To Catch a Thief Read online

  Le Borgne said, “We are not done yet, John. ’Voir.”

  The two men left the room.

  Bellini’s telephone rang as the door closed behind them. The switchboard operator at the Midi had another report to make.

  When Bellini hung up, he said, “The exodus has commenced. The Arabian demigod is leaving, likewise several others including Lady Kerry, unluckily for Danielle. The thief has them worried.”

  “Lady Kerry hasn’t anything to worry about,” John said. “Unless—”

  He didn’t finish it. Bellini said curiously, “Unless what?”

  “I haven’t looked closely at her jewelry for twelve years. She might have acquired something worth stealing in that time.”

  “Possibly.”

  John felt suddenly hopeful again, less discouraged by his own failure. A vague idea that had been in the back of his mind was beginning to take shape. It was one that had been suggested to him by Francie, and it was no better than some of her other ideas. Still, it was something.

  He said, “How much do you know about Claude?”

  “The muscular swimming teacher?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what respect?”

  “The possibility that he may be our thief.”

  Bellini chuckled. He said chidingly, “John!”

  “I know. He’s not clever enough to manage it on his own. But he has the physical equipment for it, and Francie gave me an idea when she told me how she reasoned that the thief had to be one of a gang. Suppose she’s right. Suppose the imitation of Le Chat is deliberate, to put the flics on watch for Le Chat and no one else. But instead of working alone, as I did, this thief has a clever confederate. Danielle, the brains. She works during the season for people like Lady Kerry. She can’t steal anything herself and hope to get away with it, but she can set up the thefts for Claude, tell him if the stones are worth while, where they are, and when they will be available. All he has to do is climb in the window at a convenient moment, leave Le Chat’s trademarks where they will be found, and get out. Whether she takes the stones or he does isn’t important. Le Chat gets the blame, they get the jewelry.”

  “Possible. Always possible,” Bellini said. “But it is only a bare theory. Why pick on poor Claude? Why not any of a dozen equally agile and muscular professeurs de natation here in Cannes? Or other dozens elsewhere on the Côte? Or, for that matter, any of hundreds of young men with Claude’s biceps?”

  “Because Claude has Danielle. The others don’t.”

  Bellini nodded wisely. “You are impressed with Danielle.”

  “She has a good head, she doesn’t like being poor, and in some ways she reminds me of myself at her age. She has a state of mind. I may be misjudging her, but I’m still curious. Have any of the people she worked for been robbed?”

  Bellini opened a drawer of his desk, searched through a file, and pulled out a card. It had a photograph of Danielle’s neat profile on it, and several lines of typing.

  He read from the card. “Lady Kerry, as of yesterday. I placed Danielle with her myself.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything that you placed her. Somebody had to. Read the rest.”

  “Mrs. Adam Longman. She was with her in England for nearly a year after they left France.”

  “I don’t know the name. Read another.”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Roland Sauer and child, two weeks, here on the Côte.”

  “No theft.”

  “Monsieur and Madame Ferenc Boutin, also here on the Côte.”

  “No.”

  Bellini read other names. John recognized none of them. Bellini put the card back in its file.

  “You see?” he said. “I am careful about these things. If Danielle, or any of my people, had even been questioned in connection with the thefts, I would have investigated.”

  “Just to be certain, I’d like to know if Claude can account for his time on the nights of the thefts. If he can, good. It will take him off my mind.”

  “That won’t be difficult.”

  Bellini turned in his chair, reaching with his good arm to lower the window shade. It was his way of calling a messenger.

  John said, “Is Claude in your pocket, too?”

  “I own the concession at La Plage Nautique. In another name, of course.” Bellini giggled. “Claude knows who pays him. He will answer my questions.”

  “Don’t make them too obvious.”

  “Leave it to me, John. I am not entirely without subtlety.”

  He received several more telephone calls while they waited for an answer to the window signal. John did not understand some of the languages he spoke over the telephone, but he could tell from Bellini’s mobile face, his chuckles and nods of satisfaction, that the pipelines were running. Information funneled into the little office from all over the Mediterranean coast, in French, in Arabic, in Italian, in Spanish. Bellini had a private telephone line that did not pass through the hotel switchboard, and he not only paid his sources of information well but protected them.

  Besides the private telephone line, he had his own messenger service. The half-drawn blind brought a rug peddler into the office within a few minutes. He was one of a dozen or more Moroccans who hawked small, ugly rugs and leatherwork daily along La Croisette during the summer season. They were identifiable by the greasy red fezzes and Moroccan slippers they wore with their shabby European clothes, and they all looked alike. They did not sell many rugs, but they did a fair business in pornographic pictures and, occasionally, drugs. None of them was allowed inside any hotel on the promenade except the Napoleon, and then only when the window shade was drawn in Bellini’s window. Bellini owned an interest in the Hotel Napoleon.

  The peddler stood just inside the door, his rugs and burned-leather handbags hanging from his shoulders. Bellini spoke to him, again in a language that John did not understand. Once the peddler looked sideways at John with sly, secretive eyes. Afterward he touched his forehead with the back of his dirty fingers and went away, without having said a word.

