Murder in Montparnasse (30 page)

Madame Dubois sat up against a wealth of pillows and found her handkerchief. She didn’t want to weep any more. The young woman had informed her that this was the house of the only person René was really afraid of. When he treated that one harshly, as he treated all women after the first, blissful three months, she had not stayed and clung and cried so that he beat her again. She had escaped, taking all her money with her and had gone to hide among the Sapphics, whose threats of revenge had frightened René into going home to the Auvergne and staying there until 1923.

But unfortunately—how very unfortunately—he had taken Véronique with him, and however she tried to run away, whatever desperate plans she made, he always found her, beat her, and dragged her back.

But not this time. When Phryne returned, Véronique smiled at her. ‘I am beginning to believe in you, Madame Phryne,’ she said. Phryne noted that she had been awarded Madame instead of La Petite Phryne, which was an indication of growing respect. What had Dot been saying about her?

‘Good. How do you feel?’

‘I creak a little,’ said Madame Dubois. ‘It is to be expected. Perhaps—there might be coffee?’

‘There shall be,’ said Phryne. Dot folded her knitting and went downstairs. Madame Dubois laid a hand on Phryne’s knee.

‘I will tell you all,’ she said.

‘I think I know most of it,’ said Phryne. ‘But I would be honoured to have your confidence.’

‘It was when we went to the bal musette that I fell in love with him,’ confessed Madame Dubois. ‘He was so charming, no? So funny, so insolent, so . . . whatever it was, I fell in love with him like falling down a well. I was angry when he took up with you. I kept warning you about him but you would not listen. I knew he was a scoundrel by then, but I still loved him. I adored him, I doted on him. Sarcelle never knew, not until the day he died he never knew.’

There was a silence. Phryne remembered how fervently Madame had urged her not to give her earnings to René. She had known what she was talking about. He must have been wooing Madame while he was courting Phryne. No wonder he hadn’t wanted her to come and live with him. Véronique was wringing her hands and her voice rose to a wail. ‘But I swear before God, I swear, I never knew that he was going to assassinate poor Sarcelle. He never told me. Later, he told me, he laughed at my tears. I cried for him, for there was no harm in Sarcelle, and he was a great artist.’

‘The soldiers saw . . .’ Phryne bit her lip. She now knew what the soldiers had seen. They had seen René, wearing Phryne’s black coat and her black hat, her stockings and shoes. He had often joked that he could pass for a woman, had donned Phryne’s night gown and danced Arabian dances in it. What they had seen was René shove the artist under the train. And under the paint they might know the face again. He had waited until Madame Sarcelle had an unbreakable alibi. And no one had even gossiped about Madame Sarcelle; it was well known that she was devoted to her husband. A good scheme, God rot him.

‘Why did he kill Sarcelle?’

‘To make his paintings more valuable. Me, he had me just where he wanted me. I adored him. I was his slave. I would have done anything for him. René heard Sardou, the art dealer, telling Sarcelle to die and make his work more scarce and precious.’

‘The bastard,’ said Phryne, horrified. Véronique nodded.

‘But why now?’ Phryne asked.

‘You haven’t heard? Now that Sarcelle’s work is so valuable— there is a rage to buy his paintings which has sent the prices up to the sky—they are reopening the enquiry into his death. René said that the only people who saw him were some Australian soldiers. It was not difficult to find which soldiers had been on that train. There were only seven. The railways keep all their records. René got a friend of his to find out who they were, and the Army Office told him where they lived. It was easy.’

‘You know the cream of the joke? They were all sodden drunk on Madame Printemps’ methylated raki. The ones he killed didn’t even see him,’ said Phryne.

Madame Dubois made a sad shrugging movement which brought her bruised shoulders into view.

‘The way of the world,’ she said. ‘And nothing to be done about it.’

‘I don’t agree,’ said Phryne.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

My eyes hurt. The revenge of things I have seen
only too well?

Natalie Barney,
Critical Sallies

‘It is truly a miracle of a dress,’ observed Madame Dubois. Phryne turned around and surveyed herself critically in the mirror. The night was indeed hot and would be hotter inside a crowded ballroom. The severe linen fell straight to her sandalled feet. Moving as she moved, it flowed.

‘I wish Sarcelle could paint you like that,’ said Véronique. ‘With the sharp lines of the hair, and the smooth linen, and the roundness of the beads.’

