by Claude Izner
‘Well, look who it is! Long time no see! How’s life treating you, Monsieur Legris?’ boomed Isidore Gouvier, chewing on his cigar. ‘Follow me. We can’t hear ourselves think in here.’
He led Victor up to the first floor into a cramped and cluttered office. He had not changed at all since they last met some months earlier, with his perennial brown suit, unflappable air and pouting bottom lip. The man’s ungainliness, his deliberately ponderous way of speaking and his kindly manner made him seem more like an uneducated peasant than the first-class professional he was.
‘How goes Le Passe-partout?’ Victor enquired.
‘To tell the truth, things couldn’t be better. We narrowly avoided financial catastrophe thanks to the promotional inserts. We’re even hiring new staff. Our circulation is increasing daily, and it takes more and more people just to keep the paper running. We’re in a bit of a panic because Eudoxie Allard just left us – she’s kicking her legs in the air for Zidler at the Moulin Rouge. Apparently she always had a secret passion for dancing. A fat lot of good it does us! And how is the little Maroussia? I saw her caricatures in Gil Blas. What a talent! I wish I could say the same for her successor. What brings you here, Monsieur Legris?’
‘I need your help, Isidore. I’m looking for information about a trial that took place some ten years ago. The Caicedonni affair. Does it ring a bell?’
‘I’ll say it does. I was working for the secret police then. We strongly suspected the victim’s mistress, a strip of a girl, pretty as a picture. But we had no proof and she was cleared. Why this interest in the case, Monsieur Legris? If I may be so bold…’
‘I’m writing a detective novel.’
‘Well, well! It’s fast becoming a popular genre. And how do you think I can be of help?’
‘I’d hoped to talk to one or two people who might be able to tell me something about Marie Turnerad.’
‘Easy. I’ll look in my files. Are you on the telephone?’
‘Yes, at the bookshop, 18 Rue des Saints-Pères.’
‘I’ll ring you there tomorrow.’
He accompanied Victor downstairs.
‘You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve ordered a carriage. Shall I drop you somewhere? We could talk on the way.’
They hurried out into Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
‘Cour des Comptes, Quai d’Orsay!’ Isidore called to the cabman.
It took Victor a second to register the name of their destination.
‘Cour des Comptes?’ he repeated, in what he hoped was a nonchalant manner.
‘Yes. They’ve just exhumed a body there. You’ll read about it in the paper. I’m going back to interview our good Inspector Lecacheur, who’s in charge of the investigation. The nation’s copper has developed a sudden interest in archaeology – he’s busy digging.’
‘A man’s been murdered?’
‘A woman. Two kids were rolling in the grass when they came across an umbrella. Attached to it was the hand of a blonde woman still in her prime, thirty or thereabouts according to the pathologist. The kids got the fright of their lives; they’ll not be going cavorting in the outdoors again in a hurry! I happened to be at police headquarters when the news came through. An hour later I was on the scene. It wasn’t a pretty sight, I can tell you. She had received a violent blow to the back of the head. I reckon she’s grande bourgeoise, her clothes are a dead giveaway: astrakhan coat and a dress from La Religieuse, a shop in Rue Tronchet specialising in mourning dress. We’ll soon find out who she is when we look through their accounts. She was married, wore a wedding ring. Just to put my mind at rest I paid a visit to the Bureau of Missing Persons. An employee there by the name of Bordenave Jules remembers a fellow coming in, saying he was concerned about a lady friend of his whose husband had died in Panama. Since he wasn’t a relation, Bordenave sent him packing. Those pen-pushers should be made to dig up potatoes for the rest of their days, useless creatures! If he’d done his job properly, we’d have this chap, no doubt the woman’s lover and possibly her murderer: “I loved her so much I had to kill her!” Cracking title, don’t you think?’
‘I’ll get out here,’ Victor said in a hoarse voice as Pont Royal came into view.
‘Come back and see me some time and we’ll talk about the old days. Give my love to Tasha and tell her she’s a traitor. By the way, Monsieur Legris! I’m looking for a secretary who knows how to type and keep her mouth shut. You don’t happen to know anyone fitting that description do you?’
