Pel and the Prowler

by Mark Hebden

  ‘“Les Français maudits” seemed to mean something,’ Pel reminded him quietly. ‘It meant that the Prowler had just killed Marguerite de Wibaux. And if that meant something, I think these others mean something.’

  During the days that followed they were constantly expecting the telephone to ring with the report of an incident in the Boulevard de Strasbourg. But nothing happened and eventually Darcy and Nadauld removed their men.

  Honorine Nauray’s date turned out to be a student called Paul Doucet, a youngster with a shock of pale auburn hair that looked as if it had been helped along with doses of dye. He was studying agronomy, a large boy with a weak mouth and anxious eyes, whose size was soft fat rather than muscle. Inevitably his radio was going at full blast.

  He admitted at once that he’d been with Honorine Nauray the evening she had died but that he’d left her close to midnight.

  ‘You left her?’ Pel stared at him. ‘To find her own way home?’

  ‘Well, yes. I have a room with my aunt in the Rue Lafosse. I come from Lyons but my aunt lives here. And she’s a bit strict. She wants to know where I’ve been all the time. She’s always at me. Where were you? Why were you late in? Who’s the girl you were with? I had to get back.’

  ‘And for that you left the girl to find her way across the city alone?’ Darcy snapped. ‘You condemned her to death! Hadn’t you heard the appeal we put out saying that girls should be escorted home?’

  ‘Well, yes, but there was my aunt, you see—’

  ‘Wasn’t the girl afraid of being left alone?’

  ‘She didn’t seem to be.’

  ‘Perhaps she was putting on a brave face. Where had you been?’

  ‘We went to a party. Some friends who had a record player and a couple of bottles of wine. That was all. We sat around, talking and drinking.’

  ‘What was the name of this friend?’

  ‘Mark Bartelott. He has a room of his own in the Clos des Vosges. He’s got money.’

  ‘What happened at the party? Where you with Honorine Nauray all the time?’

  ‘Yes. The others were all in twos. There was a bit of swapping about but they mostly stayed with each other. One couple disappeared. I think they went into the bedroom. But perhaps they left. I don’t know.’

  ‘Were people having sex?’

  ‘No. Just a lot of laughing and squealing. One or two were quietly in corners where it was dark. That sort of thing.’

  ‘How about you and Honorine?’

  ‘We did a bit of – well, you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Inform me.

  ‘We kissed a bit. That sort of thing.’

  ‘And afterwards? On the way home?’

  ‘She pulled me into the bushes in the Cours de Gaulle. And – well – she was keen.’

  ‘And then you left her?’

  ‘It was getting late but she said she’d be all right. She said she was often late about the city.’

  It didn’t take them long to check with Mark Bartelott that Doucet’s story was true. Bartelott was a good-looking youngster who was obviously used to money and to the confidence that went with it. He was English – which made Pel, always a good racist, wonder if France wasn’t becoming cluttered up with foreigners – and he also had a title. He was a milord or something but said he didn’t bother to use his title, which, Pel thought enviously, was typical of the nobility. They were so sure of themselves they didn’t bother with something he personally wouldn’t have dreamed of ignoring. He’d even heard that the English had noblemen who’d given up their titles to be able to sit in Parliament, which showed how crazy they must be, because no one with any sense would give up anything to sit with that lot.

  Bartelott spoke good French and had neither the uncertain manner of Doucet nor the aggressive hostility of Hélin. Inevitably his radio was going full blast but this time it was Mozart and he had the grace to turn it off at once. Pel, who was a snob at heart, conceded that, if nothing else, at least the well-born knew how to behave. Friendly, helpful and willing to answer questions, Bartelott gave them a list of names of the people who’d been at his party. They were nearly all students, he said, though he knew Doucet least of all.

  ‘So why was he invited?’ Pel asked quickly.

  ‘I was sorry for him. I gave him a leg up now and again. Gave him a lift in my car. That sort of thing. I’m doing agronomy, too, and you cling together a bit.’

