Madame Faivre-Perret was quite happy to look around the shops while Pel drove off in the hired car and sought out the fisherman Darcy had discovered. Le Bihan had made enquiries for him and obtained his name – Charles-Louis LeGrèves.
He was a strong-looking man in his late thirties, swarthy as a gypsy with tight black curls. He wore a fisherman’s jersey and thigh boots, and there was a policeman standing alongside his boat.
‘To make sure the bastard doesn’t disappear to sea,’ the policeman explained. ‘Inspector Le Bihan’s instructions.’
LeGrèves took an aggressive attitude. ‘The whole fleet’s out except me,’ he said. ‘Heading for the Cornish coast of England. Your excuse had better be a good one.’
‘It is,’ Pel said. ‘It’s a murder enquiry.’
‘What stupid con got himself killed?’
‘It isn’t a him. It’s a her. Dominique Pigny.’
LeGrèves frowned, his eyes shifty. ‘I read about that in the papers,’ he agreed. ‘Who did it?’
‘Did you?’
LeGrèves glared. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But you did know her?’
‘No.’
‘She went to sea in your boat. How did that miracle happen?’
LeGrèves made an angry gesture. ‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘I did know her.’
‘Why did you say you didn’t?’
‘I thought you’d think I killed her.’
‘I still might.’
‘I didn’t do it.’ LeGrèves was noisily indignant. ‘There was nothing to kill her for. Except perhaps her cooking. She couldn’t cook to save her life. My engineer and deckhand said that if she stayed, they’d go.’
‘And did she stay?’
‘Yes. I got a boy to do the cooking and she looked after the engine. She was good with engines. But I didn’t kill her. In spite of her cooking. We were always good friends.’
‘How good? She was pregnant. Were you that friendly?’
LeGrèves scowled. ‘So she was putting it across me,’ he said.
‘Was it yours?’
‘No. I hadn’t seen her for some time but she came down here about three months ago and stayed the night at my place. I even asked her to marry me. We got on all right. We never had a cross word except about food.’
LeGrèves’ friends seemed to think differently when Pel bought a beer at a nearby café. The fishermen, their clothes marked with salt, were sitting at old-fashioned marble tables and, like most Bretons, were close enough to give little away. But Pet was experienced enough to get them talking and soon discovered that LeGrèves had been seen arguing fiercely with Dominique Pigny.
When he returned to the Petite Annicke, LeGrèves was sitting on the foredeck in the sun, making a fender out of unroven coir rope. Le Bihan’s policeman sat alongside him, smoking and chatting.
‘When are you going to take this stupid con away so I can take my boat to sea?’ LeGrèves growled.
‘When I’m satisfied I haven’t any more questions for you. I’ve been having a talk with your friends in the bar there. They tell me it wasn’t all sweetness and light between you and Dominique.’
LeGrèves directed an angry glance at the bar. ‘That’s because I pick up more than they do.’
‘From fishing?’
‘No – yes.’
‘Make your mind up. I’ll ask you again: Did you kill Dominique?’
‘No I didn’t. But—’
‘But what? Had you reason to?’
‘I might have had. After all, she put one across me.’
‘What?’
‘A little business I did with her.’
‘What sort of business? Smuggling? French brandy across to Cornwall? Have you ever tried it?’
LeGrèves hesitated then he grinned. It changed his whole appearance and gave him a mischievous look. ‘Once or twice,’ he said. ‘We get in touch by radio and the Cornishmen meet us with whisky off Finisterre or Land’s End. Are you going to charge me?’
‘Smuggling’s a problem for Customs.’
‘Will you pass it on to them?’
‘No, I won’t. Was Dominique in it with you?’
LeGrèves lit a cigarette quickly and blew out smoke. ‘She fixed it. She was quite a girl.’ His scowl returned. ‘She knew where to get rid of it and she was also clever enough to bolt with the money while I wasn’t looking.’
‘Is that what she came for?’
LeGrèves looked puzzled. ‘Probably. I don’t know. She’d certainly got something else on. I don’t know what it was. She said she was going to the newspaper office to look something up in their files. Who killed her? Do you know?’
‘I thought it might have been you.’
LeGrèves shrugged. ‘At the time she disappeared I wouldn’t have minded.’
Glancing at his watch, Pel decided he still had time to visit the newspaper office.
As he was shown into the library, he explained he was looking for a young woman who’d been asking three months before to see the files. Because not many outsiders asked for them, the librarian remembered Dominique Pigny well, especially when Pel showed her the copies of the photographs Madame Charnier had supplied.
‘She was looking for August, 1970,’ she said.
‘Would you know what it was she was looking for?’
The librarian wouldn’t and Pel sat down with the huge file and started working slowly through the sheets. It seemed a hopeless task but then he remembered that Odette Héon had said Dominique Pigny had cut the files with nail scissors while the librarian wasn’t looking and he started turning the sheets more quickly. On August 17th, the page had been defaced and the jagged edges showed where something had been cut out by small-bladed scissors.
The librarian was indignant. ‘They’re forbidden to deface the files,’ she said. ‘I wonder how she managed it?’
‘What I’m wondering,’ Pel said, ‘is what it was.’
There were other files and ten minutes later the librarian appeared with another bulky volume. Turning up August 17th, they found that what Dominique Pigny had cut out was nothing more than the report of an inquest on an elderly woman by the name of Simone Cochet, of 17, Rue Dupuy, who had been found dead at the bottom of the stairs by her daughter, Jacqueline.
