He told the Commissaire that he was very much in love with his wife, and his great fear was that she would discover his past.
For her sake as well as for his own and his mother’s, he was determined to lead in future a decent and honourable life.
The fat, jolly man went on asking questions, but in a friendly, sympathetic way so that you felt, I think, that he couldn’t wish you any harm.
He applauded Berger’s good resolutions, he congratulated him on marrying a penniless girl for love, he hoped they would have children which were not only an ornament to a home, but a comfort to their parents.
But he had Berger’s dossier; he knew that in the heroin case, though the jury had refused to convict, he was undoubtedly guilty, and from enquiries he had made that day, that he had been discharged from the broker’s firm and had only escaped prosecution because his mother had made restitution of the money he had embezzled.
It was a lie that since his marriage he had been leading an honest life.
He asked him about his financial circumstances.
Berger confessed that they were difficult, but his mother had a little and soon he was bound to get a job and then they would be all right.
And pocket money?
Now and then he made a bit racing and he introduced clients to bookmakers, that was how he’d become friendly with Jordan, and got a commission.
Sometimes he just went without.
“ ‘En effet,’ said the Commissaire, ‘the day before he was killed you said you were penniless and you borrowed fifty francs from Jordan.’
“ ‘He was good to me.
Poor chap.
I shall miss him.’
“The Commissaire was looking at Berger with his friendly, twinkling eyes, and it occurred to him that the young man was not ill-favoured.
Was it possible?
But no, that was nonsense.
He had a notion that Berger was lying when he said he had given up all relations with the drug traffickers.
After all, he was hard up and there was good money to be made there; Berger went about among the sort of people who were addicted to dope.
The Commissaire had an impression, though he had no notion on what he founded it, that Berger, if he didn’t know for certain who’d committed the murder, had his suspicions: of course he wouldn’t tell, but if they found heroin hidden away in the house at Neuilly they might be able to force him to.
The Commissaire was a shrewd judge of character and he was pretty sure that Berger would give a friend away to save his own skin.
He made up his mind that he would hold Berger and have the house searched before he had any chance of disposing of anything that was there.
With the same idea in his mind he asked him about his movements on the night of the murder.
Berger stated that he had come in from Neuilly rather late and had walked to Jojo’s Bar; he had found a lot of men there who had come in after the races.
He got two or three drinks stood him, and Jordan, who’d had a good day, said he’d pay for his dinner.
After he’d eaten he hung about for a bit, but it was very smoky and it made his head ache, so he went for a stroll on the boulevard.
Then about eleven he went back to the bar and stayed there till it was time to catch the last Metro back to Neuilly.
“ ‘You were away just long enough to kill the Englishman in point of fact,’ said the Commissaire in a joking sort of way.
“Berger burst out laughing.
“ ‘You’re not going to accuse me of that?’ he said.
“ ‘No, not that,’ laughed the other.
“ ‘Believe me, Jordan’s death is a loss to me.
The fifty francs he lent me the day before he was murdered wasn’t the first I’d had from him.
I don’t say it was very scrupulous, but when he’d had a few drinks it wasn’t hard to get money out of him.’
“ ‘Still, he’d made a lot that day, and though he wasn’t drunk when he left the bar, he was in a happy mood.
You might have thought it worth while to make sure of a few thousand francs at one go rather than get it in fifties from time to time.’
“The Commissaire said this more to tease than because he thought there was anything in it.
And he didn’t think it a bad thing to let Berger suppose he was a possible object of suspicion.
It would certainly not make him less disinclined to tell the culprit’s name if he had an inkling of it.
Berger took out the money in his pocket and put it on the table.
It amounted to less than ten francs.
“ ‘If I’d robbed poor Jordan of his money you don’t suppose I’d only have that in my pocket now.’
“ ‘My dear boy, I suppose nothing.
I only pointed out that you had the time to kill Jordan and that money would have been useful to you.’
“Berger gave him his frank and disarming smile.
“ ‘Both those things, I admit,’ he said.
“ ‘I will be perfectly open with you,’ said the other.
‘I don’t think you murdered Jordan, but I’m fairly certain that if you don’t know who did, you have at least a suspicion.’
“Berger denied this, and though the Commissaire pressed him, persisted in his denial.