Cynthia Manson (ed) (11 page)

“I can’t understand
why he’s stopped calling us up.”

“Calling us up?”

“Attracting our
attention, anyway.”

“But why should he
attract our attention and then not say anything?”

“Supposing he was
followed. Or was following someone.”

“I see what you
mean. Look here, Lecœur, is your brother in financial straits?”

“He’s a poor man,
yes.”

“Is that all?”

“He lost his job
three months ago.”

“What job?”

“He was linotype
operator at
La Presse
in the Rue du Croissant. He was on the night
shift. He always did night work. Runs in the family.”

“How did he come to
lose his job?”

“I suppose he fell
out with somebody.”

“Is that a failing
of his?”

They were
interrupted by an incoming call from the Eighteenth to say that a boy selling
branches of holly had been picked up in the Rue Lepic. It turned out, however,
to be a little Pole who couldn’t speak any French.

“You were asking if
my brother was in the habit of quarreling with people. I hardly know what to
answer. He was never strong. Pretty well all his childhood he was ill on and
off. He hardly ever went to school. But he read a great deal alone in his
room.”

“Is he married?”

“His wife died two
years after they were married, leaving him with a baby ten months old.”

“Did he bring it up
himself?”

“Entirely. I can
see him now bathing the little chap, changing his diapers, and warming the milk
for his bottle.”

“That doesn’t
explain why he quarrels with people.”

Admittedly. But it
was difficult to put it into words.

“Soured?”

“Not exactly. The
thing is—”

“What?”

“That he’s never
lived like other people. Perhaps Olivier isn’t really very intelligent.
Perhaps, from reading so much, he knows too much about some things and too
little about others.”

“Do you think him
capable of killing the old woman?”

The Inspector
puffed at his pipe. They could hear the people in the room above walking about.
The two other men fiddled with their papers, pretending not to listen.

“She was his
mother-in-law,” sighed Lecœur. “You’d have found it out anyhow, sooner or
later.”

“They didn’t hit it
off?”

“She hated him.”

“Why?”

“She considered him
responsible for her daughter’s death. It seems she could have been saved if the
operation had been done in time. It wasn’t my brother’s fault. The people at
the hospital refused to take her in. Some silly question of her papers not
being in order. All the same, Madame Fayet held to it that Olivier was to
blame.”

“Did they see each
other?”

“Not unless they
passed each other in the street, and then they never spoke.”

“Did the boy know?”

“That she was his
grandmother? I don’t think so.”

“You think his
father never told him?”

* * *

Never for more than
a second or two did Lecœur’s eyes leave the plan of Paris, but, besides being
Christmas, it was the quiet time of the day, and the little lamps lit up
rarely. Two or three street accidents, a lady’s handbag snatched in the Métro,
a suitcase pinched at the Gare de l’Est.

No sign of the boy.
It was surprising considering how few people were about. In the poor quarters a
few little children played on the pavements with their new toys, but on the
whole the day was lived indoors. Nearly all the shops were shuttered and the
cafes and the little bars were almost empty.

For a moment, the
town came to life a bit when the church bells started pealing and families in
their Sunday best hurried to High Mass. But soon the streets were quiet again,
though haunted here and there by the vague rumble of an organ or a sudden gust
of singing.

The thought of
churches gave Lecœur an idea. Might not the boy have tucked himself away in one
of them? Would the police think of looking there? He spoke to Inspector
Saillard about it and then got through to Justin for the third time.

“The churches. Ask
them to have a look at the congregations. They’ll be doing the stations, of
course—that’s most important.”

He took off his
glasses for a moment, showing eyelids that were red, probably from lack of
sleep.

“Hallo! Yes. The
Inspector’s here. Hold on.”

He held the
receiver to Saillard. “It’s Janvier.”

The bitter wind was
still driving through the streets. The light was harsh and bleak, though here
and there among the closely packed clouds was a yellowy streak which could be
taken as a faint promise of sunshine to come.

When the Inspector
put down the receiver, he muttered, “Dr. Paul says the crime was committed
between five and half past six this morning. The old woman wasn’t killed by the
first blow. Apparently she was in bed when she heard a noise and got up and
faced the intruder. Indeed, it looks as though she tried to defend herself with
the only weapon that came to hand—a shoe.”

“Have they found
the weapon she was killed with?”

“No. It might have
been a hammer. More likely a bit of lead piping or something of that sort.”

“Have they found
her money?”

“Only her purse,
with some small change in it and her identity card. Tell me, Lecœur, did you
know she was a money-lender?”

“Yes. I knew.”

“And didn’t you
tell me your brother’s been out of work for three months?”

“He has.”

“The concierge
didn’t know.”

“Neither did the
boy. It was for his sake he kept it dark.”

The Inspector
crossed and uncrossed his legs. He was uncomfortable. He glanced at the other
two men who couldn’t help hearing everything, then turned with a puzzled look
to stare at Lecœur.

“Do you realize
what all this is pointing to?”

“I do.”

“You’ve thought of
it yourself?”

“No.”

“Because he’s your
brother?”

“No.”

“How long is it
that this killer’s been at work? Nine weeks, isn’t it?”

Without haste, Lecœur
studied the columns of his notebook.

“Yes. Just over
nine weeks. The first was on the twentieth of October, in the Epinettes
district.”

