Seurat shrugged. ‘I expect you’re right. But we’re sure to learn something. It’s worth taking the trouble.’
‘To show the British we’re trying to help?’ Isabelle could not suppress her cynicism.
‘It’s not just that. I’m sure you’d agree we’d all be quite keen to put Milraud away. It may be that MI5 are doing us a favour, rather than the other way around.’
Isabelle picked an almond from a plate on a stall and said thoughtfully, ‘I find it surprising that Milraud would choose this town for his base.’
‘Why? Not exotic enough?’
‘The file says he grew up in Brittany, so it’s not as if he had roots here. And yes, not exotic enough. From your description of the man, he sounds more Saint-Tropez than Toulon.’
‘It’s pleasant enough here,’ said Seurat. ‘Maybe he finds it a convenient port for his business. Not as heavily policed as Marseilles, close to North Africa. It has its advantages. But I don’t expect him to show up here any time soon – not if he’s involved in the disappearance of this MI5 man.’
‘So let’s call on Madame Dipeau before she closes for lunch. If we turn down here we’ll come into the top end of the rue d’Alger, where the shop is.’
At the shop, Seurat held open the heavy oak door for Isabelle and followed her into the long dark room. Behind a counter at the far end a white-haired woman in a black jacket and long skirt was polishing a beautifully chased metal scabbard with a cloth.
Madame Dipeau, thought Seurat. She looks very respectable. Clever of him – no one would suspect that a woman of mature years, formidable demeanour and decorous dress would be colluding in anything shady.
The woman looked up and nodded politely, then greeted them in the strong nasal tones of the region. ‘Bonjour m’sieurdame. En vacances?’
‘No. We were hoping to see Monsieur Milraud.’
The woman shook her head sadly, as she put the cloth and scabbard down on the counter’s glass top. ‘Pas possible. Monsieur is away.’
Seurat said, ‘Really? When we spoke on the phone he mentioned a trip to Ireland, but he said he would be back by now.’
She replied quickly, ‘He called to say he would be away longer than planned.’ Her expression made clear that this was a matter of indifference to her.
‘Was he still in Ireland when you spoke to him?’
‘I don’t know where he was, monsieur. I did not enquire.’ Madame Dipeau spoke sharply, making it clear she didn’t question her employer about his whereabouts, and that by implication neither should Seurat.
‘Possibly Madame Milraud would know where we can find her husband,’ suggested Isabelle. The woman gave an elegant shrug and did not reply. ‘Do you have an address and perhaps we could call on her?’
‘I am not authorised to give out personal information, madame,’ she replied coldly.
‘Even if we are old friends of the Milrauds?’
Madame Dipeau raised both hands palms upwards to show that she remained unable to help.
There was a pause. ‘You’re right – we’re not old friends,’ said Isabelle, speaking brusquely now, fishing in her bag and producing a warrant card. ‘Nor new ones, either. But I suggest you give us the home address of Monsieur Milraud right away. Otherwise, in ten minutes I will have the gendarmerie here. Not to mention an inspector of taxes, who will wish to inspect every item in your inventory, go through all your records, see every invoice, check every bill that’s been paid. I am sure when Monsieur Milraud eventually returns to find such a thorough investigation, he will be pleased that he’s left his business in such safe hands. C’est compris, madame?’
The woman looked long and hard at Isabelle. She said nothing but reaching for a pad from behind the counter wrote down an address and pointedly handed it to Seurat.
‘Bandol,’ he said with a charming smile, reading the address. ‘Antoine has certainly come up in the world. Merci beaucoup, madame.’ Isabelle had reached the door but he paused and, pointing at the scabbard lying on the counter, said, ‘That looks as if it belonged to one of Napoleon’s marshals.’
Madame Dipeau was unamused. ‘It belonged to Napoleon himself, monsieur,’ she said tartly.
39
As they walked back to the car Isabelle said, ‘She’ll be on the phone by now to Madame Milraud. What’s the next move?’
She didn’t need to ask – this was technically her turf; she dealt with the French mainland, not Seurat. Perhaps if it had been Milraud himself they were going to see, she might have asserted that position, taken the initiative. But she seemed to have guessed that Seurat had some sort of an issue with Madame Milraud and decided that if he wanted to handle the interview himself, she wouldn’t stand in his way.
So Seurat said, ‘If it’s okay with you, I’ll go on my own. But you’re right. That woman in the shop will be phoning around. To both the Milrauds probably – I’ll bet she knows where he is. Now that we’ve put the cat among the pigeons I think we need phone interception on the shop and on the Milraud house. Could you organise that while I go and talk to Annette?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll take the car back to Marseilles and start putting things in motion. You can take a taxi and we’ll meet up again in Marseilles. Here’s the address of our office there.’
He slid out of the back seat and walked across to a taxi rank opposite. He was glad she had taken it that way. From what he knew of Annette Milraud, he was quite sure that woman to woman would not have been the right approach.
The taxi turned off the Toulon-Marseilles motorway and began to coast down the winding side-road to Bandol. Bandol. What did he know about Bandol? Seurat asked himself. Some sort of resort where people used to come for golfing holidays, and didn’t anymore? Wine! That was it. Quite a well-known wine; pretty pricey too – not a wine he drank himself.
A big rocky outcrop loomed up in front, with a number of large villas set among the trees around its top. You could see the Mediterranean now – and now you couldn’t, as the road slithered round another bend and under a viaduct. They climbed steeply and eventually came to a halt at the gates of a big villa facing east towards Toulon. Seurat got out and rang the bell at the tall black security gates. A camera zoomed round to observe him as he gave his name to a disembodied voice. A pause, then the gate opened and the taxi drove in, up a steep drive bordered with carefully pruned conifers and flowering acacias. The two slowly-turning watersprays, the gardener working on a flower bed, the neatness of the scene – everything suggested that Milraud had done very well for himself since leaving the service, and that he was concerned to take care of his property and of himself as well.
No need to press the doorbell. As he got out of the car, the front door opened and a smartly uniformed maid took his card and ushered him into a large, square hall furnished with two sofas and an ebony table. Marble floor; pale grey sofas; mimosa-yellow cushions. Interior design job, reflected Seurat. No human hand had touched this. Expensive as well. Gauzy curtains hanging at the big windows moved gently in the air conditioning, but did not restrict the rolling view over the coastal plain towards Toulon.
Typical of Annette, he thought to himself as he waited. She’ll make her entrance after she’s given me time to take this in, and not before. He grinned at the thought of the shabby little suburban flat she’d last occupied in Paris. She’d be surprised he’d turned up here but delighted that he’d seen the luxury she now lived in. But softly, softly, he told himself. That was the way to deal with Annette.