'Which question first? I'm not on a quiz show. No, they'd never taken a holiday before. Not away. She sounded peaky on the phone – as though she needed the holiday.'
'Peaky? Nervous, perhaps?' Benoit pressed.
'Come to think of it, yes. Short conversation. For her. In a rush to get off to Majorca. Two days ago that would be.'
'Have you a key? Did you see her before she left?'
'No! Told you, she phoned. When I came round they'd gone. And no key. What's this all about?'
'One good heave would open the front door,' Sonnet called out. 'Newman has been round the house, says it looks empty. The kitchen is a mess…'
'How dare you!' Madame Joris stormed up the path. 'Marline is a clean and neat housewife. I don't believe it.'
'Unwashed dishes piled up in the sink,' Newman whispered to Sonnet.
'One good heave. These locks are useless…'
Sonnet pressed a shoulder against the lock side of the door and pushed. It held for a moment, there was a click, the door swung inward. Sonnet recovered his balance.
'You can't do that!' screamed Madame Joris.
'My impression,' Benoit told her amiably, 'is we have just done it …'
'I'm coming in…'
'I was about to ask you if you would be so kind as to do just that.'
Paula tiptoed in behind Sonnet, gestured to the rug in the small hall which was askew. Madame Joris pushed past them after Sonnet and followed him into the kitchen. She stared at the piled-up unwashed dishes.
'Something's wrong.' She sounded alarmed for the first time. 'Martine would never go out shopping leaving things like that. Let alone on holiday.'
'Could you check her clothes, please?' asked Benoit.
Madame Joris came hustling down the tiny staircase in less than a minute. She was agitated and held a pair of shoes in her hand.
'Her best shoes. Bought in a sale. She'd never leave those, her Sunday shoes. Something's terribly wrong. You do realize that, I hope?'
She made the statement as though she were the first to raise the alarm. Tweed stood watching her, hands thrust inside his raincoat pockets. His mind went back to his days as a detective, when he'd stood just like this, confronting a new witness, deciding the best way to handle the unknown quantity.
'Madame Joris,' he began, 'may I congratulate you on your excellent powers of observation?'
She seemed to grow even larger, her full breasts sagging inside her flowered dress. 'I don't miss much, I can tell you that.'
'I'm sure you don't. You know this house. Would you take me over it, see what else you can spot?'
'Of course.' She mellowed visibly under Tweed's flattery, so delighted to be the centre of attraction. 'Shall we start upstairs?'
Tweed followed her up the tiny staircase, just wide enough for Joris to squeeze her bulk between banisters and wall. They went into a small bedroom. Joris began opening drawers. She spoke over her crouched form. 'Wouldn't do this normally, of course…'
'I understand, but Martine may be in great danger.' Tweed understood only too well; Joris was revelling in the opportunity to poke among her neighbour's things.
Tweed noted the neatly arranged items on Marline's dressing-table, the few carefully placed pots on window ledges. He looked at the bed, which was made up but had a rumpled appearance.
'Is that the way Martine would make up the bed?' he asked.
'It is not! An apple pie mess, I call that. She was very tidy in her habits.'
Another signal the girl had left behind to alert the police if they caught on to her disappearance. A clever girl, this Martine. And she must have been scared stiff, knowing she and her son were being abducted. The counterpane draped to the floor. Tweed caught sight of a piece of white paper protruding from under the counterpane. He looked round, saw Joris' ample buttocks facing him as she burrowed in a lower drawer. He bent down, took hold of the paper and dragged out a coloured brochure.
Luxair. The Luxembourg airline. The folder had three pages joined together. It had been folded back to a page headed Cargolux, the cargo-carrying branch of the airline. At the bottom, in black ink and scarcely legible script one word had been written. Rio. Tweed slipped the folder into his pocket.
'What about that wardrobe?' he suggested.
'Can't find anything in the drawers.' Joris marched over to the wardrobe, opened the double doors and stared inside as Tweed joined her. She stood with her arms akimbo, checking the hanging clothes.
'Didn't take her best dress, the one she also wears Sundays.' Her beady eyes dropped to the floor. 'And her travelling case is missing. Never used it. Never went anywhere. But she hoped to one day, when they were rich. That case was her hope for the future.'
Try the dressing-table,' Tweed suggested.
'If you say so. Mind you, I'm only doing this under police orders.' She looked up as Paula appeared in the doorway. 'Didn't know they were getting such good-looking Belgian policewomen these days. Brussels, I suppose?'
'That's right,' replied Paula.
She looked at Tweed as Joris bustled over to the dressing-table. Paula had a flair not only for languages; she had an acute ear for local pronunciation. With Tweed she now realized for the first time she could pass for a Belgian.
'More trouble.' Joris made her statement with a tinge of satisfaction. A touch of drama, even at a friend's expense, was livening up her dull life. 'She left her best undies,' Joris went on. 'What woman would go on holiday and do that. I've checked in there,' she said sharply as Paula separated the dresses inside the wardrobe, then went on checking the dressing-table drawers.
Paula beckoned behind her back to Tweed. He joined her and she pointed at the rear wall behind the dresses. 'She used lipstick,' she whispered. Scrawled hastily in thick red on the wall were two half-finished words. Peug. Jaun.
'He – or they – came for her in a yellow Peugeot,' Tweed whispered back. 'We simply must save this girl and her son.'
'If they're still alive,' Paula responded sombrely.
'What made you think of looking at the wall?'
'Because it's the place I'd have chosen if I was being kidnapped. She must have concealed the lipstick in her hand. While she was taking down a few dresses she scrawled that message.'
'Nothing else,' Joris called out to Tweed. 'Are you feeling all right?'
Tweed, glassy-eyed, had gone into a trance, thoughts flashing through his mind. He blinked, smiled at Joris. 'Lack of sleep, nothing more. Incidentally, shouldn't the boy, Lucien, be at school?'
'I asked that when she phoned. She said she'd phone to the school and tell them Lucien had the flu.'
It took them only a few minutes to check the rest of the upper floor and they descended the staircase. Joris burst out with her discoveries to Benoit with an air of triumph. He listened, lips pursed at her attitude. Tweed waited until she'd finished before he asked the question.
'Did you notice a car pass your house? You're further down the road, nearer the village from the direction you came. I'm referring to the day when Marline phoned you. Perhaps half an hour or so before the phone call?'
'I heard a car, yes. But I couldn't get to…' Joris broke off, her eyes shifting round the kitchen… the window before it had gone up the hill. Tweed mentally completed her sentence. She was the local busybody.
'Did you hear a car return past your house later – say within another half hour?' he pressed.
'No! There is very little traffic all day.'
'Excuse me a moment.' Tweed took the arm of Benoit, who was chatting in undertones with Paula, and led him to the front room, nodding for Paula to follow. 'Benoit, we're looking for a yellow Peugeot…'He described what Paula had found inside the wardrobe. 'And when the car took Martine and Lucien away it drove on uphill – away from the village. Otherwise Miss Nosey Parker would have seen it – she obviously keeps a close eye on what's going on. And she didn't even hear it coming back.'
