The Montmartre Investigation

by Claude Izner

  ‘What time were you at the Botanical Gardens?’

  ‘That was yesterday, on my way from Quai de la Tournelle, so it must have been about ten or eleven o’clock. Oh, I work all hours, Monsieur! It beats being in the army, but I’ve got to keep moving if I’m to keep my customers happy. Money doesn’t grow on trees, does it? Berlaud must have found the shoe near the Botanical Gardens. That dog’s so good with my goats I put up with his fancies. When he has a yearning to run off, he won’t come to heel, no matter how much I yawl.’

  ‘Yawl?’

  ‘You know, whistle. Ah, you fickle beast, you give me the run around, but I’ll miss you when you’re gone!’ he muttered, scratching the backs of Berlaud’s ears as the dog closed its eyes with contentment.

  After he had left, it occurred to Victor that he should have given the goatherd a coin, but he did not have the energy to climb back up all those stairs. On a piece of paper he jotted down the words:

  Basile Popêche, lion house at Botanical Gardens, Grègoire Mercier’s cousin.

  He could question the man later if necessary.

  The rain had stopped. As he walked back through Rue Croulebarbe he searched in vain for little Gustin. All he could see were groups of apprentices busy plunging hides into vats of alum or scraping skins stretched over trestle tables. If he was serious about his project of documenting child labour, he would have to come back one morning when the light was good.

  The River Bièvre disappeared under Boulevard Arago. Victor walked up Avenue des Gobelins and turned off into Rue Monge. A sign caught his eye: ‘Impasse de la Photographie’. Was this an omen? And if so was it a good or a bad one? He chose to smile at it, and yet he felt a lingering anxiety about the young woman found strangled at the crossroads, and about little Élisa. He jotted something else down on the piece of paper where he’d noted Basile Popêche’s name:

  L’Eldorado: Madame Fourchon sings there, under a flowery name that catches the eye.

  Chapter 4

  Saturday 14 November

  ‘Sulphuric acid is a formidable substance, crucial to the advance of science and industry, without which chemistry as we know it would not exist. It is also a terrible means of vengeance, and the chosen method of cowards. Why it was used on the woman whose unidentified corpse was found strangled at the crossroads remains a mystery. Was this a crime of passion? As usual Inspector Lecacheur’s investigation is advancing slowly but surely. Yet there are questions that still need asking. What, for example, was an abandoned cab doing close to where the body was found lying on the road?’

  Jojo stopped reading aloud from the article in Le Passe-partout to speculate as to the identity of the author.

  ‘I wonder which journalist uses the pseudonym “The Virus”. Could it be Monsieur Isidore Gouvier?’

  Victor was only half listening. He was busy ticking off from a catalogue the books he intended buying at auction. At the same time an inner voice was telling him that Élisa was sure to be at her mother’s house, although there was no way of verifying this. Just then his cab arrived.

  Victor walked out of the auction room after the sale of the library of Hilaire de Kermarec, cousin to the well-known antiques dealer of Rue de Tournon, carrying a parcel under one arm. He passed through the first floor, reserved for the more valuable items, and crossed the ground floor reserved for deceased estates and the auction of shop stock. The courtyard was filled with an assortment of objects. He wandered among the piles of artisans’ tools and the battered possessions of impoverished labourers, over which dealers from Temple Market and scrap merchants from Rue de Lappe were haggling: cheap chests of drawers, twenty-sou lots of crockery, men and women’s clothing, sheets, eiderdowns, blankets, pillows and old bric-a-brac, the pitiful sight of which moved Victor.

  He paused when he reached Rue Drouet. If he walked fast, it would take him between fifteen and twenty minutes to get to Boulevard de Strasbourg. That would give him time for a quick snack. Should he ring Kenji from a telephone box and tell him he had bought the Montaigne?

  ‘No! Let him stew! It’ll serve him right for keeping his gorgeous goddaughter locked away at the edge of the Bois de Vincennes and giving me sulky looks for the past two days!’

