The Montmartre Investigation E-Book

Claude Izner

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Vertigo
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 407

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

November 1891. The body of a young woman is discovered at a crossroads on Boulevard Montmartre. Barefoot and dressed in red, she has been strangled and her face disfigured. That same day a single red shoe is delivered to Victor Legris's Parisian bookshop.Suspecting more than just coincidence, the bookseller sleuth and his assistant Jojo are soon engaged in seeking out the identity of both victim and murderer.In this third investigation set in belle-époque Paris, we are drawn with Victor and Jojo are soon drawn into the city's nightlife, and to the legendary Moulin Rouge...

Leseprobe

Praise for The Père-Lachaise Mystery:

‘… brilliantly evokes 1890s Paris, a smoky, sinister world full of predatory mediums and a ghoulish public, in a cracking, highly satisfying yarn’ Guardian

‘… briskly plotted, intriguing second outing for Legris’ Financial Times

‘A charming journey through the life and intellectual times of an era’ Le Monde

‘… top Gallic hokum’ Observer

‘… an extremely enjoyable, witty and creepy affair’ Independent on Sunday

THEMONTMARTREINVESTIGATION

CLAUDE IZNER

Translated by Lorenza Garcia and Isabel Reid

As always, to our dear ones! And to Andrée Millet, child of Montmartre, Elena Arseneva, Kumiko Kohiki, Solvej Crévelier. Warm thanks to Jan Madd.

Dans les plix sinueux des vieilles capitales,

Où tout, même l’horreur, tourne aux enchantements,

Je guette, obèissant á mes humeurs fatales …

In sinuous folds of cities old and grim,

Where all things, even horror, turn to grace,

I follow, in obedience to my whim …

Charles Baudelaire

Les Petites Vieilles – Dedicated to Victor Hugo from Les Fleurs du mal, 1857

CONTENTS

Title Page 

Acknowledgments

Epigraph 

Plan of Victor Legris’s Paris

The Montmartre Investigation

Parisian Nightlife in the 1890s

Notes

About the Authors

VICTOR LEGRIS MYSTERIES BY CLAUDE IZNER:

Copyright

CHAPTER 1

Saint-Mandé, Sunday 26 July 1891

QUICK! She had to rinse her hands and remove the traces of jam.

Mademoiselle Bontemps hastily dried her hands and cast a longing look at the plate piled with strawberry biscuits, mocha cakes, éclairs and meringues. Resisting temptation, she shut the plate away in the bottom of the cupboard. ‘I’ll have them this evening when everyone’s gone to bed …’ She smoothed her dress over the crinoline she persisted in wearing as if she were still only twenty, and rustled back into the salon, where her visitor was putting on his gloves.

‘Excuse me for taking so long, Monsieur Mori,’ she simpered. ‘I thought I heard a tap dripping.’

‘Yes, I distinctly heard running water too,’ replied the immaculately turned out Japanese man.

He adjusted his black silk top hat, which complemented his double-breasted blazer and pinstriped trousers, and attempted to extricate his cane from an umbrella stand decorated with a profusion of frills. The entire salon was overrun with flounces and furbelows: they embellished the curtains, the seat covers, the shelves laden with knick-knacks and even the hostess’s dress. They ran all over the décor, their rippling little waves forming an unceasing tide, and indeed the elegant Asiatic seemed to be suffering from seasickness as he wrestled with the swirls of material. Finally managing to reclaim his stick, he let out a sigh.

‘And where is your goddaughter?’ asked Mademoiselle Bontemps.

‘Iris has gone off to the fête with her friends. I don’t approve of these popular outings.’

‘The young must have their entertainment.’

‘Pleasure heralds regret, just as sleep heralds death.’

‘Oh, Monsieur Mori, that’s beautiful, but very sad.’

‘Well, I don’t feel light-hearted at the moment. I don’t like separations.’

He pretended to examine the tip of his cane, which he had been nervously tapping on the carpet.

‘I do understand,’ murmured Mademoiselle Bontemps, discreetly rearranging the pleats of the umbrella stand. ‘Don’t worry, Monsieur Mori, two months will pass quickly.’

