by Howard Engel
CHAPTER 22
The only face I recognized on the terrasse of the Dôme belonged to Warren Pease, “Tolstoi” to the chaps at the Dingo. I had not seen any of them for some time. It was as though they had, of a sudden, changed the Quarter, as they say, carried the party with them to a new location. He greeted me warmly and we both huddled as far away from the cold as we could get while losing nothing of the view. He said that he had seen me coming along from the direction of rue Vavin. I explained that I had just delivered a package — my few stories, in fact — on the rue de Fleurus. Earlier I had been working at the news agency.
“Ah, work,” he said, as though it were an obscure reference he had stumbled across. “My mother’s favourite theme. She says that there is much to recommend it. I concede that society as a whole has great regard for it. I was never able to see anything very ennobling about it, myself. I tend to agree with old Oscar Wilde. Work is a curse. It possesses no values I respect. Just look at someone who has lost his job. Work is the basis of his self-respect. Merde! It hasn’t given him a philosophy to beat back the gloom. Work offers nothing of value and takes in return all of one’s time and energy.” The way Tolstoi was waving his arms about, I could see that he had been sitting in the Dôme for some time. The pile of saucers confirmed my observation.
“I’ll tell you something, old man.”
“What?”
“I think the Puritans elevated the wrong golden calf when they chose work. As for me, I’ll have none of it.”
We ordered drinks: he another whisky and I an aperitif. I disputed the question with him for a few minutes, in a playful way, but I was dealing with a mule on the subject. Hadn’t he seen the soup kitchens and breadlines in England just after the war? Hadn’t he read Gissing? Hadn’t he talked with people of his own class, the men he was up at Oxford with? I finally had to say that I thought he was a thoroughly bad lot, with which he solemnly agreed.
“Have you seen Waddington?” he asked, after we had been watching the pedestrians for a few minutes.
“Not for a couple of days,” I said. “He was questioned by the police about Laure’s murder, you know.”
“Fancy that! I can’t really imagine Wad running up dark alleys in a dark cloak looking for strange women to stab, can you? Like a character out of Gaston Leroux? No, Waddington’s the open, above-board sort. Killer of the afternoon, or perhaps as the dawn creeps into the village square. I see him as the officer in charge of a firing squad, the pistol already drawn for administering the coup de grâce, a neat ball in the head, behind the ear, about here,” he said, showing where the bullet should enter.
“You’re very morbid this afternoon,” I observed. “Is it anything special?”
“Oh, no. It’s just the way I am.” He quickly drank off his whisky and began scouting over my shoulder for the waiter. “I don’t suppose there’s anything that drives you to drink?”
“Well, I didn’t think so. But now that I’ve heard your views on honest work, I’ll have to give it a try. What I need is some dark mystery in my life, something I’m trying to forget.”
“You’re describing the Foreign Legion, old man, not Montparnasse.”
“I always thought of you as a man with a secret, a secret serious enough for serious drinking,” I said.
“And you would like to know what that secret is, I suppose?”
“Tolstoi, I was talking to a policeman today who told me that the best way to protect oneself from a secret is to share it around. It’s the buried secret that comes back to haunt one.”
“By ‘one’ you mean me. I’ll be damned if I’ll tell you for nothing. I’ve paid out good money to keep that secret.”
“I’m not asking. That was Laure’s line of country, not mine.”
“Nature abhors a vacuum, Ward. Perhaps you are thinking of taking up her . . . interrupted . . . work?”
“I’m afraid I would make a poor replacement for Laure. I lack her burning desire for money. You and she must have had some curious conversations about money. She thought it was so very important and you have no respect for it at all.”
“I didn’t say that! I have a healthy respect for money, old man. It’s work as a method for acquiring it that I object to. I wasn’t brought up for it. No, money is a very important commodity. May we both live to roll in it.” Here he raised his empty glass in an empty toast. When he discovered that there was nothing left to drink, he stood on his unsteady legs and waved his arms about as though he were an adept at semaphore. I assumed the waiter saw him, because he soon sat down again and rolled the empty glass between his hands, as though to warm the imagined cognac within.
