Читать книгу The Montmartre Investigation: 3rd Victor Legris Mystery - Claude Izner - Страница 10

PARIS slumbered under a waxing moon. As the Seine flowed calmly round Île Saint-Louis, patterned with diffuse light, a carriage appeared on Quai Bernard, drove up Rue Cuivier and parked on Rue Lacépède. The driver jumped down and, making sure no one was watching, removed his oilskin top hat and cape and tossed them into the back of his cab.

Just before midnight, Gaston Molina opened the ground-floor window of 4 Rue Linné and emptied a carafe on to the pavement. He closed the shutters and went over to the dressing table where a candle burned, smoothed his hair and reshaped his bowler hat. He cast a quick glance at the young blonde girl who lay asleep, fully dressed, in the hollow of the bed. She had sunk into a deep slumber as soon as she swallowed the magic potion. Mission accomplished. What happened to her next was of no concern to him. He stole out of the apartment, careful not to attract the attention of the concierge. One of the tenants was leaning out of an upstairs window. Gaston Molina hugged the wall, lighting a cigarette, and passed the Cuvier fountain before diving down the street of the same name.

A man in a grey overcoat lying in wait on Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire gave Gaston a head start before setting off behind him.

Gaston Molina walked alongside the Botanical Gardens. He froze, his senses alert, when something growled to his right. Then he smiled and shrugged. Calm down, my friend, he thought, no need to panic; it’s coming from the menagerie.

He set off again. The silence was broken by the coming and going of the heavy sewer trucks, with their overpowering, nauseating smell. Going unobtrusively about their business through the sleeping city, the trucks rattled as far as the quayside at Saint-Bernard port and emptied their waste into the tankers.

Gaston Molina was almost at the quay when he thought he heard the crunch of a shoe. He swung round: no one there.

‘I must be cracking up; I need a night’s sleep.’

He arrived at the wine market.2 Sometimes tramps in search of shelter broke in and took refuge in the market. Beyond the railings, the barrels, casks and vats perfumed the air with an overpowering odour of alcohol.

I’m thirsty, thought Gaston. Ah, what I wouldn’t do for a drink!

Something skimmed past his neck, and a silhouette appeared beside him. Instinctively he tried to parry the blow he sensed coming. An atrocious pain ripped through his stomach and his fingers closed round the handle of a knife. The moon turned black; he collapsed.

As always, Victor Legris reflected on the soothing effect of half-light.

He had woken in an ill temper in anticipation of the stories his business associate would invent to avoid taking Dr Reynaud’s prescriptions.

‘Kenji! I know you’re awake,’ he had shouted. ‘Don’t forget the doctor is coming later this morning!’

Receiving nothing in reply but the slamming of a door, Victor had gone resignedly down to the bookshop, where Joseph the bookshop assistant was perched precariously at the top of a ladder, dusting the bookshelves with a feather duster and belting out a song by a popular young singer.

I’m the green sorrel

With egg I’ve no quarrel

In soup I’m a marvel

My success is unrivalled

I am the green sor-rel!

His nerves on edge, Victor had failed to perform the ritual with which he began each day: tapping the head of Molière’s bust as he passed. Instead he had gone swiftly through the bookshop and hurried down the basement stairs to closet himself in his darkroom.

He had been here for an hour, savouring the silence and dim light. No one disturbed him in this sanctuary where he could forget his worries and give himself over to his passion: photography. His collection of pictures of the old districts of Paris, started the previous April, was growing. He had initially devoted himself to the 20th arrondissement and particularly to Belleville, but recently he had started on Faubourg Saint-Antoine, cataloguing the streets, monuments, buildings and studios. Although he had already accumulated a hundred negatives, the result left him profoundly frustrated. It was not for lack of all the best equipment; it was more because there was nothing of his own personal vision in his work.

All I have here is the objective view of a reporter, he thought.

Was he relying on technique at the expense of creativity? Did he lack inspiration? That often happened to painters and writers.

The meaning of the pictures should transcend the appearance of the places I photograph.

He knew that a solution lurked somewhere in his mind. He turned up the gas lamp and examined the picture he had just developed: two skinny urchins bent double, struggling with a sawing machine that was cutting out marble tablets. The image of a frightened little boy stammering out one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales under the watchful eye of an imposing man in a dark frock coat sprang to mind. Those poor brats reminded him of the terrorised child he had been faced with his domineering father’s displeasure. And suddenly he had an inspiration:

‘Children! Children at work!’

Finally he had his theme!

