Читать книгу The Basle Express - Cyril Henry Coles - Страница 4

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Eventually the train started again, no doubt to the delight of the stationmaster of Metz who could see his whole local system being disorganized, and a few minutes later Virolet came in accompanied by Arnoux. Virolet said that somebody was bringing some probably horribly inferior coffee if monsieur would join them in a cup, and they sat down heavily.

“Were you in bed,” asked Hambledon sympathetically, “when this call came?”

“Oh no. We were merely hoping to go shortly. We only had four hours in bed the night before, eh, Arnoux?”

“Three hours and forty minutes, me,” said Arnoux cheerfully. “The Inspector lives ten minutes nearer the station than I do.”

“Another murder?”

“Oh, no. An absconding bank manager, much more urgent. There are so many lives in this world, are there not, monsieur? But money, no. Very short supply.”

A man came to the door with a tray of three thick cups of coffee and handed it around. Virolet took one and looked at it dubiously.

“This the best you can do?”

“All I can do, monsieur,” said the man with emphasis. “Breakfast, at Basle, monsieur.”

“Go away,” said Virolet and the door closed behind the man. “This,” went on the Inspector, “is, no doubt, one degree better than a nice glass of cold water. This is your book, monsieur?”

“No,” said Hambledon, “it was Bastien’s actually. It came along here with my things. I was going to give it to you.”

The Inspector dipped into it, looking at the photographs while he drank his coffee; he closed the book and gave it to Hambledon.

“Accept a memento of a disturbed night, monsieur. When I have time for that kind of thing I shall be a nice new angel in Paradise. Well now, if you will be so good as to tell me everything that happened?”

Hambledon did so, including a detailed description, in the police manner, of Pierre, and Arnoux took shorthand notes.

“The Basle police may know him,” said Virolet. “I shall come through to Basle on this train, have that coach put into a siding and that compartment efficiently searched. I did have a quick look at it but one never knows. Besides, if the Basle police will do it, I shall not have to fatigue myself, eh?”

“His luggage,” began Hambledon.

“One suitcase. I sent a man to my office with it. No, if, as I assume, those papers were in the despatch case, I do not imagine that there is anything left for us to find. Why should there be? These papers we have nowadays! Anything from atomic bomb secrets to blackmail letters beginning ‘My angel cabbage’ and signed ‘Thine Adorer.’ Phoo! They are lost, stolen, read by those not intended to read them, sold to Foreign Powers, left in trains, taxis, cafés, boîtes de nuit, put in the wrong envelopes and posted. And who has to look for them?”

“Quite often,” said Hambledon, “me.”

“Precisely! And me. All this education,” said Virolet passionately, “is a great mistake. As regards Bastien, I do not suppose that there is anything in the affair. He was a newspaper reporter, probably he had annoyed somebody. Pierre we will catch if we can—what, in your opinion, was his nationality, monsieur?”

“French. Southern France. Marseillais, perhaps.”

The train began to slow down. Arnoux drew the blind aside and looked out of the window.

“Strasbourg?” asked Virolet.

“Yes, monsieur. Strasbourg.”

Hambledon sighed suddenly and turned sideways in his corner; the night was proving rather long. The train stopped at last and a few doors slammed in the distance. He looked at his watch.

“What a time,” he said, “to alight at Strasbourg. Twenty minutes past four.”

“We are making up time,” said Arnoux. “We were thirty-five minutes late leaving Metz.”

“Who cares?” said Virolet wearily. He leaned back in his corner and closed his eyes. The compartment door slid open and the chef de train stood there with an envelope in his hand.

“A message for Detective-Inspector Virolet.”

Arnoux took the note, tore open the envelope, and presented the message to Virolet all in one movement. Virolet looked at it and said, “No reply, thank you.” The chef de train went out and the doors slid together again.

“Pierre did not find his papers in the despatch case,” said Virolet.

“How?” said Hambledon.

“I told you I sent Bastien’s suitcase to my office by one of my men? Yes. He was knocked on the head on his way to the station and the suitcase stolen.”

“Dead?” asked Arnoux.

“Oh, no. He has a headache, I imagine. He will have another when I see him again. It was in that little alley called the Boyau. Do you know Metz, monsieur?”

“No. Not well.”

“It is a short cut to the police station,” said Arnoux.

“But that is no reason why a man should walk along it with his eyes shut,” said Virolet. “Especially a policeman.”

“I wonder whether the papers were in the suitcase,” said Hambledon idly.

“So do I. Monsieur Hambledon, why did Bastien say ‘Albert’ when he was dying? Can you think of any reason?”

“Who can tell what may rise in the mind of a dying man? Especially when he has been shot in the head. It is, of course, a place name, if that’s any help.”

“It is, yes.”

The train stopped again at Mulhouse, but Hambledon was asleep and did not notice it, nor were any more messages handed in, and they reached Basle punctually at six.

“Bath and breakfast,” said Hambledon cheerfully, for sleep had refreshed him.

“I agree. Will you breakfast with me, monsieur? My programme is the same as yours except that I must telephone the Swiss police first.”

“With pleasure, thank you. We will meet in the restaurant, then.”

