The Picture of Guilt Page 6

  "You'd think the driver could show some consideration and slow down a little," she said. '"And what was that water doing in the gutter anyway? It hasn't rained since we got here."

  As if in answer, a tiny green truck appeared at the comer on the sidewalk, and rolled slowly toward them, spraying jets of water at the concrete. Two men in green coveralls walked behind it, sweeping the walk with green plastic brooms. The girls ducked into a doorway and waited for it to pass, then walked on to rue Leon Frot.

  Nancy studied the small shops that lined the street on either side. With so many shops, surely someone in one of them had seen what happened to Josephine Solo.

  "Let's start at the corner and work our way down the block, then back up the other side,'' she suggested to George.

  The store on the comer was a bakery with a long line of customers waiting to buy fresh bread for lunch. "Why don't we try the optician next door?" George suggested.

  Inside the optician's shop, a young woman in a white lab coat asked the girls if she could be of help.

  Nancy explained in French that they were searching for people who might have witnessed a fatal accident on the comer earlier in the year.

  "The poor woman who was crushed by the truck, you mean?" the woman replied. "But, of course, everyone in the quartier knows about that. And later we learned that she was a famous artist. It is scandalous the way the trucks and buses speed down such a small, crowded street. Only last week, my son, who is nine, was nearly hit by an immense tourist bus from England."

  "You saw the accident in which Josephine Solo was killed?" George asked eagerly. "Can you tell us exactly what happened?"

  The woman pursed her lips, then said, "I did not see it happen. I was with a client at the time. But I heard the noises of brakes and the screams. And when I ran to the window, I saw the poor woman's legs sticking out from under the truck. One of her shoes had been knocked oflf. I could tell that there was no hope."

  Nancy and George asked a few more questions, but it was clear that the woman had not actually seen what happened. Nor did she know anyone who had. They thanked her and went on to the next shop, which sold fruits and vegetables. The owner, in a stained white apron, remembered the incident well. He had been standing with his back to the street, arranging a pyramid of artichokes, when he heard the crash. He had turned instantly.

  "Was there anyone near the victim?'' asked Nancy.

  The man raised both his bushy eyebrows. "But of course! Everyone was running to help. I, too. When I did my military service, I had to learn some first aid. But this time it was useless. There was nothing to be done."

  Nancy and George canvassed half a dozen more stores, then crossed the street—carefully checking both ways—and canvassed the stores on that side. When they finally made it back to the comer, George and Nancy were discouraged.

  "The same story everywhere!" George exclaimed. "Everyone looked only moments after the accident, but no one saw it happen. I'm beginning to think they're all in it together."

  Nancy felt the same as George, but she refused to give up. She glanced around, hoping for inspiration, and noticed a man in green coveralls with a broom with green plastic bristles. He knelt down and inserted a metal tool into a slot in the sidewalk, then turaed it. Water gushed into the street, and he began to sweep litter into the gutter.

  Nancy went over to him. "Excuse me. Have you been working in this area for long?" she asked in French.

  He straightened up and gave her a long look. "For two years. Why?"

  "Were you by any chance here last spring, the day an American woman was hit by a truck?" Nancy continued, then held her breath waiting for his reply.

  "Ah, alors!"he exclaimed. "But of course I was here. I saw it all—all!"

  "Exactly what happened?" Nancy asked.

  The street sweeper put down his broom, the better to gesticulate, and said, "Look you, I was preparing to turn on the water when I saw the woman on the sidewalk, going to the comer. Aha, I think, ril wait a moment, not to wet her feet. So I am watching her. She walks to the comer, her eyes on nothing in particular. But then-imagine—then she turns her head, like this. To look back at a shop window? Or a passerby who seems familiar? I don't know. Then without looking, she steps into the street, directly in front of the truck. Quel horreur!"

  Chapter Nine

  NANCY STARED at the street sweeper. "You were watching the woman at the very moment she stepped into the street?'' she demanded. "You saw the whole thing?"

