When Danny got home he told Caroline he had had a most enticing offer and had agreed to meet with a French hotelier. “I’ll be flying to Paris tomorrow, then maybe Geneva, Nice, Zurich, Lyons—depending on how it goes. I’ll be checking on one, or more than one, of the chains.”
Caroline asked him if a week’s supply of clothes would be enough.
Danny nodded. “If I have to stay over, I’ll have my stuff washed. Yes, three suits should be plenty. Thanks, Caroline. I’ll go say goodbye to the kids.”
Thirty-three
WHEN HENRY RETURNED to Time from the Columbia School of Journalism, he was grateful to learn from Richard Clurman that he was not being reassigned to Saigon. “I think you had enough of Vietnam. Besides, I gather that if Barbara went there she’d root for Ho Chi Minh.”
“That’s a little exaggerated.” Henry had got used to being teased about his wife’s expressive political sympathies and thought maybe he should do something about the exaggerations before they calcified. “Barbara’s gradually pulling out of that whole scene. She still thinks we shouldn’t be in Vietnam. But she doesn’t pipe up anymore to defend what the Vietcong does, though she defends what they want—”
“Yeah, independence. Like the North Vietnamese have independence. Never mind”—Clurman didn’t allow such matters to get in the way of business at hand—“we’re going to leave you here in New York. Meanwhile, we have an immediate assignment.” Clurman lifted a cable from Stockholm.
“The Nobel committee, our book people think, is going to give the prize to Georges Simenon. Otto’s pleased as punch because nobody can be more fun to write about than Simenon. He boasts—did you know this about the great novelist?—of having had ten thousand different women.”
“Ten thousand? I remember reading about him that in one year, back in the thirties I think it was, he managed to write forty-four novels in one calendar year. It’s hard to figure out how he had time to log in his yearly ration of women—he’s how old?”
“Sixty-something. Born 1903.”
“How can you have that many women and write that many books? Hell, forget the books. How can you have that many women and—read the morning paper? We doing a cover?”
“It’ll be a cover if he gets the Nobel. We’ll write it as a cover. If Nobel passes him by, we’ll run big inside. For your information, Georges Simenon is at this moment the world’s single best-selling author.”
“I am impressed. Where do I go?”
“Cannes. He rents a big place there. He knows English but doesn’t like to give interviews in English, so your French is critical.” Clurman was reading from the bio attached to the cable. “He lived in Connecticut for five years—hey, aren’t you from Lakeville, Connecticut?”
“Yup.”
“Well, Simenon lived there for five years in the fifties, it says here. His son, Marc, went to Hotchkiss. Kicked out.”
“Why? Procuring for the old man?”
“Doesn’t say. Anyway, he’s agreed to cooperate. He doesn’t much mind the idea of being on the cover of Time. Don’t tell him he won’t be if he misses out in Stockholm. Just the usual, you know—‘It’s-not-my-decision.…’ ”
• • • •
Henry was surprised on reaching the Pan American counter to see Danny standing in line.
“Danny! Paris?”
“Yes.”
It was clear that Danny was less than overjoyed at the prospect of seven hours on a 707 seated next to his brother-in-law. “You too going to Paris? Traveling first class?”
“No,” Henry said. “The stockholders of Time Inc. don’t think first class is absolutely necessary for first-class work from their reporters. I suppose you are first?”
“What else?” Danny said, ostentatiously adjusting his tie and looking up in the general direction of the balconies. “I’ll cross the tracks somewhere along the line and have a drink with you. Now I got to get to the newsstand. Want anything?”
Henry shook his head. “I’ve got ten novels by Georges Simenon to read. That’s a week’s work for Simenon, twice that for me.”
Several hours later, Danny moved back to the tourist section. His face was flushed, his words a little garbled. He told Henry he’d be moving about a bit, Paris, Geneva, Nice—where would Henry be quartered? And for how long?
