The Assassin in the Marais

by Claude Izner

  Blockhead! Victor said to himself. You were expecting a girl with an organ. You let her slip through your fingers!

  ‘And the name of this sculptor?’ he asked, a tremor in his voice.

  ‘They call him Osso Buco. He’s an Italian immigrant. He peddles his figurines outside the bistros and sometimes poses as an artist’s model.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘I walked a long way before I came across him outside Le Procope,’ Anna said.

  ‘Another of his haunts is L’Académie des Tonneaux, on Rue Saint-Jacques,’ Mathurin added, ‘but you’ll only catch him there during the day. He goes to bed at sundown.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘I don’t know. Anna and I were convinced that the goblet was a fake or else we would have returned it to its rightful owner.’

  ‘To a corpse, you mean,’ Victor said sarcastically.

  ‘In any case we only made a few francs from it.’

  ‘You have a real talent for avoiding answering questions,’ Victor commented, getting up.

  He was jubilant.

  ‘Am I free to go, then?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Stay at 3 Rue Saint-André-des-Arts until further notice. You’ll be safe there,’ Victor said as he took his leave.

  The emissary, who’d been lying sprawled across the bench, sat bolt upright, pulled his hat down over his face and raced towards the exit, knocking into Victor. The abomination was in the hands of a bone sculptor, how ironic! There may no longer be any need to destroy it if its evil power had been neutralised through the transformation of its repulsive form.

  … The deluge begins

  The abyss resounds

  He raises his hand up high

  The sun and moon remain

  In their firmament …

  The emissary closed the Book of Habakkuk, turned out the lamp and sat meditating. In the past, when the unimaginable had happened, he had heard the thunderous voice. It was booming now, louder than ever. He must act.

  The emissary stretched out on the bed.

  CHAPTER 15

  Monday, 18 April

  As it was Easter Monday, the bookshop was closed. Victor had telephoned Kenji early to relay the fruits of his investigations. He was confident he would be able to buttonhole the bone sculptor that afternoon at one of the two cafés the Italian girl had mentioned. He had come to the conclusion that Lucie Robin, the lady’s maid, had also been done away with, and so he was planning to pay another visit to Rue Charlot.

  ‘Be very careful, Victor. Report back to me regularly. I’ll be back here in an hour, after I’ve told Joseph what you’re going to do.’

  Kenji hung up, feeling anxious, and did not notice the frail little figure coming down the spiral staircase.

  ‘Monsieur … can I speak to you?’ asked a small voice.

  Yvette, very pale and dressed in a nightshirt that was much too big for her, looked like a ghost.

  ‘You must wrap up warmly, or you’ll get ill again,’ murmured Kenji, uncomfortable in the presence of the child. ‘Where is Mademoiselle Iris?’

  ‘She’s taking a bath … Your photographer friend … he said Papa was in hospital, but it’s not true.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kenji, putting his overcoat over her shoulders.

  ‘I don’t care if Papa’s cross with me; I want to go home.’

  ‘Are you not happy here?’

  ‘Yes, but … Papa must be looking everywhere for me.’

  ‘No, no, he … knows … a-and …’ stammered Kenji, reluctant to tell the child that she would never see her father again.

  The telephone came to his rescue.

  ‘Go back to bed. I’ll answer this and then come and see you. Go on, shoo!’

  She hesitated, put the overcoat on a chair and went back upstairs.

  ‘Hello? Oh, it’s you. Thank you for calling. I’ll make a note.’ He reached for the order book.

  ‘Dubois, Dutch. Floods forced him to halt his research that winter. Resumed a short while ago. Huge amount at stake. In October 1891 he discovered a …’

  As his caller filled in the details, what had begun as a small crease at the corner of his mouth blossomed into a wide smile.

  It felt like spring — bracing and fresh. To the left of Le Marché des Enfants-Rouges on Rue Charlot, a street hawker was snoozing, lulled by the brouhaha and the pale sun. During the time Victor had been observing number 28, the vendor’s four-wheeled display, spilling over with stockings, socks and gloves, had attracted only an urchin in a Russian sailor suit, his hands sticky with liquorice. Victor had moved away a little; he had no desire to come into contact with the brat. A woman carrying a basket charged out of number 28 and planted herself beside the ship’s boy.

