The Montmartre Investigation (2 page)

Hidden behind an overgrown hedge, Gaston smoked a cigarette and watched the young girl. He had had his fair share of wenches and normally had no hesitation in undoing a bodice or ruffling up a petticoat, but this time he was wary. The girl seemed to come with a warning: ‘Careful, fragile.' He had known such a delicate flower before, carefully reared in the best society, pale-skinned, with exquisite undergarments, and he could recognise one from afar. How should he approach her? Bow and kiss her hand; then compliment her on her pretty face and fine ankles? That would be beyond him. He knew only one way of expressing his desire and that was to fling a girl on the ground and smother her with the rather rough kisses to which wenches of his milieu seemed partial. He lit a second cigarette from the end of the first, giving himself a moment longer before he made his advance.

The ant with the top hat was searching the carriages for a free seat. Élisa looked to the right, her attention caught by a serpentine movement. She could foresee the disaster about to unfold. Unable to pull out because of the comings and goings of the top-hatted man, the train from Vincennes was about to be rammed by another train, which had been hooked up to a locomotive and was being pulled backwards into the station.

The noise was terrifying. The blind train, its back to its victim, slammed into the stationary train, crumpling it with an appalling crunching sound and crushing it under its weight. It seemed to devour the last three coaches. Mounted on a heap of iron, its funnel brushing the vault of the Pont de la Tourelle, the engine, mangled into an inextricable tangle of pipe and axle, breathed its last. It had all happened in a few minutes. The noise reverberated interminably and when it ceased, screams could be heard.
¹

Staring in horrified fascination at the dislocated bodies of the driver and engine stoker, her ears ringing with heart-rending cries, Élisa was dimly aware of the swarms of people scrabbling up the sides of the embankment, away from the darkened railway line. She stumbled, feeling as if she were soaring over the clouds on a swing that had cut loose from its moorings. She drifted in tumultuous currents, and then…total darkness. Some of the people fleeing had already reached the top of the embankment and were in danger of stepping on her. Arms lifted her, pulling her out of the way.

‘Clarissa! Clarissa, where are you?'

‘Maman!'

Élisa opened her eyes. There were shouts and groans; figures moved around in the night, lit by lamps and torches. She was lying on the ground and someone was shaking her. Her vision gradually cleared, her befuddled mind took in snippets of information. How she would have loved to go to sleep, to relax. But she must not – she tried to stand but was unable to muster the strength. A man was holding her by the wrists.

‘What happened?' she murmured.

Her voice seemed to come from a long way away.

‘Don't worry, I'm here,' said the stranger kneeling by her side. ‘It's me, Gaston.'

The accident, she thought. That's why I'm lying on the grass…

‘Gaston?…Was it a long time ago?'

She freed herself from him and stood. Her legs gave way but he caught her, leaning her against a parapet of the bridge. The laments of the survivors mingled with the wails of the injured as the fire brigade and volunteers busied themselves around the locomotive. The wooden carriages burned and crackled, spilling sparks on to the platforms, which were strewn with bloody debris and puddles. People were still desperately trying to escape, clinging to the shrubs on the slope, trying to keep their balance, but more often than not sliding back and falling to the bottom of the embankment.

‘Come, Mademoiselle,' insisted Gaston, ‘I'm going to help you; we must leave the rescuers to do their work.'

They stepped over men and women collapsed on the pavement, forced their way through the incessant coming and going of ambulances and reached Chaussée de l'Étang where lights shone in the windows. Suddenly Gaston dragged her into the trees on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes. She tried to resist, overcome with panic. Without a word, he pushed her against the trunk of a chestnut tree, crushing her mouth with his, forcing her lips painfully apart. There was no tenderness in his kiss or in his grasp; it was not like her dreams. He was holding her so tightly she could not move. Filled with anguish and anger, she wanted to push him away, but the catastrophe she had witnessed had weakened her defences. Gradually her disgust changed to a growing wonder, then a sense of euphoria. He drew back, and fear and guilt rushed over her.

‘Gaston, I beg you, please don't; it's wicked.'

He raised her chin, forcing her to look at him. He whispered: ‘No, it's not wicked, because I love you.'

Those words swept away her last defences. She flung herself against him, ready this time and responsive to his kisses. The clamour from the station ebbed with the slow rhythm of the man's hands as he caressed her body, releasing in her waves of pleasure.

‘Can we see each other soon?' he breathed into her ear.

