A Particular Eye for Villainy: (Inspector Ben Ross 4) (28 page)

Inspector Benjamin Ross

AN ATTEMPT to interview Victorine Guillaume that evening, on our return to Scotland Yard from Brookwood, proved unproductive. At first, the lady simply refused to speak. She had unpinned her hat with the feathers and placed it on the table between us where it reminded me irresistibly of a dead game bird laid out like a trophy. She sat with her eyes fixed on it and her hands folded in her lap.

‘You do yourself a disservice, madame,’ I told her. ‘By saying nothing at all, when your behaviour has been so strange, it suggests you have some guilty motive for your silence.’

At that, she did ask, in her normal composed manner, ‘What behaviour?’

‘At the cemetery. When all were either hastening to help Miss Flora, or running in pursuit of her attacker, you ran in the opposite direction and resisted my wife’s attempt to prevent you.’

‘Because you ran, madame.’

‘Then I suggest it is your wife who behaved illogically, not I.’

And with that well-placed dart she’d found her target and would say no more.

‘We’ll leave her in a cell overnight,’ I told Dunn. ‘She may well have changed her mind about talking in the morning. Or we may have heard from the French police. I certainly hope so, because at the moment we can’t charge her with anything . . . except running away when everyone else was panicking and running. We’ll have to let her go tomorrow if we learn nothing new. We risk making fools of ourselves. If we can find the man who attacked Flora Tapley, and if he is Hector Mas, then that changes the picture. He may talk. In any case, she will find it hard to deny complicity.’

I knew I sounded frustrated and bitter. Dunn shared my mood.

‘If that fellow in the cemetery was Mas,’ he fumed. ‘Where the devil is he now? Find him! He should stick out like a sore thumb, wherever he is!’

I went home to my wife, there being for the moment nothing else I could do that day. It was now late but Lizzie was waiting up for me.

‘I’ve eaten Bessie’s dry meat pies and scorched rice puddings,’ I replied. ‘I’m glad you didn’t ask her. After being made to look and sound an idiot by Victorine Guillaume, and having lost Mas at the cemetery, Bessie’s cuisine would be the last straw.’

‘She is improving as a cook,’ Lizzie defended our maid. ‘But as it happens, there is the rest of the steak and kidney pie we had two days ago in the larder. It’s still quite fresh. It’s cold in the larder even in warm weather and at this time of year, there’s no fear of anything going off in a few days.’

So we ate three-day-old steak and kidney. I must say, it tasted fine.

The following morning when I reached the Yard I found that, at long last, something had gone right for us. The French police had sent a long communication answering our queries.

Mas was originally from Marseilles. He had lived for a number of years in Paris where he made his living chiefly as a small-time confidence trickster and cardsharp, who preyed on newcomers to Paris from the provinces. He had served two prison terms, one in his native Marseilles and one in the capital. Mas had not been seen in Paris in recent months. Neither had Victorine Guillaume. The lodging house still existed, run, in the absence of the owner, by a manager. As a business, it appeared to be perfectly in order. A suspicion, a few years earlier, that it operated as an unregistered brothel had not been supported by enquiries.

‘Well,’ I said to Dunn. ‘So Mas is the usual sort of smooth-talking petty crook. London is also full of rogues like him, plying the same trade fleecing the gullible.’

‘And despite what that woman insists, he is not at present in France. We know that now!’ snorted Dunn. ‘He is lurking somewhere around London. He knew the details of the funeral, where and when, and only Guillaume could have told him that. He waited in the cemetery for a chance to abduct Flora Tapley. It was a bold step but our conspirators have grown desperate.’ Dunn shook a thick forefinger at me. ‘The discovery of Flora’s existence was a development with which they had not reckoned when they followed the wretched Tapley to England. It must have come as a real shock to them.’

‘I think, sir,’ I said, ‘that with the new information to help, I am now ready to interview the lady again.’

‘Well, now, madame,’ I said when I found myself seated opposite that lady a little later. ‘I hope you did not spend too uncomfortable a night.’

She did not deign to reply to that but cast me a look of scorn and spite that spoke volumes.

She was still neat, still in her widow’s weeds, and the black wig was firmly in place. Her composure must be assumed, but it was convincing enough at the moment. I hoped to shake it very soon.

‘You should know, madame, that we have now heard from the French police.’

Her eyelids drooped briefly over her dark eyes but then she was staring at me again in her usual direct manner. ‘Then they will have informed you my marriage was legal,’ she said.

‘Yes, madame, they have told us that . . . and a good deal more. You have led an eventful life, madame.’

‘You are not a fool, Inspector,’ she said coldly. ‘You know that the world is not kind to women who find themselves alone. I was born the illegitimate child of a singer in the cabarets of Montparnasse. She placed me in the ballet school at a young age in the hope I would have an occupation that would keep me from the streets; and, eventually, help me find a protector rich enough to take care of both of us. My mother died only a few years later of consumption. I have always had to rely on my own resources, and survived because I have always done what it was necessary for me to do. But I have never been charged with any crime, Inspector.’

