Paul Temple: East of Algiers

‘Mr. Temple?’ he asked, and I could tell at once that he was going to speak good English.

‘Yes.’

He perfunctorily showed me a little wallet. I caught a glimpse of his photograph behind a cellophane slip and a flash of the red, blue and white of official France.

‘Inspecteur Mirabel, of the Police Judiciaire. I would like to speak a few words with you in private. I think this room is empty.’

He motioned me into a small room which was only used by those of the hotel’s clientele who insisted on coming downstairs to breakfast. The chairs were all hard and upright, and when we sat down one on either side of a bare table, the whole situation seemed very official and unfriendly. Mirabel’s manner and tone of voice kept it that way. He opened a small notebook, but did not glance down at it. His eyes were fixed gravely on me.

‘Mr. Temple, it is correct that you came here to-day by the 2.20 airplane from Paris?’

‘Yes.’

‘And before that you were staying at number 89 Avenue Georges V?’

‘That is right. Some friends of ours lent us their flat for several days.’

‘Were you visited there by a Miss Wincott?’

‘Yes,’ I said, surprised at the unexpected question. ‘Only very briefly. She came to deliver a package and was not in the flat for more than two minutes.’

To myself I was thinking that the instinctive antagonism I had felt towards Judy Wincott had been justified. She was bringing trouble.

‘Did you know Miss Wincott well? Please tell me what your relations with her were.’

‘My relations were very casual. I had only met her that day. She was rather kind to my wife in Paris yesterday morning, and she invited her to join us for an apéritif.’

‘That was last night?’

‘No. That was before lunch. It was then arranged that she would call on us at the flat about seven that evening—’

‘And she did so? Can you remember the exact time?’

‘Yes. I think I can. My wife and I got back at seven and she arrived about five minutes later.’

Mirabel made a quick note. I was becoming curious as to how Judy Wincott had aroused the interest of the police, but decided that it was better not to ask any questions just yet.

‘Did she give you any address?’ Mirabel continued.

‘She was staying at the Hotel Bedford, I believe – with her father.’

‘Her father?’

Mirabel had looked up in surprise.

‘He’s Benjamin Wincott, an antique dealer from New York. The American Embassy can tell you more about him than I can. According to Miss Wincott they were dining there last night.’

Mirabel gazed at me for a moment and a little smile touched the corner of his mouth.

‘You mentioned a package, Mr. Temple. Please tell me what this was.’

‘Oh, it was just a pair of spectacles she asked me to deliver to a friend of hers in Tunis.’

Mirabel’s eyebrows rose. I went on to give him a résumé of the tale Judy Wincott had told me.

When I had finished he said: ‘I should like to see these spectacles. Would you show them to me, please?’

‘Certainly. I have them here.’

I took the case from my breast pocket and handed it over to Mirabel. He extracted the spectacles and turned them over slowly in his long and sensitive fingers. He smoothed the sheet of Hotel Bedford notepaper on the table. I saw his brows furrow. He balanced the case in his hand as if assessing its weight.

‘I should like to take these to my headquarters and have them examined by an expert,’ he said. ‘You do not object?’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘You will allow me to have them back? I feel under some obligation—’

‘I will give you a receipt,’ Mirabel said stiffly. ‘Unless there is any reason to the contrary these glasses will be returned to you in the morning.’

‘Thank you. May I ask—? Is Miss Wincott in some sort of trouble?’

Mirabel’s deep eyes focused on me again and his expression was whimsical.

‘I do not think you would say that she was in trouble. Her body was found by the concierge this afternoon in one of the rubbish bins behind your block of flats. She had been shot in the back. The police doctor’s estimate of the time of death coincides with your account of the time she left you.’

I didn’t say anything. I knew Mirabel was studying me as my thoughts flew back to Fouquet’s and the girl who had so exasperated me when she had sat beside me the day before. Murderers themselves usually make sense. It is the victims they choose that somehow startle and shock one. I could have imagined Judy Wincott being smacked by an exasperated suitor, being socially ostracized, even arrested for drunkenness – but not murdered.

