Folly Du Jour - Barbara Cleverly [65]
Moulin’s expression was grim. ‘There are many more than four possibilities. I didn’t want to over-face you with detail but, if you can give me a week, I’m sure I can make out an expanded list for you. And there might be as many as twenty cases on it. Some less uncertain than others. And that’s just Paris. What do we know of other towns? But I agree with your unstated thought – it’s not just the financial returns, is it? There’s an underlying sense of . . . enjoyment?’
‘A sadistic indulgence?’ Joe said. ‘And with an added element of self-forgiveness – a twisted feeling of justification for the crimes. Someone else has paid for this. Someone else supplied the ingenious requirements of the death – the means, the scenario. So – someone else is to blame. The brain which devised the murders, the executive producer if you like, holds himself no more to blame than the dagger that came bloodstained from the heart of the victim. The guilt can be as easily washed away as the blood. Am I being fanciful?’
‘I’ve no training in psychology!’ said Moulin. ‘So you must put your theory to others. But I have to say I’ve travelled that same path, Sandilands.’
‘And the latest victim, congealing in one of your drawers? I wonder who dialled up his death?’ Suddenly decisive, Joe said: ‘I’m going to find out who’s behind the mask, Moulin. Whose hand held the Afghani dagger and whose voice asked for it to be done. I’m going to have ’em both. I can’t go back four years in a foreign country, crusading for belated justice, but I can get to the bottom of this one that’s landed in my lap. And I’ll only get close to the truth by digging up the nastier bits of Somerton’s past. Not much chance the widow will confide but I know a man who I can persuade to cough up some details.’
Sensing that his guest was ready to leave and on the point of exhaustion, Moulin got to his feet. ‘Wait here, Sandilands, while I nip out and whistle up a taxi for you. Oh, and thinking of the rogue Somerton . . .’ He tapped the cover of the book Joe was still clutching. ‘Le mort qui tue. Read the title again. That’s le mort, not la mort. Dead man – not Death itself. The corpse that kills. Be warned! Have a care for your friend. We don’t want an innocent man, blundering in on a sorry episode, to pay for his well-meaning interference on the guillotine. I suspect this man, Somerton, has caused enough havoc in his life, I don’t want to think that, from the depths of the morgue, he has the power to kill again.’
Chapter Fourteen
He chose a dark side street behind the place de la Contrescarpe to pay off his taxi. Feeling mildly foolish but in no way allowing this to make him lower his guard, he waited in a doorway until he was sure he hadn’t been followed. When he was fully confident, Joe wandered into the small square lined with cafés and restaurants. The aperitif hour was swinging to a close and the tables were rapidly filling with diners. He browsed the menus displayed on boards outside or scrawled on the windows and made his choice. The Café des Arts, being the biggest and noisiest, had claimed his attention and he went inside to the bar, ordered a Pernod and paid for a telephone connection.
He’d committed Bonnefoye’s number to memory and destroyed the card and, in his state of fatigue, hoped he’d got it right.
The same lively female answered his tentative: ‘Umm . . . allô?’
‘There you are! Just in time for supper. You know how to get here? Good. See you in two minutes! Bye!’
No names, no details, he noticed. And none asked for. Whoever she was, Bonnefoye’s female was well trained. And hospitable.
Joe was conscious of the unusual honour the Inspector was doing him and Sir George by extending this invitation to take shelter in his own home. The French rarely asked friends to dinner at their flat or house. Friendships were pursued in the café or restaurant or at shooting weekends in the country. If the Englishman’s home was his castle, the Frenchman