House of Cards

by Stanley Ellin

  He kissed Madame’s hand with the air of a courtier; he dusted the bench for her with his handkerchief; he lectured her on child raising.

  “Naturally, you’re worried about the kid, madame, but it’s selfish to plant him in a hothouse like the Parc Monceau because of that. He’s at the age now where everything outside these gates would be magic to him. A ride on the Métro, a walk through the Flea Market with a couple of francs in his fist, a game of Wild West in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont across town with the kind of kids who don’t have a bunch of nursemaids breathing down their necks all the time—that’s what he needs for his own good.”

  “I’m afraid I must be the one to determine what he needs for his own good, Monsieur le Buc.”

  “True, madame. But only if you don’t let concern about your own peace of mind spoil your judgment.”

  She didn’t like this impertinence, I saw, but she took it well.

  When she rose to leave, Louis again kissed her hand and said cheerfully, “Madame, if I were only a few years younger and a few million francs richer—” and Madame de Villemont made a charming little curtsy of appreciation for that. It was all so pleasant and meaningless on the surface that I never dreamed anything would come of it, but the next day Paul and I were, in effect, given the keys to the city.

  So he rode in the Métro at last, proudly buying the tickets for both of us, and squandered money on a collection of rusty treasures in the Flea Market, and played football à la française in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont with a gang of small roughnecks from the Boulevard de Belleville, coming home with both shins covered by black and blue marks which he proudly displayed to his quivering mother like battle wounds.

  Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité.

  3

  I had little to do with the other members of the family.

  Since my room overlooked the courtyard, I sometimes saw de Gonde and Vosiers setting out on foot for their offices on rue de Boetie nearby and a few times observed one or another of their wives depart for shopping or a social engagement—the chic little Madame Matilde at the wheel of her white Ferrari, the matronly Madame Gabrielle in the Mercedes limousine chauffeured by Georges—but I seldom met any of them face to face. When I did, I learned that each had his own unvarying way of responding to my polite greeting—Madame Matilde with an equally polite “Bonjour, Monsieur Reno” always delivered with mocking solemnity; Madame Gabrielle with a quick, abstracted smile; Edmond Vosiers with a look of open dislike; and Claude de Gonde with a chilly, noblesse oblige inclination of the head.

  For the most part, I preferred it this way. Not being natural servant material I didn’t enjoy tugging my forelock to any of them, so the more distance between us, the better. But since Paul dutifully paid his respects to his uncles and aunts at regular intervals, they must have seen the change taking place in him, and it rankled a little that none of them saw fit to pat me on the back for my achievement. Even more to the point was that meeting with Charles Leschenhaut, the editor of La Foudre, which de Gonde had promised to arrange for me. As time went on, as weeks became months, and there was no meeting or even a mention of one, I came to the depressing conclusion that he had forgotten about the whole thing.

  It turned out that I had done him an injustice on both counts.

  Late one afternoon, I was waiting for the elevator on the ground floor, and when it descended into view I saw de Gonde aboard, his thumb working back and forth over his lower lip, his thoughts evidently far away.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur de Gonde,” I said as I opened the door for him, and he gave me that frigid inclination of the head, still lost in his thoughts. Then, as I was about to take his place in the elevator, he said, “One moment.”

  “Yes, monsieur?”

  “How is the writing going?”

  I decided I had everything to gain and nothing to lose by reminding him of his promise. “I’ve been hoping to get Charles Leschenhaut’s opinion on that, monsieur. If you remember—”

  “I remember very well,” de Gonde said stiffly. “I’ve spoken to him about you. He’ll meet with you here as soon as his schedule permits, and that should be very soon. He trusts you’ll have something to show him worth his time and trouble. Will you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good.” De Gonde slowly sized me up and down, his face expressionless. Then he said abruptly, “He knows the situation here. He knows you’re doing well with Paul. That’s in your favor, too.”

  And with that, he turned on his heel and walked off.

