Missing Person (12 page)

"You're leaving me alone? You wouldn't like a last drop of Marie Brizard?"

"No thanks."

He accompanied me to the service door, along a corridor hung in dark blue velvet and lit by bracket-lamps with garlands of little crystals. Next to the door, on the wall, I noticed an inset photograph of a man. A fair-haired man, with a handsome, lively face and dreamy eyes.

"Richard Wall ... An American friend ... Also murdered..."

He stood motionless before me, bowed.

"And there were others," he whispered ... "Many others ... If I were to add them up ... All those dead ..."

He opened the door for me. He seemed so distressed that I embraced him.

"Don't worry, old chap," I said.

"You'll come and see me again, won't you? I feel so alone ... And I'm frightened ..."

"I'll come back."

"And above all, read Alec's book..."

I plucked up my courage.

"I wonder ... please ... Would you print a few photographs for me ... of Denise Coudreuse?"

"Of course. Anything you want... Don't lose the photos of Alec. And take care in the street..."

He closed the door and I heard him sliding the bolts home one after the other. I stood for a moment on the landing. I imagined him walking back along the dark blue corridor, into the drawing-room with its pink and green satins. And there, I was sure he would pick up the telephone, dial the number again, press the receiver feverishly to his ear, and listen tremulously, without tiring, to the faint messages of "Blue Rider."

21

W
E
HAD
LEFT
very early, that morning, in Denise's convertible and I believe we took the Porte de Saint-Cloud road. The sun must have been shining because Denise had on a large straw hat.

We reached a village in Seine-et-Oise or Seine-et-Marne and turned down a gently sloping, tree-lined street. Denise parked the car before a white gate which led into a garden. She pushed open the gate and I waited for her on the pavement outside.

A weeping willow, in the center of the garden, and at the far end, a bungalow.

She returned with a little girl of about ten whose hair was fair and who was wearing a gray skirt. All three of us got into the car, the little girl in the back and I next to Denise, who drove. I no longer remember where we ate.

But in the afternoon we went for a walk in the grounds of Versailles and took a boat out with the little girl. The reflection of the sun on the water dazzled me. Denise lent me her sun glasses.

Later, the three of us were seated at a table with a sunshade and the little girl was eating a green and pink icecream. Around us, a large number of people in summer clothes. An orchestra playing. We brought the little girl back as night was falling. Crossing the town, we passed a fair and stopped.

I can see the wide, empty road at dusk and Denise and the little girl in a purple bumper-car which left a wake of sparks behind it. They were laughing and the little girl waved to me. Who was she?

22

T
HAT
EVENING
, sitting in the Agency, I studied the photographs Mansoure had given me.

A fat man, seated in the middle of a settee. He is wearing a silk dressing-gown, embroidered with flowers. A cigarette- holder between thumb and forefinger of the right hand. With his left hand, he is holding down the pages of a book, which rests on his knee. He is bald, his eyebrows are bushy, and his eyelids are lowered. He is reading. The short, thick nose, the grim fold of the mouth, the heavy oriental face, remind one of a bull terrier. Above him, the carved wooden angel I had noticed on the cover of the magazine, behind Denise Coudreuse.

The second photo shows him standing up, wearing a double-breasted white suit, striped shirt and a dark tie. His left hand clasps a knobbed walking stick. His right arm, folded across his chest, and his hand, half open, lend him an affected air. He holds himself very stiffly, standing almost on tiptoe in his two-tone shoes. Gradually he detaches himself from the photo, comes to life, and I see him walking down a boulevard, under the trees, and limping.

23

7th November 1965

Subject:
S
COUFFI
,
A
LEXANDER
.

Born in
:
A
LEXANDRIA
(E
GYPT
), 28th April 1885.

Nationality:
G
REEK
.

Alexander Scouffi first came to France in 1920.

He has resided successively at: 26, Rue de Naples, Paris 8

11, Rue de Berne, Paris 8, in a furnished apartment

Hôtel de Chicago, 99 Rue de Rome, Paris 17

97, Rue de Rome, Paris 17,5th floor.

