‘It produces a new angle, patron,’ Darcy said.
‘Not for being on the motorway,’ Pel said.
‘For being dead.’
They had discovered that, in addition to the pieces of porcelain, a silver candlestick and other pieces of valuable silver were also missing, to say nothing of bearer bonds to the value of many thousands of francs, and possibly several thousand francs in cash. Because Dupont didn’t drive, he had been in the habit of going to the bank and extracting large sums of money, on which he drew when he needed cash. He had drawn out 50,000 francs the week before he had been found dead but there was no sign of it. They had also checked on the Meissen pieces. Not with the Museum of Fine Arts, which was closed, but with Nosjean’s girl-friend, Mijo Lehmann, who knew all about antiques. She confirmed what Madame Chappe had said.
‘At least five hundred thousand francs,’ she claimed. ‘Possibly almost a million if they’re in good condition.’
Nothing of moment had been found by Prélat’s fingerprint boys, beyond an immediate intimation that whoever had gone through the house had worn gloves. ‘There are smudges everywhere,’ Prélat said. ‘Somebody’s done a good job of ransacking the place and been into everything. Otherwise the only prints are Dupont’s, confirmed by prints off his razor, toothbrush, and so on, and a few which seem to belong to his daughter, confirmed by those on the coffee cup Claudie gave her. Nothing else. It looks as though the place’s been gone through by someone who knew what he was looking for.’
Dupont’s other house in Dôle seemed to have been untouched. There was no sign of a break-in there and no sign of a search. Madame Chappe, who had made a point of visiting it regularly, could see nothing out of place. There were even valuable artefacts about that had remained untouched.
‘Why did he have the Meissen figurines at St-Alban?’ Pel asked.
‘He must have liked to have a few things there with him.’
‘It still doesn’t explain how he came to be dead on the motorway,’ Darcy said. ‘With head injuries and two broken legs. We know about the broken legs but the head injuries seem a bit odd and, beyond that, why was he there at all?’
‘The break-in could be sheer coincidence,’ Pel said. ‘Somebody noticed the house was empty and decided to do it. It’s a habit people have these days. On the other hand, it might have been done by someone who knew he was dead. And that seems to suggest they might even have had a hand in getting him drunk and putting him on the motorway. Someone who wanted him out of the way so they could remove the porcelain. Do you reckon his daughter could have taken it?’
‘She had a key, patron, and there was no sign of a break-in.’
‘Perhaps she needs money.’
‘She seems to have plenty, patron.’
‘People always want more. She certainly had her eye on the porcelain. What about her husband?’
‘He seems an indifferent sort of chap.’
‘Where money’s concerned nobody’s indifferent.’
‘No. There’s also this cousin she mentioned. Name of Jean-Jacques Richter. Comes from Strasbourg. Works on and off for a bookmaker. She suspects him of stealing other things. He liked to visit Dupont, who was his uncle, and she thinks he helped himself to things while he was there. He played the horses and was always short of money.’
‘Would you say she and her husband were the type to dump Dupont on the motorway?’
‘No, patron,’ Darcy admitted. ‘But you never know.’
As Yves Pasquier had said, you never did.
Pel frowned. ‘This money he had,’ he went on. ‘He made a lot when he was young, then gambled it all away. But now he seems to have been in the money again. Let’s find out where he got it. It might explain why he was on the motorway. I’ll see his daughter again. You stay here and keep Goriot from making a fool of himself. I want to know more about this Achille-Jean Quelereil-Dupont. After all, for a while he was one of the Chief’s Missing Persons and if we find out what happened to him, that’s one off his list.’
Madame Chappe claimed to know no more than before about how her father had come to be on the motorway.
‘What were his interests?’ Pel asked. ‘What did he do with himself?’
‘He used to say that when you get to seventy-eight, you were too busy just living to do anything else.’
‘He must have had some interests.’
‘He liked his food.’
‘He must have done something else besides eat. Did he collect things of value?’