  I was still wondering about this curious passage when there was another and far more disturbing one, with Matilde Vosiers.

  Midway along the drafty, red-velveted length of the corridor outside my door was the landing of the marble stairway to the rotunda. Approaching the landing early one Friday morning, pleased with the prospect of the whole day free before me, I was suddenly brought to a halt by the sight of Madame Matilde in negligee, her hands gripping the balustrade, her eyes fastened on her husband as he walked heavily down the stairs and strode across the rotunda on his way out. It was easy to see he was in a savage temper. He wore riding clothes, and with every step he swung his crop as if he were slashing away at weeds with a sickle. The great door to the courtyard was too heavy to slam, but his gesture when he pulled it shut was that of slamming it.

  As the door closed, Madame Matilde turned and caught sight of me. Her hand flew to her cheek, covering it, but not before I had seen that the cheek was red and swollen and bore a distinct slash mark across it, a long ugly welt.

  “What are you staring at?” she said furiously. “Is that all you have to do with yourself, stand and stare at people?”

  It would have been hard not to stare. The negligee did little to conceal Madame’s plump breasts and rounded haunches, and they, along with her disheveled prettiness, were sights I was never immune to. With an effort, I managed to fix my eyes unblinkingly on hers and keep them there.

  “I’m sorry, madame.” Then, because I was sure that no matter how painful Vosierś riding crop across the face had been, the blow to her pride was even more painful, I said, “I was only concerned because you seem to have suffered a bad fall. The worn spots in this carpeting can be dangerous.”

  “Can they?” The angry eyes narrowed inquiringly. “Is that the story you intend to tell about this in the kitchen? Or will it be something a little more entertaining?”

  “I’m not in the habit of telling stories anywhere, madame. I attend strictly to my own affairs.”

  She was still breathing hard, but the anger was now oozing out of her, little by little.

  “Indeed?” She paid me the compliment of removing the concealing hand from her face. “You know, Reno, you’re not at all, one of the typical, smirking fools one finds infesting the house, are you?”

  “I try not to be, madame.”

  “No. In fact, you seem quite the chevalier. Very much the chevalier. Someone who might deserve a little good advice in return for his chivalry. Would you be interested in it?”

  I nodded, wondering what she was getting at.

  “Very well then.” Madame Matilde glanced over her shoulder as if to assure herself that the funereal length of corridor behind her was deserted, then in a low voice said to me, “The advice is to clear out of here. You don’t belong in this place. For your own good, get away from it as soon as you can.”

  I saw she meant it.

  “But why—?”

  “No questions. Ask no questions of anyone here. That sad little pédé who was once Paul’s instructor wasted time doing that, and what did it get him? Just leave here and don’t look back.”

  “Not without some reason,” I protested.

  “And what would be your reason for remaining here? The money? A man like you can do as well elsewhere if he wants to. The charms of Madame de Villemont? Believe me, if that’s what you’re mooning after, you’re living in false hopes.”

  For all its wild inaccuracy, this stung me.


  “The princess and the peasant, madame?” I said with open sarcasm.

  “No, the princess and her doctor!” Madame Matilde retorted. “Since it’s hardly a secret here that she and Dr. Morillon—”

  The words died in her throat. She must have seen from my expression that this was one secret, among many, I hadn’t been let in on. What she couldn’t know was that, when I recovered from the impact of it, I was taking this secret with a large grain of salt. It was too much an echo of Jeanne-Marie’s malicious imputation about Anne de Villemont. It was the kind of gossip that could very well have been born in the kitchen, not the bedroom. And above all, since Dr. Morillon was a practicing psychiatrist, a respected member of his profession, he wasn’t likely to risk his standing in it by having a grossly unethical affair with a patient.

  “Madame,” I said, but Madame Matilde’s eyes, which had momentarily widened with terror at her own slip, were now veiled to me.

  “I’ve said enough,” she told me dully. “Too much. You make it impossible to do you a favor.”

