Murder on the Eiffel Tower E-Book

Claude Izner

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: The Victor Legris Mysteries
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 405

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In 1889 at the brand new Eiffel Tower, a woman collapses and dies on this great Paris landmark. Can a bee-sting really be the cause? Or is there a more sinister explanation? Enter young bookseller Victor Legris, present on the Tower at the time, he is determined to find out what actually happened. In this dazzling evocation of late-nineteenth century Paris, we follow Victor as his investigation takes him all over the city. But what will he do when the deaths begin to multiply and he is caught in a race against time?

Leseprobe

MURDER ON THE EIFFEL TOWER

CLAUDE IZNER

Translated by Isabel Reid

Paris dresse sa tour ainsi qu’une grande giraffe inquiète sa tour qui, le soir venu, craint les fantômes.

Paris raises its tower like a big, anxious giraffe its tower which, come night-time, is frightened of ghosts.

PIERRE MAC ORLAN (Tel était Paris)

For Étia and Maurice Jaime and Bernard Jonathan and David Rachel

Contents

Title PageEpigraphPROLOGUECHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENCHAPTER FOURTEENAlso from Gallic Books:About the AuthorCopyrightAdvertisement

PROLOGUE

12 May 1889

Storm clouds raced over the barren plain between the fortifications and the goods station at Les Batignolles, where the scrubby grass smelled unpleasantly of sewers. Rag-and-bone men, grouped around carts filled with household rubbish, were using their gaffs to level the mounds of detritus, raising eddies of dust. A train approached from far in the distance, gradually getting bigger and bigger.

A gang of children came running down the hillocks, shrieking: ‘There he is! Buffalo Bill is coming!’

Jean Méring straightened up and, hands on hips, leant backwards to relieve his aching joints. It had been a good haul: a three-legged chair, a rocking horse that had lost its stuffing, an old umbrella, a soldier’s epaulette and a piece of wash-basin rimmed with gold. He turned towards Henri Capus, a lean old man with a faded beard.

‘I’m going to see the Redskins. Are you coming?’ he said, adjusting the wicker basket on his shoulders.

He picked up his chair, passed the Cook Agency vehicles and joined the crowd of onlookers gathered around the station, a mixture of workmen, petit bourgeois, and high society people who had come in carriages.

With a great hiss of steam, a locomotive followed by an endless convoy of coaches pulled up beside the platform. A covered wagon stopped in front of Jean Méring. Inside, panic-stricken horses were stamping wildly, and tossing their manes. Sunburned men in cowboy hats and Indians with painted faces and feather headdresses leant out of the doors. Everyone was jostling to catch a glimpse. Jean Méring slapped the nape of his neck: an insect sting. Immediately he faltered, slid sideways, staggered, and then stumbled against a woman, who pushed him away, thinking he was drunk. His legs buckled and, as he lost his grip on the chair, he sank to the ground, dragged down by the weight of his basket. He tried to raise his head but already he was too weak. He could faintly hear Henri Capus’s voice.

‘What’s the matter, my friend? Hold on, I’ll help you. Where does it hurt?’

With a tremendous effort Méring managed to gasp: ‘A … bee …’

His eyes were watering and his sight was becoming blurred. Amazingly, in the space of just a few minutes, his whole body had become as limp as an old rag. He could no longer feel his limbs, his lungs were straining for air. In his last moments of lucid thought he knew that he was about to die. He made a final effort to cling to life, then let go, slipping into the abyss, down … down … down … The last thing he saw was a dandelion flower, which was blooming between the paving stones, as yellow as the sun.

LE FIGARO, 13 MAY 1889 (page 4) CURIOUS DEATH OF A RAG-AND-BONE MAN

A rag-and-bone man from Rue de la Parcheminerie has died from a bee-sting. The accident occurred yesterday morning at Batignolles station as Buffalo Bill and his troupe arrived in Paris. Bystanders tried in vain to revive the victim. The enquiry has revealed that the dead man was Jean Méring, 42, a former Communard who had been deported to New Caledonia but returned to Paris after the amnesty of 1880.

The man crumpled the newspaper into a ball and tossed it into the waste-bin.

CHAPTER ONE

Wednesday 22 June

WEARING a tight new corset that creaked with every step, Eugénie Patinot walked down Avenue des Peupliers. She felt weary at the prospect of what already promised to be an exhausting day. Endlessly pestered by the children, she had reluctantly left the cool of the veranda. If outwardly she gave an impression of dignified composure, inside she was in turmoil: tightness in her chest, stomach cramps, a dull pain in her hip and, on top of everything, palpitations.

‘Don’t run, Marie-Amélie. Hector, stop whistling, it’s vulgar.’

‘We’re going to miss the bus, Aunt! Hector and I are going to sit upstairs. Have you definitely got the tickets?’

Eugénie stopped and opened her reticule to make sure that she did have the tickets, which her brother-in-law had bought several days earlier.

‘Hurry up, Aunt,’ urged Marie-Amélie.

Eugénie glared. The child really knew how to annoy her. A capricious little boy, Hector was hardly any better. Only Gontran, the eldest, was tolerable, as long as he kept quiet.

There were about ten passengers waiting at the omnibus station on Rue d’Auteuil. Eugénie recognised Louise Vergne, the housemaid from the Le Massons. She was carrying a large basket of linen to the laundry, probably the one on Rue Mirabeau, and was quite unselfconsciously wiping her pale face with a handkerchief as big as a sheet. There was no way of avoiding her. Eugénie stifled her irritation. The woman was only a servant but always spoke to her as an equal, with overfamiliarity, and yet Eugénie had never dared point out this impropriety.

