The Montmartre Investigation (20 page)

‘If that old bandit's eyesight goes the same way as his sense of smell, my business will go to the dogs!' he complained to Mère Guédon. ‘I'll end up a beggar in a hospital bed, surrounded by drudges and idlers!'

‘Don't be such a pessimist. There's a gentleman over there who wants to talk to you,' she said, pointing at Victor who was leaning up against a fence.

Grégoire Mercier whistled for his dog, who re-emerged, head bowed.

‘Good day to you, Monsieur Leblanc.'

‘It's Legris, actually.'

‘Oh! What a to-do! I should have stayed on the farm in the Beauce, growing oats and wheat. Only the big city lights lured me away, didn't they? When you're young you dream of having money in your pocket, so you pack your bag and learn another trade and the years go by and those bright lights end up burning your wings…My dog is fast becoming a worthless old scavenger and in a few years I'll be put out to pasture…When I'm finished you city-folk won't feed me or my animals!'

‘Forgive me for bothering you,' Victor interrupted him, keen to call a halt to the goatherd's grievances. ‘I wanted to ask about your cousin…'

Grégoire Mercier's face froze in dismay, and he forgot his own troubles.

‘You know about it then,' he whispered. ‘It's terrible, poor Basile…'

‘Did you see him again before he…'

‘In a manner of speaking. Imagine! Being torn limb from limb, like in the days of the Commune! He managed to tell me with his dying breath that it was no accident.'

‘What did he say?'

‘He was doing the rounds at closing time when he noticed that the youngest lion, Scipion, hadn't eaten his meat and was spinning round faster than a weathervane. He went straight into the cage and what did he find? A dart in the animal's rump! And when he turned to leave, the cage door slammed shut! Then he saw the road sweeper and knew he'd clapped eyes on him before. It was around midnight on the twelfth of the month. The man was wearing a grey coat and he was trailing the tenant from the flat below. Basile was leaning out of his window taking the air and the fellow looked up and saw him. And you wouldn't believe this, but it was Basile who later fished the tenant out of a wine barrel.'

‘Gaston Molina,' Victor breathed.

‘But before he could say “knife”, the man dressed as a road sweeper, who was the man in grey, threw a second dart at the lion, which roared in pain and pounced on poor Basile…'

Grégoire lifted his hands to his face.

‘I am terribly sorry,' Victor said softly. ‘Have you said anything to the police?'

‘Don't you consider I have enough troubles? Holy Virgin! They're too fond of killing humble folk. No. Basile has left this wretched earth and no policeman can bring him back!'

‘I shall say nothing to them either, I promise. Oh! There was one other thing. Where did your cousin live?'

‘Number 4, Rue Linné. Come along, Berlaud, back to the stables. We've earned our crust, now let's go and enjoy it!'

 

Victor was kicking himself for not having guessed the meaning of Rue L. gf 1211. It was as obvious as a rebus when you've sneaked a look at the answer. Rue Linné, ground floor flat 12 November. Child's play!

He hesitated over what to do next. Should he knock on all the doors of the drab building only a stone's throw from where he was now? That was the surest way to arouse people's suspicions. He decided on a method he had used before.

The concierge shuffled to the door and his bull-dog face peered out at Victor.

‘I'm from the police,' said Victor sharply, prepared to invent an excuse if the man asked for proof of his identity.

‘Oh! If it's about Monsieur Popêche, the tenant on the first floor, your colleagues have already been here pestering me. He had no family, except for a distant cousin who is from the same region, near Chartres. The problem is I've never clapped eyes on him and I don't know his name or where he lives. I can't tell you any more. It's sad, but there you are – if you work with wild animals, you take risks.'

‘I didn't come here about him.'

‘Oh! Is it on account of old Sédillot then? He promised me he wouldn't do it again,' sighed the concierge. ‘But what can you expect? It can't be much fun living like a hermit in that room. He's bored out of his brains and he finds it amusing.'

