The Usual Santas

by Peter Lovesey

  I still had my looks; the waters in Baden-Baden, when I’d been able to afford them, were to thank for that. But I was approaching what the French politely refer to as a woman d’un certain âge. A bleak future of genteel penury in coastal Saint-Malo teaching drama to vacationing English children loomed.

  Fearing this would be my last chance at the theater before such mundane prospects were enforced upon me, I’d called on my connections in the demimonde—perhaps those who had courted me in my fame would repay old favors.

  This twilight world of courtesans, artists, dance halls, and café-cabarets offered sporadic employment, though this gave me time to audition for “proper” theater. If only The Importance of Being Earnest had continued its tour, it would have supported me, I would gladly have given up everything else.

  Surprisingly, it turned out to be Meslay who offered me a chance at paying work. A mission had been promised many months ago, when I’d run into him in the Tuileries gardens, but I’d received no other word from him until now.

  A loud knock sounded on the door.

  I opened it to admit Meslay. His regal bearing and blue serge wool cape, masking his regimental uniform but not his glistening black boots, looked out of place in my cramped quarters. “Charmant,” he said, glancing around my single-room garret and the ice on the window. “Pardonnez-moi. I meant to speak with you sooner, Irene.”

  “I appreciate your visit, Meslay. I realize we haven’t been close since Norton’s death.” We had never been close, in fact, and Meslay owed me little, so I was grateful for even this consideration.

  “My superiors have use for an American expatriate’s services in Paris,” he said, smoothing his tapered mustache. Meslay, who usually enjoyed conversational sparring and endless discussion in the Gallic tradition, seemed unusually direct this morning.

  “And what exactly would these services entail?” I asked.

  “Certain underpinnings in the Third Republic warrant scrutiny,” said Meslay, his gaze on my wall of theater posters. “Ongoing surveillance, if you understand my meaning.”

  And here he was, speaking in riddles again. Realizing this would be a long meeting, I offered Meslay a glass of vin rouge, which he accepted, despite the early hour.

  “I’m not sure which skills of mine you would have use for. I can translate rather well . . .”

  “This involves your acquaintances in the demimonde,” he interrupted.

  So this was why he had turned to me. A man of his rank dealt with high-profile, very public government cases—not those in a world already half-submerged in crime.

  “You float among barmen with more government friends than I have, and masters of gambling dens worth millions of francs. You have an entrée where few can go, the casinos and bordellos, the smoky dens of the opium addicts. You could pay discreet visits in a way that a man’s presence would trigger suspicion.”

  Meslay made it sound exotic and lush, unaware that to survive this cold, unglamorous life, I had been pushed to my bounds, forced to project both submissiveness and allure. Women walked on tightropes in the cabarets. It was the only way we avoided the streets.

  “Oui, Meslay, you could say I’m acquainted with this world,” I said. “But I would still be in danger if the wrong person discovered I was spying.”

  “We’ll make it worth your while,” Meslay said, holding out a five-hundred-franc note. His eyebrows tented in supplication. “You are uniquely suited to this task.”

  Holmes had said much the same thing.

  What exactly did Meslay want me to do? The note in his gloved hand could afford me so much. My costumes were pawned, our last hotel bill from rue de la Paix still unpaid and my maid, Léonie Guerard, gone to the workhouse after I’d been unable to afford her any longer. My conscience nagged at me as I recalled seeing her son begging in the street.

  Now I could at last pay Léonie’s overdue wages.

  “What information would I be gathering, Meslay?” I asked.

  He set down his half-drunk glass and smoothed his mustache. “Irene, I would propose that you weave a . . . web of sorts among your contacts in the music halls, theaters, and bordellos of Montmartre. Make new acquaintances, with particular attention to the concierges, maids, café habitués, and restaurant maître d’s.”

  “That is more difficult than you make it out to be,” I said. Theater crews were close-knit.

  “A judicious scattering of these will help,” he said, pulling a wad of ten-franc notes from his pocket.

  He had a point, and I certainly hoped he was right.

