Summer school at labasti.., p.39
Summer School at Labastide, page 39
"M'sieu Martel is too kind," observed Petitpain.
".....these were large. Doubtless by this time M'sieu Vernon was desperately wondering what was going to happen to him. His killer was waiting for the hour when Petitpain came back for his afternoon rest. The church clock struck the half hour. M’sieu Vernon was then dragged up the steps to the Priest Walk. There he discovered he was to be dropped on his head from the top of the wall, some twenty feet into the impasse below."
There was a groan of dismay from the listeners.
"He struggled violently. The nails in the boots have scratched the flags. There is a smear of blood on the wall itself. He tried to call out even though his mouth was taped up. This noise may have woken Petitpain. Let us hear once more what you heard that evening, Msieu."
Petitpain set his hand over his mouth and made desperate incoherent noises. Somehow they brought home to the people there, more than anything that had been said, just what had been done to Vernon and there was a kind of growl of anger.
"He was hit on the head again," Martel said, "not hard enough to kill or even to stun, just enough to daze him and quiet him. It must appear that he had fallen trying to enter the old Presbytery and it would not do if he was still bound and gagged. He was no lightweight and hoisting him over the parapet could not have been easy. The tape was stripped from his mouth and wrists and he was quickly hoisted up and dropped. He fell head first like a sack and he broke his neck."
Once more the assembly reacted to this with a mutter of anger and detestation. At the same moment thunder muttered in the hills and a flash in the far distance drew some eyes.
"What happened after that we have heard from Petitpain. But not everything. The murderer had come prepared for him. He knew what was likely to happen. He waited up above on the Priest Walk. And he had a dart in his pocket, like this."
He held up a delicate plastic object.
"It is weighted," he explained. "I imagine the sting of a dart like this will have been the last sensation of a number of people. Petitpain, kneeling beside the injured man trying to make sense of what he was saying was an easy target. If I may borrow a chair...."
Half a dozen were brought.
"And a chicken from the boucherie. I will pay."
People looked at one another in amazement but Monsieur Cailleux, the butcher, raced off to his shop and returned with a plump bird, head dangling.
"If you would place it there...by the chair, so...."
Martel stood on the chair and then raised his hand as high as it would go and dropped the dart. It stuck quivering in the chicken carcase, the needle-point embedded to the hilt.
"That," he said, clambering down from the chair, "is what, I think, happened to Petitpain. The impact releases a drug which works almost at once, probably, Dr Claudine says, pentothal. She allowed me to use this device which she keeps for violent patients."
The old doctor enthroned on a chair on the far side of the circle nodded emphatically.
"The murderer now came racing round to the Impasse. M'sieu Vernon was alive, conscious and trying to speak. It was unlikely that anyone would have heard him because M'sieu Rhodes had his television set turned up very loudly as was customary with him. M'sieu Vernon's jugular vein was then cut with a very sharp, small blade, probably a scalpel, He bled very much and Petitpain lying unconscious beside him was covered in blood, but mostly on one side, as Marie-Claire has described for us."
"Ugh," said Marie-Claire, "So much blood and so little water!"
"She also said that the blood was dried in some places, that it needed scrubbing which suggests that Petitpain had been lying in it for some time. While he waited for Petitpain to come back to the Presbytery, the murderer had been to the church and retrieved the knife hidden there by M'sieu Jim. He arranged the corpse at the foot of the wall and then propped up Petitpain beside it. He used the knife....."
There was an uneasy motion around the circle.
"....in the way that you have heard described and waited for the drug to wear off. He was probably going to raise the alarm when the time was right. However, the storm broke and M'dame Rhodes looked out of her window saw what she did see and gave the alarm herself. He may have waited until she had run over to the café before replacing the knife. Instead of Petitpain holding on to it he had dropped it. It may also have occurred to him at that point that the same knife could not have done both injuries. This was not," he commented, "a very well-planned crime. It has all the marks of haste and panic."
Thunder growled in the distance.
"You have spoken of when," Madame Beauzile stated, "you have shown us how and have even suggested why this dreadful thing was done. We now demand, we of the village, that you tell us who."
"As to that," Martel said, "I know, but my informant is dead and I have little in the way of evidence. There are some clues.....one I can show you now."
"It is such iniquity !" exclaimed Madame Beauzile. "Not just to murder but to arrange to blame another and that other one of our own! Infamous!"
