Barbara Cleverly - Tug of War

‘Ah,’ said Bonnefoye, his initial spark of mischief rekindled, ‘this is the moment for a revelation of my own. I acted on the suggestion you left with me before you set off into the country. The fingerprinting? I had it done and the results sent off to our laboratory in Lyon by police messenger. They came back last night.’

He pulled a file across his desk. ‘You may take this away and study it. You will be impressed,’ he promised. ‘You will admire the technical skills and the speed. You will tell of it in Scotland Yard when you return.’

‘Come on, man!’ Joe smiled. ‘Put me out of my misery. The last page? What does it say?’

‘Thibaud’s fingerprints we already had on record. When a comparison was made it was discovered that there were thirteen distinct points of agreement. . ample to declare an absolute identification. Page 16. Got it? And what all those bifurcations, arches, whorls and loops are spelling out is this: our Thibaud and Mademoiselle Mireille Desforges’s soldier-lover are one and the same! The man who’d reached Chapter 52 of War and Peace , who sat drinking her brandy, who put his feet up at her hearth and stoked her fire is the patient in Dr Varimont’s care.’

‘Good Lord!’ said Joe faintly. ‘It was an outside chance, Bonnefoye. I wasn’t certain that after all these years the prints would still be usable.’

‘We took the pipe and the book you mentioned but it was the dirty brandy glass that gave the best evidence. Sentimentally, she’d left them untouched just as she told you she had and on a surface like that a print is virtually permanent. So, if you think I’m treating your run-in with la Houdart a little lightly — well, you see, I can afford to. Her claim has suddenly begun to look very shaky. We’re now down to one tick — Desforges — one question mark — Houdart — and two crosses.’

He was pleased to see Joe’s raised eyebrows. ‘We’ve been busy, Sandilands, while you’ve been off sampling la vie de château. I despatched two sergeants in opposite directions to the country. Smart lads! One extracted a confession from the Tellancourts and they have grudgingly retracted their claim. Though the old girl stuck to her story throughout. With those ingenuous saucer-like blue eyes of hers and her mourning clothes and lace-edged hankies, she very nearly put one over on my chap. She only caved in when he called her bluff and threatened to take a second look at the evidence buried in the churchyard. My other bloke, following instructions, grilled the grocer’s wife, Langlois, closely followed by the local schoolmaster, Barbier. My instincts proved sound,’ he said with satisfaction.

‘Blackmail?’

‘Some naughtiness of that kind. Coercion perhaps? Madame Langlois has the goods — would you say? — on the schoolmaster. A nasty snakes’ nest of low-level corruption came hissing into the daylight. And yes, I will be following it up. The man Barbier has been betraying his pedagogical trust for years. His time is up. And, Madame Langlois decided that her time had come to put certain information that she had to use: “Support me in my claim or I’ll tell the school authorities the stories the children have been circulating for decades.”’

Could it be so simple, in the end, Joe wondered? Did Thibaud’s pipe and slippers beckon? Dorcas, at least, would be pleased. To say nothing of Mireille, so longing for her Dominique to come home from his last campaign. No, of course it could not be so simple. Joe cleared his throat.

‘Sorry, Bonnefoye, but we’re not quite done yet. I’m about to throw another spanner into the works. I want you to take a look at these photographs we brought away from Septfontaines. In particular, I want you to study the man who’s sitting on Clovis’s right.’

He waited while Bonnefoye turned the photograph this way and that, around and about, hissing with disbelief. ‘This is crazy!’ he said eventually. ‘But — “Self” it says here on the back. This is surely Clovis Houdart? Attached ears and all. And he’s the man Dr Varimont is holding at the sanatorium. Are we agreed on this much? Yes? But the man Mireille Desforges has identified as her lover, one Dominique de Villancourt, is actually sitting here in the photograph, next to Clovis — entwined with Clovis you might say — and, Sandilands, he’s dark-haired and at this moment, very dead. Quite clearly he is not our mental patient.’

‘Yes. There are three of them, you see, three friends. The closest of friends. My niece jokingly called them the Musketeers.’

‘I see where you’re going, Sandilands. “One for all and all for one”, are you thinking? I am.’ He pursed his lips and looked tenderly at the photograph. ‘Didn’t we all read Dumas at an impressionable age? So young! So gallant! Tell me, Sandilands, you were a soldier and must have been young once — would you have allowed your closest friend to make use of your identity to conceal his own in an affair of the heart? An affair played out rather too close to home for comfort?’

Joe smiled. ‘Oh, certainly. The least one could do for a friend. These men would have cheerfully given their lives for each other. Some probably did, I’d guess. What’s the loan of a name in comparison?’

‘And may I remind you of the motto of the cavalry — was it the dragoons or the cuirassiers? Je secours mes chefs et mesfrères d’armes. ’

‘I come to the aid of my commanders and my brothers-in-arms. Hmm. .’

‘You remember I told you of an officer who survived a German cavalry ambush and spent the rest of the war in prison? The one who reported the dying actions of Dominique de Villancourt?’ He tapped at a face on the photograph. ‘Here he is. This chap here. I remember his name. We have his address. I can contact him and ask for information on his other friend Clovis.’

Joe sighed wearily. ‘Well, yes, you could. But it might be more informative if you were to contact someone quite else. I don’t know about you, Bonnefoye, but I can tell you — I’m getting a bit fed up stirring around in all this sticky speculation, personal opinion, bad memory, good memory, downright lies. It’s like snatching at moonbeams. You think you’ve got it and then the light shifts and your hand’s empty. Let’s get some verifiable, recorded-in-black-and-white, factual information, shall we? The fingerprints were a start. Now I think I see how to conclude this.’

‘Who’ve you got in mind?’

‘Someone rather prosaic — Houdart’s bank manager. In Paris. Any favours you can call in to wring a little information out of him?’

After a sweaty half-hour on the telephone, threading his way through departments, alternately charming and threatening, Bonnefoye finally hung up the receiver with a smile of mild triumph. ‘He’s agreed to give us what we want! He’ll ring back in an hour. Sending someone up to the attic probably to dust off a file. At least he still does have the file. Had Houdart banked in Reims, it would have been destroyed. Now, we can’t sit here waiting — let’s nip out and have that well-earned breakfast, shall we?’

They got to their feet, grinned at each other and both began to speak at the same time: ‘Bonnefoye, had you thought. .’

‘Sandilands, shall I say it, or will you?’

‘I have an old aunt who has a very annoying saying: “There’s an elephant in this room, is there not?” We’re skirting around, pretending to ignore the huge truth that’s staring us in the face.’

Bonnefoye took his kepi from a stand, put it on and adjusted it to his favoured rakish angle. ‘I think I saw the elephant first,’ he said confidently. ‘But have you realized how very much worse this makes everything? What we’ve got on our hands is a genuine tug of war, a life-or-death tug of war. And we have to decide which end of the rope we are heaving on, Sandilands.’