Alan Hynd - Authentic Cases From the Files of Alan Hynd

A little later Doctor Bougrat got into his car. He had intended to head for the Rhone to dispose of a recent but decidedly embarrassing acquisition. In the light of what the gendarme had said, however, that errand was out of the question for the time being. He would simply have to leave the thing in the closet locked up.

So, instead of the Rhone, Bougrat lit out for Marseilles. He found Marius and said he had come with the money for Andrea. The Apache counted his 9,000 francs, stuck the money in his pocket, and told the doctor where he could find Andrea. As an afterthought he added a suggestion where they could both go.

Bougrat picked up the girl and drove her to Aix to assume the role of housekeeper. Andrea wondered whether the scheme would work. The doctor was sure it would if, instead of being rouged to the ears, she wore no make-up and dressed conservatively.

On Sunday morning Andrea got up ahead of the doctor to make an omelet for breakfast. Looking around for a skillet, she found she couldn’t open the door of one of the kitchen closets. Going to the foot of the stairs, she relayed word of her plight to the doctor.

“We don’t use that closet anymore,” Bougrat called down. “And never mind about the skillet. I’ll just take some fruit for breakfast.”

All week end the hunt went on through the countryside for the missing paymaster. Official and unofficial opinion had become divided as to whether Rumèbe was an absconder or a murder victim. But on Monday morning when the doctor’s anonymous letter arrived at the St. Henri mills, the answer seemed certain. Rumèbe, the timid little man, leading a double life, had obviously taken French leave with the payroll.

While the whole town of Aix was talking about Rumèbe, a couple of paperhangers, hurriedly summoned by the doctor, were busy in the kitchen of the big stone house. When they came to the door that Andrea hadn’t been able to open, one of them noticed it had been nailed up. Sticking his head into the adjoining office, he asked Bougrat what he wanted done about it.

“Tear off the outside frame,” said the doctor, “and paper over it. There are so many wires and heating pipes inside that it is useless.”

Late that afternoon, who should pop up in Aix but Commissioner Robert of the Sûreté? After buzzing around town trying to extract some clue that might lead him to Rumèbe, Robert went up to the door of Doctor Bougrat’s house and pulled the bell. Andrea, dressed in a demure black frock, answered. Robert gave the girl a puzzled double-take.

“Haven’t I seen you someplace before?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t know, monsieur,” answered Andrea politely.

Robert cocked his head and eyed her steadily for a moment, as policemen have a habit of doing. She looked slightly uncomfortable, but it was a little late for Andrea to start blushing, so she didn’t.

“Is the Doctor in?” the commissioner finally asked.

“Oui, monsieur,” said Andrea. “But he is busy just now. Will you wait?”

Robert nodded, his eyes still on her, and she showed him to a seat.

When the doctor had dismissed his patient, he came into the waiting room with his usual sad smile

“I’ll bet I know why you’re down here, Commissioner,” he said. “Isn’t it terrible about that paymaster?”

“Did you know him?” asked Robert. “Did you ever have occasion to treat him for anything?”

Bougrat looked off into space. “That’s the strange thing,” he mused. “This is not a large town, yet I can’t recall ever having laid eyes on the man.”

“Or hear any stories about him?”

Bougrat shook his head, and Robert got up to go.

“Don’t be in a rush, Commissioner,” said the doctor. “Stay and have a drink with me.”

He led the commissioner to the dining room, next to the kitchen where the paperhangers were at work. Robert, hearing them, peered in curiously. Bougrat explained,

“I’m having the kitchen done over. How do you like the paper?”

“Looks fine,” said Robert. He glanced at the old paper still exposed, and noted that it seemed hardly faded at all.

The commissioner left shortly, and as he was returning to Marseilles through the thickening dusk, he couldn’t get the girl at the doctor’s house out of his mind. He was sure that he had seen her someplace before.

On an impulse he returned to his office. There he began to flip through the picture files of girls who had come under the scrutiny of the police for anything from prostitution to murder. Hours passed. Along toward midnight, when Robert was fortifying himself with glass after glass of black coffee, he came to the picture he was looking for.

Andrea Audibert, it seemed, had been brought to Marseilles from Paris not long before to appear in third-rate music halls and double as a prostitute. And the man who had brought her was Marius.

Now Robert went to another file. Presently he was scanning all the cops knew about the pimp. One opinion stuck out: Marius was perhaps the hardest man in the Marseilles underworld with a franc. Going back to his desk, Commissioner Robert sat sipping hot black coffee, lost in thought. If Andrea had been one of the stable of girls maintained by Marius, how come she had made the jump from Marseilles to the doctor’s home? Had she just been up in Aix temporarily when Robert called? He thought not. There had been something about the way she had stood in the doorway that led him to believe she was in permanent residence. Perhaps it was her very lack of make-up, most unusual in a femme de joie .

Robert started sniffing around the waterfront dives of Marseilles. Among a host of minor items, he learned that Marius, unlike most Apaches, believed in banks. At the bank where the pimp kept his money, Robert found out that he had made a deposit of 9,000 francs, on the Monday after the paymaster dropped from sight.

The commissioner wondered if there was a connection between the bank deposit and the appearance of the prostitute in the doctor’s house. He also wondered if there was a connection with the disappearance of the paymaster. Had that anonymous letter to the mill been a fake, a red herring to throw the police off?

He had to get some answers. Sneaking into Aix at night, Robert watched the stone house where the doctor lived. He could see, moving on the window shades, two shadows, obviously those of Bougrat and the Audibert doll. When the lights went out, Robert let himself into the garage.

He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but after a little poking around he lifted up the rumble seat. Thus he came upon that Apache attire of the doctor’s. Why, Robert asked himself, would the doctor have been driving around with that rig in the rumble seat? Inevitably it was a disguise. And it must have been used where such clothes were common, in the dives of Marseilles. The commissioner’s mind clicked on. There the doctor must have met, and purchased, the girl who was now living in the big stone house.

But the whole story, the whole series of suppositions, pushed credibility past reasonable limits. Robert just couldn’t fathom it.

In the days and nights that followed, however, Robert poked into the known past of the doctor. He thus put together the story of the defection of Bougrat’s patients. This buttressed the suspicion in Robert’s mind that Bougrat had suffered from a shortage of funds with which to finance the revels.

Now, suddenly, Robert began to think about two paperhangers he had seen in Bougrat’s kitchen on the Monday following the paymaster’s disappearance. Had Bougrat murdered Rumèbe and, not being able to dispose of the body elsewhere before the hue and cry went up, stuffed it in a kitchen closet? Then, to cover things up, had he had the kitchen papered and the closet sealed?