The Montmartre Investigation

by Claude Izner

‘I’ve stopped. There was too much competition. Now I’m…’ Victor began.

  ‘He has other fish to fry!’ exclaimed Eudoxie. ‘You should know that this gentleman has hidden depths – he’s a detective in his spare time, and delights in trumping the efforts of the cops at headquarters. He’s untangled two knotty crimes already! It’s true, Victor, don’t be modest!’

  ‘At Le Moulin, you’ll have to make do with inspecting the women for decency, although we do have on site our very own “moral policeman”,’ joked Louis Dolbreuse.

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ whispered Alcide Bonvoisin, indicating a chap in a dark suit with a white tie, a steel watch chain across his chest, who was lurking behind a pillar. ‘That strange fellow leads a double life, policeman of the club’s moral standards by night, photographer by day.’

  ‘What a coincidence! My friend is a bookseller, but he’s also a photographer,’ exclaimed Eudoxie, pressing her knee against Victor’s.

  ‘Aha, a man of many parts,’ declared Louis Dolbreuse. ‘And who do we have here today? The bookseller, the photographer or the sleuth?’

  ‘I’m looking for a fellow named Gaston; I was told he worked here.’

  ‘There’s your answer, Louis; it’s the detective we have here tonight,’ murmured Alcide Bonvoisin.

  ‘Gaston? Musician? Stagehand?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘There’s one person who’ll know for certain – Grille d’Égout,16 she knows everyone. Hey! Lucienne, come and have a bevy!’ Eudoxie sang out.

  A coquette with sweet sad eyes came towards them languorously. She flopped down with a sigh.

  ‘Thank you, Fifi, I could do with one. Those would-be toffs run me ragged, the cads, and not one of them bothered to offer me a tipple. They were kowtowing to me last month when I was giving fin de siècle dance classes to high-class ladies!’

  ‘Waiter, a beer with a little less head,’ shrieked Alphonse Allais, suddenly shaking off his torpor. ‘Where is Jane Avril?’

  Grille d’Égout smiled, revealing the two widely spaced incisors that had provided her nickname.

  ‘This gentleman, Victor to his friends, wants to pin down a certain Gaston, who works here,’ explained Eudoxie.

  ‘Gaston?…Hang on, Arsène! Not Alsatian beer I hope?’ shouted Grille d’Égout at the waiter who had brought her a tankard. ‘Because I refuse to drink a drop of that stuff until Alsace and Lorraine are returned to the mother country! Gaston you say? Josette’s Gaston maybe? Gaston Molina? If it’s him, he’s done a bunk, even though Josette’s a firecracker, a volcano who’ll erupt when he shows his face again.’

  ‘Gaston Molina, is that him, Victor?’ Eudoxie asked, increasing the pressure on his knee.

  ‘Possibly,’ he muttered.

  ‘Well, he’s a waiter, a serving boy. What do you want with him?’

  ‘One of my clients asked me to contact him discreetly; he seduced his daughter. My client wants to sort things out.’

  ‘Well, that’s a fine mess! And how does he think he’s going to “sort things out”? By extracting payment for the girl’s virtue? Gaston’s in dry dock; completely broke! As for making an honest woman of her, your client can whistle for it. That urchin’s a philanderer; he’s got a girl in every dive.’

  Pleased with this tirade, Grille d’Égout tossed off the rest of her beer while Alphonse Allais pushed back his chair roughly and ran after a slim, graceful woman with red hair and a black hat.

  ‘Poor Alphonse, she drives him wild.’

  ‘Who is she?’ asked Victor.

  ‘Jane Avril. La Goulue says Avril has legs like curtain rods but she kicks them in rhythm, and she’s right. She was committed when she was a kid, yes, my dear; under the care of Professor Charcot, and they say that’s where she learnt to swing her hips. It’s true! Apparently to entertain the inmates they’d get in dance teachers and organise parties and balls. Balls for the loonies, I ask you! Jane Avril gives us the cold shoulder; she dances alone. What do they see in her? She’s nothing but skin and bone! They call her “Honey” I would call her “Sonny”. Take a squint at the painter dwarf – he’s smitten!’

  Grille d’Égout tilted her head towards a table separated from theirs by a pillar. A strange-looking fellow with a nasal voice was holding court to three men and a woman. It was as if his body had been screwed on to two short legs moulded into checked trousers. Victor could only see his profile; he had to wait until he turned round to see his features: a massive head with a bowler hat perched on top, pince-nez on a prominent nose, a black beard framing sensual lips like a wound. His eyes blazed with intelligence and sensitivity. He was roughly Victor’s age, thirty.

