Murder on French Leave Read online

He had darted a pace or two ahead of me as I spoke and it seemed that the question had not been heard; but then he stopped and turned round.

  ‘Just two others, as it happens. I find my wife has invited some friends of hers, people called Müller. He works in my department, too, and Thea’s English. I expect Adela thought you’d be glad of one compatriot among all us polyglots.’

  He glanced at me enquiringly, as though waiting for me to confirm or deny it. Feeling disinclined to do either, I said nothing, and he went on in a sudden, awkward rush: ‘Franz was a celebrated T.B. specialist, with his own clinic, but nowadays all his work is done here.’

  ‘You surprise me,’ I admitted.

  ‘Why so?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘I thought it was one of the diseases which had been more or less wiped out.’

  ‘Ah, my dear, I am afraid that is only true of our over-privileged Western countries. In some parts of the world it is still very much a factor. IDEAS help to support several hospitals and mobile units and we also have quite an ambitious educational programme. There’s the Matisse,’ he went on, pointing to a wall ahead of us. ‘Some people say it looks like the bathroom wallpaper, but do say you agree with me that it’s really rather delightful.’

  ‘I’m a bit stumped,’ I confessed. ‘I’m sure I’d like it better if you hadn’t given me such a precise reason why I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Somehow, I feel sure your husband will have a more positive opinion.’

  ‘I’m sure of it, too. Do go and ask him.’

  ‘The damnedest part of it is,’ I said, drawing Ellen aside, ‘that his wife and stepson will be lunching with us, too; not to mention a few more polyglots.’

  ‘Which is the damnedest part of all that?’

  ‘The whole lot, because it more or less obliges us to invite the Carlsens back. If he’d been on his own we could have slid out of it, on the grounds that Robin was leaving tomorrow. Now he’s dragged the family in and made a formal sort of party, we’ll be even more involved.’

  ‘There is something I feel bound to tell you,’ Sven said, panting up to my side again, having evidently prised a satisfactory positive verdict out of Robin. ‘The fact is, your question about Franz put me in rather a quandary.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That was the last thing I intended.’

  ‘Not your fault at all, but I’ve been thinking it over and I feel I should warn you not to ask him anything about his past career.’

  ‘Why? Is he an old lag or something?’

  ‘Well, the idiotic thing is that he is, in a way, but please don’t get the wrong idea. He was something of a hero to many people, but politically he was considered undesirable. Rather too liberal, you know. Finally, he was arrested and sent to prison for manslaughter. A completely trumped-up charge, I need hardly say. One of his patients was supposed to have died through negligence, or some such nonsense. Anyway, he naturally had no wish to remain in Germany after his release, and no means of building up a new practice abroad, which is how he comes to be here. I thought I should mention it.’

  I wished he hadn’t, though. I felt sorry for the poor old doctor, but presumably the subject of crime and punishment had cropped up from time to time in his hearing, and he had learnt to live with it. The chances of my introducing it inadvertently had been about a million to one, until categorically instructed not to, when they had instantly shortened to odds on. The only effective solution for a dilemma of this kind was to tear this page from my mind and replace it with a blank one, which is not so difficult to do, once you have mastered the trick, an invaluable one, in fact, for an actor taking on a classical role which he has seen performed innumerable times by other people. In this case, the process got a helping hand from the fact that the clean new page very soon had some writing on it. It had occurred to me that the story of Dr Müller’s imprisonment was most likely pure fabrication and exactly the kind of tale that someone would invent, if he had come to Paris to do a bit of spying.

  (ii)

  Adela Carlsen and her son were waiting for us at a table in the bar. He had the same dark hair as his mother, although hers was short and curly and his worn in a more dégagé style, tumbling over his face and shoulders. So far as one could see behind this heavy curtain, his face was set in a mould of chronic discontent. There was no question that Adela had been the woman at Longchamps and she even wore the same scarlet coat, to clinch it.

  She greeted Robin like an old friend, only later turning to me to ask if I knew someone in London called Milly Carpenter. I denied it and visibly descended several notches in her social scale.

