The Stone Leopard (19 page)

`You've come back to see me ?' she inquired hopefully.

`Another night maybe ? There are plenty of nights yet,' Lennox told her.

Their voices carried down the narrow canyon of the empty street to where detective Armand Bonheur waited, huddled inside the alcove. His instructions had been complex, too complex for his liking. He must keep Jouvel under surveillance. He must not let the shop owner know he was being watched. He must keep an eye open for an Englishman called Lennox, and the description had been vague. Hearing the reply to the girl's invitation given in perfect French, Bonheur did not give a moment's thought to the Englishman he had been told about. He settled down to a long wait.

As far as Bonheur was concerned the form of surveillance was very unsatisfactory—it was impossible to station himself inside the building, to keep close observation on Jouvel. The only positive factor in his favour was that the building had no rear exit. Everyone who entered No. 49 had to go in under the archway. It was just after seven—it had begun to rain again— when Bonheur saw a shuffling old man with an umbrella approaching No. 49.

Lennox rapped on Jouvel's door only a minute or so after the Frenchman had arrived home. Lennox's manner was businesslike as he explained he was a reporter from Le Monde, the Paris newspaper, which was going to run a series on the wartime Resistance. He understood that Jouvel had been an active member of the Lozere group and would like to talk to him about his experiences. Nothing, he assured Jouvel, would be published without his permission. And there would be, Lennox added casually, a fee. . . .'

`What sort of fee?' .Jouvel inquired.

He was standing in the doorway, still wearing his yellow raincoat, his mind in a turmoil. He had asked the question to give himself a little more time to think. For over a year he had fretted over whether to approach the authorities with his suspicion, and here was a golden opportunity presented to him on a plate. Should he talk to this man, he was wondering.

`Two thousand francs,' Lennox said crisply. 'That is, if the information is worth it and makes good copy. In any case, I will pay ten per cent of that sum for fifteen minutes of your time.'

`You had better come in,' said Jouvel.

Sitting on an old-fashioned settee in the living-room, Lennox did most of the talking for the first few minutes, trying to put Jouvel at his ease. The Frenchman's reaction puzzled him. Jouvel sat facing him in an arm-chair, staring at him with a dazed look as though trying to make up his mind about something.

When he mentioned the Leopard, Jouvel closed his eyes and then opened them again.

`What about the Leopard ?' the Frenchman asked hoarsely. I worked closely with him as radio operator, but he is dead, surely ?'

`Is he ?'

The brief question, phrased instinctively by Lennox as he detected the query at the end of Jouvel's own question, had a strange effect on the Frenchman. He swallowed, stared at Lennox, then looked away and taking a handkerchief out of his pocket he dried the moist palms of his chubby little hands.

`Of course,' Lennox went on, 'if you prefer it we could print your story as being by "an anonymous but reliable witness". Then no one would connect you with it but you would still get the money. . .'

Something snapped inside Jouvel's mind. The pressure he had lived under for months became unbearable now he had someone he could talk to. He told Lennox the whole story. The Englishman, who for the sake of appearances had taken out his reporter's notebook, was careful not to look at Jouvel as he went on talking in agitated bursts.

`It must seem ridiculous to you . . . every time I hear him on television . . . the Leopard, I know, was shot during 1944 —and yet . .'

As the words came tumbling out it was like a penitent confessing to a priest, relieving himself. At first Lennox was sceptical, thinking he was interviewing a lunatic, but as Jouvel went on talking, pouring out words, he began to wonder. 'The way they handled the coffin at the burial point . . . no respect .. . brutally . . . as though nothing was inside. . .

At the end of fifteen minutes Lennox stood up to go. The Frenchman was repeating himself. Instead of the two hundred francs, Lennox handed over five hundred from the funds Lanz had provided. 'You will come back tomorrow,' Jouvel urged, 'I may have more to tell you. . . .' It was untrue, but the agitated little shopowner, unsure now of what he had done, wanted to give himself the chance to withdraw the statement if when the morning came, he felt he had made a terrible mistake.

`I'll come tomorrow,' Lennox promised.

He left the apartment quickly before the Frenchman could ask for a telephone number or address where he could be reached. Going down the dimly-lit staircase deep in thought, he pulled himself up sharply before he crossed the courtyard: he was travelling with false papers so he had better be on the alert every moment he was in France. Lennox walked with a natural quietness and he was coming out of the archway when he cannoned heavily against an old man stooped under an umbrella. Slipping on the wet cobbles, the man lost his pebble glasses and his Tyrolean hat was knocked sideways half off his head.

By the light of the street lamp Lennox caught a glimpse of a face. The man swore in German.

`A thousand apologies. . .

Lennox had replied in French as he bent down and picked up the pebble glasses, relieved to find they were intact. A gloved hand came out from under the adjusted umbrella and accepted the glasses without a word. Lennox shrugged as the man shuffled off inside the building, then he walked out and went up the rue de l'Epine in the direction of the Place Kleber, still thinking about what Leon Jouvel had told him

Half-frozen inside his alcove, detective Armand Bonheur continued to do his duty, recording everything that occurred in his notebook with the aid of his Feudor lighter, adding to earlier entries.
6.30
. Jouvel returns home.
6.31
. Denise Viron departs.
6.31
. Viron's friend arrives.
7.02
. Viron's friend departs. (He had assumed from the conversation he had overheard that Denise Viron knew Lennox well.)
7.02
. Umbrella man arrives.
7.32
. Umbrella man departs.

