Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
The ambulance took Alec to the mortuary. Sylvie begged to go with him, but the paramedic shook his head. “The police will want to speak to you all. They will be here soon.”
“Soon” turned out to be almost two hours, during which Baxter did his best to maintain some semblance of normality. He served breakfast outside in order not to disturb anything in the house, producing a basket of freshly warmed croissants and granola parfaits in individual glass jars.
“Do you think Alec heard a noise outside and went to investigate?” Francesca said.
“If it was dark and he was still drunk …” She stared at the shimmering water before them, and Baxter pictured Alec stumbling across the terrace, then tripping on the coping stone that ran around the edges and falling headfirst into the water.
“If he’d heard the gas, he’d have stayed put like the rest of us,” Carter said. “Dad wasn’t stupid.” He seemed to suddenly register his use of the past tense, and his face crumpled.
Several of the guests had heard the hissing in their rooms last night.
Carter had woken Jade up, he told the others, and they had clung together in terrified silence, listening to the same muffled sounds Baxter had heard from his own room.
Damian, Francesca, and Sylvie had slept through it, while Kaitlyn had cowered alone in her locked bathroom, too scared to come out even after the sun had come out and the intruders were long gone.
She still looked scared now, wrapped in a white waffle robe several sizes too big, her brown eyes made darker still by the shadows beneath them. “If I’d stayed in the room with him,” she said, so softly she might have been talking to herself, “he’d still be alive.”
Jade moved to reassure her, putting an arm around the quivering girl. “You can’t blame yoursel—”
“If you hadn’t got yourself knocked up,” Sylvie said harshly, “he wouldn’t have got so drunk last night—”
“Sylvie …” Francesca murmured the admonishment, but Sylvie was on a roll.
“—which means even if he’d fallen in the pool, he’d have stood a chance of getting out. You killed him, you little bitch, as surely as if you’d pushed him in yourself!”
Kaitlyn’s mouth made a perfect O as fresh tears sprang to her eyes. She pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face in her robe.
“Who killed him?”
Everyone looked up. The barrel-chested gendarme was walking around the side of Villa Sérénité, closely followed by his blond colleague, whose sunburn was even angrier than before.
“She did.” Sylvie pointed a dramatic arm toward Kaitlyn, who was sobbing noisily into her knees.
“Messieurs.” Baxter stepped forward. “Un petit café, peut-être?”
The gendarmes accepted the offer with curt nods, and Miriam went to fetch their coffees. She was back within a minute, empty-handed and in floods of tears.
“My bracelet! I put it on the windowsill when I wash up yesterday, and now she is gone! It was a gift from Thierry.” She turned to him. “Je suis désolée.”
He folded her into an embrace. “C’est pas ta faute,” he reassured her.
“Of course it’s not your fault,” Baxter said.
He was relieved his phone was an older model, otherwise no doubt the burglars would have taken that too.
Baxter had few valuables; the cuff links Hugo had given him were in a velvet bag tucked into his washbag, and although his leather butler box was inordinately precious to him, he doubted anyone else would consider it worth stealing.
Despite Baxter’s initial assessment that nothing had been stolen, once the guests were up, they had discovered several small items were missing.
Francesca’s handbag had been ransacked and flung behind the sofa, and Sylvie’s leather jacket was gone from the coat cupboard, along with an Hermès scarf Carter had given Jade.
Damian was missing his watch. “I took it off when I went for a swim before bed,” he’d said. “Must have left it on the sunbed.” He had scanned the poolside in vain.
It seemed the intruders hadn’t risked entering the bedrooms, or if they had, nothing had been taken from there.
Had they suspected some of the occupants were still awake?
Perhaps they’d only had a low dose of the sleeping gas left; certainly none of the guests had the same crushing headache they’d experienced after the previous break-in.
“You took your time,” Damian said now, looking the police officers up and down.
“Some idiot abandoned a Porsche on Rue des Belges,” the sunburned officer said. “It resulted in some serious traffic issues. I have requested a tow truck, but …” He shrugged.
Baxter closed his eyes momentarily. Rue des Belges was a one-way street in central Cannes, a key access route for deliveries, hotel traffic, and commuters trying to avoid the Croisette’s heavy footfall. Alec blocking the road would have caused havoc.
“Directing traffic trumps drowning, does it?” Damian shook his head, disgusted. “This fucking country …”
“Eh bien, on t’arrête pas de partir,” Thierry muttered. Baxter gave him a warning look. The sudden death of a client did not negate the need for politeness, even if Baxter did secretly agree with Thierry: No one was stopping Damian from leaving France, if he disliked it so intently.
The barrel-chested officer fixed a level gaze on Damian.
“It surprises me,” he said in a tone that seemed not at all surprised, “that you would be in such a hurry for your friend’s death to be investigated by …
how was it you said?” He made a show of checking his notebook. “Ah yes, ‘bumbling fools.’”
