Murder in Montparnasse

by Howard Engel

  I won the first game easily. Wad was too cross to concentrate. He slammed the ball as hard as he could and missed the first shot of each of his serves. He took the second game using the same tactics but with more control, and I took the last one, probably because his legs were tiring. He wore an elastic bandage around his right knee. It was hard not to take advantage of his disability. After all, he could claim a seat on the Métro while I couldn’t. We let another couple play and then reclaimed the red clay court for a last set. Again I beat him, but it was a better, more evenly matched game. We headed for the showers.

  “You’ve heard about Laure?” I asked.

  “I heard last night in the Dingo that it was Laure. Freddy, the bartender there, knows a bigwig on the Quai des Orfèvres. Flics have been asking questions all around the Quarter since she was killed.”

  “The papers say that it was Jack. Is that what the police think?”

  “Sure. Why not? It was just Laure’s bad luck to be walking home that night alone.”

  “Do you think it was Jack, Wad?”

  “What’s getting into you, McWardo?”

  Steam was filling the room, which was already dim with the fading of the light. We had to raise our voices to be heard above the sound of the water.

  I hadn’t thought much about it, but I had a feeling that Laure’s death could not simply be written off as another of Jack de Paris’s random murders. It might have been because Laure was still so real to me that I needed a murderer with a motive and a personal contact with Laure. That Laure was a casual victim of a madman seemed unjust. It was not a bit like Laure.

  In the locker room we climbed back into our clothes. Wad ran a comb carefully through his hair, showing a vanity I hadn’t suspected.

  “If Jack didn’t kill Laure, Mike, who do you think did? What was his reason?”

  “Look, Wad, you know as well as I do that she had enemies. If the police ever begin searching beyond the possibility of an insane street marauder, they might take a look at Wilson O’Donnell, or me — or you.”

  “Me! I hardly knew the woman! She was a drinking friend, that’s all. I know almost nothing about her.” He was tying the laces of his boots now with a worried face.

  “Laure was the sort of woman who gets murdered, Wad. She was playing a dangerous game. She collected enemies as well as lovers. She was a notorious user of people.”

  “Who do you think you are, Michaeleen? Hawkshaw the Detective? Sherlock Holmes? What are you getting mixed up in?”

  “If the flics think Jack did it, that’s just fine. But we know that it wasn’t simply her bad luck in being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Laure was killed because she was a blackmailer.”

  “Spit it out! Go ahead! You think I did it? You think I took a pair of scissors to her? You pale Canadian turd!”

  “You were talking to her at the Dôme the night she was killed. I saw you myself from across the street. After she got up and left, you followed her.”

  “You flat-faced son of a bitch!”

  “Calling me names isn’t an answer. Another thing: even before it was known that the body found in the rue her. That was a goddamned lie. You not only met and talked to her, but she showed you something that upset you. Hell, Wad, I could see it all the way from the Rotonde! She —”

  “You bastard!”

  “I know you can swear, Waddington. I know you can probably knock me down the way you knocked Hal Leopold down. But that won’t change anything. Don’t you see, if the police begin looking for a fall guy who isn’t Jack de Paris, both of us are prime suspects?”

  “You? Don’t talk wild.”

  “I went home with her. I was seen with her in her neighbourhood. She got tired of me and dumped me. I was angry about that, not enough to kill her, but that’s a question the examining magistrate might not be convinced on.”

  “One minute you sound like a fucking stool-pigeon and now you’re trying to say you’re a potential killer. Get your lines straight, kid.” Wad wrapped his shorts, jockstrap and racket in his shirt with some skill and left the locker room without another word. I followed him outside, where the air was sharp and cold on my arms. He was already half a block down the road when I caught up to him.

  “Wad, listen to me! I’m not trying to pin this murder on you. But I’m sure Laure wasn’t killed by that madman. She was murdered because of what she was and what she’s done to you and Wilson O’Donnell. Damn it, you must see that she was pushing one of her blackmail victims too hard. If it wasn’t because of what she had on you, then it was one of the rest of us. It has to have been somebody here in the Quarter.”