He put his negatives away in a cardboard box with renewed energy, smiling as he glimpsed a large picture of two interlaced bronze hands above an epitaph:

My wife, I await you

5 February 1843

My husband, I am here

5 December 1877

A photograph slipped out of the packet and drifted slowly down to land on the floor. He picked it up: Tasha. He frowned. Why was this portrait of her hidden among views of the Père-Lachaise cemetery? He’d taken it at the Universal Exhibition two years earlier. The young woman, unaware she was being photographed, wore a charming and provocative expression. The beginning of their affair, recorded in that image, reawakened his sense of their growing love. It was wonderful to know a woman who interested him more with each encounter and with whom he felt an unceasing need to talk and laugh, to make love, to hatch plans … He was again overcome by the bitter-sweet feeling that Tasha’s attitude provoked in him. Since he had succeeded in wooing her away from her bohemian life and installing her in a vast studio, she had devoted herself body and soul to her painting. Her creative passion made him uneasy, although he was happy that he had been able to help her. He had hoped that after the show at which she had exhibited three still lifes, she would slow down. But the sale of one of her paintings to the Boussod & Valadon gallery had so spurred her on that some nights she would tear herself from his arms to finish a canvas by gaslight. Victor sought to prolong every moment spent with her, and was saddened that she did not have the same desire. He was becoming jealous of her painting, even more than of the artists with whom she consorted.

He paced about the room. Why was he unable to resolve this contradiction? He was attracted to Tasha precisely because she was independent and opinionated, yet he would secretly have liked to keep her in a cage.

Miserable imbecile! That would be the quickest way to lose her! Stop tormenting yourself. Would you rather be with someone dull, preoccupied with her appearance, her house and her make-up?

Where did his unreasonable jealousy and desire for certainty and stability come from? With the death of his overbearing father, Victor had felt a great weight lift, but that feeling had quickly been succeeded by the fear that his mother loved another man. This threat had haunted him throughout his adolescence. When his mother Daphné had died in a carriage accident, he had decided to stand on his own two feet, but Kenji had joined him in Paris and, without knowing it, had limited Victor’s choices. Through affection for him, Victor had submitted to an ordered existence, his time shared between the bookshop, the adjoining apartment, the sale rooms and passing affairs. As the years had drifted down he had grown used to this routine.

He looked at the photo of Tasha. She had a hold over him that no other woman had ever exercised. No, I don’t want to lose her, he thought. The memory of their first encounter plunged him into a state of feverish anticipation. He would see her soon. He extinguished the lamp and went back upstairs.

An elderly scholar, taking a break from the Collège de France, was reading aloud softly to himself from Humboldt’s Cosmos, while a balding, bearded man struggled to translate Virgil. Indifferent to these potential customers, Joseph was massacring a melody from Lohengrin while working at his favourite hobby: sorting and classifying the articles he clipped from newspapers. He had been behaving unpredictably of late, lurching from forced gaiety to long bouts of moroseness punctuated by sighs and incoherent ramblings. Victor put these changes of mood down to Kenji’s illness, but since he too was rather troubled, he found it hard to bear his assistant’s capricious behaviour.

‘Can’t you put those damned scissors down and keep an eye on what’s going on?’

‘Nothing’s going on,’ muttered Joseph, continuing his cutting.

‘Well, I suppose you’re right, it is pretty quiet. Has the doctor been?’

‘He’s just left. He recommended a tonic; he called it robot …’

‘Roborant.’

‘That’s it, with camomile, birch and blackcurrant, sweetened with lactose. Germaine has gone to the herbalist.’

‘All right then, I’m going out.’

‘What about lunch? Germaine will be upset and then who will have to eat it? I will! She’s made you pork brains in noisette butter with onions. Delicious, she says.’

Victor looked disgusted. ‘Well, I make you a present of it – treat yourself.’

‘Ugh! I’ll have to force it down.’

As soon as Victor had climbed the stairs to the apartment, Joseph went back to his cutting out, still whistling Wagner.

‘For pity’s sake, Joseph! Spare us the German lesson,’ shouted Victor from the top of the stairs.

‘Jawohl, Boss!’ growled Joseph, rolling his eyes. ‘There’s no pleasing him … he’s never happy … if I sing “Little Jack Horner sat in a corner”, he complains. If I serve up some opera, he complains! I’m not going to put up with it much longer, it’s starting to wear me down, and I’m fed up! One Boss moping in quarantine, the other gadding about!’ he said, addressing the scholar clutching the Humboldt.

Victor went softly through his apartment to his bedroom. He put on a jacket and a soft fedora, his preferred headgear, and crammed his gloves into his pocket. I’ll go round by Rue des Mathurins before I go to Tasha’s, he thought to himself. He was about to leave when he heard a faint tinkling sound.

