Paris Requiem (31 page)

‘No, no. Of course not.’

Distrust stayed on her face. ‘You go now.’

As he adjusted his tie, she forced a smile of surprising coyness. ‘Yes. And come back. Please.’ She touched his lips with a light finger, her face that of a child who had mastered adult wiles.

This time shame suffused him. It brought moisture to his brow, a clenching of his jaw, so that he barely managed a brief bow, a mumbled thank you, before closing her door behind him. He leaned against it heavily, struggling to break free of the sullying currents of desire which threatened his purpose.

A lazy heat impregnated the noisy salon and with it came a whiff of mass perspiration. Two women stood by the piano and sang what was, judging from their lolling eyes and louche gestures, a racy ditty, though he couldn’t quite make out the rush of words. The man he believed to be Marcel Caro was nowhere to be seen, but the woman he had noticed with him, and before that with Dr Comte, was still there. She was perched on the lap of an older man who, with his spats and paunch and white whiskers, had the benign air of a grandfather. A gentlemanly grandfather. James wondered how he could go about getting her attention.

‘Will you stay on with us a little, Monsieur? The night’s still young.’ Madame Rosa was at his side, waving a glass of wine into his hand. From somewhere behind her, the swarthy man whom he felt was Marcel Caro appeared. James stiffened. A little nod from her and the man vanished through the door from which James had come.

‘I trust our Eugénie was to your taste. She’s a sweet child.’

‘Altogether satisfactory,’ James heard himself say. He hoped she would report this to the man he had a sudden distinct sense had just gone to Eugénie. He would be checking on her, scuttling through her earnings, perhaps doing worse than that.

‘Good, good. I’m glad to hear it.’

‘And yes, I will stay on a little.’ James’s eyes moved in the direction of Dr Comte’s partner.

Madame Rosa followed his gaze and raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Not quite in the same order, that young lady. I see you’re a man who likes his hors d’oeuvres followed by a good full entrée.’ She chuckled, rubbed herself against him, so that he could see beads of sweat glistening at her cleavage. ‘I’ll let her know, but she may be a little while. She’s with an old friend. Do sit down, Monsieur. Enjoy the music.’

James lowered himself into an armchair. Women strolled in front of him, ruching skirts as they went, displaying legs, swinging hips. Clarice, the slender blonde, came to perch on the arm of his chair and let her hand play over the base of his neck. For some absurd reason, Marguerite de Landois flashed through his mind. He wondered how she might comment on his present adventure, wondered too what sensation her fingers on his neck might elicit. The thought astonished him and he buried it in a remote crevice of himself and sat up, his back ramrod straight despite the woman’s caresses. She moved away with a full Gallic shrug of displeasure.

James waited and watched the activity of the place. Though appearances could hardly be foolproof, he estimated there were three Jewish women in the room, not counting the piano player and the absent Eugénie and whatever others were upstairs. He tried to see whether they too wore the telltale charm around their necks – a signal, if Eugénie’s story was an example, that they had been brought to France as part of some white slave racket, in which Caro evidently played a
role. And Comte? What was his part, the obligatory medical examination apart? Was he in cahoots with Caro, raking in a cut for silence every time a new slave was introduced into the brothels within his aegis?

He looked again in the direction of the statuesque brunette. Their eyes met this time, and with a slight tilt of his chin he nodded her over. She smiled a challenge, then turned lazily to ruffle the old man’s hair and plant a kiss on his forehead. Within seconds, she stood before James, her hands on her swaying hips, her legs firmly planted, as if she had learned her brazen posture from a cancan dancer at the Moulin Rouge.

‘Voulez-vous monter?’
she asked, her gaze basilisk still.

James nodded. ‘You’ve been recommended to me.’

‘Really?’ Thick brows rose into an arch. ‘By whom?’

‘Charlie,’ James invented. ‘An American friend. A while back.’

She shrugged. ‘He didn’t leave an impression. You’re American?’

He nodded. Close to, he noticed that she was older than he had estimated. Her eyes had a bruised look.

She surveyed him with an experienced gaze which seemed already to have undressed him. ‘We don’t get too many of your kind here.’

‘Oh? Guess I’ll have to spread the word.’

‘You do that.’ Her laugh was hard, insinuating.

