by Janice Law
Chapter Eight
“Salut,” I said.
Pyotr’s head snapped up, and his hand drifted south to the knife I knew he carried in his boot.
“C’est Francis.” I sat down uninvited. “You look as if you’ve had a hard night.”
“The worst cognac imaginable. But you are angry?” Pyotr likes to have all the cards out on the table.
“I was angry,” I said, emphasizing the past tense. “Perhaps you had good reasons.”
“I did. I am sorry, Francis. I was sorry then, too, but I was running for my life.”
I nodded. After meeting the Cossacks, I believed that. “But now you are sitting at an émigré café without a care in the world.”
He shrugged. “I have cares aplenty, but Igor’s no longer one of them.”
“You have reached a rapprochement?” I was beginning to understand why French was long the language of diplomacy. It has so many nice shades of meaning, especially for selling out your friends.
“Igor is dead,” he said flatly. “Order us a vin blanc, Francis, and we can toast the event.”
At this welcome news, I signaled the waiter. The wine was poured, and Pyotr valiantly ignored his throbbing head to lift a glass.
“So what happened?”
“He made a mess with the business you know about. The commissars were unhappy to lose their man, and the mess made led them straight to Igor. What more to say?”
I thought that there was probably a lot to say. Like just whose faction was Igor in? And who had tipped off the faraway commissars? Not to mention who had actually dispatched the son of a bitch. Pyotr’s face gave nothing away. But he was looking pretty spruce, hangover excepted. Those were handsome boots he was wearing, and although the hat was still big and black, it was definitely a fine new one. My four pounds, five shillings or a little payment for information rendered? Mind your own business, Francis, Nan said in my ear. She didn’t have to add that any and all of Pyotr’s Russian associates would be bad for my health.
“Fortunate for you,” I said. “But you still owe me. Pounds sterling go a long way in Paris.”
He raised his hands. “I’m a bit short at the moment.”
“I’m not thinking of money. I need information. Perhaps you can give it to me.”
His expression turned so cagey that I was sure this was not the first time Pyotr had been solicited for intelligence. “If I can, Francis. I am in your debt.”
I reached into my pocket and took out my best guess at Pavel’s features. “Would you have seen this boy?”
He glanced at the image and gave me a quizzical look. “This has been much altered.”
“I do not have a photograph of Pavel Lagunov. That is an image of his sister. They are said to look much alike. The boy is thirteen, so think younger.”
Pyotr examined the photograph carefully then shook his head. “I do not know him.”
“Ever see anyone resembling him? Even in passing? I think he may be on the game.”
“I see anyone like this, I would remember him. Russian, yes?”
“Yes, with a ‘face like an angel,’” I said sadly. “His sister’s description.”
“Off on his own?” Pyotr’s voice lost its habitual cool and cynical edge. I wondered how old he’d been when he decided to chance the streets.
“We believe so. He entered France roughly two years ago in the company of a man of very bad reputation. He’d been separated from his sister and her protector on the journey and was probably betrayed for money. Quite a lot of money, we think.”
“A little money, the boy is dead,” Pyotr said. “A lot of money? He’s been sold.”
“Where, Pyotr?”
“That I wouldn’t know. Maybe out of Paris. There is always demand around ports.” He looked at the photo again. “But this is a deluxe item. Only the best will do for the capital.” There was a bitter edge in his voice. “We refugees are only so much raw material here, Francis.”
“Where should I start to look?”
“You have a lot of money? Try the Hotel Marigny. Haunt of all the ‘petite messieurs,’ the gentlemen with money who buy whatever they want.”
“Thirteen-year-old boys included?”
“If that’s what the clientele demands.”
“Anywhere cheaper?”
“There’s a couple of other houses.” He thought for a moment and mentioned some names. “Not so profitable. All the best people go to the Hotel Marigny—and invest in it, too.”
