‘I’m investigating the recent murders at Impasse Louvain in Paris, Colonel,’ he said calmly.
‘So you wrote on your card.’ Gautier’s card lay on the desk and de Clermont thumped it with his fist angrily. ‘And how the devil is that supposed to concern me? Tell me that!’
‘In no way, Colonel. But I have instructions from the examining magistrate to find people who knew Madame Hassler and who would be able to testify as to her character.’
‘Well, that does not include me.’
‘But you know the lady?’
‘She was born not far from here. I know her family slightly.’
‘Perhaps I should tell you, Colonel, we know that a few days before her arrest Madame Hassler lunched with you in a private apartment in the Ritz Hotel.’
Alarm flared briefly in de Clermont’s eyes to be replaced almost at once by a look of uncontrollable fury. He shouted at Gautier: ‘Are you saying that you’ve had the impertinence to spy on me?’
‘Colonel, until that day we were not even aware of your existence. Madame Hassler was under surveillance as part of routine police procedure in a murder case.’
‘And now you’ve jumped to the conclusion that I must somehow be involved in this crime.’
‘Not at all. We have come to see you simply because you know Madame Hassler.’ Gautier paused to add effect to his next remark. ‘And you must know her well since she came unchaperoned to lunch with you in a hotel suite.’
The comment did not needle de Clermont as much as Gautier had expected. He rose from his desk and crossed to the window, where he stood looking out over the terrace and the fields beyond. Gautier noticed a deep scar slanting across his left cheek which was partly concealed by his moustaches and sideboards. The scar and his short-cropped, black hair coupled with the deep-set eyes and hawkish nose, gave him the look of an assassin.
‘These murders have caused me some embarrassment, Inspector,’ he said finally and there could be no mistaking the change in his attitude.
‘Why is that, Colonel?’
‘I have to admit that I have been friendly with the lady. But then, as you must have discovered by now, so have a good many other men.’
‘If she were to be put on trial, would you be ready to give evidence about her character?’
‘Good God, Inspector, surely in view of my er—relationship with the lady, I could not be expected to speak about her character!’ De Clermont laughed; the confidential laugh of one man to another about a woman of their acquaintance, a masculine laugh loaded with innuendo. ‘After all, man, why me? Why not a minister or some other public figure? Why not the late president? He did die for love of her!’
The colonel laughed again and looked at Gautier. They were to be friends now, Gautier supposed and that must mean he was to be promoted to temporary colonel. He said: ‘There is one question which I am expected to ask you, Colonel. Were you at the Hasslers’ house at any time on the day of the murders?’
‘Good God, no! I would have been the first to come forward and tell the police if I had. In the army we are taught to recognize our public duty.’
‘One final point. Did you ever give Madame Hassler any gifts of jewelry?’
‘Certainly not!’
‘No rings? No pearls?’
De Clermont’s face took on an expression of sullen displeasure. ‘If you’re referring to that wretched necklace which she was always talking about, then it’s supposed to be worth almost more than my chateau.’
‘Did she never mention who gave it to her?’
‘Not by name, but by all the hints she dropped it could only have been the late president.’
Moving away from the window, de Clermont pulled on a bell cord. The act was enough to create a diversion and interrupt their conversation. Before it could be re-started, he turned to Gautier and smiled a fellow officer’s smile.
‘If you’ve finished cross-examining me, Inspector, let me persuade you to take a glass of something. It’s just about aperitif time.’ Gautier recognized the gesture as one of lordly dismissal. He was prepared to accept it because he judged there was nothing more he could get out of de Clermont for the time being and taking a drink with the man might at least keep the door open. The manservant appeared in answer to the bell with a decanter of port and two matching glasses on a silver tray.
As they sipped their drinks, he noticed the colonel glance at him more than once; thoughtful, appraising glances. Eventually de Clermont said: ‘How is Madame Hassler standing up to the Juge d’Instruction? They tell me these fellows can be pretty ruthless in the questions they ask.’
‘I think one might say that she’s holding her own.’
‘Good, good!’ He glanced at Gautier again. ‘You’ve been present at the interrogations, have you?’
‘Yes. Most of the time.’
What sort of questions has he been asking her?’
‘Very wide ranging. That’s how the system works.’
De Clermont hesitated briefly and then asked: ‘Has Madame Hassler mentioned my name by any chance?’
‘No.’
Well, I warn you she might.’ The colonel laughed without amusement. ‘You know what women are like. More than once Josephine has asked me if I loved her and whether I’d like to marry her. Of course I pointed out that she was already married.’
‘But you were not interested in marriage anyway?’
‘Heavens, no! But one doesn’t like to hurt a girl’s feelings and I suppose she may just possibly have jumped to the conclusion that I’d rather fancy marrying her.’
‘And now, of course, she’s free to marry.’
‘Precisely. Slightly awkward for me, I can tell you.’
Well, so far she hasn’t even spoken about you, either to me or to the Juge d’Instruction.’
‘I’m delighted to hear it.’