  I waited for the guillotine to drop—when would he tell me his objective? His distracted gaze followed the crinkled silver mist creeping over the hill on the right side of the window. Below us, a wooden charcoal cart thumped over the cobbles as its seller cried, “Charbons!”

  “I must know what I am looking for, or I can’t build the right network.”

  He shrugged. “D’accord. We’re interested in the habits of a certain French officer. An associate of Captain Dreyfus.”

  Alfred Dreyfus, the only Jewish officer on the French General Staff in 1894, had been accused of selling French military secrets to the Germans. He was court-martialed behind closed doors, convicted in a unanimous verdict, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guyana. He was branded a traitor. And, worse in the eyes of the French, a Jewish traitor.

  “And what do you suspect this man of being party to? Blackmail?”

  “Possibly, but more along the lines of bribery,” said Meslay. “He’s an officer, and his name is Charles Esterhazy,.”

  I carefully controlled my expression, despite my shock at hearing the name a second time.

  “Anything you can learn of him—his vices, peccadilloes—would be of use to me. I hope that is sufficient information to get you started. I must go. Let’s say I will know you are ready to meet again when,” he said, picking up the empty wine bottle, “this bottle sits on your window ledge.”

  “We shouldn’t meet here. Your visits could draw attention,” I said, thinking of the inquisitive concierge to whom I owed a week’s back rent. “We can meet in the evening at the Bouillon de Pères.” The Pigalle soup canteen run by the good fathers to save wayward souls, situated between Restaurant de la Bohème and Club Boum-Boum in Place Pigalle. “Père Angelo can be trusted with messages in case one of us fails to come.”

  “Ah, a dead-letter drop,” said Meslay.

  We arranged our next meeting, after which he ducked his head under the slanting timbered roof and left. I watched his long-strided gait as he turned onto slick rue Lepic. He didn’t turn back, though I’m sure he knew my eyes were on him from the window.

  I hoped finding information about Captain Dreyfus’s associate wouldn’t prove too difficult. I debated my options: Grease the palm of painters’ models in Montmartre ateliers over a bottle of absinthe? Enlist the aid of Rose la Rouge, streetwalker and occasional cabaret singer? Ask the pianist who entertained in his infamous Sentier brothel to keep his eyes out? All that would take too much time for the tidbits I’d glean, if any. Trustworthiness was another consideration. Better to bribe the devil I knew, the crooked-nosed bouncer at the Cabaret aux Assassins, to inform me of officers’ visits.

  Though it further racked me with guilt, I also enlisted Léonie’s services. Due to the importance of the mission, Meslay was able to procure her a position cleaning ministry offices and assisting the concierge, who had a bad leg and approached retirement. So my former housekeeper, now posing as a cleaning lady, could keep a close eye on Esterhazy and the military officials surrounding him.

  I was then headed off to rehearsal—the perfect opportunity for me to speak with Bijou, the contortionist. As I glanced up at the round metal tabac sign above the dark wood shop at the foot of rue Tholoze, my mind wandered back to Holmes, and I wondered if he and Meslay could possibly be
working for the same side. If they weren’t, I was in a rather precarious position.

  Doing what Holmes had asked of me would also prove helpful to Meslay. But how could I get Bijou, barely an acquaintance, to invite me to one of the gambling dens? I couldn’t even think of anyone I knew in Bijou’s confidence.

  The brick-red moulin visible atop the building loomed in the distance, its sails having long ceased to turn. I climbed the wide stairs, directed by the crowned, dark-green gaslights dividing the staircase. Every few steps, grilled landings to tall apartments and shops branched off from its spine.

  I still had no inkling of a plan by the time I reached Le Chat Noir. I would simply have to improvise. I forged my way backstage past clowns, ventriloquists and belly dancers toward Bijou, who was limbering up for her contortion act. She lifted one ruffle-clad leg straight up in front of her face and wrapped her ankle behind her neck. After another vigorous stretch in which she stood with one foot on the floor and the other on her nose over an arched back, she collapsed into a full split.