Henry gave him the name of the hotel at Cannes.
“Ah, Cannes/Nice. Reminds me of juvenile delinquency, that part of the world. As a matter of fact I’ll probably be going to Nice. There’s a succulent hotel there. And other succulent things. When I’m there, in Nice, I always stay at the Hotel Negresco, you know, next to the Casino Royale. You remember it?”
“Yes,” Henry said as Danny took down the name of the hotel in next-door Cannes where Henry would be staying. Danny promised to call in if he got to that part of the world during the next few days.
Henry stayed overnight at the Sofitel Hotel near the Paris airport and took the flight to Nice the next day. He checked into his hotel and was given the telegram: “CALL IMMEDIATELY, NEVER MIND HOUR. URGENT. LOVE BARBARA.”
He walked quickly to his room and went to the telephone. It was four in the morning in New York.
“Listen, Henny. Goddamnedest thing. This morning—yesterday morning—about the time you took off from JFK, the people at the Poughkeepsie Inn in Poughkeepsie found a corpse—a corpse—yes. His name was Max Huxley. He was shot. Shot in the stomach and shot in the head. No apparent motive, the police say. His wallet was untouched.
“Now listen, Henny, I spent hours with Max Huxley right up until yesterday.”
“You did?”
“Yes. A really nice guy, lovely guy, a scholar who digs like a good reporter and who has bright and funny ideas—serious, a little bit of romance there, he liked to sit at FDR’s desk—”
“You knew him all that well?”
“Henny darling, I leaned on him the moment I got here, four days ago. He went out of his way to help me in every way. Day before yesterday, we had a joint session with Lila. Henny, I got close to Max.”
“Tell me more about him.”
“He was a graduate student, doing a dissertation on Hyde Park. Two days ago he told me he had got hold of an interesting wrinkle … involving a hundred million dollars. A hot lead. You ever hear of the Hyde Park Capital Fund?”
“Isn’t that where Martino left the money? For the Library?”
“It’s where he left the money, yeah. Only the Hyde Park Capital Fund was owned seventy-five percent by—Danny. Daniel Tracey O’Hara. Max couldn’t figure out why the stock passed over after Martino’s death to the Hyde Park Capital Fund and then, after two years, suddenly was transferred to the Hyde Park Fund. So for two years Danny and his partner, Cutter Malone, who was the principal accountant for the Trafalgar chain, sopped up all the profits of the corporation. Did you know anything about that?”
No, Henry said. He knew nothing about the other Hyde Park fund.
“My point is, Henny, there was a motive for killing Max. He was onto a hot story.”
“Barbara. You’re not suggesting Danny—or the Malone guy—went to Poughkeepsie to bump off a graduate student?”
“No. All I’m saying is, there was a motive. So my question is: Do I go to the police with what I’ve just told you?”
“God, that’s a hell of a question. Funny …”
“What’s funny?”
“Danny was with me on the plane yesterday. Prospecting for hotel business. On the other business—your business—I don’t think it’s right for us to throw out a lead so obviously crazy that implicates my brother-in-law.”
“Darling? Darling Henny. In this situation I am not ‘us.’ I’m me. A reporter for the New York Times. There is a murder. The victim, a good person, was working side by side with me for the better part of three days. He was onto something he thought might be—might still be—a life-sized scandal. Forget you’re my husband, forget Danny’s your brother-in-law, the best man at our wedding. You are Profe
ssor Chafee and I’m Barbara Horowitz, a student at Columbia School of Journalism, and I give you this situation. What do I do, Professor?”
Henry breathed deeply, thought quickly and said, “Yes, you’re right. But listen. To the extent you can, Barbara, be ‘Miss New York Times’ in your dealing with the police—not a friend of the victim-friend of the family.”
“That will be easy. Remember my name, darling; I’m Barbara Horowitz, not Mrs. Henry Chafee.”