  ‘Is that him, Toulouse-Lautrec?’

  ‘That’s him. “The Little Jewel”, as he likes to be known. An arrant drunkard, he tipples as much as he paints, drinks like a fish. See the cane hanging on the back of his chair? He calls it “my helpmate”. Inside the handle there’s a minuscule flask of cognac. When the pint-sized fellow isn’t here seducing the cancan girls, he hangs out at the brothels!’

  Louis Dolbreuse said all this in a detached, almost neutral tone, but it was obvious he was having difficulty concealing his aversion to the painter. Alcide Bonvoisin sat up indignantly.

  ‘That man is a genius! A genius, do you hear? Have you looked closely at his poster for Le Moulin-Rouge? The first one by Jules Chéret was a success, but his!…There is more talent in that poster than in many a fashionable painting. In a few strokes Lautrec captures the spirit of the dance; he exposes the primitive instincts that we all have. That work, in the Japanese style, took weeks of labour. And his canvases…I tell you, he’s going to be famous!’

  ‘He should avoid putting La Goulue in the middle of his daubs!’ murmured Grille d’Égout. ‘She shows off the heart embroidered on the back of her drawers; I’m convinced that that Louise…’

  ‘Who are the others?’ interrupted Victor.

  ‘The bearded four-eyes is a composer with a caustic sense of humour who lives in Rue Cortot, Erik Satie; we rub shoulders with him at Le Chat-Noir. The iron wire bent in two is Lautrec’s cousin, another aristocrat, Gabriel Tapié de Celeyran. The bloke opposite in the battered hat, that’s Henry Somm, a cartoonist and engraver whose song is often heard at Le Chat-Noir: “A staircase with no steps is not a staircase at all.” The woman…the woman…I don’t recall who she is,’ finished Louis Dolbreuse.

  They were accosted by Bibi la Purée,17 who offered scraps dredged up from the rubbish and boasted that his shirt had been given him by his comrade Verlaine.

  Victor looked at the back of the unknown woman at Lautrec’s table, a redhead with her hair piled up under a simple hat with a single rose stitched on it. He would know that neck anywhere. Tasha. She was laughing, pressing the artist’s wrist as he drew on a corner of the tablecloth. Eudoxie had followed his gaze and understood what was upsetting him. She smiled at him coarsely and whispered in his ear:

  ‘He adores carrot-tops; everyone has their preference. For example, unlike most women, I am not interested in blond men. I much prefer dark-haired men; they have a certain something…Do you follow me?’

  Blushing, Victor swung round abruptly and studied the contents of his glass.

  ‘Mademoiselle, may I have the honour of this waltz?’ begged a stout, bald man, bowing to Grille d’Égout.

  ‘I’ll dance with you when you’ve grown some hair, egghead!’ she retorted. ‘Honestly!’

  ‘Messieurs, we must abandon you. It’s time for us to prepare for the cancan. Our lace petticoats don’t just appear on us as if by magic – twelve yards of insertion and broderie anglaise, can you imagine? Perhaps you would like to lend a hand?’ Eudoxie said, batting her eyelashes at Victor. ‘See you later, Louis, at my place.’

  Louis Dolbreuse nodded. As soon as the two women had departed, Alcide Bonvoisin leapt from his seat, stammering a vague excuse about an interview with the writer Jean Lorrain.

  ‘An etheromaniac;18 I wish him luck. R
ight, we’re alone now. What do you want to do about your Gaston Molina? Are you still keen to find him?’ said Louis Dolbreuse.

  ‘I’m waiting for the bill.’

  ‘Leave it; I’ll settle it. Look, here’s someone who can help you.’

  He clicked his fingers at an obsequious man in a dicky and cravat, carrying a tray loaded with tankards.

  ‘Monsieur Dolbreuse?’

  ‘Good evening, Bizard, the bill please. This is Monsieur Legris, bookseller. Victor, this is the head waiter of Le Moulin-Rouge. Monsieur Bizard, we would like to catch a fish named Gaston Molina.’

  ‘That scoundrel, he can go to the devil! It’s been a week since he bothered to show his face. I’ve stopped his wages, he’s dismissed.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘As if I should know, or care! He comes, he goes, he gets drunk, sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere.’

