Strangled in Paris: 6th Victor Legris Mystery. Claude Izner

street, repeating the same series of movements again and again: lifting the lever on the gas tap and squeezing the rubber air pump at the bottom of his pole. The glass mantles lit up one by one, and the neighbourhood echoed with the sound of the rubbish carts doing their rounds. Martin Lorson knotted his scarf more tightly round his neck; the air was unpleasantly damp despite the mildness of the winter.

      As he walked on, he planned his movements for the next twenty-four hours. Stand in for Gamache. Then to bed, with a lie-in the next morning. Sprint over to the piano maker’s and stand in for Jaquemin. Lunch at the cheap canteen in Rue de Nantes. Stand in for Berthier, Norpois and Collin at the abattoir. Dinner at Au Petit Jour. Go back and meet Gamache again.

      The career he had invented for himself as a stand-in provided regular work and he was rather proud of it. The people whose jobs he took over could go and have a drink or a bite to eat, and in return they gave him a few centimes, enough for him never to be short of food or tobacco. And, thanks to Gamache, he even had somewhere to sleep. Had he not, all things considered, found a jolly good solution to his problems? No senior clerk breathing down his neck, no promotion, no wife, no rent and no furniture or possessions except the few odd things he kept stored in the shack where he slept. This was true independence. So what did he care about the base insults of a common waiter? Now that he had had a taste of this life, no amount of money would have persuaded him to change it. His colleagues at the Ministry were welcome to their struggles to make ends meet before payday, moonlighters taking their jobs, and the treacherous attentions of women!

      No sooner had these thoughts run through his mind than a wave of vague anxiety broke over him and his breath seemed to catch in his throat. Stopping in front of the public wash-house (only twenty centimes for a bath), he lit a cigarette. Smoking calmed his nerves. He set off again, his protuberant stomach leading the way.

      In the centre of the La Villette roundabout, the impressive rotunda that marked the toll barrier at the old city gates loomed up like a huge fortified tomb, with its circular gallery and arcade supported by forty columns. The mausoleum of a building had been built by Claude Nicolas Ledoux,3 and now contained offices and stocks of goods held as surety. A general air of dirt and decrepitude added to its funereal aspect. Below a triangular pediment were some rusty railings with a sign attached:

      NO ENTRY

      By the light of a streetlamp, Martin Lorson could just make out a figure in a kepi armed with a bayonet, on guard near one of the large colonnaded porches of the rotunda. He was twirling the ends of his enormous moustache and pacing up and down. As soon as he caught sight of his stand-in, he pulled on his cape and handed over his bayonet and kepi, which was embroidered with the emblem of a red hunting horn on a dark background.

      ‘I was starting to wonder where you’d got to – I haven’t got time to stand around kicking my heels, you know!’

      ‘I came as fast as I could!’

      ‘Well, ’scuse me! I might stay away for longer than usual tonight. I’ve got an assignation with a nice little bit-part actress from La Villette Theatre. I’ve promised her a slap-up meal and I’m hoping for a bit of slap and tickle in return. Ah, that Pauline, she’s perfect!’

      He joined his thumb, forefinger and middle finger and kissed them, but his friend merely grunted disapprovingly. Martin Lorson had no interest in Alfred Gamache’s little intrigues, and besides he was anxious to get rid of the man and settle down to drink the rum he had bought earlier in the day at La Comète des Abattoirs.

      He set the bayonet down as far away as possible, and began swigging the rum, which quickly lulled him into a state of exquisite bliss. From Boulevard de la Chapelle, the faint strains of a barrel organ could be heard, droning out La Fille de Madame Angot.4 Curled up against the railings, he soon dozed off. There was silence all around him, broken only occasionally by the click-clack of heels tapping along the tarmac. Even the canal seemed to slumber, tired after the incessant to-and-fro of barges loaded with goods destined for the factories in the port or for delivery to one of the nearby warehouses.

      In his drunken haze, Martin Lorson didn’t notice a carriage draw up on the pathway separating the rotunda from the canal. A woman in a ball gown and wrapped in a gold-sequined cloak got out and the carriage drove away. She considered her surroundings, her face hidden behind a black velvet mask. A second carriage clattered down Rue de Flandre and stopped just out of sight, and this time the commotion woke Martin Lorson from his trance. The passenger, a man wearing a soft felt hat, hesitated for a moment under the pale glow of a gaslight, a cigarette in his mouth. He watched the woman skipping down the pathway and avoiding the cracks between the paving stones. Eventually, he accosted her.

      ‘If this is where the toffs meet up for their smutty shenanigans, I’m in for a long night,’ Martin Lorson muttered.

      But he soon realised that these two weren’t a pair of lovebirds. Otherwise, why would they be so offhand with one another? There was no embrace, no tender caress; they only talked, in voices too low to be overheard. Now the woman was waving an envelope she had produced from her bag. The man tried to take it from her, but she whisked it away, laughing, and made off towards Rue de Flandre. It was four or five seconds before the man reacted, and then everything happened so quickly that Martin Lorson didn’t even have time to brandish his bayonet. The man leapt towards the woman, grabbed her by the neck and squeezed and squeezed. His victim’s body jerked like a puppet and then sank down lifeless into his arms. He let her slide to the ground, looked at her stiffened body for a moment and then bent down, rifled through her bag and ran off. Then a horse could be heard trotting away.

      On Boulevard de la Chapelle, the barrel organ was still playing, but La Fille de Madame Angot had given way to La Fille du Tambour-Major.5

      Suddenly a man appeared from behind the rotunda.

      I must’ve had one too many, Martin Lorson thought to himself, his heart beating wildly. I’m seeing visions … It’s all over, isn’t it?

      It wasn’t all over. The killer had returned. Bending over the woman, he lifted her mask. Kneeling over her, transfixed, the man studied her face minutely before replacing the mask and melting into the shadows.

      Martin Lorson was too terrified to utter a sound. He dared not move or even swallow, sure that the man must be watching him as a cat watches a sparrow, delighting in its fear. Would he jump out from one side, or from directly opposite him? Panic kept Martin Lorson curled up in a ball, shrinking against the railings. Was that creak the muffled sound of a knife being drawn? Was that shadow the fist of an assassin about to attack?

      Panting, he screwed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw. After what seemed like an hour but was only a few minutes, he managed to convince himself that there was nobody around. He tiptoed over to the woman, freezing at the slightest sound. He nudged her body with his foot. A corpse. As he greedily gulped down air, a medallion stuck between two paving stones caught his eye. Crouching down, he slipped it into his pocket, and noticed the remains of the cigarette that had fallen from the man’s mouth as he’d committed his crime. Lorson lit it and filled his lungs with smoke. The rotunda gazed at him hollow-eyed, daring him to carry on keeping watch. Why should he hang around here while Gamache was off carousing? A draught of rum revived him, and he decided to hide the kepi and bayonet behind a column as a sign that his departure had been carefully considered. Alfred was wily enough and would realise that his friend had judged it best, for whatever reason, to slip off quietly. He would see the dead woman, alert the police and, with any luck, omit to mention the name of the only witness to the crime.

      Martin Lorson made his stumbling way back to the wooden shed on the quayside that was currently his home. Here, he jostled for a little space to sleep among piles of goods confiscated at the toll barrier. In the midst of the jumble of boxes and crates, a simple mattress, a horsehair pillow and two eiderdowns, along with a sawdust stove, a pitcher and a basin, constituted the sum of his worldly possessions. He sank down on the mattress, still fully dressed and, huddled under his double layer of feathers, soon began to snore sonorously.

      Beyond