‘Not really. Just the porcelain. But he didn’t really collect that even. It was given to him in settlement of fees, I believe. Somebody who ran out of cash, or borrowed from him. It’s increased enormously in value, of course, since he acquired it.’
‘What about the pieces of silver? The candlestick and the other things?’
‘The same, I think. People he’d defended gave them to him. I never knew who they were.’
‘So if he didn’t fill in his time collecting, what else? I believe he played cards.’
‘He loved cards,’ she said. ‘He used to say piquet was the aristocrat of card games for two. But he liked people round him so he played more bridge than piquet.’
‘Regularly?’
‘Yes. With the man from the garage at St-Alban. And the undertaker, I think.’
‘And the stationer, we heard.’
‘I think that’s right. I expect Madame Mallard from the house opposite told you. She seems to know everything.’
‘It doesn’t seem a very esoteric way of entertaining himself for a man who, apart from his feet, appeared to be in pretty good shape and had had such an interesting life.’
She hesitated, then blushed. ‘He used to like to go to health spas and health farms.’
‘Was he ill?’
‘No, he went for a holiday.’
‘A holiday? At a health farm?’ A holiday in a health farm to Pel would have been a step nearer the grave. He was terrified of such places, convinced that if all the ills he was sure he was assailed with didn’t develop there into galloping campaigns and finish him off, he would contract some sort of dreaded disease from another patient which would have the same effect.
‘Well,’ Madame Chappe said. ‘They weren’t holidays exactly. He liked to take a week or two off now and then and have everything done for him.’
‘At a health farm?’
‘They’ll accept you if you can pay. You don’t have to be ill or unfit. He seemed to like to go and just be looked after for a while.’
‘Wouldn’t he have preferred to come to you? To his daughter’s?’
Madame Chappe’s face stiffened. ‘He didn’t seem to,’ she said.
Pel’s eyes narrowed. ‘Did you get on all right?’
‘In a way.’
‘In a way?’
‘He could be difficult.’
‘What about your husband? Did he get on with him?’
‘Of course. But my father didn’t like Dôle. It’s a small town and he’d been used to bigger cities. He couldn’t walk very well. He preferred to sit around and that could be boring. And he had no friends here and we’re occupied all the time with the business. We have no children. But we didn’t quarrel. My husband wouldn’t permit it.’ Madame Chappe frowned. ‘Besides, I didn’t see him often enough for that. I offered him a home when Maman died but he insisted he was best on his own. I went to see him occasionally, but never without telephoning first. He had his reasons.’
‘What were they?’
‘I don’t know. That’s just what he always said.’
‘But you always had a key to his house – to both his houses?’
‘In case of emergency, that’s all.’
‘Did he often go to a health farm for a holiday?’
She blushed. ‘Yes.’
‘But he wasn’t ill?’
‘He had no problems, apart from the trouble with his feet which he’d had ever since he was a child.’
‘With flat feet he could hardly run about much,’ Pel said dryly. ‘Was it to slim?’
She drew a deep breath, her face pink. ‘I think chiefly he liked to see women – young women – in shorts and vests. He liked women. My mother had a lot of trouble with him. When I was young, I had to warn him when she came from shopping. He was sometimes in one of the bedrooms with the maid. I was too young at the time to know what was going on. When I grew older, I refused to have anything to do with it. But it didn’t stop.’
‘So he went to these health farms to see the young girls?’
‘Some weren’t all that young. I found once he’d been dating one of the instructresses – a girl of twenty-two. But I also found he’d been going round with a woman called Bapt whose family owned a string of grocery stores. He was an oversexed old man.’ Tears came to Madame Chappe’s eyes. ‘My mother used to call him a randy old swine and she was right.’
For a while Pel sat in silence waiting for Madame Chappe to collect herself.
She sighed. ‘I was a bit ashamed of him,’ she said eventually. ‘There was a time when he made a lot of money from the law. But then he seemed to go downhill. He sold the house in Dôle and bought the one at St-Alban because it was smaller. But then he seemed to start making money again and when the house in Dôle came on the market again he bought it back again.’
