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

several times. He did not take his eyes off her, his lips frozen in a smile.

      As soon as Élisa had closed the gate, Gaston’s smile vanished. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

      That was a stroke of luck, he thought as he headed towards the lake. The accident made it easy for me to bamboozle the romantic little ninny.

      He did not yet know exactly how he would manage, but one thing was for certain, a trip to Trouville was on the cards. The Boss would be pleased: in November he would complete his assignment and hand over the wench. He picked up some stones and amused himself by skimming them across the black lake.

       CHAPTER 2

       Paris, Thursday 12 November 1891

      PARIS slumbered under a waxing moon. As the Seine flowed calmly round Île Saint-Louis, patterned with diffuse light, a carriage appeared on Quai Bernard, drove up Rue Cuivier and parked on Rue Lacépède. The driver jumped down and, making sure no one was watching, removed his oilskin top hat and cape and tossed them into the back of his cab.

      Just before midnight, Gaston Molina opened the ground-floor window of 4 Rue Linné and emptied a carafe on to the pavement. He closed the shutters and went over to the dressing table where a candle burned, smoothed his hair and reshaped his bowler hat. He cast a quick glance at the young blonde girl who lay asleep, fully dressed, in the hollow of the bed. She had sunk into a deep slumber as soon as she swallowed the magic potion. Mission accomplished. What happened to her next was of no concern to him. He stole out of the apartment, careful not to attract the attention of the concierge. One of the tenants was leaning out of an upstairs window. Gaston Molina hugged the wall, lighting a cigarette, and passed the Cuvier fountain before diving down the street of the same name.

      A man in a grey overcoat lying in wait on Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire gave Gaston a head start before setting off behind him.

      Gaston Molina walked alongside the Botanical Gardens. He froze, his senses alert, when something growled to his right. Then he smiled and shrugged. Calm down, my friend, he thought, no need to panic; it’s coming from the menagerie.

      He set off again. The silence was broken by the coming and going of the heavy sewer trucks, with their overpowering, nauseating smell. Going unobtrusively about their business through the sleeping city, the trucks rattled as far as the quayside at Saint-Bernard port and emptied their waste into the tankers.

      Gaston Molina was almost at the quay when he thought he heard the crunch of a shoe. He swung round: no one there.

      ‘I must be cracking up; I need a night’s sleep.’

      He arrived at the wine market.2 Sometimes tramps in search of shelter broke in and took refuge in the market. Beyond the railings, the barrels, casks and vats perfumed the air with an overpowering odour of alcohol.

      I’m thirsty, thought Gaston. Ah, what I wouldn’t do for a drink!

      Something skimmed past his neck, and a silhouette appeared beside him. Instinctively he tried to parry the blow he sensed coming. An atrocious pain ripped through his stomach and his fingers closed round the handle of a knife. The moon turned black; he collapsed.

      As always, Victor Legris reflected on the soothing effect of half-light.

      He had woken in an ill temper in anticipation of the stories his business associate would invent to avoid taking Dr Reynaud’s prescriptions.

      ‘Kenji! I know you’re awake,’ he had shouted. ‘Don’t forget the doctor is coming later this morning!’

      Receiving nothing in reply but the slamming of a door, Victor had gone resignedly down to the bookshop, where Joseph the bookshop assistant was perched precariously at the top of a ladder, dusting the bookshelves with a feather duster and belting out a song by a popular young singer.

       I’m the green sorrel

       With egg I’ve no quarrel

       In soup I’m a marvel

       My success is unrivalled

       I am the green sor-rel!

      His nerves on edge, Victor had failed to perform the ritual with which he began each day: tapping the head of Molière’s bust as he passed. Instead he had gone swiftly through the bookshop and hurried down the basement stairs to closet himself in his darkroom.

      He had been here for an hour, savouring the silence and dim light. No one disturbed him in this sanctuary where he could forget his worries and give himself over to his passion: photography. His collection of pictures of the old districts of Paris, started the previous April, was growing. He had initially devoted himself to the 20th arrondissement and particularly to Belleville, but recently he had started on Faubourg Saint-Antoine, cataloguing the streets, monuments, buildings and studios. Although he had already accumulated a hundred negatives, the result left him profoundly frustrated. It was not for lack of all the best equipment; it was more because there was nothing of his own personal vision in his work.

      All I have here is the objective view of a reporter, he thought.

      Was he relying on technique at the expense of creativity? Did he lack inspiration? That often happened to painters and writers.

      The meaning of the pictures should transcend the appearance of the places I photograph.

      He knew that a solution lurked somewhere in his mind. He turned up the gas lamp and examined the picture he had just developed: two skinny urchins bent double, struggling with a sawing machine that was cutting out marble tablets. The image of a frightened little boy stammering out one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales under the watchful eye of an imposing man in a dark frock coat sprang to mind. Those poor brats reminded him of the terrorised child he had been faced with his domineering father’s displeasure. And suddenly he had an inspiration:

      ‘Children! Children at work!’

      Finally he had his theme!

      He put his negatives away in a cardboard box with renewed energy, smiling as he glimpsed a large picture of two interlaced bronze hands above an epitaph:

      My wife, I await you

      5 February 1843

      My husband, I am here

      5 December 1877

      A photograph slipped out of the packet and drifted slowly down to land on the floor. He picked it up: Tasha. He frowned. Why was this portrait of her hidden among views of the Père-Lachaise cemetery? He’d taken it at the Universal Exhibition two years earlier. The young woman, unaware she was being photographed, wore a charming and provocative expression. The beginning of their affair, recorded in that image, reawakened his sense of their growing love. It was wonderful to know a woman who interested him more with each encounter and with whom he felt an unceasing need to talk and laugh, to make love, to hatch plans … He was again overcome by the bitter-sweet feeling that Tasha’s attitude provoked in him. Since he had succeeded in wooing her away from her bohemian life and installing her in a vast studio, she had devoted herself body and soul to her painting. Her creative passion made him uneasy, although he was happy that he had been able to help her. He had hoped that after the show at which she had exhibited three still lifes, she would slow down. But the sale of one of her paintings to the Boussod & Valadon gallery had so spurred her on that some nights she would tear herself from his arms to finish a canvas by gaslight. Victor sought to prolong every moment spent with her, and was saddened that she did not have the same desire. He was becoming jealous of her painting, even more than of the artists with whom she consorted.

      He paced about the room. Why was he unable to resolve this contradiction? He was attracted to Tasha precisely because she was independent and opinionated, yet he would secretly have liked to keep her in a cage.

      Miserable imbecile! That would be the quickest way to