Trent's Own Case

by E. C. Bentley

  He took Le Joufflu by the arm and led him off to the caisse, where an animated conversation sotto voce began between the two men and Louise. M. Gautier was left gazing at the abandoned backgammon board, in obvious fear that Trent would ask him some unanswerable question. However, he was not left long alone and in doubt. Madame Louise, who seemed to regard him as a wiser counsellor than the volatile Bibi, beckoned to him imperiously, and he joined the others. The muttered conversation went on, to be wound up by Bibi in a loud voice: ‘C’est convenu. Faut pas s’en faire. Je m’en occupe. Comptez sur moi.’

  Bibi and Hégésippe returned to their backgammon. Other habitués began to come into the café, and there was a general orgy of handshaking, greetings and introductions. Trent began to think that the stars in their courses were fighting against him, and despaired of ever obtaining the information that Bibi had promised him.

  Suddenly Bibi bent forward and whispered in his ear, ‘Mon cher confrère, do not disquiet yourself. You can depend on me, but you will understand that my friends are alarmed—the police, you know—and the affair is already classé. I have promised that we will not discuss it under this roof, so that they will be responsible for nothing. On ne veut pas d’histoires.’

  What Bibi could mean by saying that the affair was already pigeonholed passed Trent’s understanding; but it was clear that the little man wanted to be helpful.

  ‘Monsieur Bibi …’

  ‘Not Monsieur Bibi to a confrère—Bibi tout court.’

  ‘All right,’ Trent said laughing, ‘Bibi; but have you not the same reason as they have to avoid histoires?’

  ‘Me, my confrère,’ Bibi said with a sublime gesture, ‘I am a journalist, and I fear no one.’

  ‘Then, my dear colleague, I invite you to do me the honour of dining with me tonight, and since we cannot dine here, I ask you to choose the best place in the town.’

  CHAPTER XII

  THE COUNT EXPLAINS

  AN hour later Trent found himself sitting opposite a Bibi all smiles and satisfaction, his stout chest napkin-swathed from collar downwards. The restaurant was unpretentious, but the little journalist guaranteed both cuisine and cellar to be worthy of all respect.

  Any mention of the affair that had brought them together was tactfully avoided by Trent until his guest had reached a second glass of Meursault 1906 with the moules marinières. Bibi smacked his lips, murmuring that this was real wine, with something to bite on. It was not often that he tasted such nectar.

  ‘And now,’ Trent said, ‘will you explain to me, my dear friend, why we have to dine here like two conspirators? What is this terrible secret that you dare not even whisper to me under the roof of the Hotel of the Little Universe? What on earth could you say to me or I say to you that would bring disaster on the heads of your friends Le Joufflu, Madame Louise, and apparently M. Gautier as well?’

  ‘But surely you understand,’ Bibi exclaimed in a tone which suggested that he had somewhat overrated Trent’s intelligence. ‘There is the tobacco shop of Madame Louise’s niece. There is Gautier’s desire for the violet rosette. Even Le Joufflu has hopes of the poireau (leek), as he won the soufflé prize in the last Concours de la Cuisine at the Casino, and the deputy has promised him a coup de piston. Anyhow none of them want to have histoires concerning M. le Comte.’

  ‘Name of a name!’ Trent exploded, ‘what have I to do with the tobacco shop of Madame Louise’s niece? How could I prevent M. Gautier’s promotion to officer d’Académie? How could I stand between Le Joufflu and the green and yellow ribbon? Why should anyone have a row with the count because of me? Have I stumbled into the middle of a secret of State?’

  Bibi was obviously dismayed at the extent of Trent’s ignorance. He took another sip of his Meursault, with brow wrinkled in thought, before he replied by another question.

  ‘Mon cher confrère, will you be so obliging as to tell me quite frankly why you came to the Impasse de la Chimère?’

  ‘Very willingly,’ Trent said. ‘In fact, I have tried already to tell your friend Le Joufflu, who refused to hear. Listen then. A few days ago a friend of mine, a certain Dr Fairman, came over to Dieppe by the night-boat. For some mysterious reason he visited the Impasse de la Chimère, and returned by the next steamer. On the way back he tried to jump overboard, and was arrested on a charge of attempting suicide.’

