The Case of the Dead Diplomat (22 page)

“You have been following me for some time, monsieur, as if you desired to speak to me. I am the Minister, Jules Quesnay.”

Bigot also swept off his hat, saying, “I am flattered at meeting so distinguished a man. I have been seeking an opportunity for an interview with you, but I was told that you are difficult of access. After all, every man who has achieved the honour of a Minister's portfolio is perforce difficult to approach. Shall we stop at that café over there and converse? It is a quiet place.”

“No, monsieur, if we are to talk I prefer to take you to my apartment in the rue de Genes. We will take a taxi. Of course it is understood that our interview will in no way be an interrogatory. That would be an indignity to which I could not submit.”

“I agree with you entirely,
monsieur le Ministre
. It is I who will submit myself to an interrogatory by you.”

The remainder of the drive to the upper end of the rue de Gènes, bordering on the railway, was pursued in a constrained silence. Quesnay left Bigot to settle with the taxi-driver and led the way upstairs. The block of flats did not run to a lift. It was a mean little flat to which Bigot was admitted. He waited standing until this little southern deputy motioned him to a chair.

“Now, monsieur, I am ready to hear your explanation. Why have you been questioning people about me?”

B
IGOT ADOPTED
the manner which he had always found most successful in opening his interrogations—the polite, disarming manner. “That is very easy to explain,
monsieur le ministre
. It was thought that you would be in the position of being able to give us some useful information. It was not considered proper to approach you directly at this stage, and for that reason a few indirect inquiries were made.”

“But what is it all about? What information do you think that I can give?”

“You have a perfect right to ask that, monsieur. Had anyone else put that question to me I might have fenced with it, but to a man of your high character and importance I will be perfectly frank. What we desire to know from you is what you were doing on the night of October 6th.”

The effect of this question on Jules Quesnay was startling. His mouth fell open; his hands began to work; his breath came in gasps. Bigot took keen note of his disarray, but made no sign that he did so. There was silence for a few moments while the little man was pulling himself together. At last he found his voice.

“On the night of October 6th? How can anybody remember offhand what he was doing on a particular night two or three weeks ago? I should have to look in my diary.”

“If the information that has reached us is correct, it might not have been entered in your diary. Let me put the question in another way. Whom did you see on the night of October 6th?”

Bigot felt that his interrogation was going with surprising ease. For some reason which could scarcely have had any innocent explanation, the little deputy was again reduced to a state of panic. Bigot took advantage of this to drop some of his customary suavity. There was no question now as to who was conducting the interrogation. Quesnay was ready to come and feed out of his hand.

“Yes, monsieur, I want an answer to that question. Whom did you see on the night of October 6th?”

“I may have seen a number of people; just as you yourself have to see people without thinking it worth while to note the fact in your diary.”

“I am not talking of a number of people; I am asking you about one particular person whom you saw late that evening.”

“Listen, monsieur; I do not know what rank you hold in the police; I do not even know your name. I presume that I have a right to ask.”

“Certainly you have. I am Inspector Bigot of the ninth
arrondissement
.”

“Well, M. Bigot, it is not necessary for me to tell you my name; you know it; but you may not know how I stand with my political party. Let me ask you this. Are you a freemason?”

“Well, no, monsieur, not yet, but I have often thought I should like to belong to the fraternity.”

“Ah! Then you could have no better supporter in your candidature than myself. I say this without arrogance. I have worked hard for the brotherhood, and I am prepared to work harder still. You would find it very advantageous in your profession to be a freemason, quite apart from the satisfaction it would give you to be able to help some brother freemason who has fallen into the hands of the police through no fault of his own. But in this case I am more than a mere freemason. Hints have been dropped to me that I am approaching the critical stage in my career. A year hence, they say, I may be offered a very important portfolio, more so than that of Minister of Education, with the power to recompense my friends. You, for example, you have ambitions—don't deny it—everyone has ambitions—you have brains; you ought to rise rapidly in your profession—more rapidly than you have hitherto. Now, suppose that I were offered the portfolio of Minister of the Interior; the Ministry would be sure to send for the dossier of Inspector Bigot of the ninth
arrondissement
and ask why he has not been noted for early promotion…”