  Wad slowed down to a walk and I was able to keep up to him. He didn’t say anything for a long time.

  “You see that,” he said, stopping suddenly and pointing at a massive doorway just around the corner. “That’s where the condemned man gets his first glimpse of the guillotine. It’s only a few steps from the door to the bascule.”

  “Charming,” I said. “I didn’t know it was still a public show.”

  “They pick an early hour and the date is a well-kept secret, even from the condemned. Yes, Mike, this is where the Third Republic devours its children.”

  “They say it’s a highly democratic device.”

  “A month ago I was here to see two men shortened before breakfast. Took less than thirty seconds each.” Wad was trying out new fiction.

  “Jack is giving the Republic a run for its money. He’s credited with seven — how many can the Republic claim?”

  “Jack preys on women exclusively. The Republic must be more circumspect. Democracy has been tempered by public opinion. Few fair heads have fallen in the boulevard Arago.”

  “What does that spell for democracy?”

  “We’d better have a drink to consider the question. What do you think, old man?” He wasn’t going to apologize, but he was showing his friendly side again.

  “Long live the Republic!”

  “As you say, Citizen. I know a little place around the corner.”

  I followed Wad, who led me three blocks away from the Santé Prison and into a small boîte with tables near a window looking out on a corner of the avenue de l’Observatoire. We installed ourselves and ordered Alsatian beer. When it came, Wad indicated the heavily moustached waiter.

  “He’s one of the assistants of Monsieur de Paris, that fellow.” When I looked blank, he added, “He’s the assistant chopper, Michaeleen. He holds the condemned so he doesn’t succeed in depriving the state of its rightful portion of neck.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look, once you’ve got your neck locked between the upper and lower portions of the lunette, you might try to pull your head back into your shoulders. This makes for messy democracy. Therefore, the assistant, dressed in somber black and wearing the traditional derby hat, pulls the ears or hair of the patient at the last moment. It’s supposed to distract the condemned. What do you think?”

  I shrugged. I had no appetite for this information, since Wad was using it to keep us from discussing more pressing things. He called the waiter over and together they discussed the fine art of decapitation. The waiter nodded seriously and answered Wad’s questions directly.

  “It is better, messieurs, from every point of view, if the patient’s neck is severed in the middle and not at the base of the skull. What I say is the distillation of over one hundred years of experience, messieurs, although I, personally, have only only assisted to enfourner but a dozen souls.”

  “Why do you say you ‘put them in the oven’?” I asked, interested in spite of myself.

  “It is an expression, monsieur,” he said with a shrug. “I did not invent it.”

  When the waiter went back to his zinc counter, where he was making a Welsh rarebit, Wad and I lifted our demis in a toast to democracy and to the glorious Third Republic.

  “Sorry I jumped on your back there, Wardo.” I was surprised that Wad admitted error. “I thought you thought th
at I did it.”

  “I don’t know that you didn’t.” A cloud crossed his face. “But if you had, I think you would have taken away that piece of paper she showed you. You didn’t, so maybe yours’ll be just another innocent head in the basket.”

  “You were watching us, that night?”

  “I was in love with her, Wad. I wanted to see who she was meeting, where she was spending her time. I was a little unhinged.”

  “Who appointed you guardian?”

  “I couldn’t stand by with my arms folded.”

  “A neat phrase. I may borrow it.”

  “Look, Wad, will you help me? The sooner the murderer is caught, the sooner we can get back to everyday life. We both know there is a murderer loose on Montparnasse, and his name isn’t Jack de Paris. Aren’t you even curious? It’s nearly killing me. I want to find out what happened. Don’t you? Hell, we may be next.”

