Murder in Montparnasse

by Howard Engel

  I could see some light coming in through a small window, touching curtains, the fabric of the bedclothes and the outlines of a bookshelf. She made no move to turn on the gaslight, but I felt her hands loosening my necktie before I had sloughed my topcoat. I tried to undo the silver clasps of her cloak as I pulled her towards the bed, unprotesting. I could hear her breathing and my own as I pulled the fillets of cloth that held her dress together. She hunched her shoulders into me as the dress fell away from her. In the darkness of the room, I could only see her eyes and feel our hot mouths on one another. Without taking our hands away from each other’s body, we managed to struggle out of our clothes and into the bed.

  Perfect lassitude. I could now see better in the dark: the hump our bodies made in the bed, the cracks in the high ceiling, a distorted rectangle of light pulled across the wall, moving over the irregularities of a picture frame and clothes draped over the open door of an armoire. She was next to me. In fact my nearly numb hand was still closed around one of her breasts. I turned and moved my arm from where it was trapped beneath her and she shifted langorously into a new position, losing herself in and around my limbs. I touched her cheek lightly with my other hand. She took it in her own, cupped it and held it to her mouth. I heard the word “chéri” whispered in a husky, lazy voice. She was warm against me, and I felt the lassitude slipping, giving way to renewed caresses and urgency.

  When we had slept for some time, we smoked a shared cigarette.

  “I know next to nothing about you,” I said, thinking aloud, and louder than I’d intended.

  “Shh,” she said, putting a finger over my mouth. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do, you know. I suddenly want to know all about you.”

  “All you need to know is that we were together. Before that and after that, we were two people with nothing in common, I think.”

  “We don’t even know that. I’m Canadian; you’re French.”

  “Half-French. My mother was Irish. I grew up in Passy and Dublin. Do you know Dublin?”

  “No. But I’ve visited Balzac’s house in Passy.” She laughed and took the cigarette from my mouth, placing it in hers.

  “Wad says that you’re a rich man,” Laure said.

  “I have no money of my own,” I said. “My father’s a surgeon, but he comes from a family that runs department stores in three cities. We are poor relations who are invited to spend Christmas with our betters.”

  “You look like a little boy when you try to sound bitter. Do you resent not having money to spend?”

  “We’ve never gone hungry. I shouldn’t paint too bleak a picture. My mother saw to it that my father sent me to the right schools and made sure I had the right advantages. I didn’t rebel. I didn’t know I was supposed to rebel. I saw no necessity for rebellion until I went to work for a newspaper. I met people there who taught me about the advantages I’d had without being aware of them. It never occurred to me when I was at Trinity that everybody wasn’t as welcome as I was. The questions never formed themselves.”

  “My father was a soldier who was always getting into trouble. He was a great intriguer. Luckily, the war came along and he galloped away at the head of a regiment of cavalry. That was before the General Staff knew what barbed wire could do to cavalry.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why should you be? I’m not. He was un salaud, that one. He … well, never mind what he did. Take my word, chéri. Trust me, he was a bastard.” Again she put her face close to mine and I felt her warmth everywhere, and I slept again.

  When I woke, the room was larger than it had appeared in the dark. It was also empty. I gathered my clothes together and climbed into them. In my stocking feet I padded around the worn carpet that covered the terracotta tiles of the floor. There was no recess, no hidden alcove, behind which I might find Laure. I sat in a Louis XV chair badly in need of re-covering, and put on my shoes. I didn’t hurry, since Laure’s absence might have been temporary. But once my necktie had been knotted anew around my wrinkled shirt collar and my topcoat buttoned, there seemed little to do except go. I was curious to see what treasures her room contained, but I was secure enough in the hope that I would see it again that I was reluctant to extend my solitary stay. I was finally induced to leave by a need to find the nearest WC. It was hidden behind a concave panel on the landing between floors. I didn’t return to the room afterwards. Instead, I went down the stairs, through the cobbled courtyard and into the busy morning street.