A wave of self-esteem seized upon Bigot in spite of his sense of duty. After all, thought he, surely this is not the kind of man that self-seeking politicians would entrust with so coveted a portfolio as that of Minister of the Interior. Still, with such a strange breed as politicians, one never knows. These thoughts ran through Bigot's head, while his face wore an enigmatic smile. Quesnay thought that this was a sign that he was prevailing.

“I am forgetting my duties as a host, monsieur. Please forgive me.” He went to a little cupboard and took out a bottle and two glasses. “My friends tell me that this is an excellent Armagnac. I should like to have your opinion of it. It comes from a vineyard in my own country. Indeed, as a boy I was present when it was distilled.”

Bigot waved it aside, but the deputy insisted. “You must at least do me the honour of tasting it.” He filled the two glasses and carried one of them to Bigot. Both took a prolonged sip at the potent liquor. “As I was saying, by dear inspector, I am reaching the turning-point in my career. Happily, you civil servants know nothing of the anxieties of political men who have tried to do their duty by their constituents and by their country. There comes a moment to us all when the slightest breath of scandal, be it ever so ill-founded, may blow the most promising career to the winds. For example…”

Bigot waited eagerly for what was coming. “You were saying?”

“Exactly, my dear chief inspector—don't think I am anticipating, since very soon that will be your official title—we understand each other. No one, however upright he may be, can always escape the shafts of calumny. Jealousy, my friend, is the cardinal human sin; detraction is the common weapon of the envious. Granted, for the sake of argument, that I did see someone on that fatal night of October 6th, what of it? The thing is done every day. Cite me any of the great names in political circles during the past ten years and I will tell you strange stories about each of them. But what of it? All have lived them down, and many of them have had public funerals, and, let it be well understood, have bequeathed considerable sums to their heirs.”

Their glasses were now three-quarters empty. Bigot's expression was solemn. Armagnac always had this effect upon him. “You must understand, my dear monsieur, that orders must be obeyed; that justice must be done.”

“What do you mean?” asked Quesnay in a twitter of alarm.

“Let me say this. I do not believe that you were actually the guilty person, but I call upon you to give me the name of that person.”

“Ah, no. You are asking something that no honourable man would divulge, and, thank God, I am an honourable man. No,
par example
; not the name.”

At this critical moment an electric bell from the front door of the flat began to tinkle. Quesnay sprang to his feet. He appeared strangely agitated. “You will excuse me, my friend. This is a visitor from the Chamber who comes to me with an urgent message. It would not be becoming if he found you here. For once will you submit to a little ruse? I shall bring him into this room, and you will conceal yourself for one minute behind that curtain in the entrance hall, and as soon as I have taken him into this room and closed the door you will slip out. We will meet again to-morrow.”

“At what time?”

“Well, let us say at the same hour as to-day.” The bell rang again—this time persistently. “Quick, my dear friend, behind this curtain. Farewell until to-morrow.”

Behind his curtain Bigot heard the front door open and the words, “Ah! My dear M. Tissot, this is indeed a pleasure.” And a strange voice answered:

“I was not sure that it was prudent to call upon you here, monsieur, but I fear something has leaked out, and—”

“This way,” said Quesnay's voice, urging his new guest into the sitting-room. The door was shut behind them.

Bigot lingered for a few moments in the hope of listening to the conversation, but the house was too well-built for that; not a sound came through the massive door. He let himself out to the staircase and was soon in the street.

His first act was to jot down the few words he had overheard from behind his curtain while they were still fresh in his memory. He did this by the light from a shop window. What had begun to leak out? The fact that those two men had been concerned in a murder, or was it some other disreputable act in which they had both taken part? It was, at any rate, a good starting-point for the adjourned interrogation on the morrow.