  Wad finished his demi and called for two more. When they arrived, he looked over at me with a serious expression. What was under it, I’ll never know. But he got the look right. “What do you want to know?”

  “What was on that piece of paper?”

  He stared at the saucers and then at the amber beer in the tall glasses. “Something I wrote a long time ago.”

  “Was it something you didn’t want anyone to see?”

  “What? No! Of course not! It was a short description I wrote back in the fall of 1922. It disappeared. I haven’t seen it since Hash lost the suitcase with it and a lot of other stuff in it.”

  “So, if Laure had that fragment, does that mean she has the other missing things?”

  “I don’t know. She showed me that one page and asked me what I thought. I asked her where she got it and she just smiled, wouldn’t say anything. She wanted to know what it was worth to me.”

  “Are you talking about the manuscripts that Hash lost on the train at the Gare de Lyon?”

  “Yes. I don’t go losing things all the time, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Then you think the suitcase has been recovered from whoever took it in the first place?”

  “Damn it, Mike, I don’t know what to think. I don’t like to save my rejection slips. I don’t count casualties. I keep my attention on the page in front of me. Otherwise I’d go crazy. When Hash lost that stuff, I thought I’d been blown up all over again. But I got over it. It’s the only way to survive. Survival is the most important match on the card, kid. So, I got back to work and I forgot what was in that suitcase because it was the heart, bone and blood of two years’ work. Then, out of the blue, Laure shows up with one of the pages. I like it the way she just shows up with it! It had to have come from one of the manilla envelopes with all my stuff.”

  “You still sound bitter about it.”

  “Look, Michaeleen, I don’t pretend to be a crystal-gazer. Too much entrail-reading is bad for a writer. You end up in a cork-lined room like that fellow Proust. If I peer too closely at what I’m doing, it goes bad. I know this. I try to prevent it. All I care about is behaviour, what people do. Not what they think or what they would like to do, but what they do in changing circumstances. I can almost handle that. I miss, God knows by how far I miss! But that’s my turf. That’s where I’m at home. I work bloody hard, Mike. Bloody hard.”

  “And Hash?”

  “I owe that woman everything, kid. She’s supported both of us. All three of us, since I stopped doing journalism. A man couldn’t wish for a better wife.”

  “And yet…?”

  “And yet nothing! She’s a wonderful girl. I’d never think of leaving her.”

  For a moment, he sat there a little surprised at what he’d said, as though the thought, even expressed negatively, had opened a door into a new chamber of his consciousness.

  CHAPTER 13

  Before I left Waddington, he told me about a party at a studio where Biz had been living. He thought that it was probably going to turn into a wake for Laure, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “I was planning to go hear Valéry Larbaud read on the rue de l’Odéon,” I said.

  “Who the hell’s Larbaud?”

  “Important French writer, Wad. He loves you Americans.”

  “Never heard of him,” he said, as though that wiped Larbaud off the face of history.

  “I’ll remember that,” I said.

  “If you decide to come, call around to the carpenter’s loft after dinner and we’ll all go in a taxi together.”

  When I got to the Waddington apartment, Mme. Rohrbach, Snick’s usual night-time custodian, was getting last-minute instructions from Hash, while Wad paced the floor eager to be away. We walked to the taxi rank in front of the Dôme feeling the sharp mist on our faces. It wasn’t a long drive to the rue Broca, but it seemed cosy and even luxurious on a chilly night. I had long ago got used to the idea of taking taxis only for business reasons, so I had to wonder how the Waddingtons were able to afford such luxuries. I shouldn’t have worried about that, because I ended up paying myself. Wad said he’d match me for it when we next met for tennis.

  On the way up the curving staircase that somehow seemed to bring the outdoors inside, we could hear more and more music coming from the studio above us. It was after nine o’clock and the noise from the open doorway was already impressive. Music came from a gramophone sitting on a piano stool. Behind it was a round table bending under the weight of litres of wine bought in bulk, probably from the country relatives of the concierge for a small commission.

