But Hemingway was not much help with that question, I remember, about what it was like to be a husband. Of course he knew nothing about it. Gertrude was later to say, after her faiblesse had passed – he having never really been one. But at the time she thought Hemingway was one. He was everything, the sun, the moon, and oh, those eyes! she would say, extraordinaire!
“You are barking up the wrong tree,” I said one day after a particularly exhausting session with Hemingway. “You are never going to get anywhere with the Landru case as long as you think it's about husbands. Landru is a husband, but the case is about wives.”
“Wives?”
“Yes. How all those women could have fallen for such a man, how not one of them ever suspected a thing, not even his real wife, the legal one. Didn't she ever wonder why he never came home, or what he was doing all the time he was away from her? And the others – the ten that he murdered. Didn't any of them wonder what kind of work he did? He didn't have a job. Didn't any of them wonder where he got his money from? And the one who got away. What was it she said when the police came to talk to her? I would do it all over again, I love him so. See? It's about wives.”
“I hadn't thought of that.”
Gertrude paused.
“Are you angry?” she asked. “You sound angry.”
“No, it's just ....was
“What?”
“Hemingway. I wish he had a home of his own.”
Gertrude laughed. “He's just young. And away from home for the first time.”
“First time? He came to Europe years ago.”
“Hemingway's just young, and a little frightened. And no matter how old he gets, it'll always be the same. He'll still be away from home for the first time. Don't be too hard on Hemingway.”
It was hard not to be hard on Hemingway. Because almost every day there was something else. Early in their relationship Gertrude had decided that she would teach Hemingway how to write.
“I can do it one of two ways,” she told him. “Either in the abstract or the concrete. Which would you prefer?”
“The concrete,” he said.
“All right, then,” Gertrude answered.
“Bring over some of your stories.”
“Yes,” she said to him one day after she had read them. “Some of them are good but most of them are bad. I will say why in a minute but first I must say this. No one writes a story, Hemingway, in which a woman complains about the size of a man's sexual organ. You can, of course, but if you do you will be one kind of writer and I don't think you want to be that kind. You must define yourself from the first.”
“I was just trying to portray reality as I see it.”
Or as you wish it were, I thought.
“Well, don't,” Gertrude said. “It's simply not done. It's inaccrochable. Nobody likes to be offended when they read.”
“Now, then,” Gertrude continued. “Let's talk about your writing. You need to learn many things, Hemingway, so many that I don't know where to begin. Perhaps with description. You seem fond of that.”
“It's my favorite kind of writing.”
“That may be so. But like all beginners you have tried to put in too much. When you describe the river you once went fishing in, for example. There's so much here that I can't see the river. You must start over, and concentrate.”
Hemingway began describing the river to Gertrude, concentrating, and I thought here is a safe place for me to leave, I had to run some errands. I was gone for an hour or so and when I returned I went straight to the kitchen, as was my habit, and began to prepare dinner.
I hadn't been in the kitchen five minutes when I heard laughing and scuffling coming from the studio. Uh, oh, I thought, that does not sound like description. “That's not fair, Hemingway,” I heard Gertrude cry out, “it's below the belt!”
What is below the belt I wondered as I started for the studio. The scuffling got louder and louder and when I came to the studio door I saw why. Gertrude and Hemingway were boxing!
“Hemingway didn't believe me,” Gertrude called out, “when I told him I used to box when I was in medical school. We have a bet that I can't go three rounds with him. I'm winning!”
“Only because I'm letting you!”
They both dropped their gloves and looked at me.
“Don't let me interrupt anything important,” I said.
Gertrude turned to Hemingway. “Put up your dukes,” she said. “Or have you conceded defeat?”
Hemingway put up his dukes.
“OK, Hemingway,” Gertrude said. “Prepare for a right to the jaw!”
I left the room.
I went back into the kitchen and started with dinner again although I must admit it was hard to concentrate on the brussel sprouts. I hadn't known that Gertrude had boxed when she was in medical school.
I said this to her later that night, after dinner.
“I was sure I had told you,” Gertrude said. “At Johns Hopkins. I was a little overweight then and I thought the exercise would do me good. So I hired a sparring partner – Buzz Gleason. A welterweight. We boxed every night after dinner in the living room. It was when I was on
East Eager Street
. I've told you of
East Eager Street
?”
“Yes.”
“But it didn't do any good, so I gave it up.”
“Gertrude,” I said. “I think you should tell Hemingway about us. He doesn't seem to know. I get the feeling he thinks you're available to anyone who comes along.”
“That's hardly possible!”
