Murder in Montparnasse (6 page)

And the murderer had got away with it, if murderer there was. A clever person, to use two different methods. How would you get someone to lie down under a wheel? Simple. Feed them a Micky Finn—chloral hydrate was not hard to obtain— and arrange them suitably, then kick the jack away and let yourself out the back, unobtrusively. So the murderer was physically strong. There were no drag marks on poor Conger’s back, nor were his clothes disarranged. He must have been carried, not hauled. No one would check for fingerprints or bother too much about why a respectable tradesman in possession of his senses lays himself out on the cold ground in the middle of the night under a wheel. Voilà! No more Mr Eeles, and whatever inconvenient knowledge he had had died with him. The chloral scent would escape through the destroyed organs—and in any case they hadn’t even tested for it.

Or, if that was too difficult, he could be belted over the head with a handy spanner and laid out for execution. The same for the farmer. Someone lurks in the pub as the birthday party goes on and slips some high proof spirit into the beer or walks along with Mr MacKenzie as he leaves and offers him— what? A sip from a flask? The farmer had not been drugged. Chloral hydrate was very easy to find at an autopsy on an intact body, because of its peculiar and very unpleasant smell. Someone must have spiked the drinks or had a sure-fire way of making someone take a drink from him.

But in any case, both deaths were highly suspicious. Each singly could have been an accident, but together they looked extremely worrying.

Billy the Match’s unedifying record lay before her. A petty criminal as a child—two years in a boys’ training school, she noticed, that should have perfected his skills—and then the usual run of handbag thefts, minor assaults, the victims always other children or old people who wouldn’t or couldn’t fight back. A nasty little person, but not dangerous, until Billy the Match found out about fire. A note from the informant suggested that William Joseph Bland had been responsible for hundreds of small fires in rubbish bins. His favourite method was to tie several matches around a cigarette, light it, and toss it into a bin where, as the cigarette burned down, it would produce a burst of flame and ignite whatever was in the bin. Then he had graduated to houses and discovered the glories of turpentine.

A medical report, attached, said that he was not insane, he just liked fires, and could not be prevented from lighting them. The fact that he was good at not being caught suggested that he knew that what he was doing was wrong, which proved sanity. The physician also suggested a Freudian analysis; fire was a cleansing element, and Billy felt dirty. His background was dire. His mother was a whore and his father a toss-up between a selection of ten men, mostly sailors, among her clientele. She drank too much, took drugs, and locked the child out of the house, often in the rain, while she was working. He was malnourished and lacked nurture. He had been an early truant and still could not read or write. If the ratbag hadn’t taken to trying to burn down Melbourne, Phryne would have felt sorry for Billy the Match.

Phryne scanned the list of passengers with French passports who had entered Australia in the last two months. Not many names. Usual selections of Duponts and Duponds. Then one name leapt straight off the paper and struck Phryne between the eyes.

Oh, no. Not now! Not when she was already feeling destabilised, uncertain, and angry! What was he doing here? What cruel, Phryne-hating fate could have brought René Dubois to Australia?

She put her hands over her face. René Dubois. René of the scented nights in the Bois de Boulogne. René of the wicked smile. René of the compelling, shrill, intricate music. René wrapped around her in his ill-clothed bed under the eaves of the Montparnasse atelier in which he lived.

It was all because of that telegram . . . ‘Mademoiselle will await the escort from London?’ asked Madame la Concierge.

‘Non,’ said Phryne, furious at the unmitigated gall of her father, expecting her to wait and be called for like a parcel. ‘Mademoiselle will not wait.’

‘And may we say where mademoiselle is going?’

‘You may not,’ said Phryne, folding her new clothes into her knapsack. ‘I will write a letter for my father. Where is the nearest postal office?’

‘I will carry mademoiselle’s letter, if she will trust it to me,’ said Madame, stiffly.

‘Of course.’ Phryne sat down and wrote furiously.

‘Send it as soon as you can,’ she said. Then, out of the francs which the hotel had advanced her, she stuffed some money into Madame’s hand. ‘You have been very kind,’ she said. ‘I could not have had a better welcome back to the real world. Thank you.’

Then she was gone down the stairs. Moving well, Madame saw, refreshed by her rest and the good southern wine. But Paris was no place for an unaccompanied young woman of English background, and Madame worried about her as she watched her walk away. Out of the Hôtel Magnifique and into the grey Rue de St Honoré.