  ‘What is agronomy exactly?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘The science of soil management and crop production.’ Bartelott smiled. ‘In the old days, people like me, who knew they were going to end up running an estate, just learned to be farmers. There’s more to it these days. And with the Common Market it’s a help to know something about foreign marketing procedures. That’s why I’m learning French.’

  Pel was impressed. No wonder old families managed to retain their power. They were more intelligent than people gave them credit for.

  ‘Did you know Honorine Nauray?’ he asked.

  ‘Is she the girl who was – ?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bartelott pulled a face. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that. Doucet said he’d see her home and I expected he would. I didn’t know her much. I’d seen her with Doucet once or twice and he’d told me she wasn’t a student. As a matter of fact, it soon became obvious. She wasn’t very bright. Rather a dim little light, in fact.’

  ‘She worked in a shop.’

  Bartelott was unmoved. ‘I’ve met shop assistants who were as bright as a button,’ he said briskly. ‘All the same, I’m sorry she’s dead. Was it the same –?’

  ‘We think so. Did she talk with anyone else at the party?’

  ‘Of course she did. Everybody did. But mostly she was with Doucet and they were drinking together, listening to music together, pawing each other a bit. But not much. I don’t give those sort of parties.’

  ‘Did they leave with the others?’

  ‘Everybody left at the same time. When I give a party, it starts and finishes when I say so. No gatecrashers and no hangers-on afterwards. I’m here to study French and I like to go to bed, even if I also like to enjoy myself.’

  Pel found himself wishing he had the aplomb of an English milord and could tell people where they got off. In fact, though he was unaware of it and despite his not very prepossessing appearance, he had it in abundance.

  ‘Did you see them leave?’ he asked.

  ‘I not only saw them leave, I went into the street and talked on the pavement with everybody for five minutes. To get a bit of fresh air. You know what a place can get like if everybody smokes.’

  ‘Did anyone take drugs?’

  ‘Not in my place.’

  ‘When you were on the pavement talking to them, did you notice anybody hanging around? Anybody watching from across the street? Anybody sitting in a car? Anything like that?’

  Bartelott shrugged. ‘I wasn’t looking,’ he admitted.

  Only the students from the university seemed happily indifferent to the fear in the city, going to parties as usual, organising themselves into bands so that every girl was always escorted to her room. Pel’s admiration for them – with a few exceptions – was enormous. They were healthy, cheerful and full of vitality, even if not always full of morals, and they at least seemed alive and determined that a killer roaming the streets wasn’t going to get them down.

  But the students were always different. They were a different breed these days from those who had stormed the barricades in ’68. The old militancy had gone and they were disillusioned with ideologies; with the politically active almost all Communist and split into warring groups into the bargain, they received little support and there was little unrest. They had few clubs or organised social life, however, chiefly because they were not joiners of clubs, and unlike the British and the Americans with their attitude of ‘togetherness’, being French and individual they preferred what could be called ‘apartness’, and moved in small groups about the bars and cafés of the
city. Nevertheless, they still remained an organised community in constant touch with each other, through their hostels, their lectures, their union, their pursuits, and it was easy for them to guard each other. For the rest of the city it was different. Other people were not so well organised and there were still women who had to be out after dark and couldn’t easily arrange protection.

  Women living alone hurried home from work and locked their doors. Some arranged to stay with relatives because they were terrified that if they went home and fastened themselves in they’d find the Prowler was already inside and that they’d locked themselves in with him. A few reported heavy breathing on the telephone and everybody started eyeing their neighbours with suspicion. Was the Prowler the man next door, alongside them in the bar, in a traffic jam, in a shop, in a bus or in a train?

  By this time, thanks to the stories put out by the press that the Prowler was a man of prodigious strength, people were looking askance at anyone who was interested in sport, gymnastics or weight-lifting, and inevitably Noël Moussia started to complain that his friends were refusing to have anything to do with him.

