Читать книгу Death on the Riviera - Ernest Elmore - Страница 12

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By midday Meredith had succeeded in interviewing the two Englishmen who, in all innocence, had tried to pass the spurious notes. At first both men had been disinclined to talk. After all, the purchase of francs on the Black Bourse was technically a criminal offence and they weren’t at all sure how far Meredith was prepared to go. But a few broad hints soon reassured them. The French police were anxious to arrest the gang who were putting about the counterfeit notes. As Meredith pointed out with a withering look, they weren’t concerned with a bunch of damfool, unpatriotic Englishmen who, in any case, had been very neatly diddled. Thereafter he got his information and at once Meredith realized that he’d picked up his first real clue.

Both Englishmen, who were unknown to each other and staying in different hotels, had bought their Black Market francs off the same man, and in both cases this man had struck up a conversation with them in one of the many cocktail bars in the town. He spoke English fluently but with a very strong foreign accent. Neither of the men believed him to be French. One suggested he was German; the other, Dutch. But their descriptions of the man tallied exactly—tall, stooping, iron-grey short-cropped hair, moon-like face, deep voice, urbane in manner and faultlessly dressed.

With this description jotted down in his notebook, Meredith rang Blampignon at Nice. Was this Dutchman or German known to the police? Had he, by any chance, ever been through their hands or, at any time, come under suspicion? Blampignon was desolate. There wasn’t, he claimed, a single big-time racketeer along the coast with whom he wasn’t familiar. It was a thumping big boast, of course, but it wasn’t, perhaps, far short of the truth. In Blampignon’s opinion this man was either a stooge, a hired nobody working for the Big Shots, or he’d only recently turned up on the Cote d’Azur from his own country.

“Good enough,” said Meredith. “You leave it to me. I’ll get over to Monte for the next day or two and drift around the likely bars. With a detailed description like this we ought to get on to the fellow. And with any luck—”

Blampignon broke in with a throaty chuckle:

“Ah précisément! How shall we say? The pilot-fish might lead us to the shark, eh?”