  Victor let himself be swept along by the tide of bank clerks and insurance-company employees surging down Rue Provence and Rue Grange-Batelière, until he reached a cheap eating house on the outskirts of Montmartre. Inside, amid the coming and going of diners that created a continual breeze, he sat at a marble-topped table strewn with grains of sugar and breadcrumbs that were quickly swept to the floor by the flick of a waiter’s cloth. A grease-stained menu offered him a set meal for one franc twenty-five, and he bolted down veal Marengo, followed by camembert and prunes, barely touching the sharp table wine. He took his coffee at a bar where the owner stood filling row upon row of cups from the spout of a copper kettle. Crowds of people filed past outside the steamy windows.

  How many of the shadowy figures drifting about this city are potential criminals? Victor wondered.

  He paused before the narrow offices of Le Figaro, not far from the town hall of the ninth arrondissement, and walked in. He wandered through the dispatch room where portraits of famous people, the daily Bourse prices, important political events and gory news items were on view. He had no difficulty finding a reconstruction of the drama next to an image of General Boulanger, prone on his mistress’s grave after committing suicide.

  VILE MURDER AT CROSSROADS

  A group of onlookers had gathered round a very lifelike drawing of the disfigured woman, and was discussing the affair in an extremely distasteful way, putting Victor in mind of the spectators at the morgue. He left in a hurry.

  He paused at Boulevard Poissonière after crossing Boulevard Montmartre. Perhaps the crossroads had been baptised ‘Killer’s Crossing’ because a combination of cabmen’s incompetence and pedestrians’ recklessness had led to more fatalities here than at other junctions? In any event, the morbid name had taken on a new significance since the previous evening. Victor noticed a row of cabs lined up by the pavement. The horses were taking advantage of the halt in proceedings to chomp on feed in the nosebags hanging from their halters while the cabmen exchanged vulgar stories.

  ‘Do you know where the body was found?’ Victor asked one of them.

  ‘You’re at least the thirtieth person who’s asked me that since this morning. If this continues, I shall have to start charging! You see that paunchy copper standing guard on the corner over there outside the cobbler’s – the one who looks like a dog watching over his bone? Well, it was there. But I can tell you now they’ve cleaned up the whole area; there’s not a trace of acid!’

  Victor moved away to the sound of the cabmen’s guffaws, telling himself that given his own passion for unsolved murders he had no right to sneer at the public’s bloodthirstiness.

  Two huge pintos, their nostrils steaming, struggled to pull the Madeleine-Bastille omnibus up Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. The hammer of hooves, the clatter of wheels and the cries of card-sharps rattled in Victor’s ears. He feigned interest in the window display of an English hat shop, then, moving on a few paces, stopped in front of a Morris Column plastered with posters: brightly coloured advertisements for Papillon bicycles, Soleil washing powder and Mariani wine vied with theatre notices. But the yellow, red, black and white Moulin-Rouge poster eclipsed all the others with its eye-catching simplicity, reminiscent of a Japanese painting, and its exuberant style. It was signed by someone called Hautrec or Lautrec. The profile of a very angular man with a prominent nose and hooked chin wearing a top hat was in monochrome in the foreground, and behind him a blonde woman in a spotted bodice lifted her skirts in a frenzied motion, revealing black-stockinged legs. ‘La Goulue’ it said. In the background were the silhouetted shapes of men and women. Victor was struck by the uncanny similarity between those faceless onlookers and the anonymous passers-by he had watched earlier through the window of the café.

  ‘W
hat a fine illustration,’ a young man exclaimed, mesmerised by the dancer’s legs.

  Victor moved on. On the raised terrace of the Théâtre du Gymnase, nursemaids in ruched hats rocked perambulators with moleskin hoods containing restless infants. In an instant Victor pictured Tasha coddling a baby, then shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

  You have plenty of time to burden yourself with a family! he thought, as he turned the corner into Boulevard de Strasbourg.

