Pel And The Staghound

by Mark Hebden

  ‘Perhaps that’s all there was,’ Pel suggested. ‘Threats. Like two cockerels on the same dungheap. They don’t go in for murder because of that, though. The price’s too high.’

  ‘There must have been something,’ Nosjean insisted, ‘for Duche to get himself stabbed by Sammy.’

  ‘If he did get stabbed by Sammy.’ Pel leaned forward.

  ‘Sammy was three kilometres away at the time, mon brave. Take care you’re not making the details fit your theory instead of the other way round.’

  As Nosjean left, Darcy reappeared. Pel sighed. It seemed harder than ever to get on with things now that he had people to keep him from being interrupted.

  Darcy placed two envelopes on the desk. ‘Reports on Rensselaer’s Alfa Romeo from Prélat and Leguyader. Prélat reports no fingerprints other than Rensselaer’s. Leguyader reports nothing at all. It was kept in spotless condition. Always cleaned by the chauffeur while he was at the office. Always kept under cover. No bloodstains. Nothing to indicate anything amiss.’

  ‘What was it doing at Chaumont then?’

  Darcy shrugged and went on, laying another sheet of paper in front of Pel. ‘Rensselaer didn’t eat in the city that day as far as we can find out,’ he said. ‘We tried the Ducs de Bourgogne where he usually ate but they hadn’t seen him. We also tried all the better restaurants. No sign of him. Of course, he may have eaten somewhere cheaper – though it doesn’t sound like him and it’s surprising no one knew or that his chauffeur didn’t take him. He wasn’t seen in or around Chaumont and he’s well known there because of the engineering firm Morands’ have at Langres.’

  As Darcy turned away, he paused and grinned. ‘One last thing, Patron —’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Misset wants the night off.’

  Pel gave a malicious smile. ‘Misset’s nights off are your concern now, mon brave,’ he said. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Yes.’ Darcy smiled back, all amused eyes and large white teeth. ‘I told him what you always told him.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing doing.’

  During the afternoon, Pel heard that the new female member of his team had arrived and was looking forward to meeting her when Judge Polverari telephoned and asked him to go to the Palais de Justice for discussions on the new set-up. There was an official there from the Ministry of the Interior in Paris to brief Pel on his new duties. When he returned, there was a message to see the Chief who seemed by now to be beginning to regret turning over one of his best men. The idea of the Ministry seemed to be that Pel should spend all his time wandering round Burgundy and the Chief was beginning to wonder if they weren’t going to waste him.

  That evening, Pel and Darcy ate together in the city in celebration. Darcy had settled into his new rank easily and wore his new authority with an aplomb that Pel envied. As they were removing their overcoats a newsvendor came in. The paper carried the headline ‘Disappearance of François Rensselaer. Is It Another Kidnap?’

  ‘So they’ve got it at last,’ Pel said. ‘I was wondering how long it would take them.’

  Over the meal they discussed the new job.

  ‘Think it’s going to work, Chief?’ Darcy asked.

  ‘I think it’s going to have to,’ Pel said.

  ‘Did they suggest you get married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘They probably will. They like their senior officials married. If only to attend the parties they give.’

  ‘It’s time we both got married,’ Pel commented, thinking less of the need for socialising, than of the amount of time Darcy seemed to spend in other people’s beds and the amount he, Pel, failed to.

  It had been a very busy day for them all, and it was long after midnight as De Troquereau walked slowly under the trees in the Cours de Gaulle. He kept to the shadows, aware that if anyone were watching, they’d see him without fail, silhouetted by the glow from the lights at the Place Wilson.

  He’d been walking up and down the Cours de Gaulle for a long time now, moving in and out of other streets so that he wasn’t too obvious, hoping all the time he’d be spotted. He wasn’t very big or very heavy, but he was blessed with a lot of courage and had learned a lot of tricks, so that he felt sure he could handle anything that came along.

  He normally enjoyed walking but he was beginning to grow leg-weary, and he suspected that Pel would not accept excuses if he were late into the office the following morning. He was also growing bored by this time and had taken to counting the paces between each lamp post. Before long there wouldn’t be a bar open and the one thing he needed just then was a beer.

