The Montmartre Investigation: 3rd Victor Legris Mystery. Claude Izner

      She went round the side of the railway station, darted out on to the platform and stopped short, almost under the wheels of a train. She recognised Monsieur Kenji Mori, Iris’s godfather, leaning out of the carriage. She fled, staying close to the station wall.

      She had finally reached the embankment. She took a good look around, but saw only amorous couples and marauding dogs. Which direction would he come from? What would he say to her? Suddenly she was frightened. She remembered her mother’s advice:

      ‘Don’t fight it, my dear; fear is good – it helps us to avoid all manner of disagreeable things.’

      When she thought of her mother, Élisa was torn between anger and pity. Now aged thirty-five, the poor woman had had a series of lovers without ever finding true passion. Her love life had begun badly, and nothing had turned out as she’d hoped. Élisa was certain that she was not like her mother. Even as a young child in a London boarding school, she had boasted to her friends: ‘One day my father will come and take me to his estate in Kent. I’ll marry a lord – he’ll be madly in love with me!’

      Her father, whose name she did not even know, had never appeared.

      The railway ran along a trench between two embankments – in one direction to Paris, in the other towards the eastern suburbs and the banks of the Marne, to Nogent, Joinville and Saint-Maur. Élisa leant over a hedge running along the fence and took in the view. She had always been keen on trains; they conjured up far-off places, glamorous encounters, luxury and freedom … But the dark platforms below her were reminiscent of an ant hill; she wondered with detached curiosity what would happen if she were to bombard the people with stones.

      Like a mechanical toy, a train wrapped in a cloud of steam arrived from Vincennes. It had barely come to a halt when the human tide surged towards the carriages, but to the irritation of the waiting throng, most of the doors opened on to crammed carriages. The people ran about looking for spaces, but in vain, and there were altercations and shouts of protest. Disappointed, the ants resigned themselves to wait for the next train. One man with a top hat and cane who had got on to the train was now leaving it, followed by his wife rigged out in a purple dress and his antlet in short breeches. (Élisa was pretty sure that word did not exist and decided that she had just invented it). Amused by the absurdity of the turmoil below, she forgot about her rendezvous as she stood on tiptoe to drink in the scene.

      Hidden behind an overgrown hedge, Gaston smoked a cigarette and watched the young girl. He had had his fair share of wenches and normally had no hesitation in undoing a bodice or ruffling up a petticoat, but this time he was wary. The girl seemed to come with a warning: ‘Careful, fragile.’ He had known such a delicate flower before, carefully reared in the best society, pale-skinned, with exquisite undergarments, and he could recognise one from afar. How should he approach her? Bow and kiss her hand; then compliment her on her pretty face and fine ankles? That would be beyond him. He knew only one way of expressing his desire and that was to fling a girl on the ground and smother her with the rather rough kisses to which wenches of his milieu seemed partial. He lit a second cigarette from the end of the first, giving himself a moment longer before he made his advance.

      The ant with the top hat was searching the carriages for a free seat. Élisa looked to the right, her attention caught by a serpentine movement. She could foresee the disaster about to unfold. Unable to pull out because of the comings and goings of the top-hatted man, the train from Vincennes was about to be rammed by another train, which had been hooked up to a locomotive and was being pulled backwards into the station.

      The noise was terrifying. The blind train, its back to its victim, slammed into the stationary train, crumpling it with an appalling crunching sound and crushing it under its weight. It seemed to devour the last three coaches. Mounted on a heap of iron, its funnel brushing the vault of the Pont de la Tourelle, the engine, mangled into an inextricable tangle of pipe and axle, breathed its last. It had all happened in a few minutes. The noise reverberated interminably and when it ceased, screams could be heard.1

      Staring in horrified fascination at the dislocated bodies of the driver and engine stoker, her ears ringing with heart-rending cries, Élisa was dimly aware of the swarms of people scrabbling up the sides of the embankment, away from the darkened railway line. She stumbled, feeling as if she were soaring over the clouds on a swing that had cut loose from its moorings. She drifted in tumultuous currents, and then … total darkness. Some of the people fleeing had already reached the top of the embankment and were in danger of stepping on her. Arms lifted her, pulling her out of the way.

      ‘Clarissa! Clarissa, where are you?’

      ‘Maman!’

      Élisa opened her eyes. There were shouts and groans; figures moved around in the night, lit by lamps and torches. She was lying on the ground and someone was shaking her. Her vision gradually cleared, her befuddled mind took in snippets of information. How she would have loved to go to sleep, to relax. But she must not – she tried to stand but was unable to muster the strength. A man was holding her by the wrists.

      ‘What happened?’ she murmured.

      Her voice seemed to come from a long way away.

      ‘Don’t worry, I’m here,’ said the stranger kneeling by her side. ‘It’s me, Gaston.’

      The accident, she thought. That’s why I’m lying on the grass …

      ‘Gaston? …Was it a long time ago?’

      She freed herself from him and stood. Her legs gave way but he caught her, leaning her against a parapet of the bridge. The laments of the survivors mingled with the wails of the injured as the fire brigade and volunteers busied themselves around the locomotive. The wooden carriages burned and crackled, spilling sparks on to the platforms, which were strewn with bloody debris and puddles. People were still desperately trying to escape, clinging to the shrubs on the slope, trying to keep their balance, but more often than not sliding back and falling to the bottom of the embankment.

      ‘Come, Mademoiselle,’ insisted Gaston, ‘I’m going to help you; we must leave the rescuers to do their work.’

      They stepped over men and women collapsed on the pavement, forced their way through the incessant coming and going of ambulances and reached Chaussée de l’Étang where lights shone in the windows. Suddenly Gaston dragged her into the trees on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes. She tried to resist, overcome with panic. Without a word, he pushed her against the trunk of a chestnut tree, crushing her mouth with his, forcing her lips painfully apart. There was no tenderness in his kiss or in his grasp; it was not like her dreams. He was holding her so tightly she could not move. Filled with anguish and anger, she wanted to push him away, but the catastrophe she had witnessed had weakened her defences. Gradually her disgust changed to a growing wonder, then a sense of euphoria. He drew back, and fear and guilt rushed over her.

      ‘Gaston, I beg you, please don’t; it’s wicked.’

      He raised her chin, forcing her to look at him. He whispered: ‘No, it’s not wicked, because I love you.’

      Those words swept away her last defences. She flung herself against him, ready this time and responsive to his kisses. The clamour from the station ebbed with the slow rhythm of the man’s hands as he caressed her body, releasing in her waves of pleasure.

      ‘Can we see each other soon?’ he breathed into her ear.

      ‘Yes, I … Oh! I forgot – we’re going away.’

      ‘We?’

      ‘Mademoiselle Bontemps, the other boarders … to Trouville, we’ll be back in the middle of September.’

      ‘What’s the address?’

      ‘Villa Georgina.’

      ‘I’ll come, and we’ll find a way of seeing each other. You’ll have to go back now or your friends will worry. It’s our secret, isn’t it? You do love me a little?’

      ‘Oh, Gaston!’

      He kissed her forehead. She teetered