MYSTERIES OF THE SURETE No. 2—The Strange Case Of The Disappearing Taxi

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 189, 12 August 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

MYSTERIES OF THE SURETE

No. 2—The Strange Case Of The Disappearing Taxi

J rue Detective Stories From Secret French Archives

Tl lIS l.ixi vanished on the night ol January 12, which was a Thursday. It was a Chenard; its lic< use number was K-691-3. With it vanished its 29-year-old dnvci-owner, Etienne Faure. It w.is i- aure s young wife who i' !>"!■'•! liit husband's disappearance the f,,linking morning to Commissaire <;< ■"ri ■■ 1! 1 • "I I lie I'irst District of Limoges. "II" will out right after supper," sin ' 'I. "He had an appointment with il i.i''' \ti, if couldn't hive been a l.rr;i U 11. 11"'1 1 have telephoned me lii'f""' ilii". Something had has hap- |" ii--«!. N'<"ii must find him! 1 ' 'I'll.i' -i-i'uiod a simple enough problem f"i" tin' Surete. A man might easily * uush A taxicab? That was another inaMcr. Commissaire (lermolle gave tin- -i.tv .if the disappearance to the ICK | |" l lli'' |■ 111> 1 ii■ if v brought forth three uil in• — i'j who linil seen the missing < u'tiaril taxi. Two were men cyclists. I li**\ lii'l «'i'ii a in.i m a nswei ing Faure's ili'-i-i ipl ii.n driving the car along the i orgnac I ton 11 around eight o'clock on t lie iiiL'lit lit the disappearance. What in' ,Ti'-t I'd police was this: A second car a I'auharil—was trailing the taxi nf Ft ieime I' a.iire. A Motor Car Raced Madly Four hours later a woman living in the Km* Auguste-Renoir, in Limoges, •aw the taxicab parked near her apartment. She had not seen the driver. The taxicab, then, had returned to l.imoges. Where it. had been, or where it had gone after its return, remained a. puzzle.

There was tk> more word of cither ■ar or driver, until Sunday night, when 'ate homegoers along the river road outidr Argenton, an hour and a half from l.imoges, saw a car racing madly past

■hem. Suddenly brakes and protesting lyres squealed as it veered from the mad into a towpath that led to the lliver Creuse.

Impotcri tly the startled pedestrians looked on. That car could never be halted before it reached the river. As 'hey watched, 4he car's lights were switched off. a door in the car opened, iud a man leaped out and raced toward the railway station, a block away. The car hurdled the rim of the river '•ank and disappeared, with a crash and i splash, into the river.

Almost simultaneously the express mm Limoges pulled out of the railway station. As it puffed into motion, i ho running man swung aboard. His escape had been perfectly timed. Local police got the car out of the : iver next morning. There was nothing no one, in it, but it was the car the Limoges Snrote had been seeking. It \va« the missing Etienne Faure's Chen-

ard taxi. Back in Limoges, Inspectors I'eyrelade and Montaudon reported: Wo have checked the dossier of Etienne Faure. He has never been in troublp. Everyone speaks highly of him. He is honest and hard-working." Commissaire Fressard, liead of the Limoges Surete, asked: "Where, does he keep his car?" "At a garage in Maupas Road. He was last, seen there about five o'clock Thursday afte moon, when he dropped in to work on his ear. We have the names of everybody who was in the garage that day. All have good alibis for the night Faure vanished." "Any t liing else ?" "V es. Fa lire had dropped into the garage unexpectedly that day. He w.'is working on tiis car when he was called to answer the telephone. A man named Roux was calling. Faure told the garage attendant who called him to (lie ''phone that he knew no one of that name, but he answered it. and said he had been engaged to come with his car that night to meet Roux' on Corgnae Road—and to come prepared for a long .drive." "Thin Pierre Roux. Did you find him?" "Yes. We questioned him. Rays he never heard of Faure; certainly never telephoned him. I believe the man is telling the truth." Commissaire Fressard studied the list of chauffeurs, patrons and employees who had visited the Maupas Road garage on the Thursday of the disappearance. "Roux is not on this list," he said. "It Etienne Faure visited the garage unexpectedly last Thursday, how could Roux know it unless he, too, had been there? Maybe someone on this list telephoned Faure, gave Rotix's name. Ask Roux if he knows anyone listed here." Roux did. ne looked at the list. and put his finger on one of the names and said: "This man! He's a tricky one and T can tell you about him. all right." The Surete inspectors read the name: "Charles Barataud." Barataud. Roux said, had come to him weeks before. Barataud said lie knew an eccentric farmer who wished to sell a forest. Hid Roux know of a buyer? Roux interested M. Laseoux. a wealthy lumber merchant. Barataud. in a car. picked the two men up at four o'clock in the morning of Friday the 13th. the dry after Faure's disappearance. His client, he explained, was eccentric, would sell onlv for "spot cash." would talk business only in the hour after breakfast. Hid Laseoux have the money? Laseoux did. Six hundred thousand francs, in cash, in his pockets. Roux said they drove out into the country. Barataud stopped the ear and got out. When he came hack, he carried an axe. He clutched it in upraised

