One True Sentence: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter series Book 1)

by Craig McDonald

  Standing in the corner by the fireplace alone, Nicole Voivin took a last look around the room at all the literary lights now ignoring her — her circle of friends who were focusing instead on Molly. She was sobbing.

  Nicole slowly raised her trembling left arm.

  Instinctively, Hector and Hem began moving toward Nicole at a half-run.

  When Brinke saw what Nicole had clutched in her left hand, she screamed to Nicole, “No — please don’t do it!”

  Other guests turned just as Nicole pressed the derringer to her temple and pulled the trigger.

  The tiny gun sounded more like a champagne cork dislodging than anything like the gunshots of Hector’s experience.

  But the tiny gun was enough to do the job.

  Nicole’s eyes rolled up toward the ceiling. She wavered a moment on her feet, then tumbled into Hector’s and Hem’s arms.

  Hector pressed his handkerchief to the powder-blackened hole in Nicole’s left temple. The blood was pumping from the wound under his hand so he knew her heart was still beating. Then the pulsing pressure against Hector’s fingers subsided and the red and purple stain on his handkerchief began to spread.

  Hem said, “Dev, if Doc Williams is still here, fetch him. Hash, you call the police, now.” Hem looked at Hector, said softly, “For all the good any of that will do.”

  Hector said, “It’s too late, already, Hem…blood’s gone to seep.”

  32

  Hem said, “Can you imagine yourself getting that low? I mean despondent enough to do that? And in front of a crowd?”

  Hector shook his head. “I’ve been through so much that might have pushed me that way. But each time, I’ve seen I can wait the despair out, wait for the wheel to turn. You hunker down and plow through. Regard it as a bad interlude to outlast. The void recedes, if you can wait the bastard out. What about you?”

  “I can imagine it,” Hem said. “I can conceive of giving into that kind of despair. But not with an audience. I would—”

  “And so another calamity presents itself, and here are my two intrepid fiction writers. Blood on their sleeves and fully in the moment, talking of life and death. Such writers you two are.”

  Hector frowned at Aristide Simon. “This was a suicide,” Hector said. “And not one driven by Nada. Not by the movement anyway. I think Nicole lost all hope all on her own.”

  “Oui. I was listening before making my presence known. She was a woman drawn to art and given to high emotion. A woman who had lost her life’s one true love, or so my men are being told by your friends. So, for Mademoiselle Voivin, it was a succumbing to the grand néant.”

  Hector said, “Why are we split off like this? Why were Hem and I brought to this bedroom, away from the others?”

  “Privacy,” Simon said. “Privacy from prying eyes and ears. I still have hopes for you helping me, Hector. And I deduce that Monsieur Hemingway here is your sounding board. I suspect he knows all that you know. So I save you the trouble of telling him. And he’s proven himself capable enough. Hemingway has demonstrated what my grandfather termed ‘grace under pressure.’ My men have taken the other guests to the backroom of a neighboring café in order to begin preparing the body for transport. I think, in this case, we can dispense with an autopsy. There being so many witnesses, after all.”

  “This is a suicide,” Hector said. “No argument about that. So what brings you personally here?”

  Simon waved a hand. He took a packet of Gauloises from his coat pocket. He held the pack out. Hem and Hector both shook their heads. Shrugging, Simon said, “Pretense. Camouflage. An excuse to catch you both up on some vital developments.”

  Hector said, “What’s happened now?”

  Simon said, “We have also bolstered our intelligence. We’ve learned some things.” He smiled through a haze of smoke. “You Americans are a queer lot. Do you find it necessary to come here in order to reinvent yourselves? Can’t you just move from one coast of America to another, or more simply, from one town to another, in order to recast yourselves in your own self-images? What is it about Paris that draws you all here to reimagine yourselves in some new persona?”

  Hem shrugged. “I’m the man I always was, just more so. Hector’s the same.”

  “Yes,” Simon said, “admittedly some of you are steadfastly yourselves. And peculiarly, it’s the ones with arguably the ugliest names. ‘Hector Lassiter,’ ‘Ernest Hemingway’… ‘Alice Toklas,’ and most disagreeable sounding of all, ‘Gertrude Stein.’ Any of you four could be forgiven for adopting new names.”

