Murder in Monte Carlo Read online

  MURDER

  in

  MONTE CARLO

  MURDER

  in

  MONTE CARLO

  MICHAEL SHERIDAN

  Published 2011

  by ePoolbeg

  123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle

  Dublin 13, Ireland

  E-mail: [email protected]

  www.poolbeg.com

  © Michael Sheridan 2011

  Copyright for typesetting, layout, design

  © Poolbeg Books Ltd

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  1

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-1-84223-471-6

  eBook ISBN 978-1-84223-526-3

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Typeset by Patricia Hope in Sabon 11/15.5

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  www.poolbeg.com

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Michael Sheridan is the bestselling true crime author of Death in December, an investigation into the murder of French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier; Frozen Blood: Serial Killers in Ireland; A Letter to Veronica; Tears of Blood and Bloody Evidence. He is co-author and ghostwriter of Don’t Ever Tell: Kathy’s Story, an account of Kathy O’Beirne’s traumatic childhood, which spent 22 weeks in the UK top ten and was a Sunday Times bestseller.

  In 2010 his bestselling Murder at Shandy Hall (The Coachford Poisoning Case) was published by Poolbeg.

  Michael previously worked for the Irish Press and the Sunday Independent as a freelance journalist.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Gaye Shortland, the editor from heaven, always punctilious with her unerring eye, and most of all encouraging. Every writer should have a Gaye Shortland.

  The team at Poolbeg: Paula, Kieran, Sarah, Dave and all the rest of the staff.

  My agent Christine, always able to deal with a howl and a moan.

  The staff of Higgins in Clonskeagh: Debbie, Niall, John, Dave, Ronan.

  The staff of the National Library, always helpful though undergoing the unmerciful cuts of an uncaring government whose denizens seem to suffer nothing themselves.

  Alain Spilliaert, advocate of Paris, who has been always ready to inform about the French system of law.

  My family: Ger, Cian and Fionn, Sarah and Marty and mother Patsy for putting up with the usual obsession.

  To Aoife,

  light in my heart of darkness

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Part One

  1 La Belle Époque

  2 La Guillotine Sèche

  3 L’Affaire Gouffé

  4 Le Tigre

  5 Casino Royale

  6 Le Train

  Part Two

  7 Le Bagne

  8 Le Crime

  9 La Guillotine?

  10 Le Rendez-vous

  11 Le Quatrième Pouvoir

  12 La Histoire

  13 Le Dernier Set

  14 La Maison du Défunt

  Bibliography

  Plate Section

  INTRODUCTION

  At the time of the murder chronicled in this book, the French investigative and judicial process was then, as now, inquisitorial. This differed from the adversarial system used in Britain and Ireland. In an adversarial system, the investigation is conducted by the police, the court later acting as impartial referee between prosecution and defence. In an inquisitorial system the court is actively involved in investigating the facts of the case from the start. The police get on with the investigation but under the instruction of a public prosecutor and an examining magistrate.

  Thus, when the facts of the case in question were established at an early stage by the police investigation, a court process was begun by the examining magistrate, leading over a lengthy period to the actual trial – a process that very much suited the purposes of newspapers, as anything aired in court was in the public domain. The sensational details of such a case as this could be ventilated in public, generally speaking, without fear of legal retribution. There was nothing to prevent the Fourth Estate from engaging in the matter of concurrent investigation, to satisfy the public interest. This they did with great enthusiasm – their reportage, in fact, delivered with more enthusiasm than accuracy.

  At a time when French criminologists and forensic experts were pre-eminent in their field, the matter of the background and psychology of the perpetrators of crime was considered important, as the ultimate punishment for murder was the guillotine. Extenuating circumstances could save a killer from death, commuting the sentence to life imprisonment. That could result in a benefit to the convicted – but not always, as the murder under consideration will prove.

  In all ages there was and is an uneasy relationship between crime and punishment. Without giving too much away, there existed then in the French system, and for many decades later, penal colonies which were in essence death camps, with no redeeming features for the condemned, whatever the nature of their crimes. It was an issue that, in the light of the outcome of this murder, I felt worth examining.

  From this and other issues of reconstruction, there arose the question of how best, in style and construction, to deal with them. A murder that occurs in an enclosed space with no witnesses is by its nature subject to reconstruction by police and judicial authorities, none of whom, it can be said, were there at the time. It requires, therefore, a nexus between facts gathered and an exercise of informed imagination. When two people are involved in the commission of a murder, it may well serve one or another to supply a different version of the event. This proved to be the fact in the two interrelated cases dealt with in this book. Hence, while an author usually wants to shun the border between what are conventionally described as fact and fiction, that borderline was the terrain I felt appropriate to explore in this case.