  ‘Ah yes!’ Bibi said. ‘Over there you arrest people for trying to suicide themselves. Pity you cannot punish them when their crime is successful. Ça, c’est bien anglais.’

  ‘That is true; but unfortunately there is another charge hanging over my friend—a charge of murder, the murder of a certain millionaire called Randolph. So far, you understand, he has not been accused of this crime; but there are some mysterious features about the affair which he has not explained, and declares that he will not explain. One of them is this short visit to Dieppe. Now, your police here say that he was seen hanging about the Impasse de la Chimère during the time between the two boats. I have come here to see whether I could not find some clue to the truth which Fairman persists in holding back.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bibi said, ‘I have heard of the Randolph murder, of course. As for your friend’s visit to the Impasse, certainly the police were making inquiries there after he left, and making everybody anxious. But it is equally certain, in my opinion, that they had a pretty good idea of why he came there. That is why Madame Louise and her husband did not want me to tell you anything. Surely, my friend, you yourself must have imagined that your Dr Fairman’s visit might have some connection with the affair of the Pavillon de l’Ecstase and the scandal of the Fatal Woman.’

  Bibi had dropped his voice impressively, though there was not a soul within earshot; for the restaurant was empty and the waiter was occupying himself with the Romanée St Vivant 1904 which was to follow the Meursault.

  ‘I assure you,’ Trent said earnestly, ‘I have never in my life heard a whisper even of the Pavillon de l’Ecstase or of the scandal of the Fatal Woman.’

  Bibi dropped his knife and fork, raised his hands and let them fall in a gesture of hopeless amazement.

  ‘Ça m’épate! I know the affair was hushed up and shelved with what might seem indecent haste; but I thought the great press of London was so well informed that nothing was concealed from it.’

  Trent feared he might be shattering one of Bibi’s idols, but he was compelled to confess that, so far as he knew, not one word had been published in England about the matters so thrillingly described.

  Bibi would not allow his disappointment at the shortcomings of the London press to interfere with his enjoyment of this heaven-sent dinner. The poulet en casserole was a dream, and as for the Romanée St Vivant, of which the first glass had been poured, he kissed his fingers at it in an ecstasy of appreciation.

  ‘The good God,’ he said piously, ‘might no doubt have made a better wine, if He had so desired, but I very much doubt if He did. Fancy craving after an artificial paradise, when the natural juice of the grape is there to gladden the heart of man.

  ‘I gather, mon cher confrère,’ he went on after an interval of blissful silence, ‘that it is your mission to pursue your own private inquiries about your Dr Fairman’s object in coming to Dieppe. It is not your intention to write sensational articles about an unfortunate affair that has been shelved and suppressed?’

  ‘You are right. My only purpose on this occasion is to discover what my unhappy friend was doing in Dieppe, and I give you my word of honour that I will not write a single word about this intriguing affair.’

  ‘Tant mieux,’ said Bibi. He breathed the sigh of the replete. ‘It would not do to reopen this scabrous case. It might be fatal to the government at a moment of crisis, and it would certainly be detrimental to the hopes of my good friends, to which I have already alluded.’

  He took another sip of his Burgundy, and cast aside the flippant waggishness which was the make-up of William Rond-de-Cuir. He leant forward across the table and started
to tell his story.

  ‘Count d’Astalys as a young man was very serious. He had great talent and devoted himself to his studies. His name first became known through his researches into the effects of protoxide d’azote on consciousness.’

  ‘Stop,’ said Trent. ‘What is protoxide d’azote?’

  ‘I’m not a chemist like the count, but I happen to know that it is the gas dentists use to make their patients happy when their teeth are being drawn—gaz hilarant, in fact.’

  ‘Ah! laughing gas, we call it. Yes, I believe it is nitrous oxide, or something of the kind. I forgot that azote means nitrogen.’

  ‘Peut-être bien,’ Bibi said vaguely. ‘I only know about it because the dentist once gave me gas, and I met the count when I was still quite green in the face and felt queer. He gave me something to restore me, and told me that long ago, when it was first discovered, people used to give laughing-gas parties for their guests to take a whiff of it, and enjoy the most exquisite sensations. To begin with, it seemed quite innocent. People did not remember their sensations. Then some savant found out that it was très excitant, quoi?’

