Murder in Montparnasse

by Howard Engel

  “Everybody says that, George. It’s just another way of saying you’re not a writer. Why don’t people recognize that? George, I wouldn’t presume to tell you about the army, so why do you think you’ve got a writer buried inside you?”

  “Easy, Wad,” I said. “Last time I looked, George was still a friend of ours.” Waddington gave me a dirty grin. There was no fun behind it.

  “You used to write, Anson?” Hash said quickly. “Why don’t you talk about it anymore?”

  “I’ve had to give it all up. Life at the American Hospital in Neuilly is too ripe for fiction.”

  “I liked the way you and Tatie used to talk about what you were working on.”

  “Maybe I’m a reformed writer, Hash. I haven’t had a drop in nearly three years.”

  “Well, how about another drop from your gin supply, Goofo?” said Georgia. Wilson poured out a ration into the extended glasses, finishing the bottle’s last few ounces himself.

  “I say,” said Georgia, “have any of you ever climbed the Eiffel Tower at night?”

  “It’s closed. Hours ago,” said her husband.

  “We can break in, can’t we? First, we’ll get something to drink. What about some champagne?”

  “Do you know what you’re talking about? Think of the stairs!”

  “Oh, you leaden minds, you scrap-iron imaginations! Goofo, it’s time to change the Quarter. Get your coat and get your hat.”

  Georgia went into an emotional nosedive as soon as her crazy scheme was questioned. She was taking the plan’s first critic with her, but that was not her chief concern. During the scuffle to send someone through the French-speaking hordes upstairs to retrieve the coats, Wilson had suddenly gone very pale and had stopped talking.

  “Before you go, Georgia,” Wad said, giving her a smile that only partly disguised the savage look under it, “I think you ought to know that Mike, here, has his own theory about the murders we were talking about.”

  “Wad!” I said. “I don’t think this is the moment —”

  “Yes, Michaeleen, here, with his wily Canadian appetite for news, has had an idea about Laure’s death that might interest you.”

  “Shut up about that, Wad! I was only thinking out loud.”

  “McWardo thinks that her death wasn’t the work of a madman —”

  “Damn it all!”

  “— he thinks that she was killed by one of us. Cut her throat hoping the police would take it for the work of Jack de Paris. How do you read those aces?”

  “Good night, nurse!” said Tolstoi. “If one of us did do it, Wad, you sure as hell have given him his next victim on a silver platter.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Our quarter of the room was still digesting Tolstoi’s observation, when a new interruption punctured the party atmosphere.

  “Oh, my God! Goofo!” Georgia screamed. We all looked in the direction of the great author in time to see him sink to his knees and fall over on his face. My last glimpse of him, as he fell, was of a face devoid of colour and eyes rolling back sightless.

  “Give him air!” George called. “Stand away from him!”

  “Anson! He needs a doctor!”

  I was certain he must be having a heart attack, but Anson’s face was calm as he kneeled on the floor by the body. Georgia quickly recovered herself. “Goofo, oh Goofo, you’ll drive me to distraction!” She collected her smoking things and announced that it was time to send a second runner for their coats. Since Anson was doing what medical things had to be done, which didn’t seem to be much, I went up the stairs into the balcony to retrieve our coats and hats. Entwined couples parted like the Red Sea as I came downstairs with my burden of fur and camel-hair. The music now was something by Gershwin: “Lady Be Good,” I think.

  When I returned to the main party near the window, Georgia was lighting a cigarette from the one in Biz’s holder. I decided then that it was not unfeeling to maintain a calm exterior. Wad, Anson and I pulled Wilson to his feet. He was dead weight. Someone had to run out to fetch a taxi, and it was waiting for us by the time we’d got him down five flights of stairs. We were luckily able to pass a few of the doors without the tenant coming out to tell us what he thought of us and the late hours we kept: Didn’t we understand that working people needed their sleep? Was I unaware that there were laws that protected tenants from people like us? We let Arlette deal with these men in worn carpet slippers and women in paper curlers and mouse-coloured bathrobes. One woman was wearing a vest made from cat-pelts. I wondered whether they were her own, or simply the kind you buy at the drug store. Arlette was very good at soothing everybody. On the whole, it was wise of us non-French-natives to keep our mouths shut. That would have been all the situation needed: a new dimension for sharp tongues to wag in.

