The Disappearance at Père-Lachaise

by Claude Izner

  ‘Nice way to spend your free time,’ Joseph grunted.

  ‘Sharks are attracted to blood like a bear is to honey,’ Victor replied, quoting one of Kenji’s proverbs.

  As they reached the main display room they had the impression they were walking into some kind of foul operating theatre, where the icy air reeked of chlorine. The sparse daylight filtering through the tiny, arched windows fell on the spectators thronging in front of the corpses. At first Victor and Joseph stood, unable to see anything and powerless to push through the crowd, party to a series of comments they could have done without:

  ‘…they stick ’em in a cave where it’s minus sixty and then bring ’em up ’ere where it’s zero degrees. It’s a paradise for corpses!’

  ‘…it’s not just drowned people, it’s hanged ones too and victims of road accidents, it’s a shame they keep the murder victims in the back room, though.’

  ‘…nearly seven hundred last year, on account of the Universal Exposition attracting the crowds, so naturally there were more deaths.’

  ‘A drunkard knocks at the door of the morgue at two in the morning. “What do you want?” cries the caretaker. “I’ve been on a bender since the day before yesterday and I haven’t gone home. I was worried. I thought I might be here!”’

  The joke, told by a big lad wearing a cap, was met by howls of laughter. Just then the crowd surged forward and Victor and Joseph found themselves in the front row of the spectators.

  Stretched out on zinc-topped tables behind a glass partition, the pitiful corpses – most of them naked but preserved thanks to the refrigeration – were waiting to be claimed. Behind them on the walls hung the rags intended to help identify them.

  A woman next to Joseph was sobbing and pointing at a man’s corpse.

  ‘It’s Daniel! My God, it’s him. He was looking for a job but no one would take him on. I never thought he’d…’

  Her voice faded away and another, younger woman, who was supporting her, started shouting: ‘Get back, get back, you vultures! Aren’t you ashamed of this disgraceful exhibition?’

  ‘Calm down, my dear,’ said one of the workers, ‘we have to attract the crowds if we want these corpses to be claimed by their families.’

  As though propelled by some supernatural force, Joseph moved forward, his legs stiff. All of a sudden he froze, unable to breathe, his eyes fixed on a small body with tangled blonde hair beside which hung a black woollen dress, a waisted jacket and a shapeless bonnet. A mauve shawl, a few clothes, a crucifix and a mirror had also been laid out on the table.

  ‘Denise…’

  He recoiled, retching. One of the mortuary workers rushed over.

  ‘Were you acquainted with this young woman?’

  Not knowing quite why, Victor squeezed Joseph’s shoulder hard as a way of telling him to keep quiet.

  ‘No,’ he declared.

  ‘And yet I distinctly heard this gentleman say “Denise”.’

  ‘He thought it was our cousin Denise Elzévir – she’s gone missing. Happily he was mistaken. The strain…’

  Joseph, white as a sheet, was staring down at his shoes.

  ‘It often happens,’ the employee assured him.

  ‘The poor girl, she looks so young.’

  ‘Oh, we get all ages in here, young, old…It’s poverty that drives them to it. But this one, I’m not so sure she’s a suicide, she’s got a nasty gash on the back of her head. The pathologist will be doing an autopsy to see whether she was dead before she went in the water. That’s why we’d like her family to come forward as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Where did they pull her out?’

  ‘Pont de Crimée. Most of our corpses are washed up by the Seine. And it’s more often men who choose to end it that way. Just last week there were seven of them.’

  ‘Which explains all these people here…’

  ‘Oh, this is nothing compared to what it can be like!’

  Joseph, refusing to listen any more, made for the exit, eliciting a stream of abuse from people he bumped into on his way. Victor joined him in the square at the foot of Notre-Dame. Slumped on a bench, the young man was staring blankly at the strutting pigeons.

  ‘When I think that I was talking and laughing with her about the Canal de l’Ourcq…What are we going to do, Monsieur?’

