* * *
Beyond the streetlamp, Rue des Vinaigriers was lost in shadow. The clock in the bar hummed and then chimed ten. The landlord lit a second lamp. As he sat at the bar and looked out at the house on the corner of Rue Albouy, Corentin Jourdan felt as though the groups of men playing cards were speaking a foreign language. The two glasses of cognac he had drained one after the other had not been enough to stop him shaking. He went and sat down closer to the door.
Dazed with shock, he had brought the mare back to her stall, fed her and brushed her down before collapsing here, a few yards away from the house, whose shutters were all closed.
He was obsessed with one thought: he had got the wrong one! How could he have known that the blonde had died her hair black?
He paid the bill and crossed the street, still lit by the red glow from the bakery, went up the three floors to his room and lay down. He was tired, but sleep eluded him. What had happened at the La Villette tollgate seemed not to belong to any chronological sequence of time. He remembered having followed Sophie Clairsange for several days. How long, exactly? He could not remember. First, she had gone to a street near the church of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule. She had stopped the carriage in front of an elegant house, but had simply looked at the building without getting out. Then she had done the same thing opposite a large town house in Rue de Varenne, and then again in Rue des Martyrs, outside a residential building.
Corentin Jourdan had carefully taken note of all three addresses, hoping to identify the residents and match their names to the information he had found in the blue notebook.
A train whistling broke the silence, and all of a sudden he felt unbearably lonely. He missed his home, Gilliatt, Flip, even old Madame Guénéqué. He had neither friends nor confidants in his quest, only the certainty that he must do everything in his power to achieve his end. Eventually, he fell asleep. His dreams were filled with the image of Clélia.
* * *
At daybreak a series of violent blows threatened to break down the door of the wooden shed. Martin Lorson, yawning and scratching his aching head, opened the door to Alfred Gamache, who was fuming with rage.
‘Is that the way you thank me, eh? And to think that, if I hadn’t helped you, you’d be sleeping under a bridge by now! D’you think I’m stupid? The police found a stiff by the canal, so they came looking for me and what did they find? My hat and bayonet abandoned in the dust! Good thing I turned up sharpish just after. I told them I’d responded to an urgent call of nature, leaving the symbols of my authority to keep guard in my place. I said that whoever had throttled the poor woman must have perpetrated the dreadful crime while I was otherwise distracted.’
‘Did they believe you?’
‘I should hope so, because thanks to you I’m in a fix! Apparently, they’re going to summon me to the police station for questioning some time soon!’
‘You … you’ll keep me out of it, won’t you?’
The knot in Martin Lorson’s stomach seemed to rise up to his throat, and he began to stammer, terrified to admit that what he had persuaded himself was a hallucination brought on by the rum had actually happened, and that he had witnessed a murder.
‘Yes, you imbecile, but it’s not as a favour to you. If they find out about my escapade, I’ll lose my job. Now, spit it out.’
‘What?’
‘Tell me what happened, by God! They didn’t just invent it, did they?’
‘The truth is … I’d dropped off for a moment. I’d had a bit to drink, and then I just fell asleep. When I woke up, I saw a man standing next to a woman, all stiff and stretched out, and I was so afraid that I—’
‘Blind drunk, I’ll bet!’
‘No, I swear, I was just tired. I promise it won’t happen again, Alfred!’
‘Well, there’s no point fretting about it now. One of the flics is an old army pal. And, in any case, stiffs turn up all the time around here, so one more now and again doesn’t cause a stir … Go on, you old scoundrel, go back to sleep, and, word of honour, it’ll be our secret. We’ve been mates for so long, we won’t fall out over a crime of passion.’
When Gamache was gone, Martin Lorson stayed wide awake. A crime of passion? He kept seeing the villain in the felt hat rifling through the bag, indifferent to the fate of the woman spread-eagled on the pavement.
Something didn’t fit.
Martin Lorson struggled to order his thoughts. It was a laborious process, but eventually he managed to piece the jigsaw together.
A masked woman plays hopscotch in front of the rotunda.