Gertrude laughed. “I'm old enough to be his mother! He's twenty–two years old!”
“That's why you should tell him.”
“I can't, Alice. I don't know him well enough yet, and besides, I don't think he'd want to hear. No, we'll stay as we are. Hemingway and I need each other now. He needs to learn how to write and I need to teach him. And there's the Landru case. Perhaps later I'll tell him. But for now you'll just have to be patient about Hemingway. And you'll just have to trust me.”
That was the trouble, I thought. I wasn't sure I could.
I remember quite well when it was that Gertrude began the second part of her investigation – the part, I might add, that she should have began with first – what Landru had done with the bodies of his eleven victims.
“Of course,” Gertrude said one night as she was going through her file, “there are several questions about the bodies. An interesting one came up at the trial today. The defense brought up the fact that no blood had ever been found anywhere at Gambais – either in the kitchen where, supposedly, Landru burned some of the bodies, or out in the shed where he cut some of them up. That one's easy to answer. I know from my medical studies that if you let a dead body set for several days, then when you cut it up it will not bleed. So that problem is solved. Now we come to the difficult part – how he got rid of the bodies once he cut them up. If he cut them up. We know that he burned parts of them. They found one hundred kilos of ashes out in the shed. One hundred kilos – over two hundred pounds! That's a lot of ashes! How many bodies would that make?”
Gertrude thought about that for several days and then she seemed to stop thinking about it. And Hemingway didn't come around for a while and so I let my guard down and began to think that things had returned to normal.
That was my mistake.
I had been out shopping one day and returned to the rue de Fleurus around four in the afternoon. I opened the door and walked into the pavilion and knew immediately that something was wrong. I could see smoke in the hallway and I thought, the place is on fire!
I ran toward the kitchen and the smoke became thicker and there was a terrible smell and I thought what on earth is burning? Did I leave something in the oven? Then I got into the kitchen and saw that they were both there, Gertrude and Hemingway, standing next to my stove.
“Don't be alarmed,” Gertrude said. “We are watching it closely.”
“What
on earth are you cooking?” I asked, running toward the stove. “The temperature is up to seven hundred degrees! You'll destroy my oven!”
“No,” Gertrude said. “It's made of cast iron. It comes from America. It'll burn anything.”
“What are you doing?”
“We're almost through,” Gertrude said. “It won't be much longer. We're going to completely reduce a body to ashes, and then weigh them.”
“A body?”
“Not a real body. A sheep's head. But the principle's the same. We've worked out a formula for converting the weight of the sheep's ashes to human bone density.”
I turned to Hemingway. “You put her up to this!”
“No,” Gertrude said. “I thought of it myself. But Hemingway's helping me. He's especially good at math.”
I couldn't help it, as I stood there with my oven on fire and the smoke pouring out and Hemingway there, in my kitchen, I was so angry that I started to cry. There were so many tears that I finally had to leave the kitchen and go up to my bedroom.
Gertrude came after me.
“Alice,” she said, knocking on my door. “I'm sorry about the oven. But I'm sure we haven't destroyed it.”
I didn't answer.
“I know how you feel about your kitchen. But it'll be the same again – as soon as it's aired.” I said nothing.
“I've asked Hemingway to leave. He's gone now.”
Silence.
“I know when Landru was born,” Gertrude said, changing the subject. “You asked me that once. His astrological sign.”
I almost spoke, but caught myself.
“Pussy?” Gertrude said. “Please speak to me.”
“Go away. I don't want to talk now.”
Gertrude went away.
I sat there on the edge of the bed trying to calm myself and slowly I did. Then I thought this is the second time Landru has caused me trouble – first with my typewriter and now with my kitchen. There's only one thing left to do. I'll have to solve the case myself, and put an end to all this. I am sick and tired of perpetual husbands!
The next morning while Gertrude was still asleep I went into the atelier and began going through her Landru file. I wasn't sure what I was looking for but I knew I would know when I saw it. I thumbed through the newspaper clippings, paused over a genealogical chart that traced Landru's ancestry back five generations, looked at the notes Gertrude had made along the margins of the chart, then went on. Near the bottom of the file, there was a pamphlet that caught my eye: “The Making of a Murderer: An Astrological Reading of the Mass Murderer Henri Désiré Landru.” It was Landru's horoscope! I quickly opened the pamphlet and saw there, on the first page, Landru's chart. Beneath the chart was a listing of the positions the planets had been in at the moment of Landru's birth.
