The Melting Man

I opened the door to the hall, prepared to welcome guests.

The main house door swung back and Aristide came through. He took off a beret and gave me a half wave with it, and then stood there, shaking his head either in sadness at the sight of me or to get the sleep out of his eyes. Behind him was his driver, a big fellow in a tight blue suit and a peaked chauffeur's cap.

'The shotgun, my friend,' said Aristide, 'will not be necessary. You were just leaving?' He nodded at the suitcase inside the room door. Then he sniffed the air and said, 'Coffee?'

'In the kitchen. Help yourself.'

'You must share it with me.'

He came down the hall, took the shotgun from me and handed it to his driver.

'Have a good look round, Albert. Miss nothing.'

He took me by the arm, steered me into the main room, glanced round, nodded approvingly, and said, 'Always it has been a dream with me to have such a place. Secluded, the mountains, peace, and the air so clean you can wear a white shirt for a week without dirtying it.'

Albert clumped by us, and I led the way into the kitchen. The poodle greeted me as though I had been away for a month. The cat opened one eye, and then closed it, dismissing the interruption to its sleep.

Aristide said, 'Excuse me,' and began to make fresh coffee. I found a tin of chocolate biscuits and put them beside him. Not to get into his good books but because I knew he would have found them for himself anyway. I said, 'How did you know I was here?' He said, 'I didn't, but I am glad you are. I was merely informed that this was the address of Max Ansermoz and that the place might be of immediate interest. Personally, I am sure that behind it all was a desire to embarrass you. You are embarrassed?'

'No more than usual. Who informed you?'

'It was a woman — on the telephone — and she gave her name as Miss Panda Bubakar. A fictitious name, of course. It is always that, or they remain anonymous.' He gave me a warm smile, and went on, 'There is cream somewhere?' I found him some cream.

'Did you know,' he said, 'that coffee, which is held in such high esteem in the Middle East, used once to be taken during prayers in the mosques and even before the tomb of the Prophet at Mecca? And at one time the Turks, on marrying, used to promise the woman that in addition to love, honour and a daily bastinado or whatever, she should never go short of coffee, and that we owe that filthy instant stuff to a countryman of yours called Washington who, while living in Guatemala — yes, Albert?'

Albert had appeared in the doorway.

'It is there, monsieur.'

'Good. Go back and stay with it. We will be with you in a little while.'

'What is where?' I asked as Albert disappeared.

Aristide stuffed a chocolate biscuit into his mouth, gener ously tossed one to the poodle who was walking around on its hind legs, and then said, 'You have had a visitor tonight?'

'No.'

'Then it was you who jemmied the front door? The jemmy is on the table out there.'

I said, 'Do me a favour, Aristide — don't save the main point till last. I've got a long drive ahead of me and want to get off.'

'You have found where the Mercedes is?'

'No.'

'A pity.'

'Why?'

'If you had, I might have stretched a point. The main point you were talking about. This is good coffee. Martinique. It was a great countryman of mine, one Desclieux, who under severe hardship brought the first coffee seedling to Martinique. You can always tell Martinique coffee, big grains, rounded at both ends and it is greenish in colour. Did you see Max Ansermoz at all on this visit?'

'No.'

'You are becoming monosyllabic.'

'What do you expect at this hour of the morning?'

'That you would be in bed, sleeping the sleep of the just. However, it is convenient that you are already dressed. Are you sure that you do not know where the car is?'

'Frankly, no.'

'Splendid. If you tell me where it is, you can go, and I shall ignore all that this Miss Panda has said ignore even the evidence of Albert's and my eyes, and even the fact — which I have no doubt the laboratory experts will establish — of your fingerprints.'

I said, 'I'd better have some coffee to clear my head.'

Graciously, he poured me a cup and another one for himself. Then he gave me one of his warm, owlish smiles, and said, 'Just tell me where the car is and I will smooth away all difficulties for you. I have the power — and after all I have, too, a certain affection for you. You have had a visitor tonight — otherwise you would not be leaving at this hour. The car, mon ami, where is it?'

I lit a cigarette and shook my head.

'You insist?'

'I insist,' I said. 'And what is more I insist on my rights. Unless you are going to make some charge against me, I wish to leave. Okay?'

I turned to go.

Aristide said, 'I think we had better join Albert first. He is a good man, Albert. Solid, a little slow-thinking, but a first-class driver. He comes from Brittany where they make a coffee substitute out of chickpea and lupin seeds. This way.'

He held out a hand with a gun in it and pointed towards the door on the far side of the kitchen through which Albert had gone.

I went through the door and he followed me. At the end of the corridor I could see Albert waiting. I'd been down here before when I had first searched the house. There were a couple of storerooms and a cellar. Albert was standing outside the cellar door.

As we approached he turned the key in the lock and opened the door for us. They stood aside and motioned me in first, Aristide switching the light on behind me.

One wall held racks of wine bottles. There was no window and there were empty crates and cartons stacked against another wall. Along the wall that faced the door was a big deepfreeze unit. The lid was pushed back, resting against the wall, and an internal light was burning in it, throwing a soft glow up to the ceiling.

One of them prodded me gently up to the deep-freeze. Lying inside, knees bent up, head sunk between his shoulders was Max Ansermoz. On a pile of frozen spinach cartons rested the gun with which Najib had killed him, and I didn't have to be told, because I already had been, that my fingerprints would be on it, placed there by Najib while I lay knocked out in the main room. Najib wasn't the kind of man to throw anything away that one day might come in handy.

'Well?' said Aristide at my side.

I stepped back. 'You'd better get the lid down,' I said, 'or the rest of the stuff will spoil.'

'You killed him,' said Aristide. 'I didn't — and you know it.'

'I only know it if you know where the car is. Otherwise we go to an examining magistrate. Your prints will be on the gun.'

'That won't surprise me.'

'If you know where the car is it will save endless complications… the slow progression of the law to establish innocence… the procés-verbal. Have you any idea how long it all takes?'

'How,' I asked, 'can I tell you where the car is if I don't know?'

Aristide studied me, shook his head and said, 'If only one could tell whether a person is telling the truth or not.'

'It would make police work simple, and cause a lot of confusion in domestic life.'

Aristide nodded and then said, 'Search him, Albert.'

Albert came over, turned me round, perhaps out of respect for the dead, to face the door, and then went through my clothes. He did it very thoroughly and handed his find to Aristide. Aristide shuffled through the stuff, passport, credit cards, wallet and so on, and then handed the lot back to me.

I said, 'Look, Aristide, you know I didn't kill Max. That doesn't mean to say I'm not glad he's dead — but I didn't do it. What you are doing is just falling for a gag — from another interested party — to keep me from finding that car.'