Gently French (7 page)

‘On his cuff. He’d know exactly what he was going for.’

She giggled. ‘I think I’m proud of Freddy. I think he really was a clever man.’

‘Not so clever with this job, though.’

‘Perhaps he does it just to show his skill.’

‘You can’t help me.’

‘I am so sorry.’

‘Right. Now let’s talk about Peter Robinson.’

Her eyes widened; were suddenly empty.

‘Why should we talk about a shop?’

‘Not the shop. A man. A man who was at Haughton Thursday evening.’

‘But I do not know any Peter Robinson.’

‘A man of about your own age. Five-foot-ten, fair hair with sideboards, comes from town, drives a blue Viva.’

‘But no, I don’t know him.’

‘He spent the night at the Three Tuns.’

‘I have never visited that place.’

‘He was out during the evening. Perhaps paying a call.’

‘I cannot help it – I didn’t see him!’

I paused, holding her eyes. ‘Where were you Thursday evening?’

Now she was sitting up straight in the grass. ‘In the hotel, of course – at first on the lawn—’

‘With Quarles?’

‘Yes! Why should I not say true?’

‘And after that?’

‘Then we go into dinner – and in the bar – and watch TV—’

‘Still with Quarles?’

‘Of course! With Freddy.’

‘Until you went to bed, never alone?’

She drew quick breaths, her eyes glinting. Her hands were clasping her flexed knees. I had her going; but suddenly she realized it: suddenly let the tension go. She gave a breathless chuckle.

‘Ha-ha! You are trying to bulldoze me, huh?’

‘Were you alone?’

‘You are fierce, my friend. I adore a man with a touch of steel.’

‘Please answer the question.’

‘I grow so weak. A man like that can do what he wants with me. I melt for him, huh? A couple of times I go to the loo.’

‘Twice?’

‘It may be three times. Why do you bore me with such nonsense?’

‘Then you could have been available for a brief interview.’

‘I prefer the longer ones. All night.’

I gave it up. She’d turned on her back, with a knee crooked and waving. Her arms were folded behind her head, her eyes thinned, lips parted. Venus inviting. And I couldn’t be certain if she was covering-up or not.

‘Have you been to this part of England before?’

‘I am a Parisienne, Monsieur.’

‘Meaning yes, or no?’

‘Would that be likely? I have not even heard of it before this time.’

‘Then you have no friends here?’

‘None.’

‘Nobody to speak to on the phone.’

She hesitated. ‘Now you ask something different. It is not only to friends that one speaks on the phone.’

‘Then who was it on Friday?’

She re-composed her legs; crooking both knees, letting them spread.

‘Don’t you want to answer?’

‘Just thinking, Monsieur. Let us say it was Friday when I phoned the theatre.’

‘The theatre!’

‘But yes. They have a theatre in the town. One day I feel desolate, think it will amuse me. Perhaps Friday, I do not know.’

‘Only, of course, there were no suitable seats.’

Her lips twitched. ‘Monsieur knows.’

‘And you gave no name, so they wouldn’t remember you.’

She released a hand to make a gesture.

‘And I am supposed to believe this.’

She came coiling across to me. ‘Monsieur will believe what he likes, won’t he?’ She hung on my shoulder. ‘But it doesn’t matter. Because perhaps it was another day, after all.’

‘Though having no connection with Peter Robinson.’

‘Aha! I think that man makes you jealous. But there is no need, my fierce friend. I can truthfully say I have not met him.’

‘Not then or later.’

‘Not at all.’

‘Not, for example, today at lunch.’

I felt her tense: the weight of flesh grew a little less on my arm.

‘Now I think you are teasing me.’

‘Really? How long has your launch been moored over there?’

‘One hour, two. How would I know? I am beginning to feel it is too long.’

‘Where does the lane lead?’

‘You must ask a map.’ She broke from me quickly and got to her feet. ‘This talk of lunch makes me hungry again, Monsieur. It is sad, but I fear our game is over.’

I didn’t budge. ‘Au r’voir, Madame.’