  “Fantastique,”I said, clapping. “Bijou, you must be triple-jointed.”

  She grinned. Her gap-toothed smile was infectious.

  I walked over to her dressing room table, unadorned except for a bottle of expensive scent. I picked it up and held it to the light, admiring its glittering blue.

  “Where did this come from?” I asked.

  “Ask my new boyfriend,” she said, her muscular arms supporting her as her feet rose in the air. “He’s a grand mec, a real aristocrat, not that you’d know it in the bedroom.” She rolled down to the ground and sighed. “I’m mad about him, Irene.”

  Her rose-flushed cheeks attested to that. “What’s he like, Bijou?” I hoped she might view me as a confidante, despite our age difference.

  “I’m usually so guarded with men, but for the first time, I don’t have to be.” Her eyes glimmered. “Our circumstances don’t even matter when we’re together. Have you ever known that kind of love, Irene?”

  “Only once, Bijou.”

  And that love, my dear Neige, involves a Royal seal of secrecy and has gone with me to my grave.

  Bijou loosened her dark-brown topknot, shook out her curls, and retied them.

  “So your grand mec enjoys the good life, does he?” I asked, hoping she might let something helpful slip.

  “He does like the tables,” she said.

  “Ah. Poker or baccarat?”

  She laughed. “Both, of course.”

  “I’m partial to chemin de fer.” I confessed. “Believe it or not, I helped many a friend at the Grand Casino. We broke the bank of the Monte Carlo once. A Moldavian prince bought me chips at the start of the night. And I kept on winning. Piles and piles of chips. When I collected my winnings, I treated all the waiters to champagne.”

  “But you’re down on your luck now, eh, américaine?”

  “Perhaps, but when I feel lucky, nothing gets in my way.”

  Chill emanated from the damp stone walls of the cabaret. The smell of greasepaint and fug of bodies weren’t hidden by the cheap rosewater the cancan girls liberally applied.

  “I feel like I might hit a lucky streak soon, in fact,” I said, applying powder in front of the mercury glass mirror that ran the length of the small dressing room. “Why don’t you introduce me, Bijou?”

  “You’d like to play?” Bijou arched an eyebrow, then looked me over. “Eh, américaine . . . he might go for that. He’s got friends who’d like you.”

  ***

  Le Chat Noir’s curtains opened onto a whistler in a black and white Pierrot costume, his face painted white with artificial tears; his tune rivaled those of the birds. Strains from an accordion wheezed in the background as Bijou and Fréderique, the revue’s other contortionist, performed.

  Then came my skit, a parody of the English; Anglo-French relations had been rocky since the Battle of Waterloo. I pantomimed Napoléon calling Britain “a nation of shopkeepers.” For the entertainment of the stuffy bureaucrat, I would pick the nearest portly gentleman in the crowd, sit on his lap and get him to eat peanuts out of my hand. It was a crowd favorite.

  To my disappointment, there was no apparent trace of Bijou’s comte in the audience.

  And the next day, there was no sign of Bijou, either, which I discovered after trudging through the icy streets of Pigalle just to speak with her. Frustrated, I decided to check in with my informant, hoping to loosen his tongue with more francs.

  “Ça va, Anton?” I asked the doorman at the Cabaret aux Assassins, joining him under the fan-shaped awning of glass and iron.

  “Pas mal, but the world looks heavy on your shoulders,” said Anton.

  “Nothing some news wouldn’t lighten,” I said quietly. Several bearded men speaking in a foreign tongue emerged from the cabaret door, nearly slipping on the wet cobblestones. Anton motioned to me to wait.

  Good, so he did have information. I needed a lead, or at least the promise of one.

  To my surprise, the men refused Anton’s offer to hail them a hansom. I watched them trundle down the steep winding street.

  “So, those ‘assassins’ prefer to walk?” I eyed the rain dancing on the cobbles.

  Anton grinned, and his crooked nose shone in the lamplight. “Just Prussians and Austro-Hungarians with full bellies, wanting to work off their meal,” he said. “They were inquisitive, though, as they’d been waiting for a friend. A Hungarian officer—a count, they said.”

