Murder At the Flea Club

by Matthew Head

  By this time I had stopped thinking the situation was funny and was beginning to get scared. I didn’t care if Mrs. Jones and Audrey got into an old-fashioned hairpull with Freddy as referee, but I did care about Nicole and her club. This was exactly the kind of thing she was afraid of, even if it happened in the relative privacy of the members’ cellar. I didn’t feel like stepping in between the two principals so I decided to go right to Nicole herself and tell her things were about to pop.

  I hurried to the little room back of the stage which served as its wings, and was also the entrance hall to Nicole’s upstairs apartments, with her stairs going up out of it. Tony, with his coat and shoes off, was lying on the small couch which with a chair and mirror and diminutive dressing-table made up the furnishings of the place. I told him what was going on, as quickly as I could. Nicole was upstairs, he said, and when I hesitated—because I had never been up there—he said he would go up and tell Nicole I wanted to see her.

  He had hardly left when Mrs. Jones burst in on me, looking really awry now, with Freddy close behind her, flushed with excitement. “…couldn’t have gone far,” he was babbling, “…saw them go down there not fifteen minutes ago, I know.”

  Mrs. Jones looked at me without any recognition at all. Then her eye lit on the stairway. “What’s that?” she demanded. “Where does that go?”

  “Upstairs!” Freddy shrieked, losing all control. “Right upstairs to the bedroom! Honestly it gets better and better! Worse and worse, Hattie dear. Honestly, if Nicole’s in on this too, I think it’s just too good, I mean I didn’t think she’d go that far, but if they’re not in the cellar, where else—”

  Mrs. Jones’s feet must have touched the stairs but that isn’t the way I remember it. I remember her as just being lifted off the floor and sucked up the stairway in one swift movement, like a piece of paper up a chimney. There was a banging, a fist pounding on a door up there. Freddy uttered a cry of sheer incredulous ecstasy, and disappeared up the stairs in much the same manner as Mrs. Jones. There was a moment’s silence, then the sound of voices in which I could recognise Nicole’s and Mrs. Jones’s, growing louder and, in Mrs. Jones’s case, recriminative. She began then to scream, a shrill, thin, furious sound, half hysterical. A door was banged shut, muffling the screams, but they still trickled through, a horrifying sound. Apparently the room they had gone into was directly over my head. The thin screaming sound now began to be confused with the sound of scraping and thumping on the floor, a struggle of some kind, and that was when I went up the stairs myself.

  There were two doors on the landing, both closed. I opened the first one at hand, which proved to be to Nicole’s living-room. Freddy was bouncing around its periphery, bug-eyed with delight at the spectacle in the centre of the room. Tony stood there, his face red with the strain, his arms locked around Mrs. Jones from behind, while she writhed and screamed. Nicole stood in front of her, slapping her first on one cheek and then on the other, deliberately but hard, saying, “Now stop!” then a slap, “Now stop that!” then a slap, then “Stop that!”

  I closed the door and went back to the bar. It was an awful thing to have seen, and I kept seeing it. I could see Mrs. Jones still; she seemed to get more and more slippery as she writhed in Tony’s embrace, and that was the awful thing—it began to be an embrace, and the whole thing began to turn erotic on me. I didn’t like it much. I didn’t like it at all.

  It wasn’t more than ten minutes, though, before Nicole came into the bar, obviously looking for me, and motioned to me to come. We went into the little backstage room.

  “Anything I can do, Nicole?”

  “You can say nothing about all this.”

  “Of course. What’s going on up there now?” There was no more sound.

  “She is lying down. Tony is with her until I get back. I think she has—what you call it, passed out. Whatever made her think she might have found René in my rooms?”

  “Just crazy, I guess. Apparently René and this other woman left by the back door?”

  “I suppose so. Thank you, Hoop, but there’s nothing you can do, no. We will call her car to get her home. This kind of thing is very terrible, of course. I will not sing well in this next performance.”

  “Yes you will. You’re always good. But I don’t think I’ll hang around tonight, if there’s really nothing I can do to help.”

