Murder in Montparnasse (14 page)

‘It was,’ said Phryne, remembering. ‘But they weren’t all lonely . . .’

Friday evening and Madame Natalie Barney’s soiree was always well attended. Phryne, in a costume improvised from a bed-sheet, was posed in the temple of amitié in the garden of 20 Rue Jacob. It was cold and she was hoping that she could stop impersonating a nymph fairly soon and taste the supper which was definitely preparing behind the scenes. Natalie herself, naked except for a wisp of fabric, was declaiming a Renée Vivien poem, based on a line by Sappho.

Attis, today you grow pale, and I pass by

Like an exile whose desire to return is lost.

You, fireless, and I, my soul wearying

Retreat from love.

Behold, as it heaves and climbs with the flame

And the song’s rising and the lilies’ perfume

The innermost voice of the heart of my soul

I loved you, Attis.

Phryne twitched, attempting to dislodge an ant from her ankle. She leaned a little against one of the three Greek columns of the temple. How dare the beautiful but completely faithless Natalie recite a poem from a woman whose heart she had broken! The tale of her remorseless pursuit of Renée Vivien was gossip in Paris even now. Priestess, siren, goddess, arch-seducer. Phryne wondered if it was true that Natalie Barney’s female ancestor had been Mélusine, who turned into a snake from the waist down. In this scented darkness, hearing the beautiful voice chant sorrows, she could believe it. Romaine Brookes, the only person whom Natalie was popularly supposed to really love, sat sketching in the gloom, her pencil flying over the paper.

Natalie Barney was of fabulous age—forty-two! And as beautiful as she had ever been, white and dangerous under the moon. Behind her, Phryne heard an entirely unexpected René whisper, ‘You are as silver as a statue, Selene, as entrancing as an angel. Descend to me, your suppliant!’

He dropped to his knees, out of sight of the audience, and his clever hands slid up her thighs.

‘I can’t move,’ she whispered. ‘Not until the reading is over.’

‘I know,’ he said, and his fingers continued to search. Natalie began another poem, Sappho’s ‘Ode to Aphrodite’.

Then, blessed one, smiling your immortal smile

You asked, what ailed me now?

What made me call on you again?

What was it that my distracted heart

Most wanted? Who, Sappho, is

Unkind to you? Far let her

Run, she will soon run after:

If she won’t accept gifts, she

Will one day give them: and if

She won’t love you—soon she will

Love—although unwillingly . . .

The sigh of appreciation which greeted this verse mingled with Phryne’s sigh as René’s caresses achieved their aim. She sagged slightly. Natalie came to her and took her hand, smiling, perfectly aware of what had taken place, and said, ‘Ah, Sera-phita— but where is Seraphitus?’

The twins of the Balzac novel. Phryne retrieved her hand. René would have gone back over the wall. He knew that a mere musician who played the debased musette with the even cruder cabrette would not be welcome in this exalted atmosphere.

‘Back to heaven,’ she replied. Natalie Barney laughed. Phryne was immensely relieved. Miss Barney, if crossed, could expel Phryne from the artistic life of Paris and, apart from everything else, she was relying on these soirees for a reasonable meal. Phryne then felt a burning sensation and saw Dolly Wilde glaring at her. Of course. Dolly was head over heels in love with Madame. Time to find some supper and discuss the end of the war with some nice, safe revolutionaries. With her fee from this night’s appearance, she could go to the Rue d’Odessa tomorrow, buy Breton pancakes for lunch then go to the bathhouse and wash her hair . . .

Phryne snapped back to the present. Her reverie had not taken more than a moment. The ex-soldiers were arguing over where they had gone next.

‘It was here,’ insisted Johnnie. ‘That was the first estaminet. That’s where we got that raki.’

‘Nah,’ said Billo. ‘Next one along. It had dead geraniums in the window box—I remember because they grow in my mum’s garden. Café Luxe, that was it. Like the soap. Lux.’

‘That’s too far along the street,’ said Phryne. ‘Café Luxe was a brothel. Much further along, in Rue de Vaugirard. The café on that corner was Café Luxembourg.’

‘Yair, that’s right, Café Luxembourg. The old chook was called Tante Martine.’

‘So she was,’ said Phryne. ‘Madame Dumas. She had three sons.’

‘You knew her?’

‘I pulled one of her sons out from under a lot of mud, so she used to give me a free dinner once a week,’ said Phryne.

The soldiers looked at her. She felt each gaze sharpen.

