Pel And The Touch Of Pitch Read online

  Copyright & Information

  Pel & The Touch of Pitch

  First published in 1987

  © Estate of John Harris (Mark Hebden); House of Stratus 1987-2011

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of John Harris (Mark Hebden) to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2011 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  1842329022 9781842329023 Print

  0755124944 9780755124947 Pdf

  0755125142 9780755125142 Kindle

  0755125347 9780755125340 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  John Harris, wrote under his own name and also the pen names of Mark Hebden and Max Hennessy.

  He was born in 1916 and educated at Rotherham Grammar School before becoming a journalist on the staff of the local paper. A short period freelancing preceded World War II, during which he served as a corporal attached to the South African Air Force. Moving to the Sheffield Telegraph after the war, he also became known as an accomplished writer and cartoonist. Other ‘part time’ careers followed.

  He started writing novels in 1951 and in 1953 had considerable success when his best-selling The Sea Shall Not Have Them was filmed. He went on to write many more war and modern adventure novels under his own name, and also some authoritative non-fiction, such as Dunkirk. Using the name Max Hennessy, he wrote some very accomplished historical fiction and as Mark Hebden, the ‘Chief Inspector’ Pel novels which feature a quirky Burgundian policeman.

  Harris was a sailor, an airman, a journalist, a travel courier, a cartoonist and a history teacher, who also managed to squeeze in over eighty books. A master of war and crime fiction, his enduring novels are versatile and entertaining.

  Note

  Though lovers of Burgundy might decide that they have recognised the city in these pages, in fact it is intended to be fictitious.

  Map[1]

  One

  It didn’t look very lethal. There was remarkably little look of menace about the thing. It was small – tiny, really – slender, white and harmless-looking.

  Chief Inspector Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel, of the Brigade Criminelle of the Police Judiciaire of the Republic of France, held it carefully between his fingers and stared at it morosely. Uneasily he looked at his second in command, Inspector Daniel Darcy, who was sitting across the desk from him, and then at the head of the sergeants’ room, Sergeant Jean-Luc Nosjean, who, one of these days, would be an inspector himself if Pel had anything to do with it.

  He gazed at the small white object again. It was a killer, as well he knew. He’d studied the reports. Though it looked so innocent, it had an insidious ability to destroy.

  ‘It’s a wonder the Russians don’t get everybody at it,’ he said slowly. ‘Then, when we’re all flat on our backs, send in the tanks.’

  He stared again at the small object in his hand, his expression one of anger, then he sighed, put it in his mouth and, applying a match, drew the smoke down to his socks. For the life of him, he could never understand why he couldn’t give them up.

  ‘Do you think,’ he asked, ‘that it’s cowardice and lack of moral fibre?’

  Darcy shrugged. ‘It doesn’t worry me all that much,’ he said cheerfully, leaning back and drawing on his own cigarette as if it had never had the power to put him on his back with bronchitis, heart failure, cancer or any of the other associated ailments.

  Unlike Pel, who worried constantly about his vices, Darcy had always been able to conduct his with dignity.

  ‘In fact,’ he was saying, ‘when I travel by train I invariably head for the smoking section. That’s where you meet people of compassion and humility. In the non-smoking section the air’s clean all right but it’s heavy with self-righteousness.’

  ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’

  ‘We smokers are becoming an elite group.’

  Pel looked at Nosjean, the third member of the group. ‘Why do you smoke?’

  Nosjean grinned, taking his cue from Darcy. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘If there’s going to be a nuclear war.

  ‘We all have a reason,’ Darcy said.

  ‘I certainly do,’ Pel admitted gloomily. ‘It’s because I can’t stop.’ He studied his cigarette again. ‘I’ve often wondered if I’d do better sticking a dozen in my mouth at once, lighting them all together, smoking them at full speed, and then forgetting them for the rest of the day. While it might reduce the number in the end, though, I have a suspicion it would kill me more quickly.’

  ‘You look well enough at the moment, Patron.’

  Pel disagreed. He felt he had a cold coming on and, as he well knew, his germs were different from everybody else’s. They were big and hairy, he felt, and probably had fangs and claws. So they couldn’t miss the point, he coughed a few times.

  ‘You sound like Mimi in the last act of Bohème,’ Darcy grinned. ‘Perhaps you should try Lourdes. They’re supposed to be able to cure anything.’

  ‘Except crime,’ Nosjean pointed out. ‘They have a crime rate that’s double the average.’

  Never a man with a high threshold of tolerance, Pel scowled, feeling the levity had gone far enough. He removed the cigarette from his mouth and studied it again, a small man with intense dark eyes, spectacles on the end of his nose and thinning hair that lay over his head like wet seaweed across a rock. The occasion was his daily conference. Every morning he and Darcy held an informal chat on the subject of what the department was handling at the moment. Sometimes it included every crime in the calendar and then, with Pel sour at the encroachment of evil across the daily life of his beloved Burgundy, every member of his department was involved – even Sergeant Misset, who was known to be either stupid or suffering from a case of terminal inertia and who, if Pel could have had his way, would have been back directing traffic round the Porte Guillaume at the top of the Rue de la Liberté. Today, because there was remarkably little happening, the conference consisted only of Pel, Darcy and Nosjean and, since there was little else to occupy their attention, they had got on to Pel’s inability to stop smoking.