  With its mullioned windows flanked by columns, L’Eldorado was trying to hang on to its Second Empire splendour, the era when the singer Thérésa, who wrote Never Trust a Sapper! was the star attraction. Competition was stiff in this neighbourhood where there was an abundance of café-concerts. Victor studied the poster advertising the programme:

  Seats:

  75 centimes

  1 franc

  Boxes:

  2.50 francs

  Introducing: Messieurs

  Kam-Hill

  Vanel

  Plébins

  Mesdames

  Bonnaire

  Duffay

  Holda

  NOÉMI GERFLEUR

  The name certainly was eye-catching, and flowery! Satisfied, he decided to return later that evening.

  Jojo was leaning on the counter, taking advantage of a quiet moment to fill a page of his notebook with a hasty scrawl. He’d had one of those ideas, those flashes of genius he must put into writing immediately for fear they might be quickly forgotten. He was planning to write a serial entitled Blood and Treason, which began with the discovery of a woman in red, found strangled on the Boulevards, her face disfigured by acid. However, no sooner had he outlined the atmosphere of the story than his inspiration dried up – no matter how much he wet his pencil lead.

  Kenji looked up from his papers when he heard the doorbell, muttering, ‘About time!’ as Victor walked in.

  ‘Forgive the delay, I had lunch out.’

  ‘Did you get it?’

  Victor handed him the package. Kenji opened it and took out The Essays of Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne, a 1588 in-quarto fifth edition, bound in yellow morocco-leather.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Four thousand, nine hundred francs.’

  ‘A little pricey, although the Duc de Frioul is not known for his thriftiness. What about the Clément Marot?’

  ‘It’s coming up this afternoon. With any luck I might get it for three thousand francs. Is that all right?’

  ‘You have a free hand.’

  Kenji’s relaxed face and the hint of a smile on his lips conveyed a cheerfulness that had been markedly absent in the past few weeks.

  ‘Are you pleased with your associate?’ enquired Victor.

  ‘Quite pleased.’

  ‘Only quite!’

  ‘A single nod of approval is better than a thousand words of flattery. Joseph, serve us some sake.’

  The sky was like a liquid veil shrouding the city. The room was like a cave, its barely perceptible shadows obscuring the furniture and blurring the lined wallpaper. The man lay on the bed listening to the murmur of voices half-drowned out by the rattle of omnibuses and carriages. He lit the petrol lamp. Prompted by a baby’s cry coming through the partition wall, he went into the bathroom and emerged carrying a bottle of rum and a tumbler. This was what he needed to steady his nerves, to enable him to separate the real from the imagined. The first slug burnt in his throat; the second warmed his insides and invigorated him. The alcohol calmed his rage, allowing him to see exactly what must happen next. He found it so hard to control himself, to rein in his hatred, his impatience! But he had finally succeeded, and soon he would reap the rewards. He was nearing his goal and he would not stop before he attained it. He emptied the glass and stared for a long time at the bottle. No, he must keep a clear head.

  He went to rinse his mouth out with a menthol solution, trimmed his moustache and smoothed down his greying sideburns. He felt as if he were about to emerge from a long sleep. To the devil with inertia! He sat down at the table. Soon it would all be over; she would have paid for the five years of pain and loneliness she had inflicted on him. He had taken great care not to incriminate himself; no one would ever suspect him. The sole witness was pickling in a vat of cheap wine, the alcoholic content of which he would never know.

  ‘My life is beginning anew,’ he murmured.

  He looked at the box of cards and the envelopes and smiled.

  ‘I must follow my plan to the letter. I’m a lucky devil; everything has gone smoothly. If the police have an ounce of intuition and common sense, they’ll follow the clues I’ve left for them.’

  Spurred on by these words, he opened a map of Paris, smoothing out the fifth, ninth and thirteenth arrondissements, all marked with crosses denoting the various florists’ shops from which he had ordered eight roses to be sent each day for the last eight days. 16 November 1886 was the day she had betrayed, dismissed and humiliated him – the bitch! The day after tomorrow, he would wish her a happy anniversary. He had placed each order with a different florist before losing himself in the crowd of a thousand nameless faces. Who would remember him? Today he would send the flowers from Rue Auber. She would receive them as she made her exit from the stage and, flattered, would lift them to her nose to smell their scent. Then she would see the note.

