‘You missed your vocation, Madame Pignot. It’s a shame that the police don’t admit women into their ranks,’ Kenji remarked.
‘Women make excellent chefs, though, so woe betide anyone who objects to the whiting and lentil stew I’m making for lunch!’
Kenji made no reply except to sneeze again. As he blew his nose, a few cake crumbs fell out of his lawn pocket handkerchief. He picked one up and tasted it.
‘Raspberry tartlet,’ he murmured.
How lovely their meeting at the Gloppe tea room had been! He found Djina’s agitation enchanting, and delighted in observing the trembling of her fingers, which turned the simple gesture of raising a teacup to her lips into a perilous undertaking. He studied her sweet face, and did his best to contain his joy as he perceived that its timid expression was mingled with an attraction that she could not hide. When he had passed her cup to her, their fingers had touched and she had blushed and lowered her eyes. Bowled over, he felt his own shyness increase in response to hers. The rather superior, off-hand manner he had assumed with all women since Daphné’s death melted away. By the time he kissed her hand at the end of Rue des Dunes, after he had insisted on walking her to her door, he was completely under her spell. He did his best to conceal this from her, even though the sensation filled him with a new energy.
‘I am like Esau, Madame Pignot. I would gladly give up my birthright for a mess of pottage, or even a bowl of whiting and lentils!’ cried Helga Becker.
‘I thought you were an only child.’
‘It was just an image, Madame. I’m feeling carefree this morning, as light as air! Just think, my compatriot, Dr Otto Lilienthal,36 has pulled off yet another victory. Last October, he had already become airborne and floated down the slope of a hill near Rhinow, in Germany. And now, in Steglitz, near Berlin, he has just launched himself off a platform in his flying machine and managed to land three hundred yards away!’
‘Does he think he’s a bird?’
‘He most certainly does! He believes that it will one day be possible for man to create artificial wings like those of birds, which he has been studying for more than ten years, especially swans’ wings. Despite the swan’s weight, it is able to glide while barely moving its wings. That’s because their wings are concave and, when fully extended, they are carried on updraughts in the air around them. They use their tails as rudders to steer with, and off they go!’
Her arms outstretched, Helga Becker was about to knock over a pile of books when Euphrosine blocked her way.
‘So it follows that if you attach two geese to an elephant, take them to the Alps and launch them off the Aiguille du Midi, they’ll fly right over the mountains? What a load of rubbish!’
‘How dare you mock such impressive technological advances? Unverständig!’37
Kenji couldn’t resist getting involved.
‘Although I am a great believer in progress, I must agree with Madame Pignot. When it comes to aeronautics, we are already well supplied: hot air balloons, gas balloons, airships…’
Helga Becker drew herself up and, nostrils quivering, fixed her eyes on a point high above their heads.
‘I guarantee it: today, the engine; tomorrow, independent flight! And no amount of cynical mockery will rob me of that conviction!’
‘What, has there been another robbery?’ cried Joseph, rushing into the shop with his cheeks reddened by the cold and by unaccustomed physical exertion.
‘What are you talking about? Has something been stolen?’ asked Kenji, raising his eyebrows.
‘Er, no … I meant…’
Euphrosine came to her offspring’s aid.
‘Guess what Madame Becker has been predicting, pet: we’re all going to have a pair of wings strapped on us, and be forced to beat them until we go fluttering off, away from God’s earth!’
‘Well, if that’s the way it is, I’m leaving,’ Helga Becker retorted, but as she made to leave she met Victor and his bicycle coming in the opposite direction.
There was a clash of metal, an exchange of tight smiles and obsequious apologies, and then, finally, everything was quiet again.
‘The Teuton has admitted defeat – now the kitchen calls,’ said Euphrosine.
Joseph went to the back of the shop, where Victor was polishing the handlebars of his bike with a shammy leather.
‘I should have taken a cab – the roads are like one big ice rink. But it was worth it: the customs man confirmed that a man with a limp was asking about the murder. What about you? I wasn’t expecting you back so early. What happened?’
‘Mission accomplished, Boss. I came back because Sophie Clairsange had her things delivered to her, so now we know that she’s going to stay at the Hôtel de l’Arrivée for a while. As for the limper, no trace of him at all. But we’re all right, because I’ve got his address. Oh, and I also met—’
‘Not so loud! I’m proud of you, Joseph. Good work – you’re a first-class sleuth.’
