by Mark Hebden
They hadn’t really expected anyone to leap at the picture of Rensselaer and announce ‘That’s the type who came in here a week ago, driving a yellow and black Citroën, number 675-75-QT3, with a corpse on the back seat.’ Things just didn’t happen like that. However, they had hoped that Michelline Fabre might have been noticed and they were not disappointed. During the afternoon they had a telephone message from a police brigadier called Chaudouet in the village of Rouelles-le-Charmois.
‘She was here,’ he said. ‘They recognised her.’
When they reached Rouelles, Brigadier Chaudouet had all his reports set out for them in apple-pie order.
‘I think we’re wasting our breath asking round the villages,’ he said. ‘Shops such as we have here aren’t going to have much for a woman to buy. Ironmongers. Grocers. Chemists. Butchers. That’s all, and you can’t go mad on that sort of thing. The clothiers only have jeans, T-shirts, vests, underpants, woollen farm shirts, caps and overalls. It’s enough for the people who live here but if anybody wants anything better, they go into the city. That’s where she went, I’ll bet. It only requires a bit of intelligence to see that.’
‘And you, Brigadier Chaudouet, are intelligent?’ Pel asked silkily.
‘I like to think so, sir.’
‘Do you? Then perhaps the intelligent Officer Chaudouet can help us further. How much money did this lavish spender have in her purse?’
‘They said a great deal.’
‘And that, intelligent Officer Chaudouet, would be how much?’
Chaudouet looked bewildered. ‘I didn’t ask sir.’
‘Then could the super-intelligent, brilliant Brigadier Chaudouet also tell us whether the notes were old or new?’
‘I don’t know, sir, I didn’t ask that either.’
‘Then, perhaps the super-intelligent Brigadier Chaudouet is not so super-intelligent after all. Perhaps, in fact, he’d better get into his little van and visit the villages of Rouellesle-Grand, Longéat and Ste Germaine, all of which are in his diocese, and see if she tried there. It will be of help.’
Chaudouet looked faintly disconcerted.
‘Then the very intelligent Brigadier Chaudouet will write out all his discoveries and let us have his report at the Hôtel de Police.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Chaudouet’s face was changing colour. ‘Then–’ even Pel occasionally felt guilty of taking advantage of his rank – ‘the super-intelligent Brigadier Chaudouet may well get a recommendation in his file for sharp thinking and good honest graft. Attend to it.’
‘You might have congratulated him,’ Darcy said as they left. ‘What he said was good sense.’
Pel sniffed. ‘It would go to his head if I did,’ he said. He stopped by the car, huddled against the cold, and took out a cigarette. ‘It begins to look,’ he said, ‘as if Madame Fabre was either in on the kidnap of François Rensselaer or his murder, or both – or else she discovered the loot that our brilliant team allowed him to get away with from the park near the Chèvre Morte, and bolted. I think we’d better carry this a step further. Let’s have a look at her background – her family, where she was born and why?’
He eyed the cigarette as if it were the temptation of the Garden of Eden. ‘Madame Routy once got me some pills from the pharmacists’,’ he observed slowly. ‘They were supposed to break me of the habit.’
‘Did they?’
Pel scowled. ‘I decided they were probably rat poison. With Madame Routy, they might well have been.’
Fifteen
The following day Pel had the whole team going round the city shops yet again. It was becoming so they could do it with their eyes shut. This time they were showing the photographs of Madame Fabre, and late in the afternoon they gathered in Pel’s office. They hadn’t wasted their time with the suburbs but had concentrated on the Rue de la Liberté and its immediate surroundings, particularly near the Palais des Dues where the expensive boutiques were.
Lagé had perfume down in his notebook, bought in the Nouvelles Galéries.
‘Shows her background,’ Claudie Darel observed shrewdly. ‘She’d always bought everything in the Nouvelles Galéries and that was the only place she could think of to buy perfume. What she bought wasn’t expensive or even particularly good. Living in the Fond des Chouettes, though, it probably seemed like Chanel Number Five.’