  "Did I not just say that?" he replied, with a shrug of his shoulders.

  "Was there anyone near her?" George asked, also in French. "Anyone who might have, uh, distracted her?"

  He wagged his finger. "No, no, no. I told the police at the time, now I tell you. I was the closest, and I was three meters away, too far to help, helasr

  Nancy mentally translated this as about ten feet. "Then you don't have any doubt that it was an accident," she said.

  "No doubt at all," he replied, bending down to pick up his broom again. "A tragic accident, c'est tout/'

  Nancy thanked him for his help, then she and George went to a nearby cafe to talk about what this meant.

  "Nancy, I feel really confused,'' George admitted after they ordered a coffee and a tea with milk. "We've been basing our whole investigation on the premise that Solo was murdered. If she wasn't—and that guy's testimony was pretty convincing—then everything we've done so far was one big waste of time."

  Nancy put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her folded hands, and gazed out through the cafe window at the street. Was George right? Had they spent the last two days chasing a phantom?

  "Not quite," she said slowly. "Okay, Solo's death was an accident. But what about Jules? At least one witness thought he was pushed under the truck. And somebody stole that briefcase of his."

  "But we haven't even started investigating Jules's death," George protested. "We've been investigating Solo's."

  "On the theory that the two were connected," Nancy pointed out. She paused as the waiter set their drinks on the table, then continued. "I still think it's a good theory. Jules was doing research on Solo's last months and told Ellen he'd just made an amazing discovery. But before he could meet her to share his discovery, he was killed,"

  George nodded, "And the briefcase he was carrying vanished—and it probably contained his notes on the discovery," she added. "Okay, I get the point. Whatever Jules discovered, it must have been terribly incriminating for someone, someone who had had a connection to Josephine Solo. Maybe someone like Censier or that guy Leduc, who was apparently copying her ideas."

  "Don't forget G.A., who may have been blackmailing her," Nancy said, "And another thing— even if Solo's death was an accident, it may have inspired the person who killed Jules to copy it. After all, if you shoot or poison somebody, everybody knows it's murder. But if somebody stumbles in front of a truck, there's a good chance people will think it was an accident, and you won't have to face an investigation."

  "Unless you have bad luck and cross the path of Nancy Drew and Company," George declared with a mock-fierce expression. "Okay, so where do we go from here?"

  Nancy frowned, "Let's go on assuming that the reason Jules died had something to do with his discovery about Solo," she said, "If we can manage to retrace his steps and find out what he discovered, maybe it will point us in the direction of his killer. We should also try to find out how the killer found out about the discovery, and how he knew that Jules was on his way to Ellen's."

  "We should start checking people's alibis, too," George suggested. "And not just for the time Jules was killed. Don't forget that mobylette that tried to run us down or the attack on you this morning."

  Nancy stood up. "I'm going to try to reach Ellen," she said. "Maybe she can tell us where Jules was living. If we can get into his apartment, we might find a clue to what he found."

  Nancy returned to the table a few minutes later, smiling. "Good news," she announced. "Jules was ren
ting a spare room in the apartment of a friend of Ellen who's a professor at the Sorbonne. I have the address. It's over on the Left Bank, near the Luxembourg Gardens. Ellen's going to call and ask to let us see Jules's room."

  "Great," George said. She unfolded her map and scanned it, then added, "Oh, good—we can take a bus there. It's much more fun to be able to look out at the streets along the way."

  The apartment was on a quiet side street, just a few steps from the Sorbonne and the bustling boulevard St. Michel. Nancy rang the bell. The man who answered was in his fifties, with steel-gray hair and a closely trimmed gray beard.

  "Miss Drew, Miss Fayne?" he said, with an English accent. "I'm Pierre Reuilly. Please come in. Ellen Mathieson told me to expect you."

  Nancy and George followed him into the living room. The walls were lined with ceiling-high bookcases of dark wood. An impressive antique desk stood at the far end between two tall French windows.