  As he decided to pack it in for the night, he turned, swinging on his heel. But, as he did so, he became aware of a looming shadow by his side and suddenly there was an arm round his neck and his feet had become airborne. Automatically, he brought his right hand up to ward off the grip and was rewarded with a violent blow at the side of the head that knocked him half-silly. As he staggered away, he got a knee in the groin that doubled him up.

  He was by no means finished, however, and as he managed to chop the shadowy figure across the face, he heard a yelp, then a fist like a sledge hammer came down on the back of his head so that his face plunged into the gravel of the footpath, the crushed pebbles scraping the skin of his cheek. Still breathless and agonised from the blow in the groin, he tried to crawl to safety but a heavy boot caught him in the ribs. Name of God, he thought, not in the face!

  But, as the heavy figure loomed over him again, a car swung round the Monument de la Victoire and its lights flashed over the two struggling shapes. Immediately, the figure standing over De Troquereau vanished among the trees and he was left writhing on the ground. As the car vanished, he lay there until he got his breath back, then he staggered to his feet. He’d been lucky. The blow in the groin had been only a glancing one and hadn’t crippled him, and after a while he was able to drag himself properly upright.

  Clinging to a tree, his mouth open like a stranded fish, he fought to get control of himself. His left eye was so swollen he could hardly see out of it and the side of his face was raw. Only the car appearing when it had, had saved him from a broken nose and probably worse. It seemed he’d got it wrong. He’d thought, because had been considered clever in Auxerre, where he’d come from, that he’d be clever here. He hadn’t allowed for the fact that this city was bigger, its people were bigger, their vices were bigger. He would need, he decided, to think again.

  Seven

  When Pel arrived at the office next morning, the newspapers were waiting on his desk. The cadet he’d been given to help him with his increased responsibilities, a slightly-built youngster called Martin, considered it one of his duties to make sure he saw all the main items, even, come to that, to read them for him.

  ‘Le Bien Public’s got the kidnap story, Chief,’ he pointed out. ‘France Soir’s also picked it up. They say it’s not a kidnap and that a woman’s involved.’

  ‘They would,’ Pel growled.

  He frowned. The night had been a difficult one. Madame Routy had watched television from Children’s Hour to the goodnight kiss long after midnight. There had been no reading, an indifferent meal and not much sleep, and he was in a bad temper.

  He picked up one of the papers. ‘Beautiful Madame Rensselaer,’ it announced, ‘is in tears.’

  He tossed it angrily aside. If they could call Madame Rensselaer beautiful they could get away with anything.

  Sitting at his desk, he lit a cigarette. First of the day, he thought proudly. At least, it was the first if you didn’t count the one he’d had after breakfast and the one in the car on the way down. But he was in a mood of indifference and he inhaled so deeply Martin glanced down to see what had happened to the smoke.

  For a while, he sat back in his chair – much better than the one he’d had as a mere common-or-garden inspector – and studied the new carpet and the new files he’d been given. Darcy was right. Chief inspectors – and by this time he’d begun to
hope that before long he’d be a chief inspector – needed wives. They needed them not only for the grand occasions that took place in the Palais des Ducs when the city fathers decided to spend some of the city taxes for their own enjoyment, they needed them also to provide good homes and good food. There were other things, he thought, for which a virile man needed a wife, too, but he hurriedly thrust those from his mind.

  For a moment, he stared at his desk, his mind full of Madame Faivre-Perret. He’d have to do something about her before long, he decided, or he’d never be able to give his full attention to his new responsibilities.

  With a sigh, he picked up a report from Inspector Goriot. It was part of his new job to read the reports of the other inspectors and offer advice. He didn’t think they’d take much notice of it because no one would welcome advice from someone of the same rank. It might be different when he had the extra rank but, at the moment, he was just another man on the same step of the ladder and, unlike Goriot, he hadn’t even got a wife or a senator for an uncle.

  He was frowning heavily as Nosjean put his head round the door.

