by Claude Izner
Victor thanked Madame Blavette effusively and promised to send her a signed copy of his book, Notorious Crimes, as soon as it was published.
His jaunt to Belleville had left him hungry, but he had no time to waste. Having staunched his appetite with a couple of croissants dunked in coffee, he made his way to the Grands Boulevards, feeling like a peasant whisked away from his quiet village and plonked in the heart of the great metropolis. The clatter of clogs on the wooden sidewalks, the cries of the cabmen and street vendors bawling out the latest popular songs – a myriad sounds assaulted his ears, and at the tables outside the cafés the idlers sat watching the passers-by stroll in front of shop windows and theatres.
He stood for a moment under the awning of the Théâtre Robert Houdin. There was a matinee on the billing, and a quick glance at the nearest clock told him he had an hour and a half before it began. He climbed the two flights of stairs to the box office. A young man in shirtsleeves was whistling and pinning up a poster.
‘We’re not open yet,’ he said.
‘I know. I’d like to speak to Monsieur Delcourt, Monsieur Baptiste Delcourt.’
‘Is he expecting you?’
‘No. I’m writing a book about magic and I was hoping to interview him.’
‘You’ll need to speak to the manager, Monsieur Georges Méliès, about that. I don’t know if Monsieur Delcourt will agree to see you – he’s rehearsing in that room over there.’
Victor entered a dark hall. A screen flickered and came alive. A train chugged by and a dove took flight, then a level crossing lifted a goat up in the air.
‘An ingenious use of plates of coloured glass, giving the impression of movement,’ Victor reflected.
‘What in God’s name are you doing in here?’ a voice protested from the back of the room.
Someone pulled aside a curtain and Victor squinted, dazzled by the light. He saw a grey-haired man standing next to a tripod with a magician’s lantern attached to it.
‘I’m looking for Monsieur Baptiste Delcourt.’
‘I am he.’
‘Madame Blavette sent me. I’m writing a book on the ten most notorious murder trials of the last ten years and I wanted to devote a chapter to the Marie Turnerad affair. The man she emigrated to America with was called Médéric Delcourt. Is he a relative of yours?’
‘Médéric the Great was my stage name twelve years ago. Now it’s Baptiste. Listen, Monsieur whatever-your-name-is, that’s all in the past now. I’ve suffered too much to want to rake it up again.’
‘I understand. Forgive me; I was being untruthful just now. I’m not really writing a book. My name is Victor Legris and I urgently need to speak to Marie. She’s here in Paris. I can tell you no more, but I need your help. She’s in grave danger. I must know more about her past in order to be able to protect her.’
‘Are you a policeman?’
‘No, I assure you I’m not. Why?’
‘Because I don’t believe a word of your tall story – it sounds like something out of a penny dreadful. In grave danger, you say? So what! If you’re her latest conquest, then I pity you. Half an hour is all I can spare, sir. Come along, you can buy me a drink.’
Baptiste Delcourt was probably in his fifties. His straight grey hair fell in front of his glasses and his cheeks were hollowed with deep lines. He rested his elbows on the table and recounted his story, slowly and with great difficulty.
‘You only love like that once in a lifetime; I’m sure you haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about. As soon as I set eyes on her I knew I was lost. I should have run a mile, but I wasn’t strong enough. She became my assistant. I hardly dared look at her, let alone touch her. But one day I couldn’t help myself and I kissed her. Oh, I didn’t try to force her. She pushed me away, said I was too old. And it was true: I was old enough to be her father. She left and went to work for a hairdresser. Every spare moment I had, I spent standing outside the salon trying to catch a glimpse of her through the window. I would wait for her to come out. And then Dante came along, and the murder. Do you know about all that?’
‘More or less.’
