Doctor Cham had spent a lot of time thinking of the cases he was involved in. By this time they included Colonel Boileau. He sat at his desk staring at the contents of a line of kidney dishes he had spread across its top. In one of them were splinters of glass taken from Colonel Boileau’s face. In another was the shard he had removed from the wound in the groin of Duff Forbes Mackay. In another were splinters from the Dutch tourist’s spectacles, broken when they had been trodden on – as they now knew – by Tassigny in the hold-up at Marix. In a fourth dish were the splinters taken from Sergeant Gehrer’s eye – like those in Boileau’s head, blunt and square but as dangerous as a bullet when flung at full speed. In the last tray was the tiny splinter of glass he’d taken from the head of the man found on the motorway, Achille-Jean Quelereil-Dupont, known as Jean Dupont.
They intrigued him. Some of them had similarities. Some were different from the others. All were puzzles, some solved, some not.
He decided to go and see Leguyader, head of the Forensic Laboratory. He didn’t like Leguyader, who was an old bore and liked to correct people and blind them with science but, it had to be admitted, he was good at his job.
Leguyader heard what he had to say, then reached for his white coat. ‘We’d better look into this,’ he said.
Pel was surprised to learn that a deputation consisting of Leguyader and Doctor Cham was anxious to see him. He had been just about to contact Madame Weill’s daughter, and he put down the telephone reluctantly and stared suspiciously at the two of them as they entered his office. He was always wary of visits from Leguyader, but the fact that he had requested an interview suggested something important was in the wind. Pel fully expected it to be a complaint about procedure. Someone, he felt sure, had been contacting Leguyader without going through the proper channels. Leguyader was a stickler for the proper channels of communication. But it was nothing to do with procedure. It wasn’t even anything to do with blinding them with science. It was about glass.
‘Glass,’ Leguyader said.
‘What about it?’
‘Glass,’ Leguyader said, ‘is a term which covers a wide range of substances that differ widely in chemical composition and physical properties, but which possess the essential characteristic of having cooled from a state of fusion to become solid without crystallisation. Most commercial glasses can be regarded as mixtures of silicates. Window and plate glasses are usually made by fusing silica with substances which differ from those used in flint glass, which is used in cut crystal glassware, and heat-resisting glass. They’re coloured if necessary by adding metallic oxides to a colourless base.’
‘What are we getting at?’ Pel asked.
Leguyader held up a hand for silence. It was one of his more infuriating traits that he believed everyone was eager to hear what he had to say. ‘Plate glass,’ he went on, ‘glass used for car windscreens, crystal glass and glass for bottles, which are made these days by machine instead of being blown individually, are all different. They also break differently. When shattered, windscreens break into small thick pieces, almost like cubes, though there are among them tiny, sharp shards. Bottle glass tends to break into long slivers, often dagger sharp. Headlight glass is different again.’
Pel shifted in his seat. ‘Am I here to listen to a diatribe on the manufacture of glass?’
‘No,’ Leguyader agreed sourly. ‘You are here in the interests of justice.’
Pel scowled, put firmly in his place, and Leguyader smiled.
‘I know you consider me a bore,’ he went on and Pel’s head jerked up because this was something he had never expected to hear from Leguyader’s lips.
‘So do I you,’ Leguyader said calmly. ‘But give me your attention. It’s usually worth while.’
Pel had to admit that it was and since Leguyader, instead of stamping out in a rage at Pel’s comment, had been willing to admit himself a bore to make him listen, doubtless what he had to say might produce something.
‘Cham and I have worked together over this,’ Leguyader explained, ‘so if you find it tedious, you’ll have to blame him, too.’
Cham grinned and everything suddenly became easier.
Leguyader indicated the kidney dishes Cham had brought along, covered with transparent film and laid out in a row.
