by Claude Izner
‘She need have no fear. I am a gentleman. But what about the case, Boss?’
The case! It had gone clean out of his head, and he would gladly have put off thinking about it, but he needed to act quickly before Inspector Lecacheur discovered the trail leading from Noémi Gerfleur to Iris via Corymbe Bontemps, Élisa and Gaston.
‘I need to check something important. If Monsieur Mori isn’t back by five o’clock, ask Mademoiselle Iris to cover for you, go to the pawnshop and tail Charmansat. I shall be back before closing time.’
‘Yes, sir, Boss!’ cried the beaming Joseph, standing to attention, his arms straight by his side.
A skinny maid showed Victor to the drawing room. He gave her a friendly smile that sent her scurrying away. He stood waiting amidst a profusion of house plants that eclipsed the mahogany furniture and velvet armchairs. A bearskin rug draped over a chaise longue brought a smile to his lips: Antonin Clusel had been right, Fifi Bas-Rhin had, it seemed, managed to seduce a grand duke. A silvery glint caught his eye. He was intrigued to see a cane lying on the bearskin. He immediately recognised the jade handle carved in the shape of a horse’s head with inlaid peridots for eyes: It was Kenji’s! He was about to beat a hasty retreat when Eudoxie wafted in, wearing a pink silk negligee.
‘My favourite bookseller! What a fool that girl is – she didn’t even bother giving me your name!’
He stooped to kiss her hand and glancing towards the bedroom door, which was ajar, glimpsed a mauve silk cravat and a black pinstriped frock coat. There was no doubting they were Kenji’s. Victor imagined an extraordinary scenario. He would pretend to be shocked and rush to the bed, declaring that the daughter of this wicked man in a state of undress was in need of her father’s help. By the time he had regained his composure, the cane had disappeared and Eudoxie was making a show of polishing the leaves of a rubber plant with her negligée.
‘Servants aren’t what they used to be. What can I do for you?’ she asked, walking over to close the bedroom door.
‘I want to find Louis Dolbreuse. I was under the impression you were close friends when we met the other night at Le Moulin-Rouge. I imagined…’
‘That you might drive him out from between my sheets?’
‘That you might be able to give me his address. He suggested I might be interested in writing for an editor he knows at L’Écho de Paris, and I wanted to tell him that I am.’
‘Oh! Is that all! I thought you might be concerned about my fidelity!’
‘My dear Eudoxie, I would not be so presumptuous as to interfere in the complexities of your intimate relationships,’ replied Victor, pretending to be fascinated by the cane that was hidden behind the rubber plant.
‘Just as well, you naughty boy, for there are some secrets that should never be revealed.’
She placed herself between him and the plant, baring her neck and forcing him to step back.
‘I’m willing to please you…and to give you that address. Here it is. I rely upon you to be discreet. Louis is a charming man, but a little hot-tempered.’
‘Have no fear. Neither he nor anyone else will get wind of your…secret.’
She looked at him a trifle anxiously and rang for the maid.
The clamour of traffic on Rue de Rivoli penetrated the fog of his thoughts. No sooner had Iris’s confidences revealed an unknown side to Kenji’s personality – that of doting father and brilliant schemer – than this image was replaced by that of a shameless womaniser. Who was the true Kenji?
After all, it is partly because of me that he has avoided a formal relationship. It is strange how none of his conquests have anything in common with Daphné…
The sound of the cannon blasting in the Jardin du Palais Royal reminded him that it was midday and he was hungry.
Tasha wiped her hands on her smock and stared at the painting before her. It would be best to give up now. She stepped back from the easel. After weeks of effort, this was the disastrous result. She smeared red paint over the tousled figure of a cancan dancer, ripped the canvas off the frame and rolled it up tightly before cramming it into the rubbish bin.
The emphatic gesture calmed her. She was clear in her mind how she would proceed; there were many different approaches but what mattered most were language and style. She crouched on the floor, her chin resting on her knees.
‘Yes, painting is a synthesis of all that you have experienced, loved and learnt, which is then transformed into an individual body of work. I should go back to copying the old masters. The best way to discover myself is through them. A few months working at the Louvre would do me good.’
When Victor appeared she leapt to her feet and seized a folder of drawings, which she threw on the bed.
