John Lescroart - Son of Holmes

This last, of course, was nonsense, but I kept my silence.

Lupa half turned in his seat and reached for another beer. After opening it, he stared at the two men sitting directly opposite him. Paul shifted nervously in his chair. Georges lit a cigarette.

“Mr. Anser. I was loath to suspect you originally because you share my country of citizenship. But consider these facts: you were sitting next to me last week, and were in the best position of anyone else in the room to simply switch glasses with me during the commotion over Monsieur Lavoie’s hand. You are an amateur geologist and as such have access to, or have had access to, cyanide. You are a crack shot, by your own admission. You are not French and you live in St. Etienne. The circumstantial evidence against you is, therefore, impressive. On the other hand, last week I sent one of my own men to try and ‘cross over’ with your help. He was most persuasive and most subtle, and came away convinced that you had no idea what he was hinting at.” Lupa turned to me. “That, Jules, was the mysterious man you saw with Mr. Anser when you went to St. Etienne.” He went on. “Still, that you refused my man by no means completely cleared you. You might have recognized my ploy and acted accordingly. No, it wasn’t until I discovered that Monsieur Lavoie was the man whom I sought, and that wasn’t until yesterday afternoon, that I listed those circumstantial facts concerning you as coincidental.”

All eyes were on Georges. He sat calmly, smoking.

“I take it,” he said to Lupa, “that you are accusing me?”

“Yes.”

Georges chuckled mirthlessly. “This is rather tedious, you know.”

Lupa shared the grim humor. “I don’t really find it so, but perhaps you would like another beer. It may be your last for a long time. Still no? Well. It was admirable the way you arranged to be out of town during most of this week. It did serve to divert attention from you for a time—long enough for you to go about your special tasks.

“Let’s begin with last Wednesday. By the way, consenting to be a regular guest was an admirable choice of covers. Whether it had begun by design or by coincidence, you wasted no time in recognizing the value of this particular group to your ends. They were a singularly respectable, though eccentric, group of citizens. Your presence among them established your bona fides in an especially effective manner. To the rest of the community, your status as newcomer—and hence a natural object of rumor and suspicion—was substantially mitigated. Then, too, among a group with so many foreign connections, you stand out as passably French. It was a fine decision on your part.”

“Thank you,” said Georges sarcastically.

“Don’t mention it. But to continue, when you saw me enter Monsieur Giraud’s sitting room last Wednesday, you immediately recognized me, as I’ve said. Perhaps my small deductions that evening were a misplaced show of bravado, but in any event you wasted no time, since an agent like yourself is always prepared. I am, too. While the others were preparing for their toast, you slipped from your pocket a mercury fulmonade cap which you’d earlier procured, no doubt, by prying it from the back of a bullet. Much smaller than a petite pois, it was an admirable weapon. You placed it on the table and brought your beer bottle down on it, causing it to explode and cutting yourself. The explosion, by the way, left a small but recognizable mark on the table.

“You then excused yourself to dress the wound and, passing my seat by the door, took advantage of everyone’s being grouped around the spilled beer, as you knew we would be, to drop the poison—stolen from Monsieur Pulis, I assume—into my glass. You didn’t even have to break your stride.

“When you returned and found that Routier had inadvertently returned to my seat and drunk the poison intended for me, your panic increased. Please correct me where I may be wrong.”

Georges sat quite still. “Every word is wrong.”

Lupa smiled. “Of course. I didn’t suppose I’d catch you with that. Still, there were other endeavors to which you were committed, and you had a timetable to follow, so the next day you had to go to St. Etienne and deliver an excessive amount of gauze to the arsenal. That you entered and met Monsieur Ponty was incidental. What was not incidental was his comment on learning of your trade. He said, ‘I hope we can keep your deliveries small.’ Monsieur Giraud, here, has an admirable memory and repeated back to me your conversation with Ponty. That comment aroused my suspicion, and I fell on it like a hungry dog.

“From that moment on, you were my prime suspect. But you had worked well and left few clues. When Chatelet was killed last Friday night, I was tempted to cross you off, but then my associate in St. Etienne had reported that he’d been followed back to Valence, and by his description, I assumed it had been you. The man who followed my agent, by the way, did not have a limp, but we’ll get to that. So, in fact, you hadn’t gone south on business, but had remained here, hoping to get a chance to kill me.

