In the Shadows of Paris (17 page)

V
ICTOR
felt a heady sense of elation that morning as he cycled across Paris, despite his remorse at having told lies to the two people dearest to his heart. It was the longest bicycle journey he'd ever undertaken, and he felt invincible. He let nothing stand in his way; he avoided every obstacle as if he were one of those genies in the fairy tales. In fact, there was very little traffic that day and the only hold-up he encountered was a couple of carts blocking the entrance to Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine. The mild night had dispelled the dampness of the past few days, and the air had a spring-like feel. Victor whistled, forcing himself to stop thinking about the fibs he'd told Tasha and Kenji. Tasha thought he was meeting a fellow photographer with an interest in itinerant traders, and Kenji believed he had an appointment with a book collector in the eastern suburbs of the city.

‘“The end justifies the means, O mother of mine, long live the students!”' he sang. He watched his reflection in the windows as he pedalled past first an upholsterer and then an ironmonger and saw a man in a slim-fitting jacket with trousers clasped by bicycle clips.

Throngs of workers spewed forth from every building, their knapsacks slung over their shoulders. Housewives were hanging their washing out to dry and children were making their way to school. The stench of tanned leather wafted through Rue des Boulets. Victor was looking at the house numbers as he rattled across the moss-covered paving stones, when his bicycle slipped and began to weave dangerously. He managed to regain control and smiled at a little girl tying a piece of rag round a puppy's neck. But then his front wheel hit a piece of broken pavement and his bicycle tipped forward. His hands flew from the handlebars, his feet from the pedals and his backside from the saddle. He sailed through the air and landed with a thud. He lay sprawled in the gutter, winded. He'd sustained a few grazes but no broken bones. Kneeling beside his machine, he weighed up the damage. The chain was still on and the handlebars weren't bent.

‘A lively steed!' a man's voice cried out. ‘Needs taming, perhaps?'

‘He's calmed down. He does get a little skittish sometimes,' Victor replied.

‘You're bleeding,' the man said. ‘Come inside and stretch out on the tiles. They're cool; it'll calm you.'

‘I'm all right, really,' mumbled Victor, pressing his handkerchief to his nose.

Victor followed the man in grey overalls into his workshop.

‘Fulgence,' he shouted, ‘go and park this gentleman's bicycle, and keep an eye on it.'

The boy sitting in front of the tall machine with cogwheels that was winding up a roll of wallpaper didn't need to be told twice.

‘A glass of hooch, that'll lift your spirits,' said the man in the overalls. ‘Mine, too, for that matter – I'm parched. Bottoms up!'

‘I apologise for the disturbance.'

‘Oh, it breaks the monotony. We're slaves to work! If we take Monday off it's because we've worked all day Sunday. My name's Père Fortin.'

‘I was on my way to Monsieur Grandjean's – I placed an order with him before he was…'

Victor had scarcely uttered the enamellist's name when Père Fortin wiped his moist whiskers and launched into a detailed diatribe.

‘Grandjean, I was always bumping into him. It's only natural when you work in the same trade and you live in the same neighbourhood. He worked in Passage Gonnet, about two minutes from Rue des Boulets. His sons, Polyte and Constant, thirteen and fifteen, are friends of my son Évariste. I can't understand why anyone would want to kill Léopold – he was a generous soul and liked by everybody. You should have seen the turn-out at his funeral! He was buried at Père-Lachaise; we had a whip-round for the wreaths and the blonde negress supplied the flowers.'

He leant towards Victor and confided, ‘She found the body, she even saw the killer – from a distance, mind you, she couldn't describe him. More's the pity. A rotter like that should be skinned alive. Ever since, the poor girl's been scared the murderer will find her, which wouldn't be difficult.'

‘Why?'

‘She sells flowers. She can't afford to lie low until things die down. Mind you, the newspapers behaved decently; they didn't publish her description or her name and her address, which is almost the same as mine – I'm number 12 and she lives at 29b.'

‘She's a negress and she's blonde?'

‘Well, not exactly, more coffee-coloured with lightish hair – a pretty girl, if a bit wild. I don't suppose life's been very kind to her.'

