Nosjean and Claudie Darel huddled over the table in the restaurant behind the Bar Transvaal. The dirty plates were piled to one side and the wine bottle contained nothing but dregs. Though Nosjean still kept slipping pieces of bread into his mouth, they had long since finished their meal but in their intense concentration on what they were saying they were totally unaware of the bored waiter watching them from the doorway.
For a fortnight, Nosjean, Claudie and De Troq’ had been moving about between Paris and Lyons and between the Franco-German frontier and the Atlantic coast, making intensive enquiries. Though they had made progress it had been very, very slow.
‘After Dole,’ Nosjean was saying, ‘our friend Sirdey seems to have moved to Paris where he made money selling insecticide. He bought it from a firm that went bust, packeted it in small containers with a bright label and sold it as an aid to gardening.’
‘What about the woman he married?’
‘Twenty-three. Monique Duat. She divorced him because he was never at home. Pretty. Same type as Josée Celine. She couldn’t tell me much about him because she soon left him and he disappeared.’
‘And then?’ Claudie asked.
‘She thought he went to the Bordeaux area. He seemed to like to put plenty of distance between himself and his last resting place.’
‘Did he marry again?’
‘I don’t know yet. But there was a girl called Lefèvre in Royan who married a man called Bigéard who could be him because she was twenty-three again like Josée Celine and Monique Duat.’
‘What happened to this one?’
‘She was found dead in her bedroom, with Bigéard’s gun alongside her. Properly licensed because he’d been dealing in precious stones, but he admitted he was having an affair with another woman. A verdict of suicide was recorded but there was so much ill-feeling for him in the town he decided to leave the district.’
‘And then?’
‘And then I don’t know. But the girl he was having an affair with came from Aix-en-Provence so it’s possible he moved there.’
‘Have you found her?’
‘No,’ Nosjean admitted. ‘She disappeared.’
‘Dead? Murdered, like Josée Celine?’
‘I’ve no idea yet. She wasn’t from that area and nobody knew much about her. But he made more money and moved again.’
‘Where to?’
Nosjean grinned. ‘De Troq’s enquiring,’ he said. ‘He’s hard to keep up with.’
While Nosjean, Claudie and De Troq’ struggled with their problem, Pel sat huddled in his chair doing his daily stint of reading the newspapers before going home. As usual they were all marked for his attention by Cadet Martin. There were the usual selection of murders, beatings-up and sexual attacks, even, he noticed, an attempt at rape by an 82-year-old man on a 55-year-old woman in a hotel in Amiens. Disgusted, he tossed the paper aside and sat for a moment in silence. His brain felt addled, his sinuses were painful, his eyes were red, watery and inflamed, and his head felt as if it were full of cotton wool. In addition, there was now a dark purple bruise on his cheek where Crussol’s swinging fist had caught him.
The telephone rang. He snatched it up and was just about to snarl into it when he heard Madame Faivre-Perret’s voice. His expression melted until he looked like a dog begging to be stroked.
‘What are you doing at work?’ she demanded. ‘I gave you forty-eight hours, thinking you’d be in bed all the time but when I rang your home, Madame Routy said you hadn’t been there at all except for a few hours’ sleep.’
Pel cowered. It was the first sign of the iron fist beneath the velvet glove. ‘There are things to be done,’ he said. ‘And I’m better. Nearly, anyway.’
He tried to explain that people who got themselves killed didn’t wait for doses of flu in detectives to abate. She listened quietly and made him promise to go home early. Her concern pleased him enough to make him feel better.
‘One day,’ she said, ‘I’ll be there to look after you.’
Please God, Pel thought. As soon as possible.
Putting the telephone down, he sank back in his chair. The rings under his eyes made him look like a giant panda but the eyes themselves were bright and his brain was active. All the time his mind kept coming back to the fact that Jo-Jo la Canne had been shot, that old Stocklin had claimed to have a gun, and that Dominique Pigny had told Crussol where it was kept.
Had Crussol got hold of it somehow? Had Dominique Pigny? And if it were Crussol, why would he murder Dominique Pigny who was going to provide him with all the things he needed from old Stocklin’s money? Or had he persuaded Jo-Jo la Canne to kill her and then somehow got hold of the gun to shoot Jo-Jo? Jo-Jo’s death seemed to be explicable but not Dominique’s, because she held the key to the crock of gold. And why would Stocklin have to alter his will if there were no relations? If there were no relations, why make one at all? And why had no one seen the white Mercedes sitting in the lay-by on the road from Arne to Mongy? It must have stuck out like a sore thumb. It just didn’t make sense. It seemed important to go to Arne again.
Darcy was uneasy. He knew Philippe Duche was in the area somewhere, and he put on an operation that looked like a Para raid, with Bardolle’s men everywhere.
‘You make me feel stupid, Daniel,’ Pel protested.
‘You’d feel stupider if you stopped a bullet,’ Darcy growled.
Driving up to the château, they were surprised to find the entrance covered with black draperies embroidered with silver tears.
