by Claude Izner
‘I have skimmed the work. It is superficial.’
‘It is bound in half-calf,’ Kenji insisted. ‘This blue would look striking in any bookcase.’
‘I have none. Look around my room: the works I use are dotted all about me. What is the point of owning books when the Bibliothèque Nationale will lend them to me? Books are made from trees, and enough forests are cut down already without me adding to the destruction. The trees are our friends, our brothers. Just as they lose their leaves, so we lose our hair as soon as we get past a certain age. Our blood, like their sap, no longer flows into our limbs, our skin wrinkles, our roots grow stiff and we become paralysed – wretched, useless stumps. And then we die.’
Chilled by this speech, Kenji lightly touched the strands of hair he had been thinking of dyeing. At a loss for an argument, he made one last attempt.
‘Seeing as it’s a gift, you are at liberty to sell it if you don’t care for it.’
The Armenian lifted his tunic and scratched his leg, clearly indicating that he was deep in thought.
‘In short, you wish to get round me. What is the meaning of this gift otherwise? What is it you really want?’
‘A title: the name of the manuscript you managed to hide from me when we spoke in the reading room.’
A paternal expression came over Aram Kasangian’s face.
‘Since it means so much to you, I could ask a lot more than the price of this simple volume.’
‘That would be unworthy of you.’
The Armenian immediately put on an appearance of uprightness.
‘You have touched a nerve. I am a man of honour. I will tell you what you are so desperate to know.’
He half rose from his pouffe and, bringing his face close to Kenji’s, mumbled a title.
‘So, it was Touty Namèh, after all,’ Kenji said in a solemn voice.
‘That really takes the biscuit, Boss!’ exclaimed Joseph, without making it clear which of his employers he was addressing.
The Elzévir bookshop was closed for lunch: fried aubergines, which they had wolfed down after Iris had eaten and left for her watercolour class at Djina Kherson’s. Kenji was preparing a cup of green tea while Jojo and Victor drank their coffee.
‘It’s quite simple,’ declared Victor. ‘Either the bookbinder sold the manuscript…’
‘Impossible,’ Kenji interjected.
‘…Or it was stolen from the shop after the fire.’
‘Equally impossible – everything was reduced to ashes.’
‘No, it is possible!’ objected Joseph. ‘Whoever set fire to the shop could have taken it before letting off the firecrackers!’
‘But Pierre Andrésy would have tried to stop him,’ declared Victor.
‘Where’s the problem? The criminal knocked him out just like he did Edmond Leglantier.’
They went quiet suddenly, aware of Kenji’s astonishment.
‘What on earth are you two talking about? Why are you so sure that Pierre Andrésy was murdered? And what does it have to do with this Edmond Leglantier?’
‘Boss, it’s time we made a clean breast of it,’ said Joseph contritely.
They gave Kenji a brief summary of their investigations, both interrupting each other.
‘That explains the reason for all your absences. I congratulate you on once again being such discreet and devoted sleuths. However, I would have appreciated being kept informed of these developments in view of my friendship with Pierre Andrésy.’
‘But, Boss, we wanted to catch the culprit first!’
‘Don’t count on my collaboration. Your last case nearly got us all into deep trouble. I’m not going along with it this time.’
He savoured his tea, avoiding their eyes. Despite his resolution, as he placed his cup in the sink, he muttered, ‘There’s another possibility you haven’t thought of. Pierre Andrésy might have been alive when the manuscript was stolen, and, not wishing to throw me into a panic, he tried to find it and was murdered.’
Victor slapped his forehead.
‘Of course! Why didn’t we think of that?’
Kenji left the kitchen.
‘Joseph, I’m going straight to Chez Fulbert. I must at all costs find the last man to have spoken to the bookbinder.’
‘The famous Gustave…You’re not leaving me behind again, are you, Boss?’
‘I’m sorry, I prefer to work alone rather than make a blunder. I promise to give you a detailed account this evening.’
‘He’ll see, when I’m his brother-in-law he won’t be able to fob me off with a lot of bedtime stories!’ howled the abandoned Jojo.
