The Case of the Dead Diplomat (21 page)

“If it comes to that,” interrupted Verneuil, “what motive could Pinet have had for killing that young Englishman? Do you think it possible that it was the woman herself who used the dagger?”

“What motive could she have had? Then there's another mystery to clear up. Where did she get the money for buying that streamline car? It cost twenty-six thousand francs if it cost a
sou
.”

“We shall have to keep an eye on that lady,” said Verneuil grimly. “We must know about that camera and about that car. I shall pay another visit to le Pecq, and if I find it necessary, search the house from roof to basement.”

“And I must leave you when we reach the Concorde. I have to visit my friend, who is becoming weary of his part as a Canadian millionaire.”

M. Q
UESNAY
, the newly appointed Minister of Education, was the son of a lawyer in Marseilles, a little black-bearded man with a paunch, who had tried the law, and finding himself wanting in the qualities for success in that profession, had fallen back upon politics for a livelihood. It had taken him some time to decide which of the many political parties would suit him best, and which constituency he should stand for. Having no political convictions of his own he was inclined to join the Socialists, until he remembered that the Socialist deputy for Toulouse had once played him a scurvy trick during one of his appearances at the Bar, during a case in which they had both been briefed. Besides, the Socialists were cutting a sorry figure at the moment; whereas the Radicals were actually in power and seemed likely to remain so. He became a freemason.

In reality it mattered little what label he bore if he could persuade the electors that he was the kind of man who would serve their private interests. As to the constituency, what better than his mother's little town, where his grandfather still carried on his business as a cooper of wine-casks and was as highly respected as his reputed wealth deserved? He knew just enough about lobbying in the Chamber to lay plans for serving his electors. There was a rather ruinous bridge over a rivulet near the town which would cost them money to repair. Why should not the road be classed as a military road, and the charge for repairing it fall upon the military budget? Then the money that would have had to be spent upon the bridge could be diverted to the building of a cinema and dance hall which would add to the amenities of the town. He had burned the midnight oil in composing five speeches and committing them to memory. With very slight modification they would serve him on all occasions—electoral, presidential, patriotic. These he delivered before a mirror with the gestures appropriate to them, with his right leg slightly advanced, his chest thrown out, his eyes ready to roll in ecstasy when delivering what he imagined to be soul-stirring passages which hostile critics might have described as empty platitudes. For Jules Quesnay was no genius, though he had the keen sense of self-interest which is a major part of the equipment of professional politicians.

So Jules Quesnay was duly elected and went to live in a tiny flat in Paris, equipped with a telephone and little else that conduced to modern comfort. He was a full-blown member of the Radical Socialist majority. He could be counted upon by his parliamentary chiefs to back them up both in the Chamber and the Lobby on every occasion. He had breathed deeply the demoralizing atmosphere of that House, where, if one may believe the man in the street, the good of the country was the last consideration of most of its members; where the last quality expected from its members was disinterested concern for the public weal; where the first was personal profit and advancement at the cost of the public. The electors in Jules Quesnay's constituency were alleged to be as little concerned with the good of the State as their deputy himself; all that they asked from him was that he should contrive by foul means or fair to serve their interests at the expense of those of their neighbours; to intrigue for well-paid government posts for their sons and daughters and to relieve them from some of the burdens of taxation.

Jules Quesnay had not been doing at all badly. He had achieved the giddy height of an office in the Cabinet, albeit a modest one, but he had more than his share of the minor perquisites of a Government supporter—the membership of committees of inquiry, of sub-commissions of finances, of masonic reunions. He was not a hard worker, but to those who did not know him well he seemed indefatigable. Every evening he swaggered home with a swollen dispatch-case to get ready for the morrow's work. They did not know that it lay on the table untouched until the meeting next day, for Jules Quesnay had set before him as the first rule of life never to make an enemy, and as the second, never to be caught in doing anything that would lower his dignity as a rising politician. He did not know that the directors of his party policy spoke of him as
ce pauvre
Quesnay, which meant that he could be flattered into undertaking any disagreeable duty and be offered up as a sacrifice whenever things which he was connected with went wrong. In either case no protest from him was to be apprehended.