‘The young will no longer be advised by the old,’ she said to the hall porter.

‘That is because we advised them to die,’ said the hall porter.

Paris was cold. An icy wind sprang up, ruffling Phryne’s hair and chilling her bones. She stopped at a boutique where her father had an account and ordered a stout leather coat, then walked on. Where to go? Toupie had a lot of friends in Paris and it was time Phryne found some of them. Left bank— so she needed to cross the Seine. Now, where had Toupie told her to go if she found herself at a loose end? Aha. The tea shop of Sybaris at the end of the Rue du Chat qui Pêche.

Strange to just be walking again, with nowhere to be, no hurry, no shells bursting. No wounded men crying. Paris was crowded. Well-dressed women in fur coats gathered around the few open food shops, shrieking at the proprietors. Not much to eat in the shops. People looked thin. Paris had been besieged, more or less, for four years. Most people carried a bag of some sort, in case they came upon an open shop with some chance-arrived stock.

Phryne skirted two city gentlemen almost coming to blows over half a kilo of sugar. She heard one woman say, ‘The farmers’ market is tomorrow. Not that many will dare to come in, now that the Spanish influenza has arrived.’

Phryne winced. The Spanish ’flu had romped through the weary soldiery in May, and again in late September, when Phryne had caught it. She had been delirious for three days but assumed that she was now immune. It was very infectious and she wondered what it would do to an unprotected, malnourished population who had to be out and about if they wanted to eat. Would M. Poincaré, the President, be able to rule a city as hungry and downtrodden as this one if another plague came upon them?

She came to the Pont Neuf and put down her knapsack. There she was, Notre Dame, bone-coloured towers still lacy and perfect against the hurrying grey clouds. The river slid away beneath her, boats were hauled, men shouted. She caught sight of a red and white striped fisherman’s jersey and a voice shouted to her from a barge, offering various delights.

Standing and staring was always perilous, she knew. So was looking vulnerable, scared, or obviously a stranger. Time to pace along the Pont Neuf, walk quickly along the Quai des Grands Augustins and find the Place St Michel and Thé Sybaris. She was beginning to notice the number of eyes upon her, cold eyes, summing her up; female, fragile looking, alone. She began to feel like a target.

She lifted her chin, deliberately slowed her pace so that she would not be tempted to run, and resolved to fling her first attacker into the river. That ought to discourage the others. She might look frail, but Phryne could woman-handle a full-sized unconscious soldier onto a stretcher. One learned that most weights were all a matter of points d’appui—leverage. Her attacker would have time to say ‘Merde alors!’ as he fell, but not much else. The change in stance registered with her prospective assailants. Maybe not such an easy mark after all. Catch her on the way back, perhaps. Probably not carrying anything worth having.

She was conscious of malicious attention moving away from her. She reached the end of the bridge, patted the last knob for luck, and turned along the Quai des Grands Augustins, where hundreds of small craft were moored. From the Quai, one looked down into the boats. They were bringing into Paris late spinach in bitter, dark green bunches, apples from Normandy and cheeses in golden rounds. Sheep bleated on one barge, milling about in the nervous manner of sheep and controlled by one old, intelligent, experienced black and white dog. Phryne watched him with delight. He did not even rise, but lifted his grey muzzle from his wayworn paws and gave a small, imperative bark, and the sheep moved as he required. Even this late in the year, a few bookstalls were open under the leafless trees. Phryne went into a small tabac and bought a packet of Gauloises and a box of Matelot matches. The scratch and fume of the match and the suck of scented smoke soothed her soul. Free of war. Free of Daddy. One hundred francs in hand and all Paris before me, she thought. What could be better? Who is as fortunate as I?

Well, those who know where they are going to sleep tonight probably have something of an edge, she considered. The bare-limbed chestnuts all along the Quai dripped gently on her as she walked along. The knapsack was not heavy. Phryne owned less at this moment than she had ever owned in her life.

Down the tiny Rue du Chat qui Pêche. She walked, with one hand on either wall, wary of things falling from above, squashing through mud in which all-too-nameable substances were mixed. Paris drainage had not joined the twentieth century, not in the Quartier Latin. She came out into a tiny square, with a small fountain on which some mythological figure struggled with a dragon—St George?—and she saw the white tablecloths, brass fittings and lettered window of Thé Sybaris. Phryne scraped her boots carefully. The floor inside was of polished wood and she did not want to mar it. A woman in trousers looked up as she walked in and let her knapsack slide to the floor.