  I crossed the street to take a good look at the building where I’d spent the night. It was a brave imitation of the sturdy apartment houses of the Faubourg St-Germain, only falling slightly into decay. Then I corrected myself: it was the sort of older city building that the Faubourg imitated and elaborated for the families of the middle class. Here, with the abattoirs de la Rive Gauche on one side of the street and La Ruche, a beehive of artists’ studios built like a rising soufflé or an abandoned wheel of Brie on the other, Laure was safe from the prying eyes of respectable people. I made a note of the address, the passage de Dantzig, before finding a tobacconist’s to replenish my cigarette case. That done, I found the nearest café.

  There sat Laure, huddled over a café-crème in the corner and reflected several times in the dirty mirrors that surrounded her. In spite of our recent intimacy, or perhaps because of it, she was the last person in the world I wanted to see. I felt unwashed and gritty. When she saw me, I think she saw something of my reluctance in my face. Perhaps her own feelings echoed my own.

  “Oh, hello,” she said, as though we were fellow tellers at the Guaranty Trust, encountered by chance on the weekend. “I’m not talkative in the morning. I hope you are not wanting to talk.”

  “My head will only permit rudimentary communications, I’m afraid. May I join you?” She didn’t change her expression. I sat down across from her. The waiter in shirtsleeves took my order and brought coffee. We sipped in silence and nibbled at a stale brioche.

  I watched the beet sugar melt and crumble in my spoon as I lowered it into my cup and brought it out again. The hangover was now fully established, though I hadn’t been aware of it until I spoke. Laure was dressed conservatively and carried a leather briefcase. With her hair up, she was altogether the French schoolmistress on her way to meet her first class of the day. Since the imposition of the “no talking” rule, my head was filling with questions I wanted to ask her. I was also certain that I did not wish to appear to be the young lad from the country anxious about the pleasures of the night before and curious about when he might reasonably look forward to their repetition. I understood enough to recognize the code that governed the etiquette of the morning after the night before. I sipped my coffee.

  At last she opened her leather handbag and examined the change inside. “I’ve left myself a bit short, Mike,” she said, smiling at me for the first time with her eyes. “Could you help me out?”

  “Of course,” I said, pulling out my billfold and opening it. I took out thirty francs, which would be enough for a couple of good meals, but she reached across and took two fifty-franc banknotes from me. I was astounded, but tried to contain my surprise. She had taken half of what the billfold contained.

  “You’re a dear,” she said, putting her hand on mine and brushing my unwashed face with hers as she got to her feet. She put the money away in her bag. “A tout à l’heure, Mike,” she said. I’d heard that phrase before. It didn’t mean “goodbye” but simply “until later.” I could get through the rest of the day with that, I thought, as I watched her leave the café.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was a time when one day and one hangover blended into the next. Was it only a few days later that I found myself inside the Select with nearly the same people I’d met that night at the Dingo? We had been drinking and it was late. Chairs were already piled up on top of the tables on the terrace in front of the windows. Mme. Select was beginning to look anxious, but she put up with a good deal from her American and Br
itish clientele.

  “Did you see the piece in Le Figaro about Fargue?” Laure asked Wad in French. Waddington nodded and told her that he thought Fargue was all washed up.

  “All that surrealist stuff’s going up the chimney,” he said.

  “Wad!” Julia protested, with smiling eyes. “Some of my best friends are surrealists! What about Duchamp and Villon and Man Ray? They have something.”

  “I’m not talking about the artists. It’s people like Tzara, Fargue and Cocteau. They make me sore.”

  “Your drink is showing, darling Wad,” said Biz, removing a longish cigarette end from her cigarette-holder and replacing it with a fresh one. Biz was always bored by literary conversations. “Why don’t we take a cab up to Bricktop’s? I’d like to hear some music after all this talk.”

  “She’s got a great nigger band from New York,” Julia added. I began to feel uneasy, as I did whenever it was suggested that we uproot ourselves.