‘He’s dead,’ Guichet said as he let them in. ‘Night before last.’
Pel looked about him at the drawn curtains. ‘A bit unexpected, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘I thought he was good for a long time yet.’
Guichet shrugged. ‘I think the doctor was taken by surprise. He was pretty old. Eighty-seven last May. Older than we thought. We found out as we went through his papers looking for his birth certificate.’
‘What happened?’ Pel asked. ‘Heart?’
‘Well, he didn’t move very fast, and he liked his whisky. He also liked feather pillows. He seems to have drunk too much, turned over and smothered himself.’
Inside the house was a smell of flowers and candle-grease and there were candles burning in the hall.
‘I’d like to see him,’ Pel said.
The old man was lying in the coffin with candles burning at head and foot. Automatically, Pel took the sprig of rosemary from the bowl of holy water and made the sign of the cross over him.
Bernadine Guichet appeared, silently as a ghost. ‘It was a bit sudden,’ she said.
‘Who found him?’
‘I did.’
Pel stared at the dead man. His mouth was twisted in a rictus of a smile so that his waxen features had a look of cunning glee on them – as if he felt he’d defeated them all.
‘I came in with his coffee and roll yesterday morning,’ Mademoiselle Guichet said, ‘and there he was. We called the doctor straight away. There was no argument. After all, Doctor Lecomte had been treating him for years. He issued a certificate at once. In this weather, you have to get on with it, so we contacted the undertakers at once.’
‘Chevalliers’?’ Pel asked. ‘Of Châtillon?’
‘Yes. How did you know?’
‘Guessed,’ Pel said, thinking of the irony of Gérard Crussol about to act as pallbearer to the man whose fortune he’d hoped to acquire.
‘Were you fond of the old man?’ he asked.
Mademoiselle Guichet shrugged. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘He was difficult, but he was old, and in my experience old people suffer a lot and don’t complain. I think he’d fallen out of bed during the night. Doctor Lecomte found bruising on his shoulders. But he didn’t ring and he didn’t call out so he must have got back on his own. Perhaps he’d hurt himself and that’s why he got out the whisky.’
‘Who gets this place now?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I expect his lawyers will know. He said he’d left me a little for looking after him, but I don’t know how much.’
Pel frowned. ‘He told me he had a gun. He offered to shoot you, in fact.’
‘He was always saying that. I think he was a rough man in his youth. He liked to boast about women – and about men he’d fought with.’
‘Where did he keep it?’
‘I often wished I knew. I don’t suppose we’ll ever find it now.’
Pet gestured at the cupboard alongside the bed, on top of which the old man had kept his glasses and his other belongings. ‘What about in there?’
‘It contained his whisky. That’s all. I’ve just emptied it.’
‘I’ll still look.’
Watched by the Guichets, Pel opened the cupboard. It was an ugly piece of furniture that seemed to belong more in a Rhineland castle than in the middle of Burgundy and its lowest shelf seemed a solid square of mahogany. Tapping it, Pel began to feel towards the back. His fingers found a little niche and he broke a nail trying to pull it forward. Fishing a coin from his pocket, he inserted it in the niche and slowly, stiffly, the shelf slid towards him. Beneath it was a deep space that contained several faded jewel boxes. Taking them out one at a time, he opened them. Most of them contained jewellery, all of it old-fashioned and some of it ugly but all expensive-looking, though there was one gold bracelet that he recognised at once as another piece by Lucie and a ring with a huge diamond in it, which he studied for a moment before holding it up for Darcy to see. There was no gun.
As he looked up, he saw Mademoiselle Guichet’s eyes on the jewellery. ‘I think I’d better lock that up,’ she said. ‘It ought to go to the lawyers dealing with his estate.’
‘For the time being we’ll keep it. We’ll give you a receipt.’
Still on his knees, Pel studied the space at the bottom of the cupboard, then he put the jewellery cases to his nose and sniffed. Watched by Darcy, he put his head in the cupboard and sniffed again. ‘I can’t smell a damn thing,’ he said. ‘I think I’m clogged up solid. You have a go, Daniel.’
‘What am I smelling for, Patron?’
‘Just sniff and tell me what you smell.’
Darcy lifted the jewellery cases to his nose, then he looked at Pel and, getting to his hands and knees, he put his head in the cupboard.
‘What is it?’ Guichet asked. ‘Drugs?’
‘No,’ Darcy said. ‘Gun oil. It has a smell all of its own. He kept a gun in there with the jewellery. Where is it now?’
Madame Guichet’s shoulders lifted in a shrug.
‘Have you ever seen the gun in there?’
‘I’ve never seen in there at all. I didn’t know it existed.’
On the way home, Darcy looked puzzled.
‘Surely, Patron,’ he said, ‘you don’t think the old man shot Jo-Jo?’
Pel gestured. Bells rang in his head and it felt as if the front was about to drop off and deposit his brains in his lap.
