Death of an Ambassador

Manning Coles

• Publisher: Rare Treasure Editions
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781773238531
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Letteratura poliziesca e gialli

When the new ambassador from Esmeralda is killed in London, Tommy Hambledon becomes involved in the investigation. He goes to Paris, where Letord of the Sûreté is puzzled by some unauthorized help he's been getting. As an officer of the law, of course, Letord cannot countenance vigilante behavior, but does it hurt so much to get these jewel thieves off his books? Hambledon feels much the same, especially when the mysterious person saves his life...

SEVENTEEN

Gogo the Dwarf

The bank manager protested his distaste at being asked to reveal his clients’ financial secrets.

“For I am under an obligation to secrecy,” he said. “This little office”—it was twenty feet square and had a marble floor—“is, in a very real sense, a confessional. Here come the inexperienced, the embarrassed, the unhappy, the——”

“The police,” said Letord. “They are not inexperienced, they are seldom embarrassed, but they are frequently unhappy, especially when information is withheld from them. I have shewn you my authority for inspecting this account——”

“But I bow to it,” said the manager. “I bow deeply. At the same time I owe it to my——”

“Grandmother. The account, please.”

“I have made my protest,” said the manager with dignity and pressed a bell upon his desk; the clerk who came in was sent for the account of Monsieur Robert Écritet, l’avocat. When it was laid upon the desk the manager took his time in opening it and arranging it before him while Letord’s fingers tapped out an inaudible tattoo upon his knee.

“Well, now,” said the manager, “the messieurs desire——”

Letord shot a string of questions and received a great deal of not very helpful information. Monsieur Écritet did not pay cheques in as a rule, usually cash. Large sums in cash, usually in thousand-franc notes. Monsieur Écritet would come in with an attaché case full of notes, put it down on the counter and say: “A little more stuffing to keep the wind out.”

“That was always his little joke, you understand,” said the manager, looking over the tops of his spectacles. “Then my clerks would gather round and one would count and a couple more would check.”

“I am more interested in the cheques he received.”

“They were not large. Not many, and not large. He——”

“No large cheques at all?” snapped Letord.

“There was one large one, I remember, sometime last year. Let me turn back, yes, here we are. In April last year, fourteen months ago. It was for seven million francs.”

“From whom?”

“An art dealer named Paul Joseph, in the Boulevard Haussmann.”

“Oh, indeed. And that is the only large cheque?”

“That is so, monsieur. The others, they are for ten thousand francs, twenty-five thousand—no more.”

“I think,” said Letord when they were once more in his office, “that Monsieur Robert Écritet should be asked about this cheque.”

Hambledon agreed. “There is something fishy about it. What, a man of that stamp to take an interest in art? I don’t believe it.”

“Why not? Appreciation of fine pictures is not confined to the innocent and pure in heart. In Paris, the most unexpected people are often genuine art lovers.”

“Even if it is the only genuine thing about them? I bow to your superior knowledge.”

“All the same, I will send a man to ask Écritet a few questions about Paul Joseph’s cheque.”

Two hours later the man, one of Letord’s inspectors, came back and reported.

“Monsieur Écritet permitted himself a few acid comments about police interest in his accounts, but he answered me quite openly. The cheque was for a picture which he had sold to Paul Joseph, and the picture was one which he had accepted as payment from a client named Duplessis who lives out at Saint-Ouen. This Duplessis bought a small property there and then found himself involved in a boundary dispute. There was a court case and Écritet acted for him and won the case. Duplessis gave him the picture, alleged to be a Guido Reni, and Écritet sold it because, he said, it was too large for his rooms and not of a cheerful nature. It is, he said, a portrayal of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, and the sight of the poor young man all stuck with arrows put him off his breakfast.”

“I sympathise,” said Hambledon. “It would me also.”

“And me,” said Letord. “So he sold it; how sensible, especially at that price. At that price. Hambledon, would you expect a Guido to fetch a sum like that?”

“What? Nearly eight thousand pounds in British currency? No, I wouldn’t, there are a lot of Guidos about, are there not? I seem to remember a gallery full of them at the Louvre, but it’s no use asking me, I’m not an art dealer. One thing which does occur to me is that seven million francs seems rather a lot to pay a solicitor for appearing in a boundary-dispute case. Why didn’t Duplessis sell the picture himself, pay Écritet in cash and pocket the difference? I think——”

“I think we go and see this Duplessis,” said Letord. “Now, at once.”

Monsieur Duplessis proved to be a pleasant little old man who lived in a pleasant little house with a garden round it at Saint-Ouen, which is one of the northern suburbs of Paris. He said he was a retired draper, who had, with the onset of declining years, sold his business and bought the house with the proceeds. Yes, yes, there was trouble over the boundary line. He did not know any lawyers, having passed a life happily free of litigation until then, and someone said that Monsieur Robert Écritet was clever and usually won his cases. So he engaged him and all turned out well. Monsieur Écritet came out to see his client and admired this picture; when it was all over and Monsieur Duplessis asked what he owed, Monsieur Écritet hinted fairly plainly that he would like that picture instead. “So I gave it to him at once.”

“It was his idea, was it, to have the picture? You did not suggest it?” asked Hambledon.

“Oh no, it would not have occurred to me.” The old man laughed gently. “In point of fact I was delighted, though I did not say so. I am something of an amateur of pictures in a very small way; I cannot keep away from auction sales if there are pictures there and I have had my successes—that is a Manet over the fireplace. This Saint Sebastian, it hardly got a bid, and it was in a very large room, I did not realize how big it was—in short, I was a fool and when I brought it home my good wife very rightly told me so. So I said, let us hang it up for the time being, it is a very fine frame and one day I shall get my five thousand francs back on that——”

“How much?” said Letord blankly.