  My aim was, I hesitate to say, to give life to the characters, or to bring to life the people involved at both the centre and periphery of the case, all now consigned to their respective graves. The vast majority of them have their real names. To the Marseilles police investigation team, undoubtedly crucial to the outcome but not mentioned in dispatches, I have taken the liberty to assign names. As to some at the Monte Carlo end.

  Apart from the exigencies of the subject matter, I would like to mention the encouragement – not the possible blame – of a reviewer of my last book Murder at Shandy Hall. That is, if she does not mind my mentioning her name – Alannah Hopkin who writing for the Examiner said that I should let my imagination run more. I have done so and in an unlikely scenario between writer and critic, but well appreciated, have taken her advice.

  PROLOGUE

  Nothing in his life had prepared him for this. His mind was a whirlpool of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Outside and inside the villa complex there was sunshine, laughter, enjoyment, eating, drinking, gambling, wealth, debauchery and all the other things that constitute the pursuits of human existence and expectation. Inside their apartment nothing but sheer fright and horror.

  The dwindling of money, the panic that ensues when wondering where the next franc would come from, now seemed mor
e a pleasure than a painful experience. There must have been a better alternative, a more civilised way of dealing with the onset of poverty. They could have promised, could have begged, stolen – anything but this with its terrible outcome that had for some reason previously escaped his drunken imagination.

  Why had he agreed to his wife’s plan? Because he was a weak, drunken, foolish man paralysed by his inadequacies. It had made no sense at the time and even less now.

  The waft of cooking emanated from a neighbouring apartment, making him feel sick. But he knew he could not move to the bathroom.

  He had carried out his part of the plan while his wife engaged the female visitor in conversation. A woman who was perceived to be the cause of their problems but was not. All their misfortunes were of their own making. He had downed another whisky while in the kitchen and then had taken the pestle in his hand. His hand was shaking, so he downed another drink.

  Violence had never been part of his flawed nature. The only object he had ever hit with great intent and determination was a tennis ball in the great flush of his youth. The only person he had wanted to put away was an opponent on the court, and even that with the grace of skill rather than any aggression.

  And now he was to hit an innocent woman over the head to stun her and to rob her of her much-vaunted jewellery and any cash she possessed. It made no sense. Even in their desperation. But his wife insisted and she had always got her way. He would have rather died in poverty, but she had other ideas and told him that he was responsible for the awful position they found themselves in. He had tried to argue. It was no good – he had lost all the arguments before, a long time ago.

  It was no use. He staggered from the kitchen and quickly brought the pestle down as hard as he could on the back of the woman’s head. The visitor fell to the floor, gurgling with shock, and then let out a scream. She was alive and tried to get up. He dropped the pestle on the floor. His wife was screaming at him but it was as if he heard nothing.

  It was all happening a distance from him or, rather, he was distanced from it. He could and would do no more. He saw his wife as in a nightmare pounce on the unfortunate woman. They struggled and there were more screams.

  “The dagger, the dagger!”

  He walked in a waking dream to the sideboard, picked up the dagger and handed it to his wife who was punching the squealing victim and being scratched in return. He saw the flash of it as it was plunged into the chest of the struggling woman. He heard the slowly descending gurgle and saw the blood streaming from her nose. He ran to the bathroom and vomited the undigested contents of the whisky bottle.

  “Come back here, come back!” His wife’s order reverberated around the bathroom.

  He rushed back to the living room. She handed him the knife.

  “Push it in, push it in!”

  The woman was lying face to the ground. He shoved the bloodstained dagger into her back. It went through to the hilt. “Pull it out!”

  He did and, with a final gurgle and a tremor all over her body, the woman lay still.

  He knew in that instant his life was over. The blood all over the carpet and seeping across the living room floor was evidence enough. He trembled from head to toe, ran back to the kitchen and put the whisky bottle to his mouth. He could hardly breathe with the shock of it all.

  Tears rolled down his drunken face. What had his dissolute life been all about? Anything but this. The woman had done him no wrong. He wanted to join her in death right now. He was awoken from his instant remorse by a clunk on the kitchen sink. When he wiped away his tears a large knife and a saw came into focus.

  “Now remember what comes next. She will be home soon. You know what we must do.”

  He did not want to go back to the sitting room. But now there was no choice. He did not want to look into those dead staring eyes that would haunt him for the rest of his life. But his wife said he must overcome such scruples. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. They would remove the body to the bathroom first, do the necessary and then plan the next move.

  What did she mean by necessary? What next move? There would be blood everywhere and how could they get rid of those damned spots? Not to mind that damned guilt. He had no idea. All their time together, living on the edge, she had the ideas – as she would now. Maybe there was a way forward. He would listen to her suggestions and agree as he always had done.