‘How did he start making money again?’
‘I don’t know. There was some scandal. I told you. Not a public one. It was kept very quiet and I never found out what it was. He gave up law and he didn’t appear to have two centimes to rub together. But then he was suddenly in the money again. I never knew where I was with him.’
‘You’ve no idea what this something – this scandal – might have been?’
‘No.’ The word was bitten off and it was Pel’s impression that she did know but was not prepared to dredge it up again.
‘Were you by any chance afraid your father would remarry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because of his money?’
‘Of course. We’ve always hoped that when he died there’d be a little for us.’
‘He could have lived a long time.’
‘I know. We often thought we’d be old ourselves before he went.’
‘Who’ll get his money? You?’
‘There’s nobody else. Unless’ – tears came to her eyes – ‘unless he’s left it to one of these old women he chased. He might well have.’
‘Was there a lot?’
‘I think so. He’d started to boast about it. But I don’t really know. I never saw his bank statements. He kept them to himself.’
‘A lot of money is sometimes a good reason for getting rid of someone.’
‘Yes.’ She nodded, then looked up, startled. ‘Surely you don’t think–’
Pel did think. Certainly the thought had crossed his mind. Madame Chappe appeared to be distressed by all that had happened, but Pel had been in the game long enough not to be surprised. The sweetest old women managed to poison their husbands or contrive accidents. Madame Chappe could well have done so too.
‘Of course not,’ he lied. ‘But there seem to have been other women in his life. Women he’d also boasted to about how much he was worth.’
She nodded again and he went on quickly.
‘Could he have met someone at one of these places he went to who would wish him dead?’ he asked.
Madame Chappe sighed. ‘I sometimes did,’ she said.
Darcy’s worries didn’t go away, and Angélique Courtoise wasn’t slow to notice.
‘You’re thinking about that Goriot again, aren’t you?’ she said.
Darcy nodded. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘He’s taken it badly that I’ve got Aimedieu back on my team.’ He paused, frowning. ‘I heard some funny things today. I think someone’s after me.’
‘Goriot?’
‘Someone.’ He managed a smile. ‘It’s a rotten world.’ He looked at her warmly. ‘Not you. If anybody isn’t rotten, it’s you.’
She looked startled. ‘That’s unexpected.’
Darcy grinned. ‘I’m getting sentimental. It’s a habit of men at my age. It must be the change of life.’
As he studied her, she looked steadily back at him. ‘When we first met,’ she said, ‘you convinced me getting engaged was dangerous.’
‘It was to that chap.’
‘You said that, married, I’d be certain to need a lover. Someone to fill in the time when my husband was dozing in front of the television after a hard day’s work. You said I’d be pulsating with desire and reeking of perfume and my husband wouldn’t even notice, and that to avoid being completely frustrated I’d need to get out and meet someone else – you, I seem to remember.’
‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’
‘Would you feel the same way about the situation if you were the husband?’
Darcy laughed. ‘Not if I were your husband.’
‘You’ve changed your tune a bit.’
‘I think I must be growing old. It’s a Pel syndrome. It must be infectious.’ Darcy paused. ‘All the same, my pad does seem emptier than it did.’
‘You need someone to support you when you wilt.’
Darcy shrugged. ‘There are a few people I can fall back on.’
‘You can fall back on me.’ Angélique’s expression was just a shade wistful. ‘You’ve been falling back on me a long time, in fact. Goriot can’t harm you.’ She paused and looked anxiously at him. ‘Can he?’
‘There are a lot of things than can happen to a cop that he doesn’t expect,’ Darcy admitted. ‘One of them is people setting him up. A cop’s not only got to keep his nose clean, he has to be seen to be keeping it clean. And if someone suggests he isn’t doing so, it’s surprising how quickly people begin to believe it.’
The following day Darcy approached Pel.