‘Yes, I…Oh! I forgot – we're going away.'

‘We?'

‘Mademoiselle Bontemps, the other boarders…to Trouville, we'll be back in the middle of September.'

‘What's the address?'

‘Villa Georgina.'

‘I'll come, and we'll find a way of seeing each other. You'll have to go back now or your friends will worry. It's our secret, isn't it? You do love me a little?'

‘Oh, Gaston!'

He kissed her forehead. She teetered across the street, unable to stop herself from turning back several times. He did not take his eyes off her, his lips frozen in a smile.

As soon as Élisa had closed the gate, Gaston's smile vanished. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

That was a stroke of luck, he thought as he headed towards the lake. The accident made it easy for me to bamboozle the romantic little ninny.

He did not yet know exactly how he would manage, but one thing was for certain, a trip to Trouville was on the cards. The Boss would be pleased: in November he would complete his assignment and hand over the wench. He picked up some stones and amused himself by skimming them across the black lake.

Paris, Thursday 12 November 1891

Paris slumbered under a waxing moon. As the Seine flowed calmly round Île Saint-Louis, patterned with diffuse light, a carriage appeared on Quai Bernard, drove up Rue Cuivier and parked on Rue Lacépède. The driver jumped down and, making sure no one was watching, removed his oilskin top hat and cape and tossed them into the back of his cab.

Just before midnight, Gaston Molina opened the ground-floor window of 4 Rue Linné and emptied a carafe on to the pavement. He closed the shutters and went over to the dressing table where a candle burned, smoothed his hair and reshaped his bowler hat. He cast a quick glance at the young blonde girl who lay asleep, fully dressed, in the hollow of the bed. She had sunk into a deep slumber as soon as she swallowed the magic potion. Mission accomplished. What happened to her next was of no concern to him. He stole out of the apartment, careful not to attract the attention of the concierge. One of the tenants was leaning out of an upstairs window. Gaston Molina hugged the wall, lighting a cigarette, and passed the Cuvier fountain before diving down the street of the same name.

A man in a grey overcoat lying in wait on Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire gave Gaston a head start before setting off behind him.

Gaston Molina walked alongside the Botanical Gardens. He froze, his senses alert, when something growled to his right. Then he smiled and shrugged. Calm down, my friend, he thought, no need to panic; it's coming from the menagerie.

He set off again. The silence was broken by the coming and going of the heavy sewer trucks, with their overpowering, nauseating smell. Going unobtrusively about their business through the sleeping city, the trucks rattled as far as the quayside at Saint-Bernard port and emptied their waste into the tankers.

Gaston Molina was almost at the quay when he thought he heard the crunch of a shoe. He swung round: no one there.

‘I must be cracking up; I need a night's sleep.'

He arrived at the wine market.
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Sometimes tramps in search of shelter broke in and took refuge in the market. Beyond the railings, the barrels, casks and vats perfumed the air with an overpowering odour of alcohol.

I'm thirsty, thought Gaston. Ah, what I wouldn't do for a drink!

Something skimmed past his neck, and a silhouette appeared beside him. Instinctively he tried to parry the blow he sensed coming. An atrocious pain ripped through his stomach and his fingers closed round the handle of a knife. The moon turned black; he collapsed.

 

As always, Victor Legris reflected on the soothing effect of half-light.

He had woken in an ill temper in anticipation of the stories his business associate would invent to avoid taking Dr Reynaud's prescriptions.

‘Kenji! I know you're awake,' he had shouted. ‘Don't forget the doctor is coming later this morning!'

Receiving nothing in reply but the slamming of a door, Victor had gone resignedly down to the bookshop, where Joseph the bookshop assistant was perched precariously at the top of a ladder, dusting the bookshelves with a feather duster and belting out a song by a popular young singer.

His nerves on edge, Victor had failed to perform the ritual with which he began each day: tapping the head of Molière's bust as he passed. Instead he had gone swiftly through the bookshop and hurried down the basement stairs to closet himself in his darkroom.

He had been here for an hour, savouring the silence and dim light. No one disturbed him in this sanctuary where he could forget his worries and give himself over to his passion: photography. His collection of pictures of the old districts of Paris, started the previous April, was growing. He had initially devoted himself to the 20th arrondissement and particularly to Belleville, but recently he had started on Faubourg Saint-Antoine, cataloguing the streets, monuments, buildings and studios. Although he had already accumulated a hundred negatives, the result left him profoundly frustrated. It was not for lack of all the best equipment; it was more because there was nothing of his own personal vision in his work.

