The Case of the Dead Diplomat (6 page)

“There, gentlemen, is your first task. Kindly put on one side any papers that you consider likely to throw light on the identity or the motive of the assassin.”

T
HE SORTING
of a pile of documents was a familiar task to both Richardson and his junior. They sat opposite to one another with the pile between them and began by weeding out all carbon copies of journalistic matter; this they put aside: it reduced the height of the pile to manageable proportions. There remained a heterogeneous mass of papers—notes of invitation in their envelopes, receipted bills, and notes made in French and English on the flyleaves of letters and the backs of envelopes. Like most journalists the dead man seemed to have no method in filing his correspondence or news-cuttings; they were allowed to accumulate to the point when all were destroyed in a common holocaust. There was a series of love-letters in a French feminine hand—doubtless that of the “Mademoiselle X” of whom the newspapers were making so much.

After an hour and a half the first classification had been made. It had been singularly barren. Sergeant Cooper had put aside one letter to which he attached importance. He translated it verbally to Richardson.

“Is there no date?” asked Richardson.

“None, except the word ‘Tuesday.' It might have been any Tuesday.”

“No postmark?”

“None; apparently it was left by hand.”

“The
concierge
may remember something about it. He begins ‘Dear Friend,' so Mr. Everett must have known him well. I think we ought to get hold of Inspector Bigot. See whether you can dig him out.”

The process of “digging out” did not take long. Bigot came in with amused curiosity written on his features. He read the letter with a frown. “Tuesday? The crime was committed on Tuesday.”

“You will excuse my question, monsieur,” said Richardson, “but did you bring from the flat the scraps of paper from the waste-paper-basket?”

“No, monsieur. I don't even know that there was any waste-paper-basket in the flat.”

“Bad searching,” murmured Richardson in English. “Ask him whether we could visit the flat together; otherwise there is the danger that the
concierge
may destroy valuable evidence unintentionally.”

“I should be at your service, messieurs,” said Bigot with a smile, “if we had all eaten. It is now long past our usual hour for lunch. Perhaps you English detectives make a rule of eating nothing until your case is complete, but now that you are in France it becomes a duty to satisfy your appetites.”

The Englishmen exchanged a word or two in their own language. “Monsieur,” said Richardson, “you would be very good if you would consent to lunch with us. You, no doubt, are aware of the best restaurant in this neighbourhood.”

Bigot's eyes glistened. “I know a little restaurant quite close to this police station—the Restaurant des Gourmets.”

“Excellent,” said Richardson, “you must be our guide.” In an undertone to Cooper he said in English, “If it breaks us we shall have to do it.”

“The Embassy pays,” murmured Cooper.

They caught up their hats and followed Bigot to the restaurant. There he seemed to be well known. The proprietor himself took charge of them and prompted their decision on the important subject of the wines appropriate to the solids. They “did themselves well.” Their conversation covered subjects far more interesting to them than the case they had in hand. Bigot described the relations that existed in France between the police and the criminal courts; he deplored the sentimentality of the French jurymen and the notorious inadequacy of sentences.

“Like you in England we catch our murderers; we provide the evidence sufficient to convict them and bring them to the guillotine, and then the tears begin to flow. The guilty man is the father of a family; the jurymen and the judge too are fathers of families. To commit a little murder in a fit of passion? Why, it is a thing that any of them might do. Let us give the man another chance. A short term of imprisonment will give him time for repentance; he may still become a worthy citizen. In England, I understand, you execute your murderers.”

“Some of them,” admitted Cooper.

“Well, in France it has become the exception. We have forgotten how to punish, and the public sympathy is always on the side of the gangster.”

They discussed the dangers to which French police officers are subject. Bigot was astonished to learn that it was the exception for British criminals to carry pistols. “Here in France it is not only the pistol, but also the knife, and especially is this so with the Italians and the Poles, who furnish the greater part of our criminals. We have officers wounded every year; it is a dangerous profession, that of the police.”

When they had well fed and had drunk their coffee and their
petit verre
, Bigot looked at his watch and Richardson called for the bill, which proved not to be as extravagant as he had expected.

“Now, messieurs,” said Bigot, “I will take you to the flat where the murder took place. It is quite near. We can go to it on foot.”

The
concierge
appeared glad to see the police. “When shall I be able to clean the flat on the second floor, monsieur?” she asked. “The carpet will have to go to the cleaners.”

“All in good time, madame,” replied Bigot. “If you will now lend me your key, it may bring the moment for cleaning one day earlier. These gentlemen have to visit the flat.”

The English detectives found the little sitting-room very much as it must have appeared on the morning after the murder. A stiff brown stain on the carpet indicated the spot where the body had been found. Bigot explained that the only change had been that the chairs had been pushed back to make room for the stretcher, and that a few things had been taken down to the police station. The lamp was still lying on the floor. One overturned chair had been left as it was. Richardson pounced on the waste-paper-basket, half concealed by the window curtain. There was torn paper in it. He pulled a large official envelope out of his pocket and poured into it the tiny fragments of paper, sealing down the flap and labelling it, “Contents of W.P. basket.” Then he proceeded to scrutinize every square inch of the floor by the light of an electric torch. Bigot sat down on the divan and watched him with a smile. Cooper, meanwhile, was making a rapid sketch plan of the room, aided by a pocket tape-measure. The room was only twelve feet by fourteen and it was overcrowded with furniture.

Having completed his survey of the carpet, Richardson brought forward a chair, and addressing Bigot, said, “I must ask you to move from the divan, monsieur. If you will kindly take this chair…”

Bigot complied with a laugh. “You English detectives take nothing for granted, I observe.”