‘There was a report in France Soir last night,’ he said. ‘About an attempted rape by an old man of eighty-two. If he had urges like that, perhaps Stocklin did too. Perhaps they were strong enough to make him insane with fury if he learned that Dominique Pigny only wanted him for his money. He might have got Jo-Jo to kill her.’
‘But then he’d have to get rid of Jo-Jo, Patron.’
‘He gets out of bed. We’ve seen him.’
‘But could he also get out of the bedroom and out of the house, drive a car, meet Jo-Jo, shoot him, push him from the car, then climb out, cover him with leaves and hide the gun? Without being missed? Patron, it’s not possible.’
Pel had to admit it didn’t seem so.
Driven home in Aimedieu’s car, Pel once more took the whisky bottle to bed with a hot water bottle. Madame Routy showed no interest in him at all. Considering he was clearly dying, he felt it showed a certain lack of good manners.
Snuffling and miserable, he huddled beneath the blankets but sleep refused to come. He had too much on his mind. Nothing seemed to make sense. Who had killed Dominique Pigny? If she were on the point of making a fortune out of the old man at Arne, surely, it couldn’t have been Crussol. So was Jo-Jo la Canne somehow involved with her? And if so, why was he dead? And who’d killed him? Had the old man found out? He had a gun, but surely he couldn’t have done it himself.
He finally fell into a fitful sleep with the questions still revolving round his brain. When he woke the following morning he decided he wasn’t going to die after all, only linger on to a weak and feeble old age. Struggling into his clothes, he rejected Madame Routy’s coffee. How she managed with the best beans available to make it taste like shellac he couldn’t imagine.
Aimedieu appeared soon afterwards and, reaching his office and needing a cup of decent coffee, he rang his bell. It was Cadet Martin who answered it.
‘Where’s Claudie?’ Pel demanded. He’d grown used to seeing Claudie’s smile every morning and it irritated him to see Martin’s anxious-rabbit look instead.
‘She’s up to something with Nosjean and De Troq’, Patron. Nosjean’s gone to Aix and De Troq’ to Lyons.’
‘I hope they’ll be able to justify their expenses.’
For a while Pel sat staring at this blotter then, wearily, he put on his coat and hat again and, calling for Aimedieu, tottered off to the Bar Transvaal. Even though Aimedieu might not have to fend off assassins, he could always carry him back if he passed out. Catching sight of himself in the mirror above the bar, he thanked God Madame Faivre-Perret hadn’t ever seen him at this hour of the morning.
A heavy hand slapped his shoulder. It was Darcy. He looked fit and well and in full possession of all his faculties. Pel hated him.
‘How do you feel, Patron?’ he said.
‘I think I’m dying. Unless, of course, I’m dead already. I might well be.’
Darcy grinned, showing the white teeth he was so proud of. He looked as though he’d spent the night industriously and to his advantage.
‘I hear Nosjean’s on to a new scent,’ he said.
‘I wish I were. This whole thing is wrong. What was Dominique la Panique up to? Was she blackmailing Stocklin? Why otherwise collect press cuttings from Concarneau and Lyons? What had she found out? And what’s the connection with Josée Celine who was dead before she was born? There must have been some to make her ask questions at the caves. And why did old Stocklin make a will when he had no relations? It’s something we need to find out.’
None of the local lawyers had handled Stocklin’s business but, because of the size of his property, it occurred to Pel that one of the estate agents might know something. One did and gave them the name of a lawyer in Auxerre who had handled the purchase.
Cadet Martin found the number of the lawyer and Pel spoke for a long time. As he listened, he sat up sharply then, for the next hour, holding a handkerchief to his nose while Cadet Martin alternately brought him cups of strong black coffee to keep him awake, and bottles of cold beer from the Bar Transvaal to slake the thirst caused by his fever, he crouched over the instrument.
His office grew stuffy enough for Martin to gasp for breath as he appeared but Pel remained on the telephone. First to Concarneau, then to Lyons. He seemed to be tracing old people, talking to newspapers and to police. It went on until midday and when Cadet Martin went for lunch, the man on the switchboard turned round. ‘What’s happening up there?’ he asked. ‘Has war been declared? The Old Man’s making enough telephone calls for a general mobilisation.’
At three o’clock, Pel decided he’d had enough and, calling for Aimedieu, had himself driven home. Madame Routy took one look at him and turned down the volume of the television. Despite his headache, it made Pel feel better. He was finally winning the war against her.
He was unable to sleep because his mind was too busy and he spent the time tossing and turning underneath the blankets like a wounded whale. About eleven o’clock, the telephone went. It was Brochard, who was doing telephone duty at the Hôtel de Police.
‘I’ve got a message for you, Patron,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry it’s so late. It was a type called Le Bihan. He said you’d want to know at once. He said he’s found out about that old woman you were asking about. He just said “Tell him that the family house was used as an old people’s home.” Does it make sense to you?’
‘Yes,’ Pel said. ‘It does. I think I’ll be able to sleep now.’