by Howard Engel
“Indeed there is! Far too many of them. But for a first book, it is doing very well. Would you like to see it?” I said I would, and she led me to the “Waddington section,” which consisted of two dozen copies of for all time and about the same number of the Paris-printed book Wad had shown me, Ten Stories and Three Poems. There was also a stack of mail held together like a sheaf of love letters by a length of red ribbon.
“We’ve been his post office since he first came to Paris in 1922,” Miss Beach said. “He was very shy in those days. I think he still is a shy man underneath. All that shadow-boxing is just play-acting. Although he did box for a while when he was younger. Of all the people who have come to see us here on the rue de l’Odéon, Wad is one of our favourites.”
I paid for a copy of each of his books and sipped my coffee until long after it had become cold. As a newspaperman, cold coffee was nothing new to me, but I was beginning to feel that my presence in the store waiting for O’Donnell meant that they had to continue to entertain me. I answered their questions about my Canadian background, and accepted Adrienne’s compliments on my French, which we now slipped into and continued speaking in until a title or an American name spun us back into English again. After a tour of the store, during which Miss Beach showed me the authors’ photographs on the wall and told me the circumstances of each of them, the young man with blond bangs entered the shop. He was introduced as George Antheil, the composer of the Jazz Symphony. He and his new wife lived on the second floor. I was lining him up for an interview when Wilson O’Donnell came in looking rather pale and tousled. His hair stood up from a centre parting in two fair horns, but his blue eyes were smiling as he hugged Sylvia and Adrienne. When he got around to me, he put on a wide grin and mimed abject embarrassment by flinging his arms around and pretending to grovel.
“Damned sorry to leave you hanging out to dry like that, old man, but I was up until six this morning with a sick friend.”
“Wilson!”
“No, honestly. Georgia and I were up at Bricktop’s and one of the singers had an attack of — we thought it was gas at first — but she ended up getting her appendix out at the American Hospital. My good friend Dr. Anson Tyler did the honours.”
“Really, Wilson, you are the limit!” Sylvia said. At this, O’Donnell put his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out a small bottle. There was something floating in the liquid in the bottle.
“Voilà!” he said. “The defence rests.” The bottle was passed from hand to hand, and, after looking again, I gave it back to its present owner.
“So, that’s an appendix. It looks like a little finger with the bone removed.” I couldn’t look at it without thinking of the body in the morgue. Without my mentioning it, Miss Beach began talking about the Montparnasse murders and about how close some of the victims had lived to the rue de l’Odéon. O’Donnell listened without comment, then observed that a tiny piece of tissue floating in alcohol was a powerful promoter of morbid conversation. In order to change the subject, I said:
“I know your friend, the surgeon, by the way.”
“Anson Tyler?” Wilson replied.
“I’ve run into him from time to time at the Dingo.”
“Oh, Mr. Ward, you should stay away from such places!”
“You never tell me that, Sylvia,” O’Donnell said, showing mild surprise.
“You, Wilson? Oh, you’re hopeless. You never do what anybody says. You’re allergic to good advice, you are.”
Everybody laughed, including O’Donnell, who began his abject apologetic show once again. When that had been played out, I asked him if he’d had lunch yet. He said he hadn’t. I told him that it went with the interview. He smiled, and, as soon as we had made our goodbyes, we were walking down the rue de l’Odéon into the carrefour.
“Where should we go?” he asked, looking at the statue of the revolutionary figure Danton.
“The Procope’s just across the street. It’s reasonable and the food is good.”
“Never heard of it. I was thinking of a simple luncheon, but a good one.”
“The Procope is where Benjamin Franklin used to eat. It’s the oldest place in town. Voltaire dined there. So did Danton, Robespierre, Talleyrand and Bonaparte. Writers like George Sand, Balzac and Verlaine —”
“Sounds terrible. I’ve got a very simple meal in mind. Nothing fancy.”
“The Procope’s been serving simple meals since the seventeenth century.”
