Murder on French Leave Read online

  ‘Not a very exciting collection, I’m afraid,’ I said, proffering my pile, and could tell from her expression that she agreed with me.

  ‘If you could give me some idea of the kind of thing he enjoys, I’ll go to a bookshop and see what I can find.’

  ‘That is not at all what I am asking, madame.’

  ‘Why not? Don’t worry about the expense or anything. We should be glad to help, in whatever way we can.’

  ‘But, I assure you, it is not gifts he is seeking. This he would not accept, madame. It is simply the loan of something to read, which would be returned to you in only a few days.’

  ‘Then I am sorry, but this is the best we can do. Has he no other English-speaking friends you could ask?’

  ‘Yes, without doubt, but Mr Carlsen wishes me to approach you, before anyone. To be frank, madame, there is a unique way you could be of assistance to him.’

  ‘Then please tell me what it is.’

  ‘I must explain that, as well as reading, he is hoping to pass some of this difficult time by writing some things of his own.’

  ‘That sounds sensible, but how on earth could we help there? You mean, he needs a typewriter, or paper? If so . . .’

  ‘No, no, not that, but you understand, do you not, that he is deeply interested in matters of the cinema and theatre?’

  ‘No,’ I said slowly, ‘I can’t say I had understood that. Now you mention it.’

  ‘It is true, however. Perhaps he was too shy to tell you, but he admires you extremely, as an artist, and I think this is why he turns to you now. He is anxious to try his hand at writing a scenario, but he does not know all about the technical side. It occurs to him that you might have some material of that kind which he could study.’

  ‘You mean other people’s scripts?’

  ‘Please, madame, if you have any and would be so kind as to spare them. It would mean so much, and they would all be returned to you; you have my word for it.’

  The doorbell rang as she spoke, and it recalled to me the first occasion when I had heard it, sitting in the bath exactly a week ago. It had signified the mysterious return of my red suitcase and it flashed into my mind that all the play-acting and subterfuge denoted not that something had been removed from its contents, but that something had been added to them.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, getting up. ‘A friend has arrived and I have to see him for a moment. I shan’t be long.’

  This time I drew the door to as I went out, but left it unlatched. I could hear voices from the salon, Robin’s predominating, and silently applauded him for taking over the interrogation. Then I darted across to Ellen’s room and shut myself in. The pages of ‘The Waiting Room’ were scattered about on her bed. I tucked them neatly back into their folder and, for good measure, pushed it under the eiderdown. Then I stood at the window for a bit, doing breathing exercises.

  Mademoiselle Pêche was sitting demurely where I had left her and since I knew she had not found what she had come for, I concluded that she was confident of having bamboozled me into handing it over voluntarily. A disappointment was in store:

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I said, ‘but while I was out there I asked my husband’s advice. You see, it so happens that I do have one or two scripts with me, but they’re only on loan. My husband agrees that I am not entitled to let them out of my hands, even in a special case like this.’

  ‘It would only be for one or two days, madame. I would return them to you personally, on Monday or Tuesday. You have my word.’

  ‘I’m not doubting it for an instant,’ I lied, ‘but I’m afraid I must stick to what my husband says. He’s a police detective, as you’ve probably heard, so he knows the form about these things. You see, there are very strict copyright laws. I’ll show you.’

  I hauled the red case down from my wardrobe and flicked open the lid. The two folders from my agent’s office were lying on top, and choosing the one called ‘Thursday Never Comes’, I held it out to her. She barely gave it a glance.

  ‘But, madame, I am not ignorant of these things. I, too, have many confidential documents in my care. But have you no others, not so private? Some old material, which is now out of date?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. It’s not the kind of thing one carts around when travelling abroad. It’s possible that I could get hold of some for you. It may take a little time, but if you wish I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Please don’t trouble yourself, madame. There has been some misunderstanding. Mr Carlsen was certain . . .’

  ‘Of what?’

  She regarded me squarely: ‘That you would be able to help him.’

  ‘That’s too bad, and I’m sorry that I cannot.’

  I stood up, meaning to terminate the interview, but Ellen forestalled me. She banged on the door and stuck her head round, saying:

  ‘The inquisition’s over and we’re just off. Robin asked me to come and get your letter.’

  ‘Here it is, and don’t go stashing it away in that great rucksack of yours and then forget all about it.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ she replied amiably, ‘since it does seem to be rather urgent, after all.’

  ‘Would you mind awfully if we stayed in tonight?’ I asked Robin, as soon as we were alone. I had temporarily lost interest in the problem of Jonathan and had only paid token attention to the assurances that he seemed to be a nice enough boy, underneath all the fringes and glooms.

  ‘Not at all. Any particular reason? Your hand’s not hurting, is it?’

  ‘Not any more. I think I’ll take this bandage off tomorrow. No, the fact is there’s a script I ought to read.’

  ‘Really? Any hurry about it?’

  ‘I believe so,’ I admitted. ‘I really believe the time has come to find out what Ellen noticed and I missed.’

