Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries by Martin Edwards

Author:Martin Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2015-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

My conjectures about the case had now taken a more concrete form. There might be other more cogent reasons for getting rid of Mrs Fraser than the suspicions of a secret society, and a news paragraph from Naples had given me a new line to work upon. If I was successful it was Mr Pepper’s wonderful intuition that had furnished me with the first clue and no credit attaches to me, his humble fellow-worker.

With the scrap of paper in my pocket-book I set out on foot for the Rue St. Jacques and visited in turn No. 3, 13, 23, none of which was a shop bearing any name ending in sjean, but No. 33 bore the name ‘Grosjean’ in gilt letters over the shop window, and M. Grosjean dealt in wallpapers, paints and bathroom furniture. I walked in boldly and asked the young man for patterns of wallpapers. He showed me hundreds, but found me hard to please. Not one was of the shade of dark blue that I was looking for. I demanded an interview with the manager, who was vapouring about the office at the back. He emerged a little unwillingly, I thought.

‘I have not seen all your patterns, Monsieur.’

‘Yes, Monsieur; we have no others.’

‘Forgive me, but the pattern I have set my heart on is that which you used in papering the front first-floor bedroom of an hotel in the Rue Cambon last Thursday. You remember, you did it in two hours at the special desire of the authorities?’

The curious change in his features warmed my heart. He was quite a nice-looking French paperhanger when he first came in; he was an unpleasant paperhanger to look upon when I had done with him. Alarm, consternation, suppressed fury possessed his expressive features in turn, and when words failed him and he was reduced to inarticulate hissing, I said suavely, ‘Used it all up, did you? Well, I am sorry. Good morning.’

I took a cab for my next visit, feeling sure that my paperhanger was busy with his telephone.

The policeman on duty in the police station of the Arrondissement was polite but perfectly firm in insisting that I should divulge my business before I had a private interview with his Commissary. He found me equally firm and when I paltered with the truth and said that I represented the Times newspaper in London he departed from his desk to take counsel. Presently he returned and beckoned to me. The Commissary was suspicious and short with me. I said, ‘Monsieur the Commissary, is it an offence to tamper with an hotel register?’

‘If you have a complaint to make, Monsieur, I am listening.’

‘I assume, Monsieur, that it is an offence. I am come to denounce the Manageress of the Hotel des Etrangers, in the Rue Cambon, of erasing the names of two English ladies named Fraser from her register.’

His face was not pretty to look upon. He appeared to be biting his lips to keep the words in. I thought for a moment that he was going to shout for his myrmidons to drop me down an oubliette.

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