Murder in Montparnasse

by Howard Engel

  “Anson, where did you go in the taxi after dropping Hash at the Gare de Lyon?”

  “Mike, you’re talking about 1922. That’s three years ago! I suppose I went to the hospital in Neuilly. I honestly don’t remember.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t follow Hash into the station, buy a platform ticket and remove the suitcase with the manuscripts from Hash’s empty compartment?” There was no change in Anson Tyler’s face when I made that accusation, but the rest of the people sitting around him suddenly became animated. Especially Julia Lowry, the quietest of the group.

  “Anson! I don’t believe it!”

  “He’ll have you for slander, Mike!”

  “How could he?”

  “I’m sure you’re just making up stories, as Waddington is always doing. What an odd thing to say about a chap like Anson.”

  “That’s quite an accusation, M. Ward,” the policeman said. “You know our laws well enough to know that it is a serious business to make grave charges against someone in front of witnesses.”

  “Yes, I know. And I want all of you to know that I’m sorry that I have to ask Anson such questions. You may say they are accusations, M. Zamaron; I say I am asking questions, just requesting information. He needn’t answer. But I do have a few more questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “Mike, I have nothing to hide,” Anson said, showing a little colour. “Fire away!”

  “You knew how important these manuscripts were to Wad?”

  “Of course. Even an amateur writer like myself would understand. I did what I could to help. When Wad wired me from Switzerland, I went to the station police and made an inquiry. They had nothing to show me. They shrugged and said that suitcases are stolen all the time.”

  “Where are the railway police located in the Gare de Lyon?”

  “Why, I’m not sure I remember. Somewhere in the back, I think.”

  “At that time you were living with Laure, is that not right?”

  Anson forced a smile. “You’re always changing the subject on me, Mike. Laure and I had been living quite openly here in the Quarter. As I remember, I was very much in love with her at the time you mention.”

  “Was she smoking opium in those days? Was she hard up for money?”

  “I think perhaps we both may have had a pipe or two — just as a lark, you understand. Neither of us was addicted. As for money, I paid for all of our expenses while we were together. Laure earned a little through teaching and translating. Both, as you know, are not well paid.”

  “Anson, we all know that in later years Laure took up the hazardous practice of blackmailing some of her friends in order to support her increasing need for drugs. And I wonder if you would agree that Laure had grown more desperate recently, her demands more ambitious, the interval between demands shorter.” I looked around the room, hoping that someone would volunteer to back me up or suggest something. Finally, it was Wad who came to my rescue.

  “Michaeleen, I don’t know where you’re leading us, but, for what it’s worth, Laure was getting to be quite a pest. She was always after me with her hand out. I told her she had exaggerated ideas about the size of my writing income. She thought I could get money from Hash, but that’s all gone now. She even suggested that I borrow it from a rich friend. She wanted more cash than I’ve seen in a year to get that manuscript back again. And if I’d had the money — and I tried to get it — I would have paid her.” Wad looked over at Julia, who was examining the stem of her glass. Lady Biz gave her a cross-eyed look that was borrowed from Josephine Baker. It wasn’t meant to be kind.

  “Wad’s right in what he says,” Tolstoi said. “She was quite ready to tell all of you that my father rented a young fellow named Richard Ross to take my place in the British Army. I never met him; he was killed before the white feathers started arriving at home. Someplace on the Somme. That’s why I’m here in Paris instead of doing something in the City, with my father.”

  “I thought it might be a white-feather story,” said George. “A lot of chaps can’t show their faces nowadays.”

  “Shut up, George,” said Biz, pulling him towards her.

  “I didn’t know about it until the chap was dead, of course. Kept wondering why I didn’t get my papers. I should have made it my business to find out. Don’t know how Laure got on to it. Suspect she read my mother’s letters.” Arlette took Tolstoi’s hand. He didn’t look up at her.

  “Anson,” I said, “now that these two have confessed, can you tell us why Laure was blackmailing you? I suspect that you were the major source of money for her opium. What was it she knew about your past?”