  (vi)

  ‘Of course, I’d have spotted it myself,’ I explained, one hour later. ‘Ellen was quite right; the most interesting part comes in the second half. Where is Ellen, by the way? It must be getting awfully late.’

  ‘Only half past nine, so don’t start sending cables yet,’ Robin answered, breaking off his own study of the script. He had started from scratch the minute I put it down and was three quarters of the way through.

  ‘Well, do hurry up with that. I’m dying to hear your views.’

  ‘Patience, please! I need ten more minutes, which will only turn into twenty if you don’t stop prattling.’

  Twenty minutes later to the dot, he replaced the last sheet in the folder and laid it on the table between us.

  ‘Now be an angel and make some fresh coffee, while I collect my wits.’

  ‘Oh, honestly, Robin, how maddening you can be sometimes!’

  ‘And make it a little stronger this time,’ he added, as I did a bit of flouncing out.

  ‘When you talk of the most interesting part,’ he said, as I returned with the steaming pot, ‘I suppose you refer to the girl’s murder?’

  ‘Well, naturally.’

  The coffee was the colour and consistency of tar. He took one sip and for a moment we both thought he was going to spit it out. Restraining himself, he went on:

  ‘We are also assuming that this story, “The Waiting Room”, was written by Carlsen, alias Henry Fitzgerald?’

  ‘Yes, we are. It explains so many puzzles.’

  ‘Though not, by any means, all. In fact, I should say it creates as many puzzles as it solves. Why, for instance, was he so keen to plant it on you, only to go to equally complicated lengths to get it back again?’

  ‘We only have Pêche’s word for it that he is trying to get it back again, and she could be acting for someone else. She pretends to be deeply concerned about Sven, but it might be just an act. After all, he didn’t give her a note for me, which would have been the normal thing. In fact, you know, Robin, it struck me even at the time that she was inventing that bit about his wanting scripts for models. Otherwise, why not have said so from the start? I think she was hoping to get her hands o
n it either by pinching it while I was out of the room, or by trickery. When both those failed, she launched into this other tale. But if he is the author of “The Waiting Room”, which we both agree he must be, he wouldn’t need models at this stage. He knows enough about the technicalities already to turn out a rough scenario and the shooting script would come much later.’

  ‘All right; but assuming that he did write it and that he did put it in your suitcase, why all the subterfuge?’

  ‘But that’s so typical of him. He’s conceited, in a rather childish way, and I’m sure he thought I had only to read it to be dazzled by its brilliance. But he probably also guessed that lots of people send me scripts to read and most of them just lie around for ages. Whereas, if I believed it had come to me through my agent, I’d be much more likely to give it serious attention.’

  ‘His methods were rather drastic, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but with just the kind of cloak-and-dagger element that would appeal to him. You can tell from the script just what kind of schoolboy fantasy world he lives in.’

  ‘So the next thing one asks oneself is: which came first, the chicken or the egg?’

  ‘That is the kind of question which people always ask themselves out loud and I never know what they mean.’

  ‘In this case, it means: did the fiction or the fact come first? In all the essentials, the real-life murder was identical to the one he describes in the script.’

  The episode to which he referred came towards the end of ‘The Waiting Room’ and it was true that the similarities between it and Leila Baker’s death were quite remarkable. In the script the victim was a patient, a psychopathic, adolescent girl, with strong tendencies to nymphomania, kleptomania and spiteful curiosity, among other unfortunate traits. As had been inevitable from her first appearance, this unattractive character had presented a dire threat to Dr Marcus, who was the real villain of the piece, with the result that she had got her come-uppance before she had a chance to cook his goose. It was her murder that created the springboard from which Simon Charrington was able to plunge into the final derring-do sequence, killing off numerous baddies and triumphantly delivering the captive psychiatrist into the hands of the Allies. Meanwhile, Delphine, the beautiful nurse, had emerged in her true colours, and it was thanks to her selfless courage that he was able to bring off this dazzling coup. Unfortunately, she had been mortally wounded in the process and the story had faded out with her sighing and dying in his arms, like a sweet Victorian heroine. It was all fairly absurd, but the really riveting feature was that the murdered girl had first been knocked unconscious and then strangled with her own two plaits.

  ‘There is a third possibility,’ I said, ‘though I have no idea where it figures in your chicken and egg syndrome.’

  ‘Perhaps it will turn out to be the bacon?’

  ‘Suppose there were three murders? Two in real life and the fictitious one in the middle?’

  ‘Meaning that something like this happened a long while ago and Carlsen pinched the idea for his script? Surely we’d have heard about it?’

  ‘Not necessarily, if it happened in a foreign country.’

  ‘So you think this Doctor Somebody-or-Other could have been based on a real person?’

  ‘Felix Marcus. You should remember the name because the initials are rather significant.’

  ‘Yes, so they are!’

  ‘And Dr Müller was in charge of a clinic in Germany, where Sven’s first wife was a patient. How about that? It was a T.B. clinic, actually, but that’s a detail.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘He mentioned it himself, when he was driving us home, but I expect you forgot because it was immediately after that that we had the panic over the keys.’

