“I'm saying it now.”
“But now?”
“I can't tell you. But I can show you – if you'll come to Gambais. But we'll have to get up early. We've got to be there before six.”
“Six? In the morning? You know I can't do that!”
“That's up to you.”
“Well, I could do this. I just won't go to bed tonight. That way I won't have to get up early – if I don't go to bed.”
“That's one way of looking at it.”
Gertrude and I left very early the next morning for Gambais. Gertrude, of course, didn't drive at night and as it was still dark we decided to take the electric train. Once we got to the station, however, there was a brief skirmish Gertrude didn't like to ride public conveyances. But when it became obvious that the only way she was going to get to Gambais was on one – unless, of course, she wanted to walk – the skirmish was over. We got on the train and were in Gambais by five.
At first Gertrude was excited about being in Gambais, “the scene of the crime,” as she called it.
“Why didn't I think of this before?” she said. “It's so much easier to visualize it when I'm here.”
But once we got out to the villa and stood before it, she began to have doubts. “It may have been easier,” she said, “not seeing it. The villa is beginning to get in the way of my thoughts. It's becoming bigger than my thoughts and so I'm not having any thoughts. Maybe we should leave.”
On the way back to town Gertrude began to feel better.
“I'm beginning to have thoughts again,” she said. “I need to find a lake. He probably dumped the bodies in a lake.”
“You're an Aquarius and so you thought of a lake. But he didn't. He thought of something better. Come and I'll show you.”
We walked back through town and reached its eastern edge and that was when I saw them again, regular as clockwork, coming down the road, the long line of lorries.
“Do you see those?” I asked Gertrude.
“Sure. Trucks.”
“Garbage trucks,” I corrected.
“Making their morning run in from Paris. They start coming in each morning around six.”
“Very interesting. But I've seen garbage trucks before.”
“Not these garbage trucks. Come with me.”
We started walking down the road, following the lorries. It was not a long walk but it was a dusty one and by the time Gertrude and I had reached the quarry pits we were both coughing.
“You know I don't like to cough,” Gertrude said, coughing.
“It's not much farther.”
We came to the quarry pits and stopped.
“These pits go back for miles,” I said.
“Right up to the edge of the RambouilletForest. For the past six years the city of Paris has been dumping some of its garbage here.”
“What are you saying?”
“That Landru knew of these pits, that he knew the trucks came here early each morning and dumped tons of garbage into them, and that he brought the bodies of his victims here and threw them into the pits. What better place to put dead bodies – than in a garbage pit, where he knew they would soon be covered with tons of garbage?”
“Ummmm,” Gertrude said. “It's possible. Where were you standing when you first had this idea?”
“Over there.” I pointed to a promontory that jutted out over one of the pits.
Gertrude walked over to the promontory and stood on it.
“Yes,” she said. “I'm beginning to see what you mean. But there are many pits. Wouldn't that have been a problem?”
“Why?”
“Surely the trucks do not get to each pit each day. Wouldn't there have been the risk that the body might not be covered up right away?”
“But didn't you say he cut the bodies up?”
“Yes – into small pieces. Of course! That would solve the problem! They'd blend in with all the other garbage and not be noticed.”
“Yes.”
“There's this as well,” Gertrude said, stepping down off the promontory. “The smell. I like that even less than I like to cough and so we must leave soon. But the smell of this place would have kept all but the garbage men away. It's certainly not the kind of place where people would come for picnics. So Landru was safe there too. No one would be here to see him dump the bodies.”
We began to walk back toward town.
“What made you think of these pits?” Gertrude asked.
“Landru's horoscope. Of course, I saw the lorries. But before I saw them I knew what I was looking for. Landru is a Taurus – or at least his ascendant is Taurus.”
“You know I don't believe in that.”
“Some people do. And show me a Taurus and I'll show you a garden – or in Landru's case, a garbage pit. I knew he'd try to bury the bodies somewhere – Tauruses love to dig in the earth. So I looked for some graves at the villa. Of course there weren't any – that would have been too obvious. It's the first place the police would have looked. Then I found the cemetery in town. What a clever place to bury a few extra bodies – in a place already full of them. But when I talked to the postman at Gambais, he said that the police had already checked the cemetery. In fact, all the cemeteries in the province have been checked. That was when I saw the lorries and found the pits.”
“Yes,” Gertrude said. “It was a very clever plan. Nearly perfect, in fact.”
By the time we had gotten back to Gambais Gertrude liked Landru's plan so much that she thought we should tell someone else about it. There was no police station at Gambais. But Gertrude remembered that the Versailles Police Department had carried out the initial investigation of the case, and so we went to Versailles. Once there we found the police station and Gertrude introduced herself to the Prefect of Police.
