In the Shadows of Paris (The Predator Of Batignolles) (16 page)

‘You’re getting very philosophical in your old age, Fulbert,’ said the man with the newspaper.

‘So I am…They were bachelors so they appreciated a slap-up meal occasionally. But I mustn’t talk about Monsieur Gustave in the past tense – he isn’t dead!’

‘Have you seen him since the accident?’

‘He was very upset. He wanted us to tell him exactly what happened then he drowned his sorrows with three glasses of gut-rot,’ said Fulbert, wiping the counter.

Victor left, followed by the man with the newspaper, who asked him, ‘Were you one of Monsieur Andrésy’s customers by any chance?’

‘Yes, I’m a bookseller. I used to send him books to bind.’

‘That’s what I thought. And if I’m not mistaken you have a Chinese colleague?’

‘Japanese.’

‘And your assistant is Joseph Pignot who published a serialised novel in
Le Passe-partout.
I couldn’t put it down, it was so true to life. Someone said it was based on a real crime you helped solve. It was in the papers and nearly cost you your life…’

‘You’ve certainly done your homework.’

‘Monsieur Andrésy and I discussed it at length. It’s rare to come across somebody who pursues their own line of enquiry right under the noses of the police. Speaking of which, I need some advice. Monsieur Andrésy has no living relatives and I’m wondering what I should do with his watch. I’m a watchmaker, you see, and I do repairs. Monsieur Andrésy asked me to try to fix his fob watch – it gave up the ghost this winter. He was very attached to it. Should I keep it or give it to the police? I’d appreciate your opinion. Look, it’s going to pelt down. Why don’t you come into my shop. It’s very near.’

When Victor first entered the gloomy premises, set back from the road, he had the impression that a colony of bugs was busily gnawing away at the walls at varying speeds. Then in the half-light he made out the assortment of pendulum clocks, cuckoo clocks and carriage clocks filling every available space. The saraband of the moving hands made his head spin.

‘Quite a racket, eh? A constant reminder that my hourglass is emptying. Père Lamartine was right: “It flows, and we pass.”
³⁵
Now, where did I put it? Ah, here it is. Go over to the light and have a look at the inscription on the back.’

Victor held the watch up to one of the little windows and managed to make out the words:

Sacrovir. Long live the C—

‘Long live what?’

‘The corps. Well, what do you think? If I take it to the police they’ll only make me fill in a lot of tedious forms.’

‘I’ll sign to say that I’ve taken it, and pay for the repair. I feel sure that Monsieur Andrésy would be happy to know that Monsieur Mori, who was one of his closest friends, had inherited his watch.’

‘Ah, Monsieur, you’ve taken a great weight off my mind. I just can’t take it in, that he died so suddenly.’

Before getting back on his bicycle, which he’d fastened to a lamp-post, Victor jotted down:

Bookbinder’s friend Gustave, La Chapelle. Talk to the errand boy at Fulbert’s on 24th to find out his exact address.

He pedalled off towards the Luxembourg Gardens. It was so hot that his shirt was damp with sweat. He remembered the half-melted fob watch on Inspector Lecacheur’s desk. An inscription in the middle of an ornate daisy design left no doubt as to the owner’s identity:

To P—from his—e

‘
P
was for Pierre. As for his—
e…
’

Puzzled, Victor freewheeled down Rue de Médicis, invigorated by the wind on his face. On the other side of the railings, some tramps were sleeping on park benches. Two watches? There was nothing strange about that. While the watchmaker was repairing one, he carried the other.

He braked and turned into Rue Soufflot. He saw a dog, its tongue hanging out, on the edge of the pavement. A group of children lying on their fronts next to an air vent were fiercely contesting a game of marbles. Victor grabbed hold of the Courcelles–Panthéon omnibus. Its horses, in a lather, flared their clammy nostrils as they struggled to the end of their ordeal. Their hooves occasionally slipped on the cobblestones that had just been hosed down, and Victor himself narrowly avoided coming a cropper. He overtook the exhausted animals, hungry for oats and water, who were making one last effort, in a hurry to be free of the wretched harness.

Sacrovir…Was it a name? A place?

As he raced down Rue Sainte-Geneviève, the intoxication of his own speed drove all speculation from his mind.