  ‘I’d like permission to go to the prison, Chief,’ he said.

  ‘It’s Darcy you ask these days, mon brave,’ Pel pointed out.

  Nosjean smiled and Pel had a feeling that, despite the new set-up, things wouldn’t be very different. Just more so.

  ‘What are you up to?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d like a word or two with Belec.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The stabbing. There’s something wrong somewhere.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know, Patron, but I’ll come to it. Besides, all his boys have cast-iron alibis and there seems to be nobody else. I think I ought to talk some more to Sammy.’

  ‘He’s in prison already,’ Pel pointed out gently.

  ‘Perhaps that’s where he wants to be, Patron,’ Nosjean said.

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘If Sammy’s in prison on a charge of assaulting Roger Tachenay near the Porte Guillaume, he can hardly be charged with murdering Duche at the same time, can he, Patron? Assaulting Tachenay gives him a cast-iron alibi.’

  ‘If he was assaulting Tachenay, then it is a cast-iron alibi.’

  Nosjean shook his head in a slightly frustrated way, as if Pel were a little dim. ‘Could it have been a put-up job, Chief?’

  Pel’s eyebrows rose. Like Darcy, Nosjean could always be relied on to do more than he was asked. Earnest, too intense to be called humorous, he was religious enough to go to church every Sunday no matter what his duties, and was very much a believer in the family. Pel sometimes wished he’d marry his Odile Chenandier, so he could ease up a bit. Nosjean’s conscience had a habit of becoming the conscience of them all.

  ‘It’s an idea.’ he agreed. ‘Off you go.’

  As the door closed, Darcy appeared. ‘Seen De Troq’ ?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘He’s got a black eye.’ Darcy tossed a sheet of paper down. ‘He ran into Armoire à Glace last night. He came off worst. That’s his report.’

  Pel picked up the paper, expecting it to be full of excuses. But there were none. It was short, neat, straightforward to the point of simplicity, and contained no shifting of the blame. It surprised him but didn’t satisfy him.

  Next door, they were all staring with interest at De Troquereau. Even the new woman detective. She was more attractive even than Pel remembered and he could see she was going to cause a lot of trouble because she looked a little like a young Mireille Mathieu.

  He shook hands with her formally and turned to look at De Troquereau. His eye was all the colours of the rainbow and there was a huge lump over his eyebrow.

  ‘It looks like a second head,’ Misset said cheerfully.

  ‘Inform me,’ Pel said.

  ‘My fault, Patron,’ De Troquereau admitted. ‘I underestimated him. But I shall get him next time.’

  Pel leaned forward. ‘Not if we take you off the case,’ he said.

  De Troquereau frowned. ‘I hope you won’t, Patron,’ he urged. ‘I was just too anxious. I wasn’t careful enough.’

  ‘And next time you will be?’

  ‘Yes, Chief.’

  ‘What happened?’

  De Troquereau explained.

  ‘Hurt much?’

  ‘Only a black eye and a bruise.’

  ‘And sore balls,’ Darcy pointed out.

  Stiff with pride, De Troquereau admitted the fact.

  ‘You’ll be no good to your girlfriend for a few days,’ Misset observed.

  Pel waved him aside. ‘What makes you think you’re still able to catch him?’

  ‘It’s a matter of honour, Patron.’

  Pel exchanged glances with Darcy. ‘There’s no such thing in police work,’ he said. ‘Ideas are much more use.’

  As Pel returned to his desk, a message arrived from the Chief. Hurrying to his office, Pel found his superior standing by his desk with a frown on his face. He held out a sheet of paper. It looked as though it had been torn out of an exercise book. On it were stuck letters cut from magazines. They formed a message.

  ‘I HAVE RENSSELAER. I WANT ONE MILLION FRANCS.’

  ‘I told you it was a kidnapping,’ the Chief said.

  Pel studied the sheet. ‘It might be a hoax,’ he pointed out. ‘The papers were full of it yesterday. People try it on.’

  ‘You’d better go and see his wife all the same.’

