Bengal Fire, page 15
“What will you drink, monsieur?”
“Brandy,” said Prike.
“How? Sec or with water?”
Prike glanced at the bottle Jacques Vrai placed on the zinc-topped bar. There were only three stars on the label. “With soda,” said Prike.
Vrai poured himself a Picon citron.
“Where is your—Mademoiselle Antoinette?” asked Prike.
“She is not far. Perhaps in the kitchen—”
“Or in Room 22?”
Jacques Vrai shrugged. “Shall I call her?”
“Not yet,” said Prike. He put down his brandy peg and slipped his hands into his coat pockets. One hand touched the corrugated metal of his revolver butt. The other crackled the cablegram from the prefect of police at Nouméa. “Tell me, Mr. Vrai. At what time did you return to Chandernagore from Calcutta yesterday?”
Jacques Vrai took a long, thoughtful draught of his dark brown drink. “Quite late,” he said. “We took the boat from Chandpal Ghat at six o’clock. I wished to return sooner, but my poor Antoinette, she was altogether prostrate by the tragedy of the morning. She rested in her room to compose herself—”
“In the Grand Hotel?”
“Yes.”
“You know that Mr. Kurt Julius also had a room at the Grand?”
“Comment? Ah, yes, Julius. The animal merchant. I know him.”
“Did you see him before you left the hotel yesterday?”
“See him? Yes. In the bar. He was with two men. Two Americans. An American I do not know, and the Japanese American.”
“Henry Kobayashi?”
“Yes. He did not stay long.”
“Did you drink with them, Mr. Vrai?”
“No. That is, just one glass. A small one. A chota walla. I would not say drinking with them.”
“What were they drinking?”
“I do not know. Ah, yes, I remember. Gin with bitters.” Jacques Vrai’s fingers were nervously worrying the inflamed wings of his nostrils.
“What do you suppose killed Kurt Julius?” Prike s level gaze caused Vrai to close his eyes, as though to keep the inspector from seeing into his inmost thoughts. When he opened them again they were wide and staring.
“Killed? Julius?” Vrai exclaimed. “Nom de Dieu! I did not know he was dead. I had not heard. How—?”
“Did you attend Harrison Hoyt’s bachelor dinner?” Prike pursued.
“No. It is not usual to invite the father of the bride—”
“But you went uninvited?”
“No, monsieur.”
“Just for a moment? To speak to Mr. Hoyt at the head of the stairs?”
“No, monsieur.”
Inspector Prike nodded. “You were seen. Several recognized you. A Mr. Lee Marvin, for instance.”
“Ah, no, monsieur. He is mistaken.” Jacques Vrai flung out both hands in a gesture of protest. Inspector Prike seized his right wrist, slowly turned it over.
“Where did you get this scar, Mr. Vrai?”
Vrai tugged frantically to release his arm. Prike held fast to his wrist.
“In—in Paris.”
“How?”
“A knife,” said Vrai. “A butcher knife. When I was a young man I worked for a butcher. An apprentice—”
Prike examined the scar closely, touched it with his finger. “How long ago was this?” he asked.
“Twenty-five, thirty years.”
“This hasn’t the appearance of an old wound,” the inspector mused. “I should judge that it dates back no more than four or five years. The flesh seems to have been furrowed by a bullet.”
“Ah, no, monsieur. You are mistaken. A knife.” Again Vrai tried, in vain, to free his wrist.
“Were you ever shot during a hold-up, Mr. Vrai?”
“Me? I’m an honest man, monsieur. I am not rich, but I am honest. I am engaged here in an honest little commerce—”
“Did you ever know a man named Jean Georges Jules Honoré Marie Vorais, who was shot in the wrist during the robbery of the paymaster of a chromium mine in New Caledonia four years ago, and who escaped—with a considerable sum of money?”
At last Jacques Vrai jerked his wrist from the grasp of Inspector Prike. He got unsteadily to his feet. His colorless lips unmasked the yellow ivory of his teeth.
“Nom de Dieu!” he shouted. “You call me, an honest man, a robber?”
“I call you nothing. I am asking you a question.”
“But I have never been in Nouvelle Caledonia!”
“Would you mind telling me, then, where you contracted that beautiful case of chronic chromium poisoning?”
