Pel And The Staghound

by Mark Hebden

  Madame Rensselaer looked at Pel. ‘I fear we’re neglecting you, Monsieur. May I offer you anything?’

  ‘No, Madame.’ Between them they’d already given him quite a lot. ‘I’ve come literally to ask you a single question.’

  ‘Please ask, Inspector.’

  Pel opened his notebook. ‘On the 16th of last month Madame, the day your husband disappeared, his car was at Chaumont. Did you drive him from Chaumont to the abbey?’

  ‘I’m quite sure I didn’t.’

  Pel looked at Marie-Christine. She shook her head. Pel turned to Guitton. ‘Monsieur?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you ever driven him there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you ever been there on your own?’

  Guitton scowled. ‘Once or twice.’

  ‘How well did you know Madame Fabre?’

  ‘As well as I know Monsieur Fabre.’

  ‘Was there ever anything between you?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In what way is there usually anything between a man and a woman? I don’t need to spell it out. You know what I mean!’

  Guitton paused, his eyes flickering, failing to meet Pel’s gaze. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’

  Pel didn’t believe him and it seemed neither did Marie-Christine.

  As Pel became silent, she was looking at her husband, at first puzzled, then as though things she was aware of were beginning to click together like a jigsaw puzzle. He saw the bewilderment change to surprise, then fury, then to disgust and hatred, and through the mirror he saw her lips move silently. ‘You toad,’ she mouthed.

  ‘What about his chauffeur, Madame? Could he have driven him?’

  Madame Rensselaer shrugged. ‘You may ask him yourself,’ she said. ‘He’s here at this moment. He’s just brought the contents of my husband’s desk at the factory for me to go through. He’s in the kitchen having a coffee – and without doubt a tot of the best brandy. I’ll get him upstairs.’

  The chauffeur was a young man and he produced no surprises. ‘I didn’t take Monsieur to the abbey on the 16th,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That was the day I went to Lyons. I went to my grandfather’s funeral. All my family saw me. Monsieur gave me the day off. He also gave me money for food and drinks and to stay anywhere I fancied. He was always good to me.’

  At least there seemed to be somebody who hadn’t a good reason for knocking off Rensselaer.

  ‘I think that clears up everything,’ Madame Rensselaer said as the door closed behind the chauffeur.

  ‘Everything except where those damned jewels are,’ Marie-Christine snapped.

  ‘And what’s going to happen to me?’ Guitton whined. ‘He promised me a secure place in the firm if I worked hard and kept my nose clean.’

  Madame Rensselaer eyed him coldly.

  At that moment, to Pel she looked like someone who had a bat in her family tree. ‘But you have not worked hard,’ she pointed out icily. ‘Nor, it seems, have you kept your nose clean.’

  ‘I thought the golden rule was always to look after the family.’

  ‘The golden rule is that whoever possesses the gold makes the rule. I now handle the gold and I think I can tell you here and now what your future in the firm will be.’

  Guitton’s head jerked up.

  ‘It will remain exactly what it is now: Personnel manager.’

  ‘That’s no position for the boss’ son-in-law!’

  ‘Under the circumstances, I think perhaps it is.’ Madame Rensselaer seemed to enjoy throwing her weight about. ‘No one who’s prepared to forge my name should expect to advance very far with Produits Morand. I shall make it very clear at the next meeting of the board that I shall not expect your name to go forward as a director —’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Now or ever.’

  Guitton’s face went pink, then white, then he turned on his heel and stamped from the room.

  ‘Well done, Mother,’ Marie-Christine said. ‘That’s what he’s needed for a long time.’

  ‘As for the jewels – ’ Marie-Christine’s head whipped round ‘ – they were sold years ago.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘When we were first married and your father began to be successful, he needed money to buy shares in the firm. My father had no wish to advance him money and then see him walk out to a better job and he told him he had to raise some money somehow himself. I gave him the jewels. We sold them in Paris and the money went into the firm.’

  ‘Into the firm? My jewels?’

  ‘Into the firm,’ Madame Rensselaer agreed. ‘My jewels.’

  Sixteen

  They seemed to be making progress but it didn’t seem to be leading them anywhere and the Chief wasn’t very enthusiastic.

  ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, repeating something they had all of them said at one time or another, ‘without a body, we haven’t really got a murder. We haven’t even got proof of a murder, only a lot of good reasons for one.’

  Judge Polverari’s view was much the same. The effects of his flu were still with him, and he was the proud possessor of purple rings under his eyes that made him look like a giant panda. Pel sat as far away from him as possible.

  ‘Michelline Fabre must have been involved with the ransom note,’ he was saying. ‘But that was just a means of getting money. He hadn’t been kidnapped.’

  ‘You can’t be sure,’ Polverari said gently.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Pel insisted. ‘He was dead when the note was sent. He’d been missing some time but nobody thought of sending a note until the newspapers suggested it by shouting about kidnapping.’ He paused, frowning. ‘But why kill him?’ he went on. ‘Which of all the motives we have was the one that did for him? Fabre didn’t like him, but neither did Cottu or Retif, and if Rensselaer’s dead, none of them have much to gain from it. The pack will be sold off together with the horses and the premises and they’ll all be out of a job. Madame Rensselaer has infinitely more to gain.’

  ‘Do you think it would be worthwhile me having Fabre in and questioning him?’

  ‘No,’ Pel said. ‘Leave him. Just a little longer. Something will turn up. I can feel it in my bones.’

  ‘The only thing I can feel in my bones,’ Judge Polverari said, ‘is the effects of influenza.’

  Was it worth going over the abbey again?

  It was Pel’s belief by this time that all traces of Rensselaer had vanished. Somewhere, he suspected, all that remained of him was a pool of fatty sludge strongly impregnated with hydrochloric acid. Probably in it there might be traces of something that could be identified – a belt buckle, keys, something of that nature – but first the puddle had to be found. It wasn’t in the abbey. Of that Pel was sure. They’d already taken the place apart and seen no signs of any attempt to get rid of a body. At least – he paused – not a human body.

  Besides, he could well be wrong. It was only the death of the hound, Archer, that had put the acid idea into his mind, and that was probably pure coincidence. Perhaps Archer had been burned by acid from some other source entirely. Which left the other possibility, which had come to his mind as he had watched Retif hacking the dead cow to pieces.

  Without the body, the only other thing which could pin a murder on anyone was the discovery of the ransom money, and the chances of finding that, he suspected, were very slender. Short of bringing in the whole of the French police force from Paris to Marseilles, Pel couldn’t imagine them ever finding every possible place to hide anything. Burgundy was full of buildings like the abbey. Big old buildings, with ancient beams and holes where owls, pigeons and hawks nested, holes that rats and mice had made. They were endless and the chances of looking in them all were hopeless. He decided against it.

  Nevertheless, it hadn’t taken Leguyader long to confirm that the scissors they’d removed from the Fabres’ sink were the ones which had cut out the letters posted on the ransom note. Prélat, of Fingerpri
nts, gave them proof positive by finding on the blade a fingerprint that matched the one found on the glossy letter cut from a woman’s fashion magazine, and a check at the abbey showed it to be Michelline Fabre’s.

  They seemed now to be in a position to nail Madame Fabre, at the very least, but since she’d disappeared it didn’t advance them a lot, and Pel was just deciding to have Fabre brought in when Darcy burst into his office.

  ‘She was born in Forzée-le-Grand, Patron!’ he said. ‘Same village as Rensselaer himself.’

  ‘What! Where did you get that?’

  ‘Douzay. The shops. They know her well. She was a compulsive talker, when she’d got someone more responsive than her husband to listen to her. They knew all about her.’

  ‘When did she leave Forzée?’

  ‘When she was about twenty. She went to work in a shop in Bar-le-Duc. She was there when she met Fabre.’

  Pel was already on his feet, stuffing cigarettes, notebooks, pens and pencils into his pockets. ‘I think we’d better go and visit Forzée,’ he said.

  Forzée-le-Grand was a straggling place, and, like so many Lorraine villages, had almost as much cow dung in the main street as there was in the fields and byres. The Lorrainers – Boches d’Est to the rest of France – were surly and suspicious but the sous-brigadier who ran the police in Forzée came from Haute Marne, didn’t like them very much and was only too keen to take them down a peg or two.