  ‘For the moment we’re going back to the bookshop.’

  *

  They had only just arrived when Tasha burst through the door. She marched over to Victor, who was pouring a glass of brandy for Joseph.

  ‘You should have told me!’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘That my room’s been flooded! Denise is a real little housewife. She’s tidied everything away, including the buckets I expressly told her not to move, and the result is two ruined canvases!’

  She held out her hand.

  ‘The key I lent to your protégée, please.’

  ‘I don’t have it.’

  ‘What do you mean you don’t have it! Liar! I’ve just spoken to Madame Ladoucette and she said you told her yesterday that Denise had left the key under my doormat.’

  ‘Tasha, let me explain…’

  ‘There’s nothing to explain. You were afraid I’d leave before the week was up, that’s all. Once again you didn’t trust me! And what’s this, may I ask?’

  She waved a piece of blue paper in his face, which he grabbed. It was a letter that had been sent by pneumatic tube.

  ‘I found it on the floor by the head of the bed. Luckily, Madame Ladoucette has a master key or I wouldn’t have been able to get in.’

  Victor glanced through the letter.

  Sunday evening.

  Madame de Valois has furnished me with a reference for you and I have found you a post through an employment agency called ‘The Good Servant’. Meet me on Monday at midday in front of the Church of Saint-Jacques-Saint-Christophe, near Pont de Crimée. We shall see to the formalities and I shall accompany you to your new place of work. If it is to your liking, you may begin immediately. Bring your belongings with you and leave Mademoiselle Tasha’s key under the doormat.

  V.L.

  Victor stared at the initials, stupefied.

  ‘I didn’t send this letter…’

  ‘You didn’t!’ exclaimed Tasha. ‘But V.L. stands for Victor Legris, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t understand it. I know nothing about it!’

  ‘But you did promise to write Denise a reference; I heard you. Isn’t that right, Joseph? I was there when…’

  Tasha turned towards Joseph who, head in his hands, had just slumped on to the counter.

  ‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?’

  ‘It’s Denise, she’s…’ he began in a leaden voice and then, sitting up straight, he addressed Victor:

  ‘Are you certain you didn’t write the letter, boss?’

  ‘I’m not suffering from amnesia,’ Victor replied testily. ‘Somebody has assumed my identity.’

  ‘If it wasn’t you…then she was enticed there…But by whom? Do you think she might have been…I am beginning to fear the worst!’

  ‘What on earth are you two talking about? What’s happened to Denise?’ Tasha cried.

  Victor was silent for a moment.

  ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘What! How?’

  ‘Drowned. There’s only one thing for it, Joseph. We must go the agency.’

  ‘You’re not serious,’ Tasha protested. ‘He’s as white as a sheet! He can barely stand–’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, Mademoiselle Tasha. Monsieur Victor’s quite right. We’ve got to find out whether she went there, because if she did, it changes everything.’

  ‘The poor girl drowned herself – there’s nothing you can do about it. Suicide or accident, it’s a matter for the police.’

  Tasha looked anxiously at Victor, who was putting on his coat and hat while Joseph knocked back the last of his cognac.

  ‘Could you look after the shop wh
ile we’re out? Unless you’ve made other arrangements, of course,’ Victor whispered in her ear, kissing her neck.

  ‘Of course I can. But I have some advice for you…’

  The door closed before Tasha could finish her sentence. She stood pensively twirling a lock of hair round her finger.

  The carriage sped along Quai de la Loire towards the Bassin de la Villette, where the Seine broadened, forming a vast port for barges to unload their merchandise of sand, paving stones, flour, wheat and wood, all destined for the local factories. As it crossed the bascule bridge over the Canal de l’Ourcq, Joseph and Victor were able to glimpse the cast iron columns at either end that supported the heavy pulleys and chains. The mechanism was designed to lift the roadway to allow high-masted vessels to pass through. Neither man could prevent himself from imagining Denise’s corpse being dragged through the murky waters below.

