Murder on French Leave Page 9

  ‘It seems not. From what we can trace, she must have spent the rest of the day wandering about on her own. We can find no one except yourself who saw her at all. So you see now how important it is to know whether she was wearing this necklace when you met her?’

  ‘You mean, you are not even convinced, yourselves, that his story is true?’ I glanced enquiringly at Reg Baker as I spoke, but his face was buried in his hands and I could not even be sure that he was listening. Adela answered for him:

  ‘Oh sure, I believe it. It’s just the kind of screwy thing that would happen to Sven, but apparently Leila didn’t tell another soul, and who’ll take my word? You’re an outsider, with no reason to protect him, so that’s different. If you don’t remember, or if you have some idea she was wearing the necklace when you saw her, we’ll forget the whole thing. That’s why I wanted to see you privately, before we go to work on it with the lawyers.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve no objection to co-operating with you over that,’ I said brightly. ‘To be candid, I don’t remember whether she was wearing a necklace or not, but I’m quite prepared to say she was, to whom it may concern.’

  This airy assurance was greeted with something less than jubilation. Dr Müller sighed, and then picked up my empty glass and walked away to refill it; and Reg Baker addressed me for the first time:

  ‘I’m not saying you don’t mean well, but it’s no go.’

  ‘What isn’t?’

  ‘Your swearing any old thing you reckon might help to whitewash Sven. They’re no fools, these police geezers. They’d trip you up in no time, if you came out with a tale like that without being sure of your facts.’

  ‘The point is,’ I said grandly, taking a swig of my well-freshened drink, ‘they’ll forget all about necklaces when they hear what else I have to tell them.’

  Once again, I had somehow struck the wrong note and the atmosphere seemed to grow even more leaden and hostile, although it may have been partly the heat and the alcohol which gave me the sensation of drowning in warm mud. I made another feeble attempt to oust the dog from my lap, but this woman/poodle relationship had got off on an unequal footing and there was no drawing back. This time there was a round of rumbling growls, before it bunched itself even tighter on my numbed thighs. Ignoring this, Adela said slowly:

  ‘You have something else? Maybe you should tell us about it?’

  ‘I was going to. It was my sole purpose in coming here. I happen to be in a unique position to assert positively that your husband is innocent.’

  ‘Is that so? How do you figure that?’

  ‘Because I saw him in a cinema, several miles from the scene of the crime, at the precise time when it must have been committed.’

  This announcement really did set a cat among those quatre pigeons, although now there was an element of derision in their disbelief. Thea shook her head in a puzzled way and Adela said, smiling sadly:

  ‘Oh no, no, Theresa. It’s very dear of you, and I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it wouldn’t be any use.’

  ‘I’m not making it up, you know. It’s the literal truth.’ Once again, Dr Müller stepped into the breach and I got another therapeutic pat on the shoulder:

  ‘No one is suggesting you made it up, but nevertheless it is impossible. Believe me, Sven cannot have been miles away in a cinema. He is known to have been at IDEAS at twenty past seven, and again at ten minutes to eight. Several people who know him well have seen him there.’

  Rage and frustration boiled up inside me and, lashing out at the nearest target, I pushed impatiently at the poodle’s hind quarters, so that it slithered forward and its head pitched down over my knees. Instantly, its body tautened like a steel spring, its lips drew back in a hideous grin and it began to tremble violently. Hoping to retrieve the situation I grabbed its collar, but at the first touch it whipped round like a cobra and took a slice out of my right hand.

  It was almost a relief to let out a yell of pain and shock and I put as much energy into it as I could muster. It had them all on their feet and clustering round in no time. I fell back against the sofa and closed my eyes. Their faces bobbing round, so close to mine, questioning, commiserating, explaining, was more than I could stand and for a moment I truly believed I would faint.

