Murder on the Eiffel Tower

by Claude Izner

  ‘If we buy up all your Naverys, you will of course give us a discount?’ grumbled the Comtesse.

  ‘That goes without saying,’ Victor answered, impatient to rid himself of both the books and the lady.

  ‘And you’ll arrange for them to be delivered?’

  ‘Joseph will take care of that. He’ll deliver them to your home this evening,’ Kenji promised, making an effort to be polite again.

  She graciously smiled at him and made a majestic exit, with her niece at her heels. Valentine’s pointed nose lingered a little too long on the other side of the shop window, but Victor did not even look in her direction.

  ‘Watch out, a slip of the tongue and you’ll call her “Madame Battle-axe” to her face one of these days!’ he said to Joseph with a laugh.

  ‘And on that day, you will be dismissed!’ Kenji declared severely. ‘Victor, I hope you are free tomorrow. You haven’t forgotten we are stocktaking, have you?’ he added as he got back down to work.

  Did he want me to be away? Victor wondered while countering, ‘Of course not. By the way, you haven’t told me, was the Rue de l’Odéon library at all interesting?’

  ‘No. Too expensive. Much too expensive.’

  ‘What a pro. He just lies through his teeth! Victor thought. ‘Whilst I remember, could you lend me your copy of Goya’s Caprichos?’

  Kenji leant even more keenly over his card file and answered neutrally, ‘That’s a bit tricky. I recently gave it to the bookbinder on Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. He’s so busy right now it’ll probably be some time before it’s ready.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Morning, Monday 27 June

  THE previous day had been exhausting, what with stocktaking in the bookshop and laying out the new titles.

  ‘It makes you think,’ Kenji had remarked, ‘knowing that all these books that everyone is talking about today will be languishing tomorrow on the second-hand stalls …’

  With aching back, Victor was once again going up Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs where, at this early hour, there were just a few costermongers’ carts to be seen. Despite feeling tired in the evening he had had to write both the literary column and the advertisement that he had promised Marius, all in the sole hope of seeing Tasha again. He had been surprised to discover that his mind was not feeling as slow as his body and had in fact been able to produce an article of some quality. Perhaps I ought to be a writer? he had thought as he reread his work. Then he remembered Kenji’s words: ‘It makes you think …’

  A storm was brewing and the heat was oppressive. He stopped for a moment at a florist’s where two women were arranging carnations in vases. If Tasha was not at the newspaper offices, he would take a bouquet to her lodgings and leave it for her at the entrance with a light-hearted invitation to dinner. No, you fool, first you’ll knock on her door … He shrugged. It was too early in the day to be having these kinds of thoughts.

  The buzz of activity in the offices of Le Passe-partout reminded him of an operating theatre. Surrounding the Linotype operator like nurses round a surgeon, Eudoxie Allard and Isidore Gouvier were paying close attention to the comings and goings of the machine typographers.

  Victor had to tap Gouvier on the shoulder to get his attention. The old man looked up with his round-eyed bulldog face, an unlit cigar under his drooping moustache.

  ‘Good day, Monsieur Lenoir.’

  ‘Legris.’

  ‘Do excuse me, it’s this job. It does for your brain. Eudoxie …’

  The secretary, who was wearing a dark faille dress, which served to emphasise her femme fatale air, glanced at Victor with indifference and gave him a perfunctory nod.

  ‘I’m going to finish the correspondence,’ she told Gouvier, who was not listening.

  She went off to a side door, then turned back to appraise Victor like a housekeeper considering produce in a shop window, and seemed to revise her opinion of him. Smoothing back her glossy dark hair with one hand and fiddling with the brooch on her bosom with the other, she lingered on the threshold. Sensing that she was watching him, Victor in turn considered her. She gave him a slight smile and then fled like a nervous schoolgirl.

  ‘Would you like me to explain it all to you?’ muttered Gouvier. ‘There you have the marble, which is in fact just a polished metal plate. It can hold four formes the size of a newspaper page. Inside the formes are the lines of type for the headlines as well as the plates for the illustrations.’