‘Ah, Madame Patinot, how hot it is for June! I feel I might melt away.’

‘That would be no bad thing,’ muttered Eugénie.

‘Are you going far, Madame Patinot?’

‘To the Expo. These three little devils begged my sister to go.’

‘Poor dear, the things you have to do. Aren’t you frightened? All those foreigners …’

‘I want to see Buffalo Bill’s circus at Neuilly. There are real Redskins who shoot real arrows!’

‘That’s enough, Hector! Oh that’s good, he’s wearing odd socks – a white one, and a grey one.’

‘It’s coming, Aunt, it’s coming!’

Omnibus A, drawn by three stolid horses, stopped by the pavement. Marie-Amélie ran upstairs.

‘I can see your drawers,’ shrieked Hector, following her up.

‘I don’t care! From up here everything’s beautiful,’ retorted the little girl.

Sitting next to Gontran, who was glued to her side, Eugénie reflected on the fact that the worst moments of one’s life were those spent on public transport. She hated travelling; it made her feel lost and alone, like a dead leaf floating at the mercy of the tiniest breeze.

‘Is that a new outfit you’ve bought yourself?’ asked Louise Vergne.

The treachery of the question was not lost on Eugénie. ‘It’s a present from my sister,’ she replied curtly, smoothing the silk of the flame-coloured dress into which she was tightly packed.

She omitted to mention that her sister had already worn the dress for two seasons, but added softly: ‘Mind you don’t miss your stop, my dear.’

Having silenced the tiresome woman, Eugénie opened her purse and counted her money, pleased that they had taken the omnibus rather than a carriage. The saving would give her a little more to put by. It was worth the sacrifice.

Louise Vergne rose haughtily like an offended duchess. ‘If I were you, I would hide your bag. They say that all of London’s pickpockets have emigrated to the Champ-de-Mars,’ was her parting remark as she got off.

Immediately Gontran piped up, ‘Did you know that they had to manufacture eighteen thousand pieces in the workshops of Levallois-Perret, and that it took two hundred workmen to assemble them on the site? People predicted that it would collapse after two hundred and eighty metres but it didn’t.’

Here we go, thought Eugénie. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Why, the Tower, of course!’

‘Sit up straight and wipe your nose.’

‘If you wanted to transport it somewhere else on wheels you would need ten thousand horses,’ Gontran continued, rubbing his nose.

Hector and Marie-Amélie came bounding down from the top deck. ‘We’re here, look!’

Pointing straight up into the sky on the other side of the Seine, Gustave Eiffel’s bronze-coloured tower was reminiscent of a giant streetlamp topped with gold. Panic-stricken, Eugénie searched for a pretext to get out of climbing it. When she couldn’t think of one, she laid a hand on her pounding heart. If I survive this I shall say fifty Paternosters at Notre-Dame d’Auteuil.

The bus drew up in front of the enormous Trocadero Palace, flanked by minarets. Down below, beyond the grey ribbon of the river filled with boats, the fifty hectares of the Universal Exposition were spread before them.

Tightly clutching her bag, her eyes fixed on the children, Eugénie began her descent into hell. She charged down Colline de Chaillot, passing the fruits of the world display, the tortured bonsai of the Japanese garden, and the dark entrance of ‘Journey to the Centre of the Earth’ without a second glance. Though the whalebones of her corset chafed her ribs and her feet begged for mercy, she did not slacken her pace. She just wanted to get this over and done with as soon as possible and get back on terra firma …

Finally, she held out her tickets and pushed the children under the canopy of the Pont d’Iéna. ‘Listen to me carefully,’ she said slowly and deliberately. ‘If you stray from me by so much as a centimetre – do you hear me? a centimetre – we’re going home.’

Then she plunged headlong into the fray. A huge crowd was jostling around the multicoloured kiosks, forming a human tide of French people and foreigners of all races. The minstrels of Leicester Square, with their soot-blackened faces, led the way along the left bank, to the rhythm of banjos.

With pounding heart, and overwhelmed by the noise, Eugénie clung to Gontran, who was unmoved by the hubbub. The Exposition seemed to come at them from all sides. Jostled between the street vendors, the Annamese rickshaw-pullers and Egyptian donkey-drivers, they finally succeeded in joining the queue in front of the southern pillar of the Tower.

Moving reluctantly along in the queue, Eugénie looked enviously at the elegant young people comfortably installed in special rolling chairs, pushed by employees in peaked caps. That’s what I need …

‘Aunt, look!’

She looked up and saw a forest of crossbars and small beams, in the midst of which a lift slid up and down. At once she was seized with a desire to flee as fast and far as her exhausted legs would carry her.

She dimly heard Gontran’s monotonous voice: ‘Three hundred and one metres … leading straight up to the second floor … four lifts. Otis, Combaluzier …’

Otis, Combaluzier. Something about those strange names suddenly reminded her of the projectile vehicle, in that book by Jules Verne whose title escaped her.

‘Those preferring to walk up the one thousand seven hundred and ten steps will take an hour to do so …’

She remembered now: it was From the Earth to the Moon! What if the cables snapped …?

‘Aunt, I want a balloon! A helium balloon! A blue one! Give me a sou, Aunt, a sou!’

A clout on the ear more like!

She regained her self-control. A poor relation, given a roof over her head out of pure charity, could not afford to give free rein to her feelings. Regretfully she held out a sou to Hector.

