by Janice Law
Chapter Nine
The night’s drinks had long since metabolized and even La Fille Dorée’s brandy had worn off by the time we approached the city. I regretted having left the bottle behind. I think that gravediggers must be heavy drinkers, because it’s a serious thing to put anyone into the ground, even a stranger, even someone like the late, unlamented Richard Malet. I think Cybèle felt that, too, because she seemed subdued and didn’t swear at the gears when she had difficulties shifting anymore. Perhaps that was the moment when I should have broached her return to the old ladies, but I was preoccupied with my own difficulties. I could see nothing to be gained and much to lose in staying beyond the first morning train. The sooner I forgot this night’s work, the better.
A few delivery vans and work trucks had appeared on the streets, and the tardy southern light brightened the sea as we approached La Fille Dorée. Cybèle had begun elaborate preparations with the brake, the clutch, and the gearshift, when I saw a black truck at the side of the building.
“Someone’s parked in back.”
She slammed on the brakes, stalled the van, of course, struggled with reverse, of course, and stalled again before we shot out into the street, which was, fortunately, empty. We took off at high speed, the gears grinding and protesting. Cybèle had turned quite white—and I don’t think it was just from her difficulties with the motor. Careless of our depleted fuel, she seemed set to run us right out of town.
“That was the truck from the fish locker,” she said. “It will be full of ice for deliveries.”
Ah. “La Fille Dorée doesn’t serve fish, does it?”
“No. They were probably coming for me.”
That was my thought as well. Lucky for us, Malet had been taken by surprise, or both of us might have wound up in the cooler with the sole and mackerel. Not a good thought.
Cybèle pulled into a narrow street with modest apartment buildings, small hotels, and pensions and stopped. “Serge has a flat here, but we’ll have to be quick.” She locked the van and we hustled up the outside stairs of a two-story white stone construction. At the top, two windows and a peeling wooden door opened onto a narrow terrace. The door, unsurprisingly, was locked.
“You haven’t a key.”
“I thought you might find a way to get in.”
At that point, I had to agree that the aunts should have hired a professional. Both windows were closed with metal shutters. I stepped back and noticed an open roof window set into the slates. “Are you good with heights? I can lift you easier than you can lift me.”
Cybèle kicked off her shoes and laid down her bag. She put one strong dancer’s foot on my bent knee and gripped the edge of the roof. I grabbed her waist and pushed. She got a grip on the tiles, slithered back. I hoisted her left knee, then she was up and crawling toward the window. A creak of metal as she hauled it all the way open, then her long white-clad legs, striped shirt, and dark head disappeared through the opening and down into the room below. Thump. In the ensuing silence, I took the opportunity to open her bag and slip the revolver into my waistband. A moment later, the door opened. Cybèle looked dirty and scuffed, but this time there were no complaints. “Quick,” she said. “We don’t have any time to spare.”
“Right,” I said and handed her the bag. “Just what are we doing?”
“We’re finding the package, of course.”
“You think he still has it?”
“I suspect he couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Which isn’t surprising for Serge. You take the front room. I’ll take the bedroom.”
I waded in, literally. Serge’s living room had a couch, an upholstered chair, a table, and two wooden chairs. There was theoretically a rug on the floor—I caught a glimpse of brown and maroon flowers—but it was covered with fading newspapers, some magazines, clothes, a blanket, and wine bottles, all empty, alas, plus a pair of old boots and a blue smock like the ones the men at the villa had worn. A shotgun of some type leaned in one corner, and there were a number of smallish wooden crates, all nailed shut. I hoped he hadn’t hidden the package in one of those. The whole place was saturated with cigarette smoke, which served to take the edge off the sweat and spilled wine aroma that lingered around the clothes.
I was sifting the floor debris, when Cybèle called from the bedroom, “Marcel!”
She was holding the notebook. “This is it, yes?”
I looked over her shoulder as she flipped through the pages. I recognized the columns of names and numbers. “Wasn’t there a letter, too?”
“You lied to me. You said you hadn’t opened it.”
Time for my version of the Gallic shrug. “I couldn’t say I learned anything from it. Or from the letter.”
The sound of a heavy motor outside cut off discussion. Cybèle ran to the front windows and peeked through the shutters. “Merde.”
Two men were standing by the car; both were large and one, balding. “Golden dome was at the Villa Mimosa,” I said, and Cybèle said, “Serge is the other one. We’ll get out through the roof. They won’t look up.”
I hoped that she was right. In the bathroom, which was as insalubrious as the rest of the flat, she stepped onto the sink and grabbed the sill of the roof window. With a little help from me, she wiggled onto the roof.
“Quick, Marcel.”
I got onto the sink, the metal supports and pipes creaking. I was taller than Cybèle, so I got a good grip on the sill, but being both larger and less flexible, I was only halfway out when I heard voices on the terrace. Cybèle flattened herself against the tiles, a foot away from where I was dangling. Most of my weight was on my midsection, and I sincerely hoped the safety on her revolver was operational. Cybèle raised her head a fraction, shook it, and gave me a panicked look.