  The request to the public to look out for suspects turned up one or two more peeping toms, while a few people – one a city official of apparently impeccable reputation – were found in beds where they had no right to be. An emergency telephone number was announced which could be called at any time of the day or night and a box with a number was established at the post office where suspicions, suggestions, names, could be dropped without the informant being known in any way. It was tantamount to asking every nut in the city to drag out a writing pad and envelope but it was something they had to face.

  They had also asked for information on every strangling throughout France for two years back and already the stack of reports was growing tall, while a fresh round-up was made of all sex offenders and a check was made on every man between eighteen and forty released in the last few years from mental institutions.

  Meanwhile, the clothing of every single victim was examined again because threads, hairs, dust could all lead to clues. But nothing materialised and Leguyader, never the man to denigrate himself, had to admit it. The killer, whoever he was, had no weapon but a rope and a sharp knife, and since he was never near his victim for more than a matter of seconds he left no trace.

  They were getting nowhere fast. But there was nothing unusual in that. In police work there were no happy endings – only loose ends and sudden endings.

  The interview with Frédéric Hélin, delayed by the urgency of the new murder, had had to be put off again and again as other things cropped up but, as the panic subsided, Pel picked up Darcy and they headed for the room he shared with his postgraduate friends, Jean-Pierre Jenet and Hubert Detoc, on the top floor of a house in the Rue Henri-Gauthier. The building was an almost exact replica – as if it had been designed by the same architect and built by the same builder – as Number 69, Rue Devoin, where Marguerite de Wibaux had lived. It had the same two roofs over the extended ground floor and male and female students sharing roughly the same number of rooms, with, judging by the noise, the same number of record players – all going full blast.

  ‘They’ll all be deaf by the time they’re forty,’ Pel growled.

  Jenet and Detoc were at a lecture and Hélin had just climbed out of bed. The radio was on.

  ‘I had a heavy night,’ he explained. ‘I decided to stay in a bit. I’ll catch up.’

  ‘Catch up what?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘Studies. That’s the point about university. You’re supposed to do your studying yourself. Or hadn’t you heard?’

  It was the usual attitude. The police were the Fuzz. They were fascist bullies, stopping innocent young students from taking drugs and smashing things up with demonstrations. The complaints, of course, came only from those students who did take drugs or smashed things up. The ones who lived blameless lives for the most part had no complaints.

  ‘What is it this time?’ Hélin’s voice was bored and irritated as he gestured at Darcy. ‘I’ve told him. I’ve told you. Who else do you want me to talk to?’

  ‘You told us,’ Darcy said, ‘that you didn’t know the nurse, Bernadette Hamon.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘Remember the Medical Faculty ball?’

  ‘I went with Marguerite. She got the tickets through her father. He was a big shot at the hospital until he retired.’

  Darcy produced the picture De Troq’ had found and indicated the girl alongside Doctor Padiou. ‘Isn’t that Marguerite de Wibaux?’

  Hélin stared at the picture. ‘No, it isn’t. She wasn’t wearing a dress like that. The one she wore was much more classy, because she was a snobbish little bitch who had too much money and liked always to be the best-dressed of the lot.’ Turning, he fished in a drawer to produce another picture. It showed Marguerite de Wibaux and several other young people sitting round the table.

  ‘But if she’s not on that picture.’ he snapped, ‘she’s on this. Is that proof enough?’

  ‘Who took this?’ Pel asked.

  ‘A friend. He had his own camera. He wasn’t the official cameraman.’ Hélin gestured at the picture Darcy held. ‘And she’s not on that picture because she just happened to be off it. After all, it is a bit difficult to get five hundred people on the same photograph, isn’t it?’

  ‘Right,’ Darcy agreed. ‘But if she’s not in this picture, you are. Talking to Bernadette Hamon.’

  ‘Who’s Bernadette Hamon? You asked about her before.’

  ‘Don’t you read your papers?’ Darcy snapped.

