Folly Du Jour - Barbara Cleverly [112]
‘And you made a profit from these excursions into Hades?’
‘Oh yes. But it was more than that. He enjoyed what he was doing. A game, you know.’
‘You must have exercised a measure of control over him? In the selection of victims, Alice?’
For a moment she was puzzled, trying to guess his meaning.
‘You appear, like the black widow spider, only to kill the males of the species. I have yet to hear – apart from the unfortunate Mademoiselle Raissac who merited punishment as an informer – of a female victim.’
Alice breathed out – with relief? ‘Of course! You must have noticed our clients are men? They have aggressive fantasies about other men in their lives. Men blocking their advancement, men deserving an act of revenge on the battlefield or in the boudoir, questions of inheritance. Sometimes a vengeful fantasy will be triggered by a hurt done to a female in his circle: the father who requests that his impressionable daughter’s young man, whom he has discovered to be a penniless male vamp, be thrown from the Eiffel Tower . . .’
‘You don’t jib at academics, Alice?’ Joe asked, interested in her methods. ‘I’m thinking of a case in 1923 – must have been towards the very start of your activities. A professor who ended up inspecting, rather more closely than he would have liked, the inside of a mummy case. In the Louvre? In front of a delighted audience of fellow academics? No?’
‘No. Not one of ours. I’m sure if we’d been asked . . . he couldn’t have resisted.’
Joe was tiring of her games. ‘Bonnefoye, Alice here confessed to me while we were alone in the back of the taxi that she went to the theatre that night to save the life of Sir George who was – as we suspected – the real target.’ He filled in the details, which came as no surprise to the Frenchman.
‘I’m sure Sir George will be most relieved to hear that he survived!’ He grinned. ‘And doubtless pleased to hear that Miss Alice did what she could to divert the knife from his throat on to a more deserving one. Can’t wait to tell him! But, Joe, there is one detail in this nasty piece of entrapment that puzzles me. The tickets and the note that drew him in – I’d like to hear her account for that.’
‘You’d shudder if you knew how much they cost, those tickets! But Somerton was determined to have his fun – you might almost say, desperate – and offered to pay well over the odds for a good performance.’
‘And the note? The note that lured George to the theatre? How did you know about his relationship with his cousin at the Embassy? Did he speak of it in Simla?’
A trap.
She looked puzzled. ‘Why no. I believe I must have left India before ever his cousin took up a post here . . . Not certain. He never mentioned a cousin at any rate.’
Then she looked at him and smiled. And Joe felt the furry feet of the spider easing their way up his spine. Selecting a soft place for her fangs.
‘My boss, as you call him, wrote the note himself.’
‘Taking a reasonable shot at the handwriting, it would appear?’
‘Why would it not be an entirely reasonable shot? Not necessary to fake one’s own handwriting, Commander!’
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Before I say another word, Commander . . . Inspector . . . I want your reassurance that I may walk free from here when I’ve told you what you want to know. I came here as a witness and will leave as a witness. I’ll sign any statement you care to draw up but I must go free. I will give you an address at which I may be reached. If you require me to attend a magistrate’s hearing or a trial I will, of course, do that. So long as the man I denounce is in custody.’
‘And if we don’t agree to that?’
‘Then, one morning, you’ll find me dead in my cell in the women’s prison. His reach is a long one. And the killings will go on. Is that the proof you will be looking for?’
‘Up to you, Bonnefoye. I don’t trust her.’
He could see his young colleague had been fired by the chance of landing a male suspect. A foreigner, a well-to-do foreigner. Fourier would not have hesitated. Was