by Claude Izner
‘Forgive me for bothering you,’ Victor interrupted him, keen to call a halt to the goatherd’s grievances. ‘I wanted to ask about your cousin…’
Grégoire Mercier’s face froze in dismay, and he forgot his own troubles.
‘You know about it then,’ he whispered. ‘It’s terrible, poor Basile…’
‘Did you see him again before he…’
‘In a manner of speaking. Imagine! Being torn limb from limb, like in the days of the Commune! He managed to tell me with his dying breath that it was no accident.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He was doing the rounds at closing time when he noticed that the youngest lion, Scipion, hadn’t eaten his meat and was spinning round faster than a weathervane. He went straight into the cage and what did he find? A dart in the animal’s rump! And when he turned to leave, the cage door slammed shut! Then he saw the road sweeper and knew he’d clapped eyes on him before. It was around midnight on the twelfth of the month. The man was wearing a grey coat and he was trailing the tenant from the flat below. Basile was leaning out of his window taking the air and the fellow looked up and saw him. And you wouldn’t believe this, but it was Basile who later fished the tenant out of a wine barrel.’
‘Gaston Molina,’ Victor breathed.
‘But before he could say “knife”, the man dressed as a road sweeper, who was the man in grey, threw a second dart at the lion, which roared in pain and pounced on poor Basile…’
Grégoire lifted his hands to his face.
‘I am terribly sorry,’ Victor said softly. ‘Have you said anything to the police?’
‘Don’t you consider I have enough troubles? Holy Virgin! They’re too fond of killing humble folk. No. Basile has left this wretched earth and no policeman can bring him back!’
‘I shall say nothing to them either, I promise. Oh! There was one other thing. Where did your cousin live?’
‘Number 4, Rue Linné. Come along, Berlaud, back to the stables. We’ve earned our crust, now let’s go and enjoy it!’
Victor was kicking himself for not having guessed the meaning of Rue L. gf 1211. It was as obvious as a rebus when you’ve sneaked a look at the answer. Rue Linné, ground floor flat 12 November. Child’s play!
He hesitated over what to do next. Should he knock on all the doors of the drab building only a stone’s throw from where he was now? That was the surest way to arouse people’s suspicions. He decided on a method he had used before.
The concierge shuffled to the door and his bull-dog face peered out at Victor.
‘I’m from the police,’ said Victor sharply, prepared to invent an excuse if the man asked for proof of his identity.
‘Oh! If it’s about Monsieur Popêche, the tenant on the first floor, your colleagues have already been here pestering me. He had no family, except for a distant cousin who is from the same region, near Chartres. The problem is I’ve never clapped eyes on him and I don’t know his name or where he lives. I can’t tell you any more. It’s sad, but there you are – if you work with wild animals, you take risks.’
‘I didn’t come here about him.’
‘Oh! Is it on account of old Sédillot then? He promised me he wouldn’t do it again,’ sighed the concierge. ‘But what can you expect? It can’t be much fun living like a hermit in that room. He’s bored out of his brains and he finds it amusing.’
‘May I come in?’
‘Be my guest. Only you’ll have to excuse the mess. Antoinette was the perfect housewife, but since she left me I’ve let the place go and it’s a pigsty.’
He ushered Victor into a narrow, airless room stuffed with reproduction Empire furniture that was piled high with dirty plates and clothes. He tipped up a seat, brushed off the crumbs and offered it to Victor while plonking himself down on a stool in front of a bottle of red and a greasy glass.
‘You’re not going to arrest him, are you?’
‘No, I just wanted to find out what the actual charge was; a routine enquiry.’
‘All right then. He’s a malicious old man who sees no harm in spitting at passers-by all day long. He’s got bats in the belfry since he was run over by a milk cart, and he hasn’t a soul in the world. I take him his vittles, and it leaves me out of pocket. Luckily he owns his flat, but apart from that he’s skint.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll try to smooth things over with the neighbours on the ground floor.’
‘And who might they be?’
Victor immediately regretted having spoken too soon. How would he extricate himself?
‘Somebody in this block claims to have taken a direct hit on the back of the head.’