Misset had found out about a pair of shoes she’d bought, Nosjean about a brooch, De Troq’ about a hairdressers’ where she had had an expensive cut – not ‘Nanette’s’, Madame Faivre-Perret’s place, Pel noticed, so she obviously still had a peasant’s attitudes because ‘Nanette’s’didn’t have prices, they had fees.
Finally Claudie produced the name of a small boutique near the Place des Ducs where Michelline Fabre seemed to have really got hold of herself, together with a list of things she’d bought. Probably because she was a woman herself and knew how a woman ticked, Claudie was even able to explain Michelline Fabre’s emotions as she’d bought them.
‘It was in the afternoon,’ she said. ‘She probably started off slowly and warily. After all, she’s a country girl not used to buying in city shops. But after a good lunch, wine and probably some brandy, things looked different and she began to lash out. She’s always been short of money and excitement, and she longed to be among people enjoying themselves. She went mad on a spending spree. Three sets of underwear. A skirt. Two blouses. Two pairs of shoes. A Rodier trouser suit. A cardigan to match, plus a scarf and a gold pendant.’
‘That all?’
‘How much more do you want, Patron?’ she gave him a sly look. ‘That would be my salary for several months.’
‘So – ’ Pel waved his hands, beginning, after all the failures, to feel better with this taste of success ‘ – she was clearly involved in the kidnap business, whether it was a hoax or genuine. We, therefore, now have to accept that Rensselaer probably was kidnapped and that probably somehow he died – strangled by the ropes which tied him. Something like that; it’s happened before. And that’s why we’ve heard no more of the affair. Did it start as a kidnap and end up as a murder?’
‘Or,’ Darcy said, ‘did it start as murder and get turned into a kidnap by people who saw a means of making money?’
‘Could Lausse have been involved?’ Nosjean asked. ‘After all, Madame Fabre would know him.’
‘Perhaps,’ Pel said, ‘when my clever, super-brilliant team manages to find this Lausse, then perhaps we’ll have the answer. Until then I must contain my soul in suffering patience.’
‘He likes to make a song and dance about it, doesn’t he?’ De Troquereau said as they left Pel’s office.
‘Part of the stock in trade, mon brave,’ Darcy said cheerfully. ‘Don’t let it lull you into a sense of false security, though. He’s like a snake when he strikes.’
Which was roughly what Pel was thinking. His mind was never more active, never keener, than when he was apparently at the end of his tether. On these occasions, his brain roamed like a hunting wolf round his skull, vicious and immured within the confines of a narrow cage. It was ceaselessly on the move, first one way, then the other, growling, snarling, deadly. He was a little like a chess player involved in a colossal struggle with a clever opponent, reviewing and analysing with immense self-criticism the moves and motives that had led him to failure. Already new ideas were being born in the darkness of his mind. It was never still.
Unfortunately it wore him out and, he felt sure, increased the possibility of dying of cancer. His ashtray was crammed with cigarette butts which he viewed gloomily, trying to reassure himself that he’d read somewhere that Balkan peasants smoked almost from birth yet had the lowest incidence of cancer in the world. Look at the Peruvian Indians: They always had pipes in their mouths, but you never heard of them dying of cancer. It wasn’t often, of course, that you heard of them at all. Perhaps that was the reason. He would cut it out, he decided firmly. Tomorrow. Next week, anyway. At least in the New Year.
The very next da
y brought another break. Claude Lausse turned up in Langres and was brought in by the uniformed branch.
He was a small, shrivelled, shabby man who might have been anything between forty and sixty. He looked as though life had not been easy.
He claimed he had not done away with Rensselaer but made no bones about the fact that, given the chance, he would have liked to.
‘I even went to the abbey,’ he said. ‘On the 16th. Early. I don’t know what I was going to do.’
‘Did you put acid down in the woods?’ Pel snapped.
‘It was my acid,’ Lausse snapped back. ‘I wouldn’t have been doing him any harm if I’d poured the whole lot away. I’d have moved it long since but I hadn’t a van and I couldn’t afford to pay anyone to do it for me.’