Victor thanked him before leaving on foot, wheeling his bicycle.

An iron gate at 29b led into a courtyard overgrown with weeds where a few hens pecked. The building resembled an army barracks with its forbidding wall and tiny shutterless windows. A woman with a double chin was walking towards him, carrying a basket. She opened the gate and glanced suspiciously at Victor, who doffed his hat.

‘Excuse me, Madame, is this where the flower girl they call the blonde negress lives?'

‘Josette? Yes, she has the flat above ours. She gives herself airs because she found a body and it was in the newspapers. As if she didn't get enough attention! She's a brazen hussy if ever there was one. My Marcel has a docile nature, but even his eyes pop out on stalks whenever he sees her. It makes you sick, a half-white creature like that.'

Having vented her malice, the woman gathered up her basket.

‘Where does she sell her flowers?'

‘How should I know? On the streets or at the flower markets – girls like her are right little streetwalkers!'

 

Victor was considerably less elated on the return journey than the outward one. He felt slightly sick as he recalled the fat woman's words; was it an effect of the heat or the alcohol, or were the dealers in English furniture and the makers of Renaissance dressers and demi-Louis XV wardrobes sneering at him from their shop doorways as he walked past?

I just hope Iris, Tasha or Kenji are never on the receiving end of such bile, he said to himself as he reached Place de la Bastille.

 

By an unlucky twist of fate, one of the customers when he arrived at the Elzévir bookshop was that overgrown nanny-goat Blanche de Cambrésis, who always had something unpleasant to say on the subject of foreigners. This time, however, she had other matters on her mind and was busy running down her friend Olympe de Salignac for the exclusive benefit of Kenji, trapped behind his desk.

‘What a perfect coward! When she heard that Valentine's uncle by marriage was mixed up in a murder, she shut herself away at Rue Barbet-de-Jouy, with that poor Adalberte whose health is so frail and whose husband, incidentally, is no better than the Duc de Frioul! Réauville may be an ex-colonel, but he's no less of a ninny. He also cleaned himself out in order to buy those Ambrex shares! Adalberte will have a fit. You wouldn't catch me making such a risky investment. I've put some of my money in Russian bonds – at least you can rely on them!'

Taking advantage of the situation, Victor whisked Joseph out from under a customer's nose and gave him a brief summary of the information he'd gleaned. The Hachette guidebook showed them where the flower markets were: two of them were at La Cité and La République on Wednesdays and Saturdays. There was a third flower market at La Madeleine on Tuesdays and Fridays.

‘You'll have to dash over to La Madeleine as soon as you've had lunch,' concluded Victor, before going to Kenji's aid.

 

Joseph hurried off to La Madeleine. On the pavements outside the church, the flower sellers stood under their tarpaulins serving elegant customers or their servants. Tea roses, white gardenias, variegated carnations and brightly coloured gladioli were arranged next to simple daisies and pots of sweet peas. The shimmering colours filled him with joy as he sniffed the air, trying to identify the different perfumes that had mingled into a single heavenly scent. A gardener's daughter wearing a dress with braid trimmings gaily pointed out the blonde negress's stall to Joseph, whom she tried without success to interest in a beautifully composed bouquet.

When she glimpsed the young man striding towards her, still attractive despite his slight hunchback, Josette Fatou was filled with a sense of foreboding that was quickly justified by his blunt declaration.

‘Mademoiselle Fatou, my name is Joseph Pignot, novelist and bookseller. I was hoping that since you were a witness to a murder you might be able to help me reconstruct…'

Josette's shrieks were already drawing a crowd before he had time to finish his sentence. A plump woman wearing a mantilla hurried to her aid, spurring on the little brown dog trotting along at her feet.

‘Bite him, Sultan, bite!'

The animal merely lay on the ground and yapped at Joseph.

‘What's all the fuss about, Josette?' her neighbour called out.

‘This man is making indecent proposals.'

‘Shame on you! Libertine, lecher!'

Joseph took the insult with the composure of a hero in a Dumas novel: hands on hips, resigned yet proud, he was the image of a victim defying adversity.

‘Silence that wild beast, Madame, I am withdrawing.'

