The Disappearance at Père-Lachaise

by Claude Izner

  ‘You must admit I’ve been extremely patient with you. What do you have to say in your defence?’

  ‘A friend of mine disappeared and I thought I was doing the right thing by…’

  ‘Obstructing justice?’

  ‘I didn’t obstruct anything. I brought you the culprit’s head on a platter!’

  ‘And almost got yourself killed again in the process! What attracted you to this case? Did you want to show everyone your brilliant mind in action?’

  ‘Possibly,’ Victor replied casually, ‘but perhaps also because I see in this woman a murderer who didn’t hesitate to take four lives, and I happen to believe she deserves to pay for it.’

  ‘Why don’t you stop playing the sleuth and restrict yourself to the company of book lovers, of which I am one? Incidentally, you don’t happen to have a first edition of Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Provost do you? Excuse me just a moment.’

  He tiptoed to the door and pulled it open sharply. Joseph, who was bent over at the keyhole, stood up with a start, and hurried to sit on the nearest bench. Inspector Lecacheur eyed him sternly before closing the door.

  ‘You see? You’re encouraging emulators amongst your staff. It’s preposterous!’

  He stuffed a handful of cachou1 pastilles in his mouth, which caused him to have a fit of sneezing. When the tornado had blown over, he explained: ‘I’m trying to stop smoking. Well, that’s all for now. Naturally we’ll need you to give evidence during the trial – you’re a main witness; it’s becoming a habit.’

  Victor stood up. He barely reached the shoulder of the inspector, who stooped a little to make himself smaller.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure, my dear sir. Oh, before I forget, it’s only fair that I should thank you. After hours of unsuccessful questioning I took your advice and asked the accused to fill in a form which I immediately sent to a handwriting expert. It’s definitely her writing on all three letters you gave us. She broke down. She made a full conf–’

  ‘So we have our proof!’ Victor exclaimed.

  ‘You don’t. All you have is the door handle, which you’ll be using unless you can listen to the long story I’m about to tell you without interrupting. For you know how Marie killed, but you still don’t know why.’

  Victor tensed up, assuming an almost military bearing. He listened carefully to the inspector’s account, keeping his comments to himself, and when it was over shook the man’s hand, and took his leave with a look of triumph on his face. Joseph rushed over, keen to know what had happened, but Victor led him away in silence.

  Inspector Lecacheur, sucking on a pastille, watched them go.

  ‘Confound the man!’ he muttered. ‘Claims to be a bookseller but prefers the smell of blood to the smell of ink.’

  Joseph had gone over to the parapet to watch the ship Charenton-Point-du-jour draw alongside the quay. Victor was lighting a cigarette when someone tapped his shoulder. He turned to find Isidore Gouvier winking at him.

  ‘Well done, Monsieur Legris. You certainly fooled me with that story about writing a novel. Don’t you think it’s about time we began exchanging information?’

  ‘You’re a dangerous man. I’m afraid you’d misuse anything I passed on to you.’

  ‘Le Passe-partout lives off information, but it doesn’t mean we divulge everything. And, anyway, you owe me for having put you on the trail of Marie Turnerad.’

  ‘That’s true. Let’s say eleven o’clock tomorrow at the Jean Nicot then.’

  ‘Boss! Mademoiselle Tasha and Monsieur Mori are here.’

  Victor could hardly believe his eyes. Arm in arm, Tasha and Kenji were walking towards them, beaming. He hurriedly took leave of Isidore Gouvier.

  The four of them sat on a bench in Place Dauphine. Plied with questions by Joseph and Tasha, Victor tried to avoid looking at Kenji, whom he assumed was feeling uncomfortable. It was Kenji, however, who turned to him and asked in a natural voice, as if sensing Victor’s uneasiness: ‘I understand Mademoiselle Ninon Delarme has confessed. So what is it that’s bothering you?’

  ‘Me? Why, nothing. Ninon finally came clean and Inspector Lecacheur enlightened me as to the motive for her crimes. It all began in Panama in the spring of last year. You probably know as well as I do that seven years after the Inter-Oceanic Canal Company began construction it was drowning in debt.’