‘I have to deliver these to the newspaper before four o’clock. Did you want to talk?’
Victor nodded his head.
‘I felt like chatting to you for a moment, Tasha.’
He noticed her drawn look and her pale complexion. He could tell she hadn’t been eating properly. She turned away, snatching up her hat so vehemently that the marguerites quivered.
‘Do you intend to go out in that?’ he asked, pointing to her painted-smeared smock.
‘I was about to get changed.’
He noticed that the canvas that had been so important to her was no longer on the easel. He walked over to her, smiling, and registered the uncertainty of her expression, which he understood as an appeal not to mention it. He felt like telling her that he often sensed her despair even when she did not tell him about it, that he could tell she was feeling her way and was held back by self-doubt, and that she had probably forgotten how easy and good it was just to let go. But he did not. Instead he held her in his arms.
‘Some men may desire another woman or just for a change a sophisticated seductress,’ he murmured. ‘But I would go crazy without you. Having you near helps me live in this world, which I find so absurd at times. One thing is certain: I am the only one who really understands you, so trust me: come along, let’s make love to each other and take all the time we want.’
She stood for a moment leaning against his chest and then pushed him slowly towards the alcove. Her smock slipped down, exposing her naked body. She remained silent, her head tilted back, her eyes almost closed. She let out a tiny squeal of impatience as he undressed hurriedly. He kissed her throat and her breath quickened. She stared at him through her eyelashes with an expression almost of pain. He laid her down gently. The faint tremor of the bed became a harmonious swaying. They were oblivious to the thunder and the hailstones battering the windowpanes.
Later she said: ‘Victor, be careful, it isn’t a game. Have you thought about me?’
The rain drummed down on the roof. Victor didn’t respond. She waited for a moment.
‘Victor, I’m talking to you.’
He sat up and looked at her gravely.
‘Has Joseph been talking?’
‘Joseph? No! Be wary of us women, my love, we have a sixth sense. In the past, when men left us to go to war we were witches.’
‘I’m in no danger, believe me, and I have no intention of going off on any crusades.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, darling.’
‘Women!’ he exclaimed, laughing. ‘You’ll be the death of us!’
‘Don’t joke about it, I…’
She stopped and began chewing her thumbnail. He had the impression that her words were the beginning of something far more difficult to express. He nestled his head in her auburn hair and pretended to fall asleep.
Joseph was enduring what seemed like an interminable journey on an omnibus, sitting opposite an old lady stuffing herself with marzipan, and bitterly regretting not having partaken of Germaine’s roast veal and macaroni with Iris. The apple he had eaten perched like a perfect gentleman on his ladder that morning had not been very big. He sighed, proud to be fulfilling a mission worthy of Monsieur Lecoq, and tried to stop his stomach from rumbling.
Charmansat had tak
en an omnibus as far as Rue Étienne-Marcel and then caught another headed for Montmartre. The nausea Joseph began to feel as he contemplated the rolls of fat on the back of the man’s neck beneath his cropped hair was accentuated by the jolting of the omnibus and the old woman’s incessant chewing. He decided to concentrate on the people to his left. A man was reading a newspaper beside a young girl, who sat looking out of the window, her elbows placed on the mahogany armrests. Joseph’s malaise grew as he witnessed the surreptitious brushing of the man’s trousered leg against the girl’s stockinged one. Although both parties seemed unaware of the other’s existence, everything pointed to a secret complicity between them, and when the man rose to ring the bell the young girl quickly did likewise. Her seat was immediately occupied by a woman wearing a hat with a veil who held a fidgeting child on her lap.
His head reeling from the rattle of the windowpanes, the toing and froing of the conductor and the sound of the driver’s whip, Joseph dozed, groaning each time the toddler gave him a kick. He woke with a start. The back of Charmansat’s neck had disappeared! He turned round in time to see him step off, and just managed to jump off the vehicle himself before it turned into Boulevard Rochechouart.
Joseph stayed close to Charmansat, threading his way along Rue de Steinkerque and into Place Saint-Pierre, where he regretted not being able to buy a bag of frites at a stall called The Frites Palace. His stomach rumbling, he walked beside a fence where a row of embroiderers had set up shop. His quarry had begun the ascent of the steps of Rue Foyatier.
