Murder in Montparnasse (2 page)

‘It was to him that I confided my problem, and he suggested that, for such a delicate matter . . .’

‘That a feminine touch might be useful?’ asked Phryne.

‘Precisely.’

People were concluding their lunch and getting up. Jean-Paul rushed to the door to bow the clientele out. The chef leaned forward. Phryne could hardly hear him and she was unused to speaking this much French. She strained to hear.

‘I came here from Paris after the war. It was hard then for a cook, though we rose to the challenge. Nothing to cook! No ingredients! It is said that during the siege of Paris the great Escoffier cooked elephant and even sea-lion as the animals in the zoo were killed. I would have welcomed a sea-lion entrecôte! Grey, sad city, my Paris after the war, and a ruined countryside. And my only son, lost. So I came here, as far as I could get from war. A barbarous country, but strangely innocent. In time the rest of my family followed me. My sister Berthe and her sons and my cousins Louis and Henri.’

M’sieur Anatole swallowed his cognac in one gulp and poured another.

Phryne murmured encouragement. Close to the chef, she could smell such a cocktail of scents, spices and herbs, which had obviously soaked into his very bones, that she was afraid she might sneeze.

‘All went well. My little café has been successful with the French people here and with such of the Australians who appreciate fine food. We live well. My cousins found themselves Australian wives—they work hard, those Australian girls! That is my cousin Henri’s wife behind the counter. A jolly girl, eh?’

‘Very jolly,’ agreed Phryne, wondering where this was leading and what, if any, connection this had to the gentleman who had exited so abruptly. The dark-haired young woman behind the counter caught Phryne’s eye, winked, and hitched up her considerable bosom. The chef sighed.

‘Such breasts! They are fortunate men.’

‘M’sieur Anatole,’ said Phryne gently, putting one hand on the white sleeve, ‘what is this delicate matter? You may confide in me.’

‘It began three months ago,’ said the chef, looking more like a dispirited vulture than ever. Even his moustache drooped. ‘Three men. They came to demand that I pay them, or some accident would happen to my café. Such things are common in the milieu, are they not? But this is not Paris. I was outraged and bade them begone.’

‘And then,’ Phryne guessed, trying to hurry the conversation along, ‘accidents began to happen.’

‘Yes. A fire was started in one of the rubbish bins. Jean-Paul found it and put it out before it spread. Then a brick through the window. Then—and this is where I became concerned— a whole block of butter was ruined with paint thinner. In my own kitchen! Someone must have come in to the kitchen when the door was open and . . . well. I called a council. We sat in here after the café was closed; Jean-Paul and Jean-Jacques, my sister’s sons, my sister Berthe, my cousins and their wives. What were we to do? The criminals were not asking very much, we could afford to pay it, and that might preserve us from further sabotage. But they were all against this. So we bade them begone. There was peace for a week, then they came back today and we rejected their offer again.’

‘Rather forcefully?’ asked Phryne. ‘And through the window?’

‘Yes,’ said M’sieur Anatole, gulping another cognac. ‘Henri was enraged and he is very strong. Now there will be revenge.’

‘Why on earth don’t you go to the police?’ asked Phryne.

‘If we do that,’ said the chef, ‘they might kill us.’

‘This is Australia,’ said Phryne. ‘We don’t do things like that here.’

The chef shrugged. Jean-Paul slammed a pointed cup of coffee down in front of the patron and removed the bottle. This time his flounce would have registered about six on the Richter scale.

‘Well, I suppose if you hire a few heavies and make sure that your café is always occupied, you might be all right,’ said Phryne. ‘But what has this got to do with me? Standover men are resistant to the feminine touch, patron.’

‘Oh, no, mam’selle, no, that is not the problem I am asking you to give your consideration to,’ said M’sieur Anatole, shocked. ‘No. It is a matter of a lady.’

‘A lady,’ said Phryne.

‘After my wife died, I did not wish to marry again. She was a saint, my Marie. But as the years go on, a man becomes lonely. I have a friend here, the first Australian friend I made. A man of taste and wealth, though no culture. His daughter seemed perfect. I discussed it with my family. They had objections. I overcame them. Then I discussed it with him. He was agreeable. Then . . .’

‘Did you think of discussing it with the lady? She must have reached the age of discretion,’ said Phryne.

‘But no, I did not have a chance. The family agreed. The father agreed. I agreed. But the young lady . . .’

‘The young lady?’

‘Has disappeared,’ said M’sieur Anatole, and burst into tears.

