The Song Peddler of the Pont Neuf

by Laura Lebow

  “You again. What do you want?”

  “I wondered if you had remembered anything about the publisher of Madame Désirée’s Memoir,” I said.

  “I told you, I know nothing about that,” he said, sniffling. “Please leave me alone.” His hands clenched as his eyes darted to something behind me.

  “Where do you live?” I asked him.

  “In Saint-Antoine, not that it is any of your business,” he said. “Please, please. I cannot help you. Leave me alone, I beg of you.”

  “All right, I’ll go,” I said. I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice. “If you should decide you want to tell me anything, contact Father Bernard at Sainte-Marguerite. He is my brother. I promise that anything you tell him or me will remain confidential.”

  He stared at me, sniffling and rubbing his hands together.

  I shrugged and crossed the quai. I passed the entrance to the church, where an old man with an out-of-tune violin was singing the same popular song about the shepherdess that Chéron had sung to me. I turned into the rue Dauphine, took a few steps down the street and then turned back and returned to the corner of the quai, concealing myself in the shadows of the deep entryway of a shop selling religious texts. From my vantage point I could see Janaret with Marc-Étienne Duval. I could not hear what they were saying over the din from the old man’s violin, but Duval was shouting at a trembling Janaret. The police inspector raised his arm as if to strike the bouquiniste, who dropped to his knees and covered his head with his hands. Duval lowered his arm, leaned over and said a few words to Janaret, and then stalked away toward the Pont Saint-Michel. The bouquiniste rose, brushed off his coat, and frantically packed up his cart.

  I continued down the rue Dauphine and then cut over a few side streets to the rue de la Harpe, where I searched for the address the logbook had given for Geneviève Blesson. But when I finally found the correct block, the house was empty. Four workmen were cutting long lengths of wood to prop up the building against collapse. I’d seen this sight in several streets in this neighborhood. Much of the stone used to build the city came from quarries that lie under its streets, and in the older areas, like this one, the ground was subsiding, taking the houses built upon it with it. A workman stopped sawing long enough to tell me that all of the residents of the house had been turned out three months ago for their own safety.

  At the door to an apartment in a tidy building in the rue des Cordeliers, a pretty young maid in a starched uniform told me that Mademoiselle Geneviève Aubin was resting and could not be disturbed. Despite several pleasant minutes of effort, none of my charms could convince her to wake her mistress. I then took the long walk to the rue de Bourbon, to a small mansion behind the quai d’Orsay. A few coins and my last plug of tobacco convinced the doorman to reveal that the house was a “private club”, where the residents entertained men of influence and wealth. Mademoiselle Geneviève Courval had lived there for two years. She was a lovely girl who had always taken the time to tip the doorman when one of her guests arrived. She had married one of her patrons, a minor noble from the Netherlands, and moved to Brussels six months ago.

  By this time it was nearly four in the afternoon. Dusk would soon settle over the city. I was frustrated and disappointed, and a bit angry with myself. I had wasted the entire afternoon trying to find Duval’s Geneviève, based on the fanciful idea that she might be the link between the police inspector and the song peddler that would enable me to solve my case. I should just go home, have a glass of wine, and visit with my friends and my bird. But I had now reached the last name on my list, and the address was just five blocks away, so I trudged down the rue du Bac to the rue de la Planche, around the corner from the Hôtel d’Estrées.

  The houses here were smaller than those in the rue de Grenelle but just as lavish, and like all of the buildings in this neighborhood, hidden behind high walls. I consulted my list, which told me that a Geneviève Rivière lived somewhere along the short street. As I wandered by the closed gates, a carriage barreled past me. I swore under my breath as I recognized the coat of arms on its doors. A gate just ahead of me swung open. The carriage turned in. I ran over and peered into the small courtyard.

