The Milliner's Hat Mystery (13 page)

Verneuil acknowledged the compliment with a curl of the lip, intended to indicate that he did not accept compliments at their face value. He knew his own value—none better—and he knew where he was likely to fail in enquiries that required the delicate touch of a trained diplomatist, but he could well imagine what a mess most trained diplomatists would make of police enquiries. In private conversation he was apt to describe the Foreign Office clerks as “those young ladies.”

“Well, Vincent,” continued Goron, “I think that you and I will take one of the official cars to St Malo and engage in a friendly conversation with his Worship the Mayor. I suggest that messages should be sent to the port officers and the officers on all frontiers to exercise very special vigilance. I will get that done. If you'll come with me to the Ministry of the Interior we'll commandeer our car and start as soon as possible.”

When the other two had gone, Verneuil resolved to leave nothing to subordinates. He would undertake the business singlehanded. His enquiries at the lodgings and of the taxi driver met with no result. Neither the concierge nor the chauffeur had seen either the men or their wives since February. Verneuil knew how to extract the truth from people like this and was satisfied that they were not lying. His next visit was to the rue Duphot. He was well provided with all that was needed for dealing with locked doors. In this case the door was furnished with a Yale lock that snapped to. But what Verneuil did not know about Yale locks and the manner of bringing them to a friendly understanding was not worth knowing.

He was going to make a thorough search of the premises, but he turned first to the letter box. Empty? No. One letter. And there was no need to steam it open, for the addressee would never come to know of the outrage to her correspondence perpetrated with the grimy thumb of an ex-petty officer.

The letter was quite short and would have puzzled any unauthorized reader who did not know the facts with which Verneuil was acquainted. It was signed “P. H.” and it read as follows:

Verneuil's comment was terse. “‘Pigeons,' he calls them! Why stop at ‘pigeons' when he might have said ‘doves'? Oh, these provincial mayors, they make me tired.”

Would there be time to catch Goron and Vincent before their departure for the north? He did not stop to search the rest of the premises but hailed a taxi, directing the driver to the Ministry of the Interior.

He was in time; a car was taking in petrol in the courtyard of the Ministry when his taxi drew up.

Goron was about to take his seat when Vincent touched him on the arm.

“Here comes Verneuil. I think he wants us.”

The ex-petty officer, a little out of breath, came hurrying up.

“I have brought you this letter, gentlemen. You may find it useful when interviewing his Worship the Mayor.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Out of Madame Germaine's letter box. She was not there to receive her own correspondence; that is the obvious objection to leaving home in a laundry basket. Good hunting!” said Verneuil. “I need not detain you longer. I have my work cut out in tracing the laundry man who received Madame Germaine in his basket.”

He turned on his heel and was gone.

The journey to St Malo was uneventful. They arrived at the chief police office at half-past four, for Goron had a bone to pick with the police officers. He made himself known to the inspector in charge as Commissaire Goron of the Sûreté Nationale.

As when a sudden gust of wind stirs the growing corn the announcement of his rank produced consternation among the men in the police office. He asked to see the principal Commissaire, who made his appearance unshaven, in an unbuttoned tunic. There was a hunted look in his eyes, the look that a man wears when his sins have found him out.

“So the men that I handed over to you, monsieur, for safe custody contrived to escape? In order that I may be in a position to make my report to the Minister, I should like to be shown the cell from which the escape was made and hear your explanation of how it occurred.”

“Very good, monsieur; if you will give yourself the trouble of following me, I will take you down to the cells.”

The door was unlocked and a recalcitrant Norwegian sailor, who had been sampling French wines too lavishly, was removed into the corridor while Goron inspected the window bars. He could find nothing wrong with them. He turned upon the police officer and demanded how he explained the escape. “Those window bars were intact?”

“Yes, monsieur, I am even now enquiring from my staff how the escape could have been contrived.”

“I think I can tell you,” said Goron dryly, “how it was contrived and who contrived it, but let that pass. Tell me, M. le Commissaire, did the mayor visit the prisoners on the evening of their arrest?”

“He did, monsieur. You had said that they might telephone to the American Consul, so naturally I allowed them to telephone also to the mayor when they asked.”

Goron drew Vincent a little aside and said: “You see, I was not far wrong. These men hold their appointment from the mayor. It would serve no good purpose for us to drag out the details of this discreditable proceeding. It is the mayor whom we want.”

T
HE MAYOR LIVED
in a flat on the second floor, filled with a heterogeneous mass of second-hand furniture of various ages and styles picked up at sales. In private life he was an advocate, though his practice in a place like St Malo could not have been remunerative. It was obvious that he depended on other sources for his income. All this Vincent and Goron took in at a glance while they were waiting for the mayor to make his appearance.

When he did appear he was obviously nervous and ill at ease. Goron's card was sufficient to account for this, for any communication from the Ministry of the Interior always sent cold shivers down his spine and this card indicated that Goron was a police functionary.

The two police officers rose. Goron made the necessary introduction of Vincent and the mayor's frightened eyes took on a new aspect of alarm. It was not only the Ministry of the Interior which was concerned with his doings, but an official from the famous institution on the banks of the Thames. Clearly, trouble was brewing.

“We have taken the liberty of calling on you, Monsieur le Maire,” said Goron, “in connection with the escape of two prisoners from the cells in the police station.”

“Yes, monsieur; it was a most lamentable occurrence.”

“So lamentable, that the minister of the interior will want to know from me exactly how it happened. I am told that you had an interview with these two men while they were in the cells. May I go so far as to inquire what was the object of this interview?”

