“Her condition?”
The widow disengaged her arm from Hector’s. “Who are you, really?”
“I really am Hector Lassiter. And I really am working with the police…informally. You can confirm that with Commissaire Aristide Simon.”
“If you met her, ‘chatted’ with her, then why don’t you know that Kitty Pike is quite deaf?”
Hector frowned. He pulled his overcoat’s collar up around his face. “Why indeed?” He stopped and took the woman’s arm again. “You’d better describe Kitty Pike to me.”
“Perhaps thirty. Heavyset. She has diabetes, as well. She wears glasses…very thick lenses. Last summer, she lost her right leg below the knee as a result of bad circulation. She’s housebound now. That’s why I was surprised you said she had attended the service.”
Hector said aloud, “So whom did I meet yesterday?”
“You’re starting to frighten me,” Blake’s widow said. “What did this woman who passed herself off as Kitty Pike look like?”
Hector described her. Mrs. Blake wrapped her arm through his again and began walking. “I don’t know anyone meeting that description,” she said. “Not at all. This is quite unsettling.”
“You’re going to be offended, or angry at me again,” Hector said. “But I must confess that she claimed to be your husband’s mistress.”
The widow’s voice went flat: “My husband seems to have had at least one of those.”
“Was there a name you ever heard for her? Something with a ‘W,’ maybe?”
“Do you have a specific name in mind, Monsieur Lassiter?”
“Margaret. Margaret W.”
“Non,” the widow said. “Non. That name is not remotely familiar to me. But this woman that my husband…” She took a breath. “This woman of his, I think, is a brunette.”
“You’ve caught a glimpse of her?”
“I found black hairs in our bed.”
“I’m sorry.” Hector said, “There are other names that I’d like to run by you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Victor Leek?”
She shrugged.
“Oswald Rook?”
“Not him, either. I’m sorry, Monsieur Lassiter.”
“Hector.”
They had almost reached the graveside, hard up against an ivy-covered stone wall. Mourners were taking turns throwing cold, snow-kissed dirt onto the coffin. A symbolic gesture at best, Hector figured, since the coffin was to be placed in a crypt.
“This woman, Margaret? Someone you suspect?”
“Someone I know,” Hector said. “She’s worrying me because of some new acquaintances. Ones like the ones I chased off, maybe.”
“Mal entourée?”
“Quite.” They fell into the line in order to sift dirt onto the coffin. He said, “Madame Blake, do you have any theory about who killed your husband?”
“My guess is the raven-haired woman…Lloyd’s whore.”
***
His taxi driver said, “Where now? A bar, I’ll bet.”
“Non. Je voudrais descendre à Cimetière du Montparnasse.”
The taxi driver screwed up his face. “What, not another funeral?”
“That’s right.”
“Pardon: You must have very bad luck, Monsieur.”
“Perhaps next month will be luckier.”
26
Wet fluffy flakes twirled down on the latest band of mourners. For the third time in the same prayer, Hector took off his black hat and shook off the snow from the crown and brim. He pulled his collar up closer around his face. He’d decided Brinke had abandoned all effort to follow her own plan of attending the day’s funerals for clues.
Maybe she and Molly had found warmer, sweeter places to be.
For his part, Hector had arrived early; killed a little time visiting Guy de Maupassant’s grave. He thought about spitting on that of Charles Baudelaire — perhaps the first of the “abyss lovers.” Hector spent too much time staring at a statue of a woman in a hood, bent over, head in hands, the embodiment of grief. He’d found himself moved to place a hand on her shoulder, surprised for just an instant to find her shoulder was cold and hard like the stone that it was.
A hand patted Hector’s shoulder. “You’re a marvel, Monsieur Lassiter. Yesterday, you professed never to hear of Mueller Hawkins. Today, here you are, paying your respects.”
Hector said, “Commissaire Simon. Didn’t know you cared so much for Hawkins either.”
“I had some time. Thought it might be worth my effort to see who showed up. Your thought as well?”