She paused to give me a sharp stare. Then she tossed her hair with superb disdain and set off for the staithe. She didn’t look back.

T
HE LAUNCH LEFT;
I watched it make its turn and go creaming away up the Broad; then I sat beneath the hawthorn a few minutes longer, moodily sorting out my results.

They were not encouraging.

In the first place, I couldn’t link Peter Robinson to the crime. He had turned up
a propos
, giving a false name and address, but otherwise he wasn’t implicated. True, I had made a pass with him at Madame Deslauriers and seemed to have got a small bite; but it was a very small one, and the reaction may not have been due to Peter Robinson.

Bringing me to the second place. If Madame Deslauriers had a secret, it didn’t necessarily link with the crime either. In fact it probably didn’t, because she had no motive: Quarles had been no obstruction to her. Her secret, if she had one, was probably a lover whom she felt it injudicious to produce at this moment: whether Peter Robinson or another villain who might come gratefully to our hand.

All very semi-innocent. And yet . . .

I rose and went back to stare at the lane.

It was such an
excessively
discreet place for a rendezvous. You would almost say it would be wasted on a pair of lovers.

I got over the stile and continued to the bend. Beyond it the lane entered a plantation; then it stretched away between ranks of wild parsley to meet a minor road a quarter of a mile distant. The surface was dried, rutted mud, and the straggling parsley suggested little use. But here and there a frond was broken, and the damaged leafage had not yet shrivelled. A car? A car must have turned. The only place for that would be the plantation. I checked back till I found a gap between trees, then the plain marks of wheels in grassed leaf-mould. I followed them. They entered the plantation; stopped and criss-crossed in a little clearing. Here the car had parked, out of sight from the lane, the precise spot shown by the deeper indentations. I prowled around. Cores, apple-peelings; screwed-up wrappings from chocolate biscuits. Fresh: the peel hadn’t browned, the wrappings had taken no damp from the ground. The car-tracks were unidentifiable, but the car had not been a large one, credibly a Viva. And along with the tracks were a number of footprints: these similarly unidentifiable.

So what more had I now?

A small matter of confirmation: that Mimi was in contact with a person unknown; and whom she wanted to keep unknown.

And whom she was probably dashing back to warn by phone.

I handed in the runabout, collected the Lotus and drove through rush-hour traffic to Norchester. I found Hanson in his office; he was drinking beer and eating fish-and-chips from a newspaper package. I went over my facts. Hanson listened, scowling.

‘That lane would be Sallowes way,’ he said. ‘Are you saying there’s a chummie hiding out there?’

‘It’s a possibility. And he could be the man who stayed at the Three Tuns on Thursday.’

‘You think he’s the killer?’

‘We don’t know that. We do know he’s in contact with Deslauriers.’

Hanson worried a chip. ‘I still fancy Rampant. I wish I could believe he’s a brilliant liar.’

He fetched a map and we found the lane. It connected with a back road between Sallowes and Wrackstead. By water about two miles from Haughton, by road nearer seven, when you knew the way. In the vicinity were two farms and a scattered handful of farm cottages; Sallowes village was two miles one way, Wrackstead village four miles in the other.

‘Is there a pub at Sallowes?’

‘Yeah, The Peal of Bells.’

Hanson reached for the phone and talked to the switchboard. Two minutes later he was connected; they had had no guests at The Peal of Bells.

‘Any guest-houses? Private lodgings?’

‘There’s nothing of that sort at Sallowes. A bit of housing development, mostly commuters. Perhaps chummie is camping in a field.’

‘He’ll be close to a telephone.’

‘Well, that should help. I’ll ask the County to do some checking. Only if he isn’t the chummie with the blue Viva, how are we going to know him when we find him?’

A good question.

‘He’ll have been around since Friday, possibly all the preceding week. A man on his own, no apparent business. Most likely from London or that direction.’

Hanson hefted a shoulder. ‘So we’ll look. But it could be Timmy from Timbuctoo.’ He ate a few chips. ‘Meanwhile there’s Rampant. You haven’t got closer than him yet.’