‘I think we ought to check on that Club Atlantique in Royan,’ he said. ‘It seems to be linked to our friend, Dupont.’
‘More than we thought, I suspect,’ Pel agreed. ‘He seemed to like health clubs.’
‘They might be able to come up with a reason why he’s dead. But it hasn’t a telephone number, so it’ll mean a visit.’
‘Who’re you suggesting?’ Pel asked.
‘Me, patron. It’s a long way for–’ Darcy nearly said ‘an old man like you’ but managed to change it at the last moment to ‘someone who’s as busy as you are. After all, it’s about as far as you can go in France from east to west. It’ll take two days. Perhaps three.’
Pel eyed him curiously, far from fooled. ‘You have an interest in Royan perhaps?’
Darcy grinned. ‘If nothing else,’ he said, ‘it’ll take me a long way from Goriot. But otherwise no, patron. I have no interest in Royan.’
He hadn’t either. He proposed to take his interest with him. He put it to Angélique Courtoise that evening as they ate. ‘Three days. On the coast. It’s not much of a place. All concrete because the Americans bombed it by mistake during the war. They did their best to put things right, though, and even the church’s concrete. There’s a good hotel I know near St-Georges de Didonne next door. Fancy it?’
She smiled. ‘What do you think?’
It proved to be a good break and they both enjoyed it. The beach club was closed, of course, because it was winter and you could hardly expect elderly ladies and gentlemen to try to touch their toes on the beach in a screaming wind off the Atlantic. But for the off-season months, for the local custom the Club Atlantique had been transferred to the basement of an old church at Bernon. It was a huge room, with a restored floor of sprung pine, and blazing with lights. Three dozen men and women, all past middle age and all corpulent, were gently swaying to the pounding beat of pop music from a set of amplifiers.
‘Up – and down – and up – and down.’
A woman in her twenties, with ‘Maybelle’ stencilled on her T-shirt across a splendid bosom, was shouting instructions at them and demonstrating how to do it without even panting or growing pink.
‘Press your knees together! It reduces the thighs. Clasp your hands and pull. It increases the muscles. Don’t forget we’re fighting the flab. Right, again: up – and down – and up – and down–’
It seemed ideal for coronaries.
Receiving Darcy’s message, ‘Maybelle’ halted the class and told them to carry on in their own way. They slackened off immediately she took her beady eye off them.
‘Dupont?’ she said. ‘That’s a pretty common name. And over seventy? He sounds a bit old. Most people of that age have the sense to stop this lark. You’d better have a word with Abd-el-Krim. He ran the class on the beach in the summer.’
Abd-el-Krim’s real name was Jean-Jacques Rabot and he undoubtedly got his sobriquet from the neat black beard and moustache he wore. He was young and as dark-skinned as an Arab – he probably even was an Arab – but he didn’t recall Dupont. However, the number 579 on the card they’d found took them a step forward. Rabot looked it up.
‘Last year,’ he said. ‘Name, Jean Dupont. I’ve got him now. He was a bit old for us and I don’t think he was really interested. He was on holiday and he liked to see Maybelle jumping up and down. I often caught him watching. I even caught him once round the back where the showers are. She was inside. He was a dirty old sod.’
‘Did he make any arrangements with any woman who might have had a husband?’
‘Well, there was a woman called Massières. She had a husband somewhere. She also had a shop in St-Georges. When she left, he left. Perhaps he followed her.’
They found the address of the woman, Helene Massières, who ran an expensive boutique in the main street. She was a blonde and a youthful fifty, with a good figure and no superfluous fat, and looked as though she spent all the time when she wasn’t selling clothes doing exercises or concentrating on slimming. In addition to looking younger than she was, she was also a super saleswoman, and before they knew where they were she had sold Angélique Courtoise a skirt and blouse. Darcy managed to project a question through a chink in the sales talk.
It stopped her dead and she answered shortly. ‘He was a nuisance,’ she said abruptly.
‘In what way?’