  “Let me say something before you speak, Doctor,” Zamaron said quietly. “We have ways of finding out the truth about the spending of money. It is not very difficult to discover the financial pattern of a salaried employee of a hospital, for instance. We have the power to subpoena records and documents, you know.”

  “Yes, Laure was blackmailing me, along with some of the rest of you. And I agree that she was becoming desperate. I have never been short of money — as she very well knew — so I was not having difficulty in acquiescing to her needs. I told her time and time again that she should let me try to arrange a cure for her. I told her I’d pay for it, but she wouldn’t listen, or — and this was worse — she would pretend to agree, only to get her hands on more money.”

  “I think we can all sympathize with that, even those of us who gave in to her demands. Tell me, Anson, why was she blackmailing you?”

  “I say, old man, that’s a bit thick, isn’t it?” George said. “I don’t think I’d much relish telling you about what she had on me, if she did have her hooks into my hide. One good thing about being known as an undischarged bankrupt is that no one ever bothers you for money. Funny thing, isn’t it? You get to know who your friends are, I’ll tell you. Nobody flatters a pauper.” Biz patted his knee.

  “Anson, in spite of what George says, I’d still like to know your secret. Remember, the Commissioner is only concerned with murder, nothing else. Why was Laure blackmailing you?” I was beginning to sound like a cracked phonograph record even to myself, but I had to keep trying. “Could it have had something to do with the missing manuscripts?”

  “That is a suppositon I heartily deny in front of all of you!”

  “Indulge me for a moment, Anson. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that Wad’s early stories had fallen into your hands. Somehow. Then it would be likely that Laure knew about them. She wouldn’t have to look further for something to blackmail you with.”

  While I was talking, another idea struck me. I interrupted the course of my argument to insert the notion. “Of course, Laure now would have had the manuscripts in her own hands, wouldn’t she? She could hardly extort money from you if you still had the power to destroy or dispose of the contents of that suitcase. Laure was living with you in 1922. She was clever enough to have taken them with her when she left. I suspect, M. Zamaron, that at the time of her death Laure had possession of these papers. You searched her room, did you not?”

  “I know nothing of the manuscripts you allude to, M. Ward, but it is quite clear that the murderer went through Mlle Duclos’s apartment on the night of the murder. How did you know that, M. Ward? Have you other friends on the Quai des Orfèvres besides myself?”

  “You’re forgetting her handbag. Remember, I found it in the gutter. There were no keys inside. The murderer must have taken them. The rest was a logical inference.”

  Zamaron bowed in my direction. It was too deep a bow to be totally serious. “What can I say?” he said at last. “But where does this lead us?”

  “If Laure had the manuscripts for the last three years, she had been collecting a regular allowance from Anson for all that time. The amount never presented a great problem. You were, in Laure’s terms, well off. Now, what changed? Why would you suddenly decide to stop paying? What changes had occurred that made Laure a nuisance who could no longer be tolerated?

  “O
ne thing,” I said, beginning to answer my own question, “Wad had become less obscure as a writer. He wasn’t simply appearing in the little magazines. Two books had appeared here, one had come out in the States. So there was at least a possibility that our Jason Waddington was on the brink of a major career. I know, it’s hard to imagine my tennis friend becoming a household word . . .” Here the group exchanged smiles with one another. “But don’t forget that Wilson O’Donnell was unknown five years ago. Who among us can say that Wad won’t be almost as well known in another few years?”

  “Mike, I’ve been beating the drum for Wad in New York,” Wilson said. “I’ve written to a lot of influential people. His name is, as you say, becoming known.”

  “Goofo, I’m anxious to hear how this ends and I’m not going to hear it from you.”

  “Quiet, precious.” He patted her hand, but she pulled it away. “Wad’s going to be a great writer. I’m sure of it. He’s going to give me a run for my money. You can bet upon it.”

  “Well,” I said, “that being so, it gave Laure a greater hold over whoever had taken those early manuscripts. An insignificant act of spite or jealousy had now been altered into something approaching an art theft of some magnitude.”