Below us, Serge was fiddling with his keys—perhaps he was a bit the worse for wear; perhaps, like grave digging, stashing bodies in the fish locker requires lubrication. As the door creaked open, I got my hips through the window and out onto the tiles. Below I heard them shouting for Richard, and with this as inspiration, I scraped my legs out the window. Cybèle pushed it shut before we slithered to the edge of the roof, dropped onto the terrace, and ran down the stairs.
“Leave it,” Cybèle said, when I put my hand on the van door. “They’ll think Richard drove it here.”
We left the street for a series of alleys running behind hotels with their trash cans and discarded bed frames, and small shops that smelled of fish, sawdust, and old vegetables. We emerged several streets away from Serge’s apartment, and I flagged down the first taxi I spotted.
“To the station.” I said. When Cybèle couldn’t come up with a better idea, she followed me into the cab.
We caught the morning train west, found seats in an empty compartment, and assessed our options. Mine were not flourishing. I was carrying a murder weapon of uncertain provenance, and I had no international papers and very little cash. At this point, I remembered Malet’s wallet. The brown leather billfold revealed a gratifying amount of money and some little scraps of paper with names and phone numbers. I transferred the money and papers to my wallet, threw the billfold out the window, and settled down to study the cool, whitish light on the Mediterranean.
After a time, Cybèle said, “The aunts will be our best bet.”
“Though someone may still be watching the gare.”
“We will get off before. The train has to slow just before it reaches town. We used to jump off as kids to save the walk home.”
“And then what?”
“You said that they owed you a passport. You get it and leave.”
“Leaving you with the notebook?”
“It’s mine, now,” she said.
“I am under pressure from a gambler named Joubert to retrieve the notebook—and that missing letter. Friends of mine have been threatened.”
“You will have t
o negotiate with the aunts,” she said. “They may even know this Joubert. We had refugees from everywhere, all desperate, most unscrupulous, some clever.”
“And in need of the aunts’ skill?”
“Yes,” she said soberly. “The aunts were very much in demand.”
“And you?” I asked. “You would have been what? Fifteen? Sixteen?”
“Thereabouts.” She got up, lowered the window, and stared at the black rocks, the flat, pale water, and the hamlets with their white walled houses topped by dusty red and gray tiles. She didn’t move until the train pulled away from the village below the Villa Mimosa, and we made our way along the swaying corridor. We jumped as the train slowed for the level crossing at a jumble of houses, small businesses, and overgrown lots and gardens. A few hundred yards along, Cybèle turned up a narrow side street, and I realized that we were near Pierre’s bicycle shop. In a town this size, he had to have known her.
Cybèle took an unfamiliar and circuitous route to the aunts’ back garden. She reached up one of the pillars flanking the gate, took down a key, and let us into the shadows beneath the cypresses. The house shutters were open for the morning sun, and as we reached the terrace, Aunt Anastasie stepped out one of the French doors.
“Monsieur Lepage,” she said. “You have exceeded all our expectations.”
I entered the house in the unaccustomed role of the returned hero, to be feted with some of Agathe’s fine pastries and good coffee. Nothing was said about the notebook, the letter, or the reasons for our hasty arrival, dusty and disheveled, and carrying nothing except Cybèle’s shoulder bag. Instead, we sat companionably in the parlor, gorging on little cakes and tarts and slices of an early melon. It struck me that the ladies were being excessively polite and discreet about our situation, and I was about to open negotiations for Cybèle’s revolver and the meaning of the notebook, when I felt unaccountably sleepy.
True, I had been up all night, but I am used to seeing the midnight hour and all the little hours that follow it without missing the morning light in the studio. I set down my coffee cup on a table that seemed an unaccountably long way away. My hand felt strange, too, as if it had swollen up and floated away from my arm, which was, in turn, growing heavy as were my eyelids. I leaned my head against the plush sofa and tried without success to keep the chandelier from rotating, then darkness overcame the plaster decorations on the ceiling and dropped down the walls and furniture to sweep me away.
I woke up in a high, old-fashioned bed that reminded me of Berlin and my wicked uncle Lastings and various adventures of a misspent youth. The light had faded in the garden and the house was very quiet. I guessed late afternoon. The nice old ladies had drugged me and, I saw, made off with my dinner jacket, slacks, and shirt. All were admittedly very dirty, but that meant the revolver—and maybe Malet’s cash—were gone. In recompense, I saw a clean set of clothes awaiting me.
I was sitting on the bed, buttoning the shirt, when Aunt Anastasie tapped on the door. “Ah, cher Monsieur Francis, you are awake.”
“Don’t cher Monsieur me; you slipped me a Mickey Finn. If we were in Shanghai, I’d be enslaved on some filthy freighter by now.”
“My apologies,” she said, and I must say, “désolée” made regrets sound better in French. “But please understand,” she said, sitting down in the chair. “We did not want to take any risks, because we have waited a very long time for this material. Not this, of course,” she added and handed me back my wallet stuffed with Malet’s bills. “We are not thieves.”