‘You are surprised?’ Mirabel murmured.

‘What do you think? She left me at seven last night to join her father and dine at the American Embassy. Does it seem natural that her body should be found to-day in a refuse bin? Have you any ideas as to who did it, or why?’

Mirabel shook his head.

‘The assassin left no trace. It has taken us until now to find out who it was she was visiting last night and why.’

‘Surely her father notified the police when she failed to turn up last night? And I’m surprised her taxi-driver didn’t start looking for his fare!’

Again that little smile moved at the side of Mirabel’s mouth. I began to feel that I was the object of his amusement.

‘We have checked on all foreigners in Paris hotels at the moment. There is no Benjamin Wincott and he is certainly not known to the American Embassy.’

‘Have you tried the Bedford Hotel?’

‘We have checked at all the big hotels. No one of that name is registered at any recognized hotel.’

Steve and I talked for a long time after we had gone to bed. She was very distressed at the thought that within a few minutes of leaving us Judy Wincott had been attacked and killed.

‘One somehow feels that one should have been able to do something to avoid it, Paul. The motive must have been robbery, don’t you think?’

‘Maybe. Though I should have thought a thief would have been more likely to use a cosh or a razor.’

I felt Steve shiver.

‘I’m glad I have you beside me. There seems to be such a lot of crime on the Continent. First the business in the room next door and now the news of this murder.’

At last we put our light out and went to sleep.

Almost at once it seemed that Steve was gently shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes, saw the pattern of light cast by the moonlight on the wall opposite our bed, and for a moment had to grope in my mind to realize where we were.

‘Paul, listen!’ Steve’s words came in an alarming stage whisper. ‘There’s something very funny happening in the next room.’

I sat up quickly in bed and listened. It was a curious slithering, bumping noise as if a man were half carrying, half dragging a heavy weight. Through the wall it seemed that I could hear his grunts and heavy breathing. Then there came an especially loud thud against the dividing wall, a series of thumps and the sound of a door closing.

‘It’s Sam Leyland’s room,’ Steve said. ‘I thought he had moved somewhere else.’

We sat there listening in the dark. The noise had stopped and there was an ominous silence on the other side of the wall.

Beside me I heard a click, and Steve’s bedside light flooded the room. I already had one foot out of bed and was reaching for my dressing-gown.

‘Something damned fishy is going on. I’m going to have a look and see if he’s all right.’

‘Then I’m coming too,’ Steve said firmly, and slipped out of bed.

We moved out into the corridor so fast that we cannoned into the young man who was at that moment passing our door. He too was wearing a dressing-gown and had apparently been roused from sleep just as we had.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and then remembering that we were in France I changed it to: ‘Pardon.’

‘It’s all right,’ the young man smiled. ‘I’m English too. My room’s on the floor below, and I came up to see what all the commotion was about. But if it’s only you two having a row…’

He was good-looking in a matinee idol sort of way, with side-whiskers just a shade on the long side and a frieze of early morning stubble round his chin. He was tall and well-made, and a dressing-gown of sheer, sky-blue silk was knotted round his middle. His voice was well educated and nicely pitched, his manner of speaking lazy and slow. But his eyes, as they appraised Steve, were obviously missing nothing.

‘It wasn’t us,’ Steve said quickly. ‘I was woken up by it, and my husband was just going to investigate. It came from in here.’

She pointed to the door of number twelve. The young man turned back and advanced towards the door. He gave a tentative knock; there was no answer.

‘Perhaps we should break in,’ he suggested unenthusiastically.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Steve stoop suddenly and pick something off the floor.

I said: ‘Try the handle first.’

The young man turned the handle and pushed. The door swung open into the pitch-dark room. The bulb in the corridor behind us sent a rectangle of light across the floor in which our two shadows loomed like elongated monsters. Someone had pulled the curtains in that room tight shut and the light behind us only served to accentuate the blackness of the rest of the room. We stood there for a moment, tense, as if expecting some nameless horror to burst out at us. Then the young man put a hand up and snapped on the light.

