Continental Crimes, page 22
I followed him slowly as he walked away, followed him through the room, stopping occasionally to look at the play, followed him outside, past Ciro’s, and along a road leading to the Rue Paradis. Here he stopped, and we spoke to each other. Henri must have told him of my knowledge of the Bertaux affair, for he began to speak of it at once.
‘And it is fortunate I met you to-night,’ said he, ‘for things have come to a crisis. I believe I have got my man; indeed, I could have pointed him out to you in the room where he was playing. He did not see me, I only got a glimpse of him, but to-night I expect he will re-visit the house where the murder took place and where I have taken rooms.’
‘Taken rooms?’ said I.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Madame Bertaux’s flat was to let; people weren’t anxious to rent it just after the crime, so M. Jacob, who owns the place and lives below, let it to me. I have been there a good while watching the Casino and the strangers who have come to Monte Carlo. I had to wait a good while, but I found my man—and my woman.’
‘Who was the woman?’
‘Rosalie—she was justly condemned.’
‘And the man—?’
‘Was her young man, a rival to Coudoyer.’
‘And to-night,’ I said, ‘you expect him to re-visit the scene of the crime. What bait have you put out for him?’
‘You’ll see,’ said Malmaison.
We had reached the door, and he opened it with a latch-key. The door of M. Jacob’s flat was closed.
‘You haven’t told M. Jacob?’ said I.
‘Not a word,’ he replied. ‘I believe in Henri’s motto, which is “Be dumb.” He believes I am just a prosperous rentier, and as I pay my rent in advance he doesn’t bother about anything else. Why should I tell him?’
He led the way up, and I found myself again in Madame Bertaux’s room; but very different it looked now, with cigar and cigarette boxes about and glasses and other signs of good cheer.
Malmaison made me take the arm-chair, then he opened the window and left it standing half open.
‘You expect him to come through the window?’ said I.
‘Let us expect nothing,’ said he. ‘I believe in Henri’s idea that not only ought one to be dumb, but that, given a true theory, too many brains in the know may set up ether vibrations warning the criminal. However, a sketch of how the case stands up to a certain point will do no harm.’
He offered me a cigar and went on:
‘I came here on seemingly an impossible task, but M. Henri had given me an idea of how to set to work. It was only during the last few days, however, that the truth became quite evident. The criminal is first of all and above everything else a gambler; the crime was committed to recoup his gambling losses. He has a cousin who runs an hotel here. A very shady man, this cousin. He it was, I suspect, who turned the stolen jewellery into money; a worse man, perhaps, than the actual murderer, who was urged by Play and the Devil to commit his crime.’
As Malmaison talked and as I looked at him, noticing his good clothes, his large watch-chain and the rings on his fingers, the idea came to me that the bait he had put down to catch the assassin was himself, and it gave me a very queer sensation, the thought that through that open window the tiger might suddenly appear. However, I said nothing, and he went on:
‘The criminal has two addresses here. One is the hotel owned by his cousin. He doesn’t stay there; he has a house of his own, a pleasant little house which he picked up cheap and where he lives free of taxes, the only drawback being that when he wants to play at the Casino he can’t, owing to the fact that he’s a resident employed in a bank. He is also a man with a certain power over women, and so it came about that Rosalie fell under his spell.
‘Now you will see how things conspired to bring this man to his undoing. He has a brother very like himself who travels in wine for Meyer and Capablanca, of Bordeaux.
‘This brother, when he visits Monte Carlo, stops at the cousin’s hotel and plays at the Casino, and one fine day it occurred to the criminal, who was then only a bank cashier, to drop into the Casino under the brother’s name and giving the address the brother had always given. The chief difference between the two men was the fact that the brother wore glasses. So you see it was quite an easy matter to buy a pair of glasses, and, handing the brother’s card over the counter, gain admittance—or use his ticket for the season.
‘Well, there you are: a man well-to-do and comfortable, yet sucked by the whirlpool of the tables—drawn into the net. Most likely the first time he went in under the guise of his brother he thought it would be the last; he just went in to see the play and have a flutter. Then the passion grew. Or it may be that he was a gambler at heart with a passion full grown to be satisfied—who knows? One can only say that the tables took him and turned him into a murderer, and that Henri jumped to the fact that the man who dropped that ten-franc counter might be a resident who played at the Casino under disguise.’
Malmaison rose and held up a finger.
‘Here he is,’ said he.
I could hear a far-away step in the silent street outside.
Malmaison closed the window.
‘Why do you close the window?’ I asked.
‘I only left it open to let in a footstep,’ said he. ‘Come, this gentleman will enter boldly by the front door, if I am not mistaken. Quick!’
I took my hat and followed him downstairs to the hall, where we stood waiting while the footsteps paused outside. The hall light was on. We heard the noise of the key in the latch; the door opened, and a man entered. It was only M. Jacob.
I pitied Malmaison. I felt like a man watching a play which has suddenly broken down, a hunter who hears the footsteps of a tiger and finds them to be the footsteps of a lamb.
‘Good evening, monsieur,’ said Jacob when he saw Malmaison.