“Well, I am. These”—I ruffled the bills—“belonged to a dubious type named Richard Malet.”
“Yes, so we have heard. And we are grateful for your assistance, but you had taken Cybèle’s revolver, and we were not sure what game you were playing.”
I was indignant. “The game I was playing was trying to locate your niece. I arrived just before she shot Malet. Admittedly, after provocation. He worked for Serge Brun who apparently stores corpses in a fish locker.”
“You know, we made Serge his first set of false papers.” Her voice almost sounded nostalgic. “One did not ask too many questions then. Life was terrible and full of complications and yet we had no doubts.”
“And now?”
“Now there is nothing but doubts. With your help, we can put some to rest.”
“Where’s my passport?” I asked. “I did your paintings, I found your niece. I want to go back to London.”
“We very much need your help.”
I shook my head. “I very much need to get back to London, preferably with that notebook. I have been threatened. Nan, too.”
“Nan? Who is Nan?”
“My old nanny and companion. She is going blind and cannot be left alone too much longer.”
“I see. You continue to surprise me, Monsieur Francis. But in a good way.” She smiled and tapped my knee in a friendly gesture.
“Another difficulty is that Monsieur Joubert, who holds my gambling chits, expects me to retrieve the notebook.”
“That might be arranged, but we must discuss this all together,” she said, standing up. “We will fix you something to eat and we will talk.”
They were waiting in the parlor when I came downstairs, and I had a moment to wonder how they had managed to transport me to the bedroom above. Cybèle and Aunt Agathe sat together on the sofa, while Anastasie had taken a straight-backed chair before the window. There was a plate with pâté en croûte, some small tomatoes, and bottles of mineral water set out on the low table. I found I was hungry. When I had finished two slices of the pâté, Anastasie said, “You must tell us about this Monsieur Joubert.”
“I delivered the package for him.” I explained that he had opened a London gambling club just as the war was ending and described his curious behavior the night that Victor Renard was shot. The old ladies listened with complete concentration. They wanted to know every detail of the shooting and exactly what Victor Renard looked like. By the time I’d explained Joubert’s visit to the studio and his proposal, they exchanged glances and nodded.
“I think we know this man,” said Agathe.
“It is László Bencze, to the life,” Anastasie agreed. “He was a resident alien during the war. He had money, and, unlike so many, he managed to hold on to his capital and become an associate of Paul Desmarais.”
“We think, in fact,” Agathe said, “that he funded some of Paul’s activities. Early on, that is. Later, Paul needed no help.”
“And Renard. Is he Desmarais?”
The sisters looked at each other and thought this over. “Maybe,” said Agathe. “But the relationship does not sound right. Paul was a very commanding, dominating figure. László was sly and cautious. He was careful always to defer to Paul.”
I pointed out that Renard had been bleeding to death.
“And may be dead,” Anastasie said. “Was that not Monsieur Joubert’s information?”
“It was and his possession of the package suggests that it is true. But if so, the information did not reach the public press.”
“We must find out,” Anastasie said. “We will do that.”
I guessed that they would somehow enlist Inspector Chardin for this task. “But what is in the notebook?” I asked. “What is so valuable about it?”
“In itself not very much. It is a record of Desmarais’s dealings with various people. People you do not know, Monsieur Francis, but people who are now important in the Var and who wish to leave the war behind. That is one thing.”
“The other names,” Agathe added, “represent outright thefts.”
“Almost outright,” her sister corrected. “Paul was one of our contacts early on. He introduced people who needed papers. Which we supplied.”
“While he took most of their valuables as his commission?” I guessed.
“Exactly. We did not know this at first, and
once we realized, we were compromised. You can imagine our position.”
I could, actually. “And what do you plan to do with the notebook?”
“It will be evidence in a trial that is to begin soon. Important evidence.” She held up her hand. “But it is not impossible to return it to Monsieur Joubert. Not at all.”
I must have looked puzzled for she added, “the magic of photography.”
“We developed a certain expertise doing passport photos,” Agathe said.
“I don’t understand why Joubert wanted to send the documents to France in the first place,” I said. “Surely, he might also be implicated.”
Cybèle spoke up. “There’s a little more to it.”
Her aunts looked displeased, but she said, “He probably saved my life. He certainly helped me out of a tough spot. And he knows Joubert.”
“Paul ended up a very wealthy man. We believe—” Anastasie began.
“We know,” interrupted her sister.
“All right, we know that he hid his money in Swiss banks. We think that the letter and the notebook together might form a cipher.”
“And now?”
“Well, in any case, we do not have the letter, but we think that there may be a third piece.”
“Why is that?”
“Because otherwise nothing else would have been needed. There would have been no reason to involve this ‘Madame Renard,’ far less murder the poor woman. I think there was some other document that was the key for the rest.”
“Belonging to the late ‘Madame Renard’?”
“Possibly.”
“It is our best guess. Which Serge was too stupid to perceive. His thought was to murder her and have Cybèle take her place. Once he had the package, he didn’t know what to do with it.”
