Page 66 of Marble Hall Murders

‘He took his purchase and he also went. I did not see in which direction.’ Hector Brunelle was close to tears. ‘I did nothing wrong,’ he complained. ‘The man told me he was a doctor. He had a licence.’ A thought occurred to him. His eyes brightened. ‘He signed his name in the register.’

‘Let me see it!’

The pharmacist ducked down behind the counter and reappeared with a thick leather volume with deckle-edged pages. He found his glasses and put them on, then laboriously searched through the entries. At last, he found the date he was looking for. ‘Here!’ he said. But he sounded disappointed.

Pünd saw why. When the book was turned round, the signature was nothing more than a scribble of turquoise ink in which not a single letter was legible. The so-called doctor had not even pretended to add an address.

Brunelle knew immediately that he was at fault. He should have worn his glasses. He should have taken more care. ‘I only provided him with two grams of the medicine,’ he protested. ‘It was not a fatal dose!’

But once the three men were back out in the street, Voltaire took a different view. ‘The man is a fool,’ he snapped.‘Two grams would have been more than enough to kill an elderly woman with a heart condition.’

‘Will you prosecute him, Monsieur Voltaire?’

Voltaire considered. ‘No. What good will it do? But this will be a warning for him to take more care in future.’ He glanced at a café that was just a few steps away. ‘I would like a coffee,’ he said. Perhaps it was an invitation. Pünd and Fraser exchanged looks, then joined him at a table underneath the awning.

The café was not the most charming in the city, but there was something honest and authentic about the striped canopy and the tables spread out along the pavement that put all three of them at ease. For a moment, the murder and the friction between the investigators could be forgotten. A waiter with a long white apron appeared and they ordered three coffees. Voltaire lit another cigarette.

‘You live in Paris?’ Pünd asked.

‘I have lived there for much of my life. I have a wife and a son in Montparnasse.’

‘How old is your son?’

‘His name is Lucien and he is seventeen.’ Voltaire smoked contentedly. ‘He was born two years before the war. During that time, he and his mother moved to the south, to Hyères, which is not so very far from here. They were safer staying with relatives.’

‘And you?’

‘I was a police officer but also an army reservist. I was conscripted and sent for training in a town called Bitche in the Moselle.’ He glanced at Fraser. ‘It is perhaps fortunate that your friend has no need to translate.’ He paused. ‘I foundmyself serving in the Ardennes, part of the famous Maginot Line that was said to be indestructible until the moment it was destroyed. I was in one of thepetits ouvrages– as we called them. A bunker connected to a network of tunnels. A German hand grenade ended my war on the twenty-eighth of May 1940. It left me as you see me now.’

‘I am sorry,’ Pünd said.

‘Are you, Herr Pünd? It does not matter now, of course, but we were on opposite sides. I was in hospital for many weeks and spent the next five years as a prisoner of war. Some prisoners were exchanged under therelèvesystem, but I was not considered to have any value and so remained in a stalag in Görlitz in the far east of Germany. At least I was spared forced labour. My injuries made that impossible. Instead, they tried to starve me to death.’

‘You were fortunate to survive,’ Pünd remarked. ‘But if you will allow me, Monsieur Voltaire, I must say that you are wrong when you state that we were on opposite sides. I was born in Germany, but I come from a family of Greek Jews. I was, like you, a police officer in the thirties, but I made the mistake of speaking out against the Nazis. As a result, I spent the war in a prison camp.’

‘Then our experiences were similar.’

‘The camp where I was held may have had a different clientèle, but I would imagine the living conditions were equally unpleasant.’

‘Then I apologise. I have perhaps allowed my experiences to have informed the way I have behaved towards you.’

‘There is no need for an apology, Monsieur Voltaire. The war has cast a long shadow and its darkness reaches us even now.’

The coffee had taken a long time to arrive, but finally the waiter reappeared, balancing a silver tray with cups and saucers on the flat of his hand. Pünd waited until he had gone before he began again. ‘What did you make of the story told by our friendle pharmacien?’ he asked. ‘The man with the white hair.’

‘The only man with white hair who is known to me is Elmer Waysmith,’ Voltaire replied.

‘He also has an American accent,’ Fraser chipped in.

‘Indeed so. I have not, however, seen Monsieur Waysmith make use of a walking stick.’

‘Well, perhaps he was trying to disguise himself,’ Fraser said. ‘The straw hat, the dark glasses, the way he tried to hide his face …’

‘That is certainly one interpretation,’ Pünd muttered. ‘I would ask myself, though, why Mr Waysmith should have carried with him the scent of surgical spirit.’

‘And then there is the question of timing,’ Voltaire said. ‘We know that he had lunch with his son on the same day that the aconitine was purchased. We are at least fifteen minutes from the Place Masséna, even at a brisk pace. It would be interesting to know at what time he arrived at the restaurant …’

‘And what he was wearing,’ Pünd added.

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