The old lady was struggling to hang out her washing on the clothesline, which stretched from one side of the courtyard to the other. Victor propped his bicycle against a wall and finished pegging up her sheets, for which he received a string of thankyous. He discovered that Monsieur Gustave wasn’t home from work yet, but that he wouldn’t be long.
The errand boy at Chez Fulbert had been unable to give him Monsieur Gustave’s exact address, but he was sure that there was a mattress maker’s workshop next door on the ground floor. Armed with this information, Victor had wandered around La Chapelle until he’d finally located Rue Jean-Cottin. He now stood watching the carding machine relentlessly chewing up and swallowing the wool and cotton. His life was falling apart, he thought, overcome by a sudden wave of melancholy. Tasha agreeing to marry him had filled him with joy to begin with, but now the prospect was preying on his mind. What if she’d been right when she’d refused to marry him? What if formalising their commitment undermined their love?
Steam engines puffed in the distance. A short, portly fellow in a check bowler was making his way towards Victor, who was instantly on the alert. He fitted Adélaïde Paillet’s description of the man who had handed the cake box to Edmond Leglantier. As soon as he entered the courtyard, Victor recognised his face; he’d seen him at the police station with Raoul Pérot and then again briefly at the restaurant where the two men had lunched. Crocol? No, Corcol. Inspector Corcol.
‘Excuse me!’ he cried out, drawing level with the man, who swivelled round with cat-like agility.
He, too, recognised Victor – the fellow at Madame Milent’s, he thought. Both men feigned indifference.
‘Monsieur Gustave? I believe you were a friend of Pierre Andrésy’s?’
‘I still am.’
‘Even though sadly he died in a fire recently.’
‘Yes, the news came as a terrible shock.’
‘I was – am – also a close friend. He mentioned your name.’
‘Really?’ Corcol said, frowning.
‘Certainly. He was most insistent: “Dear Gustave, now there’s a true friend!” But how rude of me. Allow me to introduce myself, Victor Legris, bookseller. Monsieur Andrésy did all my rebinding. I found your address through Fulbert. I came to you because there is something bothering me and I’d like to get to the bottom of it. Have you seen this?’
He showed him the death notice from Le Figaro. Corcol looked at it, his face betraying no sign of emotion.
‘Yes, I’ve seen it. It puzzled me, too. I thought about it and came to the conclusion that it must be a tribute to his brother who passed away on 25 May last year. Pierre was in a terrible state about it.’
‘What about the cemetery, could it be Saint-Ouen?’
‘Possibly. It’s quite near. Ah, fate can be so cruel…’
‘It’s strange that the notice should appear on the eve of the fire…almost as if…as if he’d foreseen the tragedy.’
‘Maybe Pierre had left instructions in the event of his own death. His health wasn’t good, his heart, he only told his close friends about it.’
Victor ignored the insinuation that Pierre Andrésy hadn’t considered him close enough to confide in.
‘The fire was an accident. How could he possibly have foreseen it?’
‘After sixty we start being on first-name terms with death; we can sense it, we cultivate it.
’
‘The notice refers specifically to his funeral not his brother’s. How long had you known him?’
The courtyard was gradually filling up with children frolicking and playing hide and seek using the old lady’s washing. They were joined by housewives discussing the price of vegetables, dogs sniffing the wind, workers and craftsmen released from their labours. Shouts rang out above the general hubbub and an exasperated mother pulled up her youngest and gave him a slap on the backside.
‘Nearly two years. Let’s get away from this racket,’ grumbled Corcol.
Victor followed him to the end of a passageway next to a blind alley filled with refuse.
‘We used to drink at the same bar,’ he resumed. ‘We ended up becoming acquainted and would swap reminiscences. He often visited his brother at Hôpital Lariboisière, where the poor fellow’s lungs finally gave out, the result of a bad wound he’d got in 1871.’
‘That’s strange. He never mentioned he had a brother,’ remarked Victor.
‘Poor Pierre, he was very close to his brother. I did my best to comfort him. It’s common among war veterans; war brings us together – it’s a real joy! I was at Gravelotte and he was at Reichshoffen. He was shot in the hand by a Prussian sniper.’