‘What were you doing in France in the war?’ asked Billo. ‘We thought you were a lady.’

‘I was an ambulance driver,’ said Phryne.

‘Was yer?’ demanded Thommo, voice thick with suspicion.

Phryne excused herself and went out. She came back with a khaki kitbag which she had not opened for ten years. She emptied it onto the table, on the map of Paris. Bert sorted through the contents. French identity card. Scatter of French coins, sous and centimes. British army tunic with all rank badges removed. Leather belt. Certificate of completion of a driving course. Box containing her Médaille d’Honneur. Cake of dark amber scented soap. Driver’s cap. Letter of discharge from a military hospital. Pocket watch. Address book with attached pencil (broken). Five photographs. He spread them out.

The first was a group of uniformed girls, squinting in the sun. The central woman, a massive, masculine figure, held a board which said ‘Third Ambulance Drivers’.

‘That’s Toupie,’ said Phryne. ‘That’s Dolly Wilde. That’s me.’ Bert nodded. Despite the cap and the youth of the face, it was definitely Phryne.

‘I heard about her,’ said Billo. ‘They say she went across the Itie border in trousers and they picked her up for being a woman impersonating a man. Then she went back over the border in a skirt and they picked her up for being a man impersonating a woman. Good old Toupie! So you were one of Toupie’s girls! Them Frenchies were very fond of Toupie. Called her Lieutenant Toupie.’

‘The next picture,’ said Phryne, ‘is me and my ambulance.’

‘Blanky big brute of a thing,’ observed Johnnie. ‘How did you steer it with them thin little wrists? Beg pardon,’ he added, conscious of making a personal remark.

‘It’s leverage, not strength,’ Phryne explained. They nodded.

‘This is Paris,’ said Bert, looking at the next photograph. ‘That’s a music hall, isn’t it? One of them bal musette. We went to one of them. Who’s the bloke?’

There stood René, hat cocked over one eye, button accordion in his hands. A rush of feeling swept over Phryne: regret, loss, fury. The photo could not show his dark skin, his snapping bright black eyes, his smooth red lips over the white teeth . . .

‘No one of consequence. This is a soiree at Madame Barney’s.’ She shuffled the picture of semi-naked nymphs past them and tucked it under another photo. ‘Here are some artists I knew. That is Sarcelle, his wife, some other people.’

‘You were wounded,’ said Cec. It was the first time he had spoken. ‘Is that why they gave you the medal?’

‘I suppose so. It was Madame Dumas’ son I was dragging out when the shell hit us. Then it was nothing but blood and mud and noise—you know.’

They all nodded. They knew.

The attitude of her visitors had changed. Until they had seen those reminders of Phryne’s war, they had treated her as a nice lady: a stranger, an alien. Now they began to slide towards treating her as a comrade. Phryne preferred being a comrade. It was simpler. She folded her tunic and shoved the leftovers into the kitbag. On impulse, she retained the photographs. Something about the Sarcelle picture was itching at her subconscious. And she stole another look at the Barney photo. She had been very beautiful then, the toast of Paris. Now she was a stone heavier. The pictured Phryne was ethereal, impassioned and very hungry. She much preferred her present body. That Phryne was clinging on to the very edge of starvation, and even Vogue did not want women to be as thin as that.

‘All right,’ she collected her audience again. ‘Now, you were saying. You got the raki at Café Luxembourg? Madame Dumas’, Tante Martine’s place? She was fond of soldiers.’

‘Yair.’ Billo grinned a reminiscent grin. ‘So were all them sheilas at the café. So we had a few belts of that raki and then things started to get a bit mixed. Cec only had two drinks, poor bastard. He’d remember.’

‘I only had two drinks,’ said Cec. ‘But they were water glasses. Then there was that nice little Marie making eyes at me. At all of us. And her friend Yvette. And Yvette’s friend Renée. And that Antoinette as well. We were being smothered in girls and it kind of went to our heads.’

‘I can imagine,’ murmured Phryne.

‘And they said to us, come along to a place where we have even more girls, so we went along,’ said Billo. ‘Along the Boulevard and down through this maze of little side streets until we ended up at a place called—what was it called?’

Heads shook all around. ‘There was a big red brick building on the corner,’ recalled Cec, ‘and the street was a dogleg which led back to the Avenue du Maine.’

‘Oh, Lord,’ said Phryne. ‘You didn’t end up in the Rue Falchon, did you? At Madame Printemps?’