Victor’s eyes filled with tears as he walked along the quayside as though in a trance. He felt a profound sense of fatigue, and despite the mild weather he was shivering. Odette was dead, laid out within those ruined walls. Why? He needed to speak to Lecacheur urgently, to tell him Père Moscou was certainly the murderer. He slowed down, ready to cross the bridge. Across the Seine he could make out the imposing outline of the abandoned building. Never before had the Cour des Comptes reminded him quite so much of Bluebeard’s castle. ‘Don’t! You may regret it,’ an inner voice whispered. He imagined Lecacheur looking at him quizzically. He won’t believe your story it doesn’t hold water, like Joseph said, all you have are theories.
Having managed to rein in his emotions, he found himself walking up Rue du Louvre. Jostled by the crowd, he ended up in the middle of a thicket of masks and false noses. The streets were thronging, the cafés stormed and all the seats taken. In Place des Victoires he stumbled upon a parade of Harlequins and Punches followed by carriages decked with flowers and full of washerwomen showering the frenzied hordes with streamers and jeering at them. Behind them came the floats carrying the orchestras that were to play dance music that evening at Place de l’Opéra.
Victor, his head spinning, couldn’t see a way out. Suddenly he was hemmed in by a troupe of beggars from the city’s seamiest quarter. They danced round him in an infernal circle, some dressed to look like pilgrims, others pretending to be epileptics – using soap to make them froth at the mouth, tricksters rattling their loaded die and cripples hobbling on crutches.
‘He who wears no disguise is obliged to pay the price! Spare us some change, sir, spare us some change!’
They only let him go after he’d thrown them a handful of coins.
Tasha looked at the clock again. She had refused dinner at the Soleil d’Or because she was supposed to be spending the evening with Victor. And here she was still waiting after more than an hour while Germaine’s lovingly prepared dish of hare in morel sauce went cold. The telephone rang. She waited, thinking Kenji might answer, and then assuming he hadn’t heard it went down, leaving the door ajar to light her way on the stairs.
‘Tasha? It’s me. I’m dreadfully sorry. The streets are so crowded that the carriages are blocked.’
‘Where are you ringing from?’
‘From a café on Rue de Rivoli.’
‘I’ll wait for you. Gouvier telephoned. He wants you to meet him at the Jean Nicot at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’
She walked slowly back up the stairs, deep in thought. She was pensive. What was he roaming the city for when he had said he had letters to write? Why was he meeting Isidore? She suspected him of continuing his investigation, but what could she do about it? There was nothing more deadly than an ultimatum where love was concerned. She stopped on the landing. Was she imagining things or was that laughter coming from Kenji’s apartment? She heard a woman’s voice call out: ‘Make sure the water’s nice and hot!’
And then the sound of the bathtub filling up.
Chapter Ten
The rain had been falling all morning and the Jean Nicot was filled with typographers and journalists. Installed at the far end of the bar, cigar in hand, Isidore Gouvier was sipping a glass of cognac. Victor hung his dripping raincoat over the back of a chair and ordered a coffee.
‘Sorry to have made you come out in this weather, Monsieur Legris. I tried to ring earlier to save you from getting wet, but no one answered.’
‘The bookshop is closed – my a
ssociate has taken the day off.
He’d had the pleasure of glimpsing Kenji that morning, dressed in a pinstripe suit and looking up at the sky with consternation before running, boater in hand, over to his carriage. Victor suspected him of having a tryst with the woman who wore Cuir de Russie perfume at a restaurant on the banks of the Marne River. If this were true, their romance was in danger of becoming waterlogged.
‘My files didn’t bear much fruit, I’m afraid. Here, I’ve written down the name and address of one of Marie Turnerad’s character witnesses during the trial. I can’t guarantee she still lives there or even that she’s alive. I warn you, it’s in the back of beyond.’
‘Thank you – it’s something at least. By the way, has the body at the Cour des Comptes been identified yet?’
‘No. The corpse is in rather bad shape. The worms have had a field day with it – fertile ground around there. Not a pretty sight. But there’s more. They’ve dug up a second body. An old man who’d lived there for years, a certain Père Moscou. His skull was smashed in too, more recently it seems. The cops are scratching their heads over it. This should be of interest to you, Monsieur Legris. It’d make a good opening to your murder mystery.’