  I saw there was no use trailing after her down the corridor, trying to get more out of her. On the way to the Café au Coin, where I was to pick up Louis and my amiable tenant, Léon Becque, so we could travel together in my car to the track at Auteuil, I mulled over what I already had. A cryptic warning. Word that Anne de Villemont and her doctor were having an affair. But the warning was too cryptic and the affair too unlikely to add up to very much. There was something else she had said, however—one small word she had dropped—which began to loom larger and larger in my mind until it overshadowed everything else in it.

  She had referred to Paul’s previous tutor as a pédé, and, as I knew from Paul, there had only been one other tutor in his life besides me. And there was only one single, explicit interpretation of that slang word pédé. Pederast

  Yet the description of my predecessor given by Georges when he drove me to the mansion my first day on the job there had been that of a passionate young man who had suicided because of a hopeless love for Anne de Villemont. There was a glaring discrepancy between that image and the one presented by Madame Matilde in a single unthinking word.

  Now I remember how Claude de Gonde had insisted Georges chauffeur me to the mansion that day. Was this so Georges could tell me things he had been carefully instructed to tell me? In effect, to blindfold me before I arrived at the rue de Courcelles? On the other hand, if Georges had been sticking to the truth, why had Matilde Vosiers now been so careless with it?

  I made poor company for the rest of the day while my mind was endlessly churning over the same futile questions and conjectures. I could hardly wait until I arrived back at the rue de Courcelles early in the evening and turned the Renault over to Pascal, the scrawny young garage-hand. He had been a worshipful friend of mine ever since he realized he had once seen me in the ring at the Palais du Sport.

  To him I put the question directly. What sort of man had Paul’s other tutor been? Un pédé, peut-être?

  “You mean Monsieur Sidney Scott?”

  “Yes. What was he like?”

  “Oh, him.” Pascal smiled broadly, “He was one of those, all right.”

  “Then how did he ever get the job taking care of the kid? After all—”

  “How do you think? Monsieur Bernard was his mignon, and Monsieur Bernard throws plenty of weight around here.” The smile suddenly disappeared from Pascal’s face. “Look, champ,” he said anxiously, “it’s not smart to yakkety-yak about these things. Otherwise, we can both end up in the river like Monsieur Sidney, and the Seine is still damn cold this time of the year.”

  “You make it sound as if he was pushed in, copain. I thought he jumped in.”

  “I never said that, so don’t put words in my mouth. The police report says he jumped, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “And what made the police so sure about it?”

  “Hell,” said Pascal, “why shouldn’t they be? That’s what Madame de Villemont told them, and she was right there when it happened, wasn’t she?”

  “Madame de Villemont and who else?”

  “But nobody else, of course.” Pascal dug a knowing elbow into my ribs. “How many people will you ever find hanging around the Quai d’Anjou on a February midnight?”

  4

  I phoned Louis early the next morning and told him to meet me at the round pond in the Luxembourg Gardens in the afternoon. When he joined me on my bench there, Paul was hanging far over the edge of the pond flat on his belly, trying to get some wind into the sail of his toy boat with his lungs.

  As soon as my pupil saw who my company was, he came running over to us, the boat clutched against his chest and dripping water down his shirt front. One reason he enjoyed having Louis around was that then the rule about speaking only English to me had to be suspended. Louis’ command of English was serviceable, but rudimentary.

  “Comment ça va?” Paul greeted this old friend, and held up a leg to show the latest collection of bruises. “We won the last game, and I almost kicked a goal.”

  “Good. And the fingernails?”

  “This time I really did stop biting them.”

  “Very good. And the weight this morning?”

  “Thirty-one kilos.”

  “Say, you’ll be a real fatso before you know it. Now go take your boat and sail it some more while Reno and I talk business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Private business. So keep sailing that boat until we’re open to the public again.”

  He waited until Paul was back at the pond, then said to me, “Come on, let’s hear about it. What had you so hot and bothered on the phone?”