“Laure was a curious sort,” he said at length. “She tried to get me organized, to get me on my feet. It was for her own selfish purpose, of course — so she could bleed more money out of my family — but putting that aside, she was the only one who gave a damn about me.”
“You’re not getting sentimental, are you?”
“Of course I am. I’ve earned it. It complements my drunken state.”
“You know, I knew Laure as well. I was really quite fond of her.”
“Yes, I think we all saw that coming. Laure has — had — a way of slipping into an early intimacy with people, then becoming more formal with them once the ring was firmly placed in their noses. All of us wear one. I wouldn’t carry on about yours if I were you.”
“I knew her well enough to know that her habit for opium was perhaps more serious than your own.”
“Oh, you know that too, do you?” He took advantage of the waiter’s arrival to put his response in order. After sipping his fresh whisky, he looked me in the eye. “We all pass the word to Freddy behind the bar at the Dingo. He gets it from Arlette’s brother, Jean-Paul. Freddy’s a good scout. There’s not much he won’t do for a good customer.” I kept quiet, hoping that he would go on. He did.
“Freddy used to work across the river in ‘the Hole in the Wall,’ Le Trou dans le Mur. Boulevard des Capucines, or maybe further up on the boulevard des Italiens. It’s on the odd side of the street. Côté impair. Freddy used to work for Jean-Paul. Did I tell you that?”
“And Laure was blackmailing you?”
“That’s where my patrimony went and went and went. What is it George calls his mother? His ‘keeper,’ that’s it. At least my governor pays me directly, not through a lawyer or bank. That takes courage, wouldn’t you say? I get my allowance for staying out of England, you know.”
“Tolstoi, everybody in the Quarter knows that much. What they don’t know is why.”
“Do you think it’s because I killed somebody or because I was buggered at school? George thinks I pinched another boy’s five-shilling postal order, like that Archer-Shee chap who was killed in the war.”
“I think George was rather naughty in reporting Waddington to the French police,” I said, to see what his reaction might be.
“I tried to talk him out of it, old man, but they pay informers very well over here. George is broke, you know.”
“You’re not as worried as the others are about Wad’s book, then?”
“I skipped Spain this summer. But I was there last year. He has me in the setting if he wants me. He could have me running down those narrow streets in my undershirt pursued by those damned bulls he is forever talking about. Or he could put me at the Quat’z Arts Ball doing a strip-tease. I couldn’t stop him. And my reputation, as it is, is stretched as tight as Kiki’s dress over her hips.”
“You’re not as excited by the book as Hal Leopold is?”
“The book will finish Hal, Ward. I have a sketchy notion of what went on down there and, if you ask me, Hal is beside himself with frustration. I wouldn’t be surprised at anything he did. If I were Jason Waddington, and thank God I’m not, I would get out of town before the book is printed. If I were Wad, I’d deliver my head to that Dr. Freud in Vienna. For all that bluff, hail-fellow-well-met front of his, I think he’s deeply cross-grained and troubled. He’s all
knotted and gnarled inside. He’s got a secret bigger than mine to hide. Maybe he only learned the first half of the alphabet. Maybe he has never read a word of all these writers he keeps slamming. Like Anderson. I met Anderson, and he thought the world of Wad. Now Wad never misses a chance to slam his old mentor. And he’s started slamming Bob McAlmon as well.”
“McAlmon was Wad’s first publisher over here! I don’t get it.”
“Wad is always moving on. He can’t record his progress if he doesn’t leave old friends behind. I mean, is the train moving if you don’t leave people standing on the station platform?”
“What do you think of this cabal of friends leagued against him?” Tolstoi’s head was wavering now. I couldn’t even be sure he heard me. He was lost in the aptness of his latest similitude and half smiling to himself.
