The Missing Corpse: A Brittany Mystery, page 20
part #4 of Commissaire Dupin Series
Dupin couldn’t detect any bitterness in her voice.
They had reached his Citroën. Madame Premel drove up to it without reducing her speed, braking hard only at the last moment. They stopped right next to the car.
“What were you doing late yesterday afternoon, Madame Premel, around four thirty or five?”
“The ‘Missing Man from the Belon,’ I see. I was at the farm—it’s high season for oysters now, in the run-up to Easter. It’s a madhouse. That’s why there’s a night shift in the shipping department today.”
“You probably weren’t alone at the farm, someone saw you? Your colleagues?”
Madame Premel had started up the engine again and was stepping lightly on the gas from time to time.
“There are six of us working at the moment. In several shifts. I was also upstairs in the office part of the time. I won’t have been seen there. But downstairs I was.”
“What do you think about the blight, Madame Premel? Will it reach the Belon?”
“We’ll see.”
For the first time Madame Premel seemed impatient; all of her body language signaled: Now get out, I need to go.
Dupin opened the door. “Thank you so much.”
“No problem.”
The commissaire was just out of the car when Madame Premel drove away. He managed to slam the door shut at the last second.
A moment later there was nothing but a sluggish cloud of dust hovering above the parking lot. The sun had set, the last of the light would fade soon.
Dupin rubbed his eyes.
* * *
He had seen them all now, spoken to them all.
Everyone who was involved with oysters in Port Belon. The two farmers and the trader—Kolenc, Tordeux, and Madame Premel. The lady from the Château was the only one he hadn’t seen, because she was on holiday in Morocco with her whole family. And he had also spoken to the only person in Brittany who it could be proved knew Mackenzie. And he had also made the acquaintance of the wonderfully insane Madame Bandol.
Dupin propped his hands on the hood of his car, and he stayed standing like this for a while, leaning forward, his forehead in deep furrows.
He was far from satisfied.
What continued to drive him crazy was that he didn’t have direct access to the people associated with Mackenzie and Smith. His Scottish colleagues were doing flawless work, but that didn’t alter the fact that Dupin was only investigating indirectly. What’s more, there was no one person amongst their Scottish colleagues who was in charge, constantly poking about, even on the off chance, someone who clung to leads independently, ran around, looked around, spoke to this person and that person, to acquaintances and friends. But that’s exactly what was needed.
Dupin looked at his watch. It had just crossed his mind to drop in on Madame Bandol in La Coquille after all. It would be interesting to hear what she said about the fire. Most importantly: he needed to return to the beginning of the case. To where and how everything had started. And that still meant Madame Bandol, or more specifically, her tricky, wonderful memory that might have new things in store at any moment. Then he would have the conversation with Tordeux—and finally he would drive straight to the Amiral. To Claire.
Dupin climbed into his car, started the engine, and stepped on the accelerator. No less forcefully than the druidess had done earlier.
In less than ten minutes, he was walking into La Coquille. It was full down to the last chair. It was incredibly cozy.
Madame Bandol had spotted him immediately and was waving as if she had been waiting for him, certain that he would be coming after all. Dupin greeted the lady behind the bar, who was keeping an eagle eye on the door. He slid along the counter and a moment later was standing in front of Madame Bandol. A sleepy Zizou lay at her feet.
Madame Bandol got straight to the point: “It’s all extremely odd. Now this mysterious fire too!” She looked him right in the eye. “Your excellent young policewoman has brought me up to speed, by which I mean: how things stood as of six o’clock today, when she canceled our dinner on your orders. I only know about the fire from the village, I haven’t heard anything from you. The smoke was drifting straight toward me.” A clear rebuke—and a clear demand.
Dupin told her about the developments that evening, what they knew about the fire (nothing at all), the salvaging and the car and the conversations (most of them). Madame Bandol listened attentively, her expression becoming increasingly concerned. Even though Dupin had made an effort to summarize everything in an optimistic way.
“But none of that makes sense.” Madame Bandol shook her head. “Everything that matters is missing. What did the Scotsmen want to do here? Why this sudden fire? What is the story behind all of this? We basically don’t know anything at all yet, the investigation is in a wretched state, Monsieur le Commissaire. We’re running out of time.” Her voice vacillated between concern, reproach, and something resembling encouragement and solidarity. “The probability that a crime will be solved decreases with every hour and every day that elapses from the time the crime is committed. Isn’t that right? Hercule Poirot says that!”
Madame Bandol looked out the window at the Belon. Staring at something. On one of the fishing boats. Dupin couldn’t tell what.
“Poirot, now he is a great investigator. You could learn from him!”
Dupin smiled. He wasn’t offended. He himself deeply admired Poirot.
“Who might have been angry at Tordeux, Madame Bandol?”
“It doesn’t have to have been overt anger. The guy isn’t very popular here anyway—my friend Baptiste Kolenc is sick of that show-off. You should ask him. I don’t really know Tordeux. And”—her voice turned cautionary again—“and anyway, who exactly is telling you that Tordeux is not the murderer himself and just trying to divert attention? It would be a smart move.”