Gontran was still reciting impassively from the Exhibition Guide. ‘… on average, eleven thousand visitors a day, and the Tower can accommodate ten thousand people at any one time …’

He stopped abruptly, sensing the icy glare of the man just ahead of them, an immaculately dressed middle-aged man of Japanese origin. He stared at Gontran unblinkingly until he lowered his eyes, then slowly turned away, satisfied.

Turning towards the ticket window, Eugénie was so overcome by panic that she was unable to string two words together.

Marie-Amélie pushed her aside and, standing on tiptoes, bellowed: ‘Four tickets for the second platform, please.’

‘Why the second? The first platform is high enough,’ stammered Eugénie.

‘We must sign the Golden Book in the Figaro Pavilion, have you forgotten? Papa insisted – he wants to read our names in the newspaper. Pay the lady, Aunt.’

Propelled to the back of the lift, close behind a Japanese man whose face bore an expression of childish delight, Eugénie collapsed onto a wooden bench and commended her soul to God. She could not stop thinking about an advertisement glimpsed in the Journal des Modes that declared: ‘Do you lack iron? Are you anaemic? Chlorotic? Bravais tincture restores the blood and combats fatigue.’

‘Bravais, Bravais, Bravais,’ she chanted to herself.

There was a sudden jolt. Her heart in her mouth, she saw the red mesh of a birdcage passing by. She had just time to think, Mon Dieu, what am I doing here?, when the lift came to a stop on the second floor, one hundred and sixteen metres above the ground.

Leaning against the railing on the first floor of the Tower, Victor Legris was keeping an eye on the coming and going of the lifts. His business associate had suggested they meet between the Flemish restaurant and the Anglo-American bar. The gallery was crammed and the atmosphere was electric with the nervous laughter of women, the animated conversation of men. Those returning for a second visit looked blasé. The lifts stopped, discharged their cargo and set off again. A motley throng stretched back along the stairs. Victor loosened his cravat and undid his top shirt button. The sun was beating down and he was thirsty. Hat in hand, he wandered as far as the souvenir shop.

A blue balloon brushed past his nose and a piercing voice cried out: ‘He was a cowboy, I tell you! He signed the Golden Book behind us. He comes from New York!’

Victor observed the two boys and the little girl whose face was pressed up against the shop window.

‘Everything’s so beautiful! The brooch with the Eiffel Tower on top, and the fans and the embroidered handkerchiefs …’

‘Why do you never believe me?’ yelled the little boy with the balloon. ‘I’m sure he’s part of Buffalo Bill’s troupe!’

‘That’s enough about Buffalo Bill – why don’t you look at the view instead?’ The older boy pointed towards the horizon. ‘Do you realise we can see Chartres from here? It’s a hundred and twenty kilometres away. And there are the towers of Notre-Dame and there, those of Saint-Sulpice. Then there’s the dome of the Panthéon, the Val-de-Grâce. It’s amazing, like being giants in Gulliver’s Travels!’

‘What are those things that look like enormous boiled eggs?’

‘That’s the Observatory. And further away over there is Montmartre, where they’re building the Basilica.’

‘It looks like a piece of pumice stone,’ muttered the younger boy. ‘Gontran, if I let my balloon go will it float all the way to America?’

I would love to be their age and have their enthusiasm, thought Victor. Even if they live fifty years more, they’ll never know greater excitement than this.

He caught sight of his reflection in the shop window: a slim man of medium height, thirtyish, with a harassed expression and a thick moustache.

Is that really me? Why do I look so disillusioned?

He went up to the railing and glanced down on the hordes of people milling around the Palace of Fine Arts, hurrying up Rue du Caire, storming the little Decauville train and massing in front of the vast Machinery Hall. Suddenly he felt that the atmosphere had become hostile.

‘Aunt, look after my balloon.’

Glued to her seat like a barnacle to a rock, Eugénie Patinot was determined not to move. Without a word of protest she let Hector knot the string of the balloon around her wrist. The garlands and flags of the Flemish restaurant fluttered in a light breeze and made her vertigo worse. She recalled a few lines of a song:

    Le doux vertige de l’amour     Souffle parfois sur nos vieux jours …

She felt suddenly sick.

‘Marie-Amélie, stay with me.’

‘That’s not fair! The boys are—’

‘Do as you’re told.’

She was worn out after that interminable wait on the second platform with all the people wanting to sign the Golden Book, pushing and shoving. Her cheeks were flushed and her hands trembled – where would she find the courage to bear the lift ride for a third time? Clumsily, she tucked a lock of grey hair back under her hat. Someone sat down beside her, rose again, stumbled, and leant heavily on her shoulder without apologising. She let out a little cry – something had stung her on the base of the neck. A bee? Yes, definitely a bee! She waved her arms in fright and jumped to her feet, then lost her balance as her legs refused to hold her. She managed to sit back down on the bench. A feeling of great heaviness began to spread through her limbs and she had difficulty breathing. She leant back against the gallery partition. If only she could go to sleep, and forget her fear and tiredness … Just before she lost consciousness she remembered something the priest had said to her after the death of her child: ‘Life here on earth is only a sort of prelude, it is written in the Bible, and the Bible is the Word of God.’ She saw Marie-Amélie run away, disappearing into the crowd, but she didn’t have the strength to call her back as a weight was pressing down on her chest. Before her watering eyes the crowd drifted heedlessly in a circle that seemed to close in on her, nearer and nearer …

Victor was fanning himself with his hat at the entrance to the Anglo-American bar as he tried to spot his friend Marius Bonnet amongst the mosaic of dark frock coats and light-coloured dresses. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he turned towards a small plump man of about forty, who was hiding his advancing baldness under a Panama hat worn at an angle.