‘I didn’t mean pour it away,’ Pel said. ‘I meant lay it down deliberately. Spread it about?’
‘What for?’
‘To harm his hounds.’
Lausse looked shocked. He seemed to have made his point without trying and Pel waved him on.
‘I got a lift to the crossroads,’ he said, ‘and walked the rest of the way. It’s a long walk. It tired me.’
It would probably have killed me, Pel thought.
‘Was Rensselaer there?’ he asked.
‘Well, his car wasn’t there. I knew his car. If you can find the most expensive there is, that’s his. He had an Alfa Romeo but he’d also had British Rolls Royces and American Cadillacs. He had to let everybody know who was coming.’
‘And it wasn’t there?’
‘No. But I think he was.’
Pel glanced at Darcy. So Retif had been telling the truth.
‘Somebody was there, anyway,’ Lausse said. ‘There was no one about, but I heard laughter. Her laughter.’
‘Whose laughter?’
‘Michelline Fabre’s. She was with him.’
‘Where?’
‘Upstairs. I saw her at the window. She didn’t have much on, either, believe me.’
Pel glanced at Darcy. Here, with a vengeance, was motive. ‘And Rensselaer was with her?’ he asked.
Lausse looked worried. ‘Well, I assumed it was him. I knew her husband wasn’t there, and I knew Rensselaer went in for that sort of thing.’
‘With her?’
‘It was obvious. We had our little works there for a while, you know. We could see through the windows into the courtyard. I’d often noticed him arrive. Always on the days when Fabre had gone off looking for a horse or something. It was obvious they were up to something together.’
‘And on that day? The last day he was seen?’
‘Well, it must have been him, mustn’t it?’
‘Must it?’
Pel sat back, frowning. Their motive seemed to have gone out of the window as soon as it had arrived. ‘You’re guessing,’ he said. ‘Did you see him?’
‘Well, no.’
‘Then how do you know it wasn’t her husband? He wasn’t away that day. At least, he didn’t arrive where he was going, so he may have come back.’
‘I didn’t see his car.’
‘You didn’t see Rensselaer’s either.’ Pel frowned, feeling that somehow they were on the edge of something, despite the absence of real proof. ‘Did you ever see anyone else out there who shouldn’t have been there? Before Rensselaer kicked you out.’
‘I saw Rensselaer’s son-in-law.’
‘Alone? Without his wife?’
‘From time to time.’
‘What was he looking for? Documents?’
‘He didn’t seem to be looking for anything.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, when I saw him he was with Michelline Fabre.’
‘Doing what?’
‘He had his arms round her. When they saw me, they separated. Quickly.’
‘Did you see them together on other occasions?’
‘Once or twice.’
‘Was there something between them?’
Lausse shrugged. ‘She was never one to object. She even made eyes at me, and I had a foreman for a while she was always talking to. She liked a good-looking man. And underneath all that hair, Guitton was a good-looking man.’
‘On the 16th – when you saw her with someone and you were certain her husband wasn’t there – why are you sure it wasn’t her husband?’
‘She never laughed with her husband.’
‘It doesn’t follow it had to be Rensselaer. Did she laugh with Guitton?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you go into the house?’
‘Into the kitchen. I could hear them upstairs. They were talking.’
‘What about?’
Lausse looked puzzled. ‘It sounded like politics.’
‘Politics?’
‘Yes. Then they stopped and started laughing. I found a carving knife. I thought I might shove it in Rensselaer. Not to kill him. Just to hurt.’
‘It would hurt him a bit, that,’ Darcy agreed drily.
‘Yes, I suppose it would. I wanted him to know how much he’d hurt me. I even went to the stairs and listened. But then I felt it just wasn’t fair to go bursting in on them when they were enjoying themselves like that.’
Darcy’s eyebrows rose and he glanced at Pel.
‘You, my friend,’ he said, ‘will never make a murderer. If I were you I’d give up the idea.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ Lausse looked defeated. ‘In the end, I just went away and walked back towards the main road to try to get a lift back to Langres. It took me hours. It was getting late in the day and nobody came past. Just a motor cyclist, that’s all. Eventually a tractor driver gave me a lift. He was taking wood to Douzay. I had to get a bus into the city and another to Langres. It cost me a fortune and achieved nothing.’