  ‘Thank you, Bizard, keep the change.’

  The head waiter pocketed a banknote and went off towards Lautrec’s table from where there came gales of laughter.

  ‘He calls himself an artist; he’s nothing but a drunk! That Lautrec should dry out,’ growled Dolbreuse. ‘Listen, old chap, I’m a friend of the famous Josette. If it would be helpful, I could intercede for you.’

  ‘Too kind.’

  Victor was in a hurry to escape Tasha and the guffaws of the dauber. Dolbreuse’s antipathy to Lautrec created a sort of complicity between them. They dodged in and out of the waltzing couples whirling elegantly around.

  ‘You won’t find such an eclectic group of people anywhere else. You have the Prince de Sagan, the Comte de Rochefoucauld and the Duc Élie de Talleyrand rubbing shoulders with the regulars of Le Mirliton cabaret and the ladies of the night of Place Blanche.’

  ‘Ladies of the night?’

  ‘Street walkers, trollops – you’ll have to get used to all this, my friend. You have rich brokers chasing after milliners’ girls, English and Russians fraternising cheerfully and well-bred ladies propping up the bar. Le Moulin-Rouge is a melting pot; not just a café or a cabaret or a brothel, but all three at once, just as Zidler intended.’

  ‘And the acme of bad taste!’ remarked Victor, as they crossed the area of the hall reserved for the winter café-concert.

  The audience was roaring with laughter at a stage where, haloed in green light, a little man in a red jacket, his hair standing up like a brush and sporting a handle-bar moustache, was performing. The programme announced him as:

  THE FARTISTE

  The only artist who doesn’t have to pay royalties!

  The incongruous sounds emitted by his posterior provoked hilarity amongst the spectators. A suspicious dandy climbed on to the stage to check that there was nothing hidden under the black velvet trousers.

  Scandalised, Victor turned away.

  ‘As Zidler says, “deep in the heart of every man vulgarity hides”,’ said Dolbreuse, and laughed. ‘Josette kicks up her heels in the elephant; she dances under the name Sémiramis.’

  In spite of the damp evening, the garden was full of people come to get a breath of fresh air. With an air of resignation, donkeys were carrying the beau monde along paths bordered with trees brightly lit by gas and electricity. There were also wooden horses, a shooting range and an outdoor café-concert dominated by the massive structure of an elephant brought from the Universal Exhibition of 1889. For twenty sous men could buy themselves a little excitement by watching a pretend Oriental girl perform an erotic dance.

  When Victor and Dolbreuse ventured into the elephant, the show had just finished, and the audience was applauding in an effort to get the voluptuous odalisque, draped in a revealing gossamer costume, back on stage. They went to the dressing room behind the miniscule stage where she was removing her make-up.

  ‘Hello, my darling, I’ve brought you an admirer.’

  ‘Not now, I’m beat,’ replied the odalisque in a strong regional accent.

  ‘He just wants to ask you a question or two about Gaston.’

  She stared at them, one eye circled with kohl, the other red from having been rubbed clean.

  ‘Don’t talk to me about that cockroach! He filched my money and the silver locket of the Blessed Virgin my father gave me! You’re not from the flics, are you?’ she said to Victor, looking worried. ‘Is he in trouble?’

  ‘Don’t worry, this gentleman is after the same thing as you, he would very much like to speak to Gaston.’

  ‘Well, I hope Gaston sinks to the bottom of the sea!’ screeched Josette, turning her back on them.

  ‘It’s a beautiful thing, love,’ sighed Dolbreuse.

  ‘In case you do manage to run him to earth, I warn you straight away I cleaned up after him. If he wants to get his togs back, he’ll have to go to Biffin & Co, and if he’s looking for a room, I’m full up. Goodbye!’

  *

  Discouraged, Victor wandered back inside, forgetting about Dolbreuse, who watched him thoughtfully.

  ‘It’s very annoying. I sympathise with the daughter of your client – disgraced by a wastrel. There’s one more place that might possibly give you a clue – the employees’ cloakroom.’

  They had to go back through the hall. Dolbreuse suddenly stopped. ‘Drat! My hat. One minute, I’ll be right back.’

  Victor craned his neck and saw Tasha going arm-in-arm with Lautrec to the bar. He wanted to follow them, but at that moment Dolbreuse returned.

  ‘I have it. Are you coming?’