‘Bonjour, madame,’ said Phryne. ‘Thé, s’il vous plaît, et un pastis. La Toupie, est-elle ici?’

The woman, who had not seemed welcoming, smiled suddenly. ‘Oui, mam’selle,’ she said. ‘Il est là.’ And on that sexually ambiguous note, she opened an inner door. A gush of steam, scented with garlicky roasting, rushed out. Phryne swallowed saliva and went in.

There was Toupie. There was Madeleine, known as La Petite because she was as tall as a man and built like a wrestler. There were several women dressed in full male costume and there, sitting at a side table, were the American Sylvia Beach and nun-clad Adrienne Monnier, who owned the bookshop. They were correcting proofs and arguing fiercely. The poet Djuna Barnes was scowling impartially at both of them. Romaine Brooks was sketching the group in charcoal on white butcher’s paper.

‘Phryne!’ called Toupie. ‘Take the weight off. Have a drink. Lunch in a moment—it’s horse. Lucky to get it, too. Poor thing died in the Rue Jacob and they had the devil’s own job trying to get the cart out. So you got back all right, then?’

That was Toupie. Barbara Lowther. The Hon. As long as you were alive and on your feet, she considered that all was well. She was a solid, jolly woman with cropped salt and pepper hair and big, capable hands. Freed from uniform, she was wearing a sombrely magnificent gentleman’s smoking jacket, a fez, velvet trousers and a soft silk shirt.

‘You look gorgeous,’ said Phryne, sinking down into a Turkish cosy corner and finding a cushion. ‘Toupie, I need a place to stay. Not too expensive. My father has ordered me back to London.’

‘Kismet,’ said Toupie. ‘La Petite was just saying that she needed someone to share her apartment. Two bedrooms. Very cheap. In the Rue de Gaîtés in Montparnasse. Suit you?’

‘If it suits Madeleine.’

Madeleine nodded. ‘And if you want some spare cash, why not come with me to Rue d’Odessa? Artists’ model. Easy. All you have to do is lie still and try not to freeze to death. They’d like you,’ she commented dispassionately. ‘Nice. Thin. They want ’em thin, the Moderne. You can go there now if you like. Or, wait. Come home with me tonight? It’s Friday. We’re going to Madame Barney’s. She’s having a late soiree. Miss Stein’s in Belgium with the War Relief, but Madame Natalie doesn’t admit wars in her salon.’

‘Lovely,’ said Phryne, and sank down into her cushion again. Paris was beginning to feel like home.

And that’s how it started, thought Phryne, wondering how long she had been staring at a list of French passports. And what was she going to do if she saw René Dubois again?

Because the last time she had seen him, she had sworn to kill him.

Onward, she told herself. Now for a prominent racing identity and his lost daughter. She got out the Hispano-Suiza, which had been attracting general attention in the police garage, and drove to Flemington.

It was a large house, she noticed as she stopped her car at the huge iron barrier. Someone with a lot of iron and their very own pair of pincers had gone to a lot of trouble to do a Palace of Würzberg on the gates. In the middle of each collection of tortured metal was a panel enamelled with a racehorse galloping at full stretch. The jockey’s silks were purple, green and white.

‘I wonder if he knows that he is racing under suffragette colours,’ Phryne said aloud. She honked the horn. ‘Come along,’ she added, ‘I haven’t got all day.’

Three large men, wearing the kind of suits which are only bought to impress a magistrate, surrounded the car. Phryne noted a suspicious bulge under each ill-tailored arm and put her own hand on her bag, in which reposed her own pearl-handled pistol. Mr Chambers had some heavy muscle on the staff. What was he afraid of?

‘My name is Phryne Fisher,’ she said, smiling sunnily at the nearest thug. ‘Here is my card. I would like to see Mr Chambers.’

‘Mr Chambers don’t want to see no one,’ grunted Thug One.

‘Oh, he’ll want to see me. Your education in grammar didn’t extend as far as the double negative, did it?’ she smiled again. ‘Take in my card and ask,’ she prompted. ‘And get a wriggle on, there’s a good chap. It’s cold out here.’