Scouffi was a man of letters who published numerous articles in various periodicals, poems of all kinds and two novels:
At the Golden Fish Residential Hôtel
and
Ship at Anchor.

He also studied singing and although he did not work as a professional concert performer, he did make an appearance at the Salle Pleyel and the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. In Paris, Scouffi attracted the attention of the Vice Squad. Regarded as an undesirable, his deportation was even considered.

In November 1924, when he was living at 26, Rue de Naples, he was questioned by the police in connection with an attempt to commit an offense against a minor. From November 1930 until September 1931, he lived in the Hôtel de Chicago, 99 Rue de Rome, with a young man, Pierre D, twenty years old, a soldier in the 8th Engineer Corps at Versailles. Evidently, Scouffi frequented the homosexual bars of Montmartre. Scouffi had a large income which came to him from property he had inherited from his father, in Egypt.

Murdered in his bachelor's flat, 97, Rue de Rome. The murderer was never found.

Subject: De Wrédé, Oleg.

AUTeuil 54-73

It has so far been impossible to identify the person bearing this name.

It may be a pseudonym or an assumed name.

Or it may belong to a foreign national who stayed only a short while in France.

The phone number AUTeuil 54-73 has not been assigned to anyone since 1952. For ten years, from 1942 to 1952, it was assigned to:

T
HE
C
OMET
G
ARAGE

5, Rue Foucauld, Paris XVIth

This garage has been closed since 1952 and is shortly to be replaced by a residential development.

A few words, appended to this typewritten sheet:

"This is all the information I have been able to gather. If you need more information, do not hesitate to ask. And please convey my best wishes to Hutte.

Yours, Jean-Pierre Bernardy."

24

B
UT
WHY
does my clouded mind retain the image of Scouffi, this fat man with his bulldog face, rather than anyone else? Perhaps because of the white suit. A bright spot, like a burst of orchestral music or the pure sound of a voice amid the crackling and interferences when you turn the knob of a radio ...

I remember the bright patch made by this suit on the stairs, and the dull tap-tap of the walking stick against the steps. He used to stop at each landing. I passed him several times when I was going up to Denise's apartment. I have a clear vision of the brass hand-rail, the beige-colored wall, the dark wood, double doors of the apartments. The glow of a night light on each floor and this head, the gentle, sad look of a bulldog emerging from the shadows ... I believe he even greeted me as we passed each other.

A café, at the corner of Rue de Rome and Boulevard des Batignolles. Summer, the terrace spills over on to the pavement and I am seated at one of the tables. It is evening. I am waiting for Denise. The last rays of the sun linger on the façade and the glass-fronted doors of the garage, over there, on the other side of Rue de Rome, by the railway track...

Suddenly, I see him crossing the boulevard.

He is wearing his white suit and holding his walking stick in his right hand. He limps slightly. He moves off in the direction of Place Clichy and my gaze follows this stiff, white figure, under the trees. It grows smaller and smaller and finally disappears. Then I sip some menthe-à-l'eau and speculate about what he is up to. What appointment is he keeping?

Denise was often late. She worked - it is all coming back to me now, thanks to that white figure moving off down the boulevard - she worked for a dressmaker, in Rue la Boétie, a thin, fair-haired fellow who caused quite a stir later and who at the time was just starting out. I remember his first name, Jacques, and if I persevere, I shall certainly find his name in the old directories in Huttes office. Rue la Boétie ...

Night had already fallen when she joined me on the terrace of the café, but it did not bother me, I could have stayed there much longer in front of my menthe-à-l'eau. I preferred waiting on this terrace than in Denises little apartment, which was quite near by. Nine o'clock. He crossed the boulevard, as was his habit. His suit seemed phosphorescent. Denise and he exchanged a few words, one evening, under the trees. The dazzling white suit, the swarthy bulldog face, the electric green foliage, had something summery and unreal about them.