“We will find a way to check. But will you keep an eye out for Pavel? Please. You can leave a message for me at the theater. Or—” I was about to give him my address but stopped. I liked Pyotr, but I didn’t trust him. “Or with Jimmy at the Parnasse Bar.”
“Certainly,” he said. He emptied his wineglass and finished the mineral water, hints that he was about to be on his way and that I should be too.
“One other thing,” I said, as I really hadn’t yet gotten my pounds and shillings’ worth. “Would you know anything about a man named Bogdan Anoshkin?”
The response was immediate. Pyotr straightened up, his face rigid. Then he recovered himself—Pyotr hadn’t survived on the streets by accident—and shook his head.
“You don’t know him? Supposedly a Soviet political official?”
Now he shrugged. “Maybe by reputation. I may have heard this or that.”
“Even ‘this or that’ might be helpful,” I said.
Pyotr sat silent.
“The boy is thirteen. He nearly starved to death after the revolution. He’s lost everyone except his sister. If we can find him, he has a chance.”
Now Pyotr stood up. “Stay away from Anoshkin. He is a dangerous man.”
“Did he kill Igor?”
Now Pyotr smiled. “Anoshkin has another specialty altogether.” He pushed back his chair and walked away.
A few hours later, I dropped the altered photo on Monsieur Chaput’s desk. “His sister agrees it is a plausible likeness.”
“This will be helpful,” the detective said.
“Because of the boy’s good looks, I asked around. The Hotel Marigny came up. Since Pavel hasn’t been seen on the streets, that was my informant’s best guess.”
The detective made a dismissive gesture. “I will inquire,” he said, “but the Hotel Marigny is a thoroughly respectable establishment. It is patronized by the sorts of people who do not wish to have any irregularities.” Then he added, “Except the obvious,” which, despite his dry tone and closed face, seemed by way of a joke.
I mentioned the other houses Pyotr suggested.
“A bit more likely,” Chaput admitted. “But all these places are under the eye of the police. A boy, clearly underage, especially a boy confined against his will, this, messieurs, is unlikely.”
Jules sighed. “However disagreeable the idea, we’d had hopes of finding him quickly. And the alternative . . .” His voice trailed off. I knew that he was wondering what he could tell Inessa.
“There are avenues yet,” said Chaput. “Remember that there is no record of his death. And no unclaimed corpses of anywhere near the right age and description.”
“Perhaps he was taken from Paris,” I suggested.
Chaput surprised me by sharing Pyotr’s opinion. He picked up the altered photo, looked at it again, and shook his head. “If the boy does look anything like his sister—oh, yes, I took in the show, dreadful except for the girl and the machines—he would be valuable to a certain clientele. My apologies, messieurs, to speak of him in these terms, but his beauty is his best chance for survival. With your permission, I will press on with our investigations.”
He looked at both of us, and I looked at Jules. My personal exchequer would not stretch any further, but Jules nodded. “Time, Monsieur Chaput, is of the essence,” he added and immediately
rose to leave.
Out on the sidewalk, he seemed discouraged. “I’m afraid poor Pavel has eluded the record keepers. Although we must let Chaput proceed, I am not sure we have the right approach yet.”
“I think Anoshkin is the key,” I said. “He brought Pavel to Paris, purpose unknown since he apparently hasn’t lived with the boy for over a year. That leaves us with Alexi. It would be good to know more about him. About his business here and whether he is still in contact with Anoshkin.”
Jules shrugged. We both remembered Inessa’s description of Alexi’s changeable moods, late nights, and mysterious messages. “If Inessa cannot figure him out, who can?”
“Agreed,” I said, but there was another possibility, one I did not yet feel able to mention to Jules. As soon as I finished my work for Monsieur Armand, an abstract pattern this time, much more to my taste than the everlasting bouquets—I swear, even in gouache, roses and lilies roused my asthma—I set off for my “French” uncle’s antique shop.
