The Case of the Dead Diplomat (10 page)

“Well, sir, we've seen Mademoiselle X, as they call her.”

“The devil you have! How did you see her?”

“We were present at her interrogation.”

“You seem to be getting on with your French colleagues.”

“I think M. Bigot rather fancies himself at interrogations, and he wanted us to play the gallery.”

“What was she like?”

“A very handsome young woman, sir; quite a lady. We felt very sorry for her, and we hope that no journalist will get hold of her address.”

“Have you seen all the people who visited Everett on Tuesday night?”

“We have seen two of them. M. Chabrol came quite well out of the interrogation. He can be dismissed. We are not so sure about the other man, a journalist named Pinet, but there is no real suspicion against him so far. He had no motive. According to Pinet, when he left the flat, Mr. Everett seemed to be expecting a third visitor, but as yet we have no clue to him at all.”

“The question of motive is certainly a puzzle; no one can have gone to the flat to steal. Poor Everett had nothing worth stealing; he had barely enough pay to rub along. What are you going to do next?”

“Well, sir, we are going now to see M. Bigot and hear about what he did yesterday afternoon.”

“I wish you luck. I've always heard that luck is one of the chief assets of Scotland Yard. I'm sure you deserve it.”

“One thing, perhaps, you can tell me, sir,” said Richardson. “Do the French police observe Sunday, or do they treat the day like any other?”

“I am not quite sure what they do about Sunday; my impression is that you'll find them all at their posts. There is very little Sabbatarianism in France.”

On arriving at the police station, Richardson found that Mr. Gregory had been right. He sent a message to Bigot that they were at his disposition. Bigot answered the message in person. He was swelling with importance.

“I hope you had a useful afternoon yesterday,” said Richardson.

“Let me tell you about it, and then you can judge for yourselves. I discovered—no matter how—that M. Quesnay, the deputy who challenged M. Everett to a duel, was at the
Jardin Zoologique
of Vincennes on the Sunday before the murder. He took a party of school-children with him and paid for their tea; that might mean that their fathers would vote for him at the proper time.”

“How did you find this out?” asked Cooper.

“Ah!” replied Bigot with a look of ineffable cunning, “I have my methods. A photograph of M. Quesnay and the party of children appeared in the
Echo de la Seine
of last Monday. I went out to Vincennes and found one of the waiters who had served the deputy's party. He assured me that when M. Quesnay handed over his umbrella and waterproof he handed over also a Kodak camera, and said that he had amused himself and the children by taking photographs of the animals.”

“Unfortunately we do not know the size of that camera.”

“Not positively, but the waiter assured me that it was larger than most cameras which visitors take into the garden. I think there is enough in this to justify us in assuming that the film found in M. Everett's
appartement
fitted that camera.”

Richardson and Cooper exchanged a furtive glance, but remained silent for a moment. Richardson was the first to speak. “Do you wish to interrogate M. Quesnay?” he asked.

“I? Interrogate a deputy? Oh, the matter has to be handled far more delicately than that, though the interests of justice might be served better by an interrogation conducted by myself, than they would be by handing the case over to a mere
Juge d'Instruction
. We have not come to that yet. As I say, one must, in the case of deputies, proceed with infinite tact; it is not a matter that can be delegated to a man inexperienced in such business.”

“That I understand. You have, no doubt, taken the initial steps?”

Cooper noticed that this pressing of the question by his colleague was not to M. Bigot's taste. He said, “What my colleague means, I think, is that if such an interrogation is contemplated he should be allowed to be present. The interrogation of a deputy by one so skilled as you are would interest us extremely.”

Bigot was mollified. “In the first place a French deputy enjoys immunity from interrogation. This immunity would have to be lifted before we could interrogate M. Quesnay, and it would at once become a very serious matter. Would you be allowed in England to interrogate one of your deputies?”

“The system in England is not the same as yours in France. We are not permitted to question persons who may afterwards be charged with a crime without first warning them that what they say may be used against them at their trial.”