Denise and I went in the opposite direction to him and followed Boulevard de Courcelles. The Paris which we walked in at that time was as summery and unreal as Scouffi's phosphorescent suit. We floated in a night scented by privet as we passed the railings of the Parc Monceau. Very few cars. Red and green traffic lights lit up softly, for nothing, and these alternating colors were as gentle and rhythmic as the swaying of palm-trees.

Almost at the end of Avenue Hoche, on the left, before the Place de l'Étoile, the large windows on the first floor of the townhouse that had belonged to Sir Basil Zaharoff were always lit up. Later - or, perhaps, at the same period - I often went up to the first floor of this town-house: offices and a large crowd always. Groups of people talking, others telephoning feverishly. A continual coming-and-going. And no one ever even took off his coat. Why are certain things from the past recalled in such photographic detail?

We dined in a Basque restaurant, near Avenue Victor- Hugo. Last night, I tried to find it again but failed. And yet I searched the whole district. It was on the corner of two very quiet streets and in front of it was a terrace, protected by tubs of greenery and a large red and green awning. Lots of people. I can hear the hum of conversation, the clink of glasses, I can see the mahogany bar inside, above which is a long fresco depicting a Gascony coast scene. I can still remember some of the faces. The tall, slender, fair-haired fellow at whose establishment in Rue la Boétie Denise worked, and who sat down for a minute at our table. A dark man with a moustache, a red-haired woman, another man, with fair, curly hair this time, who laughed continuously. But unfortunately I cannot match these faces with names ... The bald skull of the barman fixing a cocktail that he alone knew how to do. If I could only remember the name of this cocktail, which was also the restaurant's name, it would awaken other memories, but how? Last night, wandering through these streets, I knew they were the same ones and I did not recognize them. The buildings had not changed, or the width of the pavements, but in that earlier time the light was different and there was something else in the air ...

We returned by the same route. Often, we went to the cinema, a local picture house which I found again: the Royal-Villiers, Place de Lévis. It was the square with its benches, the Morris Column and the trees that recalled the spot to me, much more than the front of the cinema.

If I could remember the films we saw, I would be able to identify the time exactly, but only some vague impressions remain of them: a sledge sliding over the snow; a man in a dinner-jacket entering the cabin of a liner; silhouettes dancing behind french windows ...

We were back in Rue de Rome. Last night, I walked as far as number 97 and I believe I had the same feeling of distress as I had that earlier time, seeing the railings, the railway line, and opposite this the DUBONNET advertisement covering the whole wall of one of the buildings and whose colors had certainly faded since.

Number 99, the Hôtel de Chicago, was no longer called Hôtel "de Chicago," but no one at the reception desk was able to tell me when it had changed its name. A fact of no importance.

Number 97 is a very large building. If Scouffi lived on the fifth floor, Denises apartment was below, on the fourth. Was it the right or left side of the building? There were at least a dozen windows per floor, so that each floor was no doubt divided into one, two or three apartments. I studied the façade for a long time in the hope of recognizing a balcony, the shape or the shutters of a window. No, it did not remind me of anything.

Neither does the staircase. The hand-rail is not that brass one that shines in my memory. The doors to the apartments are not dark wood. And above all, the landing light with the time-switch does not produce that dim glow out of which Scouffi's strange, bulldog face would emerge. It was no use questioning the caretaker. She would be suspicious, and besides, caretakers change, like everything else.

Was Denise still living here when Scouffi was murdered? An event as tragic as this must surely have left some trace, if we had lived through it on the floor below. Not a trace of it in my memory. Denise could not have stayed long at 97, Rue de Rome, perhaps a few months. Did I live with her? Or did I have a place somewhere else in Paris?

I remember a night when we came home very late. Scouffi was sitting on one of the steps of the staircase. His hands were folded about the top of his walking stick and his chin rested on his hands. The features of his face sagged, his bulldog look was stamped with distress. We stopped in front of him. He did not see us. We would have liked to speak to him, to help him up to his apartment, but he was still as a wax figure. The light went out and all that was left of him was the white, phosphorescent patch of his suit.