Joseph had the impression he was following a monkey as he watched the ease with which the little man climbed the ten flights of steps overlooked by a rotunda ornamented with Florentine arches – the new reservoir on the hill. The sky turned dark and a shower of rain obliged Jojo to turn up his collar. He took no notice of the colossal scaffolding beneath which the votive church of the Sacré-Coeur was growing up like some gargantuan mushroom, but glanced now and then at the fenced off thicket on the side of the hill where a monumental staircase was planned. His only concern was not to be spotted by his prey, or by the murderous thieves he imagined were hiding behind every bush. Euphrosine had read aloud to him from the newspapers about the bloody crimes that occurred in this place after sundown. He had duly cut out the articles and kept them in his notebook for future use in his novels, but he had no desire to put their veracity to the test in person!
He was relieved, then, to leave behind the tangle of dried shrubs on his right and pursue Charmansat up Rue Gabrielle and into Place du Tertre. At that time of the evening and in such weather, the restaurants offering food, music and dance attracted only a handful of inveterate drinkers. The sky had cleared by the time they reached Rue Mont-Clenis, and Charmansat took advantage of the break in the weather to stand under a washerwoman’s awning, push up the brim of his bowler and wipe his brow with his handkerchief. Joseph was obliged to hide behind a section of wall. He felt as though he had been transported to a foreign land, where everything seemed unfamiliar, as though in an oriental fairy story. In the damp gloom, the winding streets with their jagged paving stones looked like stairways cut into the hillsides of a trompe l’œil stage set; six-storey buildings stood next to small shacks with thatched or tin roofs; painters carrying their materials, their easels slung over their shoulders, walked past him, and ragged urchins ran around the courtyards shrieking. His reverie was interrupted as Charmansat moved off again, like a puppet operated by invisible strings. He left Rue du Mont-Cenis, which wound on down towards the flats of Saint-Ouen and Saint-Denis, disappearing into the dusk that echoed with the sound of train whistles, and took a left into Rue Saint-Vincent. Joseph hurried past the corner of Rue des Saules, where the previously named Cabaret des Assassins was now called A Ma Campagne. The last rays of sunlight chased out by the encroaching darkness gave the neighbourhood a surreal atmosphere.
‘Where is that rascal taking me? Has he seen me? We seem to be going round in circles!’ Joseph muttered as Charmansat turned left again into Rue Girardon. He just managed to glimpse the intersection where Rue Lepic climbed steeply to the windmill at the top of the hill, before plunging into the undergrowth. He found himself in the middle of a village full of lean-tos made from planks of wood filched from the building sites and separated from one another by shrubs and tiny patches of grass. The place was swarming with animals: hens clucking, flea-bitten dogs scratching, rutting toms proclaiming their desire for scrawny she-cats. Virginia creeper grew up the broken, lopsided windowpanes of the shacks, which were clad in cardboard painted with tar, and bristling with makeshift chimney pots – artists’ studios, labourers’ cottages and brigands’ dens.
Charmansat slipped down an alleyway covered in graffiti. Joseph hesitated to follow him, fearing he might be noticed. All of a sudden, he felt a hand on his shoulder and he stifled a scream. It was only an old man in rags with a mop of yellow hair asking for money, who received five coins from a reluctant Joseph.
‘Thank you, kind gentleman, you’re a good sort. Two sous for bread and three for liquor and the world can continue on its merry way. What are you standing here for? Have you come to see Yellow Melanie?’
‘Yellow Melanie?’
‘The trollop with the ague who lives down that alleyway. The one your friend went to see.’
To the old man’s astonishment Joseph suddenly dived back into the undergrowth. Charmansat was coming back, apparently satisfied at having been given an audience. With a blank look on his face, he continued walking until he reached the winding Rue Caulaincourt where, to the immense relief of his pursuer, normal life resumed its course.