Bigot looked from one to the other in stark astonishment. “Why then, of course, they answer none of your questions!”

“In theory the police are debarred from putting any questions to them.”

“What an extraordinary country! No, messieurs, I fear that if ever I have to interrogate a senator or a deputy I shall have to do it alone. It would cause great comment if it became known that foreign police officers had been called in to help the Paris police. It would imply a lack of confidence… I am sure that you will understand.”

“Perfectly, monsieur.”

“Of course if you care to inquire from time to time how we are progressing with the case, I shall always be delighted to see you.”

“And on our part, if we hear anything at the Embassy or elsewhere that may be useful to you, we shall consider it our duty to bring it to your notice, monsieur. I suppose M. Verneuil has already reported to you what we did yesterday afternoon?”

“Oh, that… yes, he reported it to me, but you need not waste your time over such trifles when we are on the real track.” He dismissed Pinet with a sweeping gesture of contempt.

“M. Verneuil undertook to verify Pinet's account of his accident. In order to complete our report to the ambassador, we should very much like to know the result of his inquiries.”

“I will send him to you, messieurs, and if we do not meet again for a time, let me assure you that the assistance you have given me is very highly appreciated.”

They shook hands cordially; it was a polite dismissal.

The Englishmen had no time to discuss their position, for the approaching footsteps of Verneuil resounded in the passage outside. He greeted them with a whimsical smile as he shook hands with them.

“You want to hear what I did after leaving you yesterday afternoon? Well… I found the
agent
who picked up the pieces of our friend, M. Pinet, in the Place de la Concorde on Tuesday night. That gentleman ought to go far in his profession; he has a fine gift of imagination.”

“You mean that there was no accident at all?”

“Oh, yes; there was an accident all right. The
agent
said that the gentleman fell off his
moto
and damaged it; that he was bleeding profusely from the nose.”

“You mean that the accident was done on purpose?”

Verneuil shrugged his shoulders. “The
agent
could not say that. He said the man was riding very slowly and very carelessly. He seemed to wobble into the refuge when he had a clear road before him, and when he picked him up he seemed to be dazed. That was why he was taken to the hospital. The
agent
telephoned to a repairing garage and they took the
moto
away and mended it. At the hospital they said that a little sticking-plaster would have sufficed for the wounds. Pinet told them that he thought he must have become faint when riding and that he had no memory of the accident.”

“He fainted, eh? Such things have happened, of course. Have you found anything indicating who Mr. Everett's third visitor was that night? You remember that Pinet half suggested that it was one of M. Quesnay's seconds.”

Verneuil looked at them quizzically. “I dare say that at a later stage, when my inspector has finished his business with M. Quesnay, we shall have to interview that gentleman's seconds. He chuckled inwardly at his thoughts about those interviews. “Yes, certainly they must be interviewed. I shall volunteer for the duty myself.” His big frame shook with merriment. “Duelling seconds committing a murder to vindicate their honour.
Mon Dieu!
”

“I am sorry to say that we shall be leaving you,” said Richardson.

“Leaving us?”

“Yes, we gather that M. Bigot has no further need of our services.”

“Always this Bigot!” exclaimed the ex-petty officer, half to himself. “My colleague is aiming high; he's out to hunt deputies. He is riding for a fall, like Pinet. Well, I wish him joy of it. But I shall not say farewell to you, because I foresee that we shall still have work to do together, and that when my inspector has finished his business with M. Quesnay, he will expect us to find the real culprit. So it is not
adieu
, but
au revoir
.”

The two English detectives set out to walk home in chastened mood.

“I wonder why Bigot has chucked us,” said Cooper. “Did we offend in any way?”

“Perhaps we didn't play up to him enough about this duelling business, but probably the real reason is that he believes in himself and doesn't want anyone else to share the laurels with him. I'm not altogether sorry. There is nothing worse in our job than to be working under a man who is barking up the wrong tree.”

“What will the Embassy say? Send us back to the Yard with a bad mark against us? After all, we've come up against a dead wall.”