Joseph did his best to look modest. He studied the glass case full of quivers and blowpipes attentively, but his face shone with happy pride.
‘We must go back to Rue de Varenne and offer our condolences to Madame de La Gournay. I want to find out who this man with the square face is,’ Victor whispered, out of the corner of his mouth.
‘Don’t forget that he was particularly interested in a key decorated with the image of a unicorn, so that he could get to the Baron’s collection and see whether it had been covered with blood, just like his own dolls – dolls, at his age! Shall I copy all that down for you?’
‘No need, Joseph, it’s all up here,’ said Victor, tapping his forehead.
‘When shall we go?’
‘I’ll have lunch quickly with Tasha, and then I’ll go straight away.’
‘Where shall I meet you?’
‘I’ll go by myself. I’ll telephone you later.’
Joseph seemed to be struggling to understand what Victor had just said. He stood absolutely still, holding his breath, his eyes wide. He knitted his eyebrows and said quietly, ‘What have I done to deserve this punishment?’
Victor replied in a honeyed tone, ‘Oh, nothing whatsoever. You deserted your post when it was crucial not to let Sophie Clairsange slip through our fingers, and you made me look like a fool in front of Monsieur Mori, to whom I had carefully explained that you were spending the day at the Drouot exhibition. Do you know what, Joseph? You’re nothing short of useless. So if I go without you this afternoon, it’ll be good riddance.’
He pushed the door open angrily, slipped on the parquet, nearly fell and staggered back into the shop.
Joseph clenched his fists, suddenly roused to anger.
He really has got a nerve! he fumed. Well, never mind! He shall know nothing of what Bricart told me. Nothing at all. I’ll keep that firmly under my hat! Ergot, the candle, the trial, the whole lot! Really, what’s the world coming to? Bother and blast, he can just go without, Monsieur too-big-for-his-boots Legris!
‘Lunch time!’ roared Euphrosine.
* * *
His eyes fixed firmly on his shoes, Victor twisted his hat in his hands, almost as disconcerted as he had been when he had met La Môminette. The maid with the warts had shown him into a room filled with dark upholstery and draperies, which seemed to blot out the light. Three candelabra cast a dim glow over some sofas arranged in a semicircle, on which several lethargic-looking women were lounging. The women’s faded complexions, their bluish eyelids and their dazed expressions gave their faces a mask-like appearance of intense fatigue. The light of the candles revealed several small dressing tables on which lay, among bottles of perfume and powder compacts, an array of hypodermic syringes made of silver and gold, in leather cases encrusted with precious stones.
One of the women, propped up on her elbow, let out a sigh, which quickly turned into a wild laugh.
‘Clotilde! A handsome stranger has come to fall at your feet! I didn’t know that you had reconciled yourself to the opposite sex!
’
She sat up and, without the slightest embarrassment, hitched up her skirt and petticoats, rolled down her stocking and plunged a needle into her thigh. Madame de La Gournay rose calmly, adjusted the widow’s cap which covered her hair, smoothed her plain grenadine silk dress and straightened the short cape she wore over her shoulders. She was as tall as Victor. As she drew closer to him, he could see her chalky complexion and the dilated pupils that betrayed her addiction.
‘Madame, I was terribly sorry to hear of your husband’s unjust and untimely death, and may I—’
‘That is a pleonasm, Monsieur: death is always unjust,’ she observed in a neutral tone which showed that she was not entirely under the influence of the morphine. ‘I am astonished to see that, despite his numerous misdemeanours, Edmond managed to retain some friends. For you are a friend, unless I am mistaken?’
‘Certainly. I used to provide him with books about alchemy. We met—’
She silenced him with an upraised hand.
‘The details do not concern me. Nothing about my late husband is of the slightest interest to me. If you wish to pay your respects, the body is laid out upstairs. Octavie will show you the way.’
She rang a bell and the maid reappeared. The clatter of her pattens was not enough to drown out the sniggers of the women as Victor left the room.
After following a series of winding corridors, they came to the antechamber that Joseph had described. Octavie stopped and stared at Victor. The crepe bow attached to her collar added to her forbidding appearance.