The noise came from the kitchen. Victor appeared in the doorway, surprising Kenji in the act of loading a tray with bread, sausage and cheese.

‘Kenji! Are you delirious? Dr Reynaud forbade you …’

‘Dr Reynaud is an ass! He’s been dosing me with sulphate of quinine and broth with no salt for weeks. He’s inflicted enough cold baths on me to give me an attack of pleurisy! I stink of camphor and I’m going round and round in circles like a goldfish in a bowl! If a man is dying of hunger, what does he do? He eats!’

In his slippers and flannel nightshirt Kenji looked like a little boy caught stealing the jam. Victor made an effort to keep a straight face.

‘Blame it on the scarlet fever, not the devoted doctor who’s working hard to get you back on your feet. Have a glass of sake or cognac, that’s allowed, but hang it all, spare a thought for us! You can’t leave your room until your quarantine is over.’

‘All right, since all the world is intent on bullying me, I’ll return to my cell. At least ensure that I have a grand funeral when I die of starvation,’ retorted Kenji furiously, abandoning his tray.

Suppressing a chuckle, Victor left, one of Kenji’s Japanese proverbs on the tip of his tongue: ‘Of the thirty-six options, flight is the best.’

‘Berlaud! Where have you scarpered to, you miserable mongrel?’

A tall rangy man with a cloak of coarse cloth draped across his shoulders was driving six goats in front of him. At the entrance to the Botanical Gardens, he struggled to keep them together. Cursing his dog for having run off, he used the thongs attached to their collars to draw them in.

The little flock went off up Quai Saint-Bernard, crossed Rue Buffon without incident and went down Boulevard de l’Hôpital as far as Gare d’Orléans,3 where the man stopped to light a short clay pipe. The silvery hair escaping from under his dented hat and his trusting, artless face gave him the look of child aged suddenly by a magic spell. Even his voice was childlike, with an uncertain catch to it.

‘Saints alive! I’m toiling in vain while that wretched mutt is off chasing something to mount.’

He put two fingers in his mouth and gave a long whistle. A large dog with matted fur, half briard, half griffon, bounded out from behind an omnibus.

‘So there you are, you miscreant. You’re off pilfering, leaving me yelling for you and working myself to death with the goats. What you lookin’ like that for? What you got in your mouth? Oh, I see, you went off to steal a bone from the lions while I was chatting to Père Popèche. That’s why we heard roaring. But you know dogs aren’t allowed in the Botanical Gardens, even muzzled and on the leash. Do you want to get us into trouble?’

Berlaud, his tail between his legs and teeth clamped round his prize, ran back to his post at the back of the herd, which trotted past the Hospice de la Salpêtrière, before turning towards Boulevard Saint-Marcel and into the horse market.

Each Thursday and Saturday the neighbourhood of the Botanical Gardens witnessed a procession of miserable worn out horses, lame and exhausted but decked out with yellow or red ribbons to trick the buyers. They were kicking their heels in resigned fashion, attached to girders under tents held up with cast iron poles where the horse dealers rented stalls. Ignoring the auctioneers proffering broken-down old carriages just outside the gates, the goatherd pushed his flock in among the groups of rag and bone men and furniture removers in search of hacks still capable of performing simple tasks. Each time he visited, the goatherd found it heart-rending to see the dealers with their emaciated nags, whose every rib could be seen, making them trot about to display their rump, their face and their flanks to possible buyers.

‘Savages! Tormenting to death these poor beasts worn out by pulling the bourgeois along the streets of Paris! My brave horses, you certainly know what it is to work hard. And the day you’re of no use you’ll be sent to the knackers’ yard or to the abattoir at Villejuif! Dirty swindling dealers!’

‘So, here comes our friend Grégoire Mercier, the purveyor of milk direct to your home, the saviour of consumptives, the ailing and the chlorotic! Well, Grégoire, still heaping invective on the world? I’m the one who should grumble – you’re late, my fine fellow!’

‘I couldn’t help it, Monsieur Noël. I had so much to do,’ replied the goatherd to a horse dealer who was impatiently waving a household bottle at him. ‘First, at dawn I had to take the she-kids to graze on the grass on some wasteland at the Maison-Blanche. Then I had to visit a customer on Quai de la Tournelle with a liver complaint; she has to have milk from Nini Moricaude – I feed her carrots. After that it was straight off to do some business at the menagerie at the Botanical Gardens.’

‘You’re curing the chimpanzees with goat’s milk?’