She seemed reluctant to talk. ‘In what way is a man a nuisance to a woman? He followed me the whole day.’
‘Was he in love with you or something?’
She gave Darcy a cold look.
‘But he stopped in the end?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
She hesitated again before speaking. ‘He met a woman from Dijon and transferred his attentions to her.’
Well, Dijon was nearer home and there didn’t seem to be much point in hanging around so they went to the hotel Darcy knew. It was old-fashioned and, as there was a gale blowing off the sea, had a huge fire roaring in the grate. There were extensive grounds so they wrapped up well to walk round them. Angélique had a red scarf round her neck and her hair blew in the wind. Her nose was pink but so were her cheeks and she looked bright and cheerful.
‘Happy?’ Darcy asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Let’s go to the cinema when we’ve eaten.’
They took tea in front of the fire, then drove into town to a restaurant Darcy knew where they ate tripes à la mode de Caen with a local wine. Afterwards they went to the cinema. They didn’t even bother to enquire what was showing and sat in the back row, Darcy with his arm round the girl. Afterwards, they returned to the hotel and drank coffee and brandy.
‘Do you go out at nights much when you’re home?’ Darcy asked.
‘Only with you.’
‘What do you do when I’m not there?’
‘Wait until you are.’
‘Isn’t there anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
She looked gently at him. ‘The others pale into insignificance.’
‘Don’t you ever cheat a bit?’
‘No.’
Darcy paused, ‘I’m glad you came,’ he said.
‘So am I.’ She paused. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t think it will get me very far.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because I know you.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Darcy said slowly, ‘that these days you do. I’m not so sure I know myself.’
‘Is Goriot worrying you?’
‘A bit. But it’s not Goriot. It’s the effect that worrying about Goriot’s having on me that’s worrying me.’
She didn’t understand what he was getting at. For that matter, Darcy wasn’t sure he did himself. He saw her eyes were moist.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘I’m the matter.’
‘How?’
‘I know it will all come to nothing and I ought to back away from you. But I don’t want to. Life’s rotten, isn’t it? There’s no future, Daniel.’
Darcy felt guilty.
‘There are other men around,’ she went on. ‘Plenty. But no bells ring. Not even a little tinkle, and I’m used to hearing great resounding peals when I’m with you. I really ought to have been more careful.’
They climbed into the car next morning, not quite looking at each other and half-imagining that the other guests were watching them. Dropping Angélique outside the Faculty of Medicine at the University, where she worked, Darcy moved on alone, trotting round the aerobics and callisthenics clubs in search of Achille-Jean Quelereil-Dupont, better known simply as Jean Dupont. His quarry couldn’t have chosen a more anonymous alias because Jean Dupont must have been the commonest name in France.
He found him again at the Palais des Sports at Mirabeau. It was less a palace than a set of barns converted into a luxury complex. One of them was a huge hangar-like shed behind the central building, and from it he could hear the thudding of the beat music that always seemed to accompany physical exercise. People in track suits or satin shorts and T-shirts were moving about the entrance hall, heading down a corridor marked ‘Showers and Changing Rooms’. Among them was a blond young man with bulging muscles and teeth that flashed almost as brightly as Darcy’s own.
‘Come on,’ he was saying. ‘Hurry up! It’s the run next! Change your shoes and be back here!’
‘Okay, Tony.’ The man who answered was surreptitiously biting a bar of chocolate.
On Darcy’s right was an office and he was met at the door by a woman whose age he guessed to be around sixty. She was slim, expensively dressed and had once been beautiful. She had peroxided hair and a heavily made up face.
‘I’m Alicia Coty,’ she said. ‘Madame Coty. Do you wish to enrol for our courses?’
Darcy shook his head, put on his best smile and produced his identity card with its red, white and blue stripe. Her smile vanished abruptly.
‘Police?’ she said sharply. ‘What do you want? We’ve nothing here of interest to you.’
‘I think I’d better decide that, Madame.’ Darcy didn’t like being dismissed before he had even opened his mouth.
