Pel and the Faceless Corpse Read online

  Copyright & Information

  Pel & The Faceless Corpse

  First published in 1979

  Copyright: Juliet Harris; House of Stratus 1979-2011

  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 Mark Hebden (John Harris) 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

  1842328921 9781842328927 Print

  0755124839 9780755124831 Pdf

  0755125037 9780755125036 Mobi/Kindle

  0755125231 9780755125234 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.

  One

  The pain in his chest was awful. It seemed to grind and twist below his heart, hot, searing and agonising, like an iron fist gripping his inside.

  It was growing, becoming gradually worse, the pain sweeping under his breastbone in red-hot waves. He shifted miserably, aware that it was rapidly reaching the point when it would become unbearable.

  Everything was black. He was wretched, alone and miserable. He put his hand out, reaching feebly, but there seemed to be chains round his limbs securing him to the bed. He seemed to be growing weaker, and as the pain came in increasing waves, he was certain he could never survive the night.

  A drink would help. His lips were parched and his mouth dry. Could the wine he’d had to drink that evening have been poisoned?

  Somewhere, miles away, he could hear a telephone ringing, noisy and repetitive. It beat on his brain like a cymbal, pounding at his senses, insistent, demanding, imperative. If only someone would answer it! He writhed on the bed, his limbs contorted. The cold in them spread. He could feel it reaching his chest. The pain grew worse. If this wasn’t death, he felt, he didn’t know what was…

  ‘Merde alors!’

  Jerking bolt upright in bed in a fury, Inspector Pel saw with disgust that the eiderdown had slipped off and he was freezing. His indigestion was giving him hell and the telephone was yammering away. And, of course, because he was unmarried, there was nobody to answer it so he could sleep on in peace.

  As he snatched up the telephone and barked at it, Sergeant Darcy answered. He was speaking from the office and he sounded so cheerful he might have been at a party.

  ‘It’s a murder, Patron,’ he said. ‘The Chief’s given it to us.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In the woods at Butte-Avelan.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Orgny, Côte d’Or. Sergeant Massu, of the sub-station there reported it.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘We don’t know yet.’ Darcy paused. ‘I should put something warm on, Patron,’ he warned. ‘It’s a cold night and Butte-Avelan’s high ground.’

  Probably as high as Mont Blanc, Pel thought bitterly, and covered with ice all year round.

  Ringing off, he called Transport and asked to be picked up, then, because it had been bitterly cold for days, with nights of deep frosts with the ground like iron and the grass silver-white with hoar rime, he decided it would be wise to be on the safe side, and put on three sweaters and dug out a scarf. His blood was always thin at this time of the year, and the night’s operations would probably bring him down with pneumonia. Since, like all Frenchmen, he had learned in minute detail at school every part of the body and its functions, Pel suffered from a severe case of a little knowledge being dangerous, and was always convinced he was on the verge either of a nervous breakdown or a complete collapse in his health. The fact that his slight frame was always able to go on when all his colleagues had fallen by the wayside with exhaustion never managed to convince him to the contrary and he spent most of his days in a gloomy fear that they were to be his last.

  He didn’t bother to shave. There’d be time for that later, he thought; the French, unlike the British, were too realistic to set much store by personal appearances when speed was essential. Thinking about speed, he wondered if he could delay long enough to make himself a cup of coffee – Hag, of course; decaffeinated, so it wouldn’t harm him – but in the end he decided he hadn’t time and settled for a glass of brandy. Only to warm him up, he tried to persuade himself, because, falling as it would on an empty stomach, he knew it would give him hell later.

  Shuddering at the thought of going out in the middle of a November night – at six o’clock in the morning, it was as good as night – he heard his housekeeper, Madame Routy, give a little snuffling snore as he passed her door. He stared at it bitterly, wondering why he couldn’t be like Maigret whose wife always got up when he was called out and had soup or coffee ready for him before he left.

  Going downstairs, he poured himself a brandy, drank it quickly, and for safety popped a bismuth tablet into his mouth. Taking from his pocket a small device of rollers covered with rubber, he proceeded to fill it with tobacco from a packet marked ‘Samson Halfzware Shag’. In his agonised efforts to cut down on his smoking, he’d taken to the desperate remedy of rolling his own, and during a recent visit to Holland on an enquiry had come back armed with Dutch tobacco and a British roller and cigarette papers.

  Concentrating fiercely, he turned out a bent and wilting tube which he put in his mouth. As he applied a match, there was a shower of sparks and the cigarette vanished in a puff of smoke. Determined not to be beaten, he tried again but this time he put in too much tobacco and the effort of drawing the smoke down made his eyes bulge. Furious and frustrated at his lack of success, he was still trying when the car arrived.

