The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  Josef’s Story

  It was lunchtime, so Inspector Perret and I found a nearby brasserie where he interrogated me over choucroûte garnie, huge plates of steaming sauerkraut laced with juniper berries and topped with plump sausages and hefty slabs of smoked pork, a delicious if near-lethal dose of cholesterol and salt. The questions he asked were the ones you’d expect, having to do with why on earth I was acting so suspiciously. The police, too, had discovered Bruno Blanc’s interest in the mirror, and the inspector had been assigned to keep an eye on the comings and goings at Le Jardin Métaphysique. I had provided the most interesting activity so far, so he seemed let down by my claim that I was merely a witness and journalist, not a thief and possible murderer.

  “You see, Madame,” he scolded, cutting a bite of sausage and dipping it into mustard of eye-watering strength, “I understand that you must do your job. But these diversions make it more difficult for me to do mine.”

  I tried not to think about Madeleine Bellefroide’s ransom, and what effect that might have on his job. “If I hadn’t come along and aroused your suspicions, you might not have followed Jane yourself,” I pointed out. “This way, you got a new lead— Lucien Claude, the scientific instruments dealer.”

  I took out Claude’s card and Perret copied down the information. Then he picked up his knife and fork again and shook the greasy knife admonishingly. “I urge you to be careful. This is a murder case. It isn’t like going to Monte Carlo to write stories about movie stars.”

  I had never thought of going to Monte Carlo to write about movie stars, but it wasn’t a bad idea for later when this was wrapped up. In the meantime, I reminded him, “I know it’s serious. I was there when Legrand was killed.” Perret, I had decided, wasn’t nearly as awful-looking as I’d first thought, although he was no Adonis like Lucien Claude. Blond and burly, he had bright blue eyes with a slight downward slant and ears that stuck out rather fetchingly— the kind of man the expression “you big lug” was invented for. And his concern for my welfare was touching, after the chilly and distrustful treatment I’d gotten from his dapper colleague.

  We finished lunch pleasantly, and after the bill was paid he excused himself to go, I presumed, back to his post on the Rue Jacob. I was gathering together my things preparatory to a visit to the ladies’ room when, picking up Lucien Claude’s card, I had a thought.

  The thought was: The Bellefroide family acquired Nostradamus’s mirror from a dealer named Claude.

  I was just about positive, but I checked my notebook to be sure. Garbled as my notes of Bernard Mallet’s press conference were, on this point they were clear: “Mirror bought, mid-nineteenth century, Francois Bellefroide, from J. Claude et Fils, dealer.” I also remembered Mallet’s saying the firm was no longer in business.

  The likelihood of it being the same family was slim to none. Claude was a common French name, and probably dozens of Claudes were antiques dealers. But how many of those dozens had been talking this morning to Bruno Blanc, who on his own admission wanted to own, or rather to liberate, the mirror? Even if the connection was thin, it was a good enough excuse to see what Lucien Claude looked like up close.

  Back at the flea market I found Lucien Claude alone in his stall. Half-sitting on the edge of a table, arms folded, one leg bent and foot dangling, he looked like an ad for Champagne, fancy cars, silk underwear, or whatever denotes the good life.

  I had taken off my knitted hat and done the best I could with my traumatized hair. I thought the best tactic was to be as straightforward as possible, while not betraying that I knew of his connection with Bruno Blanc. Accordingly, I introduced myself as Georgia Lee Maxwell, journalist.

  “Lucien Claude,” he said, and gave me the same soulful handshake he’d given Jane. His eyebrows arched when I said I’d been on the scene at the Bellefroide and was doing a story about the theft of Nostradamus’s mirror, but he didn’t betray shock or surprise. He seemed urbane and decidedly unflappable.

  “What brings you to me?” he asked.

  I had worked this out beforehand. “Your name. I know that a dealer named Claude sold the mirror to the Bellefroides in the first place. I thought perhaps there was a connection.”

  He smiled a perfect, crinkly-eyed smile and said, “Out of all antiques dealers named Claude, I have been chosen as the possible heir?”

