The Montmartre Investigation

by Claude Izner

  ‘Savages! Tormenting to death these poor beasts worn out by pulling the bourgeois along the streets of Paris! My brave horses, you certainly know what it is to work hard. And the day you’re of no use you’ll be sent to the knackers’ yard or to the abattoir at Villejuif! Dirty swindling dealers!’

  ‘So, here comes our friend Grégoire Mercier, the purveyor of milk direct to your home, the saviour of consumptives, the ailing and the chlorotic! Well, Grégoire, still heaping invective on the world? I’m the one who should grumble – you’re late, my fine fellow!’

  ‘I couldn’t help it, Monsieur Noël. I had so much to do,’ replied the goatherd to a horse dealer who was impatiently waving a household bottle at him. ‘First, at dawn I had to take the she-kids to graze on the grass on some wasteland at the Maison-Blanche. Then I had to visit a customer on Quai de la Tournelle with a liver complaint; she has to have milk from Nini Moricaude – I feed her carrots. After that it was straight off to do some business at the menagerie at the Botanical Gardens.’

  ‘You’re curing the chimpanzees with goat’s milk?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Monsieur Noël! No, I had to speak to someone and…’

  ‘All right, all right, I don’t need your whole life story.’

  Grégoire Mercier knelt down beside a white goat and milked it, then held out a bowl of creamy milk to the horse dealer, who sniffed it suspiciously.

  ‘It smells sour. Are you sure it’s fresh?’

  ‘Of course! As soon as she wakes up Mélie Pecfin gets a double ration of hay fortified with iodine; it’s the best thing for strengthening depleted blood.’

  ‘Depleted, depleted, my wife is not depleted! I’d like to see how you’d be if you’d just given birth to twins! I’ll take it to her while it’s still warm.’

  The man dropped a coin into the goatherd’s hand and snatched up the bowl.

  ‘Tomorrow, do you want me to deliver to your house on Rue Poliveau?’

  The horse dealer turned his back without even bothering to say thank you.

  ‘That’s right, run off to your missus. You may treat her better than you do your horses, but you don’t cherish her the way I cherish my goats when they have kids! Isn’t that right, my beauties? Papa Grégoire gives you sugar every morning and he nourishes your babies with hot wine. Come on, Berlaud, let’s go!’

  As he reached Rue Croulebarbe, Grégoire Mercier regained his good humour. Now he was back on home turf, the borders of which were the River Bièvre4 to one side and to the other the orchards where the drying racks of the leather-dressers were lined up.

  Freed from the strap holding them prisoner, the goats gambolled between the poplar trees bordering the narrow river, its brown water specked with foam. The Bièvre snaked its way along by tumbledown houses and dye-works whose chimneys belched out thick smoke. Although he was used to the sweetish steam of the cleaning tubs and the fumes from the scalding vats where the colours were mixed, Grégoire Mercier wrinkled his nose. Piled up under the hangars, hundreds of skins stained with blood lay hardening, waiting to be plunged in buckets of softening agent. After a long soaking, they would be hung out and beaten by apprentices, releasing clouds of dust that covered the countryside like snow.

  Determined not to drop his find, Berlaud guided the goats on to the riverbank where tomatoes, petits pois and green beans grew. He hurried past the wickerwork trays of the peat sellers and the coaching-shed of Madame Guédon who leased hand-carts for use on Ruelle des Reculettes, which opened out just beyond the crumbling wall behind the lilac hedge.

  Old buildings with exposed beams housed the families of the curriers. Blackened twisted vines ran over their packed earth façades. The sound of pistons, and the occasional shriek of a strident whistle, served as a reminder that this was the town and not the countryside.