At a sign from Richardson, Cooper took one end of the divan while Richardson took the other. They brought it eighteen inches forward and tilted it. The carpet under the divan seemed not to have been dusted for many weeks, but the object that riveted the attention of the three men was an exposed roll of film from a Kodak camera. It was lying a few inches in from the edge of the divan.

“Here is something,” remarked Richardson.

“You think so? To me it seems quite unimportant. All journalists nowadays carry cameras.”

“Where is Mr. Everett's camera?”

“Here,” said Cooper, “here on this shelf.”

“Let's have a look at it.” Richardson took it out of its leather case and measured the exposed film against it. He turned to Bigot. “You see, monsieur? This film could never have been used in this camera; it is two sizes larger.”

“
Tiens!
” exclaimed Bigot, “but that is certainly a point; the film may have rolled out of the murderer's pocket during the struggle. We will have it developed.”

Richardson had moved over to a little buffet with a marble top. “This room smells strongly of whisky, and now I see why,” he said. He pointed to an uncorked decanter, from which a liberal libation had been poured into a glass. A siphon was standing beside it. “Look here, Cooper, this shows that Everett was pouring out a drink either for himself or for a visitor… and… stoop your head a little… he must have seen something in that mirror that made him forget to put the stopper back in the decanter. From where I am standing I can see everything in the room, with the inspector in the centre of the picture. Perhaps it was this fact that led to the fatal quarrel. Well, we'll remember that, but for the moment we have our hands full; we ought to get back and piece these fragments of paper together.”

They walked back to the police station, making a little detour to pass a photographer's shop, where Bigot left the film to be developed. Back at their table the two British detectives engaged in the familiar and fascinating game of re-constructing a document out of torn paper. The trick consists, of course, in getting all the outside borders into their proper positions; that gives the size of the sheet, and the rest of the work becomes comparatively easy. It was obvious that the torn-up scraps had belonged to the same document; there were no odd scraps in the basket.

“Hallo!” exclaimed Cooper. “Here's an address.”

“An address is always something.”

“Yes, but look, this address is embossed—
Cercle Interallié
, Faubourg St. Honoré. I know the place; it's a club, almost next door to the British Embassy; but, as you see, the document itself is written in French.”

“Let's get on with our piecing, and then we shall know what the document was.”

They went on working at their game for another half-hour before Cooper found himself in a position to read the document aloud. It consisted of note of a story compromising to a member of the French Cabinet at the time.

“I wonder whether a French police station runs to a pot of paste,” said Richardson. “This document is written on one side only, so we can paste it down on ordinary thick paper, and not on transparent flimsy as we have sometimes to do at home. See whether you can rout out Bigot and scare a pot of paste out of him.”

Two minutes later Cooper returned, carrying a paste-pot in triumph. Paste appeared to be a commodity very largely used by French officials.

“We must get on with our pasting,” he said, “or we shall have the inspector on our backs. He wants to see the result of our piecing game.”

Actually the inspector followed close upon Cooper's heels, and was able to watch the re-construction of the document with the paste-pot.

“It is in French,” he exclaimed with relief. “Then I shall be able to read it. Do you think it has anything to do with the letter signed ‘P.C'?”

“Yes, monsieur; it has, in our opinion, everything to do with it. ‘P.C.,' whoever he may have been, must have met Mr. Everett at the club, where every member of the British Embassy staff is an honorary member, and ‘P.C.' wrote out the story then and there for the information of the British ambassador. Then, for some reason, ‘P.C.' must have changed his mind and insisted upon the destruction of the note in his presence. That is how we interpret the two documents. The date can be fixed only by going to the club, where the names of all guests of members are recorded.”

A taxi set down the party at the gate of the courtyard, and Cooper suggested that Bigot should enter the club alone; three men interviewing the porter simultaneously might attract too much attention, whereas one would attract none. Bigot acquiescing, the two Englishmen walked towards the British Embassy to see how Mr. Gregory was disposing of his reporters. The tide was on the wane, for the little crowd at the gate in the morning had dwindled to a single photographer, who might be bent upon securing portraits of the two foreigners who had been seen to go in, but not to come out again. They retraced their steps to the club. Bigot emerged triumphant. He had found in the visitors' book the name of Frank Everett, and Paul Chabrol as his luncheon guest, and this had been on Monday, the first of October. All that now remained was to find M. Paul Chabrol and hear what he had to say.

“That will be my task,” said Bigot. “Also I shall call for those photographs that we left to be developed this morning; they may yield some light on this mysterious affair.”

“Now that we are so near the Embassy,” said Richardson, “I think we ought to report our day's work to the first secretary, Mr. Carruthers, I think his name was.”

The porter touched his hat as they went in; they were now members of the Embassy staff. The Press photographer had deserted his post, weary of waiting for what seemed never destined to materialize.

Chubb met the two detectives at the door of the Chancery. “They've been asking where you two gentlemen were, and I could tell them nothing. I said that probably you were going over the floor of Mr. Everett's flat with a high-power microscope—that's what they do in the detective films. Number One holds up a hair found on the carpet. ‘What's this?' he asks, and Number Two says, ‘I know it; it belonged to the beard of the
sous-prefet
who was done to death last Thursday,' and there you are!”

“Are they fond of detective films over here?” asked Cooper.

“They eat them, but always there's a woman in the case—she's the vamp that lured the poor man to his death. When she's off stage they talk about her as the most beautiful woman that you've ever seen, and when you do see her—my God!”