She led him up the stairs he had trod not so very long ago and then turned in a direction opposite to Eugénie’s room. From behind a door he heard a rasping sound and then a scream. He stopped.

‘Don’t worry. It’s Madeleine. She likes noise.’ She eyed him curiously. ‘You don’t, I take it.’

James shrugged and followed her into a room which was about twice the size of the last one he had been in. One wall was all but covered by a rack of clothes. Costumes, he
corrected himself. He saw a nurse’s uniform, a nun’s habit, a judge’s cloak, a gendarme’s cape, a frock coat and on the floor, a riding crop, handcuffs, an assortment of shoes and boots. One pair caught his eye.

‘You like boots?’ she asked, swift as lightning. She reached for them, raised them to his nostrils. James sniffed supple leather. ‘Shall I put them on?’ She lowered the boot to his crotch and rubbed it there.

James stepped backwards, shook his head.

‘What’s your taste then,
Monsieur l’Américain
?’ From
somewhere
she pulled a leather thong and smoothed it between her fingers.

‘I … I really wanted to talk, to tell the truth.’

‘Talking … Is that an American form of brothel activity?’ Laughter cascaded from her.

He found himself joining her in it. ‘Perhaps. Why not. What’s your name?’

‘You can call me Berenice. Berenice from Nice.’ She
fluttered
long eyelashes at him in some parody of the sultry southerner and showed him to a chair. She herself sat down on the bed, drawing her skirts up, so that he could see red garters and a length of thigh. ‘So talk away. Tell me your sins, if it excites you.’

James averted his eyes from her legs and plunged. ‘Not my sins, exactly. I’d like to ask you some questions. You look like a woman who knows her way round this world.’

‘You’re a cop?’ The laughter fled from her face.

‘No. No. Promise. I’m a visiting American and all I want is to ask you whether by any chance you know a woman called Olympe Fabre, once Rachel Arnhem?’

She sprang from the bed and walked towards the window, straightening the curtain with an abrupt movement. There was a glimmer of fear behind the well-oiled mask which was her face.

‘What’s it to you?’

James reached for his wallet. ‘I’m trying to find out how and why she died. She’s a friend of the family.’

‘Family! You can put your money away. Until later. I haven’t seen her in years.’

‘I was told she used to visit here.’

‘Maybe she did and maybe she didn’t.’

‘So she wasn’t a particular friend of yours?’ He looked at her throat to check for the charm. There wasn’t one. James thought quickly. ‘She never tried to persuade you out of here?’

‘I enjoy my work, Monsieur. Though I’m not enjoying this particular pass.’

James reached into his pocket and pulled out the erotic photograph. ‘Is that what Olympe looked like when she worked in your trade?’

Berenice stared at the image and scoffed. ‘That’s not Olympe. That’s Judith.’ She clamped a hand over her mouth.

‘Judith. I see. I see,’ James murmured. ‘Judith used to work here.’

‘Not here. Another place.’ She gave the bedclothes a savage tug, then her face softened. ‘She was a sweet thing. Helpless. I took pity on her. I got her that posing job. Not that the money really helped. She wasn’t cut out for the profession. So there you have it,
Monsieur l’Américain
. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘You’re Jewish?’

She shrugged. ‘What difference does it make? But no, if you must know, I’m not. I’m a good little Catholic girl. Want to hear my catechism? No, I can see you don’t.’ She walked over to him and drew out his wallet, helped herself defiantly to a few bills. With a shushing finger over her lips, she walked to the clothes rack and hid the money in the swathes of the nun’s habit.

‘So you never saw Olympe Fabre here?’

‘Okay, sure. I saw her. Once. Madame Rosa was all atitter. That’s how I found out the woman I was looking at wasn’t
Judith. Thought she’d just somehow managed to grow too grand for me.’

James swallowed a little sigh of triumph. So he had been right. The Olympe of the present and the Judith of the brothel days bore an uncanny resemblance. ‘Go on,’ he urged Berenice.

‘Anyhow Rosa thought that maybe this Olympe had come ’cause she wanted to pick up a little extra cash on the side. Women do, you know. In the afternoons. Good upstanding ladies,’ she sneered. ‘Rent themselves a place. Take away our trade. But no. That’s not what she’d come for. She’d come to talk to Simone.’