The mayor gulped and swallowed. It gave him time to prepare the answer to this embarrassing question. “I was doing my bare duty, monsieur; the police of the municipality being under my control, I felt that I should be failing in my duty if I did not satisfy myself that the prisoners were being properly treated.”

“That I quite understand,” said Goron. “The two men were, I presume, confined in the same cell. They did not escape through the window.”

The mayor was about to reply when Goron held up his hand to stop the interruption. “That I know from personal enquiry at the police station. They escaped through the door, but the door was not damaged in any way and the locks and bolts were intact; therefore it was obvious that they escaped through collusion with one or other of your police. May I ask what you are doing about this?”

“I am going to hold a very searching enquiry,” replied the mayor, “and if I find that any of my officers were responsible for the escape, he will be severely dealt with. Of that you may be sure.”

“I am pushing my enquiry a little further than I should have done were it not for a letter signed ‘P.H.' found by the Paris police in the letter box of a lady whose conduct, I fear, leaves something to be desired. It occurred to me right to show this letter to you, since it bears your initials, and ask you whether it was typed on your machine?”

The mayor took the letter with trembling fingers and made as if to read it. Vincent watched him narrowly the while and satisfied himself that his eyes were not following the lines and that his mind was engaged in speculating about the reply that would be most likely to find acceptance.

“It is most unlikely, monsieur, that anyone should have had access to my machine. It is used occasionally by my clerk, but she could not have written a letter of this kind. For one thing, I have no carrier pigeons, nor have the police.”

It had gradually been borne in upon Vincent that, so far from being a leader or the brains of the gang, the mayor was a mere cog in the machine; Goron, on the other hand, was thinking of the report that he would make to his chiefs in the Ministry of the Interior on the subject of the mayor and of the policemen under him. He intended to call attention to the deplorable effect it would have in London on the reputation of the French authorities: that, he knew, would set many wheels revolving.

“I don't think we need trouble you further, Monsieur le Maire,” said Goron. “I have sufficient material for my report to the minister. I will only trouble you further in asking you to let me use your typewriter for a moment. My case will then be complete.”

The mayor stammered an inarticulate reply, but Goron maintained his bland attitude. “You will not refuse to allow me to use your machine?”

It was useless to attempt concealment, for the machine was standing in full view in a corner of the room. Goron swept off the cover and proceeded to type with unexpected agility a copy of the letter signed “P.H.” found in the Germaine hat shop in the rue Duphot.

He compared the two, noting all the defects in the typescript of both and marking them with a blue pencil.

“Look, Monsieur le Maire,” he said, as if he had just made a discovery, “this is indeed a curious co-incidence, for if you compare these two copies you might be tempted to say that they had been written on the same machine, and yet you think that most unlikely. But in Paris they have typewriting experts…if ever it came to an official investigation…especially since your address appears in such questionable company in a list recently acquired by the Paris police—that, you know,” added Goron pleasantly, “is how we knew where to find ‘P.H.'”

The poor mayor was not made of cast steel. The Day of Judgment had come upon him without any preparation. The power of speech had abandoned him; he could only bleat inarticulately.

“You wish to tell us something confidentially, I think, Monsieur le Maire?” said Goron.

“Yes, monsieur. There is much to tell, and if I have a solemn promise from you two gentlemen that I shall be exempt from prosecution and that nothing that I say will be disclosed to any journalist, I will tell you everything that I know.”

Goron seemed to waver about giving this undertaking, but Vincent intervened. “No hint will be given by us to the journalists, Monsieur le Maire. If they learn anything it will be through the indiscretion of a member of your own staff. As to the question of prosecution…”

“We are not in a position to give any pledge, but if you come forward as a witness for the Procureur Général I suppose that the usual course will be followed,” said Goron.

The mayor hesitated. He appeared to be putting a strain upon what he would have described as his brain. But once he had got under way, the information which he vouchsafed was of absorbing interest to Vincent. To begin with, he admitted quite frankly that he was in league with drug traffickers and that Madame Germaine, in Paris, was mixed up with those chartered to distribute the poison. A few tactful questions brought out further admissions. His special duty was to keep watch on the ports of the northern coast through colleagues who were concerned to some extent in the same traffic, and to give facilities to boats entering or leaving. Moreover, he had agreed to be at the disposal of foreign drug runners—such as Blake and Lewis, whose names were well known to him.

Goron had taken charge of the questions up to this point, but now Vincent broke in. “When these men escaped, where did they go?”

The mayor hesitated. “I do not know.”

“Think again, Monsieur le Maire. You knew that they were going to Paris because you wrote to Madame Germaine to warn her. Is that not so?”

The mayor inclined his head. He seemed to be beyond articulate speech.

“Very well. If you know so much, you must also know where they stay in Paris.”

This was a question that the mayor could answer truthfully. “I assure you, gentlemen, that I do not know that. All that I had to do was to pass the word to Madame Germaine. She would surely know that.”

Vincent now left his French colleague to take up the interrogation again.

“You could not be doing all this unless you had some influential person in Paris to cover you in case of trouble.”

“You are perfectly right, monsieur; I am told that there is no less a person than a deputy who will protect us when things go wrong.”

“His name?”

“That I cannot tell you. I have never heard his name.”

“At present I shall not insist; but it will have to come out. He is your protector.”

“Yes, monsieur, he is more than merely our protector; he gives us advice.”

“You mean advice for nothing?”

“Oh no, monsieur. The advice, I believe, is very expensive, but that does not concern me. The gentleman has access to ministers; he is a person that counts in the political world; occasionally he visits the prime minister, if not the President of the Republic.”

“And who provides the money for oiling his palm?”