The Murders at Impasse Louvain

by Richard Grindal

  ‘Well, Inspector, you asked to see me,’ Loubet said to Gautier. ‘What is it about?’

  ‘The Impasse Louvain affair, Sir.’

  ‘But the examination of the woman has been concluded. The dossier has been passed to the Chambre des Mises en Accusation and so my part in the process is finished.’

  ‘Even so, I thought you should know that I believe I may have discovered Madame Hassler’s accomplice in the murders.’

  ‘And who is that?’

  ‘The Russian ambassador in Paris.’

  Loubet looked at him thoughtfully. ‘In that case, Inspector, you had better sit down and tell me about it.’

  Briefly Gautier told him of the Grand Duke Varaslav’s behaviour at La Maison des Anglais and of why he believed that the man whom the manservant Mansard had seen outside the Hasslers’ house on the night of the murder must have been the private detective Fénelon. He did not say anything about his own confrontation with the grand duke at Maxim’s.

  When he had finished Loubet remarked: ‘Your evidence is scarcely conclusive, Inspector.’

  ‘I realize that, but a few enquiries might easily produce definite proof.’

  ‘And so you are asking me for my authority to make such enquiries?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  Loubet leant back in his chair and stroked his beard thoughtfully. During the examination of Josephine Hassler, Gautier had formed the impression that the judge was conscientious, intelligent and scrupulously fair, a man who had accepted his post not for love of power or personal ambition, but because he respected and valued the law. That was why he had come to consult Loubet instead of approaching one of the senior officials at the Sûreté.

  ‘Your first step, Inspector, would be to question this detective person, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘There can be no harm in that but until you have much stronger evidence that the grand duke was actually at Impasse Louvain on the night of the murders, you should make no attempt to question either him or any of the embassy staff.’

  ‘Those conditions will make my investigations very difficult.’

  ‘I’m afraid so, but remember that diplomats have certain privileges and of course you have no right to enter the embassy of a foreign power uninvited.’

  ‘Diplomatic status wouldn’t protect anyone involved in murder, though?’

  ‘There are other considerations to be taken into account. Remember, Gautier, that our government is anxious to preserve good relations with Russia,’ Loubet said and then smiled as he added: ‘But then I’m sure we can rely on you to be tactful and discreet. The prefect has a very high opinion of you.’

  Before he left Gautier decided to ask the judge one last question. ‘Am I right in thinking, Sir, that you did not appear surprised when I mentioned the grand duke’s name?’

  Loubet sighed. ‘Between you and me, his excellency has been causing certain problems, Gautier. I’m not suggesting for a moment that he could possibly be a murderer – that is inconceivable – but, well, there has been trouble with women, particularly with women of a certain class.’

  As he left the Palais de Justice, Gautier found himself thinking about what Loubet had said. It did indeed seem inconceivable that the ambassador could possibly have been party to a deliberate murder. The man might have an overpowering urge for sex and was certainly promiscuous, but that made it less likely rather than more, that he would kill for a woman. There was no shortage of women in Paris to satisfy all his tastes. The manservant Mansard and Claudine might well both have been mistaken and the person seen in the lane outside the house might have been a passing stranger. Even the grand duke’s behaviour at Maxim’s could be explained. Had he been secretly involved with Josephine Hassler, he would be only too anxious to conceal the fact at a time when she had become the centre of a major scandal.

  From the Palais de Justice he took an omnibus to the Place de la Republique and from there made his way to Rue Gassonville, which proved to be a narrow street leading off Rue Reaumur. The buildings in the street were shoddy and housed the offices of a large number of small businesses, attracted to the neighbourhood no doubt by a belief that the proximity of newspaper offices would lend them respectability.

  Fénelon’s office was on the fourth floor, reached after a tramp up a staircase in almost total darkness. Obeying the instructions on the door, Gautier knocked and entered. Inside a youth of about eighteen wearing a black suit and paper cuffs to protect his shirt, was sitting with his boots on a desk reading a pornographic book.

  When Gautier asked for Fénelon, the youth said: ‘He’s not here.’