  ‘How much are these mittens?’

  The street hawker continued to drowse on his camp stool, elbows on knees and cap pulled down over his face. He half-opened his eyes and made an evasive gesture accompanied by, ‘Ten sous.’

  Victor thought he recognised the cook Joseph had described. She was a determined-looking woman whose curves were moulded into a black silk coat.

  ‘Are you Madame Bertille Piot?’ he ventured as she regretfully put down the mittens.

  She confirmed that she was and said she remembered seeing Victor in conversation with the old man.

  ‘I was just about to pay Monsieur de Vigneules a visit and …’

  He grabbed her arm and steered her into the market as he caught sight of an imposing-looking individual pacing up and down on the opposite pavement. He could have sworn it was Inspector Lecacheur!

  ‘Do you mind …’ began Bertille Piot, freeing herself as soon as she could.

  ‘I’m sorry, it was because of that kid: he was about to stain your coat with his sticky fingers — children today, I don’t know.’

  Mollified, she went over to a costermonger’s stall and felt the weight of a bunch of leeks.

  ‘I’d advise you to keep away from the old madman. He’s so confused now he’s completely incoherent. He stutters so much he can hardly get the words out. As God is my witness, I’m used to his gibberish, but even I can’t make out what he’s saying now! I think Monsieur’s death tipped him over the edge. And then …’

  An angry exchange followed as the costermonger became exasperated at Bertille Piot’s manhandling of her produce. Bertille gave her a piece of her mind and then took her revenge by transferring her custom to the competition, an old man dressed entirely in grey. Victor waited patiently until she had made her purchase.

  ‘His clothes may not be very clean, but his fruit and veg is the best quality.’

  ‘You hadn’t finished what you were saying. What’s happened to Monsieur de Vigneules?’

  ‘He was in his cellar as usual at the crack of dawn, saying his meaningless prayers over his stuffed dogs. Suddenly, just as he was bending down to put his candle on the floor, a gunshot rang out above his head. He ran upstairs, howling worse than a banshee. Madame Gabrielle, who is not the most sympathetic of people, shouted at him, and Monsieur Wallers bellowed that the old man was becoming so soft in the head that he was going to lock him in the cellar once and for all. Monsieur Dorsel, who’s always been kind to poor old Monsieur Fortunat, made him sit down and describe exactly what had happened. It took a while, I can tell you. They called the doctor who prescribed a double dose of sedative, but it took Monsieur Fortunat ages to fall asleep.’

  ‘Perhaps he was telling the truth?’ suggested Victor.

  Monsieur Wallers went down to the cellar, and looked through it with a fine-tooth comb, but he found nothing unusual. Right, I’d better get on with the shopping.’

  ‘Just one more thing. Did Lucie Robin get on well with her employers?’

  ‘Why use the past tense?’

  ‘She’s left, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Well, she’s left before, but she always comes back. For all she looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, underneath she’s a terrible flirt. They’v
e all been attracted to her, Monsieur Antoine, Monsieur Wallers and even the old man!’

  ‘What about Monsieur Dorsel?’

  ‘Him? He hankers after Madame Gabrielle, but apparently she only has eyes for her cousin.’

  ‘You don’t seem to care for her very much.’

  ‘Apart from Monsieur Dorsel, I don’t like any of them very much, and Monsieur Wallers least of all. His hands wander so — one of these days they’ll go off on their own!’

  He watched her as she looked carefully over the butcher’s stall. Bertille Piot was wrong. The lady’s maid would never return to Rue Charlot.

  In his straight tweed jacket, buttoned all the way up, pinstriped trousers, and checked bowler hat, Kenji looked so like an Englishman that Euphrosine almost did not recognise him. She herself was in her Sunday best. Topping off her golden yellow dress with bouffant sleeves was a little round hat decorated with wide loops of ribbon that produced an effect not unlike a windmill.

  ‘I’m going to mass at Saint-Sulpice. If it’s Joseph you’re looking for, he’s in the study. He prefers to blacken his pages than purify his soul at confession.’

  Muttering about ‘this generation of miscreants’, she drew herself in to squeeze past Kenji and headed off to church.