  “Well— I haven’t investigated all of them.” I was getting flustered. “I thought scientific instruments might be more likely—”

  “Of course. Fortune-telling mirrors could almost be considered scientific instruments, couldn’t they?” He was a smoothie, obviously accustomed to making an impression, his manner just this side of teasing.

  “I took a chance…”

  His smile deepened. “Telescopes contain mirrors, after all, and astronomers study the heavens just as astrologers do.”

  He had rendered me speechless, but that was all right because he went on, “You are very clever, and the first journalist to find me. Josef Claude, of J. Claude et Fils, was an ancestor of mine. He sold the mirror to Francois Bellefroide. It’s quite a family legend.”

  I was amazed to have struck this mother lode. “But at his press conference Bernard Mallet said the firm was out of business, and he didn’t know anything about the provenance of the mirror,” I stammered.

  Claude’s lip curled. “Bernard Mallet knows nothing because he wants to know nothing,” he said contemptuously. “The information was there if he cared to find it.”

  “And he also implied that your ancestor— Josef Claude— made up the Nostradamus story so he could get a better price for the mirror.”

  He snorted with laughter. “Josef would surely have been capable of doing such a thing,” he said. “In this case he didn’t. According to the family story, he was completely convinced that the mirror had magical powers and had belonged to Nostradamus. The mirror changed his life.”

  Chill bumps popped out on my arms, the way they always did when the mirror was mentioned, but also because this was a scoop. I pulled out my notebook. “Would you be willing to tell me about it?”

  He glanced around. The stall was still empty. “Why not? Business is terrible.”

  I uncapped my pen. “You say the mirror changed Josef’s life?”

  He clasped his hands around one knee and rocked back a little. Storytelling posture. “Decisively,” he said. “You see, Josef, my revered great-great-great-uncle, began as a tramp and something of a madman. He had fits and babbled in unknown tongues. He married an unfortunate woman and fathered a child, but then refused to stay home or settle down, and traveled through the countryside with a horse and wagon, sleeping in ditches. I think he did a small business in buying and selling junk. My family, I tell you willingly, were not very grand, but even so he was a shame and embarrassment to them.

  “Josef often stayed away for months on end, covering great distances. According to the story he told later, on this most important trip he went as far as Provence, in the south of France. Toward nightfall one evening, he was in the vicinity of a town called Salon. Have you heard of Salon?”

  “No.”

  “It is the town where Michel de Nostredame, or Nostradamus, lived for much of his life, where he died in 1566, and where he is buried.” Lucien Claude smiled his heartthrob smile. “The story becomes intriguing, doesn’t it?”

  “It certainly does.”

  “On that evening, the weather was dreadful. A torrential rain was falling, the wind was blowing, and Josef’s horse went lame on the rocky path. Such conditions weren’t unknown to Josef, of course. He began to search for shelter, but no snug farmhouses or warm barns turned up as the storm worsened and his horse’s limp became more pronounced. At last he saw, some distance off the road, a tumbledown stone cottage and shed. The place was dark and looked deserted. Josef settled the horse in the shed and, with his lantern, went into the cottage to take shelter for the night.

  “As soon as he entered, he heard hoarse, rattling breathing. He held
up his lantern and saw an old man lying on a filthy bed. The man was ill, surely dying. He begged Josef for water, which Josef gave him. Josef sat by the old man through the night, and during that time the old man told Josef about the mirror of Nostradamus.

  “Some of his ancestors, he said, had been servants in Nostradamus’s home. The old man claimed the prophet had given his forebears the mirror out of gratitude for their services, but Josef thought it also possible that they stole it when he died. In any case, the treasure had never been harmed or lost, and this old peasant was its guardian. As he felt death overtaking him, he gave it to Josef.”

  At this critical moment, a couple of people approached to ask Lucien Claude about prices, and I came back to the flea market, its babble of commerce the reminder that life could be normal instead of an imitation of fairy stories. When Claude had finished he returned and said, “That was Josef’s story, at least. It could be that he battered the old man to death and stole the mirror, but there’s no way to know now.”