  A footman opened the door of the house and a woman wearing a velvet cape came down the steps. She had not pulled up the fur-lined hood, and her light brunette curls tumbled down her back. My breath caught as I watched the footman help her into the carriage. The etchings I had seen in the windows of bookstores all over Paris did her little justice. I stepped back as the carriage came my way. It rumbled through the gate and then sped toward the rue de Sèvres.

  I stood gaping after it for a full minute. The last woman on my list, Geneviève Rivière, was Mademoiselle Violette, Paris’s most acclaimed actress. I pulled my cloak about me and hurried down the street. It was high time I saw the inside of the Comédie-Française.

  • •

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  After returning to my room, tending to my bird, and changing into my better suit, I ate a light supper at a tavern in the rue Saint-Jacques and presented myself at the ticket window inside the Comédie-Française at twenty minutes past five.

  “What is playing this evening?” I asked the ticket seller. He rolled his eyes and pointed to a sign on the wall next to the window. “The Marriage of Figaro, by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais,” it said.

  “Which section do you want, monsieur?” the seller asked.

  I hesitated. “Which are the least expensive seats?”

  “Parterre—the ground floor,” he said.

  “I’ll take one ticket, please.”

  “Standing or bench?”

  “Are the prices different?” I had no idea one required so much knowledge to purchase a mere theater ticket.

  “Stand, one livre, one sou. Bench, two livres, eight sous.”

  I decided to treat myself. “The bench, then,” I said.

  He took my money and handed me a ticket. “Through the lobby to the farthest door on your right,” he said. “Next!”

  I followed the throng of well-dressed people into the lobby, a large wide room decorated with crimson wallpaper, gilded trim and large, sparkling chandeliers. I pushed my way through the crowd and located the door to the parterre. I handed the usher my ticket.

  “Take any available seat on the benches in the middle or back,” he said.

  I waded through the crowd who had only paid for standing room and found a seat on a long bench about halfway back from the stage. I removed my cloak, settled myself, and then looked around the room. The theater was much larger than the ones I had attended as a child, with a domed ceiling and four tiers of boxes arrayed along the walls. The deep stage was simply set with a large armoire, a plush armchair, and a standing mirror.

  The chatter of my fellow audience members hummed around me.

  “Look, Delon is sitting with Fournier—I thought they were suing each other over that garden space between their houses.”

  “There is Madame Poulenc, but where is the comte du Bellay tonight? At home with his wife?”

  “Ah, look at the fat baker from the rue du Four, taking up two seats. Doesn’t it look as if his wife is pregnant again?”

  I noticed Anton Cobenzl pushing his way to the front row of the benches. Good, I thought, I can file a report on him, even though I had decided to neglect him tonight to satisfy my curiosity about Geneviève Rivière.

  A middle-aged man, his large belly crammed into a threadbare waistcoat and coat, took the seat beside me and nodded a greeting.

  “Have you seen this play?” he asked.

  “No, this is my first time here,” I said.

  He gave a friendly snort. “First time! Why, I’ve been coming since this theater opened, six years now. You’ll find it is the best one in the city.” He patted the space on the bench next to him. “No other theater has benches in the parterre. That’s why the tickets are more expensive. It’s worth the cost, though.” He waved his arm at the stage. “This i
s the best troupe in the country, maybe in all of Europe. And it’s a high-toned crowd. At the other theaters, if you want the cheapest seats you have to stand all night. They’ll let anyone in. There’s lots of pickpockets, and folks get rowdy. I once saw a man stabbed at a place up on the boulevards. No, I like it here the best.”

  “I’m looking forward to the performance,” I said.

  He looked me up and down. “What do you do for a living?” he asked.

  “I’m a clerk,” I said.

  “So am I. I work for a group of lawyers over near the university. How about you?”

  “I work for a merchant in the Marais.”

  “You’ve had a bit of a journey, then, coming all the way down here,” he said.

  “I’ve heard a lot about Mademoiselle Violette,” I said. “I saved my wages so I could finally come see her.”

  “Well, you shall have an enjoyable evening,” he said. “She is—oh, look, they are beginning.”

