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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Notes
Also by Claude Izner
Copyright
To our darling mother
To Monique who will always be with us
Many thanks to our friend Jacques Rougemont for his invaluable research
The past and the future slumber in the eye of the unicorn.
Adage from the Middle Ages
The pitiful, battered voices
Of the old hurdy-gurdies
First caressing, then biting
Are like the sad, reedy cries
Of a madman who sniggers and sobs
On his deathbed.
Jean Richepin
(The Song of the Beggars, 1876)
CHAPTER 1
Sunday 7 January 1894
The storm was battering the Normandy coast. It had swept through the British Isles, attacked the Pas de Calais and had now reached the Cotentin peninsula, where it was venting its full force on the La Hague headland.
Corentin Jourdan lay fully dressed on his four-poster bed listening to the great gusts and squalls shaking the walls. The fire flickered. A piece of canvas hung from the mantelpiece to stop the smoke filling the room. The flames threw bright, fleeting tongues of light onto the copper cistern and the old grandfather clock. Two carved birds’ heads seemed about to fly away from the corners of the wardrobe. A raucous miaowing briefly made itself heard above the tumult: the terrified cat was scratching at the front door. Corentin sat up. A ball of dirty fur with a pink nose and curly whiskers hurtled in through the cat flap and burrowed into the warmth of the eiderdown.
‘Now, Gilliatt, is that any way for an old ship’s mascot to behave? There’s nothing to get excited about!’
An explosion of noise drowned out his words: the thatched roof of the shed had just been torn off. Corentin grew more and more anxious as he heard the tempest attack his stock of dry logs, and he tried to calculate the damage. He would have to get the roof seen to by old Pignol, a real crook but the best thatcher for miles around. A loud neighing suddenly erupted from the stable next door: Flip was getting nervous. Just as long as he didn’t start kicking the walls down!
No doubt hoping to evade the worst of the weather, the old tomcat curled up under his master’s arm, purring loudly. Corentin smiled.
‘Chin up, Gilliatt! It’s only a little shower!’
He had seen worse when he used to navigate the Marie-Jeanneton around the Channel Islands. If it hadn’t been for that confounded spar, which had split during a squall and crushed his foot, he would never have left the navy.
He sighed deeply. Even though his house was a quarter of a mile from the shore, the sound of the breakers filled his room like the baying of a ghostly pack of hounds. The pounding of the surf reverberated inside him, soothing him. He sank into sleep.
When he woke, he felt once again the subtle stirring of fear he had battled ever since the accident. He had had to make a supreme effort to prevent the combination of inactivity and physical suffering getting the better of him. He had hated lying immobile on a hospital bed, dependent on the goodwill of others and far away from the salt air of the open sea. The enforced confinement had left him with no choice but to reflect on his past. For weeks he tried to work out whether he had made a mistake; why the stupid accident? At forty, with two-thirds of his life already gone, what did he have to look forward to? He had quickly recognised the brutal truth that no ship’s captain would ever trust a cripple. At that realisation he had fallen into deep despair as he thought longingly of the familiar, reassuring atmosphere of the Marie-Jeanneton.
A sickly, yellowish dawn was struggling to break, and in its pale light he saw Gilliatt, perched on a cupboard with incriminating crumbs of meat and pastry stuck to his whiskers.
Corentin stretched, and remembered his dream. Once again, Clélia had appeared, transparent and inaccessible. The only woman he had ever loved, the only woman he had never possessed, still haunted him. The memory of all the others, kitchen maids or working girls, whose services were freely offered, faded as soon as his desire was satisfied: only the unattainable woman had been able to capture and hold his imagination for such a long time.
He decided to go out. There might be someone in need of his help. Despite his general misanthropy, he was careful to maintain good relations with his neighbours; after all, it had been his decision to limit his life to this little huddle of cottages.
A squall of rain whipped his face. He jammed his hat more firmly on his head, glanced at the increasingly grey sky and pushed open the stable door. Flip’s tail and mane were ruffled by the wind. The mice feasting in the hay ran off, squeaking. He lit his lamp.
‘Hello there, Flip!’
The horse quivered at the sight of his master. Corentin patted his flank and fed him a sugarlump from his open palm.
‘A little treat from your groom, you old misery. There there, easy now, the storm’s dying down.’
The horse slowly rubbed his muzzle against the wood of his stall before deigning to accept the titbit.
‘Heavens above, Flip, stop looking at me like that!’ cried Corentin, rummaging in the bag full of grain. Flip pawed the ground happily and plunged his nose into the handful of oats that was offered to him.
‘Don’t make a mess, now.’
Corentin patted his neck, put fresh hay in the rack and extinguished the lantern.
‘Be good now, won’t you? Don’t kick anything over,’ he said, fastening the door.
Outside, a cold wind raked the distant hills. Corentin walked on, past the Chaulards’ farm, huddled behind its hillock like a frightened animal. The windows rattled in their frames and the whole building creaked. He couldn’t see a living soul.