  My ears perked up “And this man didn’t show up?” I asked, hugging myself against the chill as the rain beat down.

  “This Hungarian is also a commissioned French officer. No love lost there, I’d say, from their conversation.”

  Intrigued, I probed further. “You speak Hungarian?”

  “My mother came from Budapest,” he said. “But I don’t share that with many.” This didn’t surprise me, as France’s attitude toward Eastern European immigrants had worsened of late.

  “Did they mention a name?” I said.

  He tugged at his beard. “Yes, it was Ferdinand Walsin. The man they were looking for actually did arrive earlier tonight, but paid me well not to mention it to them. I’m surprised they didn’t find him inside—I didn’t see him leave.”

  Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy . . . What luck!

  “Are you sure he couldn’t have left?”

  “Don’t have eyes in the back of my head when I take my dinner, do I?”

  “But I thought all doormen had another set,” I said, winking.

  Anton laughed, but said nothing more. I had to take a gamble.

  “Anton, does this happen often? Men entering the cabaret and not coming back out?”

  He looked away, silent. I pushed a wad of francs into his hand and asked, “Where do they go?”

  “I’ve heard whispers of a gambling ring,” he said, in a low voice.

  “Higher stakes than the one above the print shop in place Clichy?”

  “Police closed that down last month. This one only opened a year ago, but already many an inheritance has been traded in the basement as dawn rises over Montmartre.”

  I wondered how much Esterhazy had already gambled away in that year. I wished I could glean more now, but barging in would raise suspicion, and the night’s performance had exhausted me.

  “If this Walsin shows up again, no matter what time, send a runner to find me or leave a note with my concierge.”

  I then turned and tramped home in the sleet, but soon noticed a stocky, side-whiskered man following me, starting from the Bateau Lavoir, an old washhouse. Fear invaded my senses, and I quickened my pace.

  He kept close behind as I passed the small park and took a winding path up the winding cobbled streets.

  When I finally escaped from his view around a corner, I ducked into the local alimentaire. My purs
uer waited outside, eyeing the window. I could see his large form through the letters painted on the shop window, wavering to and fro.

  After selecting a hub of cheese, I paid the amount owed on my credit and scribbled a quick note to the propriétaire, who bagged my purchase, rubbed his hands on his stained apron, and gave a quick nod to the rear of the shop. And a wink.

  I scooted past the tubs of brined fish, freshly slaughtered rabbit haunches on ice, and leaning flour sacks. Behind rue Lepic, the narrow cobbled street lay ice-sheathed, and icicles hung from handcarts.

  Relieved to see the narrow street deserted, I battled the slick ground to my oval courtyard on the adjoining street. After paying off my many debts, there wasn’t enough left to find alternative lodging. So I appreciated my luck in having a warm garret, with a location unknown to my stalker.

  Madame Lusard, my concierge, a wire-haired battle-axe of a woman, thrust a letter into my cold hands. She pulled her shawl tight around her, opened the door of her loge, and returned to a purring cat in front of her glowing grate. My excitement crested as I mounted the groove-worn stairs of the building, feeling the embossed vellum envelope. Surely evidence of a wealthy sender.

  Inside, I struggled out of my wet cloak, leaving puddles on the rough wood floor. After sticking scraps of newspaper into the crevices at the edges of the window to block the drafts, I pulled on my only dry pair of leggings and lit the candle. The small room warmed up quickly, thanks to Madame Lusard’s fire below. Even though I’d run out of charcoal, the brick radiated heat, which kept me comfortable and dried my clothing in a matter of hours. I was grateful not to be among those who slept in the chill damp and caught pneumonia every winter.

  As soon as my hands were dry, I opened the thick envelope to find an upcoming audition announcement at the Théâtre Anglais.

  Not forgotten . . . How wonderful! For a secondary role in a George Bernard Shaw drawing-room farce. I knew most of the first act, and could learn the rest in a day. Joy filled me. A serious role, and someone had thought to send word my way!