Vango (17 page)

“Hello . . .”

It was a bad line, but he could hear the bellowing on the other end clearly enough when he had to admit that no, he hadn’t found anybody on board the zeppelin. Grund swore that he simply couldn’t understand it. He knew that the person they were looking for was a priority for the regime and that his escape had been denounced by somebody very reliable and very close to the authorities. The mission was fail-proof.

“Fail-proof!” the voice on the other end shouted.

Max Grund was swimming in the tropical heat. The telephone handset was melting in his fingers. A large fan was turning, to no avail, on the ceiling.

Close by, in the men’s lavatories, the fat opera singer was standing in front of the mirror with a serious expression on his face.

He ran his hand through his hair and slid off the wig that had been hiding his bare scalp. He pushed his fingers into his mouth and pulled out the piece of rubber that had been padding his gums and cheeks, thereby transforming his face. Then he undid his suspenders and opened his shirt to remove the large rubber pouch that had provided him with his paunch.

He buttoned up his shirt again and stuck his head under the faucet.

The face that appeared in the mirror was that of the actor Walter Frederick, star of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and a fervent opponent of the Nazi regime. After living under a death threat for the past eighteen months, he’d had no choice but to leave Germany hastily in order to reach California via Brazil.

He thought his life as an actor was at an end. Little did he know that a few years later, he would triumph in Hollywood and that his and Vango’s paths would cross again.

He went out into the lobby and performed, as a final number, a few tap-dancing steps behind Max Grund, who had just hung up furiously.

The stowaway Grund had just failed to capture was Frederick.

Everland, Scotland, May 1, 1934

The superintendent arrived at the castle at midday.

He had just spent three days traveling. He had already caught two trains and one boat when his suitcase got stolen somewhere between Victoria and King’s Cross Stations, in London. He was hopping mad and cursed the English first, then Napoleon for having lost the battle of Waterloo. Passersby stared at him as he kicked the pavement, his face turning as red as a poisonous mushroom.

There was nothing for him to do but catch the Flying Scotsman, the new train that linked London to Edinburgh in seven or eight hours. Once safely on board, the superintendent enjoyed the comforts of one of the world’s great railways. He spent half the journey eating lunch, and he even found a barber’s booth where he could freshen up ahead of his meeting the next day. On arrival, he spent what was left of the night near to Edinburgh’s Waverley Station, in a hotel that was so jam-packed he had to share a room with a redheaded giant who suffered from insomnia. By the time his neighbor finally dropped off to sleep at five o’clock in the morning, Boulard had already left.

For the last leg of his journey, Boulard got a carpenter with a horse and cart to drop him off at the end of a long driveway. The superintendent stared at the castle for some time, at a loss for words.

“Are you sure?”

He repeated the address several times for the benefit of his driver, who nodded to the effect that this was indeed the right place.

“Everland Castle,” the carpenter confirmed.

Boulard thanked him in his impenetrable French accent, before watching the cart drive off.

“Well, my little pussycat . . .”

He smoothed his hair under his hat.

“Well, my little pussycat, you don’t exactly live in a basket . . .” he muttered, recalling the fragile young woman he’d met briefly in Paris, upstairs at the Smoking Wild Boar.

Boulard had been expecting a pleasant little house in the hills. But this was a fortress that would have made Mordachus, King of Scotland, quake in his boots.

The superintendent didn’t feel dressed for the part of charging the castle. He could have done with a chain-mail coat, a helmet, and two horsemen, but he didn’t even have a spare pair of socks.

He hid behind a tree, where he straightened out his clothes. Luckily, he still had his umbrella. His umbrella was key to his elegant appearance, or so he believed. He was thinking of his elderly mother, who had packed his case for him back in Paris:
I’ve put in your flannel trousers, in case you need to dress up of an evening. . . .

His thief back in London was probably passing himself off as a prince, drinking to the superintendent’s good health while sporting his dapper evening suit. Above all, Boulard was annoyed about his notebook getting stolen, because it contained what little information there was of the Parisian investigation as written up by his faithful Avignon.

“Onward, Boulard!”

He marched toward the castle. He was using his umbrella as a walking stick. The double doors of the main entrance swung open when he was still a hundred meters away.

Knight Boulard was expected.

A man showed him inside, greeting him in perfect French:
“Soyez le bienvenu, Monsieur le Commissaire!”

He helped Boulard take off his coat before reaching for the superintendent’s umbrella. Caught by surprise, Boulard tightened his grip on the handle.

The umbrella. He mustn’t let go of his umbrella. The man was tugging at it, but Boulard clung on with both hands.

They stared at each other and began walking in a slow circle around the umbrella, which was firmly planted on the stone floor. It was a strange samurai duel between a Scottish butler and a French police officer.

