The Montmartre Investigation (24 page)

‘You're in luck. We have a few copies of
L'Éclair.
Don't put spittle on your finger when you turn the pages,' the old man stipulated, returning to his desk.

Standing side by side, they scoured the back issues.

‘Boss, I think we've drawn a blank.'

‘There!'

They became engrossed in their reading.

‘What an incredible story, Boss! I can just picture it: the mysterious Baroness behind her veil, Prosper Charmansat trussed up and desperate, and the Doctor austere and…'

‘Yes, but this is real life, Joseph, and if we don't get a move on dear old Herbert is going to start looking daggers at us!'

They avoided the old man's baleful glances. Out on the pavement of Rue du Croissant, they stood for a moment, stunned. A sudden downpour roused them, and Victor swiftly put up his umbrella.

‘One thing is sure; this is a case of revenge. But who is taking revenge on whom? Charmansat on Aubertot? Or vice versa?'

‘It might seem strange, Boss, but I think those two are as thick as thieves. I wouldn't be surprised if Aubertot was the man I followed who met Charmansat at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont and then in Rue Caulaincourt again yesterday!'

‘Yes, your description fits,' agreed Victor.

‘And what's more I followed him down Rue de Navarre, near the Roman arenas and Rue Monge, so maybe that's where he got the idea for his nom de plume.'

‘Joseph! You're getting quite good at this.'

‘I know, Boss, I never cease to amaze myself. Are our two chaps in cahoots or is someone else pulling the strings? As for Noémi Gerfleur, her goose is cooked: exit one Baroness Saint-Meslin, and Élisa who was unfortunate enough to have a thief for a mother.'

‘Yes, but where does Louis Dolbreuse fit into all this?'

‘Nowhere yet, Boss. But I'm keeping him up my sleeve, because yesterday the other two were after him. Where to first?'

‘The pawnshop is nearest to here.'

‘That's just what I was going to suggest. If we're lucky, we'll catch him coming out for his lunch break.'

‘…and we can grab a bite ourselves,' added Joseph, ever hopeful.

 

A stream of clerks and office workers filed down Rue des Franc-Bourgeois, but the tubby, bearded fellow was not among them. Victor collared a stooped young man with bushy eyebrows.

‘I must have missed one of your colleagues, Prosper Charmansat…'

‘I'm not surprised. He's ill.'

‘Since when?'

‘Since this morning. I'd be telling a lie if I said I missed him. People like that make you wish the plague still existed.'

‘Why? Is he an unpleasant sort?'

‘Worse than that, he takes himself seriously,' replied the young man, whose shoulders looked as if he were bearing the weight of the whole world upon them. ‘There are times when he behaves as though he owned all the rubbish these poor people come here and dump on us. Oh, and it's thanks to him, too, that the wheel was invented. Well, all I can say is with well-oiled cogs like him, the machine of state will never cease to turn,' he declared, spitting in the gutter.

Victor and Joseph looked at one another and hailed a cab in unison.

 

The ex-jeweller was not at home. They ran after their cab and shouted to the driver to take them to Rue Monge. Victor left the famished Joseph in the carriage and went to knock on Aubertot's door. The mute valet he had met on Saturday gave him a pained look.

‘Monsieur is not at home,' he said through gritted teeth.

Victor produced a coin from his pocket, and by his customary sleight of hand transferred it to that of the servant, whose mouth, forming an O as if he were about to emit a smoke ring, miraculously began to move.

‘A messenger delivered a note to Monsieur while he was in the middle of lunch and Monsieur left for the Salpêtrière immediately.'

The servant snapped his jaw shut, exhausted after such a long communication.

 

Nobody on Mazarin or Lassay Wings could boast having received a visit from Doctor Aubertot that morning. Victor cursed the ill-fortune that had sent him on so many wild goose chases in one day. Joseph, as wet as he was hungry, found it hard to keep up. He swore never again to go off on a case, however exciting, without enjoying a hearty meal first.

‘Hey! I'm getting wet here under this so-called umbrella.'

‘What are you complaining about now?'

‘Nothing, I'm just talking to myself.'

They walked alongside the Chapelle Saint-Louis, which looked like an animal crouching beneath the overcast sky. A tiny hunched figure stirred near the entrance and a voice cried out:

‘Help! A ghost!'

Victor looked at Joseph and passed him the umbrella.

A woman as thin as a reed with a halo of white hair clutched his arm.

‘I came to listen to the music of God. I was floating up with the angels when I saw him,' she breathed. ‘He's in there, waiting.'

Victor recognised the little old lady from Cour Manon, who only a few days before had been recalling her first kiss. She looked back at the chapel and, regaining her composure, spoke in a barely audible voice.

‘I saw him, I saw him, he's come back, the sly devil, and he's dancing like a pendulum, right, left, ding, dong, ding, dong, black as a ghost under a red moon. I know who is; he's come for Zélie Bastien.'