‘Madame is ruining herself with that drug. She may well say that it’s a remedy to calm her nerves, but she’ll soon be a wreck if she carries on with it. Sometimes she sleeps for hours, sometimes she paces up and down all night. It spoils her appetite and her brain’s got more holes in it than a sieve!’
‘She seems not to care about her husband’s death.’
‘She doesn’t give a damn. I’m the only who ever cared for him here. And even I lost my nerve when it came to calling a priest to give him the last rites and absolve him of his sins. Our priest, a good man, took the initiative himself and sent his cousin just as Monsieur was about to pass. Thanks to that, he may still go to heaven despite his faults. Madame and her great oaf of a son certainly couldn’t be counted on … they’re a pair of heathens! They abandoned him. And he dares to play the piano on a day of mourning! That boy is heartless.’
The sound of a clumsy pianist murdering a Chopin polonaise drifted from some far-off room.
‘Did the Baron leave a large legacy?’
‘Not on your life! The fortune has all gone – there’s just a pile of debts where it used to be. And the house is mortgaged to the hilt. Madame and her son are lucky that Monsieur’s family, in Orléans, are going to take them in. As for me, at my age, references don’t mean much any more, and it’ll be difficult for me to find another position…’
She looked sheepish, and Victor felt obliged to reply, ‘I’m only a bookseller, but I’ll keep my eyes open.’
‘Oh, thank you, Monsieur, thank you!’ cried Octavie, and she showed him into the bedroom, stepping aside as soon as she had opened the double door.
The stuffy atmosphere of the room, with its closed shutters and macabre setting, made Victor feel slightly uneasy. The body looked huge, stretched out on the bed and dressed in riding gear. The Baron’s hands were joined over a large ivory crucifix. A row of candles cast wild flickering shadows over the walls.
‘Is it true that somebody smashed his skull?’ Victor asked Octavie, who was in a hurry to escape from the room.
‘The doctors finally admitted the truth of what the nurse had said all along: somebody knocked him off his horse, the poor man. A real-life game of Aunt Sally, except they were aiming for the back of his neck instead of his head. And they didn’t even take his money!’
As she made off down the corridor, she delivered a heartfelt monologue on the treachery and cowardice of the perpetrators, which gradually faded into the distance.
Left alone with Edmond de La Gournay, Victor swiftly sought out a paraffin lamp and lit it. The corpse regained its normal proportions, and its outfit became almost grotesque: silk hat, morning coat and jodphurs. The boots and whip were waiting close by, laid out on a rug. Was the horse pawing impatiently in a nearby corridor?
Victor glanced around the room with some trepidation: it was filled with innumerable Louis XVI cupboards and sideboards, each one of which could have concealed a multitude of keys. Where to start? He pulled open a drawer and a pile of letters and bills spilt out. Next, he knelt down in front of the bookcase, and was worried when he felt a sudden cramp flash through his right calf – was he already getting old? Standing up again, he pushed his hat back and scratched his forehead, perplexed. It would take at least three days to sort through all this.
He tried to gather together everything he could remember.
‘Look deep into your memory,’ Kenji used to tell him. Now then, where did his father used to hide the key to the larder, to stop his son stealing sugar and apples? Victor frowned, and the image of a richly decorated vase standing on the mantelpiece in the dining room came to him. The father had underestimated the son’s perspicacity: Victor had quickly discovered the hiding place, but hadn’t taken advantage of it, so fearful was he of the punishment that would inevitably ensue.
Of the three vases that stood in a row, looking down on all this bric-a-brac, the second proved to contain the prize. Victor fished a key out of it, and saw that it had a tiny golden unicorn inlaid in its ornate head. He was full of childish triumph, until another thought stopped him short: which lock would it open?
Once again, the furniture seemed to crowd round him hostilely. Was the answer even in this room? Would he have to comb every inch of the whole house? Discouraged, he began to ferret around in the death chamber, the presence of the corpse no longer perturbing him at all. Wherever the man who had been called Monsieur de La Gournay was now, the torments he had endured, his taste for ether, the occult and money, the very reasons for the criminal act which had caused his death – all these had disappeared when he had breathed his last breath. And what did it matter if a curious ghost was observing Victor as he turned around and about like a hamster in a wheel?