All I have here is the objective view of a reporter, he thought.

Was he relying on technique at the expense of creativity? Did he lack inspiration? That often happened to painters and writers.

The meaning of the pictures should transcend the appearance of the places I photograph.

He knew that a solution lurked somewhere in his mind. He turned up the gas lamp and examined the picture he had just developed: two skinny urchins bent double, struggling with a sawing machine that was cutting out marble tablets. The image of a frightened little boy stammering out one of Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales
under the watchful eye of an imposing man in a dark frock coat sprang to mind. Those poor brats reminded him of the terrorised child he had been faced with his domineering father's displeasure. And suddenly he had an inspiration:

‘Children! Children at work!'

Finally he had his theme!

He put his negatives away in a cardboard box with renewed energy, smiling as he glimpsed a large picture of two interlaced bronze hands above an epitaph:

A photograph slipped out of the packet and drifted slowly down to land on the floor. He picked it up: Tasha. He frowned. Why was this portrait of her hidden among views of the Père-Lachaise cemetery? He'd taken it at the Universal Exhibition two years earlier. The young woman, unaware she was being photographed, wore a charming and provocative expression. The beginning of their affair, recorded in that image, reawakened his sense of their growing love. It was wonderful to know a woman who interested him more with each encounter and with whom he felt an unceasing need to talk and laugh, to make love, to hatch plans…He was again overcome by the bitter-sweet feeling that Tasha's attitude provoked in him. Since he had succeeded in wooing her away from her bohemian life and installing her in a vast studio, she had devoted herself body and soul to her painting. Her creative passion made him uneasy, although he was happy that he had been able to help her. He had hoped that after the show at which she had exhibited three still lifes, she would slow down. But the sale of one of her paintings to the Boussod & Valadon gallery had so spurred her on that some nights she would tear herself from his arms to finish a canvas by gaslight. Victor sought to prolong every moment spent with her, and was saddened that she did not have the same desire. He was becoming jealous of her painting, even more than of the artists with whom she consorted.

He paced about the room. Why was he unable to resolve this contradiction? He was attracted to Tasha precisely because she was independent and opinionated, yet he would secretly have liked to keep her in a cage.

Miserable imbecile! That would be the quickest way to lose her! Stop tormenting yourself. Would you rather be with someone dull, preoccupied with her appearance, her house and her make-up?

Where did his unreasonable jealousy and desire for certainty and stability come from? With the death of his overbearing father, Victor had felt a great weight lift, but that feeling had quickly been succeeded by the fear that his mother loved another man. This threat had haunted him throughout his adolescence. When his mother Daphné had died in a carriage accident, he had decided to stand on his own two feet, but Kenji had joined him in Paris and, without knowing it, had limited Victor's choices. Through affection for him, Victor had submitted to an ordered existence, his time shared between the bookshop, the adjoining apartment, the sale rooms and passing affairs. As the years had drifted down he had grown used to this routine.

He looked at the photo of Tasha. She had a hold over him that no other woman had ever exercised. No, I don't want to lose her, he thought. The memory of their first encounter plunged him into a state of feverish anticipation. He would see her soon. He extinguished the lamp and went back upstairs.

 

An elderly scholar, taking a break from the Collège de France, was reading aloud softly to himself from Humboldt's
Cosmos
, while a balding, bearded man struggled to translate Virgil. Indifferent to these potential customers, Joseph was massacring a melody from
Lohengrin
while working at his favourite hobby: sorting and classifying the articles he clipped from newspapers. He had been behaving unpredictably of late, lurching from forced gaiety to long bouts of moroseness punctuated by sighs and incoherent ramblings. Victor put these changes of mood down to Kenji's illness, but since he too was rather troubled, he found it hard to bear his assistant's capricious behaviour.

‘Can't you put those damned scissors down and keep an eye on what's going on?'

‘Nothing's going on,' muttered Joseph, continuing his cutting.

‘Well, I suppose you're right, it is pretty quiet. Has the doctor been?'

‘He's just left. He recommended a tonic; he called it robot…'

‘Roborant.'

‘That's it, with camomile, birch and blackcurrant, sweetened with lactose. Germaine has gone to the herbalist.'

‘All right then, I'm going out.'

‘What about lunch? Germaine will be upset and then who will have to eat it? I will! She's made you pork brains in noisette butter with onions. Delicious, she says.'