  Trent did not need Bibi’s wink to explain the rather special significance of the ‘excitant,’ which has betrayed not a few blameless English gentlewomen into shocking respectable French families.

  ‘And so, it appears, those parties came to a sudden end. But all that, of course, did not prevent the count from going on with his experiments. In the war he was called to G.Q.G. after the first German gas attack, and was one of the chiefs of the poison gas department. After the war he returned to his experiments. He is not only a savant but also a philosopher, and Henri Poincaré and Bergson have both stayed at the Maison de la Chimère.’

  ‘Your count seems a versatile fellow.’

  ‘Then unhappily he became interested in that new science they call psychology. Ça l’a détraqué. I do not know myself what this psychology is, but it seems to be a machin Boche with its Freuds and its Jungs.’

  ‘Not so Boche as that,’ Trent protested. ‘Freud is an Austrian and Jung a Swiss.’

  ‘What differences does that make? Anyhow, psychology was the count’s ruin. He fell in love.’

  ‘What on earth had psychology to do with his falling in love?’

  ‘All his life he had been tellement sage et sérieux. Up to then he had never jété sa gourme—not a woman in his life.’

  ‘To my mind,’ observed Trent, ‘our English phrase about sowing wild oats is more picturesque than your French idiom, which I gather refers to an equine disease, or the rash of an infectious illness. Anyhow, what is the connection between his psychology and his love?’

  ‘He fell in love with the Fatal Woman, the woman of the affair of the Pavillon de l’Ecstase, Marise Sylvain, the daughter of Raymond Sylvain the psychologist. He would never have met her but for his acquaintance with Sylvain—there is your connection! The count was forty-five, very gentle, studious and serious. She was twenty-two, très rusée, hard and immoral. He brought her back to the great dull Maison de la Chimère, and she was bored. Everyone in Dieppe knew it; for she was seen everywhere with her young men from Paris, and her bathing-dresses were the scandal of the place. The count went back to his experiments, but he was no longer rich. He had spent a fortune on Marise.’

  ‘It is not an uncommon story.’

  ‘No, the count had married a Parisienne, and had to take the consequences.’

  Like other provincial bourgeois, Bibi regarded the frivolous women of the capital with a coveting hatred.

  ‘Worse followed. There was no divorce. The count lived with his chemicals and books in the Maison de la Chimère. They say he still loved her. The countess spent most of her time in Paris, and when she came to Dieppe, she brought with her a band of Parisians who faisaient la noce in the Pavillon de la Chimère. It was she who gave this name to the Pavillon de la Chimère. Then she turned to politics and politicians. She made the conquest of …’

  Bibi bent forward and whispered to Trent the name of a very well known personage who was still a member of the Cabinet.

  ‘By this time she and the count were riddled with debts. All the gay parties had to be paid for. Then she had the idea of dealing in les paradis artificiels, in the strange drugs which her husband discovered and composed. Mind you, it was not a traffic in ordinary dope—cocaine, morphia, hashish and so on. They were drugs of which the law knew nothing, drugs that played mysterious tricks with the brain, and sometimes in the orgy led through ecstasy and transport to death.’

  Trent murmured to himself a favourite passage of The Odyssey.

  ‘Straightway she cast into the wine they were drinking a drug that stayed all pain and wrath and brought forgetfulness of every evil. Whoso should drink it down, not all that day would he let a tear drop down his cheeks, no, not though his father and mother should lie dead before him, or though before his face men should put to the sword his brother or the son of his soul and his eyes should behold it.’

  Carried away by the swing of the Homeric hexameter, Trent rolled out the Greek lines as though he expected Bibi to understand them. Bibi, prepared for any madness from an Englishman, listened and looked at his host inquiringly.

  ‘Golden Helen,’ Trent explained, ‘poured out for Telemachus a draught of Nepenthe and Forgetfulness. She was the first to dispense the artificial paradise.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ Bibi said surprisingly. ‘The Odyssey is one of my favourite books.’

  ‘The deuce it is! Do you read it in Greek?’

  ‘Alas, no!’ said Bibi, ‘but I read it in Provençal.’

