Bodies from the Library 5, page 27
‘Your master has awakened, eh?’
Prosper nodded and winked.
‘But he seems to have fallen asleep again. You can guess his fatigue, Henri, that he should fall asleep before his glass is empty.’ Prosper lowered his voice and added in confidential tones: ‘Listen, Henri, I want you to watch over the master for a few minutes. There is a very special letter of his which I have forgotten to post. He will be full of fury if he finds out that it has not gone tonight. If he should wake, bring another Pernod. You cannot be wrong in doing that!’
Henri chuckled and winked in turn, and the hunchback scuttled off down the boulevard in the direction of the nearest post-box. For some time Henri gazed stupidly at the figure humped in the invalid-chair. At the back of his mind he wondered what it must be like to be paralysed and half-blind. The poor old chap must be frozen to the bone, dozing away in the chill of the September evening. His cloak, too, seemed to have half-slipped from his shoulders. Prosper should have noticed that and set it right. Very cautiously Henri leant forward and twitched the cloak a little higher. It seems to be caught in the back of the wheelchair. He tugged a little harder and suddenly, to his horror, the body of Lebrun toppled forward and his head hit the table with a resounding thump. Even in the excitement of the moment the waiter in Henri was uppermost, for shooting out an arm he snatched up the half-empty glass of Pernod before the old man fell and set it aside on the adjacent table. Then, trembling with anxiety, he tried to raise him to a sitting posture. The body seemed strangely heavy and limp. Had that unexpected contact with the table-top knocked the old fellow unconscious? Certain it was that the head would not remain upright on the neck. It lolled forward in the most grotesque fashion with the faded képi jammed down over the forehead. What should he do? Rouse Monsieur Bonnard? Wait until Prosper should return? Perhaps brandy … but how was he to force the spirit between the old man’s lips single-handed? Henri’s alarm increased. Suppose the blow on the forehead had killed Monsieur Lebrun? Mightn’t he, Henri, be arrested on a charge of murder? After all, if he hadn’t fiddled with that cloak … Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! This was terrible … terrible!
For a moment the bewildered waiter did not move, then coming to a sudden decision, he rushed into the café and ran up the staircase to his master’s apartments. In less than thirty seconds, in answer to Henri’s frantic knockings, Bonnard appeared in the doorway.
‘Well—idiot—what does it mean? Have you gone mad?’
‘It is Monsieur Lebrun,’ gasped Henri.
‘Lebrun? He is still here?’
‘He has fallen, M’sieur—hit his head against the table. I think he is dead!’
‘Dead? Here—out of my way!’
Bonnard flapped down the stairs in his nightgown and out on to the pavement. Lebrun still lay where he had toppled, his forehead resting against the table, his two arms hanging down like the flippers of a seal. Bonnard groped for his pulse. There was no response—not a flutter of blood in the veins! As Bonnard straightened up, Prosper appeared and ran with a cry toward the table.
‘M’sieur—what is the matter? Why are you here in your nightgown?’
Bonnard ignored the question.
‘The police. We must get on to the police. We cannot afford a scandal in the Café Vavin.’
‘But the master, M’sieur?’
‘Dead,’ replied Bonnard curtly as he gathered up the trailing hem of his nightgown and rushed inside to the ‘phone.
The hunchback let out a sharp wail and collapsed, weeping, on the steps of the restaurant.
‘Now,’ said Inspector Moreau, ‘let’s get this in order. When you tried to arrange the cloak round Monsieur Lebrun’s shoulders, he fell forward and struck his head sharply on the table, eh? Was he asleep when you first touched him?’
‘But how can I say? How should I know?’ wailed the unfortunate waiter. ‘In any other man—yes. But in the case of Monsieur Lebrun—’
‘You mean the dark glasses? You were unable to see whether his eyes were open or closed? Eh, bien—so much for that. But you say he had been awake just previously?’
‘Indeed, M’sieur, he must have been, for his glass of Pernod was half empty.’
‘That is right,’ broke in Prosper quickly. ‘I arrive here some time about a quarter to one and a little after that time the master awake and ask what time it is. I tell him and—’
‘A minute,’ cut in Moreau incisively. ‘Who do you happen to be? Why should you be sitting beside Monsieur Lebrun?’
