The Prisoner of the Riviera

by Janice Law

  Next up would be a trip to a doctor for Pierre’s broken ribs and then arrangements for a safe place for Pierre and me. That sounded good. What did not sound so appetizing was searching out the tracks of the late Gravois, aka Madame Renard. Of course, I said no a dozen times over, before twenty-four hours confined in a flat in Hector’s oh-so-boring hamlet, watched over by an oh-so-boring ex-copper who proved both plain and straight, changed my mind.

  A day later, still stiff and sore after my encounter with Brun and his associates, I was on the train for Nice wearing a borrowed black leather jacket and a pair of Hector’s slacks, too short in the leg. I had money in my wallet, and my brief was to eat and drink and make new friends. I thought I could do that—if someone didn’t kill me first.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ah, azure sky and Homer’s wine-dark sea—rather an exaggeration that, though the water was purple, definitely purple in the shadows under the rocks—with a handful of swimmers on every little white sand plage, and sunbathers draping themselves over the black rocks along the shore. If I remained on the Riviera, would my subject matter evolve? Would I begin to see gods and goddesses, water nymphs and Poseidon’s train? I think not, though on closer examination, the Greek myths lose their prettiness, and the nymphs wind up in the ancient version of the fish locker, so maybe.

  I was hoping that I wouldn’t be on the Riviera long enough to know. It turns out that I really need London to paint. I need fog and rain and louche clubs drowned in smoke. I need nights gambling with Arnold. I need Millais’s old studio with Nan puttering about in the kitchen and endangering us by overlooking the gas. I really do. Instead, I was off looking for a ghost, who shifted between male and female and whose effects might be anywhere—or nowhere. I thought the latter most likely.

  Hector had come to visit me in the “safe house,” which was a second-story room above the local tabac, a room, Hector assured me, that had a history of sheltering brave men and women.

  “I am a comedown for the residence,” I said. “I am quite uninterested in being a hero.”

  “Never deal with anyone who wants to be a hero,” Hector said. “They are dangerous for everyone concerned.”

  He was, like Shakespeare’s Viola, fortified against all denials, and he’d come to brief me for my mission. He began with Brun, who ran a series of clubs in both Nice and Cannes. “I don’t know if he actually owns them outright or if he provides expensive ‘protection’ for them, but either way, he controls them.”

  “With an associate called Richard Malet.”

  I got a sharp, quizzical look. “Someone you know?”

  “I met him in passing. I think he’d promised Cybèle engagements at a better type of club.”

  Hector looked sad. “Cybèle is another person who has found the transition to peace difficult.”

  “Malet is out of the picture. I can assure you that he, too, has gone to ground.”

  Hector absorbed this for a moment. His almost immobile features transmitted amazingly delicate shades of feeling. “I see I did not make a mistake with you, Monsieur Lepage.”

  “Don’t think it; everything was improvisation.”

  “Exactly what I meant. Now, here is what we know about Gustave Gravois/Madame Renard.” He took out several photographs, square head shots that might once have graced identity cards—or wanted posters—and several old handbills with lettering in both French and German showing a very glamorous drag performer.

  “He was good,” I said.

  “He had a kind of genius, and the strange thing was, though he didn’t seem to be terribly interested in sex, his inclinations were more toward women than men.”

  “Yet you said Paul—”

  “Paul was very much taken with him, and he was fond of Paul. What I’m trying to say is that there wasn’t much passion in Gustave. Not of the everyday kind anyway. He came alive onstage and particularly in drag. When he was made up and performing, then he was lively and sexy. When he came out of the theater in his slacks and jacket, he was a good-looking man with some big thing missing inside.” Hector looked thoughtful. “It was as if he’d left his soul in the dressing room.”

  I looked again at the newspaper clip announcing Madame Renard’s death. When I’d first seen it, standing in the sun in Monaco, I’d thought that she had the face of a tragic heroine. In contrast, the mug shots of Gustave Gravois were totally forgettable. “In some cultures, men take all the women’s parts in drama.”

  “Our sex is greedy for sensation,” Hector remarked. “But for whatever reason, he was a different person onstage, and I think that’s what Paul loved and could never reach, because the minute Gustave left the footlights he was ordinary and disinterested.”

  “The unattainable has a certain fascination.”

  “Exactly. Others came and went—women, boys—but Gustave retained his appeal long after he lost his looks. I think he must have gotten some little postwar engagements, not in the big halls and fancy clubs but somewhere, because performing was the breath of life for him.”

  I remembered the drag performer, the vocal equivalent of the beach caricaturist, who’d sung “The Man I Love.” Surely there would be a place for an artiste who could actually sing. “You think that’s how Brun found him? He heard him, recognized him, followed him?”

  “Yes, and there’s more. You described the shooting in London. Brun might have arranged that, too.”

  “With László’s connivance?”

  Hector shrugged. “It is possible.”

  “Brun will be on the lookout for me. And for Pierre.”

  “The reason I didn’t want to involve him further. We want some evidence the police cannot ignore, and we want it quickly before the bicycle races when he will be out and vulnerable.”

  I had to agree with that; at the same time, one does not care to be expendable. “I feel a little like the big game hunter’s goat.”