Phryne walked back to her own house in possession of all available information about Elizabeth Chambers and her father, company director and racing identity Hector Chambers, a slight headache incurred from drinking two glasses of wine and a glass of cognac at lunch, and considerable bemusement.

She could not forget the picture of poor M’sieur Anatole weeping into his moustache under the scornful gaze of Jean-Paul, who had taken him back into the kitchen to mop him up. It was all very sad. She wondered how Elizabeth Chambers, aged eighteen, had felt about being married off to an elderly Frenchman who dyed his hair. If the girl had fled to Cairns, it was explicable. And which collection of standover men was targeting Café Anatole? Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, her old friend, would know, but she did not feel she could approach him yet. Perhaps Anatole’s family could defend their own café without police help.

Phryne walked briskly up her own path and was admitted by her own housekeeper, Mrs Butler. She seemed agitated.

‘Oh, Miss Phryne, I’m so glad you’re back. Mr Bert and Mr Cec have brought a friend of theirs to see you.’

‘Just what I need,’ muttered Phryne ungraciously. She shucked the coat and hat and went into the parlour.

There she saw a bright fire, the short dark Bert and the tall blond Cec, wharfies and taxi drivers for hire, and a sad man holding his hat in his hands. He seemed intent on tearing off the brim.

‘We got a problem,’ said Bert.

‘Too right,’ echoed Cec.

‘Then let’s sit down. Mrs Butler will bring us some tea, and you can tell me all about it,’ said Phryne, as politely as she could manage. She could not take off her boots without her maid Dot and a shoehorn, and her feet were hurting.

Bert put the sad man into a chair. He had still not raised his eyes from his hat.

‘This is our old mate Johnnie Bedlow. Been with us through Gallipoli and then bloody Pozières,’ said Bert, not even apologising for swearing in a lady’s parlour. He was clearly upset. So, probably, was Cec, but it was always hard to tell with Cec, who preserved the imperturbability of a granite statue in his ordinary dealings with life. Johnnie Bedlow was still mauling his unfortunate hat.

‘Hello,’ said Phryne. ‘I’m Phryne Fisher.’

Johnnie Bedlow raised his eyes for a moment, murmured something, and looked away again.

‘There was five of ’em,’ said Bert. ‘Old mates. Old diggers. Seven with me and Cec. We get together every year about this time to have a yarn and a few drinks.’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. What was making Bert so furious?

‘Two of ’em are dead,’ said Bert.

‘Yes,’ said Phryne, encouragingly.

‘And there’s something wrong with the way they died. Come on, Johnnie. You tell the lady.’

‘First there was Maccie. He’d gone out to one of them soldier settler schemes. Growing oranges up on the Murray. Found drowned in an irrigation ditch. Coroner said he was drunk. But what about them black bruises on his shoulder blades? What about them, eh? And Maccie never drank much.’

‘Too right,’ said Cec.

Johnnie Bedlow, once launched on his topic, was shaking with fury, red-faced. The hat tore under his fingers and his voice was loud and ragged.

‘Then there was Conger. Supposed to have been fixing his van and it fell on him. But there was nothing wrong with the jack. No one tested it for fingerprints. No one wondered why he ought to be fixing his van in the dark. Inquest said “accident”. Accident? Hah!’

‘You think that someone’s been killing your old mates?’ said Phryne. ‘Why would they do that?’

‘I’d think it might be a coincidence,’ said Bert, ‘but for the car which knocked old Johnnie right off the pavement and into your front fence. We got a murderer, all right—and you’re going to find out who it is. And then,’ he added through gritted teeth, ‘I’m gonna talk to him about it.’

‘Too right,’ said Cec.

‘Oh,’ said Phryne.

CHAPTER TWO

I remember hearing a french nurse once say and
the only thing she did say of the front was, c’est
un paysage passionant, an absorbing landscape.
And that was what it was when we saw it. It was
strange.

Gertrude Stein,
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

‘Mrs Butler!’ called Phryne. ‘Forget the tea. This calls for beer. Sit down, Bert, do. Now, tell me all.’

She took from her bureau a new, sea-green notebook, found a fountain pen, and sat down, prepared to listen. Ordinarily, nothing discomposed Bert and Cec. They had been through wars, shipwrecks, gang fights and riots without turning a hair. Now they were concerned, even angry. This was serious.

Phryne’s parlour furniture was too fragile for outbreaks of insensate rage. This needed to be handled carefully. Beer was distributed and the first schooner went down without touching the sides. Glasses were refilled.

