It was late by now and the Commissaire thought it would be better to resume the conversation next day, he thought also that a night in the cells would give Berger an opportunity to consider his position.
Berger, who had been arrested twice before, knew that it was useless to protest.
“You know that the dope traffickers are up to every sort of trick to conceal their dope.
They hide it in hollow walking-sticks, in the heels of shoes, in the lining of old clothes, in mattresses and pillows, in the frames of bedsteads, in every imaginable place, but the police know all their dodges, and you can bet your boots that if there’d been anything in the house at Neuilly they’d have found it.
They found nothing.
But when the Commissaire had been going through Lydia’s bedroom he’d come across a vanity-case, and it struck him that it was an expensive one for a woman of that modest class to have.
She had a watch on that looked as if it had cost quite a lot of money.
She said that her husband had given her both the watch and the vanity-case, and it occurred to the Commissaire that it might be interesting to find out how he had got the money to buy them.
On getting back to his office he had inquiries made and in a very short while learnt that several women had reported that they had had bags stolen by a young man who had offered them lifts in a Citroen.
One woman had left a description of a vanity-case which she had thus lost and it corresponded with that which the Commissaire had found in Lydia’s possession; another stated that there had been in her bag a gold watch from such and such a maker.
The same maker’s name was on Lydia’s. It was plain that the mysterious young man whom the police had never been able to lay their hands on was Robert Berger.
That didn’t seem to bring the solution of the Jordan murder any nearer, but it gave the Commissaire an additional weapon to induce Berger to spill the beans.
He had him brought into his room and asked him to explain how he had come by the vanity-case and the watch.
Berger said he’d bought one of them from a tart who wanted money and the other from a man he’d met in a bar.
He could give the name of neither.
They were casual persons whom he’d got into conversation with and had neither seen before nor since.
The Commissaire then formally arrested him on a charge of theft, and telling him that he would be confronted next morning with the two women to whom he was convinced the articles belonged, tried to persuade him to save trouble by making a confession.
But Berger stuck to his story and refused to answer any more questions till he had the assistance of a lawyer, which by French law, now that he was arrested, he was entitled to have at an examination.
The Commissaire could do nothing but acquiesce, and that finished the proceedings for the night.
“On the followng morning the two women in question came to the Commissariat and immediately they were shown the objects recognized them.
Berger was brought in and one of them at once identified him as the obliging young man who had given her a lift.
The other was doubtful; it was night when she had accepted his offer to drive her home and she had not seen his face very well, but she thought she would recognize his voice.
Berger was told to read out a couple of sentences from a paper and he had not read half a dozen words before the woman cried out that she was certain it was the same man.
I may tell you that Berger had a peculiarly soft and caressing voice.
The women were dismissed and Berger taken back to the cell.
The vanity-case and the watch were on the table before him and the Commissaire looked at them idly.
Suddenly his expression grew more intent.”
Charley interrupted.
“Simon, how could you know that?
You’re romancing.”
Simon laughed.
“I’m dramatizing a little.
I’m telling you what I said in my first article.
I had to make as good a story out of it as I could, you know.”
“Go on then.”
“Well, he sent for one of his men, and asked him if Berger had on a wrist-watch when he was arrested, and if he had, to bring it.
Remember, all this came out at the trial afterwards.
The cop got Berger’s watch.
It was an imitation gold thing, in a metal that I think’s called aureum, and it had a round face.
The press had given a lot of details about Jordan’s murder; they’d said, for instance, that the knife with which the blow had been inflicted hadn’t been found, and, incidentally, it never was; and they’d said that the police hadn’t discovered any finger-prints.
You’d have expected to find some either on the leather note-case in which Jordan had kept his money or on the door handle; and of course they deduced from that that the murderer had worn gloves.
But what they didn’t say, because the police had taken care to keep it dark, was that when they had gone through Jordan’s room with a fine comb they had found fragments of a broken watch-glass.
It couldn’t have belonged to Jordan’s watch, and it needn’t necessarily have belonged to the murderer’s, but there was just a chance that somehow or other, in his nervousness or haste, by an accidental knock against a piece of furniture, the murderer had broken the glass of his watch.
It wasn’t a thing he would be likely to notice at such a moment.
Not all the pieces had been found, but enough to show that the watch they had belonged to was small and oblong.
The Commissaire had the pieces in an envelope, carefully wrapped up in tissue-paper, and he now laid them out before him.
They would have exactly fitted Lydia’s watch.
It might be only a coincidence; there were in use thousands of watches of just that size and shape.
Lydia’s had a glass.
But the Commissaire pondered.