  Hector nodded. “Naturally, there is some risk in trying to flush Brun out, but you will be under a certain amount of surveillance—from old comrades and some sympathetic officers.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that and said so, but Hector shook his head. “Too dangerous otherwise. Especially if you have been asking questions there already. Though this should help.” He reached into his pocket and produced another identity card. This one was dirty and a bit smudged. “Not up to the Chavanels’ standard, I’m afraid. But it will do.”

  I took a look at the image. He was my facial type, whoever he was, and at a quick glance the card might pass. “My hair isn’t blond,” I said, and though I hate to sound fussy, I added, “I really prefer darker for evening.”

  “It can be made blond.” Hector opened up the kit bag he’d brought and produced a bottle of peroxide, an apron, a cape, rubber gloves, and some packets of yellow-brown hair dye. Monsieur Hector of the Ritz! Would that a man of his ingenuity had stuck with the Sûreté. “You just need to look that little bit different,” he said. “And Eugène Laroche is a nice name.”

  Great—I’d just about accustomed myself to Marcel, as in Proust, and now must think of myself as Eugène, as in Eugène of Savoy, military man extraordinaire, another fellow queer and genius. With a knowledgeable air, Hector put on the apron and gloves, draped me in the cape, and set to work quickly and neatly. “We strip the color out first, then dye it a dark blond.”

  I could feel my identity running off in interesting directions. It took Hector several hours, strong chemicals, and some work with the scissors, but eventually I emerged looking blond and vaguely German. “You were an admirer of Gustave’s when he was entertaining during the war,” Hector said. “His stage name was Mademoiselle Veronique.”

  “I can imagine that. What was I doing here?”

  “Do you speak a little German by any chance?”

  “I speak a lot of German, most of it naughty.”

  “
That will do very nicely. You’ll an be Alsatian black marketer.”

  “I know nothing about either.”

  Hector tried again. “You are British but were stranded by the war in France. You fell in with black marketers.”

  I could see tedious reminiscences about stock pricing and smuggling and the running of heavy trucks. “What about I was stranded by the war in France and was kept in chocolates and Champagne by a rich German officer?”

  Hector laughed. “Very well. Invent a name for him.”

  “Not on your life! I’m the soul of discretion as a ‘gentleman’s gentleman.’ But he’d be—what should he be? I rather fancy an Oberstleutnant in the Wehrmacht.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t go all the way to general.”

  “Too much about a general might be remembered; besides, my real love is the ‘other ranks.’ ”

  “No chocolates and Champagne there.” Hector held up the identity card and the hand mirror. No one who knew me would be fooled, but I figured I would pass a casual inspection. “Very reasonable.”

  Hector took off the cape and his apron and gloves. He sat down next to me to go over a list of clubs that might have employed Gravois. “You’re looking for friends, contacts. You’ve been away. You hadn’t heard of his disappearance.”

  “Some will surely know he’s dead.”

  “It will be a very great shock to you when you learn,” Hector suggested.

  “If I find his flat, his house wherever he was living? Is breaking and entering on the menu?”

  “We can take care of that,” Hector said quickly. He gave me a number. “The tabac. Leon will always give me a message promptly.”

  Why do I get involved in these half-assed schemes? I wondered, and maybe Hector was thinking along the same lines, because there was a long pause. “You’re sure Brun will be around?” I asked. “You don’t think he’s off to Switzerland with Yvette Lambert?”

  “According to what you’ve told us, he still doesn’t know which bank and he doesn’t have the account number.”

  “Unless Yvette knew.”

  “That she was still in France two nights ago suggests she does not have all the information, either.”

  “She was planning to disappear, though. She intended the dead woman to be mistaken—even temporarily—for herself.”

  “Yes, and that worried me. But you and Pierre recovered what we think was the key, the parts catalog. The Chavanels and Joubert have copies of the notebook, and the letter has been lost.”

  “Or is in her possession—or Brun’s.” Though the Chavanels were closest to the jackpot, I admitted reluctantly that no one had all the information.

  “However much money Brun could potentially get, he can’t let go of the clubs until he has that information,” Hector said.

  That made sense if anything did, but was Brun sensible? “Was he always a killer?”

  Hector shrugged. “Before the war he was a low-level thug. The war brought out the worst in him, and sad to say the Resistance gave him skills that he’s turned to bad use. Though I understand now that he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, that he contracts everything out.”

  “To the likes of Richard Malet?”

  Hector nodded.

  “There’s someone else I want to know about, Jerome Chavanel. He was a cousin of the old ladies and a waiter at the Hotel Negresco, who was murdered at the end of the war, stabbed in the back, the same MO that almost finished me. If I have the chronology accurate, that happened soon after Cybèle arrived in Nice. I was told that he had good contacts in the clubs and theaters. I want to know if there’s a connection.”

  After a long enough pause to make me uneasy, Hector said, “Everyone rich and powerful went to the Negresco. Jerome was in position to learn a great deal, and he frequently passed on useful information to the Resistance.”

  “On the side of the angels then.”

  “Well, most of the time. There was also an unproven suspicion that he was a contact for either the Gestapo or for the Abwehr.”