  “I see that you are still looking at me, Mike. I don’t much like it, old man. The humour escapes me. I’m not a dunce. I can see where all of this fiction is pointing. And it is fiction, Mike. You haven’t a shred of evidence to hang any of this theorizing on, now have you?” Anson was speaking calmly and without much animation. He went on. “Commissioner, I have some very good friends at the Quai des Orfèvres. My information is that they are quite happy to lump Laure’s death in with the total claimed by Jack de Paris. So, I’m happy that you people are having all this fun at my expense — I can take a joke — but I’m beginning to find it a little stale, like a croissant left too long in the sun.”

  “You’re right, Anson. I have been long-winded.”

  “Monsieur le Commissaire, if there is no reason why I am not free to go, I think I’ll wish you all good night. Biz was quite right about the effect of this kind of talk on good liquor.” Anson’s chair squeaked as he got to his feet.

  “Pray sit down, Dr. Tyler,” Zamaron said. “I suggest you sit down and continue to help us in these inquiries. As far as my colleagues on the Quai des Orfèvres are concerned, like the Bourbons, ils n’ont rien appris, ni rien oublié; they have learned nothing and have forgotten nothing. For instance, they have not learned that Jack used a weapon that made a wound of approximately twenty-one centimeters in depth. Laure, on the other hand, was killed by a pair of blades that were at least fourteen and a half centimeters in length. A difference of six and a half centimeters; almost, as you would say, three inches!”

  “That may be very interesting to you, Monsieur. As for me, I am going home.”

  “Back to your barge on the river, Doctor?”

  “Why, yes. That is where I live. Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “Such a charming location, Doctor. I must congratulate you on finding it.” Zamaron put his hand to the flap of his briefcase and tugged at the straps until they came free. “It was in that charming setting that my men discovered this pair of scissors.” Here he held up a pair of very ordinary-looking scissors. He held them in a handkerchief with the open blades pointing up to the ceiling of the Dingo.

  “You’ve been to the barge! Sir, you had no right —”

  “Monsieur, when I heard about your telephone call to the Prefect of Police, I became interested in your sudden interest in the capture of Jack de Paris. A friendly judge supplied me with the proper papers and a thorough search was made less than two hours ago. We were assisted in this work by M. Georges Sim, your Belgian tenant. He told my men that the scissors are his. Do you recognize them?”

  “They look like any pair of scissors, Commissioner. What are they to me?”

  “What indeed! The blades measure fourteen and a half centimeters, Monsieur. I have taken them apart and have seen stains that could be bloodstains at the point where the blades are held together by a screw. As a doctor, Monsieur, perhaps you have heard of the Uhlenhuth test for human blood. It’s a very simple test, but most instructive. Such a test has been ordered for these scissors.”

  “I hope Georges has a good lawyer,” Anson said, still maintaining a calm exterior.

  “Luckily for M. Sim, he has an excellent alibi for the night of the Duclos murder. He was in the company of a woman, the writer Colette, and two other well-respected men of letters. It is you, Dr. Anson Tyler, who should be looking for an avocat to defend you from the grave charges that will undoubtedly be laid before the day is out.” Léon Zamaron did not raise his voice, but the effect was such that we sat stunned, as though he had shouted these words at the top of his voice.

  “I see, M. Ward, that you are perhaps not as surprised as your friends at this turn of events,” the policeman said, while urging Anson to be seated again. “Did your amateur sleuthing uncover the same result that we hope the Uhlenhuth test will confirm, Monsieur?”

  I took a deep drink of the whisky Freddy had brought me. He’d been smart enough to recognize that a single malt would be wasted on my palate at the moment: this was no time for sampling rare pleasures.

  “There are two things that occur to me,” I began. “The first is that when I visited the Gare de Lyon, I saw the record book for December 1922 that is kept by the railway police. All reported incidents are recorded, some in considerable detail. There was no mention of a theft of a suitcase on the day that Hash left for Switzerland.”

