As Pel climbed into Darcy’s car, Darcy was just lighting a cigarette. Pel drew a deep breath.
‘I’ll have that cigarette after all,’ he said.
‘I thought you’d stopped.’
‘I’ve decided to take it up again.’
He explained about the hotel and Darcy laughed.
‘Soon sort that one out, Patron,’ he said. ‘We’ll let De Troq’ stay there instead. He’ll be useful when it comes to dealing with De Mougy’s staff because he’s a baron, too, and they’ll all drop on one knee. We’ll come home.’
The Baron de Mougy was seated in the salon at the home of his friend. Judging by the surroundings, his friend had as much money as the Baron de Mougy.
Two metres of bone, muscle and sinew despite his advancing years, the Baron had been a champion fencer, a dead shot and an utterly ruthless Resistance leader. His wife, blonde, the daughter of a financier who was reputed to have sold her to the Baron in return for payment of debts, sat alongside him in a deep chintz-covered armchair. To Pel’s surprise, neither of them seemed desperately upset. He had expected tears and temper but the Baron showed only cold fury and his wife only indignation. He had to assume they had so much money the theft troubled them only in so far as it was an inconvenience that had delayed their journey north.
There was no hand-shaking. The Baron didn’t believe in shaking hands with inferiors in the form of policemen. He conceded a small nod of his head.
‘Pel,’ he said, his face as unyielding as a granite slab. ‘I think we’ve met.’
The Baronne gave Pel a scared look before composing her features into a mask of indifference. She knew Pel had once caught her out in an affaire with another man and she was afraid he might let the cat out of the bag.
‘How much, Monsieur?’ Pel asked.
‘There were five hundred thousand francs’ worth of jewellery,’ De Mougy said. ‘And twenty thousand francs in cash.’
‘What happened?’
‘We were on our way to the airport at Dijon. We were to fly to Deauville. A friend had put his aeroplane at our disposal.’
Some people were lucky, Pel thought.
‘And?’ he said.
‘We were on the road from Mirebeau past Quigny towards the N7. Just outside Quigny we had to stop for a man who was standing in the middle of the road with a bicycle. He had his back to us and it seemed that his chain had broken and he was mending it. As we approached he put the bicycle down and waved and we thought he intended to come and apologise. But then I saw he was wearing a stocking mask and he pulled out a gun. Another man in a mask appeared from the bushes and they took my wife’s jewel case and my wallet. As they were doing this, a car appeared with another man in it. He also wore a stocking mask.’
‘What were they like. Build? Colouring?’
‘The man with the bicycle was small, dark and narrow-faced. He might have had a moustache, I think.’
‘Height?’
‘About one metre sixty-five.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘Nothing. Everything was done by signs. They slashed the tyres of my car, jumped into the waiting vehicle and disappeared. It took us some time to call help.’
‘You walked to a telephone?’
Baron de Mougy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘My chauffeur walked to a telephone,’ he corrected. ‘On my instructions, he also got in touch with my friend here, who collected us. I would be grateful if you could hurry your interrogation, Chief Inspector. We would very much like to be on our way.’
Marvellous, Pel thought. Just like that. Over half a million francs light and all they could think of was being on their way.
‘Doubtless you made a note of the number of the car they drove off in, Monsieur?’ he said.
The Baron gave him a blank stare. ‘Never occurred to me,’ he admitted, as if taking the numbers of cars whose occupants had just robbed him of a fortune were a job best left to servants.
‘Perhaps Madame la Baronne?’
‘Never thought about it.’ She still kept her face averted from Pel.
‘Then, surely the chauffeur?’
‘He’s outside,’ the Baron said. ‘You can ask him but you won’t get anywhere. He didn’t.’
Pel scowled. Name of God, he thought, three intelligent people and not one of them had thought to take the number of the getaway car. Not that it would matter because without doubt it would have been stolen, but it seemed to show how indifferent the wealthy could be, not only over the loss of half a million francs but also about being helpful to the police who were trying to recover it. If the aristocracy had been like this in 1789, he thought, no wonder there’d been a revolution.
‘Did they touch your car at all, Monsieur?’
The Baron looked puzzled then light seemed to dawn. ‘Ah, fingerprints you mean? No–’ he frowned. ‘Come to think of it, they were very careful. They made Josso – that’s my chauffeur – get out and open the doors for us. They didn’t touch a thing.’ He looked pointedly at his watch.
Pel saw the movement and deliberately took as long as he could, delaying his questions and dealing with trivialities which could easily have been found out by other means.
The Baron was growing more and more restless and in the end the cold eyes flashed. ‘Pity I hadn’t my gun with me,’ he growled.
‘What would you have done, Monsieur?’
‘Shot him, of course.’
‘That would have been most unwise.’
‘Doubtless. But it would have given me a lot of pleasure.’
They questioned Josso, the chauffeur, who could add nothing.
‘Better write down a description of the three men, Daniel,’ Pel suggested to Darcy. In an undertone, he added maliciously, ‘And don’t hurry.’
They learned that the De Mougys had been invited to a house party in Normandy, with a large and expensive get-together that evening to start off, and sailing, the Casino and the races to follow.