Charmansat stopped and leant against a lamp post. What are you doing now, you rogue? Joseph thought as he hid behind a cart parked next to the pavement. A man wearing a check jacket and a sombrero walked out of number 32 and into a wine bar. He swigged back a glass at the counter while Charmansat, who had hidden in a doorway, waited. In no apparent hurry, the drinker re-emerged and strolled down Rue Caulaincourt. At the corner of Rue Lepic, Charmansat, who was halfway across the road, collided with a passer-by. Joseph, pressed flat against a wall, recognised the man he had followed to the Roman arenas, whom Charmansat had met with in the Église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. The two men exchanged a few words and went their separate ways. The same dilemma presented itself. Which one should he follow? He decided to stay with Charmansat. He hurtled down Rue de l’Orient, where he caught sight of the bowler and the sombrero again. But his luck soon ran out. Two drunken women burst out of a cheap eating-house next to which a man selling chestnuts had set up his stall. The women hurled insults and struggled, and in their bellicose rage knocked over the brazier. The hot coals, perforated pan and sizzling chestnuts went crashing to the pavement, and the poor stall owner went down on his hands and knees to retrieve his property from underneath the feet of the people attempting to separate the two furies. Caught up in the commotion, Joseph lost sight of his two targets.
‘That’s done it! Back to square one. Never mind, I’ve more than enough to report back to the Boss. He’ll be happy with me.’
He retraced his steps, deciding to collect some more information on the way. He entered the bar where the man in the check jacket and sombrero had gone to slake his thirst, and ordered a glass of Mariani wine. The photograph of a young drummer boy in uniform pinned behind the counter gave him an idea of how to broach his subject.
‘Is that you?’ he asked the landlord whose face was lined with wrinkles and who was busy dusting off a row of bottles on a shelf.
‘Yes, that’s me all right. June 1870 – a proud, eager recruit. That didn’t last long. Two months later I was in the battle of Reichstoffen. There are experiences in life we’d prefer not to have had, eh? I kept the drum, in memory of my comrades who never came back.’
‘What a strange coincidence. I’m looking for the bugler in my regiment. We met by chance last month. You see I play the trumpet, and he promised to try to get me a job at a local dancehall. I know h
e lives around here, but I can’t for the life of me remember his address.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Well, in the barracks we called him Pignouf.’
‘Describe him. You never know.’
‘He wears a sombrero – an eccentric-looking chap.’
‘There’s no lack of them up here in Montmartre. Anyone would think all the lunatics in the world had decided to congregate here. If that’s all you can tell me about him you won’t get very far,’ said the landlord, a deep furrow creasing his brow.
‘Hold on a minute, I’ve remembered something else: he wears a jacket with a grey and beige check!’
‘Oh, I know him! He’s a poet, apparently. I find poets…Well, they’re all penniless. But this fellow is an exception. He pays and I respect a customer who pays. So you want me to tell you here he lives do you? Nicht Möglich30 as the Germans say. I’m not in the business of telling; I just listen to what people tell me, and believe you me I’ve heard a lot of drunken confessions in my time. However, you’re in luck because I happen to know where your poet works. Go to Le Chat-Noir – a little bird tells me you’ll catch him there.’
Joseph was thankful to catch a yellow omnibus with a red interior from Rue Damrémont via Rue Caulaincourt all the way to Rue des Saints-Pères. His legs were especially grateful for the rest and he told himself that the three mile journey would give him ample time to prepare the report he would give the Boss the next day. He did his best to concentrate, but within a few minutes a wave of tiredness had swept over him, his eyes closed and the other passengers became a blur. Victor’s face was replaced by that of Iris, and before long he had joined the young girl in the land of dreams.
Chapter 13
Tuesday 24 November
The lights were blazing in the Temps Perdu, which shone like a beacon through the rain that had cast a gloom over the early morning. The waves of bargemen and mattress makers from Quai Malaquais arriving at the bar took no notice of the fellow in the frock coat and sodden felt hat who sat dripping next to the stove. Victor had leapt out of bed at six o’clock after a fitful sleep plagued by bad dreams, and slipped quietly out of the studio on Rue Fontaine to meet Joseph at the bistro. Two coffees drunk in quick succession had failed to help him clarify his thoughts. The different elements of the case had become entwined in his imagination with Iris’s revelations, like two jigsaw puzzles hopelessly jumbled together. The figures of Prosper Charmansat, Doctor Aubertot, Grégoire Mercier and Noémi Gerfleur reached out to other ghostly shadows. He felt a migraine coming on, and had visions of his last dream: a mass of snakes spilling through a crack in a wall writhed over his body and transformed into the thick, ebony and copper coils of Iris and Tasha’s hair.