“Are you touting for the place, Ward, or what? Let’s get a cab and find a quiet place in the Bois.”
“I think we have different ideas about ‘simple,’ Mr. O’Donnell.”
“Please. Call me anything but ‘Mister.’ I’ll even answer to Calvin Coolidge, but never ‘Mister.’”
“Look, Wilson, if we go all the way to the Bois to eat, we won’t be finished until dark. There are lots of places here in the Quarter that I don’t get a touting fee from. The important thing is to talk, isn’t it?”
“Okay, we’ll compromise. Let’s hurry over to the Tour d’Argent for a duck. I haven’t been there since the old man died.”
“I can’t afford to take you there! I work for a news service, not the Morgan Bank. I can offer you a modest luncheon. What about the Chope Danton over there?”
“Mike, old man, I’m buying. I won’t even argue with you. So don’t look green when I say the Tour d’Argent.” Wilson wanted to try to get a taxi, but I convinced him that it would be faster to walk. He looked at me as though walking were a dirty word. In the end he agreed, probably because it would make a good story. He could tell his friends on the other side of the Seine that he had actually walked from the rue de l’Odéon to the Quai de la Tournelle.
My first victory was to get O’Donnell to trust my knowledge of the streets of the Quarter. He wanted to buy a map. In the end, I convinced him that the rue Racine would take us to the rue des Écoles, and that we could have a pleasant time walking past the windows of second-hand bookstores and watching the Sorbonne students.
It wasn’t the shortest route, but the visual distractions made it seem so. O’Donnell was out of shape. He was puffing by the time we got to the Place de l’Odéon and the downhill run from there to St-Michel was not much better. He wanted to stop in a café for a drink and to catch his breath, which seemed like a good idea to me, since the place he picked also served a small menu for lunch. But he wouldn’t be put off with an omelette or some pâté or even the moules marinières that the waiter recommended. Wilson’s mind had fixed on the duck he was going to order at the Tour d’Argent. I tried to tell him that it was getting very late, but he began questioning me over the whisky and soda he had ordered. I kept pulling my watch out and looking at it. Each time I did it less subtly than the time before. The omelette being served at the neighbouring table looked like a work of art. O’Donnell was not softened.
“So all of your family comes from Toronto?”
“Most of it. There are a few farmers north and east of Toronto who answer to ‘Uncle Charley’ and ‘Uncle Vernon.’ The war thinned the family out. I lost some cousins and more uncles at Passchendaele and Vimy.”
“I was in the army, but I didn’t get over to this side,” he said. “You were too young to get into it?” I nodded. “Have you ever been to a place called Orillia?” he asked.
“Orillia? Sure. My family has a summer home near there at Uptergrove. I’m surprised you’ve ever heard of Orillia. That’s where Stephen Leacock lives in the summer.”
“Leacock’s funnier than Will Rogers.”
“Granted. But, please, I want to know how you know about Orillia.”
“I spent some weeks there in the summer of 1907. Camp Chatham. It was run by a rather cloying woman named Mrs. Upton. There were several counsellors and they all wore whistles around their necks on cords. As a little fellow, I was quite helpless in their hands. They taught me how to swim. I’ll give them that. I’ve got a letter to my mother, which she saved to sho
w me what a little snob I’d already become by the time I was ten.”
“I’m finding it a little hard to digest this. I never imagined you closer to the border than Great Neck, Long Island.”
“Well, old man, just don’t let it get around,” he said. “I don’t suppose they would let us buy some French frieds, would they?” He looked hopeful.
“I shouldn’t be surprised.” I called the waiter over and asked about the potatoes, and Wilson asked for a salad to accompany his. I went directly for the mussels and wasn’t sorry. A half bottle of Alsatian white wine was brought from the cellar for Wilson to inspect and we settled for that and its brother and sister. O’Donnell was a cautious eater. He trimmed the spines from the Romaine lettuce and left them, as though they were discarded chicken bones. The remainder of the meal, with the exception of the wine, he picked at rather than feasted upon.