They learned that the man with the bicycle had worn a blue windcheater. The man who had appeared from the bushes had been taller and worn a red windcheater – it was thought, but nobody seemed sure – while the man who had brought up the getaway car had been wearing a leather jacket – black or brown, again they couldn’t be certain. Since he hadn’t got out of the car they had no idea how tall the third man was, and no idea what he looked like because in addition to his mask he’d worn a large flat cap that had hidden his face. Most people, Pel knew, went about with their eyes shut and wouldn’t have noticed if Brigitte Bardot had appeared alongside them in the street, but these three seemed blinder than usual.
As he left, he heard, with a certain amount of sly pleasure, the Baron discussing the possibility of staying overnight because the delay would mean that they wouldn’t reach the airport until almost dark and would arrive in Deauville too late to attend the function that evening.
It cheered him up. Anybody who could shrug off half a million francs deserved to be delayed. Pel would have been hopping about like a chicken on a hot tin roof over the loss of a mere five francs, let alone five hundred thousand.
They drove to the spot where the robbery had taken place. The car, a large black Citroën, was still where it had been stopped and a man from Fingerprints was working over it. De Troq’ and Aimedieu were also there with Lagé and two of Leguyader’s men from the Forensic Laboratory. Another man from Fingerprints was bent over a battered green bicycle lying by the side of the road. A local cop, who had turned up from Quigny in a cream van, recognised Pel from the funeral the previous day.
One of the Forensic men had found a footprint and was trying to take a plaster cast of it. With tweezers he had plucked out the grass and twigs from the imprint in the soil and was running into it a thin mixture of plaster of Paris. Unfortunately a dog had appeared from somewhere. It was large, young and friendly and as Pel arrived it had its head on its forepaws, its tongue hanging out, and was regarding Leguyader’s man with clumsy affection. If he wanted to play with sticks and twigs, it was more than willing to join in.
Leguyader’s man glared at it. ‘Va-t’en,’ he snapped.
As the dog sprang up, barked and galloped round him in a circle, he snatched up a thick stick and hurled it at it, but the dog decided it was part of the game and chased after it, grasped it between its teeth and tore back towards him, stirring the earth with its clumsy paws.
‘Whose is this damned animal?’
‘It comes from the farm down the road, I think,’ the local cop said.
‘Then you’d better remove it or I’ll have it shot.’
It took three men to ambush the dog, and the local cop, his handkerchief through its collar, set off for the farm looking acutely uncomfortable.
Pel studied the footprint. ‘Think you’ll get something?’ he asked.
‘It’s not a bad print, Patron,’ Leguyader’s man said. ‘Of course, it isn’t a scrap of use unless we find the shoe that caused it and the man who was wearing it.’
Pel turned to the man working over the limousine who shrugged.
‘Nothing, Patron,’ he said. ‘Chauffeur’s dabs – most of them made with gloves because I gather he always wears them when he’s driving, and a few which seem to belong to the owners.’
‘What about the bicycle?’
‘We found prints on the bell, Patron. Nothing else worth having. Somebody’s handled it with gloves and it looks to me as if several people have had their mitts on it, but most of them seem to be kids.’
‘Kids?’
‘They’re not fully developed male prints.’ The Fingerprint man stared at the bicycle, which was scarred and scratched, its drab green paint flecked with patches of rust. ‘It’s an old bicycle, Patron,’ he pointed out. ‘There should be a number on it but I think it’s been painted over so often it’s disappeared. Racing saddle but not racing handlebars. And–’ he added ‘–it isn’t a man’s bicycle. Fourteen-year-old’s. Something like that.’
‘They said one of them had a moustache,’ Darcy put in. ‘He doesn’t sound like a fourteen-year-old.’
‘He doesn’t have to be,’ Pel said. ‘They probably brought it here lashed to the back of the car and just used it to stop the car. I expect we’ll find it’s stolen.’
‘We’ll have all known bike thieves in,’ Darcy suggested. ‘There’s one in Talant who’s just done time for an attic full of missing machines. He can’t even ride a bike, either. He just likes the colours.’
‘This one isn’t missing,’ Pel pointed out gently. ‘It’s here. We’ll just have to wait until someone reports it missing and see if there’s a connection.’
They left De Troq’ and Aimedieu to look after things, and headed homeward. De Troq’s title was as old as Baron de Mougy’s, and was usually enough to flatten any attempt at snobbery. But De Troq’ was still only a sergeant, and wealth had great influence, and the absence of a senior officer might well have suggested an indifference equal to the Baron’s, with the difference that police indifference might have raised a howl of protest whereas the Baron’s only raised indignation in police breasts.
‘It sounds like a gang job, Patron,’ Darcy said. ‘A tip-off.’
‘I imagine it must have been,’ Pel agreed. ‘We’d better look into our old friends. Not just the local boys. Outsiders. Pépé le Cornet, Maurice Tagliatti. This place is just about halfway from Paris where Pépé operates, and Marseilles which is Tagliatti’s stamping ground. From time to time they seem to like to pay us a visit. De Troq’ can keep an eye on it for the moment and we’ll tackle the staff tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s have the owner of that bicycle identified. Look for a fifteen-year-old. But let’s do it quietly. If professionals are involved, and I suspect they are, I don’t want to frighten them off.’