  A hush came over the crowd as a stocky man wearing the garb of a valet and carrying a long measuring stick strode onto the stage. He leaned over and measured an area of the floor. “Nineteen by twenty-six,” he announced to the audience. But no one was paying attention to him, for Mademoiselle Violette had just walked onto the stage. I joined in the clapping and whistling as the young actress, clad in a simple white dress and the cap of a lady’s maid, stopped in front of the mirror. She placed a wreath of orange blossoms on her head.

  “Look, Figaro, my wreath of orange blossoms,” she called to the valet. “Do you like it?”

  The crowd whistled their approval and settled in for the performance. I soon became lost in my own enjoyment of the story, as I attempted to track the various schemes and strategies of the many characters: the count who is determined to bed the maid on the night of her wedding to the valet; Figaro, who is anxious to thwart his master’s plan; the middle-aged woman and bombastic doctor who are plotting to marry the woman to Figaro despite the fact that she was old enough to be his mother; and the lonely countess who enlists the assistance of her maid and the valet to trick her husband into returning to her bed. I howled with laughter at the antics of the young flirtatious page, who was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the middle of the second scene, the performance was briefly interrupted by a woman in a wide, fancy gown and tall hat who noisily maneuvered herself into a first tier box to the left of my seat. My bench mates and I all booed her.

  When the action broke for intermission and a scenery change, I chatted with the legal clerk, who was eager to tell me about Mademoiselle Violette. “I’ve seen this play five times already this season,” he confided. “She’s a wonderful actress. She came from nowhere, just two years ago. She started with very small roles, but now she’s the star of the company.”

  He directed my attention to an elegantly-dressed man who occupied a box near the front of the theater. “That’s the duc de Biron over there. She’s his mistress. All of the noblemen vie to have the actresses here as their lovers. I understand he keeps her in lavish style. I’m surprised he is here tonight—he’s a very busy man. I’ve heard he is a good friend of the duc d’Orléans, and attends a lot of those political meetings over in the Palais Royal. There, you see, he’s leaving now.” He scratched his head. “Ah, the benefits of being a wealthy aristocrat, heh? I doubt Mademoiselle would give me even one brief glance. Good, look there, they are starting again.”

  Over the next hour and a half the schemes of the characters were played out, and all of the lovers reunited with their proper partners in a moonlit chestnut grove. When the applause had died down, I thanked my bench mate for his good company and followed the crowd out into the plaza. I ignored the offers of lantern men to light my walk home and instead slipped into the shadows of the theater portico. A few paces to my right, an old beggar, his hood pulled over his head, slumped against a thick column. He had placed a small basket on the ground beside him, to collect any coins that might come his way. Across the plaza, Cobenzl was purchasing a posy from a flower vendor. He strolled back to the theater and took his place near the front door among a handful of the actress’s other admirers.

  Eventually the carriages all left the plaza, the audience members were safely ensconced in the cafés, the lantern men had accompanied stragglers away, and the vendors began to pack up their wares. The duc de Biron’s carriage entered the plaza and pulled up by the front door of the theater. I stepped off the portico and joined the group of admirers waiting for Mademoiselle Violette.

  We all stood for a few minutes until she emerged from the theater, the hood on her cloak pulled up over her light brunette hair. Cobenzl pushed his way to her and held out his floral offering. She shook her head. He thrust the posy into her hands. The duc’s footman descended and opened the carriage door for her.

  Sometimes in my profession I am forced to act the churl, even if a lady has provided me with an entertaining evening and deserves nothing but my thanks and admiration. I took a step forward. “Geneviève! Geneviève Rivière!” I shouted.

  She froze, but did not turn her head toward me.

  “I have a message for you from Marc-Étienne Duval!”

  I retreated to the portico as Cobenzl’s flowers fluttered to the ground. The footman offered his hand and she climbed into the carriage. The footman closed the door after her, looked around to locate the source of the shouting and, seeing only dejected gentlemen slowly walking toward the cafés, climbed up to the coachman’s box. The carriage barreled away.