‘Oh, I prefer to draw on crimes that have already been solved,’ Victor blurted out, rather too quickly.
His hands were shaking and he placed them on his thighs. Gouvier watched him closely.
‘You’re upset, Monsieur Legris. There’s no need to be ashamed; I still find it hard to stomach and I’ve been in the business thirty years. You need a pick me up. Waiter, two cognacs!’
Shattered by Odette’s death, Victor had spent part of the night imagining various scenarios, all leading to one conclusion: that Joseph had been duped, Père Moscou was still alive, he had murdered Odette and then decided to disappear. Unfortunately, with the news of Moscou’s death this theory had collapsed.
‘I must leave you, Monsieur Legris, duty calls. Good luck until I see you next. Keep me informed.’
Gouvier shouldered his way through the groups of people. The moment he opened the door the rain clouds evaporated and the sun glistened on the pavements.
‘Sun’s out. Back to work!’ shouted the journalist.
The Louvre-Belleville omnibus bounced nonchalantly along, pulled by three bays. Its twenty-eight seats were all occupied and people were standing on the stairs. Relegated to the upper deck and flanked by a large lady loaded with baskets and a bearded man with hiccups, Victor felt as if he were venturing into the heart of a foreign country, for the modest fee of fifteen centimes.
Rows of old houses, their upper floors overhanging the pavements, gave way to an area of wasteland where a donkey was grazing, a goatherd watched over his flock and a dairy farm advertised its milk straight from the ‘American prairies’, a vast expanse of bare grass between Rue de Bellevue and Rue Manin where the gypsum quarries had been.
The thousands of labourers, employees and artisans wending their way to work in the centre of Paris had been replaced by a bevy of housewives wearing shawls, their string bags crammed with vegetables fiercely bargained for at the stalls. Children clattered behind the heavy vehicle in their clogs, shouting with glee as if the circus had come to town. A little girl tripped over a paving stone and a white puddle spilled out of her tin cup, instantly lapped up by a dog.
The horses stopped at 25 Rue de Belleville.
‘End of the line!’ cried the conductor.
‘Yes, but I’m not home yet,’ grumbled the large woman as she gathered all her baskets. ‘When’re they going to give us that flipping funicular they promised?’
‘They promise us the moon, and what do we get? Nothing!’ cried the bearded man between hiccups. ‘Hey! Stop pushing, will you!’
Victor made his way down the stairs. Someone jostled him and he turned round and saw a schoolboy hurrying away.
All along the narrow asphalt path that ran between the fronts of the houses, women and old men sat on chairs con-versing as they peeled potatoes, knitted or played cards. The calls of the different door-to-door merchants overlapped: ‘Twopence a pint for my cockles!’ ‘Chickweed for your birdies!’ ‘Rabbit skins, clothes for sale!’ The gardens, courtyards and wells gave the area a village atmosphere, and as Victor searched for Rue Ramponeau, where Gouvier’s witness Francine Blavette lived, he regretted that Tasha wasn’t with him. She would have loved it. He promised himself he’d come back and take some photographs before the little houses were mown down to make way for the funicular. Baudelaire had understood when he said: ‘The nature of a town changes more quickly, alas, than the human heart!’
Not only was Madame Blavette the picture of health, she was also at home which, she announced to Victor, was lucky for him since at this time of day she would normally be out promenading, in cavalier fashion.
‘Pardon the expression but you see I visit a lot of theatre people; if I’d had any talent, my dream would have been to play all four musketeers. Female roles don’t interest me.’
She invited him in to her two cramped rooms on the third floor at the end of a corridor in which some chickens were clucking. Shortish, plump and attractive, she was approaching forty and had a strong Burgundy accent. As soon as Victor said the name Marie Turnerad she opened up like a tap.