  They skirted round the Church of Saint-Jacques-Saint-Christophe and down Rue de Crimée. The agency known as ‘The Good Servant’ occupied the first floor of a brick building in Impasse Émélie, near Cité Gosselin. On an enamelled plaque was a picture of a hand with the index finger pointing downwards to a sign saying:

  The agency is on the second floor.

  As they climbed the narrow, dark staircase they passed a young girl coming down clutching a piece of paper. Joseph felt a pang as he recalled Denise’s account of her arrival in Paris.

  Victor pushed down on the grimy door latch and the hubbub inside instantly went quiet as twenty or so curious women craned their necks at the visitors. Bareheaded, they were sitting on a wooden bench running along a whitewashed wall, patiently waiting to be registered. They were decked out in their finest flowered percale or striped calico dresses, and only the sharpest eye could have spotted in the half-light the darns in the threadbare fabric. They were telling one another in hushed tones about their hopes and fears, nervously glancing towards the office at the back of the room, where the proprietor, enthroned behind his desk, received them one at a time, jotting down details of their references on a register to be verified later by the police.

  Meat, thought Joseph, remembering the expression Denise had used to describe these slaves in search of a master.

  ‘I shall go and enquire,’ Victor said.

  While he walked over to the office, Joseph remained standing, embarrassed by all the girls staring at him. Muffled giggles broke out on all sides and then a plump dark-haired girl invited him to sit between her and the girl next to her, a haggard blonde.

  ‘Have you come for a job?’ she asked, in a strong Provençal accent.

  ‘Er…no. Just to make some enquiries.’

  ‘It’s my second agency this morning. The other one offered me a job as cook in an asylum for the deaf and dumb, twenty centimes an hour, ten hours a day. What with bread at forty centimes a kilo I said no thank you very much, and they said, “We don’t want any truck with finicky girls like you.” I had something to say about that: “My references don’t say I’m a cook. I’m a maid, I am!” The morons!’

  ‘That’s right!’ the blonde girl chimed in. ‘If it weren’t for us queuing at their counters, they wouldn’t be behind them!’

  ‘Where’re you from?’ the brunette asked, craning her neck.

  ‘Up North. I worked nights packing beets. They take us women on because we’re cleverer and more agile than the men. We put up with the rain and the mud better too, only they pay us half as much! I packed it in. I never saw my children and I couldn’t make ends meet even though I scrimped and saved. It was too hard.’

  She held out her cracked fingers, retracting them almost immediately when she spotted a snooty couple looking for a housemaid walking towards them. With an air of distaste, the woman sized them up from beneath her wide-brimmed hat and made a face. The office door opened and out stepped Victor. Joseph rose and doffed his hat.

  ‘Ladies…I wish you luck,’ he said in a low voice, before following his boss.

  Out on the landing, the latter shook his head.

  ‘He says he registered no one by the name of Denise Le Louarn.’

  They returned to the canal and stopped halfway across the bridge, both tortured by the same thought. Victor pretended to take an interest in the view. To his right he could make out the Bassin in the fading light and beyond it the General Stores at the entrance to La Villette. To his left, the passing barges furrowed the water, red-roofed warehouses lined the quays and the iron structures of other bridges gradually vanished in the mist.

  ‘I’ll get the bastard who killed her,’ said Joseph.

  ‘There’s no positive proof that it was a murder.’

  ‘But we both think it was, don’t we?’

  Without answering, Victor started to walk back down Rue de Crimée towards Buttes-Charmont. After a few yards, they stopped and went into a tavern.

  Joseph knocked back a glass of Mariani wine, his finger tracing mysterious symbols on the greasy table top.

  ‘Why tell her to go to that agency where no one’s ever heard of her? Think about it, boss. She receives the letter signed with your initials so she goes off unsuspecting to the meeting and she’s found drowned with her skull cracked open. Whoever sent that letter knew a great deal. Read it again.’

  Victor reached into his pocket for the crumpled piece of paper.

  ‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘The sender knows Tasha’s name, he knows Denise is looking for a new position and he mentions a reference from Madame de Valois. Who could it be? A friend of the family, perhaps?’

  ‘Or Madame de Valois herself! As Monsieur Lecoq2 says, “One must not take things at face value.”’

  ‘Come now, Joseph. I’d like to agree with Émile Gaboriau that in matters of guesswork it pays to be bold, but there’s no reason to think…No. I am seriously beginning to fear for the safety of Odette de Valois.’

  ‘Has she come home yet?’

  ‘How did you know she’d been away?’

  ‘Denise told me she’d disappeared at the cemetery. She was terrified.’

  Victor sipped his vermouth. ‘No, Madame de Valois still hasn’t returned. I went to her apartment yesterday evening to find the whole place had been turned upside down. What worries me is that Tasha’s room has been ransacked too. I admit that up until a moment ago I suspected Denise of pulling the wool over our eyes to cover up some wrongdoing. But now…Whatever happens don’t breathe a word of this to Tasha. I put everything back in its place.’

  ‘What if there’s a connection between Madame de Valois’s disappearance and Denise’s death?’

  ‘What sort of connection?’

  ‘Remember at the morgue, Denise’s things were on display – you saw them as plainly as I did. Well, there was something missing: a picture of the Virgin Mary. I’m positive it wasn’t there, and yet Denise was very fond of it. When I took her to Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette on Saturday afternoon, she showed it to me and burst into tears and said Madame de Valois would be furious because it was the one she wanted to place in her husband’s funerary chapel. Then she said, “I didn’t steal it; I just borrowed it. I thought it was pretty so I changed it for the other one, the one of the Archangel Saint Michel.” I didn’t know what she was on about at the time, but now when I think of it…’

  ‘Yes, she mentioned it to me when we were in the Temps Perdu, but I didn’t attach any importance to it.’

  Victor’s mind was filled with murmurings and muddled images. His memory of the conversation in the café was all the more vague because he had only been half-listening to the girl’s story. He frowned and tapped his glass. Joseph’s face became a blur, replaced by two faded patches on a dark wall.

  ‘That’s it! They were hanging in Armand’s bedroom.’

  ‘What was that you said, boss?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’

  Anxious to keep certain pieces of information to himself, he began counting out the change for their drinks to try to put his assistant off the scent. But nothing would divert
Joseph from his own thoughts.

  ‘I remember now, boss, that picture, she called it The Madonna in Blue. Maybe that’s what they were looking for in Madame de Valois’s apartment and Tasha’s room; it’s probably valuable. What do you think?’

  The ‘Madonna’…the ‘Madonna’…Victor had come across that word recently but he couldn’t remember where…His study! He was in his study with a bundle of papers in front of him. There was one…what was it? A letter! A letter with some sentences underlined…

  He stood up, eager to follow Ariadne’s thread to see where it would lead.

  They sat opposite one another in the kitchen nibbling at Germaine’s veal roulade. The carriage had dropped Joseph at his home on Rue Visconti. Now Victor regretted not having invited his assistant to dine with them, since his presence might have dissuaded Tasha from pestering him. Indeed, as soon as he had stepped through the door to the shop, she had started to complain about how long he’d been away. After apologising and confiding in her his concern following their visit to the agency, he had responded with an evasive gesture to her demand that he tell Denise’s story to the police.

  She picked at her fruit salad and finally threw down her spoon in exasperation.

  ‘Promise me that you’ll go.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse.’

  ‘Give me a little time. They probably wouldn’t believe me anyway, or, if they did, they’d ask me endless questions.’

  ‘I know exactly what you’re up to. You’re dying to get mixed up in another mystery and to flush out the criminal. Do you know what I think? You read too much! I don’t want you to carry out any more private investigations – it’s too dangerous. I nearly lost you last time; don’t do it again.’

  ‘You’re behaving towards me the way you hate me behaving towards you,’ he remarked, touched by her concern.