‘Simone?’

‘Our pianist. Well not always just a pianist. She’s quite a hand if you fancy her type. Been round the track a few hundred times.’

‘So Olympe came to see her?’

‘Yup, apparently they’re old friends. That’s it,
Monsieur l’Américain
. Your time’s up. I’m a working woman.’ She pulled him from his chair, so that he stood face to face with her. ‘Too bad you didn’t want to play. I rather like those icy eyes of yours and the upright posture.’ She slipped her hand into his shirt. ‘And you’re in good shape for a man of your years.’

James stopped her hand. ‘Better than Dr Comte?’

She moved away. ‘I don’t know any Dr Comte.’

‘I just saw you with him.’

‘Oh him!’ There was a faint tremor in her laugh. ‘He’s just a form filler. We all need form fillers in this great
Republic
of ours.’

The door suddenly burst open and over her head he saw the man he assumed was Caro lunging across the room. Berenice stepped aside with a gasp. Before James could move, the man was shaking him like some child’s rattle, slamming a fist into his jaw, another into his belly. The last landed with such force that the walls went reeling.

James fell back onto his chair, tried to catch a painful breath and simultaneously charge at the man.

But Caro, despite his bulk, was too quick and experienced a fighter. He all but lifted James up and shoved him towards the door. ‘Let that be a warning,’ he hissed. ‘Get out of here and don’t come back. Nobody scares Maro’s girls. Nobody tampers with them. You hear me.’

‘Nobody but you and your friend, Comte, eh?’ James heard himself snarl.

The door slammed behind him. He lurched down the hall. The walls swerved towards him.

Clinging to the banister, he tried to assemble his scattered wits. He should go back and give the man a wallop. His pride cried out for it. Yet even if he could dent that solid girth, it would serve little purpose. The police then. But Touquet had already intimated that Caro was probably in cahoots with the locals and he now knew the swarthy pimp was Caro.

No, no. The sensible thing was to talk to Simone, the
pianist
, before the bull of a man made his way downstairs. And then he would go to Durand. For all his mad speculations, Durand wasn’t crooked. He was all but certain of that. Then together they would confront the evil Comte. Like some maleficent presence, the doctor had shadowed every point of their investigation. Who knew but that a little further digging would show that the girls in Caro’s white slave racket ended up on slabs at the Salpêtrière when they took the first brave steps towards exposure or escape – steps that Olympe had encouraged. Yes, at the Salpêtrière, where they could provide ready physical proof for theories of degeneracy.

James straightened his jacket and made his way downstairs. The room looked slightly desolate now, empty of the
favourites
who were elsewhere engaged. Only a few girls lolled on the sofas. The men looked dazed, worse for drink perhaps. He could use one, but he didn’t want to have to confront
Madame Rosa. He sidled towards the piano, where the large woman was playing a bittersweet number, and leaned against it, catching her eye.

‘I’d like to speak with you privately, Madame,’ he said, hardly moving his lips.

She looked up at him lazily. A gold tooth glittered as she smiled. ‘I’m busy, Monsieur. I hope you liked our little Eugénie.’

‘I want to talk to you about Olympe Fabre.’

Her stubby fingers missed a beat.

‘Come again.’

‘You heard me. I know the two of you were friends.’

She looked quickly round her shoulder, her fleshy arms quivering with the motion, her face now as tight as a mask. ‘Not here,’ she murmured. ‘Not tonight.’

‘When then?’

‘I have nothing to say.’

‘Better to say it to me than to the police, however.’

‘Who are you?’

‘A private investigator. Shall I speak to Madame Rosa?’

‘No, no.’ She flashed him a plea, her face sinking into jowly gloom as she struck a dissonant chord.

‘Name a place then. For tomorrow.’

She looked round again. ‘Café Dauphine. Near the
Comédie
. 11.30.’

‘If you’re not there, I’ll come straight back here. With a friend.’ James’s stance threatened.

‘I’ll be there. Poor Olympe.’

E
xhaustion tugged at James’s limbs like metal weights. He leaned heavily on the hotel counter and tried to clear the fog that had invaded his mind. He was certain that he had left his room key here, but now it was nowhere to be found and the lengthy business of identification had only just begun. He searched his pockets once more. Could he have mistakenly taken the key with him and dropped it somewhere in the brothel – or left it at Marguerite’s house with his pipe? He tried to think back to his departure from his room – almost two days ago now, but all he could focus on was that he felt soiled, irascible, bruised.