Fear in the eyes of another, even an old lady lapsed into second childhood, strikes at the heart. Joseph gulped. The sinister Cours des Comptes
³¹
took the place of the squat shape of Chapelle Saint-Louis and suddenly his appetite had vanished.

‘Please don't leave me alone,' begged Madame Bastien, looking like a terrified child who has seen a wolf. Her knees buckled and she propped herself up against a sculpture depicting Cain and Abel, which Victor would not have wished to encounter in any forest. He motioned to Joseph.

‘Stay with her. I'm going to see what it is.'

As he entered the icy interior of the building, he had the impression of walking into a cave where a wild beast has its lair. The gloom was mitigated by the sputtering flames that cast a yellow light on to the figures of the paintings hung round the walls – copies or imitations of the old masters – that flickered briefly to life as though animated by a desire to exist in three dimensions. He recalled the terrifying English gothic horror novels he had read, from Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
, which Kenji had given him one summer when he was thirteen, to Robert Louis Stevenson's
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde
, which he had devoured when it first came out in 1885.

His steps echoed as he walked into each of the side chapels. When he reached the third he saw something. He moved between the rows of prayer benches.

‘Are you all right, Boss?' Joseph called.

‘Yes,' he replied.

His voice sounded as if it were coming out of an organ pipe and the noise bounced off the walls of the nave. The waning daylight filtering through the stained-glass windows depicting saints gazing up at azure skies mingled with the encroaching darkness and cast terrible shadows. Victor paused. He felt his legs turn to jelly. On one of the walls a huge, black shadow was swinging. He turned round slowly.

Terrified, he tried to calm his wildly beating heart. He stumbled and grabbed hold of the rail round the altar.

‘Get out! Get out!' a voice whispered inside his head.

He had seen many corpses, but this one was different.

The body was suspended from the pulpit by a rope round its neck. One end of it had been tied in a double loop and was lying under the dais. The man's feet were dangling some eight inches above the tiled floor. In front of the corpse a chair lay knocked over.

Victor found a candle and put the chair upright. Doctor Aubertot would be giving no more consultations. His head was bare and his face stained with the blood that had poured from his nose and ears. There was some severe bruising beneath his left ear.

Victor's first instinct was to call for help, and yet there was something about the corpse that intrigued him. It was the expression. He had never dealt with a hanging before, but he couldn't help feeling this one had a staged quality about it. There was no swollen tongue sticking out of the corpse's mouth and the half-open eyes stared at him from an ashen face. He lowered the candle. A pool of red was spreading across the floor.

All of a sudden a cackling laugh rang out from behind a pillar.

Victor jumped out of his skin. In the gloom he made out a screwed up face and a bulging neck. It was a woman, a wretched woman with goitre who was pointing her finger at him and shaking with laughter that seemed more like sobbing. He moved back, horrified, and ran out into the fresh air where he stood for a long time letting the rain run down his face.

 

The hospital attendant hurrying in the direction of the main building tried without success to avoid the stranger running towards him waving his arms. Victor seized the poor man by the wrists and ordered him to go and cut down the body hanging in the Chapelle Saint-Louis. Panting, he hurried back to Joseph, who was only too relieved to be delivered from Madame Bastien's lamentations.

‘Anyone would think you were being chased by demons, Boss!'

‘Aubertot has been murdered! There's not a moment to lose!'

Joseph, astonished, and still clutching the umbrella he had closed in order to be able to move faster, set off behind Victor in the direction of Boulevard de l'Hôpital.

 

The widow Galipot was blocking their way. Sprawled across the bottom step, she was brandishing an empty bottle and railing against the bastards who had stolen her drink. Unruffled by her haranguing cries of ‘fools!' and ‘rascals!' they managed to climb over her and up the stairs.

‘On the left, Boss!'

Victor was about to push against the door when it flew open. A man in a sombrero, wearing a check jacket, knocked Joseph off his feet and leapt down the stairwell.

‘Dolbreuse!' roared Victor.

‘Stop him!' shouted Joseph at the top of his voice.

There was a high-pitched shriek and the words: ‘Your dough, you imbecile!' rang out, followed by the dull thud of a hard object coming down on someone's head, and then a general commotion. Joseph went downstairs to find out what was going on, and Victor searched the apartment, ending up in the bedroom, where he found a man hanging from the window latch by a piece of gauze. It was Charmansat. Victor rushed forward, hoisted up the wretched man, who was twisting about frantically, and managed to untie him, but failed to stop him from falling.

‘If he isn't already done for, that might have finished him off,' he murmured, kneeling beside the ex-jeweller who lay in a heap.

Charmansat was in a sorry state. He sat up with difficulty, choking and spitting, his hand clasping his side. Victor helped remove his waistcoat and his ripped shirt. He was astonished to see that the man's chest, which was protected by a leather breast plate, had only suffered a surface wound. Had it not been for this unusual corset, the knife attack would have proved fatal.

‘It's a souvenir from the psychiatric hospital,' Charmansat breathed, grimacing. ‘I strained my back struggling when they put me in that cell. This contraption keeps the vertebrae in place.'