‘May I come in?'

‘Be my guest. Only you'll have to excuse the mess. Antoinette was the perfect housewife, but since she left me I've let the place go and it's a pigsty.'

He ushered Victor into a narrow, airless room stuffed with reproduction Empire furniture that was piled high with dirty plates and clothes. He tipped up a seat, brushed off the crumbs and offered it to Victor while plonking himself down on a stool in front of a bottle of red and a greasy glass.

‘You're not going to arrest him, are you?'

‘No, I just wanted to find out what the actual charge was; a routine enquiry.'

‘All right then. He's a malicious old man who sees no harm in spitting at passers-by all day long. He's got bats in the belfry since he was run over by a milk cart, and he hasn't a soul in the world. I take him his vittles, and it leaves me out of pocket. Luckily he owns his flat, but apart from that he's skint.'

‘Don't worry. I'll try to smooth things over with the neighbours on the ground floor.'

‘And who might they be?'

Victor immediately regretted having spoken too soon. How would he extricate himself?

‘Somebody in this block claims to have taken a direct hit on the back of the head.'

‘And you say they live on the ground floor? Well, it can't have been Mademoiselle Bugne because she's visiting her sick mother in Dijon. And the others didn't arrive home until late in the evening, when Sédillot would have been in bed.'

‘If they made it up, they'll be in trouble. Are they tenants?'

‘Yes. There were three rooms to let and a man calling himself Duval came and paid two months in advance, thank you very much! That was mid-September. “It's for my daughter and son-in-law,” he said. “They're from Montargis and want to have a place to stay when they come to Paris.”'

‘What did this Duval look like? Square beard, bald, stout, blue eyes?'

‘I couldn't tell you, my friend. It was Antoinette who dealt with him. All she told me was that the man paid up. The next day she cleared off, leaving a laundry ticket and three jars of her sister's homemade plum jam. They're in the kitchen right where she left them. Life's wicked. You fall in love with someone, live with them and see yourselves growing old together and then one fine morning you wake up alone in a cold bed.'

He filled his glass to the brim and took a swig.

‘I comfort myself with the juice of the grape. It helps me pass the time until Antoinette returns. Because she will come back, I know she will. A little voice keeps telling me. I hear it all the time in here, echoing,' he said, tapping his head.

‘Could you describe Monsieur Duval's daughter and son-in-law to me,' Victor persisted, ‘so that I may identify them correctly as the plaintiffs?'

‘I'm afraid I can't help you. On the two occasions I opened the door for them I had such a blinding headache I was nearly out for the count, and the next day they were gone. They never open their shutters. But they've paid their rent, haven't they? The landlord's happy and he owns two-thirds of these apartments. I am not here to spy on people. That's your job, which takes us back to old Sédillot. The best thing would be to put bars on his windows so he can't lean out. If you want to talk to him, I'll have to warn him first or you might get a gob!'

‘No, no, leave it. I'll try to play the thing down to my superiors.'

The concierge accompanied him out to the street, and as Victor was walking away the man cried out: ‘You're not bad for a
flic
! Do you like plums? I'd be only too glad to give you my jam.'

*

The studio was like a little island of contentment. The pleasant fug made Victor drowsy as he lounged in his underwear in the alcove, watching Tasha languorously brushing her hair. She often put her hair up after their love-making, and then he would have the pleasure of untying it again. Their leisurely afternoon had washed away all thoughts of Popêche's death and Charmansat's presence at Rue Linné. What had most troubled him about the concierge's story, making him hurry back to Tasha with an urgent need to whisper words of love in her ear, was the image of Antoinette flying away one fine morning leaving three pots of jam. Their passion aroused, they gave up the idea of a walk followed by a meal at a grand restaurant. Victor apologised for his childish behaviour of the past few days, and solemnly promised to be jealous no more. Behind her pretence of amusement and scepticism, Tasha was deeply moved, and Victor went up in her esteem. They had tea and bread and butter, playing at tea parties, like a couple of children. Tasha felt relaxed enough to show Victor the canvas she had been working on. Not wishing to discourage her, Victor feigned admiration. Perhaps later on he might allow himself to make a couple of suggestions. And yet, he didn't feel within his rights to give advice, since he hated it when anyone criticised his photographs.

