Murder Most Merry (69 page)

It was half past two. Had they had anything to eat? Had Loubet, with his mind set on escape, been able to resist the temptation to drink?

“Monsieur le Commissaire—”

Andre Lecœur couldn’t speak with the assurance he would have liked. He couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he was an upstart, if not a usurper.

“I know there are thousands of little bars in Paris. But if we chose the more likely districts and put plenty of men on the job—”

Not only were all the men there roped in, but Saillard got through to the Police Judiciaire, where there were six men on duty, and set every one of them to work on six different telephone lines.

“Hallo! Is that the Bar des Amis? In the course of the day have you seen a middle-aged man accompanied by a boy of ten? The man’s wearing a black overcoat and a—”

Again Lecœur made little crosses, not in his notebook this time, but in the telephone directory. There were ten pages of bars, some of them with the weirdest names.

A plan of Paris was spread out on a table all ready and it was in a little alley of ill-repute behind the Place Clichy that the Inspector was able to make the first mark in red chalk.

“Yes, there was a man of that description here about twelve o’clock. He drank three glasses of Calvados and ordered a glass of white wine for the boy. The boy didn’t want to drink at first, but he did in the end and he wolfed a couple of eggs.”

By the way Olivier Lecœur’s face lit up, you might have thought he heard his boy’s voice.

“You don’t know which way they went?”

“Towards the Boulevard des Batignolles, I think. The man looked as though he’d already had one or two before he came in.”

“Hallo! Zanzi-Bar? Have you at any time seen a—”

It became a refrain. As soon as one man had finished, the same words, or practically the same, were repeated by his neighbor.

Rue Damrémont. Montmartre again, only farther out this time. One-thirty. Loubet had broken a glass, his movements by this time being somewhat clumsy. The boy got up and made off in the direction of the lavatory, but when the man followed, he thought better of it and went back to his seat.

“Yes. The boy did look a bit frightened. As for the man, he was laughing and smirking as though he was enjoying a huge joke.”

“Do you hear that, Olivier? Bib was still there at one-forty.”

Andre Lecœur dared not say what was in his mind. The struggle was nearing its climax. Now that Loubet had really started drinking if was just a question of time. The only thing was: would the boy wait long enough?

It was all very well for Madame Loubet to say the gun wasn’t loaded. The butt of an automatic was quite hard enough to crack a boy’s skull.

His eyes wandered to his brother, and he had a vision of what Olivier might well have come to if his asthma hadn’t prevented him drinking.

“Hallo! Yes. Where? Boulevard Ney?”

They had reached the outskirts of Paris. The ex-Sergeant seemed still to have his wits about him. Little by little, in easy stages, he was leading the boy to one of those outlying districts where there were still empty building sites and desolate spaces.

Three police cars were promptly switched to that neighborhood, as well as every available
agent cycliste
within reach. Even Janvier dashed off, taking the Inspector’s little car, and it was all they could do to prevent Olivier from running after him.

“I tell you, you’d much better stay here. He may easily go off on a false trail, and then you won’t know anything.”

Nobody had time for making coffee. The men of the second day shift had not thoroughly warmed to the case. Everyone was strung up.

“Hallo! Yes. Orient Bar. What is it?”

It was Andre Lecœur who took the call. With the receiver to his ear, he rose to his feet, making queer signs that brought the whole room to a hush.

“What? Don’t speak so close to the mouthpiece.”

In the silence, the others could hear a high-pitched voice.

“It’s for the police! Tell the police I’ve got him! The killer! Hallo? What? Is that Uncle Andre?”

The voice was lowered a tone to say shakily: “I tell you, I’ll shoot, Uncle Andre.”

Lecœur hardly knew to whom he handed the receiver. He dashed out of the room and up the stairs, almost breaking down the door of the room.

“Quick, all cars to the Orient Bar, Porte Clignancourt.”

And without waiting to hear the message go out, he dashed back as fast as he’d come. At the door he stopped dead, struck by the calm that had suddenly descended on the room.

It was Saillard who held the receiver into which, in the thickest of Parisian dialects, a voice was saying:

“It’s all right. Don’t worry. I gave the chap a crack on the head with a bottle. Laid him out properly. God knows what he wanted to do to the kid. What’s that? You want to speak to him? Here, little one, come here. And give me your popgun. I don’t like those toys. Why, it isn’t loaded.”

Another voice. “Is that Uncle Andre?”

The Inspector looked round, and it was not to Andre but to Olivier that he handed the receiver.

“Uncle Andre. I got him.”

“Bib! It’s me.”

“What are you doing there, Dad?”

“Nothing. Waiting to hear from you. It’s been—”

“You can’t think how bucked I am. Wait a moment, here’s the police. They’re just arriving.”

Confused sounds. Voices, the shuffling of feet, the clink of glasses. Olivier Lecœur listened, standing there awkwardly, gazing at the wall-map which he did not see, his thoughts far away at the northern extremity of Paris, in a windswept boulevard.

“They’re taking me with them.”

Another voice. “Is that you, Chief? Janvier here.”

One might have thought it was Olivier Lecœur who had been knocked on the head with a bottle by the way he held the receiver out, staring blankly in front of him.

“He’s out, right out, Chief. They’re lugging him away now. When the boy heard the telephone ringing, he decided it was his chance. He grabbed Loubet’s gun from his pocket and made a dash for the phone. The proprietor here’s a pretty tough nut. If it hadn’t been for—”

A little lamp lit up in the plan of Paris.