  "We're sorry to intrude on you," Nancy said.

  ''Oh, not at all. I understand you wish to look through poor Daubenton's affairs," Reuilly replied. "You arrive at an opportune moment. I was planning to pack everything this weekend, to ship to his family in Burgundy."

  "Do you have any idea what research he was doing for Ellen?" Nancy asked.

  Reuilly shook his head. "That, I fear, I do not know. In view of what happened, I feel quite bad that I didn't get to know the chap better, but our paths rarely crossed. You'll understand the reason when I show you his quarters. This way."

  Nancy and George followed him down a long, dark hall with closed doors on both sides. At the end, was a large, old-fashioned kitchen.

  Reuilly pointed to a door near the refrigerator and said, "That leads onto the rear stairs. In the last century, when this building was put up, it was not considered proper for servants to use the same entrance as their employers. I never use this back entrance, but I gave Daubenton the keys so that he could come and go as he wished without having to run into me constantly. You can understand that we rarely saw each other. His room is just over here."

  The professor pushed open a narrow door at the far end of the kitchen and added, "I'll leave you, then. If I can be of further service, you'll find me in my study."

  "One question, if you don't mind," Nancy quickly said. "Has anyone else come by to look at his room? A friend or relative, maybe? Or the police?"

  "No, no one at all," Reuilly told her. "His relatives asked me to send his belongings, but I haven't had time yet. Poor chap, it's such a terrible thing that happened."

  The room Jules had occupied was small and rather barren. A single bed took up most of one wall. Along the opposite wall were an armoire, a bookcase whose shelves sagged under their load, and a desk made of two sawhorses and a wide plank. The uncurtained window framed a view of the roof of the next building.

  "Brrr!" George said, pretending to shiver. "And he was an art history major. You'd think he could have put a few prints on the walls to cheer the place up."

  Nancy said, "I suspect he was the kind of person who doesn't really notice his surroundings. He had a place to work, a place to sleep, and a place to store his stuff. What else did he need?

  "Well, let's get to work," Nancy added after a pause. "You take the bookcase. I'll start on the desk." V George began taking books down, shaking each one, in case a paper was tucked inside, and examining the titles. Nancy approached the desk. Jules had obviously tried to be organized—four cardboard box files were stacked on the floor near the desk—but he hadn't quite managed- Most of the desk's siuface was hidden by piles of file folders, paper clipped sheafs of notes, letters, magazines, and stray scraps of paper.

  Holding back a sigh, Nancy started sorting through the papers, setting aside any that might relate to Josephine Solo. When she finished, she had compiled a stack over an inch thick that seemed to deserve closer scrutiny. One item that she spent a long time perusing was a notebook in which each page was headed with a date, starting about a year earlier. The majority of the pages were blank, but others contained an>1:hing from a single word to a whole paragraph. After studying it, Nancy decided that the notebook was a summary of the research Jules had been doing into the daily life of Josephine Solo.

  She selected one of the longer entries, from late November, and read.

  Replied EM's letter 14.11 re grant (corres files). Met pm w/ J-LC, broke oflF w/ gallery. Din 2Mag w/ GFountain.

  That was easy enough to decode. EM was Ellen, J-LC was Censier, and GFountain was the food writer whom Nancy and George had interviewed the day before. So after breaking off relations with the gallery that had represented her for years. Solo had celebrated, or consoled herself, by having dinner with a close friend at the Deux Magots.

  Nancy leafed through the notebook again, copying any entries that seemed relevant, but she didn't note anything that ranked as an amazing discovery. Of course not, because Jules had certainly taken his documents to show Ellen, and they were now in the hands of the person who had stolen his briefcase. Or had destroyed it.

  "I've drawn a total blank," George said, breaking into Nancy's thoughts. "How about you?"

  "I'm not doing so well, either," Nancy replied, continuing through the stack of papers. "But what was I expecting? A hot pink folder labeled Important Que? Whatever Jules—"

  She broke off as something caught her eye. It was a scrap of paper with a column of numbers. Something about the numbers looked familiar.