Pel studied the man across the table. ‘If you had nothing to do with Rensselaer’s disappearance,’ he said, ‘why did you hide?’
Lausse sighed. ‘Well, I’d thought of killing him, hadn’t I? And I’d told more than one that I’d like to. I decided they’d immediately think of me.’
‘They immediately did.’
‘But I didn’t do it. I’m not that type.’ Lausse sighed again.
‘I – I don’t think I’ve got the guts really. I do a lot of shouting but I never get anywhere in the end. That’s why I was such a poor businessman. I could never get people to pay me.’
On the way back to the Hôtel de Police, they stopped at the house in the Avenue de la Première Armée. Pujol was just leaving as they appeared.
‘I had better come back in with you,’ he announced. ‘There’s been a slight contretemps. A few problems. Family matters, you understand.’
It seemed to be less of a slight contretemps and more of a blazing row. Marie-Christine Guitton was standing by the fireplace, her eyes hot with rage, while her husband stood by the window drawing on a cigarette as if his life depended on it. Madame Rensselaer sat alone, fishing in her handbag as though all the treasure of the Orient had been inside and she’d just mislaid it.
She looked up as Pel appeared, her manner scarcely welcoming.
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘The police!’
‘The flics,’ Guitton growled.
‘Fédération Lamentable des Imbéciles Casqués,’ Marie-Christine said coldly.
Pel didn’t even blink. He’d heard that one long since from Didier.
‘I expect they’ve come to harry us,’ Guitton said. ‘They should certainly harry you,’ Marie-Christine snapped.
‘Why, might I ask?’ Pel asked.
Marie-Christine stared at her husband with cold contempt. ‘The fool tried to utter a forged document,’ she said.
‘Oh, no, not really,’ Pujol protested.
Pel held up his hand. ‘I think, Maître, I’d prefer to hear the answers direct, not through the mouthpiece of a lawyer.’
‘But I have represented the family —’
‘You are entitled to listen. You are even entitled to advise them not to
answer, if you wish. But you are not entitled to answer for them.’
Pel was beginning to grow irritated by Pujol’s constant interruptions and was beginning to wonder if there were more to them than met the eye.
Pujol blushed and nodded his head in a little bow. ‘Very well, inspector,’ he said acidly. ‘I shall remain here only as the legal representative of Produits Morand.’
Pel waved, indifferent. ‘This forged document – ’ he prompted.
Marie-Christine’s face was deathly white. ‘The idiot got hold of a sheet of Bernard’s notepaper and made out a form giving him power of attorney. Then he signed my mother’s name and Bernard’s name to it and went to the bank.’
‘Damn it,’ Guitton snarled. ‘Pujol’s so damned secretive! Everybody’s secretive! Half the time we’re having to spy on each other to find out what’s going on. I only wanted to investigate the Old Man’s affairs.’
‘You wanted to find out if there were any bonds at the bank that would bring in money.’
‘Perhaps it’s my fault,’ Pujol said. ‘I should have been more careful.’
‘Careful?’ Marie-Christine exploded. ‘It isn’t care you need with him. It’s a strong safe with a double lock.’
‘I was thinking of you,’ Guitton snapped.
‘I’ll bet you were! If you were, why didn’t you tell me? I could probably have got power of attorney without trouble. You wanted it for yourself without telling me.’
Guitton glared. ‘God damn it, you’ve been searching the building ever since your father disappeared – and even before when nobody was looking – for those jewels.’
‘They were my jewels by right.’
‘Mine!’ The voice was Madame Rensselaer’s and it came quietly over the ill-temper.
Marie-Christine turned. ‘Well, yours, yes,’ she agreed. ‘At the moment. On Father’s death they’re mine.’
‘That’s something you decided. Your father never said so. Neither did I.’
‘It was understood.’
‘It was understood that they’d become yours when we decided.’