“Why is your friend Baptiste Kolenc ‘sick’ of this Tordeux?”
“He says he’s violating the spirit of ostréiculture.”
“Anything more tangible than that?”
“I don’t know of anything. Ask him!”
“And Tordeux and his ex-wife?”
“Ha! She has long since forgotten him! A strong woman. She lives her life and doesn’t care what people say.”
Jacqueline came to the table with Madame Bandol’s order, Saint-Jacques à la Bretonne. Dupin’s mouth was watering. That had probably been his first ever contact with Brittany when he was a child: large pieces of fresh scallop with cream and fine bread crumbs on a large half shell. He realized he was slightly dizzy. He hadn’t eaten anything since the baguette in the Monts d’Arrée. And that felt like days ago.
“I’m eating a little late this evening. This is the earliest I could manage. Have something to eat with me, don’t be rude.”
“I have to disappoint you, I’m afraid. I have another appointment later.”
Surprisingly, Madame Bandol acted satisfied with this vague information, merely raising her eyebrows.
“If only I could remember more details about the car from the parking lot.” She changed subjects as quickly as Dupin did. “That would help us so much,” she said, and closed her eyes for a moment, and then shook her head theatrically. “I don’t think more details are going to come to me. Too bad.” She said it as if this were a scientific fact. “But since you just mentioned it, the car that you fished out of the water—I did see that.”
Dupin started in astonishment.
“Sorry?”
“It came back to me as you were talking about it.” She smiled. “Silver. A Citroën. Medium-sized. The car that you dragged out of the sea.”
“You now recall that a silver Citroën was parked in the parking lot when you saw the dead body?” Dupin was dumbfounded. “You remember exactly? You’re certain?”
“Yes! It was parked right at the end of the parking lot.”
Dupin stared at Madame Bandol. A thought had crossed his mind as she was speaking, a crazy thought. But then again it was not that crazy. What if Madame Bandol could in fact remember quite a bit more than she was letting on? And was only coming out with what she knew bit by bit? What if it was a kind of game? For fun? This way she would be constantly included in the progress of the investigations.
“From the Glénan! Unbeatable!” Madame Bandol was eating a piece of scallop with relish. Then she went on. “This much is clear: Mackenzie very likely met somebody from Port Belon. Someone who is now denying it. One person or several. It seems highly unlikely that the Scotsman suggested the meeting place if he had never been in the area before. Only the locals know that out-of-the-way parking lot. Even someone from Riec would have suggested a different place—one of the dark little woods at the end of the river, or maybe where you’ve just come from. No—it’s someone from Port Belon.”
As haphazardly as Madame Bandol’s mind sometimes worked, she was going about this very methodically now. “Besides, so few cars are on the roads here outside of the season that you’d be taking a risk just by driving too far and being spotted on the way.”
She let her words fade away and then added mysteriously, “Or that man from Cancale was here. As an oyster farmer, he would know Port Belon. Maybe he even has an accomplice.”
She leaned back, took a sip of champagne, and her brow furrowed.
“In any case—we must get our feet on solid ground, Commissaire!”
Something else occurred to Dupin that he had wanted to ask at lunchtime.
“Why did you not take your usual route on your walk yesterday? Down by the river? Why did you leave the Belon before the cliffs and come up to the little road?”
She answered without the slightest surprise: “If it’s raining as hard as it did yesterday, the path by the water gets muddy, you can easily slip. And that’s when I prefer the other route. But I always walk as far as the headland, no weather stops me from doing that!”
It sounded logical.
“I need to go, Madame Bandol. Monsieur Tordeux is due to arrive any moment.”
“Don’t expect too much from that conversation, Commissaire.”
“See you tomorrow. And you know to call me as soon as anything else occurs to you, no matter how insignificant it seems to you. No matter when.”
“You can count on it.”
Dupin stood up.
He was already at the bar when he turned around again and walked back to Madame Bandol.
She didn’t look at all taken aback.
“Do you have,” Dupin whispered conspiratorially and leaned over the table to her, “a specific hunch, Madame Bandol?” He left a brief pause. “Do you know who it was?”
For a split second there was a kind of confusion on her face, but then she burst out laughing.
“Well, you’re the commissaire!”
“You don’t have a particular hunch?”
“No, Monsieur le Commissaire.”
“My inspectors also let me know if they have a suspicion. Everything stays within the team.”
Madame Bandol gave Dupin a kind look. “I’ll keep thinking. I promise.”
“Great.”
Dupin left the restaurant a moment later.
* * *
It was dark now. Very dark. The sky must have grown overcast, although there were no clouds visible; no crystalline glimmer from the sky anymore, no stars, no moon. Just an all-enveloping blackness.
It had become cooler too. The wind coming in off the sea had picked up again, several powerful squalls sweeping along the Belon. They blew fiercely through the village, making eerie sounds—near and far, high-pitched and low-pitched rattling, roaring, clattering, tapping, and rumbling. Neither the centuries-old oak trees nor the occasional houses could ward off the wind.
Dupin walked toward the quay and pulled his mobile out of his trouser pocket.
“Hello—hello, boss!”