‘You shall paint me,’ said Phryne. ‘You were good until you devoted yourself to Sarcelle and that cochon René.’

‘I haven’t touched a brush in years,’ protested Madame Dubois.

‘Time you started. While I am gone, I suggest that you come downstairs, where I have a large policeman called Hugh Collins on guard to protect you, not to mention Dot and my gun—which you had better not mention to Hugh, if you please. You will meet my adoptive daughters and give them some painting lessons. They are nice girls, gentle and sweet. Most of the time. And that will keep everyone in one place in case there should be trouble. I do not expect it, but one must prepare. Besides, you need feeding up and it is almost dinner time. My Mrs Butler is a very good cook. Her soups are especially excellent,’ Phryne cunningly informed her, knowing how much Véronique liked a good soup.

‘Very well.’ Véronique struggled to her feet. ‘What shall I wear?’

‘I have borrowed Mrs Butler’s new house dress,’ said Phryne. ‘I remember you liked wearing colours. None of my clothes would fit you or you could rummage in my wardrobe. Soon we shall buy you some more clothes.’

‘It has been ten years since I had a new dress,’ said Véro-nique, allowing herself to be clothed in Mrs Butler’s choice, a rather sprightly shade of spring green cotton with cherries on it. Madame Dubois smoothed it down as though it were silk.

Instead of the moaning, ragged figure which Hugh had carried out of that house in Fitzroy Street, she now looked like a respectable Frenchwoman of middle age. Her freshly washed hair was rolled into a chignon, her eyes were relatively calm and her hands hardly shook at all.

‘It is a very nice dress,’ she said bravely. ‘Take me down to meet your daughters.’

‘You are a courageous woman,’ said Phryne, ‘and it will be a pleasure.’

Lin Chung arrived as dinner was cleared away, the pad and cloth were laid over the big dining table, and watercolours, pencils and paper were laid out in preparation for the drawing lesson. Hugh Collins let Lin into the room.

Lin saw a chattering, fully-fed girl on either side of a haggard woman in green, who told them that they must draw only what they could see. She spoke Parisian French and the girls were trying very hard to understand her. With the learned sympathy of those who had also been injured and oppressed, they were sitting close to Madame Dubois, asking questions. Then a vision of such outré loveliness entered that he had no eyes for anything else. Phryne looked at once Egyptian and western, alien and familiar, and absolutely beautiful. He bowed and offered his arm.

‘Silver Lady,’ he said, ‘you are magnificent!’

‘She is,’ agreed the woman in broken English. ‘And always she was.’

Lin bowed to the crowd and escorted Phryne out to his car.

‘We are meeting the Robinsons in the portico,’ Phryne reminded him. ‘And you look absolutely splendid, Lin dear. Savile Row?’

Lin in full evening dress was elegant, smooth, and a little dangerous. The suit was cut so that it fit like a glove. It was so black that light seemed to fall into it, as black as the cat Ember’s sable fur.

He inclined his head at the compliment. Lin did not drive unless he had to. He had also indulged himself in the newest of the Rolls Royce cars. This one was called the Silver Ghost for the silence of its approach. His chauffeur was dressed, for this evening, in livery. Lin Chung, also, had a point to make.

Phryne leaned back against the dark grey glove leather upholstery and lit a Sobranie in a long holder.

‘Lin dear,’ she began, ‘there may be some little unpleasantness tonight.’

‘I never pay attention to people who do not like Chinks,’ returned Lin easily. ‘And I find that, after being ignored for a while, they go away.’

‘Not that sort. You recall that I told you about René Dubois, who broke my heart in Paris ten years ago? And the soldiers who were being killed, Bert’s friends?’

‘I remember,’ Lin lit his own cigarette. ‘Tell me more.’

‘That damaged woman in my parlour is René’s misused wife,’ Phryne told him. ‘René is the murderer, and he is playing in the band at this ball. If he sees me, he may attack.’

‘That,’ said Lin, smiling a little, ‘could be very, very unfortunate for René.’

‘So I thought,’ said Phryne. ‘We need to catch him, Lin, or he’ll keep murdering his way through those soldiers. He would love to murder me and he will definitely torture Madame Dubois until she dies, in revenge for being rescued. She didn’t run away, Lin. She stayed with him because she is utterly broken. She is what I would have been if I hadn’t escaped him.’

