Tug of War (29 page)

‘Yes. Charles said as much. And there are doubtless complicated reasons for that. But I’m no psychiatrist, Dorcas. Nor are you. Leave it alone.’

‘And this framed one is a party of some sort?’ she said, trying to make sense of the third photograph.

‘Passing out of his year at St Cyr, according to Aline.’

‘Ah, yes. I can spot Clovis. He’s here on the left, with his arms around two of his friends. It’s funny, Joe, we’ve always seen him as a total solitary . . . no one to
talk to even if he could talk. But here he’s . . . well, a bit drunk, obviously . . . but matey, popular, supported. What wonderful young men! And now I suppose . . .’

‘I’m afraid so. French cavalrymen didn’t hang back,’ said Joe. ‘One only survived of that merry band, Aline says. Apart from Clovis, of course. And for the same
sinister reason – held prisoner in some German hell-hole.’

‘Well, perhaps there’s another contact there? Ah, yes. Of course. Now Bonnefoye can set to work to find him.’

After a moment’s thought she spoke again, tentatively. ‘Joe, you know what people do with these photographic records? So that they won’t ever forget old so-and-so when
they’ve grown decrepit and ga-ga? I’ve got a souvenir photo of my last class at the village school and I did it. They write the names on the back. Shall I have a look? It’s only a
cardboard frame stuck down at the edges.’

She was already sliding a thumbnail along the join and Joe pulled into the side of the road, intrigued by the operation. Neatly she withdrew the original photograph and scanned the back.

‘Yes! There’s a name in pencil over the head of every one of these men! Now Clovis is on the bottom left . . .’ She turned it over again and got her bearings. ‘So this
would be him, the centre of the entwined group of three. The Musketeers! And look, Joe, it says “Self”. Well, that’s it! Your final proof, I’d have thought. No need to go
hunting after the missing survivor.’

Joe took the photograph from her and studied it. His hand began to shake.

‘No. You’re quite right, Dorcas. But there’s one man on here we must chase after, to the grave if necessary. What the hell! Sorry. But this is really rather unsettling. You see
the man on the extreme left – that’s on Clovis’s right? Musketeer number one? Dark-haired, dishevelled and devilish handsome? Now turn over and look at his name!’

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Bonnefoye was looking mischievous, Joe noticed with apprehension when he entered his office early on Monday morning.

‘Sandilands! My poor fellow – what an unpleasant weekend you must have had! Unearthing bodies much better left lying, I hear. How tiring! Sit down, sit down! Alone today?’ He
enquired with warmth after Dorcas. ‘I won’t send for coffee . . . Tell you what – I haven’t had breakfast yet so why don’t we go out into the square and have a
café complet
when we’re done here? That suit you?’

‘It certainly would,’ said Joe. ‘I dashed out breakfast-less too.’ Then, picking up on the word that had disturbed him in the Inspector’s bland and friendly speech:
‘You
hear
, you say? From whom do you hear?’

‘Madame Houdart herself telephoned to fill in the details about half an hour ago. She had some pretty disparaging things to say about the methods employed by the arm of the British Law.
Bounder? Perfidious Anglo-Saxon? Tool of the Interpol Inquisition? Recognize yourself? She was calling for your head on a plate, I’m afraid, but don’t worry! I squashed her complaints
with ringing references to the Minister of the Interior, the Foreign Office . . . everything that occurred to me. I think I quietened her.’

‘She jolly well ought to keep quiet! Concealing a murder is, I presume, something of a crime here in France?’

‘A murder? Would you say so? I understand the body to be that of a runaway, a wounded escaper from the battlefield. Dead of sabre wounds, I’m told.’

‘That’s
her
story. Now listen to mine. And prepare yourself for some surprises.’

Bonnefoye sighed and paid attention.

‘I understand. And I accept your account of events, Sandilands,’ he said simply when Joe had finished. ‘But you know as well as I that there is no action I can reasonably take.
Even if we allow that a murder was committed – and by Clovis Houdart – we’d have insurmountable difficulty in putting a case. We’d be laughed out of court – would that
be the phrase?’

‘I think Madame Houdart would approve it. You might even have heard her use something very similar,’ said Joe bitterly.