‘Eh bien?
’ He growled at the night clerk who had just
re-emerged
from some nether office.

‘It’s all right, Monsieur. The porter will see you up. You may find your key safely in your room.’ He waved James’s papers at him. ‘We’ll just hold on to these until everything is settled.’

James grunted a response and followed the porter. In the night-time dimness, the hotel felt eerie. The empty elevators, the long, darkened corridors with their rows of neatly polished shoes awaiting their owners, were like some image of
an afterlife in which the sleeping dead had not yet risen from their tombs. He shivered with sudden cold as the porter fitted a key into the lock of room 411.

It turned smoothly. He nodded his thanks and let himself in, switching on the bedside light as he made gratefully for the bathroom.

There was a rustle of noise behind him. Before he could turn, his arms were clamped behind his back in a muscular vice. He struggled against it. To his surprise, it relaxed. He veered round.

‘Sorry, Jim.’ Raf was rubbing his eyes. His hair was
dishevelled
. He was wearing James’s pyjamas. ‘I must have been dreaming. Something about sabres and lopped heads.’ He grinned. ‘Good thing I recognised you.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘It seemed a good place to be.’ He glanced at the watch on the bedside table and whistled. ‘Do you realise that it’s after three.’

James spied the whisky bottle on the table. ‘Not too late for a drink. I need one, what with you scaring the daylights out of me.’ He poured them both a measure. ‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated as he handed his brother a glass.

‘Well, I tried to go home, but there was this surly-looking guy hanging around the apartment, so I changed my mind. One of the Chief Inspector’s crew, I imagine. By the way, I’ve located the nasty little band of creeps who sent me that
odiferous
present.’

‘Oh?’

‘Ya. A mean-minded trio of right-wing journalists. Didn’t like my position on Dreyfus – or on anything else for that matter. And don’t like the fact that I’m foreign and attacking the honour of
la belle France
. So they thought they’d teach me a lesson. A practical joke, you might say.’ He let out a guffaw. ‘They hired someone else to do their delivery work, of course.
I gave them a talking to and threatened retribution. Not that in my present circumstances I can imagine the police taking action.’

‘Do they have anything to do with Olympe’s death?’

After a moment’s hesitation, Raf shook his head. ‘Not directly anyhow. They’re just windbags. They create a
climate
in which others can act on the hatred they foment.’ He pounded the pillows, then propped them up and smoothed the sheets. ‘Guess you’d better have the bed, Jim. It’s your room after all. I’ll finish the night on the sofa.’

‘How come you didn’t go to Marguerite’s? You spend enough nights there.’

Raf shot him an acerbic look. ‘Do I detect a note of malice in your tone? Or is it just good, clean curmudgeonly envy?’

‘Neither. I’m tired. I’ve got to have a wash.’ James closed the bathroom door behind him.

When he came out again, Raf was stretched on the sofa and smoking a cigarette. The desk behind him, James now noted, was littered with the letters he had taken from Olympe’s apartment.

‘I can’t sleep any more.’ He surveyed James. ‘Just to put your mind at ease, I did speak to Marguerite and she said it was better I didn’t come round. I had a feeling she was worrying about Durand, about the fact that I’m being followed.’

‘Why?’ James asked. His guilt made him aggressive. It was he after all who had planted the seeds of worry in Marguerite. ‘It’s not as if Durand doesn’t know about the two of you.’

Raf blew a smoke ring into the air. ‘To tell you the truth I don’t quite understand what’s got her suddenly worried. It’s not like her. I think she’s hiding something from me.’

‘Really?’ James had a sudden image of the men’s clothes hanging in Marguerite’s spare room. They were too small for Raf. ‘Do you think she has another lover?’

‘Another lover.’ Raf mimicked his tone. ‘You’re sounding
jaded, Jim. So quickly, too. It’s not a question of another. Marguerite and I aren’t any more. Haven’t been since I met Olympe.’ He paused over the name, his face suddenly
despairing
. ‘Marguerite must have told you that. Would have if you had asked. But it’s not the kind of thing you ask, I imagine. I know how much you disapprove of me.’