  Kenji found Joseph trying to come up with his next line, staring at his fountain pen as if waiting for it to speak.

  ‘Boss! What a surprise! It’s the first time you’ve been here! Excuse the chaos. I’ll free up a seat for you.’

  ‘No need, I’d prefer to stand. I’ve come to update you on the investigation.’

  Without dropping his formal tone, he passed on Victor’s information to Joseph. As he was speaking, he was congratulating himself on having postponed the painful task of telling Yvette of her father’s sad end by instructing Iris to entertain her. Delighted at the prospect of going to The Enchanted Spring, the latest show by the stage magician Georges Méliès at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, the child had forgotten her anguish. And it also meant that Iris would be out of Joseph’s reach for the whole afternoon.

  ‘Blimey, another murder! Anyone would think we were collecting them! Let’s hope the Boss catches up quickly with that bone sculptor. Then we might finally be able to see clearly!’

  ‘See clearly? Oh, that’s rich. Don’t imagine that I don’t see clearly,’ remarked Kenji tartly.

  Joseph rose, astonished.

  ‘Why do you say that, Boss? Have I done anything wrong?’

  ‘I hope not. But it would be regrettable if your brazen flirtation with my daughter went too far.’

  Joseph turned scarlet. He thought his heart had stopped.

  ‘It’s not just flirtation, Monsieur Mori. It’s love.’

  ‘So you admit it!’

  ‘Our only crime has been to succumb to our uncontrollable affection for each other,’ protested Joseph, happy to have remembered the final lines of a romantic novel he’d borrowed from his mother.

  Kenji sighed, disarmed in spite of himself by his assistant’s grandiloquence.

  ‘Well, make sure that your uncontrollable affection remains within the limits of decency. Must I remind you that Iris is not only a minor, but also completely feather-brained?’

  ‘You have a strange view of your daughter, Boss.’

  ‘I have known her longer than you. She is quick to fire up, but her passions are often flashes in the pan, absurd pipe dreams.’

  ‘So it’s absurd that she should be drawn to me? Because I’m a hunchback? You might as well come out with it and call me a monster!’ cried Joseph bitterly.

  ‘You’re twisting my words. I did not mention your physique. You’re as romantic as Iris, ready to cast yourself as Quasimodo dreaming of Esmeralda.’

  ‘Now you have said it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Quasimodo. Beauty and the Beast. Thanks, Boss, thanks very much. Now I know how you regard me.’

  ‘Come off it, Joseph, stop being childish. You know perfectly well the power you exert over women.’

  ‘So it’s because I’m just a miserable sales assistant.’

  ‘Don’t ascribe to me that contemptible attitude towards a role that was once mine. I am Iris’s father. I must protect her from her impulses wherever they might have harmful consequences. And I am also responsible for your conduct. You are both too young. You don’t know …’

  ‘Young, me! I was twenty-two on 14 January. And anyway, it’s not a crime to be young.’

  ‘But it is sometimes a handicap,’ concluded Kenji, who was in a hurry to draw the conversation to a close.

  He felt he had played the role of indignant father just right. But he also felt annoyed with himself at having complicated the situation. He was growing old. His greying hair was proof — perhaps he should consider dying it.

  ‘Please come to the shop this afternoon if you can. We will no doubt know a bit more about the goblet by then,’ he said as he turned to leave.

  Joseph sat down, nursing his resentment. ‘I don’t care what he thinks!’

  He wished that something would happen to deflect his thoughts.

  He despises me, he thought. But he’ll change his tune when my second serial has made me the man of the moment!

  He began to scribble furiously.

  Éleuthère scratched furiously at the damp floor of the cellar. His sense of smell rarely let him down. Suddenly his claws met a bone. Frida von Glockenspiel gave a shriek of horror …

  Clouds filled the sky. A brisk wind swept the Carrefour Buci as the concierges shouted to each other from door to door. Then came the downpour. The customers at the terrace cafés scattered instantly. The emissary took refuge under the awning of a grocery, reproaching himself for having the same idea as the associate. They had been hanging around for more than an hour in the hope of catching the elusive Osso Buco visiting Le Procope. Perhaps he should have gone directly to the L’Académie des Tonneaux; that might have enabled the emissary to lay his hands on the Italian first. But too late now, the prey might appear here at any moment.