The toile de Jouy wallpaper depicted shepherdesses watching over herds of pale-blue sheep. Amorous musketeers popped out from behind an infinite number of small hillocks. The galloping of their steeds began to make Victor feel dizzy, and he stopped his feverish searching. There was something odd about the wallpaper. He examined the wall opposite the window and gradually realised what it was that seemed strange. Each little pastoral scene was exactly the same, except for one, which contained a sheep that seemed to reflect the light. Was it a nail? Without taking his eyes off it, he moved closer. A lock! He raised the lamp and noticed that the edges of the strips of wallpaper were uneven. He traced the join with his fingertips, and found that it formed a rectangle, about five feet tall and two feet wide. He put down the lamp and knocked: it sounded hollow. There must be an empty space on the other side.
He turned the key in the lock and a corridor opened up in front of him. He took a candle and, stooping beneath the low ceiling, began to make his way along the dark passage. The door closed behind him. He had only taken a few steps when he came up against another wall. The candle guttered and went out. He wanted to turn round and go back, but there was no longer any escape that way. Victor slid to the floor to rest his back, and suddenly retched: he felt seven years old again, and his father was all-powerful, imposing, threatening, without pity. The implacable sentence had been passed. What crime had he committed to deserve being locked in the cellar? The cellar: darkness and solitude. He couldn’t stand it. He would surely die.
Crouching with his knees up against his chin, Victor searched desperately through his pockets and finally found his lighter. The candle wick lit straight away, but then smoked and flickered. He felt a slight draught on his forehead.
>
‘Oh God, please let there be…’
A breath of air was coming through a tiny crevice in the woodwork. He put his hand against it and heard a click. A panel slid to one side.
Bent double, he clambered through and found himself in a narrow room full of even more jumble than the death chamber, lit only by a faint ray of light filtering through a tiny bull’s-eye window. At first, all Victor could see was piles of books, but as his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light he was able to make out serried ranks of unicorn sculptures, in bronze, marble, amethyst, agate and china, prancing on shelves and display cases. Several of the statuettes were broken. The air was stale, but he also detected another, sour smell which turned his stomach. Had he been transported straight into a unicorn’s belly? Then he saw the brownish stains, like mould, infecting the whole room and giving it the appearance of pock-marked skin. He looked more closely: it was dried blood. Overcome with nausea, he saw great splashes covering the floorboards, the rug and the walls. He held the candle nearer to some of the books, and deciphered their titles: The Origins of Alchemy by Berthelot, and tracts by Nicolas Flamel, Albertus Magnus, Eliphas Lévi, Roger Bacon, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus and Helvétius, all stained with scaly mould.
‘A shame – they’re all originals, and they’re ruined,’ Victor murmured.
A sudden flash of light hurt his eyes. On an oval mirror in a frame decorated with acanthus flowers, some words had been scrawled in white, in capital letters:
IN MEMORY OF BRUMAIRE
AND THE NIGHT OF THE DEAD
LOUISE
Victor leapt back and knocked over a table, sending several unicorns flying. To stop himself falling, he caught hold of a handful of medallions that were fixed to the wall: they were exact replicas of Martin Lorson’s unlucky talisman. The fatal mystery which had been troubling him and Joseph was beginning to make sense: the La Villette medallion had belonged to Edmond de La Gournay who, like Louise, had been brutally murdered … She couldn’t possibly have written this abstruse message. So who had? The mysterious Sophie Clairsange, in a fit of vengeance? Hermance Guérin? The limper? The Millionaire? The man with the square face? He looked at the key to the room, half expecting it, too, to be covered in blood like the key to the forbidden room in Bluebeard’s castle. He put it in his pocket and tried to open the tiny window to let in some fresh air. He pulled, but the latch had seized up. He staggered backwards and bumped into the door he had come through, which slid shut before he could stop it. Victor screwed up his courage and searched the narrow surface for some kind of hidden mechanism. He caught his foot on a poker lying on the floor and, bending down, discovered a few chips of wood that seemed to have been knocked off one of the bookshelves. A second door, disguised by a covering of fake books, was right in front of him. It gave easily when he pushed it – somebody had forced it open.
Strangled in Paris: A Victor Legris Mystery (Victor Legris Mysteries) Page 15