Murder Most Merry (62 page)

“Talking of
boudin
—”

“What
boudin
?” murmured Janvier, whose cheeks were flushed with

sleep.

“The one my mother used to—”

“Hallo! What? You’re not going to tell me someone’s smashed the glass of one of your telephone pillars? Really? It must be the same chap. We’ve already had two reported from the Fifteenth. Yes, they tried to nab him but couldn’t find a soul about. Gets about pretty fast, doesn’t he? He crossed the river by the Pont Mirabeau. Seems to be heading in this direction. Yes, you may as well have a try.”

Another little cross. By half past seven, with only half an hour of the night watch to go, there were five crosses in the Miscellaneous column.

Mad or sane, the person was a good walker. Perhaps the cold wind had something to do with it. It wasn’t the weather for sauntering along.

For a time it had looked as though he was keeping to the right bank of the Seine, then he had sheered off into the wealthy Auteuil district, breaking a glass in the Rue la Fontaine.

“He’s only five minutes’ walk from the Bois de Boulogne,” Lecœur had said. “If he once gets there, they’ll never pick him up.”

But the fellow had turned round and made for the quays again, breaking a glass in the Rue Berton, just around the corner from the Quai de Passy.

The first calls had come from the poorer quarters of Grenelle, but the man had only to cross the river to find himself in entirely different surroundings—quiet, spacious, and deserted streets, where his footfalls must have rung out clearly on the frosty pavements.

Sixth call. Skirting the Place du Trocadéro, he was in the Rue de Long-champ.

“The chap seems to think he’s on a paper chase,” remarked Mambret. “Only he uses broken glass instead of paper.”

Other calls came in in quick succession. Another stolen car, a revolver-shot in the Rue de Flandres, whose victim swore he didn’t know who fired it, though he’d been seen all through the night drinking in company with another man.

“Hallo! Here’s Javel again. Hallo! Javel? It can’t be your practical joker this time: he must be somewhere near the Champs Elysées by now. Oh. yes. He’s still at it. Well, what’s your trouble? What? Spell it, will you? Rue Michat. Yes, I’ve got it. Between the Rue Lecourbe and the Boulevard Felix Faure. By the viaduct—yes. I know. Number 17. Who reported it? The concierge? She’s just been up, I suppose. Oh, shut up, will you! No, I wasn’t speaking to you. It’s Sommer here, who can’t stop talking about a
boudin
he ate thirty years ago!”

Sommer broke off and listened to the man on the switchboard.

“What were you saying? A shabby seven-story block of flats. Yes—”

There were plenty of buildings like that in the district, buildings that weren’t really old, but of such poor construction that they were already dilapidated. Buildings that as often as not thrust themselves up bleakly in the middle of a bit of wasteland, towering over the little shacks and hovels around them, their blind walls plastered with advertisements.

“You say she heard someone running downstairs and then a door slam. The door of the house, I suppose. On which floor is the flat? The
entresol
. Which way does it face? Onto an inner courtyard— Just a moment, there’s a call coming in from the Eighth. That must be our friend of the telephone pillars.”

Lecœur asked the new caller to wait, then came back to Javel.

“An old woman, you say. Madame Fayet. Worked as charwoman. Dead? A blunt instrument. Is the doctor there? You’re sure she’s dead? What about her money? I suppose she had some tucked away somewhere. Right. Call me back. Or I’ll ring you.”

He turned to the detective, who was now sleeping soundly.

“Janvier! Hey, Janvier! This is for you.”

“What? What is it?”

“The killer.”

“Where?”

“Near the Rue Lecourbe. Here’s the address. This time he’s done in an old charwoman, a Madame Fayet.”

Janvier put on his overcoat, looked round for his hat, and gulped down the remains of the coffee in his cup.

“Who’s dealing with it?”

“Gonesse, of the Fifteenth.”

“Ring up the P. J., will you, and tell them I’ve gone there.”

A minute or two later, Lecœur was able to add another little cross to the six that were already in the column. Someone had smashed the glass of the pillar in the Avenue d’Iéna only one hundred and fifty yards from the Arc de Triomphe.

“Among the broken glass they found a handkerchief flecked with blood. It was a child’s handkerchief.”

“Has it got initials?”

“No. It’s a blue-check handkerchief, rather dirty. The chap must have wrapped it round his knuckles for breaking the glass.”

There were steps in the corridor. The day shift coming to take over. They looked very clean and close-shaven and the cold wind had whipped the blood into their cheeks.

“Happy Christmas!”

Sommer closed the tin in which he brought his sandwiches. Mambret knocked out his pipe. Only Lecœur remained in his seat, since there was no relief for him.

The fat Godin had been the first to arrive, promptly changing his jacket for the grey-linen coat in which he always worked, then putting some water on to boil for his grog. All through the winter he suffered from one never-ending cold which he combated, or perhaps nourished, by one hot grog after another.

“Hallo! Yes, I’m still here. I’m doing a shift for Potier, who’s gone down to his family in Normandy. Yes. I want to hear all about it. Most particularly. Janvier’s gone, but I’ll pass it on to the P. J. An invalid, you say? What invalid?”

One had to be patient on that job, as people always talked about their cases as though everyone else was in the picture.

“A low building behind, right. Not in the Rue Michat, then? Rue Vasco de Gamma. Yes, yes. I know. The little house with a garden behind some railings. Only I didn’t know he was an invalid. Right. He doesn’t sleep much. Saw a young boy climbing up a drainpipe? How old? He couldn’t say? Of course not, in the dark. How did he know it was a boy, then? Listen, ring me up again, will you? Oh, you’re going off. Who’s relieving you? Jules? Right. Well, ask him to keep me informed.”

“What’s going on?” asked Godin.

