slung over his shoulder. The jackal put down his luggage again and proffered his Danish passport. The CRS man flicked through it, not understanding a word.
«Vous etes Danois?»
«Pardon?»
«Vous… Danois.»
He tapped the cover of the passport.
The Jackal beamed and nodded in delight.
«Daruke… ja, ja.»
The CRS man handed the passport back and jerked his head towards the platform. Without further interest he stepped forward to bar passage to another traveller coming through the barrier.
It was not until nearly one o'clock that Louison came back, and he had had a glass of wine or two. His distraught wife poured out her tale of woe. Louison took the matter in hand.
«I shall,» he announced, «mount to the window and look in.»
He had trouble with the ladder to start with. It kept wanting to go its own way. But eventually it was propped against the brickwork beneath the window of the Baroness's bedroom and Louison made his unsteady way to the top. He came down five minutes later.
«Madame la Baronne is asleep,» he announced.
But she never sleeps this late,» protested Ernestine.
«Well, she is doing today,» replied Louison, «one must not disturb her.»
The Paris train was slightly late. It arrived at Tulle on the dot of one o'clock. Among the passengers who boarded it was a grey-haired Protestant pastor. He took a corner seat in a compartment inhabited only by two middle-aged women, put on a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses, took a large book on churches and cathedrals from his hand-grip, and started to read. The arrival time at Paris, he learned, was ten past eight that evening.
Charles Bobet stood on the roadside next to his immobilised taxi, looked at his watch and swore. Half past one, time for lunch, and here he was stuck on a lonely stretch of road between Egletons and the hamlet of Lamaziere. With a busted halfshaft. Merde and merde again. He could leave the car and try to walk to the next village, take a bus into Egletons and return in the evening with a repair truck. That alone would cost him a week's earnings. But then again the car doors had no locks, and his fortune was tied up in the rattletrap taxi. Better not leave it for those thieving village kids to ransack. Better to be a little patient and wait until a lorry came along that could (for a consideration) tow him back to Egletons. He had had no lunch, but there was a bottle of wine in the glove compartment. Well, it was almost empty now. Crawling around under taxis was thirsty work. He climbed into the back of the car to wait. It was extremely hot on the roadside, and no lorries would be moving until the day had cooled a little. The peasants would be taking their siesta. He made himself comfortable and fell fast asleep.
«What do you mean he's not back yet? Where's the bugger gone?» roared Commissaire Valentin down the telephone. He was sitting in the commissariat at Egletons, ringing the house of the taxi-driver and speaking to his own policeman. The babble of the voice on the other end was apologetic. Valentin slammed the phone down. All morning and through the lunch-hour radio reports had come in from the squad cars manning the road blocks. No one remotely resembling a tall blond Englishman had left the twenty-kilometre-radius circle round Egletons. Now the sleepy market town was silent in the summer heat, dozing blissfully as if the two hundred policemen from Ussel and Clermont Ferrand had never descended upon it.
It was not until four o'clock that Ernestine got her way.
«You must go up there again and wake Madame,» she urged Louison. «It's not natural for anyone to sleep right through the day.»
Old Louison, who could think of nothing better than to be able to do just that, and whose mouth tasted like a vulture's crotch, disagreed, but knew there was no use in arguing with Ernestine when her mind was made up. He ascended the ladder again, this time more steadily than before, eased up the window and stepped inside. Ernestine watched from below.
After a few minutes the old man's head carne out of the window. «Ernestine,» he called hoarsely, «Madame seems to be dead.»
He was about to climb back down again when Ernestine screamed at him to open the bedroom door from the inside. Together they peered over the edge of the coverlet at the eyes staring blankly at the pillow a few inches away from the face.
Ernestine took over.
«Louison.»
«Yes, my dear.»
«Hurry down to the village and fetch Dr Mathieu. Hurry now.»
A few minutes later Louison was pedalling down the drive with all the force his frightened legs could muster. He found Dr Mathieu, who had tended the ills of the people of Haute Chalonniere for over forty years, asleep under the apricot tree at the bottom of his garden, and the old man agreed to come at once. It was past four-thirty when his car clattered into the courtyard of the chateau and fifteen minutes later when he straightened up from the bed and turned round on the two retainers who stood in the doorway.
«Madame is dead. Her neck has been broken,» he quavered «We must fetch the constable: Gendarme Caillou was a methodical man. He knew how serious was the job of an officer of the law, and how important it was to get the facts straight. With much licking of his pencil he took statements from Ernestine, Louison and Dr Mathieu as they sat around the kitchen table.
«There is no doubt,» he said, when the doctor had signed his statement, «that murder has been done. The first suspect is evidently the blond Englishman who has been staying here, and who has disappeared in Madame's car. I shall report the matter to headquarters in Egletons.»
And he cycled back down the hill.
Claude Lebel rang Commissaire Valentin from Paris at six-thirty.
«Alors, Valentin?»
“Nothing yet,» replied Valentin. «We've had road blocks up on every road and crack leading out of the area since mid-morning. He must be inside the circle somewhere, unless he moved far away after ditching the car. That thrice-damned taxi-driver who drove him out of Egletons on Friday morning has not turned up yet. I've got 304 patrols scouring the roads around here for him.… Hold it a minute, another report just coming in.»
There was a pause on the line and Lebel could hear Valentin conferring with someone who was speaking quickly. Then Valentin's voice came back on the line.
«Name of a dog, what's going on round here? There's been a murder.»
«Where?» asked Lebel with quickened interest.
«At a chateau in the neighbourhood. The report has just come in from the village constable.»
«Whose the dead person?»
«The owner of the chateau. A woman. Hold on a moment… The Baroness de la Chalonniere.»
Caron watched Lebel go pale.
'Valentin, listen to me. It's him. Has he got away from the chateau yet?»
There was another conference in the police station at Egletons.
«Yes,» said Valentin, «he drove away this morning in the Baroness's car. A small Renault. The gardener discovered the body, but not until this afternoon. He thought she must have been sleeping. Then he climbed through the window and found her.»
«Have you got the number and description of the car?» asked Lebel.
“Yes.»
«Then put out a general alert. There's no need for secrecy any more. It's a straight murder hunt now. I'll put out a nation-wide alert for it, but try and pick up the trail near the scene of the crime if you can. Try to get his general direction of flight.»
«Right, will do. Now we can really get started.»
Lebel hung up.
«Dear God, I'm getting slow in my old age. The name of the Baroness de la Chalonniere was on the guest list at the Hotel du Cerf the night the jackal stayed there.»
The car was found in a back street in Tulle at 7.30 by a policeman on the beat. It was 7.45 before be was