“What case? What poison?” Jacques Vrai was trembling, either with the righteous indignation of the innocent, or the apprehension of the guilty about to be accused.
“With that ulcerated nose of yours and the skin that’s scaling off, you might just as well wear a sign around your neck,” said Inspector Prike.
“Ah, that. True, my nose has been bien malade since I was working for the Citroën automobile factory in Paris. I was—working with metals—plating—”
“With chromium, of course.”
“Yes.”
Inspector Prike shook his head. “Vrai,” he said, “you’ve never been in Paris in your life. You’ve never been in France. You were born in New Caledonia, where your father was exiled for murder—”
“Menteur! You lie!”
“—and while I have neither the time nor inclination at the moment to go into my theories on the comparative influence of heredity and environment, I don’t have to tell you that you, Jean Vorais, son of a murderer, are also suspected of murder.”
“Murder? Me, monsieur? Who?”
“Harrison Hoyt, of course. And Kurt Julius.”
Jacques Vrai recoiled as though he had been struck. He retreated several steps—toward a small door, Prike noticed—before he exclaimed, “But that is ridiculous! Why should I kill my poor Antoinette’s fiancé?”
“Because,” said Prike thrusting his hands into his pockets, as he moved farther after the retreating Vrai, “you did not want Antoinette to marry Hoyt.”
“On the contrary, monsieur. Hoyt was a nice young man. Very serious, very intelligent, the ideal husband for any young girl.”
“But not for Antoinette. You hated Hoyt.”
“But, monsieur, my daughter’s future—”
“Your daughter!” The inspector’s jaw advanced an eighth of an inch. “Antoinette is no more your daughter than her name is Antoinette Vrai. She was Mathilde Jabot in Nouméa when you fell in love with her and robbed a paymaster so that you could run away together. You have always been jealous of her because she is so much younger than you. For years you have been brooding because she insists on posing as your daughter. When you were about to lose her definitely to Hoyt, it seems logical that your jealousy might have reached a point of madness, a point of committing—”
“No!” The crimson nostrils of Jacques Vrai quivered like a rabbit’s, the only movement in his cadaverous face. His hands twitched at his sides.
“—murder,” continued Prike, “for the sake of keeping your Antoinette.”
“You are speaking of me, my friends?”
The shrill, rasping sound of a woman’s voice behind him caused Prike to turn. In the doorway from the lobby stood Antoinette Vrai, her dark eyes flashing hate, her blue-black hair radiating from her head like the corona of an eclipse, her fists punched deep into the vivid green hips of her silken dress.
Chapter Twenty-One
TESTING A THEORY
“Bonjour, Mathilde,” said Prike.
Antoinette’s fists sank deeper into her ample hips. Her sharp elbows jerked backward until the waist of her diaphanous green dress outlined tautly the challenging contours of her pointed breasts. “My name,” she said, “is Antoinette. To you it is Mademoiselle Vrai.”
Inspector Prike bowed with apparent submission. “Quite right,” he said. “I am not particularly interested in Mathilde Jabot. What happened in New Caledonia concerns only the French authorities. I am rather preoccupied at the moment with things that happened in Calcutta—and at Jharnpur.”
“Jharnpur?” Antoinette, her elbows still defiant, advanced several steps into the bar-room. The two Pathan giants sauntered in behind her, swinging their long lathis absent-mindedly.
“Jharnpur,” Prike repeated. “I will save you the embarrassment of being caught in a lie by informing you that in consulting the register just now I happened to notice that Sree Rangam Bahadur was a guest at your hotel last month. It is no secret that this is the Maharajah of Jharnpur’s family name which he uses when he wishes to remain more or less incognito.”
Antoinette’s chin went up two inches. “It is no secret either,” she declared, “that His Highness is fond of French cooking. He had heard of my poulet marengo.”
“Was it to discuss cooking,” asked Prike, “that you visited the Maharajah at his palace in Jharnpur one night a week later?”
“Comment?”
“You were seen,” said Prike, “by the same person who informs me that you returned to Jharnpur again five nights later—doubtless to discuss gastronomy.”
Antoinette glowered at Prike down the thin ridge of her nose. Then she burst into shrill laughter. “After all, why not?” she laughed. “I wear skirts, no? That is all one needs to be invited by the Maharajah of Jharnpur.”