  ‘Yes, I remember reading about it in the papers at the time,’ Kenji said. ‘At the end of 1888 the Canal Company asked the government for a further three months in which to repay its debts. They refused and in February 1889 disaster struck. Over eight hundred thousand small investors lost their savings, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘Exactly right,’ said Victor. ‘The suicide rate shot up and the cessation of the canal works plunged the Panama region into chaos. There were riots in the villages and workers scoured the country looking for non-existent jobs. Crime and theft rates went up and the British government sent special emergency vessels to evacuate ten thousand of their citizens to Jamaica. The United States did the same. Chile, which needed immigrants, welcomed any volunteers, offering them a free passage to Valparaíso.’

  ‘Would you mind if I take notes, boss?’

  ‘Please do, Joseph, please do. Armand de Valois, convinced that Ferdinand de Lesseps’s project would be a success, imprudently invested all his money in the canal. After the débâcle he was left with no money and no job. He put off his return to France to give himself a chance to recoup his losses. He was sure that sooner or later the United States would take over the digging of the canal through the isthmus. He heard talk of a little port town called Tumaco, on the frontier between Colombia and Ecuador, and went there with the intention of setting up a trading post. And that is where, during a reception at the French Consulate, he made the acquaintance of Palmyra Caicedo.’

  ‘Marie Turnerad,’ Joseph volunteered, with a knowing air.

  Victor leant back against the bench.

  ‘Palmyra and Armand became lovers. He told her about his plans to buy land in Tumaco. She was interested, and offered to put him up at the hotel she ran in Cali, where they could begin raising the money they needed. Armand offered his services as a geologist to prospectors who were combing the region and purchased small quantities of gemstones, and Palmyra managed the profits. And this is when Lewis Ives arrived on the scene.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Kenji.

  ‘An American. He’d lost his job as foreman at the canal works.’

  ‘Was he the St Nazaire corpse?’

  ‘No, that was Armand de Valois. Patience, please! Lewis Ives was penniless. He decided to try his luck prospecting for gold. After months of travelling, he arrived in the south. There he heard about a legend. It was said that at the beginning of the century, native people reported finding pieces of gold weighing several pounds in remote parts of the south. It was the promise of an Eldorado! Lewis Ives ended up in Cali, where he rented a room at the Hotel Rosalie. He set about exploring the region around the River Sipi, reputed to be rich in minerals. One day he met an old Indian who had dug up some green crystals believing them to be gold that is unripe. In exchange for a machete and a few pickaxes, Ives persuaded the old man to show him the place in the mountains where he’d been prospecting.’

  ‘What a great beginning for an adventure story!’ said Joseph.

  ‘If you keep interrupting, I’ll lose the thread.’

  ‘I’ll shut up, boss. Not another word, I promise.’

  ‘Lewis Ives was a novice where mineralogy was concerned and needed some expert advice. He went to Armand, whom he’d met at the hotel. Armand examined the pieces of stone. He instantly recognised them as emeralds, but was careful to tell Ives they were worthless quartz crystals. Nevertheless, he also told Ives he’d like to analyse the rock where they came from for other possible mineral deposits. The unsuspecting Ives showed him on a map the exact location of the seam, a remote region of the central cordillera only accessible on foot. Armand offered to finance an expedition. He
told Palmyra about the emeralds, but craftily omitted to say he knew the exact whereabouts of the seam.’

  ‘The villain!’ exclaimed Joseph.

  ‘Palmyra hatched a plan. Armand would go with Ives to find the place and on the way back he would get rid of his unwanted companion. Then the two of them would become partners and mine the emeralds. Only Armand was a crafty devil, and had no intention of going into partnership. Just before setting out, he secretly purchased the piece of land and with it the mining concession. He sent the deeds to his wife Odette, hidden inside a chromolithograph hanging above his bed.’

  ‘The Madonna in Blue,’ Joseph gasped, forgetting to note it down.

  ‘He asked Odette to send him a telegram telling him it had arrived safely, which she did and, convinced he’d got away with it, booked his passage to France on the La-Fayette in the name of Lewis Ives.’

  ‘I can guess what’s coming next,’ murmured Kenji. ‘He killed Ives and assumed his identity. One thing remains unclear, though. How could he mine the emeralds as Lewis Ives if the deeds were in his name?’

  ‘He probably intended to disappear for a while and resurface miraculously after three or four months – there exist vast, unexplored areas of Colombia.’