  “It’s worth the trip just to see Bricktop’s hair,” Anson said. “The last time she had it dyed, it went quite blonde. After watching her two nights ago, I realized that she reminded me of a pint of Guinness.”

  “Oh, Anson!” Julia said. “Do you say such terrible things about people one knows, as well?”

  “My dear child, I’m essentially a truth-teller. My role in life is to run through it as though it were a masked ball and I were in charge of taking off all the masks.”

  “You’re too serious, Anson,” Julia said, her eyes glinting in the semi-darkness. “Except when you’re pulling the wings off social butterflies.”

  “Going to take lessons in being frivolous. I thought coming to Montparnasse was pretty frivolous, but I see my high seriousness is rubbing off on Tolstoi. Isn’t it, old sport? What do you think? Should we change the Quarter? Should we venture forth?” Anson asked.

  Julia and Biz scanned our faces, but no enthusiasm for crossing the river at this time of night was written there. Instead, we promised Mme. Select that we would leave quietly after one more round of drinks. She looked doubtful that we would keep our word but served the drinks anyway.

  “I’m going home to bed,” Hal Leopold announced, as though there were some novelty in the idea. No one protested. Biz took the newly fitted cigarette from her holder and replaced it in her case.

  “I’ll come along with you,” she said to Hal, and then to the table at large. “Don’t get up, please.” All the men got up.

  Once Biz had left the Select with Hal, the party began to break up in earnest. Wad was muttering something about Leopold, but I didn’t catch it. His disapproval of Biz cadging a ride home with Hal was clear, but he never offered to lend her the fare. Of course, he was on short rations himself.

  I felt an arm encircle my waist. I knew it was Laure before I turned around. “Be a dear and let me have thirty francs, chéri. I’m in a fix and you’re the only one I can trust.” Her smile was warm and promising. I didn’t dispute her need. I could feel her body against mine as I took out my billfold. Once again she took it from me and removed the money herself. “You are a darling, you know! Dear Mike.” She patted my cheek and kissed it in a sisterly way before disentangling her arms from me.

  “I’ll see you home,” I said, picking up my beret from the chair. “I don’t want Jack to come up behind you in the dark.”

  “You are a dear, Mike, but I’ll be quite safe in a taxi.”

  “But—!”

  Laure moved away from me, still smiling, and announced to the group that she was leaving. I could no longer get her to look at me. At the door, when she turned to wave, I was included in her brittle “Good night.” I glanced at the others, who were already collecting their belongings from the brass rack above the banquette for their own departure. No one looked at me. Was I exaggerating my feelings? Certainly not enough for any of my friends to spare me a reassuring smile. When I came to pay for my share of the bill, I discovered that Laure had taken something in excess of thirty francs.

  I began to think about what to do next as I started across rue Vavin. I had got only half way when Wad caught up to me. “I’ve got half a bottle of good wine back at the apartment,” he said.

  “What about Hash and Snick?”

  “Just for a few minutes. Hash won’t mind, and I have to change Snick anyway.”

  “Why not?” I said. “Waddington, I am here.” We walked up the boulevard towards the intersection where it becomes Port-Royal and then skirted the Closerie des Lilas, with its chairs sitting on top of the tables on the terrasse.

  “I’m going to have to read your stuff,” I said to Wad. “It’s getting embarrassing to know you and maintain my native ignorance.” We walked into the apartment on top of the carpenter’s loft on the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. The concierge swore audibly as she pulled the cordon that let us in. On our way up, we made no more noise than the sounds of the stairs themselves. We relieved ourselves in the WC on the landing, bowing elaborately and saying, “After you, my dear Alphonse.” We ignored the shushing noises.

  It was dark inside and Waddington lit the gas. I removed a teddy bear from a chair as I sat down, beginning to feel my drink. I made a noise misjudging the distance between me and the bottom of the chair. It was hardly louder than the sound of the cork as Wad pulled it. A door opened and a tousled auburn head came around the corner of the frame.