Tissot, who was he? There was no time to waste; Bigot went straight to the post office in the rue Amsterdam and consulted the telephone directory. There were no less than twenty-three subscribers named Tissot; it would need a whole day to determine which of them was acquainted with the deputy Jules Quesnay, and this was work which could not be entrusted to any subordinate.

When he returned to his office in the rue de la Rochefoucault he called in the clerk and gave some hasty directions about visiting the various persons named Tissot, omitting those whom he had reserved for himself because they were all in his own
arrondissement
.

Surely the little god who broods over deserving detectives was watching over Bigot that next morning, since at the office of the second Tissot whom he had reserved for personal interrogation he struck what he believed to be a vein of the purest gold. The man had an office in a courtyard with four separate staircases: one given up to a cardboard-box-maker; a second to a dentist; a third to a truss manufacturer, and a fourth to a builder; this builder was M. Tissot, a thin, nervous-looking person with a reserve of forced
bonhomie
always on tap. Following the direction on the door, Bigot entered without knocking, and found the man he sought closeted with a lady of redundant figure who acted as his amanuensis. Bigot showed him his card, and M. Tissot hastened to intimate to his stout secretary that her presence was undesired. She cast a swift look at the visitor; one glance was enough for her—she fled like a frightened rabbit.

“M. Tissot? Good. Now that you are alone, allow me to ask you a question—a very simple one. Whom did you go to see after office hours on the night of Tuesday, October 6th?”

The confusion in Tissot's face was painful to behold; he changed from red to white and back again to red like a politician who changes his party. He came to a decision. “I remember the 6th of October very well. It was my brother's birthday. When I closed the office I went straight to his apartment and spent the evening there.”

“Your brother's name and address?”

Tissot gave them readily, knowing that a call on the telephone would provide corroborative evidence, but Bigot had ringing in his ears the words, “I fear something has leaked out,” and became convinced that the voice of the man now speaking to him was that of Quesnay's visitor of the evening before. He drew his bow at a venture. “I am referring to the gentleman you visited last night—the deputy whom you told that something had leaked out.”

M. Tissot was struck speechless. He gasped with his mouth open like a newly landed fish, but after swallowing audibly once or twice he found his voice. “I refuse to answer. You have your own remedy, monsieur. Since you know so much already, go and question the man I saw. I did nothing except at his instigation. He is the man that counted. I see what's happened. He set a trap for me last night. He had hidden you away in that apartment of his in order that you might take a note of everything we said. Well, you can do your worst. When the time comes I shall have something to say, but you can't force me to speak now.”

“You mean that it was you who committed the crime at his instigation?”

Tissot had turned mulish. “I refuse to speak. You must get it all out of him.”

Bigot had achieved his object. He knew now that out of the twenty-three Tissots in the telephone directory this was his man. Throughout the day he had to decide between two courses: either to do his duty without fear or favour, or to give time for his patron in the unseen world to work a miracle on his behalf—to move Quesnay to procure his (Bigot's) promotion. To anyone outside political and police circles it might seem perilously near blackmail, but in both these callings in France the moral aspect of a transaction is the last to be considered if scandal be avoided. He had felt so sure that he was on the point of discovering the perpetrator of the crime that when Verneuil and his Englishman from Scotland Yard came to him during the morning to seek authority for arresting the foreign swindlers in connection with the murder, he laughed at them. Should he startle that stolid English detective by bringing in the murderer and his instigator, or should he quietly allow his own promotion to be worked for him?

The knotty point had not been unravelled when Bigot rang the bell at the Quesnay flat. The bell was answered not by Quesnay himself, but by a hungry-looking youth who described himself as M. Quesnay's secretary, and stated that the deputy was expected every moment from the Chamber; that he had left instructions that M. Bigot should be shown into the
salon
to await him.