“It was a thought,” Hector said.
Simon smiled, his hand still gripping Hector’s shoulder. “Unless you think it’s bad luck, or you’re caught up in the moment, I propose we go find a warm fire and some good coffee.”
“I concur.”
They wended their through the cemetery, past sculptures of winged, long dead children and lost loves. Simon said, “All this care and money for the dead. How long until you think they find some rationale for digging these up, like the ones gone before? How long until they find some reason to discard the bones of these deeper underground in order to make room for the next round of corpses?”
Hector said, “It’s not an issue back home in America. I don’t think we’re capable of running out of room to bury our dead.”
The cop lit one of his Gauloises. “The blessing and curse of a young and vast country, I suppose. And here is my car.”
Hector slid in and Simon slid in beside him. “You live on the Rue Vavin, yes? I’ll keep your walk short for your leg.” Simon instructed his driver to take them to a café on the Boulevard Raspail.
In the café, Hector settled into his chair by the crackling fire and checked his pocket watch — a few minutes after two. He sipped his red wine.
Simon asked, “You have somewhere you need to be?”
“Not for a couple of hours yet.”
“I won’t detain you…I have places to be. But I did want some coffee. And perhaps some advice. I have some photos, if you’re up to it.”
“Surely.”
“Crime photographs.”
“I’m going to need some wine then.” Hector signaled their waiter and ordered himself a bottle of red wine. Hector said, “These photos — anyone I know?”
“A man named Jeremy Hunt. He was a friend of yours?”
“No,” Hector said. “But I know him by name. He was another magazine publisher. I hear he was murdered. You should caution your coroner, because Hunt supposedly had tuberculosis.”
“I’ll do that, though the information comes treacherously tardily.” Simon lit another cigarette, shook out the match. “These literary types, they fall around you like flies, my friend. Yet you endure.”
Hector sipped his wine. He shrugged. “You said you have photos.”
“I do.” Simon lifted a leatherette case from the chair beside him and unfastened it. He pulled out three black-and-white photos and handed them to Hector. “Not terribly gruesome. Not like some other things you’ve seen recently. But a corpse is a corpse is a corpse and that is always unsettling.”
“May it always remain so.”
Hector placed the three photos side by side on the table, staring at them. They might as well be the same photo, really — just taken at slightly different angles. One was cropped to encompass everything from the waist up.
“It’s the peculiar posture that you’ll of course note,” Simon said.
Hunt, a dangerously thin-looking man with sparse, sandy hair and a wormy mustache, lay on his back on an Oriental carpet. He was staring up at the camera with sightless eyes, his mouth slightly opened. He wore dark slacks, an open vest, and a white shirt stained with blood. The man’s thin legs were stretched straight out.
It was Hunt’s hands and arms that looked unnatural. The man’s right arm was crooked at the elbow. His hand rested palm-down, three fingers extended toward his toes; the pinkie tucked under the thumb. The lef
t arm was also crooked at the elbow, but the left hand rested palm-up. Three fingers of that hand were also extended above his head; the left hand’s pinkie again folded under the thumb. Hector could see only one interpretation; one he wasn’t prepared to share with Simon. Instead he said, pointing at the left hand, “Hunt was American. He was a bit older than me. But three fingers, that could be the Boy Scout’s salute.”
Simon scowled. “As he was dying, he took the trouble for that? And what of the right hand?”
“Unconscious symmetry, perhaps? He was dying, as you said…hardly a time for thinking…not thinking enough to send messages.” Hector curled his lip, “Not outside of one of Estelle Quartermain’s unreadable novels.”
Simon smiled. “You’ve shamed me with that, as I’m sure you intended.” He inhaled some smoke deeply into his lungs and let it out slowly. “Still, my instincts are against this being anything less than a message of some kind. Perhaps three and three. Or, together, six. But what does that mean?” The inspector picked up one of the photos, held it close to his face. “Or, perhaps not numbers…”
Hector swallowed hard. An inspiration: “Where in the room was the body found?”