“You say your
brother didn’t tell his son he was out of a job. Do you mean to say he went on
leaving home in the evening just as though he was going to work?”

“Yes. He couldn’t
face the idea of telling him. You see—it’s difficult to explain. He was
completely wrapped up in the boy. He was all he had to live for. He cooked and
scrubbed for him, tucked him up in bed before going off, and woke him up in the
morning.”

“That doesn’t
explain why he couldn’t tell him.”

“He couldn’t bear
the thought of appearing to the kid as a failure, a man nobody wanted and who
had doors slammed in his face.”

“But what did he do
with himself all night?”

“Odd jobs. When he
could get them. For a fortnight, he was employed as night watchman in a factory
in Billancourt. but that was only while the regular man was ill. Often he got a
few hours’ work washing down cars in one of the big garages. When that failed,
he’d sometimes lend a hand at the market unloading vegetables. When he had one
of his bouts—”

“Bouts of what?”

“Asthma. He had
them from time to time. Then he’d lie down in a station waiting room. Once he
spent a whole night here, chatting with me.”

“Suppose the boy
woke up early this morning and saw his father at Madame Fayet’s?”

“There was frost on
the windows.”

“There wouldn’t be
if the window was open. Lots of people sleep with their windows open even in
the coldest weather.”

“It wasn’t the case
with my brother. He was always a chilly person. And he was much too poor to
waste warmth.”

“As far as his
window was concerned, the boy had only to scratch away the frost with his
fingernail. When I was a boy—

“Yes. So did I. The
thing is to find out whether the old woman’s window was open.”

“It was, and the
light was switched on.”

“I wonder where
Francois can have got to.”

“The boy?”

It was surprising
and a little disconcerting the way he kept all the time reverting to him. The
situation was certainly embarrassing, and somehow made all the more so by the
calm way in which Andre Lecœur gave the Inspector the most damaging details
about his brother.

“When he came in
this morning,” began Saillard again, “he was carrying a number of parcels. You
realize—”

“It’s Christmas.”

“Yes. But he’d have
needed quite a bit of money to buy a chicken, a cake, and that new radio. Has
he borrowed any from you lately?”

“Not for a month. I
haven’t seen him for a month. I wish I had. I’d have told him that I was
getting a radio for Francois myself. I’ve got it here. Downstairs, that is, in
the cloakroom. I was going to take it straight round as soon as I was
relieved.”

“Would Madame Fayet
have consented to lend him money?”

“It’s unlikely. She
was a queer lot. She must have had quite enough money to live on, yet she still
went out to work, charring from morning to evening. Often she lent money to the
people she worked for. At exorbitant interest, of course. All the neighborhood
knew about it, and people always came to her when they needed something to tide
them over till the end of the month.”

Still embarrassed,
the Inspector rose to his feet. “I’m going to have a look.” he said.

“At Madame
Fayet’s?”

“There and in the
Rue Vasco de Gama. If you get any news, let me know, will you?”

“You won’t find any
telephone there, but I can get a message to you through the Javel police
station.”

The Inspector’s
footsteps had hardly died away before the telephone bell rang. No lamp had lit
up on the wall. This was an outside call, coming from the Gare d’Austerlitz.

“Lecœur? Station
police speaking. We’ve got him.”

“Who?”

“The man whose
description was circulated. Lecœur. Same as you. Olivier Lecœur. No doubt about
it, I’ve seen his identity card.”

“Hold on, will
you?”

Lecœur dashed out
of the room and down the stairs just in time to catch the Inspector as he was
getting into one of the cars belonging to the Préfecture.

“Inspector! The
Gare d’Austerlitz is on the phone. They’ve found my brother.”

Saillard was a
stout man and he went up the stairs puffing and blowing. He took the receiver
himself.

“Hallo! Yes. Where
was he? What was he doing? What? No, there’s no point in your questioning him
now. You’re sure he didn’t know? Right. Go on looking out. It’s quite possible.
As for him, send him here straightaway. At the Préfecture, yes.”

He hesitated for a
second and glanced at Lecœur before saying finally, “Yes. Send someone with
him. We can’t take any risks.”

The Inspector
filled his pipe and lit it before explaining, and when he spoke he looked at
nobody in particular.

“He was picked up
after he’d been wandering about the station for over an hour. He seemed very
jumpy. Said he was waiting there to meet his son. from whom he’d received a
message.”

“Did they tell him
about the murder?”

“Yes. He appeared
to be staggered by the news and terrified. I asked them to bring him along.”
Rather diffidently he added: “I asked them to bring him here. Considering your
relationship, I didn’t want you to think—”

Lecœur had been in
that room since eleven o’clock the night before. It was rather like his early
years when he spent his days in his mother’s kitchen. Around him was an
unchanging world. There were the little lamps, of course, that kept going on
and off, but that’s what they always did. They were part and parcel of the
immutability of the place. Time flowed by without anyone noticing it.

Yet, outside, Paris
was celebrating Christmas. Thousands of people had been to Midnight Mass,
thousands more had spent the night roistering, and those who hadn’t known where
to draw the line had sobered down in the police station and were now being
called upon to explain things they couldn’t remember doing.

What had his
brother Olivier been doing all through the night? An old woman had been found
dead. A boy had started before dawn on a breathless race through the streets,
breaking the glass of the telephone pillars as he passed them, having wrapped
his handkerchief round his fist.