Death Has Deep Roots (28 page)

“Somewhere in France. They slid out down one of their two-way gold-smuggling routes, I should think.”

“It did occur to me to wonder why they weren’t arrested when Macrea gave Inspector Partridge the news early that morning.”

“You’re not the only person who’s wondered about that,” said Hazlerigg shortly.

Silence fell again in Hazlerigg’s office. It was McCann who broke it.

“You know,” he said, “the whole thing was too logical. That’s why people didn’t see it at once. You don’t expect crime to be logical. Everything that happened in England depended on what had happened five years before in France. Once you knew what really did take place near Langeais in September, 1943, you could see exactly what must have taken place in London this spring. There are a few gaps, still, of course. Do you know if Sainte and Camino really were brothers?”

“We know a certain amount about them now,” said Hazlerigg. “They were both Italian citizens – we’ve traced them under the name of Santi – who came to France in the thirties. They took the name of Marquis and ran the Ferme du Grand Puits as brothers. They may have been brothers, or it may just have suited their book to pretend they were. When they came over here they changed roles and became hotel proprietor and waiter. Either way the deception was liable to be useful to them. They were born criminals.”

“They had their nerves in the right place,” said McCann. “In France, during the Occupation, they posed as moderately loyal Maquisards, but I can’t help thinking that that Gestapo raid on the Père Chaise Farm was a little
too
well timed.”

“You mean they had them tipped off that Wells was there?”

“Yes. I think so. The Gestapo drill, as Lode explained in evidence, was to raid at dusk. So the brothers Marquis went down with a farm cart and took Wells away at about four in the afternoon. They took him straight up to their farm—then waited to see what transpired. When the Germans shot Père Chaise and the other men in the farm and picked up Miss Lamartine
there was no single outsider left who knew where Wells was.
So they quietly cut his throat and dropped him down the well. As soon as they decently could after the war they sold the farm and decamped. They used a crooked attorney in Angers, Maître Gimelet, to do the job, and killed two birds with one stone, because he was also contact man for the French side of the gold-running crowd. They needed professional help to dispose of the gold. When they got to England they used some of the money to buy the Family Hotel, and they must have been making quite a nice thing out of it. There were only two snags. The first was that the English end of the gold-running crowd thought that they were worth watching and installed Mrs. Roper to keep an eye on them. They couldn’t object to that. They were still realising the gold, piece by piece, and it all had to be done on the black market.”

“And the other snag?”

“The other snag,” said McCann, “might be described as the possible conjunction of Miss Lamartine and Major Thoseby. It must have been intensely irritating to them. They were so nearly safe. If only Wells hadn’t been so damnably attractive to – and attracted by – small brunettes. If only the Gestapo had finished Vicky off when they had her. If only she hadn’t been devoted to the ghost of Julian Wells. If only Major Thoseby hadn’t been such a painstaking investigator. There they were, miles from the scene of the crime, the body disposed of in one of the deepest dry wells in France, the gold almost all realised, many of the actors dead. Yet all the time, week by week and month by month retribution was coming up on them. Vicky Lamartine and Eric Thoseby. Of course, they had always realised that Vicky might be a nuisance. That’s why they got her a job in the hotel – to keep an eye on her. What they hadn’t foreseen was that Thoseby, working from another angle, was going to be equally dangerous. It only needed those two to have ten minutes’ conversation – mention their suspicions to each other – and the truth would have been out.”

“I suppose that’s right,” said Hazlerigg. “I shouldn’t have thought it would have been easy for anybody to pin it on to the brothers Marquis after all that time.”

“Not just anybody – no,” said McCann. “I think that’s the whole point. As I see it, there were three bits of information needed, and you had to have them all. The first’s just guesswork. If the brothers were going to remove Wells they had to have some sort of conveyance to remove him in. Motor cars were nonexistent. They were all requisitioned or hidden away. And, anyway, it would have been too risky.”

“A farm cart,” suggested Hazlerigg.

“Surely, with a load of hay in the back to hide him under. But they couldn’t hope to take a farm cart from up at Grand Puits all the way to Père Chaise without meeting a few people. That was fact one. They must have been seen on the road. Miss Lamartine probably saw them, herself, though they meant nothing to her at the time. Now take fact two – which was known only to the Germans at first, but had recently, by long and patient research, become known also to Major Thoseby: that Wells was no longer at the Père Chaise Farm by the time it was raided. Miss Lamartine, remember, had left him there after lunch.”

“And your third fact?”

“The third fact,” said McCann, “was one which was entirely harmless by itself, but which might assume a certain significance if it was considered alongside the other two. It was simply that Miss Lamartine knew that the brothers Marquis had been, rather unexpectedly, absent from their farm from before three o’clock until after seven o’clock. It had been arranged for her to meet them there, you will remember. Well, there was nothing much in any of those by themselves, but put them together and a certain pattern begins to emerge. A clear enough pattern to make it worth while instituting a little search at the Ferme du Grand Puits. And it would have been inevitable that one of the first places to be searched would have been the well. And once the body had been discovered the hunt would have been up. Photographs of the brothers Marquis in all the papers—”

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “And they still had some of the stolen gold undisposed of. Very uncomfortable for them. So the long and short of it was, they had to take vigorous steps to prevent Miss Lamartine and Thoseby from meeting.”