‘No,’ said Lin. ‘You are far too strong a character to have become what Madame Dubois has become. You would have killed him or died before you were reduced to such a state. I know you, Silver Lady.’

Obscurely comforted, Phryne leaned over and gave Lin a lingering kiss. He was very beautiful, exceptionally desirable, and probably right.

The car drew up in the midst of the crowd in Carlisle Street. The Lin family livery was a tunic and trousers of heavy dark blue serge, in which the chauffeur must have been sweating, and a rather impressive laced cap with the family crest, a phoenix, in gold thread. Phryne alighted and shook her dress into place. Mr Lin was handed down. The great car glided away into the velvety St Kilda night to massed murmurs of envy which were music to Lin Chung’s ears.

Among the overheated, chattering crowd, Phryne and her escort stood out as slim, elegant and strange. Lin led Phryne ceremoniously up the marble steps to the portico, where a stout lady in dark red with a magnificent orchid pinned to her shoulder and a detective inspector in his best evening suit awaited them.

‘This is my wife,’ said Robinson. ‘Mrs Rose Robinson. Miss Phryne Fisher, Mr Lin Chung.’

After a moment of initial shock, when Mrs Robinson took in the Egyptian dress, the fact that it was made of cotton— how daring!—and the beautiful young man who was Chinese, she recovered magnificently. She held out a work-hardened hand to Phryne and said, ‘How nice to meet you, Miss Fisher. Jack is always talking about you. That is a remarkable dress,’ she added.

‘And that is a remarkable orchid,’ said Phryne. ‘Is it one of yours, Jack? It goes perfectly with that wine-red of your dress, Mrs Robinson.’

‘Bred it myself,’ said Robinson, pleased. He was at this ball entirely on account of his dear Rosie and was now thinking that it might not be as bad as he had thought, after all. And he had always liked Lin Chung. ‘Rosie likes that shade of red. She grows roses that colour. Black Boy, they’re called. Grow all over the side fence and you can smell them right down the street in spring.’

‘A young lady was just telling me that I ought to have a garden,’ said Phryne. ‘I promised to do it, if she would design it for me. I have always thought rose arbours charming. Can you tell me about them, Mrs Robinson?’

‘Call me Rosie,’ said Mrs Robinson, launched on her favourite topic. ‘Well, you need to make the arbour really strong. Roses are heavy, and they aren’t true climbing plants, they just throw out long tendrils which can be draped and tied . . .’

Lin and Robinson exchanged a glance of masculine empathy.

‘Shall we go in?’ asked Lin.

‘Got those invitations, Rosie?’ asked Robinson.

The colour scheme of the Town Hall was exactly to Mrs Robinson’s taste; dark red and gold. Gilded leaves cascaded down from the domed ceiling. Red flowers were everywhere. Scarlet and gold lanterns depended from the roof and ropes of scarlet blossoms with small electric bulbs inside were swagged along the walls. Huge gilt medallions on scarlet ropes of flowers were draped all along the balconies. No expense had been spared and it seemed, from the buzz and the scent and the passing trays of drinks, that it was going to be a night full of fashion and exertion. The band was already playing selections from the ‘Student Prince’ when Phryne, the Robinsons and Lin joined the mayoral party and they made their entrance to a minuet.

Phryne was delighted to see that one lady had eschewed the prevalent pink and blue and wore an ivory crepe dress with heavy silver and coral beading at the hem and a posy of shaded brown pansies. This was a woman Phryne would like to meet. Especially since she had seen that beading before. It was the piece which Julia Chivers had been working on when Phryne first encountered her.

They took their places on the dais and the debutantes came in. They formed a column of unrelieved white, stark against the opulent scarlet and gold.

Pair by pair, they made their curtsy, terribly young, good looking in some cases only because they were young, and each smooth head dipped to the correct depth. The Mayor’s daughter led the way, dressed in pink and blue, with bows.

There was a poignancy in a debutante parade, Phryne found. She had been that young once, had indeed, rather late, dressed in a suitable white gown and the regulation three white ostrich feathers and curtsied to the Queen. By then she had been twenty, on a London visit at the urgent request of her mother, and she had shucked the dress at her earliest convenience and rushed back to Paris.

But Phryne nodded and smiled as the young people came forward, the Lady Mayoress said a few suitable words and they filed aside, looking unutterably relieved not to have fallen over while curtsying or stammered while whispering ‘thank you’.