  ‘It’s a big place,’ I said defensively, ‘with a lot of people.’

  ‘Oh, but Milly gets around simply everywhere. Why, she must know more people in the theatre . . . She’s a darling person, you’d love her. I’m always trying to get her to come over and visit in Paris for a while, but she’s too damn taken up with the social whirl, I guess.’

  ‘Can’t you go and see her in London?’

  ‘Used to. We had some really marvellous times together. But now we have the two babies, and Sven not home all day . . .’

  My reproachful look at Sven elicited the information that the babies were a pair of poodles, around whom their lives revolved. I noticed that in his wife’s presence he adopted a slight American intonation, which had not been in evidence before; a tribute, maybe, to her forceful personality, perhaps just another manifestation of being all things to all men.

  ‘Not while they have those damn quarantine laws,’ Adela informed me.

  I think I may have started to turn purple in the face at this point, because Robin chipped in with some dreary anecdote about a poodle belonging to his mother, which he had certainly never thought worth mentioning before.

  Jonathan, meanwhile, had not uttered a word, although I had noticed some surreptitious glances at Ellen from beneath the thunderous black eyebrows; and Sven had been making noisy but ineffectual attempts to get our orders for the bar. He was in the final stages of sorting this out when we were joined by the other two guests.

  Mrs Müller was even more beautiful than Adela, as well as a year or two younger. She had auburn hair and blue eyes and wore a plain, black linen dress, the simple effect being saved from downright dullness by one or two well-placed diamonds. She shook her head to Sven’s offer of a drink and Adela was on her feet in an instant, saying that since we were now all assembled and she had been obliged to leave the dogs shut up in the car, it would be advisable to cut out the apéritifs and go straight in to lunch. She then dashed through the introductions, linked arms with Thea Müller and led the way to the restaurant.

  This was in the style of a huge conservatory, jutting out from one end of the long narrow building, like the sun deck over the stern of a ship, and it took us three or four minutes to walk there from the bar. Once more, I found myself paired off with Sven in this procession, and suspecting that Adela might have another, undisclosed reason for being in such a tearing hurry, I had a whim to ask him if he happened to know the white-haired man with the boyish face, who had entered the bar just before we left.

  ‘Oh, what a delightful description!’ he exclaimed, reverting instantly to his archaic public-school English. ‘It could only fit one person. Yes, of course I know him, although, as I told you, he’s only been here quite a short time.’

  ‘Did you tell me that?’ I asked stupidly.

  ‘Yes, I’m positive I did, you know. That’s Reg Baker. Leila’s husband.’

  ‘So I hear you had some not so nice experience for your first days in Paris?’ Dr Müller said, as we sat down to lunch.

  He was a large, grizzly-bear sort of man, with a bluff jolly manner and twinkly blue eyes; not quite the conventional spy figure of the seedy mac and homburg, but you can’t always rely on type-casting.

  ‘You mean the poor old man and his heart attack? Yes, it was a horrid thing to happen, but I can’t pretend we were personally involved. You weren’t at the concert, were you?’
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br />   ‘No, I am glad to say. Leila tried very hard to make us go, but it was not possible. She is very persistent, you know, so it was not easy to back out, but I think in the end Thea took some tickets, just to pacify her. Isn’t that so, my dear?’

  Mrs Müller, who was sitting opposite me on Sven’s left, nodded briefly, but did not put herself to the wear and tear of replying aloud.

  ‘Well, you didn’t miss anything,’ I said, speaking to neither of them in particular.

  ‘No, and this is one time when virtue is rewarded. I think we must have gone, if I had not been obliged to stay at home and do some work.’

  ‘Really? On Sunday night?’

  ‘Oh yes, this can happen, you know. There is a big meeting this afternoon, which has to be prepared for, and sometimes the only way to get down to such things without interruption is at home. But why do we talk of work at such a time? You have been making some pleasant excursions in Paris, as well, hein?’

  ‘Yes, lots. We had a fabulous day at the races.’

  ‘Ah, that is good. So you won some money?’

  ‘I didn’t, but my cousin was very lucky; or so it seemed at the time. How about you, Sven?’ I asked, hoping the question sounded natural. ‘Did you have any winners yesterday?’