“Chatelet, with a bit of terrible luck for both of you, ran into you on the street as he interrogated Pulis Friday night. Worse yet, Pulis then introduced you to the inspector. Of course, between Henri’s being your friend and Pulis’s deep suspicion of me, it never crossed his mind that your presence was questionable.”

Henri, his face red now and dripping with sweat, looked wide-eyed from Georges to Lupa. Again and again he seemed to be trying to swallow, but the dryness of his mouth wouldn’t allow it. Remembering his beer, he sucked at it like a man dying of thirst.

Lupa pressed on. “Still, Chatelet presented you with an immediate danger. He wouldn’t even have to suspect you of anything. Merely his knowledge that you were in Valence would have condemned you.”

Georges still smirked. “Why, exactly, would that be?”

“Because in questioning the other suspects, possibly including myself, that fact would have come out. In other words, you were not in St. Etienne where you were believed to be. In fact, you had followed my man to Valence.”

“Fascinating,” Georges said.

“Not really,” Lupa answered. “So Chatelet presented too great a risk, and you did away with him.

“On Sunday, you followed me to the woods where I was to have had lunch. When you saw your opportunity, you fired three times but, luckily for me, you missed. That must have been particularly galling for you. When Monsieur Giraud and I gave chase, you ran, and you escaped.”

Lupa leaned back and pulled the bell for Fritz. “That,” he explained, “was my signal for Fritz to get Magiot and his men.”

“That’ll be the end of you, then,” said Georges levelly.

Lupa drank his beer. “We’ll see. Well, to get on with it, yesterday you succeeded in your primary mission, which was to blow up the arsenal. To do that, you used one of your agents—I’d be curious to know how you recruited the janitor, since all the employees there had ‘Top Secret’ clearance, but that’s another question. Reasoning told me what he had done. My man in St. Etienne, who’d been watching the place all day, noted that the smokestacks had stopped functioning about an hour before the explosion. Shortly afterward, the janitor had left the building.

“What he had done was to enter the boiler room in the fifteen or twenty minutes when, according to Ponty, everyone in the building, including the men stoking the boilers, was acting as a ‘pack mule.’ He opened the doors to the boilers and stuffed them with as much of your excess gauze as he could fit. The boilers are located, or were located, directly adjacent to the ammunition room, and an explosion of the boilers would of course set off the highly unstable dynamite in the next room. The gauze effectively stopped up the pipes, creating intolerable pressure within the boilers. It also stopped their smoking for at least a half hour before the pressure became critical.

“There was your flaw. There is no other explanation for the smoke stopping just prior to the explosion. You thought it would go unnoticed, and for the most part it did. Only my agent there noticed it. Otherwise, it was a brilliant plan. You were having lunch with Messieurs Anser and Giraud while the pressure was building in those boilers. But you should have stayed with directing your agents. When you act on your own, you make mistakes. My agent, you see, swears that he can identify the man who was following him. He didn’t know it was you, but now we’ll give him a chance to say if it was. Watkins!”

Watkins seemed to magically appear out of the wall as he pushed aside the tapestry and stepped out of the tunnel. Everyone gaped.

“How many secret entrances does this place have?” Tania asked.

“None anymore. You’ve seen them all.” He turned to Watkins. “Is he here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Kindly point him out.”

He pointed at Lavoie. I reached inside my jacket to be near my pistol just in case it would be needed.

“That’s all very clever,” said Georges. “It’s a neat little theory, with the minor drawback of being completely false. You can’t prove a word of what you’ve said.”

Henri cleared his throat. “You were here . . . I mean we did meet you, the inspector and I . . .”

Georges smiled at his friend. “I never denied it, Henri. The point never came up, did it?”

Henri, confused, leaned back in his chair.

“Monsieur Lavoie is right,” Lupa said to the group. “I could have paid this man to come in here and identify him. There is no proof. And so, now, I’m going to ask him to do something which will undoubtedly demonstrate his innocence.”

“Certainly,” Georges said, his smile ice. “I’d be glad to end this farce.”