While we were eating I asked him the questions that would help make the luncheon profitable for my employers. I interviewed him about the new novel and its reception in America. He was willing to talk about it, but not with much enthusiasm. He saved that for the American and British writers who had made Paris their home. He discussed Joyce and Gertrude Stein in reverential tones. Then, after mentioning some of the others, he gave Jason Waddington a big endorsement. “He’s instinctively in touch with everything new and exciting about the modern movement. His novel, which will be published next year by a major American publisher, will set new standards on both sides of the Atlantic.”
When I thought I had given the agency value for its luncheon money, I began to ask Wilson about the difficulty of moving around the world with a young family. Georgia and Wilson were accompanied almost everywhere by their charming three-year-old daughter, Willie.
“Willie was born in a steamer trunk, or very nearly,” he said. “She’s just a perfect travelling companion. Whenever Georgia’s nursing a headache, Willie is there with an ice-pack, if you can believe it. And she’s only three!”
“You’re living at 14, rue de Tilsitt right now, isn’t that right?”
“Sure. But for God’s sake don’t put the address in your copy or I’ll start getting manuscripts sent to me again. They follow me like Banquo’s ghost wherever I go. It used to be that every time the doorbell rang, there’d be a sob-story standing on the doorstep. Be a pal, Mike, and forget about where we’re staying.”
“You sublet the place from the real tenant, is that right?”
“Sure. They’re the originals of Lord Tarlyon and his wife in that Michael Arlen book of last year or so. What was it called? Piracy, that’s right.”
“And you in turn sublet the apartment when you’re going away from Paris?”
“Yes, that’s right. Where is this leading, Mike? You sound like a tax lawyer trying to account for my wasted millions.”
“I ran across a woman named Laure Duclos, a friend of some people I know at the Dingo. She gave your address.”
“Oh, Laure. Yes, Georgia let her have our place while we were down with the Murphys on the Côte d’Azur.”
“She’s quite a woman, this Laure Duclos.”
“Yes, I’ve put her into a story or two.”
“Damn. That’s too bad. I was thinking of using her myself.”
“Don’t tell me she’s caught you in that tangle of blond hair, Mike? She collects men. You’d better know that.”
“Well, at the moment I’m on the shelf, Wilson. I’m alone in a strange town. Besides, I’m a little worried about her. She seems to have disappeared.”
“Forget it!” he said, finally deciding to remove his heavy navy-blue overcoat. “Laure can take care of herself. She’ll turn up, you’ll see.” A waiter carefully took the overcoat and hung it up. “Art and games are one thing, Ward; Laure’s another. When I tell you to keep away from her, I’m doing you a favour, old man. I’m not running it out. This is the crystalline truth. Don’t get involved. That’s the best advice I can give you.”
“Are you still carrying the torch?”
“I don’t know what you think you know, Mike, but back away from that angle, please. I’m a happily harassed husband and wish to remain so. I was trying to give you a piece of advice.”
“I don’t mean to pry. I know it’s none of my business, but I’d like to find out as much as I can about Mlle Duclos. And, by the way, you noticed, I hope, that I put my notebook and pen away some time ago.”
“I suspect that you’ve got a bad case. You have my sympathy. Hell, I thought she was a hell of a girl myself, so don’t go blaming yourself. There’s nothing picayune about Laure. She could give the old boys who take a nap on the courthouse lawn at home a rude awakening, to coin a phrase.”
“She can be nice. I admit that.”
“Original party girl, incarnate. Damn it, she jumps out of everything I’ve ever written.”
“And when she’s not so nice?” I asked. “I’d better hear it all.”
“Has she been getting that way with you, Mike?”
“I won’t know until I hear about it.”
“She has a way of reminding one of a compromising situation just before she remembers that she’s short of rent money. Funny, how it works out that way.”
“Did she use pressure on you to get the apartment this summer?”
“She didn’t actually say she’d tell Georgia about a momentary lapse of mine. She only hinted. And since Georgia’s very fond of her, I couldn’t see the harm. Any available oil to calm the raging sea. I try not to get into a fight with Georgia. She wouldn’t understand.”