‘Good evening,’ replied the other. ‘I was just going to show my friend out. How fortunate we have met, for my friend wished to ask you some questions concerning real estate in Monte Carlo.’
‘Come into my room,’ said M. Jacob, ‘and we can talk.’
He opened the door of his flat and we entered the sitting-room, where he put on the light and offered us cigarettes, which Malmaison refused.
‘Monsieur Jacob,’ said he whilst we took seats, ‘excuse my asking, but how much money did you make playing at the Casino to-night?’
The murderer rose to his feet at this terrible question, the full weight of which he had not quite realised. He knew he was caught, but not how seriously.
‘Ah!’ said he—‘a spy of the bank!’
‘No,’ said Malmaison, ‘I have nothing to do with the bank of which you are cashier. I am a police officer in search of a certain ten-franc counter which was dropped—’
He did not finish the sentence. Jacob had made a dash for the door.
The struggle did not last a minute.
It wasn’t much, for I had managed, seeing the truth, to seize Jacob from behind. We found the glasses in his pocket and a large number of banknotes which he had won that night. At the Bureau of Police, where we brought him, he was told that his cousin, the hotelkeeper, had confessed to the whole business; this was an untruth, but it served, for in his anger he rounded on the cousin and told how he had disposed of the jewels. Both men received life sentences. He rounded on Rosalie, the girl who had begun by stealing the antique watch as a present for Coudoyer and ended by assisting M. Jacob in his plans, the girl who had not given him away simply because she would have had to give herself away too, and who took her condemnation and sentence without a word, knowing she would do herself no good through freeing Coudoyer; feeling perhaps jealous that Coudoyer should escape whilst she had to suffer. Women are strange things.
I have told you the story for two reasons. First of all, it is interesting as it shows the methods of M. Henri. He seized directly on the really essential thing, the counter. When he mentioned the counter to M. Jacob he saw at once what I did not see, that Jacob was the man who had dropped it, saw it by some subtle signal in the man’s manner. Also, it seemed to him that the drain-pipe by which the assassin was supposed to have climbed was too fragile to support a grown man, and that the marks on it were ‘artificial.’
When he sent Malmaison to Monte Carlo he told him to watch Jacob and, if possible, to secure the rooms left vacant by the death of Madame Bertaux.
Now, if Jacob had been a really clever man he would never have gone to the Casino again after the finding of that counter by the police, but, lulled to security by the conviction of Coudoyer and the girl, and little dreaming how that counter had talked to Henri, instead of destroying those fatal glasses he put them on and walked into the trap.
It was the finding of those glasses on him that really broke him down and saved a long trial by inducing him to confess.
The other reason for my telling you this story is to show you the pull of the tables and exhibit to you the men who run them as what they are, men who for the sake of profit sacrifice men to the Demon of Play.
The Demon kills a man every day on an average at Monte Carlo, kills him by his own hand and sends his soul to perdition. And what shall we say of the men who do not commit suicide yet are ruined; of their wives and children?
I am no priest; my business in life is the taking of criminals—criminals—criminals, but what shall we say of the men who are licensed by society to kill for gain?
Are they so much better than M. Jacob?
He crossed and put another cigarette-end on the pile in the ash-tray.
I did not answer his question. I was looking through the open window and the balmy night at the jewelled necklace of Monte Carlo, and the far-off light of Cap Ferrat winking across the sea.
Have You Got Everything You Want?
Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie (1890–1976), the most popular detective novelist who has ever lived, is often thought of as a quintessentially English woman who produced quintessentially English stories. The stereotype does her less than justice. Christie, whose father was American, was a cosmopolitan figure who was as happy travelling on the Orient Express, or working on an archaeological dig in the Middle East as she was enjoying the views of the River Dart from Greenway, her house in Devon.
It is sometimes suggested that her mystery fiction was almost always set in cosy English villages (for which the crime writer Colin Watson coined the generic term ‘Mayhem Parva’), but this is simply not true. Even Jane Marple, the spinster-sleuth from the village of St Mary Mead, travelled as far as the Caribbean in one novel, while Death Comes as the End (1945) is a whodunit set in Ancient Egypt. Several of her short stories also benefit from overseas settings, notably ‘Triangle at Rhodes’, a splendidly plotted Hercule Poirot mystery. This story features one of her less famous recurrent characters. After making an initial appearance in a magazine in 1933, it was included the following year in the collection Parker Pyne Investigates.
***
I
‘Par ici, madame.’
A tall woman in a mink coat followed her heavily encumbered porter along the platform of the Gare de Lyon.
She wore a dark-brown knitted hat pulled down over one eye and ear. The other side revealed a charming tip-tilted profile and little golden curls clustering over a shell-like ear. Typically an American, she was altogether a very charming-looking creature and more than one man turned to look at her as she walked past the high carriages of the waiting train.
Large plates were stuck in holders on the sides of the carriages.
Paris-Athenes. Paris-Bucharest.
Paris-Stamboul.
At the last named the porter came to an abrupt halt. He undid the strap which held the suitcases together and they slipped heavily to the ground. ‘Voici, Madame.’