A constable was coming over, and Joseph thought it best to beat a retreat.

Alone once more, Josette managed to control her fear, but she could not stop her hands from shaking. The man's face still haunted her. She relived the fear she'd felt when she regained consciousness, stretched out on her bed, a cold compress on her forehead. Had it been a nightmare or had she really felt a hand caressing her breasts while she was still semi-conscious? She couldn't be sure, though her blouse was half open. The stranger had apologised for giving her a fright, he'd had no business entering her bedroom. If he'd dared to importune her it was because she was the only one who could help him – that is if she agreed to describe the man who'd stabbed Léopold Grandjean. She had cowered, convinced that he was enjoying her terror and that he would beat her, violate her, kill her even. But instead he had sat down beside her and gently handed her another compress. Then she'd told him falteringly that she could only remember two things about the murderer: his hair was grey and he liked music, because when he'd stabbed the enamellist he'd started singing a song.

‘Mademoiselle, you've just given me a priceless piece of information,' the man had said, getting up to leave. ‘See you soon!'

She jumped as a voice whispered to her through the openwork fence behind her stand.

‘Mademoiselle, it's me, Joseph Pignot. Please don't scream. I don't want to hurt you! I lied, I'm not really a novelist, I'm a trainee journalist and this is my assignment. You see, my future depends on your willingness to help me. All I ask is a few details you haven't already given the newspapers.'

‘What good will it do if I tell you?'

‘I'll avoid a dressing-down from my boss!'

She smiled weakly at Joseph's forlorn expression and his lopsided bowler.

‘All right,' she sighed. ‘Here we go again. I was on my way back from Les Halles – it must have been about seven in the morning. I often passed Monsieur Grandjean and we'd say good morning to each other. He was a very kind man, and good to his wife, he was always buying her bunches of carnations.'

‘Did you see his attacker?'

‘He had his back to me. He was wearing a felt hat and a sort of greatcoat. I think he was quite old because when he ran off I saw a lock of grey hair sticking out from under his hat. Monsieur Grandjean clutched his stomach, and fell to the ground. It seemed to happen so slowly, like a bad dream, but it can't even have been five minutes. I couldn't move. The killer bent over and laid something on his chest then he started singing.'

‘Singing? What?'

She paused. She'd told the other man. But telling a journalist…What difference did it make?

‘“The Cherry Season”, my mother's favourite song. It was strange the way he stood right over the corpse and started singing, like you'd sing a child to sleep. I crouched, hidden in the doorway. I waited until he'd gone before running over to Monsieur Grandjean, who was curled up in a ball. For a moment I thought he was still breathing because he was holding a scrap of paper between his fingers and it was moving. And then I saw the blood. I screamed and everyone came running. A coalman went to fetch the coppers. The policeman arrived. That's all. Please, whatever you do, don't mention my name. I'm terrified the murderer will come for me!'

‘I swear on my mother's life! How tall was he?'

‘About the same height as you, five foot seven. I couldn't say whether he was fat or thin with that big coat on.'

‘Mademoiselle, you've saved my bacon! Here, I'll buy one of your gardenias; it'll make a pretty buttonhole.'

Bravo lad, a cake-walk. You're becoming a right little Romeo! Right, grey hair, ‘The Cherry Season', five foot seven, a fine harvest!

 

Iris was waiting in the hallway of the School of Oriental Languages on the corner of Rue de Lille and Rue des Saints-Pères. She had just attended a conference on
Genji Monogatari
and, as she'd been one of very few women in the lecture hall, and no doubt the youngest and the prettiest, all the men's eyes had been on her. A few months earlier, she would have felt pleased as punch, but now her success with men infuriated and repulsed her. A curse on her beauty, if all it did was bring her unhappiness! Why couldn't she be like those plain or even ugly girls who dazzle people with their intellect! Then she would not have fallen for Maurice Laumier's smooth-talking charm and would have avoided the rift with the man dearest to her heart. The moral of this unfortunate story was enough to make a poor innocent girl faced with life's dangers cynical: it was better to lie, or to leave out one or two important facts, rather than risk disaster.