‘We have no criminals here. People come here to get fit or to become more attractive to the opposite sex. They pay a lot of money for it.’
‘So I imagine. I’m looking for information on a man called Jean Dupont. He was keen on your sort of activity and he might well have attended your classes.’
She tempered her manner to wariness and listened as he described what he knew about the man he was seeking.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we have health and beauty – that’s for women, of course. I run that.’
‘You’re an expert?’
She managed a stiff smile. ‘I should hope so. I own this place. We also have computerised fitness, nutrition analysis, rejuvenation and longevity training. He might have been interested in those if he was getting on in years. We have stretch and tone isometrics, therapy massage, tension-reducing aerobics–’
Is that the one where they jump up and down?’
‘Well, yes, a little. They also do toe-touching and torso swinging – to reduce the hips.’
‘Who conducts this class?’
‘Annie Albert. She’s a fully qualified instructor–’
‘Young?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you’d better check the names in that class. That’s probably where he was.’
Madame Coty stared at him hostilely, then she spoke slowly. ‘Why do you want this Dupont?’
‘I don’t want him, Madame. I just want to know about him. I want to know why he was found dead on the motorway on the 14th of last month.’
Her face went pink. ‘He’s dead?’
‘He is, Madame. You seem concerned.’
‘No! No!’ She suddenly seemed a great deal less hostile. ‘I know the man you want. He came here. But he was asked to leave the class.’
‘Ah! Why?’
‘Annie said he was a nuisance.’
‘I’d like to have a word with Annie.’
Annie Albert was an attractive woman in her late twenties, with a good figure and a surprising bust for a gym instructress.
‘He didn’t bother with the exercises,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he was interested in them at all. When he came into the class he just stood at the back moving his arms and bending his knees a little and nothing else. Everybody else was giving it all they’d got. You have to if you wish to make progress.’
‘Why was he here then, do you think?’
‘Well, he came with a woman called Guignard. Jeanette Guignard. She came from somewhere in the city. But she left. I think she objected to his attentions.’
‘Old? Young?’
‘Fiftyish.’
‘Well preserved?’
‘Not particularly. She hadn’t paid attention to herself. She was overweight.’
‘When she left, what did Dupont do?’
‘He joined the aerobics class. As I say, he didn’t do anything. Just watched me.’
‘You, of course, were doing the exercises?’
‘I led the class.’
‘Jump up and down a bit? That sort of thing?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why do you think he watched you?’
‘Because he was a dirty old man. I’m engaged. To Tony Sarcino. He looks after the male classes.’
‘The one who looks like a Greek god?’
Her serious face cracked in a smile. ‘He does a bit, doesn’t he?’ she said.
By this time she had clearly decided that Darcy wasn’t bad-looking himself and was much more friendly. She invited him into a room labelled ‘Instructors’ and offered him a coffee.
‘Have you been doing this work long?’ he asked.
‘No. But it’s not hard to learn. We’ve got cardio-fitness tests, sun lamps, therapists, nutritionists, steam baths, inhalation rooms, active mud.’ She grinned. ‘It’s all balls, of course. It does make you fitter, but a normal person who doesn’t overeat doesn’t need it – or grapefruit juice and brewer’s yeast. You don’t really need to wear yourself out keeping fit.’
‘Did Dupont try to molest you?’ Darcy asked.
‘He once put an arm round my shoulder. I told him pupils weren’t allowed contact with instructors – any sort of contact. It’s not true, of course. Some of the pupils are just friendly and it does no harm. He was different.’
‘What happened?’
‘He left. I told him of a place at Yon.’
‘What place is that?’
‘The Reggio Hall of Health.’
‘Same sort of place as this?’
‘Not as good.’
‘Why did you send him there?’
‘I heard one of the instructors goes in for the sort of thing he wanted. Barbara Valendon. She was here for a while. She tried to get her mitts on Tony. She got the push.’
Darcy wondered if Annie Albert had arranged it.