  When will he be here?’

  ‘I can’t say.’ The youth had not bothered to take his feet off the desk and was not at all pleased at having his reading interrupted.

  ‘Look, son,’ Gautier said, deciding that a small measure of authority might save his time, ‘I’m from the Sûreté. Inspector Gautier. Either you give me some answers and a little civility or I’ll take you down to headquarters.’

  The youth jumped up in alarm. ‘I’m sorry, Monsieur l’Inspecteur, but honestly I don’t know where the patron has gone. He rushed into the office first thing this morning, gave me some money to cover expenses and said I’d have to run the place on my own for a month or even longer. He said a really big job had come up.’

  ‘Did he tell you where?’

  ‘No, but my guess is it could be in Russia.’

  ‘Why Russia?’

  ‘For a start he had his passport sticking out of his pocket and when he gave me the money he took it from an envelope that was absolutely stuffed with notes. I noticed the coat of arms of the Russian embassy on the back of the envelope, the same as the one on letters which we sometimes get.’

  ‘He was working on a job for the Russians, wasn’t he?’

  The youth hesitated. ‘I’m not supposed to talk about it.’

  ‘That’s all right. Fénelon and I were colleagues when he was in the police and anyway I met him last night when he was working, at Maxim’s.’

  ‘Some job!’ The youth laughed. ‘It’s money for nothing! All he’s been doing is to follow this important Russian everywhere and see he comes to no harm. He’s a wild one that Russian! The patron spends half his time paying up for damage and he takes his percentage all the time.’

  ‘Well, when Fénelon gets back you tell him to contact me. Immediately, or he won’t be working as a detective very long.’

  From Rue Gassonville, Gautier returned to the Left Bank in a mood of depression. He felt, as he had felt ever since he had been called to Impasse Louvain on the Sunday morning following the murders, that he was wasting his time in a struggle against people or forces that remained in the background, but who were more powerful than he and would have the final say.

  To break the grip of this pessimism and since it was approaching the hour of the aperitif, he went to the Café Corneille. Duthrey was already there, established at their usual table with a young actor from the Comédie Française and a schoolmaster from the Lycée Condorcet who was beginning to make a reputation as a poet. Gautier joined them and ordered himself an absinthe, which was unusual for him since he seldom drank spirits during the day.

  ‘Taking something stronger this morning, I see,’ Duthrey remarked nodding towards the absinthe. ‘Are you by any chance trying to fortify yourself for the duel?’

  What duel?’

  ‘They tell me an up and coming inspector from the Sûreté was carried away by an excess of gallantry at Maxim’s last night.’

  ‘God in Heaven!’ Gautier exclaimed, mildly irritated, ‘Do you journalists know everything?’

  ‘We have men in all the best restaurants and in all the best houses too, if it comes to that, who keep us informed. We specially like to have advance warning of any duels.’

  ‘There will be no duel.’

  ‘A pity.’ Duthrey looked at Gautier inquisitively. ‘Anyway how did you come to be embroiled with the Grand
Duke Varaslav?’

  ‘It was just a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Then that can’t be the reason why he’s going home.’

  What are you talking about?’

  ‘The Russian embassy issued a statement less than an hour ago. Apparently his excellency the ambassador is being recalled to Russia suddenly—for consultations of course.’

  * * *

  All that afternoon Gautier sat at his desk reading and correcting a large pile of reports. The Director of the Sûreté had decided on a major review of the administration throughout the department, in order to introduce new methods and standard practices. Everything was to be controlled by regulations, from the liquid capacity of the inkwells to the form, layout and, as far as possible the language of reports. Everyone in the Sûreté except Courtrand knew it was a lunatic scheme impossible to implement in a country where every individual, every commune, every municipality believed it was their inalienable right to make their own decisions and defy conformity, in a country where only twenty years previously the Minister of Defence had discovered that army bands were playing no less than 179 different versions of the ‘Marseillaise’.