An unseen carriage stops behind the toll barrier. Someone jumps out and, after a brief exchange of words, strangles the woman and disappears. The carriage drives off, clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop.
‘That much I’m sure of. So why did the bloke come back again straight away?’
Martin Lorson finished off the last dregs of the rum and all of a sudden it hit him like a slap in the face: the killer couldn’t be in two places at once, so there must have been a second criminal lying in wait. Yes, that was it! And it was this second man who had come back to peer at the dead woman’s face.
‘Unless … unless the strangler never got back into that blasted carriage. What if he saw me? If he did see me…’
Martin Lorson thrust his trembling hands into his pockets. His fingers closed round the medallion. He stifled a curse.
CHAPTER 3
Wednesday 14 February
A man was loitering outside 18, Rue des Saints-Pères. Dressed in a tightly fitting overcoat and a black velvet beret, rather like a latter-day Van Dyck, he was feigning an interest in the window of the Elzévir bookshop. On the left-hand side, several books about famous criminal cases and how they were solved were on display, with the complete works of Émile Gaboriau taking pride of place. The right-hand side was filled with old books illustrated with engravings, and other more recent ones, many of them English, including The Picture of Dorian Gray, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.6
It was a dank, gloomy morning, and a persistent drizzle was making the paving stones damp and treacherous. The streets were deserted. The same could not be said of the bookshop, though, which had been invaded by a quartet of society ladies all decked out in their winter finery. There was an old man with them who had the look of a poet about him: his forehead was marked by fine lines and the corners of his mouth were curled into a sardonic expression, only partly masked by his luxuriant beard.
Maurice Laumier peered in through the window. Kenji Mori, one of the owners, was making a discreet exit up the stairs leading to the flat above the shop, whilst Joseph Pignot, his assistant, was leaning against a fireplace adorned with a bust of Molière, reading a newspaper. There was no sign of the other owner, Victor Legris.
Making his way over to the porch of the adjoining building, Maurice Laumier deliberated for a moment before resigning himself and knocking on the door of the concierge’s room.
‘Be brave,’ he adjured himself. ‘Mustn’t fall at the first hurdle!’
Micheline Ballu abandoned her pile of carrots and turnips. The scandalous corruption of these final years of the century had spawned more than its fair share of eccentrics, and since she and her late husband had begun working as concierges in this neighbourhood full of bookish types and students, nothing surprised her any more. She hardly batted an eyelid at the sight of the damp and dishevelled dandy. By the look of him, he was probably trying to sell her something.
‘O keeper of the gate, goddess of this vestibule, please be so good as to tell me where the venerable Monsieur Legris is currently residing.’
The concierge had been about to rebuff her unwelcome visitor, but to be addressed as a goddess, when secretly she had always thought of herself as having a lot in common with the Queen of Sheba, was music to her ears. How could she resist? She quickly took off her apron and smoothed her hair, before pointing upstairs and murmuring, with a little curtsy that made her arthritic knee
twinge, ‘First on the left.’
But when the young whippersnapper bounded off up the stairs without so much as a ‘thank you’, she bellowed after him, ‘They probably won’t let you in, you know! They’re all as lazy as each other, and the apartment’s knee-deep in filth!’
With a face like thunder, she retreated back into her lair.
‘Sheba Ballu! Really, you should be ashamed of yourself – at your age! You’re nothing but a cracked old jug, you silly fool,’ she muttered into her vegetables.
* * *
Standing in front of the apartment above the bookshop, Maurice Laumier hesitated for a second time. He was not on the most cordial terms with Victor Legris, and he baulked at the idea of begging for his help. Finally, he rang the doorbell.
An imposing, thickset woman, her hair drawn into a tight bun bristling with pins, appeared at the door armed with a ladle. He recoiled, awestruck, crying, ‘Incomparable Aphrodite, guardian fairy of this castle, might I humbly request an interview with Monsieur Legris on a private matter?’
Euphrosine Pignot frowned, trying to remember where she had seen this young firebrand before. She was sure he was some sort of artist, but his name escaped her.