“I am Gertrude Stein,” she said, “and I have something to tell you about the Landru case.”
Of course the Prefect of Police had never heard of Gertrude Stein. But I am happy to say that by the end of the day he had. He was so taken, in fact, with what she had to say that he called the Prefect of Police in Paris and they had a long talk. Then several newspaper reporters came out to Versailles and we all went back to Gambais, again in a public conveyance, but this time one about which there was no skirmish at all – a police car. Gertrude was delighted with that.
We went out to the quarry pits and Gertrude explained it all again – this time standing on the very spot where she had first gotten the idea. The story appeared in the newspapers the next day, several with pictures, which made Gertrude even happier than the police car. The next day she received a letter of commendation from the Prefect of Police at Versailles, praising her for her fine detective work, which pleased her even more. Then she wrote up her solution to the Landru case, telling how Landru had disposed of the bodies in the garbage pits, and sent it to Le Monde. Her entry was judged to be the best they received and so she won the prize. Again there were newspaper stories and again more photographs and, of course, a check for 5000 francs, which pleased Gertrude most of all.
“Now we can have our summer in the south of France,” she said. “This is the way I have always wanted to be able to provide for you, Alice. Someday we will be rich, I promise.”
So in the end everyone was happy.
Gertrude was happy because she had gotten her name in the newspapers and because the Prefect of the Versailles Police had sent her a letter of commendation and, of course, because she won the 5000 francs. Monsieur Godefroy, the chief prosecutor in the case, was happy because the jury found Landru guilty of eleven counts of murder and sentenced him to death. And all of France, except, of course, the one wife who had gotten away, was happy because there was soon to be one less murderer in their midst.
But perhaps I was the happiest of all.
For on the morning of February 22, 1922, Henri Désiré Landru was led from his prison cell at Versailles and marched out into the courtyard, where, at exactly five a.m., his head was cut off.
&
nbsp; I, of course, being an early riser, was up at that hour. And having read of the execution time in the newspapers the day before, I noted it on the clock in the studio.
I will not say that I was smiling, as I looked at the clock, at exactly five a.m., and observed the moment of death. But I will say that I felt a moment of great relief.
That now there was one less man amongst us to have lovers.
And one less husband to be unfaithful to eleven wives.
And, of course, one less subject for Gertrude and Hemingway to talk about.
Julie Smith
(1944 – )
While Julie Smith is best known for her richly textured novels of the contemporary South featuring New Orleans policewoman Skip Langdon, she has demonstrated her versatility with two earlier series and numerous short stories. The five Rebecca Schwartz mysteries, which debuted with Death Turns a Trick (1982), are fast–paced comic tales of the exploits of a San Francisco Jewish feminist attorney. Paul McDonald, a freelance San Francisco editor (an occupation Smith once pursued) appeared in two novels, True–Life Adventure (1985) and Huckleberry Fiend (1987); his strong first–person voice proves Smith's ability to portray authentically a member of the opposite gender.
In the late 1980's Smith, a Savannah native who admits to never having felt at home in the South, began to examine her roots fictionally; the resultant novel, New Orleans Mourning (1990), earned her the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel and introduced Skip Langdon. The tall, somewhat overweight policewoman is a product of New Orleans society who has never conformed to the genteel image; an outsider on her home turf, she draws upon her wide contacts to plumb the dark underside of the city, while relying on her objectivity to understand and mesh the facts of her investigations. Smith weaves intricate tales of treachery and deceit on every level of society, and surrounds her heroine with a well–drawn and eccentric cast of ongoing characters. Her examination of Southern society in The Axeman's Jazz (1991), Jazz Funeral (1993), New Orleans Beat (1994), House of Blues (1995), and The Kindness of Strangers (1996) makes New Orleans, in all its flawed beauty, as much of a character as Langdon herself.
While Skip usually detects on her own, here she is joined by her male friend, Steve Steinman, in an original story that may very well be the only short mystery set in Antarctica. It is a fitting last entry for this anthology, as Langdon and Steinman epitomize the detecting duo in the 1990's, and deal with issues that will last well into the twenty–first century.
THE END OF THE EARTH
SKIP LANGDON AND STEVE STEINMAN
ANTARCTICA
1997
She sat on a rock, boots digging into the snow, binoculars trained on the lone bird trudging up the hill. It waddled absurdly, poorly adapted for walking, much less long–distance hiking. She knew some penguins had to walk as far as a hundred miles to the sea and back to their nests. They could, of course, just stay at sea, but the species continued because they opted instead for the uphill trudge.