  Victor watched distractedly as the operator turned a small handle several times to lock the lines in place. The formes disappeared inside the machine. Gouvier cleared his throat. ‘Good, now you place the sheets of damp card on the —’

  ‘Is Marius here?’ interrupted Victor.

  ‘Wait, I haven’t finished,’ growled the old man. ‘The dried board comes back out of the press, can you see? It bears the impression of the page. Now we take it across the courtyard to the printer. Clusel is down there. He’s taken over from Bonnet, who has gone to a reception for the Prince of Wales. Follow me.’

  Leaning against the rotary press, wearing an English suit from Etheridge’s, Antonin Clusel was looking over the front page and chewing the end of his cigar.

  ‘These two deaths are our pièce de résistance. We’ve hit the jackpot!’ he exulted to Victor, who held out the two pages of his literary review without a word.

  Clusel ran through it and, with an embarrassed laugh, spat his cigar out onto the floor, crushing it with the toe of his shoe.

  ‘Excellent diatribe against school teaching. Very amusing, that suggestion of yours to banish the “ismes” to the isthmus of Panama. But I’m sorry, it’s too late for today’s edition. It will have to go in tomorrow.’

  ‘You can add this too.’

  Clusel cast an eye over the notice.

  ELZÉVIR BOOKSHOP V. LEGRIS – K. MORI

  Founded in 1835

  New and antiquarian books

  First Editions

  Catalogue available

  18 Rue des Saints-Pères, Paris VIe

  ‘Perfect, perfect. Eudoxie will open an account for you.’

  ‘So, any news?’

  ‘I should say so! The man who died at the Colonial Exhibition has been identified, an American named Cavendish. Apparently also stung by a bee. Gouvier has been laying siege to police HQ, but they don’t have any more information than that. The police are saying nothing, rather like the army! They prefer to play safe and stick to the story of killer bees. They get the blame for everything, those honey-gatherers!’

  ‘But it’s all suspiciously obvious,’ put in Gouvier. ‘Two stiffs in the same place in three days, and then there’s that anonymous letter, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘They want to feed us information bit by bit. Well, they’ll soon see. I’m going to give them news, all right, and not in dribs and drabs!’ Clusel added heatedly. ‘Rummaging around at the faculty, I discovered some very interesting facts.’

  He took the front page and read out loud: ‘“It is sometimes said that frail individuals can suffer an epileptic fit after being stung by a bee. However, the only fatal cases were reported by a colonial doctor three years ago. Two African children succumbed to tetanus after being stung by a bee.”’

  ‘Tetanus?’ repeated Victor, frowning. ‘I am no expert, but … would an infection like that show up so quickly after the sting?’

  ‘I was coming to that! The incubation period for tetanus varies between a few hours and two weeks before the first symptoms begin to appear. Now, our two victims kicked the bucket there and then. So tetanus is not the explanation! We can therefore deduce that either these are murders — and Gouvier is right, the anonymous letter favours that hypothesis — or, we are dealing with the early signs of a mysterious epidemic. In either case the authorities do not want to make the public panic and endanger the Exposition. They are deliberately playing things down by blaming the bees. It would not be the first time that the interests of the common people came a poor second to those
of the bigwigs who govern us.’ ‘That’s a rather cynical view,’ commented Victor.

  ‘Feed the flames of controversy, Monsieur Legris, that is the job of the press! It’s all in here!’ cried Clusel, waving Le Passe-partout. ‘“DEATH STALKS THE EIFFEL TOWER AND THE COLONIAL PALACE.” Quite a headline, don’t you think? Our circulation figures are going to go wild. Listen to this: “On June the twentieth, John Cavendish arrived from London to stay at the Grand Hotel, room three twelve. Four days later, in the early afternoon, he …”’

  Victor was no longer listening. Clusel’s words faded into the background. Staring blankly, Victor tried to remember. ‘J.C … .Grand Hotel … Room … J.C … .’ John Cavendish? No, impossible!

  He leant sharply forward. ‘The Grand Hotel? Which one?‘he asked in an altered voice.

  ‘The one on Boulevard des Capucines, of course. Where else? That’s where all the Yankees stay when they are in Paris. That is, those who can afford it. I could live for two weeks on what it costs to stay there for one night.’

