Alan Hynd - Authentic Cases From the Files of Alan Hynd

Playing around with the problem, Bougrat hit upon a solution. He decided to appear in Marseilles thereafter not in his usual black suit, high stiff collar and bowler, but in disguise. So he went out and bought himself a French hoodlum get-up: the corduroy pants, black turtleneck sweater, and beret of the French Apache. This rig he put in the rumble seat of his little blue car so that, on the way to his nightly revels, he could stop along a lonely stretch of road and change clothes…and identities.

Bougrat was, of course, playing with fire in more ways than one. The Apaches were a loosely grouped association in the French underworld at the time, much like the Black Hand in Italy. They were strongly associated with Paris, but had some powerful gangs in the other French cities, including Marseilles.

During their heyday in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century, the prospect of being mugged by Apache gangsters was a daily preoccupation of proper French society. Some of the gangs developed a unique type of pistol which was named the “Apache revolver”: a pin fire cartridge revolver with no barrel, a set of fold-over brass knuckles for a handgrip, and a folding knife mounted right underneath the revolver-drum for use as a stabbing weapon. It was a weapon to be reckoned with, as was anyone who carried one.

The Apaches also developed a distinctive process of mugging people: The most famous was the so-called coup du père François , a tactic by which a victim was stalked by several gang members and eventually garroted from behind; one Apache was assigned the job of searching through the victim’s pockets for money, while another served as a lookout.

But Bougrat passed himself off by night as a member of this underworld society. And by day he was a devoted doctor.

For more than a year Bougrat successfully carried on this Jekyll-Hyde existence. No matter how rough the night, he was always on the job next day. Then, with shocking suddenness, his hijinks began to catch up with him. He was frequently late for his office hours, and sometimes, despite a waiting room filled with the ailing, he never showed at all. His better-off patients began to defect to other doctors, and eventually his practice dropped off. Meanwhile, the horse races he bet on and the roulette wheels where he dropped wagers at night were all going in the wrong direction. He was cash strapped… or would have been, without his wife’s fortune.

A year or so after Madame Bougrat’s gumshoe had caught the doctor playing games, her father died. Since there was no longer any reason for her to keep up appearances, she divorced the doctor and moved to Paris. That left Bougrat alone in the big house in Aix, which, in light of what he soon had in mind, was just as well.

One afternoon the doctor’s nurse, an absent-minded old maid, announced a new patient: an elderly widow named Bernays. Madame Bernays tottered in laden with gems and declared she was suffering from arthritis. As she catalogued her symptoms, Bougrat nodded pleasantly and flicked his popping eyes over that showcase of rocks. Suddenly he mapped his fingers, rose, and left the room. In a moment he was back with a small glass of fluid.

“This will help you no end, madame, ” he said, and gave it to the old doll to drink. He could hardly have spoken more truly.

A month passed. Then one afternoon a young nephew of Madame Bernays appeared in Doctor Bougrat’s office and inquired about his aunt.

The doctor reached into a card file.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “Here is your aunt’s record. I sent her to a colleague in Paris.” He looked up at the nephew and blinked his eyes earnestly. “At least that’s where I told her to go.”

A week later the nephew was back. His aunt had never reached Bougrat’s colleague, he declared, as Bougrat looked off into space.

“Your aunt was elderly, monsieur,” the doctor said, “and as I recall, she seemed subject to amnesia. It is entirely possible that she wandered off somewhere and will turn up in good time. One must be patient with the old. They are sometimes soft in the head.”

The nephew was patient to the extent of a few weeks, then, when his aunt still hadn’t appeared, he went to the local gendarmes, who in turn relayed the information to the Marseilles police. There the report passed along until it went across the desk of Commissioner Pierre Robert of the Sûreté Nationale. Robert, a smallish man with a wrinkled face, knowing blue eyes, and an elephant’s memory, had long since come to look upon practically everybody and everything with suspicion. But when he read that a Doctor Bougrat had declared Madame Bernays suffered from amnesia, he dismissed her disappearance as none of his official concern.

He had almost forgotten the case when, later in the year, an officer of a Marseilles bank called to tell him that a wealthy depositor named Petiot had dropped from sight after cleaning out his account. The banker was anxious to get Petiot’s signature on some important papers.

“Tell me about the man,” said Robert.

“Petiot,” said the banker, “had been a somewhat eccentric character, given to lapses of memory. Just before his disappearance he had been consulting a physician in the town of Aix.”

“What was the doctor’s name?” asked Robert.

“Bougrat. Doctor Pierre Bougrat.”

The commissioner lifted an eyebrow and stroked his jaw. He promised he would look into the matter.

Next morning, Robert drove to Aix and popped in on Doctor Bougrat. He said he understood the doctor had treated a patient by the name of Petiot. Bougrat nodded and pointed out that he had several patients named Petiot. Could the commissioner give him any further information? When Robert supplied it, Bougrat smiled sadly.

“Oh, that old man,” he said.

He went to his file, pulled out a card on the missing eccentric, and glanced through it.

“I advised him to take a long sea voyage,” he told Robert. “Whether he followed my advice or not I have no way of knowing.” The doctor tapped his temple with a forefinger. “Petiot is in his dotage, monsieur, and you can never predict the behavior of anyone in that condition.”

As the commissioner sat weighing this intelligence he also studied Bougrat, who was wrinkling his brow with obvious concern. In a moment Robert decided it was unlikely so earnest and humble a country medic, much less a war hero, could have anything to do with the disappearances. So he got up to go.

“If you should hear from the old man,” he said, “let me know.”

During the next two years Doctor Bougrat was a very busy little beaver. Several nights a week he caroused in his Apache outfit in the dives of Marseilles. Usually he got there just when the fun began, but occasionally he was late, and every time he was late it just happened to be after he’d treated an elderly patient alone.

Somehow, at such times, when he had shut up shop, he also barreled through the dark countryside in that little blue car, headed toward the River Rhone which flowed into the sea. Long restful walks…? Or was he dumping something off?

All this time, Commissioner Robert of the Sûreté was having his official headaches. Every few months there came to his desk a report that some well-heeled resident of the region had dropped through a hole into space. Invariably the missing citizens were elderly and without close kin. Thousands of such persons vanished from view throughout France every year, however, and Robert showed no suspicion that foul play might be afoot.

Still, he was not a man to ignore any possibility. Since two of the missing, Madame Bernays and old man Petiot, had been patients of Doctor Bougrat, the commissioner dropped in on the doctor once in a while when he was in the vicinity of Aix. Oddly enough, he always seemed to be asking the doctor whether he had, by any chance, treated the latest citizen to vanish. And every time, the doctor went to his files and looked through them. Never again, however, could he find that he had had acquaintance, professional or social, with any of the people Robert sought.