The room was still in a state of chaos, though all Sam Leyland’s things had been collected and moved. The only difference was that the curtains were drawn, which they had not been before, and the doors of the big built-in cupboard on the wall adjoining our room were closed. I thought I could see an impression on the bed where a recumbent body might have lain.

‘Nobody here,’ the young man said. ‘But what an extraordinary mess! I think we’d better let the management know.’

I said: ‘Hold on a moment.’

I was remembering the thump on the wall which had brought us out of bed. It must have had something to do with that cupboard. I crossed the room, turned the small key in the lock and opened the door. Behind me I heard Steve gasp and the young man utter an exclamation.

The body was lying on the floor of the cupboard, where it had been bundled hastily and unceremoniously. It was that of a girl, and she was wearing clothes which I recognized. Her legs were free, but her wrists were tied with a strip of cloth and a gag was still in her mouth. I lifted her face for a moment before letting it fall back on her chest. Her body was still warm, but there could be no life behind those eyes. My guess was that she had been forcibly brought to that room and then smothered with the pillow which still lay on the bed. Not a very pretty crime.

‘Don’t look, Steve,’ I said, and stood up to shield her from the sight. But Steve had already seen enough and was twisting away in horror. I closed the cupboard door and met the eyes of the young man. He was standing like a statue, trembling violently, every drop of colour drained from his face.

‘You’d better let them know downstairs about this,’ I told him. ‘I’ll stay here and look after my wife.’

He seemed glad to go, and vanished without a word. Steve, whose nerves have become harder than those of most women, had pulled herself together quickly.

‘Paul!’ she said in a low voice. ‘You saw who it was. I couldn’t mistake that hair and those clothes. It was Judy Wincott!’

I didn’t answer. A movement of the curtains had caught my eye, and I was very conscious of the fact that we had come into the room within a minute or so of the murderer completing his work. I pushed Steve back, stepped over to the curtains, and with a quick movement pulled them aside.

In front of me the open windows gaped out on to the night, and the faint sea breeze which had stirred the curtains fanned my face. The greeny light of the street lamps brought the dark walls and gables into ghostly relief. Down below a street cleaner was hosing the pavement and swishing the debris down the gutters with a long brush. From somewhere indeterminate came the smell of tomorrow’s bread baking.

I turned back to Steve.

‘This must be the way he went. We can’t have missed him by much. He may even have been watching us when we opened that cupboard.’

Chapter Two

THERE was little sleep in store for Steve and me that night. At my suggestion Mirabel was summoned and a cold-looking dawn was lightening the sky before we had made our statements and been given permission to withdraw.

We were awakened by a buzz on the house telephone at ten o’clock. A quarter of an hour later our petit déjeuner was brought up on a nice big tray. We had barely finished our coffee and croissants when the ’phone buzzed once more. Mirabel was in the hall below and wanted to see me again.

‘I’m just going to have a bath,’ Steve said. ‘You can tell him to come up here.’

‘I’m afraid I’m not dressed yet,’ I told the telephone. ‘Would you mind coming up to room number thirteen? Or if you’d rather I’ll get dressed and be down in about ten minutes.’

Mirabel decided to come up. Within a minute he was at the door. He had found time to shave and change his collar. Spick and span as he was, he looked very out of place in our chaotic bedroom. I pulled him up a chair and offered him a cigarette, which he refused. I thought, however, that his manner was more friendly than the previous night.

‘Are you any further on?’ I asked, trying to show the right amount of polite interest.

‘I have had time to communicate with our English colleagues and obtain some information about you, Mr. Temple. They tell me that though you have a gift for attracting trouble towards you, you are not usually the prime cause of it.’

I laughed, imagining Vosper’s wording of such a message.

‘Then I’m off your list of suspects?’

‘I think so,’ Mirabel said and smiled. ‘You will be interested to hear that we have solved the mystery of the same woman being murdered twice. It now appears that the girl found in the dustbin behind your flat was not Judy Wincott at all, though she was half American too and her name was Diana Simmonds. Our mistake was a natural one, since a letter found in her bag bore the name Judy Wincott and the murdered woman resembled her enough for the concierge to mistake her for the Miss Judy Wincott who had enquired for you the previous evening.’