  ‘Every bit as good as a Gustave Aimard story!’ cried Joseph. ‘“Captured by Indians he manages to escape…” So far Ninon’s innocent then.’

  ‘In principle. She still had no blood on her hands, but she was just as cunning as Armand, and after he left she searched his room and found at the bottom of the wastepaper basket some torn up bits of paper that she painstakingly pieced together. A telegram. “Received Madonna in Blue. Will take good care of her. See you at Christmas. Odette.”

  She ascertained that The Madonna in Blue was missing from his room and went to the concession office, where she discovered she’d been tricked. At the shipping office she found a Lewis Ives on the list of passengers sailing for France. She resolved to buy a passage herself on the same boat, kill Armand and retrieve The Madonna in Blue from Odette’s apartment.’

  ‘It’s as clear as crystal, boss. She bumped off her lover in St Nazaire!’

  Sensing Kenji’s uneasiness, Tasha quickly asked: ‘Did Odette have any idea that The Madonna in Blue contained the deeds of sale?’

  ‘No. And Ninon knew she didn’t.’

  ‘How foolish I’ve been!’ muttered Kenji, smiling feebly. ‘I should have…’

  ‘You couldn’t possibly have known,’ said Tasha. ‘I liked her too.’

  Victor stood up and straightened his hat.

  ‘Let’s go home. I’m exhausted.’

  ‘They walked back to the bookshop. Not one of them would have admitted it, but they were all thinking of Ninon. Tasha recalled the intrepid young woman posing nude in the studio at the back of the Bibulus, and found it impossible to imagine her as a criminal. Kenji wondered, shamefully, whether his name would come up during the trial. Joseph was relieved that the shadow he’d mistaken for the ghost of Père Moscou had only been a woman. As for Victor, he was reflecting on the unwitting part little Denise had played in all this. Had she not fallen in love with that chromolithograph she, Odette and Père Moscou would all still be alive. He came to the conclusion that in matters of art, good taste can sometimes be crucial.

  With a look of disgust on his face, Isidore Gouvier tossed some drawings by Le Passe-partout’s new caricaturist on to a table covered in glasses.

  ‘Honestly, Monsieur Legris, he’s no match for Tasha. Look what he’s come up with, the joker! He wanted to poke fun at the spiritualists and he thought it would be clever to show a ghost brandishing a cane. Only the ghost looks like an epileptic sheik and you couldn’t hit your way out of a paper bag with that cane! By the way, Monsieur Legris, you had a lucky escape. Did you know that the handle of the murder weapon contained a piece of lead?’

  ‘Naturally, since I read your detailed articles about the state of the corpses they dug up at the Cour des Comptes,’ murmured Victor. ‘Poor Odette, she was so trusting! Why did Ninon – or should I say Marie – have to kill her?’

  ‘My contact at police headquarters gave me a few tips and I can tell you one thing. Marie didn’t mean to kill Odette de Valois. In fact it was an accident. When she went to the cemetery to get the picture back, as arranged, Madame de Valois thought she was seeing Armand’s ghost and started screaming hysterically. To shut her up Marie hit her, but a little too hard, and the rest you know…And now it’s your turn to shed a bit of light, Monsieur Legris, fair’s fair.’

  Victor swallowed his vermouth cassis.

  ‘On condition you don’t mention my intimate association with Odette de Valois.’

  ‘I’d willingly oblige, old chap, but I can’t vouch for my fellow journalists. The concierge at Boulevard Haussmann, a certain Hyacinthe, has already been raging about you quite a bit. I suppose I could edit his declarations. The written word outlasts the spoken word. Will that do?’

  ‘It’ll do. When Denise came to see me at Rue des Saints-Pères, to tell me about Madame de Valois’s disappearance I took her to a local café. I suppose Ninon must have been sitting in an adjoining booth, in which case she would have overheard our entire conversation.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘About what had happened the previous evening at the cemetery and then in the apartment at Boulevard Haussmann, and about Madame de Valois’s strange behaviour – I wasn’t paying attention to everything she said. Afterwards I went to see Mademoiselle Kherson to ask if she’d agree to let the girl stay in her room. When I came back to Rue des Saints-Pères I noticed a student browsing in the shop – it was Ninon, but naturally I couldn’t have known that then. She presumably followed Denise and my assistant to Rue Notre-Dame-de Lorette and…’

  ‘Monsieur Legris, let’s stop all this beating about the bush. What interests me is the methodology of your investigation, the rest I can get from my sources.’