  The driver of the taxi declared that he was not about to let all the world mount into his cab. We were instructed to think of his poor springs. In the end, without a dainty leave-taking, I went in the taxi with Anson and the O’Donnells to help carry Wilson into the apartment. Wad, Hash and the others waved us away, looking as if they were on their way to another party. As we drove off, I had a glimpse of Mr. and Mrs. Burdock coming around the corner searching for the party we’d just left. He resembled Lord Plushbottom in the Sunday papers at home.

  “The more I see of him, the less I can abide that posturing fake of a man,” Georgia said through the driver’s speaking-tube behind the glass in the front seat. I was to discover that Georgia almost always travelled across town next to the driver. If she noticed the driver at all, she was sure to turn him into a slave for life.

  “What?”

  “Who do you mean? Not Burdock, just now?”

  “No! I mean that bogus he-man, Jason Waddington. Oh! He makes me so cross!”

  “Wasn’t he nice to you, Georgia? I think he and Hash both think the world of both of you.”

  “At home we’d call her a doormat. She has no spunk, no mind of her own. All she lives for is to please the lord and master. Who does she think she’s married to, Tarzan of the Apes?”

  It was very late. Montparnasse was nearly quiet, the boulevard wide and empty. The taxi took the avenue Bosquet to the Pont de l’Alma, moving a little faster as the gentle hump of the bridge came closer. The river was dark, almost invisible beneath us. We circled the place to avenue Marceau and its ramparts of apartment houses, then spun around the Étoile to the avenue du Bois de Boulogne, where the driver turned into the impressive rue de Tilsitt. Number 14 hardly separated itself out from its spacious fellows. I paid the driver, who, though charmed by Georgia, did not fail to add in the night tariff. I tipped him, hoping I would see the money again when Wilson sobered up. With Georgia holding open the doors, we got him into the building and then into the lift, as I was beginning to call the elevator because of the number of English people I’d been talking to recently.

  There were no signs of life from O’Donnell as we laid him out on the bed. Anson removed his shoes, while Georgia crossed his hands on his chest and placed a silk rose there for good measure.

  “There,” she said, “nothing will wake him now until morning.” She spoke in a normal voice, where most people would have whispered. We followed her out of the room. Anson closed the door behind him.

  “Do you think he’ll need anything for the morning?” he asked, searching in his pocket for a notepad.

  “You mean a prescription? No, Anson, Goofo’s got a trunk full of medicine. We don’t need any more. But you’re a dear to ask.”

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t put him to bed?” I asked.

  “He’ll be right as rain in the morning. Except for the headache. If he went to mass, he wouldn’t even have that. But do you think I can get him to go?”

  Ten minutes later, Anson Tyler and I were walking under the Arc de Triomphe. Leaves were blowing about in the great empty space beneath. There were no taxis in view.

  “Do you feel like walking?” Anson asked. “At Châtelet we could catch an all-night bus.”<
br />
  “I’ll walk with you that far. My boat is in the river near there.” We set out down the Champs-Élysées, with the wide sidewalks all to ourselves. The electric signs had been turned off except in the showroom of an automobile firm on the Rond Point. From there, we walked under the chestnut trees that ran in two long lines on our side of the street.

  “Did I understand correctly that you live on a boat?”

  “A barge, really. It’s not a yacht. Nothing grand, but I wouldn’t trade it for that studio we were in tonight.”

  Anson Tyler moved with a quick military stride. We covered the distance to the river in less than twenty minutes. Tacitly, I’d given up the hope of a night bus. I wanted to have a look at this barge on the Seine. I’d seen strings of barges moving up and down the river before, usually offering a glimpse of a woman hanging out washing on a clothesline or the captain changing the baby. It was another world on the river. The trips on the bateaux-mouches don’t quite catch it.