  Bellini said, “Claude will be here in a few minutes. You can wait in the other room.”

  John went into the next room, Bellini’s bedroom, and sat in a chair against the wall behind the open door. He relaxed deliberately, loose in the chair, and closed his eyes.

  It did no good. He could not stop his mind from its activity, nor control his thoughts. When he tried to visualize Claude as the thief, see him climbing down a rope into the lightwell, the picture would not come to life.

  He saw only Paul, sitting alone on the bench with the hurt of rejection in his face. He thought of Oriol, whose friendship had turned to bitterness at what he believed to be a betrayal, and of Francie, coldly angry at the deception she thought he had played on her. All three had been his friends. All three would still be his friends if they knew the truth, and yet his whole instinct was against telling any of them. The feeling was as strong as his faith in Bellini. When he tried to analyze the reason for it, it came to him suddenly that he put his faith in Bellini and Coco and Le Borgne not because they were fellow maquisards but because they were thieves, criminals. Francie and Paul and Oriol were not.

  It’s because you’re a thief at heart, he thought, with real surprise. You were born a thief. You’re on the other side only by accident, like the gypsy.

  It was the plain truth. He had stolen nothing in twelve years, had no intention ever to steal again, and yet retained a thief’s distrust of those who were not thieves themselves. Like Bellini, he did not trust what he did not understand.

  He was still thinking about it when he heard the door in the next room open and close.

  Claude had stopped long enough after receiving Bellini’s message to put on a dark jersey and trousers over his swimming trunks, but he was barefooted. His feet made no sound on the worn carpet in front of Bellini’s desk.

  Bellini looked up, smiling his biggest smile of welcome.

  Claude said, “Bonjour, m’sieu. You sent for me?”

&nbs
p; “I did. I have a question to ask you, Claude. Where were you on the night of the fourteenth of July?”

  John, listening behind the door, could picture Bellini studying Claude’s face, watching for a reaction. A blunt question about Claude’s whereabouts at three or four o’clock in the morning of that same day could be something he was prepared to answer without a change of expression. Bellini’s demand would make him hesitate, think back. The fourteenth of July was Bastille Day. A Frenchman might reasonably forget where he had been any other day in the year, but not Bastille Day. And the marquee chain of the hotel in Monte Carlo had been climbed on the night of Bastille Day, while the celebration was still going on in the street below.

  Claude said, “The fourteenth of July?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bastille Day?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s been a long time. It’s hard to remember. If I knew why you wanted to know—”

  He’s stalling, John thought, and felt a momentary hope.

  Bellini said, “I ask for my information. Where did you pass the night?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Bellini chuckled. “Come, come, Claude. Bastille Day, and you don’t remember?”

  “No.”

  “Think again.”

  Bellini took off his spectacles and beamed at Claude in a friendly way.

  Claude’s eyes dropped before long. He said sullenly, “Danielle put you up to this.”

  “Of course.”

  “She could have asked me herself. I can explain.”

  “I am asking you. Where did you pass the night?”

  Claude shrugged. “With a poule. I was drunk.”

  “What poule?”

  “Just a poule. Jacqueline. I don’t know her last name. One of the girls who comes to the beach. I had a date with Danielle, but I got sidetracked.”

  “Were you with the poule all night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she still come to the beach?”

  “Yes. But I told her there was nothing doing. Danielle and I have plans.”

  “Tell the poule to come see me.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to talk to her. If, as you say, you and Danielle have plans, somebody should tell the poules to leave you alone. In case you get drunk again.”

  “What if she won’t come?”

  “Convince her that she should. That will be all.”

  Claude stood his ground. He said stubbornly, “You don’t have to tell Danielle. If you give her another story, she’ll believe you. I’m already in bad with her.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why. I haven’t even looked at anyone else since Bastille Day. But she didn’t come to the beach yesterday or this morning, and she hasn’t been with the American. She told me that job was finished. I don’t know where she is.”

  “I have given her temporary work with Lady Kerry, at the Hotel Midi. She will be back with you today or tomorrow. In the meantime, try to avoid tangling yourself with poules, and your conscience will stop nagging you without reason. You may go now.”

  “What are you going to tell her?”

  “Nothing at all. You may forget that I questioned you, but only this time. That is all, Claude.”

  John heard the door open and close again.

  He waited at the window in the other room until he saw Claude come out on the boulevard below and hurry back to his job. His fine torso in the tight jersey attracted the attention of a group of young girls who were strolling the promenade arm in arm. They stopped to look after him, giggling. One attempted a whistle. Claude paid no attention.

  John went into Bellini’s office. Bellini said, “Well?”

  “I think he’s telling the truth. But check with the girl, just the same.”

  “Certainly.”

  “And don’t forget about the gypsy.”

  “I’ve already sent word.”

  John rubbed his eyes. It was more than twenty-four hours since he had slept last. His mind was dull with fatigue. He was sure there were other important things that Bellini should be reminded to do, but he could not think of them, or of anything else except the coming need to beg his freedom from Francie.