  After I answered that at length, Louis sat in frowning silence for a long while.

  “Well,” he said at last, “you seem to be in with an unlucky bunch, all right. People they know have a funny way of falling down stairs and jumping into rivers, don’t they? And the idea of a fag like this Sidney Scott killing himself over a woman—” He slowly shook his head. “No, there’s a lot more chance Mama found that this type was trying to corrupt the kid and pushed him into the river for it.”

  “The hell there is. You’ve met her, haven’t you? Does she look like somebody who’d commit murder?”

  “Listen, pal, I have the same weakness for tall, beautiful, sexy-looking women you have, but that doesn’t mean I wear blinkers around them. Sure, I met her. And what I saw, aside from all the assets, was that she’s like a violin string wound up so tight it’s almost ready to snap. Give a type like that enough reason for it, and she’ll kill somebody before she can stop herself.”

  “I’d have to see it to believe it. Anyhow, what I’m getting at is her reason for hiring me as Paul’s bodyguard. Up to now I never really thought there was anything to guard him against. Now I think there might be. Isn’t it possible someone close to Scott jumped to the same conclusion you did and threatened revenge against Madame because of it? The cruelest way to hit her would be through Paul.”

  “It’s possible,” Louis said. “Anyone special in mind?”

  “Yes, this Bernard Bourdon, de Gonde’s confidential secretary. If he was Scott’s mignon—”

  “You can’t hang a man just for that. What’s he like, this Bernard?”

  “Very pretty outside but poisonous inside. Sweet as sugar when he talks to you, but the eyes are dead, if you know what I mean. They’re like a snake’s eyes. They look right at you, and you can’t see anything behind them.”

  “Sounds delightful,” Louis said drily.

  “If you like snakes. That reminds me. Be careful when we’re on the phone. I wouldn’t put it past Bernard to be listening in.”

  “A fine type all around,” said Louis. “But take it from me, pal, this is a type for blackmail, not revenge. I knew a couple of boys in that line of work, and when you described that sweet smile and those dead eyes you could have been describing them. Yes, there’s a good chance Bernard knows more about Scott’s death t
han he should, so now he’s got Madame de Villemont paying through the nose. I’ve watched this kind of thing being done. It’s no joke, believe me.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way about it,” I said. “Now tell me how I can get hold of the police report on Scott’s death.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Keep your voice down or the kid’ll wonder what you’re so steamed up about,” Louis warned. “As for that report, it concerns the family of General de Villemont, pal, and General de Villemont is now a sainted hero of France. You think the police are going to let anybody walk in and set off a scandal about the de Villemont name with their help?”

  “How about Véronique? She got me that dossier on Marchat, didn’t she?”

  “That had information anyone in the Ministry of Commerce is entitled to look at. This is a criminal report supposed to be locked up tight.”

  “Suppose she typed up a requisition for it and had her boss sign it? She said a couple of times that he never looks at what he signs.”

  “He might look at this. Then she’d be in a fine mess.”

  “Why not leave that up to her?” I persisted. “Just ask her if she can get me that record without sticking her neck out too far.”

  “Why not ask her yourself?” Louis said coldly. “Tomorrow’s Sunday, so you’ve plenty of time to do it while the kid is with his grandma.”

  “Not tomorrow. Grandma sent word she’d like to meet me, so I’ll be going along to Île Saint-Louis with him. And this is something I’d like to clear up as soon as possible.”

  He was, of course, the kind of friend who would faithfully carry out a request, much as he might hate to. He also had a flair for conspiracy, as I learned when he called that night while I was playing dominoes in the kitchen with Georges and some of the other help. It was the morose Georges who took the call on the kitchen phone and who, after handing me the phone, remained right within earshot. But I had nothing to worry about.

  “Monsieur Davis?” Louis said brightly. “Ah, monsieur, that filly you asked me to place your bet on will be running this week. I’ll keep you informed.”