  Courtrand, however, refused to be diverted from the idea which he had picked up from a study of foreign police methods and for a start he had given his inspectors the task of reading through all the official reports of the last six months, editing and re-writing them as necessary so that they would fit into a new, standardized report form. Though as one man the inspectors decided that the director had gone mad, they had no choice except to obey his instructions.

  As he read and annotated and edited, Gautier felt weighed down by what he recognized as a sense of remorse. The memory of the previous night, of Claudine lying naked beside him in her bed, was still sharp and sensual. He seemed almost still to feel her quick, slim body moving beneath and around his own. She had made love with a passion and aggressiveness that was almost masculine and he remembered thinking, and smiling at the thought, that it was as though she were crusading for those women’s rights which she believed in so fiercely. Half-recalled sensations, the demanding pressure of her open lips on his own and the light touch of her fingers on his stomach, still played on his senses. At the same time he could not put out of his mind his return home early in the morning and the sight of Suzanne asleep in their bed. She had been sleeping contentedly, trustingly it had seemed to him and now he felt guilty for having broken that trust.

  His spell of duty finished at six o’clock that day and pushing the reports thankfully to one side, he locked up his desk and went downstairs. There, to his surprise, waiting for him outside the entrance to the building was Suzanne’s father. Gautier’s immediate thought was a projection of his remorse; her father had come to tell him that Suzanne had been in an accident, that she was ill, that she was dead.

  Instead the old man hailed him as though it were the most natural thing in the world to be waiting for his son-in-law after work. ‘How goes it go, Jean-Paul?’ he asked. ‘Had a good day?’

  ‘Not very. I’ve spent the afternoon in a futile exercise.’

  ‘I was passing so I thought I’d walk home with you. It’s a beautiful evening.’

  Together they crossed the road and began walking along the Seine in the direction of the Quai d’Orsay. Monsieur Duclos was a small, rotund man whose clothes always seemed to hang on him untidily and who usually talked and laughed a good deal. Today he was unusually silent. Three or four men were fishing from the banks of the river, holding their rods out hopefully over the slowly moving water. When his father-in-law stopped and leaned on a parapet to watch one of them, Gautier did the same.

  ‘Do you suppose they ever catch anything?’ he asked the old man.

  ‘Not now. Thirty years ago so the story goes, a man might pull out some lovely big fish. Now all the factories spew their waste into the water: tar, oil, soap, chemicals.’

  ‘Not long ago I passed a man fishing down there and he had beside him a basket with two small fish in it.’

  ‘Just show. He must have bought them down the road.’ Monsieur Duclos fell silent again. Gautier felt certain that he had come to meet his son-in-law for a purpose, that he had something to say and was finding it difficult to begin. Gautier wondered whether if perhaps Suzanne had somehow found out about Claudine and had sent her father to deliver a rebuke or even an ultimatum.

  ‘I don’t believe you came to the Sûreté by chance,’ he said. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Is there something you wish to tell me?’

  ‘Yes, you’re right, Jean-Paul, but I don’t know how I’m going to say it.’

  Gautier smiled. ‘Try the straightforward, direct way. Policemen prefer straight talk.’

  ‘All right, then.’ Monsieur Duclos looked at him miserably and Gautier thought he was going to burst into tears. ‘Suzanne has found herself a lover.’

  Gautier stared at him, wondering whether this was some elaborate joke, but looking away Monsieur Duclos went on, the words spilling out clumsily: ‘My God, Jean-Paul, I have to tell you I’m shattered! When she told me I nearly hit her. How could she do this to you? You’ve always been a wonderful husband; the whole family loves and respects you and yet my daughter – yes, my favourite daughter, I have to admit it – treats you like this. She’s no better than a slut, a whore.’

  ‘Who is the man?’ Gautier asked, his voice carefully controlled. ‘A policeman, if you please. One of your former colleagues at the fifteenth arrondissement. He’s nothing! Dirt! I feel so ashamed of Suzanne.’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on her.’

  What! You say that? After she has behaved like this?’

  ‘I haven’t exactly been innocent myself. As you probably know I had a mistress myself not long ago.’