  They had covered everything else first, the state of the crime statistics, the fact that the authorities in Paris – in fact, Paris in general – had no idea how the provinces thought, the coming election.

  With only a week or two to go, the political campaign was beginning to gather force and at that moment, in the street outside the Hôtel de Police, a van with a loudspeaker was roaring away, the metallic tones loud enough to make the windows rattle. Just the thing for committing a murder, Pel thought sourly. You could let off a sub-machine gun and it wouldn’t be heard above that lot. It was a wonder criminals hadn’t thought of it.

  The city walls were daubed with posters in a variety of colours – where possible over the opposition’s – all of them portraying politicians wearing beaming smiles t
o indicate how much they loved children, dogs and going to church. No wonder, Pel thought, that they had come to be regarded with a contemptuous attitude of dismissal. In addition to informing the country at large what was being said in the Assembly, clever newspapers these days also took care to run a funny column mocking the men who said it.

  Sourly he studied Darcy. He was quite certain that, despite his indifference to the dangers of using cigarettes, if he’d wanted to, Darcy could have stopped smoking in an instant, while he, who was convinced that at any moment he could drop dead of heart failure, was totally incapable of doing a thing about it.

  ‘Things are slack,’ he said.

  ‘There’s been another break-in at the supermarket at Talant,’ Darcy said with a grin.

  Pel shrugged. There was always another break-in at the supermarket at Talant. They had break-ins the way dogs had fleas.

  ‘Who this time?’

  ‘Kids,’ Darcy said. ‘The management renewed the alarms on the doors and windows when we complained after the last break-in, so they got in through the skylight. They were caught because they didn’t know how to get out again.’

  Pel nodded and looked at Nosjean. ‘What about your art theft?’ he asked.

  Nosjean, who looked like the young Napoleon leading his troops across the bridge at Lodi, was a bit of an expert on art and antiques, chiefly because he had a girl friend, Marie-Joséphine Lehmann, who worked at the Galeries Lafayette and knew a lot about it. Nosjean had plenty of girl friends because he was good-looking, intelligent, ambitious and obviously had potential. Mostly they looked like Charlotte Rampling, because Nosjean had always had a thing about Charlotte Rampling, and Marie-Joséphine Lehmann was one of them. But there had been a succession of others in between, one or two who didn’t look like Charlotte Rampling, one even who looked like Catherine Deneuve, and at the moment it was a lady estate agent who worked at Agence Immobilière Lafaye. She was a year or two older than Nosjean and he had a feeling that the affair wasn’t coming to fruition. The lady estate agent seemed to think more of selling houses than she did of Nosjean and seemed to find it difficult to take time off to see him.

  He thrust her from his mind and looked up. ‘I’m a bit worried, Patron,’ he said.

  ‘Why? The picture was stolen, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it was. A Vlaminck – Landscape with Houses. Claude Barclay provided it with one or two others to decorate the hall of the Hôtel du Grand Cerf at Lorne when it reopened after modernisation.’

  ‘Showing off again, was he?’

  ‘He can afford to, Patron. He’s a member of the National Assembly who’ll get re-elected next month whatever happens to anybody else, and he’s got a lot of money. He’s also an architect who’s been involved in some pretty big contracts. That new centre at Lake Souillat, for instance. That must have brought him in a bit in fees. The new buildings at the Collège Privé de l’Est at Noray. It’s a big complex and very up to date.’

  Pel sniffed. Though he’d never met Barclay, he’d long since decided he didn’t like him. He didn’t like any politicians, as a matter of fact – or, come to that, anybody who was wealthier or better-looking than he was.

  ‘They have huge fees there,’ Darcy said. ‘For backward sons of the forward-moving wealthy. To bring them up to the right standard for going into Daddy’s business and eventually taking it over without ruining it.’

  ‘Girls, too,’ Nosjean said. ‘They learn very important things: How to arrange the cutlery on the dining table, the right number of guests to invite, how to chat up Hubby’s colleagues.’

  ‘All right!’ Pel slapped a hand down on the desk. There was only one person allowed to be sarcastic in Pel’s team and at the moment it was getting out of control. ‘Let’s get back to business. Are you listening?’

  ‘Both ears,’ Darcy said and Pel scowled again.

  Darcy and Nosjean grinned at each other. Nosjean tried to explain. ‘Barclay’s a financier, too,’ he said. ‘And he’s got money in the hotel so it seems fair enough that he should provide half a dozen pictures from his collection to make the place look tasteful.’