“An old woman who’s been done in. Down by the Rue Lecourbe.”

“Who did it?”

“There’s an invalid opposite who says he saw a small boy climbing up a drainpipe and along the top of a wall.”

“You mean to say it was a boy who killed the old woman?”

“We don’t know yet.”

No one was very interested. After all. murders were an everyday matter to these people. The lights were still on in the room, as it was still only a bleak, dull daylight that found its way through the frosty window panes. One of the new watch went and scratched a bit of the frost away. It was instinctive. A childish memory perhaps, like Sommer’s
boudin
.

The latter had gone home. So had Mambret. The newcomers settled down to their work, turning over the papers on their desks.

A car stolen from the Square la Bruyère.

Lecœur looked pensively at his seven crosses. Then, with a sigh, he got up and stood gazing at the immense street plan on the wall.

“Brushing up on your Paris?”

“I think I know it pretty well already. Something’s just struck me. There’s a chap wandering about smashing the glass of telephone pillars. Seven in the last hour and a half. He hasn’t been going in a straight line but zigzagging— first this way, then that.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t know Paris.”

“Or knows it only too well! Not once has he ventured within sight of a police station. If he’d gone straight, he’d have passed two or three. What’s more, he’s skirted all the main crossroads where there’d be likely to be a man on duty.” Lecœur pointed them out. “The only risk he took was in crossing the Pont Mirabeau, but if he wanted to cross the river he’d have run that risk at any of the bridges.”

“I expect he’s drunk,” said Godin, sipping his rum.

“What I want to know is why he’s stopped.”

“Perhaps he’s got home.”

“A man who’s down by the Quai de Javel at half past six in the morning isn’t likely to live near the Etoile.”

“Seems to interest you a lot.”

“It’s got me scared!”

“Go on.”

It was strange to see the worried expression on Lecœur’s face. He was notorious for his calmness and his most dramatic nights were coolly summarized by the little crosses in his notebook.

“Hallo! Javel? Is that Jules? Lecœur speaking. Look here, Jules, behind the flats in the Rue Michat is the little house where the invalid lives. Well, now, on one side of it is an apartment house, a red-brick building with a grocer’s shop on the ground floor. You know it?

“Good. Has anything happened there? Nothing reported. No, we’ve heard nothing here. All the same, I can’t explain why, but I think you ought to inquire.”

He was hot all at once. He stubbed out a half finished cigarette.

“Hallo! Ternes? Any alarms gone off in your neighborhood? Nothing? Only drunks? Is the
patrouille cycliste
out? Just leaving? Ask them to keep their eyes open for a young boy looking tired and very likely bleeding from the right hand. Lost? Not exactly that. I can’t explain now.”

His eyes went back to the street plan on the wall, in which no light went on for a good ten minutes, and then only for an accidental death in the Eighteenth Arrondissement, right up at the top of Montmartre, caused by an escape of gas.

Outside, in the cold streets of Paris, dark figures were hurrying home from the churches...

One of the sharpest impressions Andre Lecœur retained of his infancy was one of immobility. His world at that period was a large kitchen in Orleans, on the outskirts of the town. He must have spent his winters there, too, but he remembered it best flooded with sunlight, with the door wide open onto a little garden where hens clucked incessantly and rabbits nibbled lettuce leaves behind the wire netting of their hutches. But, if the door was open, its passage was barred to him by a little gate which his father had made one Sunday for that express purpose.

On weekdays, at half past eight, his father went off on his bicycle to the gas works at the other end of the town. His mother did the housework, doing the same things in the same order every day. Before making the beds, she put the bedclothes over the windowsill for an hour to air.

At ten o’clock, a little bell would ring in the street. That was the greengrocer, with his barrow, passing on his daily round. Twice a week at eleven, a bearded doctor came to see his little brother, who was constantly ill. Andre hardly ever saw the latter, as he wasn’t allowed into his room.

That was all, or so it seemed in retrospect. He had just time to play a bit and drink his milk, and there was his father home again for the midday meal.

If nothing had happened at home, lots had happened to him. He had been to read the meters in any number of houses and chatted with all sorts of people, about whom he would talk during dinner.

As for the afternoon, it slipped away quicker still, perhaps because he was made to sleep during the first part of it.

For his mother, apparently, the time passed just as quickly. Often had he heard her say with a sigh: “There, I’ve no sooner washed up after one meal than it’s time to start making another!”

Perhaps it wasn’t so very different now. Here in the Préfecture de Police the nights seemed long enough at the time, but at the end they seemed to have slipped by in no time, with nothing to show for them except for these columns of the little crosses in his notebook.

A few more lamps lit up. A few more incidents reported, including a collision between a car and a bus in the Rue de Clignancourt, and then once again it was Javel on the line.

It wasn’t Jules, however, but Gonesse, the detective who’d been to the scene of the crime. While there he had received Lecœur’s message suggesting something might have happened in the other house in the Rue Vasco de Gama. He had been to see.

“Is that you, Lecœur?” There was a queer note in his voice. Either irritation or suspicion.

Look here, what made you think of that house? Do you know the old woman. Madame Fayet?”

“I’ve never seen her, but I know all about her.”

What had finally come to pass that Christmas morning was something that Andre Lecœur had foreseen and perhaps dreaded for more than ten years. Again and again, as he stared at the huge plan of Paris, with its little lamps, he had said to himself, “It’s only a question of time. Sooner or later, it’ll be something that’s happened to someone I know.”

There’d been many a near miss, an accident in his own street or a crime in a house nearby. But, like thunder, it had approached only to recede once again into the distance.

This time it was a direct hit.

“Have you seen the concierge?” he asked. He could imagine the puzzled look on the detective’s face as he went on: Is the boy at home?”