  The downpour abated and Rue de l’Ancienne-Comédie became animated again. In the evening Le Procope attracted young aspiring authors drawn in by Cazals, the cartoonist and song-writer friend of Verlaine famous for his 1830s attire. Now there was only a handful of beer and kümmel drinkers lounging near the pot-bellied stove, digesting their lunch in peace.

  Victor had tired of standing about and questioned the waiter, who shrugged his shoulders, merely saying that the macaroni-eater did not follow a precise timetable and that he also hawked his wares on the terraces of La Source, Le Voltaire and Le Soleil d’Or, as well as at L’Académie in Rue Saint-Jacques, as his fancy took him.

  ‘You can stride up and down as much as you like, but what will that get you? Sore legs is all!’ The waiter slapped his thigh.

  Victor left him to it and headed for Boulevard Saint-Germain. Without paying any attention to the worm-eaten gables of Rue Dupuytren, he crossed over and hurried along École de Médecine. A procession of students, each with his arms round the waist of the one in front, blocked his path. They were celebrating Easter in their own inimitable way — parading through the quarter in lines that were soon joined by ophicleide and trombone players. Coach drivers and pedestrians took their hats off in tribute. Although Victor was champing at the bit, he did the same, and the emissary on his bicycle followed suit. Then they set off again in a deluge of hail.

  At the narrowest point of Rue Saint-Jacques, a modern wine shop was nestled in a pretty Louis XIV façade. Victor searched the area in vain — he saw no one resembling a bone sculptor. Discouraged, he entered.

  Inside, tables and wooden stools stood between partitions made of casks piled one on top of the other, and an eager audience sat listening to a fellow in a worn-out frock coat who was declaiming and gesticulating wildly. Victor leant on the bar next to a lanky chap who stood open-mouthed, hands on hips, drinking in the words of the orator. As he ordered himself a glass of Sancerre, Vi
ctor asked the owner if Osso Buco had been by.

  ‘I haven’t seen him. Go and ask his mate — I’m listening to the speech,’ was all the owner said, pointing to a ragged-looking individual with a pug nose, who was gloomily staring at his empty glass.

  Taking his white wine with him, Victor sat down between the man and a black-and-brown mongrel dog perched on a seat.

  ‘Excused me interrupting, Monsieur …’ he began.

  ‘Not Monsieur anything, just Big Mouth, that’s how I’m known around here. Do you want to buy a picture? Look, there are all sorts: Big Mouth in front of La Panthéon, Big Mouth beside La Sorbonne and how about this fine one, Big Mouth coming out of Vespers at Saint-Germain-des-Près.’

  He fanned out an assortment of ill-executed caricatures before Victor, who chose a charcoal sketch of a brachycephalic human squinting at a distorted church, and handed over a franc. ‘Very original. I’d also like to get hold of one of those objects your friend Osso Buco sculpts out of bone.’

  ‘I’m too thirsty to talk.’

  ‘Here, have my drink.’

  While Big Mouth slurped the Sancerre, Victor had time to study the artisans, street peddlers, mature ladies and unsuccessful poets that made up the orator’s audience. The latter finished his peroration, took a bow and was invited by the crowd to taste one of the liqueurs from the jars and bottles squeezed in besides the casks.

  ‘Bravo, Caubel, very accomplished. “The effect of syphilis on toads”, that’s worth worrying about!’ bawled Big Mouth.

  ‘That’s Caubel de la Ville Ingan,1 very erudite, astronomer, assistant at the museum, wine-taster at La Halle de Bercy, chef. All that in one man! Not surprising that he trumps the forty,’ he explained to Victor.

  ‘The forty?’

  ‘The forty bigwigs at the Académie Française!’ roared Big Mouth, choking with laughter.

  After Victor had banged him on the back, causing him spit out a large amount of wine, he continued.

  ‘You’re looking for Osso Buco? That moron is a lucky devil; good fortune seems to follow him around; the daubers all fight over him. What’s wrong with my face, I’d like to know? Soon the Musée du Luxembourg will be overflowing with paintings of Joseph or Noah or whoever, all with his ugly Italian mug. And if he hasn’t just been hired for a version of Vercingetorix!’2