‘I’ll have her bathing suit and sunhat delivered by Thursday. Are you still leaving next Monday?’

‘God willing, Monsieur Mori. Lord Jesus what an expedition! It will be the first time I’ve taken the young ladies to the seaside. They’re beside themselves with excitement. I’ve had to reserve four compartments. What with the cook and the two chambermaids we’re a party of sixteen. The journey is costing an arm and a leg! And when you’re away for more than six weeks, you’re not entitled to the cheap excursion rate. In previous years, we’ve made do with Saint-Cyr-sur—’

‘Morin, yes, yes, I know,’ finished the Japanese man, clearly exasperated.

‘But what can you do? Times change; now all people talk about is tourism, beaches and bathing!’

‘Make sure Iris never goes into the water without supervision.’

‘Of course! The young ladies will not stray by so much as an inch from the roped-off area. I’ve engaged a swimming teacher.’

‘Keep an eye on him, especially if he’s attractive.’

‘Monsieur Mori, I watch over my girls like a cat—’

‘Over her kittens, I know, I know. Would you be able to call me a cab?’

‘At once, Monsieur Mori. Colas! Colas! Where has that rascal got to? He’s the gardener’s son, a good-for-nothing,’ she explained, casting a smug glance at herself in a mirror adorned with plump cherubs, and delicately adjusting the two looped coils of dyed black hair on either side of her moon-shaped face. A youth appeared, sullenly chewing a straw.

‘What on earth is he wearing? You’d think he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. Go and find a cab and be quick about it – Monsieur is waiting.’

As soon as he was out on Chaussée de l’Étang, the youth stuck his tongue out at the heavy bourgeois building behind the iron gates on which a brass plate read:

C. BONTEMPS BOARDING SCHOOL Private Establishment for Young Ladies

Then he set off, following the sound of the fête’s music to the square in front of the town hall.

A handsome, rather feline young man of about twenty pulled himself from the chestnut tree on which he’d been lounging and fell into step behind him. Colas was about to cross over to the line of cabs in front of Gare Saint-Mandé when a hand grabbed his shoulder.

‘Oh, it’s you, Monsieur Gaston! You gave me a fright.’

‘You took your time!’

‘Well, I couldn’t get away from the Boss.’

‘Here, take this to you know who,’ said the man, handing him a note.

‘How will I find her? They’re all at the fête – have you seen the crowds?’

‘That’s your problem. Go on, kid, get on with it.’

‘Look at that one with the gold braid on his uniform and all the medals – isn’t he handsome!’

‘If you like all that metal. He’s so red in the face he looks as though he might burst! I prefer the chap with the trumpet; look how serious he is, with his great fat neck and that stomach like a big drum!’

A dozen young girls in light-coloured dresses were lined up at the foot of a podium, admiring the brass band of the municipal fire brigade. The girl who had admired the uniform was a gawky girl in a hat weighed down with cherries. She turned to her companion, a dumpy little person as crimped as a freshly groomed poodle, and gave her a severe look.

‘You’re so vulgar, Aglaé, just like a shop girl! And out with no hat into the bargain!’

‘Well, I can’t help it if my father’s only a shopkeeper. We can’t all be the niece of a rich marquis!’

‘Oh, go to the devil!’

Oohs and aahs greeted the strains of ‘L’Alsace et Lorraine’, and the enthusiastic crowd joined in:

You Germans can take our plains

But you’ll never put our hearts in chains

‘That’s enough, you two; stop bickering!’

Fed up with their squabbling, the pair’s friends separated them with blows of their parasols. Two of the girls, a slim brunette dressed in blue and a plump blonde in bright red, took advantage of the general scrimmage to slip off into the crowd. They stopped, out of breath, by the swing-boats.

‘They’re loathsome,’ declared the blonde. ‘Squabbling in public, like fishwives!’

‘Will you come on with me, Élisa?’ asked the dark-haired girl, fascinated by the motion of the swings.