‘Now why,’ Pel said aloud, ‘would she be interested in that?’
Returning to the city centre with a photocopy of the article, Pel found the police station, identified himself, and asked what was known of Madame Cochet. Records weren’t kept there but a middle-aged civilian clerk remembered the case.
‘She was old,’ he said. ‘At first it was thought she’d had an intruder but it was decided in the end she’d heard a noise, got out of bed and fallen down the stairs. It was a big old house and they were steep. She wasn’t found until a week afterwards when her daughter called. I can dig out the records but it’ll take time.’
‘Anything special about the property?’ Pel asked. ‘Made of gold? Studded with diamonds? Anything like that?’
The clerk grinned. ‘Bit tumbledown, as I remember. It’s gone now. It was used for a while by the daughter until some charity organisation bought it, then squatters got in there. After that they pulled it down and put up a block of flats in its place.’
Pel nodded, satisfied and, borrowing a telephone, informed Le Bihan what he was doing and arranged for a discreet eye to be kept on LeGrèves. Then, driving back to the shops, he found Madame still quite happy, her arms full of parcels.
It was late afternoon as they drove towards the hotel they’d booked at Benodet. It was a comfortable family hotel, just beginning to open for the holiday season and Pel gallantly gave Madame the room with the better outlook and the bigger bed.
It started raining as they settled in and Pel glared at it. For Darcy, he thought bitterly, it would have been a balmy night with a moon as big as an orange and they’d have been able to stroll hand in hand near the sea. Because it was Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel, it chose to emulate the Flood. Doubtless the Ice Age and the End of the World were just around the corner.
Faintly nervous and unsure of himself, he met Madame for apéritifs in the bar where he went mad and ordered champagne to celebrate their first holiday together. The champagne was just beginning to work and his face had finally become unfrozen when an enormous figure like a badly-set blancmange appeared in the doorway. It was Le Bihan.
‘Thought I’d look you up,’ he said. ‘I can join you for a meal and talk a bit of business. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’
Pel was all for hitting him over the head with the ice bucket.
Back at the Hôtel de Police the following afternoon, uncertain whether to be depressed by the fact that the arrival of Le Bihan had ruined his evening or elated by the fact that Madame had insisted that she didn’t mind so long as she was with him, Pel felt exhausted. Le Bihan had hung on, talking about himself, long enough to spoil the evening and Pel had gone to bed with a feeling of having missed an opportunity.
As he’d undressed, he’d wondered if by chance Madame was expecting him to make a foray down the corridor after the lights went out. Was it possible? Women seemed to expect these sort of things. On the other hand, if she didn’t, it could ruin a beautiful friendship. It seemed to call for courage, however, and a touch of élan, and the Pels were not unknown for such things. There must have been a Pel, he felt, leading the attackers at the storming of the Bastille. On the other hand, of course, he had to admit, the family was also noted for its commonsense so it was also very likely that ancestor of his had quietly disappeared down a side street until it was all over.
Nevertheless, the situation had seemed to demand a show of spirit, but the spirit of Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel was obviously not the spirit that had made France great. He had thought about it for a long time and had just reached the conclusion it was worth a try when he had fallen asleep.
He was sitting in his office frowning at a photocopy of the article Dominique Pigny had cut from the newspaper in Concarneau, wondering just what it meant. He had placed it exactly in the middle of his blotter. Now that he’d reached high rank, Cadet Martin felt he should have his blotter changed every morning whether he used it or not and was making great inroads into the Police Authority’s stocks of blotting paper. The clean white sheet made the photocopy look almost as if it were in a frame.
Pel frowned. Josée Celine was still only a vague shadow of a person. And what Dominique Pigny had been up to still eluded them. Full of rectitude, Madame Charnier had asked for the body for interment in the family plot, but they still had no idea why Dominique la Panique had telephoned just before her death to say she was coming home. Money? Advice? Charnier himself?
As Nosjean and Claudie appeared round the door, he pushed the photocopy aside and waved them to chairs.
‘What about Sirdey?’ he asked. ‘Has he turned up yet?’
Nosjean shrugged. ‘No, Patron. He covered his tracks pretty well. If we could only move forward a step or two, I think we’d sail away. It’s the twenty years immediately after getting rid of Josée Celine that have us beaten. We think now that he joined the Milice while the Nazis were occupying the country.’
‘Then you have a problem, mon brave,’ Pel said. ‘You know about the Milice? They worked for the Nazis, and because they were French they knew how French people thought and behaved and were twice as dangerous. And when it was over, most of them vanished as if they’d never existed because everybody was wanting to cut their throats. I think you’ll have trouble finding him if he was part of that obnoxious outfit.’
‘All the same—’ it was Claudie who spoke this time ‘—we think we might have a lead. He went to Dole and we’ve found a man who might be him called Morot, who married a girl called Henriette Devoise. With her money he bought up a lot of military material when the war ended, much of it American and all of it going cheap. Vehicles. Blankets. Beds. Cooking utensils. Electric light bulbs. Linoleum. Shirts. With the shortages at the time, everybody was crying out for them and he made a small fortune. She died in 1953.’
Pel leaned forward, suddenly interested. ‘Of what?’
‘Natural causes, Patron.’
‘Unless it was “poudre de succession”.’
‘Inheritance powder?’ Claudie looked blank.
‘Arsenic. It’s very hard to trace and very useful for getting rid of elderly relatives without being found out.’