‘She lived downstairs with her grandmother, a sweet woman who wrecked her eyes embroidering place mats to sell in the markets. I saw Marie grow up. Lord, was she pretty! Whatever she lacked in social standing she more than made up for with her looks! She had that certain something that attracted men, if you know what I mean. Rosalie, her granny, soon realised it – the girl was already turning heads when she was twelve. She needed keeping an eye on, which is why Rosalie was quick to apprentice her to a friend who ran a milliner’s shop over at Batignolles.’
‘Anatole! Anatole in a hole!’ a tinny voice screeched from the adjoining room.
‘Put a sock in it, Mélingue!’ shouted Madame Blavette.
When Victor looked perplexed, she explained: ‘It’s a mynah bird. I named him after Gustave Mélingue,1 who began his career with us before working with Frédérick Lemaître and triumphing in Paris where he made a fortune in his role…’
‘Anatole, in a hole!’ repeated the mynah bird.
‘Shut your trap, Mélingue! My neighbour taught him that ditty – a comedian who’s on at the Tambourin in Montmartre with Madame Mirka and Alfreda. I’m just thankful they haven’t taught him their latest old chestnut, “I’ve got a bird in my corset”!’
‘Are you an actress?’
‘You must be joking! I’ve been working at Cour Lesage at Théâtre de Belleville for the last twenty years, usherette first then box office. If you haven’t already you must come and see Les Misérables.’
‘Rabbit! Rabbit!’
‘Pipe down, chatterbox, or I’ll pull your feathers out!’
‘So, Marie Turnerad worked at Bat…At a milliner’s shop?’
‘She didn’t last long there. She caught the eye of a conjurer who took her on. They did their act on the Grands Boulevards. But they fell out and the girl went to do the shampooing at Lenthéric’s. And then she had the misfortune of meeting Dante Caicedonni, an actor. Oh, not one of the greats, just cameo roles. He started off as a prompter. They met here, in this house. I ironed his shirts for him and she came up one day to borrow some sugar.’
‘He was murdered, wasn’t he?’
‘I’m coming to that. It was love at first sight, though I never understood what she saw in him, apart from his Florentine beauty – and it must be said he was a handsome devil – but he was a gambler. The girl paid for his bed and board, all out of her wages, and he had expensive tastes, did Dante. He had to look spruce so he could seduce the society ladies. Oh, he lived the high life all right, with all his gallivanting! He received his lovers at a boarding house on Boulevard Saint-Michel – we learnt that later. The same went for his debts – Marie paid them all off so she and her grandmother had nothing left, if I t
old you…’
‘Later. Do you mean after he died?’
‘He was found stabbed. They immediately suspected Marie because they discovered a bloody handkerchief with her initials, MT, embroidered on it near Dante’s body. She was arrested, but denied the charge. Unluckily for her, on the same day as the murder she cut herself with a razor and had to have the tip of her finger amputated. The police looked no further, maintaining that she must’ve done it when she wielded the murder weapon. But she had a good lawyer and the coppers had no solid evidence. And Dante hung around with a band of lowlifes all of whom had reasons to want to him dead. Witnesses, including myself and the magician, were called, to testify to Marie’s good character and devotion. In the end she was so young and pretty the jury disregarded the prosecution’s summing up and acquitted her. The week she was released Rosalie died, the excitement was too much for her heart…So Marie packed her belongings in a bundle. We were crying as we said goodbye. “I can’t stay here, Francine, there are too many memories. It tears my soul…”’
‘Anatole! Anatole, in a…’
Without saying a word, Madame Blavette stood up and went over to close the door.
‘Did you ever see her again?’ Victor asked.
‘Never.’
‘Do you know what became of her?’
‘She went back to that conjurer of hers. They got an act together, which played for a few months, and then just like that they decided to try their luck in America. Marie sent me a note saying she’d write. I’m still waiting. No, I don’t know what became of her. It’s been a long time – ten years, or more.’
‘What was the name of the illusionist?’
‘Médéric Delcourt. He used to play at the Théâtre Robert Houdin2, 8 Boulevard des Italiens. Funnily enough, one of my neighbours took her son there recently. The company changed hands two years ago and now they’re putting on shows using automatons, quite entertaining, they say. She showed me the programme and I saw the name Baptiste Delcourt. Perhaps he’s a relation…’