‘He moved out ages ago. And, anyway, he’ll be in the shop at this time of day.’
Before the visitor had time to protest, she closed the door in his face and went back to the stove.
‘Who is he, anyway, the big beanpole? Not a respectable person, that’s for sure! And what was all that about dying for a cup of tea? I’ve already got enough to do and now they want me to start serving tea? If Monsieur Mori thinks I can turn myself into one of those creatures with ten arms like that horrible Hindu statue on his dressing table, he’s got another think coming! Me, the mother of his son-in-law!’
She locked herself in the kitchen. When she had all her pots bubbling away on the stove and stood over them singing hymns, nobody could cross the threshold of her culinary fortress, even if they were part of the household. The principal victim of this eviction, Kenji Mori, had resorted to making his tea on a small stove in his sitting room. In her new role as head chef for the family, Euphrosine was becoming skilled at slipping meat or fish into the mashed or puréed vegetables that she prepared. Now that she was about to become a grandmother at long last, she watched over her daughter-in-law as keenly as any midwife. She was tormented by the idea that her future descendants would have weak constitutions because Iris Pignot, née Mori, was a vegetarian. Every evening, holed up in her little flat on Rue Visconti where she now lived alone, she racked her brains to come up with nutritious recipes to nourish the baby who was to continue her family line. The child’s Japanese ancestry mattered little to her, and she did not even consider the fact that it might turn out to be a girl. She now had time to sit and think about all these things, because since her son’s marriage she was no longer burdened with looking after the flat above the bookshop or the one at Rue Fontaine, where Victor and Tasha Legris lived. Monsieur Mori had taken on Zulma Tailleroux, a dreamy young woman employed to do the housework, which she did with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop. It had long since become impossible to keep count of the number of vases, glasses and plates that she had smashed. For Kenji Mori, the fact that he had got rid of a tyrannical housekeeper only to replace her with a clumsy girl was endlessly irksome, but he was determined not to let his annoyance show: Euphrosine would be only too delighted to point out that he had nobody but himself to blame. She had seen straight away that this Zulma girl didn’t amount to much, but Monsieur Mori, so high and mighty, and hoodwinked by this little temptress – like all men, only one thing on their minds – had taken her on.
‘A good thing too! If she smashes all his precious things, that’ll teach him a lesson! Just as long as she doesn’t lay a finger on the baby!’ she muttered between hymn verses, hacking away at a slice of calf’s liver.
The terrible vision of a baby suffering at the hands of the new employee appeared before her. Always quick to imagine corruption and deficiency in others, she kept a journal in which she noted down people’s failings. She promised herself that she would add some juicy details to the section on Zulma Tailleroux, as well as describing the ridiculous flatterer in a beret whom she had just seen off.
* * *
Despite the shrill tinkle of the bell, no heads turned when Maurice Laumier entered the bookshop. He hid his face inside a copy of Octave Mirbeau’s Tales from the Village, which he had picked up from a pile of new arrivals, so didn’t see the expression of annoyance on Joseph Pignot’s face.
‘Do carry on, Monsieur Pignot!’ cried a woman with a face like a goat.
Joseph continued to read aloud from the newspaper:
‘After an inspection by the magistrate and the head of the municipal laboratories, the Terminus café is once again open for business. For part of the day and the evening, Rue Saint-Lazare was obstructed by a crowd hoping to join the customers already there and hear the witnesses’ testimonies. For our part, it must be admitted that we entered through one door and left immediately by another, more amused by watching the crowd than by being crushed in it. Police Sergeant Poisson, who was shot twice in the chest as he tried to bar the terrorist’s way, received a visit from Lépine, the Chief of Police, who awarded him the Cross of the Légion d’honneur.’
‘That man is a hero – they should put up a statue of him!’ intoned a woman who was wearing a dress of aubergine silk and carrying a fur muffler from which emerged the leads of two miniature dogs, a Schipperke and a Maltese.
