Murder at Renard's (Rose Simpson Mysteries Book 4) (18 page)

‘Don’t be stupid, Rose. I meant nothing by it. You think I stabbed the girl with the scissors because she stole a couple of pairs of silk stockings? Pah! It is ludicrous, what you are suggesting.’

‘I know. Of course it is. I’m sorry ... it was stupid of me to think … I just remembered how very angry you were, that’s all …’

‘That is not surprising, eh?  Anyway, you do not need to concern yourself. It does not matter. I made a mistake,’ said Madame Renard. ‘Sylvia was not the thief.’

But you said – ’

‘Yes, but I was wrong. I know that now.’

‘But you were so sure. And if Sylvia wasn’t the thief, then that means – ’

‘I don’t want you to say another word about it, do you hear me?’ The words were said so forcefully and with such abruptness that they invited no contradiction. To remove any further doubt, if indeed it were needed showing that the matter was now closed and should not be referred to again, Madame Renard looked at her so coldly that it was all Rose could do not to retreat to her end of the settee. For the second time within half an hour she felt herself thoroughly admonished. But if nothing else, it was proof at least that she had touched a nerve and she felt duty bound to worry at it, like a dog with a bone, in order to uncover the truth. She was in danger of incurring her employer’s wrath by so doing, but really there was no alternative. Still she hesitated. 

Before she was required to make a definite decision as to whether to pursue the subject or not, it was perhaps fortunate that at that very moment the door opened to admit Sergeant Perkins come to summon Madame Renard for interview. Everyone turned to stare at the newcomer; not one of them looked away. The room became restive with suppressed anticipation. The proprietor did not move. After a moment in which no one did anything except look rather guiltily at the sergeant, as if they all had secrets to hide, Madame Renard roused herself. She took a deep breath and seemed to collect herself, as if she were preparing to engage with a difficult customer. As she got to her feet, she put her hand out and clutched at Rose’s sleeve. The gesture was something of a desperate one, revealing an anxiety that Rose had not imagined the woman possessed. Even so there was nothing weak about the grasp which felt strong and insistent. Madame Renard clearly had no intention of letting go her grip until she had got her own way.

‘You will come in with me, Rose,’ she said. The proprietor spoke as if it were a statement rather than a question. She might have been asking Rose to tidy one of the counters or help a customer with her purchases. Rose herself had some reservations in complying with the request. If nothing else, she was reluctant to face Inspector Deacon so soon after their last encounter. He had made it quite clear that he did not wish her to investigate Sylvia’s murder. She had made it equally plain that she had every intention of doing just that. Barely more than a few minutes had elapsed for him to reconcile himself to the fact. For all she knew, he had just been complaining about her to that sergeant of his. Certainly Sergeant Perkins was regarding her with interest. If she did not know better, she would have sworn there was a twinkle in his eye. The inspector might be none too pleased to see her enter the room with Madame Renard but, she reasoned, he would not be unduly surprised.

It took a moment for Rose to realise that Madame Renard was still speaking to her, probably because she had lowered her voice so considerably that when she spoke it was barely above a whisper.

‘You won’t mention the thefts, will you? Sylvia wasn’t the thief. It had nothing to do with her death.’

‘If you don’t mind my saying, sir,’ said Sergeant Perkins, as soon as the door had closed behind the retreating form of Rose Simpson, ‘I think the young lady has a bit of a point.’ He glanced over at his superior officer and took his silence to signal a willingness to hear what his subordinate had to say. ‘What I mean, sir, is that it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if we work together, we’ll go further forward? And Miss Simpson, I reckon she has a way with her. Sergeant Lane told me people open up to her as they wouldn’t do to us. They confide in her, like. She’s such an ordinary looking young lady, but there’s something about her all the same, at least there must be for that young earl of hers to be so taken with her.’

Inspector Deacon gave his sergeant something of an exasperated look. Sergeant Perkins, fearing that the inspector was likely to interrupt him before he had made his point, hurriedly ploughed on.

‘These people, they’re friends of hers, aren’t they? They’ll confide in her and even if they don’t she’ll know if they’re lying or if they’re hiding something.’

‘But that is part of the trouble, Perkins. Miss Simpson has a tendency to form an opinion regarding someone’s innocence early on in an investigation. And when she does, she goes all out to protect them, even if it’s obvious to the most casual observer that they’re hiding something which may, or may not, have something to do with the case in hand. I’m not saying that they necessarily turn out to be the murderer, but she lets her feelings intervene. She can’t look at the position dispassionately as we can. She can’t be objective. And I hasten to add that’s with people she hardly knows, one’s with whom she has only the briefest of acquaintance. Can you imagine what she’ll be like in this investigation?’

‘I daresay you’re right, sir, but you heard what she said just now. Whatever we say, even if you talk to her until you’re quite blue in the face, you won’t be able to persuade her to leave this case to us to investigate.’