She felt hands come to rest on her shoulders. “Some say the world will end in ice.”
The voice was so familiar it might as well have been herown. She completed the thought. “From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire.”
“You know the poem.”
“Yes. Were you thinking of the penguin?”
“Can you imagine being so driven?”
That was the day before Toby's body was found. He was their favorite person on the ship.
They had wondered who'd be crazy enough to take a cruise to the end of the earth – to actually pay for it, which they hadn't – and had looked forward to grand eccentrics, screwball adventurers. Yet plain vanilla was the flavor of the month. Everyone seemed tediously normal, except for some of the guides, of whom Toby was one.
They might have known this would be the case – if they'd been the sorts of people who traveled much themselves. They'd have liked to be – and certainly intended to be – but right now they were a little young and not quite successful enough. In other words, being a police officer (Detective Skip Langdon, New Orleans P.D.) and a much–in–demand film editor (Steve Steinman, self–employed), she didn't have the money and he didn't have the time. The Antarctica trip was a gift. Skip's good friend Jimmy Dee Scoggin won it in a charity drawing, but didn't feel he could leave his adopted children at Christmas.
“But Dee–Dee,” Skip said, “why don't you just go another time?”
“Because winter is summer Down There – good God, that sounds like what's in your pants. It's the only time the ocean thaws, comprenez? Anyway, I don't want to go. I hate ice. I hate snow. I hate penguins. I only bought the ticket to be nice.”
“How could anyone hate penguins?”
“They make me feel like a shabby dresser.”
The appealing thing to Skip and Steve, who weren't all that fond of ice and snow themselves, was that this was no luxury cruise, but adventure travel. Getting there was half the trip, if not half the fun. You had to fly to Miami, then to Santiago, then to Tierra del Fuego, where you boarded an ice–class ship that would hold some thirty–eight passengers and about as many crew members. Then you spent two days in Drake Passage, the roughest water in the world, and if you weren't seasick, you were as rare a bird as a condor.
Once in Antarctic waters, you landed on the continent several times a day, wherever there were penguins and scenery, in rubber dinghies that could hold a dozen people.
The guides drove the dinghies, led hikes, and lectured on such topics as Antarctic history and wildlife. They were the usual semi–loners – as close to cowboys as a twentieth–century man can get – young, well–educated, contrarian in every way. Toby had wild blond hair, a quick clever tongue, and an air of competence that Skip liked. In water so icy it could kill in minutes, she wanted a dinghy–driver who could patch a leak.
“After the guides,” she said to Steve as they hunkered in their bunks during the Drake crossing, “the crew's the most interesting.”
“Do tell. You never mentioned you speak Estonian.”
“Andre's English isn't that bad.”
“It is so. But he's a great–looking guy.”
“He was a scientist when this was a research ship. He even helped design it.”
“Start from the beginning, okay?”
“In the days of the Soviet Union, there were lots of research vessels, studying various things about the climate and the ice and the wildlife – Antarctic Studies, you might say.”
“Ha. Spy ships.”
“Oh, I'm sure. But they did provide employment for guys like Andre. And this was one of them. You didn't know?”
“As a matter of fact, I did. While you were getting the mad scientist's life story, I happened to retaliate by chatting up the waitress in the shorts.”
“Oh, yeah. Shorty. I guess that's how she got her name. But really! Who wears shorts in the Antarctic?”
“There's nothing short about her legs.”
Skip ignored him, answering her own question. “A waitress looking for a better life, that's who.”
“Well, in that case she shouldn't have picked Toby. He'll probably spend his whole life traveling and never make a nickel.”
“She's Toby's girlfriend?”
“Are you jealous?”
That was how they spent the two days on the Drake, sometimes not even making it to meals, having soup sent in instead, gossiping because there was little else to do.
Sometimes the ship rolled and sometimes it pitched. The sky was overcast, and the waves were grayish mountains that shattered over the bow, reaching seven on the Beaufort Scale, something, as Skip understood it, rather like a Richter Scale that measured fractious water instead of cranky land. Eleven was cyclone strength.
The change, when it came, was almost instant. Skip was napping when she heard Steve jump from the top bunk.
“What?”
“Feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“It's like the curiou
s incident of the dog in the night – from the Holmes story.”
“The dog did nothing in the night.”
“Exactly. The ship's like a friendly pup. I'm going on deck.”
He was back in ten minutes. “Come on. You've got to see this. You won't believe it.”
The sea was as blue as its reputation, except where the sun turned it gold. The sky was a clearer, more exaggerated hue than even seemed possible. A black–browed albatross glided at the stern. That was all.
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