‘There is always a first time, for everything, madame, or so they say. The French police also inform us that you were once accused of procuring young girls . . .’

Her eyes snapped with anger! ‘One girl! One girl only and let me tell you about her, Inspector, before you lecture me! She was being forced by her parents to marry an old man, an old man she detested and feared. So she ran away from her home. I found her begging on the streets. I took her home with me and I tried to help her by finding her someone who would take care of her. I did find her a protector, a decent man who would have treated her well. But then, of course, the parents reappear. They must have their daughter back! I have seduced their innocent child into a despicable and immoral life. They complain to the police. The police come to me. The wretched child is forced back to her parents’ home. Because they want to be reconciled to her? No, because they fear the gossip and scandal. The old suitor comes forward again and this time, having no hope of escaping him, the girl swallows rat poison, arsenic. It is a terrible death, Inspector. The police suddenly have no further interest in pursuing me. No charges were ever brought against me in court. No one, of course, pursues the parents or the filthy old lecher who was the cause of it all.’

‘Yet the matter remains upon your police file, madame. If what you tell me is true, that is indeed unfortunate.’

‘Policemen, in the whole of Europe and probably even further afield, like to keep files,’ Victorine Guillaume said. ‘It encourages the taxpayer in France and here, I suppose, to believe their money is well spent.’

I decided to abandon this line of enquiry. But I was getting very tired of being out-argued by her.

‘Let us talk of your associate, Hector Mas. Now, he’s a different kettle of fish. His police file is fat and none of the reports in it has been doubted. He has spent at least two spells in gaol. He has not been seen in Paris or elsewhere in France for some time. He is here in London, isn’t he? We believe it was Mas who attempted to abduct Flora Tapley from the cemetery. The only explanation for his knowing where to position himself for the attempt is that you told him: the hour, the place and the day. I assure you, madame, you will be charged with conspiracy to kidnap.’

This was a chance throw of the dice by me. It might be possible to make such a charge stick, but without Mas in our hands, it would be difficult.

‘I do not know who was the man in the cemetery—’ she began.

I interrupted her. ‘Please, madame,’ I said gently. ‘You were kind enough just now to say I was not a fool, so, I beg you, don’t start now to treat me like one. Equally, I believe you to be an intelligent woman. You must know you can’t rely on Mas. We shall catch him, without question. He is fleeing like a hunted fox at the moment. But we shall run him to earth. The French police are now on the lookout for him also. If he returns there, they will arrest him. He will seek to save himself. I know the type. His own skin is all that matters to him. He knows no loyalties.’

She said nothing but watched me warily. A tiny flicker of hope sprang up in me that she could be persuaded to bargain. She would do what she said she had always done, anything necessary, and that would include abandoning Mas, but only if I proceeded cautiously.

‘Madame,’ I began again, ‘let us begin again differently. Let me tell you the history of what has happened, as it seems to me. You will then tell me if I am right. Is that in order?’

‘I cannot prevent you,’ she said coldly.

‘Thomas Tapley is an Englishman who has lived many years in France, kept by personal reasons from returning to his own country. He is growing older and beginning to regret his lack of a permanent base. You are the owner of a lodging house on the outskirts of Paris. One day, into the lodging house walks Tapley.

‘He appears down at heel, but he
is
a gentleman, you identify him as that. He begins to lodge with you. It soon becomes apparent to you, because you have a sharp eye, that this “poor” Englishman in his shabby coat is not so penniless after all. He pays his rent regularly with no delay. Money is coming from somewhere. He doesn’t, perhaps, realise how well you speak and read English. One day, while he is out, you go into his room and manage to gain access to his personal papers. He is in correspondence with a bank in England, with a firm of solicitors. There is mention of property . . .’

She had made no attempt to interrupt me and was watching me keenly. I am on the right track! I thought.

‘At first all is well, but then Tapley falls ill. You take care of him devotedly. But when he recovers, instead of being grateful, he is suspicious. Perhaps Mas has been hanging around and Tapley has recognised Mas for what he is. Perhaps Mas is asking you why you tried so hard to help your husband recover, when, had you let him die, you could have written to England with the news and claimed any estate. You are both of you quite sure, by now, that there is money. During his illness, you have probably either read some mail directed to him, or again rummaged through his papers.

‘But Tapley has realised it. He begins to fear a plot against him, that his very life is at risk. Should he “fall ill” again, no doctor would think it odd, after the serious illness he’s already had. Perhaps Mas has said as much to you, madame. One day, when you are out of the house, and Mas out of the way, Tapley packs his box and flees. So desperate is he, that he feels nowhere in France safe, and returns to England. When he arrived in Harrogate and spoke to his solicitor there, he deposited some personal papers, stressing the need for them to be kept secure, and spoke of “an incident”. He appeared a frightened man. Am I more or less right so far, madame?’

‘You are taking facts I have told you, and interpreting them in a different way, Inspector,’ Victorine replied. ‘You have said nothing new, except to speculate about what Hector Mas may have said. As to that, you would have to ask Hector himself.’