‘Listen to me, Victor Legris, are you going to tell me the truth about Laumier? What are you cooking up together?’
‘That coxcomb? I absolutely refuse to listen to his whining any more. He can keep his distance. Come on, duty calls!’ he cried, scratching Kochka under the chin and completely avoiding answering the question.
The cat craned her neck and purred voluptuously.
* * *
Iris opened one eye and could just see Joseph getting dressed near the window, which was still closed but let in a few rays of grey morning light. She looked at the uneven line of his shoulders. Far from being repulsed by this imperfection, she found it touching. How fragile he was, this man whose child she was carrying! Although she was younger than him, she felt stronger and more mature than this husband of hers with his slightly hunched back and naïve eyes. Because he had read a lot and written a little, he thought himself more mature than her. Iris, however, was convinced that she was the more sensible one of the couple.
She made herself more comfortable on the mattress, her palms resting on her stomach as she thought about the new life inside her, which was both real and unreal. Soon, it would take up a central role in this apartment and in the daily lives of those around it. Was it a boy or a girl? What would it look like? What would be its strengths? Its weaknesses?
Still half asleep, embroidering all sorts of imaginary details into her musings, she was barely aware of Joseph leaning over her. An excess of love almost made him wake her to give her a kiss. That she should have agreed to share her life with him, misshapen as he was, and nothing but an obscure shop assistant – although he did have the makings of a literary master – filled him with gratitude.
Bearing a loaded tray, Euphrosine strode into the room, cutting short any further loving reveries.
‘Maman? Already?’
She set her burden down on a pedestal table.
‘I’ve been thinking it over: this young lady needs a bit of pampering. Lord knows, expecting a baby is no joke! I remember my own pregnancy. You weighed a ton, my pet! And I had all sorts of cravings. Just think, I once absolutely had to have black pudding with apple sauce in the middle of the night!’
‘Don’t ever make that for Iris!’
The subject of this conversation had heard every word of it, even though it had been enacted in stage whispers, and she tried hard not to laugh. Despite Euphrosine’s exasperating ways and her insistence on taking charge of the whole household, Iris had come to feel the sort of respect for her that she might have felt for a grandmother. Having lost her own mother at the age of three, she enjoyed having an older woman look after her, even if all of this solicitude was sometimes rather suffocating.
Iris waited until Joseph had left the room and then sat up.
‘Euphrosine, I want to apologise about the meat yesterday. I understand your concern and I’ve come up with a compromise. I’ll agree to eat ham once a week, some fish on a Friday, and a chicken breast once every so often. Dr Reynaud did say that it would be a good idea.’
‘At last! I’m so pleased. I hope you haven’t got anything against eggs either, because I’ve made you two soft-boiled ones. You must be peckish. There’s some toast too, and homemade plum jam, a present from Micheline Ballu, some croissants, a brioche, a hot chocolate and some orange juice.’
Feeling suddenly nauseous, Iris allowed her mother-in-law to plump up the pillows and place the tray on the bed.
‘Eat up while it’s hot! I’m going to let a bit of air into this room – it feels like a greenhouse in here.’
While Euphrosine opened the curtains, Iris quickly stuffed the croissants, the brioche and the bread into an empty biscuit tin hidden in her bedside table.
‘Please, don’t make my father, my husband, my brother-in-law and you yourself go without meat because of me. And do sit down and eat with us – that way we’ll be a proper family.’
‘Y–you’re a good girl,’ stammered Euphrosine, her eyes moist. ‘So kind to relieve me of the cross I bear. Oh, you’ve run out of bread! I’ll go and get you some more, to make soldiers with.’
As she went into the kitchen, Euphrosine saw Kenji rushing to his apartment, kettle in hand. She only had time to catch a flash of blue dressing gown with red spots before he had closed the door behind him.
‘Like father, not like daughter,’ she grumbled to herself. ‘He survives on nothing but tea!’
Downstairs in the shop, Joseph was giving an impromptu rendition of the Savoy regional anthem.23
‘I salute you, hospitable land,
Whose charity all ills allays,
Where freedom’s flag rests in the people’s hand;
Your constitution I come to praise.’