  Then to take his revenge he began to declaim at Trent.

  ‘Alor, Elano, chato de Jupitèr, aguè uno autro pensado e tout d’un tèms vuejè dins lou vin que bevien lou trassegun que douno la demembranço di mau. Aquèu qu’aurié begu d’aquèu boucoun pourrié pas toumba ’no lagremo de tout un jour, emai fuguèsson mort si paire e maire, emai davans éu fuguèsson mata pèr lou fèrri soun fraire o soun fiéu bèn ama, e quand meme de sis iue vesènt lou veirié.’

  Bibi looked at Trent with a twinkle in his bright eyes, and an air of satisfaction suggestive of the schoolboy who has got successfully through his repetition, and feels that he is on even terms with his master.

  ‘It was something like that, I know. I never saw Marise d’Astalys without thinking of Golden Helen, so lovely and so fatal. Charloun’s translation of The Odyssey has been one of my bedside books ever since I can remember. You see my mother is of the Camargue, and when she married my father and came to the North, she taught me her language, and made me talk it with her. But come! mon cher confrère, we are talking not of Helen, but of Marise d’Astalys, who trafficked with her beauty and strange drugs in this twentieth century.’

  ‘Surely,’ Trent said, ‘the count was not involved in this traffic.’

  ‘No, he lived in a world of dreams. He shut his eyes to his wife’s lovers. He was too gentle to deal with such a woman. She went her way, while he worked in the Maison de la Chimère with his servant Robert, trying to forget. It came out afterwards that Robert, whom he trusted, stole the drugs and passed them on to Lucette, the countess’ maid, a Parisienne and a bad one, too.’

  Bibi paused for a time to attend to his dinner. Then he took up his parable again.

  ‘In Dieppe people gossiped more and more, but it was some time before the scandal became public. First there were some deplorable cases in Paris among the countess’ acquaintances, cases that puzzled both the doctors and the police. One of her lovers—he was said to have ruined himself for her—went mad, actually and permanently mad, and the doctors could find nothing to account for his condition. Other rich young men who had made fools of themselves—des fils à papa, quoi?—became mentally unhinged, and died equally mysteriously.

  ‘So it happened that the police were already keeping an eye on the d’Astalys, when the scandal of the Pavillon de l’Ecstase broke out. She was at the Pavillon with the minister whom I have alread
y named, several deputies, and heaven knows what women. They were to inhale some new gas which was to produce raptures beyond description. So there was another orgy.

  ‘At four o’clock in the morning a policeman on duty outside the Impasse de la Chimère—his name is Jules Duphot—had a vision. He saw dancing over the cobbles, singing as she went, a very pretty girl clothed in nothing but a pair of slippers. Jules could not believe his eyes, though I suspect he tried to. Then he threw his cloak over the shameless hussy and marched her off to the poste.

  ‘The lady turned out to be Madame Cloclo, danseuse nue of the Casino de Paris, so she was habituated to the situation, but when she came to the police station she began to laugh, and she laughed and she laughed as though she were being tickled until she fainted from exhaustion. They had to take her off to the hospital. And that was not the worst.

  ‘About the same disreputable hour, some frightened servant called Dr Lambert by telephone to the Pavillon de l’Ecstase. He found a terrible state of affairs. The minister and the countess were lying unconscious on a divan; a deputy was groaning in agony on the floor, and a half-a-dozen more men and women were in the same state. The doctor called the police. They started by arresting everyone, but by that time the minister had come to. There were, as I have said, several deputies and another minister’s wife concerned as well.

  ‘Now this happened at an unfortunate moment. It was one of those periods when everyone feels that the Republic itself is in danger. This scandal therefore had to be hushed up at any cost—one more straw, and the régime was fichu. Only a few paragraphs appeared in the press, and in them the truth was veiled by innuendo. As for us here in Dieppe, no one desired to do the count a bad turn, but Dr Lambert told his wife what he had seen at the Pavillon de l’Ecstase; and that was very foolish. Just imagine for yourself the stories that began to fly about the town; for Madame Lambert is bavarde. However, at last the gossip died down. The countess disappeared, and they say she is now in Africa with a marchand de comestibles.’