  The room was a cube, with a single large window that I feared was not on the preferred north wall. Opposite the window, the roughly plastered wall supported a balcony, which overhung a quarter of the room. The stairs leading up to it were already occupied by various members of the congregation.

  Lady Biz came hurrying through the crowd of people in the main room to greet the Waddingtons. She held my hand formally for a moment, too, and offered me a powdered cheek to kiss. Waving her arms in the direction of the round table, she urged me to find some wine for myself.

  “It’s one for all and all for one, chaps, with a little of every man for himself. There are glasses in the crate under the table. Do help yourselves.”

  The walls of the studio were hung with unframed canvases, some of startling size, showing some flair but no huge talent. There were also maquettes of sculptures and even some architectural friezes, mounted low enough to be used as shelves for some dishes and a clock. The music I recognized as Rossini as it came to an end. It was replaced by Chevalier singing in his fruity tenor. Biz was off across the room like an express train before I could properly ask any questions. I felt overdressed in my suit and tie. Some of the painters were dressed in worn suits with old ties knotted around the collars of colourful flannel shirts. Most of them were wearing sweaters and peasant blouses, which a number of artists were affecting this year.

  I went over to the table and found a glass in a wooden crate divided into sections. Wine was poured into my glass while I was still trying to decide which of the bottles looked the least lethal. I turned to see a woman with a mole on her cheek and dark hair. Her skin was clear and uncomfortably white.

  “You are not a painter?” She looked at me, perhaps hoping I was J.P. Morgan’s wayward son.

  “That’s true, but I like paintings.”

  She looked at me as though I had said something clever that she had not understood. She frowned.

  “Everybody’s a painter around here. A canvas merchant could grow rich. You’re not English?”

  “No, I’m Canadian.”

  “So that’s why you speak French.”

  “I’m from English Canada, but I wanted to learn the language.”

  Already the woman was scanning the new faces coming into the studio and making assessments.

  “It’s a rotten language,” she said. “It’ll keep me poor. I think German’s a better language. Germans always have money.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I rent my skin, what do you think?
These painters around here are crazy for me. But most of them can’t pay, and the rest won’t. Still,” she said with a shrug, “it’s better than my sister Étiennette in the Place de Clichy. And I don’t have to give most of what I make to some goddamned pimp. It’s honest work. Why are you in the Quarter?”

  “I’ve got a cheap room, where I’m trying to write. In the daytime I work for a news service across the river.”

  “So you come here to find some girl?” She was looking at me as simply as though she’d asked me the time. I found it chilling at first, and then refreshing.

  “Probably,” I said, matching her candour.

  Biz was greeting the O’Donnells, who had just come in. You could hear the din abate as they stood looking for familiar faces. Georgia was wearing a flame-coloured dress with an irregular slashed hem that was supposed to look like tongues of fire. Wilson took off an impeccable grey felt hat and finely tailored overcoat. He handed it to someone without looking. I watched the progress of the coat up the stairs, dislodging entwined couples, to a bed on the balcony.

  “You think I’m pretty?” the girl beside me asked.

  “You are very attractive. What’s your name?”

  “Justine. It’s a terrible name, don’t you think?”

  “No. I like it. It suits you.”

  “The artists all think it’s some dirty joke when I tell them. That’s another reason why I’m sick of this stinking town. How are you called?”

  “Michael.”

  “Like the archangel. I like that. My father was religious. My mother was a socialist, and a lot of good it did her.”

  “Where do you do your modelling?” I asked the question in all innocence, but quickly she made me reach up to loosen my tie.

  “You want to come and see?” I protested, but she went right on as though I hadn’t spoken. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you a ticket. You must come over to La Ruche. If I’m not with Foujita or Vlaminck, I’ll be there. You know it? La Ruche, the beehive?”

  “I know it,” I said, as though simply knowing the address were already the first button unbuttoned, the first ribbon untied.