‘I say, Marius, what’s got into you? Why did you choose a place like this to meet? In honour of what? I didn’t understand your message at all.’

‘Oh, don’t complain: the world seen from up here seems quite ridiculous and that fortifies the soul. Where’s your business associate?’

‘He’s coming. So, tell me, what’s this all about?’

‘We’re celebrating the fiftieth issue of my newspaper. The first edition came out on the fourth of May, on the eve of the centenary celebrations of the opening of the Estates General at Versailles. Personally, I’m happy to make do with a three-hundred-metre tower, and I wanted you to join the party.’

‘So you’re no longer a reporter for Le Temps?’

‘I’ve given up working at Le Temps. A great deal has happened since I last visited your bookshop! Have you forgotten our discussion?’

‘I must admit that I didn’t really take your plans seriously.’

‘Well, old chap, you’re going to be surprised. And if I have gone ahead, it’s partly because of your business associate.’

‘Kenji?’

‘Yes, Monsieur Mori really cut me to the quick when he mocked my indecisiveness. So I took the plunge; you see before you the director and editor-in-chief of Le Passe-partout, a daily newspaper with a great future. Besides, I want to make you a very interesting proposition.’

Victor considered Marius’s chubby face doubtfully. He had met him some years earlier at the house of the painter Meissonier, and had been very taken with the voluble and enthusiastic southerner. Marius was a witty conversationalist, peppered his speech with literary quotations, and charmed both men and women with his apparent candour, but he also had a razor-sharp tongue and never hesitated to voice what others thought wiser to keep to themselves.

‘Come, I’m going to introduce you to our team. There are only a few of us. We’re a long way off rivalling the eighty thousand copies sold by Le Figaro but being small doesn’t stop you being great – think of Alexander.’

They pushed their way through the crowd to a table where two men and two women sat sipping drinks.

‘Children, let me introduce Victor Legris, my learned bookseller friend whom I’ve often spoken about. His collaboration will be invaluable to us. Victor, this is Eudoxie Allard, our peerless secretary, accountant, co-ordinator and general factotum.’

Eudoxie Allard, a languorous, heavy-lidded brunette, looked him up and down and, judging him to be of only limited and strictly professional interest, gave him a noncommittal smile.

‘That chap dressed like a dandy is Antonin Clusel. He’s an expert at unearthing information,’ Marius went on. ‘Besides, you’ve already met him; he’s been to your bookshop with me. He’s very persistent: once he’s on the trail of something he never gives up.’

Victor saw an affable young man with flaxen hair, whose nose bent slightly to the left. Beside him was a large disillusioned-looking fellow with protuberant eyes, who was contemplating his glass.

‘To his right, Isidore Gouvier, police deserter. He can gain access to the most secret information. Finally, Mademoiselle Tasha Kherson, a compatriot of Turgenev’s and our illustrator and caricaturist.’

Victor shook everyone’s hands but only remembered the illustrator’s first name, Tasha, with her red hair pulled back in a chignon under a little hat decorated with marguerites, and her pretty unmade-up face. She looked at him with friendly interest, and a wave of warmth spread through him. He made a real effort to follow what Marius was saying, but was distracted by the slightest movement of the young woman.

Tasha was surreptitiously watching him. She had a vague feeling that she knew him. He gave the impression of being on the defensive, withdrawn, yet neither his voice nor his manner betrayed any shyness. Where had she seen that profile before?

‘Ah, at last, here’s Monsieur Kenji Mori!’ Marius exclaimed.

Victor rose from his chair and suddenly Tasha remembered where she had seen him: he reminded her of a subject in a Le Nain painting.

‘Over here, Monsieur Mori!’

The new arrival came over, very much at ease, and bowed while Marius made the introductions once more. When it came to the turn of Eudoxie and Tasha, Kenji Mori doffed his bowler hat and kissed their hands.

There was a moment’s silence. Marius asked him if he liked champagne. Kenji Mori replied that although the sparkling drink could never compare to sake, he would be delighted to have a glass. Impressed by the virile allure of this polite, refined Asian man, Eudoxie speedily revised her preconceptions of him. The others seemed to be expecting something from Kenji Mori. He had unwittingly upset the equilibrium of the group.

‘My friend Victor’s business associate is Japanese,’ announced Marius triumphantly.

Victor noticed Tasha’s almost imperceptible smile. Their eyes met and she saw his expression change. He finds me attractive, she thought. She would have liked to sketch his face: he has an interesting, sensual mouth …

Leaning towards Kenji Mori, Eudoxie asked: ‘Have you visited the Japanese Pavilion?’

‘I’m not interested in Japanese knick-knacks manufactured in bulk and intended for bazaars,’ he replied without departing from his customary affability.

‘Yet there are some beautiful pieces on display,’ said Tasha, ‘especially the prints …’

‘In the West, few people who are not experts understand that kind of pictorial art. For them they are nothing more than pretty, exotic images with which to decorate the Henri the Second-style drawing rooms. You clutter your homes with such a profusion of objects that in the end you don’t notice any of them.’

Tasha protested vehemently. ‘You’re wrong! Why tar everyone with the same brush? I was lucky enough to see the exhibition of Japanese prints organised by the Van Gogh brothers. The Great Wave by Hokusai made a real impression on me.’

