Страница 181 из 194
MY MOTHER USED TO WRITE CRITICISM FOR NASTY LITTLE MAGAZINES. OUR COMMUNICATIONS ARE MINIMAL. SHE DOES SOMETHING FOR THE MOVIES NOW. I GREW UP TO THE MUSIC OF TYPEWRITERS AND IT SEEMS NORMAL FOR ME TO PUT MY THOUGHTS, SUCH AS THEY ARE, ON PAPER. THE AMUSEMENTS ARE LIMITED HERE, ALTHOUGH IT’S BETTER THAN NAM, AS THE COLONEL KEEPS SAYING.
I PLAY TENNIS WITH THE COLONEL AND PRAISE HIS FEEBLE BACKHAND, WHICH IS ONE WAY OF GETTING AHEAD IN THE ARMY.
IF THE PREEMPTIVE RUSSIAN STRIKE DOESN’T HIT NATO, AS THE COLONEL WARNS IT WILL, I’LL KEEP SCRIBBLING. IT GIVES ME SOMETHING TO DO WHEN THINGS GET SLOW AT THE MOTOR POOL, WHERE I AM CALLED THE TRUCKMASTER.
I WONDER WHAT THE GUY IN CHARGE OF THE MOTOR POOL AT THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE WARSAW PACT FORCES IS DOING TONIGHT AS I WRITE THIS.
« »
Alexander Hubbell was a newspaperman. Or at least he worked for Time Magazine in Paris. He was not supposed to be a newspaperman this week because he was on holiday with his wife. His wife was taking a siesta in the hotel at the base of the cape and Alexander Hubbell was approaching the préfecture of police in Antibes. He had been puzzling over a name that he had read in Nice-Matin three days ago, Jordache. An American named Jordache had been murdered in the port of Antibes just five days after his wedding. The murderer or murderers were being sought. For the time being no motive for the crime had been found. The victim who had been the owner of a yacht called the Clothilde, berthed in the harbor of Antibes, had been clubbed to death on the deck of his own ship.
Hubbell prided himself on his newspaperman’s memory and it had a
Still, a man whose wife had exposed herself bare-assed in front of a howling mob of students might well have gotten rid of her and married somebody with less flamboyant habits.
Of course, it might be somebody entirely different with the same name, Hubbell thought, as he waited for a light to change. A yacht in Antibes was a long way from Whitby, New York. Anyway, it was worth looking into. If it turned out to be the same promising young politician it would make a useful little story, vacation or no vacation. He had been on holiday five days already and was begi
The single policeman in the paint-flaked empty anteroom was dozing behind his desk, but brightened, glad for company, when Hubbell told him, in his good French, that he was a newspaperman and that he had come to make inquiries about the murder. The policeman went into another room and came out a moment later to tell him that the chef could see him now. Crime, it seemed, was not rife in Antibes that afternoon.
The chef was a sleepy-eyed, small, dark man in a blue T-shirt and rumpled cotton pants. A gold front tooth gleamed when he spoke: “What can I do for you, monsieur?”
Hubbell explained that the details of the murder of an American in France, especially if this was the Jordache he thought it was, a man of considerable importance back home, would be of interest to the American public. He and his editors would be most grateful to the chef for any light he could shed on the affair.
The chef was used to French newspapermen, who had treated the murder as a routine settling of waterfront accounts. This shrewd-looking American, representative of a prestigious magazine, investigating the death of a fellow countryman in a holiday resort that attracted many Americans, was a different matter. The chef would have been happier if the arrest had already been made and the culprit behind bars, but there was no help for that at the moment.
“Are there any clues,” the man was saying, “as to who might have done it or what the motives were?”
“We are working on the case with diligence,” the chef said. “Twenty-four hours a day.”
“Do you have any leads?”
The chef hesitated for a moment. In the movies reporters were always finding clues the police overlooked. The American seemed like an intelligent man and there was the possibility that he might come up with something useful. “On the night of his wedding,” the chef said, “Monsieur Jordache was involved in an argument—a brutal argument, I have been told by his sister-in-law—in a bar in Ca
“A brutal argument,” Hubbell said. “You mean a fight.”
The chef nodded. “Of extreme brutality, I have been told by the sister-in-law.”
“Do you know what it was about?”
“The sister-in-law claims that the foreigner was about to commit rape on her when Monsieur Jordache intervened.”
“I see,” Hubbell said. “Was Jordache in the habit of getting into fights in bars?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the chef said. “I knew Monsieur Jordache. In fact, we occasionally had a glass together. It was with great sorrow that I learned of his death. I knew him as a peaceful man. He was very well liked. He had no known enemies. However—I ca
“Nice-Matin says he owned a yacht,” Hubbell said. He laughed lightly. “That’s pretty important.”
“He worked the yacht,” the chef said. “He was a charter captain. It was his means of livelihood.”
“I see,” Hubbell said. He couldn’t imagine one of the ten most promising young politicians in America making his living out of ferrying boating parties around the Mediterranean, no matter how many times his wife had displayed herself naked back home. The story was becoming less interesting. “Perhaps the murder was political?” he asked hopefully.
“I don’t believe so. He was not a political man at all. We tend to accumulate information on political people.”
“Smuggling?”
“I hardly think so. In that field, too, we have our information. Or at least suspicions.”
“How would you describe him, then?” Hubbell persisted, out of force of habit.
The chef shrugged. “A decent workingman. A good type.” Brave type in French. Measured praise, slightly patronizing from a French cop. “Honest, as far as anyone knew,” the chef went on. “We were not really intimate. He spoke very little French. Not like you, monsieur.” Hubbell nodded recognition of the compliment. “And my English, I regret to say, is most rudimentary.” The chef smiled at his disability. “We did not discuss our private philosophies.”
“What did he do before he came here? Do you know?”
“He was a merchant seaman.” The chef hesitated. Jordache had told him over a glass of wine, after the chef had commented on the broken nose, the scar tissue, that he had been a boxer. But he had asked the chef to keep quiet about it. In waterfront cafés boxers were likely targets for large men made belligerent by drink. “I didn’t come to France to fight,” Jordache had said. “It isn’t my lucky country for fighting. I had one bout in Paris and got my brains knocked out.” He’d laughed as he said it. From the look of the body the fight he’d been in before he died hadn’t been a lucky one, either.