Maxim Jakubowski - Paris Noir

‘So you think he is planning a job in Paris?’ asked the commissioner. He allowed a small smile to flicker across his face. ‘After all, we are not short of the undeserving rich…’

‘Perhaps. Or he could be diverting himself here while all the time what he is doing at night is the important thing. Eh?’ From under his lowering, sardonic brow. Sir Seaton returned Lapointe’s smile. ‘Might he be making himself so public that all our attention is drawn to his flaneurism and we ignore his true activities?’

‘What do you suggest? We need to know details of Hitler’s plans soon, Sir Seaton. We must anticipate and counter whatever terror the Nazi insurgents intend to unleash.’

‘Naturally you must. What else can you tell me?’

‘Only that the adventuress Mrs Una Persson recently took rooms above the Arcades, shortly after I contacted you. For the last three days she has been seen in the gardens walking her two cats, a grey and a black Oriental shorthair. She is a known associate of Monsieur Zenith, is she not?’

‘Of him and others,’ agreed Begg, his eyes narrowing in an expression of reminisence. ‘And does she have a female companion, perhaps? A Miss Cornelius?’

‘Not as far as we know.’

Sinclair seemed surprised. His eyes darted from Lapointe to Begg and then to Bardot, who shrugged.

‘Mrs Persson has been seen talking to Zenith,’ Bardot offered. ‘Yesterday she had lunch with him at L’Albertine. We had a lip reader eating at a nearby table. Zenith mentioned Hitler and Rohm. He might have spoken of an explosive charge in Paris. Unfortunately we did not learn where. She said that she had investigated a site where a bomb would create the most damage. So certain of those among our superiors are now convinced they are working together for the Nazi insurgents.’

Lapointe interrupted rapidly. ‘Of course, I find that impossible to believe.’ He shrugged. ‘But I have, as we all have, certain bosses, owing their jobs more to their connections than to their native abilities, who insist on believing Zenith and Mrs Persson are in league with Hitler and his underground army. It could be, perhaps, that they are both working for themselves and that they have plans which Hitler’s activities will facilitate. My guess is that some treasure is involved, for it is not Zenith’s habit to dabble in civilian politics. At least, as far as I know. Not so, of course, Mrs Persson. Is there some way you could find out any more. Sir Seaton? Something I could take to my superiors which will let me get on with the real business Zenith has in Paris? Whatever that may be.’

Sir Seaton finished his café crème, smiling out at a group of little boys and girls running with fixed attention towards the pleasure of the carousel.

‘I could ask him,’ he said.

Inevitably, Seaton Begg met his albino cousin close to the noon hour in the Arcades de L’Opéra where eight galleries branched off a central court, containing a paved piazza and an elaborate fountain. He appeared almost by magic, smiling courteously and lifting his hat in greeting. Impeccably well-mannered, Zenith, of course, was incapable of ignoring him.

‘Bonjour, cher cousin!’ The albino raised his own tall grey hat. ‘What a great pleasure to come upon you like this! We have a great deal to talk about since our last meeting. Perhaps you would be good enough to take a cup of coffee with me at L’Albertine?’

After they had dispensed with their hats and ordered, Count Zenith leaned back in his chair and moved his ebony cane in an elegant, economic gesture in the direction of a beautiful young woman wearing a long, military-style black coat, and with a helmet of raven-black hair, walking two cats, one a grey Oriental, the other a black, in the sunny gardens at the centre of the arcades. He gave no indication that he was already acquainted with the woman who was, of course, Mrs Una Persson, the famous European adventuress. ‘Has anyone, I wonder, ever really tried to imagine what it must be like to have the mind of a beast, even a domesticated beast like one of those exquisite cats? I think to enter such a brain, however small, would be utterly to go mad, don’t you, Sir Seaton?’

‘Quite.’ The Englishman smiled up at a pretty waitress (for which L’Albertine in the morning was famous) and thanked her as she laid out the coffee things. ‘I have heard of certain experiments, in which a beast’s brain has been exchanged with that of a human being, but I don’t believe they have ever been successful. Though,’ and in this he was far more direct than was his usual habit, ‘some say that Adolf Hitler, the deposed Chancellor of Germany, had succeeded and that he did indeed go quite mad as a result. Certainly his insolent folly at attacking three great empires at once would indicate the theory has some substance!’

Only by the slight movement of an eyebrow did Zenith indicate his surprise at Begg’s raising this subject. He said nothing for a moment before murmuring something about the Russo-Polish empire being already at the point of collapse. His own Romanian seat remained part of that sphere of influence, as Begg knew, and the fact was considered a source of some distress to the albino.

‘As one who showed such courage on their side during the war, you cannot be one of those who thinks Hitler should have been encouraged to attack the “alliance of eagles”?’ Begg offered. ‘The other Great Powers have since made an oath to protect the Slavic empire. Perhaps you feel that we have not been more resolute in tracking down the Hitler gang? I cannot believe you share their views.’

‘My dear Begg, the deposed Chancellor was a beerhall braggart supported by a frustrated military bully, a plump bore with aristocratic pretension and a third-rate broadcasting journalist!’ References to Röhm, to Göring and to Goebbels, whose popular radio programme was thought to have helped Hitler to power. ‘It was a matter of duty for anyone of taste to frustrate his ambitions. He was warned often enough by the Duma, the Assembly and your Parliament. His refusal to sign the articles of confederation were the last straw. He should have been stopped then, before he was ever allowed to marshal his land leviathans and aerial battleships. As it was, it should have taken three days, not a year, to defeat him. And now we have the current situation, where he and his riff-raff remain at large, doubtless somewhere in Bavaria, and far too many of our armed forces, as well as those of Germany herself, are engaged in putting a stop to his so-called Freikorps activities. I understand that it’s believed by some fools in the French foreign service that I yearn to ‘free’ my ancestral lands from the Pan-Slavic yoke, but believe me, I have no such dream. If I were to deceive myself that the people were free under the reign of my own family, I would deserve the contempt of every realist on the planet. And if there are, indeed, certain self-esteeming coxcombs on the Quai d’Orsay who believe I would ally myself with such degenerate opportunists, I shall soon discover their names and, in my own time, seek them out and challenge them to repeat their presumptions.’

Begg permitted himself a small smile of acquiescence. It was as he thought. He had needed only this statement by his cousin to confirm his understanding. But what was Zenith doing here in Paris, keeping such a strange, yet regular schedule? He knew that there was little chance of the albino offering him an explanation. All he had done was rule out the theory, as his French opposite number had hoped, of certain under-admired civil servants at the Quai d’Orsay. He regretted that he was not on terms of such intimacy with Mrs Persson. Although it was unlikely, she could be allying herself with the Hitler gang to further her own schemes.