A Death Overseas Read online

  ‘Rory said that Bertram said Pierre had left the Fair.’

  Mary sighed. ‘Let us check for ourselves. I think the gentlemen were all too wont to hear what they wished – or to tell you what they thought you should hear.’

  ‘They would not...’ I began, but Mary had already headed upstairs to put on her hat. I hurried behind her. I had decided to change my outfit so I could wear a hat she had not yet disparaged. Not that there was anything particularly wrong with my hat, but when someone had commented negatively on one’s appearance it takes far more confidence than I currently felt to continue to wear the outfit with pride. I put on my smartest dress and hat. For a lady, dressing well is a kind of armour. It buoys us up against foes and misadventures. Gentlemen I doubt will ever understand this. I wanted to feel strong should we find the reluctant Pierre. I only hoped he spoke English. Otherwise I feared Mary would resort to the tactic she had used in the police station, of speaking slowly and increasingly loudly until she got her own way.

  The French Pavilion was quiet. Mirrors had been covered and some black trim had been draped around some of the interior statues. However, it was open and the usual exhibits were all on display.

  Mary managed to find some kind of staff member and even ask to speak to Pierre as a matter of condolence. In her rather slow flow of French I did hear her mention her college and it seemed that her academic qualifications carried the day. We were both shown through to the areas behind the auditorium that were not usually seen by the audience. I own my stomach was fluttering as we went in. I half expected to see Monsieur’s Toussaint’s body laid on the floor. I also found myself sniffing the air for that awful smell, but all I could smell was carbolic soap.

  We were shown through one final door and there, packing various pieces into boxes, was Pierre; the assistant Rory had assured me had already left for home.

  ‘Bon apres-midi, monsieur. Parlez-vous anglais?’ asked Mary in her schoolgirl French.

  Pierre, who now I saw him closer was older than I thought, looked past her and at me. ‘You are the lady who fainted,’ he said in faintly accented English. ‘I am sorry you were so distressed. I trust you are well now?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ I said, my voice not as a strong as I might have wished. ‘But should I not be offering you condolences on the death of your colleague.’

  Pierre gave a small shrug and made a sighing noise. ‘It is a shame, to be sure, but it was inevitable that it would happen. I am only sorry you were a witness. I am also, of course sorry, that I am out of a position. You mentioned being an academic Madame, could it be you come to offer me work?’

  ‘I am afraid not,’ said Mary. ‘Although I do know people in the right departments and I could enquire. Do you hold a degree, monsieur?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Pierre. He frowned and I saw a number of lines on his face. He had to be well into his thirties and not the twenty-year-old I had thought. ‘Unlike Monsieur Toussaint. I am sorry to say he was an amateur when it came to science. Though he was good at attracting investors.’

  ‘So it was your work he was showing?’ asked Mary.

  ‘No, not at all,’ said Pierre with some force. ‘I did not even know how his invention worked.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ said Mary. ‘You have said yourself that you are the more qualified scientist. Even if he had not discussed his invention in details, you must have some idea of how it worked. How else could you have been of any use?’

  ‘I am sorry for the distress you experience, mesdames, but I have much packing to do. If you will excuse me.’

  ‘You told my friend Mr Stapleford that you checked the dials and switches before the demonstration,’ I said. ‘It is important we know the truth. My friend may have taken her own life because she believes she caused Monsieur Toussaint’s death. There is little I can do for her, but her children will have to live with the shame of their mother being a murderer unless you tell the truth.’

  ‘As I told your gentleman friend, madame, there is no possible way your friend could be responsible for Monsieur Toussaint’s death.’

  ‘I am very glad to hear that,’ I said. ‘What did the police say when you told them? Will they reopen the case?

  Pierre coloured slightly. ‘Your friend’s misunderstanding changes very little.’

  ‘It would be the difference between murder and accidental death,’ said Mary.

  Pierre returned to his packing. ‘I am sorry. I have much to do. There is nothing more I can tell you.’

  ‘You make no sense, monsieur,’ I said. ‘Do you have no loyalty to your former employer.’