‘Yet you stay at her place.’

‘Sure. It’s a big house. And it’s sometimes convenient. We like to talk. We’re good friends. Don’t give me that
disbelieving
face, Jim. It doesn’t suit your sweet temperament.’

‘A jealous friend, I imagine.’ James followed his own line of thought. ‘You with a younger woman. One you could consider marrying, one she had to a certain extent shaped.’

‘There isn’t a trace of jealousy in Marguerite.’

‘I’m beginning to suspect you’re the innocent.’

Raf glared at him. ‘She knows I’m devoted to her. She’s like – well she’s like a fairy godmother to me. She’s given me so much, taught me everything.’

Even with his limited knowledge of women, James had the distinct impression Marguerite would hardly be happy with that description. But he kept his counsel.

After a moment, Raf said. ‘So you think she has a lover?’

James shrugged. ‘All I know is that there were men’s clothes in the spare room. A smaller man than you. Suits, boots …’ He yawned.

Raf chuckled. ‘So you haven’t guessed?’

James wasn’t listening. It had suddenly come to him. That matter that had niggled at him for days. All at once, it was there, clear, beyond the sleepy haze of his mind, like a sentence in bold capitals he should have been able to read before. He leapt up. ‘That’s it, Raf. We have to go back to the barge. First thing tomorrow.’

‘Why?’

‘The boots. The boots the woman on the boat was wearing.
They were sleek, supple, expensive. Not at all in keeping with the rest of her grimy clothes.’

‘So? So someone gave them to her.’

‘No, no. It’s something else. I suspect they came from Olympe. From her body. Before or after her death, I don’t know. It’s something the woman said, too.’

‘What are you talking about, Jim? Where have you been anyway? You’re all wired up. A bit like the electricity pavilion they’re building for this great new century of ours.’

James sighed, promised himself that he’d visit the barge first thing in the morning, then told Raf where he’d been, told him tersely about Bernfeld and about Touquet’s letter and his visit to the Hotel Monpiquet. About Caro and Dr Comte.

By the time he had finished, Raf was pacing, his face a livid scowl. ‘So you think that Caro and Comte together …’ He slammed his fist on the desk. ‘Let me get this straight. Caro’s running a white slave ring. Trafficking in women. Comte services their medical needs and if they act up or are past their use, he takes them off to the Salpêtrière. And
eventually
they end up as useful subjects for scientific autopsy. Small brains, lesions, whatever. It’s too ghastly. And the powers that be turn a blind eye. Anything’s better than having to change the immigration laws. And Olympe must have somehow got mixed up in it, made them fear exposure, so they did her in. Like they did those other women in. Bastards.’

‘We’ll have to build the evidence step by step, Raf.’ James tried to calm him.

‘That reminds me,’ Raf stopped his pacing and reached to extract Olympe’s notebook from the litter on the desk. ‘I went through this earlier. The initials H.C. definitely appeared. Henri Comte. She must have gone to see him. That’s it, Jim. Tomorrow we go and bludgeon a confession out of him.’

James took a deep breath. ’As I said, Raf. Slowly. We have to get Durand on board. We haven’t any proof yet of a link
between Caro and Olympe. Except that she went to the
Mon-piquet.
We don’t know why she went there or what she did. We need to get our hands on the hospital files too, check out Judith’s story and see if any of the deaths in the hospital were of girls who had been prostitutes. I imagine there are others involved, probably Madame Rosa …’ His voice trailed off, cracked in discomfort.

James’s cautionary note visibly irritated Raf. ‘Who’s this Madame Rosa, then? Is that your source, the one you slept with?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Don’t look so deeply offended. Loosen up. It’s not a crime. We have bodies. We have senses.’

‘We have other more important parts, too.’ Anger leapt from James’s voice. He realised it was directed as much at himself, at his shame over Eugénie, as at Raf.

‘You mean a soul, I imagine?’ Raf scoffed. ‘You really think a just God would have had Olympe murdered? You really think that? You’re a fool then.’

James kept himself still. ‘I meant a moral intelligence. A mind. We have minds. They give us a sense of what is right. Of justice.’

‘Justice, indeed. What’s justice for the rich man is hardly justice for the beggar. Let alone the female beggar.’

