The Case of the Dead Diplomat (19 page)

After that there seemed nothing more to be said. Verneuil opened the door and followed Richardson out.

“This way, monsieur,” he said, steering the Englishman to the room in which he had previously worked. As usual it was unoccupied; scraps of written paper were scattered over the table; one of the cupboards was open, disclosing thick piles of papers discoloured with age and dirt; there seemed to be no system.

“You see how it is, comrade,” said Verneuil, jerking his thumb towards his chief's room; “working his promotion, that is his present preoccupation. To him it matters not whether he finds the guilty person or not, provided that it makes a public sensation and that the newspapers refer to Bigot as ‘that astute
commissaire
.'”

“But I should have thought that in the line he is taking he must be making enemies as well as friends. Is he not fishing in troubled waters when he goes to the Lobby of the Chamber for information?”

“You have said it, comrade. How many police officers have I seen fall through the politicians and their newspapers, and when they are given the key of the fields they can count upon no one to befriend them. You will see what will happen with M. Bigot.”

“I hope, monsieur, that this will not disturb our pleasant relations; that we can still continue to work together.”

“Yes, monsieur, but I must confess to you that this refusal to let me arrest that little gang of three has been a shock to me. I say to myself, ‘What more can we do? The case will have to join those thousands of dossiers which are treated as waste-paper.'”

“I see no reason for discouragement at this stage,” said Richardson. “If M. Bigot will not sanction an arrest, we must continue the investigation in our own way; for example, our Canadian millionaire may be able to do a little astute inter-rogation on his own account. There is another thing that might be done, monsieur; it is to have one more interview with the lady whom the Press called Mademoiselle X—Madame Blanchard. You have her address?”

“Certainly. I will take you there and you shall ask her any question you like. We might even go there this morning. What do you want her to tell you?”

“Whether she had ever heard M. Everett hint that he had been asked to join a syndicate for selling gold as M. Pinet told you.”

“Very well—we will start at once.”

A constable put his head in at the door. “A gentleman is asking to see a member of the police
judiciaire
. Will you see him, M. Verneuil? The chief is not in his room.”

“Yes, show him in here.” Richardson had risen. “No, you need not leave me to see him alone, monsieur; it is no doubt some trifling incident that he comes to report—the loss of a dog, perhaps.”

He had hardly spoken when the door opened to admit a young man of under thirty, who seemed to be in a state of agitation. He presented his card on which was inscribed his name and address, “Dr. Albert Moreau, II bis rue Jean Bissot.”

“I do not know whether I am doing right in coming to you, monsieur, but since you are the police officers of this quarter, you can at least advise me. Yesterday evening the
concierge
of a building in this neighbourhood telephoned to say that one of her tenants was very ill and would I come at once. I went to the house and was taken upstairs to a room where a woman of between thirty and forty was lying groaning on a bed.”

“What class of woman?” asked Verneuil.

“Oh, she may have been a street prostitute; she told me that she was a seamstress out of work. I examined her and questioned her; she had vomited more than once and this had left her weak and suffering. In fact, all the symptoms pointed to poisoning.”

“You mean that it was a case of attempted murder?”

“No, monsieur, that was not my impression. She denied the suggestion that she could be suffering from poisoning, but the symptoms were entirely those of irritant poison, and her manner when I questioned her was strange. While I was talking to her I made a cursory inspection of the cupboard, but I could see no bottle in it. My impression remains that it was a case of attempted suicide, and that is why I have come to you. Now that I have done my duty I must leave you; I have patients to see.”

“You have not yet given me the woman's name and address.”

“Ah! Did I not? It was Thérèse Volny, and her address is 100 rue Vidal.”

The doctor bowed himself out with little ceremony.

“The address is quite close to that of Madame Blanchard, monsieur. We might do the two inquiries this morning; that is if you care to see how we work on a case like that described to us by the doctor.”