Damian blustered. “Well now—”
“Your friend was similarly disenchanted by French police, non? He did not like what he called our laissez-faire attitude, I remember.”
“They didn’t mean anything by it, officer.” Francesca’s tentative smile wasn’t reciprocated.
“We are working to establish if the gang of thieves I told you about was in the area last night,” the barrel-chested officer said.
“Earlier in the evening, one of your neighbors reported a local pickpocket lurking around the back of their property. She claimed to be lost, but she ran off as soon as they challenged her. It’s possible she’s working as a spotter for the gang. ”
“What does she look like?” Baxter asked.
The gendarme shrugged. “Young. Red hair. She is a menace, with a particular liking for cruise passengers, who she knows won’t hang about long enough to press charges if she gets caught. Not that she often gets caught. Slippery little devil.”
Baxter thought of the way Red had melted away after he’d made her empty her pockets. He’d been right, then: She was scouting for bigger players.
“She has a police record,” the blond officer said. “So if we find her fingerprints here, we might be able to finally put her away.”
Baxter wasn’t so sure. Red had been inside Villa Sérénité legitimately—if trashing a luxury villa at the invitation of its caretakers could be considered legitimate.
Epic parties, she’d said. It would make a convenient defense should she be arrested for last night’s burglary.
Perhaps that had been her plan all along. “Will you arrest her?”
“If we can find her.” The barrel-chested officer looked around. “Did the intruders disable the alarm again?”
“They must have done,” Baxter said, “although I don’t know how.” The security firm had installed steel casing around the external cables after the first attempted break-in, making it impossible to cut them. Uncertainty formed in his chest. Had he forgotten to set the alarm last night?
“What was the point of entry?”
“The main doors haven’t been touched, but the sliding door that leads to Mr. Prescott’s bedroom was open.” Baxter led the officers across the terrace to Alec’s room.
“It was this way when you first saw it?”
“Yes, no one’s been inside.”
The blond officer examined the door. He pointed at a series of marks on the wooden frame. “Looks like a crowbar, or a large screwdriver. These doors are an easier target than the upper floor, where they first tried to gain entry, but they took a risk entering through a bedroom.”
“Mr. Prescott must have woken up and found them in his room,” Baxter said. He followed the gendarme into the bedroom. The sheets were rumpled, and clothes were strewn across the armchair.
“Perhaps.” The gendarme looked thoughtful. “Or perhaps Monsieur Prescott decided to go swimming. Never a good idea after large quantities of alcohol.”
“With respect,” Baxter said, “I don’t think—”
“Every summer it is the same. Tourists getting drunk and getting into trouble.” He eyed Baxter sternly. “And you English— You are the worst.” He strode back to the others, updating his colleague in terse, rapid French.
“What’s he saying?” Damian said.
“I think they think it was an accident.” Carter screwed up his face. “That’s all I got.”
“They don’t want to record a murder as well as a burglary,” Thierry said. The police officers instantly stopped talking, turning to glare accusingly at Thierry. “He said perhaps the victim wasn’t in his room when the intruders arrived— That’s why they chose his door to force.”
“A murder would make Cannes look bad, would it?” Sylvie said. “Well I don’t give a fuck about bad publicity. My husband is in the mortuary, and he didn’t put himself there.” She looked at each of the gendarmes in turn. “Do your job. Find the individuals responsible.”
The barrel-chested officer narrowed his eyes at Sylvie’s imperious tone, then he let out a dismissive tsk. He nodded to his colleague, and they began walking to their car.
“Nice one, Mum,” Carter said sarcastically. “Way to get Dad’s case pushed to the back of the queue.”
Baxter was walking back toward Alec’s bedroom.
The police were undoubtedly trying to downgrade the job.
Alec’s bed had been slept in, but he’d been wearing his clothes, which suggested he’d gone to bed fully dressed.
A drunken midnight dip was feasible for someone just returning home from a night out, but it seemed far less likely that Alec would have woken in the middle of the night and felt a sudden urge to do a few fully clothed laps.
It was far more likely he had heard a noise and gone outside to confront the intruders.
Perhaps there’d been a tussle on the terrace, and Alec had fallen in.
Or been pushed.
Baxter examined the steel casing around the alarm cabling, confirming his earlier conclusions that nothing had been damaged.
The control panel was in the hallway, cleverly concealed behind a hinged panel.
Baxter entered the admin code and looked at the sequence of digits that would reassure him that he had indeed set the alarm before going to bed.
Yes, there it was. alarm activated: 00:29:43. Baxter was chiding himself for doubting his professionalism when he saw the next two lines on the small screen.
alarm deactivated: 01:36:03
alarm activated: 02:21:56
He stared at the screen. The break-in must have occurred during the time the alarm was deactivated, but how could the intruders have accessed the control panel from the outside?
Even before he’d formed the question, Baxter knew the answer.
Someone in the house helped them.