  Letting his dog and beasts trot ahead, Grégoire Mercier stopped to greet Monsieur Vrétot, who combined work as a concierge with his trade as a shoemaker and cobbler to make ends meet. Then the goatherd started up the stairs, whistling on every landing. Thirty years earlier he had left his native Beauce for Paris, and settled at the heart of this unhealthy neighbourhood, ruled by the misery and stench of the tanneries. A delivery boy for the cotton factory by Pont d’Austerlitz, he had fallen in love with a laundress, and they had married and had two little boys. Three happy years were brutally cut short by the death from tuberculosis of Jeanette Mercier. Moved by the plight of the little motherless boys, public assistance had given them a goat to provide nourishment, until consumption carried the little boys off in their turn. When he had overcome his grief, Grégoire decided to keep the goat and take in others as well. He had never remarried.

  He reached the fifth floor, where his flock were massed before a door at the end of a dark corridor. As soon as he closed the door of his garret, the goats went into the boxes set up along the wall. He went into a second room, furnished with a camp bed, a table, two stools and a rickety sideboard, shrugged off his cloak and hurried to prepare the warm water and bran that his goats expected on returning from their travels. He also had to feed Mémère the doyenne a bottle of oats mixed with mint, before opening the cubby hole where Rocambole the billy goat was languishing. Finally he heated up some coffee for himself and took it to drink beside Mélie Pecfin, his favourite. It was then that he noticed Berlaud. He was sitting on his blanket, wagging his tail, his find from the Botanical Gardens still between his paws, but with his eyes fixed on the sugar bowl. Grégoire pretended not to know what his dog was after and Berlaud growled meaningfully.

  ‘Lie down!’

  Instead of obeying, the dog adopted an attitude of absolute servility, flattened his ears, raised his rump and crept stealthily forward, begging for his master’s attention. Grégoire distracted him by throwing him a sugar cube and grabbed the dog’s spoils.

  ‘What’s that? That’s not a bone, that’s…that’s a…How can anyone mislay something like that? Oh, there’s something inside…’

  Grégoire was so puzzled he forgot to drink his coffee.

  Lying back with his hands under his head, the man reflected on the enormity of what he had done. He had returned exhausted at dawn and sprawled on top of the rumpled sheet under his overcoat, going over the events of the previous night. The journey to the wine market on Rue Linné had barely taken him ten minutes. The blonde girl had slept deeply under the effect of the sleeping draught and he had carried her to the carriage without difficulty. No mistakes, no witnesses. And then? Child’s play; she had not suffered.

  He put a coffee pot on the still warm stove, went over to the window and looked down into the street. It was an autumn day like any other. He had managed everything to perfection. It would take the police a while to identify the blonde and by then he would have had his vengeance. As for the young thug he had hired, there was no risk that he would give him away or try to blackmail him – when they found his body they would imagine it had been a settling of accounts. No one would link the two murders. He let the curtain fall. A detail was troubling him. That fellow at the first floor window…had he spotted him? He would have to reassure himself, find out who the man was and perhaps…

  ‘You’re mad,’ he said out loud.

  But he let this thought go, and instead gloated over his plan, which he considered ingenious, cunning, brilliant – it had come off without a hitch, except that when he’d arrived at Killer’s Crossing5 he had noticed that the blonde was only wearing one shoe. It would have been much too risky to return to Rue Linné. At first he had panicked – that kind of error could be fatal. Then the solution had presented itself: all he had to do was remove the other shoe.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee.

  ‘The flics will easily trace the owner of the stolen carriage but so what! Where will that get them, the fools?’

  As he hunted in the pocket of his overcoat for some cigarettes, three little stains on the grey material caught his eye. Blood? It was an alpaca coat; it would be costly to get rid of it.
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  ‘Just wine,’ he decided.

  He inspected his trousers and shoes: spotless. He sat down at the table and regarded the red silk shoe sitting beside a flask of sulphuric acid.

  ‘The police will think it was a crime of passion.’

  It was an amusing idea, and it soothed him.

  ‘In fact, I can make use of the shoe.’