‘We wouldn’t actually get this as far as court. And the alleged murderer who committed this
crime passionnel –
which may even have been a case of self-defence –
has officially been dead these nine years. If he
is
still alive, he’s insane. And we aren’t in the business of sending to the guillotine men of unproven identity who are not in
possession of their senses. Forget it, Sandilands! Antibes calls.’

‘I agree. I’m not trying to persuade you to follow up this crime, Bonnefoye. I’m asking you to do whatever you can to prevent a
further
one.’

He laid out his fears for Thibaud should he end up in the dubious care of Aline Houdart. ‘Though how we would ever account to anyone for assigning the patient elsewhere – or nowhere
at all, which I suppose is always an option – I have no idea. Since he
is
her husband, we’d have our work cut out,’ said Joe.

‘Ah,’ said Bonnefoye, his initial spark of mischief rekindled, ‘this is the moment for a revelation of my own. I acted on the suggestion you left with me before you set off
into the country. The fingerprinting? I had it done and the results sent off to our laboratory in Lyon by police messenger. They came back last night.’

He pulled a file across his desk. ‘You may take this away and study it. You will be impressed,’ he promised. ‘You will admire the technical skills and the speed. You will tell
of it in Scotland Yard when you return.’

‘Come on, man!’ Joe smiled. ‘Put me out of my misery. The last page? What does it say?’

‘Thibaud’s fingerprints we already had on record. When a comparison was made it was discovered that there were thirteen distinct points of agreement . . . ample to declare an
absolute identification. Page 16. Got it? And what all those bifurcations, arches, whorls and loops are spelling out is this: our Thibaud and Mademoiselle Mireille Desforges’s soldier-lover
are one and the same! The man who’d reached Chapter 52 of
War and Peace
, who sat drinking her brandy, who put his feet up at her hearth and stoked her fire is the patient in Dr
Varimont’s care.’

‘Good Lord!’ said Joe faintly. ‘It was an outside chance, Bonnefoye. I wasn’t certain that after all these years the prints would still be usable.’

‘We took the pipe and the book you mentioned but it was the dirty brandy glass that gave the best evidence. Sentimentally, she’d left them untouched just as she told you she had and
on a surface like that a print is virtually permanent. So, if you think I’m treating your run-in with la Houdart a little lightly – well, you see, I can afford to. Her claim has
suddenly begun to look very shaky. We’re now down to one tick – Desforges – one question mark – Houdart – and two crosses.’

He was pleased to see Joe’s raised eyebrows. ‘We’ve been busy, Sandilands, while you’ve been off sampling
la vie de château.
I despatched two sergeants in
opposite directions to the country. Smart lads! One extracted a confession from the Tellancourts and they have grudgingly retracted their claim. Though the old girl stuck to her story throughout.
With those ingenuous saucer-like blue eyes of hers and her mourning clothes and lace-edged hankies, she very nearly put one over on my chap. She only caved in when he called her bluff and
threatened to take a second look at the evidence buried in the churchyard. My other bloke, following instructions, grilled the grocer’s wife, Langlois, closely followed by the local
schoolmaster, Barbier. My instincts proved sound,’ he said with satisfaction.

‘Blackmail?’

‘Some naughtiness of that kind. Coercion perhaps? Madame Langlois has the goods – would you say? – on the schoolmaster. A nasty snakes’ nest of low-level corruption came
hissing into the daylight. And yes, I will be following it up. The man Barbier has been betraying his pedagogical trust for years. His time is up. And, Madame Langlois decided that her time had
come to put certain information that she had to use: “Support me in my claim or I’ll tell the school authorities the stories the children have been circulating for
decades.”’

Could it be so simple, in the end, Joe wondered? Did Thibaud’s pipe and slippers beckon? Dorcas, at least, would be pleased. To say nothing of Mireille, so longing for her Dominique to
come home from his last campaign. No, of course it could not be so simple. Joe cleared his throat.

‘Sorry, Bonnefoye, but we’re not quite done yet. I’m about to throw another spanner into the works. I want you to take a look at these photographs we brought away from
Septfontaines. In particular, I want you to study the man who’s sitting on Clovis’s right.’