“Vigorous and logical. There was something almost classical about the way in which they set the two menaces to cancel each other out. Thoseby wished to come to the hotel. Very well, he should be encouraged to do so. Vicky mustn’t see him at once. All right, then, tell her that Thoseby wasn’t arriving till eleven o’clock. I don’t know what devious and damnable alternative plans they had hatched. It all turned on when Thoseby went up to his room. He’d been allotted that room on purpose, of course. In fact, he went up before Vicky came back. That was all that mattered. At about twenty past ten – he would leave it as late as possible so that the medical evidence wouldn’t conflict – Sainte walks from his office,
through
the reception desk, upstairs, knocks at Thoseby’s door, goes in, says something conventional about he hopes Major Thoseby has everything and is quite comfortable. Perfectly comfortable, says Thoseby. Splendid, says Sainte, here’s one thing more. Whips out the knife he’s been holding in his gloved hand – a kitchen knife which he knows is already well covered with Vicky’s fingerprints – and good-bye Thoseby.”

“And then?”

The next bit’s quite easy, too. Macrea had most of it in his summing-up. Thoseby slides gently to the floor. Mrs. Roper’s wireless would drown any noise there was. Sainte pushes the knife down the back of the sofa, walks out of the bedroom and locks himself into the bathroom opposite. Then he sits – and waits.”

“Yes. There was nothing wrong with his nerve, as you said. What exactly is he waiting for?”

“Why, the signal that Vicky is in the reception desk and the front hall is clear.”

“And the signal is given by—?”

“Camino, of course, from the kitchen. At about twenty to eleven. That was your mysterious Benny. They were both Italians, and in a moment of stress they naturally spoke in Italian. Camino simply whispers up to his brother that the way is clear and all is well. A Frenchman would have said
‘Bien.’
Camino says
‘Bene.’
Sainte, when he gets the signal goes back into Thoseby’s room – still gloved – and
simply presses the bell.
Then he comes out again quickly and walks down the passage – it’s only conjecture, but it seems reasonable – as far as the empty bedroom. Vicky comes upstairs, along the passage, goes into Thoseby’s room, and – somewhat naturally – screams. Sainte is well placed to pretend to be coming up the stairs attracted by her screams. We’ve only got Camino’s word that he was ever seen on the actual staircase.”

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg. “I think that’s it all right. I think that’s how it must have worked. Mrs. Roper’s statement – nerves, imagination or self-defence?”

“A bit of all three. Mostly self-defence. She saw the red light at once. If Vicky didn’t do it, then she was automatically next choice. Also she had a bad record. She had only to invent the mythical thud – or so she thought – to clear herself. Only she ought to have realised that if you are going to tell a lie which is to stand up under cross-examination, you’ve got to think it out pretty carefully. She didn’t do herself much good with that thud.”

“No. After that I suppose Camino and Sainte worked together to delay the arrival of the doctor, long enough, anyway, to conceal the difference between a death at ten- twenty and a death at ten-forty.”

“Yes, that’s about it.”

Silence fell again.

“How’s Nap?” said Hazlerigg.

“Fine,” said McCann, “he’s fine. The wound’s absolutely healed.”

But he only said that absently. His real mind was still turning over the case.

“Do you think,” Hazlerigg said, “that they meant her to hang?”

“I’m sure they didn’t,” said McCann. “The most they expected was for her to be found guilty under provocation – and either pardoned or given a nominal sentence for manslaughter. That, incidentally, was the line of legal defence that Sainte bespoke and paid for – and with all possible respect to everyone, if Vicky hadn’t been so determined to change her lawyers, it’s just about what would have happened.”

“Yes,” said Hazlerigg again. “You seem to have got everything tied up. All we’ve got to do now is to catch them. Then we can start all over again, trying to explain it to a jury. Not just the straight bits but the odd little difficulties, too. What’s worrying you now?” he added, for McCann still seemed to be turning something over in his mind.

“It’s just this,” said McCann. “I’m fairly sure now that that’s what did happen. It all fits together reasonably well. But there’s one thing I can’t understand at all. Why did Sainte – or Marquis, I suppose I should call him –
ever allow the girl near him?
I know that I suggested that he wanted to keep an eye on her, and that may be true, but look at the risk he was running. It only needed an acquaintance from France to come into the hotel and address him as Marquis, in Vicky’s presence – and the fat would have been in the fire. Perhaps the risk was small, but why run it at all?”

“Criminals,” said Hazlerigg, “are people with extraordinarily acute apprehensions. They revisit the scene of the crime to see if they have overlooked some obscure clue, and a blundering policeman, who doesn’t like the look of them, arrests them on suspicion. They take wild precautions to guard against imaginary dangers, and the precautions themselves lead to their undoing, long after the crime has become undetectable. In short, they make mistakes; which is as well, for if they never made mistakes we should never catch them.”

Plan
[1]

All Series titles can be read in order, or randomly as standalone novels

Inspector Hazlerigg

Patrick Petrella