  “There isn’t. Good night, Hoop.”

  As for the Italian boy…

  I met him at the boulevard door, as I left the club.

  He was around twenty years old, of medium height, very dark as to hair and eyes, but not swarthy. His face showed that combination of arrogance, sensuality, alertness, and quick good will which makes it so difficult for me to decide whether I like Italians or Frenchmen best. His suit was new and respectable, but neither expensive nor fashionable. He was standing at the side of the door, and as I started along the boulevard he took a few quick steps to catch me, and said, “Sir—excuse me, but is it very expensive in there?”

  “Depends what you mean, expensive. Five hundred francs for a drink at the bar.” That was close to a dollar and a half at the legal rate, and if your native coin was the lira, it was steep.

  “Can anyone go in?”

  “I could get you in. Shall I? Nicole’s worth the price?”

  “What is?”

  “Nicole, the singer. Haven’t you heard of her?”

  He hadn’t, which made it odd that he should be hanging around outside The Flea Club, with half a dozen more promising-looking places in the neighbourhood.

  “I’d like to go in for a while,” he decided. I scribbled a note on a card, with the date, wrote “Bearer introduced for this night,” signed it, and gave it to him. Then I went along the boulevard to the Rue Bonaparte and turned down it towards my place.

  I was followed.

  Dr. Finney hung over the rail of the Pont des Beaux Arts. Her breath rose in moonstruck vapour as she contemplated the river purling beneath her. At this ungodly hour of the morning the water was nearly flat, undisturbed by any river traffic; only the supports of the bridge, butting gently against the currents, raised a few long, spreading ripples. According to which tradition you chose to follow, she might have been contemplating suicide, pondering the mysteries of life, or composing a poem. As it turned out, she was occupied with thoughts of a sweet, gaseous, citron-flavoured beverage.

  “Tell me about Nicole’s lemon sodas,” she said.

  “She never drank anything stronger. Wine at meals, of course, but no cocktails, no highballs—nothing, ever.”

  “Is that so unusual, in a Frenchwoman?”

  “Not except for the rigour she enforced it on herself with. It wasn’t a matter of taste so much as inviolable rule.”

  “I see. She ever say as much to you?”

  “Come to think of it, no. I guess it was just obvious or something.”

  “I see,” Dr. Finney repeated, and then, “I’m inclined to accept that.”

  She stood silently for a while, watching the river, while I got colder. Then, “Did you notice, Hoop, when we went into the cellar this morning, there was a bottle of lemon soda open on one of the tables, with a glass—an inch or so of the stuff in the glass, too, and some whisky and soda with ice in another glass, and a bottle of whisky and a seltzer bottle?”

  “No, I didn’t. You sent me upstairs so quick to look—”

  “Well, there was. All these people you know around The Flea Club, the ones you’ve told me about so far—would any of them be ruled out because they wouldn’t have been drinking whisky that early in the morning?”

  “It’d be damn funny if any of them were there so early in the morning, whisky or no whisky. Bunch of night owls. Maybe the glasses were left over from the night before.”

  “The place hadn’t been straightened up yet, that’s true,” Dr. Finney admitted, “but the ice wasn’t melted in the glass, and the soda hadn’t lost its fizz.”

  “I’ve lost mine,” I said. �
��Let’s call it a night. Let me take you to your hotel. I’m tired out and freezing to death.”

  “We’ll go back to your place and turn up the heater. I’d suggest that palace I’m staying in but we might keep Emmy awake. Also, no coffee-maker. Come on,” she said, and we started back again.

  Dr. Finney continued, “I don’t know much about nightclub singers but it seems to me that Nicole leads an extraordinarily quiet and circumspect life for any young and vigorous woman who’s successful and on her own. What about lovers?”

  “None.”

  “So far as you know.”

  “So far as anybody knows.”

  “Seems odd.”

  “It is odd.”

  “Maybe there’s a very secret one.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “René, for instance.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Emotionally?”

