was trying not to laugh. Why was it Leguyader always liked to make such a song and dance?

  Leguyader drew a deep breath. ‘W,’ he went on. ‘The twenty-third of the English alphabet. In the French language it’s rarely used. My dictionary gives only thirty-nine words which begin with it and most of them were originally English. The Germans have no sound like the English “w” and we use “ou” as a substitute, while the Spanish use “hu”. H: Eighth letter of the English, Semitic, Greek, Etruscan and Latin languages. It’s never sounded in France and in Italy it’s almost disappeared.’

  Pel stared at him. ‘And this has some significance?’ he asked.

  ‘None that I know of,’ Leguyader said. ‘But then, unlike your department, my department deals with facts, not imagination.’

  As the door closed behind him, Darcy grinned.

  Pel didn’t return his smile. ‘I have better things to do,’ he said slowly, ‘than to listen to puffed-up twaddle of that sort. He behaves like someone out of France Soir which, as we all know, is written for not very bright readers.’

  Darcy’s grin grew wider but Pel’s face was set and his eyes were bleak, and Darcy’s smile died. ‘Don’t let it get you down, Patron,’ he urged.

  Pel was silent for a while. He was used to violent death. It was something every policeman had to face. Road accidents, collapsed buildings, bombs, were all in their way an obscenity against humanity, to say nothing of the sudden disasters to the flesh which, even if the injuries weren’t so horrific, produced much the same sort of shock. But the death of a young girl or a child always seemed twice as brutal, and he sometimes wondered what had caused them, of all people, to be picked out. God was supposed to be just, merciful and all-seeing and sometimes it didn’t make sense that He allowed the innocent to die when there were plenty others who could well be spared.

  ‘Three people are dead,’ he said at last. ‘None of them old. One of them very young.’ He paused and fumbled awkwardly to light a cigarette. ‘And unfortunately,’ he ended, ‘I suspect we haven’t finished yet. I think there’ll be another one before long.’

  Eight

  He was right, of course. It was an instinct that came from many years as a policeman and a knowledge of criminals, perverts and sexual deviates which told him that, once started on a career of this sort, this kind of murderer found it hard to stop.

  However, it didn’t come for some time and, as the days passed, every one that went by without another killing was ac
cepted gratefully. It almost began to seem, in fact, that the newspapers had dropped the case, because the headlines no longer leapt out and bit you in the leg. But if the city allowed the crimes to fade from its consciousness, Pel didn’t. Madame noticed that he was quiet and distracted. Even the projected purchase of a weekend house by a lake and the fishing that went with it seemed to have slipped from his mind.

  She didn’t complain, merely keeping Madame Routy out of his hair at meal times, hurrying to smooth ruffled feelings if she slipped past Madame’s watch and got in his way. When he left in the morning, she made sure it was she, not Madame Routy, who handed him his briefcase at the door and that she was always waiting for him with an aperitif when he returned in the evening. Several times when she addressed him, her remarks went unnoticed. But she made no comment, simply waiting quietly until he was ready to include her in his thoughts again.

  He knew it wasn’t over, despite the days that were slipping past. The murders had been the result of an obsession, and obsessive murderers could never throw off the grip their obsession had on them. What was worse, in cases such as this there was no step by step advance towards identifying the killer. As often as not, success came purely by chance and from some careless move on the part of the murderer. All they could do was collect every scrap of information available on every possible suspect so that when the killer slipped up they could jab a finger at the name and say: ‘That’s the one that fits!’ So everything had to be filed, cross-indexed, checked and cross-checked, and Inspector Goriot and his staff of helpers – some of them drafted in from outside the city – went over the filed cards again and again, perusing every single report that arrived on their desks, trying to link them with other cards and other reports in the hope that somewhere in one of them there would be that minute detail which would give them a firm lead. So far it hadn’t happened.

  Fear in the city continued to abate; as the time passed, despite repeated warnings, potential victims even grew bolder and took less care.

  They still hadn’t found the hit-and-run driver of Borgny; and of the Abrillards’ attackers, though Nosjean was still checking antique shops, nothing had been discovered despite another sighting, this time at the other side of the city at St Seine which meant, if nothing else, that they were still nearby and would probably eventually have another go.

  An interview with Doctor Bréhard confirmed that he and Nurse Hamon had been hoping to marry the following year and that he had intended to set up in practice somewhere in the south with her as his wife, receptionist, clerk and general factotum. The date 1940 meant nothing to him. He looked more in control of himself now but he still found it hard to speak of the dead girl. ‘I just can’t believe it,’ he said.

  Doctor Padiou came into the room just as they were leaving. ‘Ah, les poulets,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The fuzz. No offence, Chief Inspector. It’s just what the students call you. Personally I have a high regard for you. When I had my car stolen last year you got it back in record time. Fancy a coffee?’

  Doctor Bréhard was collecting his papers and his stethoscope so Pel said yes, they did fancy a coffee. As Bréhard left the room, they took the cups Padiou offered.

  ‘It’s always available,’ Padiou said. ‘Sometimes you need it, believe me. There’s never enough equipment here, but I don’t suppose we’re any different from anyone else. What do the police suffer from a shortage of? Stout boots?’

  ‘Personal radios,’ Darcy growled. ‘They spend more time being repaired than they do on the streets.’

  ‘Bit like our bleepers. Mine’s often on the blink. Doesn’t make for efficiency.’

  Pel drew him back to the subject of Bernadette Hamon. ‘How would you describe her?’ he asked.