“When I think of Wad’s character,” he said at last, “I begin to feel better. Ward, if you were trying to cheer me up, you’ve succeeded. Damn it, now I suppose I’ll have to do something purposeful with the remainder of the day.”
“I thought you were looking better. But I wouldn’t become a changed character, Tolstoi. Remember, you have an investment to protect. You wouldn’t want to abandon a character you’ve worked on for years after one quiet chat. You think more of yourself than that, I hope?”
Tolstoi was smiling when I put down enough money to cover my drinks. His own stack of saucers was his problem. I caught sight of old Père Chambon, the proprietor of the Dôme, shaking his head at Tolstoi as I got up to leave. Tolstoi’s head was now close to the edge of the table. In another moment, they would come together, but by then I was back in the bustle of pedestrian traffic along the boulevard.
CHAPTER 23
Freddy Briggs had been an assistant bartender at Le Trou dans le Mur before he earned the running of the place. There, his pleasant Liverpool accent and the right note of servility won him hundreds of friends among the English-speaking colony. When he crossed the river to the Dingo, he took many of those customers with him. A shortish, rosy-faced fellow with slicked-back hair, he had the knack of remembering names and drink preferences. He was the still point in this whirling world of sodden characters. His bar was solid and dependable. Freddy had the manner of a corporal who had not only survived life in the British Army, but who had learned to live like a king without any of it showing on his bland countenance.
He always greeted me now by name and with some remark that linked me to the band of drinkers who sustained the establishment. It was still too early for Biz, George or the others to be found, so I took a seat at the bar and made conversation with Freddy, while drinking some Scotch that he recommended.
“That’s good stuff, Freddy. Best I’ve had in years.”
“Ought to be, Mr. Ward. Twelve years in the cask. It’s hard to come by a Highland malt over here. When I see you come in, I says to myself, ‘There’s a man with a taste for a fine malt.’ There aren’t many, I’ll tell you. Most people don’t really taste whisky. But this is so good you don’t want to put a siphon on the table. In the old days, Mr. Steams liked a good malt, but he’s beyond that now by a long stroke, poor chap. It’s a serious problem with him and some of the others. Don’t think I don’t notice. I try to keep things reasonable, like, not let things happen because somebody’s got a drop taken, sir, if you know what I mean?”
“From your side of the bar, Freddy, it must seem a three-ring circus.”
“Cor, a few days ago, would you believe it, Mr. Leopold comes in, sober as a judge, askin’ for Mr. Waddington. I’m glad Mr. Waddington didn’t come in, because I’m sure Mr. Leopold was armed.”
“You mean he was carrying a gun?”
“Yes, sir. You could tell by the way his jacket didn’t hang right and the way he kept putting his hand in his pocket.”
“Does Mr. Waddington know this?”
“I mean to tell him when I see him, but he’s made himself a stranger these last few days. Probably off at some peace conference for a paper. But I’ll tell him when I see him, Mr. Ward. You can count on that.”
“Swell.” I made a mental note to let Wad into this story as soon as possible. I wondered about the others; were they as serious as Hal? “Mr. Leopold packing a weapon is serious, Freddy. I’ll tell him about it when I leave here.”
“We don’t want any more bad luck at the Dingo, do we, sir? After what happened to Miss Duclos.” I sipped my whisky neat, as they say, shoving the siphon away from me with my elbow.
“Tell me, Freddy, on the night she died, did Miss Duclos look in for a short time?”
“Since it’s you asking, there’s no harm in telling you that she did.”
“But she didn’t usually come to you, did she?”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“Didn’t she usually get what she needed at the Hole in the Wall?”
“I didn’t know you knew about that, Mr. Ward.” He gave me a slight smile, as though he were welcoming me into the select fraternity. “I first met her when I worked in the Hole.”
“What’s this fellow Jean-Paul like? I hear he’s a hard man.”