  Somebody removed the dog, Adela presumably, for I could hear her telling it that Mummie was not pleased, and I fancied it was Thea who calmly went to work with bandages and disinfectant. If so, she was remarkably deft and I felt nothing worse than a slight stiffness in my hand, although I did not bother to open my eyes and tell them so. They went on explaining things over and over again, but there was not an object or a person in the room that I wished to look at.

  I had sent Pierre away, so the Müllers drove me home in the Mercedes. They were kind and patient, speaking in soft, reassuring voices, as we swept through the glistening deserted streets. Clearly, they were trying to impress on me their sincere belief that I had not invented my story, but that it was a straightforward case of mistaken identity. But I had heard it all before, in Adela’s drawing-room, and I didn’t pay much attention. One half of my mind was fixed on Robin’s warning to have nothing further to do with these people; the other was asking how I should feel in six months’ or a year’s time, when I learnt that Sven Carlsen had been executed for crime he could not possibly have committed.

  (iii)

  They both escorted me to the lift, but I would not allow them to come any further, saying that I had my key. I could not be bothered to get it out, though, and leant against the top banister, praying that Ellen would not waste time reconnoitring through the spy-hole, as otherwise she was liable to witness something more sensational than she had bargained for.

  As it happened, the door was flung open in a matter of seconds, and I was confronted by Robin, in a towering rage.

  I was too thunderstruck and he, it appeared, too angry to speak, and we might have remained there for half an hour, doing our absurd mime, had not Ellen materialised and broken it up.

  ‘There you are!’ she said cheerfully. ‘I explained to him how you sometimes have to work late. I told him you’d be all right, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘All right?’ Robin bellowed. ‘She’s not all right at all. And what has she done to her hand? Why is it all bandaged up like that?’

  ‘Do you think I could come inside?’ I said weakly. ‘I’m rather tired, as it happens.’

  They stood aside to let me pass, then both followed me into my bedroom, Robin still raging on:

  ‘And, before you launch into one of your romances, I may as well warn you, Tessa, that I rang the studios two hours ago and they said you’d already left, so let’s cut out that bit where you tell me you were kept on the set until ten o’clock.’

  Since this feeble excuse was the only one which had so far occurred to me, there was nothing for it but to break into noisy sobs, which was not difficult to do and had a fairly magical effect. Ellen sped away to heat up some of the chalky liquid which the French call milk, Robin backed nervously on to the defensive and, as my own scalding emotions were blubbered away, I realised that the only sensible move was to acquaint him with all that had passed and to plant the responsibility for further action squarely on his shoulders. However, there were questions to be got through first.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, getting in first with these. ‘And why didn’t you let me know?’

  ‘I tried to. God knows, I tried, but your telephone was engaged for two solid hours this morning.’

  ‘There was a reason for that,’ I assured him.

  ‘I felt sure there would be.’

  ‘I was trying to ring you.’

  ‘Oh, were you? I confess that didn’t occur to me. I concluded that you’d either gone to sleep with the receiver off, or were playing some crazy game of cops and robbers, all on your own. The second seemed the more probable, so I caught an early plane.’

  ‘But you still haven’t explained why you caught a plane at all
.’

  ‘Come to that, you haven’t explained what you’ve been up to for the last couple of hours.’

  ‘No, but I intend to. It’s a long story, though, whereas yours must fit in a nutshell. Presumably, it was a last-minute whim, because you hadn’t planned it when I spoke to you last night. Or had you?’

  ‘No, but whim is the wrong word. In the language of the beat, I acted on information received.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘My colleague in the piscine. He telephoned me at eight o’clock this morning.’

  ‘To tell you about Sven’s arrest?’

  ‘Among other things. I can’t honestly say that the entente was quite so cordiale this morning. Possibly the fact that Carlsen had been run in for murder, within a week of my seeking information about him, carried a faint whiff of the perfide Albion, but I hope to have convinced him that it was sheer coincidence.’

  ‘And did he tell you why Sven had been arrested?’