Riwal came running up to him, frantic.
“Tordeux arrived five minutes ago. And we’ve got something!” He was standing right in front of Dupin now and left a dramatic pause. “Tordeux has a previous conviction! He was given a suspended sentence of three months. He pulled a nasty scam. He treated bigger, ordinary creuses from Holland with a green pigment and sold them as fines de claire and spéciales de claire.”
This was a significant piece of news.
“When? Where?”
Riwal hesitated. “Nineteen years ago.”
“Nineteen years ago? This happened nineteen years ago?!”
That was a hell of a long time ago.
“He still lived in Cancale at the time. He owned a little oyster farm there. With a bogus address in Marennes d’Oléron where fines and spéciales come from. He lived in Cancale, you see!”
“And?” Dupin didn’t understand.
“Cueff! Nicolas Cueff. He lives in Cancale too.”
“If I understand correctly, there are dozens of oyster traders in Cancale.”
The oyster industry in Cancale was many times the size of the one on the Belon.
“So do we know of any link between Cueff and Tordeux?”
“Not yet, boss.”
“And afterward—after these criminal activities of Tordeux’s nineteen years ago—there was never another incident? Tordeux didn’t do anything else wrong after that?”
“No. Not according to the police records,” Riwal answered rather quietly. It was a little like with Smith’s criminal past more than forty years before.
“When did Tordeux come to Port Belon?”
“Seventeen years ago. Two years after the incident.”
“So he wanted to start over again here.”
“Or he was planning to carry it off more skillfully this time.” Riwal’s words echoed darkly.
“How exactly did he go about his scam?” Dupin wanted to understand the principle behind it; maybe it could have been applied again.
“Fines de claire and spéciales de claire are excellent refined creuses from the Île de Oléron and the mainland across from it. They’re reared in old salt ponds, they—”
“Salt ponds?”
Dupin was reminded of the case in the Guérande salt marshes the year before. He had already had his fill of criminal activities in salt ponds.
“Yes. With their special clay floors and algae, they produce the perfect nutrition for oysters. The unique thing there is an alga containing copper that has a green pigment that dyes the oysters. Which became their trademark.”
“And they’re particularly expensive?”
“Oh yes. The fines are allowed to live with a maximum of twenty other oysters per square meter during their final refinement. The spéciales can live with just ten—and that’s for a minimum of two months! They’re systematically fattened to increase the proportion of meat. Gillardeau has every single one of his oysters engraved with a laser!”
“Tordeux dyed cheap oysters green and sold them as fancy oysters?”
“Exactly.”
He’d have a nice little topic of conversation if he met Tordeux soon.
“Where is he now?”
“In the little building by the oyster beds. You know the one.”
Riwal and Dupin walked the remaining meters to the quay. From there they could get to the parks and Tordeux’s little building.
“Did he go straight there?”
“He took a quick look at the annex. I was there. The fire has been put out, the forensic investigators have set to work very carefully.”
“Has Tordeux said anything yet?”
“No.”
“Good.”
The news was highly significant. There was someone in Port Belon who had skeletons in his closet and had already attracted attention in the oyster world with his criminal intent. And he, of all people, he was the person who had been near the scene of the crime yesterday—even if the story about the gîte was true. And he was the person whose house had been on fire today. Perhaps Tordeux had really just “refined” his criminal behavior on the Belon.
But it could mean nothing. Dupin knew people who had truly changed. And others for whom that wasn’t the case.
“Riwal!”
“Boss?” The inspector looked attentively at him.
“From now on, we’re going to go about things differently,” Dupin said emphatically. “Completely differently. We are going to grill people in person. It can’t go on like this.”
“All right, boss.” Riwal was used to very determined announcements from the commissaire, but this one was extremely vague.
“You are going to take the first flight to Scotland tomorrow. And I’ll drive to see Cueff, the man in Cancale, at the crack of dawn. Kadeg and Melen will hold down the fort in Port Belon. And Nolwenn will act as the central figure from the office.”
“Scotland? Really? You mean I’m flying to Scotland by myself?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“As early as possible. Call Nolwenn, she’ll organize everything … including the formalities. And tell her that I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
“Yes, okay. I’ll fly to Scotland, boss. Just recently in the seminar”—there was enthusiasm in his voice now—“we talked about the famous alliance of Scottish and Breton soldiers in one of the numerous Anglo-French wars in the eighteenth century. On the battlefield, in the midst of a brutal attack by the British, Scottish soldiers recognized the Celtic language and immediately put down their weapons. Then they marched off with the Bretons. ‘Les Frères d’Outre-Manche,’” Riwal said, almost affectionately.
“Riwal! This is not the time for stories. I’m going to speak to Tordeux now.” Dupin turned to go. “Then I’ll be in touch again.”
“All right, boss.”
The commissaire was pleased. This was the right decision. Long overdue. Riwal knew Dupin’s way of investigating better than anyone else; he intuitively knew what would be important to Dupin. Accompanied by some precise instructions, it would almost be as if Dupin himself were in Scotland. He had considered that too: flying there himself. But who knew what else would happen here?