‘Don’t that mean spring?’ guessed Billo, language expert. ‘Yair. That was the place. Lots of girls. Lots and lots of girls. They swarmed all over us and filled us up with more of that raki and . . . I don’t remember a lot more about it,’ confessed Billo.

‘I never been kissed that much in all my life,’ said Johnnie.

‘Nor me,’ said the builder. ‘We were good-looking young blokes then, of course, and we had money. Paris likes young men with money.’

‘Until they are young men with nothing to recommend them but their youth,’ said Phryne drily. ‘Cec, you were supposed to stay sober. What happened to them all?’

‘Well, miss, it was a brothel,’ said Cec. ‘What would you expect?’

‘Precisely,’ said Phryne. ‘I wasn’t asking for details. What happened after you were dragged upstairs by all those girls, ravished out of your wits and deprived of all your money and personal jewellery?’

‘Dunno,’ said Johnnie. ‘I woke up with the sort of hangover which makes you wish you’d died on the train going to Boulogne.’

‘Cec?’

‘It’s a bit blurry,’ confessed Cec. ‘The Madam woke me up downstairs and told me to go and get them all, so I did, and she chucked us out. Then we sort of wavered along that dogleg alley until Billo surfaced and asked the way to the station. A nice lady led us along and gave me two francs to buy some coffee. None of us had a skin to our name and my money was all in English pounds. I only just got them up the steps. Johnnie kept sitting down and falling asleep on me.’

‘I don’t remember any of this,’ said Johnnie.

‘Better than Thommo—he kept sitting down and telling me he was dying and I should leave him to his fate. And Bert was seeing things. I don’t know what was in that booze . . .’

‘Pure metho,’ said Phryne. ‘Madame Printemps was notorious. She would only have mixed it with raki because raki was cheaper. So, you dragged them all along into the Gare Montparnasse . . .’

‘And loaded us on a metro train. Then loaded us off the train in the Gare du Nord. Nearly left Maccie behind, he was so floppy. Then we went left instead of right and found the train for Boulogne. Lucky the girls hadn’t half-inched the travel warrants and we still had our paybooks and all. We sagged down onto the platform and waited for the train to come in and wanted to die. Jeez, we was crook.’

‘I can imagine,’ murmured Phryne.

‘Then the train started to come in, the people shoved forward, there was a carriage for soldiers towards the front and we started stumbling towards it, then this bloke went flying straight under the train.’

‘The date, Cec, what was the date?’ demanded Phryne.

‘December 13th,’ said Cec.

‘The dead man was a painter called Sarcelle,’ said Phryne.

‘If you say so. He was a scraggy-looking bloke with a beard. He was right next to us. And he was pushed.’

‘Cec!’ exclaimed Phryne. ‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’

‘Tried to,’ said Cec. ‘They stopped the train and backed it up to get the poor bloke out from under, and then the cops came and took the names of all of us. The other blokes were out for the count. I tried to tell them that I saw it all, but they looked at my mates and noticed that we were a day late on our travel warrants and sorta lost interest in my story. Couldn’t blame ’em. We was a sight. In the end they loaded us all up and sent us off to catch a boat to Blighty. No one ever asked about it again. We were that sick and sorry the next day, what with the boat and all, that instead of locking us up the MO in London sent us all to hospital. But it was a great time,’ said Cec. ‘It was worth it.’

‘All right,’ said Phryne, pushing the map of Paris aside. ‘Does anything else occur to you? Was there a fight in the brothel? A girl hurt, perhaps? Did you punch a nose that needed to be punched?’

‘No,’ said Cec. ‘No fights. Lots of giggling. Lots of dancing and drinking. No fights. As long as our money held out they were real glad to see us and when it ran out, they chucked us into the street. We were far too sick and sorry to argue about that. And before we got to Madame Printemps, we were too happy.’

‘Well,’ said Phryne, ‘if that’s absolutely all you can remember, then the only odd thing that happened was the death of Sarcelle at the station. You didn’t surprise any burglars, catch sight of any prominent politicians in your brothel?’

‘How would we know if they were prominent politicians?’ asked Billo. ‘And anyway, that was ten years ago. Why go crook about it now?’

‘Then we can assume it was Sarcelle’s murder,’ said Phryne. ‘And I want to know everything you can recall about the person who pushed him.’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Johnnie. ‘I wasn’t among those present. Neither was Thommo. He was leaning on me and I was leaning on him. Maccie and Billo were doing the same. Bert had curled up like a bug in a rug and gone byes like a baby. I don’t reckon anyone saw anything except Cec.’