The wagon-lit conductor was standing beside the steps. He came forward, remarking, ‘Bonsoir, Madame,’ with an empressement perhaps due to the richness and perfection of the mink coat.
The woman handed him her sleeping-car ticket of flimsy paper.
‘Number Six,’ he said. ‘This way.’
He sprang nimbly into the train, the woman following him. As she hurried down the corridor after him, she nearly collided with a portly gentleman who was emerging from the compartment next to hers. She had a momentary glimpse of a large bland face with benevolent eyes.
‘Voici, Madame.’
The conductor displayed the compartment. He threw up the window and signalled to the porter. The lesser employee took in the baggage and put it up on the racks. The woman sat down.
Beside her on the seat she had placed a small scarlet case and her handbag. The carriage was hot, but it did not seem to occur to her to take off her coat. She stared out of the window with unseeing eyes. People were hurrying up and down the platform. There were sellers of newspapers, of pillows, of chocolate, of fruit, of mineral waters. They held up their wares to her, but her eyes looked blankly through them. The Gare de Lyon had faded from her sight. On her face were sadness and anxiety.
‘If Madame will give me her passport?’
The words made no impression on her. The conductor, standing in the doorway, repeated them. Elsie Jeffries roused herself with a start.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your passport, Madame.’
She opened her bag, took out the passport and gave it to him.
‘That will be all right, Madame, I will attend to everything.’ A slight significant pause. ‘I shall be going with Madame as far as Stamboul.’
Elsie drew out a fifty-franc note and handed it to him. He accepted it in a business-like manner, and inquired when she would like her bed made up and whether she was taking dinner.
These matters settled, he withdrew and almost immediately the restaurant man came rushing down the corridor ringing his little bell frantically, and bawling out, ‘Premier service. Premier service.’
Elsie rose, divested herself of the heavy fur coat, took a brief glance at herself in the little mirror, and picking up her handbag and jewel case stepped out into the corridor. She had gone only a few steps when the restaurant man came rushing along on his return journey. To avoid him, Elsie stepped back for a moment into the doorway of the adjoining compartment, which was now empty. As the man passed and she prepared to continue her journey to the dining car, her glance fell idly on the label of a suitcase which was lying on the seat.
It was a stout pigskin case, somewhat worn. On the label were the words: ‘J. Parker Pyne, passenger to Stamboul.’ The suitcase itself bore the initials ‘P.P.’
A startled expression came over the girl’s face. She hesitated a moment in the corridor, then going back to her own compartment she picked up a copy of The Times which she had laid down on the table with some magazines and books.
She ran her eye down the advertisement columns on the front page, but what she was looking for was not there. A slight frown on her face, she made her way to the restaurant car.
The attendant allotted her a seat at a small table already tenanted by one person—the man with whom she had nearly collided in the corridor. In fact, the owner of the pigskin suitcase.
Elsie looked at him without appearing to do so. He seemed very bland, very benevolent, and in some way impossible to explain, delightfully reassuring. He behaved in reserved British fashion, and it was not until the fruit was on the table that he spoke.
‘They keep these places terribly hot,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Elsie. ‘I wish one could have the window open.’
He gave a rueful smile. ‘Impossible! Every person present except ourselves would protest.’
She gave an answering smile. Neither said any more.
Coffee was brought and the usual indecipherable bill. Having laid some notes upon it, Elsie suddenly took her courage in both hands.
‘Excuse me,’ she murmured. ‘I saw your name upon your suitcase—Parker Pyne. Are you—are you, by any chance—?’
She hesitated and he came quickly to her rescue.
‘I believe I am. That is’—he quoted from the advertisement which Elsie had noticed more than once in The Times, and for which she had searched vainly just now: ‘“Are you happy? If not, consult Mr Parker Pyne.” Yes, I’m that one, all right.’
‘I see,’ said Elsie. ‘How—how extraordinary!’
He shook his head. ‘Not really. Extraordinary from your point of view, but not from mine.’ He smiled reassuringly, then leaned forward. Most of the other diners had left the car. ‘So you are unhappy?’ he said.
‘I—’ began Elsie, and stopped.
‘You would not have said “How extraordinary” otherwise,’ he pointed out.
Elsie was silent for a minute. She felt strangely soothed by the mere presence of Mr Parker Pyne. ‘Ye—es,’ she admitted at last. ‘I am—unhappy. At least, I am worried.’
He nodded sympathetically.
‘You see,’ she continued, ‘a very curious thing has happened—and I don’t know the least what to make of it.’
‘Suppose you tell me about it,’ suggested Mr Pyne.
Elsie thought of the advertisement. She and Edward had often commented on it and laughed. She had never thought that she…perhaps she had better not…if Mr Parker Pyne were a charlatan…but he looked—nice!
Elsie made her decision. Anything to get this worry off her mind.
‘I’ll tell you. I’m going to Constantinople to join my husband. He does a lot of Oriental business, and this year he found it necessary to go there. He went a fortnight ago. He was to get things ready for me to join him. I’ve been very excited at the thought of it. You see, I’ve never been abroad before. We’ve been in England six months.’