There was a scratching noise at the door. He sat up.

‘Are you expecting someone?' he asked Tasha, who had turned round to face him, her brush suspended in the air.

She shook her head. He groaned, pulled on a dressing gown and went to open the door a crack.

‘What on earth are you doing here? Is something wrong?'

‘No, Boss. I mean, yes, Boss. I know who did it!'

Victor was about to push Joseph back outside when Tasha, who had followed him over, cried out: ‘Don't stay out there. You'll catch your death!'

The two men stood in awkward silence beside the stove as she fluttered around them, preparing a snack for Joseph.

‘Here you are,' she said, setting down a platter of bread, cheese and wine on a chair for him, ‘that'll fortify you.'

Suppressing her desire to listen in to their conversation, Tasha engrossed herself in a novel, leaving Jojo and Victor at liberty to speak in hushed tones.

‘Honestly! You might have chosen a better time and place!' hissed Victor.

‘When you hear what I have to tell you, you'll agree it was urgent, Boss. Now we know there's no time to lose.'

‘Now we know. Now we know. You keep saying that!'

‘And it's true. I spent the whole day breaking my back trying to find a newspaper from 1886. Don't concern yourself about the state of my health, though; I'm only starving, freezing and cross-eyed from reading, regardless of which I've brought you printed evidence of…'

‘All right, have a bite to eat and pass me the newspaper – discreetly.'

Offended, Joseph opened the newspaper as noisily as he could and Victor, worried Tasha might see him, grabbed it from him and turned away.

‘Isn't Saint-Meslin the name on the card you picked up in La Gerfleur's dressing room?' whispered Joseph, who was reading over his shoulder.

The article ended there. Frustrated, yet pleased with this new information, Victor stared at the palm tree, imagining he saw floating in its fronds a frieze of protagonists. This Baroness robbed a jeweller named Prosper Charmansat in Lyon in 1886. Five years later, the vengeful jeweller, now an employee at the pawnshop in Paris, comes across the woman who fleeced him at the L'Eldorado in the person of Noémi Fourchon, alias Noémi Gerfleur, the singer. After murdering her daughter, Élisa, he kills her, no doubt with the aid of Gaston Molina, a crook known to the police in Lyon. Fearing betrayal at the hands of this swindler, Charmansat bumps him off and conceals his body in a barrel at the wine market before proceeding to silence another witness, Basile Popêche, who was a tenant at the same address, 4 Rue Linné.

He gave an account of his reasoning to Joseph who hung on every word.

‘Well, Boss, it looks like you've unveiled the truth. Bravo!' he said, his mouth stuffed with food.

‘There's just one snag. What part does this Doctor Aubertot, mentioned in the note from Le Moulin-Rouge, play in all this?'

‘Possibly none; I mean, that scrap of paper might have no bearing on the case at all.'

‘We cannot just ignore a piece of evidence. I shall pay him a visit tomorrow morning. Here, take a cab and go home to bed. I'll drop in at the bookshop before lunch tomorrow to let you know of any progress. We can discuss where to go from there. If Monsieur Mori asks where I am, tell him I've gone to do an evaluation.'

‘Yes, Boss!' said Joseph, pocketing the banknote. ‘Goodnight, Madame Tasha!'

‘Goodnight, Jojo!'

Victor turned to her, yawning.

‘That boy wears me out, coming here to pester me about buying bookshelves!'

‘You seemed rather absorbed – just like a couple of conspirators cooking up some dastardly plot. It had all the elements: whispering, averted eyes, notes changing hands in secret. Are you sure you aren't hiding anything from me?'