‘Names,’ suggested Phryne.

‘You know Cec and me,’ said Bert. ‘This is our old mate Johnnie Bedlow. Got a garage in Fitzroy, he’s a mechanic. Tom MacKenzie is dead. So is Alan Eeles—we called him Conger. The others are Billo, William Gavin, and Thommo, Thomas Guilfoyle. Billo’s a fisherman, lives down the coast, Queenscliff way, and Thommo’s got a building business in Footscray.’

‘And you always meet once a year, around this time?’

‘Yair,’ said Bert. ‘It’s the anniversary of . . . of a good time we had. When the war finished.’

Phryne raised an eyebrow.

‘In Paris,’ Bert explained.

Phryne nodded. She understood what sort of a good time seven young men could have had in Paris after the liberation. She had, in fact, been in Paris herself after her ambulance unit had disbanded. The scent of acorn coffee and the sound of the bal musette drifted back into her mind.

‘Billo and Thommo will be on their way,’ said Bert. ‘They’ll arrive later today. We’ll meet the country train.’

‘Good. I’ll ask my friend Detective Inspector Robinson to get me the coroner’s reports on those two deaths. We need, I think, to all sit down together and go through everything— almost everything—that you seven have done together.’

‘Why?’ asked Bert.

‘Because if you are all in danger, as you think, then the murderer must be trying to eliminate a witness, right? And if he is after all of you, then it must be something you all know or you have all seen.’

‘Or that’s what he thinks, the bastard,’ said Johnnie Bedlow unexpectedly.

‘Exactly. Do you want to stay here, Bert? We can put up the shutters and sit a siege.’

‘Nah. We’re on our guard now. Johnnie’s staying with Cec and me. We’ll pick up Billo and Thommo as soon as we can and all go back to our place. We’ll be all right. But we need to know,’ said Bert fiercely.

‘Then we shall find out,’ said Phryne.

Johnnie Bedlow stared at her for a long moment. Then he sighed.

‘All right,’ he said.

Phryne saw her visitors out. She shut the door. She sank into a chair.

‘Dot,’ she called, ‘For pity’s sake, come and help me take off these boots!’

It took Dot all her strength and the use of a long shoehorn to get the Russian boots to relinquish their suckerlike grasp on Miss Phryne’s calves. When they finally came free with an audible ‘pop’, Dot sat down on the carpet, clutching a boot to her cardiganned bosom. Phryne wriggled her freed toes luxuriously.

‘Oh, that is a whole world of improvement,’ she said, hauling Dot to her feet. ‘Thank you. I’ve had a very strange afternoon, Dot dear. Have a seat and I’ll tell you about it.’

‘I saw Mr Bert and Mr Cec,’ said Dot. She was a plain young woman with long brown hair, firmly confined in a plait, and a milkmaid complexion. She was wearing her favourite dark brown woollen dress with a terracotta woolly and a worried expression. Dot always worried about Phryne. There had been raised male voices in the refined parlour, and Dot didn’t like it one bit. Raised male voices, in Dot’s experience, preceded raised male fists. And then Miss Phryne might have to hurt someone.

‘They think that someone is murdering a group of their friends,’ said Phryne. ‘Has already murdered two of them and is intending to collect the whole set. I need to ring Jack Robinson. I don’t know if there is anything in it, Dot dear, but it is never wise to gainsay men who have such a lot of experience with firearms and who appear convinced of the correctness of their theory.’

‘No, they might go crook,’ agreed Dot.

‘And also I have met Monsieur Anatole, a superb French cook—we must dine there, Dot, it is the most wonderful food—and he has lost the girl he was going to marry.’

‘How did he lose her?’ asked Dot, wincing at the idea of being dragged along to a place full of foreign smells and tricked-up foreign food. There might even be—horrors—garlic. And Miss Phryne would make her eat it. ‘Did she die?’

‘I hope not, Dot dear. Here’s her picture.’

They both considered the postcard sized photograph. It was of a plain young woman. Her mouth was too wide for beauty, her forehead too high, her eyes too small, her nose too beaky, her jaw too determined. She was staring straight at the camera and frowning.

‘Bad temper?’ asked Phryne.

‘More as if she doesn’t like having her picture taken,’ said Dot. ‘She hasn’t got the crease between the brows that means bad temper. I reckon she knows she’s not beautiful and she doesn’t want to be photographed.’