The story told about his adventure on February 6th had been perfectly true. Nature had been chary of her gifts to him at his birth; the gift of natural eloquence, of charm of manner—both very necessary to success in the calling which he had chosen—had been denied to him, and so had physical courage, but that form of human weakness, which no training can cure, may be concealed successfully in a civilized country except in moments of popular convulsion. It was hard that one of these should have occurred at the very moment when his efforts as a political
arriviste
promised to be crowned with success. There had been firing in the Place de la Concorde; the ex-soldiers had been trying to force the bridge towards the Chamber with the intention, so it was rumoured, of stringing up all the deputies they could find to the nearest lamp-posts. Small wonder that the Chamber had emptied itself miraculously, and that he was almost the only deputy left in it. On that fateful day the Chamber was no place for deputies; a thin blue line still held the bridge, but it was being forced backward, and then there would be nothing between these ravening wolves and the Chamber except an iron railing. An iron railing! What obstacle would this be to men who had stormed the German trenches! The Chamber was no place for him. One of the constables whose duty it was to be in attendance on the Chamber happened to pass through the Lobby. To him Jules Quesnay appealed and stammered out a request for information about the safest exit from the House. The policeman was dilatory of speech.

“Well, monsieur, some have taken the Metro; others have walked into the Boulevard St. Germain because they happen to live on this side of the Seine, but in your place I should take one of the auto-buses which are still running towards the Louvre. No one will molest an auto-bus.”

Quesnay thanked him with tears in his eyes, and bolted out of the House along the Quai d'Orsay. The policeman had not deceived him; omnibuses were still running over the bridge in both directions, their engines drowning the noise of pistols and machine-guns less than a quarter of a mile away. The deputy had taken no account of the direction in which the motor-buses were running. He boarded the first that he saw, and it was not until after they had crossed the bridge that he realized that it had turned along the Quai in the direction of the rioting. Well, there was nothing to distinguish him from any other occupant of the vehicle; he wore no uniform or badge; he was naturally an inconspicuous figure at whom no one would look twice; he would risk it. But the sound of those machine-guns rattling on the bridge would, he knew, remain with him all his life.

Who had been the first to recognize him as a deputy will never be known. It must have been some brute who took an unhealthy interest in deputies and was suddenly seized by a vision of how comely Jules Quesnay would look, spinning round at the end of his rope with his tongue protruding from his bearded lips, who first began pointing when the auto-bus was held up at the bottom of the rue Royale. And when once a finger had been so pointed things began to happen. Fierce-looking ex-soldiers, infuriated by the carnage on the bridge, leapt on to the footboard. The conductor made a brave attempt to protect his passengers; women screamed. While the conductor was struggling with the invaders, Quesnay spied an avenue of escape. He could slip past the conductor, vault over the railing at the back, and make a bolt across the street to the Café Moreau. He did his leap unnoticed, and then members of the wolf-pack who were coming up caught sight of him and ran baying at his heels. The café had been converted into an impromptu field hospital; stretchers carrying wounded men were streaming into it; their presence must deter his pursuers. He darted in; wound his way between the stretchers into the lavatory and locked himself in. He could hear the shouts of the men who were searching for him; if they broke the lock and dragged him out he knew that he would be speechless from fear; none of the five set speeches which he had learned by heart would apply to this emergency. It would be the lamp-post for him, and in his end, dangling from the centre post facing the Faubourg St. Honoré, he would be a more conspicuous figure than he had ever been during his lifetime.

How long he stood behind that locked door he never knew. Hours seemed to have passed as he listened to the distant firing and the shouting in the streets, but his pursuers seemed to have melted away from the door, perhaps in pursuit of other victims. At any rate it was long before he dared withdraw the bolt and venture through the lines of stretchers into the street, where he hoped to be mistaken for one of the doctors.