‘From left to right. Splinters from Colonel Boileau’s face. The shard of glass removed from Duff Forbes Mackay’s groin wound. Fragments from the spectacles of the Dutch tourist held up by highway robbers at Marix. Splinters from Sergeant Gehrer’s eye, removed by the eye surgeon and preserved by Doctor Cham. In the last dish the splinter Cham found in the wound in the head of Quelereil-Dupont.’
Pel was listening now.
‘They’re all different kinds of glass,’ Leguyader went on. ‘The glass from the car Gehrer was driving and the glass from the car that hit Colonel Boileau are practically the same – probably even from the same manufacturer. The splinters from the Dutch tourist’s spectacles are of finer glass. Finally, the splinter from Quelereil-Dupont’s head wound: one would have expected to find it was the same glass as that found in the wounds of Sergeant Gehrer and Colonel Boileau. But it isn’t. Because it isn’t glass from a car. We didn’t examine it too closely at first because we assumed it came from a car’s headlight. A great mistake, because it didn’t. It’s not the same sort of glass at all. We’ve checked it with various glass manufacturers. Three of them, They all gave the same opinion, despite the minute size of it. It didn’t come from a car. It came from a bottle.’
‘A bottle?’ Pel leaned forward. ‘He was hit with a bottle?’
‘Not a wine bottle because the glass is colourless and wine bottles are usually green. Not a gin bottle either because they’re often green, too. Not brandy, because they’re usually brown unless they’re half bottles containing cheap brandy, in which case they’re often clear, like the one that supplied the shard that killed Duff Forbes Mackay. A vodka bottle? Litre size, for example?’
‘A full one,’ Cham put in. ‘An empty one wouldn’t be heavy enough to cause the injury he received. It must have weighed around a kilo.’
Pel sat in silence for a moment, then he looked up and even managed a smile at Leguyader. For a moment Cham thought he was going to embrace him.
‘You’ve said I think you a bore,’ he announced. ‘And that you think I’m one. Doubtless we’re both right. However, and I’ve admitted it before, there’s nobody better at your job than you are. I think, between you, you’ve just solved another mystery and I’m grateful.’
‘Has he solved another mystery, patron?’ Aimedeu asked as Leguyader vanished.
‘More than one. And with a few splinters of glass.’ Pel shrugged. ‘I know he likes to think we couldn’t function without him and, unfortunately, that’s true because he’s the biggest bore this side of the grave. But he is good at his job.’ Pel paused. ‘Am I a bore, too? He said so.’
Aimedieu grinned. Yes, he thought, Pel was a bloody bore occasionally. Especially when he went on about being ill and not being able to give up smoking. But, like Leguyader, he was good at his job.
‘Bore?’ he said loyally. ‘Not you, Chief.’
Pel studied him gravely. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said.
Within half an hour Pel was talking by telephone to Madame Weill’s daughter.
‘My mother doesn’t live here.’ Madame Luciano sounded surprised at his request to speak to her mother. ‘She runs a nursing home at Lugny in Burgundy.’
‘They tell me she’s visiting you and has been for some time.’
There was a long silence before Madame Luciano spoke again. ‘I haven’t seen her for six months,’ she said.
She was puzzled and insisted on flying from Marseilles immediately, while Pel decided to delay the holding charges he’d been about to make against the three old men, and await her arrival. Later that day, the thing that had been bothering him for so long became clear. He’d finally remembered where he’d seen Madame Sully before.
He looked at his wife as they sipped their aperitifs. ‘You remember,’ he said over the Mahler, ‘when we ate at the Relais St-Armand a little while ago, there was a woman there who caught your attention.’
Madame had no recollection of the incident. It had been so long before, it had completely slipped from her mind and Pel had to struggle to bring it back.
‘Blond woman going grey,’ he said. ‘With a big dark man. Curly hair. She wore a red polka-dot dress you said came from your boutique. She had a handbag you said also came from your place. And a hair style you said was one of yours. You said Sylvie Goss did it.’
Recollection came. Seeing it was important, Madame turned down the Mahler. ‘I remember,’ she said.
‘Would it have been an expensive dress?’
