Folly Du Jour - Barbara Cleverly [94]
‘I’m thinking this must have been a particularly forceful delivery boy,’ said Joe. ‘Too much to hope there’s a card with them, I suppose?’
Bonnefoye checked and came up with nothing more than a shrug.
‘Well, gentlemen, are we ready to face the crowd?’ asked Joe.
Information, explanation and requests for back-up followed in an intensive quarter of an hour. Derval hurried away to carry out Bonnefoye’s instructions.
‘I hope you don’t mind but, in the circumstances, with the performance about to start, we’ve kept all this quiet,’ said the stage manager, assuming authority. ‘Josephine turned up five minutes ago, strolling down the corridor, munching on a ham sandwich, cool as you please. God! I nearly fainted! We guessed what had happened and when Derval could get his voice back he told her there’d been an accident in her room, a spillage . . . Had to get the cleaners in . . . When we could reassure her that her animals were all safe she agreed to borrow a costume, use the general dressing room and go on as normal. She doesn’t make a fuss . . . used to bunking up . . . gets on well with the girls. Goodness only knows what I’m going to tell her when she comes off! She was very fond of Francine, you know. We all were.’
Joe launched into an angry outburst. ‘Then you should take better care of your staff, monsieur! Where is your security in all this? A murderer walks in from the street and kills what he assumes to be the star? What next? One killing on the premises, I will call chance, two, a coincidence. But three? That’s known as enemy action! If you call us back here for a further crime I shall send Commissaire Fourier to arrest you! Good day, monsieur.’
Joe and Bonnefoye each felt his arm taken in a firm grasp and they heard Simenon’s voice in their ears growling: ‘The bar’s open! Come on, lads – we all need a brandy. This way!’
‘It’s not your fault. I’m talking to both of you! I haven’t got the whole picture by any means, but I see enough to say: I can see you’re both knocked sideways by that girl’s death – more than professional concern calls for perhaps? I don’t know what more you could have done or shouldn’t have done and why you should hold yourselves responsible, but it wasn’t your hands around her throat. Hang on to that! All you can do now is find those hands.’
‘And break every last bone in each one,’ muttered Bonnefoye viciously. ‘Slowly and one at a time. Then stamp on both of them.’ Catching sight of Joe’s wondering look, he added, ‘Excuse me. My uncle was in the Foreign Legion.’
They had found a quiet corner behind a screen of potted palms and were sitting, heads together, sipping generous measures of cognac, half an hour before the doors opened to admit the crowds.
‘It seems that, unwilling as we were to believe it, what we’ve got is a double – at least – murder, carried out, gangland-style, to punish informers and send out a warning,’ said Joe. ‘Alfred and Francine.’
‘You said you knew about Alfred?’ Bonnefoye asked the newsman.
‘Her brother? Rumours only. Nothing for certain. Feel like telling me?’
Bonnefoye obliged.
‘. . . So it would seem to me that these clever dicks not only punish but signal ahead the identity of their next victim,’ Joe summarized heavily.
‘See what you mean,’ said Simenon. ‘All that stitching done on Alfred was a very personal warning to his sister.’
‘She perceived it as such. Yes.’
‘And her own death is meant to carry with it a threat to the next name on their list?’
‘Oh, good God! Those English banknotes, Joe!’ said Bonnefoye. ‘It was more than a cocky way of saying, “Look, this was all your fault. She sold out to you, you English copper.”’
‘Yes. I’m afraid so. Though they got that wrong. The notes they provided from their own resources. She had nothing from me but a red rose, a cup of coffee . . . and a laugh.’ With an effort, he pulled himself together and battled on: ‘I think the next name on their list is Joseph Sandilands. As Simenon here has remarked, I’m not safe to stand close to and I take the comment seriously.