Murder At the Flea Club

by Matthew Head

  “Bingo! But you haven’t got all her records, just her early ones. He’s changed it to Tony Crew.”

  “Anyway, I win, don’t I? You’ll take me now, won’t you? You’ll introduce me to Nicole?”

  “And Tony Crew, on the chance that he’s the one you’re fascinated by.”

  I told myself she was lying somewhere. After all, she was Audrey’s daughter. But she was very young and very pretty, which, I decided, made it just innocent fibbing. Entirely different thing altogether. Sort of charming, when you came right down to it.

  Although I went to The Flea Club two or three times a week, even if only for a short nightcap, and occasionally had to take a guest, I had never before turned up with anyone who was unusual in any way. They would be people from home who had looked me up, or friends of people like my female cousin, that I couldn’t get out of looking up. They were always nice enough but never of any particular distinction. Just people. So my appearance with a pretty young girl was something of a sensation, in a small kind of way, with the people who knew me around there.

  Marie Louise was really looking extremely pretty, and also she was looking extremely young and fresh in an assemblage where even the best-looking women usually looked jaded. She looked brand-new, whereas everybody else bore at least the first visible symptoms of ultimate dissolution, and her excitement looked young and natural whereas the typical Flea Club habituée, even if she had an excited look, owed it to alcohol or some less innocent stimulation.

  Bibi came up to Marie Louise and looked at her as if she were looking into some extraordinary and disturbing mirror. The two girls were about of a height, and of more or less the same general colouring and build. There wasn’t even too much difference between their features, if you wanted to force the comparison, but even so, they might have come from different planets. Bibi’s eyes travelled over Marie Louise from hair to shoes, and then, curiously, she stepped up and took a bit of the material of Marie Louise’s dress between her fingers and rubbed it, as a shopper might do in a store, as if she were trying to explain to herself the difference between what she was and what Marie Louise was, on some less terrifying level than the obvious one. During all this examination Marie Louise stood quite still, uncertain and I think a little frightened, glancing at me in a puzzled and questioning way for some kind of help. I said, “Bibi, meet Marie Louise,” but Bibi said nothing. She dropped the fold of the dress and turned and walked away, taking up her position at the end of the bar.

  Freddy Fayerweather came bouncing up and said, “My dear! How refreshing! A sweet pea in a patch of deadly nightshade! Do introduce me!”

  “Marie Louise—” (avoiding “Miss Bellen” in case anybody around there knew Audrey’s last name) “—meet Freddy. Mr. Gratzhaufer of St. Paul.”

  “Hoopee,” shrieked Freddy. “Raley! My name’s Fayerweather, Miss—Marie Louise—or anyway it practically is. Now tell me about yourself.”

  “Well…” said Marie Louise, and stopped.

  “Where’s Tony, Freddy? I want him to meet Marie Louise. She knows his records.”

  “No! Really? But she’s a whatcha-ma-callit. A cognoscente! He’s back with Nicole. Why don’t you two come sit at my table?”

  Marie Louise was looking at Freddy the way she might have at some monster that had suddenly grown legs and walked out of an aquarium tank. And come to think of it, Freddy’s features, with their soft and slightly blurred quality, were like something seen through water. But she made no objection, so we went over to his table to wait for Nicole’s number.

  Freddy prattled along, telling Marie Louise about Tony’s virtues and hinting at everyone else’s shortcomings, trying to find out what was what between Marie Louise and me, and generally skittering around in his own little world of intrigue, frustration, and false excitement, and in the middle of all this I caught sight of the Italian boy, over at the bar. Bibi was just leaving him, probably having found he wasn’t ticklish, and his eyes were searching the room. When he saw me, his face lit up with recognition, and he made a bee-line for our table. Nobody would have called him a sweet pea in a patch of deadly nightshade but he was the male counterpart of Marie Louise—a very nice fresh-looking kid.

  “Howdy,” I said. “How did you get in?”

  He showed me the card I had given him the other night. “Nobody asked for it,” he said, “so I kept it. Nobody asked for it tonight, either.”

  “I guess you look honest. Uh—afraid I don’t know your name.”

  “Balducci, Luigi Balducci.”

