The Predator of Batignolles: 5th Victor Legris Mystery. Claude Izner

      

       Read the next Victor Legris Mystery

      Praise for Claude Izner:

      ‘Full of pungent period detail’

       The Observer

      ‘A cracking, highly satisfying yarn’

       The Guardian

      ‘An extremely enjoyable, witty and creepy affair’

       Independent on Sunday

      THE PREDATOR OF BATIGNOLLES

      CLAUDE IZNER

      Translated by Lorenza Garcia

      To those without whom

      Claude Izner would never have existed:

      Ruhléa and Pinkus

      Rosa and Joseph

      Étia and Maurice

      To Boris

      To our bouquiniste friends on the banks of the Seine

       When Paris closes its eyes at nightIn the dark of the cemetery Screams escape from the stones Of the wall

      Jules Jouy

      (Le Mur, 1872)

       So who ordered this terrible violence?

      Victor Hugo

      (‘Un cri’, L’Année terrible, 1872)

      CONTENTS

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Plan of Victor Legris’s Paris

      The Predator of Batignolles

      PROLOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      Notes

      About the Author

      Also by Claude Izner:

      Copyright

       Plan of Victor Legris’s Pari

       PROLOGUE

       Paris, spring 1891

      A WINDOW opened on the second floor and the light glancing off the panes caught the attention of a passer-by. He saw a woman leaning over a pot of geraniums, and next to it a little dog watching the comings and goings on Rue Lacépède, its muzzle pressed up against the latticed railing. The woman tipped a small watering can. Splish splash! Water dripped onto the pavement.

       The corpse lies face down on the ground. A pinkish trickle seeps from the faded blue jacket, staining the gutter. Already stiff, the fingers rest on the butt of a bayoneted rifle. A soldier in a grey greatcoat seizes the rifle; the blade pierces the lifeless body. The soldier braces himself to pull it out.

      The little dog barked; the image dissolved. The man quickened his pace, anxious to escape the past. But just as he reached Rue Gracieuse a horse yoked to a delivery cart stumbled and fell. The cart tipped on its side and began sliding down the hill, dragging the poor creature by its harness. The mare kicked, struggled and then gave up, defeated.

       The linesmen swarm before the shattered barricades. They take aim at the Communards who flee, trying desperately to rip the red stripes, their death warrant, off their trousers. A volley of machine-gun fire ploughs into a trench where a bay horse is trapped. A terrible whinnying rings out above the thud of bullets.

       A cry goes up: ‘The Versailles Army!’

       A headlong rush, caps, flasks, haversacks and belts scattered everywhere. The city has turned out its pockets.

      The man leant back against the shop front of a dairy. Eyes closed, jaw clenched, stifling a sob. He must rid himself of these images once and for all! When would they stop tormenting him? Would the passing years never drown out the horror?

      A few people had gathered around the cart. The driver, with the help of a local constable and a couple of passers-by, managed to get his horse back on its feet and with a crack of the whip he was off.

      The man moved on, calmed now by the peaceful surroundings of Rue de l’Estrapade. He passed a blacksmith’s reeking of singed hoof, then a confectioner’s and a drycleaner’s. A delivery girl came out of a bakery carrying a load of four-pound loaves. A costermonger wheeling her barrow cried out, ‘Cabbages! Turnips! Bushels of potatoes! Who’ll buy my lovely lettuces! Handpicked this morning at dawn!’

      In her curlpapers and faded calico dress she looked like a princess fallen on hard times. She winked at the man as he stepped aside to let her pass, and bawled at the top of her voice, ‘Cherry ripe! Cherry ripe! First crop of the season! Don’t be the last to taste them!’

      ‘Too dear,’ retorted a woman coming the other way.

      ‘That’s because they’re like gold dust and they still make cheaper earrings than rubies!’

      The man found himself singing:

       ‘I wi ll for ever love the cherry season

       Those distant days have left in my heart

      A gaping wound!’ 1

       Ravaged façades of buildings, cobblestones blackened with gunpowder and strewn with belongings thrown from windows. In Place de l’Estrapade soldiers from the Versailles Army with their sabres and tricolour armbands form a firing squad. They aim their rifles at a Communard officer with double-braided silver bands on his cap.

       ‘Fire!’

      In Rue Saint-Jacques, the clatter of a passing cab freed the man from his nightmare. Some sparrows and pigeons were fighting over a pile of dung as a woman scooped it up with a shovel. A drunkard stumbled out of a bar-cum-cobbler’s, run by a man from the Auvergne.

      ‘What will those ministers of injustice cook up next to crush us common folk!’ he roared through wine-soaked breath.

      The man felt a sudden thirst and was about to enter the bar when a sign caught his eye:

      SAXOLEINE

      Certified, refined paraffin oil, deodorised, non-flammable