In a torrent of words Prosper explained his position in the Lebrun household. Moreau nodded.
‘Go on.’
‘Well, M’sieur, after he had asked the time, the master notice the Pernod and he threw back half the glass in one big gulp—so!’ The hunchback made a descriptive gesture. ‘Then he say “Bon!” and keep silent and after a time he seem to be asleep. Then I remember a letter which I should have posted for the master and I leave Henri to watch him while I go to the post-box.’
‘I see.’ Moreau got up and walked to the doorway of the restaurant in which he had been conducting his preliminary enquiries. A group of gendarmes was gathered about the body, which was still slumping forward from the wheelchair.
The Inspector took a quick glance round and suddenly his eye alighted on the object he was seeking. He stepped forward and picked up the half-glass of Pernod from the table where Henri had placed it just before Lebrun had toppled forward. This Moreau carried back carefully into the café, sniffing it as he went. Henri identified it as the glass from which the dead man had been drinking.
‘Tell me, Monsieur l’Inspecteur,’ broke in Bonnard, who had been watching Moreau’s movements with interest, ‘do you think that Monsieur Lebrun may have poisoned himself?’
‘Why should I think that?’
‘Then you have not heard!’ exclaimed Bonnard. ‘Two years ago, in this very café, Lebrun attempted to kill himself with arsenic. If I had not seen him place the powder in his glass—’
‘He has seemed depressed of late?’
‘But very much so, M’sieur. Often he has spoken of taking his life. Hélas—what had he to live for? Paralysed, half-blind, with no real friends, slowly going mad through continual drinking … perhaps this is the kindest thing that could have happened.’
Moreau nodded but made no comment. Already he was beginning to see daylight—the same old story, the hopeless despair of the dipsomaniac, the quick way out, the opportunity seized and … another commonplace suicide! He turned to greet a little man with a black beard who came hurrying between the tables.
‘Ah M’sieur, I have been waiting for you. I think it is a simple case, but perhaps when you have viewed the body—’
The doctor nodded and followed Moreau over to the wheelchair, where he made a cursory examination. As he was doing so the Inspector primed him up with the facts of the case.
‘Umph,’ said the doctor as he straightened up, ‘it’s quite certain that he didn’t die from the blow on the forehead. I think he was dead before he fell forward. You say he attempted suicide two years ago? Arsenic, eh? Well this time, if it is poison, then it is not arsenic we shall find. There would have been vomiting, perhaps, convulsions, which his servant could not have failed to notice. Well, Inspector, I think if you get the body to the mortuary I could perform a post-mortem at once. I should like, too, the glass from which he was drinking and its contents. I do not think the case will prove to be very troublesome where you are concerned. I will ring through to the Sûreté when I have made the necessary tests.’
Four hours later, as dawn was coming up over the jumbled roofs of the city, the doctor’s unemotional voice was speeding over the wires to the Inspector.
‘Morphine—the hydrochloride—at least two grains in the residue of the Pernod. I tested the saliva and found strong traces of morphine. The pupil of the eye was contracted—a typical result of morphine poisoning. No doubt about it, Inspector—Lebrun committed suicide. He must have smuggled the morphine salts into his drink when nobody was looking.’
‘As I anticipated, M’sieur, I shall have to make further enquiries naturally, but I don’t think there will be any unexpected evidence to upset your verdict.’
For the remainder of that day Inspector Moreau was busy collecting various depositions. Prosper was closely questioned in the Rue Delambre concerning the morphine, but he could not say how his master had been able to obtain the fatal dose. Through Bonnard, the Inspector got in touch with several habitués of the Café Vavin and they all agreed that Lebrun suffered, and had suffered for years, from acute melancholia. More than one had heard him speak quite openly of suicide and recently at that.
For once it seemed, his usual routine upset by the journey up to Paris, Prosper had failed to search his master’s pockets before they left the Rue Delambre. There was only one factor in the case which surprised Inspector Moreau. When, in the mortuary, he had removed Lebrun’s dark glasses he was astonished to find him far younger than the general evidence led him to believe. Forty, fifty—certainly not more. It seemed tragic that a man with a future still ahead of him should have fallen victim to a vice which, though slow in its devastating results, has but one inevitable end.