  “Cybèle arrived just before his murder. Bad timing, maybe, given her reputation?”

  “I’m afraid so. The poor child was not to know and, being innocent, never dreamed.” He shook his head as if shaking off bad thoughts, worse memories. “We were all to blame, but with the war winding down, we hoped to resume ordinary lives once more.”

  “I was under that illusion and look where it’s gotten me.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Yet a German private, barely more than a boy—how could that have suggested anything more than folly and impulse?”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  “The old ladies. Cybèle denied everything.”

  “And quite rightly. Her lover—if I can use the term though I’d rather not—was fairly high up in the Gestapo, a Kriminalinspektor. She got picked up on some minor infraction, dodgy coupons, I think, though I suspect they already had their eyes on the family. When she was brought in, he spotted her, dismissed the charges out of hand, squired her home, and discovered Agathe’s cooking. He probably had enough to arrest them all, and if he had, he’d have rolled up our network.” When I looked surprised, he added, “We assumed that no one held out for more than twenty-four hours; the working assumption was that we’d be betrayed. That was wisest.”

  “But the Kriminalinspektor had other ideas?”

  “He was no fanatic. The war was going badly and his career was shot, so he figured to enjoy himself while everything went to hell. He was willing to work a deal: the favors of Mademoiselle and dinners at the Chavanels’ residence in exchange for a blind eye. Of course, it was not put so bluntly. It was a hint here or there.” He lifted his shoulders. “You will think badly of us. She was just sixteen and very brave.”

  “And no one knew the real situation?”

  “Some knew and sought to take advantage later, like Paul Desmarais. That was when he was working with the Americans, swaggering around with a Browning automatic and a jeep at his disposal. He went in a big way for denunciations, for rooting out Fascist elements and straying women. Really, he was settling old scores and eliminating old rivals.”

  I began to see Cybèle’s contacts with Brun and his circle in a different light.

  “Yet hadn’t he worked with the Chavanels earlier?”

  “Indeed, until they figured out that he was stripping their clients of pretty much all their assets. The ladies can be tough, and Anastasie is idealistic. Paul didn’t like being called to account—even as mildly as they could afford to do it. I think they had something on him, too. I think they did, because he never moved directly against them, only against Cybèle, and only when the Milice was history and he was working for the Yanks and looking for the exit door.”

  A piece of work. I must remember that and also that he might not be dead. Be on the lookout, Eugène, I thought, as we rumbled into Nice. Be alert, as we used to say in the ARP, and keep your eyes open for ghosts and ghouls and the very much alive Serge Brun, who must by now have figured out that at least one of his colleagues was not coming back. Whether or not I had any luck tracing the friends of the late Gustave Gravois, I was sure that my visit to the old belle epoque burg would be filled with incident.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Have I mentioned my fondness for sailors? I have a weakness, as Nan would say, for members of the maritime profession, for the toilers of the sea, for jolly jack-tars and also the not-so-jolly ones, who are really more to my taste. But Nice, alas, is not a naval port: no smart white-and-blue uniforms, no gay striped shirts and red pom-pom-topped caps. Nice had hard-eyed fishermen and workers on the cement boats and the ferry trade, few promising enough to make the port-side bistros appealing. But eventually full dark descended, the nightclubs, smart or seedy, got in full swing, and café society came out to play.

  I wandered along
a brightly lit street, searching out Hector’s likely prospects, Le Chien Rouge, Le Nouveau Mayfair, La Voile Noire, Bacchus, and El Grec. I’d decided that Eugène was a gay dog, and at each one, I had a few drinks, listened to the headliner, and flirted with other patrons. I was in full bon vivant mode and after applauding a singer who squawked through “As Time Goes By,” or “L’amour est un jeu,” it was easy to say, “Know who I miss? Mademoiselle Veronique. Anyone remember her?” And sometimes to add, “Gustave. That was his name. Gustave G-something, Gravois, I think. Yes, Gustave Gravois, but he usually performed as Mademoiselle Veronique. Now there was a voice.”

  Reaction to this gambit varied. Incomprehension, mostly; the war was ever present and under the rug simultaneously, while prewar seemed as ancient as Babylonia, and the only allowable nostalgia was a few old songs. Most claimed never to have heard Gravois, though a chap who knew the mademoiselle had “sung for the Krauts” punched me a good one, with the result that we both landed on the sidewalk. I hoped that he’d prove interesting in one way or another, but he was just a drunk with a temper. With dwindling possibilities of success and needing a restorative drink, I tried a little ramshackle place with a garden seating area. The headliner last seen on the memorable night when I entered the gravediggers’ fraternity had squeezed himself into a tight red satin gown to warble “Un amour comme le nôtre.” I took a seat at one of the tables, ordered Champagne, and sent my compliments to the chanteuse, who sashayed over at the end of his set, his makeup softening in the heat.

  “Champagne! For me? My dear, this is a special night. One’s work is so seldom appreciated.”

  I could certainly believe that—but I have a tin ear for music. “Your singing takes me back to café life before the war.”

  “Before my time,” he said kittenishly. “Professionally speaking.”