The colonel finished his port in a swift gulp. Now that he had learnt what he wished to know, he clearly wanted to rid himself of Gautier as quickly as possible. Putting his glass down he said: ‘Very glad to have had this little chat, Inspector. It clears the air. We must keep in touch. Can you find your own way out, do you think?’
On his way out through the hall, Gautier smiled to himself at the contrast between de Clermont’s manner at his arrival and at his departure. The colonel seemed to have convinced himself that Gautier had come all the way from Paris to reassure him. The door to the drawing-room was still open when he passed it and the same woman was standing beyond it. She looked at him and her lips twitched in what might have been intended as a smile.
* * *
When he reached Paris it was evening but, feeling that his long day had been frustratingly unproductive, he went to Sûreté headquarters in the hope that Surat might have left some account of his own day’s investigations on Gautier’s desk. He was not disappointed and found a report waiting for him in a sealed envelope marked for his attention. It was written in the round, laboriously fashioned script which he could instantly recognize as his subordinate’s handwriting.
CONFIDENTIAL REPORT
On your instructions I went to Rue Lépic in Montmartre to interview the woman Marie-France Despard, known professionally as ‘Mimi’. She was totally unco-operative, denied that she had ever been associated with any brothel or other establishment in Rue des Moulins and professed complete ignorance of any assault or similar incident. She repeated these statements so vehemently, even when I threatened to bring her in for questioning, that I began to believe that a mistake might have been made. However after leaving her apartment I made enquiries among her neighbours who confirmed that she works in an establishment at number 3, Rue des Moulins. I then went to the Ritz Hotel where I was able to establish the dates on which Colonel Gerard de Clermont has stayed there during the last two years. These are given on the attached sheet. It would appear that Colonel de Clermont has been in the habit of coming to Paris about every three months or so for several years. Recently his visits have been much more fr
equent. As you will see he spent the night of 31 May, which as you know was the date of the Impasse Louvain murders, in Paris. Thinking that you might be interested in his movements on that night, I made further enquiries among the hotel staff and learned that the colonel came to Paris on that particular occasion to attend a banquet at his club, the Cercle Agricole. The doorman at the Ritz remembers him leaving the hotel early in the evening and returning at about eleven o’clock. Subsequently I went to the Cercle Agricole to check with the secretariat of the club who were able to confirm that the colonel had attended the banquet.
signed: F. Surat.
Gautier glanced through the list of dates attached to the report. They showed, as Surat had stated, that over the last few months de Clermont had been coming to Paris twice and sometimes three times a month. That might suggest a growing infatuation for Josephine Hassler. On the other hand, as the colonel himself had remarked, he was only one of several men who had been enjoying her favours and there was not the slightest evidence to show that he had in any way been connected with the murders at Impasse Louvain.
Still dissatisfied with the day’s achievements, Gautier locked Surat’s report in his desk, left Sûreté headquarters and, remembering that he had eaten nothing all day, crossed the Seine to a small restaurant near the Halles. There he was served with a huge dish of cassoulet, a hunk of fresh bread and a carafe of red wine. Then he walked up to Rue des Moulins.
Number 3 was well known to the Paris police, although they seldom paid it any of the routine precautionary visits which they made to the many other brothels of the city. Popularly known as La Maison des Anglais, number 3 was frequented by men of society, members of the Jockey Club, visiting American millionaires, the diplomatic corps and royalty. Before he became King of England, the Prince of Wales, it was rumoured, had been a regular visitor during his frequent trips to Paris and this was the origin of its nickname. People said he used to fill a special silver bath with vintage Champagne for the ablutions of the girl who was his choice for the evening. As good Frenchmen, the police understood very well that it would be indiscreet and possibly embarrassing if they were to drop in on a ‘maison close’ with such a clientele.
Outside the house there was nothing to show the kind of pleasures it offered, not even the large illuminated street number which was the accepted sign of a brothel. Inside the front door a liveried servant took Gautier’s hat and showed him into a large room, which by the elegance of its furnishings might easily have been a drawingroom in Avenue du Bois. Three men in evening dress were playing cards at a table opposite the door, while two girls in stylish dresses were re-charging the brandy glasses at their elbows. In another corner a handsome, silver-haired man whom Gautier recognized as a duke and a former member of the Senate, was sitting on a Louis XIV sofa next to a beautiful Japanese girl.
A woman of about 50, expensively dressed, came forward, arms outstretched, towards Gautier. ‘My friend!’ she exclaimed. ‘How lovely to see you again! Come and tell me your news.’ She called out to the footman who was still standing by the door: ‘Feliçien, fetch some Champagne for Monsieur.’
Gautier knew he had never seen the woman before and he began: ‘Don’t think me impolite, Madame, but—’
‘Let’s sit over there,’ the woman said, interrupting his protest and pointing towards two chairs at the end of the room farthest from the card players.
Suddenly realizing what the woman was trying to do, Gautier followed her to the chairs, sat down and waited until the Champagne was brought and poured out for them. Then he asked her: ‘How did you know I was from the police, Madame?’
‘One learns to sense it, Monsieur. And it is very obliging of you to play my little game so my guests will not know.’