Richardson considered. He had nothing particular to do before lunch, and he did want to see “Mademoiselle X” to ask her a specific question, but the other case—the attempted suicide—had no interest for him. Nevertheless he fell in with Verneuil's suggestion. Their first visit was to the house in the rue Vidal, an old house in which generations of Parisians had lived and died. The staircase was narrow, the planking worn, the wallpaper torn and stained; the very air they breathed as they entered was fetid. They found the
concierge
in a little den constructed behind and under the staircase. A visit from a police officer in plain clothes was an event in her squalid life; she was bursting with importance.

“Ah, monsieur, I expected this. The doctor who attended the lady upstairs is young and impressionable. What might be considered by us as an ordinary occurrence seemed to him something terrible.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Well, monsieur, last night Madame Volny entered this office looking dreadful. She was staggering; she had to cling to that railing to hold herself erect. I thought, of course, that it was the old story; that she had drunk more than was good for her, for I will not disguise from you, monsieur, that the habit of the bottle has been growing upon her. She said, ‘This time I think I am going to die; my legs are too weak to get me up the stairs.' So I helped her up. Scarcely had I got her on to the bed, monsieur, than she was sick, and the sickness was so grave that I telephoned to the doctor. It did not seem to be only the sickness of a drunken person; and when the doctor came he said that she had been poisoned.”

“Has she ever threatened to take her own life?”

“No, monsieur, and she is not one to do that. She's of a cheerful temperament and takes the ups and downs of women of her class with resignation—up one day and down the next.”

“Did she tell you where she had been last night?”

“No, monsieur, to say truth, I never asked her. She makes the round of the cafés every night, I believe.”

“She may have had some stroke of ill fortune.”

“I think not, monsieur, and I'll tell you why. When I was getting her to bed last night, and slipping off her blouse, a little bundle fell out. ‘Give me that,' she cried eagerly. I did. Monsieur, you may believe me or you may not, it was a roll of notes of one hundred francs tied up into a packet. There must have been a hundred of them.”

“Ah! Then it wasn't a moment for suicide. She must have found a generous patron. If you will show me the way we will have a word with her.”

Led by the woman, the two men climbed the squalid stairs to the third floor. Using her master-key, the
concierge
called, “Thérèse, here are two gentlemen to see you.” A faint voice from an inner room replied, “Tell them I'm ill; tell them I'm in bed. I can see no one.”

“Follow me, messieurs; I'll take you into her room.”

The flat itself was a surprise. The furniture, picked up no doubt in sale-rooms, was a mingling of many periods, but though the taste that mingled them was vulgar, the things themselves were good of their kind. The floors were carpeted with oriental rugs. The bedroom into which the two police officers were ushered was unexpectedly tidy. Clothes had been put away in a wardrobe and drawers; there was a
cabinet de toilette
screened off from the bedroom, and on the bed lay the woman they had come to see. It was not a moment when such a woman could look her best; her face was lined, puffy and yellow; her eyes suffused; she was only just beginning to recover from her sickness overnight.

“But who are these gentlemen?” she asked indignantly.

The
concierge
whispered in her ear the reason for the intrusion. She sank back on her pillows, resigned.

“I have to ask you a few questions, madame?” began Verneuil. “You are Thérèse Volny? What is your occupation? A seamstress out of work?”

She inclined her head and began to talk volubly.

“Messieurs, you have been sent here to waste your time on a false errand. That young doctor was mistaken. He thinks that I am suffering from poison. It is nothing of the kind. I will keep no secrets from you. For some days I have been imprudent in drinking. The habit reached its climax last night. If my stomach was poisoned as the doctor thinks, it was poisoned solely by alcohol. I have been a fool.”

“You have been taking remedies?”

“Drugs, you mean? No, that is not one of my vices. I never touch drugs.”

“Where was it that you were drinking last night?”

Lines of obstinacy formed about her mouth. “I do not remember, monsieur.”

“I ask you only for the name of the last café that you frequented.”

“And I tell you, monsieur, that I do not remember.”