“Isn’t it true,” Prike demanded, “that on the occasion of your last visit Jacques Vrai popped up rather unexpectedly and raised a considerable rumpus because you were—well, in no condition to make a public appearance?”
Antoinette Vrai looked narrowly at Prike as though she was uncertain if he was guessing or speaking from positive knowledge. Jacques Vrai, too, was staring at Prike. He stopped in the process of pouring himself a drink and glanced at Antoinette—who again burst out laughing.
“But Jacques is used to that,” she gasped when she had caught her breath. “Why should he make a—a rumpus?”
Jacques Vrai set down his bottle with a thump.
“Because,” said Prike, his tone as sharp as a rapier thrust, “the two of you were working the badger game on the Maharajah.”
“Badger game. What is that?”
“Extortion. You forced His Highness to give you some very valuable jewels as a price for not causing scandal.”
“Jewels?” Antoinette lighted a cigarette, drew the smoke deep into her lungs and punctuated her words with little puffs of gray vapor. “You mean that funny necklace? The stones were very badly mounted—very crude—”
“Then you did get it?”
“Get it? His Highness gave it to me—in a moment of affection. He is a dear and very nice but the necklace was really not very pretty.”
“I’m sure this moment of affection corresponded very closely with the moment of Jacques Vrai’s untimely arrival upon a compromising scene,” Prike said.
“But no. His Highness gave the necklace to me, not to Jacques. It was a gift to me.”
“I wonder if you would show me the gift?”
Antoinette advanced her under lip. Smoke curled out to rise along her cheeks. “I no longer have it. His Highness had a change of heart. I do not know why he regretted his generosity—I was very nice to him—but he took it back.”
“His Highness took it back—personally?”
“Well, no. I was not going to give it back at first. To me a gift is a gift. But poor Mr. Hoyt said His Highness was very angry and would make trouble. I don’t know why—”
“Did you tell Hoyt about this?”
“Oh, no. His Highness told poor Mr. Hoyt. Mr. Hoyt came to give us the friendly warning. He said, ‘I will take the necklace back to the Maharajah, otherwise the Maharajah will make a process of law against you in the courts and you will both go in prison.’ Then Jacques said, ‘The Maharajah will not take us before the courts because he already has a mauvaise presse and must take care for his reputation with the English.’ And my poor Harry Hoyt said, ‘All right, do as you please. Only remember that a Maharajah can keep his name secret in the courts. Just recall the Maharajah who made a prosecution against the bookmaker’s wife in London but nobody knew him except as Mr. A.’ So I gave the necklace to poor Harry to give back to the Maharajah.”
Antoinette was telling her story with great animation of all her features, her hands, even her torso. Her expressive fingers made points of emphasis dangerously dose to Inspector Prike’s imperturbable nose.
“You knew, of course,” said Prike quietly, “that Harrison Hoyt, having applied American mass production methods to the business of blackmail, would try to wring an exorbitant sum from the Maharajah.”
“Oh, no, monsieur.” Antoinette’s dark eyes grew unconvincingly round with innocent amazement. “Why should I think that?”
“Perhaps you didn’t,” said Prike. “In which case you would have been considerably upset and chagrined to discover that Hoyt was double-crossing you by working his own extortion game on the Maharajah—”
“Cross me? Oh, no, monsieur—”
“—and you might very well have gone to Hoyt to demand your share in the chantage money!”
“Oh, no, monsieur.”
“Isn’t it a fact that on Thursday you discovered that Hoyt had not yet returned the necklace to the Maharajah, but was dickering for extortion money? Didn’t you send Jacques Vrai to Peliti’s restaurant on the night of Hoyt’s bachelor dinner to threaten him unless he either returned the necklace or gave you a substantial share of the blackmail?”
“Threaten my fiancé? Oh, monsieur.”
“Jacques Vrai would have been very glad to threaten Hoyt—from personal as well as financial reasons. And Jacques Vrai was seen talking to Hoyt.”
Jacques Vrai slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “You must not believe this Marvin!” he shouted. “He was maybe drunk. He did not see me. He made a mistake. It was someone else he saw. He—”
“I was under the impression,” Prike interrupted quietly, “that Mr. Marvin had known you long enough not to mistake your identity.”