Across the cobbled courtyard. Around to the converted stable. All quiet. I rang the bell. No answer. Was Claude out searching for antiques? Ormolu furniture, his specialty? If so, why was the little sign in the window not turned to Fermé? I tried the door. Locked tight. Had my uncle left in a hurry? Forgetful? That did not sound quite right. I looked around the silent courtyard; even the sounds of the street—a horse clopping by, the squeak of a cart, the hum of a motor—were muffled. No one in sight: no maid taking a break at the back of the town house; no chauffeur wiping down the Peugeot or the Citroën. There was no one to see me peering in the windows, at the front, then along both sides.
Possibly there was a rear entrance. I went quietly around to the back, where a small green van was parked near, yes, a back door. Unlocked, as it turned out. I stepped inside, caught a whiff of gas, and immediately began to wheeze in the toxic air: Call me the canary in the mine. “Claude!” I called, and when there was no answer, “Uncle Lastings!”
I pulled my shirt up over my mouth, propped the back door open, and hurried the length of the shop to unlatch the front door. I grabbed one of the cheap chairs to hold it open. Even with a through draft, the gas was almost overwhelming. I gasped outside for a moment, then stepped in again. Main showroom empty. Clutter of chairs and tables, likewise.
The workroom with its storage racks: I should have thought of that first—gas clearly affecting me. Down the corridor, lungs laboring like a steam engine, shove the workroom door, stuck. Locked? Turn the handle, Francis! Gas like a toxic cloud. “Claude! Claude!”
A faint moan. He was lying on the floor behind the big worktable. I grabbed one leg and staggered back, bumping him against the legs of the table and banging my shoulder into the painting rack before I reached the door. Hallway. Better. It’s better in the hallway, I told myself, although I was unable to transmit that conviction to my lungs. They’d had enough. More than enough. I dropped Uncle Lastings’s leg, and I think I’d have lunged for the back step and left him there if a sharp gust of wind hadn’t blown through the corridor.
A gasp of clean air. I grabbed his arm and, stumbling, falling, crawling, reached the back door. Out! I dropped Uncle Lastings, head down and in the clean air, his legs still prone in the hallway, and fell to my knees in the yard. Lunch returned in a disgusting brown-and-yellow spatter. I wiped my mouth. My head was throbbing, and it took me several minutes in the open air to get to grips with the situation.
First thing, Francis, is to stand up. I stood. Next thing is to remove Uncle Lastings from the doorway. Done. Loosen his collar, prop him up. “Uncle Lastings! Claude!” His head lolled and there was no answer. Help needed. Help beyond me. I stood up, dizzy, the courtyard swaying and rippling and stumbled around the building to the main house. I hit the bell with the flat of my hand and kept it there, croaking, “Au secours!”
The door was opened by a starchy-looking maid, disapproval all over her face.
I could feel mon français drifting away in a cloud of carbons. “Gaz! Gaz!”
Right word. Gas is bad. Comes via mains. Threatens everyone.
“Dans l’étable de mon oncle.” Oops! C’est la table de mon oncle, beloved of French lessons. But no uncle. It was Claude. Correction: “L’étable de Claude. Claude est tres malade!” And I flapped my arm toward the back court, lost my balance, and wound up listing against the doorjamb and feeling a good deal removed from what became a frantic bustle. The maid rushed into the yard and began shouting for a doctor. Her mistress got on the phone, high speed and high volume, and a butler, tall and fat with a white moon face, extracted me from the door frame and maneuvered me into a chair.
From then on, it was safe for me to be a spectator. By the time the firemen arrived to see about the gas leak, and my uncle had been carried, I suspect by the maid and the butler, to a nearby doctor’s office, I had recovered enough to speak intelligible French, to conceal my relationship with Claude, and to walk unassisted.
“You’re very lucky,” said the butler. “Enough gas to send the building into the clouds.”
My lungs weren’t impressed, and I wasn’t either. Even in deep disguise as Claude, purveyor of ormolu, my uncle had managed to land me in the soup. Nonetheless, I nodded weakly and agreed that I’d been lucky. “And Monsieur Claude?” I tried for the right amount of concern. He was supposedly a casual acquaintance.