‘I haven’t come to cause you any trouble but merely to talk to one of your girls.’
‘Which one?’
‘Marie-France Despard. I understand that she calls herself “Mimi” professionally.’
‘Is she in trouble? Perhaps there’s something I could do.’
‘No, Madame, I think not. I just want to ask her a few questions.’
‘That can easily be arranged. Would you mind very much seeing her in one of our rooms upstairs?’
‘Whatever causes you least inconvenience.’
‘If you would wait a moment then.’
The woman left the room. While she was away, Gautier looked around him as he sipped his Champagne. Even to his inexpert eye it was obvious that the cut-glass chandeliers in the room, the heavy gilt-framed mirrors and the paintings were all genuine and expensive. All the men to be seen were wearing evening dress. He had heard that the bedrooms were also lavishly decorated, each in a different style – Spanish, Venetian, Moorish, Scandinavian – to suit the mood or the inclinations of the clients. He could see no sign of improprietry, no scantily-clad girls, no drunkenness, no bawdy language. The rich, he concluded, evidently took their pleasures like gentlemen.
Presently the woman who had received him returned and said: ‘Go up to the first floor. The young lady is waiting in the English room; that is the third room on the right.’
Following her instructions, he mounted an imposing staircase and made his way along a corridor on the first floor to the third door on the right. It opened on to a room that was in semi-darkness, the only light coming from an oil lamp which threw grotesque shadows on the ceiling. The walls were a plain, stark white, studded with hooks and nails from which hung a selection of chains and whips and manacles. In one corner stood a life-size figure carved in wood of a Christian martyr, St Sebastian perhaps, whose body, bound to a stake, was pierced by arrows.
When his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, Gautier saw that a girl was lying on a wooden bed in the centre of the room. She wore a long shift of a white diaphanous material and little more and her dark hair hung loose to her shoulders. At the head and foot of the bed were leather straps by which a prostrate victim could be secured before flagellation. The room, one supposed, was the torture chamber of which he had heard speak, provided for English visitors since the English were reputed to enjoy the particular perversion which it offered. Realizing that the woman who ran the establishment must have deliberately chosen this room as the most appropriate for a policeman to interrogate one of her girls, Gautier was amused by her sense of humour.
He said to the girl on the bed: ‘Are you Marie-France Despard?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Then you can sit up. I’m from the Sûreté.
She sat up quickly and he noticed that she wore slave bangles on her wrists and ankles, intended no doubt to heighten the atmosphere of primitive savagery. ‘What do you want?’
‘The answers to certain questions; answers which you refused to give my colleague this morning.’
‘I can only tell you, as I told him, that I know nothing.’
‘Come now, Mimi, you lied to him when you said you didn’t work here. Isn’t that so?’
‘Well, I know nothing of the other affair, the supposed assault.’ Gautier sighed and shook his head. ‘In that case I shall have no alternative but to take you to the nearest police post where we can discover whether your registration as a prostitute is in order. And that, Mimi, will be the end of your job here, since Madame would never employ girls who are in trouble with the police.’
She called him a filthy name, using an adjective that was much in vogue among soldiers in North Africa but rarely used by young ladies in Paris. Then she said truculently: ‘What do you want to know?’
‘For a start the name of the man who beat you up.’
‘Men who come to this place don’t give their names. And anyway it was his first visit here, so I didn’t know him. He told me to call him Nicki.’
‘A name he had invented, no doubt. Describe him.’
‘He was not tall but very broad and powerful; going bald, with a thick moustache and a short, neatly-trimmed beard. Twenty years ago, before he started going to fat, he must have been quite a man. H
e wasn’t French of course.’
‘English?’
‘His accent could have been English but his manners were too coarse and brutal. The Englishmen we get here are always beautifully behaved.’
‘Even when they whip you? That’s nice to know. Anything else?’
Mimi thought for a while before replying. ‘I would say he was a man who was used to getting what he wanted, women included, without ever paying. He couldn’t have been in an establishment like this very often before.’
What makes you say that?’
‘That was the start of the row we had, that and the drink. He kept repeating that back home he didn’t have to pay for women; they were only too glad to sleep with him. Finally I grew sick of it and told him I’d want double to make love with anyone so fat and vulgar. He slapped me across the face so I took off my shoe and hit him with it. That was a mistake. He went quite crazy, turned as red as a beetroot, swore and punched me. Trying to get away from him I fell and hurt my ribs, but that didn’t stop him and he grabbed my throat as though he meant to kill me. He might easily have done so, but then this other man rushed into the room just in time and dragged Nicki off.’
What man was that?’
‘A burly fellow, soberly dressed, who had arrived with the group and was sitting down in the hall all the time sipping beer.’
‘A bodyguard, perhaps.’
‘Perhaps. They say he goes everywhere with this Nicki.’ She made a contemptuous noise and put one hand up to her throat. ‘Not that he’d ever need a bodyguard. A warder would be better; to stop him going right off his head and killing somebody. It couldn’t have been a servant, for he was carrying a pile of money. It was him who called up Madame and settled for the damage.’
The Murders at Impasse Louvain Page 11