Many things happen in Paris that pass unnoticed. Why should this innocuous adventure of his be dragged into the light by an Englishman who happened to have been an eye-witness? There was but one method of restoring his reputation for personal courage, and this was the chivalric method of challenging his detractor to a duel. He had never yet fought a duel, but his friend, M. Bernardeau, assured him that a lesson or two in a fencing school would fit him to pass through the ordeal with credit, and that as to personal risk of injury, the terms of the challenge could be so worded that at the first scratch which drew blood, the umpire would declare that honour was satisfied and the duel would be called off. So the challenge had been sent. Who could have foreseen that this Englishman would have refused to treat such a formal ceremony seriously, and should talk derisively of fighting him, Jules Quesnay, with his fists? Well, he had done what honour required of him and that was the end of a distasteful business as far as he was concerned.

This seemed destined to be an ill-fated year for him. Within the last few days his friend Bernardeau had stopped him in the Lobby of the Chamber and had said jocularly, “What have you been up to, my friend? There's a
flic
on your track.”

“What do you mean?”

“He said he belonged to the ninth
arrondissement
and had been to the Zoological Gardens at Vincennes; and something about some photographs you've been taking.”

“Photographs?” As much as could be seen of Quesnay's face seemed to turn livid; his friend noticed it.

“There's nothing to be alarmed about, I suppose. Probably he'll come down to see you again, and then you can get him to explain himself.”

“If he comes again, I shall decline to see him. By what right does a
flic
enter the Chamber to question a Minister? How are we to discharge our duties according to our oaths if every
flic
in Paris is free to come in and submit us to an interrogatory? It is scandalous.”

“Calm yourself, my friend; this
flic
may be pursuing some miscreant, and every citizen ought to assist him if he can. Besides, didn't I see in the papers that you were taking a pack of children to the Gardens and photographing them with a number of strange beasts? There was a Press photographer there who photographed you holding up a little one to bestow a cake upon a camel. It was a moving picture and the tears ran down my cheeks when I saw it.”

But Quesnay did not recover his composure. He was still protesting under his breath when his friend left him.

And then a day later another deputy stopped him in the Lobby. “You'll soon be in the limelight, my dear fellow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only that a
flic
of my acquaintance—his name is Bigot—seems to be very much interested in your doings.”

“Pshaw! About my taking photographs at the Zoological Gardens.”

“He said nothing about photographs. He asked me about that duel of yours with that Englishman who was found dead in his flat.”

“That is very ancient history.”

“Yes, but he asked me a good deal about your movements during the last few weeks, and why you were interesting yourself in teaching zoology to children.”

The deputy was surprised to notice that this last remark had a startling effect upon the composure of Quesnay, who swallowed once or twice before he replied, “That
flic
will have to be brought to order by his superiors. I don't know what he means.”

“Hadn't you better see the man and have done with it?”

“Certainly not. It would only encourage him to come and annoy other deputies. These
flics
are only promoted constables and we must keep them in their places.”

And then came the day when Quesnay found for the first time that he was being followed by a policeman in plain clothes. He was skirting the Place de la Concorde on the way home when he first became aware of it. Looking round for a taxi he had seen the man stop, and when he resumed his walk the policeman, as he took him to be, did the same. Without looking round he opened his watch-case and used the inside of the flap as a mirror. Yes, there was no doubt of it, for when he stopped the man did the same, just as he had done farther back. He was obviously a detective, a well-built man of between thirty and forty, clean-shaven and of a fresh complexion—a Norman or a Breton he took him to be. Quesnay resumed his walk, debating in his mind whether he should shake the man off or turn and ask him what he wanted. It required some courage, but anything was better than this continual sense of being under suspicion. He walked along the pavement beside the Tuileries Gardens for a good two hundred yards before bringing his courage to the sticking-point. The pavement was almost deserted when his mind was made up; he turned and began to walk firmly back to his tormentor. He lifted his hat.