‘We don’t sell cheap dresses.’ Madame smiled. ‘Snobbery being what it is in the clothing and perfumery business, if you don’t charge a lot, they think the goods are inferior. Sell cheap dresses and you have failure. Sell expensive ones and you have a runaway success on your hands.’
Pel was frowning again. ‘I ask because I wouldn’t have imagined the woman who was wearing it drew the sort of salary that enabled her to buy at your place. Or buy handbags of the quality you sell. What about the hair style?’
‘I remember it. Sylvie did it. I recognised her style.’
‘Would that be expensive?’
‘Our hair styles don’t come cheaply either.’
Bertholles, the carpet shop, were also helpful. Sure, they said, they had sold a carpet to the Hospice de Lugny. Not a very good one but the hospice hadn’t been particular. They just wanted some floor covering and they hadn’t quibbled about the quality or the colour. It had been delivered within a few days.
‘What happened to the old carpet? The one it replaced?’
‘We’ve got it here. There’s a bad stain on it. Someone’s spilt a bottle of red wine on it. There’s nothing worse for carpets. They must have had a party. It smelled of whisky.’
Soon afterwards Records came back to Pel. They exchanged names for a while then Pel tried one more.
Records were silent for a moment or two, and there was the sound of paper being moved. ‘There’s a record,’ they said. ‘Both for fraud. Both in Amiens. And, if you’re interested, she still seems to be active. We’ve been approached by the bank. Crédit Industriel. They wanted to know much the same as you. We didn’t tell them anything because our records aren’t for public use. But they did say she’s trying to negotiate a loan to buy a big house in Toulon. The name given is Weill. Any use to you?’
‘I think it might be,’ Pel said.
As he put down the telephone, Claudie appeared. ‘There’s a Madame Odebert to see Inspector Darcy,’ she said. ‘She’s wanting to report a disappearance.’
‘Inspector Darcy’s not here. Give it to Aimedieu. He can deal with a Missing Persons report.’
Claudie hesitated. ‘I think this one might be more than just a Missing Persons report, patron,’ she said.
‘It’s my father,’ Madame Odebert said. ‘Henri Lefêvre. He’s disappeared and I’m wondering where he is. Then I read about this man being found on the motorway and that he’d been at that hospice at Lugny. My father was there.’
Lefêvre had gone into the hospice at Lugny for a matter of six months.
‘My husband’s a professor at the University,’ Madame Odebert said. ‘He got the opportunity to exchange with a professor from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Naturally, he wanted me to go with him. My father, who’s eighty-four and lived with us, didn’t want to be in our way and he said he’d go into the hospice for the six months we were away. It seemed all right to me. It seemed comfortable and when we left he seemed happy and had money available. He’s quite wealthy. But then we stopped getting letters and I grew worried. In the end my husband thought I should fly home and make enquiries.’
‘And?’
‘I’ve been to the hospice. He isn’t there. They said he left three months ago. They say he announced that he wanted to go home. Well, he might have, but it seems very unlike him, and none of our neighbours has seen him.’
As Madame Odebert left, Pel picked up his cigarettes, slipped them into his pocket and stood up.
‘Aimedieu.’
As Aimedieu appeared in the doorway, Pel gestured. ‘Get in touch with Inspector Turgot, of Uniform,’ he said. ‘He knows what I want. I’ve talked to him. We’re going to Lugny.’
When they arrived at the hospice, there were three or four elderly people sitting in chairs in the sun on the lawn. They looked up with interest, as though they welcomed any diversion from their boredom.
‘Have they found him?’ an old woman asked. ‘They said he was in the river and that he was a solicitor who’d defrauded his clients.’
‘He was found ages ago,’ an old man corrected. ‘Some men from the village did for him.’
The youth, Bernard Sully, met them at the door. He was still working on the steps with a trowel and a bricklayer’s hammer. He studied them with his blank eyes and vacant expression. At Pel’s request he summoned his parents.
Like the old people outside, they’d heard that Siméon, Espagne and Cardier had been taken in for questioning.
