Jean Bereut had been a master mariner until an accident had deprived him of both his legs. Now, he was forced to sit behind the bar of La Boule d’Or and serve drinks while his mind drifted away from time to time to the far oceans where he had spent the best years of his life.
Seeing Jay seat himself, Bereut reached forward and struck a bell that hung within reach. A moment or so later, Ginette came out from the rear room and looked inquiringly at her father. He gave her a friendly grin as he jerked his thumb towards Jay.
She came across the room and paused at Jay’s side, her back turned to her father. Jay looked up and he felt a surge of pleasure run through him to see the flush that mounted to her face as she recognized him.
“Hello,” he said. “I was passing... ”
“Father mustn’t know,” she said, her voice an anxious whisper.
He understood that. He wouldn’t want his father to know either. His eyes moved over her. She was wearing a simple light blue dress and her hair was caught back by a strip of blue ribbon. He thought she looked lovely and he felt blood mount to his own face.
“Can I have a Vermouth, dry, with ice?” he said, then added quickly, “I’ll be down at the harbour at midnight. You will be there?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
She gave him a quick smile, then she went into the bar and he heard her ask her father for a Vermouth.
Jay looked across at the Beau Rivage hotel. The place stood inactive in its dingy sordidness. Then, as Ginette brought the Vermouth to his table, a girl with dyed red hair, wearing a shabby grey coat and skirt, accompanied by a red-faced, anxious-looking man in shorts and a flowered patterned shirt that proclaimed him to be an American on holiday, entered the hotel.
“I’m looking for another hotel,” Jay said. He nodded across to the Beau Rivage. “Is that any good?”
“The Beau Rivage?” Ginette’s eyes opened wide. “You mustn’t go there. It is a horrible place. All the street girls use it.”
“I didn’t know.” Jay leaned back in his chair, looking up at her. He saw she had a tiny mole just under her chin and he felt an urge to kiss it. “Do you know of any place — that’s cheap?”
“Well... ” She hesitated. “We have a few rooms. They’re clean, but I don’t suppose they are what you are used to.”
Jay laughed.
“You want to see the place where I am staying now. It’s clean, of course, but it isn’t very exciting. I may need to make a change. If I could have a room... ”
“Yes. It would be five hundred francs a day.” Ginette looked anxiously at him. “Would that be too much?”
“No, that would be fine. Well, if I have to leave the other place I’ll come here and discuss it with your father.” Jay had no idea why he was talking like this. He wanted to keep her at his side and he knew she wouldn’t remain there unless he held her on the legitimate excuse of business.
“Would you be staying long?” she asked.
“No, not for long. I shall be leaving for Venice some time next week.”
He was glad to see her expression of disappointment.
“I see,” she moved back. “Well, I must go.”
“To-night,” he said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
She nodded and went back into the rear room.
Jay finished the Vermouth, lit another cigarette, and after a moment or so, he got up, went into the bar and laid a five hundred franc note on the counter.
Bereut put aside his paper and gave change, nodding genially to Jay.
“Come again, monsieur,” he said. “You will always he welcome.”
Jay thanked him. As he moved out into the the sun-baked street, he had a feeling he was being watched, and he looked back.
Ginette was standing in the doorway of the inner room. She raised her hand and smiled at him. Looking quickly at the bar and making sure her father was intent on his newspaper. Jay returned her smile and her signal, then he walked out of the cafe and strolled past the Beau Rivage hotel.
He caught a glimpse of an enormous woman sitting behind the reception desk: a woman with rust-coloured hair, and whose bodies seemed to be about to burst in its effort to contain the grossness of her bosom.
So this was Madame Brossette. Jay thought. She looked imposing enough and terribly strong. He flinched at the thought of having to kill her. She wouldn’t be easy to kilclass="underline" not like the slight, beautifully proportioned Lucille Balu.
He walked on through the dark shadows and the patches of hard, white sunlight, then suddenly he paused before the window of a jeweller’s shop, stopping abruptly as if he had been caught hold of by an invisible hand and had been jerked to a standstill.
In the centre of the shop window was a necklace of sapphire blue beads, the size of small walnuts. They were the exact replica of the beads that Lucille Balu had worn and which he had dropped one by one into the harbour.
He stood staring at the beads. Providence, he was thinking. Luck seems to be favouring me.
He walked into the jeweller’s shop and bought the necklace. It cost four thousand five hundred francs.
When the assistant wanted to wrap the beads in tissue paper Jay stopped him.
“It’s all right. I’ll take them as they are,” he said, and, picking up the necklace, he dropped it into his hip pocket and laid on the counter a five thousand franc note.
Taking his change, he left the shop, and a few yards further on, he came to a hairdresser’s shop. He entered and asked for a razor.
The assistant showed his surprise at the request. He tried to interest Jay in an electric razor, but Jay, shaking his head, and smiling his meaningless smile, said: “No. I want a razor. The old-fashioned kind. After all, they do give the best shave. Haven’t you one?”
Yes, they had one, but it took several minutes for the clerk to find it. He laid the razor, its blade glittering in the sunshine, on the counter.
“Yes, that’s what I want,” Jay said.
He paid and let the assistant put the razor into its leather case, then, taking it from the man’s hand, he slid it into his hip pocket.
Moving slowly, he again passed the Beau Rivage hotel. This time he noticed there was a young girl behind the reception desk: a thin slattern who was yawning over a newspaper, scratching her head as she read with a bored expression on her thin, sun-tanned face.
It would be unwise, he thought as he passed the entrance and headed once more up the Rue d’Antibes, to do anything until it was dark. The back streets would be deserted soon after ten o’clock: then would be the time and he felt a quickening of his pulse as he thought what he had to do.
While he was walking back to the Plaza hotel, the news of the murder exploded like a hand grenade among the pressmen haunting the Plaza lobby.
For more than half an hour Inspector Devereaux was besieged in the assistant-manager’s office. Then when the pressmen were satisfied that they had all the information he could give them, there was a mad rush to the telephones.
Left alone with Guidet, Devereaux sat back and mopped his perspiring face.
He had said nothing about Joe Kerr to the pressmen. He had given them the details of the girl’s death. He had given them permission to visit the morgue where she had now been taken. He had said that the investigation was proceeding but so far there were no clues.
This was all very well for a few hours, but he knew before long pressure would be brought to bear on him for further information and a demand made for an arrest.
“Still no sign of Kerr?” he asked Guidet.
“Not yet. He’s not staying at any of the hotels here,” Guidet said. “We are extending the search further afield and I have every available man on the job. It looks suspicious. The hall porter tells me that Kerr always arrives before eleven in the morning and hangs about up to midnight. To-day, so far, there has been no sign of him.”
Devereaux dug his pencil viciously into the much-marked blotter.