‘Did you hear that, Raphaëlle? An attack in the station where I had been just a few hours earlier, with Mademoiselle Helga Becker and my cousin Salomé!’ complained a plump woman.
‘These anarchists don’t even know themselves what they’ll dream up next! It was lucky that this maniac’s device, apparently a pot filled with gunpowder and bullets, collided with a lampshade, which threw it off course so that it landed on some tables. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have just been twenty injured, there would have been deaths!’ cried Blanche de Cambrésis whom, privately, Joseph Pignot referred to as ‘the nanny-goat’.
‘Finish the article, Monsieur Pignot,’ ordered a majestic woman, whose face on one side was twisted into a painful grimace.
Renouncing his anonymity, Maurice Laumier tried to attract Joseph Pignot’s attention, but Joseph cleared his throat and continued.
‘Police Sergeants Bigot and Barbès also deserve to receive a Cross. The libertarian attacked them on Rue de Rome, and they fought with him hand to hand until they eventually succeeded in immobilising him, with the aid of several doughty passers-by. And, dear readers, did I neglect to mention that our rough and ready pyrotechnician appears to be a music lover, who decided to act while the orchestra was playing Martha by Flotow, or some similar minuet? When summoned to state his identity at the police station, this eighteen-year-old upstart, with only the slightest hint of a moustache, declared, “I am X from Peking.7 That is all you need to know.”’
‘What a nerve! I’d have him beheaded without a trial, this little Pekinese! Or else I’d send him to the front line wrapped in dynamite, and he could be a flare for our brave soldiers fighting in the colonies! Sooner or later Madagascar will be ours,’ piped up the old man.
‘Madagascar?’ said the plump woman. ‘You share the beliefs of Colonel Réauville then?’
‘I am rarely wrong in my predictions, my dear Madame de Flavignol. I have contacts in government. Madagascar will adopt French culture very easily as soon as we have conquered it.’
‘Indochina will also become French before long, no matter how rebellious, Chinese and anti-Western it is at the moment, provided we can root out their yellow culture by substituting French for their Annamite dialects, which are an inferior sort of chatter. Those are the terms used by Monsieur Gabriel Bonvalot, the famous explorer,’ declaimed the woman with the twisted face.
‘I see, Madame Brix, that you too are keen to see the expansion of
our culture,’ replied the old man approvingly.
‘Certainly. Following my stroke and my marriage to Colonel Réauville, I decided to start an artistic salon in my home in Rue Barbet-de-Jouy. I organise dinners there, which the members of the Dupleix Committee8 often attend. They are experts in these matters. As my fourth husband never ceases to remind us, “The Celestial Empire and its satellite states have no real language – so let us give them one!”’
‘Bravo! Where there is effort, success will follow.’
Exhausted by the conversation of the battle-axes – the name he gave to the windbags who surrounded him – and by the persistence of Maurice Laumier who, the previous year, had tried to seduce Iris, Joseph sought to conceal himself behind his newspaper. He noticed an advertisement at the bottom of the page.
Modern! Unprecedented!
Ever in search of the most exciting serials for our readers, Le Passe-partout is proud to be the first to publish the second work by Monsieur Joseph Pignot, Thule’s Golden Chalice. The first instalment appears next month and those who enjoyed The Strange Affair at Colombines (published as a novel by Charpentier & Fasquelle) will love the gothic adventures of the intrepid Frida von Glockenspiel and her dog Éleuthère, on the trail of the evil amber. It is a story that will enchant our male readers just as it will delight the ladies and our younger readers.
Taken aback, Joseph folded the newspaper, set it down next to the bust of Molière, and scratched his head, muttering, ‘Those swine! I’ve been waiting for a reply since October. They could have warned me! We haven’t even discussed the contract. All they gave me was two hundred francs – that’s nothing! Next time, I’ll demand a thousand francs! Although Clusel won’t like it, that’s for sure. I’d go down to eight hundred francs, but that would be my last offer, otherwise…’
Strangled in Paris: A Victor Legris Mystery (Victor Legris Mysteries) Page 4