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

mantelpiece above the hearth for luck, and fired a question at Victor.

      ‘Tell me honestly, Victor, do you think I’m shrinking?’

      ‘We’re all subject to the laws of gravity. What’s the matter with you?’

      ‘It’s my back.’

      Oblivious to Joseph’s presence, they began discussing their health before moving on to ‘poor Iris’s’ state of mind. All that was missing was the tea and muffins!

      ‘Aren’t you lunching here?’ Victor asked. ‘Euphrosine has made celery and turnip croquettes.’

      ‘No thank you, really,’ said Kenji. ‘I’ll see you this evening – wish me luck.’

      ‘Women! They’re all alike,’ grumbled Joseph. ‘Look at Monsieur Mori, wasting away because that cancan dancer Fifi Bas-Rhin went off to St Petersburg with her Russky archduke!’

      ‘Don’t you believe it, Jojo. I suspect he prefers his meat to the vegetarian regime imposed by my sister and has gone off to Foyot’s to enjoy escalope Milanese or tournedos in pepper sauce.’

      Victor’s envious expression betrayed a strong urge to do the same as his adoptive father. However, at the thought of Madame Pignot’s wrath, he abandoned the idea.

      Frédéric Daglan walked with his hands in his pockets and a case slung over his shoulder along the fortifications separating Paris from its suburbs. The outlying boulevards bordered by huts and wooden shacks spread out across the parched grass at the foot of the fortifications.6 The sky above Saint-Ouen was black with the smoke billowing over from the factories. Frédéric Daglan walked through the tollgate at Clignancourt. He always began his rounds at Anchise Giacometti’s bistro. Anchise was a fellow countryman who had given him a helping hand the day he had arrived at Gare de Lyon, penniless, jobless and with no prospects.

      Frédéric was forty-three. He had warm memories of his father, Enrico Leopardi – a Garibaldian killed at the battle of Aspromonte in 1862. His widowed mother had emigrated to Marseilles, confident of a better future. She had sweated fourteen hours a day at an India rubber and gutta-percha factory on Avenue du Prado and had gone without in order to send Federico to school. The boy’s schoolteacher, Monsieur Daglan, was a good man, and had taught him reading, writing and arithmetic.

      When his mother died of a heart attack, Federico Leopardi bought a train ticket to Paris, where he became Frédéric Daglan. He was just fifteen.

      He was a rebel and a loner, full of care for the exploited and downtrodden, for the nobodies of the world. His job as a calligrapher served as a cover for his so-called criminal activities. He worked alone, undercover, occasionally soliciting the help of Theo, the nephew of Brigadier Clément, the park keeper. He never stole more than he needed to help his friends and to enjoy life and love. His philosophy was simple:

      ‘Faced with the sad fact that life is a vale of tears, I have chosen to prey on the rich rather than lose my self-respect begging at their table. Society is a jungle where the strong devour the weak and the moral of the story is that we all end up six feet under. That’s what I call liberty, equality and fraternity. I do nobody any harm, I simply cream off a tiny surplus. Besides, rich or poor, we can’t take it with us, not even what might fit through the eye of a needle.’

      Only he was still very much alive, and in it up to his neck. The papers in the brown briefcase had left him in no doubt: he must go undercover and sort things out.

      Le Piccolo run by Anchise Giacometti stood on the edge of the working area. It resembled a village inn with its blue-painted bar, checked tablecloths and rustic sideboard. Anchise Giacometti, a silent patriarch with a flowing moustache, presided over the bar while his wife, a tiny Calabrian woman as dark as an olive, ran the kitchen. At lunchtime, the restaurant filled up with market gardeners and employees from the toll office.

      Frédéric Daglan greeted Anchise and sat down in the corner at an unlaid table. The landlord brought him a stack of oblong cards together with the lunch menu. Frédéric opened his calligraphy case, took out his bottles of ink, his pens and nibs and went to work. He carefully wrote out the names of the dishes on each card, separating them with an arabesque. He used fine script for the desserts and bold characters for the beef and cabbage stew. Anchise poured him out a tumbler of wine and went back to polishing his glasses.

      Frédéric gulped it down in one.

      ‘Anchise, do you know somewhere I can hide out?’

      ‘Mother Chickweed’s, Porte d’Allemagne.7 Just say Anchise sent you.’

       CHAPTER TWO

       Six o’clock in the morning, Wednesday 21 June

      LÉOPOLD Grandjean lived with his wife and two sons on the fourth floor of a building in Rue des Boulets, near Place de la Nation. His rent was three hundred and ten francs a year, which included the door and window tax and the cost of the chimney sweep. In return, his three-room lodgings were equipped with running water and gas lighting. He had always loved reading. History, geography, science and literature – everything interested him. He could quote whole passages from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Two lines from The Social Contract had influenced him in particular:

       Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.

       The fruits of the earth belong to everyone and the earth to no one.

      On Sundays, he would take a stroll with his family along the fortifications and spend the day walking and setting the world to rights. Life was good.

      His enamelling business was thriving. It was by no means a life of luxury and he occasionally had difficulty making ends meet, but everything about him suggested a relaxed and bohemian attitude towards life. Léopold had been an apprentice engraver then a porcelain painter. He adopted the attitudes of an artist and didn’t give a damn what his neighbours thought. His factory – a shed with a glass roof – stood at the end of Passage Gonnet in the shade of a lime tree whose dense foliage in summer was a haven for birds. Beyond it was a patch of wasteland where ragged children whooped and ran wild. The premises were divided into the factory proper and the sales room. Its shelves were filled with the most commonly enamelled objects of the day: sweet dishes, powder compacts, bowls, brooches, and pommels for canes and umbrellas. Once spring arrived, Léopold would get to his workshop at dawn in order to work on the more difficult orders. This time he had to produce a picture based on an icon; the task he’d set himself was complicated, but he felt confident that he would succeed. He began by making a quick, bold sketch.

      ‘Perfect. Now let’s fill in the detail.’

      He added a finishing touch to his design then went over to a lathe, which had a copper plate covered in a first coat of clear enamel resting on it. He transferred the plate to a low table crowded with pots, paintbrushes, spatulas, and jars of gold and silver leaf. He cherished such moments of solitude as a respite from mass production and book-keeping; they were his secret moments of creativity. At thirty-nine, he still looked like a young man. Broad-shouldered and of medium build, he gave an impression of calm determination. Rarely did anything disturb his equanimity.

      At this early hour, the workshop was bathed in an atmosphere of peace; even the chirping sparrows were scarcely audible. Léopold applied his colours, placing blobs of paste onto the lighter areas of the design then blending them gradually in the cloisonné sections. This preliminary task allowed his mind to wander freely.

      If business went well, he’d buy a plot of land in Montreuil and grow peach trees; they’d give a good return. His two sons would take over – they were better off there than in a factory – and his wife would finally have the kitchen garden she’d always wanted.

      A milk cart rattled down the quiet