‘What was his brother’s first name?’
Corcol blinked. ‘How stupid, I can’t remember offhand. Age is affecting my brain. I didn’t see him for a while after his brother died. Then one day I dropped in at his shop. And I went back there. Occasionally I’d stay and watch him operate the presses. We arranged to meet once a month for lunch. It’s distressing imagining him trapped by the flames. It was a terrible blow. What grieves me most is not being able to visit his grave and pay my respects. They assured me at the morgue that there was nothing left of him, or so little…’
‘Did he have a cousin, as the death notice implies?’
‘If he had any relatives, he kept them well hidden. He only mentioned his brother to me. Frankly, this Léopardus is a mystery.’
‘Inspector, do you have any idea what the word Sacrovir might mean?’
‘No. Could it be a new swearword? Delighted to have made your acquaintance, Monsieur Legris. Leave me your card in case I remember the brother’s name.’
Victor returned to his bicycle just in time to save it from being dismantled by a group of kids, and rode off in the direction of Rue des Roses. Was Gustave Corcol a brilliant actor or had he been telling the truth? If so why couldn’t he remember the name of Pierre Andrésy’s brother?
By the time he rode past the artesian well in Place Hébert, Victor was convinced the man was a liar.
Gustave Corcol gulped the smoky air greedily. He was worn out after climbing three flights of stairs. He stood there panting, surveying the industrial landscape at his feet, the railway tracks and workshops, the stations linking the Ceinture lines, where engines stood belching out steam. Infuriated, he tore himself away from the window and paced up and down his two-roomed apartment, which years of living alone had transformed into a hovel. The place had a sour smell of stale sweat and grime, and was strewn with dubious-looking garments and greasy plates. Still, Corcol had decided against hiring a cleaning lady for fear she might stick her nose into his shady affairs.
‘And to think things were going smoothly and now this idiot bookseller is threatening to muck everything up!’ he bawled at his own reflection in the centre of a dusty mirror.
Did Legris know about the part he’d played? It was unlikely. They’d met because of an unfortunate set of circumstances, that blasted Fulbert had given him his address, that was all! No, there was more, otherwise the fellow wouldn’t have been so thick with the Chief of Police’s assistant, that wretched Raoul Pérot. He must come up with a counterattack, and quickly.
He took off his jacket and wiped his brow. This situation was about to turn very nasty. He unlocked a desk drawer and took out a file full of press cuttings. They all implicated Daglan. Daglan was the mysterious cousin Léopardus who had murdered Léopold Grandjean, the designer of the Ambrex shares; Daglan was responsible for the fake suicide of the loud-mouthed actor Leglantier and for the disappearance of the printer Paul Theneuil. He had signed his nickname to this string of crimes and embellished it with cryptic messages that were meant to be humorous. For God’s sake! Why was he getting so worked up when all of these hideous crimes could be laid at the door of the leopard of Batignolles?
His first aim must be to put Daglan out of action before the police got hold of him.
Inspector Corcol hadn’t a cowardly bone in his body. Only recently he’d taken on a band of thugs down by the gasometer in Rue de l’Évangile, an exploit that could have cost him dear. He wasn’t afraid of hard work, despite the scant respect it earned him from his superiors. And yet, at that moment when he clutched in his hand the few short paragraphs bearing the leopard’s signature, fear clouded his judgement, preventing him from thinking clearly. He would have preferred a bloody fight to this uncertainty in the face of an absurd situation.
He screwed up the cuttings and dropped them in the ashtray. His hands were shaking so much that he had difficulty striking a match. He reassured himself as he watched the paper burn, ‘Once Daglan is dead, nobody will be able to trace anything back to me. How ironic that, if I’d stayed on, the Chief of Police might have congratulated me for ridding society of such scum! An act of bravery! Only in four days time, I’ll be far away.’
Gustave Corcol closed his eyes. He imagined his colleagues’ faces when they realised that he’d gone. The miserable wretches, if they only knew!
