Barbara Cleverly - Folly Du Jour

‘Time for the opening of the mouth ceremony?’ said Bonnefoye quietly. ‘What did you say, Joe? Release the ka ? Let’s do it, while we can — before rigor starts to set in!’

He delicately ran a finger between her lips and slid it under her top teeth. With his other hand he tugged gently on the lower jaw and the mouth sagged open. The fingers probed the inside of her mouth and drew out the contents.

With an exclamation of disgust, Joe spread his handkerchief on the floor by the corpse to receive the damp bundle.

Bonnefoye poked at it. ‘A wad of currency and. .’ He flipped the folded notes over revealing something wrapped tightly up in them. ‘There it is — the curl of hair.’

He sat back on his heels, confused and defeated. ‘Now what the hell are we supposed to make of that?’

‘ Mèche ! That’s what we’re meant to understand!’ Simenon’s voice was urgent, trying to stifle triumph. ‘It’s a play on words! It means “kiss curl, strand of hair” but it’s also a candle wick. . or a fuse. And if someone informs on you in criminal circles you’d say: on vend la mèche. They’re selling out. Selling information. They got the girl they wanted, you know. It was Francine they intended to kill. No mistake!’

‘And the choice of currency, I believe, was not random,’ said Joe bitterly. ‘Significant, would you say? That the notes are English ones? Have you noticed? Those elegant white sheets of paper are English treasury fivers. They’re saying she sold out to me . To the English cop. They’ve crammed in ten of them. Fifty pounds! No expense spared on the death of a little Parisian ouvreuse ? More money than she ever had in her life.’

He turned away to hide his sorrow and anger.

Simenon’s eyes flashed from one policeman to the other. ‘Ah. Little Francine whispered more than she ought to have done into a sympathetic English ear, did she? Alfred? He’s the connection. He talked to her and she talked to you , Sandilands. Brother and sister both got their rewards then. They’re suspicious of family relationships. One sees why. Word of this will be on the street by the end of the day. And people like me will be silenced for another year.’ He turned to Joe and finished quietly: ‘Whatever you charmed out of her, keep it to yourself, will you? I don’t want to hear. Not sure it’s even safe to stand next to you.’

Joe began to pull himself together and turned again to the body, though he noticed the younger men looked away, unable to meet his eye, alarmed by his expression. For a fleeting moment, the two sides of his face came together, disconcertingly in harmony, uniting to give out the same message. A message of fierce hatred.

Joe made the sign of the cross over the dead girl and knelt, tugging down and straightening the hem of the green satin dress. ‘Even in death, she looks beautiful,’ he murmured. ‘She’d be pleased to be making her last appearance in something special. Not her black uniform. What is this little number do you suppose, Bonnefoye?’

‘I know what this is. I checked the label. It’s a Paul Poiret. Her favourite.’

The three men gathered at the door, pausing to adjust their expressions, regain control and prepare for the flood of questions waiting for them in the corridor.

On the point of leaving, Simenon took a parting glance around the room, then, one element of the chaos evidently catching his attention, he pointed and exclaimed.

‘Look! Over there! That’s how he got in!’

They followed his pointing finger to a lavish bouquet of two dozen large white lilies abandoned behind the door and beginning to wilt on the floor. The smell of death. Funerals and weeping. Joe had seen too many lilies.

Bonnefoye sighed. ‘A special delivery! They must be three feet high! Walking along behind those, no one’s going to notice your face or challenge you. “Who are you and what’s your business here?” Pretty obvious, I think. You’d feel silly asking!’

‘And flowers arriving at the stage door — it’s a daily occurrence. There’s usually someone on duty to receive them, though, and bring them on here to her dressing room.’

‘I’m thinking this must have been a particularly forceful delivery boy,’ said Joe. ‘Too much to hope there’s a card with them, I suppose?’

Bonnefoye checked and came up with nothing more than a shrug.

‘Well, gentlemen, are we ready to face the crowd?’ asked Joe.

Information, explanation and requests for back-up followed in an intensive quarter of an hour. Derval hurried away to carry out Bonnefoye’s instructions.

‘I hope you don’t mind but, in the circumstances, with the performance about to start, we’ve kept all this quiet,’ said the stage manager, assuming authority. ‘Josephine turned up five minutes ago, strolling down the corridor, munching on a ham sandwich, cool as you please. God! I nearly fainted! We guessed what had happened and when Derval could get his voice back he told her there’d been an accident in her room, a spillage. . Had to get the cleaners in. . When we could reassure her that her animals were all safe she agreed to borrow a costume, use the general dressing room and go on as normal. She doesn’t make a fuss. . used to bunking up. . gets on well with the girls. Goodness only knows what I’m going to tell her when she comes off! She was very fond of Francine, you know. We all were.’

Joe launched into an angry outburst. ‘Then you should take better care of your staff, monsieur! Where is your security in all this? A murderer walks in from the street and kills what he assumes to be the star? What next? One killing on the premises, I will call chance, two, a coincidence. But three? That’s known as enemy action! If you call us back here for a further crime I shall send Commissaire Fourier to arrest you ! Good day, monsieur.’

Joe and Bonnefoye each felt his arm taken in a firm grasp and they heard Simenon’s voice in their ears growling: ‘The bar’s open! Come on, lads — we all need a brandy. This way!’

‘It’s not your fault. I’m talking to both of you! I haven’t got the whole picture by any means, but I see enough to say: I can see you’re both knocked sideways by that girl’s death — more than professional concern calls for perhaps? I don’t know what more you could have done or shouldn’t have done and why you should hold yourselves responsible, but it wasn’t your hands around her throat. Hang on to that! All you can do now is find those hands.’

‘And break every last bone in each one,’ muttered Bonnefoye viciously. ‘Slowly and one at a time. Then stamp on both of them.’ Catching sight of Joe’s wondering look, he added, ‘Excuse me. My uncle was in the Foreign Legion.’

They had found a quiet corner behind a screen of potted palms and were sitting, heads together, sipping generous measures of cognac, half an hour before the doors opened to admit the crowds.

‘It seems that, unwilling as we were to believe it, what we’ve got is a double — at least — murder, carried out, gangland-style, to punish informers and send out a warning,’ said Joe. ‘Alfred and Francine.’

‘You said you knew about Alfred?’ Bonnefoye asked the newsman.

‘Her brother? Rumours only. Nothing for certain. Feel like telling me?’

Bonnefoye obliged.

‘. . So it would seem to me that these clever dicks not only punish but signal ahead the identity of their next victim,’ Joe summarized heavily.

‘See what you mean,’ said Simenon. ‘All that stitching done on Alfred was a very personal warning to his sister.’

‘She perceived it as such. Yes.’