‘I wrote and sent gifts to her before and after the trial. I testified to her good character. When they released her, she agreed to come and work with me again. She had nowhere else to turn; her grandmother was dead. I showed her the ropes – the woman sawn in half, the magic wand, the bottomless wardrobe, all the usual tricks. She was a fast learner. I taught her the secrets of the quick-change artist too. Our show enjoyed a modest success and an impresario offered us a tour in the United States. You can imagine how keen Marie was to leave the country that had ruined her life, and she urged me to accept. And there was money in it too. We sailed in October 1880 on board L’Amerique, coincidentally on the same boat as Sarah Bernhardt, who was also going on tour. President Lincoln’s wife was there too, and we would occasionally cross paths – an unforgettable experience. But the real reason my memory of that voyage is so vivid is because Marie agreed to give herself to me for the first time.’
He went quiet and wiped his glasses, then replaced them on his nose. He hadn’t touched his drink.
‘I was happy. The world was my oyster: New York, Boston, Cincinnati, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, then Mexico, Tampico and Vera Cruz. We ended up in Panama, Colombia, just in time to witness the first pickaxe blow that launched the inter-oceanic canal works. Mademoiselle Ferdinande de Lesseps, the canal builder’s daughter, invited us to the celebrations. Tell me, where is Marie?’
‘I don’t know. I was hoping you might be able to tell me.’
‘I have to get back. Will you walk with me?’
They crossed the foyer, where the young man in shirtsleeves was setting out the chairs.
‘If you’re fond of magic, sir, you mustn’t miss Cagliostro’s mirror in the interval. You’ll see your face transformed. And then, it’s a secret…a real surprise! Monsieur Méliès is a true genius,’ the young man said to Victor.
‘All right, Michou, save your breath; he’s with me. Come in, Monsieur Legris, I must get dressed.’
Baptiste Delcourt slipped into a black suit and began applying powder to his face.
‘Where was I? Oh yes, Panama, a terrible climate, unbearably humid, and full of insects. The ants…As for the town, it was nothing special. The whole place had burnt to the ground two years before. There were dozens of ruined churches and monasteries that had been turned into shops and barracks, army depots, and a cathedral even uglier than the one in Mexico City. There were shacks and huts where the blacks, mulattos, mestizos, Indians, people from China and India lived – whole legions of cheap labour. And prefabricated houses imported from the United States popped up like toadstools along the route of the future canal. We had shows lined up in Colon, Cali, Medellin and Bogota and then I fell ill and had to cancel. We holed up in Tumaco, a small island to the south of the country, away from the swamps. I became delirious, I lost weight. I nearly died. Indeed, I don’t know how I survived. Three months later, when I was fully recovered, Marie was calling herself Señora Palmyra Caicedo and…
‘Palmyra?’
Baptiste stopped fastening his floppy bow tie round his neck and laughed.
‘What a name! She fancied herself an Empress and you should have seen her holding court.’
‘Zénobie, queen of Palmyre,’ Victor said under his breath.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothing. I was thinking aloud. Please go on.’
‘She’d become a kept woman. I should have known. I mean, after that Italian…But I loved her, and it’s true that love is blind. She seemed pleased to see me well again. She introduced me to her protector, Don Belisario Cortes, a wealthy tobacco planter who owned a hacienda near Cartagena, and told me she was leaving with him. What she most longed for was respectability. “I want people to call me Madame.” I made a last desperate bid and offered to marry her. She laughed in my face. I was too old, too sentimental, too nice for her. I came back to France
at the end of ’82. After a few setbacks I managed to pick up my old act again here in this theatre. I changed my first name to give the illusion of a fresh start.’
‘Did you ever hear from Marie?’
‘She wrote to me once, about five or six years ago. She’d just bought a hotel in Cali, Hotel Rosalie – I believe that was her grandmother’s name. It was a French establishment, offering French cuisine and French wines. She asked me to send her some prints to decorate the rooms – those dreadful daubs they hang above the beds. She knew exactly what she wanted. Like the one her grandmother had on Rue Ramponeau, a picture of the…’
‘Virgin Mary,’ Victor finished the sentence.
‘So you are from the police! What has she got mixed up in now? No, I’d rather not know.’