  He opened a drawer, took out some writing paper, a pen and an inkwell and wrote out an address:

  Mademoiselle C. Bontemps

  15 Chaussée de l’Étang

  Saint-Mandé. Seine

  Victor sat on a bench outside a building on Rue des Mathurins, leafing through Paris Photographie, a review to which he had just subscribed. He looked half-heartedly at an article by Paul Nadar and a collection of portraits of Sarah Bernhardt. His mind was elsewhere; he had not warned Tasha he was coming as he planned to surprise her. He consulted the pneumatic clock and decided to wander slowly to Tasha’s apartment. Making a detour to avoid Boulevard Haussmann, which stirred up unhappy memories, he turned off down Rue Auber and walked along Rue Laffitte.

  As he passed 60 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette he felt a sudden wave of nostalgia. He pictured Tasha’s miniscule loft, and the memory of the early days of their affair produced an ardent longing to share his life with her.

  On Rue Fontaine he noted with satisfaction that the little notice was still up in the hairdresser’s window:

  Shop and Apartment to Let

  For information contact the concierge at 36b

  He had made up his mind. He went in under the porch.

  On Thursdays the courtyard overlooked by Tasha’s studio became the domain of the joiner’s little girls, who were energetically playing hopscotch using a wooden quoit. A washing line stretched from a second floor window to the acacia tree in the middle of the courtyard. On windy days Victor loved to watch the washing billow like the sails of a boat. He circled the water pump splashed white with bird droppings and made his way over to the back room of the hairdresser. He shaded his eyes to make out the layout of the room through the dirty window: it was a well-proportioned space. Once done up it would make a splendid photographic studio!…Yes, it was the ideal solution; he would only have a few yards to cross…

  Tasha was leaning over a pedestal table mixing colours on her palette. Lemon yellow, Veronese green and Prussian blue echoed the tones of the canvas she was working on, which depicted a laurel branch and two ears of corn emerging from an iridescent vase. The slanting rays of sunshine caught the brilliant copper lights of her hair, which hung loose. On impulse Victor buried his face in the magnificent mane of red hair.

  ‘Victor! You gave me a fright!’ cried the young woman. ‘I should wipe my brush on your shirt! Oh, it doesn’t matter, I wasn’t getting anywhere anyway.’

  She threw the corn and the laurel down beside a potted palm.

  ‘I’m sick of still lifes!’

  Victor, sitting in a Tudor chair, watched her put the vase away in a sideboard, then turn back to her easel.

  ‘Tasha, am I preventing you from fulfilling your potential?’

  ‘Of course not, idiot, I’m just not up to it, that’s all! I’m incapable of distinguishing the incidental from the essential.’

  ‘You’re overworking! Sometimes less is more; take a step back. What are you trying to prove?’

  ‘Maurice Laumier says that…’

  ‘Oh please! For pity’s sake! Forget about him! He has no originality; he thinks theory obviates the need for creation. Theory, theory, that’s all he talks about!’

  ‘You really do hate him.’

  ‘I despise what your Laumier stands for; there’s a difference. He paints by numbers and he calls that art. What he’s really interested in is making a sale.’

  ‘First of all, he’s not my Laumier, secondly…’

  ‘I’m right and you know it. Good grief! You don’t have to bow to fashion! Explore your interior universe, search what Kenji calls “the chambers of the soul”…Excuse me, I’m getting carried away, but perhaps you should take more interest in other aspects of life, in people.’

  ‘Do you think so? That’s what Henri advocated…Come on, don’t look like that. You have no reason to be jealous; he’s just a kind friend, and he’s talented. I met him at the Salon des Indépendents6 and…’

  ‘I demand nothing of you, you are free.’

  ‘Oh, stop it, Victor. Please don’t be childish; it’s becoming tiresome.’

  She knelt down before him, slid her fingers under his collar and caressed his neck. He relaxed, ecstatic to feel her so close.

  ‘Isn’t it hot in here?’ she murmured, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘There now, I need to see the only male model that inspires me.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Just a quick drawing, there, on the sofa. Come on, take everything off.’

  She picked up a sketchbook.

  ‘I’ll call it Monsieur Récamier in the Nude. Stay still.’

  She adjusted the position of his right arm across his chest. He embraced her, pulling her towards him, fumbling to unfasten her dress. The sketchbook slipped to the floor.

  ‘Oh well, the light isn’t very good,’ she said.