  ‘Leave it to me, Chief,’ he said. ‘Just make yourself at home in the bar. I’ll send for you when I’ve got someone who’ll talk.’

  They were settling themselves for a long wait when a young policeman with the down still on his cheeks appeared. They hadn’t even finished their first beer.

  ‘That was quick,’ Darcy said.

  There were two men in the sous-brigadier’s office, both of them in their late forties; strong men but clearly not blessed with a surfeit of brains.

  ‘Armande Reuss,’ the sous-brigadier introduced. ‘Gérard Haegelen. Both farmers.’

  What he’d threatened Pel had no idea and he didn’t bother to ask, but the photographs of Rensselaer, slapped down on the table in front of them, produced an immediate response.

  ‘I know him,’ Reuss said. ‘That’s young Rensselaer.’ He looked at Pel. ‘Was it him who – ?’

  ‘Yes,’ Pel said. ‘It was.’

  ‘Well, he had it coming to him.’

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  ‘He was a décontracté – a cool guy.’

  ‘I thought,’ Haegelen said, ‘that he was a pain in the arse.’

  Reuss grinned. ‘That’s because he took your girl.’

  ‘He never took my girl. Michelline was always my girl.’

  Pel tried to stop them but they continued to argue. As the discussion grew fiercer, the sous-brigadier stepped forward and slapped their faces with a back and forth flip of his hand.

  ‘Shut up, you stupid cons,’ he snapped. ‘Listen to what the inspector says.’

  They became silent and sat facing Pel, their eyes on his face in a set stare as if they were nailed there. Pel wondered what it was the brigadier had over them – smuggling, perhaps, over the border from Belgium, with him taking a little on the side, and just reminding them from time to time that he had the power to fix the lot of them.

  ‘This girlfriend of yours,’ he said to Haegelen. ‘This Michelline. What was her full name?’

  ‘Michelline Roos.’

  ‘What became of her?’

  ‘She didn’t like this place. You couldn’t earn much money here and she couldn’t stand the quiet. And when her boyfriend left, it grew worse. Eventually she went away. Bar-le-Duc, I heard. To look after her aunt.’

  There was a shout of laughter from Reuss. ‘Aunt, my eye! It was a man.’

  ‘Was it? Good job her boyfriend, Rensselaer, didn’t know.’

  ‘He wasn’t her boy friend. He was her lover.’

  ‘He couldn’t have been. I went out with her for a long time and never got anywhere.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t know how.’

  ‘One of these days, Armande Reuss, I’ll take a knife to you!’

  The sous-brigadier stepped forward again and the two heads waggled as he did his back and forth flip with his hand. Immediately, they were sitting bolt upright once more, full of attention. What a pity, Pel thought, he couldn’t indulge himself in the same way with some of his witnesses in the city. But what could be got away with here in this remote corner of Lorraine would hardly do in one of the great capitals of France.

  ‘They were lovers,’ Haegelen finally admitted. ‘Then Rensselaer went away. He went to Amiens or Rouen or somewhere. I don’t know. I heard he moved about a bit. Then I heard of him further south. He’d made his pile by then.’

  ‘They said he married an heiress.’

  ‘It would be just like him.’

  ‘What about Michelline Roos?’ Pel asked. ‘Whom did she marry?’

  ‘Type called Lefèbre. Or was it Fourie? Or Favre? Something like that. Little type about as big as a ferret. Kennel worker on a hunt in the Haute Marne. She was getting on a bit by then. I heard they moved further south into Burgundy. Good job, they told me.’

  ‘It was,’ Pel said. ‘It was for Rensselaer.’

  ‘What?’ The two men eyed each other, their faces full of surprise. Then the surprise changed to merriment and they rolled about laughing. ‘So Rensselaer got her in the end,’ Reuss said. ‘He’d know who she was at once. As soon as he saw them together. I’ll bet her husband didn’t get that job because he knew which end of a horse the shit came from, but because she was a hotpants – Rensselaer’s hotpants.’

  Which, Pel thought, was just what he had decided.