‘Could you describe the pictures to me?’
‘They were identical. She sent me a colour sketch of a blue Madonna standing in front of a grotto, her hands clasped together. She wanted a dozen of them. I knew a little artisan who turned out pictures of General Boulanger and Opéra Garnier and I placed an order with him and then sent them on to Marie. That’s the last I heard of her. The show is about to start. I won’t see you out.’
‘Psst, sir,’ the young man in shirtsleeves caught Victor’s attention as he passed. ‘If you put my name in your book, I’ll tell you how Monsieur Méliès makes the audience believe Alcofrisbas the magician is running after a skeleton that’s stolen his head. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if…’
But Victor had already disappeared through the doorway.
As he drifted through the tide of passers-by, Victor felt a vague yet powerful sense of danger. He turned round several times without knowing quite what it was he expected to find, and took a few deep breaths in the hope this might dispel the uneasiness that was dogging him. The two stories he had just heard melded in his mind. The charming Marie Turnerad had changed into the cynical Palmyra Caicedo: angel or devil? He was haunted by the feeling that if he didn’t solve this mystery soon there would certainly be another victim. Who can help me? Whom can I turn to? Why not a medium? Why not Numa? You have doubts about spiritualism but in your heart you would like to believe.
He rang the bell five times, but no one came to the door. Angrily, he seized the knocker and rapped loudly until the door to the apartment opened a fraction, and he glimpsed the head of a young girl in a white bonnet above the safety chain.
‘It’s no use insisting, sir. Madame says Monsieur Winner left for England yesterday.’
‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘Not before the summer.’
‘How may I contact him?’
‘You’ll need to speak to the concierge – he probably forwards his post.’
Victor hesitated for a moment then began, dolefully, to walk down the four flights of stairs. He was just reaching the first-floor landing when his foot caught on something and he plunged headlong, grabbing the banister rail to stop his fall. He managed to stay upright for a split second but the momentum carried him forward and he fell flat on his face, stunned and breathless. A succession of faces flashed before his eyes: Numa, Marie, Palmyra and The Madonna in Blue, leering masks, fugitives from the Fêtes des Fous.
After what seemed like an eternity, he managed to stand up, using the wall to steady himself. His knees felt weak and he walked back up the steps to make sure he hadn’t twisted his ankle. He swivelled round on the first-floor landing. At eye level, written in large, red letters were the words:
DESIST! A.D.V.
His legs turned to jelly and he stood for a moment at the top of the stairs looking down at the piece of wire he had ripped out of the wall with his foot. He stooped and picked up a nail that had traces of plaster on it, and twiddled it in his fingers. He could hear a distant conversation echoing in the stairwell, the sound of stampeding feet and children’s’ laughter. A woman’s voice rang out:
‘Paul, Henri, stop racing about! Just wait till I catch you!’
Brought back to reality by the voices, it occurred to him that his assailant could not be far away. He grabbed the piece of wire, raced back down the stairs and out into the Rue d’Assas. A carriage was picking up a fare close by, the door closed and it moved away, turning into Rue Madame. Victor walked a few paces and then stopped, out of breath, his view of the street ahead blocked by an upholsterer who had appeared from his right carrying a load of furniture.
He collapsed on to a bench opposite a bakery, exhausted. This wasn’t an attempt on his life: it was a warning, meant to scare him off. The murderer hasn’t found The Madonna in Blue, or he’d have scarpered long ago. He stared at the piece of wire in his hand and racked his brains, trying to think where Denise might have hidden the print. Among Tasha’s canvases? He would have found it by now, he’d examined them one by one during the move. At a loss, he found himself staring at the bakery windows and then at the piece of wire he was unthinkingly twisting in his fingers. An idea emerged, like the image on a plate in the developing bath, vague at first then gradually becoming clearer. He leapt to his feet. The mirror! I forgot to look at Tasha’s mirror!
Monsieur and Madame Ladoucette were in the middle of dinner when Victor appeared in the doorway to their lodge.