‘You’re right, Sergeant, she’ll investigate regardless of what we say,’ said Inspector Deacon emitting a sigh. ‘And, if I’m honest, I can’t say I blame her. Not entirely anyway.’

A picture of the defiant Rose appeared in his mind’s eye, and he did his best to suppress a smile lest his sergeant should see. Rose Simpson in a dress shop was rather different from Rose Simpson in a sprawling country estate, the surroundings in which he had encountered her before. Then, despite knowing her profession, her social standing had seemed considerably beyond his own, as if the social class of her friends and acquaintances had somehow rubbed off onto her so that in his eyes she too was an aristocrat. Now he saw her for what she truly was, in her own environment. The shop, with all its pretentions of grandeur, was still little more than a backstreet boutique. It was not the sort of establishment to be frequented by the likes of Lady Lavinia Sedgwick or Lady Celia Goswell. It was also possible that the house Rose shared with her mother was no more furnished than Madame Renard’s flat. In the same way, he remembered that she had not appeared disconcerted by the meanness of her employer’s kitchen facilities and had apparently thought nothing of waiting on them with cups of tea as the servants, employed in the grand establishments in which she had been a houseguest, had attended on her.    

A spasm of pain from his injured leg brought him to his senses. He rose from his seat and made a turn of the room as best he could given its limited dimensions. He was further hindered by both his stick and the abundance of furniture, the latter partially due to the addition of the two chairs from the shop. Unless he was mistaken, it was likely that another chair would be required, which would only make the room more cluttered and confined.      

‘This damned thing,’ he said, stopping and pointing to his injured leg, ‘it has made me more cautious. It’s made me realise how very dangerous police work can be. But for a bad shot, I might have been killed. Someone like Miss Simpson, she plays at investigating a murder almost as if it were a game – ’

‘I say, sir, I don’t think that’s quite fair,’ interjected the sergeant.

‘You are quite right, Perkins, my choice of words was not good. But what I mean is someone like Miss Simpson will not be cautious in her investigations. She will want to arrive at the truth, and she won’t mind much if she takes some risks to achieve it, because she won’t be convinced that there is any peril. If the murderer is found to be one of her friends or colleagues, then that is how she will view them, as a friend rather than as a murderer. She will expect them to behave to her as they always have, whereas you and I know how dangerous a cornered animal can be. After all the murderer will have nothing to lose if he were to do her harm and potentially much to gain. Remember, he can only be hung once.’

‘What you’re saying, sir, is the girl’s a bit naïve. I daresay you’re right, and of course you know her better than I do, but I reckon she’ll be all right. It’s not as if this is her first murder case, is it?’

‘No, it isn’t, more’s the pity. It would seem that our Miss Simpson has got rather a knack for attracting murder wherever she goes.’

Before Madame Renard’s interview could begin, Sergeant Perkins was dispatched to the shop to acquire an additional chair. Much to Rose’s relief, Inspector Deacon gave no sign that he considered her an interloper in the proceedings. Instead, while they awaited the sergeant’s return, he made much of shuffling the papers on the desk in front of him. He had risen on their entrance and remained standing as did Rose, who stood at her employer’s shoulder in the guise of some guardian angel. Madame Renard had seated herself warily in the chair opposite the inspector, her back as straight as a rod. She was perched right on the chair’s edge as if ready for flight.

Waiting afforded Inspector Deacon an opportunity to scrutinise the woman before him. She had on a long, black velvet dress over which she had thrown a silk shawl seemingly effortlessly, which had the effect only of accentuating her foreignness. Despite its finery, it seemed appropriate in the circumstances, reminding him of funeral garb as it did. Small and petite, and anything between forty and forty-five, in complexion Madame Renard inclined to Mediterranean, her olive skin smooth and unlined, her eyes dark. He could appreciate that there was a certain presence about the woman that belied her diminutive physique. Even as she entered the room, he noted that she carried herself well. To the inspector, she epitomised the typical Frenchwoman. He had the impression also of someone consumed with a pent up energy, which he assumed usually presented itself in expressive and flamboyant physical gestures and loud exclamations. This evening, however, the woman’s demeanour was quiet. He imagined the energy bubbling under the surface, creating an inner turmoil. He knew the type well. The interview would more than likely proceed in one of two ways. The woman could be sullen and restive, fiddling with those great bangles of hers, but giving only monosyllabic answers. In which case the exchange was likely to be laboured and unfruitful. The inspector groaned inwardly. Conversely, there was also the possibility that Madame Renard might fly off the handle for little reason and become verbose. He knew the trick to achieving this was to touch a nerve or a subject on which the woman felt so strongly that she was unable to keep her emotions contained.

The sergeant returned and the chair was put in place. Rose sat down next to Madame Renard and the policemen resumed their seats.

‘I understand that this is a very distressing time for you, Madame Renard, and that the hour is very late,’ began Inspector Deacon. ‘I shall try to keep my questions as brief as possible. It may therefore be necessary for me to speak to you again tomorrow.’