  ‘I must go. Tell Marius I’ll call by later.’

  Clusel held out his hand, but Victor kept his own in his pocket. It was trembling too much. Without so much as a goodbye to Gouvier, he raced off. Gouvier and Clusel exchanged knowing looks.

  ‘You need to be one of us to really understand the underhand ways of journalism,’ Gouvier remarked.

  Room … room … what was the room number? wondered Victor as he hurried through Galerie Véro-Dodat where the sound of thunder reverberated. The storm broke as he came out onto Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs. The only way he could find out for sure was by going back to the bookshop. He had forgotten all about Tasha.

  For the first time in several days, Joseph was surrounded by customers, and, not knowing which way to turn, he had asked Kenji to come to his rescue. When the door opened and in came a drenched Victor, they both looked at him hopefully but, ignoring them, he hurried up to the first floor, vaguely murmuring something about an umbrella.

  He took off his wet shoes, went into Kenji’s room and marched straight up to the oak table, but Le Figaro de la Tour had disappeared.

  Cross with himself, he paced up and down the room. He decided to open one of the drawers, then closed it and opened another, but he could not get over his reluctance to spy on Kenji in this way! Even if he was only seeking to reassure himself, it felt terribly wrong. He was all set to abandon the search when, with a final impatient gesture, he lifted up the blotter. There was the newspaper: ‘Meet J.C. 24-6 12.30 p.m. Grand Hotel Room 312.’

  3, 1, 2. Eyes riveted on the numbers, fists clenched, he felt almost at breaking point. There was no mistaking it, all the facts led to one dreadful conclusion. Kenji had met John Cavendish. He put the blotter back in place and, leaving his friend’s apartment, returned to his own.

  If Kenji’s furnishings displayed a taste for the French style of the time of Louis XIII in the seventeenth century, Victor’s showed him to be unashamedly nostalgic for the country where he was raised — England.

  Starting with the dining room, with its massive table and six dining chairs, through the bedroom containing a bed, bedside tables, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers, to the study, which was equipped with a roll-top desk, a solicitor’s filing cabinet and a breakfront bookcase, everything was made out of mahogany. Petrol lamps hung down from the ceiling, and on the floor were carpets of vaguely oriental design. On the walls hung Constable watercolours and two Gainsborough portraits inherited from his father, Edmond Legris, who, although he had known nothing about art, had followed the advice of Daphne, his wife, in making his purchases. A very beautiful red chalk drawing of the young woman hung over the bed, mounted in an oval frame. The only concession to France was a series of framed pen-and-ink drawings, arranged on either side of the desk and showing various aspects of Fourier’s phalanstery. Before leaving the bookshop to his nephew, Uncle Émile, a fervent Utopian, wanted to make sure that he would never part with his sketches, nor the assortment of objects and books stored in the basement. And when Victor came to be with him in his final moments, he made him swear an oath to that effect.

  The overcast sky let hardly any light into the small room where Victor sat at his desk. He decided to try out the Rochester lamp that Odette had given him. He filled it with petrol and lit the wick by turning a button. A bluish light appeared in the lampshade and for a moment Victor felt less worried. He was reminded of a winter morning shortly after his father’s burial, which for him had been a deliverance. He saw again the now lifeless face of the man he called ‘Monsieur.’ Twenty-one years had passed but the memory of Edmond Legris’s coldness had never faded. Kenji had freed Victor from his fear. Day after day, in his company, he had discovered a taste for life. By the light of the chandeliers, bright with candles, in the little first-floor drawing room above the bookshop in Sloane Square, Kenji would read him accounts of his adventures, teach him the arts of paper-folding and of calligraphy, whilst the sound of Daphne’s melodious voice humming ‘Greensleeves’ rose up from the ground floor. One evening Victor realised that he was hearing his mother sing for the first time.