Henri Désiré Landru,
born 17 April 1869,
6 a.m. at 2dg
Latitude, 49dg Longitude
Positions of Planets by Signs
Sun 22dg Aries
Moon 24dg Aries
Mercury 5dg Aries
Venus 15dg Aries
Mars 16dg Leo
Jupiter 26dg Aries
Saturn 26dg Aries
Uranus 13dg Cancer
Neptune 17dg Aries
Pluto 15dg Taurus
Ascendant 10dg Taurus
The first thing I noticed, as I looked at Landru's chart, was the large number of planets that had been in the sign of Aries when he was born. Seven of the ten planets were there – an amazing concentration! That figures, I thought. Aries are the bullies of the zodiac. Once would be enough, but to have it in your chart seven different times! No wonder all those women were murdered! As I continued to look at the chart I saw something even more amazing. Landru's ascendant was Taurus. My sun sign was Taurus so I knew about Taurus and I also knew that the ascendant could be as dominant a force as the sun sign itself. And if that were true and it was then I knew what that could mean.
So Landru's ascendant was Taurus. Hmmmmm. There was only one thing to do, I realized, as I lay the pamphlet down. Go to Gambais and check things out for myself. Now that I knew what to look for.
I was taking no chances as I arose the next morning. I had suspected that Landru was an early riser. Most Tauruses are, having been born in late April or most of May when the weather starts to get nice and people want to be out of doors – just the opposite of Aquarians, who are born in the dead of winter and so never want to get up at all. But if Landru was an early riser then it might be important for me to get up even earlier than he had. So I had gotten up extra early, around four, and began to dress for my journey.
Gertrude, of course, was still asleep, having just gone to bed, and wouldn't be up until noon. I debated for a moment whether to leave her a note telling her where I was going, and then decided against it. With any luck, I would be back before noon and there would be no need to explain anything. Except, of course, the solution to the case.
I took a taxi to the Gare Montparnasse and got on the fast electric train that went to Versailles and got off halfway there at the town of Gambais. I call it a town but it was only a village, maybe not even that, just ten or twelve houses in a row along a cobblestone road. I walked through the town fairly quickly – it does not take long to pass ten houses – and I thought, where is Landru's villa? It was still very early, a little past five, and not many people were up yet. But I did manage to find one man who was delivering milk in a little cart he pushed over the cobblestones. “Landru's villa?” he snorted, after he had told me how to get there. “More like a broken–down pig sty.”
I walked to the edge of town and started down the dirt road that led toward Landru's villa, all the time coming closer and closer to a forest that seemed to circle the edge of town. That forest was tempting to think about, with all those dark and hidden places to bury bodies in. But I thought no, forests belong to Sagittarians, not to Tauruses. I'm looking for something else.
I finally came to Landru's villa at the end of the road and saw what the milkman had meant. It was a small stone house, so small it looked more like the servant's quarters than the main house itself. The front gate was chain–locked and had a sign hanging across it: KEEP OUT, BY ORDER TO THE VERSAILLES POLICE. So much for going to the front door and looking in the windows, I thought, although it wasn't doors or windows I wanted, or even rooms. I walked around to the back of the house and saw the small shed that Gertrude had mentioned – where they had found the bones and teeth – and I thought I have seen enough here, but I have not seen it yet. I walked back to town and walked around for another half–hour or so and found the cemetery and thought about that for a while. Then as I was walking back up the road toward the train station I saw a long line of lorries coming toward town and then turning off and going down a road. I watched them for some time. Then I walked back to town and found the local postman – by now the town was waking up – and talked to him. Then I walked back to the train station and got on the train and started back for Paris. As the train pulled out of the station I looked at the clock above the station door. Seven forty–five, it said. It's a good thing I did get up extra early this morning, I thought, or I wouldn't have seen it. So Landru is a Taurus, after all.
He, too, got up very early, in order to do his business.
I didn't see much of Gertrude that day. She had gotten up extra late, around two in the afternoon while I was out shopping, and by the time I had returned she was in the studio. I hadn't had time to go in and talk to her, as I usually did, having lost some of the morning hours and so having to work extra hard to make them up. It was not until dinner that we finally saw one another.
“I've been thinking about the Landru case all day,” Gertrude said as we sat down to dinner.
“Oh? So have I.”
“I've been thinking that perhaps I've gotten ahead of myself, that maybe I should go back to some of the earlier items on my list. My experiment with the sheep's head wasn't as successful as I had hoped.”
/>
“There's no need for that,” I said. “I wanted to tell you earlier. I've solved the case.”
Gertrude looked up.
“What?”
“I went to Gambais this morning – while you were asleep. I know what he did with the bodies.”
“You've said nothing of this to me.”
Detective Duos Page 61