  Hector got out one of his own cigarettes. He said, “You have a point?

  Simon smiled. “I’ll come to it. You have somewhere else to be? More sleuthing, or perhaps just another brush with death you’re tardy for? Now, take Aleister Crowley…I find there is no such creature. He was instead born ‘Edward Alexander.’ Another reinvented man.” Simon smiled and shook his head.

  Hector said, “You’ve confirmed that Hem and I have clung to our given names…so you’ve been poking around into our pasts, too.”

  “As I said earlier. And I’m thorough. Hector Mason Lassiter, born in Galveston, Texas, on January 1, 1900.” Simon looked at the glowing end of the cigarette gripped between his knuckles. “Tell me, Hector, I know this Texas of yours is a big state, but do you know another Texan named Vander Clyde?”

  Hector looked around for a place to dispose of his match. “Nope.”

  “He performs every night at the Casino de Paris. Cocteau, among many others, is a great fan of this Vander’s. Only many of those admirers of his believe that Vander is a woman. Your fellow Texan might be the most extreme case of ‘reinvention’ of which I’m aware. Vander is now an acclaimed trapeze performer most believe to be a woman named Barbette.”

  “Her — him — I’ve heard of,” Hem said. “Can’t wait to tell Ford. I think he has designs on this Barbette once his current mistress, Stella Bowen, comes to her senses.”

  Simon smiled, “Well, this fellow Texan of Hector’s is an extreme example. Most of you Americans seem to lean more toward the kind of reinvention we see in Monsieur Crowley…in this Rook, who has rechristened himself ‘Victor Leek.’ Only there is no ‘Oswald Rook,’ either. We’ve run him to ground — his identity I mean. We’ve done that with the assistance of some rather tiresome, but dogged, genealogists in London. Oswald Rook is actually a man who was born ‘Jackson Douglas Starr’ in a state called Illinois. His parents were George and Irene Starr. He had one sibling, a younger sister named Lenore. In 1921, George and Irene Starr died in a fire that consumed the family home. The brother and sister, who both still lived with their aging parents — the siblings were both aspiring writers with no real other marketable skills, you see — were fortuitously away from home when the fire started. By the time home insurance investigators realized arson was to blame for the tragic conflagration, the Starr siblings had already liquidated their parents’ assets and collected on two rather sizable life insurance policies, fleeing to London. Eventually they found their way here to Paris.”

  Hem said, “Leek — Rook — Starr, I mean, has a sister? Living here in Paris?”

  “Oui. So it would seem.” Simon reached over and took Hem’s empty glass from his hand. He turned over his own palm and emptied into the glass the ashes from his cigarette he’d been allowing to collect there. Simon tapped the butt of his cigarette over the glass and then held it out for Hector to dispose of his spent match and to tap down his own cigarette’s growing cone of ash. “We’ll come to that momentarily,” Simon said.

  Hector said, “So Starr, and presumably this sister, murdered the mother and father for cash and a pretty new life in the Old World.”

  “Precisely,” Simon said. “The sister, one presumes, is every bit as destructive as the brother. La belle dame sans merci.”

  “You have passport photos? You know what this sister looks like?”

  “No, we have genealogists. And a newspaper in America that is sending us a copy
from its archives of the story that was run regarding the fire that killed the parents. Photos of the brother and sister ran with that article. The journalists were able to describe the brother and sister. Seems if the descriptions I’ve heard of Victor Leek are accurate, the brother, at least, has dyed his hair black. In the photos, he’s quite fair, or so I’m told the journalists back in Illinois insist. The sister’s hair? Harder to tell…she’s wearing a hat.”

  Hem, the ex-newspaperman, said, “When will you have those materials in hand?”

  “Friday at the latest, I would hope,” the detective said. “We’ve been at this a while…we were looking for this Starr in connection with something else. A different crime. But it is a happy accident, oui?”

  Hector said, “I’d like to see those pictures when you get them. Maybe I’ll recognize the sister. Or maybe Hem will.”