Victor braked sharply in front of the bookshop, and narrowly avoided knocking over an imposing-looking woman wielding a large flowery umbrella, who looked daggers at him through her lorgnette. She was about to tick him off soundly for having such an infernal machine when Joseph appeared.

‘I’ll park your mustang at the back of the shop, Boss. Oh, good morning, Madame la Comtesse, look at those clouds! It’ll soon be raining cats and dogs.’

The Comtesse de Salignac pursed her lips, pushed him smartly aside and swept into the shop like a ship in full sail, making for Kenji, who was talking on the telephone.

‘Any news?’ Joseph whispered to Victor.

‘Go down to the stockroom and look up the word
Sacrovir
in the dictionary,’ Victor replied softly.

‘What about my deliveries? Monsieur Mori will be furious. Sacro what?’

‘
Vir
, the name probably comes from the Latin
vir
meaning “man”, like in
triumvir
.’

‘Ah! And sacrolumbar is the lower back. I get it! It’s a man suffering from backache.’

‘I’m not interested in your half-baked theories; this isn’t a guessing game. Go and look it up before you start blathering,’ Victor ordered, putting on a charming smile as he rejoined the Comtesse de Salignac.

She was beating the air stoically with her fan, put out at having to wait for Kenji to be free.

‘Would you care to sit down, dear Madame?’

‘I’m quite capable of standing, I just don’t want to have to stand here all day,’ she retorted.

‘May I be of some assistance?’

‘No, it’s your colleague I must see.’

Adopting what she considered a suitably dignified pose, she turned her head away, fanning herself furiously. Victor withdrew, intrigued by the in-quarto volume in yellow morocco-leather, which the battle-axe was clutching to her bosom. It looked familiar.

Joseph stumbled over something and banged his knee violently. Cursing, he finally managed to find the light switch. Since Monsieur Legris had moved to Rue Fontaine, the darkroom in the basement he had used for his photography had been turned back into a reading room and electric lights installed. Its shelves were lined with bibliographies, collector’s items, catalogues and encyclopedias, which could be taken out and consulted at a table.

‘These tomes weigh a ton! They’ll be calling me Sacrovir when my back breaks from lugging them about.’

He leafed absent-mindedly through several volumes. What a pity his meeting with the girl in the classified ads at
Le Figaro
the evening before had ended in failure!

Regretful at having resisted the advances of the employee in the satin bonnet, he’d used the pretext of a delivery in order to enjoy Monday afternoon off. He’d gone to wait for the girl at the entrance to the newspaper’s offices and had asked her politely to take a drink with him at Café Napolitain, where he hoped to catch a glimpse of Georges Courteline
³⁶
and Catulle Mendès.
³⁷
Emboldened by the effect of the sherry, she had told him that her name was Francine. She realised from Joseph’s indifferent expression that he’d been hoping for some interesting revelation.

‘You know, I’ve racked my brains about that death notice and it’s come back to me. He was well-to-do. Middle-aged, and podgy,’ she added.

‘You mean fat?’

‘Well, there’s fat and there’s fat! Let’s say he was…well padded. And he had a squint. Yes, he had a squint.’

As she spoke, she gently pressed Joseph’s foot under the table with hers. Nonchalant, she drained her glass, moistened her lips and resumed, ‘He had a scar on his chin, too, and a thick Alsace accent.’

Joseph prudently crossed his legs. The wealth of detail together with the attack on his shoe had aroused his suspicions. She was leading him on. Much to Francine’s dismay, he suddenly remembered a courtesy call he had to pay to his first cousin who’d suffered a fit of catalepsy recently, and left in a hurry after paying the bill, which he considered a little steep.

‘A fat bloke from Alsace with a squint and a scar my eye! She must think I was born yesterday! I swear women are a mystery to me. First they say no, then they say yes, next they’re nudging you with their foot under the table while you’re having a drink, and by the time the dessert comes they’ve shown you their stocking tops…A pity, though, she was rather fetching…’

Francine’s face was replaced by Iris’s in his mind.

‘I must be on my guard!’ he concluded.

His finger stopped at a paragraph on the history of Gaul.

‘By Jove! I think I’ve found it! Sacrovir!’

The Comtesse de Salignac studied Kenji in sullen, reproachful silence. She’d given up fanning herself and her cheeks had turned bright red. She was visibly at the end of her tether. At last, Kenji replaced the receiver. Eudoxie Allard, alias Fifi Bas-Rhin, former cancan dancer at the Moulin-Rouge, had clearly lost none of her volubility during her stay in the north. Having no doubt grown tired of her Russian archduke, the insatiable woman was back in town and eager to renew her intimate relations with her men friends.