III
THE MISSING ARTIST
For a day or two Lebrun’s suicide was the chief topic of conversation among the pavement-tables of Montparnasse. Prosper was seen about the streets mournfully shopping, a long loaf under one arm, a litre of red wine cuddled in the other. His eyes had a fluttering, nervous expression, as if at any corner he expected to encounter the ghost of his dead master.
There was a vacancy also at the table under the third bay-tree from the right. It was nearly a fortnight since Noel Blake had shown up at the Café Vavin. His absence caused no comment, because his friends knew well enough that Blake would shut himself away for days when his brush was running sweetly. Nobody made enquiries for him at his studio, for it was an unspoken rule that those who wished to chat with him could always do so at Bonnard’s.
But less than a week after the Lebrun tragedy a rumour concerning Blake was going round the cafés. He had been arrested as a spy. He had forged a cheque and made a get-away over the Belgian frontier. He had stolen a jewel-case from a woman’s flat and succeeded in crossing the channel with some eighty thousand francs worth of diamonds in his possession. The later the rumour, the more fantastic the details. But there was one drop of truth to be distilled from all this wild hearsay—Noel Blake had undoubtedly disappeared.
It was Madame Mollien who first got in touch with the police. She had waited four nights for Blake to return and when on the fifth day his bed still remained unslept in, she rang up the Sûreté. Twenty minutes later Inspector Moreau was at the Ateliers Daubigny.
Wasn’t it possible that Monsieur Blake might be staying with friends? Madame Mollien shook her head. Never before had Monsieur slept away from his studio without first informing her. He was most regular in his habits. ‘A woman perhaps?’ suggested Moreau. Madame disagreed. Monsieur had an eye to economy and if he wished to sleep with a woman he brought her back with him to the studio. What more natural? It was a sensible arrangement.
‘When did he first disappear?’
‘It was a Friday—the Friday before last. That would be—’
‘The twentieth,’ broke in Moreau, adding to himself: ‘The night of the Lebrun affair, eh? A coincidence.’ Aloud he went on: ‘Tell me, Madame, what time on Friday was it when you last saw Monsieur Blake?’
‘Eleven o’clock that morning, M’sieur. Always at eleven o’clock I take up Monsieur’s coffee and brioche.’
‘He sleeps late?’
‘Indeed, M’sieur—often he does not come in from the cafés until the early hours.’
‘You take up all his meals to him?’
‘Oh no, M’sieur—only his petit déjeuner. His other meals he has on the Boulevard.’
‘I see. And on this particular Friday did he seem strange or upset in any way?’
‘No, M’sieur. He seemed to be quite himself. He spoke, I remember, of a picture which he was anxious to finish—that picture there which you see on the easel.’
‘And you did not see him for the rest of the day?’
‘No, M’sieur. And the next morning when I take up his coffee I find the door unlocked and the bed still made as I had left it.’
‘But on Friday morning wasn’t Monsieur Blake still in bed when you took up his tray? When did you have time to make the bed?’
‘Oh, as usual, M’sieur. M’sieur Blake always has his petit déjeuner seated at the table and while he is drinking his coffee I make the bed and clear up the rest of his apartment.’
‘I see. Did you notice anything unusual about the room on Saturday morning?’
Madame Mollien hesitated, then she took the Inspector by the arm and led him to the easel.
‘Do you notice anything strange about this picture, M’sieur?’
Moreau peered at it and then laughed lightly: ‘To me, Madame, it is not so much strange as incomprehensible!’
‘But you notice nothing unusual?’
‘Mon Dieu!—yes! The sail of this boat—it is smudged across the sky, as if something had been brushed against it when the paint was wet.’
‘Yes. M’sieur, and on Saturday morning the paint was still wet. It is curious that M’sieur Blake should have been so careless, for he had been working many weeks on this picture.’
‘You heard no sounds from the studio during the day or night of that particular Friday?’
‘I cannot be sure of that, M’sieur. It is curious. I have my apartment in one wing of the courtyard. It was a little before midnight when I think I hear—’
‘Well?’
‘Squeaks, M’sieur.’
‘Squeaks?’
‘Exactly, M’sieur—as of something squeaking in the courtyard. For a moment I was frightened, then I think it is nothing to worry about and I go to sleep again.’
‘One more little point, Madame. During the five days that Monsieur Blake has been away, has this room remained undisturbed?’