‘And you say they live on the ground floor? Well, it can’t have been Mademoiselle Bugne because she’s visiting her sick mother in Dijon. And the others didn’t arrive home until late in the evening, when Sédillot would have been in bed.’
‘If they made it up, they’ll be in trouble. Are they tenants?’
‘Yes. There were three rooms to let and a man calling himself Duval came and paid two months in advance, thank you very much! That was mid-September. “It’s for my daughter and son-in-law,” he said. “They’re from Montargis and want to have a place to stay when they come to Paris.”’
‘What did this Duval look like? Square beard, bald, stout, blue eyes?’
‘I couldn’t tell you, my friend. It was Antoinette who dealt with him. All she told me was that the man paid up. The next day she cleared off, leaving a laundry ticket and three jars of her sister’s homemade plum jam. They’re in the kitchen right where she left them. Life’s wicked. You fall in love with someone, live with them and see yourselves growing old together and then one fine morning you wake up alone in a cold bed.’
He filled his glass to the brim and took a swig.
‘I comfort myself with the juice of the grape. It helps me pass the time until Antoinette returns. Because she will come back, I know she will. A little voice keeps telling me. I hear it all the time in here, echoing,’ he said, tapping his head.
‘Could you describe Monsieur Duval’s daughter and son-in-law to me,’ Victor persisted, ‘so that I may identify them correctly as the plaintiffs?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t help you. On the two occasions I opened the door for them I had such a blinding headache I was nearly out for the count, and the next day they were gone. They never open their shutters. But they’ve paid their rent, haven’t they? The landlord’s happy and he owns two-thirds of these apartments. I am not here to spy on people. That’s your job, which takes us back to old Sédillot. The best thing would be to put bars on his windows so he can’t lean out. If you want to talk to him, I’ll have to warn him first or you might get a gob!’
‘No, no, leave it. I’ll try to play the thing down to my superiors.’
The concierge accompanied him out to the street, and as Victor was walking away the man cried out: ‘You’re not bad for a flic! Do you like plums? I’d be only too glad to give you my jam.’
*
The studio was like a little island of contentment. The pleasant fug made Victor drowsy as he lounged in his underwear in the alcove, watching Tasha languorously brushing her hair. She often put her hair up after their love-making, and then he would have the pleasure of untying it again. Their leisurely afternoon had washed away all thoughts of Popêche’s death and Charmansat’s presence at Rue Linné. What had most troubled him about the concierge’s story, making him hurry back to Tasha with an urgent need to whisper words of love in her ear, was the image of Antoinette flying away one fine morning leaving three pots of jam. Their passion aroused, they gave up the idea of a walk followed by a meal at a grand restaurant. Victor apologised for his childish behaviour of the past few days, and solemnly promised to be jealous no more. Behind her pretence of amusement and scepticism, Tasha was deeply moved, and Victor went up in her esteem. They had tea and bread and butter, playing at tea parties, like a couple of children. Tasha felt relaxed enough to show Victor the can
vas she had been working on. Not wishing to discourage her, Victor feigned admiration. Perhaps later on he might allow himself to make a couple of suggestions. And yet, he didn’t feel within his rights to give advice, since he hated it when anyone criticised his photographs.
There was a scratching noise at the door. He sat up.
‘Are you expecting someone?’ he asked Tasha, who had turned round to face him, her brush suspended in the air.
She shook her head. He groaned, pulled on a dressing gown and went to open the door a crack.
‘What on earth are you doing here? Is something wrong?’
‘No, Boss. I mean, yes, Boss. I know who did it!’
Victor was about to push Joseph back outside when Tasha, who had followed him over, cried out: ‘Don’t stay out there. You’ll catch your death!’
The two men stood in awkward silence beside the stove as she fluttered around them, preparing a snack for Joseph.
‘Here you are,’ she said, setting down a platter of bread, cheese and wine on a chair for him, ‘that’ll fortify you.’
Suppressing her desire to listen in to their conversation, Tasha engrossed herself in a novel, leaving Jojo and Victor at liberty to speak in hushed tones.
‘Honestly! You might have chosen a better time and place!’ hissed Victor.