He staggered down the slope, tossed about in the wind like a skiff bobbing on the sea. It was at times like this, when there was a big storm, that he most regretted the loss of his own boat. On board a ship, he used to be able to grapple with bad weather in an equal fight; on dry land, he was at the mercy of the slightest squall.
Looking out to sea, Corentin could see the waves tipped with glints of silver. He crossed a stream, now a torrent, gazed briefly at the cliffs obscured by clouds of sea-spray and turned his back on them. The main street in Landemer zigzagged between fishermen’s cottages and a few large villas converted for the summer into family boarding houses. The customs officer’s house had lost its ostentatious ceramic decoration and the smashed remains lay forlornly in the middle of the front garden. Corentin slowed down as he reached the inn, turning up the collar of his oilskin jacket. At this time of day the fish market was usually in full swing, but today the place was eerily empty. He turned towards
the beach, dodging as best he could the buffeting breath of the invisible demon.
The raging waves had thrown up a wall of pebbles at the edge of the sand, which was now gradually emerging as the tide receded. The boiling cauldron of the sea was capitulating regretfully. To the right of the fort, there was a pale patch in the water – a flock of birds? Corentin had previously spotted storm petrels here, blown off course from the Orkney Islands.
He walked on for another hundred yards, happy to find himself in the deserted spot where he had spent so many hours observing wildlife and combing the beach for driftwood and curious stones. His solitary walks here had brought him a sense of peace and security. Except for occasional conversations with Madame Guénéqué, who came to clean his little house and to cook for him, Corentin led a solitary existence.
Leaden clouds raced along the horizon, and an angry wind whipped the waves into crests before flattening them again. Corentin squinted into the distance. No, that wasn’t a flock of birds, it was something much bigger. Driven against the reef, a schooner must have struck a rock, where its boom and bowsprit had shattered. The broken mast hung at a sickening angle; people on the bridge ran to and fro, dropping lines to evacuate the vessel. Small boats were bustling around the great carcass. So that was where all the inhabitants of Landemer and Urville had gone. They would have to work fast: the waves would soon pull the wreck under the sea.
He thought of all the fishermen who must have died, and of the captain of the vessel who, probably heading to France from England, had been presumptuous enough to defy the warning of such a troubled sea. Corentin, too, had often thought himself invincible.
Near Gréville, several small, wide skiffs were setting off towards the wreck, and he hurried on, impatient to join them. Suddenly, he stopped, still and attentive. A dark mass undulated in the ebbing tide. For a few seconds he stood motionless, shading his eyes, until all at once he understood, and began to run. A little girl or a woman lay in the foaming water, like a siren caught in the sticky net of seaweed.
Half carrying, half dragging the unconscious form out of the water, he staggered up onto the beach, and gazed in shock at the young woman’s face. Clélia? No! Clélia had been dead for twenty years. Acting instinctively, he loosened her clenched teeth with the stem of his pipe, cleared the mucus and seaweed out of her throat with his fingers and put his ear to her chest. Her heart was beating weakly. He knelt down and, seizing her wrists, began to raise and lower her arms vigorously, pressing on her chest with each downward movement. All this came to him automatically, with an expertise gained from twenty-five years of experience. He repeated this manoeuvre fifteen times every minute, his only thought to bring the unknown woman back to life.
All at once, she was racked by a great spasm and coughed violently before falling back again, inert. He took off his jacket and wrapped it round her. As he hoisted her up, he felt something digging into him: tied around the woman’s wrist was a cord with a small leather bag hanging from it.
Buffeted by the wind, he began to struggle back up the beach. Slight and fragile as his burden was, her drenched clothes made her heavy, and getting her back to his house was no easy task. The dunes seemed to have blurred into a grey mist, which danced before his eyes. He had to stop halfway to get a firmer grip on his charge, finally hauling her over his shoulder. The rain had set in again and he began to fear that the seeming calm had been misleading. When he finally reached his house, his mouth was parched and he had a burning pain in his back. Inside, it was bitterly cold.
With a sigh of relief, he laid the woman on the eiderdown and hurried to light a fire. Still limping, he rushed into the woodshed. The sodden logs would be useless. He turned back.
Ignoring Gilliatt, who was mewing for food, he grasped a hatchet and hacked two of his wooden chairs to pieces. As the flames engulfed them, he remembered that he had stored several bundles of heather at the back of the stable. He collected these, along with a crate that had once held bottles of cider: enough to keep the fire alive for at least an hour.