“Has she ever asked for rather a lot of money?”
“A couple of nights ago.”
“What did you tell her? I assume she threatened you after her fashion?”
“She was a little balder than usual. A lot of steel showing under the velvet glove. I told her that I’d have to think it over. She said she’d give me overnight and that’s all.”
“And?”
“I haven’t heard a word. Every time the telephone rings at the apartment, I think it’s going to be her.”
“Do you think Georgia suspects anything?”
“God! No! She can’t know! She thinks I’ve never been with anyone but her. Georgia mustn’t find out. Ever!”
“I see the delicacy of your position.”
“You don’t begin to see,” O’Donnell said, his fingers white against the edge of the table. “If Georgia found out about Laure, I wouldn’t give ten francs for either of our hides. Georgia’s a complex and delicately balanced woman. I wouldn’t even want to guess what might happen if Georgia ever found out about Laure and me.” O’Donnell emptied his glass. That was when I saw that he was beginning to look scared.
CHAPTER 12
The morning papers cleared up the mystery of why Laure Duclos hadn’t been in her room when I’d called again, just before I began looking for a place to eat dinner. Again I’d talked to her concierge, and again I’d not been given any information other than that she had not been seen. According to all the morning papers, Laure had not been seen because she had been lying in the Institut Médico-Légal, the new morgue in the Place Mazas. Although I’d been fearing the worst since the moment I discovered her bag in the gutter, I was shocked to read about Laure’s death in the paper, as though the printing of the news created, not simply confirmed, the fact. As a newspaperman, I knew only too well the fallibility of the press, but this was in all the dailies. The body found in the rue Léopold Robert the night I came upon the handbag was that of Laure Duclos. Even in English, the words seemed to suggest that there was a Laure alive somewhere who was the owner of this body, even as she was the owner of the handbag and the tenant of the room in the passage de Dantzig. It was a trick of the way the languages worked, I know, and whatever the words seemed to say, the message was that the lovely, provocative, perhaps evil Laure Duclos was dead.
I was reading and eating breakfast at the Café Lipp, which was just around the corner from my room. The waiters in their
waistcoats and shirtsleeves were dealing informally with the few early customers. The black jackets would be donned closer to noon and the informality, the banter with the morning regulars, would slip into more formal modes of address. I sipped my coffee and pulled a croissant to pieces, daubing them liberally with butter and jam from the pot à confitures. To an observer, I might have lavished more attention on these things than they deserved. But, to be honest, I was shaken by the news. I needed to grasp ordinary things to reconfirm the fact that the world around me still functioned, still responded to all the normal laws of nature.
I had an appointment to play tennis with Wad. Should one cancel the match out of respect for Laure? It was hard to tell what was the right thing to do. Would Wad have heard the news? As I walked back along St-Germain to the tram stop, I tried not to look at the display of medical instruments in a window; stainless-steel clamps, retractors and scalpels. I shut my eyes hard against them and the thought of the Institut Médico-Légal.
The number 14 tram took me from St-Germain-des-Prés to the Quai d’Orsay. The seats reserved for femmes enceintes et mutilés de guerre were occupied by three men with walking sticks. One wore his medal on his jacket. It had the look of having been pinned on by some loved one. Across from them, my duffel bag, with its racket, was an embarrassment to me, a reproach. I buried the bag under my coat and left it in the cloakroom at the office.
I filed two or three stories, took them by taxi to the Gare St-Lazare to see them off on the boat-train and did an interview with an actor who had just won some award or other, while we ate lunch at a place off rue Byron. He was singularly proud of his honour; there wasn’t a shred of false modesty. When I had completed my assignments, I took the Métro from Étoile to Denfert-Rochereau and hurried with my bag up the boulevard Arago to the clay courts. I arrived five minutes late. Wad was already there, changed and trying to hold onto the court. He was twirling his racket and looking mean. He was in no mood for talk, so we got at it.