  We crossed an empty Place de la Concorde. The globes of the street lamps glowed. The mist in the air made the classical fronts of the buildings on the other side look like a painted backdrop for a stage setting. One of the fountains was draped in canvas while some restoration work was going on; it made the other, uncovered fountains look austere and naked. The obelisk in the centre of the square divided the night sky in two. The water under the bridge was moving quickly, with occasional eddies to illustrate the power of the river held in check.

  The barge, wide and low in the water, was tied between the Pont de la Concorde and the Pont de Solferino. It nestled into a curve of the quay and looked battened down for a squall. There was a fenced-in square of deck space with a view of the best of Paris, if from a low angle. I was about to say good night and shove off when a hatch opened in the deck and a head with a pipe in its mouth poked through.

  “You make enough noise for the German army!” the head said in French.

  “Sorry, Georges. Are you off?”

  “Yes, I worked until about half an hour ago. Now, I go for a walk in Les Halles. Maybe I can find myself a good northern breakfast.”

  Anson introduced me to Georges Sim, who shared the barge with him. Georges, who came from Liège, spent the day writing pot-boilers on the barge. He had a wife somewhere in the city, but he came to the barge when he wanted to work. Tonight he had taken advantage of Anson’s being away to get a few more hours of writing done.

  “He turns them out the way Ford does in Detroit,” Anson said.

  “There’s coffee made,” Georges said, opening up the rest of the hatch cover.

  “Won’t you stay and have some?” I suggested. He shrugged and went below. We followed.

  Sim’s writing desk was bare except for a pot of paste and a pair of scissors. His portable typewriter was in its case. He saw me looking and smiled, taking his pipe out of his mouth as he spoke.

  “What I do will never pass for literature,” he said, “but I try to keep it tidy. Years from now I’ll get the Légion d’Honneur for spelling and neatness.”

  “I try to keep my office neat, too, but there are too many other people using the space.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me! Another writer! Anson, where do you find them?” He took the remaining clean cup and poured coffee into it. There was a bowl of sugar but no milk. I took the first sip and passed the cup on. The coffee had been boiled.

  The main cabin was low-ceilinged with gas lamps in weighted balances mounted on the walls. There was a double bunk built into one of the bulkheads. Hooks along one wall carried caps and a couple of dark jackets, one with a tracery of gold flecks on the shoulders. One of the caps was fixed with gold braid in front of the jutting, dark peak. The cabin was altogether a tidy place to lay one’s head, if you ignored the galley.

  “What sorts of things do you write?” I asked Georges. “I’m sure Anson was pulling my leg when he said they were pot-boilers.”

  “No, not at all. They’re pot-boilers all right. People keep asking me when I’m going to write a real novel, a big novel, a serious magnum opus. Ha! That’s an easy question. Maybe the sum of all my pot-boilers will be my big novel. I used to think I was writing them for practice; now, I accept them as what I do. It’s a sort of métier, or a métier of a sort.”

  “Have you ever done a detective story?”

  “Never. I’m easily confused by puzzles. I’d make a hash of it.”

  “Detective stories?” Anson said with a superior smile. “Why waste time writing that sort of rubbish? You’ll turn your mind to jelly.”

  “Ah,” said Georges, “you say that now! I remember when you were trying to write one yourself, mon ami.” Georges laughed as though he had just declared checkmate on his companion.

  “Yes, I tried to write one once. As an experiment. Georges was no help at all. But it wasn’t his fault; it’s the form. They’re trash, a truant occupation. There’s no room for literary interest. In fact, it’s almost breaking the rules to put in anything but the puzzle.” Anson had climbed out of his coat and jacket and was now in his shirtsleeves. The front of his shirt showed expensive studs.

  “But the detective story doesn’t have to be a puzzle like the English mysteries,” I said. “It could be about real people with their backs against the wall.” Georges cocked his large head as though to examine the proposition from a new angle. “Most murderers aren’t master criminals. They are ordinary people caught on the wrong foot.”