hand, eyed them strangely, then seemed to change his mind. He got in the car, turned round and drove back into town with no other explanation than that "the deal was off." The Surete inspector questioning Roux asked: "This road where Barataud stopped. Was it Corgnae Road?" "Yes." "And the ear Barataud was driving. Was it a taxi?" "I don't know. It was too dark to see a metre. All I know is that it was a Chenard." f I he men from the Surete soon found that Ba rat and ad a dossier. He was the only child of a wealthy porcelain ma mi fact urer. Educated at Saiut-Cvr, his had served with distinction in the var - He had an income of 40,000 francs, lie did not work and had never been in trouble. He was a local tennis <hn 111 pi. in. frequented nightclubs, liked to piny the part of a woman in amateur theatricals, had neither wife nor woman friend, spent most of his time with a 10-year-old youth named Bertrand Pev net. Barataud was brought into the office of Commissaire Fressard—slender, clearskinned, brown-haired, perfectly poised. JTe admitted the Roux incident, but passed it off as a practical joke. Bat It Was Not a Joke "Hardly a joke," said Fressard. "Yoar dossier shows that your ear is a Banhard. Such a. car was seen early Thursday night trailing Etienne Faure'" Chenard. Faure vanished; probably murdered. And the car you used for your practical joke was a Chenard. Yon knew I'aure. \ou had been to the garage that afternoon; had seen him. You made the appointment with him to meet on Corirnae Road, where you later played your joke. \ou used Roux' name to hire l'aure. \ou used Faure's Chenard to drive Roux ami Laseoux." "Hut it wasn't Faure's car I used." "Then whose was it?" "Let me speak to my friend. Bertrand I'eynetsaid Barataud. "Then I will tell you all." They humoured him. They took him to the house of the younger man. The pair merely to exchange o-root-ings, but Barataud managed secretly to tell his friend: "Re at my home at nine to-night."

He went hack to t-lio station with the officeiv. Ho pave his confession. Obviously it was a lie. He said his car had broken down Thursday night. He had hailed Faure, who happened by in his taxi. They had quarrelled. In selfdefence, Barataud said, he had shot the taxi-driver. He had tossed his botlv into a quarry outside Limoges. That* too,

ByZeta Rothschild later proved a lie. There was no body in the quarry. But it was a wedge; a preliminary confession. "Sign it, please," said Fressard. Barataud shook his head. "Xot unless you let nie break this news to my father myself. He is an invalid. It. will be a great, shock." Once again they humoured liiui. They took him to his home. They let him go upstairs alone. He went into a room and locked the door, and a moment later a gun blasted. The alarmed detectives rushed up the stairs, smashed in the door. There was a dead man there, sitting quietlv at a desk, his face so bloody that for a moment detectives did not recognise Barat.aud's friend, Bertram! Peynet. No one else seemed to lie in the room. I'eyret had been writing something. A detective grabbed it. up before it became too crimson to read. A short note, it read: All is over between us, Mimi." Charles Barataud was ".Mimi." Ho stepped from behind the smashed doop at that moment, a rille in his ha nds. "(lent lemen." he said, "I am sorry this happened." lie lit a cigarette with unshaking lingers. "It was to lie a suicide pact, gentlemen. I'm afraid I've only carried out half of it. l'oor Bcrtra nd!"

Commissaire Fressard took him back to head quarters. "We have had enough for one night," he said. "Will yo-u sign that confession now, please?" Barataud grinned. '"But I have 110 intention of signing it. It is quite false and I withdraw it. I did not kill Faure. In fact, I know nothing whatever about his disappearance." '1 he Rurcte found TtseTf in possession of an extremely slippery murderer—and no case. Starting at scratch, Commissaire F regard began unravelling the enigma. Obviously, Charles Barataud iiad made tho confession merely as a ruse —a stall —to a ir.i nge an appointment with young Peynet. Had Pcvnet been murdered because he had guilty knowledge of the Faure disappearance? Or had Peynet been involved in that; disappearance? Friends furnished the dead Peynet with an alibi for the evening of Thursday, January 12. Barataud had, then, murdered his young friend for one of three possible reasons:—(l) Jealousy; (2) he feared what Peynet might testify against him; (3) it had really been a suicide pact that miscarried. A\ hat of the missing taxi-driver, Ktiene Faure? His body was found on January It), with his skull crushed, hidden in the weeds in the River Vaneou, near Varogne. He had been dead a week. That still left unanswered the question: Wby had Barataud, a man with an income of 40.000 francs, murdered an impoverished taxi-driver ?

Investigation by the Surete disclosed that, for all his income, Charles Barataud at the time of the murder was almost penniless and deeply in debt. "I think," Commissaire Fressaxd. told has men," that what happened was this: Baxata/ad conceived the fiction of a wealthy eccentric farmer who wished to sell a forest. Roux:, acting as agent in hopes of winning a fat commission, interested the lumber merchant, Lascoux. "Barataud hated Roux; had tried unsuccessfully to borrow from him before the murder. Pretending to be Roux, he called the garage; made an appointment to meet Etienne Faure at a lonely spot on Corgnac Road. Faure, unsuspecting, came that night. Barataud murdered him with an axe. hid the body and stole his car. He planned to pick up Roux and Lascoux—the latter with tiOO.OOO francs in cash in his pockets, remember that same night, drive them out Corgnac Road in Faure's taxieab. "He would murder them both, leave them in Faure's car. .All suspicion would point to the missing Faure. ''Barataud would drive home in his Panliard, which was hidden near by. It was a perfect murder plot. Everyone who could connect him with it would be dead. T-- _ , ,i t

_ riut ne lost nis uerve at the last minute. He drove Lascoux and Roux out to that lonely spot before daybreak. He left the taxi and walked into the woods, where his car was hidden. He came back with the axe upraised—and then Charles Barataud's nerve turned to water and he passed the whole thing off as "a joke and drove back to town. From there on the joke was on him." A grim joke, it proved. Charles Barataud went to trial. He had no defence and was quickly found guilty of the murders of both Faure and Peynet— and of the theft of a taxi. A technical error by the jury foreman saved him from the guillotine and he was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labour in Guiana. That night, in Limoges, an enraged, protesting labour crowd broke every window in the factory of Charles Barataud's wealthy father.