  “I suspect I will recognize this sister when I see the pictures,” Simon said. “You see, I have two candidates, two women I suspect of being this Lenore Starr. I’m fairly confident they can’t both be wrong guesses on my part. It will be the one, or the other. I stake my career on that.”

  Hector braced for it: “Who are these women?”

  “Indeed…who are they indeed?” Simon said, “This is going to be terribly distressing for you, Hector. You see, as I told you earlier, I’ve been investigating others around you beyond Hemingway here. And I’ve learned some things. Things that will be hard for you to hear. For instance, Hector, there is no such person as ‘Brinke Devlin.’”

  Hector said, “That’s no revelation. ‘Brinke’ is a nickname. Her real name is Alison.”

  “Yes, Alison Boyton Devlin,” Simon said. “Born in New York state. That’s her story now. But there is no such person. Her last confirmed identity we traced to the Middle East. In 1922, she was living in Egypt under the name of ‘Margaret Walker.’ She was then writing her mystery novels under the pen name of Connor Templeton, of course. But she lived under this alternate identity. Prior to that, that ‘Margaret’ spent a year in Berlin. There she was ‘Gretchen Pabst.’ And, of course, the author Connor Templeton.”

  Hector felt a strange tightness in his chest. He could hear it in his own voice: “But you can’t confirm that she’s Starr’s sister?”

  Simon shook his head. “I’m sorry, Hector. I can’t seem to grasp a thread that I can follow to a ‘true personality’ for this woman. By that, I mean I can’t determine what name this woman who now calls herself Brinke Devlin was given at birth.”

  “She’s not Starr’s sister,” Hector said. “I know she isn’t.”

  “And you’re perhaps right,” Simon said. “She may be entirely apart from Starr, or Rook, and apart from all these crimes. But there is another issue, my friend. Perhaps other crimes, of which your ‘Brinke’ is not so innocent.”

  Hector swallowed hard. “What the hell are you talking about now?”

  “In Berlin, in Madrid, and in some other places we know or suspect her to have been, there have been other crimes…crimes strangely close to crimes described in various of Connor Templeton’s novels. I have a young detective working for me who studied in America. He’s quite fluent in English. He’s been reading the Templeton books in their original English…and making connections. A talented and diligent young man, you’ll agree.”

  “Kudos to your boy,” Hem said. “How do you know Brinke wasn’t just drawing on crimes that happened in these places where she was living at the time? Lowndes modeled The Lodger after the Ripper murders, but nobody suspected her of committing the Whitechapel crimes.”

  “Well, that is the question,” Simon said. “Which came first? The crimes, or the crime stories? I have no satisfactory answer for that as yet. Particularly because in at least two cases, the crimes, and the probable composition of the novels describing those crimes, seem to have unfolded almost simultaneously. Or so we’re inclined to believe.”

  Hector said, “You’re going to confront Brinke?”

  “Not yet. Not until I have my photos. And these others crimes are outside my purview…far outside my jurisdiction. Depending on what my young man finds in his researches, I may eventually turn the materials over to my counterparts in Spain and Germany. I suppose I should think about confiscating her passport. But that can wait another day or two…for the newspapers from America to reach me. You’ll of course want to keep all this from this woman, Hector. Particularly since she may be Leek’s, or rather, Starr’s sister, and thusly a murderer many times over. I’m sorry to put you in this quandary. I know you are lovers. But given today’s earlier threatening letter, and that poem, I think it’s only fair to arm you with information so you can protect yourself, Hector. You should perhaps find some excuse to stay away from her for the next couple of days.”

  “I’ll see to myself,” Hector said. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Hem said, “You said there are two women you suspect could be Starr’s sister. Who is the other?”

  “A slightly more compelling candidate to my mind,” Simon said. “And, in her current incarnation, she claims to have been born in the same small town where Starr was born.”

  “Illinois?” Hector said, “this small town…is it Elgin?”

  Simon nodded, sighing. “I’m sorry, Hector, oui.”

  Hem said it: “Molly.”

  “Oui, Margaret Raeburn Wilder. For whom no authentic records exist, just like Brinke Devlin.”

  “Molly’s shown me correspondence from Elgin,” Hector said. “From her mother.”