CHAPTER TWO

THE POLICE discovered Leon Jouvel hanging from the inside of his bathroom door the following morning

`It will be Saturday night—the body won't even be discovered until Monday morning. . ' It was a shrewd and reasonable calculation on the part of Carel Vanek, but the shrewdest plans can be upset by tiny human factors. Sunday, 19 December, was close to Christmas, so before he left his shop on the Saturday evening Leon Jouvel had persuaded Louise Vallon to come in for a few hours on Sunday morning to help prepare for the expected Monday rush of business. 'I'll pay you double,' he had promised her, 'and in cash, so forget the tax man. And I'll be here at 8.30, so mind you're prompt. . .'

By nine o'clock on the Sunday morning Louise Vallon, who had her own shop key, was sufficiently surprised by Jouvel's non-appearance to phone him. There was no reply. She called him again at 9.15 and then, growing worried, at regular ten minute intervals.

At 10 am she phoned the police.

The inspector in charge of the surveillance on Jouvel, a man called Rochat, went to the apartment himself; worried about what the reaction from Paris might be. After talking to the medical examiner and checking the scene of the death, Rochat —initially suspicious—was soon convinced that Leon Jouvel had committed suicide. Pursuing this line of inquiry, he quickly found evidence to back up his opinion. A number of Jouvel's friends told him how the Frenchman had seemed worried for several months, that he had complained of lack of sleep, that he had stopped spending his evenings in bars as had once been his habit. No one could say why Jouvel had been worried but Rochat thought he knew when he discussed the case with his detective, Bonheur.

`A widower living alone—first losing interest in his friends, later in life itself. It forms a pattern. . .'

Rochat's complacent view of the case lasted exactly three hours. It was shattered when he received a call from the Paris prefecture informing him that Andre Boisseau was already on his way to Strasbourg. Forgetting the recent edict from the Elysee, Rochat protested that the Paris prefecture had no jurisdiction outside the capital. 'It is my case,' he said stiffly. He then received a further shock when the caller revealed that it was the police prefect of Paris himself speaking.

`And this,' Grelle blandly informed him, 'does come under my jurisdiction since it may well concern the safety of the president of the French Republic. . .'

Despite his irritation with what he regarded as Parisian interference in a local affair, Rochat had at least had the sense to phone Boisseau and inform him of the apparent suicide before he left to visit Jouvel's apartment. The man in Paris fired a number of questions at him, put the phone down and went straight to the office of the prefect who was working on Sunday —like a juggler trying to keep half a dozen balls in the air at once.

`Leon Jouvel,' Boisseau announced, 'has just died in Strasbourg. He is supposed to have committed suicide. I don't think that Rochat—the man in charge down there—is too bright. I checked up on him—he's fifty-six and still only an inspector.'

`Does the death have to be suspect ?' Grelle inquired.

`Not necessarily, but over the years too many people who were connected with the Leopard have died. Now we hear that Jouvel . .

`And,' Grelle smiled grimly, 'since we are getting nowhere at this end you are restless to check something else.'

It was true that they were getting no results from their inquiries in Paris. The discreet surveillance on Danchin and Blanc had turned up nothing promising. Danchin, dedicated to his work as always, had hardly left the Ministry of the Interior where he had an apartment on the first floor overlooking the Place Beauvau, so frequently, unlike other cabinet ministers, he didn't even dine out.

Alain Blanc had also spent long hours at his Ministry, but twice he had visited the address in the Passy district where he met his mistress, Gisele Manton. She, also, had been followed, and Grelle had a detailed list of where she had been and whom she had met. For neither of the two ministers did there seem to be any trace of a Soviet link. Grelle, without revealing it to Boisseau, was beginning to get worried. Could he have made a terrible mistake about the whole business ?

`You'd better take a look at Strasbourg,' he said. 'Fly there and back, of course. I need you here in Paris. . ..' It was typical of the prefect that after Boisseau had gone he had personally phoned Strasbourg to inform them that Boisseau was on the way.

As he put down the receiver he was inclined to agree with his deputy's assessment: Inspector Rochat was never going to set the world on fire.

The proprietor, M. Jouvel, has died suddenly. This shop, therefore, will remain closed until further notice.

Lennox stared at the typed notice pasted to the glass door and went on staring beyond it at the girl inside. When he rattled the handle she waved at him to go away and then, as he persisted, came forward glaring and unlocked the door. Taking of his hat, he spoke before she could start abusing him. `I'm a friend of Leon's—this is a great shock to me, you'll understand. Can you tell me what happened ?'

Relenting, because he was so polite—and because now she could see him properly she liked what she saw—Louise Vallon, who had just returned from being interviewed by Inspector Rochat, let him inside the shop and told him all the grisly details.

Lennox had the impression that although she managed to bring tears to her eyes, she was rather enjoying the drama of it all. At the end of ten minutes he had heard most of the story; he knew that Leon Jouvel had been found hanging behind his bathroom door, that the time of death was estimated as being between six-thirty and eight-thirty the previous evening.

`They wanted to know whether anyone normally visited him at that time,' the girl explained tearfully. 'The last words he said to me were . .'

Lennox excused himself after explaining that he had been away from Strasbourg for some time and had just called to have a word. 'It wasn't a close friendship,' he went on, aware that this conversation might be reported back to the police, `but we had business dealings occasionally.' Telling her that his name was Zuger, that he had to catch a train for Stuttgart, he left the shop, walked a short distance towards the station, and then doubled back over one of the bridges into the old quarter.

The police patrol-car he had seen earlier was still outside No. 49, so he left the vicinity of the rue de l'Rpine. At one in the afternoon it was still very quiet on Sunday in Strasbourg as he wandered round the ancient streets thinking. He found the suicide of Leon Jouvel hard to swallow. The Frenchman had been followed to his home by the unknown man with the newspaper only an hour or so before he had died. He had arranged to meet Lennox the following morning with the expectation of receiving more money in exchange for more information. A man who is contemplating killing himself is hardly likely to show interest in the prospect of acquiring more money. It smells, Lennox told himself; in fact, it more than smells, it stinks.