“Essentially, in the middle of the sitting room, not far from a couch. Why?”
“Was his head pointed toward, or away from the front door?”
Simon ground out his cigarette, watching Hector. “His head was pointed toward the door.”
Arching an eyebrow, smiling as if he was sharing some epiphany, Hector said, “Then perhaps he meant for you to see what he was trying to tell you this way, as you would approach his body upon entering. Upside down, I mean. From the perspective you have right now, sitting across from me and looking at this photo in front of me.”
“Upside down, so to speak. Yes, that’s quite astute of you. You’d really make a fine detective, with the proper training.” Then Simon frowned. “But, non, look, it’s the same either way…”
Hector sat back in his chair, lifted his glass. Well, he’d tried. He looked at the photo facing him. He looked from the dead man’s right hand to his left. Hector couldn’t imagine the fingers imparting any message other than initials: MW.
“You should take more care with yourself, Hector. Visiting these funerals, giving these men chase. You’ll make yourself a target, if you haven’t already, my brash friend.”
Hector shrugged, posturing. “They’ve made it a matter of life and death. Provoked, I will respond. A la guerre comme à la outrance.” Hector held up a photo. “May I hold on to this for a time?”
“I’ll allow it. But don’t share it around.”
“No. I just want to look at it some more. Brood over it. May spark some further epiphany. Any luck at Suzy?”
Simon said, “Ah yes, this Leek or Rook — your bête noire. And mine, too, I suppose. No, nothing turned up at that brothel.”
***
Simon was barely out the door of the café when Hem wandered in. Hem whistled at the photograph of Hunt’s body. “Jesus, like something from a mystery novel, isn’t it?”
“Exactly. I figure it for posed,” Hector said.
Hem pulled on his glasses and looked again at the photo. “Posed? You mean, like by some photographer, going for composition? Mise-en-scène?”
Hector sipped his wine. “More like someone who has read one too many facile mystery novels and is trying to frame someone. ‘Posed’ was a poor word choice. Staged.”
“Yeah? By whom?”
“Look at those fingers in tandem, Hem. Molly Wilder is my bet. I mean, as object of the frame.”
“But you’re concerned Molly’s tied up with this Nada stuff, Lasso. What, you change your mind about all that when she crawled into your bed with Brinke?”
“I’m going to ignore that crack, Hem, and only confide that I suspect I’ve been made to be concerned about Molly’s so-called ties to these killings.”
“By whom?”
“You…maybe others. You in innocence, of course.” Hector hastened to add that last as he saw Hem’s neck and cheeks flush. “But you colored my thoughts on this, Hem. You locked me into a kind of tunnel vision that others may be exploiting now. There’s more, too. But I’ve got to go.”
“Where?”
“Men’s room, a ways from here.”
“Why not use the can here?”
“I left something in the other one.”
“They’re burying Joan tomorrow.”
Hector said, “Think there’s some record for the number of funerals attended in a single week?”
“Not any record I’d want to break.” Hem pointed at Hector’s half-finished bottle of wine. “You’re not going to finish that?”
“Haven’t the time. You do it for me.”
***
The men’s room was empty save for the stall — the one that Hector had locked the nihilist inside.
Hector climbed back atop the radiator, mounting with his good ankle.
“Jacques Ravel” was still there, head against the stall wall, a long drool trail sliding down his neck. But his eyelids were fluttering…he was close to coming to.
Hector lowered himself from the radiator, let himself out, and took up a seat close by the hallway leading back to the restrooms. He sat with his back to the hallway. He pulled out his notebook and pen. He checked his watch — three o’clock. Hector worked on his novel’s newest chapter for about fifteen minutes before he heard heavy footfalls on the tile of the corridor leading back to the bathroom. A shadow crossed his table. He watched “Jacques Ravel,” awkward and heavy on uncertain feet, stumble through the café and out into the gray afternoon light. Hector closed his notebook and followed.