Petitpain looked round at her and the tears were running down his cheeks.
"Dear Madame. For that I thank you....from the bottom of my heart....."
He laid a floury hand upon that organ.
"....for the first time I feel I have found my home here."
"Louis," Martel interrupted this touching exchange, "tell us once more what M'sieu Vernon managed to say to you."
"Viel, I have no English and he spoke in that tongue."
"Nevertheless, tell us."
"He moaned," Petitpain said, "he was in pain and I set my hand upon him, to comfort, to let him know he was not alone, you understand......"
He appealed to the listeners who nodded their understanding.
"He opened his eyes and I think he saw me. Then he spoke. It sounded to me as if he said, 'Hope! Hope! Such hope!"
Some among the assembly crossed themselves and murmured at this wonder.
"Behold," Madame Beauzile spoke for many, "if such a one could hope, so may we all....."
"Except," observed Martel very drily, "that he spoke next to no French."
The court looked back at him in bewilderment, some even resentfully. Thunder muttered again, much nearer than it had been.
"The second clue....."
Bewildered enquiring looks were exchanged.
"I have here."
He dug in his pocket and produced a number of small colourful objects.
"Madame...."
He beckoned to Madame Beauzile and she sailed across to where he stood.
"These were found," he told her, "in the souterrain. Have you ever seen them?"
She examined them and shook her head. However, one of the Vietnamese was near enough to have caught a glimpse of what lay on Martel's palm and she made an exclamation. Bonhomme beckoned to her and she came and looked more closely. She spoke to Bonhomme briefly.
"She says that she swept up a number of such things from the floor of the café yesterday morning. They appeared to be seeds. There were very many, she says and she put them in the waste bin."
"They will be there yet," said Antonin who had joined the group. "There has been no collection of rubbish."
"She is sure that they are the same?"
There was a flurry of assent.
"She is sure," Bonhomme said.
"Thank you," Martel told them. "And if you could find a few of these things for me, I would be more than grateful."
"They will be found," boomed Madame and there could be no doubt of it.
"Thirdly, Marie-Claire!"
She came over smiling.
"How may I assist?"
"Have you counted your gas bottles ?"
"Indeed. There are two gone. And there are no empty bottles to match them."
"Two. You are sure of that?"
"Oh, yes."
Martel turned to Antonin who was conferring in whispers with Madame. Clearly he had no wish to turn out the dustbin.
"M'sieu Antonin, you are a pompier, are you not?"
"I am. I am sous-chef for the village."
"And you told me that the fire in the Priest's House was caused by a gas bottle, is that not so?"
"It is true. One might see the remains of the bottle in the wall. It is plain. It exploded."
"You saw only one?"
"Only one."
"And you reported that there was only one? Those in the village knew this?"
"Truly."
"Thank you."
"Marie-Claire," Martel turned back to her, "how many of the incomers use gas?"
"Some. Not all. Lucie does not like gas so the school uses none. Her cousin was burned she told me, so it is no wonder. Señora de las Vencias, she has gas, two a month, sometimes more. But the Americans they do not nor do the Dutch. Madame Berook has a heater in the winter and so does M'sieu Bric. They....." she jerked her chin at the Vietnamese, "use none. They cook on charcoal. The summer people in the Rue du Castel have gas but they are not here and nor are the English in the Place de la Croix."
"And M'sieu and M'dame Rhodes?"
"And those two," she said contemptuously, "I had forgotten them. They use no gas. If they cook and if they wash, which one may doubt, they use electricity. One needs no gas to open a bottle."
"It does not do," suggested an anonymous voice," to get upon the wrong side of Marie-Claire. Eh, Marie-Miche?"
Marie-Michelle glowered, trying to see who had spoken and Bonhomme tapped gently for silence.
"I ask these questions because there has been another murder," Martel said. "The fire in the Priest's House was no accident. The detonator which M'sieu Ellermann dropped in the cellar of the murderer's house was used to trigger a gas explosion by remote control. The murderer watched the Ellermanns leave to make ready for dinner, calculated the time and then pressed the button on the transmitter. After that, we all know what happened."
"Who did all these things?" demanded Calli. "Don't you know?"
"I have known a name since I spoke to the Ellermanns. But I had no proof. And what proofs I have now are flimsy. We are looking for someone who arrived here within the last eighteen months which applies to at least three households; for someone with some medical training and there are four who have that...."