As he finished opening the shutters, he bellowed the chorus at the top of his voice:
‘Valiant Savoyards, I salute you!’
The sound of the telephone ringing cut short his moving performance. He resisted the temptation to bellow ‘I salute you!’ into the receiver, realising that the Comtesse de Salignac was on the other end, asking about the delivery of the book about the education of children that she wanted to buy for her niece.
‘By Dr Lesshaft,’ she enunciated, in her best German accent. ‘Don’t let me down!’
‘Jawohl, Madame la Comtesse!’ said Joseph.
He replaced the received, muttering to himself, ‘There’s no need to keep on at me! She’ll get her manual eventually.’
He wrote the order down for a second time in Kenji’s ledger and the lanky figure of Boni de Pont-Joubert, the husband of his former sweetheart, Valentine, who also happened to be the Comtesse’s daughter, came into his mind. ‘That pretentious, overdressed prince of fashion! When I bring up my son, I’ll do it without an instruction book, or an English nurse either! Seriously! In any case, English or not, if I employ a nurse, Maman will kill me!’
A little man with a sallow complexion came into the shop, a newspaper under his arm. While he rummaged among the shelves, Joseph quietly removed the newspaper, which the man had left on top of a pile of dictionaries.
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ he exclaimed. Hurriedly, he cut out an article and slipped it into the notebook where he kept short news items, without noticing that the little sallow-faced man was cramming a hardback into his pocket.
The bookshop was full of customers all of a sudden. It was one of those days – was it because of an unexpected ray of sunshine? – or had each passer-by, struck by a thirst for knowledge or simply by curiosity, decided to come in and look at a book, perhaps even buy one?
At that moment, Victor and his bicycle came to the rescue. The little man had just rolled up his newspaper and was about to leave when, leaning his steed against the counter, Victor called to him.
‘Monsieur, that book that seems to have got caught in your coat … my assist— my brother-in-law will be most happy to help you if you wish to buy it,’ he said, pointing at Joseph.
The thief paid up without a murmur for the volume of Ronsard’s poetry that had taken his fancy and, having checked that Joseph had given him the right change, he sauntered out casually.
‘What a nerve!’ muttered Joseph.
‘I saw you through the window – your scissors were working away at that newspaper. What news?’ asked Victor.
He greeted a few acquaintances as he went to put his bicycle away. When he got back to the counter, he winked reassuringly at Joseph.
‘Don’t worry about it. These things always happen when you least expect them,’ he whispered.
‘In any case, it was worth it. Have a squint at this!’ retorted Jojo.
He handed over the article.
MAN SERIOUSLY INJURED
AVENUE DU BOIS-DE-BOULOGNE
The Marquis Saturnin de La Picaudière was driving his phaeton in the park, according to his daily routine, when he noticed a body lying on the verge beside one of the avenues. It was Baron Edmond de La Gournay, who, despite being a skilled horseman, must have fallen off hi
s horse, a fine Württemberger called Priam, who was later found wandering along the Champs-Élysées.
The Baron’s face was covered in blood, and he was found to have a wound at the back of his head. He was taken home as quickly as possible, and the victim is now in a critical condition, although the doctors say that the danger of a stroke is, in all probability, very slight.
We would like to remind our faithful readers that the Baron is a friend of Jean Lorrain, whose play Yanthis opens tonight at the Odéon Theatre, and that a few years ago the Baron founded one of the most famous occult societies in Paris, the Black Unicorn, whose professed aim is to ‘probe the realms of the invisible and illuminate the obscure labyrinth leading to the philosopher’s stone’. If only the society could have sharpened the poor Baron’s vision a little, then he might not have had this terrible accident.
‘What’s so interesting about this?’ asked Victor.
‘What’s so interesting? Well, the medallion with the black unicorn that the fat chap at the abattoir gave to you – he found it near Loulou’s body, didn’t he? Maybe she knew the Baron—’
Victor signalled to Joseph to be quiet as he heard Kenji’s footsteps on the spiral staircase.