Jacques walked past six or seven storefronts, leaning heavily on bollards and benches to keep from falling. He finally decided he needed a taxi. Hector signaled for one, as well.
Hector’s taxi pulled curbside and he slid in. He said to the driver, “See that taxi there? Where it goes, we go.”
The other taxi journeyed to the Rue Quincampoix. Hector knew the street by low reputation — a string of hotels housing prostitutes; a varied array of houses of pleasure.
“Jacques Ravel,” a little steadier on his feet now, Hector thought, exited his taxi, spilling bills to the driver. One or two notes fluttered into the slush of the street. Some prostitutes approached Jacques and he waved them away with a shaking hand. Hector said to his taxi driver, “Don’t leave. I’ll be back, and quite soon, I think.”
“Back soon from one of these?” His driver nodded at the pleasure houses, looking skeptical.
“I’m police,” Hector said. “That man is a suspect. Now wait for me.”
Hector followed the man to what looked like a private residence, but for the red light above the door. He gave the man ten minutes, smoking two cigarettes and turning down the overtures of perhaps a half-dozen street tarts in the interval. Then Hector rang the bell.
An enormous ex-whore-graduated-to-madam met him at the door. She shook a brass bell that she carried in her pudgy hand and several girls in various states of undress lined up near the door. Hector walked along the line, looking them over. One wore more clothes than the others. She looked new to the job. She held her shoulders straighter than the rest and met his gaze. Her eyes were blue — cobalt and darker and deeper than Hector’s own. Her hair was as black as Brinke’s, but long and straight and worn very much against fashion. Hector thought there was something French in her features and pale skin. But not French “proper” — more like Creole-French, from back home.
He said to the whore, “Comment vous appelez-vous?”
“Solange.”
A strong American accent. Hector smiled at the fat, buxom madam. “Solange will do me fine.”
“You pay me,” the madam said. Hector bought fifteen minutes of “Solange’s” time.
That prompted some giggles from the other whores that the madam tried to stifle with a quick stare.
Hector took Solange’s hand and foll
owed her down a corridor to an anonymous, relatively clean room.
“We haven’t much time,” she said. “What is your preference?”
“I’m American, like you,” Hector said. “I don’t know a single ‘Solange’ back home. What’s your given name? Mine is Hector.”
The black-haired woman said, “Are you here to talk? To try and save me? What are you? Some missionary? A romantic?”
“I’m police, investigating some murders,” Hector said. “I won’t threaten your position here, and I won’t require more of you than some honest answers, which, frankly, may save your life. Your life, or the lives of others of these women in this house.”
“Victoria, that’s my name. I’m…I don’t mean to stay here long. Doing this work, I mean.”
Hector thought to himself that none of them ever did. And every day, a few more fallen women who never got off their backs or knees for one reason or another proved him right. “You’re quite beautiful,” Hector said. She was — despite some palpable self-hatred. But she wasn’t hard-looking yet. Hector sensed she hadn’t fully given up hope. If Victoria cut her hair and wore better clothes — squared her shoulders more — hell, she could be Brinke’s younger, just as pretty sister, Hector figured.
As his mind drifted in different directions, Hector said, “A man came in before me. Do you know who he is?”
“Not a customer,” she said. She hesitated. “More like a visitor. I could get in some serious trouble for telling you this. Discretion is everything here. We’re supposed to be very discreet. And, occasionally, that woman you paid listens at the door. She looks through the keyhole to make certain that nothing, well, you know, sinister is going on.”
Hector looked around. The bed was positioned on the wall opposite the door, in full view of the keyhole. He sat down on the bed and said, “All I want you to do is kneel in front of me, Victoria. Do that, and move your head a bit now and then. You know, as if…”
“I understand.”
Hector tangled his hand in her long, black hair, occasionally gently moving her head as he would if she had really taken him into her mouth. He said, “This man who visits, whom does he visit?”
One True Sentence: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 1) Page 18