‘Don’t be silly, Monsieur Noël! No, I had to speak to someone and …’

‘All right, all right, I don’t need your whole life story.’

Grégoire Mercier knelt down beside a white goat and milked it, then held out a bowl of creamy milk to the horse dealer, who sniffed it suspiciously.

‘It smells sour. Are you sure it’s fresh?’

‘Of course! As soon as she wakes up Mélie Pecfin gets a double ration of hay fortified with iodine; it’s the best thing for strengthening depleted blood.’

‘Depleted, depleted, my wife is not depleted! I’d like to see how you’d be if you’d just given birth to twins! I’ll take it to her while it’s still warm.’

The man dropped a coin into the goatherd’s hand and snatched up the bowl.

‘Tomorrow, do you want me to deliver to your house on Rue Poliveau?’

The horse dealer turned his back without even bothering to say thank you.

‘That’s right, run off to your missus. You may treat her better than you do your horses, but you don’t cherish her the way I cherish my goats when they have kids! Isn’t that right, my beauties? Papa Grégoire gives you sugar every morning and he nourishes your babies with hot wine. Come on, Berlaud, let’s go!’

As he reached Rue Croulebarbe, Grégoire Mercier regained his good humour. Now he was back on home turf, the borders of which were the River Bièvre4 to one side and to the other the orchards where the drying racks of the leather-dressers were lined up.

Freed from the strap holding them prisoner, the goats gambolled between the poplar trees bordering the narrow river, its brown water specked with foam. The Bièvre snaked its way along by tumbledown houses and dye-works whose chimneys belched out thick smoke. Although he was used to the sweetish steam of the cleaning tubs and the fumes from the scalding vats where the colours were mixed, Grégoire Mercier wrinkled his nose. Piled up under the hangars, hundreds of skins stained with blood lay hardening, waiting to be plunged in buckets of softening agent. After a long soaking, they would be hung out and beaten by apprentices, releasing clouds of dust that covered the countryside like snow.

Determined not to drop his find, Berlaud guided the goats on to the riverbank where tomatoes, petits pois and green beans grew. He hurried past the wickerwork trays of the peat sellers and the coaching-shed of Madame Guédon who leased hand-carts for use on Ruelle des Reculettes, which opened out just beyond the crumbling wall behind the lilac hedge.

Old buildings with exposed beams housed the families of the curriers. Blackened twisted vines ran over their packed earth façades. The sound of pistons, and the occasional shriek of a strident whistle, served as a reminder that this was the town and not the countryside.

Letting his dog and beasts trot ahead, Grégoire Mercier stopped to greet Monsieur Vrétot, who combined work as a concierge with his trade as a shoemaker and cobbler to make ends meet. Then the goatherd started up the stairs, whistling on every landing. Thirty years earlier he had left his native Beauce for Paris, and settled at the heart of this unhealthy neighbourhood, ruled by the misery and stench of the tanneries. A delivery boy for the cotton factory by Pont d’Austerlitz, he had fallen in love with a laundress, and they had married and had two little boys. Three happy years were brutally cut short by the death from tuberculosis of Jeanette Mercier. Moved by the plight of the little motherless boys, public assistance had given them a goat to provide nourishment, until consumption carried the little boys off in their turn. When he had overcome his grief, Grégoire decided to keep the goat and take in others as well. He had never remarried.

He reached the fifth floor, where his flock were massed before a door at the end of a dark corridor. As soon as he closed the door of his garret, the goats went into the boxes set up along the wall. He went into a second room, furnished with a camp bed, a table, two stools and a rickety sideboard, shrugged off his cloak and hurried to prepare the warm water and bran that his goats expected on returning from their travels. He also had to feed Mémère the doyenne a bottle of oats mixed with mint, before opening the cubby hole where Rocambole the billy goat was languishing. Finally he heated up some coffee for himself and took it to drink beside Mélie Pecfin, his favourite. It was then that he noticed Berlaud. He was sitting on his blanket, wagging his tail, his find from the Botanical Gardens still between his paws, but with his eyes fixed on the sugar bowl. Grégoire pretended not to know what his dog was after and Berlaud growled meaningfully.

‘Lie down!’

Instead of obeying, the dog adopted an attitude of absolute servility, flattened his ears, raised his rump and crept stealthily forward, begging for his master’s attention. Grégoire distracted him by throwing him a sugar cube and grabbed the dog’s spoils.

‘What’s that? That’s not a bone, that’s … that’s a … How can anyone mislay something like that? Oh, there’s something inside …’

Grégoire was so puzzled he forgot to drink his coffee.