Mirabel seemed prepared to dismiss the subject at that. I expected him to ask me a great many more questions and there were several that I would like to have put myself. But the Inspector limited himself to feeling in his breast pocket and producing a small object wrapped in tissue paper.

‘I am returning the glasses to you as I promised,’ he said. ‘Without the case, though. Our people soon reduced that to its elemental components.’

‘Did you find anything?’

Mirabel shook his head.

‘Nothing at all.’

‘Did you have the spectacles checked?’

‘Yes, of course. There is nothing unusual about them. They are a perfectly ordinary pair of spectacles.’

He unwrapped them from their tissue paper and inspected them casually before handing them across to me.

‘Genuine tortoiseshell, too clear to conceal anything. And the lenses – well, there is nothing, is there?’

I took the glasses reluctantly.

‘I can’t help wondering. All the trouble seemed to begin from the moment these spectacles came into my life…’

‘You can rest assured, Mr. Temple. If there were anything abnormal about those spectacles our experts would have found out about it.’

The Inspector rose to his feet and pulled his jacket down.

‘I am sorry that your holiday has been interrupted in such an unpleasant way, and grateful to you for your co-operation.’

He held out his hand.

‘Give my homage to madame, your wife. I hope you will have a pleasant journey to Tunis.’

‘We are free to carry on?’ I said, still surprised that Mirabel was letting us off so lightly. ‘You won’t require us to give evidence at the inquest?’

‘It will not be necessary,’ Mirabel assured me. ‘You can continue your journey and Mr. David Foster can recover his spectacles – which I feel he must be missing very badly.’

I had risen to my feet at the same time as Mirabel but I still felt reluctant to let him go.

‘Will you forgive me, Inspecteur, if I ask you something?’

Mirabel shrugged non-committally, but he waited for my question.

‘This woman who was murdered in the Avenue Georges V – do you know who she was?’

‘We have found that out,’ Mirabel said readily enough. ‘She had several names but the one she used the most of the time was Lydia Maresse. She was known to Interpol as an international criminal.’

‘Any idea of the motive for her murder?’

‘None at all.’

I hesitated for a moment while Mirabel studied me quizzically.

‘Inspecteur – it surely does not escape you that there must be some connection between the two crimes, since Judy Wincott’s handbag was planted on the body found in Paris. Nor can it have failed to strike you as odd that my wife and I should have been so close at hand on each occasion.’

Mirabel raised his eyebrows and studied his immaculate nails.

‘These facts had not escaped us, Mr. Temple. But we are satisfied none the less that you had nothing to do with either crime.’

He suddenly smiled, offered me his hand again and turned to the door. It had almost closed on him when his head was poked in again.

‘If by any chance I need to contact you again I can always be sure of finding you. Thanks to Interpol we can reach the people who interest us in almost any country in the world.’

Steve and I had half a day to kill. We were again booked for the afternoon flight, this time to Algiers. I felt that what she most wanted was a breath of honest fresh air, as far away from that accursed hotel as possible. Enquiries at the hotel desk revealed that it was quite feasible to hire a small yacht. Sailing is a sport both Steve and I are addicted to and by half-past eleven we were well out from the shore in a neat little dinghy with racy lines.

For an hour we enjoyed the illusion that no inquisitive or prying eyes were watching us. From out at sea Nice, with its long promenade of white buildings, gay sun shades and the hills rising in tiers behind it, looked even more attractive than from land. A number of other craft were out on the water. Several speed-boats were towing water ski-ers at speed across the bay and there were a dozen other yachts of various sizes about. The water was not rough, but there was enough of a breeze to make sailing an energetic job that occupied most of our attention. Every now and then an aircraft taking off from the Nice airport skimmed low over our heads.

The wind was whipping the hair away from Steve’s ears, and I could see the colour returning to her pallid cheeks. We had just gone about for the twentieth time and were sitting on the gunwale to counterbalance the dinghy when she pointed to one of the speed-boats which had been cruising in our vicinity for some time.