  As Pel returned to his office, Darcy appeared. ‘There’s been a telephone call, Chief,’ he said.

  ‘From the kidnapper?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  Pel pushed the sheet of paper with the pasted letters at him. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘It was obviously a disguised voice. The man on the switchboard took it. It just said “I have Rensselaer. I want a million francs. I’ll be in touch.” Then he hung up. The man on the switchboard thought it was from a call box.’

  ‘I expect we’ll get more of them,’ Pel said. ‘Take that sheet along to Leguyader and see what he makes of it. In the meantime, you and I had better go and see Madame.’

  The Rensselaer house overlooked the park. The bell was sunk in a bronze rosette in the middle of a door that was big enough to impress the President of France.

  As the door opened, an elderly maid appeared, dressed in black and white in a way they’d thought had ceased to exist. Wearing an expression that wouldn’t have been out of place round the guillotine during the Reign of Terror, she led them across a marble-tiled hall and into a drawing room. On the walls were old portraits and landscapes with gilded frames, a tapestry depicting a hunting scene and several paintings of stag hunts. There was also a photograph of a man on a horse alongside a huntsman holding a French horn.

  ‘Rensselaer,’ Darcy said.

  The drawing room was huge, a table in the centre with a polished marble top, across which stretched a green runner.

  In one corner a statuette supported a light, and there were stiff chairs covered with damask and brocade. There was a feeling of silence that went beyond the absence of noise, an absence of vibrations, as if the room was never used.

  As they waited, Darcy prowled about. There were several other photographs, one of a hunt moving off with the hounds, the trees above frosted with winter rime, another of a room full of antlers, a third of Rensselaer at the head of a table facing other people in hunting clothes, a fourth of him holding up the head of a dead stag.

  When Madame Rensselaer appeared, she was accompanied by a tall dark-eyed girl with bleached hair and a thin-faced young man not much older who wore a suit, but instead of a tie a coloured scarf. He wore his hair long about his pale features so that to Pel he had the look of a ferret peering through a hedge.

  ‘Please sit down.’ Madame Rensselaer’s gesture was imperious. ‘This is my daughter, Marie-Christine, and this is her husband, Jean-Marc Guitton. I gather from Bernard Pujol that there’s bee
n a message saying my husband’s a prisoner and that they’re demanding a million francs.’

  ‘We can’t afford a million francs,’ Guitton put in quickly.

  ‘Even if we could, I’m not sure I’d want to,’ Madame Rensselaer said. ‘This is a hoax. My husband’s enjoying himself somewhere with a woman.’

  The interview proved unproductive. Madame Rensselaer clearly had no particular wish to have her husband returned and both her daughter and son-in-law were inclined to support her. It seemed obvious why: if Rensselaer were dead, they’d inherit his money.

  Leaving with a feeling of distaste in his mouth, Pel decided he’d get more sense out of Pujol.

  ‘Chaumont,’ he said. ‘Where his car was found. From Chaumont you can easily get to Belgium, and Brussels is a lively place these days. Could he have a lady friend there?’

  ‘I think,’ Pujol pointed out, ‘that you can rule out Belgium. And anywhere else, too. His passport was found in his desk.’

  Pel frowned. ‘Chaumont’s also not far from the Fond des Chouettes. Could he have gone there? There’s a suggestion that he did.’

  Pujol shrugged. ‘He might,’ he agreed. ‘I know he used to slip away from the office and drop in on the place unexpectedly.’

  ‘Was Fabre cheating him?’

  ‘He was certainly worried about something out there. But I’ve seen the books. There’s nothing that’s not straightforward. Fabre ran the place well.’ Pujol sighed. ‘If it is a kidnap,’ he went on, ‘then, of course, we must pay. The firm can’t do without him. We can raise the money.’ He gave a little smile. ‘When the recent spate of kidnappings started, I even discussed with him what we should do about it and we came to the conclusion that, in view of his wealth, we should take out an insurance to cover the possibility. As we haven’t been troubled much in this area, we got good terms and we decided it was well worth it. It will be good to get Monsieur Rensselaer back.’