“I don’t know what time I’ll get back from seeing Simenon. Whatever time it is, I’ll call you. Will you be at the Times or back in Hyde Park?”
“I’ll be wherever the police tell me to be, is my guess. Call person-to-person for me at the Library. And don’t go through Lila. Goodbye, darling. Say hello to de Gaulle. Congratulate him for getting out of Algeria.”
The villa where Simenon lived and wrote was larger even than Somerset Maugham’s, only a few miles away, about which Henry had written four years previously. Looking at the imposing villa, a reconstruction of a nineteenth-century château, Henry estimated from the driveway that there might be as many as fifteen or more bedrooms there. Enough for a moderate man’s purposes.
But then it was a complex household. One story about Simenon, one of the many Henry had perused in the past few days, published in The New Yorker, described the great author’s entourage at one point in the fifties. Henry had copied out, possibly to quote in his own story, the passage exactly: “The ménage consisted of the Master; his first wife; his soon-to-be second wife; Boule, the faithful maid-companion-mistress who has lived with him for twenty years, and two children by the two wives.”
Henry had decided there wouldn’t be any point in attempting to probe Simenon on family matters; no reporter had ever succeeded in getting Georges Simenon to talk about any aspect of his home life with the single exception of his mother, for whom he would take any opportunity to reiterate his loathing. His mother had wanted him to be a pastry cook and was terribly disappointed when, at age twenty-one, he went instead into writing. Almost there and then, it seemed, Simenon published not one dozen, but several dozen novels, all of them successful, gradually becoming the toast of the international literary set with his Inspector Maigret series. Simenon liked to talk about his books. Henry had been especially struck by one published interview. Simenon was asked how had he thought up such an extraordinary array of criminal situations around which to center his sixty-five Maigret books, to which Simenon had answered: “I have no imagination of my own. Everything I write is based on something that happened somewhere.”
He found Simenon in an agreeably talkative mood. The butler had led Henry into a wing of the palatial villa. The study was, as one would expect, book-lined. On one side of the desk reposed the famous typewriter—for the first decade or two, Simenon had written everything by hand. Now his typewriter was greatly fancied and admired by the legion of journalists and writers who interviewed him. Uniformly they stared at it, wondering what was its talismanic secret.
Henry noted that notwithstanding that he sat in what amounted to a literary factory, there was no disorder. Well, perhaps that was why: In factories there can’t be disorder, or the flow of … sausages is interrupted. He knew, had read all about, Simenon’s famous working habits: up at six in the morning, six hours of uninterrupted writing, an hour or two in the afternoon to survey yesterday’s work or even to attack an entirely different book. Or short story. Or movie script. Or play. Simenon writing fiction was an undisturbable phenomenon, like the rising sun. No one who himself wrote—no one like Henry—could begin to understand how it was done. But all were curious about the physical arrangements of Simenon’s workshop. He was neat.
Simenon sat deep in a leather armchair, legendary pipe in mouth, wearing his glasses over what had so often been described as his hound-dog eyes. An olive-and-green bandana hung loosely but neatly around his neck.
Simenon took the initiative. His greeting in English was more guttural than, for some reason, Henry had expected, given the five years he had spent in northwestern Connecticut whence he supervised the training of his son at prep school. The boy’s instruction had been comprehensive, including, at age thirteen, sending him to New York City where, at the great Simenon’s request, a friend of his editor at Doubleday had arranged a night for the teenager with an accomplished and motherly whore, to “fix him up,” as Simenon had learned to put it. Henry would need to make some reference to Simenon’s extravagant sexual life, always the talk of the literary world, but he knew better than to dwell on it. Perhaps Simenon would say what was foremost on his mind? Simenon did:
“I see Time magazine has picked up the Nobel rumor in Stockholm. I will not believe it unless I see it in the newspapers. But perhaps it will happen—who knows? I suppose it is true there is no single writer alive who is better known than I am. Certainly none who is more productive. I correct that, monsieur. There are no dozen writers alive whose work, cumulatively, is as extensive as my own. I do not deny that. And there is always this possibility too, that Sweden will rise above those dreary accusations—that I collaborated with the Nazis during the war. It is true that I continued to write in Paris during the war. What was I supposed to do? Take up music? In Sweden they should understand.