‘Monsieur Mori, what a pleasure to see you again!’ trilled a generously proportioned woman whose hair was arranged in tight ringlets. ‘Have you finally got the Songs of a Country Man by Déroulède that you’ve been promising me ever since it came out a month ago?’
Joseph hid behind a row of shelves and was eventually saved by the ringing of the telephone, which drowned out Kenji’s reply.
‘Hello, Legris? It’s me,’ said a voice which Joseph immediately recognised as belonging to the loathsome painter.
‘The shop’s full of people,’ he said, in a low voice.
‘Have you given it any more thought? Can I really count on you? Mimi won’t stop pestering me.’
‘“By time and toil we sever, What strength and rage could never.”’
‘Save your preaching, Legris, and tell me what you mean!’
‘It’s from a fable by Jean de La Fontaine, and I think its meaning is clear!’ Joseph slammed down the receiver. ‘To think that we’re going to all this trouble for that cretin…’
‘Joseph, what’s this you’ve put in the ledger? It’s illegible,’ said Kenji.
‘Oh, it’s just an education manual for Madame de Salignac. It’s the second time the old battle-axe has asked us for it.’
‘I thought I’d strictly forbidden the use of that word.’
Victor quickly put his arm round his brother-in-law’s shoulders, saying, ‘Do you remember those two bookshops you told me about? Well, I think it’s about time you went along there, to see about that big order from the Baron de La Gournay.’
‘What order?’ chorused Joseph and Kenji.
‘The one the Marquis de La Picaudière told us about,’ replied Victor, brandishing Joseph’s newspaper cutting in his free hand.
‘Oh that, of course! I’ll go straight away!’
‘Where’s he going? The Marquis de La Picaudière? A customer? You and Joseph have endless confabs and I’m never in on the secret,’ grumbled Kenji. ‘And now he’s off again. What about you? Will you deign to stay or are you going to make up some excuse about having photographs to develop?’
Victor looked around the shop. The more irritating customers had all left, leaving only a few well-behaved bibliophiles browsing.
‘Listen, Kenji, don’t you think it’s time we reassessed Joseph’s status in the bookshop? After all, he’s your son-in-law now.’
‘I’m all too well aware of that. There’s no need to twist the knife in the wound.’
‘So he can’t be just a shop assistant any more.’
‘But he insists on behaving like one! I wanted to employ a new assistant and he was categorically opposed to the idea! So here we are in a pretty pickle, with an ex-assistant who refuses to be replaced, and his mother who insists on playing housekeeper!’
‘I could take over the purchasing side of things, and he could look after sales and delivery, in exchange for a share of the profits.’
‘If apple trees bore fruits of gold, man’s burning greed would soon turn cold. In other words, money doesn’t grow on trees!’ Kenji said, before being accosted by a customer.
‘But a new assistant would be expensive too,’ Victor objected.
He gave up. ‘There are none so deaf as those who will not hear,’ he reflected, determined to take up the point again at the earliest opportunity.
* * *
Joseph jumped off the omnibus at Rue Bergère and, walking past the National Savings Bank, headed towards number 29, Rue de Trévise. Victor had had the bright idea of continuing their investigation at the Supernatural Bookshop, owned by Lucien Chamuel, a native of the Vendée, who was also a publisher and had a little back office behind the shop, which served as a meeting room. For fifty centimes a day, readers could consult key texts on hermeticism.
An imposing figure, adorned with exotic fur-trimmed draperies, shook his dark hair and beard as he declaimed a text of his own devising.
All praise to you! Intangible Eros,
Uranian Eros! All praise to you!
O deliverer from banal tenderness,
Great alchemist of impure desire,
Athanor of the great work in the world of souls
All praise to you, Androgyne!24
Joseph saw that the rest of the audience were applauding devoutly and resisted the urge to burst out laughing.
A stocky, jovial man with a curly beard came into the bookshop. The speaker bowed stiffly to him and made his exit, followed by his admirers.
The man narrowed his malicious eyes and knocked at the editor’s door. A voice called him in.