I used Hanson’s phone to ring Dainty. Dainty had a tale of woe to tell. He had just missed laying hands on Fring at the staked-out house in Battersea. At about 2 p.m. a Ford Zephyr came by with a driver resembling Fring. It had slowed, pulled in, then departed in haste, the driver obviously having smelled a rat. Alarms and excursions. They had found the Zephyr (it was stolen) across the river in Chelsea, but no Fring, no money; and now the stake-out had been blown.

I made sympathetic noises. ‘What about our Peter Robinson?’

Dainty sounded less than interested. ‘You have to admit your description is vague.’ I was getting that reaction from everywhere.

‘This chummie has been missing from his usual haunts.’

‘So have half the chummies we know.’

‘The description would fit someone like Jack Straker.’

‘Straker’s away. Hadn’t you heard?’

I passed on my little bit of information about Quarles’ deposits in a Swiss bank. That didn’t cheer Dainty either: but I hadn’t supposed it would. He came back with something else.

‘We found Quarles’ will in his safe deposit.’

‘He left a will?’

‘It’s dated last August. It leaves his whole estate to Mimi Deslauriers.’

I chewed that over as I drove back to Haughton. It had a chilling sort of ring to it. By her own account, Mimi was a rich woman, but her account was all I had. And even if it were true, this was motive. The rich are not averse to becoming richer. Nor must I forget that previous occasion when a man had died to Mimi’s profit.

A second shake with the same dice?

But that would mean she had known about the will. Quarles, ex-lawyer, master-criminal, would surely have kept his counsel in a matter so sensitive. And supposing she had known: then I had still to construe the crime as a plot devised by her, whereas the principal circumstances were arranged by Quarles, and the murder apparently a piece of opportunism. To make it credible, one would have to assume communication and conspiracy between her and Rampant: not to mention the shadowy Peter Robinson, necessary if Rampant jibbed at the killing. Possible, but highly unlikely: it would have left her at the mercy of two con-federates. Mimi was much too
au fait
for that. A simple jostle at a tube station would have served her better.

And yet . . . Quarles must have been worth a great deal of money.

If it hadn’t been Mimi, then perhaps a secondary operator?

For example, Peter Robinson, with a hold on Mimi, working through her to net Freddy’s jackpot . . . ?

I shook my head: this was thinking like Hanson – trying to angle it away from Mimi! Mimi, who had no need to murder anyone, who could do it all with the drop of a bra. Not practical thinking. Mimi could kill, perhaps had blood on her hands already. The field was open.

And now I knew of one lode-stone that could have applied a fatal deflection.

I parked in the yard at the Barge-House and went in to confer with Dutt. Dutt was refreshing himself in the lounge, where Mimi, with a group of admirers, was also installed. She favoured me with a vivacious wave and a cooing ‘Hallo!’ – which I acknowledged with a dead-bat nod; her appetite, officially unlunched, appeared to have been satisfied with toast and jam.

I joined Dutt, who was sitting alone and looking every inch a copper. A waiter, not Bavents, came up and took my order for tea and toast.

Dutt nodded towards Mimi. ‘I see you clicked, sir.’

I grunted. ‘And what have you been up to?’

Dutt looked sly. ‘There’s a little maid called Nancy. We spent quite a time going over her statement.’

‘And what did you get – in the way of business?’

‘In the way of business, not very much, sir. But the head-waiter, Colby, remembered something.’

‘Save him till after I’ve had my cuppa.’

I drank and ate, while up the lounge Mimi continued to glamorize the peasants. She was clever with it: she talked to the wives and left the husbands to drink her in. She had changed out of the shortie dress she’d been wearing and put on a clinging gown with a split skirt. Most of one clamorous leg was on view, and though the bust was now harnessed, it was cleft to infinity.

‘She does fetch them in, sir,’ Dutt murmured wistfully.

I crunched some toast. ‘You keep your heart for Nancy.’