Victor looked disgusted. ‘Well, I make you a present of it – treat yourself.'

‘Ugh! I'll have to force it down.'

As soon as Victor had climbed the stairs to the apartment, Joseph went back to his cutting out, still whistling Wagner.

‘For pity's sake, Joseph! Spare us the German lesson,' shouted Victor from the top of the stairs.

‘
Jawohl
, Boss!' growled Joseph, rolling his eyes. ‘There's no pleasing him…he's never happy…if I sing “Little Jack Horner sat in a corner”, he complains. If I serve up some opera, he complains! I'm not going to put up with it much longer, it's starting to wear me down, and I'm fed up! One Boss moping in quarantine, the other gadding about!' he said, addressing the scholar clutching the Humboldt.

Victor went softly through his apartment to his bedroom. He put on a jacket and a soft fedora, his preferred headgear, and crammed his gloves into his pocket. I'll go round by Rue des Mathurins before I go to Tasha's, he thought to himself. He was about to leave when he heard a faint tinkling sound.

The noise came from the kitchen. Victor appeared in the doorway, surprising Kenji in the act of loading a tray with bread, sausage and cheese.

‘Kenji! Are you delirious? Dr Reynaud forbade you…'

‘Dr Reynaud is an ass! He's been dosing me with sulphate of quinine and broth with no salt for weeks. He's inflicted enough cold baths on me to give me an attack of pleurisy! I stink of camphor and I'm going round and round in circles like a goldfish in a bowl! If a man is dying of hunger, what does he do? He eats!'

In his slippers and flannel nightshirt Kenji looked like a little boy caught stealing the jam. Victor made an effort to keep a straight face.

‘Blame it on the scarlet fever, not the devoted doctor who's working hard to get you back on your feet. Have a glass of sake or cognac, that's allowed, but hang it all, spare a thought for us! You can't leave your room until your quarantine is over.'

‘All right, since all the world is intent on bullying me, I'll return to my cell. At least ensure that I have a grand funeral when I die of starvation,' retorted Kenji furiously, abandoning his tray.

Suppressing a chuckle, Victor left, one of Kenji's Japanese proverbs on the tip of his tongue: ‘Of the thirty-six options, flight is the best.'

 

‘Berlaud! Where have you scarpered to, you miserable mongrel?'

A tall rangy man with a cloak of coarse cloth draped across his shoulders was driving six goats in front of him. At the entrance to the Botanical Gardens, he struggled to keep them together. Cursing his dog for having run off, he used the thongs attached to their collars to draw them in.

The little flock went off up Quai Saint-Bernard, crossed Rue Buffon without incident and went down Boulevard de l'Hôpital as far as Gare d'Orléans,
³
where the man stopped to light a short clay pipe. The silvery hair escaping from under his dented hat and his trusting, artless face gave him the look of child aged suddenly by a magic spell. Even his voice was childlike, with an uncertain catch to it.

‘Saints alive! I'm toiling in vain while that wretched mutt is off chasing something to mount.'

He put two fingers in his mouth and gave a long whistle. A large dog with matted fur, half briard, half griffon, bounded out from behind an omnibus.

‘So there you are, you miscreant. You're off pilfering, leaving me yelling for you and working myself to death with the goats. What you lookin' like that for? What you got in your mouth? Oh, I see, you went off to steal a bone from the lions while I was chatting to Père Popèche. That's why we heard roaring. But you know dogs aren't allowed in the Botanical Gardens, even muzzled and on the leash. Do you want to get us into trouble?'

Berlaud, his tail between his legs and teeth clamped round his prize, ran back to his post at the back of the herd, which trotted past the Hospice de la Salpêtrière, before turning towards Boulevard Saint-Marcel and into the horse market.

Each Thursday and Saturday the neighbourhood of the Botanical Gardens witnessed a procession of miserable worn out horses, lame and exhausted but decked out with yellow or red ribbons to trick the buyers. They were kicking their heels in resigned fashion, attached to girders under tents held up with cast iron poles where the horse dealers rented stalls. Ignoring the auctioneers proffering broken-down old carriages just outside the gates, the goatherd pushed his flock in among the groups of rag and bone men and furniture removers in search of hacks still capable of performing simple tasks. Each time he visited, the goatherd found it heart-rending to see the dealers with their emaciated nags, whose every rib could be seen, making them trot about to display their rump, their face and their flanks to possible buyers.