  “Uh—Marie Louise, Luigi Balducci. Luigi, Freddy Fayerweather. Have a seat.” It wasn’t exactly according to the etiquette book but for The Flea Club it was almost stuffy. Also it was Freddy’s table and I had no right to ask the boy to sit there, especially since it left no place free for Tony to join us later, but he so obviously wanted to be asked, and Marie Louise was so close to being foundered in the wash of Freddy’s chatter, that I was glad to take on Luigi as a stabilising element.

  I have always said I don’t believe in love at first sight, and I still say it. People think it happens, but it happens in retrospect, not really at first sight. But I must admit that what hadn’t happened between Marie Louise and me I could see happening between her and Luigi. It wasn’t sparks, but I swear there was something like a flow of light between them. That sounds a little sloppy. All I mean is, something happened. It was like watching one of those magician’s tricks, where he takes an empty flower-pot, pours water in it, and a great big son-of-a-bitch of a geranium begins to grow and unfold into leaf and blossom before your eyes. It was so obvious that even Freddy noticed it. “Well Hoop,” he said, highly pleased, not at what was happening but at my possible discomfiture, “if you had anything in mind, I mean if you had any plans or de signs, I think you’ve made an irretrievable mistake!”

  The lights went down and Tony and Nicole came in for their number. The turn went pretty well, probably to Freddy’s disappointment, and in due time Tony and Nicole took their applause and Nicole began to move about from table to table. But Tony neither went with her—which was not unusual—nor came over to Freddy’s table—which was. He went instead down the stairway to the cellar.

  Freddy went through a miniature gamut of emotions, ranging from ordinary surprise through alarm to extreme fidgetiness—if fidgetiness can be an emotion. It could be, with Freddy. He gave me a huffy little glare—he was really at his worst—and said, “Well, if you will fill my table for me!” and it was true that there was no chair now for Tony, with Luigi there, but it was also true that Tony had headed for the stairway without even looking in our direction. “I’ll simply have to go find him,” Freddy said, getting up. “’Scuse.”

  “Bring him back, Marie Louise wants to meet him,” I said. “We’ll pull up another chair.”

  Freddy vanished, and shortly Nicole reached our table. I introduced Luigi and Marie Louise and told Nicole why we were there—or at any rate told her Marie Louise’s story about why we were there. Nicole was pleased, and responsive to both of them, and sat down in Freddy’s chair, motioning to the barman that he could bring her usual lemon soda to that table.

  Marie Louise said something about how lovely the number had been.

  “You liked it? I’m glad. But it was not a very happy one, was it? I tell you what I will do. The next one I sing will be a happy one, and I will sing it especially for you and your husband. It is about honeymooners.” Nicole smiled at both of them, but seeing their expression, added, “It is your honeymoon, of course?”

  Marie Louise and Luigi made odd sounds together, among which it was possible to isolate a few phrases such as, “Well, yes, or rather, why no, that is, we’re not married but it is true that we just met,” the general sense being, by implication, that the world had begun about thirty minutes ago.

  “Just met?” said Nicole incredulously. “Absurd.”

  “But true,” I said. “I just introduced them. But I see exactly what you mean. Nicole, will you hold
this place? I want to get Tony for Marie Louise.”

  I let myself into the cellar stairway with my key, descended the stairs, turned the corner into the members’ room, and saw it occupied by only three people at one table, but it was as unexpected a trio as I could have named—Freddy, Tony and Mrs. Jones. Over in one corner gaped the two pits of Professor Johnson’s excavations.

  Freddy was pink with agitation, Tony’s lips were set in a firm line less suggestive of his typical gentle patience than usual, and Mrs. Jones seemed on the point of tears.

  “Good evening,” I said to everybody.

  “Honestly, Hoop, you’re in the way everywhere tonight,” Freddy complained. “Every time I turn round, you’re in my hair. Hattie, dear, you know Hoop Taliaferro?”

  Mrs. Jones nodded as if we had never seen one another and so did I, and I said, “Tony, there’s a girl upstairs would like to meet you if you have a minute before you go on again?”

  Freddy said, “Can’t you see we’re involved? Go away.”

  Mrs. Jones said, with a tremble in her voice, “Why should he go away? Everybody knows all my private affairs. All they have to do is look in the newspapers.” She began to cry, in a small habitual way that didn’t interfere too much with her other activities. These included a large glass of whisky and soda.

