by Claude Izner
‘You have to admit, it’s curious.’
‘I’m not paid to be curious. All they ask of me is to publish. The number of nutcases who come through here, it’s amazing!’
‘I sympathise, Mademoiselle, and I admire your dedication. But if you could just check the date when this bizarre notice was placed, I’d be eternally grateful.’
She shrugged and began rummaging through a couple of desk drawers.
‘How does it begin?’
‘Cousin Léopardus requests…’
‘L, L, L…Here it is. Somebody placed the notice on 4 July but don’t ask me who. Is there anything else?’
‘Do you really have no recollection of who placed it?’
The young girl moistened her lips then examined her nails.
‘Straight off I’d say no, though sometimes I only need a little something, a sorbet or a drink to refresh my memory. I get off for lunch at one, so if you fancy…’
She blushed and, too nervous to look the irresistible fair-haired young man in the eye, began stamping a pile of forms.
Joseph beat a cowardly retreat.
‘Poor girl, she tried and failed…A pretty thing, too. But I’m not as fickle as some people I know. I’ll never pay for a favour in kind…4 July, the day before the fire! I don’t get it. Monsieur Anatole France is right: “We are only troubled by what we do not understand.” I must resolve to look into this affair with Monsieur Legris’s help. Even though his brain cells are painfully slow to get going, once they’re fully firing there’s no stopping him. When he’s on form that is…’
Wrapped up in his thoughts, he reached Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. He was filled with sadness as he recalled the stroll he had taken there with a friend who had died under tragic circumstances.
‘Denise de Louarn32…Valentine…Let’s be honest, women find me attractive. Mademoiselle Tasha would doubtless have succumbed to my charms had it not been for Monsieur Victor. She used to call me her moujik. That’s a point, Mademoiselle Tasha lives near here. With any luck at this time of day I’ll find the lovebird still in his nest!’
Scarcely had he reached Rue Fontaine, when a clap of thunder boomed above his head. Rain poured down over the city. Joseph took shelter under the awning of a grocer’s and waited impatiently for the torrent to subside. ‘Hell’s bells!’ he shouted as a passing cab splashed him with muddy water. People scurried past, slipping on the wet cobbles; umbrellas collided. A mewling came from below. A ball of wet fur was rubbing itself against the hem of his trouser leg.
‘Hey, stop that flea bag, clear off!’
A fawn mask with two little yellow eyes staring up at him plaintively broke down his resistance. He picked up the kitten and held it in his arms; he could feel its heart beating through his frock coat. One stroke was enough to set off a loud purring, and a rough tongue licked his wrist.
‘Where did you come from, puss? Is he yours?’ he asked a small girl standing next to him in the open doorway of the shop.
She had a terrible squint and began tapping on one of the shop-front mouldings.
‘Onion soup’s for boys
Sorrel soup’s for girls!
Boys like toys
Girls like pearls!’
she chanted, much to the annoyance of her mother, who was busy serving a customer.
‘Come back inside at once, you wicked child! You’ll catch your death,’ she called out.
‘A great help,’ groaned Joseph. ‘Who does this clingy creature belong to? Hey, moth-eaten moggy, hop it!’
The kitten had snuggled up in his arms and was purring at full volume. Its muzzle and paws were white. As for its tail, it had a big kink in it and ended in a scrawny tuft that looked like it had been plucked.
‘You’re stuck with that alley cat, mister!’ the little girl pronounced before disappearing into the shop.
After a night and a morning spent commemorating in bed the storming of the Bastille and the fête de la Fédération, Tasha had just said goodbye to Victor and pulled on a cotton smock when there was a knock at the door.
‘Joseph! You’re soaked.’
‘To the skin! Is Monsieur Victor here?’
‘You’ve just missed him. Oh! Isn’t he gorgeous!’
‘I picked him up in your street. I think he’s hungry.’
He put the kitten down on the floor. It arched its back and took refuge under Tasha’s skirts, purring like an engine.
‘Have you seen his tail? It looks like a brush,’ Joseph said.
‘A proper artist’s cat! He’s superb with his little mask and stripy coat and white mittens…I’ll go and fetch him some milk.’
While she was busy in the kitchen, Joseph, accompanied by his protégé, went to nose about in the entrance cluttered with canvas stretchers and books. His eye fell on a cardboard tube with charred edges lying on a pedestal table among the other bits and bobs. Tasha gave little brush-tail a saucer of milk, which he lapped up greedily.
‘He’s so funny-looking. I think I’ll keep him.’
‘You’ve taken a weight off my mind, Mademoiselle Tasha. Maman would have given me what for if I’d dared bring him home. What will Monsieur Legris say?’
‘Well, Joseph, you know the expression: what a woman wants…’
Joseph had picked up the tube and was studying the drawings on it.
‘We could have gone without streetlights for a month with the amount of Bengal lights they set off last night! Well, little brush-tail, is your tummy full? Would you be prepared to share my humble lodgings?’ Tasha asked.
The kitten stopped preening itself and let out a loud miaow.
‘Joseph, he said yes!’
‘Maybe he speaks Russian and Japanese, too. You’ll never be short of a penny with that clown around.’
Tasha scratched the kitten’s belly then examined it more closely.
‘Mm, I think he’s got company…And what’s more he is a she.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘There’s a distinct lack of…How do you say that in French?’
‘Er…’
‘Male accoutrements. Little brush-tail, I hereby name you Kochka,’ she announced.
‘Kochka?’
‘It means cat in Russian.’
‘Well, Mademoiselle Tasha, Mademoiselle Kochka, I must go. Maman will be here soon with your shopping and her army of mops…’
And, if I hurry, I can dally a wee bit at home before getting back to the grindstone in Rue des Saints-Pères, he thought as he said goodbye.
On his way home on the omnibus, Joseph had the niggling feeling that he had missed something important. However, rather like the phantom itching which no amount of scratching could relieve, the elusive thought kept escaping his grasp. It was only when he was shut away in his study, close to the crate he used for a desk, that an image materialised in his mind of a cardboard tube covered in caricatures identical to the ones lying between his pen and his novelist’s notebook. This discovery sent an electric shock through his brain.
‘Those tubes I found in the wreckage at Pierre Andrésy’s shop!…Bengal lights? Roman candles? Blimey! What do you think, Papa?’ he asked the photograph of the jolly-faced bookseller leaning up against a wall in Quai Voltaire. ‘Might the blaze have been started by fireworks? You wouldn’t know, eh?’
Joseph felt as if he were looking at the facts through murky water.
‘But it doesn’t make sense! Why would anybody let off fireworks ten days before Bastille Day? Unless it was deliberate…Good heavens! I’ve found a clue, I’m sure! I must let the boss know straight away.’
Intoxicated by speed, Victor was cycling along Boulevard Saint-Germain. His rubber-tyred chrome bicycle, fitted with a dynamo and a horn, filled him with pride. Perched on his sprung saddle, he dodged the traffic hold-ups. Farewell to interminable journeys and to sore feet!
The cobblestones raced beneath his wheels. At the corner of Rue Jacob stood the good ship Elzévir, where he was to take over the watch so that K
enji and Iris could spend the afternoon together. He allowed himself a calculated skid before mounting the pavement and rolling to a halt in front of number 18.
Of course Joseph was nowhere to be seen. Recently, he’d developed a casualness and laxity towards his work, which Victor found particularly irksome.
‘I’ll have to have a word.’
Having parked his precious bicycle at the back of the shop, he went upstairs to eat a plate of warm ratatouille washed down with a glass of white wine. When the door bell tinkled and a voice called out: ‘Is anybody there?’ he raced downstairs, intent on giving his assistant a piece of his mind. But Joseph wouldn’t let him get a word in edgeways. He launched into a wild story about a death notice in Le Figaro, a leopard, the month of May and some empty tubes smelling of gunpowder.
The arrival of a customer stopped him in full flow. Scarcely had the young dandy, who had come to buy a copy of Georges Brummel 33 and Dandyism, left the premises than Victor said to his assistant, sardonically, ‘May I point out that you’re half an hour late.’
‘I know, Boss, mea culpa. All I can tell you for sure is that such a long list of coincidences set my mind working. I found out that the notice wasn’t a typo or the fault of a drunken typesetter. It was placed on 4 July, the day before the fire. As for who wrote it, I couldn’t get a name.’
‘So, correct me if I’m wrong, this twaddle is supposed to prove that Pierre Andrésy’s death was a murder disguised as an accident?’
‘There’s another thing, Boss. On 21 June, an enamellist was murdered, stabbed to death. The police found a visiting card on his body. I bet you can’t guess what it said!’
Victor placed his hand on the bust of Molière and prayed to heaven to give him patience. Joseph flicked through his jotter and read out, ‘“Like amber, musk, benzoin and incense, May has made of ours a solitary pursuit. Can an Ethiopian change the colour of his skin any more than a leopard his spots?” I checked in Paul-Émile Littré’s Dictionary of the French Language. The first line is Baudelaire and the second the prophet Jeremiah. And the last line of the death notice, “For the blossom in May beckons us from the fields”, is Victor Hugo.’
The silence that followed reminded Victor of when he fell into the Serpentine aged six. For a split second during which the world above was replaced by the stifling murky water, he’d been more terrified by his sudden deafness than by his fear of drowning.
‘Boss? Boss?’
‘Yes, Joseph, I’m listening.’
‘Do you remember the beginning of the notice? “Cousin Léopardus…”’
Victor sat down at Kenji’s desk and began tracing spirals on a blotter. What if he had drowned in the Serpentine that Sunday in 1866? What if everything he had experienced since that day had been a dream? The vision of Tasha’s warm, sunny face appeared, and he felt reassured that he was alive.
‘You’re making it up, Joseph.’
‘I didn’t make up the empty cardboard tubes! I was wondering what they were, and so when I saw Mademoiselle Tasha’s one with the sketches…’
‘How the devil did you know Tasha had practised her talents on a Bengal light?’
‘I stopped off this morning at Rue Fontaine, only you’d just left. Mademoiselle Tasha asked me in because I was soaked through and because I brought her…I brought you a small gift.’
He neglected to tell him what it was, worried that his boss might not appreciate the idea of living with a four-legged feline. ‘So?’
‘It struck me that the cardboard tubes I found at Monsieur Andrésy’s shop were fireworks, and may have started the fire. I told you about it, only as usual you weren’t listening!’
‘Let’s start again, Joseph. A few Bengal lights went off inside Pierre Andrésy’s shop. And you’ve deduced from this that the sparks they gave off might have set oil ablaze?’
‘They aren’t Bengal lights, they’re Roman candles, Boss, and Roman candles contain a mixture of gunpowder, saltpetre, sulphur, coal and any number of other combustible substances. I found three, maybe there were more. Ten or twenty of them could do a lot of damage.’
‘Inspector Lecacheur hinted at arson, and…’
‘He’s on the right track, Boss, don’t be pipped at the post by that…’
‘Let me think,’ replied Victor.
His intense concentration made him look as if he were frowning. He muttered, ‘The wording on the death notice anticipating Pierre Andrésy’s demise is similar to the wording on the visiting card left on the enamellist’s corpse…Two murders, one murderer? We must study the pros and cons. Except that I did promise Tasha…’ he concluded dreamily.
‘Are we going to investigate, Boss?’
Joseph, his eyes shining, quivered impatiently as he watched for Victor’s reaction. He looked like a dog waiting for a treat. Leaning over the desk with his mop of dishevelled hair, his expression was saying: Don’t bore me with your silly crises of conscience – do I get the treat or not?
‘We’ll investigate, Joseph, but discreetly.’
‘Yes, yes, yes, Boss! Nobody will get wind of what we’re up to, especially not Mademoiselle Tasha. I certainly don’t intend to let any women stand in my way!’
‘We have two leads: Pierre Andrésy and the enamellist, what was his name again?’
‘Léopold Grandjean.’
‘His address?’
‘He was knifed on Rue Chevreul. No doubt he lived around there. In any case an enamelling workshop should be easy to find.’
‘Are you free tomorrow – it’s Sunday?’
Joseph was about to say yes when he remembered he had promised to take his mother to the Folies-Dramatiques. A representative from Les Halles had given them free tickets to a matinee performance of Cliquette – a comedy in three acts.34 They would have lunch beforehand at Gégène, in Les Halles. Euphrosine was so excited about their day out that he hadn’t the heart to disappoint her.
‘No. Worse luck!’
‘That’s too bad. We’ll just have to put it off until Monday,’ replied Victor.
For his part, he was sure of being able to get away from Tasha for an hour or two in order to go and nose about at Rue Monsieur-le-Prince.
‘No point in worrying Monsieur Mori, mum’s the word.’
‘Count on me, Boss,’ Joseph promised, delighted to be the sole accomplice of the famous Victor Legris.
Chapter Six
Monday 17 July
ADOLPHE Esquirol’s name suited him to a tee. With his prominent front teeth, rodent-like snout, red whiskers and pointed ears, he was the spitting image of a giant squirrel dressed in bell-bottomed trousers and a short jacket. Esquirol liked to think of his bookshop on Rue de la Sourdière as a tiny corner of Asia, which is why he wasn’t at all surprised to see a Japanese gentleman walk through the door.
‘Good day, Monsieur. I’m a fellow book dealer,’ Kenji announced, presenting his card. ‘I’ve been informed that at the beginning of this month the Biblothèque Nationale acquired at the Rue Drouot auction house a lot that belonged to you containing several Oriental manuscripts. May I enquire as to their origin?’
Adolphe Esquirol evaded the question, pushing out his lower lip and spreading his arms as if to say ‘How the devil should I know?’
‘Forgive my persistence. I simply wish to make sure that none of the works was entitled Touty Namèh or The Parrot’s Stories. The auctioneer gave me an exhaustive inventory of the lot, which included a Persian manuscript with a missing first chapter and numerous miniature illustrations.’
The squirrel’s brains began working; despite his slanting eyes and his visiting card this fellow, whom he recognised from Rue Drouot, might be a police informer. And Adolphe Esquirol was loath to have his registers inspected.
‘One accumulates so many documents of uncertain value over the years, and then one fine day one simply decides to get rid of the whole lot.’
‘As a colleague I understand your reluctance to reveal your sources. Perhaps you could just
tell me whether this unidentified text was sold to you and if so by whom.’
Adolphe Esquirol weighed up his options and decided to prevaricate. After all, this samurai in an opera hat seemed a nice enough fellow – why not give him something to keep him happy?
‘The transaction took place in late June at a café near l’Opéra. I have no doubt as to the impeccable credentials of the seller.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Somewhat plump, about fifty, with a florid complexion and salt-and-pepper hair.’
‘Is that all?’
‘When he stood up, he only reached my shoulder, and I’m not even five foot six.’ Adolphe Esquirol frowned and blinked to show that the interview was over.
Kenji doffed his hat. Since nothing was biting upstream he would try downstream, venturing into the heart of the labyrinth that was the Bibliothèque Nationale.
Kenji walked through the enormous doorway on Rue Richelieu, opposite Place Louvois. A hallway took him into a courtyard and on the right a short flight of steps led to a corridor. He stopped to leave his cane in the cloakroom. Thanks to his membership card, he had no difficulty gaining access to the reading room, a vast square hall ending in a semicircle where the librarians’ desk was situated. Kenji moved pleasurably through the hushed atmosphere of this temple of knowledge with its cast-iron pillars supporting a Moorish-style vaulted ceiling, its plush carpets, and the murmur of researchers who handled the books carefully and only interrupted their reading to dip their pens in their inkwells. He began by consulting the catalogues, but was quickly daunted by the scale of the task. He decided to ask one of the librarians.
‘Is it a recent acquisition?’ whispered a slight man with a stoop and a receding forehead. ‘If so, I suggest you go to the acquisitions office.’
Kenji walked back the way he’d come, collected his cane and arrived at the north courtyard. He came to a succession of high-ceilinged rooms, their walls lined with thousands of books. A clerk was painstakingly separating the uncut pages of a dictionary with the aid of a finely sharpened blade, which he hurriedly set down, only too happy to escape this monotonous task.