“Five thousand two hundred to be exact, and as Monsieur Écritet’s bill was for twenty-five thousand francs, you can imagine that I was well pleased.”

Hambledon and Letord looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“It is indeed amusing, is it not?” said Monsieur Duplessis.

“It is,” said Hambledon, “but what is even funnier is that Monsieur Écritet sold the picture again to Paul Joseph in the Boulevard Haussmann——”

“I know the shop,” nodded the old man. “I always look in the window if I am passing.”

“For a very much larger sum.”

“May I ask how much? I am interested in prices.”

“Hold on to your chair,” said Letord. “For seven million francs.”

“For seven—for seven million—oh no. Not possible. There must be some mistake.”

“There is not,” said Letord.

“Then,” said Duplessis severely, “Paul Joseph must have taken leave of his senses and his relations should take some advice in the matter before he ruins an extremely good business.”

“But it was a Guido Reni, was it not?” said Hambledon.

“Oh no, my dear monsieur, no. It was a Spanish copy probably made in the early nineteenth century. About 1840. I told him so myself.”

“Then Paul Joseph must be mad.”

“Either that,” said Duplessis, “or Écritet sold him some other pictures at the same time. That might account for it, you know. Perhaps Monsieur Écritet is also an amateur of pictures, and when he sees one—Monsieur Letord, what is the matter?” For Letord was staring at him as though he had announced a revelation.

“Nothing. That is, you have given me an idea—I am very deeply in your debt—excuse us, please. My colleague and I have an urgent appointment——” Letord was upon his feet and urging Hambledon towards the door.

“I am delighted,” said the old man, in a puzzled voice, “if I have said anything helpful. I cannot think what it could have been.”

“ ‘Monsieur Écritet is an amateur of pictures,’ ” quoted Letord. He fairly pushed Hambledon into the police car, leapt into the driver’s seat himself and drove back to the Sûreté at a pace which, Hambledon felt, demanded a respectful silence. Do Not Speak To The Man At The Wheel.

They reached the Préfecture unscathed, and Letord led the way upstairs at his customary gallop, threw himself upon the telephone and asked for the file concerning the robbery, in February of last year, of five pictures from a private gallery at Biarritz.

Hambledon said, “Ah,” and lit a cigarette.

“It is indeed ‘ah.’ It is time I retired and kept chickens,” said Letord violently, “for when I picture in my mind the face and general demeanour of a hen, that is an exact representation of what the mechanism I used to call my brain most resembles at the moment. Dieu-de-Dieu, to think it should take a fat little retired draper with a bald head and fallen arches to indicate to me, Letord, a point which is as plain as the Dent du Midi on a clear day! Of course Écritet has to take a cheque for a really large sum. One does not walk into a bank with seven million francs in notes in a paper bag. No. It would occasion more comment than a cheque, even from that stuffed dummy of a bank manager whom we interviewed this morning. No, he presents a cheque and produces a perfectly genuine picture to account for it. He——”

“It was not even genuine,” said Hambledon, “it was a Spanish copy. 1840 or thereabouts.”

Letord said, “Bah!” with such energy that three letters and a memorandum blew off his desk and fluttered to the floor. Before Hambledon had finished picking them up, the door opened and a clerk came in with a file of papers.

Letord opened the file and looked through it.

“Here we are. A Hobbema, 1 metre 16 centimetres long by 71 centim—oh, to the devil with these measurements!—of a village with a water mill bathed in a warm golden light. A Jan Davidsz de Heem, measurements so-and-so, a still life of a table with a blue cloth loaded with fruit and a tortoise-shell butterfly. A Caravaggio of a Cheating Gamester, a tavern scene by Teniers, who, I understand,” interpolated Letord, “spent most of his time in taverns and probably died young as a result of it, and a Frans van Mieris of a shop scene, a young lady, accompanied by her duenna, buying ribbons, 41 centimetres by 28.”

“That’s very small,” commented Hambledon.

“He started a fashion for tiny pictures, a reaction from Rubens’ highly coloured acres,” said Letord absently, and provided a proof of the truth of his own remark that in Paris the most unexpected people are art lovers. “No, that was all. I was thinking of some stolen miniatures, but that was a different case altogether. Now, I think, we go and call upon Paul Joseph, do we not?”

Paul Joseph’s shop was narrow-fronted, having only one window and a door beside it, but once inside, it could be seen that the showroom stretched back a long way. The walls were covered with paintings, and down the middle of the room were long screens with more pictures hung upon them. The severity of this arrangement was tempered by having a few more set about upon easels—presumably these were especially choice—and some small statuettes and bronzes upon pedestals. Paul Joseph himself was a tall thin old man with a wispy grey beard. He came wandering slowly forward as Letord and Hambledon went in, and greeted them with a vague smile.

Letord showed his credentials and engaged Paul Joseph in conversation while Hambledon strolled quietly about looking at the exhibits.

“In order to check a small point in connection with one of my cases,” said Letord, “would you be so good as to answer one or two questions?”

“Certainly, certainly. I spend my days answering questions—or trying to—in what way can I help you? A little matter of art, I suppose?” Paul Joseph’s voice was as soft and vague as his manner and he smiled upon Letord like a kindly grandfather instructing the children.

“It is to do with a picture which you bought from Monsieur Robert Écritet——”

Instantly ...

Table of contents

• ONE
• TWO
• THREE
• FOUR
• FIVE
• SIX
• SEVEN
• EIGHT
• NINE
• TEN
• ELEVEN
• TWELVE
• THIRTEEN
• FOURTEEN
• FIFTEEN
• SIXTEEN
• SEVENTEEN
• EIGHTEEN
• NINETEEN
• TWENTY
• TWENTY-ONE
• TWENTY-TWO