Lying back with his hands under his head, the man reflected on the enormity of what he had done. He had returned exhausted at dawn and sprawled on top of the rumpled sheet under his overcoat, going over the events of the previous night. The journey to the wine market on Rue Linné had barely taken him ten minutes. The blonde girl had slept deeply under the effect of the sleeping draught and he had carried her to the carriage without difficulty. No mistakes, no witnesses. And then? Child’s play; she had not suffered.

He put a coffee pot on the still warm stove, went over to the window and looked down into the street. It was an autumn day like any other. He had managed everything to perfection. It would take the police a while to identify the blonde and by then he would have had his vengeance. As for the young thug he had hired, there was no risk that he would give him away or try to blackmail him – when they found his body they would imagine it had been a settling of accounts. No one would link the two murders. He let the curtain fall. A detail was troubling him. That fellow at the first floor window … had he spotted him? He would have to reassure himself, find out who the man was and perhaps …

‘You’re mad,’ he said out loud.

But he let this thought go, and instead gloated over his plan, which he considered ingenious, cunning, brilliant – it had come off without a hitch, except that when he’d arrived at Killer’s Crossing5 he had noticed that the blonde was only wearing one shoe. It would have been much too risky to return to Rue Linné. At first he had panicked – that kind of error could be fatal. Then the solution had presented itself: all he had to do was remove the other shoe.

He poured himself a cup of coffee.

‘The flics will easily trace the owner of the stolen carriage but so what! Where will that get them, the fools?’

As he hunted in the pocket of his overcoat for some cigarettes, three little stains on the grey material caught his eye. Blood? It was an alpaca coat; it would be costly to get rid of it.

‘Just wine,’ he decided.

He inspected his trousers and shoes: spotless. He sat down at the table and regarded the red silk shoe sitting beside a flask of sulphuric acid.

‘The police will think it was a crime of passion.’

It was an amusing idea, and it soothed him.

‘In fact, I can make use of the shoe.’

He opened a drawer, took out some writing paper, a pen and an inkwell and wrote out an address:

Mademoiselle C. Bontemps

15 Chaussée de l’Étang

Saint-Mandé. Seine

Victor sat on a bench outside a building on Rue des Mathurins, leafing through Paris Photographie, a review to which he had just subscribed. He looked half-heartedly at an article by Paul Nadar and a collection of portraits of Sarah Bernhardt. His mind was elsewhere; he had not warned Tasha he was coming as he planned to surprise her. He consulted the pneumatic clock and decided to wander slowly to Tasha’s apartment. Making a detour to avoid Boulevard Haussmann, which stirred up unhappy memories, he turned off down Rue Auber and walked along Rue Laffitte.

As he passed 60 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette he felt a sudden wave of nostalgia. He pictured Tasha’s miniscule loft, and the memory of the early days of their affair produced an ardent longing to share his life with her.

On Rue Fontaine he noted with satisfaction that the little notice was still up in the hairdresser’s window:

Shop and Apartment to Let

For information contact the concierge at 36b

He had made up his mind. He went in under the porch.

On Thursdays the courtyard overlooked by Tasha’s studio became the domain of the joiner’s little girls, who were energetically playing hopscotch using a wooden quoit. A washing line stretched from a second floor window to the acacia tree in the middle of the courtyard. On windy days Victor loved to watch the washing billow like the sails of a boat. He circled the water pump splashed white with bird droppings and made his way over to the back room of the hairdresser. He shaded his eyes to make out the layout of the room through the dirty window: it was a well-proportioned space. Once done up it would make a splendid photographic studio! … Yes, it was the ideal solution; he would only have a few yards to cross …

Tasha was leaning over a pedestal table mixing colours on her palette. Lemon yellow, Veronese green and Prussian blue echoed the tones of the canvas she was working on, which depicted a laurel branch and two ears of corn emerging from an iridescent vase. The slanting rays of sunshine caught the brilliant copper lights of her hair, which hung loose. On impulse Victor buried his face in the magnificent mane of red hair.

‘Victor! You gave me a fright!’ cried the young woman. ‘I should wipe my brush on your shirt! Oh, it doesn’t matter, I wasn’t getting anywhere anyway.’

She threw the corn and the laurel down beside a potted palm.

‘I’m sick of still lifes!’

Victor, sitting in a Tudor chair, watched her put the vase away in a sideboard, then turn back to her easel.

‘Tasha, am I preventing you from fulfilling your potential?’

‘Of course not, idiot, I’m just not up to it, that’s all! I’m incapable of distinguishing the incidental from the essential.’

‘You’re overworking! Sometimes less is more; take a step back. What are you trying to prove?’