  Dolbreuse pushed open a door to reveal a narrow room with cupboards round the walls. From the one marked ‘Molina’ he extracted a crumpled shirt and an open packet of Turkish cigarettes. He stuck one in the corner of his mouth. A piece of paper slipped out of the packet. Without reading it, he held it out to Victor, who deciphered with difficulty a note scribbled on a flier for chocolates from the Compagnie Coloniale:

  Charmansat at uncle. Aubertot, rite cour manon, sale pétriaire. Rue L., gf 1211…

  ‘Does that help?’ asked Dolbreuse.

  ‘Take a look for yourself.’

  ‘Hmm, might as well be Chinese or a dialect, if it’s not Volapük.19 Have fun with that! I’m going to watch the quadrille – does that appeal?’

  ‘You go ahead. I’ll follow.’

  As soon as Dolbreuse had gone, Victor hurried to leave. Once outside he caught sight of a man elegantly dressed in the English style.

  ‘Antonin Clusel!’

  ‘Legris! Victor Legris! My good fellow, it’s been an age!’

  ‘Almost two years. How is Le Passe-partout going?’

  ‘Wonderfully well. We’ve moved to number 40 Rue de la Grange-Batelière, beside Passage Verdeau. I’ll await your visit! Excuse me, must dash. I don’t want to miss our Eudoxie’s number. She’s sensational, Fifi Bas-Rhin – who would have thought it, eh?’

  On Boulevard de Clichy the crowd thickened. Carried forward by the throng, Victor turned off the boulevard. The bitter taste in his mouth indicated that his system was objecting to the mixture of alcoholic drinks he had swallowed in that accursed Moulin. His mind was filled with the image of Tasha sitting beside the bespectacled painter, squeezing his wrist and laughing, laughing…What would he say to her when he arrived back at Rue Fontaine? Would he be able to feign indifference? All this for a trifle, for an incoherent note from one Gaston Molina, whom he was not even sure was Élisa Fourchon’s suitor. Or perhaps the note had been sent to Gaston by someone else?

  ‘It serves you right, poor imbecile! The only thing you’ve discovered is that Tasha associates with libertines.’

  Chapter 6

  The steam from the coffee pot was like a finger raised to impose silence. Bundled up in a shawl, Tasha nibbled bread and butter between yawns. Victor tried to cure the effects of his sleepless night with coffee. He regretted having feigned sleep when she had come home, shortly after him. Had he unburdened himself to her, he would not now have so much trouble meeting her eye.

  As he prepared his preamble, in
cluding a subtle allusion to the quadrille at Le Moulin-Rouge and to Eudoxie Allard’s second career (‘It’s an amazing progression, isn’t it? Did you know about it?’) Tasha baffled him by exclaiming:

  ‘Ia nié mogou!’

  He jumped.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I can’t! I’ll never be able to! Never, never, never!’

  ‘Be able to what?’

  ‘To paint as well as him!’

  ‘Him? Who?’

  ‘An artist I saw yesterday. I’ve already mentioned him to you, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.’

  So she admitted it! He put his cup down, his hand trembling.

  ‘Your meeting was with him?’

  ‘Yes, at Le Moulin-Rouge. The Gil Blas has commissioned me to do a series of caricatures: “Personalities from Parisian nightlife”.’

  ‘But I thought…You said…’

  ‘Don’t leave your mouth hanging open; you look like a carp!’

  ‘I thought you’d stopped working for that paper. Your book illustrations pay you enough to live off! And, Tasha, I pay the rent, you sold a picture…’

  ‘My passion is more expensive than photography. Frames, paints…It’s so sweet of you to take on this studio. But as for that wretched canvas bought by Boussod & Valadon, that wasn’t enough to cover my expenses! Besides I like keeping up my contacts in the press. It’s stimulating, don’t you agree?’

  Victor did not know how to respond. It had been difficult to convince her to accept his financial support. Their communal life – parallel would perhaps be a better description – rested on a fragile equilibrium. Tasha had declined his offers of marriage, claiming that marriage changed an independent woman into a minor with a guardian. And she intended to pursue her career in her own way. What arguments could he use to persuade her?

  ‘Be careful of that little runt. Apparently he’s keen on redheads.’

  It was her turn to be stunned.

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘I have my sources,’ he retorted drily.

  She hid her face in her shawl, her shoulders shaking. Was she crying? But when she sat up, he saw she was laughing.