  My day had been a long one, so I decided to let Cobenzl walk to his hotel unaccompanied, and instead started home to my own bed. I walked down the rue Voltaire and then by the remnants of the city’s twelfth-century wall. In the rue des Cordeliers, the old convent that had given the street its name sat silent, its cloister dark and eerie. I heard a rustling noise behind me. I turned to look. The street was empty. Perhaps the ghosts of the medieval monks were walking the cloister tonight, I laughed to myself. Nevertheless, I quickened my pace.

  I crossed the rue de la Harpe and walked by the Hôtel de Cluny, the sprawling old city residence of the Benedectine monks, which had been sold and broken into apartments years ago. I glanced up at the building’s tower, which was an observatory used by the government’s Naval Office. On clear nights one could sometimes see a man perched high in the tower, looking through a long telescope. I had no idea what he searched for in the skies, or if he had ever seen anything up there.

  Someone coughed a few paces behind me. I whirled around, only to see the old beggar from outside the theater shuffling along, his head bent, his basket hanging on his arm.

  “Could you spare an old man a sou for some bread, monsieur?” he called to me.

  I dug into my pocket, pulled out a coin, and extended my hand. He hurried up to me, his head still bent low, grabbed the coin, and scuttled down the street toward the rue Saint-Jacques. I followed more slowly, and when I reached the corner, looked down the street. There was no sight of the old man. I shrugged and walked down the block to my lodgings.

  Henri Talbot and Jean Simard were hunched over the trictrac board when I entered the wineshop. My landlord looked up from his work at the bar and nodded a greeting.

  “Has anyone come looking for the bird yet?” I asked.

  “No one today,” Guy said. “Do you want a glass of wine?”

  I shook my head.

  “Paul, come over and play with me,” Talbot called. “Simard has to get home.”

  “Sorry, I cannot,” I said. “I’m tired. I’ve been walking the city all day long.”

  “Next time, then,” Talbot said. “I’m determined to beat you sometime, if you ever recover your vigor.” He gave an exaggerated sigh. “Young men today—”

  We all laughed.

  I climbed the stairs to my room. The bird chirped a greeting as I entered and pulled off my cloak. “It looks like you’ll be staying, my little friend,” I said, opening the cage to let him out. “I’ll think of a good
name for you.” I let him fly around while I refreshed his food and water, and then called him back to the cage. I pulled off my boots and my clothes, threw them on the floor, and crawled into my bed. A few moments later, I was fast asleep.

  • •

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  As I walked to the rue Saint-Séverin the next morning to break my fast, questions about the Bricon case filled my mind. Geneviève Rivière had recognized Duval’s name when I had called to her last night. But to my frustration, I still didn’t possess enough information to draw a connection between her, the police inspector, and the missing song peddler. Was Geneviève Rivière the woman Bricon had sung about, the woman he had told Vincent Chéron was “a dream from long ago?” That seemed implausible—the actress was in her early twenties, too young to have been romantically involved with an old man years before. I shook my head. I was probably just leaping to conclusions, assuming that Bricon’s Geneviève had been a real woman. Song writers, like poets, have a tendency to fabricate characters and stories to please their listeners.

  And more importantly, no matter what role Geneviève Rivière or another woman named Geneviève had played in the lives of Duval and Bricon, I still had no motive for Duval to murder my client, and I was in a muddle about the disappearance of Bricon after my visit to the morgue. If only—

  “Read all about it!”

  I started as a colporteur shouted in my ear.

  “Austrian diplomat attacks young girl, leaves her for dead!”

  I grabbed his arm. “What did you say?”

  “Buy the pamphlet, monsieur!” he said, pushing it into my hands. “Only five sous. An Austrian raped and beat a young girl the other night. She’s given witness to one of our top reporters. Have a look.”

  I handed him the money and took the pamphlet into the nearest coffeehouse. I took the first open seat I saw, tossed my cloak aside, and started to read.