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

resist? She quickly took off her apron and smoothed her hair, before pointing upstairs and murmuring, with a little curtsy that made her arthritic knee twinge, ‘First on the left.’

      But when the young whippersnapper bounded off up the stairs without so much as a ‘thank you’, she bellowed after him, ‘They probably won’t let you in, you know! They’re all as lazy as each other, and the apartment’s knee-deep in filth!’

      With a face like thunder, she retreated back into her lair.

      ‘Sheba Ballu! Really, you should be ashamed of yourself – at your age! You’re nothing but a cracked old jug, you silly fool,’ she muttered into her vegetables.

      Standing in front of the apartment above the bookshop, Maurice Laumier hesitated for a second time. He was not on the most cordial terms with Victor Legris, and he baulked at the idea of begging for his help. Finally, he rang the doorbell.

      An imposing, thickset woman, her hair drawn into a tight bun bristling with pins, appeared at the door armed with a ladle. He recoiled, awestruck, crying, ‘Incomparable Aphrodite, guardian fairy of this castle, might I humbly request an interview with Monsieur Legris on a private matter?’

      Euphrosine Pignot frowned, trying to remember where she had seen this young firebrand before. She was sure he was some sort of artist, but his name escaped her.

      ‘He moved out ages ago. And, anyway, he’ll be in the shop at this time of day.’

      Before the visitor had time to protest, she closed the door in his face and went back to the stove.

      ‘Who is he, anyway, the big beanpole? Not a respectable person, that’s for sure! And what was all that about dying for a cup of tea? I’ve already got enough to do and now they want me to start serving tea? If Monsieur Mori thinks I can turn myself into one of those creatures with ten arms like that horrible Hindu statue on his dressing table, he’s got another think coming! Me, the mother of his son-in-law!’

      She locked herself in the kitchen. When she had all her pots bubbling away on the stove and stood over them singing hymns, nobody could cross the threshold of her culinary fortress, even if they were part of the household. The principal victim of this eviction, Kenji Mori, had resorted to making his tea on a small stove in his sitting room. In her new role as head chef for the family, Euphrosine was becoming skilled at slipping meat or fish into the mashed or puréed vegetables that she prepared. Now that she was about to become a grandmother at long last, she watched over her daughter-in-law as keenly as any midwife. She was tormented by the idea that her future descendants would have weak constitutions because Iris Pignot, née Mori, was a vegetarian. Every evening, holed up in her little flat on Rue Visconti where she now lived alone, she racked her brains to come up with nutritious recipes to nourish the baby who was to continue her family line. The child’s Japanese ancestry mattered little to her, and she did not even consider the fact that it might turn out to be a girl. She now had time to sit and think about all these things, because since her son’s marriage she was no longer burdened with looking after the flat above the bookshop or the one at Rue Fontaine, where Victor and Tasha Legris lived. Monsieur Mori had taken on Zulma Tailleroux, a dreamy young woman employed to do the housework, which she did with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop. It had long since become impossible to keep count of the number of vases, glasses and plates that she had smashed. For Kenji Mori, the fact that he had got rid of a tyrannical housekeeper only to replace her with a clumsy girl was endlessly irksome, but he was determined not to let his annoyance show: Euphrosine would be only too delighted to point out that he had nobody but himself to blame. She had seen straight away that this Zulma girl didn’t amount to much, but Monsieur Mori, so high and mighty, and hoodwinked by this little temptress – like all men, only one thing on their minds – had taken her on.

      ‘A good thing too! If she smashes all his precious things, that’ll teach him a lesson! Just as long as she doesn’t lay a finger on the baby!’ she muttered between hymn verses, hacking away at a slice of calf’s liver.

      The terrible vision of a baby suffering at the hands of the new employee appeared before her. Always quick to imagine corruption and deficiency in others, she kept a journal in which she noted down people’s failings. She promised herself that she would add some juicy details to the section on Zulma Tailleroux, as well as describing the ridiculous flatterer in a beret whom she had just seen off.

      Despite the shrill tinkle of the bell, no heads turned when Maurice Laumier entered the bookshop. He hid his face inside a copy of Octave Mirbeau’s Tales from the Village, which he had picked up from a pile of new arrivals, so didn’t see the expression of annoyance on Joseph Pignot’s face.

      ‘Do carry on, Monsieur Pignot!’ cried a woman with a face like a goat.

      Joseph continued to read aloud from the newspaper:

      ‘After an inspection by the magistrate and the head of the municipal laboratories, the Terminus café is once again open for business. For part of the day and the evening, Rue Saint-Lazare was obstructed by a crowd hoping to join the customers already there and hear the witnesses’ testimonies. For our part, it must be admitted that we entered through one door and left immediately by another, more amused by watching the crowd than by being crushed in it. Police Sergeant Poisson, who was shot twice in the chest as he tried to bar the terrorist’s way, received a visit from Lépine, the Chief of Police, who awarded him the Cross of the Légion d’honneur.’

      ‘That man is a hero – they should put up a statue of him!’ intoned a woman who was wearing a dress of aubergine silk and carrying a fur muffler from which emerged the leads of two miniature dogs, a Schipperke and a Maltese.

      ‘Did you hear that, Raphaëlle? An attack in the station where I had been just a few hours earlier, with Mademoiselle Helga Becker and my cousin Salomé!’ complained a plump woman.

      ‘These anarchists don’t even know themselves what they’ll dream up next! It was lucky that this maniac’s device, apparently a pot filled with gunpowder and bullets, collided with a lampshade, which threw it off course so that it landed on some tables. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have just been twenty injured, there would have been deaths!’ cried Blanche de Cambrésis whom, privately, Joseph Pignot referred to as ‘the nanny-goat’.

      ‘Finish the article, Monsieur Pignot,’ ordered a majestic woman, whose face on one side was twisted into a painful grimace.

      Renouncing his anonymity, Maurice Laumier tried to attract Joseph Pignot’s attention, but Joseph cleared his throat and continued.

      ‘Police Sergeants Bigot and Barbès also deserve to receive a Cross. The libertarian attacked them on Rue de Rome, and they fought with him hand to hand until they eventually succeeded in immobilising him, with the aid of several doughty passers-by. And, dear readers, did I neglect to mention that our rough and ready pyrotechnician appears to be a music lover, who decided to act while the orchestra was playing Martha by Flotow, or some similar minuet? When summoned to state his identity at the police station, this eighteen-year-old upstart, with only the slightest hint of a moustache, declared, “I am X from Peking.7 That is all you need to know.”’

      ‘What a nerve! I’d have him beheaded without a trial, this little Pekinese! Or else I’d send him to the front line wrapped in dynamite, and he could be a flare for our brave soldiers fighting in the colonies! Sooner or later Madagascar will be ours,’ piped up the old man.

      ‘Madagascar?’ said the plump woman. ‘You share the beliefs of Colonel Réauville then?’

      ‘I am rarely wrong in my predictions, my dear Madame de Flavignol. I have contacts in government. Madagascar will adopt French culture very easily as soon as we have conquered it.’

      ‘Indochina will also become French before long, no matter how rebellious, Chinese and anti-Western it is at the moment, provided we can root out their yellow culture by substituting French for their Annamite dialects, which are an inferior sort of chatter. Those are the terms used by Monsieur Gabriel Bonvalot, the famous explorer,’ declaimed the woman with the twisted