Basle station may be said to be the centre of the spider’s web of the railway systems of Western Europe. In Paris one arrives at any one of half-a-dozen main-line stations and there will be an exhilarating taxi drive to the other; at Basle there is the one big station and it is said that unless a man is prepared to stay at home all his life, sooner or later he will breakfast there. This is no hardship, for the restaurant is famous, especially for black cherry jam, and the bathrooms are almost equally in demand.

Hambledon, pink and clean, shaven and brushed, came into the restaurant, wandered from room to room looking for Virolet, and was found by Arnoux.

“I have a table in the room with the scenery down the middle, if you will follow me,” said the Detective Sergeant. “The Inspector’s compliments and he begs you not to wait for him. He will be with you shortly.”

The scenery down the middle consists of pot plants on a low partition, but they are a pleasant sight in the early morning. Hambledon had not finished his first cup of coffee before Virolet came striding in with Arnoux at his heels.

“The police here are most friendly and helpful,” said Virolet, “always. I have done business with them before. That train we came in is put onto a siding to be washed and tidied up for the run back to Calais tonight; the Swiss police are asking the stationmaster to leave that locked compartment untouched. One of them—yes, coffee, please, and rolls—a man named Cournand is coming here to meet us and we will do the coach together. Is monsieur still interested? Perhaps you would care to accompany us. Cournand is a nice fellow and only mad on one subject. The ballet. Is monsieur also a balletomane, if I have the term correctly?”

“In the matter of the ballet,” said Hambledon, “I am painfully uncultured.”

“And I. Tell me, how do they spin round like tops and not get giddy? That is what I ask myself. For me, if I spin round rapidly three times, the room comes with me.”

“Perhaps it is practice,” suggested Hambledon.

“Probably,” agreed Virolet. Then, with another of his rapid changes of subject: “Monsieur is going to Innsbruck, you said, did you not?”

“I am, actually, going to Seefeld in the Tyrol. One changes at Innsbruck and there is an hour in a local train. I am due for a holiday, and some friends of mine told me the place was charming.”

“I have heard so, yes. One climbs mountains, I believe. Monsieur is a mountaineer, no doubt? I see you have a rucksack. But there are plenty of trains from here to Innsbruck. Here is Cournand in person.”

Cournand, a short stocky man with a slow smile and a pleasant manner, came up and was introduced.

“So you have been letting somebody get murdered in one of your dangerous trains, eh? You should take more care of your customers, Virolet. For me,” he added to Hambledon, “whenever I have to travel upon the French railway systems I insure my life.”

“I am not a railway official,” said Virolet mildly.

“If you were I would not travel at all! Terrible people, these French. Tell me, whom have you killed off this time?”

“A man named Bastien, a newspaper correspondent. He lived in Basle according to his passport. Do you know him?”

“Know him? I should think so. He is very well known, our Herr Bastien. He has been at the game a very long time; he was not young. Sixty, perhaps? His birthdate will be on his passport. He was very wise and experienced; he knew everybody, absolutely everybody, Herr Hambledon. Not only celebrities but also waiters, taxidrivers, porters, flower sellers, café proprietors, everyone. Not only in Basle, but in Geneva, in Rome, in Bonn, in Paris, who knows? He would stroll round talking to his friends; if your Sir Anthony Eden bought himself a new hat, Bastien was the first to hear of it.”

“Political stuff, eh? What paper did he write for?” asked Hambledon.

“No one paper. He was, as they say, a free lance. It was very careless of you, Virolet my friend, to let such a man be shot—who did it?”

“A man named Pierre; perhaps you know him too. Monsieur Hambledon saw it done, and here is his description.” The breakfast room had emptied; there was no one to overhear them. “Arnoux, read it out.”

Arnoux did so. Cournand listened and shook his head.

“No, I cannot place him. Please let me have a copy of that and I will ask my men. Somebody may know him if he has ever lived here. Have you reason to think he has?”

Hambledon repeated Pierre’s remark to Bastien about “those papers you got by a trick at Basle last night” and added, “Of course, that doesn’t prove that Pierre was also in Basle that night, or ever. He may have been told that over the telephone.”

Cournand brooded, staring at the tablecloth, and then roused himself.

“Have you all finished? Quite sure? Then let us go and examine the scene of the crime. We will get a railway official to lead us to it; I have no ambition to end my life in small pieces under the wheels of a locomotive. Shall we go?”

“Monsieur Hambledon,” said Virolet, “where is your luggage?”

“In the left-luggage office.”

Virolet nodded.

They followed a railway man for about a half mile across lines and along tracks, a most uncomfortable walk, until they climbed into the sleeping car of last night’s Anglo-Swiss Express. The other coaches were all being energetically swept and polished by the cleaners, but the whole of that particular coach had been left until they had seen it. Virolet led the way along the corridor to the compartment which had been left locked and stopped short at the door with a loud exclamation.

The doors were no longer locked but ajar, and the inside of the compartment was a wreck. Bedclothes lay on the floor in a sordid tangle, mattresses were flung awry, and the padding of the seats had been slit and dragged out to open up the crevices between. The four men viewed the scene in silence broken eventually by Virolet.