  ‘I might have had more loyalty if he had paid me for my previous month’s work.’

  ‘If it is a question of money,’ said Mary (and I could see she was trying not to sneer), ‘I can pay for information.’

  ‘I cannot help you. Please leave or I will have to ask someone to escort you out.’

  ‘You have not told the police this, have you?’ I said.

  Mary threw me a shocked looked. ‘Is this true? Have you not attempted to clear the poor dead woman’s name?’

  ‘Or even discover why your master died?’ I added.

  Pierre kept his head down, refusing to say anything else. Mary and I looked at each other. Then I said, ‘Mary, this does not seem right to me. I think we should take matters to the British Embassy. I have a cousin who works there. I do not believe things have been investigated properly.’

  ‘We should probably also go to the French Embassy as well,’ said Mary. ‘We can ask Mr Stapleford to do that, as he speaks the language so well.’

  ‘I agree. It is clear the local police have entirely botched this affair.’

  Pierre had now gone very pale. ‘Unless there is something else you can tell us after all?’ Mary commented. ‘Like what truly caused the death of Monsieur Toussaint.’

  Pierre collapsed against a crate. His head in his hands. ‘You have been sent to drag me to hell, have you not?’ he said. ‘Devil women.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Pierre’s difficult day

  ‘I will tell you the truth,’ said Pierre, ‘I will meet you at the Azalea Restaurant in half an hour.’

  ‘I think not,’ said Mary. ‘We will give you no opportunity to escape, monsieur. Take us to your office or Monsieur Toussaint’s office and we will talk there.’

  ‘He had no office.’

  ‘Then we will borrow someone else’s,’ snapped Mary. ‘Unless you want to accompany us to a more official location. And do not think you can escape me. I must tell you, Pierre, that as a militant suffragette I have trained well in self-defence and it will go painfully badly for you if you do not comply.’

  I gazed at Mary in awe. Then I looked back at Pierre. ‘I would not doubt her,’ I said. ‘We were once both in jail together for riotous behaviour.’

  Mary laughed. ‘I only lashed out. She,’ she said, nodding at me, ‘pulled a policeman off his horse.’

  ‘In fairness,’ I began, but Mary threw me such a look that I stopped.

  ‘I concede,’ said Pierre. ‘I cannot see it will do any harm now. Besides, anything that gets rid of you two salopes is worth it. Follow me.’

  He led us to a small room that appeared to be some kind of administrative office. He swept papers off a couple of uncomfortable looking chairs for us and took the seat behind the desk.

  ‘I have not yet decided if I will admit this outside this room, but the first thing you need to know is that Monsieur Toussaint was a fraud.’

  ‘Bertram wondered as much!’ I said.

  Mary looked unsurprised. ‘It is not uncommon for inventors seeking funding to exaggerate their claims so they can gain finance to extend their studies,’ she said.

  ‘He was nowhere near what he claimed. If there had been anyone in the audience that had even the slightest knowledge of the science of electricity, then had they examined the apparatus they would have seen it was nothing out of the ordinary.’

  ‘The elect
ricity did not travel along the tube?’ I asked.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Pierre. ‘It was merely generated in the two positions in turn. Nothing that has not been seen before, but Monsieur Toussaint was an adept salesman. He could convince an audience that red was yellow and blue was green.’

  ‘Could he have designed a fault to prevent people from examining it too closely?’ I asked.

  ‘And it went wrong and killed him?’ suggested Mary.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Pierre. ‘You saw how he dressed. He was a dandy and very careful of his own person. He would not even move the machinery himself in case he damaged a fingernail.’

  ‘So what happened?’ asked Mary.

  ‘I do not know. It may be that he bought a cheaper component that usual. His funds were low. There are certain manufacturers it is safer to use than others. The electricity can overload the equipment, resulting in the sort of disaster you saw.’[24]

  ‘Have you not checked?’ asked Mary.