‘He seems very interested in us,’ she called to me above the noise of the spray and the water swishing under our bows. ‘I think he’s watching us through binoculars.’

I glanced at the launch and then turned to laugh at Steve. She is a very attractive woman, but unusually modest, and she can never bring herself to attribute the attention and interest of other gentlemen to the very apparent attractiveness of her person. In the blue trousers and scarlet shirt she was wearing this morning she was likely to be the target for more than one pair of eyes.

A sudden gust of wind made the dinghy tip over dangerously, and we had to lean right back to keep her sails up out of the water. It was quite a tricky moment, and several hectic minutes passed before we had things under control again. Our canvas hid the cruising speedboat from us until I brought the dinghy’s head round to work her back to the shore. The noise of wind and water was so high that we had been unable to hear the sound of the engine. Even when I did hear the powerful roar I thought that it was just another aircraft taking off.

Steve’s shout switched my attention to our starboard beam.

‘Alter course, Paul. He’s coming straight for us!’

I looked up and saw the speed-boat no more than twenty yards away. Her engines must have been at full power, for her bows were well clear of the surface. A cliff of water seemed to be sheering away from either side of her steeply sloping sides. Every time she hit a wave the white foam went hissing outwards.

She must have been doing thirty or forty knots. On her present course she must surely ram us.

It was hopeless to shout and attract the attention of the pilot. He wouldn’t have heard us, and anyway his bows were riding so high that I doubted whether he could see us.

I slammed the tiller over and ducked as the boom came across. The dinghy yawed. She had lost all momentum and wallowed in a trough of water, a helpless and motionless prey for the oncoming speed-boat. She bore down on us like a swooping hawk.

When she was twenty yards away I shouted to Steve: ‘Jump for it!’

Hand in hand we leapt into the sea, as far from the path of the speed-boat as we could. Even as we rose to the surface we heard the crash behind us and the splinter of wood. The big speed-boat had cut the flimsy dinghy clean in two. Next instant a wall of creamy water hit us, filling our eyes and noses, thrusting us deep under the water. All the time I kept Steve’s hand clutched in mine.

When we got our heads above water and recovered our breath the hum of the speed-boat was quite distant. A wave lifted me up and I saw his wake disappearing in the direction of Monte Carlo.

The biggest piece of wreckage left was a section of the mast, which had a life-belt attached to it. Dragging Steve, I paddled towards it and we each grabbed hold of one side.

‘Well,’ Steve remarked to me bitterly, between gasping breaths. ‘Do you still maintain that the man in that boat was only interested in my elegant torso?’

As we bobbed aimlessly up and down, the coast seemed to be as far away as the Antipodes. None of the other craft in the neighbourhood had noticed the accident, and there was not enough of our dinghy left to attract attention. Luckily the water was not unbearably cold. I thought we could hold on till darkness at least. During that time someone must surely come near enough to spot us.

In the end it was less than ten minutes before we were found. A rather slow but obviously safe fishing-boat came chugging out straight towards us. As it drew near I began to wonder if there was going to be room on board, since half the population of Nice’s old quarter seemed to have thumbed a ride out to watch the rescue.

So many willing helpers reached down to haul us out of the water that our arms were nearly pulled out of their sockets. There were even some especially keen rescuers who would have been only too willing to apply artificial respiration to Steve.

‘Doucement, doucement! Faîtes place pour Madame.’

The accent was pretty good, but there was still that slight broadness of speech which betrays the Englishman. I looked round and saw the young man who had shared our discovery of Judy Wincott’s body. His name, as I knew all too well by now, was Tony Wyse. He seemed to have been accepted by the crew and passengers as the leader of the salvage operations, and in answer to his instructions room was made for us while dry pullovers and jackets were pressed on our soaked bodies.

‘It was a bit of luck I saw it all happen,’ Wyse told us, as he held his lighter to the cigarettes we had accepted. ‘I’m interested in sailing myself, and I was watching your yacht through one of those penny-in-the-slot telescopes they have on the front.’