“Hallo! Your car’s gone out?”

“Someone’s smashed the glass of the pillar telephone in the Place Clignancourt. Says there’s a row going on in a bar. I’ll ring up again when we know what’s going on.”

It wouldn’t be necessary.

Nor was it necessary for Andre Lecœur to put a cross in his notebook under Miscellaneous.

—translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury

MURDER UNDER THE MISTLETOE – Margery Allingham

Murder under the mistletoe—and the man who must have done it couldn’t have done it. That’s my Christmas and I don’t feel merry thank you very much all the same.” Superintendent Stanislaus Oates favored his old friend Mr. Albert Campion with a pained smile and sat down in the chair indicated.

It was the afternoon of Christmas Day and Mr. Campion, only a trifle more owlish than usual behind his horn rims, had been fetched down from the children’s party which he was attending at his brother-in-law’s house in Knightsbridge to meet the Superintendent, who had moved heaven and earth to find him.

“What do you want?” Mr. Campion inquired facetiously. “A little armchair miracle?”

“I don’t care if you do it swinging from a trapeze. I just want a reasonable explanation.” Oates was rattled. His dyspeptic face with the perpetually sad expression was slightly flushed and not with festivity. He plunged into his story.

“About eleven last night a crook called Sampson was found shot dead in the back of a car in a garage under a small drinking club in Alcatraz Mews—the club is named The Humdinger. A large bunch of mistletoe which had been lying on the front seat ready to be driven home had been placed on top of the body partially hiding it—which was why it hadn’t been found before. The gun, fitted with a silencer, but wiped of prints, was found under the front seat. The dead man was recognized at once by the owner of the car who is also the owner of the club. He was the owner’s current boyfriend. She is quite a well-known West End character called ‘Girlski.‘ What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Oo-er’,” murmured Mr. Campion. “One of the Eumenides, no doubt?”

“No.” Oates spoke innocently. “She’s not a Greek. Don’t worry about her. Just keep your mind on the facts. She knows, as we do, that the only person who wanted to kill Sampson is a nasty little snake called Kroll. He has been out of circulation for the best of reasons. Sampson turned Queen’s evidence against him in a matter concerning a conspiracy to rob Her Majesty’s mails and when he was released last Tuesday Kroll came out breathing retribution.”

“Not the Christmas spirit,” said Mr. Campion inanely.

“That is exactly what
we
thought,” Oates agreed. “So about five o’clock yesterday afternoon two of our chaps, hearing that Kroll was at The Humdinger, where he might have been expected to make trouble, dropped along there and brought him in for questioning and he’s been in custody ever since.

“Well, now. We have at least a dozen reasonably sober witnesses to prove that Kroll did not meet Sampson at the Club. Sampson had been there earlier in the afternoon but he left about a quarter to four saying he’d got to do some Christmas shopping but promising to return. Fifteen minutes or so later Kroll came in and stayed there in full view of Girlski and the customers until our men turned up and collected him.
Now
what do you say?”

“Too easy!” Mr. Campion was suspicious. “Kroll killed Sampson just before he came in himself. The two met in the dusk outside the club. Kroll forced Sampson into the garage and possibly into the car and shot him. With the way the traffic has been lately, he’d hardly have attracted attention had he used a mortar, let alone a gun with a silencer. He wiped the weapon, chucked it in the car, threw the mistletoe over the corpse, and went up to Girlski to renew old acquaintance and establish an alibi. Your chaps, arriving when they did, must have appeared welcome.”

Oates nodded. “We thought that.
That is what happened
. That is why this morning’s development has set me gibbering. We now have two unimpeachable witnesses who swear that the dead man was in Chipperwood West at six last evening delivering some Christmas purchases he had made on behalf of a neighbor. That is
a whole hour
after Kroll was pulled in.

“The assumption is that Sampson returned to Alcatraz Mews sometime later in the evening and was killed by someone else—which we know is not true. Unfortunately, the Chipperwood West witnesses are not the kind of people we are going to shake. One of them is a friend of yours. She asked our Inspector if he knew you because you were “so good at crime and all that nonsense.”

“Good Heavens!” Mr. Campion spoke piously as the explanation of the Superintendent’s unlikely visitation was made plain to him. “I don’t think I know Chipperwood West.”

“It’s a suburb which is becoming fashionable. Have you ever heard of Lady Larradine?”

“Old Lady ‘ell?” Mr. Campion let the joke of his salad days escape without its being noticed by either of them. “I don’t believe it. She must be dead by this time!”

“There’s a type of woman who never dies before you do,” said Oates with apparent sincerity. “She’s quite a dragon, I understand from our Inspector. However, she isn’t the actual witness. There are two of them. Brigadier Brose is one. Ever heard of
him
?”

“I don’t think I have.”

“My information is that you’d remember him if you’d met him. Well, we’ll find out. I’m taking you with me, Campion. I hope you don’t mind?”

“My sister will hate it. I’m due to be Santa Claus in about an hour.”

“I can’t help that.” Oates was adamant. “If a bunch of silly crooks want to get spiteful at the festive season, someone must do the homework. Come and play Santa Claus with me. It’s your last chance. I’m retiring this summer.”

Oates continued in the same vein as he and Mr. Campion sat in the back of a police car threading their way through the deserted Christmas streets where the lamps were growing bright in the dusk.