  “Well, if you want to make public entertainment out of it,” Freddy said.

  Mrs. Jones cried harder, murmured, “…humiliating…” and then reached out suddenly and put her hand over Tony’s where it rested on the table. She remained clutching it, wiping her eyes with her other hand. “Oh, T-T-Tony,” she whimpered, and then, forced to abandon either Tony’s hand or her handkerchief in order to lift up her glass, she stopped crying and put away the handkerchief and took a long drink. She seemed to improve immediately.

  I said, “I’d better get along. I’d appreciate it if you can stop by on your way up, Tony. I hope you feel better, Mrs. Jones. So long, Freddy,” and I turned to go.

  “Don’t leave,” Mrs. Jones said. “Why leave? Freddy, I wish you’d leave. Sit down, Harper,” she said, and I didn’t bother to correct her. “I haven’t any pride. Why should I have any pride? But one thing I never thought I’d find myself doing, I never thought I’d find myself in a position like this. Tell him what I did, Tony. I don’t think it was so awful.”

  Freddy volunteered, “She just tried to buy Tony right out from under me, that’s all.”

  The merchandise under discussion got an even grimmer look on his face, but didn’t move or say anything.

  “And I simply refuse to allow it,” Freddy went on in a righteous tone. “It’s simply too absolutely degrading for wor—”

  “Tony!” wailed Mrs. Jones. Tony had jumped up, which jerked his hand out from under hers. He started striding across the room, and went up the stairs fast, and disappeared.

  “Tony!” the poor thing wailed again, “Tony, don’t leave me! Oh, Tony, I love you!” but he was gone, and she put both hands in front of her face and made unlovely burbly noises. She had had a lot more to drink than I thought.

  Freddy said, “Well, really, Hattie, if you will put yourself into these terrible positions, I don’t see how you can expect to get anything but hurt.”

  She mumbled, damply and thickly, “He’s so wonderful.”

  Freddy emitted something divided between a laugh and a jeer and a gasp, and said to me, “You know what I want for Tony, Hoop, I’ve told you. I want to protect him from just this kind of thing. And I come down here looking for him and what do I find? Hattie, of all people! And now, of all times!” He turned to poor Mrs. Jones and said, “Honestly, Hattie, pride or no pride, I should think you’d realise that a boy like Tony wouldn’t look twice at you, especially when his first look, so to speak, was like the other night. And anyway he’s mine, and I don’t mean that the way you think I do, either, if you’re getting nasty-minded about it. So—”

  “He’s not!” Mrs. Jones cried out, taking down her hands and giving one good strong wipe at her eyes. “You just bother the life out of him, that’s all. You just pester him! He doesn’t like you one bit!”

  Freddy’s laugh tried to be contemptuous, but there were uncertain overtones in it. “Now I know you’re crazy,” he said. “Who told you that?”

  “He did!” said Mrs. Jones. “Just now!”

  Freddy’s face turned into shrimp-coloured blubber and began to vibrate. “I don’t believe it,” he said, “I simply don’t believe it and I won’t accept it. I’ll tell Tony what you said.”

  But he did believe it, he knew it was true, whether Tony had actually said it or not, and I saw he was going to cry. I didn’t want to see it, and for that matter I didn’t want to see anything that was going to happen from then on. I got out faster than Tony had.

  In her time, Mrs. Jones had experienced the birth of love in lots of different ways, I imagined. But that it should come while she was pinioned in the arms of a handsome boy, while she kicked and screamed and fought in hysterics, was something entirely new, I suspected, and probably as sudden and as lively as the most jaded could ask. Eros, as was usual around The Flea Club, was working overtime at strange ways in which his wonders to perform. And this one was really novel all the way through, since for the first time, Mrs. Jones seemed to have fallen in love with an un-son-of-a-bitch.

  All of this was happening the night before the murder.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “W E HAVE NOW arrived,” said Dr. Finney, “at the point where you went back upstairs and found Marie Louise had skipped out on you with the Italian boy.”

  “We’ve arrived at the point where I’m going to have a couple of hours sleep. I’m full of fatigue poisons.”

  “It’s 5.30. Give me another half-hour and then I’ll give you until 8.00. Now tell me about Marie Louise.”

