The Montmartre Investigation: 3rd Victor Legris Mystery. Claude Izner

he had left, it occurred to Victor that he should have given the goatherd a coin, but he did not have the energy to climb back up all those stairs. On a piece of paper he jotted down the words:

       Basile Popêche, lion house at Botanical Gardens, Grègoire Mercier’s cousin.

      He could question the man later if necessary.

      The rain had stopped. As he walked back through Rue Croulebarbe he searched in vain for little Gustin. All he could see were groups of apprentices busy plunging hides into vats of alum or scraping skins stretched over trestle tables. If he was serious about his project of documenting child labour, he would have to come back one morning when the light was good.

      The River Bièvre disappeared under Boulevard Arago. Victor walked up Avenue des Gobelins and turned off into Rue Monge. A sign caught his eye: ‘Impasse de la Photographie’. Was this an omen? And if so was it a good or a bad one? He chose to smile at it, and yet he felt a lingering anxiety about the young woman found strangled at the crossroads, and about little Élisa. He jotted something else down on the piece of paper where he’d noted Basile Popêche’s name:

      L’Eldorado: Madame Fourchon sings there, under a flowery name that catches the eye.

       CHAPTER 4

       Saturday 14 November

      ‘Sulphuric acid is a formidable substance, crucial to the advance of science and industry, without which chemistry as we know it would not exist. It is also a terrible means of vengeance, and the chosen method of cowards. Why it was used on the woman whose unidentified corpse was found strangled at the crossroads remains a mystery. Was this a crime of passion? As usual Inspector Lecacheur’s investigation is advancing slowly but surely. Yet there are questions that still need asking. What, for example, was an abandoned cab doing close to where the body was found lying on the road?’

      Jojo stopped reading aloud from the article in Le Passe-partout to speculate as to the identity of the author.

      ‘I wonder which journalist uses the pseudonym “The Virus”. Could it be Monsieur Isidore Gouvier?’

      Victor was only half listening. He was busy ticking off from a catalogue the books he intended buying at auction. At the same time an inner voice was telling him that Élisa was sure to be at her mother’s house, although there was no way of verifying this. Just then his cab arrived.

      Victor walked out of the auction room after the sale of the library of Hilaire de Kermarec, cousin to the well-known antiques dealer of Rue de Tournon, carrying a parcel under one arm. He passed through the first floor, reserved for the more valuable items, and crossed the ground floor reserved for deceased estates and the auction of shop stock. The courtyard was filled with an assortment of objects. He wandered among the piles of artisans’ tools and the battered possessions of impoverished labourers, over which dealers from Temple Market and scrap merchants from Rue de Lappe were haggling: cheap chests of drawers, twenty-sou lots of crockery, men and women’s clothing, sheets, eiderdowns, blankets, pillows and old bric-a-brac, the pitiful sight of which moved Victor.

      He paused when he reached Rue Drouet. If he walked fast, it would take him between fifteen and twenty minutes to get to Boulevard de Strasbourg. That would give him time for a quick snack. Should he ring Kenji from a telephone box and tell him he had bought the Montaigne?

      ‘No! Let him stew! It’ll serve him right for keeping his gorgeous goddaughter locked away at the edge of the Bois de Vincennes and giving me sulky looks for the past two days!’

      Victor let himself be swept along by the tide of bank clerks and insurance-company employees surging down Rue Provence and Rue Grange-Batelière, until he reached a cheap eating house on the outskirts of Montmartre. Inside, amid the coming and going of diners that created a continual breeze, he sat at a marble-topped table strewn with grains of sugar and breadcrumbs that were quickly swept to the floor by the flick of a waiter’s cloth. A grease-stained menu offered him a set meal for one franc twenty-five, and he bolted down veal Marengo, followed by camembert and prunes, barely touching the sharp table wine. He took his coffee at a bar where the owner stood filling row upon row of cups from the spout of a copper kettle. Crowds of people filed past outside the steamy windows.

      How many of the shadowy figures drifting about this city are potential criminals? Victor wondered.

      He paused before the narrow offices of Le Figaro, not far from the town hall of the ninth arrondissement, and walked in. He wandered through the dispatch room where portraits of famous people, the daily Bourse prices, important political events and gory news items were on view. He had no difficulty finding a reconstruction of the drama next to an image of General Boulanger, prone on his mistress’s grave after committing suicide.

      VILE MURDER AT CROSSROADS

      A group of onlookers had gathered round a very lifelike drawing of the disfigured woman, and was discussing the affair in an extremely distasteful way, putting Victor in mind of the spectators at the morgue. He left in a hurry.

      He paused at Boulevard Poissonière after crossing Boulevard Montmartre. Perhaps the crossroads had been baptised ‘Killer’s Crossing’ because a combination of cabmen’s incompetence and pedestrians’ recklessness had led to more fatalities here than at other junctions? In any event, the morbid name had taken on a new significance since the previous evening. Victor noticed a row of cabs lined up by the pavement. The horses were taking advantage of the halt in proceedings to chomp on feed in the nosebags hanging from their halters while the cabmen exchanged vulgar stories.

      ‘Do you know where the body was found?’ Victor asked one of them.

      ‘You’re at least the thirtieth person who’s asked me that since this morning. If this continues, I shall have to start charging! You see that paunchy copper standing guard on the corner over there outside the cobbler’s – the one who looks like a dog watching over his bone? Well, it was there. But I can tell you now they’ve cleaned up the whole area; there’s not a trace of acid!’

      Victor moved away to the sound of the cabmen’s guffaws, telling himself that given his own passion for unsolved murders he had no right to sneer at the public’s bloodthirstiness.

      Two huge pintos, their nostrils steaming, struggled to pull the Madeleine-Bastille omnibus up Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle. The hammer of hooves, the clatter of wheels and the cries of card-sharps rattled in Victor’s ears. He feigned interest in the window display of an English hat shop, then, moving on a few paces, stopped in front of a Morris Column plastered with posters: brightly coloured advertisements for Papillon bicycles, Soleil washing powder and Mariani wine vied with theatre notices. But the yellow, red, black and white Moulin-Rouge poster eclipsed all the others with its eye-catching simplicity, reminiscent of a Japanese painting, and its exuberant style. It was signed by someone called Hautrec or Lautrec. The profile of a very angular man with a prominent nose and hooked chin wearing a top hat was in monochrome in the foreground, and behind him a blonde woman in a spotted bodice lifted her skirts in a frenzied motion, revealing black-stockinged legs. ‘La Goulue’ it said. In the background were the silhouetted shapes of men and women. Victor was struck by the uncanny similarity between those faceless onlookers and the anonymous passers-by he had watched earlier through the window of the café.

      ‘What a fine illustration,’ a young man exclaimed, mesmerised by the dancer’s legs.

      Victor moved on. On the raised terrace of the Théâtre du Gymnase, nursemaids in ruched hats rocked perambulators with moleskin hoods containing restless infants. In an instant Victor pictured Tasha coddling a baby, then shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

      You have plenty of time to burden yourself with a family! he thought, as he turned the corner into Boulevard de Strasbourg.

      With its mullioned windows flanked by columns, L’Eldorado was trying to hang on to its Second Empire splendour, the era when the singer Thérésa, who wrote Never Trust a Sapper! was the star attraction. Competition was