Pel sat at his desk, scowling at the reports in front of him. He was dying for a cigarette but felt he hadn’t allowed enough time to elapse since the last one.
Knowing what was going through his mind, Darcy edged his own packet across the desk, moving it closer as if it were moving of its own accord. In the end, Pel could resist no longer. Looking the other way, he reached out and took a cigarette as if he had done it without thinking. Darcy grinned and reached across the desk with his lighter.
Dragging the smoke down until it looked as though it might come out through the lace-holes of his shoes, Pel coughed as if he were dying of consumption and began to feel better.
As they talked, Claudie Darel appeared to announce that Pel was wanted in the Chief’s office.
The Chief met him with a smile. ‘Brochard did well,’ he said, producing the brandy bottle and obviously in a good mood. ‘Is he still down there in Evian?’
‘He’s gone back,’ Pel said. ‘To tie things up. After all, he was the one who sorted it out. But, it always takes longer to handle the paperwork than make an arrest. Most of the time we’re neck-deep in it. But Evian’s pleased. They were in danger of losing about fifty hectares of forest overlooking the lake. The maps Brochard found seemed to indicate somebody’s anxious to build there.’
‘Any idea who?’
‘Seems to be a firm called Branco. We’ll check them.’
‘What about the plans? Anything been submitted?’
‘No. And some of them seem to concern places other than round Evian. We’re trying to decide where.’
Later in the day, Darcy’s theory about the Baron’s mallet was proved to be correct. It was found on the Aignay rubbish tip. It had been dropped into the communal garbage bin at Faux-Villecerf, an enormous grey and green plastic affair on wheels which was hoisted up and tipped by hydraulic power supplied by the refuse cart. ‘Very clean, very efficient,’ the foreman in charge said. ‘No flies. No smells. Well, not many. Not in winter, anyway.’
It had been found by the man emptying the cart, who had decided it was just what he was wanting for use at home. He had helped himself to it and was reluctant to give it up. It revealed nothing except traces of blood on the head which matched the Baron’s. It had been well wiped and there were no fingerprints.
‘People know what to do these days,’ Pel said gloomily. ‘They get their tips twice nightly from television whodunits. There’s something about all this that smells less of inheritance than of speculation.’
‘Would people murder for that?’ Darcy asked.
‘They seem to be prepared to set places on fire. We have four people in custody. Then there are those two hundred bags of cement Jaunay ordered. That’s a lot of cement to reorganise a stables into a gymnasium. Could Jaunay have been accepting bribes? Suppose Gilliam offered more than that three thousand francs to Bronwen. Suppose he was in deeper than he said. Suppose things had gone wrong and he stood to lose a lot of money. He has a temper. That we know because we saw his wife with a black eye.’
When they talked to Jaunay he looked uncomfortable.
‘Well, there was a plan,’ he admitted.
‘And it fell through,’ Pel said. ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Were any sweeteners offered? There must have been people who were willing to push this thing through.’
‘I suppose there were.’
‘They accepted bribes?’
‘I expect so.’
‘Who were they?’
‘I don’t know. The Baroness didn’t tell me anything.’
‘Could it have been you who offered them?’
Jaunay looked alarmed. ‘I haven’t got that sort of money.’
‘But you were prepared to take advantage of them?’
‘I’m a builder. I need to build – and the bigger the project and the longer it lasts, the better it is for me and my people.’
It seemed a good idea to look once more at the papers Brochard had rescued from the Espagne kitchen stove. Some of them clearly didn’t concern Evian but someone was obviously eager to do some building. It seemed important to identify the locations.
They took over the lecture room at the Hôtel de Police and spread the papers on tables to study them. In addition, there was a large map of Burgundy and its neighbouring areas and the appropriate Michelin maps. Claudie, who’d been watching everything, was running the show.
They started with a check on all the places where recent developments had been suggested. Concentrating on country areas, they found there were more than they had expected.
‘There are agencies all over England,’ Claudie said. ‘They deal in anything from châteaux to small businesses. They’re even building high-rise apartment blocks and giving them English names like “Oxford” and “Pall Mall”. They’re everywhere. Le Touquet. Boulogne. La Baule. Brittany. Anywhere there’s a bit of water.’
‘They’re surely for the rich,’ the Chief said.
‘No,’ Claudie insisted. ‘There’s something for everybody. It’s an invasion as big as D-Day. Northern France welcomes them. They’ve been going through a bad patch up there so anything that brings employment is welcomed. When someone applies to buy land for planning the first question they’re asked is “How many local people will be employed?” If it’s more than five they get permission straight away.’
‘I think we have to find who’s interested in these places marked on Brochard’s map,’ the Chief said. ‘Council records will show if there have been applications.’
‘I think we’d do better to check places where land’s been destroyed,’ Pel advised. ‘And find who built on them.’ He gestured at Brochard’s sheets. ‘There are plenty to go on. There’s one here for a complete holiday village. A hotel with split-level dwellings and apartments. And water. That’s surely water indicated in blue.’
As Pel returned to his office Lagé appeared. Slow as he was, he was very thorough and when he got his teeth into something he never let go. He’d been taken off his fraud enquiry and had been examining records from the level of local mairies up to the level of the Conseil Général to find where the holiday village was planned.
‘Patron,’ he said, ‘that blue on the drawing Brochard found: it has to be a lake or something. And these split-level buildings seemed to indicate lakes with steep sides. But France’s full of lakes. There’s the Lac de Serre-Ponçon, the Lac d’Allos, the Lac de la Forêt d’Orient, the Lac de St Cassien, the Lac de Ste-Croix, the Lac des Carces—’
‘Never mind how many,’ Pel said irritably. ‘What about lakes in this area?’
‘There’s really only the Lac de la Liez and the Reservoir de la Mouche near Langres. South, there are more. Near Pontarlier there’s the Lac de St-Point and the Lac de Joux. Near Annécy there’s the Lac d’Annécy, and there are one or two south of Bourg-en-Bresse, together with a whole lot of smaller ones further west. All big enough to make a pleasant outlook for someone wanting to develop an estate on the shore. But nothing round here.’
Pel said nothing and Lagé went on. ‘I’ve also been checking all the areas where woods were burned down. I came across five more dubious ones. Planning permission was applied for in three cases. For development. One was granted because it’s now five years since the fire. In the case of one that was not granted, the speculators – a Paris outfit – said they’d apply again. The other three – all recent – have not been applied for, but I was told applications might well arrive eventually. Rumours have been floating about. Judging by what I could find out, the application that was granted, at Larin-et-Musset, and the one that wasn’t, at Mont Gathier, both came from the same source, but the names of the companies – Financements Générals Bourgignons and Commandites de Dijon – were different. Both are Anglo-French.’