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

for the delay. I was so caught up in the renovations at the theatre that I lost all sense of time.’

      ‘And yet there’s a rumour going round that work has been suspended due to lack of funds.’

      ‘‘‘Slander, Monsieur, I’ve seen honest men all but destroyed by it”,11 my dear Colonel de Réauville. Lady Luck will soon be smiling on me and I shall reap the full benefits!’

      ‘By what miracle?’

      Edmond Leglantier spread out his twenty-five share certificates on the green baize.

      ‘Thanks to these beauties. It’s a pity I’m short of funds otherwise I’d have bought more. They’re about to soar – I’d swear to it.’

      ‘Ambrex? Never heard of it,’ remarked the gossip columnist.

      ‘Ah, that’s because the company isn’t listed on the stock market yet, but next month … Expect a coup de théâtre – rest assured this investment will revive my finances. Your health, gentlemen,’ he concluded, waving one of the shares in the air.

      Colonel de Réauville muttered, ‘Ambrex, Ambrex, dashed funny name!’

      ‘Come on, Leglantier, stop beating about the bush. Tell us the whole story. What is this Ambrex?’ demanded an art dealer from Rue Laffitte.

      ‘There’s no mystery. Look,’ said Edmond Leglantier, holding up a cigar holder. ‘What do you suppose this is made of?’

      ‘Amber.’

      ‘Wrong. It’s a perfect imitation, an invention that will revolutionise the jewellery industry.’

      ‘Come on, Leglantier, we’ve all seen imitation amber before, it’s just yellow glass!’ exclaimed Colonel de Réauville.

      ‘This isn’t glass.’

      ‘Gum lacquer?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Tortoiseshell?’

      ‘No, no! I assure you it’s an original formula. Believe me, I’d never have put money on this company if I wasn’t convinced of its success.’

      He slipped the cigar holder into his pocket, pretended to hesitate then reopened his briefcase. ‘Here, a gift for the future audience of Heart Pierced by an Arrow. Help yourselves, and be sure to bring your wives, daughters and mistresses to Théâtre de l’Échiquier!’

      Every man examined the cigar holders, going into raptures about their quality. The transparency, the colour, even the tiny insects trapped in the resin looked uncannily like Baltic amber.

      ‘I can’t tell the difference,’ muttered the gossip columnist.

      ‘The patent has just been registered,’ added Edmond Leglantier.

      ‘Are you in partnership with the inventor?’

      ‘He’s an acquaintance from my youth, who invited me in on the deal.’

      ‘Really … Well, I for one am interested,’ replied the art dealer.

      ‘We’re all interested,’ seconded a tall fellow with the handlebar moustache, close-cropped hair and florid complexion of a hussar.

      ‘My dear Coudray, this is a limited offer only. My “acquaintance” wants to start off slowly. As Racine wrote in Les Plaideurs, Act I, Scene 1: “He who will travel far …”’

      ‘All right, chi va piano va sano, we know the expression. Count me in anyway,’ Coudray went on. ‘I want fifty of these shares.’

      ‘And I’ll have seventy!’ said a man with a monocle.

      ‘I want fifty, too.’

      ‘Count me in! I’ll buy thirty.’

      ‘Don’t forget me! Forty!’

      Edmond Leglantier began to chuckle.

      ‘Calm down, gentlemen, calm down; we’re not on the trading floor now. I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise anything. I’ll have to make sure there are enough to go round …’

      He opened a jotter and began taking down the orders.

      ‘Two hundred and forty shares … Gentlemen, it’s your lucky day. I think I’m in a position to give you what you want. As long as the shares remain unlisted, I’m the intermediary, but we’ll need to act quickly. Meet me back here at seven o’clock this evening … Oh, and no promissory notes, cash only.’

      Edmond Leglantier left. His performance had been such a resounding success that he allowed himself to pat La Circassienne’s behind on his way back out onto the Boulevard.

      ‘Fiddle dee dee! The simpletons! It’s in the bag. Let’s see, two hundred and forty times five hundred is a hundred and twenty thousand … sixty thousand for me! And if I manage to wheedle at least another hundred thousand francs out of that old codger the Duc de Frioul tonight, I’ll be in clover!’

      A bare-headed young laundress smiled at him.

      He doffed his hat and called out, ‘Mademoiselle, you are utterly delightful!’

      He straightened up. The fair-haired man in the light-coloured suit was leaning against a lamppost. He kept looking at his watch as though waiting for a romantic tryst. Had he been spying on him ever since he arrived at the club?

      Ecce homo,12 thought Edmond Leglantier.

      It occurred to him to approach the stranger, but he decided against it. He resisted a momentary urge to flee, and instead sat down at a table outside a café. He conjured up the face of the man who had hired him. Edmond Leglantier had sensed that beneath the easy-going exterior he was someone of formidable character and devilish intelligence: setting up a fraud of such complexity required total control of the situation. Was he having Leglantier tailed to make sure he didn’t try to swindle him? Edmond Leglantier shuddered. With a man like that he’d be well advised to play straight.

      His shadow paced up and down, looking as though he were carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

      ‘They’d boo him off stage,’ Edmond Leglantier said to himself. ‘Well, that’s enough of that!’

      Having ordered nothing, he walked back home, making sure he kept to the side streets. He forced himself not to turn round.

      ‘Remember Lot’s wife!’

      When he reached the entrance to his building, he peered carefully about him, but his shadow was nowhere in sight.

       CHAPTER THREE

       Tuesday 4 July

      FRÉDÉRIC Daglan was peeling potatoes. The weather was mild and he felt safe in the middle of the overgrown garden with its riot of viburnum, bindweed and elderberry bushes threatening to invade the vegetable patch. Mother Chickweed lived at the foot of the fortifications, which had been built in order to protect Paris but had failed dismally to do so.13

      Two weeks earlier, when Frédéric Daglan had come to her, she had asked no questions. Anchise had sent him and that was recommendation enough; he could stay here and sleep in the shed, preparing the meals when she was out.

      Mother Chickweed was about forty years old and fiercely independent. She had left her drunkard husband and found a way of making a living all year round.

      She trudged the streets with her basket of wild grass flecked with white flowers, crying out, ‘Chickweed for your songbirds!’