  ‘Which reminds me that the key business is another unsolved mystery. Did Sven take them, and, if so, was it in order to break in and retrieve his script? Then why did he plant it on you in the first place? We’re back to that again.’

  ‘He may not have stolen them. They could have dropped out of your pocket, as Pêche claimed, or she could have pinched them herself. Your macintosh was sitting in Sven’s office for all of two hours and perhaps she’s working for Dr Müller on the side.’

  ‘The theory being that this psychopathic girl really existed and was murdered by Franz Müller, alias Felix Marcus?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘So, having disposed of her, he chugs merrily along on his espionage course, only to be tripped up by Mrs Baker when he arrives in Paris. Do you suppose the motive in her case was the same, or has he got a phobia about women with long hair?’

  ‘Laugh if you like, but having got away with it once why shouldn’t he have used the same method again? Specially if he believed that no living soul knew about the first time.’

  ‘But how did he then discover that Sven did know and had written it into his script? He must have been aware of that, if he was really behind Pêche in her efforts to get it back from you.’

  ‘Probably Pêche told him. What more natural than that she should have read the script? And if she’s in league with Müller her job would be to scrape up any information she could, and pass it on. She told me herself that she handled a lot of confidential documents.’

  ‘You could hardly describe “The Waiting Room” in those terms,’ Robin objected.

  ‘No, and I don’t suppose she did, either, until Leila Baker was killed. Then the coincidence would have struck her and force of habit would have made her tell Dr Müller. It must have given him quite a frisson to learn that the very colleague he’d been double-crossing was in possession of evidence to get him convicted of murder. I bet he didn’t lose any time instructing Pêche to get hold of the script and destroy it, before Sven could tell anyone where he got the idea from, and before the police started asking awkward questions.’

  ‘They wouldn’t restrict themselves to questions, you know. They’d check with the German authorities, as well.’

  ‘Yes, but if he’d disposed of the girl’s body and covered his tracks, it’s unlikely that anything incriminating could be traced to him. So long as the script was destroyed and Pêche sworn to secrecy, it would be hard to prove that Sven hadn’t invented the story, as a lunatic attempt to put the blame on someone else. Pêche is at great pains to create the impression that she’s loyalty personified, so no one would suspect her of telling lies to get Sven into trouble.’

  ‘And we don’t know that she has told any. All she has said is that Sven was in his office at seven-twenty on the night of the murder, which does nothing either to exonerate or incriminate him.’

  ‘But supposing it were actually fifteen or twenty minutes later than that when she went back and saw him working? That would mean that when Mrs Müller saw him leave the building, he would have been coming down from his office, just as she thought. He certainly wouldn’t have had time to get to the Champ de Mars and back.’

  ‘And neither, I must point out, would he have had time to get to the cinema.’

  ‘Oh damn, nor he would,’ I admitted sadly. ‘We go round and round and we always end by running straight into the same old obstacle.’

  ‘Well, cheer up; we may have cleared away a little of the undergrowth. I’ll pay another round of courtesy calls on Monday and see if there’s a dossier on Dr Müller. Their records are pretty exhaustive.’

  ‘Records?’ I repeated stupidly.

  ‘Not Ellen’s variety. Wake up, Tessa! You’ve gone all gormless.’

  ‘I know it. My gorm deserted me days ago and it’s only just trickling back. Of course, Dr Müller has a record. Sven told me. He’s done a stretch.’

  ‘Here, in France?’

  ‘No, Germany.’

  ‘What was the charge? Not homicide, by any chance?’

  ‘Well yes, it was, that’s the extraordinary thing. He was run in for knocking off one of his patients with the wrong dose. Not malice aforethought, you understand; criminal negligence.’

  ‘But
we know better?’

  ‘Do we?’ I asked in a hopeless voice. ‘I’m beginning to feel that we know worse and worse. You see, it was Sven who insisted that the charge was a trumped-up one, just an excuse to lock him up. He said the real reason was that they didn’t like his politics. That doesn’t fit very well with Dr Felix, does it?’

  Robin said thoughtfully: ‘I wouldn’t be too depressed by that, if I were you. He had already planted the script on you by then, but he hadn’t reckoned on your meeting Dr Müller. That was an unfortunate accident, so he quickly set about impressing on you that Müller had been imprisoned for political rather than criminal activities. In that way he would hope to prevent your associating the two characters; and, indeed, I doubt very much if you ever would have, if it hadn’t been for the real murder following so quickly.’

  ‘All of which is another indication that Sven is not a likely person to have committed it.’

  ‘And also that it wouldn’t hurt to start a few enquiries about Dr Müller. Something may turn up in the records.’

  ‘There you go again!’ I moaned. ‘I do wish we had a different word for it, like the French. What time is it now, and why isn’t she back?’

  ‘Only just after ten, but you could give those people a blow of the telephone and ask them to put her in a taxi. You’ve got their number.’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to,’ I agreed, ‘even though it may be a rod in pickle. I’ll feel worse than ever if they tell me she left hours ago.’

  I was spared this ordeal, however, because Ellen turned up before I had finished dialling. Jonathan was with her and remained scowling in the background, while she led off with the explanations.