‘When you hear what I have to tell you, you’ll agree it was urgent, Boss. Now we know there’s no time to lose.’
‘Now we know. Now we know. You keep saying that!’
‘And it’s true. I spent the whole day breaking my back trying to find a newspaper from 1886. Don’t concern yourself about the state of my health, though; I’m only starving, freezing and cross-eyed from reading, regardless of which I’ve brought you printed evidence of…’
‘All right, have a bite to eat and pass me the newspaper – discreetly.’
Offended, Joseph opened the newspaper as noisily as he could and Victor, worried Tasha might see him, grabbed it from him and turned away.
Lyon, 20 November 1886
For four days now the whereabouts of Monsieur Prosper Charmansat, a jeweller from Place Bellecour, has been unknown. His assistant reported his disappearance last Thursday. Monsieur Charmansat left the shop that morning in the company of a customer, Baroness Saint-Meslin, with the intention of showing her husband some precious jewels. There has been no sign of him since. So far the police have mounted an unsuccessful search for Baroness Saint-Meslin.
‘Isn’t Saint-Meslin the name on the card you picked up in La Gerfleur’s dressing room?’ whispered Joseph, who was reading over his shoulder.
According to the assistant the lady owns a house named Les Asphodèles somewhere in the Lyon area. The jewels in Monsieur Charmansat’s possession are worth half a million francs. The police heading the investigation claim that no one in Lyon has ever heard of this mysterious Bar–
The article ended there. Frustrated, yet pleased with this new information, Victor stared at the palm tree, imagining he saw floating in its fronds a frieze of protagonists. This Baroness robbed a jeweller named Prosper Charmansat in Lyon in 1886. Five years later, the vengeful jeweller, now an employee at the pawnshop in Paris, comes across the woman who fleeced him at the L’Eldorado in the person of Noémi Fourchon, alias Noémi Gerfleur, the singer. After murdering her daughter, Élisa, he kills her, no doubt with the aid of Gaston Molina, a crook known to the police in Lyon. Fearing betrayal at the hands of this swindler, Charmansat bumps him off and conceals his body in a barrel at the wine market before proceeding to silence another witness, Basile Popêche, who was a tenant at the same address, 4 Rue Linné.
He gave an account of his reasoning to Joseph who hung on every word.
‘Well, Boss, it looks like you’ve unveiled the truth. Bravo!’ he said, his mouth stuffed with food.
‘There’s just one snag. What part does this Doctor Aubertot, mentioned in the note from Le Moulin-Rouge, play in all this?’
‘Possibly none; I mean, that scrap of paper might have no bearing on the case at all.’
‘We cannot just ignore a piece of evidence. I shall pay him a visit tomorrow morning. Here, take a cab and go home to bed. I’ll drop in at the bookshop before lunch tomorrow to let you know of any progress. We can discuss where to go from there. If Monsieur Mori asks where I am, tell him I’ve gone to do an evaluation.’
‘Yes, Boss!’ said Joseph, pocketing the banknote. ‘Goodnight, Madame Tasha!’
‘Goodnight, Jojo!’
Victor turned to her, yawning.
‘That boy wears me out, coming here to pester me about buying bookshelves!’
‘You seemed rather absorbed – just like a couple of conspirators cooking up some dastardly plot. It had all the elements: whispering, averted eyes, notes changing hands in secret. Are you sure you aren’t hiding anything from me?’
‘No, my darling, I assure you I’m not.’
‘Because if I discover that you’ve been involved and the police question me I shall have to put on an act and that’s not my forte.’
‘The police? Why would the police want to stick their nose in my business? I’m not dealing in stolen goods, I promise.’
‘Be careful you don’t perjure yourself, my love,’ she whispered, pressing her body against his.
They tried to outstare one another, Victor wearing an expression of pure innocence that broke down under her insistent gaze. He lowered his eyes and, embarrassed by her victory, she stood up to put out the light.