  “And the mirror had a profound effect on Josef?”

  “The old peasant told Josef he kept the mirror, wrapped in cloth, under one of the stones of his hearth. After the man died, Josef found it and unwrapped it. He spoke of its heaviness, its coldness, the glossy black of its surface. Naturally, he looked into it.

  “At first he saw nothing. Then came a slight movement in its depths, like a twitching of something coming awake, and a scene emerged.

  “It was a terrible struggle between a man and a monstrous black bird. The bird tore at the man with its beak, slashed with its claws, while the man fought ferociously. The battle was so savage that at first Josef did not recognize the man as himself. When he did, tears started to his eyes, because the man and the bird would surely kill one another. As he watched, however, his image put his arms around the bird, enfolding it lovingly, the bird settled against his chest, and the two melted into one. Then the mirror was black again.

  “The next morning, Josef buried the peasant and started for Paris. When he arrived weeks later, he went to his wife and son and humbly begged them to forgive him for the pain he had caused. With the little he had, and help from his family, he became a junk dealer, and in time he founded a respectable business in secondhand goods, J. Claude et Fils. Toward the end of his life, he sold the mirror to Francois Bellefroide. The firm continued until his direct descendants died out.”

  I’d been holding my breath. I could see the struggle between man and bird, and their reconciliation. I exhaled slowly and said, “There’s something I don’t understand.”

  “What?”

  “The mirror had been so important to Josef, changed his life, shown him this… vision, or whatever. Why would he sell it?”

  Lucien Claude rubbed the tip of his finger over the table top. “Oh, you may imagine he got an outstanding price.”

  “But still, it doesn’t seem right.”

  He shook his head. “No, it doesn’t, unless you know one further thing. Josef kept the mirror for years. When he needed guidance, he gazed into it. He consulted it innumerable times. He never saw another vision.”

  Scrying

  I must have looked as overcome as I felt, because Lucien Claude threw back his head and laughed. “It’s a wonderful story, isn’t it?” he said. “God knows if it is true.”

  I had the awful feeling he might have made it up for the occasion. “You weren’t kidding? About the family legend?”

  “Absolutely not. The version I just told you is exactly the one my parents told me. But to believe it we must trust Josef, who has been dead a long time and who, as I mentioned to you, went through a period when he wasn’t in his right mind.”

  “It was awfully convincing,” I said, almost belligerently, and then asked myself when I had acquired a stake in the mirror’s authenticity. Another thought occurred to me: “Josef’s story— is it common knowledge? I mean, did the Bellefroides know it?”

  He shrugged. “If Josef thought it would enhance the price of the mirror, he may well have told Francois Bellefroide at the time of the sale. It isn’t a secret, but it’s hardly the kind of tale a businessman wants widely circulated about himself.”

  I nodded. If Madeleine Bellefroide had heard about Josef Claude, even if she hadn’t remembered consciously, that might account for the similarity between their stories. Both said they had seen symbolic images of themselves. Madeleine’s had shown her the steadily burning flame of her life. What had Josef’s bird signified to him? His madness? His restlessness? Whatever it was, he had made his peace with it and gone on to a different kind of existence.

  “And the people at the Musée Bellefroide? Do they know?” I asked.

  “Possibly the former director did. Bernard Mallet is too busy keeping dust off his Sévres table services to concern himself with Nostradamus’s mirror.”

  Claude stood. People were drifting into the stall, and I knew I’d have to leave soon. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about the mirror since it was stolen,” I said.

  “The police have asked all of us to be on the alert for it,” he said, which I noticed wasn’t really an answer.

  I took a breath. “I’ve heard that a ransom may be offered. A lot of money.”

  “Oh, yes? Offered by the museum?” His tone was perfectly casual, and the tension I sensed may have come from me.

  “No, by an individual.”

  “But that would be stealing, surely? The mirror is the museum’s property.”

  “The person offering the ransom would give it back to the museum,” I said, although I didn’t remember Madeleine Bellefroide saying so.

  “That’s very generous and very strange. Who is this person?”

  Although he still betrayed no more than normal interest, I was now convinced I could feel an intense curiosity radiating toward me. I dropped my eyes, as if he might read Madeleine Bellefroide’s name in them, and said, “The person wants to be anonymous for now.”

  “But he— or she— would be willing to pay well?”

  “That’s my impression.”

  “I see.” A hunger in the question gave me a clue to Lucien Claude. Money turned him on.

  I told him to call me if he heard anything, gave him my address and phone number, and moved to go. I had only one question left: “Have you ever heard of a group called the Speculatori?”

  He gave me a look of comic exasperation. “Bruno Blanc and his colleagues? My God, yes. Bruno ferreted me out long ago. I told him Josef’s story— why not?— and since then he has plagued my life, asking for more details. Now that the mirror has been stolen he’s like a wild man.”

  “Do you think he stole it himself?”

  “I almost wish he had. Then he might go into hiding with it and leave me alone. But now—” He made a gesture toward the several people who were hanging around looking like potential customers, and I thanked him and left.

  On the long Metro ride back, I thought about Lucien Claude. He was achingly handsome, the soul of charm, a polished raconteur. The major emotion he had shown was amusement. He seemed almost as cold and glossy as the mirror itself.

  I climbed out of the Opera Metro station to find that the weather had changed. The golden Apollo on top of the opera house hovered against a background of scudding clouds. The wind had picked up, and there was a touch of chill in it. Before long my hat, which had been superfluous this morning, would be welcome.

  The office door was standing open, as usual, and as I approached I caught sight of Kitty sitting at her desk. She must have heard my footsteps, because she looked up and, seeing me, rolled her eyes wildly. I walked in without taking the hint, whereupon Bruno Blanc, who had been sitting at my desk, unfolded himself and stood up full length to glower at me.

  “So,” he said.

  I glanced at Kitty. Her eyes were cast upward, and her expression conveyed that she had tried to warn me, but since I’d been too obtuse to catch on I would now have to suffer as she had been suffering. I turned to Bruno Blanc,
remembered that I wasn’t supposed to know who he was, and said, “Hello.”

  “So. You intrude in my business,” he said, shaking his wealth of gray frizzy hair at me. His face radiated fury. Jane must have told him about my visit to the Rue Jacob. I had given her, I recalled, my office address and phone.

  “Georgia Lee, let me present Bruno Blanc,” said Kitty in an artificially bright tone. “Monsieur Blanc is eager to talk with you.”

  “You’re like a vulture, picking through the pain of others,” Bruno hissed. “You arrive in secret, insinuate yourself, pry.”

  I had to admit the truth of his accusations. I had arrived in secret, insinuated myself, and pried. I had also, and thank heavens he didn’t know it, snooped in his desk, tracked his girlfriend to the Porte de Clignancourt, and watched Bruno himself talking with Lucien Claude. “I was hoping to find out—”

  “Hoping to find out! You were hoping to find out what you have no business to know!”

  Justified as his anger might be, I wasn’t going to be his punching bag. I planted my feet and said, “Monsieur Blanc! What are you so afraid of?”

  To my surprise, it stopped him cold. He made chewing motions with his mouth a couple of times and sank down into my chair. “I’m so afraid,” he whispered harshly. “I’m so afraid the mirror is gone forever.”

  Kitty and I exchanged looks. I replied to her unspoken question with the unspoken answer that she should leave Bruno and me alone. She got up and slipped out, and I perched on the edge of the desk.

  I wasn’t sure how to proceed. Bruno rasped, “All my work, all my study. And now it’s gone.”

  He was carrying on like the mirror had been stolen from him personally. “But… you didn’t have access to it in the museum, did you?”

  He shot me a resentful glance. “Access! That fool Mallet didn’t give anyone access. No, the mirror chooses when it will be quiescent, and when it will be free. I am only afraid that it has removed itself from my sphere.”