“Greedy, that’s what Jean-Paul is nowadays. Plain greedy. The Hole is only a front for under-the-counter stuff. He used to be a reasonable bloke, like, but not lately.” He poured another measure of Scotch for me and moved it in my direction. “The only thing he cares about is his sister, Arlette. He’s glad she’s only smoking a little hashish now and again. Nothing serious.”
“Was she smoking the night Laure was killed?”
“She was always very discreet about it. She’d always trot off to the lavatory. I was on good terms with her, until she wanted a favour. Then I told her to piss up a rope, if you’ll excuse the French, Mr. Ward.”
Freddy did some cleaning up behind the bar and I watched him. I always enjoyed the precision of people working in confined quarters. In another minute, he was back with a question of his own.
“Mr. Ward, may I ask why you’re so interested in Miss Duclos’s death, sir? Not that I haven’t been asked all sorts of questions since it happened.”
“I think that there are those who would like to see Mr. Waddington arrested for her murder, Freddy.” He whistled, and then looked around at the faces that had turned in his direction. He returned their good-natured grins.
“But I thought that it was this Jack fellow what done it? I mean, that’s what I read in the papers.”
“That’s probably what did happen, Freddy, but it hasn’t stopped some people from trying to implicate our friend.”
“Cor! If there’s anything I can do to help, Mr. Ward, you let me know.”
“Thanks, Freddy. I knew I could count on one of Mr. Waddington’s oldest friends over here.”
“I remember when he used to come into the Hole, you know. In those days, he came in with his newspaper friends. I forget most of their names, but we had a lot of good talk over a bottle, believe you me. Never understood half of what they were saying, them being educated men, you understand.”
When I was half-way to the door, Dr. Anson Tyler came into the Dingo with Lady Biz on his arm. They both appeared glad to see me; I accepted their invitation to join them at a table. Biz cut a fine figure in a new coat and what looked like a milliner’s recreation of her old felt hat. She lit up the room when she sat down. Anson was wearing an English suit and carrying an umbrella and bowler hat. He might have just alighted from the London Underground. He managed to wear the clothes and make them take orders from him in a way that poor Wilson O’Donnell never quite managed to do.
“You’ve been making yourself very scarce, Mike!” Biz said, “What have you been up to? Tell us something to make us laugh, that’s a good chap.”
“I’ve been giving my liver a rest. Where have you been?”
“Same old watering-holes. Disgusting, isn’t it? Oh, I know! Some money came! And then it went. I’m wearing most of it. I think I’m all foolish virgins rolled into one. And, don’t be facetious, either of you. It�
�s perfectly easy to be facetious after a remark like that.”
“You are well turned out, Biz. You look wonderful.”
“How’s your detective work going? Have you caught Jack at it yet?” Anson leaned the crook of his umbrella against the table’s edge and placed his hat on an empty chair.
“Mainly I’ve been running up to the Gare St-Lazare with dispatches and trying to stay out of trouble,” I said.
“Freddy!” Biz called in a loud voice. “Will you save me from these two boring men? Neither of them is in the least amusing today.” Freddy smiled from the bar and hurried to our table. Meanwhile, Biz continued scolding. “I don’t think you two deserve to have a well-turned-out chap sitting between you.” She pretended to pout. Freddy wore an expression that was poised to go along with the joke, if it was one, or to discourage any real aspersions cast upon her character. We placed an order for drinks and he retreated behind the bar.
“Coward!” Biz said. “Men always let you down in the end.”
“Biz, you may despise us,” Anson said, “but you’ll have to own that you’ve never cared much for the company of other women. Perhaps it’s because we are the best of a thoroughly bad lot. What do you think?”
“Women stifle me, Anson. I’ll have to give you that. Men bring me out in colour like a rotogravure Sunday magazine.”
“You’re like Waddingstein,” Anson said, “a perfect romantic.”
“I’m a romantic, Anson, but I’m not a bit like Waddington. Why do you say he’s a romantic? I thought he was always pulling the wings off life as though it was a butterfly that got caught in his hair.”