Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012
- Автор: Макдермид Вэл, Манфредо Лу
- Год: 2012
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012». Краткое содержание книги:
“I remember.”
“I think those words inspired the crime. I think someone in that community was desperate to recreate it. There was one sure way to accomplish that. He or she could kill Kit and Emile, either making it look like an accident, which would have taken time to plan, or like a random killing committed during the commission of a robbery. The marriage community would then be reunited for a double funeral.”
“Why would anyone go to those lengths, Mr. Keane?”
“That’s what I asked myself next. It had to be that a guest at the wedding saw someone very important to him, saw him so unexpectedly that he was not prepared to act. Before he could gather himself, this unexpected person left. So I had one characteristic of the murderer’s real target. He didn’t attend the reception.”
“I did not,” Crevier said.
“This target had to have some other characteristics to explain what happened in Quebec. Even if he’d given the murderer the slip after the wedding, it should have been possible to trace him through the Derivals or Le Clares without resorting to violence. That didn’t happen, so the target had to be unapproachable through any conventional means, someone who lived behind a wall of security that the murderer couldn’t breach, someone who had to be tricked into the open.
“I asked Mr. Ohlman to inquire about such a person. If there hadn’t been one, I would have accepted the killings at face value. But there was one, Mr. Crevier. You. So I have to ask you again, do you have a mortal enemy?”
The old man drew deeply on his neglected cigarette. “To answer that, gentlemen, I must tell you a story.”
6.
“Are you familiar with the Algerian War of Independence?”
I would have had to say not very. Luckily, Harry was tired of sitting out the hand.
“It was an uprising against French colonial rule back in the fifties,” he said.
Crevier nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Some of us did not consider Algiers to be a colony. We thought of it as part of France. It seems an odd conceit after all this time. But the belief was strong enough then to support the fighting for years. By nineteen sixty-one, however, the French people had had enough. They voted in favor of separation with Algiers. Some elements of the French army refused to accept this decision. They seized control of Algiers in April nineteen sixty-one. I was a member of that group. The man you are seeking — if Mr. Keane’s conclusions and mine are correct — was another.
“The putsch lasted but a few days. General de Gaulle rallied the nation against us, and key army units refused to follow us. The generals and colonels in command of the insurrection fled or were arrested. I myself was almost killed.
“I had decided to surrender to the civilian authorities and return my troops to the flag of France. My second in command, a major named Burnon, urged me instead to join a group of officers who planned an underground resistance. Burnon had lost a brother in the fighting and become a fanatic. When I refused to join him, he shot me, condemning me to this chair. Nevertheless, with the help of Tritt—” he indicated the man behind him with a wave of his cigarette — “I escaped Algiers with my life.
“I came to the United States, hoping for a cure for my legs that did not come. I stayed because I had friends here, some ex-patriots, some American. I had served as a liaison to the Americans in North Africa in the war against the Nazis. Those old comrades proved more faithful than Burnon.”
“What became of him?” I asked.
“He joined the OAS, the terrorist organization formed by survivors of the Algiers putsch. When the OAS was crushed, there were rumors that Burnon had been killed, but I never believed them. I believe he has been living in exile all these years, as I have, under a false name, as I have, enduring God knows what indignities and privations for which he now blames me. He must have formed some connection to the French ex-patriot community here, which is natural enough. By an unhappy chance, he was also a guest at the wedding.”
Harry said, “You saw him there?”
“No. Believe me, gentlemen, when I say that if I had known Burnon was there, if I had guessed that he posed the least threat to those children, I would have acted to save them.”
“We can still get the guy,” Harry said. “We’ll give the police what we know. They’ll go over the guest list, narrow it down, and nail him.”
“They never will,” Crevier said. “If Burnon was responsible for that horror in Quebec, you must believe that he has cut himself free of whatever identity he has been living under, so he could melt away at the first suggestion that the police had uncovered his plans. They could establish his discarded persona but never put their hands on the man. There is only one way to do that, gentlemen.”
He handed me the punch line with a glance.
“Go ahead with the funeral,” I said.
“Yes. Go ahead with the funeral. I will attend. That will draw Burnon out of hiding.”
Tritt didn’t like the idea, or so I concluded from a tightening of his mouth and a darkening of his skin that made the scar on his cheek glow white. Harry didn’t like it either, and he spoke up.
“We could be adding to the list of innocent bystanders. Suppose he puts a bomb under the church.”
“Not Burnon. He will shoot me face-to-face as he did thirty years ago. He will sacrifice his own life to do it.”
“It’s hard to stop an assassin who’s willing to sacrifice himself,” I observed.
“I am a soldier, Mr. Keane. Danger is part of my profession. I would face this danger just to avenge those two young people. But I also have a motive of my own. You have observed, perhaps, the manner in which I live. Not uncomfortably, thanks to some investment advice, but not freely. There has been a price on my head since nineteen sixty-one, placed there by the government I once served. All these years, I have waited for the knock on my door and the hand on my collar.
“Now that has changed. Not long ago, an amnesty was passed in France for the officers who led the putsch. I have made inquiries since and learned that, if I desired to return to my native land, I would not be molested. My dream is to go back to the village where I was born and live quietly and simply, without locked doors around me. But until Burnon is caught, my plans must wait. I dare not leave this prison I have made for myself while he is free.
“So, gentlemen, how do we proceed?”
He addressed the question to me, but Harry answered. “We contact the authorities down in Somerset County. And we make our plans.”
7.
Harry had likened my original deduction, the one that led us to Crevier, to the work of Rex Stout, but I stepped from that tower thinking instead of the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Of The Sign of Four and “The Crooked Man” and the others in which some ancient crime, committed in an exotic place, is recounted and accounted for in the present.
I would have shared this reflection with Harry, but he was, as usual, all business now that there was business to conduct. “We’ll have to get in touch with the police in Quebec,” he said as we waited for the tower’s doorman to snag us a cab. “They’re the ones who’ll end up with Burnon, assuming we get him alive.”
“Assuming we get him period,” I said. “I don’t think we surprised Crevier today. I mean, when we told him why we were there, he looked sadder, but he never seemed shocked.”
“The Le Clares told him yesterday about my call, Owen. So he had all night to work it out. We just confirmed his worst fears this morning. Don’t feel bad if he reached the same conclusion you did. He had a lot more pieces of the puzzle to work with. Burnon, for one.”