Isidore Gouvier suddenly intervened. ‘Talking about making an impression – up here one might almost be on the bridge of a transatlantic liner,’ he remarked in a sinister tone. ‘All we need is a really good ground swell to topple this red pylon you’ve made me climb.’

They laughed.

‘Don’t criticise Monsieur Eiffel’s Tower. It’s the technical apotheosis of our century,’ declared Kenji Mori. ‘It’s amazing to think its seven thousand tonnes of iron weigh no more heavily on the ground than a ten-metre-high wall.’

‘Especially if that wall were as long as the Great Wall of China,’ retorted Tasha.

There was a silence. Victor studied the pretty redhead. Twenty-two, twenty-three years old at most. She had a self-confidence that was very provocative. He felt his heart quicken, then regain its normal rhythm.

Antonin Clusel got up, muttering: ‘I’m going to the gallery for a cigarette.’

Marius cleared his throat. ‘Children, a toast to a prosperous future for Le Passe-partout and our new literary columnist, Victor Legris.’

‘Not so fast. You can’t trap me like that. I’ll have to think about it first,’ laughed Victor.

‘Boss! It’s an emergency!’

Everyone turned to look at Antonin Clusel.

‘What is it?’

‘There’s a woman outside. She’s dead.’

Marius leaped up. ‘To work, children. Tasha, I want sketches, right away. Eudoxie, hurry back to the office – we’ll have to prepare a special edition. Quickly! Isidore, off you go to police headquarters and try to find out the exact cause of death. Antonin, you come with me.’

He turned to his guests. ‘Monsieur Mori, Victor, I do apologise, but news waits for nobody. Think about my proposition!’ he called before dashing outside.

The lift operating on the southern pillar had been halted on their floor. Marius Bonnet, Antonin Clusel and Tasha Kherson elbowed their way through the barrage of onlookers and reached the bench where the body of a woman in a red dress lay. She was open-mouthed and her skin was livid. Her dilated pupils were staring at a blue balloon, which floated on the end of a string tied to her wrist. Driven by force of habit, Tasha took a sketchbook out of her bag and quickly did a rough drawing of the scene: the dead woman, her hat, which had fallen on the ground, and the sorrowful and yet inquisitive expressions of the people tightly packed around her.

‘Did anyone see anything?’ asked Marius.

‘Are you from the police?’

‘I’m a journalist.’

‘I was there!’ shouted a pleasant-looking woman. ‘What terrible luck – to pay forty sous just to end up dead! It’s expensive, Monsieur, two francs to get to the first floor of this Tower, which is scarcely higher than the top of Notre-Dame. When you add the price of entry to the Exposition, that makes a hundred sous, a day’s work, just to end up like this …’

‘Your name?’ Marius was equipped with a notebook.

‘Simone Langlois, seamstress. I noticed that lady as I went by. She looked as if she was suffering; I get vertigo too. I thought it couldn’t be that serious, and in any case she had her children with her.’

‘Her children?’

‘Yes, the two boys and the girl, over there. The youngest had given her his balloon. I went into the souvenir shop, just to have a look. It’s lovely but expensive.’

‘Is that them?’ Marius indicated three children huddled together.

Simone Langlois nodded. ‘When I came out again, the woman was asleep. Her little girl was shaking her and whining: “Let’s go now, I’m hungry, I want a toffee apple.” The woman’s head was flopping from side to side …’

The seamstress punctuated her speech with theatrical gestures, clearly excited to be the centre of attention.

‘I went up to her, in case she was really ill. I hardly touched her and she keeled over like a rag doll. I think I actually screamed. Some gentlemen ran over and picked her up. When I saw her face I thought I would faint.’

Antonin Clusel had crouched down to the children’s level. The little girl was quietly whimpering.

‘I want Mama … Mama!’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Avenue des Peupliers, in Auteuil … She was stung by a bee.’

‘A bee? Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure. She went, “Ow!”, and said, “I’ve been stung by a bee.”’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Marie-Amélie de Nanteuil. I want to go home.’

‘Are they your brother and sister?’ Antonin asked the older of the two boys.

‘Yes, Monsieur.’

‘We’re going to notify your father.’

‘No, he works at the Ministry; it’s Mama you should tell.’

Antonin looked at the body in bewilderment. Marius came to the rescue.

‘So that lady’s not your mother? Is she your governess?’

‘She’s our Aunt Eugénie, she lives with us.’

‘Eugénie de Nanteuil?’

‘Eugénie Patinot, she’s … she was my mother’s sister,’ mumbled Gontran, whose eyes were filling with tears.

‘Out of the way, please! Let’s have some space!’

There was a ripple of movement and exclamations. A police inspector followed by two stretcher-bearers squeezed through the crowd.

‘I’ve got their address, Boss,’ murmured Antonin, who had just questioned Hector.

‘Jump in a cab and go and find out what you can from the family, the servants, even the dog! I want to know everything about the victim, her past, where she spent her time, the colour of her skirts. I want enough copy for an article as long as your arm! This time Le Matin will not have the scoop on a story! Let’s go!’

Leaning on the terrace of the Anglo-American bar, Victor and Kenji watched as, down below, the stretcher-bearers removed the body of a woman in red.

‘I fear we’ll have to walk down,’ remarked Kenji, startling Victor who, pressed against the guardrail, was totally absorbed in his contemplation of the impertinent Russian redhead as she argued with Marius Bonnet.