‘Have they been charged?’ Madame Sully asked.
‘Not yet. There are a few things to sort out still. Siméon has a record and they knew Dupont had money and valuables in his house. After he was killed, it was decided to take him to the motorway and leave him there so it would look like an accident. They were in a hurry.’
‘They must have been, the way they buttoned up his clothes.’ Bernard Sully spoke excitedly. Then he stopped abruptly, his eyes wide and shocked, and there was a dead silence. Pel stared at him.
‘Where did you learn that?’ he asked. ‘It’s not general knowledge.’
Sully was staring at his wife, then his eyes turned to his son. ‘You stupid bastard,’ he said.
As he lunged for the boy, Pel stuck out his foot. Sully stumbled over it and crashed into a small side table which collapsed into matchwood under his weight.
The boy watched dumbly, his eyes uncomprehending; then, as Aimedieu dragged out the handcuffs and wrenched his father’s hands behind his back, he came to life. Swinging round, he burst through the open french windows. But, as he stepped on to the terrace, two of Turgot’s men appeared from behind the door. As they grabbed his arms, he gave a strangled shout like that of a captured animal.
‘Take him away,’ Pel said. ‘Don’t be too hard on him.’
That bomb at the airport.
Things had been stirring for some time in Misset’s not over-alert mind. As he watched Ferry’s house from outside the Petite Alsacienne he saw the upstairs window – the window of what Ferry called his study – open, and a cloud of white powder tossed out. It landed on the garage roof below and was promptly swept by the breeze in the direction of Jouet’s garden.
Misset frowned. He’d just read the report on the wounding at the airport. One of the substances in the bomb that had caused it had been sodium chlorate, he gathered. It suddenly seemed to be worth looking into.
There was a garden centre down the road. It wasn’t a big one, because the French were never enthusiastic gardeners, but they answered his question. ‘Sodium chlorate,’ the salesman said, ‘is no longer sold loose, and it’s just labelled weed-killer. In any case, there are better ones these days and sodium chlorate rots anything you put it into – even tins. I had a tin of it and the bottom fell out.’
‘Nasty stuff, is it?’ Misset said.
‘Very. But that’s not why they don’t label it these days. People use it for making bombs. They mix it with something else.’
‘What?’
‘It’s more than my job’s worth to tell you.’
‘Come off it,’ Misset said. ‘I know.’
The man looked indignant. ‘Well, if you know, why ask?’
Misset puffed his chest out. ‘Because I’m police,’ he said. ‘And I’m interested.’
It seemed to be time to pick up Ferry. Misset was certain he’d solved the mystery of the mad bomber at the airport. It wasn’t terrorists of the Free Burgundy organisation. It wasn’t the Russians or the Chinese or rioting students. It was Aloïs Ferry, because he’d been sacked and wanted to get at Trudis.
Ferry’s car was still in the drive and Misset took up a position by the bar of the Petite Alsacienne to consider what to do. The correct thing would have been to call for assistance because Ferry might react with violence. But Misset wanted any glory that was going for himself and, besides, it was hot and he was thirsty. Calling for a beer, he glanced at the barmaid. Oh, God, he thought, if only she were his wife!
He had a feeling that Ferry was on to him. His last chat with him had been stiff and formal. Ferry had been wary and he had a suspicion that at that very moment he was watching Misset through the window of the upper room where he worked. His car was in the drive below, blue and rusty and looking like a heap of junk. Misset began to regard him in a new light. His resentment at his dismissal had not been obvious but it was clear it was seething inside and he had intended doing something about it. He had tried a few curses against Trudis and when they hadn’t produced any thunderbolts or flashes of lightning he’d decided to try something more positive.
It didn’t require much effort on Misset’s part to reach the conclusion that the bombs at the airport, amateurish as they were and despite the fact that one of them had indirectly been the cause of Nadauld’s death, were Ferry’s work. No wonder Jouet had a wilting garden. Ferry had been using the weed-killer to make his bombs in the upstairs room he claimed was his study and had been throwing spilled crystals on to the sloping roof of the garage just beneath, from where they had blown in the breeze on to Jouet’s property. Ferry had certainly been damaging Jouet’s garden but it had been unintentional. His quarrel was not with Jouet. It was with the airport.
