Barbara Cleverly - Folly Du Jour

Soda! Campari-soda! The shock of realization was so intense he looked furtively around him to see if anyone was conscious of his reaction to the sudden thought. Ridiculous! These chattering strangers, even if they’d been looking in his direction, wouldn’t have given a damn for an Englishman whose startled expression was that of a man who’d just remembered — too late — his wife’s birthday.

‘Campari-soda’! George had been trying to pass on a message and he’d missed it. Pink and decadent, light but lethal. And always, for him, to be associated with that woman.

George had been attempting to let him know he’d spent the evening trapped in a box with a viper.

Joe, all appetite vanished, chewed his way through his sandwich and planned his next move. Looking around him, he remembered that he was just a few steps away from the rue Jacob and he frowned.

Good Lord! It seemed a week ago he’d met that redhead on the plane. What was her name? Heather, that was it. And she was staying at a small hotel down there. Raking his memory, he had a clear impression he’d promised to meet her again, though he’d left it all a little vague. He doubted she was the kind of girl to sit in her room waiting for him to contact her but, all the same, it would be too rude to do nothing. He could at least explain that he’d run head-first into the most frightful bit of trouble and wouldn’t be at liberty to enjoy Paris with her as he’d hoped. Paying his bill, Joe strode off down the rue St André des Arts and crossed over into the rue Jacob. He wandered along until he found a pretty, flower-bedecked hotel whose name rang a bell.

The receptionist at the Hotel Lutèce admitted he had a guest of that name but Mademoiselle Watkins had gone out over an hour ago and — no — she had not said at what time she expected to return. With some relief, Joe scribbled a note and left it in her pigeon-hole.

And now, he was free to concentrate on a second lady who’d caught his attention. He took out his notebook and checked the address he’d hurriedly memorized from the Chief Inspector’s interview sheets and copied down later. An address in Montmartre. He looked up and north, seeking but not finding, for the press of rooftops, the gleaming white dome of the Sacré Coeur, presiding over the huddle of cottages, mills and cabarets that made up the old village on the hilltop. Too far to walk in the time he had. Joe went back to the place St Michel and picked up a taxi.

‘ Montmartre. La rue St Rustique ,’ he said. ‘ Le numéro 78 .’

‘Another liar!’ he thought and began to plan how best he could lay a trap for her.

Joe decided to tell the driver to drop him in the place du Tertre in the heart of Montmartre. The cab moved off easily northwards, threading its way according to Joe’s directions, along the Right Bank, taking a westerly route through Paris’s most spectacular streets and on up the rue d’Amsterdam. They turned on to the boulevard de Clichy which wound like a necklace along the wrinkled throat of the ancient village on the hill.

As they crossed the place de Clichy, he glanced at the billboards of the Gaumont Palace cinema with its imposing Beaux Arts façade. Le plus grand cinéma du monde , it announced. Today they were offering a matinée pro-gramme, a repeat showing of a pre-war thriller: Fantômas III. Le mort qui tue.

Fantômas, Part Three. The Murderous Corpse . One of a series of horror stories that had swept France. Joe was not a fan. He’d stopped reading them after the second book when he’d worked out that the Emperor of Evil whose sadistic exploits were recounted always escaped the law. At the end of every story one implausible bound set him free from the clutches of the tenacious policeman who’d vowed to bring him to justice. Joe lost patience with the good Inspector Juve. But he was a human like Joe, overworked, mortal and fallible and fighting a hydra-headed, super-human essence of wickedness. A completely implausible villain, for Joe. He much preferred Professor Moriarty. Though he had shown a tendency to survive unsurvivable plunges into waterfalls.

They attacked the hill by way of the rue Lepic, lined with market stalls. Progress up the cobbled streets was slow. They were impeded every few yards by two-man push-and-pull handcarts whose pushers and pullers stared in disdain at any motor vehicle attempting the steep incline, taking their time, demonstrating defiance. The worst blockage was caused by a two-wheeled cart being pulled along by an ambling old horse. His sole interest was in the contents of the nosebag he wore and he eventually ground to a halt outside a grocer’s shop. La Bordelaise looked prosperous, its windows bright with bottles of wine and oil, baskets of olives and dangling saucissons. Sticking his head out to assess the delay, Joe was caught by the scent of roasting coffee beans. On impulse he called to the driver to wait and dashed into the shop. A moment later he climbed back into the taxi with a fragrant bag of beans in his hand.

He paid off his taxi in the place du Tertre and looked about him, getting his bearings. He strolled off along the north side of the square, getting a feeling for his surroundings. More strident than it had been in its heyday half a century ago when Pissaro, Cézanne and Renoir had sat at their easels on exactly this spot, painting the crossroads scene. More self-consciously colourful, tricked out, alluring, completely aware that it had something valuable to sell. Itself. Montmartre was a tart. But people fell for her charms every time. And he was gladly allowing himself to be seduced.

The gaudy square was surrounded by poor streets. He turned left into one of them. Here, the children playing in the street were ragamuffins like the ones in the East End of London. Barefoot some of them, all scrawny but cheeky enough to shout rude comments at a stranger. He brushed aside offers to shine his shoes, take him to a jazz bar and other more dubious propositions. He skirted around ball games and dodged urchins swinging out across the pavements on ropes suspended from gas lamps — a dangerous game of bar skittles in which the passer-by risked losing his hat or, at the least, his dignity. Joe, in a moment of playfulness, could have wished he was wearing a top hat for them to aim for and quickly took himself in hand. Such a spurt of frivolity was not appropriate. He blamed it on the freshness of the air up here on the hilltop, the blossom, the new leaves, the wad of bills in his pocket and a feeling that all was possible. He gave the lads his police stare, put on a show of knowing exactly where he was going and they left him alone.

Every narrow street he looked down called to mind a scene already captured in paint or waiting to be captured. He turned a corner into the rue St-Vincent and found himself following a few paces behind a figure from the last century. In baggy black suit and wide-brimmed gypsy hat, guitar slung across his back, a chansonnier strolled on his way to perform perhaps at the Lapin Agile. Conscious that he was wasting time, Joe tracked him until he disappeared into the dilapidated little cottage, his entrance marked by raucous cries of welcome and a burst of song. For a moment Joe paused, tempted to go into the smoky depths. He remembered that in an earlier age it had been known as the Cabaret des Assassins.

Who would he see in there if he slid inside and took a table? He narrowed his eyes and pictured the scene. Letting his fancy off the leash, he saw: Picasso. . Apollinaire. . Utrillo. . Jean Cocteau. . and he grinned. He probably wouldn’t understand a word of the conversation! Avant-garde, fast-living, arty. . But he knew who would understand and almost turned to share his thoughts with young Dorcas. He felt a stab of regret that his adopted niece who’d trailed through France with him last summer was not by his side. She’d have felt at home here. She’d have greeted the gypsy guitarist and talked to him in his own language. Her raffish father, Orlando, must have spent hours drinking and yarning with his fellow painters in this picturesque hovel, judging by the quantities of canvases it had inspired. And his daughter was probably on first-name terms with half the clientele!