Colin Forbes - The Stone leopard

Alain Blanc had also spent long hours at his Ministry, but twice he had visited the address in the Passy district where he met his mistress, Gisele Manton. She, also, had been followed, and Grelle had a detailed list of where she had been and whom she had met. For neither of the two ministers did there seem to be any trace of a Soviet link. Grelle, without revealing it to Boisseau, was beginning to get worried. Could he have made a terrible mistake about the whole business?

`You'd better take a look at Strasbourg,' he said. 'Fly there and back, of course. I need you here in Paris…' It was typical of the prefect that after Boisseau had gone he had personally phoned Strasbourg to inform them that Boisseau was on the way.

As he put down the receiver he was inclined to agree with his deputy's assessment: Inspector Rochat was never going to set the world on fire.

The proprietor, M. Jouvel, has died suddenly. This shop, therefore, will remain closed until further notice.

Lennox stared at the typed notice pasted to the glass door and went on staring beyond it at the girl inside. When he rattled the handle she waved at him to go away and then, as he persisted, came forward glaring and unlocked the door. Taking of his hat, he spoke before she could start abusing him. `I'm a friend of Leon's-this is a great shock to me, you'll understand. Can you tell me what happened?'

Relenting, because he was so polite-and because now she could see him properly she liked what she saw-Louise Vallon, who had just returned from being interviewed by Inspector Rochat, let him inside the shop and told him all the grisly details.

Lennox had the impression that although she managed to bring tears to her eyes, she was rather enjoying the drama of it all. At the end of ten minutes he had heard most of the story; he knew that Leon Jouvel had been found hanging behind his bathroom door, that the time of death was estimated as being between six-thirty and eight-thirty the previous evening.

`They wanted to know whether anyone normally visited him at that time,' the girl explained tearfully. 'The last words he said to me were..'

Lennox excused himself after explaining that he had been away from Strasbourg for some time and had just called to have a word. 'It wasn't a close friendship,' he went on, aware that this conversation might be reported back to the police, `but we had business dealings occasionally.' Telling her that his name was Zuger, that he had to catch a train for Stuttgart, he left the shop, walked a short distance towards the station, and then doubled back over one of the bridges into the old quarter.

The police patrol-car he had seen earlier was still outside No. 49, so he left the vicinity of the rue de l'Rpine. At one in the afternoon it was still very quiet on Sunday in Strasbourg as he wandered round the ancient streets thinking. He found the suicide of Leon Jouvel hard to swallow. The Frenchman had been followed to his home by the unknown man with the newspaper only an hour or so before he had died. He had arranged to meet Lennox the following morning with the expectation of receiving more money in exchange for more information. A man who is contemplating killing himself is hardly likely to show interest in the prospect of acquiring more money. It smells, Lennox told himself; in fact, it more than smells, it stinks.

Over lunch he wondered whether to go straight on to meet the next witness on the list, Robert Philip of Colmar, and then he decided he would wait until Monday. The local Monday newspaper should carry an account of Jouvel's death, which could be enlightening.

Robert Philip, 8 Avenue Raymond Poincare, Colmar, was the second name on the list Col Lasalle had handed over to Alan Lennox. It was also the second name on the list Carel Vanek carried in his head. On Saturday evening the three members of the Soviet Commando pad their bills at their respective hotels and left Strasbourg, driving the forty miles to Colmar through a snowstorm. They arrived in the Hans Andersen-like town of steep-roofed buildings and crooked alleyways at 9.30 pm and again Vanek took precautions, dropping off Lansky with his suitcase near the station, so that only two men arrived together at the hotel.

Lansky walked into the station booking-hall, inquired the time of a train for Lyon for the following day, and then smoked a Gauloise while he waited for a train to come in-any train. Walking out with the three passengers who got off a local from Strasbourg, he crossed the Place de la Gare to the Hotel Bristol which Vanek and Brunner had entered earlier and booked a room in the name of Froissart. The receptionist, noting he had no car, assumed he had just come off the Strasbourg train.

Upstairs in his bedroom, Vanek had followed his usual routine, checking Philip's address in the telephone directory and locating it on the Blay street-guide of Colmar he had obtained from the hall porter. He looked up as Brunner slipped into his room. 'This is very convenient-staying here,' he informed the Czech. 'Philip lives just round the corner…'

`If he is home,' the pessimistic Brunner replied.

`Let's find out…'

Vanek did not use the room phone to call Philip's number; that would have meant going through the hotel switchboard. Instead he went out with Brunner to the car and they drove about a kilometre into the shopping area and entered a bar where Vanek called the number he had found in the directory. The voice which answered the phone was arrogant and brusque. 'Robert Philip…'

`Sorry, wrong number,' Vanek muttered and broke the connection. 'He's home,' he told Brunner. 'Let's go look at the place…

On a snowbound December night at 10.30 pm the Avenue Raymond Poincare was a deserted street of trees and parks with small, grim, two-storey mansions set back behind prison-like railings. No. 8 was a square-looking stone villa with steps leading up to a porch and a gloomy garden beyond the railings. There were lights in the large bay window on the ground floor and the upper storey was in darkness.

`I think you can get round the back,' Brunner said as the Citroen cruised slowly past the villa and he tried to take in as much detail as he could.

`The next thing to check is whether he lives alone,' Vanek remarked. 'Tomorrow is Sunday. If we can check out the place in the daytime I think we might just pay a visit to Mr Robert Philip tomorrow night…'

`One day you will be too quick…

`Tomorrow is 19 December,' Vanek replied calmly. 'We have only four days left to visit two people-one of them across the Rhine in Germany. In speed can lie safety. And this will not be a job for the Rope. We have had one suicide, so Robert Philip will have to die by accident…'

Earlier on the same day, arriving in Strasbourg by helicopter, Boisseau put Inspector Rochat through a grilling almost without Rochat realizing what was happening. He was well aware he must tread warily: unlike Lyon, Grelle had no particular friendship with the prefect of Strasbourg and the locals were prickly about his arrival. After half an hour he suggested that later Rochat must join him for a drink, but first could they visit the dead man's apartment?

It was Boisseau who extracted from detective Bonheur the information that two men had entered No. 49 between 6.30 and 7.15 pm, that the second man had shuffled and carried an umbrella, that later the first man had left at 7.2 pm, followed by the umbrella man half an hour later. 'Which was just about the time Jouvel may have died,' he pointed out to Rochat.

It was Boisseau who interviewed the other tenants in the building and discovered no one could identify the shuffling man, which meant he did not live there. 'Which proves nothing,' he informed Rochat, 'but why did he come here when we can find no one he visited? And half an hour is a long time for a man to enter a building for no purpose.'