  ‘Winners?’ he repeated blankly.

  ‘Robin thought he saw you at Longchamps yesterday.’

  ‘Did he? Then I must have been sleepwalking. I am ashamed to confess that I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon recuperating from the night before.’

  ‘Then it must have been your wife he saw. I expect I got it wrong.’

  He shook his head: ‘No, I assure you. Adela was exercising the dogs, as she does every afternoon. In fact, if memory serves, she drove out to Saint-Cloud and walked them in the park there. It’s very beautiful at this time of year. You must let us take you and your cousin out one Sunday. You would enjoy it.’

  ‘Not if she is a true Englishwoman,’ Dr Müller said, wagging his head knowingly. ‘They do not care for our continental parks where everything is orderly and symmetrical. Thea is always complaining about this. She misses the wildness you find in your English gardens, is it not so?’

  I looked again at Thea, who had acknowledged these remarks about her with a faint smile. She did not strike me as one who went in for wildness very seriously, and I wondered whether her impassively silent manner arose naturally from her temperament, or had been cultivated as a youth and looks preserver. There were signs that the latter might be her abiding passion in life, for she had waved away the bread and potatoes and was now neatly dissecting her sole meunière and pushing most of it to one side of her plate. Also she was drinking mineral water instead of wine.

  This also applied to Adela, but even with two total abstainers the three bottles of wine which Sven had ordered did not quite last out, and in fact he drank almost a whole one on his own. He was gesturing to the waiter for fresh supplies when Adela intercepted him. She said that she didn’t have too much time and had promised faithfully to take the babies for walkies in the Champ de Mars. A few minutes later she was on her feet and, with impassioned reminders to Robin about our all getting together again next time he was in Paris, brought the party to an end.

  It was still pouring with rain when we descended to the main hall and Dr Müller insisted on driving us home. We protested that we only had a few hundred yards to go and could easily take a taxi, or even walk, but he would not hear of it. Laughing delightedly, he told us that the district was notorious for its dearth of taxis and that, since he had every intention of driving his wife home, it would not be putting him to the slightest trouble.

  It was rather mystifying after all this to find ourselves being ushered back into the lift, where he pressed a bell marked S.2., but he explained that his was the lower of the two basement floors and was used as a car park.

  ‘So nobody is getting their feet wet,’ he said, as we emerged into the Stygian caves. ‘And since you are all not so fat like me, there will be plenty of room.’

  No one could deny this, for his car turned out to be a sleek and powerful Mercedes, with what Robin had described as those distinctive green number-plates.

  Ellen sat in front and Frau Müller placed herself beside Robin and me, leaning well back in her corner, as though we were a couple of particularly unappetising soles meunières.

  It was interesting to find that the doctor, who had projected the jolly, rumbustious image all through lunch, became a demon of aggression when seated behind the wheel. He ricocheted in and out of traffic lanes, blaring his horn at startled pedestrians and shooting across amber lights like a man possessed. None of this appeared to ruffle Thea in the least: ‘Give them an inch and they’ll take an ell,’ she remarked impassively, as Simcas and Renaults fell back in disorder all around us.

  ‘Have you known the Carlsens long?’ I asked her, more to divert my own mind from these cavortings on the slippery roads than from genuine curiosity.

  ‘Oh, Franz knew him ages ago. Neither of us had seen Adela until we came to Paris. When did you first meet Sven, Franz?’

  ‘In the dark ages, my darling. Do you wish these young people to know how ancient I am? His first wife was my patient. So! This is your house, ja?’

  ‘Yes, and thanks for the lift.’

  ‘We meet again, I hope. Auf wiedersehen.’

  ‘Who has the keys?’ Robin asked, fumbling through his pockets, as we stood outside the front door.

  ‘You have,’ we both replied.

  ‘How very disappointing! I thought so, too, but we all seem to be wrong.’

  ‘You transferred them to your macintosh just before we went out,’ Ellen told him, ‘I saw you.’

  ‘And what became of your macintosh during lunch, Robin?’