‘Maurice Laumier says that …’

‘Oh please! For pity’s sake! Forget about him! He has no originality; he thinks theory obviates the need for creation. Theory, theory, that’s all he talks about!’

‘You really do hate him.’

‘I despise what your Laumier stands for; there’s a difference. He paints by numbers and he calls that art. What he’s really interested in is making a sale.’

‘First of all, he’s not my Laumier, secondly …’

‘I’m right and you know it. Good grief! You don’t have to bow to fashion! Explore your interior universe, search what Kenji calls “the chambers of the soul” … Excuse me, I’m getting carried away, but perhaps you should take more interest in other aspects of life, in people.’

‘Do you think so? That’s what Henri advocated … Come on, don’t look like that. You have no reason to be jealous; he’s just a kind friend, and he’s talented. I met him at the Salon des Indépendents6 and …’

‘I demand nothing of you, you are free.’

‘Oh, stop it, Victor. Please don’t be childish; it’s becoming tiresome.’

She knelt down before him, slid her fingers under his collar and caressed his neck. He relaxed, ecstatic to feel her so close.

‘Isn’t it hot in here?’ she murmured, unbuttoning his shirt. ‘There now, I need to see the only male model that inspires me.’

‘Now?’

‘Just a quick drawing, there, on the sofa. Come on, take everything off.’

She picked up a sketchbook.

‘I’ll call it Monsieur Récamier in the Nude. Stay still.’

She adjusted the position of his right arm across his chest. He embraced her, pulling her towards him, fumbling to unfasten her dress. The sketchbook slipped to the floor.

‘Oh well, the light isn’t very good,’ she said.

He kissed her on the nose, the forehead, the hair as she helped him to slip off her dress.

‘Tasha, marry me; it would make everything so simple.’

‘It’s too soon,’ she whispered. ‘I’m not ready; I don’t want children … Have you got any …?’

He looked at her intensely, propped on one elbow, patted the pocket of his frock coat and pulled out a box of condoms.

‘Victor, are you angry with me?’

‘You know perfectly well that I always make an effort to be careful, even without protection.’

He pushed a lock of hair back from her cheek.

‘We’ll have to wait a little before we move on to the serious business and I advise you not to laugh,’ he murmured, clasping her to him.

A little later, as they lay together on the narrow sofa, he came close to confessing that he had rented the hairdressers’ shop.

‘Tasha, I …’

But she silenced him with a kiss. Everything ceased to exist, except her. He no longer felt the need to explain. Ideas, the future; nothing mattered. She stretched; she was happy. Her eyes were shining. Her breasts rose and fell with her quickened breathing.

‘I adore you. But my back hurts. We’ll have to move to the bed!’ she said over her shoulder, already making for the alcove.

Grégoire Mercier’s sciatica was troubling him. How long had he been sheltering under the porch of this building under the suspicious eye of the concierge? Twenty, thirty minutes? And when would those two chatterboxes finally clear off?

He clutched his iron-tipped staff, anxious about his flock, left at home in the care of Berlaud. Angry that his find had been confiscated, the dog had registered his disgust by lying down and growling in Rocambole’s cubby hole. That was a bad sign, a very bad sign. Grégoire hoped he would not take it out on the kids. The dog was becoming unpredictable in his old age.

Grégoire Mercier went over to the window and turned his gaze on the woman nearest him, as if he could force her to leave by a simple exercise of will.

Unaware of the thought waves aimed at her, Mathilde de Flavignol refused to comply. Oppressed by a grief she felt unable to contain, she had come to the bookshop hoping to be comforted by the bookseller. The seductive young Monsieur Legris aroused a strange excitement in her. But she was out of luck; he was absent, no doubt off paying court to that Russian hussy. The slightly hunchbacked blond shop assistant was there on his own, munching an apple as he read the newspaper. Still, she preferred him to the other one, the Oriental with the inscrutable expression.

She had scarcely begun to explain that her mourning sash marked the suicide of poor General Boulanger in Belgium, driven to shoot himself on the grave of his lover Marguerite de Bonnemain, when a woman in a fine wool suit, her grey hair braided under a ridiculous Tyrolean hat, had come in.

‘It’s not my day; here’s the Valkyrie,’ muttered Joseph. Then, out loud, ‘Mademoiselle Becker, what a lovely surprise!’

‘Guten Tag, Monsieur Pignot. You’re going to help me out, I know!’

Madame de Flavignol learned that this German lady was passionate about cycling and that she had come to look for works on the celeripede and the dandy horse, ancestors of the bicycle.