  As always there was no choice, no alternative. That had been the path of their lives. There was only one way forward, or backward. But he felt utterly sick in his heart and that had been the case for a very long time.

  The rest was a blur of hacking, cutting and cleaning of a now inanimate thing that had once been a living human being. Blood provides the greatest challenge to erase after spilling in a variety of spots, splatters and formations from the body. Not to mind the soul which is beyond the constraints of the visible.

  The sea was a dark shade of purple and blue under the scimitar moon. He looked furtively behind him and almost jumped at the small flat whale-like shape of Cap Martin. His nerves were shredded and he nearly let the bag slide out of his hand. From the white sand of the beach of Larvotto, the lights of Monte Carlo twinkled. From the direction of the seafront the warm wind carried sounds of gaiety. Their comforting timbre served only to mock him as he scuttled like a crab along the beach, fearful of encountering a human form.

  He looked for an outlet that would carry the contents of his bag as far out to sea as possible. His glazed eyes were drawn to the moon from the shimmering reflection of its light on the calm surface of the sea. It watched him, unmoved, immutable. He trembled and trudged on, the sand tugging quietly at his feet.

  The light reminded him of the streams of gold that flowed from the croupier’s hands, and he could hear the dull thud of scattered coins on the table. It sent a shiver right down his spine. The cloying sense of greed that the image evoked was now a source of repulsion, for it was not a bag of coins he was carrying. The contents slid around as he stumbled on a mound of flotsam. Was it for this that he had stood around the tables, transfixed with trepidation? Always searching for something, a sign, a play, calculating, taking notes of the roll of the ball, the expression of the players, anything – even a hint of superstition – to lead to a reversal of fortune? But nothing turned in his favour and he was beset by more feverish thoughts and sudden false expectation that tomorrow would provide the break, and if not the following morrow. His chances were as good as being born all over again or rising from the grave given him by the dead hand of fate.

  Of course he played the hand – it was his nature and nothing had ever changed that. It was copper-fastened by his companion in life, whose nature was the same if not worse. Without a check on that dual nature, nothing had even the remotest chance of improving their circumstances. Tomorrow it would all be ended. But now there was no tomorrow but certain ruin.

  He slid across a number of small rocks beyond a turn in the beach. There in a modest gulf was a fast-flowing outlet. He opened the top of the bag, averted his eyes and slid the slippery stinking contents into the water. He heard a sickening plop and a gurgle. He dropped the bag in too and the current bore it away. He turned quickly away and made his way to the seashore and immersed his hands into the soft waves to wash them.

  He gazed towards the moonlit horizon. If he walked towards that horizon it would be all over in a matter of minutes. But he lacked, as he always had, the courage of any conviction. Unlike his ancient ancestor, the crusader who had fought with distinction in Damietta. Unlike his domineering father, the resolute magistrate in Waterford who unflinchingly opposed the Fenian rebels.

  The silent beauty of this place put the horror that he had left behind in the Villa Menesini into perspective. He shed some cowardly tears, for nothing or no one in particular, not for himself or the victim. He dreaded the return, and the dreadful aftermath of the awful act. He dragged himself to his feet and retraced his passage along the beach and onwards in th
e direction of Boulevard des Moulins.

  The steps afterwards he did not dare to contemplate.

  PART ONE

  1

  LA BELLE ÉPOQUE

  La Belle Époque (‘The Beautiful Era’) was a period in European social history between the Great Depression of the 1870-1880’s and the advent of World War I. It was so named in retrospect, when it began to seem like a lost ‘golden age’. It roughly corresponded to the ‘Gilded Age’ in the United States (the boom period circa 1870–98) and the late Victorian Age in Britain. Like any boom that follows a bust, it encompassed the realities of expansion, carefree attitudes, faith in progress and an affluence spreading down through society. The approach of a new century signalled notable developments in fashion, art, literature, feats of engineering, technological progress and general economic wellbeing. These characteristics were common to boom times past and no doubt future, the good aspects and the bad.

  There was a mood of optimism about the future, thanks in part to what at the time were considered extraordinary innovations in technology which created an aura of excitement and new belief in the fruits of human endeavour. This was manifest on the streets of Europe, in cafés, cabarets, art galleries, concert halls and salons, places frequented by the new middle classes who benefited most in new status and income from economic stability and progress.

  POLITICS

  This prosperity was aided and abetted by a new-found political stability with the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870 after the collapse of the Second French Empire of Louis-Napoléon III following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. The new Republican Government survived the acute polarisation of the left, heir to the tenets of the French Revolution, and the right, rooted in rural areas, the Church and the army, wary of progress unless it was controlled by the traditional elite, including the remnants of the aristocratic classes.