  ‘He did, and I must say it sounded a bit thin to me. Specially in view of what you’d told me.’

  ‘There are wheels within wheels.’

  ‘Which you are now about to put in motion?’

  ‘Just as soon as Ellen is in bed. This may take all night, but it doesn’t matter because I feel quite bobbish again, now that you’re here, and I’m not on call tomorrow; or Monday, either. The way I snarled things up for them today, it may well be that they need a couple of days to rewrite my part and cut out about eighty per cent of it, but I’ll live through that tragedy when I come to it. First, I’m going to tell you all about a visit I’ve just paid to Adela Carlsen.’

  When I had done so he said thoughtfully: ‘Yes, it’s a puzzle, I agree. Normally, I’d award you top marks in the observation test, but is it possible that you’ve slipped up this time? The alternative, that Sven has an identical twin running around in Paris, is something which I refuse even to contemplate.’

  ‘So do I; mainly because someone would surely have seen fit to mention it. But it’s so frustrating, Robin. If only Ellen had been standing where I was, I’m sure she’d have seen him, too.’

  ‘But she didn’t, so there’s no point in wasting regrets over that. What was it about his appearance that chiefly struck you? His coat, for instance, and his special way of wearing it?’

  ‘Partly that, I suppose; but also his hat half over his eyes and his head thrust forward. It makes him look like a tortoise standing on its hind legs.’

  ‘They don’t have any, but I know what you mean. Only it could be that these rather marked characteristics are awfully easy to imitate. Could someone have been impersonating him, by any chance?’

  ‘But to what end? Presumably only to provide him with an alibi, which is the one thing it hasn’t done. Besides, he did turn his head when I called out and only someone hearing his own name would have such quick reflexes.’

  ‘Unfortunately, none of this disposes of the real snag.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That, as far as I can make out, Sven himself doesn’t claim to have been in the cinema that evening. Can you think of any single reason for that, except that he wasn’t there?’

  ‘I know that sounds logical,’ I admitted, ‘but there’s something wrong somewhere. I’m sure I did see him, and everyone who says I didn’t must be lying.’

  ‘Well, that’s been known, too; but just who are all these people?’

  ‘Not so many, actually. In fact, it boils down to three; his secretary and two others.’

  ‘Start with her.’

  ‘Well, you know what she’s like. A prim, middle-aged spinster, who probably lives a blameless life in some genteel suburb. She says he was working in his office when she left at twenty past seven, and I can’t see any reason why she should be making it up.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but does she normally stay as late as that?’

  ‘No. Apparently, some people are there till eight or nine, and Sven is one of them; but they’re mostly heads of departments. Most of the clerical staff knock off between half past five and six, but that particular evening happened to be the one when Mademoiselle Pêche has her weekly orgy in the staff supermarket. It’s a kind of co-operative affair in the upper basement and it stays open until eight o’clock. Anyway, when Pêche had finished her rounds there, she went into the cafeteria, which is also on that floor, to take the weight off her feet and get a snack, before setting off to Meudon, or wherever it is; and there she met a friend.’

  ‘So they got talking, as the saying goes?’

  ‘And wound up arranging to spend the evening together. They were going to a concert and that’s how Mademoiselle happened to trot upstairs to her office at seven-fifteen.’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Well, you see, she’d lumbered herself with this great stack of groceries and wine and so on, and she didn’t fancy carting it round the concert halls, so the idea was to leave it in her office overnight. When she got there, the communicating door to Sven’s room was open and she could see him working at his desk.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Not as far as I know, but she knew he had a report to finish, which would take him a couple of hours, so there was no reason to disturb him. She just dumped the parcels and padded off to join her friend. Exit Miss Peach.’

  ‘And enter who?’

  ‘If we jump straight into Act Two, it’s Enter Mrs Müller. There’s a short scene in between, but I’ll take that later, and you’ll soon see why.’

  ‘And what was her role?’