Before Jacques Vrai could reply, Antoinette said, “Lee Marvin? Yes, he is an old, old friend.”
“Then you of course know where Mr. Marvin lives in Calcutta,” said Prike.
“He has never invited me to his apartment.”
“He has never invited Jacques Vrai, either,” said the detective, “yet I strongly suspect that he has been there— recently.”
“Never!” Jacques Vrai declared.
“There is a mango tree in the compound,” said Prike, “which gives convenient access to Mr. Marvin’s window.”
There was a pause. Jacques Vrai’s fingers closed nervously about the Amer Picon bottle.
“I detest mangoes,” said Antoinette. “They taste of turpentine.”
Inspector Prike reached across the table, snatched the bottle from the hands of Jacques Vrai.
“Thank you,” the inspector said, holding the bottle carefully by the neck, “for a perfect set of fingerprints. I found an ebony jewel case under Mr. Marvin’s mango tree yesterday which bore, in addition to the crest of the Maharajah of Jharnpur, some fingerprints which I imagine might very well match the ones on this bottle. I—”
With a deep-mouthed roar like the infuriated bellowing of a cornered animal, Jacques Vrai lunged across the table, grabbed at the bottle. Prike stepped back, whipped out his gun. The two Pathan giants closed in from the rear, clubs swinging.
Antoinette screamed imprecations in French and English. One Pathan arm crooked, flashed back and up. The club cleft the air. Prike sidestepped. The club fanned his ear, glanced off his shoulder.
Jacques Vrai kicked over the table. Glasses and bottles crashed to the floor. Prike’s gun spat flaming thunder. The cloudy mirror behind the bar shivered into a thousand jingling fragments.
Shrieking with rage and terror, Antoinette picked up bottles, hurled them wildly. Prike slipped in a puddle of spilled Amer Picon, went down. The Pathans pounced on him, their lathis working like flails.
A door slammed. Antoinette picked up a chair. Before she could swing it, Inspector Prike had wriggled agilely to his feet, had the two hillmen staring stupidly into the muzzle of his gun. “Bas!” he commanded, his voice unruffled, “Goli marta hai!”
The Pathans dropped their clubs. There was a moment of silence, broken only by the drip of brandy from a broken bottle on the bar. The fumes of alcohol blended with the acrid smell of burned powder. Prike looked calmly about the room.
Jacques Vrai was gone!
Antoinette threw back her head and gave vent to throaty peals of hearty, malicious glee. “And the bottle’s broken!” She laughed. “Your fingerprints—”
“There were no fingerprints on the ebony jewel case I picked up under Mr. Marvin’s mango tree,” said Prike, nonchalantly smoothing out the wrinkles of his alpaca coat with his free hand. “However, had I found any, I know now whose they would have been. Jacques Vrai has just made a silent confession of the theft of the nao ratna from Marvin’s flat. Please open that door, my dear Mathilde—or should I say Antoinette?”
“It is locked. It leads only to the wine cellar.”
“Then unlock it.”
“It can be bolted from the inside.”
“Unusual arrangement for a wine cellar,” mused Prike. “In that case we will break it down. Should— Ah, bonjour, Monsieur le Commissaire.”
Prike turned to greet the commissaire of police of Chandernagore, who at that moment appeared in the doorway, flanked by two sergeants.
“Monsieur l’Inspecteur!” The commissaire started forward when he recognized Prike. Then he stopped and flung his hands wide at the sight of the shambles the bar-room had become. “But there has been a riot!” he exclaimed. “Shall I send for more men? Have you been hurt? I heard a shot, and I came at once. What has happened?”
“Nothing has happened,” said Prike blandly. “Nothing of any importance. I was testing a theory, that is all. What can you tell me about the wine cellars of the Hotel Dupleix, Monsieur le Commissaire?”
“You wish—?” The commissaire frowned at the phlegmatic character of his British colleague who could think of wines in the midst of serious disorder. Then he smiled. “I understand, Monsieur l’Inspecteur,” he resumed. “You are joking. You have trapped a criminal in the cave. I will send for grenades, gas bombs, and mitrailleuses. It is dangerous to venture into a cellar after a desperate man without preparation. Afterward we can break down the door.”