As Kenji hung up, he looked like the cat that had got the cream but hastily composed his expression and calmly enquired of the Comtesse to what he owed the pleasure of her visit.

‘Pleasure! Ah, Monsieur Mori, it is not pleasure but disgrace that brings me here. Will you buy back this edition of Michel de Montaigne, which Monsieur de Pont-Joubert’s uncle purchased from you?’

Kenji pretended to be indifferent, but Victor recognised the rare fifth edition from 1588 of
The Essays of Michel, Seigneur de Montaigne
he’d bought at auction two years before.

‘One thousand nine hundred francs,’ said Kenji.

The Comtesse’s jaw dropped in indignation, her cheeks flushed a darker red.

‘What!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is that a joke? The Duc de Frioul paid you six thousand francs for it! It was a wedding present for my niece Valentine!’

Joseph heard the name as he reached the landing and it brought back disagreeable memories.

‘You’re mistaken, Madame, he only paid five thousand two hundred francs. You should be thankful, generally speaking we only reimburse a third of the price. I’m making an exception because it is you.’

The Comtesse’s mouth twisted into a bitter smile.

‘Come, Monsieur Mori, I’m one of your best customers – surely I deserve better treatment than this.’

‘Alas, Madame la Comtesse, shares have plummeted,’ parried Kenji, ‘and the book market is subject to the same fluctuations as the antiques market. Is Monsieur de Pont-Joubert experiencing financial difficulties?’

The Comtesse sniffed and tossed her fan into her reticule.

‘He has suffered a reversal of fortune, his capital has been tragically reduced and he is obliged to rein in his expenditure. The nincompoop has been ruined by the Duc de Frioul’s idiocy. What is the world coming to when we can no longer even trust our own relatives!’

Hiding behind a pile of books, Joseph had been hanging on every word and was inwardly rejoicing: there was such a thing as justice!

‘Do you see how far I must stoop in order to save the family reputation, Monsieur Mori? Not content to fritter away his own fortune at baccarat, that gambler Frioul had the brilliant idea of buying up a lot of worthless shares! When I think that he’s my niece Valentine’s uncle by marriage! And do you know what the old skinflint had the nerve to give the twins on their first birthday? Amber cigar holders – one for Hector and one for Achille. It’s a disgrace!’

Victor, choking back his mirth, turned aside in case the Comtesse saw him with her eagle eye. Kenji maintained an expression of polite concern.

What a brilliant actor! Victor thought, watching him. How does he manage to keep a straight face?

The Comtesse rummaged in her reticule and pulled out a piece of crumpled paper, which she waved under Kenji’s nose.

‘Here’s the proof!’

Victor came over to help Kenji out.

‘Why not tell us the whole sorry story?’ he suggested, pulling up a chair for the Comtesse.

She collapsed into it, explaining in a tremulous voice that the Duc de Frioul had been swindled by a second-rate actor, a ham, a scoundrel by the name of Leglantier – the so-called manager of Théâtre de l’Échiquier.

‘The Duc wanted to use his shares as security for a loan since he was in need of ready cash. He went to his bank, Crédit Lyonnais, and what did they tell him? The Ambrex securities were fake. Naturally, he immediately contacted Colonel de Réauville, who was also in a panic. He’d just come back from his own bank. Théâtre de l’Échiquier indeed! As if anyone had ever heard of it! It was all a fraud!’

She handed the share certificate to Victor and pulled herself up out of the chair.

‘I have enough of them to paper my bedroom. Frame it and hang it above your counter! Well, Monsieur Mori, what about the Montaigne?’

Victor decided to make himself scarce. Joseph beckoned to him from the back of the shop.

‘The boss isn’t being very charitable, is he, Boss?’

‘Charity begins at home. What did you want to say?’

‘I found your Sacrovir. I made notes. I’ll read them to you then I’ll have to dash. He was a Gallic chieftain, who occupied Autun at the beginning of the first century
AD
. He was defeated by the Roman legion of Upper Germania, which ransacked and pillaged his village. It would make a great subject for a play. Why all the interest? Are you thinking of writing an essay on Gaul?’