  ‘She was the next to see him. She had been at a hair-dresser’s in Avenue de Suffren and she came out of there at half past seven.’

  ‘Sorry to keep raising the same eyebrows, but wasn’t that rather late?’

  ‘Oh, not for Paris, Robin. It’s quite acceptable to book an appointment for six in the evening, and they sometimes leave you under the dryer for ages, if twenty other customers happen to roll up without any appointment at all. She obviously hadn’t counted on getting out even as early as that, because she’d arranged to pick up her husband at his office at eight o’clock. It was only ten minutes’ walk from the hairdresser’s, so she took it slowly.’

  ‘Including a stroll through the Champ de Mars, by any chance?’

  ‘Oddly enough, yes. She made no secret of it, but she says she went across the top end, near the Eiffel Tower, which in fact would have been her direct route. Mrs Baker was found at the southern end, not far from the Joffre statue.’

  ‘And she saw nothing?’

  ‘So she says. Her part in the plot begins when she got to IDEAS. It was still not quite eight, but the receptionists had left and she didn’t want to risk taking the lift up, in case she crossed with her husband coming down, so she sat on one of those leather couches to wait for him. When she’d been there about five minutes, a lift stopped at the ground floor and out stepped Sven. He’d got his hat and coat on and he walked past and out by the main door. Apparently, he normally travels to work by Métro, because Adela mostly has the car, so it was all according to routine. He says he arrived home about eight-thirty, but Adela and Jonathan were both out, so that’s just his word.’

  ‘How about Adela? What was she doing?’

  ‘She’d been playing bridge, but she left the party early because she had an appointment with someone called Marie Claire, who runs a dogs’ beauty parlour, somewhere in Montmartre. The traffic through the centre of Paris was so terrible that it took her over an hour to get home and she arrived there a few minutes after Sven. Anyway, if he did get back at eight-thirty, that’s just about the time it would have taken him to get from the office; or, to look at it another way, from the cinema.’

  ‘And I’m even more in the dark as to why he has been arrested.’

  ‘At this point, so was everyone else, but unfortunately there’s this small scene between Acts One and Two, which hadn’t been made known when Mrs Müller and Miss Pêche told their bit. Reg Baker gave it away, uninten
tionally, not having heard what they’d said.’

  ‘Gave what away?’

  ‘What he saw in the car park, in the lower basement. He was questioned about his own movements, naturally, and he said that at a quarter to eight he brought the lift down and walked across to his car. So, of course, they asked for proof and, not knowing any better, he said he was sure Carlsen would confirm it, because he’d caught sight of him by one of the other cars and had called out goodnight. He hadn’t stopped to chat or anything, because he was collecting his wife from some gathering of the gurus and he was pushed for time. It was when he found that she’d never turned up for it and wasn’t at home when he got back there, either, that he rang the police.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, he didn’t ring round to any of their friends first, or ask the neighbours if they’d seen her? He was a bit precipitate about bringing the police in, wasn’t he? Unless he had good reason to know there was something wrong?’

  ‘Well, they haven’t been in Paris very long, so perhaps they weren’t on those terms with the neighbours. And she’d been acting a bit strangely, to put it mildly, so it wasn’t quite so peculiar as it sounds. But I’ll tell you all about that some other time. I want you to hear about these stories they all told while they’re still fresh in my mind. Then you can sift through them and decide who’s lying and what we ought to do about it.’

  ‘I’m afraid your blind faith is somewhat misplaced, but go on.’

  ‘Well, it was because he rang the police that they were able to identify her. Up to then, they hadn’t even known who she was, because her bag hadn’t been found.’

  ‘Has that turned up, by the way?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but I can’t see that it signifies, one way or the other. I doubt if she often carried one. But you see what all this means, Robin? If Sven was really in the car park between twenty and ten to eight, then he can’t have been in his office, as he says.’

  ‘Whereas, he could easily have just come from the Champ de Mars?’