  ‘Oh God, you don’t think your friend has been up to his tricks again? He took it off me and put it in his office.’

  ‘Didn’t you go with him?’

  ‘No, why should I? It seemed a perfectly normal thing to do.’

  Luckily, Lupe was still in the flat and was prevailed upon by Ellen to let us in. Robin marched straight to the telephone and was eventually connected with a Mademoiselle Pêche, which struck me as a charming name for a secretary, although he said that this one sounded more like a quince than a peach. She informed him that Mr Carlsen had gone to a meeting outside the building and would not be available until five o’clock. She promised to pass on Robin’s enquiry about the keys, and she must have been as good as her word, for at six o’clock she brought them round, in person.

  She turned out to be the censorious, middle-aged lady last seen selling tickets for the Recital of Indian Music and Dance, and once again she was inclined to be severe with us. This time, however, her displeasure was on behalf of Mr Carlsen and the trouble and pain Robin had caused him by allowing the keys to fall out of his pocket. We grovelled a bit, in the face of her disapproval, but did not get so carried away as to refer to the visit of two gallant messieurs from an organisation called S.O.S., who had already performed a rapid and efficient service. By the time that Mademoiselle Pêche handed over the old set of keys, their only remaining function was in unlocking the refrigerator.

  Five

  (i)

  Ellen and I both drove out to Orly to see Robin off on Tuesday. It was an affecting scene, but he told us to dry our eyes and soyez de bon courage, which is no doubt what the gentlemen of the piscine say to each other when they find themselves in deep waters.

  Even more cheering was his promise to return for another long weekend before the month was out; so the homeward drive was not so desolate as we had foreseen and, by the end of it, we had so far recovered our spirits as to have laid down plans for our cinema-going the following evening. I was on call at the studios, but only for lighting tests and rehearsals, and expected to be through by six.

  Determined to be punctual, if nothing else, on my first working day, I was standing on the pavement, fighting down the nauseating nerves, a good t
en minutes before the car was due to collect me. Making an iron pact with myself not to sneak another look at my watch until twenty more people, excluding children, had passed by, I chanced to be in an exceptional situation to perceive the slow and wavering advance of Leila Baker, who, appropriately enough, would have been checked out as number thirteen, if she had only passed by.

  Unfortunately she chanced to perceive me, too, and even though she was clearly in a state of mental torment similar to my own, a gleam of recognition lit up her face and she quickened her pace and came alongside.

  ‘Why, Theresa!’ she burst out, placing a firm grip on my arm and speaking in such a breathless rush that once again her voice almost deserted her. ‘Oh, it is good to see you . . . so wanting to talk with you . . . answer to prayer . . . made up my mind . . . what you must think.’

  ‘Oh no, honestly,’ I protested. ‘You mustn’t worry about us. It was a wretched thing to happen, but you’re the one we feel sorry for.’

  For some reason, so far from steadying her, this assurance only increased her distress. She still clung tightly to my arm, but it had become a means of support, quite distinct from her natural tactile compulsions, and she swayed a little, swivelling her eyes away from me:

  ‘Do you? For me? No, don’t . . . You’re such a sensitive, intuitive person, Theresa . . . feel it.’

  ‘Oh no, not really. Are you feeling all right? I’m sorry I can’t ask you in, but . . .’

  She looked at me, but she was barely listening.

  ‘Is your husband still here?’ she asked in a clearer, almost crafty tone, and so much to my astonishment that the major part of mind was momentarily jerked away from the ticking hands of my watch.

  ‘No, he’s not. He went back to London yesterday. Why do you ask?’

  ‘It just occurred to me . . . I had a mind to . . . that is, if you . . .’

  She was off on the waffle again and my brief flutter of curiosity died away. At the same moment a car on the other side of the street made an intrepid U-turn, missing the nose of a bus by centimetres, and pulled up beside us. Leaning sideways, Pierre flung open the passenger door and embarked on a pantomime of shrugs and grimaces, probably to indicate that he had broken all the traffic laws of Paris by this manoeuvre, and I wrenched my arm from Mrs Baker’s grasp.