‘Iris, you’re completely mad! We’ve just had lunch! And why they served us split peas in this heat, I can’t imagine! The old frump must have bought a job lot on the cheap.’

‘As you like, but I’m going on,’ declared Iris, moving resolutely towards one of the newly vacated swings.

Before Élisa could stop her, a boy in shirtsleeves was installing Iris on the bench of the swing and setting it vigorously in motion. Iris sat rigid as he pushed her harder; she held on to her hat with one hand, while with the other she clung to the side.

Élisa tried to watch her friend in motion, but when Iris stood up and bent her knees to increase her speed, she grew dizzy and turned away, pretending to take an interest in a strongman who was lifting a dumbbell bearing two cheerful midgets.

‘Mam’zelle Lisa!’

She jumped. Colas put his finger to his lips and slipped her a piece of paper.

‘It’s from the man who wrote to you before,’ he whispered. ‘He says you’ve got to hurry – it’s a unique opportunity, and won’t happen again. I had trouble finding you. I was late to begin with – the cabs were all taken – and the Chinaman and the Boss are going to be furious, that’s for sure.’

‘Where is he?’

She noticed his outstretched palm and gave him a coin.

‘He’s hiding,’ the youth blurted out, and took to his heels.

Élisa checked that Iris was still swinging and retreated under the awning of a stall selling marshmallows, where a man with his sleeves rolled up dangled thick glossy skeins of green and red paste. A group of children, noses pressed against the counter, were following his every move, intoxicated by the smell of melted sugar. Élisa unfolded the message. She immediately recognised the cramped handwriting and glanced up at the sweet-seller, her face radiant. She had longed for this to happen. For as far back as she could remember, she’d had a strange sense that she was destined for something special, but she had begun to lose patience of late. She was seventeen years old and the routine of Bontemps Boarding School was far from exciting. If this goes on much longer I shall die of boredom, she thought to herself each morning.

It had been just over a month since the stranger had burst into her life. Although she had never spoken to him, he was always in her thoughts, and she had even begun to dream about him. At first he had been just another ordinary fellow who appeared when Mademoiselle Bontemps and her girls took their walk along the lake. He would pass by with an indifferent air, never looking at any girl in particular – although after a while each of them believed that he had come just to see her. None of the girls confided their secret desire to be noticed by him – who would admit to an attraction towards the extravagantly dressed bohemian? Then, one evening in June, he had sent her a note. After lights out Élisa had taken the note over to the window and read it by the light of the street lamp:

You is the most beautiful. I love you.

Gaston

Twenty-three equally laconic, misspelt messages had followed that declaration. She had kept them all, meticulously hidden beneath the mantelpiece. Gaston scarcely had the makings of a great romantic letter-writer; his prose was limited to the most elementary construction: subject, verb, a compliment sometimes qualified by a superlative, and above all love, always, always love. She was bowled over by his persistence, but she had never dared to reply. This time he had surpassed himself, quite a feat for a man normally so concise!

Leave your friends, make up a xcuse, and join me at the botom of the slope behind Pont de la Tourelle. I love you,

Gaston

Did she dare abandon Iris and go to the rendezvous? Iris would worry, and tell Mademoiselle Bontemps. She would have to invent something – and quickly. Dizziness? … She could tell them she felt ill. It was almost true. She felt hot all of a sudden – her head was spinning; she was seeing herself anew, as Gaston saw her. He found her beautiful; he loved her!

Darkness was falling and all around the fête Chinese lanterns were being lit. The showmen were haranguing the passers-by.

‘Ten centimes! Only five for soldiers!’

The whistling trombones punctuated the sonorous tone of the barrel organs and the rhythmic drum rolls. A clown in stockings was perched on a barrel, calling out that the best attraction was Nounou the famous flea master. A few yards further on, two exhausted ballerinas in sequinned costumes jiggled about in a poor imitation of belly dancing.

‘Come and see the headless man talk!’

‘Waffles, who would like my waffles, come and taste the delights of Pantruche!’

‘Toffee apple, mademoiselle? For the apple of my eye!’