The woman groaned, her eyes still closed. She wore a small blue earring in her left ear but the right one was missing. He felt her pulse, which was racing. Her forehead was damp. He needed to undress her and rub her skin to get her circulation going. Quickly removing her bag and the jacket he had wrapped around her, he hesitated when confronted with her dress. So many buttons! He tore one off, undid another, and then resorted to more drastic measures. Using a knife, he cut away layer after layer of clothing. Tatters of cloth – skirt, bodice and petticoat – were strewn over the tiled floor. He felt as though he were peeling a fruit with an endless number of skins. Just as he thought he had finished, he came to a final barrier: the corset, as rigid as a breastplate. Clumsily, he undid the stays, and with a last effort separated the two halves of the armour, revealing her breasts, round, supple and generous. With trembling hands, he removed her lace drawers and torn stockings. Her legs were covered in scratches and the corset had left its impression on her skin, but nonetheless she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Not daring to touch any other part of her, he rubbed her frozen feet timidly.
Intrigued, Gilliatt began to sniff the woman’s body, nudging his nose between her legs. With a sweep of his hand, Corentin sent the cat flying, and Gilliatt leapt up onto the canopy of the bed.
Corentin uncorked a bottle of plum brandy that he kept for special occasions and dampened his hands with the alcohol. He slowly began to massage the woman’s skin, but stopped at her waist, hesitating to go any higher. The cat’s mewing brought his attention back to the task in hand. Applying a few more drops of brandy to his palms, he accelerated his massage. Her breasts were soft to his touch, and he moved down to her thighs, working methodically. He was calm now, her nudity no longer troubling him. He moved over the nape of her neck, her back, curving in so delightfully at the waist, her arms, her stomach, her thighs …
The bottle was empty and the woman lay, still unconscious, stretched out on her side, impregnated with alcohol and pink from having been rubbed all over. When he had cleaned her wounds, he covered them with a balsam pomade scented with mint. Reaching into the wardrobe, he unfolded a sheet, placed it over the woman’s body and piled several blankets on top.
The fire was dying down, so Corentin sacrificed a third chair, and hurried to the stable, where he grabbed the last bundles of heather and two more wooden crates from under Flip’s nose. Throwing all these provisions into a wheelbarrow, he made his way back via the shed and managed to find two logs that were less sodden than the others. He spread all this new fuel out next to the fireplace, and leant the logs against the fire-back to dry.
He felt drained of all strength. A sharp pain throbbed in his leg, just above the knee. He leant on the edge of the table, trying to get his breath back, and began to shiver, overcome by weariness after all the tensions of the day. He changed his clothes, cut himself a large hunk of bread and reduced another crate to splinters, immediately giving it up to the hungry flames. This time, the fireplace, satisfied with the offering, gave out an intense burst of heat. Corentin poured himself a tankard of cider and sat down beside the woman.
She looked young, no more than twenty-five. She was tanned, which showed that she had lived in the sun. And were her eyes even darker than the thick curls of her hair? And how would her lips taste? It was difficult to resist the temptation to find out. He held firm, but after a few moments pulled away the sheet to reveal her body, gazing in silent admiration, then reached out to caress a shoulder, the curve of a breast, her neck. Then, springing up so brusquely that he knocked over his stool, he pulled the covers back over her.
Was he going mad? He had learnt to protect himself with a shield of indifference. He had kept to himself, avoided all intimacy and turned off his emotions. This woman was the first to threaten his serenity since Clélia. The only explanation he could find was that the exertion had affected him more than he cared to admit.
He went up the steps to his
attic room, a familiar little world that he had created when his sailing days had come to an end. A homely, comforting smell of tobacco, apples and ink hung in the air, and cases filled with watercolours and sketchbooks served as reminders of his past life. Two stuffed deities reigned over the chaotic piles of souvenirs from his travels: a great black cormorant and a chough. Scattered pages related stories from his youth when, as a young sailor, he had plied the seas of North Africa and the East. The small desk was covered with clothbound notebooks along with two paperweights and a paraffin lamp. Beside the desk, a sextant and a telescope jostled for space with pots of herbs and jars of pickled samphire. The carefully reconstructed skeleton of a tawny owl kept watch over a little trestle bed covered in books. On the rough wattle walls hung several drawings by Jean-François Millet, left to him by his uncle Gaspard, who had bought them when the painter had returned to his native village near Landemer. Corentin’s favourite was a sketch of a shepherd herding his flock by moonlight. He was also particularly fond of the large circular map of the world that he had copied from one by Mercator. One of the cupboards was filled with dozens of nautical charts, although the chart showing the seas near his home was redundant because Corentin (like Gilliatt, the hero of Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, for whom the cat was named) was ‘born with a map of the bed of the English Channel inscribed in his head’.
Corentin lit his pipe. Without warning, Clélia appeared before him. If only he had married her, his beloved cousin! She had been seduced by a travelling puppeteer in Cherbourg, and followed him to Paris where, abandoned and miserable, she had died of puerperal fever. He had only found this out after endless searching and questioning. He had never been able to discover where she was buried.
‘What does it matter, anyway?’ he muttered, getting up and standing by the window. The apple trees in the paddock were bending in the strong west wind. The slate-coloured sky was indistinguishable from the sea.
Strangled in Paris: A Victor Legris Mystery (Victor Legris Mysteries) Page 1