“The papers were not in the suitcase,” he said.

Cournand turned on his heel and leaned out of the corridor window, shouting for the foreman in charge of the cleaners who came running.

“Mein Herr?”

“This coach,” said Cournand, “was ordered to be left uncleaned until we, the police, had examined it, was it not?”

“Certainly, mein Herr, and so it was. Even now we have not started on it, as you can see.”

“Yes,” said Cournand, “yes. Did you see the police who examined it, then?”

“I saw them, yes. When we arrived I saw some men—two men—in the corridor where you are, and I asked them if they were the police and they said they were, mein Herr. I was a little surprised that I did not know either of them, mein Herr, and they said that, as the crime had been committed in France, French detectives had been sent to investigate it, mein Herr. So I left them to it and they have not long been gone, mein Herr, perhaps a half hour. You will have missed them in the station.”

“No doubt,” said Cournand, “no doubt. In order that, if I should meet them, I may recognize them at once, can you describe them at all?”

“Difficult,” said the man, fingering his chin.

“No idea what they looked like?”

“Ach, yes, they looked like detectives. They wore felt hats and raincoats and had ordinary faces, mein Herr.”

“Thank you,” said Cournand, and straightened up from the window.

“Your criminals,” said Virolet, “are regrettably quick off the mark.”

“They were probably leaning against the door of the box while you were telephoning to me,” said Cournand.

“Gentlemen,” said Hambledon, “assuming that our—er—precursors were again unlucky in their search, do you think it possible that they will now proceed to ransack Herr Bastien’s flat or whatever he lived in?”

“A flat,” said Cournand, leading the way across the tracks to the station at such a pace that the railway man who had been appointed to lead them was reduced to trotting behind, “a flat in Sandgrubenstrasse which is across the river. I will call for a police car.”

“Has he,” asked Hambledon, “any staff in the flat?”

“An elderly housekeeper who looked after Bastien and a niece of hers to look after the housekeeper, a country girl, not too bright. Well, here we are safely off those damned rail tracks. Just a minute while I ring for a car.” Cournand entered a telephone box and Hambledon turned to Virolet.

“It occurs to me that I am intruding upon a matter which is no business of mine,” he said. “It was very good of you and Herr Cournand to let me see so much. I ought to——”

“Are you, then, no longer interested in this enquiry?” interrupted Virolet. “You are on holiday and I am spoiling the start for you?”

“Not at all,” said Hambledon, whose ruling passion was curiosity. “I am most interested, truly, and I should like above all things to see if anything has happened at the flat. It is only that I have no locus standi, no right to be with you.”

“That is easily arranged,” said Virolet. “If it will ease your conscience and legalize your presence, I can always arrest you as a suspect. Eh, Cournand?”

“What?”

“Monsieur Hambledon suffers from a feeling that he has no right to be with us.”

“No right? Nonsense. In view of the fact that this case appears to involve international relations—Bastien went to France, didn’t he—I shall call upon a representative of Britain to assist us in our enquiries. Or shall I enrol you as a special constable?”

“So long as I do not intrude,” said Hambledon——

“Quatsch,” said the Swiss. “Let us walk outside, the car will be here in a moment—here it comes.”

They crossed the Rhine at the Wettstein Bridge and almost at once turned into a wide street.

“It is along here, a turning to the left,” said Cournand. “It is a block of flats, not very new but comfortable. Do not drive up to the entrance,” he added to the driver. “Take the nearest turning this side and we will walk on.”

The car turned left into Sandgrubenstrasse, passed along it for a short distance, turned right into a quiet street, and stopped.

“Now,” said Cournand, and hurried along to the entrance, a rather dull hall with a lift at the far end. There was no porter and they took themselves up to the third floor. “I have been here before,” said Cournand. “Bastien used to have little parties sometimes. Stag parties,” he added firmly, and rang the bell. The door was opened by an old woman, bent and frail, but with bright intelligent eyes.

“Good morning,” said Cournand gently. “Do you remember me? Cournand, of the police. May we come in?”

“Certainly, Herr Cournand, but Herr Bastien is not at home. He is always travelling, as you know; he went away only yesterday all in a hurry as usual.”

“May we go into the sitting room?” asked Cournand, leading the way. “Did he tell you where he was going, meine Frau?”

“He said he might be going to England. Yes, yes, it was to England that he was going. He had been there before, you know, many times before.”

“Yes, I know,” said Cournand, and there was a silence.

“Is there anything the matter? I am sure there is something the matter—is he ill?”

“Come and sit down a moment, meine Frau,” said Cournand, and led her to Bastien’s armchair.

“He is ill, where is he? Tell me where he is.”

“I am sorry,” said Cournand, “very sorry to have to bring you bad news.”

She looked piteously at him.

“He cannot be dead. It is not possible that he should be dead.”

Hambledon and Virolet strolled across to the window. Arnoux had been left in the hall.

“He was—I looked after him when he was a little boy. I was his nurse. Yes, yes, when he was three years old I came to look after him.”

No one spoke and after a moment she rose unsteadily to her feet and went sobbing out of the room.

“How I detest this kind of thing!” said Cournand violently. “Damn all murderers!”