Élisa wandered among the excited throng crowding the stalls and almost bumped into Aglaé, her mouth stuffed with doughnut. The fête had freed her to behave as she liked. On the opposite pavement, plump Mademoiselle Bontemps, decked out like a ship in full sail, tottered towards a merry-go-round on which three of her girls were perched.

‘Edmée, Berthe, Aspasie! It’s late, where are the others?’ she shrieked.

Élisa melted into the stream of people heading back to Paris. Near Gare Saint-Mandé a crowd had gathered round a busker who was singing a popular song to the accompaniment of a fiddle.

Mademoiselle! Pray listen to me 

I want to offer you a glass of Madeira  

She went round the side of the railway station, darted out on to the platform and stopped short, almost under the wheels of a train. She recognised Monsieur Kenji Mori, Iris’s godfather, leaning out of the carriage. She fled, staying close to the station wall.

She had finally reached the embankment. She took a good look around, but saw only amorous couples and marauding dogs. Which direction would he come from? What would he say to her? Suddenly she was frightened. She remembered her mother’s advice:

‘Don’t fight it, my dear; fear is good – it helps us to avoid all manner of disagreeable things.’

When she thought of her mother, Élisa was torn between anger and pity. Now aged thirty-five, the poor woman had had a series of lovers without ever finding true passion. Her love life had begun badly, and nothing had turned out as she’d hoped. Élisa was certain that she was not like her mother. Even as a young child in a London boarding school, she had boasted to her friends: ‘One day my father will come and take me to his estate in Kent. I’ll marry a lord – he’ll be madly in love with me!’

Her father, whose name she did not even know, had never appeared.

The railway ran along a trench between two embankments – in one direction to Paris, in the other towards the eastern suburbs and the banks of the Marne, to Nogent, Joinville and Saint-Maur. Élisa leant over a hedge running along the fence and took in the view. She had always been keen on trains; they conjured up far-off places, glamorous encounters, luxury and freedom … But the dark platforms below her were reminiscent of an ant hill; she wondered with detached curiosity what would happen if she were to bombard the people with stones.

Like a mechanical toy, a train wrapped in a cloud of steam arrived from Vincennes. It had barely come to a halt when the human tide surged towards the carriages, but to the irritation of the waiting throng, most of the doors opened on to crammed carriages. The people ran about looking for spaces, but in vain, and there were altercations and shouts of protest. Disappointed, the ants resigned themselves to wait for the next train. One man with a top hat and cane who had got on to the train was now leaving it, followed by his wife rigged out in a purple dress and his antlet in short breeches. (Élisa was pretty sure that word did not exist and decided that she had just invented it). Amused by the absurdity of the turmoil below, she forgot about her rendezvous as she stood on tiptoe to drink in the scene.

Hidden behind an overgrown hedge, Gaston smoked a cigarette and watched the young girl. He had had his fair share of wenches and normally had no hesitation in undoing a bodice or ruffling up a petticoat, but this time he was wary. The girl seemed to come with a warning: ‘Careful, fragile.’ He had known such a delicate flower before, carefully reared in the best society, pale-skinned, with exquisite undergarments, and he could recognise one from afar. How should he approach her? Bow and kiss her hand; then compliment her on her pretty face and fine ankles? That would be beyond him. He knew only one way of expressing his desire and that was to fling a girl on the ground and smother her with the rather rough kisses to which wenches of his milieu seemed partial. He lit a second cigarette from the end of the first, giving himself a moment longer before he made his advance.

The ant with the top hat was searching the carriages for a free seat. Élisa looked to the right, her attention caught by a serpentine movement. She could foresee the disaster about to unfold. Unable to pull out because of the comings and goings of the top-hatted man, the train from Vincennes was about to be rammed by another train, which had been hooked up to a locomotive and was being pulled backwards into the station.