  ‘I will admit I fear for my reputation, but the French government would not look too kindly on an investigation that threw up questions over a gentleman they are now calling a martyr to science. You know, of course, that we are in a race with the Germans. He may indeed have simply made a mistake in his hurry to get the demonstration performed before the German scientists did theirs. You will have heard the building of their pavilion was held up by the strike for universal male emancipation that the local workers held?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mary. ‘I believe a great deal of the Fair is delayed.’

  Before Mary could get distracted by the theme of strikes and their causes, I said, ‘Could we not examine Monsieur Toussaint’s equipment now?’

  ‘You would not know what to look for!’ sneered Pierre.

  ‘But you would,’ said Mary. ‘Come now. If you inspect the equipment properly in our presence we may learn that none of us have any reason to investigate further.’

  ‘You are not going away until we do, are you?’ sighed Pierre. ‘Come on.’ He rose and led us at a clipping pace back to the original area.

  ‘I have packed up some of the equipment, but it will take only a few moments to reassemble it properly. It is the careful packing that takes the time.’ He sighed again.

  True to his word, within an amazingly short time he had reassembled the machinery. ‘As you will have seen, it was mainly put away in sections or groups of items rather than singular pieces.’

  ‘You were hurrying,’ said Mary.

  Pierre ignored her. ‘Now, the machine is not attached to the source of power, but I can trace its route.’ He bent his head over the machine. ‘This is fine. This is fine. Those are the pieces I had previously packed. This, obviously, is not, being black and broken. This is where the lethal shock exited. I do not see anything.’

  ‘You have not looked in the far left,’ said Mary.

  ‘I am getting there,’ said Pierre, annoyed. ‘Bon. Bon. Mon Dieu? Ques que ca fait? The resisters here are missing! There is nothing to control the current. How could I have missed this?’ He held up a small fused piece of glass. ‘The melted glass has flowed into the gap where they should have been. It is sabotage!’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Mary. ‘Now we are getting both answers and proof.’

  It took much argument and several threats, but eventually Mary, Pierre, and myself were seated in a cab on the way back to our hotel. ‘The time has come to involve Mr Stapleford and Mr McLeod,’ announced Mary. ‘I will sit with the French gentleman while you fetch them, Euphemia.’

  She commanded this as if it were the easier of the two tasks. I watched her take Pierre into the hotel’s reading room. Although I had not explored so far I assumed the hotel would also have a smoking room and that Bertram and Rory would count themselves safe there. I mentally girded my loins and prepared to commit yet another social solecism.

  They were indeed in said room, along with an elderly gentleman with a moustache that rendered him the image of a walrus, and another slight and dapper gentleman with a very sparkling and long gold watch-chain. The dapper gentleman looked up the moment I entered as if preternaturally aware of the presence of a female where none should be. He made a little harrumph, drew his fob watch from his pocket, and noisily opened and shut the case. This made the walrus, who had been half asleep with his cigar drooping from his lower lip, start up with a loud snort. ‘Good Gad!’ He exclaimed. ‘A gal.’

  Of course by this point both Bertram and Rory were on their feet and ushering me out of the room.

  ‘What the heck do you think you are doing?’ asked Bertram. Rory’s language was somewhat fruitier. I let them hustle me back to the reading room, it was easier than trying to explain. Once we were there Mary did an excellent job of introducing Pierre and bringing them both up to date.

  Rory did try to interrupt her when she was explaining about Eugenie’s letter, but a quelling, ‘If you would allow me to finish, Mr McLeod!’ and a nudge from Bertram, who was looking tiresomely impressed by Mary, brought him into line. Finally Pierre produced his small piece of molten glass as evidence and the men studied it seriously.

  Finally Bertram’s innate honesty won out. ‘Damned if I know what that is. Is it a French thingy?’

  ‘It’s a,’ begun Rory, but Bertram’s comment had reminded me of something.

  ‘Bertram,’ I asked, ‘what is a salope? Only Pierre said that Mary and I were ones.’

  Bertram turned instantly puce and before any of us could anticipate what he was about, punched Pierre in the face.