They would never know, sadly, for he’d have liked nothing better than to show them his contempt. Too bad, his triumph would go unnoticed. Everything he’d always aspired to was within reach. The women who made fun of his physique, ignorant bigwigs, self-important bosses – he’d got them all where he wanted them now. Money bought respect, honour, comfort and pleasure. And he had money. It was waiting for him snug and warm in Brussels, a tidy sum: more than two hundred thousand francs, a hundred and eleven years’ salary! Why worry now that he was almost home and dry?
‘Only four more days and you’ll be gone.’
He pushed back his chair, and slipped on his jacket. He made sure he stepped across the threshold of his hovel right foot first, smiling at his own childish superstition. He knew the fellow’s address on the outskirts of Batignolles. He’d find that petty thief and cook his goose.
Sunday 23 July
Frédéric Daglan had spent the morning wandering from stall to stall at Carreau du Temple market. He’d got hold of a greasy old cap, a pair of down-at-heel army boots, some woollen trousers and, after much searching, an army greatcoat.
He tried them on behind the locked door of Mother Chickweed’s shed. In less than five minutes he was transformed into a shaky old fossil. The worn uniform was too tight, and the cap so big it fell down over his eyes, but the regular strollers who were used to the familiar appearance of the park keeper wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Brigadier Clément would spend part of Monday snoozing in his hut while Théo kept watch outside, and once the operation was over, his uncle would take up his place again.
Frédéric Daglan slipped out of his rags, then, stripped to the waist and wearing only his drawers, he set to work on the key part of his plan.
Smoking a cigarette, he opened a book at the page indicated by a bookmark and began numbering the lines. When all this was over, he wouldn’t return to Rue des Dames or Porte d’Allemagne. He would wait quietly at the lodgings of his latest conquest until things blew over. Nobody would ever think of looking for him there.
Monday 24 July
As usual, Joseph was singing a brisk marching song at the top of his voice as he took down the shutters and opened the shop. This morning’s recital was ‘The Goodbye Song’.
‘“From north to south the warrior’s trumpet…”’ Jojo bellowed, his foot slipping on an envelope on the floor.
He bent down to pick it
up.
‘Who put that there? I nearly came a cropper!’
‘Grumbling already? You’ll wake Kenji and he’ll be in a bad mood,’ warned Victor, who had just that moment jumped off his bicycle.
‘Ah, there you are at last, Boss! I’ve been waiting for you since the evening before last!’
‘I was worn out. I went straight back to the stable.’
‘That’s nice, comparing Mademoiselle Tasha to a horse,’ muttered Joseph, removing the last shutter.
‘If you’re going to be grumpy I’ll keep my lips sealed.’
Victor wheeled his bicycle to the back of the shop. Annoyed, Joseph pocketed the letter. Victor reappeared leafing through a novel by J. K. Huysmans and began singing a couplet of his own.
‘Dear Monsieur Gustave, as he drew near, looked straight at me, and said with a leer…’
He stopped and glanced mischievously at his assistant.
‘Come on, Boss, you’re dying to tell me what the fellow said.’
‘And you’re on tenterhooks. All right, I’ll tell you.’
At the end of Victor’s account, Joseph picked up his pen and stroked his cheek with it, distractedly.
‘Something’s not right. Pierre Andrésy couldn’t have been wounded at Reichshoffen, since I happen to know he was nowhere near the battlefields. I remember him telling me as clearly as if it were yesterday. He’d lent me some books by Erckmann-Chatrian: Madame Thérèse, Story of a Conscript in 1813, Waterloo and Fritz’s Friend. When I gave them back, I asked him about 1870 and he told me: “War is a dirty business. I’m on the side of those who prefer not to take part in that great celebration of nationalism, thank you very much.”’
‘What does that prove?’
‘Hold on. I told him my father was in the National Guard and spent two months freezing to death on the city ramparts.’
‘I know all that, but what about Pierre Andrésy?’
‘There’s a connection, because as soon as I asked him whether he’d taken part in the fighting, he told me that he’d refused to serve an emperor. “The Republic at a pinch, but the Man of Sedan,55 never!” he declared. In short, he went to England and sneaked back into France during the siege.’