There was such deep-rooted rancour in Raf’s sudden attack, that it robbed James of his last ounce of energy. His legs felt weak, as if the very foundations on which he had erected his life were crumbling. He lay back on the pillows. ‘Would you rather I went home, Raf? I’m obviously just in the way here. Whatever I do, whatever I say, you just snipe at me. And none of it is really my business. I’ll take Elinor with me and we’ll board the first available ship.’

They stared at each other across the room.

‘Sorry, Jim. Sorry. Don’t know what’s come over me.’ Raf
turned his back on him and fiddled with the papers on the desk. ‘Old habits, I guess. Half the time, when I’m with you, I feel I’ve been turned into a kid again, the useless and
rebellious
black sheep of the family, so I lash out or run off. As if you and Father were both standing over me, judging, shaking your heads, robbing me of any breathing space, telling me whatever I touch is wrong.’

He turned back to James, his face suffused with guilty emotion. ‘Sorry, Jim. In fact you’ve been incredibly helpful through all this. And of more use than I’ve been.’

James stared at him through a fog of incomprehension. Blurry incidents from the past floated through it. An image came to him of the two of them standing before their father in his study. Raf was being reprimanded for some minor misdemeanour. But their father’s love for him was palpable. It was there in the very heat of his sorrow over this trifling transgression. James rarely transgressed and rarely felt the warmth of that love.

‘You’re wrong about that, Raf. Father adored you. Of the two of us, you were his decided favourite, let alone Mother and Ellie’s.’

Perplexity played over Raf’s features. ‘That’s not how it felt to me, Jim. Ellie, maybe … but we won’t go into that. Father saw you as perfection itself, the perfection I could never aspire to. God, I resented it.’

James shook his head, bewildered by this declaration,
saddened
, too. ‘In fact, Raf, I was always a little jealous of you. Still am probably. Your talent for life. Even Maisie adored you.’

‘That’s the whisky talking.’ He topped up James’s glass with a shaky smile which did nothing to eradicate the frown etched on his forehead. ‘You’re trying to tell me that all these years, the two of us have been doing a little green-eyed family dance, each of us imagining the other as parental pet?’

‘Maybe. Probably.’

He met James’s eyes, his own darkly serious. ‘You know, I like you, Jim. Like getting to know you again. And I really am glad you’re here, even if it’s not altogether evident from my actions. I guess I haven’t been feeling too good. And I’ve been taking it out on you.’

‘It’s hardly been an easy time.’

‘No.’ Raf sat down, his elbows on his knees, his chin propped on his hands. He gazed at the muddle of papers on the desk. ‘Sometimes, I feel everything’s running away with me. This Bernfeld business and the money, the blackmail, the thugs and their white slaves, all that on top of Olympe’s death. It makes me realise that there was so much about Olympe I didn’t know. She kept so much from me. So much.’ He leapt up to scrunch one of his own letters into a ball and fling it across the room, then with a sheepish look went to pick it up.

‘Maybe it was her way of being kind,’ James said softly. ‘She didn’t want to shatter your illusion of perfection. The sense you had of her.’

‘So she didn’t ask for my help. Was afraid to tell me, as if she thought I wouldn’t love her if she did.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘The way I sometimes used to be afraid of you. Still am now and again. My perfect big brother.’

‘The far from perfect big brother,’ James grumbled, ‘needs to get some sleep. You too, Raf. Let’s hope things look clearer in the morning.’

The Dauphine had all the accoutrements of a chic
establishment
– striped awnings, clean, marble-top tables with curving ironwork, comfortable wicker chairs, an ample indoor area, where floors and counters sparkled, not to mention polite waiters and a clientele whose hats and parasols had evidently come from the best of establishments. James found himself agreeably surprised. He chose an indoor table in a quiet corner, drank a welcome
café au lait,
his first of the day,
and waited for his appointment with the pianist. He didn’t, he realised, even know her full name.

Raf had gone by the time he woke. It was already late. The note he had left had uncharacteristically thanked James for his patience and for buoying up his little brother. Raf explained that he was off to see Touquet to talk their findings over. He was planning to drop in on Louise Boussel again, too. And maybe later, they could all arrange to see Durand together and make a concerted attack on the direction of the Chief Inspector’s investigations. Only he could influence the magistrate.