  Padiou considered carefully. ‘Lively,’ he said. ‘I think perhaps after her husband died she’d been too much alone and she wasn’t the type to live like that so that when she began to come out of her shell she put all she’d got into it. She liked company. She was fun-loving. At the Medical Faculty Ball a month ago she danced with everybody who asked her. Perhaps because René Bréhard isn’t much of a dancer and she enjoyed dancing. And if the man she was dancing with was the same sort, she fooled around a little. You know what I mean – made a great show of the dancing. She was quite a mimic. René never minded.’

  ‘How well did you know her? Really.’

  ‘Pretty well, I think. We often went around together. I’ve been a friend of René’s ever since he came here. Sometimes we made up a four with another nurse. Had meals together. That sort of thing.’ Padiou eyed Pel dubiously. ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking,’ he went on, ‘but let’s get it very clear; she wasn’t interested in me. She had eyes only for René.’ He frowned and his mood changed. ‘It’s sad this happened,’ he ended. ‘They’d have made a good team.’

  There were all the usual alarms and excursions but still nothing new so that there was a cautious easing up on duties, and those policemen’s wives who were considering divorcing the husbands they rarely saw were placated for a little longer. It was something that happened several times a year. A few wives were never completely placated and marriages fell apart because, after years of living their lives alone, some of them stopped worrying about their husbands and started lashing out at them instead. For the most part, however, they adjusted well to the strains and, like most women, backed their men to the hilt.

  Pel was growing frustrated by this time. He had allowed himself no let-up in the hunt for the man they were now beginning to call Le Rôdeur, the Prowler (a whole series of names had cropped up – Fingers and Midnight Mick being among the most popular). For the fiftieth time he studied the messages they’d found.

  Les Français maudits – the cursed French. 1940. And Stras-St D Nov 9.

  They meant something. The Prowler’s conscience was trying to tell them something. Suicides and assassins liked people to know of their sufferings, as if there was an element of egotism about them. Suicides and assassins had an exaggerated self-feeling, wanting to explain, wanting people to know it wasn’t their fault.

  1940?

  What did that mean? It was a date that was imprinted on the minds of all Frenchmen of the generation of Pel’s father. But what could it mean to students? And Les Français maudits? The Cursed French. Why? Pel studied the report for a while then he suddenly sat bolt upright.

  ‘Claudie,’ he yelled. ‘Bring me a list of all the churches in the city.’

  She produced it within minutes and they began to tick off those which had clocks which chimed the hours.

  ‘It was one of these the man at the switchboard heard,’ Pel pointed. ‘It had to be. Check which ones are five minutes slow.’

  It took most of the afternoon but she came back with the answer eventually. ‘None of them, Patron,’ she said. ‘It seems that in this city the guardians of our religious institutions are careful to maintain their clockwork in good order.’

  Pel frowned. ‘It must have been a clock,’ he said. ‘And it must have been a church clock. You can’t mistake a church chime for a clock on a mantelpiece.’

  ‘Could it have been a radio or a television?’

  ‘Chiming midnight? The man on the desk times the message 12.05. The radio or the television wouldn’t be five minutes slow surely?’

  ‘Patron –’ Claudie was smiling ‘– I think we’ve forgotten something. There are some church clocks which chime twice. Once on the hour and once five minutes later. I stayed at Torcé-en-Vallée last summer on the way to the south coast. It’s near Le Mans and the church was outside the hotel and it chimed every quarter of an hour. On the hour, quarter-past, half-past, and quarter-to. And not once – twice! It was an old church and an old clock, and they said the idea dated back to the days when the people in the fields didn’t carry watches, and it chimed twice so that if the cattle were making a noise or a harvester was clattering, they’d hear it the second time. And they made it good and loud so it could be heard several fields away. It kept
me awake all night.’

  Pel pushed the papers aside. ‘Find out, Claudie,’ he said.

  She came up with the answer the following morning. ‘Ste Odile’s, Patron. There used to be a glassworks in that area and the sacristan says it was given a double chime to make sure the people got to work on time. And it’s only three streets away from the Rue Devoin, and there’s a telephone box with a broken window only fifty metres away from Number 69. That message was sent by the Prowler, Patron. After he killed Marguerite de Wibaux. It doesn’t tell us much, but it gives an exact time of death.’

  Claudie’s discovery didn’t move them forward very much but it did at least give meaning to the other messages. They knew now that they were linked with the bodies near which they were found. The Prowler, as Pel had thought, was trying to explain his actions. If nothing else, the messages went a long way to prove that they were dealing with someone who wasn’t wholly sane.

  Pel was beginning to wonder by this time what marriage was really like because he hadn’t been married long and he didn’t seem to be experiencing much of it, which was a pity considering that he had a wife who appeared to enjoy having him around. It had always been Pel’s impression that most people found him a pain in the neck so it seemed a bit of a waste that he shouldn’t be able to see as much as he wished of someone who didn’t. But for some time now all he had seen of his wife were fleeting glimpses in the morning and evening when he arrived home for hurried meals, all the time guiltily conscious of her troubled eyes on him as he came and went.

  As he thought about it, he became aware that there was a pain in his chest. It came from indigestion caused by too many snatched meals but, convinced it was an incipient heart attack, he stubbed out his cigarette and rose to examine himself in the mirror in his office. He was just scrutinising his tongue in the firm belief that the wear and tear of police work was killing him when the door opened and Darcy appeared. Though more than likely he’d been working half the night and had been with a girl the other half, he looked as if he’d just returned from a holiday.