  He dressed and picked up the cards and envelopes. He was not sure exactly what to write, but it would come to him on his way there. He looked at his watch; it was a quarter past six. He glanced about the street. A couple of servants were chattering beside a carriage entrance, and a little girl hopped along the gutter clutching a small loaf of bread to her chest. It was drizzling. He pulled his hat down over his forehead, and turned up the collar of his grey overcoat. He must remember to remove the stains from the sleeve. He walked down the street, unaware of a chubby little man with a bushy beard, in a threadbare frock coat and shabby bowler hat who was standing on the corner next to the dairy.

  The city’s cosmopolitan neighbourhood around Rue Auber, with its English tailor, American optician, telegraph and cable office and travel agent, was alive and bustling. Shop girls, purveyors of the latest fashions, and accountants were all racing for a seat on the omnibus. The man in the grey overcoat strode through the revolving door of the travel agent. Inside, well-dressed customers sat at green-topped desks in leather chairs writing letters to loved ones abroad under a bluish lamplight. At the far end of the room the model of an ocean liner was an invitation to travel. The man went over to a display counter and flicked through one of the shipping company’s catalogues until a chair became free. Then he sat down at a desk with a metal inkpot, put down the cards and envelopes, nibbled the end of his pen and proceeded to dash off the following message:

  To the Jewel Queen, Baroness of Saint-Meslin, a gift of ruby red roses in fond memory of Lyon – from an old friend.

  He signed himself in careful, rounded letters: A. Prévost, slipped the card into an envelope and addressed it to the recipient:

  Madame Noémi Gerfleur

  Théâtre L’Eldorado

  Boulevard de Strasbourg

  Indifferent to the rain, the chubby little man stood pressed up against the window of the travel agent’s, pretending to peruse the price lists of the brightly coloured brochures. His dull protruding eyes gave an impression of blindness, and yet they were fixed on the back of the man in the grey overcoat as he sealed the envelope. The man rose and headed towards Rue Caumartin, followed at a distance by the little man who hopped about like a sparrow through the crowd. They walked past a brightly lit tea room, where Singhalese waiters in traditional dress moved deftly between the rattan tables occupied by elegant ladies. The figure in the grey overcoat stepped into a florist. The little man leant against a Wallace fountain12 and watched as the man pointed out some red roses to the shop assistant and handed her an envelope and some money before leaving. He waited until the man was far enough away from the shop and went in.

  *

&n
bsp; The edition of Marot safely tucked in his pocket, Victor dined at a smoky brasserie decorated with stained-glass windows. As he left that shrine to the consumption of tough meat and bad wine he noticed the hands on the shiny face of the pneumatic clock were pointing to seven thirty. The show started at eight o’clock.

  The busy boulevard was lined with brightly lit pleasure palaces and shimmering signs: a foaming beer glass; a silvery fork, green and red billiard balls. Thousands of shoes clattered over cobblestones glistening in the rain and people leant from cab windows. A coach and four stuck between an advertising vehicle and an upholsterer’s cart managed to break free, spraying the passers-by with dirty water from the gutter.

  The façade of L’Eldorado, lit up in blaze of electricity, held the night at bay. The audience, a mélange of middle-class families, shop girls, workers and students had gathered on the promenade. As he approached the ticket office, Victor spotted Stanislas and Blanche de Cambrésis – he tall and potbellied in a tailcoat, she larger than life in her furs – who had come to rub elbows with the masses. Victor arrived just in time to climb up to the gods where, not without a struggle, he found a seat in the second row.

  A few moments earlier he had been soaked through by the fine rain and shivering, but now as the theatre began filling with people he felt suffocated. He looked down towards the ground floor, where the boxes overlooked the stalls. The first row was taken up by well-dressed people. Behind them in the second row the dress code was already more casual, and in the gods all formality had been left behind; the men in berets or cloth caps removed their jackets and rolled up their shirtsleeves.