‘You see, Monsieur Pignot, I would like to give our national hero Charles Terront a present for winning.’

‘Who’s Charles Terront?’ demanded Mathilde de Flavignol.

‘I can’t believe that you haven’t heard of him! He’s the winner of the Paris to Brest race – held last September, on the sixth. One thousand miles there and back in seventy-two hours! He pedalled day and night without stopping to sleep! What an outstanding man. And he’s going to be giving cycling lessons at Bullier.’

‘Perhaps that would take my mind off my misery … You see I worshipped the General, a passionate man who could not bear the death of his Dulcinea. I made the journey to Ixelles to attend his funeral. What a magnificent ceremony! He still had many friends – that was clear from the crowd of French who went to his obsequies. Oh, I’ll never get over it … Bullier … Isn’t that a dance hall of ill-repute? It’s said that La Goulue7 danced the cancan there … I’m so miserable. Do you think that bicycling would …?’

‘Assuredly, Madame. The sport has two advantages: it has a very calming effect but it is also wonderful for firming up the calves!’

‘I’m too frightened to get in the saddle …’

‘Do you have a good sense of balance? Can you walk in a straight line?’

‘Well … I rarely drink too much.’

‘In that case you will certainly be able to master the bicycle, take my word for it.’

Joseph Pignot was not the only one to breathe a sigh of relief as the two women went off arm in arm, allowing him to settle down to his newspaper again. Hurrying out from his shelter and escaping the venomous eye of the concierge, Grégoire Mercier made his entrance.

What now? Jojo thought, his nostrils assailed by a pungent odour.

A strangely attired, snub-nosed fellow advanced towards him, pulled a woman’s shoe from his cloak and laid it on the counter.

‘There you are. Berlaud found it this morning; he loves to pick up whatever’s been left behind. Mind you I let him do it; nothing is more important than freedom and independence. When we got home again, I took a good look at what he’d found. Well, I said to myself, a lady’s slipper. The lass who left behind that trinket must be furious, especially since it’s beautifully made. I’m giving it to you; it just needs a bit of work from the cobbler. He’ll be able to fix the holes; my dog bit it a little too hard.’

Stupefied, Jojo looked first at the embroidered red slipper, decorated with pearls, and then back at the strange man.

‘Why are you giving it to me?’

‘Because it has the name and address of your shop fitted inside, like an inner sole.’

He held the folded sheet of headed notepaper out to Jojo, who opened it out and read:

ELZÉVIR BOOKSHOP

V. LEGRIS – K. MORI,

Established in 1835. Antiquarian and New Books.

First Editions. Catalogue by Request.

18 Rue des Saints-Pères, Paris VI

‘Well that’s truly bizarre!’ he exclaimed. ‘Perhaps it belongs to a client.’

‘One who’s not short of a penny? Who could afford to have precious stones on their shoes?’

Guessing that the visitor was fishing for a tip, Jojo opened the till and proffered two francs, but the strange fellow recoiled, offended.

‘Grégoire Mercier does not accept payment, other than for the produce of his goats. Naturally if the owner of the shoe wants to thank me with a little something I won’t say no.’

He touched two fingers to his hat and turned to go.

‘Wait! Where did you unearth this shoe?’

‘In the middle of my rounds, after having delivered a bowl of milk from Nini Moricaude, who I feed on carrots, to Quai de la Tournelle …’

‘So your dog …?’

‘Berlaud scampered off. I heard lions roaring and I thought he’d pilfered a piece of their meat; he’s old but intrepid. I whistled for him, he didn’t come back, so …’

‘Right, well I’ll do my best to return this shoe to the correct foot,’ said Jojo nasally; he was breathing through his mouth to avoid the overpowering stench of goat. ‘Where can we find you if there’s a reward?’

‘Ruelle des Reculettes, in the Croulebarbe quarter. Over there everyone knows Grégoire Mercier.’

When the man had gone Jojo examined the slipper carefully.

‘Yup, there’s something odd about this shoe business. I’ll have to put it in my notebook.’

‘Joseph! Who was that?’

‘Boss! Are you up? That’s not allowed! What will become of us if you give the customers scarlet fever?’

‘I’m recovered. My quarantine expired thirty-four minutes and eighteen seconds ago. Show me that,’ said Kenji, leaning over the banister.

Murmuring, ‘The Boss has put himself on Paris time,’8 Jojo held out the shoe against his better judgement. Kenji studied it carefully, and his expression suddenly changed as if something terrible had happened. He let the slipper clatter to the floor. Jojo put it back on the counter.