  It had been snowing and the city’s famous coloured roofs were hidden and the trees were stark and black. Winter always laid bare the bones of a city and, like unhappiness, seemed to bite more in the streets than in the country. And this winter, Pel decided, seemed to have lasted all his life.

/>   At the Hôtel de Police everybody was looking glum. The man at the enquiry desk was looking glum because he had a cold coming on and the draught from the door had fangs and claws in it. The sergeant was looking glum because he was just pinning up on the board a notice which had come from St Etienne further south. It asked for information on a gang of four men who had jumped from a car at Firmin three days before and filled the air with flying bullets to keep everybody’s head down while they’d robbed a branch of Crédit Lyonnais. Two policemen who’d stopped their car on a lonely road near St Symphorien as they’d escaped had been shot to death and the gangsters had helped themselves to the dead men’s .38s, probably because they were running out of ammunition for their own. The sergeant considered it something to be glum about when policemen’s lives were regarded as possessing so little value.

  Misset was sitting in the detective sergeants’ room looking glum because, as he’d confided to Pel that day, his wife was expecting another baby and he knew he couldn’t afford it, and that his work schedules would have to be adjusted so he could give her a bit of help. Krauss was looking glum because he was fat and due for retirement and didn’t consider being turned out on a cold night one of the pleasanter aspects of a policeman’s lot. He was already involved in the case of the Mysterious Chicken Stealer. Up near Orgny, where the murder had taken place, there had been cases of chickens disappearing and since some of them had belonged to a farmer friend of the Chief of Police, they’d had to look into them. Krauss had landed the job because he was the oldest and the slowest. Even Nosjean, who was young enough still to have a face like a choirboy, was looking glum, and Pel suspected he was having trouble with his girlfriend again. Nosjean had girl troubles as dogs had fleas.

  Only Sergeant Daniel Darcy wasn’t looking glum. He was in Pel’s office, using the spare telephone, and as Pel entered, he smiled and lifted a hand in salute. He looked so pleased with himself, you could have assumed that one of his chief joys in life was being dragged out in the early hours of a November morning. He looked so happy, Pel hated him.

  As he put down the telephone, Pel opened his mouth to ask whether Lab, Fingerprints, Photography and all the other odds and ends had been informed, but Darcy, who was nothing if not efficient, was too quick for him and informed him that they had.

  Pel grunted. After all, he thought, why shouldn’t they suffer too? ‘They got me out of my bed –’ he began.

  ‘They got me out of someone else’s bed,’ Darcy said.

  Pel frowned. ‘You’re always in someone else’s bed.’

  ‘Well, these lonely women –’ Darcy smiled. ‘That’s what you need, Patron. A woman. To love and cherish you. You’d feel fulfilled. Life would change. The day would be full of laughter and song.’

  Pel glared. ‘Tell me the worst,’ he said.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ Darcy said. ‘Everything’s under control.’

  ‘With bodies being found all over Burgundy?’ Pel’s eyebrows shot up to the sparse hair he flattened to his skull. ‘Sometimes, I think you have a curious idea of what’s normal.’

  ‘These days,’ Darcy said cheerfully, ‘with terrorists, kidnappers and so on everywhere, it wouldn’t be normal if there weren’t bodies lying about.’

  Pel digested this, trying in vain to find a scathing reply. ‘What do we know?’ he growled.

  ‘Male,’ Darcy said. ‘Aged fifty to sixty. Grey-haired, running to fat.’

  ‘What’s he look like?’

  ‘Hard to say, Patron. He seems to have no face.’

  ‘No face?’

  ‘Whoever did for him seems to have made a thorough job of it. Shot several times in the face and several times in the back of his head. It just about demolished his features.’

  Pel grimaced. He didn’t like messy murders. ‘What about his papers?’ he asked. ‘Don’t they give any indication?’

  ‘No, Patron,’ Darcy said. ‘They’re missing.’

  ‘Clothes?’

  ‘Not a chance, Patron.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He isn’t wearing any. At least nothing apart from undershirt, pants and socks.’

  Pel stared. ‘You don’t usually undress before getting yourself murdered,’ he said. ‘At least, men don’t. Especially in this weather. You could catch your death –’

  He stopped, realising what he’d said. Darcy grinned.

  ‘Somebody did, Patron.’

  They climbed slowly. Darcy was driving carefully because of the snow on the road, and it took them until daylight to get anywhere near Butte-Avelan.

  ‘Where did it happen?’ Pel asked.

  ‘Private estate called Bussy-la-Fontaine. Between Orgny and Savoie St Juste. In the Forest of Orgny.’

  ‘Who’s it belong to?’