  He kissed her on the nose, the forehead, the hair as she helped him to slip off her dress.

  ‘Tasha, marry me; it would make everything so simple.’

  ‘It’s too soon,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not ready; I don’t want children…Have you got any…?’

  He looked at her intensely, propped on one elbow, patted the pocket of his frock coat and pulled out a box of condoms.

  ‘Victor, are you angry with me?’

  ‘You know perfectly well that I always make an effort to be careful, even without protection.’

  He pushed a lock of hair back from her cheek.

  ‘We’ll have to wait a little before we move on to the serious business and I advise you not to laugh,’ he murmured, clasping her to him.

  A little later, as they lay together on the narrow sofa, he came close to confessing that he had rented the hairdressers’ shop.

  ‘Tasha, I…’

  But she silenced him with a kiss. Everything ceased to exist, except her. He no longer felt the need to explain. Ideas, the future; nothing mattered. She stretched; she was happy. Her eyes were shining. Her breasts rose and fell with her quickened breathing.

  ‘I adore you. But my back hurts. We’ll have to move to the bed!’ she said over her shoulder, already making for the alcove.

  Grégoire Mercier’s sciatica was troubling him. How long had he been sheltering under the porch of this building under the suspicious eye of the concierge? Twenty, thirty minutes? And when would those two chatterboxes finally clear off?

  He clutched his iron-tipped staff, anxious about his flock, left at home in the care of Berlaud. Angry that his find had been confiscated, the dog had registered his disgust by lying down and growling in Rocambole’s cubby hole. That was a bad sign, a very bad sign. Grégoire hoped he would not take it out on the kids. The dog was becoming unpredictable in his old age.

  Grégoire Mercier went over to the window and turned his gaze on the woman nearest him, as if he could force her to leave by a simple exercise of will.

  Unaware of the thought waves aimed at her, Mathilde de Flavignol refused to comply. Oppressed by a grief she felt unable to contain, she had come to the bookshop hoping to be comforted by the bookseller. The seductive young Monsieur Legris aroused a strange excitement in her. But she was out of luck; he was absent, no doubt off paying court to that Russian hussy. The slightly hunchbacked blond shop assistant was there on his own, munching an apple as he read the newspaper. Still, she preferred him to the other one, the Oriental with the inscrutable expression.

  She had scarcely begun to explain that her mourning sash marked the suicide of poor General Boulanger in Belgium, driven to shoot himself on the grave of his lover Marguerite de Bonnemain, when a woman in a fine wool suit, her grey hair braided under a
ridiculous Tyrolean hat, had come in.

  ‘It’s not my day; here’s the Valkyrie,’ muttered Joseph. Then, out loud, ‘Mademoiselle Becker, what a lovely surprise!’

  ‘Guten Tag, Monsieur Pignot. You’re going to help me out, I know!’

  Madame de Flavignol learned that this German lady was passionate about cycling and that she had come to look for works on the celeripede and the dandy horse, ancestors of the bicycle.

  ‘You see, Monsieur Pignot, I would like to give our national hero Charles Terront a present for winning.’

  ‘Who’s Charles Terront?’ demanded Mathilde de Flavignol.

  ‘I can’t believe that you haven’t heard of him! He’s the winner of the Paris to Brest race – held last September, on the sixth. One thousand miles there and back in seventy-two hours! He pedalled day and night without stopping to sleep! What an outstanding man. And he’s going to be giving cycling lessons at Bullier.’

  ‘Perhaps that would take my mind off my misery…You see I worshipped the General, a passionate man who could not bear the death of his Dulcinea. I made the journey to Ixelles to attend his funeral. What a magnificent ceremony! He still had many friends – that was clear from the crowd of French who went to his obsequies. Oh, I’ll never get over it…Bullier…Isn’t that a dance hall of ill-repute? It’s said that La Goulue7 danced the cancan there…I’m so miserable. Do you think that bicycling would…?’

  ‘Assuredly, Madame. The sport has two advantages: it has a very calming effect but it is also wonderful for firming up the calves!’