  “A bout de souffle? At the end of one’s tether?” Georges said, knocking his inverted pipe against his boot. “I hadn’t considered that. Maybe it’s a thought I should put in my pipe to think about.” He got up smiling and shook hands with both of us. “In the meantime, I have a wife who expects me to bring some meat and vegetables from the market. I’ll leave my mistress —” Here he nodded at the table and the portable typewriter “— in your custody.” He said goodbye, and we could hear the sound of his boots on the deck overhead as he went ashore.

  “Georges is a nice fellow,” I said, hoping to hear more about him from my host.

  “He’s a demon for work,” Anson said. “I could never keep up with him. He can finish a book less than three weeks after he’s started it. And he’s getting faster!”

  “Anson, you’re being too hard on yourself. How could you keep up with Georges? You’re at the hospital all day. Be fair with yourself. Didn’t Wad quit journalism before he started writing seriously? I can’t see how anyone can do two jobs. I know I’m usually too tired at the end of the day to do more than find a good place to have dinner. If I had a place like this, I’d be too tired to keep it clean.”

  “Well, you can see that our ideas on housekeeping are similar.” Anson had removed his shirt and was pulling on a cotton sweatshirt. “The last time I found the broom, it had cobwebs growing on it.”

  “But don’t you find your work at Neuilly fully rewarding?” I asked, having taken the liberty of pouring more coffee into the single cup. “I should have thought that, with medicine, you wouldn’t need to look for …”

  “Fulfilment? A reason for not cutting my throat?”

  “Well, let’s just say another string to your bow.”

  “Mike, I’d say that I’m a good doctor, a good surgeon; I can handle the traffic in the operating room. They call me a good clinician. I have a sixth sense when it comes to diagnosis. But when I think that I might still be taking out gallbladders and tonsils twenty years from now, I begin to wonder whether I’ve not taken a wrong turn somewhere. Maybe I should have taken a run at politics back home, or — hell, I don’t know.” Anson had slipped out of his trousers and pulled on some dungarees. He tightened the belt with care.

  “That’s why I came over here, Mike. America wasn’t in the war yet, but I wanted to escape from filling sample jars with tonsils and prostates for the pathologist.”

  “I see,” I said inadequately.

  “I was in a good practice; everything was going well. I was a member of the country club. I wa
s learning to sail.”

  “But you came over to do medicine in the front lines.”

  “I enjoyed that.” He gave me a large grin that showed his front teeth at their rabbity best. “I’ll never tell anyone I had a rotten war. People left me alone. No interference. Once America came into it, I had to fight my own people, who found my freelance status embarrassing to them. I wasn’t in the right pigeon-hole, they said. They wanted me out of there. I was fighting on two fronts. By day there was the fight in the advance medical units against gangrene and blood-loss and shock, and, by night the writing of letters to so-called superior officers protesting my re-posting to some New England shelter for the walking wounded. It was terrible there for awhile, until I found a senator who got them to leave me alone.” He was looking very thin as he told this to me, yet I could picture him working over the wounded without a wasted movement. “Let’s change the subject,” he said. “It still makes me mad.”

  “How did you meet Waddington and Hash?”

  “She had the grippe and was running a dangerous fever. They called the American Hospital and I dropped in on my way home. I was living on Cherche-Midi in those days. Later, I saw Hash through the early stages of her pregnancy until they returned to the other side. Wad and I got along. As I said, I used to think I could write. For awhile, I worked pretty hard at it. Now, I know it was a waste of time.” He looked up at me, trying to make a grin wipe away the pain in his words.

  “Et vous? as the French say. And you?” he asked.

  “I’ve been filling some notebooks, but that’s about all. Wad thinks I’ve done more than I have simply because I never talk about what I’m doing. I try to keep him guessing. He’s damned competitive.”

  “He said you were doing some detective work.”

  “Oh, he was pulling everybody’s leg. I just had a theory that a man with a grudge against some woman might take advantage of a killer like Jack to settle his private score. If he imitates Jack’s crimes, the authorities will add his murder to Jack’s total and think no more about it.”