‘Come on, let’s go while there aren’t too many people on the stairs,’ he added impatiently. ‘I’m not disappointed that the meeting was cut short; that illustrator has no manners and your journalist friend is a charlatan. Are you really going to write a literary column for him?’

‘I have no idea,’ replied Victor distractedly. ‘Do you mind if I stay here a moment?’

‘On the Tower? Have you been seduced by the architecture?’

‘No, no, at the Exposition. There’s a photographic section in the Palace of Liberal Arts and I’d like to see the newest camera models.’

They passed the French restaurant and started down the stairs. In front of them, a father was teaching his offspring about the method of climbing the Tower extolled by Gustave Eiffel.

‘Slowly, children, with your hands on the rail. That’s right. Now swing your body from side to side, take your time.’

‘Excuse us, excuse us,’ said Kenji, adding under his breath to Victor: ‘Some people are quite mad! They go up on their knees, or on stilts, or backwards.’

As they reached ground level, policemen were pushing aside onlookers in order to clear a way for the stretcher-bearers, who were coming out of the lift. Victor could just discern fingers sticking out from under a sheet thrown over the body.

‘I’m going back to the bookshop,’ said Kenji. ‘I don’t like to leave Joseph to his own devices for too long. Do you know what his nickname for the Comtesse de Salignac is? The battle-axe! One of our most important customers!’

‘The one who swears by Zénaïde Fleuriot?’

They crossed the French garden, which was laid out around the base of the Tower, interspersed with waterfalls and copses. Victor glanced up. What looked like an inverted exclamation mark was drifting towards the Machinery Hall: it was the blue balloon.

‘Kenji, wait, have you forgotten?’

‘Forgotten what?’

‘The date – it’s the twenty-second of June. Here you are, this is for you.’

With an air of mystery he held out a little parcel. Surprised, Kenji untied the golden string, to find, wrapped in tissue paper, a fob-watch.

‘My mother gave it to me,’ Victor went on. ‘It belonged to my father and now it’s yours. Happy birthday.’

‘I was hoping you would forget about my birthday,’ said Kenji, laughing. ‘I’m fifty, you know!’

He turned away, looking at the watch, unable to speak. Finally he whispered, ‘Thank you.’

He slipped the watch into his waistcoat and hurried off, not noticing that a piece of paper had fallen out of his pocket.

‘I say, Kenji, you’ve dropped …’

But he was long gone. Victor smiled. It was typical of Kenji. Whenever he felt moved, he preferred to make an exit. Victor bent down to pick up the small-format newspaper printed over four pages.

LE FIGARO

UNIVERSAL EXPOSITION 1889

SPECIAL EDITION PRINTED ON THE EIFFEL TOWER

This edition has been presented to Monsieur Kenji Mori as a souvenir of his visit to the Figaro Pavilion on the second platform of the Eiffel Tower 115.73 metres above the Champ-de-Mars.

Paris, 22 June 1889

Victor couldn’t help smiling. So that’s why Kenji had been late arriving at the Anglo-American bar. He carefully put away the newspaper, which he would leave discreetly at Kenji’s; there was no need for him to know that Victor had uncovered his little secret.

He turned off towards the Central American Pavilion, and skirted around the exotic plantations of Bolivia and Chile. A thin Englishwoman, a member of the Temperance Union, gripped his arm and demanded he buy one of her brochures condemning alcohol as the poison of heretics. He had barely extricated himself from this when a sandwich man gave him a handbill, announcing ‘the big parade of Colonel Cody, the celebrated Buffalo Bill’. Irritated by all these useless bits of paper, he crossed the sumptuous foyer of the Palace of Liberal Arts and immersed himself in the labyrinth of halls, looking for George Eastman’s famous camera.

‘You press the button and Kodak does the rest, what a clever advertisement,’ he was muttering to himself as he came down the stairs, when he suddenly found himself in a chamber of horrors, packed with scalpels, lancets, trocars, forceps, and acoustic wigs. Quick, find the exit. He hurried past, head down to avoid the graphic illustrations of the dangers of morphine addiction. When he saw a way out, he headed straight for it, only to end up surrounded by anatomical mouldings of frightening precision. He rushed towards the central rotunda, then suddenly stopped, having just spotted the Russian illustrator from Le Passe-partout, clutching a sketchbook in her lace-gloved hand. His pulse quickened. How vivacious she looked in her pearl-grey skirt and fitted jacket! He felt this slight woman wanted to gobble up life whilst capturing it with her pencil.

‘I’m lost,’ he admitted to her.

‘So am I. I was hoping to see the model of the great temple at Ava dedicated to Buddha and I found myself in the prosthetics section instead. Have you seen it?’ she laughed.

‘What? Buddha?’

‘No, the two-headed foetus! Let’s get out of here!’

‘Ice cream! Ice cream! Lovely vanilla ice cream!’

‘Can I buy you one?’ he asked her. ‘To calm our nerves.’

‘I have work to do and … I’d like to see Rue du Caire.’

‘In that case you’ll need a large ice cream. It’s very hot in the land of the pyramids.’

Along Avenue de Suffren were a Chinese pavilion, a Romanian restaurant and an isba. They crossed the Moroccan quarter and immediately found themselves in the heart of the Egyptian bazaar.

‘This is a rather haphazard way of travelling round the globe,’ said Victor, who was not the least distracted from his interest in Tasha by the hustle and bustle around them.