  “No,” I said; “reasonably. René’s not a sensualist, particularly. And if he did want it for excitement he can get them younger and prettier than Nicole. The point is, he’s in the business, and he can also get them older and richer, which is his special forte. And it’s impossible from Nicole’s point of view. She knows exactly what René is, wouldn’t get mixed up with him emotionally, and she’s a hard-headed business woman herself. She’s not going to pay for it.”

  “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve thought about it before.”

  “All very odd,” she said. “There wouldn’t be any stigma attached to her having a lover, would there? Wouldn’t it be quite usual?”

  “Quite.”

  “But she absolutely hasn’t?”

  “You keep insisting. All I can say is that even Freddy Fayerweather admits she hasn’t. If there were ever a whisper, Freddy would hear it. And if there were ever a lover, there’d be a whisper.”

  “What about Tony?”

  “With Nicole? Never.”

  “Why not? Lots of sympathy there. Both coming up the hard way, both talented, lots of propinquity. Don’t tell me Tony’s an ascetic.”

  “Tony’s got a private life none of us know anything about.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Well—I guess I don’t know it. He just disappears into some world of his own when The Flea Club closes, and he’s such a quiet fellow I’ve always taken it for granted that he had things satisfactorily organised. Anyway, about him and Nicole, if they were lovers I suppose they might be able to conceal it in conversation and so on, but never when they were doing a song together.”

  “Why, Hoopy!” said Dr. Finney, “you’re a romantic!”

  We went on back to my place then, and by the time we were settled, with the heater going full blast, and the coffee made, and Dr. Finney with her stockinged feet propped up before her, and me in an old bathrobe that had been my dearest friend ever since adolescence, I knew that what I wanted to do more than anything else was to go on talking to her all night, because I began to feel (rather than see) that everything I was saying was really going to tie in, before long, with what had happened that morning in the cellar of The Flea Club. So I took my own shoes off and propped my feet up like Mary Finney’s, and started talking again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I HAD MET Audrey Bellen Saturday morning, met the plane bearing Mary Finney and Emily Collins Saturday afternoon, taken Marie Louise to the Opera Saturday night, and thereafter had gone to The Flea Club as I related. Sunday morning I slept until a reasonable hour and fooled around for a little while straightening up the gallery and getting it ready to open again on Monday, since it had been closed while I had been away. Then I went to St. Sulpice for the services, since Marcel Dupré was the organist, and I looked at the two Delacroix murals near the entrance and wondered why I never managed to get any excitement out of them when so many other people claimed they did. I decided they were bluffing. From St. Sulpice it was natural to gravitate back along the street to the Deux Magots for a little quiet spectating, but once there, to my own surprise, I telephoned Marie Louise.

  I recognised the voice of the pomaded young man when I asked for Mrs. Bellen’s suite. Who was calling, please? Mr. Taliaferro, for Miss Bellen. One moment, please. Then Marie Louise’s voice.

  “Hello.” It was the same indifferent hello she had given me when she walked into the lobby the night before.

  “Good morning,” I said. “It’s Hooper Taliaferro. How you feeling?”

  There was a short pause, heavily laden with nothing, and then she said, “Soggy.”

  “Too bad. I hope it clears up. Ever been to Lipp’s?”

  “No, I haven’t. The places you go to have such funny names. First The Flea Club, now Lipp’s.”

  It was a long speech compared to what she had given me so far. I said, “It’s a nice place for lunch. I offer it to you.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said.

  In the background I very clearly heard Audrey say, “Who is it, dear?”

  I said, “I do have to eat, though. How about it?”

  “Oh, no. I don’t think so. Thanks, but I don’t think so.”

  More Audrey in the background, but unintelligible. Then Marie Louise, “Oh, Mama!” in exasperation, and then some murmur back and forth. Then Audrey: “Hello, Hoop? Well how really sweet of you to call! Marie Louise had a perfectly lovely time last night, and I—now what was it you wanted?”

  “I wanted Marie Louise for lunch, but it seems sort of complicated.”

  “But of course she’ll come to lunch. She’d be delighted.”