“Dr. Gallopin will see him right. He treated men gassed in the trenches. Monsieur Roleau couldn’t do better anywhere in Paris.”
“Perhaps I should visit him, too. I have lung trouble,” I added and tapped my chest.
The butler agreed this would be prudent; he would escort me as soon as he had locked up the building. “Madame rents the building to Monsieur Roleau. She will not want any risk of his losing stock.”
A few minutes later, he returned to report that the building was airing out nicely. The gas had been shut off, the corroded pipe would be repaired. Everything would be perfectly safe, he assured me, then took my arm and helped me down the block to the doctor’s office. Claude was lying in the main consulting room with an oxygen mask over his face. The doctor took me into his office, listened to my lungs, and had me count backward to see if I was compos mentis.
My asthma was, he said, a complication. He would give me a little oxygen after Monsieur Roleau was finished with the apparatus.
“Will he be all right?” I asked.
The doctor was very tall and very straight backed with a mop of coarse black hair, a narrow face with high cheekbones and prominent eyebrows. He smelled of cigarettes and, faintly, of brandy. His manner was brisk; his speech, clipped. My uncle would find him sympathetic. He reminded me of my father and I found him less so.
“Should be. Oxygen is the best thing. You found him, I understand?”
“Yes. A friend of mine bought a quite valuable boule chest from him. I’d stopped by to check about the shipping and to see if he had acquired any similar pieces.” Did that sound right? I’d clearly been mildly affected by the gas, too. I was finding it hard to tell if what I was saying was plausible, never mind true.
“Probably saved his life. Could you see him home afterward? He will be weak. You will be, too, but your exposure was not as severe.”
“Certainly,” I said, figuring that Uncle Lastings could at least come up with the doctor’s fees and a cab.
When we left the office several hours later, my uncle still looked very peaked. The dyed red hair accentuated his pallor, and his large and vigorous body seemed to have come unstrung at every joint. He moved like an old man, although his mind seemed unaffected. He leaned heavily on my arm, and said, “Nice of you to see me home. It’s Francis, isn’t it? Philip’s little friend? You saved my life, I’m told. Along with the good doctor here.”
Gallopin was on the other side of him, and between us, we got my uncle into a cab. He leaned his head back and breathed heavily for several seconds. Dr.
Gallopin waved, and when he returned to his office, Uncle Lastings asked the driver to take us first to the antique shop.
“You best not go in, Monsieur,” I said en français. “There will still be gas.”
He reached into his pocket for a ring of keys. “There’s a Webley in the bottom drawer of the desk,” he said in soft and rapid English, pointing to a small key. “Right side. And a box of papers. Authentications. Bring those to me. And lock the shutters.” He took a big breath and collapsed against the seat again.
I gave him a look. I didn’t fancy even one more molecule of gas. I fancied the Webley even less. The last time he’d had me fetch his service revolver, nothing good had happened.
“It was deliberate, of course,” he added. “That building hasn’t been lit by gas for twenty years. And I haven’t had the heater on for more than a few hours in the last months.”
“All right,” I said. The cabbie pulled around to the back. I got out, unlocked the back door, and went through the building closing and locking the shutters, but leaving the windows partly open as there was still gas. In the front office, I unlocked the desk drawer and found the Webley wrapped in an old silk scarf. I stuck it in my belt. There was a small box of bullets. I put those in my pocket and closed the drawer. I was on my way out when I remembered that I was supposed to get a box of documents, not a box of bullets. Clearly, gas is bad stuff in more ways than one.
Back to the desk. I unlocked the drawer and found a reinforced green cardboard document box. Checked that it contained authentications, relocked the desk, and made my way out. In the cab, my uncle glanced at me. When I nodded, he gave the driver a nearby address that turned out to be a fine three-story building with a walled garden. Whatever Claude’s tastes might be, my uncle prefers comfort, even luxury. I wondered who was paying the bills this time.