The noise was terrifying. The blind train, its back to its victim, slammed into the stationary train, crumpling it with an appalling crunching sound and crushing it under its weight. It seemed to devour the last three coaches. Mounted on a heap of iron, its funnel brushing the vault of the Pont de la Tourelle, the engine, mangled into an inextricable tangle of pipe and axle, breathed its last. It had all happened in a few minutes. The noise reverberated interminably and when it ceased, screams could be heard.1

Staring in horrified fascination at the dislocated bodies of the driver and engine stoker, her ears ringing with heart-rending cries, Élisa was dimly aware of the swarms of people scrabbling up the sides of the embankment, away from the darkened railway line. She stumbled, feeling as if she were soaring over the clouds on a swing that had cut loose from its moorings. She drifted in tumultuous currents, and then … total darkness. Some of the people fleeing had already reached the top of the embankment and were in danger of stepping on her. Arms lifted her, pulling her out of the way.

‘Clarissa! Clarissa, where are you?’

‘Maman!’

Élisa opened her eyes. There were shouts and groans; figures moved around in the night, lit by lamps and torches. She was lying on the ground and someone was shaking her. Her vision gradually cleared, her befuddled mind took in snippets of information. How she would have loved to go to sleep, to relax. But she must not – she tried to stand but was unable to muster the strength. A man was holding her by the wrists.

‘What happened?’ she murmured.

Her voice seemed to come from a long way away.

‘Don’t worry, I’m here,’ said the stranger kneeling by her side. ‘It’s me, Gaston.’

The accident, she thought. That’s why I’m lying on the grass …

‘Gaston? …Was it a long time ago?’

She freed herself from him and stood. Her legs gave way but he caught her, leaning her against a parapet of the bridge. The laments of the survivors mingled with the wails of the injured as the fire brigade and volunteers busied themselves around the locomotive. The wooden carriages burned and crackled, spilling sparks on to the platforms, which were strewn with bloody debris and puddles. People were still desperately trying to escape, clinging to the shrubs on the slope, trying to keep their balance, but more often than not sliding back and falling to the bottom of the embankment.

‘Come, Mademoiselle,’ insisted Gaston, ‘I’m going to help you; we must leave the rescuers to do their work.’

They stepped over men and women collapsed on the pavement, forced their way through the incessant coming and going of ambulances and reached Chaussée de l’Étang where lights shone in the windows. Suddenly Gaston dragged her into the trees on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes. She tried to resist, overcome with panic. Without a word, he pushed her against the trunk of a chestnut tree, crushing her mouth with his, forcing her lips painfully apart. There was no tenderness in his kiss or in his grasp; it was not like her dreams. He was holding her so tightly she could not move. Filled with anguish and anger, she wanted to push him away, but the catastrophe she had witnessed had weakened her defences. Gradually her disgust changed to a growing wonder, then a sense of euphoria. He drew back, and fear and guilt rushed over her.

‘Gaston, I beg you, please don’t; it’s wicked.’

He raised her chin, forcing her to look at him. He whispered: ‘No, it’s not wicked, because I love you.’

Those words swept away her last defences. She flung herself against him, ready this time and responsive to his kisses. The clamour from the station ebbed with the slow rhythm of the man’s hands as he caressed her body, releasing in her waves of pleasure.

‘Can we see each other soon?’ he breathed into her ear.

‘Yes, I … Oh! I forgot – we’re going away.’

‘We?’

‘Mademoiselle Bontemps, the other boarders … to Trouville, we’ll be back in the middle of September.’

‘What’s the address?’

‘Villa Georgina.’

‘I’ll come, and we’ll find a way of seeing each other. You’ll have to go back now or your friends will worry. It’s our secret, isn’t it? You do love me a little?’

‘Oh, Gaston!’

He kissed her forehead. She teetered across the street, unable to stop herself from turning back several times. He did not take his eyes off her, his lips frozen in a smile.

As soon as Élisa had closed the gate, Gaston’s smile vanished. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

That was a stroke of luck, he thought as he headed towards the lake. The accident made it easy for me to bamboozle the romantic little ninny.

He did not yet know exactly how he would manage, but one thing was for certain, a trip to Trouville was on the cards. The Boss would be pleased: in November he would complete his assignment and hand over the wench. He picked up some stones and amused himself by skimming them across the black lake.

CHAPTER 2

Paris, Thursday 12 November 1891

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.