‘Go and fetch me a cab, this instant!’ commanded Kenji, in a husky voice.

‘A cab! You’re joking! If he finds out, Monsieur Legris will slaughter me!’

‘It’s an order!’ shouted Kenji.

The afternoon was dull. The only visitors to the bookshop were a Paul Bourget enthusiast, a woman in pince-nez anxious to buy the latest book by Edmond de Goncourt on the painter Outamaro and two young men seeking travel books. At each tinkle of the doorbell, Jojo looked up hopefully, but neither of his bosses deigned to appear. At seven o’clock, neglected by everyone, he closed the shutters and abandoned ship. On the way out he picked up the red slipper and, not knowing what else to do with it, stuffed it into his pocket.

Rue Visconti, where Madame Pignot and her son lived, had been transformed by a fine and persistent autumn rain into a dark tunnel. Joseph bounded over the threshold and took refuge in the study his father, during his too-short life, had transformed into a bookseller’s treasure trove. Euphrosine Pignot had finished her costermonger’s rounds and was stirring her pots on the stone sink of their narrow lodgings. Joseph lit a match and adjusted the wick of the petrol lamp. The shelves, weighed down with books and newspapers, acted as a balm to his soul. He hung his soaking jacket on the back of a chair and hummed the disparaged couplet that had incurred Victor’s displeasure:

Do you know her, Lohengrin,

Lohengrin, Lohengrin,

A woman divine

But full of venom …

The word ‘venom’ revived his despair, reminding him of Valentine de Salignac, his lost treasure. Last May the niece of the Comtesse had married the nephew of the Duc de Frioul, a pretentious, drunken young rake named Boni de Pont-Joubert. Ever since their marriage, celebrated in the Église Saint-Roch the day after the shooting at Fourmies,9 Jojo had been prey to those changes of mood that so annoyed Victor. The pain was gradually abating, but was reawakened by the merest trifle. Deep down he had known that his love for Valentine could never lead anywhere, and that the young girl had been forced into her alliance despite her own feelings for Joseph. But this had not stopped him from shelving his great literary project, destined to outdo the mysteries of Émile Gaboriau: Blood and Love.

‘Women! First they inspire you and then, because of them, the muse deserts you! So, what am I going to do this evening? Perhaps I should go back to writing The Life and Times of Rue Visconti. I was at the chapter describing the attempted murder of Louis-Philippe by Louis Alibaud, resident of number 3, with a rifle-cane …’

Taking up a manuscript and a pencil he settled himself in a rickety armchair.

A chubby face topped with a chignon appeared round the door connecting the study to the rest of the apartment.

‘So, you are there, my pet? I thought I heard singing. You might have let me know you were here! Are you going to tuck into some lovely cabbage soup?’

‘Not hungry.’

‘You’ve got to eat! You’re as white as a sheet and your arms are like lollipop sticks! You’re wearing yourself out; I might have something to say to your bosses. And for heaven’s sake, how many times over could Monsieur Mori have given you scarlet fever? That would have taken the biscuit! He’s better at least?’

‘No, yes, I don’t know. I’m writing in case you’re interested …’

‘He should have taken my advice. Cupping is what draws the illness out from under the skin or leeches; it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. Writing or not, you’ve five minutes to come through for dinner.’

She wrinkled her nose and sniffed, looking about suspiciously.

‘There’s a strange smell, and it’s not my soup! Is it you, by any chance?’

‘Me? What does it smell of?’ asked Jojo, flaring his nostrils.

Madame Pignot studied her son dispassionately; when had he stopped shaving?

‘It smells of goat. Right, five minutes!’ she finished in a threatening tone as she went out.

Jojo sniffed his jacket. His mother had a keen sense of smell. The shoe! He pulled it from his pocket, took it over to the lamp and let the light play on it, the pearls shimmering. A fairy tale slipper, a Cinderella slipper … ‘The girl who fits this slipper shall be my betrothed …’

He imagined Valentine slowly removing her corset, her underskirts and her blouse … but his fantasy was ruined by the extremely disagreeable smell emanating from the red silk. What had that bizarre character been telling him? He’d mentioned a sheepfold, a street called ‘croule’ something or other, a dog, goats, lions, a real muddle, but that smell … There was no doubt, it was the smell of goat. And the headed notepaper from the shop – was that just a coincidence? And why had Monsieur Mori run off like that at the sight of the shoe, as if he had had the devil at his heels?

‘Say what you like, it’s not normal. I’ll note it all down; it might come in handy …’

Just as he picked up his notebook, a ferocious voice thundered: ‘My pet! The five minutes are up! Your soup is getting cold!’