  “She did not skip out on me. When I came upstairs she and Luigi and Nicole were talking like old friends together, very animated and all. No sign of Tony.”

  “Any idea where he went or what he was doing?”

  “None. Is it important?”

  “How do I know? At this stage, everything’s important. Go ahead.”

  “I joined them at the table and Nicole told me she thought my young friends were charming. Came time for her second number and she left us and pretty soon came out on the stage, etcetera. Tony seemed O.K. Nicole sang like a million bucks, got a terrific hand. Had to do a couple of encores. Came back to our table and Marie Louise said she was thrilled, which she obviously was, you could see it. Said she had to go home, though, and would I mind taking her. It was only a little after twelve, and I remembered what I had said to Audrey about keeping Marie Louise out late, but I didn’t regard it as a contract. Asked Marie Louise to wait while I made a phone call. Called their suite at the Prince du Royaume. No answer. If Audrey and René were there, I didn’t want Marie Louise bumping into anything bothersome. They must have been at René’s.”

  “Taking it for granted they were together.”

  “Taking that for granted, yes. So I went back to the table—Nicole was still there—and said to Marie Louise, ‘O.K., let’s go.’ The Italian boy said why didn’t I just stay there and he would take Marie Louise home and then come back and join us. I said I thought that was a lousy idea and he apologised. So Nicole said was I coming back, and I said no, it was late and I thought I’d go on home. Where Tony was, all this time, I don’t know. Luigi asked if it was all right if he stayed on, was he wearing out his welcome considering he wasn’t a member or anything, and Nicole said of course not, he was welcome to stay as her guest, and please do. He said he’d love to. I took Marie Louise home. Kissed her good-night. Turned out to be avuncular in the extreme. She said thank you, said she wanted to thank me a thousand times for a thrilling evening, she had never met anyone quite as wonderful as Nicole, good-night, Hoop. I went home. End of day.”

  “Sleep well?”

  “Like a top.”

  “So the next morning you cal
led for Emmy and me—I guess we have to call that ‘yesterday morning’ now—and I should know everything from that time on. But you’re hiding something from me. Aren’t you?”

  “I have been.”

  “Ready to talk?”

  “I can really have a couple of hours sleep afterwards?”

  “Sure. Promise.”

  “I’ll talk. Here goes.”

  I will first fill in for the record, as briefly as possible, that I called for Dr. Finney and Emmy late. It was about 8:45, but I had said eight o’clock breakfast. I had called Professor Johnson, in spite of the hour, from my place, but hadn’t had an answer. I called him twice from Dr. Finney’s suite, once when I arrived, and then after breakfast. That time, at nearly ten, I got him. I told him I had a couple of friends who would be really interested if he had time to explain the excavations in the basement of The Flea Club, and he said if I could give him half an hour he could meet us there. So Dr. Finney and Emmy and I went to St. Julien-le-Pauvre first after all, thus compounding a minor violation of chronological sequence, and thence proceeded to the members’ entrance of The Flea Club. Since we were punctual people and Professor Johnson a punctual person, we met there, and went in together.

  I won’t try to be dramatic about it. It was a horrible shock and no fun to remember. Although it was now mid-morning, the cellar was still a mess from last night. A few tables had been cleaned up; the rest were still littered with glasses and ashes. Professor Johnson, a fastidious man, looked with distaste at the room, and began pointing out vestigial indications along the walls of the original chapel structure. He had had trouble getting permission to begin the excavations. Nicole had objected, and he had had to get an injunction, or whatever it is called, from the Monuments Historiques. It had turned out very well, since the excavations, in spite of the mess, were an odd fillip for a night-club cellar, and everybody enjoyed them. Professor Johnson was digging up the entire area, small sections at a time, to a depth of eight feet, hunting indications of the original floor and so on. Then these holes would be filled in, and adjacent areas explored. The two pits now in the club were due to be filled that day, and he was commenting that we were fortunate to have hit just that time, when we discovered that one of the pits was more than half filled, and that a figure was lying in it half covered with earth. It didn’t make any sense to me at all when I first saw it. It was like rags. Flesh was showing too, but I suppose I just refused to recognise it. Then it wasn’t rags, it was Nicole’s robe, and the flesh was her neck and head and part of one arm, everything in twisted and unnatural positions.