The barmaid was at the street end of the bar. As Misset picked up his beer and stared in her direction, Ferry slipped from his mind. A girl with a bust like that, he thought, shouldn’t be serving drinks. She should be in a public harem where, for a small fee, Misset could enjoy her favours. There had been a time, he thought nostalgically, when his wife had had a bust like that. Misset had picked his wife for her physical charms but, he realised now, he ought to have thought ahead and taken a look at her mother. They always said that if you wanted to know what your wife would develop into, you should look at her mother. Misset’s wife’s mother was an interfering old bag who had nagged her husband to his grave. From time to time she came to stay with Misset and his wife. Those were the times when Misset discovered he was on constant duty in the city.
He stared again at the girl behind the bar, hardly aware of what he was doing. Getting his hands on that lot, he thought, would be like –
‘You looking at me, Dad?’
Misset came to life with a start. He hadn’t been looking at anyone. He’d been staring into space, his mind far away, imagining erotic happenings, and it startled him to realise he had been staring at the girl without being aware of the fact. With a bust like that, too!
He realised what she had said. ‘Dad,’ he thought. Mother of God, what had he come to?
‘No,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t looking at you.’
‘Yes, you were! You’ve been looking at me for days. Ever since you started coming in here. Who are you? Merve the Perve or something?’
‘Well,’ Misset said gallantly, ‘you’re worth looking at.’
‘Not by a wrinkly like you,’ the girl said spiritedly and, shamed and humbled, Misset swallowed the last of his beer and headed for the door. As he reached the street he stopped dead. Name of God! His senses were brought up all-standing. Ferry’s car had gone. Where? The bastard was probably blowing up something else with his weed-killer. Perhaps he’d set off for Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris to blow up a couple of 747s, or some of that plastic tubing they used to contain the moving staircases that conveyed passengers from one place to another.
He ran into the road, barely aware that the barmaid was shrieking that he hadn’t paid. Where in God’s name, he thought, had the little sod gone?
He caught sight of the rusty blue Renault just as it disappeared round the corner down the road. He was heading for Leu, he decided. Why? Was he heading for the airport again? To the garden centre for some more sodium chlorate? Then, in the middle of his panic and for no reason at all, he remembered Ferry’s interest in Pel. ‘Who’s your boss? Where’s he live?’
Hostage, his mind shrieked. He was going to hold Pel hostage or something. Blow him up if he didn’t withdraw Misset from the scent. It had often occurred to Misset that it would be pleasant to plant a bomb under Pel’s car but, though Misset was a weak character and a bully in many ways, the idea of disloyalty of that kind wasn’t in his nature.
He fell into his car, to find the barmaid at the window demanding money. Frantically, he put his hand in his pocket and threw the contents at her.
‘Oh, charming!’ she yelled.
Leaving with a squeal of tyres, Misset headed for Leu at full speed. The roads were clear and he knew he couldn’t be far behind.
Roaring into Leu – Misset’s car wasn’t new and always roared – Misset saw Ferry’s Renault parked in the road outside Pel’s house. A small boy with a dog that looked like a rag rug was staring at it.
‘He’s gone inside,’ he told Misset.
‘Thanks,’ Misset said.
‘Is he a crook?’
‘Yes.’
Misset just had time to be aware of the small boy’s look of excitement, then he was running up the drive. Bursting into the house, he saw Madame Pel, with her back against a small table. There was another woman with her, who he assumed was the dragon housekeeper he’d heard about at the Hôtel de Police. Between them on the table was a large heavy-looking device in shining copper with a long oak handle which he realised was an old-fashioned warming pan. The housekeeper was holding a hammer and nails and it dawned on him that they were on the point of hanging the warming pan on the wall. The hammer was far too large for the job and looked heavy enough to drive stakes into hard earth.