Feeling rather lost, Joseph went and stood next to a young, delicate-looking man with a halo of blond curls who was engrossed in a slim volume of verse. Joseph coughed quietly to attract his attention.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, but who was that old chap?’
‘What? Didn’t you recognise Sâr Péladan?’
‘Sire Péladan?’
‘No, he takes the title Sâr from the kings of Assyria. He’s a highly respected writer – his fictional character Merodack is fascinating. I recommend that you read his book The Supreme Vice. It was published ten years ago, but is still fresh and instructive today.’
Joseph remembered having placed a few books by this man on the shelves of the Elzévir bookshop, but he had been put off by their convoluted style and had never actually read any.
‘And the other man, who the, er, Sâr seemed to want to avoid?’
‘Oh, that was Dr Encausse, commonly known as Papus,25 the name of a spirit in the Nuctemeron by Appollonius of Tyana. He and Péladan haven’t been on good terms since the War of the Two Roses broke out.’
‘The one fought in England?’ Joseph hazarded innocently. He had once flicked through an abridged history of the House of Lancaster.
The young man put his volume of poetry back on the shelf and looked at him pityingly.
‘That’s got nothing to do with it. I assume that the name Stanislas de Guaïta26 also means nothing to you?’
Joseph gave a subdued nod of the head.
‘Six years ago Stanislas de Guaïta, a great admirer of Péladan, suggested that they should found the Cabalistic Order of the Rosicrucian together. Papus became a member. However, on 14 May 1890, the Sâr decided to create his own brotherhood, and gave himself the title of “Imperator and Supreme Hierarch of the Catholic Order of the Rose and the Cross”. From then on, Papus replaced Péladan in Stanislas’s eyes, thus all the resentment. Last year, the supreme council, to which de Guaïta and Papus both belong, condemned Péladan as a usurper, a schismatist and an apostate. It’s a great shame, because in my opinion they’re all talented investigators. Ah! If only he could succeed in discovering the secret of the philosopher’s stone, as he so passionately desires!’
This last comment caught Joseph’s attention. Suddenly alert, he cried, ‘He’d definitely be able to tell me something about the Black Unicorn, this Papus!’
The young man curled his upper lip, giving him a curious air.
‘The Black Unicorn! A band of imbeciles, the dregs of society!’
‘But they’re seeking the philosopher’s stone!’
‘They couldn’t even begin to guess at its whereabouts. You, on the other hand, dear boy, seem extremely talented. What would you say to taking a little glass of the Green Fairy with me? Unless you’d prefer to inhale some ether in my humble abode?’
The young man was pressing himself so close that Joseph, terrified, abandoned his plan to talk to Dr Encausse, alias Papus, and escaped as quickly as he could.
He went down Rue La Fayette, and continued, his forehead still damp from this unsettling experience, until he reached Rue de la Chaussé d’Antin, where he managed to find the Independent Art Bookshop. He tore a page out of his notebook, scribbled the title The Supreme Vice on it, and waved it under the nose of one of the shop assistants, a stooped old man who made up for his baldness with a flowing white beard and moustache. The assistant said that it was a shame that Joseph had arrived when he had, because he had just missed Stéphane Mallarmé and Claude Debussy, who were both interested in esotericism and friends of Sâr Péladan. Feeling reassured by the fact that he was the only customer in the shop, and relieved to be safe from the young man’s clutches, Joseph enquired about the Black Unicorn. It transpired that the old man was rather hard of hearing.
‘Speak up!’ he shouted.
‘The Un-i-corn,’ Joseph enunciated.
‘Ah, yes, the beautiful animal. Three thousand years ago, the Chinese believed it to be sacred and called it the kilin. In Sanskrit, it was known as ekasringa; in Tibetan, tso-po; and in Vietnamese, lân. The Arabs knew it by the name of kurkadann. Its traces can be followed to India, where the sarabna haunts the snowy mountain summits, and to Palestine, where the name re’em recalls the Assyrian name, rimu,’ the old man quavered.
‘I want to know about the Black Unicorn!’ bellowed Joseph.
Strangled in Paris: A Victor Legris Mystery (Victor Legris Mysteries) Page 10