“Yes, Sweden. You will remember, Monsieur Chafee—you are so young—Sweden did not engage in the war. In that sense the whole of Sweden was, by fashionable ideological standards, a ‘collaborator,’ right?
“Did you know,” Simenon’s lips crackled into a smile as he reached into his pocket for a different pipe, “that when it was proposed, at the founding conference in San Francisco, that Sweden, Switzerland and Ireland be admitted into the United Nations, they were all three vetoed? On what grounds? Monsieur, guess. On what grounds?”
Henry said he could not remember.
“On the grounds that they were not peace-loving nations!” He let out a whoop of laughter. “Three nations that did not go to war were not peace-loving!”
Henry did not want to interrupt the soliloquy, and didn’t do so. A half hour went by before Simenon asked, “What do you want to talk to me about? I have told my wife I will no longer discuss with anybody the matter of fornication. What else?”
Henry popped the question. He said, “Beyond fornication there is imagination. Tell me about yours.”
Simenon welcomed the query. He spoke of his last three novels as handy reference points. Had Henry read Le train de Venise? L’homme au petit chien? Le petit saint?
The first two, Henry said, not Le petit saint.
“Well,” Simenon said with relish, “all three of them were based on events that happened between the first day of April last year, and the last day in April. And the one before, Le rond point—that one was not published in English—did you read my novel about the pornographic photographer, right here in Cannes?”
No, Henry said, he had not read it.
“Well,” Simenon explained, “a middle-aged—procurer?—no, he wasn’t a procurer, not exactly. He had two or three beautiful women in his stable, one of them apparently a knockout and privately wealthy. His specialty was to find socially conspicuous men—somebody like me, for instance. He would represent himself as someone anxious to please that beautiful lady over there—this would be at the opera, at a nightclub, at a casino. He would tempt the person to bed with one of his ladies in a room especially equipped with a camera. You guessed it?”
Henry found himself leaning forward, listening acutely. “And then?”
“And then he would take the pictures and do one of two things. Either he would blackmail the man, or he would sell the pictures to the underground tabloids.” Simenon sighed. “It was an exciting life, but not a very long one.”
“What happened?”
“Somebody put handcuffs on him in his apartment over here”—he flexed his finger in the general direction of the sea—“and shot him. That was an intriguing one, because the police found one photographic negative—it had been separa
ted from the roll. The lady was readily identifiable, one of the photographer’s regulars, but the man, you could see only his backside. All you could tell was that he was young and well shaped.
“They did track down the lady. There was no way for her to deny what she had been up to. I mean, a screw is a screw, is it not, monsieur? But she insisted that she and her lover were entirely unaware what the pornographer was up to, said she didn’t know anything about the cameras, said she kept no record of who her lover was.
“Of course they cannot fool my Inspector Maigret. He pieces it all together, with his characteristic skill and delicacy and self-effacement.” Henry knew that the fabled creation of Georges Simenon, the Inspector Maigret who figured in sixty-five novels, was a special enthusiasm of his creator. “Yes, Maigret of course penetrates the operation and comes up with the identity of the killer. It happened that it was a young man who was in these parts to frolic. He was the grandson of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—”
“Excuse me.” Henry’s impulse had been to shoot up from his chair. He clenched his left hand on his steno pad and continued to write, controlling his voice. “But how did you come up with that?”
“Simple. I told you, I have no imagination. But I read everything. I looked at the society columns during the period and there were two references to a grandson of President Roosevelt, who apparently frequented the same casino the dead man operated in.”
“Do you have, for instance”—Henry struggled to affect only a journalist’s interest—“the date of the murder?”
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