"Four? It is not possible!" exclaimed Madame Beauzile.
"Four," Martel insisted. "M'sieu Baxendale, who is a surgeon specializing in organ replacement; Señor de las Vencias was a doctor in Barcelona for many years, M'sieu Wayne trained as a nurse and Madame Ngu's second son was a medical orderly in a hospital in Saigon. You yourself, Madame, are a midwife and must have some basic knowledge. And there is, I think, one other......"
Madame Beauzile swelled with indignation.
"Of these, all dwell in houses linked to the souterrain....except Madame," he added hastily. "And it was possible, if not likely, that Graham Ellermann was mistaken. One could not really be certain. Even now my proofs are flimsy. However, taken together, they may serve. This..."
He held up a garish yellow plastic box with a picture of Yogi Bear on it.
".....was found in the souterrain. It had been used to contain a radio transmitter which was almost certainly used to trigger the gas explosion. Graham described it to me."
"Where in the souterrain?" asked someone.
"In a moment. Also there is this wood.....M'sieu Greg could you bring the log?"
Greg reached down behind the chairs which held the party from the school and lifted two smallish logs. He brought them over to the well.
"And M'sieu Steven, if you would be so good....."
Steven also reached behind him and brought out two logs which he brought across.
"M'sieu Greg, where were your two found?"
"They made part of the blockage of the cave mouth that we dismantled yesterday."
"You will swear to this?"
"I will."
"M'sieu Steven, where were these logs found?"
Steven opened his mouth to reply when he was drowned out by a clap of thunder. The court looked up apprehensively at the darkening sky.
".....cellar," Steven repeated. "A cellar connected to the souterrain."
"And you know which cellar it was?"
"I do."
"Biaux !"
Martel beckoned to a young man leaning against the legs of an elderly woman who had a chair under the arcade. He looked bewildered and uncertain until the elderly woman dealt him a kick.
"You, Edouard....it is you he wants. Get up, you, and go."
Biaux obeyed. Martel picked a log from the two Greg had brought and handed it to the young man.
"M'sieu," he began, "you supply wood to all the village do you not?"
Biaux nodded.
"Would you say that these two logs....." he reached behind for one of Steven's, "were from the same batch?"
Biaux assuming the role of expert for the first time in his life examined the two.
"They are both chestnut," he said. "Most prefer oak. They are very dry, more than three years under cover, I would say. And as for the same batch....behold...."
He fitted Greg's log end to end with Steven's and it could be seen even in the dimming light that there was a scar in the bark where a branch had broken off which extended over both logs. A spatter of applause startled him and he blushed.
"Who in the village buys chestnut?"
"Only the poor and the mean," Biaux said. "It spits sparks and is a danger. It must be watched all the time."
"Who ?" Martel repeated.
"I think the last to get a load of chestnut was the widow Molinier," Biaux suggested. "She had a closed stove where it could be burned in safety. But she died soon after....did she not, Madame?" he called across to Madame Beauzile who had returned to her place.
Madame Beauzile agreed, adding that it ill became him to call other folk mean when he had refused to buy back the load which, the good God knew, was of no use to the heirs.
"And who would have taken it off my hands ?" demanded Biaux indignantly. "And did you not charge your tenants for it when the house was let at last?"
"And why should I not ?" boomed Madame in tones of righteous indignation, "was it not mine?"
"Ah," Biaux warmed to the argument, "but you charged them for oak....not for chestnut. Oh, I hear these things me."
"And I know who tells you," retorted Madame with a glare across the square at Biaux's mother, "and she lies. In her face I say it, she lies!"
Biaux turned about and appealed to the Rhodes sitting in the front row with the other customers of the Café packed behind them.
"Madame, I ask you....did you not pay three hundred francs when you should have paid only two fifty ?"
"We don't use logs," snapped Pattie. "Up and down the bloody cellar, day and night? No way. Electric for me."
"You were not asked if you used them, Madame," Martel put in. "You were asked if you paid for them?"
"May've done," Pattie admitted grudgingly.
"And would anyone else have such wood in their cellar?"
Biaux stood in thought, ticking off unheard names on his fingers.
"No," he said at last. "Not three years cut."
He was thanked and dismissed and went back to his mother.
"Now," Martel began, "it is not unknown for logs to stray. But I would remind you that this log was found in the cave under the church and this other in a cellar....."
"You accusing us?" Pattie demanded. "You saying that was in our cellar?"