“Yes, and it's at the foot of such dead walls that we detective officers find a friend waiting for us. We haven't met him yet in this case.”

“What friend?”

“Why, Sergeant Luck, of course. It's at the dead wall that he comes sidling up with a grin on his face. He may be waiting for us round the corner at this very moment.”

Cooper sighed audibly. “Personally I don't see any way out. You'll have to see the first secretary to-morrow and what progress can you report?”

“Cooper, you make me tired. We shall never get anywhere if we get discouraged.” They were passing the big hotel at St. Lazare. A crowd filled the chairs set in front of the café. “Here, let's have a drink and talk the matter over.”

They found a vacant table near the entrance and ordered mild restoratives. Cooper's choice of beer was overruled in favour of
byrrh-cassis
which he had never tasted. While they were awaiting their drinks, Richardson's eye scanned the crowd on either side of them. Suddenly he stiffened.

“Don't look round just yet. That international crook, Polowski, as he used to call himself, is sitting at the fifth table on your left.”

“Polowski?”

“Ah! I remember. You weren't in that case. It was great fun while it lasted. What a lot of funny cases the Russian revolution brought to us.”

“Was that the case of the Russian gold? I remember something about it. He was trying to dispose of gold which he said had been fished up out of a lake in Russia, where the owner had dropped it to hide it from the Bolshies.”

“Yes, that was the case. Polowski and another crook, a Roumanian, were kept under casual observation by Simpson in Central for a week or two, but you know what it is—people won't come forward to prosecute when they think that they will be laughed at as fools for having been done down, or blamed for dealing in stolen property.”

“You mean that the men were dealing in base metal and calling it gold?”

“Yes; the sample they produced was gold right enough, but the stuff they tried to sell afterwards was brass. We were trying to get a deportation order against them when they vanished.”

“Left the country?”

“Yes; Simpson's attentions had been too pressing, I suppose. At any rate they crossed the Channel, and their names and descriptions were put on the black list at the ports. I wonder what game they are playing over here.”

“Probably the same as they did in London. These fellows don't very often change their methods.”

Richardson was plunged in thought. “After all,” he said at last, “we've been sacked by our friend, Bigot, and we can't sit twiddling our fingers. We've got the Yard to think of. I'll tell you what, Cooper; we won't lose sight of these fellows. If we can establish the fact that they are playing the same game over here in Paris as they were in London, we'll go to the Sûreté about them and perhaps get them to stir up our friend Bigot, who won't want to fall foul of a body like the Sûreté. What about putting them under very discreet observation? You could do it. All you would have to do would be to house them in their hotel, but don't let them spot you. They may have noticed me. I've a sort of feeling at the back of my mind that we are on the edge of something good. We'll sit here until they move. I'll touch you on the foot when they do, and then you'll take leave of me in the French way—you've seen it—we'll both rise, take off our hats, shake hands formally, grin at one another, and you will follow them up and see where they go. I'll sit tight here and settle up with the waiter. Ah! Polowski is tapping on his glass for the bill.”

“Do you recognize the other man?”

“No, I can't put a name to him, but there's something familiar about his face. Ah! There's the waiter. Get ready to bid me
bon appetit
and get on their heels.”

They took leave of one another in the real French way and Cooper, who had had years of practice in “shadowing,” ran across the studded crossing-place just in time to pick up the trail. The street-lamps were being lighted. Richardson sat on for nearly half an hour, wondering what this chance meeting with Polowski would bring him.

P
OLOWSKI
and his unrecognized friend led poor Cooper a dance. It would be impossible to imagine anything more futile than the proceedings of the quarry. They crossed the Boulevard Haussmann and turned into the rue Vignon, which they followed up to the back door of the Café Veil; they pushed through the back door while Cooper strolled round to the front. He knew that he was taking a risk of losing such wary birds, but it would never have done for him to follow them in. His heart gave a bound when he recognized them sitting in the crowded front of the café and giving their order to the waiter. They had passed clean through the building.