  6250

  14000

  11500

  8000

  28500

  "What is it, Nan?" asked George, coming over to stand by the desk.

  Nancy showed her the paper. "Aren't those the amounts of the checks Solo wrote to GAT*

  "Yes," George replied, excitement in her voice. "All except that one at the bottom."

  Nancy read, "CL 381-44961210—No, that certainly doesn't ring a bell. But I'm going to copy this list. When we get home, we can compare it with the amounts of those checks. If they match, it means that Jules was on the trail of the blackmailer."

  Nancy spent the next twenty minutes going through the rest of the papers, while George searched Jules's clothes. Neither of them found anything else that resembled a clue. Finally they thanked Professor Reuilly and returned home.

  As they were going upstairs, Nancy said, "I'd like to look at that checkbook now. Let's see if Ellen is in."

  They continued up another flight and knocked on her door. It was David who answered. "No, the professor's out," he said. "She said she'd be back around five. Boy, this research business is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I'm just beginning to find my way around."

  Nancy decided this was a good moment to begin checking alibis. "David?" she said. "You remember that on Thursday night, you left the party before us?"

  "Yes," he said, in a guarded voice. "What about itr*

  "Would you mind telling me why?''

  He glared at her. "Playing detective? Well, I would mind, but FU tell you anyway. I went to meet somebody. But the guy I was supposed to meet didn't show up. I wasted half an hour standing around."

  "Alone?" George asked.

  "Yes, alone," he replied, sticking his chin out. "What of it?"

  "Who were you expecting to meet?" Nancy probed. "Any idea why he failed to show up?"

  David suddenly became uneasy. "Sure," he said. "I know exactly why. Because he'd just been killed by a truck. The guy I was supposed to meet was Jules Daubenton."

  Chapter Ten

  NANCY FELT as if someone had just touched an ice cube to the back of her neck. David was admitting that he had an appointment to meet Jules at the very time that Jules died.

  There was an uneasy silence in the room. David's eyes shifted from Nancy to George and back, as if he were dreading their reactions.

  George cleared her throat and said, ''I don't get it. Why were you and Jules supposed to meet?"

  "I don't know," David growled. "It wasn't my idea, it was his. He said it was importan
t, that's all I know."

  Nancy frowned. There was something here that didn't add up. Why would Jules make a date to meet David for the same time that he was rushing to an urgent appointment with Professor Mathieson?

  "When did Jules ask you to meet him?" Nancy asked.

  "I don't know," David said again, with a scowl. "During Professor Mathieson's open house, that's all I know. Look, here's what happened. Near the end of the open house, Cindy— you remember, the brown-haired girl from Oklahoma?—brought me a message that Jules had called. He said he needed to see me and would meet me in front of the bookstore over on Ledru RoUin at ten o'clock. I probably wouldn't have bothered, but he said it was important."

  "Did he tell Cindy why it was so important?" asked George.

  David gave an exasperated sigh. "That's the whole point," he said. "She didn't talk to him. She just found the message next to the telephone and brought it to me."

  "Let me see if I've got this straight," Nancy said. "Somebody answered the telephone and took down a message for you from Jules. And then, instead of giving it to you, he or she simply left it by the telephone? Even though it was supposed to be very important?"

  "Look, I know it sounds fishy," David said, raising his voice. "All I can say is, I didn't think anything about it at the time. I just figured whoever took the call got distracted and forgot to give me the note."

  George said, "David, I don't understand why you didn't tell anybody about this."

  "You mean, after I found out that Jules had been killed?" he retorted. "And that he had been on his way to meet with Professor Mathieson, not with me? Give me a break! That message wasn't from Jules at all. Somebody was trying to set me up. Why make it easier for them?''

  "Do you still have the note?'' Nancy asked. "Maybe the handwriting—"

  "No such luck," he said bitterly. "I tossed it in a litter basket on my way to meet Jules."