“Sir, allow me to take your umbrella,” the butler finally insisted.

“I’d rather keep it,” retorted Boulard, as if fearing a small outbreak of rain in the drawing room.

Being a good sport, the butler gave in to the visitor’s wishes. Boulard felt thoroughly relieved. After the robbery, this was all he had left. His mother thought he looked much more stylish with his umbrella. Without it, he would have felt naked inside this citadel.

The guest was bidden to sit by a fire in what was referred to as the small hunting room, but which was in fact large enough to park two or three planes from the French airmail service. A glass was poured for him. And he didn’t say no to a second. Boulard’s feet were warming up nicely by the flames. He had discreetly removed his shoes in the hope that his socks would dry out.

Ordinarily, the superintendent hated waiting. He only had to be left on his own for a single minute before his blood pressure started rising in much the same way as in a dentist’s waiting room. But on this occasion, he felt relaxed in the corner by the fire, in the middle of all these carpets and paintings. He was almost snoring.

He realized that he had never waited for a young lady in a castle before. It was a giddy sensation. At sixty-nine years of age, he suddenly felt that it was high time he experienced the life of a Prince Charming.

Boulard was starting to worry about his mental faculties when he saw the door being pushed ajar and a young doe with white spots walk through the gap.

Yes, a doe.

A doe.

He stared at his glass and the animal in turn, then at his glass, then at the animal.

Boulard, old boy, you’re worn out
, he told himself.

He threw the contents of his glass onto the fire, producing a high flame that made the young doe shy away.

A doe.

Boulard stood up abruptly.

The animal was approaching him.

“Shoo, shoo, shoo!” tutted the superintendent, waving his fingers to make it go away.

The doe liked this game. She pranced around the room a bit before heading back toward her new friend.

“Shoo, shoo, shoo!” Boulard tried again, realizing that he had left his umbrella and shoes by the armchair.

The doe was delighted. She was dancing about on the spot.

“Shoo, shoo!”

This time, she jumped on top of a large table, took a sharp turn along a leather banquette, and threw herself at the superintendent.

When Ethel walked into the small hunting room, she could tell that something was up.

The superintendent was standing in his socks on the chest of drawers, holding on to a chandelier. The doe was staring at him, batting her long amorous eyelashes.

“Could I ask you for my umbrella, please, Mademoiselle?”

Ethel clicked her fingers and the doe, looking moody, sloped off toward the door.

“I’m sorry. You’ve met Lily,” said Ethel, holding out the umbrella and shoes.

Boulard stayed on top of the chest of drawers long enough to tie up his shoelaces, while checking that Ethel closed the door firmly behind Lily.

“Does she . . . does she live with you?”

“No. She comes from the woods, but she sneaks into the house whenever a door or window is left open.”

The superintendent was astounded. In Paris, not even the pigeons got close to his windows.

“I bottle-fed Lily for the first year of her life,” Ethel explained in her faint accent. “She’s become very . . . clingy.”

It always took Ethel a while to get used to speaking French again.

Boulard had to admit he’d never bottle-fed a pigeon. Which might explain why they never ventured into his apartment.

Once the superintendent had set foot on the parquet floor again and was reunited with his umbrella, it was only a matter of seconds before he was back in the character of Auguste Boulard, the impressive police superintendent from Paris, who had solved some of the century’s greatest crimes.

“I don’t imagine you’re paying me a visit just because of your love for animals,” said Ethel.

“Indeed not, Mademoiselle. Indeed not.”

It had only taken two days — the two days following the events at Notre Dame — for Boulard to realize that he wouldn’t find out anything about Vango Romano in Paris. He had never been confronted with a situation like this before: a boy who had lived for four years in a seminary, alongside dozens of others who all viewed him favorably, and even admired him; a boy who had fit well into a close-knit community but about whom people could say nothing at all. Nothing.

Boulard sometimes investigated street crimes, and now and then, a witness might not be able to state his own name, answering, “They call me Mosquito around here — I don’t know my name.” But Vango wasn’t a street urchin: he had been a boarder in a Carmelite seminary for four years.

From the other students, Boulard had tried to track down any piece of information that could have rooted Vango Romano somewhere on this earth: his place of birth, the surname of a family member, his parents’ address. The superintendent had inquired about the boy’s hobbies, where he spent his holidays, what visitors he had, what mail he received . . .

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

“You’re making fun of me, Canon!”

Boulard had ended up in the office of Canon Bastide, whose responses to the same questions involved his eyes bulging as he tied knots in his cassock.

“Nothing,” the canon replied over and over again, fueling Boulard’s outrage.

“You’re making fun of me! You can’t seriously be telling me that you don’t know his date of birth!”