  ‘So what’s the trouble?’ Pel asked. ‘This type, Guiho, appears in a uniform with a cap and shiny buttons as if he’s an attendant and, in front of everybody, as bold as brass, calmly walks up to the picture, removes it from the wall, remarking to the watching crowd as he does so that it has to be taken away for repairs, and quietly walks off with it. But he’s identified, caught at home the next day, the picture’s returned, he’ll get a spell in 72, Rue d’Auxonne, by which delightful if obscure name we choose to call our prison, and that’s that.’

  ‘Not quite, Patron,’ Nosjean persisted.

  ‘There are problems? Inform me.’

  ‘Well, Professor Grandjean, of the Fine Arts Department at the University, happened to be there at the time. He’s an admirer of Vlaminck and has one of his paintings himself, and he’d just been looking at the picture before it was removed. He’s also an uncle of Mijo Lehmann and he happened to discuss it with her. She passed what he said on to me.’

  Pel was pleased to see that the relationship between Nosjean and Marie-Joséphine Lehmann was still standing on its legs, however tottery they might be. He was a romantic at heart, believed in true love and approved of Mijo Lehmann.

  ‘So?’ he asked. ‘What comments did he make?’

  ‘He had reason – and now so have I – to believe that the picture might not be a Vlaminck at all.’

  ‘Something else?’

  ‘A fake.’

  ‘Ah!’

  Pel sat back, crushed out his cigarette and, without even noticing it, lit another one immediately. The moment he put the match out he realised what he’d done but, being on the mean side – careful, he preferred to call it – he decided it couldn’t be wasted (no good Burgundian wasted things) so he sat back and decided he might as well enjoy it.

  ‘Does Deputy Barclay know about this?’ he asked.

  ‘I spoke to him on the telephone.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said it wasn’t a fake. He sounded a bit indignant.’

  ‘But Professor Grandjean’s certain?’

  ‘Pretty certain, Patron. He didn’t put it to all the tests the experts use, of course, but you know what they’re like. They have a gut feeling about things and they’re not often wrong. He suggested it should be properly tested.’

  ‘Have you asked Barclay about this?’

  ‘Not yet, Patron.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps I had,’ Nosjean agreed. ‘But I’ve been wondering how to set about it. I’ve had dealings with a few people who own paintings and I’ve come to the conclusion that most of those who’ve been bamboozled over them don’t like admitting it. Especially the self-important ones.’

  Pel waved the matter aside. Nobody had been hurt. Nothing had been lost. And if a wealthy politician had been diddled out of a little of his money because he was too pompous to admit to a lack of knowledge, that was his business. There was no rush. Especially with Deputy Barclay. If the painting was indeed a fake, then certainly a crime had been committed somewhere, but it seemed to be one that would keep for a day or two.

  ‘I’ll leave it with you,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday and I’m going to Bois Haut for the weekend. There’s a family party on. My wife’s relations like to have them from time to time. It’s at her uncle’s estate.’ He pulled a face because he didn’t expect to enjoy himself. ‘Still the weather’s good and there’s nothing demanding our attention.’

  The party started on the Friday evening as Pel and his wife appeared, to be greeted by bent and elderly relations and their spouses who were all gathered at the home of Uncle Georges-Louis in the forest, all full of life despite their age. They represented only a small proportion of Madame’s family because there were plenty more – scattered all over France, all wealthy and all eager to leave their money to her when they died.

/>   Since marrying Madame, the money problems that had darkened Pel’s days from the moment he had started earning his living as a young cop had faded from the memory. A policeman’s salary never allowed for a life of sybaritic luxury and what he had tried to stash away in the bank for his old age had never seemed to be enough, so he derived a lot of comfort these days from the fact that Madame Pel seemed to have the ability to conjure money out of thin air. She ran a hairdressing salon in the Rue de la Liberté which was the envy of the best in Paris and had recently opened a boutique next door so that, after spending a fortune on having their hair done, her clients could now spend another on buying clothes.

  The relations were all obviously looking forward to the party and were delighted to see each other, but as soon as they assembled for dinner the table resounded to argument. Nobody was angry. It was just that the family liked arguing and, with the election due, they were at it hammer and tongs. Before they rose to go to bed, it was decided that, before the local guests arrived the following day, they would all go for a walk together. It involved a long and noisy argument about which part of the estate they should explore but they were all up bright and early the following morning. When Pel crossed the courtyard at 7a.m. towards the woods that surrounded the house, they were at it again over breakfast. At least, he thought, they showed no signs of dropping dead, which was something, because when Pel had been courting Madame they had always chosen the time when he had a date with her to disappear from the scene so that she was always having to vanish into the wild blue yonder to attend a funeral, a wake or the reading of a will.

  As he entered the woods, he bumped into another of the relations, a plump cheerful man called Cousin Roger, who came from Lyons and had a plump cheerful wife. He grinned at Pel.

  ‘Have you come here for what I’ve come for?’ he asked.