  ‘Guy called Piot. Paul-Edouard Piot.’

  ‘Do we know him?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. He’s fairly new here. He has a food-store in Chatillon and a factory in Dôle. He also has a few business interests in Paris and a second-hand book store in Dijon.’

  ‘What’s he doing at Butte-Avelan?’

  ‘I gather he grew tired of fighting the unions and went in for this instead. He bought the place three years ago from a Madame Heurion, the widow of the previous owner. She preferred to live in a town and wanted to join her daughter in St Malo.’

  ‘Where did you get all this?’

  ‘Massu, the brigadier in charge of the sub-station at Orgny.’

  ‘Isn’t he the big chap? Bad-tempered?’

  ‘Quick-tempered would be nearer.’

  ‘How does he know all this?’

  ‘He gets up to Bussy-la-Fontaine now and again. I get the impression Piot’s not ungenerous with refreshment and it’s a lovely spot in summer.’

  ‘What is it? A farm?’

  ‘No. Forestry. The wood goes for pulp, pit props and telegraph poles. Piot employs a garde forestier to look after it but he’s about due for retirement and, according to Massu, Piot’s decided that when he finally leaves he’s going to run the place on his own.’

  ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘The garde.’

  Pel stared gloomily at the grey-white landscape. ‘Anybody else up there apart from the garde?’

  ‘Just his wife and the owner, Piot.’

  ‘What about his wife?’

  ‘He hasn’t got one. He’s a bachelor.’

  The road was climbing through the forest now. The leaves were brown and withered-looking, and the grass stuck in long spikes through the grey coating of melting snow. Occasionally they saw the eyes of some animal, and it came as a surprise to Pel because he’d always imagined that every scrap of wildlife in France had long since been killed by huntsmen. He’d seen them himself only the month before going out armed to the teeth with everything but anti-tank guns to stand in groups at the corners of every field and every crossroads, waiting to blast off at anything that moved. He’d thought at the time that it was a wonder a lot of them didn’t shoot each other. Some of them did, of course.

  The road curved round the top of the hill on to the bare high plains of the Côte d’Or, and they turned towards Savoie St Juste. A police car was waiting by the roadside and, as Darcy’s lights caught it, a man in uniform jumped out to direct them down a long winding drive like a tunnel through the trees.

  As the car came to a halt by the house a policeman, stamping his feet in the cold by the small cream Renault van from the Orgny sub-station, pointed to Massu, waiting in the doorway, looking like an ox in his thick clothing. He was a bull-like man with a dark meridional face and a chest like a wardrobe. Pel knew him well. He was a good policeman with a well-conducted district, though Pel suspected that he didn’t always wait for the courts and preferred at times to deal out his own punishments.

  ‘This way, sir,’ he said, his black eyes and dark skin curiously menacing in the poor light.

  They set off walking through the trees. The path was wide enough for a car; and its surface, whe
re the snow had been tramped away by the police, was covered with twigs, old pine cones and the mulch of fallen leaves. It was bitterly cold, with a damp and chilling wind coming through the trees to set the branches above them crackling and creaking and shedding snow. Pel was already convinced he’d started a cold.

  A few hundred yards from the house, in a small opening off the road, there was a small calvary. It was just a simple stone cross on a plinth to which a metal plate bearing several names had been screwed.

  Behind it, a canvas screen had been erected. Inside it, Minet, the police surgeon, was bending over the body. He looked up at Pel as he appeared.

  ‘You won’t need a report from me for this,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have one, nevertheless,’ Pel said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘There appear to be six shots in the head. Three in the face. Three more from behind. Those from behind smashed in the skull and blew out the face. Those fired from in front completed the ruin.’

  Pel stared at the body. It was that of a well-built man, the flesh already slate-grey with death, and it wore short underpants, a sleeveless undershirt and black socks. It was covered by a thin layer of wet snow.

  ‘Any marks on the clothing?’

  ‘None that I can see. There might be, of course, under the blood.’

  Pel studied the smashed pulp of the head. An eye, glazed now, stared out at him from the ruin, and short, thinning, grey-blond hair stood stiffly upright with the dried blood.

  ‘Any other wounds?’

  ‘His throat’s been cut.’

  Pel’s jaw dropped. ‘For the love of God! With six bullets in his head?’

  ‘They probably did the throat first. We’ll know when we get him back.’

  Pel frowned. ‘An execution, do you think?’

  ‘Have we any gangsters round here?’

  From what he read in the papers, Pel had a feeling that the world was swarming with gangsters, kidnappers, terrorists and murderers, all of whom practiced their trade for no other purpose than to prevent ageing detective inspectors like himself on the verge of retirement from getting any rest.