  “Mike, old boy, that’s because Hash was on the train when she made the discovery,” Wad said, taking a cigarette from George.

  “Granted, she might not have had time to make a report before the departure, but you wired someone to do that before you returned from Lausanne, didn’t you?”

  “Damn it, Mike, Anson just told you that! He told me that he talked to the railway police and got nowhere.”

  “Then why wasn’t there any record of Anson’s report in the ledger, Wad? He told you he went to the station. If he went to the station and talked to the police, there would have been a record. Go to the station, look it up yourself. There was no report of your stolen suitcase made either on the date Hash left or later that month.”

  “Well. . .”

  “There’s only one explanation I can think of,” I said. “Anson knew that it would be a waste of time going to the station, since he had the suitcase himself. Why ask a question when you already know the answer? Anson told you he’d spoken to the police because he knew that you would believe him.”

  “I searched everywhere except at the Gare de Lyon. I believed Anson. Why wouldn’t I have believed him? He was a good family friend.” Wad called Anson’s name, but the Doctor refused to turn in Waddington’s direction.

  “That brings me to the second observation, M. Zamaron.” The policeman made a gesture which I translated as leave to continue. “Wad, do you remember your last meeting with Laure at the Dôme?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “You might recall that she’d been scattered with flecks of gold.”

  “Yes. She said something about Beaux-Arts students. Sure, I remember.”

  “It was hard to get off. I was combing it out of my hair for days afterwards. I was sitting with her when they fired the gold at us,” I explained. “Well, I saw that gold-dust again. It was on the lapels of a jacket I saw hanging on Anson’s barge. How could he have got the gold flecks on him without having come in close contact with one of the people who were dusted before Père Chambon threw the students out? I’m sure that there are other possible explanations, but one of them surely is that Laure and Anson met and stood very close to one another that night. It would have to have been after you saw her, Wad, and before I stumbled across the handbag in the street.”

  Wad whistled through his teeth, trying not to look at Anson.

  “That’s not much time,” I
said. “Hardly half an hour.”

  “C’est bizarre,” Arlette said, almost to herself.

  “What, my dear?” asked Tolstoi.

  “That gold-dust you spoke about. I seem to remember seeing it someplace. Yes, it was on Anson’s coat. Just as you say. I had to help Freddy with him. He was very drunk, you know. It took the two of us.”

  “And which of you brought the unfortunate man’s umbrella, may I ask?” said Zamaron, looking first at Arlette and Freddy and then, triumphantly, at me. The other two regarded one another but neither spoke. “So, the umbrella that refused to hang properly at the side of the table and that made the doctor look so droll when he went out for cigarettes was found on the floor by the cleaners in the morning. Is that so, M. Briggs?”

  “Sorry, sir, I don’t know anything about no umbrella. I don’t think he left it here, sir. I would have heard about that, him being a regular customer and all.”

  “So, we have the case of the missing umbrella,” Zamaron said, looking around the room with an amused expression on his face. “M. Briggs saw him leave with the umbrella when he went to buy cigarettes, but it was not with him when he was assisted to leave the second time.”

  “I suspect that you have a clever theory to cover that, Commissioner?”

  “You are quite right, Lady Biz, I have,” he said, at the same time making a motion to his man at the door. “But I imagine that our friend, M. Ward, will have already guessed the answer to that question. Am I correct, M. Ward?” At this moment, the plainclothesman handed a furled umbrella to Zamaron, who inspected it before passing it on to me.

  “Are you showing off again, Ward?” It was Hal. He had, by the look of him, forgotten all about his own melodramatic entrance that evening. I found the catch on the stem of the umbrella and released it. Quickly I pushed the ring of wires to the top, expanding the umbrella against Hal’s chest.

  “Anson stabbed Laure through here so that he wouldn’t get any blood on his clothes. He was a surgeon, remember. He knew exactly how much blood to expect. When she fell, he ditched the umbrella in the gutter further down the street and hurried back here.”