The proprietor gave him the briefest of nods to indicate that she understood what he was saying. There then followed the preliminary routine questions regarding Madame Renard’s particulars, and Rose found her thoughts drifting off. She tried to visualise in her mind where this room was positioned in relation to the shop below. Were they directly above the kitchenette and storeroom, or above the storeroom and office-cum-dressing room? Perhaps part of their room edged over the shop floor itself. What a dismal little room this was. It felt intrusive to be in what was after all Madame Renard’s bedroom of sorts, even if it did also serve the function of a study. She stared at the dark red curtain and thought of the bath and sink hidden behind it, nudging shoulders with the mean little cooking facilities, if one could even call them that. She looked up at the walls and ceiling and saw signs of damp and peeling paint. Her eyes focused next on the desk before her, which constituted so effective a physical barrier between policeman and suspects. The desk itself was a poor imitation of the one downstairs in Madame Renard’s office, the latter piled so high with bills and correspondence that they had scattered on the floor when Marcel Girard had inadvertently knocked the desk while pacing the room …

‘Now, I should like you to tell me about the doors to your shop, Madame,’ the inspector was saying when Rose returned her attention to the conversation in hand. ‘There are only the two, I understand, the main entrance, which is the shop door facing onto the street and used by your customers, and the door at the back of the storeroom opening out onto the next street?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now, just to help me get this straight in my own mind, am I right in thinking that no one could have come through the main door this evening without being admitted by you or one of your staff, that’s to say a person could not just have walked in off the street?’

‘No, they could not. The door, it was kept locked. No one could enter unless they were admitted. The event, it was by invitation only, you understand? The door was opened to let each person in and they were only admitted if they had an invitation.’

‘And the guests? By that I mean your customers were allowed to have a guest or two accompany them, weren’t they? I assume these guests didn’t also have an invitation?’

‘No. It was not necessary. They accompanied the customers.’

The proprietor gave the policeman a look which suggested that she thought he had asked a remarkably stupid question.

‘What would happen if someone were to claim to be a guest of one of your customers and the customer in question did not happen to be there?’

‘They would not be admitted.’

‘You are quite sure of that?’

‘Perfectly, Inspector.’

‘Right, let’s talk about this other door, the one in the storeroom opening onto the next street. Was it locked?’

‘But of course. Mary had to get the key to let everyone out. That door, it is always kept locked. My stock, it is stored in that room.’

‘And the key, it is kept in the kitchen under the sink, I believe?’

‘Yes. And if you are thinking one of my customers got the key and let in some accomplice through the storeroom, you are wrong, Inspector. The key, where it is hidden, it is not obvious.’

‘So what you are saying, Madame, if your scenario is correct, that’s to say someone was let in, it could only have been done by one of your staff?’

‘Or by a member of your family?’ piped up Sergeant Perkins. ‘Your son perhaps? I’ll wager he knew where you kept that key. I daresay even that Monsieur Girard had a fair idea, didn’t he?’   

There was an awkward silence. Rose stole a sideways glance at her employer. The proprietor had not turned around to face the sergeant, and yet the woman had been clearly affected by the interruption. She might well have forgotten that the sergeant was there, positioned out of their sight, as he was. Or perhaps it was what he had said that had disturbed her so deeply. Madame Renard had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, yet they were not still. There was a nervous movement to them which betrayed her emotions, accentuated by the slow jangling of the bangles, which created an odd music in the stillness. Madame Renard looked down at those hands as if she were trying to entreat them to be motionless.

Rose, who knew her employer well, and was fully versant with how she was likely to react given almost any situation was nevertheless perplexed. This was not because of what the young and rather tactless sergeant had said, for the inspector had implied as much. It was rather how the proprietor was reacting, not only in this interview, but to the whole situation. Madame Renard was a woman who expressed herself in dramatic and flamboyant gestures, who threw up her arms and spoke in exaggerated terms on almost every subject. Why, look how she had reacted when informed that Lavinia could not attend the fashion event. She had said something along the lines that it was a disaster, no less than a catastrophe and that her reputation would be ruined. All nonsense of course, because at worse it had been an inconvenience and something of an embarrassment. And yet with a murder on her premises, and the victim a member of her staff no less, her reaction had been remarkably subdued. One would have been forgiven for expecting histrionics on a grand scale. If Rose had been asked before how she anticipated Madame Renard would react in the event of such an occurrence, she would have said that her employer would be wailing the place down and literally tearing out her hair. She would certainly not have expected that she would be sitting quietly as she was now, albeit clearly agitated. One could put it all down to shock, of course. Perhaps everything was yet to register clearly in her mind. Perhaps the histrionics had merely been postponed or deferred, and when they did materialise they would be even more dramatic than could ever be imagined.

‘What exactly are you suggesting, Inspector?’ asked Rose, more to break the silence than anything else. ‘There was no need to unlock the storeroom door. We were all in the shop when Sylvia was murdered. Or are you proposing that one of us unlocked the door during the course of the evening to admit the murderer?’