Ferry was pointing a small automatic at them. Misset recognised it as a Belgian gun of the sort people bought for protection. Bank clerks carried them. Commercial travellers carried them. So also, it seemed, did Ferry.
Madame Pel – even in his extremity as the gun swung towards him, Misset noticed she was attractive – looked up.
‘Sergeant Misset!’ she said.
‘Madame!’
Ferry grinned and gestured with the automatic. ‘Get over there, alongside them,’ he said.
Pel had just unloaded the Sullys at the Hôtel de Police. ‘Tuck them up, Aimedieu,’ he said.
‘What do I charge them with, patron?’
‘I’m not sure yet. But you won’t go far wrong if you make it conspiracy, which will do to hold them for the time being.’
Heading for his office, Pel took the Meissen figures from the carton in which they’d been brought to the Hôtel de Police. Some of the silver from Dupont’s house was missing but he suspected that was because it was easy to get rid of. A search round the antique shops would doubtless turn some of it up and then there’d also be a few questions to be answered by the owners about why they’d been dealing with stolen property. He expected a few interesting answers.
He placed the Meissen figures on his desk and studied them. He knew little about antiques but he was aware they had beauty. They would have to get Mijo Lehmann, Nosjean’s girl, in to value them. Madame Chappe would no doubt be pleased to see them. If they were worth what she said they were worth, no wonder they were still around. Property of that value wasn’t easy to get rid of. It would need a trip to Paris or Marseilles, even to London or the USA. They would need to be dealt with carefully, and the Sullys had been nervous.
It was pretty clear now what had happened because the Sullys had talked. Pel had had the details right but he’d been looking in the wrong direction and a weapon had not been found because it didn’t exist any more. It was a bottle – a full one – and it had been smashed against Dupont’s head.
‘They’d all been drinking,’ he explained to Aimedieu when he returned, ‘and they tried to dope the old man with sleeping tablets. But he was tougher than they thought and came round while they were standing with his wallet in their hands.’
As he had struggled to his feet, the youth, Bernard Ruffel, had panicked and hit him with the full litre bottle of whisky. It had broken, scattering glass, whisky and blood on the carpet.
‘The bottle they showed us when we first went out there,’ Pel went on, ‘was a new one they’d bought to replace it. What else they hit him with we don’t know but we’ll doubtless soon find out. They haven’t finished talking yet. Bernard Ruffel had been repairing the flagged kitchen floor and had brought his tools to the card game because, he says, he didn’t want to stop. There was a cold chisel among them so I expect the hammer he was using on the front steps when we first met him was there, too. I expect we’ll find it eventually.’
Aimedieu listened carefully, wondering how anyone as unprepossessing as Pel could have the skills he had.
‘The Sullys thought he was dead,’ Pel continued. ‘And, knowing what he possessed they went to his room for his keys and two of them, the father and the son, went to his house and lifted the Meissen figurines and the silver and the money he kept there.’
‘What about Madame Sully?’ Aimedieu asked.
‘She stayed behind to go through his room. When the others returned they found her in a panic. She’d left the old man on the floor – dead, she believed – but when she returned from his room he’d vanished. He’d come round and staggered off into the darkness. But they found blood and guessed he’d headed for the motorway to get help. When they found him this time, he was dead.’
After that it had been a series of hurried expediencies. Because it was growing late, they hadn’t known what to do, so they had decided not to cart the dead man back to the hospice and had sent the son, Bernard Ruffel, to collect his clothes. But, because he wasn’t very bright, he forgot the underclothes and socks.
‘They couldn’t delay, though,’ Pel ended, ‘and they dressed him hurriedly with what they had and, in the dark, buttoned him up incorrectly and with his waistcoat inside out. Then they dumped him on the motorway and went back to Lugny to burn the pyjamas, clean up and arrange to change the carpet. They told the shop it had been spoiled with red wine. Probably they emptied a bottle on it to hide the blood. They didn’t go to the house in Dôle and they didn’t touch the briefs in the safe because they didn’t know they existed.’