He waited while Bonnefoye turned the photograph this way and that, around and about, hissing with disbelief. ‘This is crazy!’ he said eventually. ‘But –
“Self” it says here on the back. This is surely Clovis Houdart? Attached ears and all. And he’s the man Dr Varimont is holding at the sanatorium. Are we agreed on this much? Yes?
But the man Mireille Desforges has identified as her lover, one Dominique de Villancourt, is actually sitting here in the photograph, next to Clovis – entwined with Clovis you might say
– and, Sandilands, he’s dark-haired and at this moment, very dead. Quite clearly he is not our mental patient.’

‘Yes. There are three of them, you see, three friends. The closest of friends. My niece jokingly called them the Musketeers.’

‘I see where you’re going, Sandilands. “One for all and all for one”, are you thinking? I am.’ He pursed his lips and looked tenderly at the photograph.
‘Didn’t we all read Dumas at an impressionable age? So young! So gallant! Tell me, Sandilands, you were a soldier and must have been young once – would you have allowed your
closest friend to make use of your identity to conceal his own in an affair of the heart? An affair played out rather too close to home for comfort?’

Joe smiled. ‘Oh, certainly. The least one could do for a friend. These men would have cheerfully given their lives for each other. Some probably did, I’d guess. What’s the loan
of a name in comparison?’

‘And may I remind you of the motto of the cavalry – was it the dragoons or the cuirassiers?
Je secours mes chefs et mes
frères d’armes.
’

‘I come to the aid of my commanders and my brothers-in-arms. Hmm . . .’

‘You remember I told you of an officer who survived a German cavalry ambush and spent the rest of the war in prison? The one who reported the dying actions of Dominique de
Villancourt?’ He tapped at a face on the photograph. ‘Here he is. This chap here. I remember his name. We have his address. I can contact him and ask for information on his other friend
Clovis.’

Joe sighed wearily. ‘Well, yes, you could. But it might be more informative if you were to contact someone quite else. I don’t know about you, Bonnefoye, but I can tell you –
I’m getting a bit fed up stirring around in all this sticky speculation, personal opinion, bad memory, good memory, downright lies. It’s like snatching at moonbeams. You think
you’ve got it and then the light shifts and your hand’s empty. Let’s get some verifiable, recorded-in-black-and-white, factual information, shall we? The fingerprints were a
start. Now I think I see how to conclude this.’

‘Who’ve you got in mind?’

‘Someone rather prosaic – Houdart’s bank manager. In Paris. Any favours you can call in to wring a little information out of him?’

They got to their feet, grinned at each other and both began to speak at the same time: ‘Bonnefoye, had you thought . . .’

‘Sandilands, shall I say it, or will you?’

‘I have an old aunt who has a very annoying saying: “There’s an elephant in this room, is there not?” We’re skirting around, pretending to ignore the huge truth
that’s staring us in the face.’

Bonnefoye took his kepi from a stand, put it on and adjusted it to his favoured rakish angle. ‘I think I saw the elephant first,’ he said confidently. ‘But have you realized
how very much
worse
this makes everything? What we’ve got on our hands is a genuine tug of war, a life-or-death tug of war. And we have to decide which end of the rope we are heaving
on, Sandilands.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

They ordered breakfast sitting on a café terrace in the sunshine while it was still cool enough to be comfortable. Crunching his way through his first croissant from the
pile of still-warm rolls served in a napkin inside a silver basket, Bonnefoye stopped chewing, wiped his mouth and spoke to Joe in a low voice.

‘I wonder if you’ve noticed . . . will be surprised to hear . . . that your niece is also taking breakfast at the Café de la Paix? And she’s not alone. She is
accompanied by a gentleman. Odd choice of escort, I’d have said. They’re sitting four tables away, north-north-west.’

Joe was alarmed and puzzled. He’d slipped a note under Dorcas’s door which clearly said he’d left instructions for breakfast to be brought up to her in her room and she was to
stay there until he returned. He risked a quick look over his shoulder in the direction indicated. Dorcas caught his eye and waved to him. He identified her escort at once and turned back to
Bonnefoye with a relaxed smile.