“Then if you do not remember the café, tell me who paid for the liquor you drank?”

“I paid for it myself. I spent the evening alone.”

“But the money you brought home—several thousand francs?”

“Oh, that money? It was given to me days ago by a foreigner who was about to leave Paris.”

“His name?”

“He did not tell me his name, nor his nationality, nor where he was going.”

During this conversation Richardson had to keep reminding himself that this was not one of his cases, otherwise he would be making a thorough search of the flat. Almost involuntarily he took a step towards the
cabinet de toilette
to look for bottles, when the woman's yellow face flushed and she cried, “Why does your friend go looking into my private affairs? Surely a lady's
toilette
is exempt from police prying!”

Richardson explained rather lamely that he was looking to see what medicine the doctor had prescribed for her.

The
concierge
had knelt down beside the bed to hold a whispered conversation with the patient. Verneuil drew Richardson into the outer room to discuss the case.

“Listen, my friend, it seems to me that we are wasting our time here. The woman herself laughs at the idea of poisoning and she must know best. She ascribes her sickness to drink, and there again she must know best. That it was not an attempt at suicide is evident from the fact that she carried a considerable sum of money on her person. The wonder is that she was not robbed of it. What say you? I will admonish her about her drinking and her way of life, and then we'll go on to the rue Chapelle.”

Richardson agreed, but suggested that the roll of notes should be produced for their inspection.

“She'll fight over that,” objected Verneuil, “but I think we ought to see them. I'll see what I can do by persuasion.”

He went back to the bedroom. Richardson remained near the open door; he was curious to see what Verneuil's idea of friendly persuasion might be.

The courtliness of the lower deck peeped out in Verneuil's “friendly” admonition. “Listen,” he said to the sufferer. “If you go on drinking like this you will go down those stairs feet first. Give it up, I say. If drink you must have, let it be a
limonade
, or a Vichy; that will not harm the stomach of a mosquito. At the rate you are going you will be dead before the year's out.”

The poor woman burst into tears and began to sob. The success of Verneuil's address seemed to gratify him. He laid his huge paw on her shoulder and patted her in paternal fashion. “Now, my little one, let me have a look at that money you brought home. Where did you put it?”

Thérèse redoubled her sobs, but made no other sign that she had heard him.

“Come!” he said, “you heard my question. Where did you put that money?”

“It's under her pillow,
monsieur le commissaire
,” whispered the
concierge
.

There seemed to Richardson's ears to be a physical struggle, for the sick woman screamed and Verneuil returned to the sitting-room with a fat bundle of hundred-franc notes. “Help me to count these, comrade. The amount should be given in my report.” He unfastened the bundle. The count amounted to a round sum of five thousand francs, but the fact that struck Richardson was that the bundle was tied with a black and white shoe-lace. He called Verneuil's attention to this; he went to the door and beckoned to the
concierge
.

“Have you ever seen Madame Volny wear shoes with this sort of lace in them?”

The woman shook her head emphatically. “Never, monsieur.”

Verneuil went back to the bedroom with the bundle of notes tied up with the same shoe-lace and restored it to its owner. “When you come to count the notes,” he said, “you will find the count exact. It is not my habit to make any charge for my visit.” With a final fatherly pat on her shoulder he took his leave.

As they descended the stairs he said, “We have wasted a good hour, comrade. It's your turn now with Madame Blanchard.”

W
HEN THE
two police officers were in the street heading towards the rue Chapelle, Verneuil delivered himself of a monologue on the duties of Paris policemen.

“I said just now, comrade, that we had wasted our time, but on reflection I feel that I was wrong. Certainly it is no business of ours to concern ourselves with the doings of these women, provided that they keep within the law, but a police officer with a conscience may drop words of admonition that stick in the minds of these poor creatures. For, look you, they are superstitious; they believe in omens and fortune-tellers; any charlatan can impress them, and therefore good advice tendered without seeking any return must appeal to them.”