  ‘Not if I can help it. They’re all run by capitalist lackeys like the Police.’

  ‘She was murdered,’ Pel said. ‘Twelve days after Marguerite de Wibaux.’

  Hélin scowled and Darcy’s finger jabbed at the photograph. ‘That’s her! You’re talking to her.’

  ‘So what?’ Hélin shrugged. ‘I expect I was talking to her because she was pretty, and because, I suppose, her boyfriend was stupid enough not to be handy. I think we danced together but I’m not sure. And she didn’t tell me her name. Next time I’ll make a point of asking so I’ll be able to give you a list.’

  ‘Don’t try to be funny, my friend,’ Darcy growled.

  Hélin glared at him. ‘Then don’t come in here accusing me!’

  ‘What about the night she was murdered?’ Pel asked. ‘The fifteenth. Where were you?’

  ‘Am I supposed to have done that, too?’

  ‘Answer the question.’

  ‘Well, I couldn’t have been with Marguerite,’ Hélin said. ‘Because, if you remember, I’d only recently murdered her.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  Hélin gave a sarcastic grin. ‘I’ll have to consult my engagement diary,’ he said, fishing out a shabby book from his back pocket. ‘I keep my dates in this. Also dirty jokes so I can tell them to my friends, invitations to the Elysée Palace to see the President, the days when Brigitte Bardot invites me down. Things like that.’ He flicked a few pages, then he looked up and grinned. ‘Sorry.’ he said. ‘I can’t oblige. I wasn’t with your friend Bernadette Hamon.’

  ‘Proof?’

  ‘I was with a dame.’

  ‘Which dame?’ Pel said. ‘A student?’

  ‘Much more important. A doctor. One of the lecturers.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘A gentleman never mentions a lady’s name.’

  ‘This time you’d better.’

  ‘Then it was Martine Sirat. You might have a bit of difficulty checking with her, though, because at the moment she’s in the States.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘She’s supposed to be doing a sabbatical at Brown University in Boston. But she doesn’t start there until next year and she’s spending the time in between touring. She took unpaid leave. A bit suddenly. Overnight, in fact. I think she wanted to get away from me.’

  ‘Wh
y?’

  ‘Because I’m a ravisher of women, didn’t you know? She found out about Marguerite.’

  ‘You weren’t sleeping with Marguerite de Wibaux. Were you sleeping with Doctor Sirat?’

  ‘Of course I was. I have been for a year. But I was growing bored. I told her so, and there was a row. We were at her apartment. In her bed, as a matter of fact. I walked out and at the end of the week I heard she was ill and in danger of a nervous breakdown. The next week she vanished to the States. Perhaps she’ll marry a splendid upright honest American and forget me. I expect that’s at the back of her mind. She was an incurable romantic. I’m not.’

  Eleven

  As they returned to the Hôtel de Police, Nosjean was just leaving.

  ‘The Abrillards’ case, Patron,’ he said as he passed, heading for his car. ‘I’ve got another sighting. A woman turned up in an antique dealer’s with a tankard, offering it for sale. Said it was her uncle’s. There was a tankard on that list we put out of what was stolen from the Abrillards and the type in the shop was suspicious. He said he’d just go round the back and check on prices. But when he picked up the telephone he heard the shop door go and he found she’d disappeared.’

  ‘Where was this shop?’

  ‘Chagnay. I’m going down there now.’

  Pel frowned. There had been a shop in Chagnay connected with the château gang who had emptied large houses of their treasures. He remembered he’d almost made a fool of himself over a woman there, and that the shop had been run by an attractive girl.

  ‘Isn’t Chagnay the place where—?’

  Nosjean blushed. Nosjean’s heart was never very stable and he had recently lost the girl he had expected to marry to a tax inspector, for no better reason than that the tax inspector worked regular hours, and wasn’t asked to turn out in all weathers or face mad criminals armed with guns. He was even better paid.