  ‘The girl, Monique? Yes, I knew about that, but Suzanne didn’t. You had the decency to keep it from her. Anyway that was different.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Men have mistresses. It’s a fact of life. But for a well-brought-up girl of good bourgeois stock to make a cuckold of her husband! I thought it was only actresses and aristocrats who behaved like that.’

  Gautier found himself wondering ironically how Claudine would have reacted to the philosophy of Monsieur Duclos. The old man had probably never even heard of women’s rights.

  ‘I left Suzanne alone too much,’ he said.

  ‘That was because of your work. Suzanne knew what to expect when she married a policeman. Don’t make excuses for her.’

  ‘Did she ask you to tell me?’

  ‘Yes. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.’

  ‘Does that mean she wants me to move out of the apartment?’ Duclos was astounded. ‘You? Move out? Jean-Paul, I came here to ask you not to thrash her, even though she richly deserves it. If you throw her out of your home no one is going to blame you.’ There was no way, Gautier began to realize, of explaining to his father-in-law how he felt. The old man was too conventional, too set in his ideas to understand why Gautier might feel guilty for having neglected his wife, whatever the reason, or why he might feel that he must take at least a share of the blame for Suzanne’s infidelity.

  ‘I don’t think the girl even knows what she wants,’ Duclos said angrily.

  ‘We’ll have to work it out for ourselves,’ Gautier said. ‘I’d better get back home.’

  They walked together for a little way without speaking. There seemed to be nothing worth saying. Gautier wondered whether their relationship could ever be the same again. Duclos appeared to be humiliated by the knowledge of his daughter’s behaviour and few friendships between men could survive humiliation. He would be sorry if the breach were permanent because he had always enjoyed the old man’s good spirits and earthy Parisian humour.

  They parted at the end of the street where Gautier lived. He went on alone and found Suzanne in the living-room of the apartment, pretending to be working at a piece of embroidery, her face drawn and tense. She looked up as he went in and then
almost immediately lowered her head.

  He made the only speech he could think of making. ‘I’ll move into the spare bedroom,’ he said simply.

  She began to cry, unhappy, bewildered sobs, like a small child faced unexpectedly with an adult situation which it cannot understand but which it knows intuitively will cause unhappiness. He wanted not so much to comfort her as to tell her about his own infidelity, to confess that less than 24 hours ago he had been lying naked with another woman. Then, if he could not lessen her sense of guilt, he might at least share it.

  Instead he said awkwardly: ‘Don’t cry, chéri. You have nothing to be ashamed of.’

  She reached out and touched his hand timidly. ‘Jean-Paul you’re so good to me. I don’t deserve it,’ she said between her sobs.

  XVIII

  THE TRIAL FOR murder of Josephine Hassler, a woman of good family but doubtful morals, the supposed mistress of a President of France, was an event which fascinated not only the whole of France, but London, New York, Moscow, Berlin, all the capitals of the civilized world. Special correspondents flooded into Paris, sending back daily accounts of the trial that ran into thousands of words. A block of seats was reserved in the court for the embassies so that ambassadors, politicians and even royalty could come to watch the spectacle. For those who had no claim to privilege, money was the only passport. One hundred seats were set aside for the public and for these the poor and the greedy queued overnight outside the Palais de Justice, selling their places next day to the highest bidder.

  Although he played a negligible part in the proceedings except to give some routine evidence during the early stages, Gautier was obliged to be in court for the whole of the trial. He divided the time between trying to analyse the strategy of the prosecution and studying Josephine Hassler’s performance. When she was escorted into the dock on the first day, Madame Hassler was wearing, in the face of the advice of her counsel, a black dress which, as the newspapers had already revealed, had been specially made for the occasion by one of Europe’s leading couturiers, Worth. Her gestures and her expression were one of tragic martyrdom, sorrow at the great wrong that was being done her. Often she appeared crushed and pathetic, sometimes she sobbed and seemed on the point of fainting, but throughout the fourteen days of the trial, Gautier seemed to sense behind the acting and the performance a contempt for both the trappings of justice and for those who were trying her. It was as though all the time she was confident of the outcome of her trial and secure in the knowledge that she would survive it.