  “Tatie, is that you?”

  “Go back to sleep, Hash. I’ll see to Snick. I’ve got Mike with me.”

  “Good night, Mike,” she said, stretching as she turned. “Don’t let him keep you up all night.”

  Wad handed me some wine and a slim volume with the title Ten Stories and Three Poems. I liked the feel of it in my hand. The titles of the selections were printed on the cover as well in the same sanserif type.

  “This must make you feel good.”

  “Like a warm-up bout with a middleweight. Gets your blood moving but you don’t raise a sweat.”

  “You’re going for bigger game?”

  “I’ve bagged it already. I’ve got a publisher I want to get rid of and three others that want to take me on. They all want my book.”

  “That’s the Spanish book?”

  “Yup.”

  “And these aren’t French publishers?”

  “Hell, no!” he said a little too loudly, and then he repeated it in a whisper.

  “So that’s why you had such a strange reaction to Hal Leopold’s news the other night?”

  “Now everybody in town knows. Damn it!”

  “Is Laure Duclos in it?”

  “I thought you knew something about writing, kid?” I shrugged and couldn’t find an answer. It was one of Wad’s trick questions. “Well, damn it, you should know a fool question before you ask it. A novel is a long fiction. And fiction is what you make up.”

  “We both know that’s only partly true. You don’t need Mencken to tell you that. We’ve both read Huckleberry Finn, so let’s be honest.”

  “This is fragile stuff, Michaeleen.”

  “And the book is written?”

  “Thank God for that! Shit, I did it in a few weeks. Started in mid-July and finished it on the twenty-first of September.”

  “You like it?”

  “Hell, that’s a damned funny question! Yeah, I like a lot of it. A lot of it will have to do, and some of it is close to the way it should be.”

  “This is a fifteen-round bout?”

  “More like eight, but eight good ones. The kind that gives you a good feeling afterwards. The kind you want to have a big meal after. But let’s shut up about the book, okay, Mike? Talking about it can spook it for me and I need this one. What are you doing? Have you got a novel going? Almost everybody has.”

  “Nope,” I lied. “I just write my share of the cables and keep the wire humming. I’ll leave fiction to you, for now, anyway.” I took out my watch; it was nearly four in the morning. “I should be getting back,” I said.

  “Just stay another minute. We’ll fini
sh this bottle. Why’d you ask about Laure?”

  “She’s right out of Michael Arlen, isn’t she?”

  “She could show that rug merchant something. She was living with Tolstoi until a month ago. There were no kisses exchanged when they parted.”

  “I heard she was with the Doctor?”

  “Ancient history. She might be working her way through the Chamber of Deputies for all I know.”

  “How interested is she in George? I thought he was wearing the Leighton colours.”

  “George is going to be a wealthy man one day soon, unless he’s put in jail first for skipping out on a few hotel bills. In Spain …”

  “Yes? In Spain, what?”

  “Never mind. It’s just that George doesn’t know what year it is where women are concerned. But what is he to do when Laure plays up to him? I think he enjoys making the Countess jealous.”

  “The Countess?”

  “Biz. That’s what they call her here in the Quarter.”

  “I can’t see George and Biz. Can you?”

  “When there’s a fortune to be made, I can see more every day. It’s called education. For instance, that Laure has a nasty side, Mike. She can play rough.”

  “There are no secrets in the Quarter, are there?”

  “Not to my knowledge. You be careful, kid. She’s like a character out of Laclos. You know who I mean?”

  “Yeah. Les Liaisons Dangereuses, right? Yeah, I know the stuff. It’s all letters, right?”

  “Well, Laure can be as bad as the Marquise de Merteuil with all of Valmont thrown in. They’re both wrapped around inside Laure like a pair of rattlers. She’s worse than a mischief-maker — there are plenty of those in the Quarter, along with the time-wasters — but Laure can be evil, Mike. Take my word for it, kid.”

  “Really?”

  “Take it from me, Mike: Laure’s poison.”