Chapter 12
Monday 23 November
Victor asked the cabman to drop him off at Rue Linné, where he battled against the wind and rain that had transformed the morning into dusk. He wanted to have another peek at the building where Père Popêche, Gaston Molina and Élisa had all stayed. As he walked past the semi-detached house – the side wall of which was adorned with a painted advertisement for Le Balnéum, Turco-Roman Baths –he reflected on the proximity of the places where, as on a chessboard, the pawns of his investigation were laid out:
Rue Linné, Botanical Gardens, Hôpital de la Piété: Basile Pôpeche.
Wine market: Molina’s corpse.
Impasse de Bœufs: Prosper Charmansat.
Hospice de la Salpêtrière and Rue Monge: Doctor Aubertot.
All seven squares were situated in the eastern part of the fifth arrondissement.
Without knowing how he got there, he found himself in Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire. The gusty wind had been replaced by icy rain. He felt disheartened. He was well acquainted with the cycle that seemed to mark out human existence: the euphoria when an idea first occurs, followed by anxiety and misgivings. He carried on walking, his mind blank. He had the impression of being in a provincial town where, other than a handful of visitors bringing an orange or some brioche to the patients inside the bleak walls of the Hôpital Pitié, passers-by were a rare sight. The shops waited for their regular customers to rouse them from their lethargy. Indeed, the whole neighbourhood, largely inhabited by men of independent means, teachers and museum curators, had a sleepy feel, as though it had been placed under a spell, which the distant trumpeting of an elephant or the repetitive cry of a peacock could not break.
Servants carrying shopping, safe from the rain under their broad umbrellas, hurried past nannies walking arm in arm with soldiers. Pedestrians waited impatiently for the Glacière omnibus to go past before venturing across the slippery road. It occurred to Victor that the student hurrying towards him with a shabby briefcase under his arm must tread this same piece of pavement every morning at nine fifteen. He rejoiced at not being a slave to an invisible clock that ruled every minute of his life and, suddenly depressed by the thought, he looked up and found himself in Rue Monge.
The brass plaque advertising the clinic of Doctor Aubertot, psychiatrist at the Hospice de la Salpêtrière, was at number 68. Not without some trepidation, Victor stepped into the hydraulic lift. It was an invention which, unlike Kenji, he did not really care for, though he could see tha
t it was useful. He was let in to the fourth floor apartment by a valet who appeared to be mute. He mumbled his name, and followed the man across a plush carpet that led from an entrance hall hung with dark red fabric, to a Louis XV drawing room that had been turned into a waiting area. A baby grand, an Empire clock and several pieces of medieval furniture broke the harmony of the décor.
Where does this craze for the pseudo-Gothic style come from? Victor wondered, deciding not to sit down on one of the oak choir stalls that ran along two of the walls. He opted instead for a bishop’s chair with a latticework back which, despite its embroidered cushion, proved extremely uncomfortable.
Is this meant to give patients a foretaste of the torments to come or make them glad to leave such an unwelcoming place?
Indeed, the trembling old man, the bilious looking fellow with twitchy eyes and the woman bent double with curvature of the spine all sat staring with anticipation at the closed door of the consulting room.
Victor, his back aching and his legs stiff, stood up to avoid getting cramp. A window hung with chiffon curtain revealed a gap between two buildings, through which was a view of the Botanical Gardens, where the imposing cedar, more than one hundred years old, towered like an emperor over the other leafless trees in the maze. Smoke rising from the chimneys of Sainte-Pélagie prison and the Hôpital Pitié fused with the leaden clouds that hung like a menacing blanket above the quietly pulsating city. On the pavement opposite, a baker’s boy carrying a basket covered in a white cloth was buffeted by the wind as he darted out of the pâtisserie and headed for the door of a dilapidated building. Victor amused himself by imagining the boy racing up the stairs to an attic room, where a bachelor and former squadron leader stood, watch in hand, awaiting the boy’s arrival at ten o’clock sharp. The image saddened him, and he resumed pacing up and down the room, where someone suffering from ataxia had just been wheeled in by a nurse. He picked up a couple of magazines that were lying on an escritoire, but his own thoughts were already too clamorous for him to concentrate. He glanced at the painting above the fireplace: a professor of medicine examining a patient in an amphitheatre packed with medical students. Just as he was reading the caption at the bottom of the frame, a man’s voice called out: