Death in Bordeaux

by Allan Massie

‘She’s a cow, like I said. But I don’t think so.’

  Was it because she still spoke with the local accent, as he did, even if hers had been modified, the nasal vowels now less open, that he felt at ease with her?

  ‘Or one of the count’s other children?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. They’re a rum lot, certainly. Have you met them?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘You should, you really should. They’re an education. I had no idea such people existed, though of course I’ve got used to them now.’

  ‘Tell me about them.’

  ‘Willingly, though I have to say that if they weren’t so odd, so truly bizarre, they would bore me stiff. As it is, they’re as good as a play. I make an exception for Edmond. He’s clever and witty, which doesn’t prevent him from being altogether horrible, but he’s not boring. You would say he’s a cynic except that he proclaims himself to be a man of convictions. If you’ve ever seen his review, you’ll know what they are. I may add that despite his hatred of Jews, he has tried more than once to get me into his bed. Unsuccessfully. Then there’s Jean-Christophe, the heir. I’ve had no trouble from him, I’m far too big. Little girls are his thing. You probably know about the scandal. That frightened him and he has to restrain himself. But he still looks. You can see him on the terrace of the Café Regent eying up the schoolgirls. All the same he’s not your letter-writer. I simply don’t exist for him. He looks right through me with his fishy eyes.’

  ‘He doesn’t resent you?’

  ‘Of course he does. He resents everything that’s happened since 1789. To give Edmond his due he once told him that in the days of the Ancien Régime his brother would have found himself in the Bastille, sharing a cell with de Sade.’

  ‘Charming. And the daughters?’

  ‘The girls, as my husband calls them, sarcastically since none of them will see forty-five again. Well, you’ve met the old cow, seen her, listened to her and smelled her too, I suppose, and that’s enough to know her. I’m enjoying this. It’s not often I have the opportunity to speak so frankly.’

  ‘To an outsider, you mean? To someone who doesn’t matter?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say you don’t matter, superintendent. No, I mean to anyone. If I spoke like this to someone not in your position, it would fly round Bordeaux faster than a swallow. So I’ve learned to keep my thoughts to myself, which doesn’t, as you may suppose, come easily to me. I can see you wondering why I endure it. I’ve often asked myself the same question and there’s many a day I’ve regretted that I’m not behind the counter of my father’s tabac.’

  Lannes smiled. In truth it was easier to picture this big robust cheerful woman doling out chaff and cigarettes to customers in a tabac, and perhaps having a glass of red or pastis with them, than to imagine her in that gloomy house in the rue d’Aviau, like a mausoleum except for the count’s room which was as warm as one of the conservatories in the Jardin des Plantes.

  ‘The girls,’ she laughed. ‘They’re a pair, they really are. Juliette, you know, hasn’t had a new gown since the year the old Pope died and I don’t mean the one who went last year. She cuts her own hair with a pair of blunt scissors, chops it off really. But she’s not a bad old thing, and I’m sure she didn’t write these letters. Apart from anything else I presume they are full of words that a pious lady devoted to works of charity wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Lannes said, though he recalled the case of a nun who had starved herself to death, leaving a journal in which she had recorded her dreams – some of which were of a startling obscenity.

  ‘Thérèse now,’ Mirian said. ‘She’s a different one. There’s some story about her, but I don’t know what it is. She’s simple, a bit touched in the head maybe, but I’ve seen an old photograph of her as a very pretty girl, and old Marthe has a rough tenderness for her. But I’m sure she isn’t your letter-writer. For one thing I don’t believe she actually dislikes me. She’s afraid of her father, they all are, except Edmond, but I’ve seen her tremble when he speaks to her. As for Juliette, I should tell you that she prays every day for the conversion of the Jews, including me.’

  Lannes poured himself the last of the coffee which was now lukewarm, and scratched Toto behind his ear. There was a wind getting up, smoke scurried from the chimney-pots across the street. The day he had watched Alain play rugby had belonged to a false Spring. Phoney Spring, Phoney War.

  ‘Why are you pursuing this?’ she said. ‘Since, as you say, no crime has been committed.’

  What could he say? That he didn’t know? That it was like an itch he couldn’t help scratching?

  ‘What about the boy Maurice?’

  ‘You can’t suspect him surely. He’s a sweet boy, unhappy but sweet. Misses his mother.’

  ‘Writing anonymous letters is sometimes a sign of profound unhappiness. Is his mother dead?’

  ‘Not dead, divorced. Her name’s Nancy, she’s English and I scarcely know her. She left Edmond and who could blame her? Anyway she returned to England but he kept the boy. To punish her in my opinion. And poor Maurice has suffered ever since.’

  She spoke of him more like a fond and indulgent aunt than a lover. Nevertheless . . .

  ‘You’re accused of seducing him,’ he said.

  She started to laugh, then looked, abruptly, away.

  ‘I don’t like that. There’s real malice there. It’s not true of course.’

  She looked him full in the face.

  ‘I suppose anything I tell you can be in confidence, since this isn’t official?’

  ‘No reason why not, unless circumstances change.’

  ‘That’s a very cautious answer.’

  ‘It’s the best I can give.’

  She poured herself another whisky, splashed in soda, took a big drink, and said:

  ‘Maurice is a sweet boy who thinks he’s a poet. But he’s not interested in women. Not yet anyway. If I tell you he was a friend of Henri’s brother, Gaston, well, that’s enough, isn’t it? Poor Gaston, is there any development in his case? Perhaps I shouldn’t ask and you can’t tell me.’

  ‘I can tell you there’s none. We’ve no leads.’

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’ve given you one.’

  ‘I don’t think anything.’

  ‘Their friendship was literary, you understand. Maurice would show him his poems, that sort of thing. Beyond that, I know nothing. Poor Gaston! I’ve known him and Henri all my life. He used to make me laugh. As a girl I thought him a regular comic. It’s wretched.’

  Lannes said, ‘I don’t think I need take this further. You’ve been very helpful. One last thing. Do you find the existence of these letters distressing or alarming?’

  She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, then turned the full force of her personality on him.

  ‘I’m Jewish. What is there in the world today that isn’t distressing and alarming for my people?’

  ‘I hope,’ Lannes said, ‘that if things get worse, you’ll feel you can come and speak with me.’

  ‘Thank you. You’ve been very kind, and they will get worse. I won’t forget.’

  As they descended the stairs, she said, ‘Have you thought of old Marthe? She really detests me. She used to be Octave’s mistress. Oh long before my time, and she still loves him, I’m sure of that, though she never addresses a civil word to him. Or to anyone, except Thérèse and perhaps young Maurice. All the same I can’t see her writing these letters. Not really. For one thing she’s never hesitated to abuse me to my face.’

  V

  ‘Chief,’ young René Martin said, blushing as he still often did when he addressed Lannes of his own accord, sometimes also indeed when he had to reply to a question. ‘Can you spare a minute, let me have a word.’

  ‘It had better be a quick one,’ Lannes said.

  Then, fearing he sounded abrupt and dismissive, added, ‘Unless it’s really important. I’m expected home in good time for dinner tonight. It’s my wife’s mother’s anniversary and she�
��s to be there along with my brother-in-law. The old lady can be difficult.’

  ‘It’ll keep till the morning,’ Martin said, blushing more deeply, ‘if that suits you better, chief.’

  It did of course. Lannes wanted to be home. Visits from her mother upset Marguerite, especially now, and Alain was sure to say something to provoke his uncle Albert. So Lannes liked to be there to steer the conversation, also to try to prevent Clotilde from shocking her grandmother with some remark that wasn’t actually shocking in the least. But he read disappointment in his junior inspector’s face. So he said, ‘Come along then’, returned to his office and removed his thorn-proof coat.

  ‘What is it, René? Don’t hurry. Take your time. I can see that you’ve got hold of something that may be important.’

  Martin was the only one of his inspectors whom he addressed as ‘tu’, which he did because the lad was almost young enough to be his son, and Lannes had known him since he joined the force when the boy had had to shave only a couple of times a week at most.

  ‘Well, I think it’s important, but I may be wrong. And I have to confess that I’ve stepped out of line because I know that the case of that poor Monsieur Chambolley has been officially filed, “no further action”. But then I saw him dead, what was done to him, and you said yourself that no one should die like that, being insulted in that manner by his killers. Moreover Moncerre – he won’t mind me telling you this – he hasn’t been happy either. You know what he’s like when he gets caught up in a case, he really hates letting go.’

  ‘We don’t call him “the bull terrier” for nothing,’ Lannes said, and smiled – he hoped encouragingly.

  ‘So he kept digging, and a couple of days ago he asked me if I fancied doing some investigation – out of hours and unofficially, you see. It’s these Spanish Reds, he said. Chambolley was seen with some of them – consorting, that was the word his informant used. So, he said, something makes me think that this may not be a sex-crime like we all thought, but political. Only, he said, I don’t properly understand the buggers, their French is mostly lousy. So would I go to the bar where they meet, some of them anyway, and ask around.’

  ‘Why you?’

  Young René seemed surprised by the question.

  ‘Because I’m from Perpignan. It’s on my file. I speak Catalan because my grandmother came from Barcelona and she brought me up after my mother died, and we used to speak Catalan together. So it was natural he should ask me, and I think he’s right, not a sex-crime at all, but political. It’s only a hunch of course, but . . . Anyway it took some time but I brought the conversation round to Monsieur Chambolley, pretending I was a friend looking for him, and at first they clammed up, it was as if the subject made them nervous. But they weren’t hostile as I think they would have been if the case had been what everyone assumed, that sort of disgusting thing. Just nervous and shy, it seemed. Of course they didn’t twig that I was a flic, I’m sure of that because of what followed. One of them, a great big fellow with a beard and a limp – Javier, he’s called – took me outside and said that at first they had all been suspicious of Monsieur Chambolley, him being a bourgeois and “maricon” – that was obvious to them – but then they accepted that he was sincerely trying to find out what had happened to his sister-in-law, a Spanish lady, who had worked for the Republican cause, and disappeared. So Javier concluded that in spite of appearances Monsieur Chambolley was OK, and neither a pervert on the lookout for a pick-up nor a spy, which they thought he might be at first. All the same he insisted that he didn’t know anything himself and warned me it might be dangerous to ask questions. So, what do you think, chief? It does seem to me to make things look different. I know I’ve stepped out of line, but all the same.’

  ‘It certainly casts a new light. You’ve done well, René. We’ll discuss it in the morning – with Moncerre. Ten o’clock. Meanwhile you are to resist the temptation which I’m sure you feel to find this Javier again and try to learn more. That’s an order, and this time one to be obeyed. Understood? Go and see your girl instead.’

  This time René’s blush covered his whole face.

  So, Lannes thought, as he walked home, it wasn’t just to avoid embarrassment that Rougerie had been so quick to clamp down on the investigation. Someone had leaned on him. Interesting.

  He was late and there was awkwardness in the air. It was usually like that. His mother-in-law would have arrived in a good temper, declaring herself delighted to see her two darling grandchildren, who would however soon be reproached for neglecting her, As if their lives weren’t sufficiently occupied, Lannes thought, without running after a selfish cantankerous old woman who was dissatisfied with everything. Then she would have started talking about Dominique, her favourite, always such a good boy, so attentive to his old grandma, and she would have distressed Marguerite by saying again, as she had ever since the war started, that she was sure she would never see him again, he would be killed in this cruel war like his grandfather, her Achille, in the last one. Lannes, going through to the kitchen to greet his wife, found her in tears.

  ‘You mustn’t listen to her. It’s just the way she talks.’

  ‘I can’t help it. She says aloud what I’m afraid to think.’

  In the salon his brother-in-law Albert was now holding forth. He worked in the mayor’s cabinet. His every pronouncement echoed his master’s voice, and he brought Marquet’s name into his conversation with tedious frequency, tedious and irritating for Lannes who had no high opinion of the mayor and indeed thought him an out-and-out Fascist.

  ‘As Monsieur Marquet said to me only yesterday,’ Albert now said, his long-nosed head dipping in emphasis, ‘we have blundered into an unnecessary and stupid war. For Poland, I ask you. What’s Poland to us? In any case, France and Germany should be friends, there’s really no reasonable alternative. The mayor is convinced that together we can build a New Europe. On sure foundations, sure foundations, his very words. Besides, if you ask me – and this is the mayor’s opinion also – France has two real enemies: the Communists at home and the English abroad, the English who are jealous of our empire and are also our commercial rivals. And both – Communists and the English alike – are abetted, if not actually controlled, by the Jews. So this war is folly, madness. But I am confident matters will arrange themselves, and you don’t need to worry about little Dominique, maman. Why should Hitler attack us? He knows the strength of the Maginot Line. He respects the French Army and has no quarrel with the real France, the authentic France. So, when we have a change of government – Monsieur Marquet is confident that Marshal Pétain must come to power, if only temporarily and perhaps, given his age, as a figurehead, a rallying point – then you will see how all will be arranged. Meanwhile, here in Bordeaux, these Spanish refugees, Reds one and all, are causing anxiety. I’m sure you find the same thing in your office, Jean,’ he added, acknowledging Lannes’ return to the room.

  ‘I don’t understand, Uncle Albert,’ Alain said. ‘Surely Hitler aims at the German domination of Europe, creating a new German Empire indeed, and that means that France would be subject to him. Moreover, as far as Communism being the enemy, how do you explain the Nazi-Soviet Pact and their military alliance which saw the Russians invade Poland from the east while the Germans marched in from the west.’

  ‘That’s no way to speak to your uncle, young man,’ Madame Panard said. ‘It’s impertinent. Well brought-up children should listen to their elders and learn from them.’

  Lannes dug his nails into his palms, and gave Alain a smile willing him not to reply, to let it go. But at the same time he approved of his son’s answer, even while remembering with some amusement that this was the boy who had insisted he had no intention of dying for Danzig.

  ‘My poor child,’ Albert said, ‘you speak truth only when you say you don’t understand. That Pact with the Soviet Union was a mere ruse on Hitler’s part. Just you wait and see. When matters have arranged themselves in the west, as they must do, then Hitler wi
ll turn east and destroy the Soviet Union.’

  ‘That might not be so easy,’ Alain, obstinate, said.

  ‘Not so easy? Not easy? When Stalin has liquidated the Russian officer class. I assure you, Hitler will go through Russia like a knife through butter. Take it from me. In any case the Fuehrer has always said that he has two enemies whom he is determined to destroy: Bolshevism and international Jewry. Not France, do you hear? Not France. We are his natural allies, for his enemies are ours too. This is another reason why matters must arrange themselves.’

  Alain thrust out his lower lip, looked mutinous, but, catching his father’s eye, gave a half-smile and kept silent.

  ‘You see,’ Madame Panard, massive and complacent, said, ‘your uncle knows about these things. You are fortunate to have him to instruct you. But I dislike talk of war. I have suffered too much. It’s sufficient to know that all will be arranged, as your uncle says, and that our dear Dominique will soon be home, safe, and normal life will be possible again. I must say I would like to get a night’s sleep, or as near to one as I ever achieve, without lying awake tormented by anxiety.’

  She smoothed her black bombazine dress with pudgy fingers.

  ‘Clotilde,’ she said, ‘that dress you are wearing is quite unsuitable for a well-brought-up girl. It’s immodest. Really, your poor mother . . . ’

  Who, fortunately, now appeared to summon them to dinner, and Madame Panard demanded Alain’s arm to help her out of her chair. Then, clutching her ebony cane and leaning heavily on her grandson, she led the way to the table. The prospect of food always raised her spirits, and she was even able to praise the setting, though declaring that she detested to see flowers as a centrepiece, and expressing the hope that Clotilde had been at least of some help to her mother.

  ‘Of course,’ Marguerite said, ‘she always is. But she has also a lot of schoolwork to do, maman.’

  ‘Schoolwork – that’s not what is important for a young lady.’

  The paté de foie gras was approved, Madame Panard taking a second helping, and so was the magret de canard. Clotilde had lit candles on the table and sideboard, and they made the atmosphere warm and intimate. Conversation was steered on to safe topics: family history, relationships and so on, well away from public affairs and the war. Madame Panard launched into a long account of the difficulties she was having with some of her tenants. Albert mentioned the mayor only some half a dozen times. Alain was polite and attentive to his grandmother. When they had eaten the cheese, which was Roquefort, and then the flan, Marguerite’s speciality, Lannes opened a bottle of Veuve Clicquot that they might drink grande-me’re’s health on this her happy anniversary; and after coffee the evening was at last over.