“Well, then. The man who trailed Monsieur Watkins, here, had no limp. I contend that you have no limp but rather a substantial lifter in your left shoe. You can easily demonstrate which of us is right by taking off your shoes.”

“This is ridiculous!”

Lupa shrugged, then leaned back in his chair. “Go on, Georges,” Paul urged. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

Georges looked around at each of the group, and the sentiment was unanimous. I saw his glance at the tapestry from behind which Watkins had entered, and my grip tightened on my pistol.

Finally, he came to some conclusion and reached down as if to undo his shoelaces. How he did it I don’t know, but by some sleight of hand, he reached into his jacket and came out with a pistol which he trained on Lupa, the hammer cocked.

“All right, now,” he said calmly, “no one is to move.” But I had already moved. My pistol was out. “Georges, drop it!”

He turned toward me and fired at the instant I did. I was hit under the left collarbone, and spun backward and to the floor. Tania screamed and crossed over to me. I felt her place my head in her lap.

“Jules, are you all right? Jules.”

I couldn’t speak, and the room began to spin before me. There was a pounding from outside, then the sound of a door opening and boots on a wooden floor. I opened my eyes and tried to focus them. It looked as though Magiot and his men had entered. They gathered around Georges, who lay prostrate on the floor.

Lupa spoke, the words coming to me as though through wads of cotton or gauze. “There’s your man, inspector. He’s dead.”

I passed out.

17

It is now August, and we are entering our second year of war. I write in the sitting room, propped on the settee with a pad before me. It looks as though Lupa was right. The war may drag on for a long time.

Miraculously, the bullet did no major damage, and the doctor estimates that I’ll be completely recovered in another month. In all, it’s been a pleasant recovery period. I’ve used the time to write this report of my last case. Really nothing formal, of course. Something to read in my advancing years and with which to recall the way it all had been.

Lupa has written twice, from Corsica. After that last Wednesday meeting, Magiot took him in for questioning, but released him after Tania went in and spoke for him. Within twenty-four hours he was gone, taking Anna with him. His first letter was written obviously in the first flush of relaxation. He said it was his first vacation in four years. The second letter, however, showed signs of restlessness, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he were to return to the fray before long. There was no talk of marriage to Anna, though I gathered that they were together still. Watkins is back in England, presumably with his olives.

There were several strange offshoots from the Lavoie case. Paul and Henri both decided to enlist, and even though Henri was rejected, it brought forever to an end our beer gatherings. And Tania . . .

Tania lost her second son three months ago, and for a time she fell back into thinking herself old and useless. Her eldest son, the one resembling Lupa, received a furlough and came home to comfort her. After that, she recovered a bit and began nursing me daily. Fritz complained about constantly having a woman in the house, but I was happy to have her. One day, she entered my bedroom early in the morning and threw back the curtains, letting the sun stream in. She was beaming.

“Monsieur Giraud?”

“Oui.”

She came and sat by the bed.

“I’m afraid my fears of approaching old age have been groundless.”

“That’s what I’ve always said, my dear.”

“But more than you know, love. To avoid a scandal, I’m afraid you’re going to have to marry me.” Our laughter shook the house.

And so, six weeks ago, Madame Chessal became Madame Giraud. We hope our child will be a girl.

After Tania and Danielle moved in, Fritz eventually moved out, but there were no hard feelings. He’d been in touch with Lupa constantly, and planned to go home to Switzerland for a while, and then on to Corsica. Since they’d begun the rationing of food in earnest, losing Fritz wasn’t the tragedy it might have been.

Perhaps strangest of all, Magiot has been around to visit. He’s apologized several times for his earlier opinion of me. He’d no idea I was, in his words, “such a man of action.” He’s even gone so far as to say I deserve my retirement.

We had the Pulises and the Magiots around for dinner the other night, and Magiot said he’d heard I was to receive the Legion d’Honneur.

Though I had by now earned his respect, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to get in one last dig.

“Do you really think, Jules,” he asked, “that the medal is for your efforts in the Lupa business? It seems a rather grand gesture for what was really a rather insignificant episode. Compared to the larger war, I mean.”

“My dear Jacques, there’s no doubt in my mind that the recognition is for what I do best.”

“And that is?”

“I’ll tell you what that is,” Henri said. “It’s for making the finest damned beer in France.”