  With a vaguely sick feeling in his stomach, he picked up a black notebook that had been lying on the table and wrote down the note from the margin of Le Figaro de la Tour. He then drew in pencil a row of increasingly large question marks. The light from the lamp flickered for a brief moment. He must protect Kenji. Whatever he might have done, Victor had to look after him, just as Kenji had looked after Victor as a child from the day his stern father engaged the young Japanese man, newly arrived in London, as an assistant. Above all, he must find out what had happened and calm his own, probably misplaced, fears. He had a sudden thought. Café de la Paix was part of the Grand Hotel. The stout man with the monocle who had bought Kenji’s prints — was he Cavendish? What time had Victor seen them together? Ten thirty, eleven o’clock? Not half-past twelve, in any case. At that moment he remembered he had been eating a portion of Pont-Neuf potatoes on Quai Conti before taking a cab to the Esplanade des Invalides.

  Abandoning his damp frock coat, he slipped on a tweed jacket and dry shoes, and went back downstairs. Intrigued, Kenji left the two affluent men he had been serving leafing through an eighteenth-century atlas, and came to stand in front of Victor to block his path. ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘No, everything’s fine. I just have an urgent errand to run, so have lunch without me.’

  ‘What about your umbrella?’

  ‘Oh, it’s not going to rain any more!’

  Kenji went to the window to watch the young man as he strode towards Boulevard Saint-Germain.

  The Grand Hotel wasn’t just a palace, it was a town in its own right. Its eight hundred luxurious bedrooms were spread over five floors where an army of bellboys, chambermaids and waiters were engaged in the business of ensuring the comfort of its classy, cosmopolitan clientele. The Grand Hotel enjoyed an impressive reputation across the Atlantic for its excellent cuisine, fine wines, splendid ballroom, reading rooms and music. It was also known for its American bar, where guests could be entertained by violins from a Tzigane orchestra, for its bureau de change, and both men and women’s hairdresser. You felt you need never leave — everything was there, including nature in the form of a jungle of palm trees and a multitude of rubber plants in pots.

  As he entered this caravanserai, Victor felt as if he were embarking on a transatlantic voyage. He was almost a little giddy, though this was because of his state of mind, rather than anything to do with the hotel. He paused in front of reception and waited for one of the black-liveried clerks to turn to him. Victor asked for Monsieur Belot, Antoine Belot, just arrived that morning from Lyon. The name was duly searched for in a register, repeated several times, only to be met by perplexed expressions and the shaking of heads.

  ‘I’m sorry, Monsieur, we have no one under that name. One moment, I’ll check our reservations … No, no Monsieur Belot.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked
Victor. ‘That’s strange. I received a telegram from him yesterday evening. Monsieur Belot arranged to meet me here in room three twelve. We were going to lunch together at Café de la Paix.’

  ‘Three twelve? That’s impossible, sir.’

  ‘Why impossible? Room three twelve, Monsieur Belot, wine merchant. Would you like to see the wire?’

  Victor said this with such assurance that he almost convinced himself of Antoine Belot’s existence! Without waiting for an answer, he took out his wallet. The employee winked almost imperceptibly at a colleague, who immediately intervened.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself, sir. There must be some mistake. We have no vacant rooms at the moment; everything has been reserved for months because of the Exposition, you understand. Room three twelve was … is occupied by an American, Mr Cavendish, who —’

  ‘Was? Mr Cavendish? The John Cavendish, who’s been mentioned in the paper?’ cried Victor. ‘Would you believe it? Are you trying to tell me that Antoine is sharing a room with … a dead man?’

  The employee looked about him anxiously, then leant over the counter and said in a low voice: ‘Ah … we don’t really want to broadcast that unfortunate news. I’m sorry to insist, Monsieur, but are you sure that your friend did not go to stay at the Grand Hotel des Capucines? It’s very near here and, if you would kindly wait a moment, we could telephone …’

  ‘You must be right: I must have confused the hotels. How stupid of me!’

  Moving away a little, Victor opened his wallet and pretended to consult a piece of paper inside it.

  ‘Good God, that’s unbelievable, I ought to wear glasses, it is indeed the Grand Hotel des Capucines.’

  Relieved, the employee’s face took on a sympathetic expression and he pointed vaguely towards the door. ‘Just a bit further down, sir, at number thirty-seven.’