  Simon nodded. “You saw the envelopes?”

  “No,” Hector said.

  “The signatures?”

  “No, she quoted the letters to me.” Hector squeezed the bridge of his nose. Jesus.

  “Could be forgeries…perhaps some adopted mother…or a woman who styles herself as this ‘Molly’s’ mother,” Simon said. “Or she made them up on the spot. She is the creative type. The fact remains, we have the Elgin connection. Fair hair. And she’s of the right age to be Starr’s younger sister.”

  Hector shook his head. “Name changes — at home they’d be sinister. At least eyebrow-raising. But here? De rigueur. As you said, many Americans do it. Man Ray is really ‘Emmanuel Radnitzky’…I could go on and on.”

  Simons said, “Well, Friday we’ll know all. Until then, stay away from these pretty, deceptive young women, Hector. That is my advice to you.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  “My men continue to watch you,” Simon said, “but that veil of protection only extends so far, Hector. It can’t reach into the beds of apartments and garrets. I can only protect you en plein air.” Simon rose and said, “Now I go to speak to some other witnesses.”

  Hem said, “Molly? You’ll confront her about this?”

  “She was gone before my men arrived,” Simon said gravely. “The only one of you to leave, it seems. So again, my suspicions are raised.”

  When Simon was gone, Hem slapped Hector’s back. “You are bitched. I’m so sorry, Lasso.”

  “It’s a goddamn mess,” Hector agreed. “But I don’t think Brinke is a murderer. And she’s certainly not Leek’s sister.” Hector couldn’t yet think of the killer poet as “Starr.”

  “So what do you do, Lasso?”

  “First, find out if Brinke’s ever been to Italy and written any books about Italy that might make her a suspect there. If not, she and I push on to Italy on the night train tomorrow. Do it before that cocksucker Simon can take her passport.”

  “Still going to marry her?”

  “I love her, Hem.”

  33

  Hector was very aware of Hem watching him. But he smiled at Brinke as she rose to embrace him. She kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear, “Hadley was terrified they were going to arrest Hem again, and you, too, this time.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Then what was it about?”

  He squeezed her arm. “Later, please.” Hector looked around at th
e other party guests, then innocently asked, “Where’s Molly?”

  “The police want to know that, too,” Brinke said. “She seems to have drifted off in the confusion after Nicole’s shooting. Left before the police came. She’s so unbalanced emotionally, hard to tell what seeing that did to her. I feel so sorry for her, in a way. There she was, given this great gift, having her big night thanks to Nicole, then Nicole does that and takes all the focus away from Molly and her new literary enterprise.”

  “Like you said,” Hector said, watching Simon watching him with Brinke, “gotta take the rough with the smooth.” Hector helped Brinke on with her overcoat.

  “Most are staying on here to drink,” she said.

  “Exactly,” Hector said. “Good reason for the four of us to find our own café. Speaking of the future — you ever actually been to Italy, Brinke?”

  “Not until tomorrow.” Brinke frowned. “We are still going, aren’t we?”

  “Of course.” He stroked her hair back from where it had fallen over her right eyebrow. “Of course, darling.”

  ***

  “Another ghastly night,” Hadley said, holding out her wineglass for Hector to refill it. Hadley sipped her wine and said, “Hardly feel up to the next stop.”

  Hem said, “Pardon, Hash? There’s a next stop?”

  Hadley said, “Invitation came while you were out with Hector. Adam Byron, who runs Revelations, is having a party in ‘defiance of the recent murders’ according to the announcement he sent. I wish I’d brought the actual invitation along. It’s rather amazing. Covered with skulls and crossed bones. I’m sorry I forgot to mention it.”

  A husky voice over Hector’s shoulder: “We are invited, as well. But I wonder about going after tonight’s mess.”

  Gertrude and Alice had sidled up behind Hector and Brinke. Hector rose and pulled over a couple of extra chairs.

  “Given the way these social gatherings are going,” Gertrude said, “reticence seems the thing called for regarding tonight’s next affair.” Hector scooted in Alice’s chair, then, with a good bit more exertion, Gertrude’s.