  The unprepared Frenchman fell to the floor, blood pouring from his nose.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Bertram and I hatch a plan

  By the time the Frenchman had recovered consciousness and was being mopped up by Mary and Rory, Bertram and I were beginning to form a plan.

  ‘I do not want to bring Fitzroy or his ilk into this,’ I said, ‘but I cannot help but feel the uneasiness between France and Germany at this time makes everything rather difficult.’

  Bertram nodded. ‘I can well see how the local police would not want to delve further. They are both figuratively and geographically caught in the middle. And the French will do everything to protect their false scientist. Can you image what the Germans could do with that piece of news? They draw rather splendid cartoons for such a humourless people.’

  ‘These are rather murky waters we are ploughing through,’ I said and then blushed. ‘I did not mean to allude to...’

  ‘No, of course, you did not,’ said Bertram. ‘Do you think you and I could sneak off somewhere? Only Rory and Miss Hill do tend to get a bit – er passionate.’

  ‘Pig-headed, you mean?’ I said.

  ‘Well, we can all be a bit like that,’ admitted Bertram. ‘It is more that I think you and I think more about the bigger picture.’

  ‘Let us go and find a tearoom,’ I said. ‘They will never think of looking for us locally.’

  We slipped out of the door with surprising ease. Mary and Rory were fiercely debating the best way to stop a nosebleed. Pierre was moaning quietly.

  We found a nice little shop and Bertram ordered us coffee and chocolate torte. ‘You will love this,’ he predicted. Once an exceedingly large confection had been placed in front of each of us I asked, ‘What do you think we should do?’

  Bertram smiled at me, a large cream moustache adorning his face. ‘Good to be discussing things properly again with you,’ he said. Then he made the little coughing noise of gentleman who has almost admitted to having an emotion and inadvertently swallowed some cream the wrong way. Once he had recovered he continued, ‘I think it is more a case of deciding what we want. Do we want Eugenie exonerated from the murder of the scientist – of course. Do we want to find who forced Eugenie to write that letter?’

  ‘You mean the murderer?’

  ‘Well, you know all the objections Mary raised, I did wonder from the way you described the letter that maybe she thought they were going to send her away somewhe
re with some money. Let the body stay missing. I do not accept any other explanation Mary offered for happily writing a note that would see one killed.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ I said thinking. ‘That’s why she wrote the bit about her daughter at the end in a rush.’

  Bertram nodded. ‘That’s when she realised it was all over. I only wish she could have given us a better hint.’

  ‘It must be to do with the competition between France and Germany, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, but it is the rather violent competition between two scientists that has brought this about, or is it the actual nations themselves scheming.’

  ‘You mean like a pair of Fitzroys facing off against each other?’ I said.

  Bertram shuddered. ‘Nasty image, two of the man. But if it is on a national issue I have to ask myself if investigating this further could tip Europe into war.’

  ‘An experiment with electricity? How could it?’

  ‘It’s not the actual incident,’ said Bertram. ‘Did your father teach you much history?’

  ‘Mostly ancient history – Greeks and Romans.’

  ‘Hmm, well, in the modern world it is all too often not personalities or single grievances that lead to war, but long lists of things.’ He stopped and scratched where his awful beard had once been. ‘You know, like Richenda eating too much cake. It’s all fine and dandy until that last mouthful and then she’s sick. Or at least that’s what she was like in the nursery.’

  ‘You mean a solitary and seemingly minor action can be a tipping point?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s a much better way of putting it. Goodness knows I want Eugenie’s murderer brought to justice as much as you, but we have to think of the cost. Is one woman’s reputation and revenge worth the possible death of hundreds? Thousands?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘In abstract it is a clear answer.’

  ‘But a lot harder when you know the people involved.’

  ‘Her family will be devastated.’

  Bertram sighed. ‘Damned if I know what we should do.’

  ‘Could we get Pierre to confirm to the local police that there was a fault in the equipment and Eugenie did not kill Toussaint? It seems very little, but at least it would stop her family thinking she was a murderer.’