  It was nearly noon. He had six hours before the deadline.

  He said, “I’ve got to sleep. Can I do it here? I don’t want to go back to the hotel while there’s still a chance I might run into photographers.”

  “Of course. Close the door. I’ll see that you are not disturbed.”

  “Don’t let me oversleep. I’ve still got a hope, and I don’t want to lose it by failing to get to the beach before six.”

  “I’ve never failed you yet, John. And you have much more than a hope with the girl. When she knows the truth about you, that you are not a thief at all, there will be even less reason for her to betray you than there was before.”

  “The truth about me is that I am a thief, Bellini. I just found it out. The truth about Francie is that she’s on the other side, for all her talk, and if she has no other reason for existence, as you call it, it’s enough that she’ll probably send me back to La Maison Centrale, sooner or later, one way or another. Maybe even without trying. If I believed in premonitions, I’d say I had one.”

  He went into the other room and closed the door.

  Bellini looked thoughtfully at the door. For once, he was not smiling. He believed strongly in premonitions.

  5

  John's sleep was not restful. The room was too hot, and he woke often with a start to look at his watch, afraid that he had overslept. The frequent shrill of Bellini’s telephone in the other room and occasional voices disturbed him as well. Once he came wide awake at the sound of a voice he recognized, Danielle’s.

  He went soundlessly to the door and put his ear to the panel.

  Danielle said, “…frightened them all, I suppose. Lady Kerry was one of the first to leave. She was nice, though. She paid me for the whole week.”

  Bellini’s voice answered, “Does she have enough jewelry to attract a thief?”

  “Mountains of it. Family heirlooms, mostly, but they must be worth a lot of money.”

  “Naturally she would want to take them home with her, if only for sentimental reasons.” Bellini’s chuckle came thinly through the door panel. “I have nothing else for you at the moment, Danielle. Go back to Claude until you hear from me.”

  “All right. I’d better pay your commission now.”

  “Of course. Business is business.”

  There was a silence. Danielle said, “Did Mr. Burns leave you any money for me?”

  “No.”

  “He still owes me for two days. He said he’d give it to you.”

  “He must have forgotten. I’ll remind him. Was he satisfied with you?”

  Danielle hesitated only momentarily. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I said something wrong. I don’t know what it was, but he didn’t like it. One minute we were good friends, talking about me and Claude, and the next minute—I don’t know. Americans are hard to understand. He just said he didn’t need me any more.”

  “What about you and Claude, Danielle?”

  “You sound like Mr. Burns, m’sieu.” Danielle was amused.

  “I like to keep my files up to date. From what Claude says, I may have to change your name on my card.”

  “Claude says too much for his own good. I work for him as long as he pays me a salary. That’s all.”

  “No romance, then?”

  “With Claude?” She laughed. “With you, possibly. You are not pretty, but you have money and a pleasant disposition. Are you interested in romance?”

  Bellini giggled at the suggestion. “My romantic years are long past, regrettably.”

  “Then bonjour, M’sieu Bellini.”

  “Bonjour, Danielle.”

  There was quiet afterward. John went back to bed. This time he fell immediately and soundly asleep.

  Bellini woke him ab
out five. He held a copy of the day’s edition of L’Espoir.

  “Lepic is badly out on a limb, or else he has found something that we do not know about,” he said, plainly worried. “I don’t like it. He is too cautious to make promises he cannot keep. Read it.”

  He gave the paper to John, then went back to his office to answer the ringing telephone.

  L’Espoir’s front page showed a photograph of the thief’s latest victim with her lipstick more lopsided than usual, another of the façade of the Hotel Midi, and a third showing the skylight, with an arrow indicating the thief’s point of entry into the lightwell. The photographer had not been able to get a picture of the room where the theft had occurred, but photographs were less important to the story than Lepic’s statement, directly quoted, that the Sûreté Nationale promised an arrest in the immediate future. It was the first time any such statement had been made, and L’Espoir’s editor, frankly skeptical of Lepic’s ability to live up to the promise, suggested that if nothing else were accomplished, at least the commitment would force him to eat his words publicly and confess to being the incompetent he was. From that point the editorial thundered along familiar lines of criticism.

  Bellini came back.

  “It is not as bad as I thought, although bad enough,” he said. “They have started the roundup they promised. Jean-Pierre was first.”

  “They took him?”

  “Not yet. He was tipped and got away. But they are looking for him in Marseilles, and if they do not find him they must find somebody. Le Borgne may be next, or Coco. I will have to get word to them quickly.”

  John put the newspaper down and stood up to put on his coat. He felt calm, rested. He said, “It may not be necessary. If I’m going back to prison, there’s no reason why anyone else should go with me. I’ll let you know how I come out as soon as I can.”

  Bellini said, “I’ll know as soon as you do, although I am already certain that you will be able to win her help.” He went to the window and drew the shade to call his messenger. “Don’t be pessimistic, John. It is not like you. Something has happened to you.”