She barely reached his shoulder and sometimes had to quicken her step to keep up with him. They wandered amongst the little donkeys grouped on the moucharaby. Stopping in front of a display of Egyptian cigarettes, Tasha took out her sketchbook and pencil. Looking over her shoulder, Victor saw the outline of a body on a bench with three tense-looking children standing next to it.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, his eye drawn to the curve of her cheek.

She closed her sketchbook quickly with a look of concern.

‘That woman, on the Tower … dying like that in the middle of all the festivities … I’ve got to go.’

‘Can I leave you anywhere? I’m going home as well.’

‘Where is your shop?’

‘Eighteen Rue des Saints-Pères. You can’t miss it, the sign says: “Elzévir, New and Antiquarian Books”.’

‘I’m going in the opposite direction, to Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.’

‘That’s ideal, I have a meeting on Boulevard Haussmann,’ he said quickly.

She looked at him with amusement and, after pretending to hesitate for a moment, accepted his offer.

He hailed a cab on Avenue de Saffron. Sitting side by side, they remained silent. Victor felt embarrassed. This girl was so unlike the other women he knew! You almost had to drag the words out of her mouth.

‘How long have you been in Paris?’

‘Almost two years.’

‘I love your lilting accent. It has a touch of the Midi about it.’

She turned towards him and paused, giving her a pretext to study his profile, before replying in an intentionally exaggerated accent: ‘Oh, you’re from Odessa, Mademoiselle, they say in Moscow, while in Paris they say: she’s from Marseille!’

Victor looked baffled, but then quickly caught on.

‘Odessa, the Crimea, Little Russia, port on the Black Sea, cosmopolitan city hailed by Pushkin. The Duc de Richelieu, descendant of the famous cardinal, was governor at the beginning of the century. There is a statue of him there, if I’m not mistaken?’

‘No, you’re right. He sits on a throne in Roman dress at the top of a hundred and ninety-two steps, which join the port to the upper town. Marius is right, you are a mine of information, Monsieur Legris,’ she declared with a straight face.

‘Be kind to us scholars: all I do is read the travel writing I come across,’ he said modestly. ‘You yourself have mastered perfectly the subtleties of the language of Molière. Did you have a French governess?’

She burst out laughing.

‘My mother is the daughter of French merchants and my father the son of German settlers. I learnt to juggle both languages from birth.’

‘Have you worked for Marius long?’

‘Three months. I managed to convince him that I was a gifted caricaturist.’

‘Would you like to show me?’ he asked, handing her the Buffalo Bill flier.

‘With pleasure. I don’t like him.’

With a few swift pencil lines she transformed the dashing Colonel Cody into a cartoon picador riding an old nag and pointing a rifle and bayonet at a bison begging for mercy.

‘You’ve completely ruined it!’ he exclaimed in dismay.

As he didn’t seem to want to take back the flier, she stowed it in her bag saying: ‘I enjoyed that, I really don’t like that murderer. Do you know that in 1862 there were roughly nine thousand bison between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains? They’ve all disappeared. There were also nearly two hundred thousand Sioux Indians, and those who are still alive have been parked in reservations.’

‘Perhaps it’s stupid of me,’ said Victor, keen to change the subject, ‘but I don’t understand the attraction of illustrations in novels. It doubles the size of the book.’

‘A good illustration can sometimes say more than an entire chapter. At the moment I’m illustrating a French adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedies. I am looking for models for the witches of Macbeth, and the surgical exhibition didn’t inspire me much!’ she laughed.

‘You should take a look at Goya’s Los Caprichos.’

‘Do you have them?’

‘A first edition, a superb quarto, eighty plates, with no discoloration,’ he murmured, looking at her intently.

He had just noticed the roundness of her breasts beneath her white bodice. She moved away from him slightly.

‘It belongs to my friend Kenji,’ he went on, sitting back.

‘The Japanese gentleman with the trenchant opinions?’

‘Oh, indulge him. The current fashion for Japanese curios gets on his nerves.’

‘You seem very fond of him.’

‘He raised me. I lost my father when I was eight. We were living in London. Without Kenji’s devotion, my mother would never have survived – she had no head for business.’

‘How long ago was that?’

Was she trying to guess his age?

‘Twenty-one years.’

‘I see …’

She fell silent again.

‘When will you come by the bookshop?’ he asked, trying to sound casual.

‘I’ll have to see – I have a very busy schedule.’

He frowned. Was there a man? Several, possibly. You could never tell with a woman like this.

‘You have many demands on your time,’ he said, feigning a sudden interest in the wooden cobbles of Boulevard des Capucines.

‘Yes, I have to sell my skills to survive.’

The remark startled Victor.

‘You can rarely live on what satisfies the spirit. Le Passepartoutand illustrating books are what pay for my meals and rent.’

‘And what is it that satisfies your spirit?’

‘Painting. I learnt intaglio engraving and aquatint from my father at a very young age, and my mother taught me watercolour painting and drawing. They ran an art school and were real artists. My father painted and …’ She shook her head. ‘Let’s leave the past buried in the past. In my eyes the only thing that matters is creativity. I don’t know if I have any talent, I don’t know if what I do may touch other people, but I can no more stop painting than an alcoholic can stop drinking. That is what counts for me; the end result is secondary.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Victor, who wasn’t sure that he quite understood.

Odette wearied him with her holidays to Houlgate, her latest outfits, her society gossip. He suddenly felt upset to have such an insipid mistress. How different she was from this girl!

‘And you?’

‘Me?’

‘Do you have a passion?’