Pel lit a cigarette, feeling he deserved it. It would probably be the final nail in his coffin but he was feeling so pleased with himself he was prepared to drop dead on the spot if necessary.
The Sullys had tried hard and probably deserved ten for effort, but they’d been amateurs all along. Still, he thought with satisfaction, they might have got away with it but for the fact that Doctor Cham had noticed that the wounds were wrong.
And he, Pel, had been looking for an old scandal, blackmail and extortion, even drug trafficking, as a reason for the murder, and all they’d found was greed. Marianne Sully had wanted money because she was eager to transfer her activities to the safety of the South Coast. And very nice, too! There’d have been plenty of elderly geriatrics down there with a lot of money and, by using Madame Weill’s name, which was known to the bank, she’d been negotiating a loan to do it. She hadn’t been without experience, either, because, with her husband, she’d engineered frauds on at least two previous occasions.
As he turned to place the Meissen figurines on his safe, the telephone went. Annoyed at the interruption of his triumph, he snatched it up.
‘Inform me,’ he snapped.
What he got wasn’t what he expected. There was a gabble in his ear that made his hair stand on end. ‘What!’ he yelled.
Madame Pel was showing no sign of panic and Misset, still panting after his run, had to admire her for it. The housekeeper type just looked angry – as if she resented having her work interrupted.
Madame Pel looked from Ferry to Misset. ‘What’s all this about?’ she asked.
Misset drew a deep breath. ‘He’s the type who planted the bomb at the airport,’ he said.
Ferry grinned, obviously pleased to be recognised. ‘It took you long enough to work it out,’ he said. ‘I’ll do better next time. I’m still only learning.’
Misset was still struggling to get his breath.
‘It was to get back at the airport?’ he said.
‘That’s right.’ Ferry’s smile vanished. ‘Somebody had to show them.’
Talking to Misset, he had his back now to Madame Pel. Beyond him, Misset saw she was moving quietly and it dawned on him she was grasping the handle of the warming pan they’d been cleaning. Name of God, he thought, she’s going to hit him with it!
Even as the thought crossed his mind, Madame Pel swung. Ferry must have caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and he turned just in time to get the warming pan full in the face. The gun went flying.
Good God, Misset thought. Here was Madame Pel, a woman, supposed to be fainting with terror as any normal woman would when faced with a pistol, and instead she was laying about her with a will. It was time he did something. Even as the thought crossed his mind, he dived at Ferry and got a fist in the face for his trouble. A kick in the family jewels doubled him up and he staggered back. Recovering, he stumbled forward again just as Madame Pel swung the warming pan once more. Unfortunately this time it missed its target and hit Misset at the side of the head with a clang that set his ears ringing. Ferry leapt for the gun but as he laid his hand on it, the heavy hammer the housekeeper held came down on his fingers. Ferry screamed and, reeling away, clutching his hand, he was hit in the face with another more accurate swing of the warming pan. As he tottered sideways he was finished off with yet another swing and disappeared under the table.
‘Madame Routy,’ Madame Pel said briskly, ‘get the clothes line.’
By the time Misset had recovered himself, Ferry’s hands were tied behind his back and he was trussed like a chicken. For good measure he was attached to the table leg.
Misset struggled to his feet. ‘Thank you, madame,’ he said. ‘He might have shot me.’
Madame Pel smiled. ‘You did well,’ she said.
‘Did I?’ Misset was still dazed. ‘I think we’d better telephone headquarters.’
‘You’d better do it,’ Madame Pel said. ‘It’s your case.
There was no need. A police car was just turning into the drive and two of Pomereu’s men were falling out of it.
‘That was quick,’ Madame Pel said as they appeared.
Yves Pasquier was just behind them, his dog barking excitedly. ‘It was me,’ he said. ‘The policeman said he was a crook so I thought he’d need help. I telephoned.’