  ‘It might take a while.’

  ‘I’ve plenty of time; it’s not yet midday.’

  ‘I’d like another drink, how about you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no. Alphonse! Two vermouths! I’m all ears, Monsieur Legris.’

  Victor tousled his hair and waited for the waiter to leave again before he began telling his story.

  By the time he’d finished, the minute hand and the hour hand were both pointing at two.

  ‘It only came to me at the very last moment,’ he concluded. ‘Whoever would have suspected such a pretty woman?’

  ‘Yes, she’s a handsome creature,’ declared Gouvier. ‘I saw her in Lecacheur’s office. She possesses the sort of poise a lot of our Comédie-Française actors wouldn’t mind having.’

  ‘Don’t fall into the trap of glamorising the most despicable criminals. Journalists are so good at it that they end up turning murderers into heroes.’

  ‘Novelists too, Monsieur Legris.’

  Victor greeted Madame Ballu, who ignored him. She was busy reading aloud from the front page of a daily newspaper. Her audience consisted of Madame Pignot and son, who were all ears.

  ‘Don’t forget to come to work, Joseph!’ Victor called out.

  ‘The bitch!’ cried Madame Pignot, snatching the newspaper from Madame Ballu who looked daggers at her. ‘Listen to this! “I went to spy on the little redhead at Rue des Saints-Pères.”’

  ‘She’s referring to Madame Tasha,’ Joseph explained.

  ‘“She took an omnibus to Montmartre, where she entered a cheap eatery called the Bibulus. When I discovered the studio I realised my task would be a lot easier than I’d thought. Befriending the artists was child’s play.”’

  ‘She’s got a nerve, that one!’ Madame Ballu opined loudly, snatching back her paper. “I was sitting in the Temps Perdu when to my astonishment I saw the old man from the Cour des Comptes go past on his way to spy on the bookshop. I discovered he’d taken up residence in one of the courtyards…” Number 23!’ cried Madame Ballu. I knew he was up t
o no good the moment I saw him prowling around…’

  ‘My turn! My turn!’ screeched Madame Pignot and grabbed the newspaper, tearing it in the process. ‘“I decided to return early the next morning. I was nervous. I saw the old man being chased down the street by a concierge.” She means you, doesn’t she?’

  ‘I was chasing him all right. He was rude to me! Here, let me see that! “…I had spent the night with Laumier who was in a hurry to start the life-drawing sessions…”’

  ‘The shameless hussy!’ Madame Pignot cried.

  ‘And to think she was slipping in and out of here. You can say what you like, but even so, Monsieur Legris and Monsieur Mori are hardly…Well, I know what I mean.’ Madame Ballu went quiet, shooting a sidelong glance at Joseph, who had managed to get hold of the paper.

  ‘“…I had to act quickly to get rid of the old man from the Cour des Comptes. It would have all been all right if the little upstart hadn’t caught me in the act…” Hey, Maman, did you hear that? The upstart, that’s me! Look! There’s my name, spelled out, Joseph Pignot!’

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Where? I can’t see a thing!’ bellowed Madame Pignot.

  ‘Give me back that paper. It’s mine!’ brayed Madame Ballu.

  Each of the women pulled at the paper in an effort to snatch from the other, with the result that the ground was soon strewn with bits of paper and the two women, red in the face, their hair ruffled, began hurling insults and aiming kicks at one another. Joseph placed himself between them, arms akimbo. Regardless of the blows he received during this valiant intervention, there was but one thought running through his mind: ‘My name’s in the paper! My name’s in the paper! Valentine will be proud of me!’

  Chapter Twelve

  A stream of light poured in through the window on to a little table covered in palettes and tubes of gouache. Nonchalantly seated in an armchair, legs crossed, holding a book and with a faint smile on his face, Kenji Mori looked for all the world as if he were about to utter one of his favourite proverbs. With an air of satisfaction, Tasha took a step back to admire her canvas, then added a white fleck to the corner of Kenji’s eyes to bring them alive.