‘I like books and … photography. I bought an Acmé in London last winter. It’s like a little dark room – people also call it a detective camera – and I … but I’m boring you.’

‘No, no, I assure you, it’s not because I’m a woman that I find technology impenetrable.’

‘Right then, in that case I’ll tell you about bromide plates, which will soon be overtaken by flexible celluloid film.’

Her consternation made him laugh.

‘So you do understand.’

‘I don’t understand at all.’

Perhaps he had annoyed her. He wished he hadn’t said anything.

‘Like yours, my hobby comes with a certain amount of theory, but once you’ve mastered the basic principles—’

‘It’s not a hobby,’ she cut him off abruptly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Painting. It’s not a hobby. When I paint I feel alive in every part of my being. It’s not like … crocheting a doily!’

She drew back, leaning against the window. He could have hit himself.

‘Are you angry? Please excuse me, I’ve been stupid.’

With a huge effort she turned towards him and gave him a forced smile.

‘I’m a little tired at the moment, on edge.’

Stuck in a traffic jam on Boulevard de Clichy, the cab had not moved for a while.

‘I’m going to get out here. We’re very near my house. Goodbye,’ was her parting remark as she opened the cab door.

‘Wait!’ 

He couldn’t stop her; she had already jumped onto the road. The driver of another cab cursed her and cracked his whip.

Victor hurriedly paid for their journey and followed Tasha, who was making quick progress up Rue Fontaine. As long as she doesn’t turn round … She stopped on the edge of the pavement and he hid behind a Morris column. She set off again, crossed Rue Pigalle and went up Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette to number 60, where she pushed open the door of a heavy Haussmannian building.

His short-lived relief at finding out her address immediately gave way to a new worry: what if it was the home of one of her lovers? He would have to check by asking Marius. That meant he would have to see Marius, and no doubt accept his offer of writing a column.

Tomorrow, I’ll go tomorrow, and if it really is where she lives, I shall send her flowers to apologise.

Apologise for what? Shouldn’t she be the one to apologise? She hadn’t even thanked him for the lift. He shrugged his shoulders. Women always had to be in the right!

As he wandered down Rue Le Peletier, imagining his next meeting with her, a newspaper vendor bumped into him, brandishing a special edition.

‘Forty sous just to die! Buy Le Passe-partout! Mysterious death on the first floor of the three-hundred-metre Tower! Read the whole story for five centimes!’

CHAPTER TWO

Thursday 23 June

VICTOR went along Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs. He had decided to have lunch in a brasserie on one of the Boulevards before making his mind up. He knew exactly what he would say: ‘I was passing, so I thought I’d come and discuss your proposition.’ At any rate it was his pretext for seeing Tasha again to make his peace with her. He had outlined the beginning of an article entitled ‘French as It Is Written’, sparing neither Balzac: ‘A police commissioner silently replies, “She is not mad.”’ (Cousin Bette), nor Lamartine: ‘The soles of my feet hurt from their desire to go out with you, Geneviève’ (Geneviève), nor Vigny: ‘That old servant in the employ of Marshal Effiat who had been dead for six months got ready to leave again’ (Cinq-Mars).

He passed the headquarters of L’Éclair newspaper and turned into Galerie Véro-Dodat, looking for the sign of Le Passe-partout. Nothing. He turned on his heel, then, on the off chance, tried a metal gate that opened onto a row of courtyards. A song floated on the air, and there was a smell of honeysuckle and horsedung. He skirted a cart full of animal feed parked in front of a grain warehouse, passed some stables, and stopped a moment to watch two boys push a paper boat along the water in the gutter.

The editorial offices of Le Passe-partout were at the end of a blind alley: a dilapidated single-storey building wedged between a printing works and an engraver’s workshop. He went in, and climbed up the spiral staircase, bumping into Eudoxie Allard and Isidore Gouvier, who were keeping watch behind a half-open door.

Isidore who was smoking a cigar, winked at Victor and joked, ‘You’ve really got the little redhead’s hackles up.’

‘The redhead?’ Victor asked.

Eudoxie turned and stared at him coldly. ‘Can I help you?’

‘May I see Monsieur Bonnet?’

‘He has somebody with him,’ she replied.

‘And… Mademoiselle Tasha?’

‘Absent. If you would like to wait…’ She pointed to a low divan next to a pile of newspapers.

Disconcerted, Victor sat down, crossed his legs and picked up a copy of Le Passe-partout. Page one was almost entirely taken up with a satirical picture showing the Eiffel Tower chastely veiled in a flared underskirt. An enormous threatening bee circled its campanile, which wore a feathered hat. He could not resist a smile when he made out the artist’s signature: ‘Tasha K’.

He looked further down to find the main headline:

ACCIDENTAL DEATH OR MURDER?

We have the right to ask, having received the following anonymous message:

I won’t spell it out But poor Eugénie Patinot Knew more than she ought.

Are we dealing with a homicidal beekeeper who settles scores via an apian intermediary? Yesterday, towards the end of the day…

Victor started as loud shouting erupted suddenly from Marius’s office.

‘I’m warning you, Bonnet, one more article like this and—’

‘Come now, Inspector, freedom of the press has existed for eight years, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘Do you want to sabotage the Expo? The drawing on the front page is revolting.’

‘That isn’t what the public thinks. Do you know how many copies we sold this morning and how many we’ll sell this evening, tomorrow and the day after that?’

‘You’ve blown up out of all proportion a run-of-the-mill news story! What gives you the right to assert that the Patinot woman’s death was suspicious?’