‘Forgive me for bothering you. I seem to have mislaid the key to the new lock. Would you lend me your master key?’
Madame Ladoucette leant over and shouted in her husband’s ear: ‘Aristide, the master key.’
Monsieur Ladoucette wiped his mouth, put down his napkin and pushed his chair back.
‘It’s not that I like climbing all those stairs, Monsieur Legris, it’s a question of discipline. I mount the guard at the outpost, like I did in Sedan, and I won’t hand that key over to a soul. The master key is to the concierge what the rifle is to the artilleryman!’
‘Don’t behave like a fool, Aristide. What about your rheumatism? It’s Monsieur Legris, you can trust him.’
‘I don’t want to get an earful from that German landlady. They won the war – that’s a fact – we can’t change it. There’s always a loser in a war. But there’s one thing they can’t take away from us and that’s our sense of duty!’
‘Come now, Aristide,’ Madame Ladoucette protested. ‘Mademoiselle Becker is a lovely landlady, and anyway she’s lived in France for years.’
‘All the same. Shall we mount the attack, Monsieur Legris? Choupette will go with us so I can come back and finish my boiled beef and you can take your time. When you’re ready to leave, all you have to say is, “Private Choupette, report for duty!” She’ll understand, and she’ll come and fetch me like a good little soldier so I can lock the room. You know, we call them dumb animals, but they’re not as dumb as all that. Madame Ladoucette and I went to Fernando’s Circus yesterday, and you should see what they can make those horses do!’
They arrived on the sixth floor and Monsieur Ladoucette opened the door for Victor.
‘You know what to say then, Monsieur Legris: “Private Choupette, report for duty!” and I’ll come and lock up.’
Victor waited for the concierge to leave before going straight over to the cracked mirror hanging next to the recess containing the bookshelves. He lifted it off the wall. Nothing. How stupid he had been to trust his intuition! And yet, since he was there, why not have one more look around, just to be sure? He gave a bitter laugh. Where to begin? The famous piece of evidence wasn’t simply going to appear out of a hat. If you want to compete with Monsieur Lecoq, be meticulous. He started by looking through Tasha’s trunks, though without much conviction, and while doing so plunged his hands into her petticoats and corsets, and delighted in the softness of a silk stocking. Then he pulled out the dresser, maybe The Madonna in Blue was concealed behind it. All he found was dust. He groped under the sink, felt the mattress, tapped on the walls to see if they sounded hollow, indicating a hiding place. Intrigued, Choupette watched, wagging her tail.
‘Come on, dog, sniff it out and I’ll give you a bone!’
> But Choupette contented herself with frantically scratching her ear.
‘There’s nothing here. That’s it, I’ve had enough.’
He was perspiring.
‘Choupette, go and fetch Papa! No, that’s not it. Private Choupette report for duty! Is that it? I’ve forgotten. Never mind, we’ll have to go down. Come on, out!’
As Victor shooed the dog in the direction of the door he stepped on a frame and trapped the end of his shoe between the crosspiece and the canvas. The dog gave a bark that sounded like a hoot of laughter.
‘Shut up, pooch!’
Choupette scuttled out into the corridor, head bowed and tail between her legs.
Puzzled, Victor contemplated his trapped shoe. The frame was heavy, it was solid. Bending over to free himself, he remained in a stooped position, pondering.
What if…? No! That would be too easy.
He hopped over, grabbed a book and tried to slip it under the crosspiece, then thought for a moment and put the book aside.
Yes! It has to be hidden in here!
He lifted his leg and brought it crashing down with all his might. The frame exploded and the canvas crumpled.
He rummaged excitedly through the debris.
As he got up, he thought he saw a shadow in the doorway. Instinctively, he rushed over, arms outstretched, just in time to crash into the door as it slammed shut from the other side. He turned the handle, gently at first then more forcefully. It wouldn’t open. He stood there, feeling foolish. He was locked in. He put his face up to the door and called out.
‘Choupette…Choupette…Hey! Is anyone there?’