  Back in his office that evening, Pel studied his list of suspects. By this time he’d crossed them all off but Fabre.

  ‘Have him brought in,’ he ordered. ‘Judge Polverari can put him through the mill.’

  As Darcy vanished, leaving Pel studying the scrawled name on his pad, the telephone rang and he answered it warily. To his surprise it was Madame Faivre-Perret.

  ‘Inspector,’ she said. ‘Evariste.’

  He made crooning noises down the telephone, wishing he could purr. To have her ringing him instead of the other way round was progress indeed.

  ‘I was wondering if perhaps you’d care to come to my house for dinner on Friday night,’ she said. ‘I thought with this case you’re working on, you might like to relax. I cook an excellent coq-au-vin and I gather it’s something you like.’

  ‘Oh, it is, it is.’ Where had she found out? Whom had she asked? It was clearly serious when she started doing things like that.

  ‘I even have a bottle of Romanée Conti. Shall we say eight o’clock? You know your way. And this time perhaps you need not hurry away.’

  The words seemed full of promise and Pel left determined that this time he would push his suit. ‘Perhaps you need not hurry away,’ she’d said. How late did that mean? Where lay the difference between ardour and presumption? Or did she perhaps expect him to be presumptuous? At least a kiss, he thought. Perhaps several kisses, building up to – he stopped dead. Neither of them were young and she would hardly expect him to be a passionate boy. Grave, perhaps, as became a senior inspector and a good Burgundian, witty, not dashing – God, how he wished he could be dashing! – circumspect, always respectful. Gentle, too, he decided, but certainly leading to further advances. He felt hot under the collar at the thought of it. Suddenly everything seemed to be making progress. Even his private life.

  Nosjean was also making headway in his inquiries into the Duche killing, though he didn’t realise it just then. With Fabre brought in, there was time to think again about Sammy Belec and he sought out Labbé, the man who’d found the body in the Passage Wallieux, feeling against all the evidence of his own watch, the clock in the Bar de la Descente and Labbé’s own memory, that he’d be able to shake him about the time.

  ‘No,�
� Labbé said. ‘It was 11.30. I went for the bus, if you remember, and I was early.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Dead sure. Is it important?’

  Nosjean shrugged, frustrated. ‘It ought to be,’ he said.

  De Troquereau was making rather more headway than Nosjean. Concerned with Armoire à Glace, he was heading for the home of Yves-Pol Aramis.

  Yves-Pol lived in a small house with a neat garden and an interior that was less elegant than dainty. It looked like a boudoir for a woman, with cut-outs of butterflies on the walls and a great deal of coloured ribbon about.

  His face still bruised, a pad of cotton wool against his injured cheekbone, he was sitting with his feet up, sipping a pernod and watching Children’s Hour on television.

  ‘Hello, chéri,’ he said to De Troquereau. ‘You again? What have you been up to? Have you found the beast yet? I’m hoping to return to work soon and I’d like to feel safe.’

  ‘Not yet,’ De Troquereau admitted. ‘But I shall.’

  ‘Well, I hope you do him some harm when you get him,’ Yves-Pol said with a trace of mincing vindictiveness. ‘He rammed his knee into my – ’ he delicately indicated his groin. ‘Then he hit me at the side of the head with his left fist.’

  ‘He did the same to me,’ De Troquereau said.

  ‘I see you’ve got a bruise. Did it hurt?’

  ‘Perhaps not as much as it hurt you,’ De Troquereau admitted. ‘Because I was ready. He surprised me, but I’d been expecting trouble.’

  ‘He’s done it before, you know. He got Noni Barre and Pépé Kléber. Of course, they probably asked for it.’ Yves-Pol made a clicking noise with his tongue. ‘They’re always pushing themselves, the stupid things.’

  De Troquereau was well aware of the facts because he’d talked to several other little men who’d been attacked. ‘The method’s the same every time,’ he said. ‘One hand on your neck, a knee in the balls and then a clout at the side of the head. Has it ever happened to you before?’

  Yves-Pol gestured sadly. ‘People aren’t always as kind as they might be,’ he admitted. ‘And there are always people ready to jeer. But I’ve never been assaulted.’