‘Oh yes, M’sieur. I have kept the door locked. I have a master-key, you understand? So that I can get into the studios to dust or make the beds when the occupants are out.’
‘Exactly. And have you dusted or in any way disturbed any of the furniture or objects in this room since Monsieur Blake has been absent?’
‘No, M’sieur.’
Moreau was puzzled. The strange disappearance of this Englishman seemed to bear with it the outlines of a first-class mystery. Why should he vanish so abruptly and leave behind him a room full of pictures? Blake must have been in a queer frame of mind to have smudged that wet paint across the middle of his latest canvas.
Moreau gave a little snort of impatience and, turning aside from theory, got down to a practical examination of the studio.
It was really a self-contained flat, for through one door Moreau found a kitchenette and through another, a minute bathroom. His first interest lay in the kitchenette and almost directly Moreau found something new to perplex him. On a small, enamel-topped table stood a half-empty cup of coffee and a half-eaten slice of bread-and-butter capped with thin slices of Dutch cheese. On the edge of the draining-board was the burnt-out stub of a Gitane cigarette from which drooped a long cylinder of ash. From these little scraps of evidence he tried to reconstruct the events which had taken place in that kitchen. One thing was obvious—some time during the course of Friday evening, Blake had come into the kitchen, brewed himself a cup of coffee, cut himself a slice of bread and cheese and then, in the midst of this snack, something, or somebody, had interrupted him. He had not expected to be disturbed, for when he had entered the kitchen to pour out his coffee, which he had heated in a saucepan over the gas stove, Blake had been smoking a Gitane. Realising that he could not eat and smoke at the same time, he had set the lighted cigarette aside, intending to finish it after he had eaten his bread and cheese. The interruption had come and this man of precise and careful habits had left the burning cigarette on the draining-board! What or who had drawn him so abruptly from that casual, little meal? Was it too much to suppose that almost directly after Noel Blake had walked out of the kitchenette, he had walked out of the studio, out of the Rue Campagne-Première, out of, the district Montparnasse, and thus into oblivion?
‘Walked?’ thought Inspector Moreau dubiously. ‘By his own free-will? No, no—somehow, I think not. If that were so, why did he not return to finish his coffee and cigarette? It seems more possible that he left because he was forced to leave, perhaps even under physical pressure. Might there have been a struggle, chloroform perhaps and—’
Moreau clicked his fingers and broke into a smile. The picture! The smudge! A struggle? Surely that was a feasible explanation? In the course of such a struggle it would be quite possible for an arm or shoulder to brush against the wet paint. He moved quickly to the easel and fixed in his mind’s-eye the exact colour of the boat’s sail. It was a vivid russet—no, not quite, it was a shade brighter. Tangerine. Ah, that was it precisely! And if his theory were correct, somewhere there was a sleeve, a shoulder, a lapel, belonging either to Blake or his assumed assailants, which would reveal a similar smudge of colour. Maybe the coat had since been sent to the cleaners. Ça fait rien! Moreau chuckled. The all-seeing eye of the ultra-microscope was profoundly difficult to fool. Many a criminal had forgotten this little fact and suffered accordingly.
Moreau passed into the bathroom. The wash-basin, closet, the wall-cabinet and the bath itself occupied so much space that there was barely room to turn round in the place. The bath had obviously received the recent attentions of Madame Mollien, for it glistened a pristine white. But the same could not be said for the wash-basin. A thin rime of dried soap was clearly evident, suggesting that the basin had been used after Madame had cleaned up the flat on Friday morning. Eh bien—there was nothing unusual about that. Moreau was just about to turn aside for an examination of the cabinet when his eye was suddenly arrested by a detail which he had nearly overlooked The rime of dirt round the basin did not consist solely of dried soap. Here and there minute scraps of stubbly, black hairs had been caught in the rime. Somebody had been shaving in the basin. And since this was Blake’s bathroom was it absurd to suppose that the shaver was Blake? But mon Dieu! It was impossible! Moreau drew his enlarged photo of the missing man from his pocket—a photo which Madame Mollien had cut from a recent art magazine. The chief feature of Noel Blake’s physiognomy was the untidy black beard which encircled it. And a man with a beard does not leave a stubble of hair among the dried soap in his wash-basin!