  I heard Marie Louise quite clearly: “I won’t I won’t I won’t and I won’t!” Things began to get out of control on the other end of the wire and I just stood listening to the hubbub. There was a silence, then some real noise—a sort of running, and voices raised and talking both at once.

  Then Audrey all at once, frantic: “Hello, hello—”

  “Hello, Audrey.”

  “Hello, this is Mrs. Bellen. My daughter just started downstairs. Will you stop her, please—Audrey? Who said Audrey? Oh, Hoop—Hoop, please hang up, hang up right now. Call me back, will you? Hang up!”

  Five minutes later, nobody answered the telephone in Mrs. Bellen’s suite. Ten minutes later, the pomaded young man told me that Mrs. Bellen and Miss Bellen were both out. I asked that Mrs. Bellen call Mr. Taliaferro at the Deux Magots if she got in within the next hour, and ten minutes later, she did.

  “Hoop, I’m so sorry. Things became dreadfully confused. Now where were we?”

  “I wanted Marie Louise for lunch, then hell broke loose. Sorry. I didn’t know it was going to crack everything up.”

  “But it didn’t. What do you mean?”

  “I thought things sounded pretty complicated there for a while.”

  “Marie Louise decided to go out, that’s all, and—there was something I wanted to tell her before she got away, though, and so—that’s all it was. I’m sorry if we sounded terribly noisy and American and common about everything,” she said, with a pretty laugh that showed how very, very uncommon she was. “Poor little Hoopsy, all puzzled at the other end of the line!”

  “Yeah. Well, I guess that’s all.” The last person I wanted to see was Audrey, but in decency I had to say, “I don’t suppose you’re free for lunch yourself?”

  “Well, how sweet! How really sweet! I do think it’s the sweetest idea in the world. But I can’t do it. Listen, Hoop—” pause, and a shift from pure sugar to something conspiratorial in suggestion—“call Marie Louise again, won’t you? I know she’d love to go somewhere with you again. She’s awkward about these things. I’m sorry about just now—really—but call her again. Call her tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, I will.”

  “Do that, without fail. Good-bye, Hoop.”

  “So long.”

  I hung up, visualising Audrey at the Prince du Royaume hanging up and then beginning to walk the floor, back and forth, up and down, around and a
bout. The tension had never gone out of her voice.

  But I didn’t get a chance to call back, because Audrey called me first. I ate alone at Lipp’s, then went back to the gallery and did some more straightening up, then lay down to read. My phone rang and there she was.

  “Hoop, I’ve got to see you. I know it’s going to sound perfectly crazy but I must. Now don’t tell me you’re busy this afternoon.”

  “I’m free, more or less.”

  She became a little arch, really working to get me. “I won’t listen to any of your maybes! I’ve a perfectly delightful surprise for you and we’ll make it a party, a real party. A cocktail party, in your honour. Will you come to my very special cocktail party in your honour this afternoon, Hoop?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “Early, so we’ll have plenty of time together. Five.”

  “Five’s all right.”

  Laughter and charm, then, “I’m so happy about it! It’s a wonderful surprise, and ever and ever so special. Five.”

  “O.K. Five.”

  “Five! Until five—Hoop.”

  Somebody had to stop it. I said good-bye and hung up.

  It seemed to me that Audrey was getting a little out of hand. Yesterday morning she had finagled me into that date. Last night I had caught her at The Flea Club with a prize bastard. This morning I had listened in on a big row of some kind between her and her daughter, and now she wanted me for something and she was so eager to have me that she was sounding plenty silly and artificial about it, apparently on the assumption that in order to get me she had to do it the hard way. What to expect at five for my delightful surprise, I had no idea.

  At five I was walking down the corridor towards her suite. The hardest test of a hotel is its corridors. This one was immaculate, and there was something special about the air in it. The carpet caressed the soles of your feet right through your shoes. The door to Audrey’s suite was bone white and martini gold, and the mounting for the push button suggested minuets at the Petit Trianon. I gave it a rude punch anyway; there was a chaste response somewhere back in the apartment. The door opened and there she was. Audrey. In person.