Death on the Marais

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Rocco arrived near Poudric’s house to find the expected posse of police vehicles and eager onlookers spread along the street. He negotiated the barriers and flipped his card to a uniform at the gate, and was nodded indoors. He found a tired-looking individual standing in the kitchen doorway, rubbing his eyes.

‘Rocco?’ The man stifled a yawn and put out a meaty hand. ‘Louis Bertrand. Sorry — I was up all last night chasing a bastard of an arsonist halfway round the city. Now this.’

Rocco shook his hand. ‘No problem. Did you get him?’

‘Yes. His dad’s a local councillor, would you believe? He had the cheek to deny it — and there was his little git of a son stinking of petrol and smoke right there in the living room.’ He shook his head at the thought. ‘I was tempted to flick a match near him: he’d have gone up like a Roman candle.’

‘What’s with the heat?’ said Rocco. The air was heavy and musty, as if the heating had been jacked up to its maximum temperature.

‘It was like this when we got here. We turned it down so we could work, but the place is well insulated.’ Bertrand bent his head towards the study. ‘We haven’t moved the body yet. Thought it best to let you take a peek first.’

Inside the study, two men were checking through the papers on the desk, having to work over the reclining form of Ishmael Poudric lying in his chair. His head was thrown back and his arms hung by his sides, as if he had simply fallen asleep, too tired to find a more comfortable position. His mouth was open, Rocco noted, but there was no shock or surprise on his features, no frozen expression of pain.

He moved round for a better look. A patch of blood no bigger than a small child’s hand showed on the front of Poudric’s jumper.

‘No sign of other wounds?’ he asked.

Bertrand shook his head. ‘None. He didn’t answer his door to the postman this morning. There were a couple of parcels for him and a signature was needed. When the postman called back later and pushed the door, it opened. Poudric was right here, where you see him. The postman called us immediately.’ He lifted his shoulders, suggesting a complete lack of ideas. ‘No bad history, no rows with neighbours who, between you and me, are too old and infirm for this kind of nonsense, anyway — and no sign of a robbery.’ He puffed his cheeks in frustration. ‘If there’s anything you can tell me, I’d be glad of the help. Our local medic reckons he’s been dead over ten hours, but it’s not easy to be certain because of the heating. I think the killer knew what he was doing.’

Rocco understood. Concealing or blurring the time of death usually had one purpose only: to allow the killer to prepare a convincing alibi for being somewhere else at the time.

He bent closer. There were no cuts to Poudric’s hands, no defensive wounds to suggest the photographer had seen the knife thrust coming. Whoever had stabbed the old man had taken him by surprise.

‘We think he was standing when he was stabbed,’ Bertrand continued, pointing to the floor beneath the desk, where one of Poudric’s slippers had come off. ‘He probably fell back and the killer eased him into his chair.’ The detective pulled a face. ‘At a guess, I’d say he knew his killer and was comfortable having him in here.’

Rocco couldn’t argue with that. He played the scene in his head, picturing the sequence of events. An elderly photographer, welcoming someone he knew. No threat, no sign of danger, relaxed in his own home. It fitted.

‘You found my card. Where was it?’

‘Ah.’ Bertrand nudged one of his colleagues, who handed him a buff folder from the corner of the desk. Rocco’s card was stapled to the top right-hand corner. ‘This was it, on his desk but under a pile of other stuff. He was building a library of war pictures, it seems, cataloguing photos from the period.’

‘That’s right.’ Rocco opened the folder. Inside were two black and white photographs. One showed the diminutive figure of Didier Marthe standing next to a tall man with his back half-turned to the camera. They were close, as if deep in conversation. The second snap was the one Poudric had mentioned. It showed the tall man by himself this time, sitting at a rough table in a clearing. He was wearing a heavy coat, work boots and a soft cap pushed to the back of his head, and seemed unaware of being captured on camera. He was busy examining what Rocco recognised as a British Sten gun. On the table alongside him were a revolver and a box of ammunition.

But Rocco wasn’t looking at the weapon. He was more interested in trying to control his reactions when he saw and recognised the face of the man who was holding the Sten with such easy familiarity. A man who, according to the late Ishmael Poudric, was long dead, a victim of German repression.

Philippe Bayer-Berbier.