Free The Montmartre Investigation by Claude Izner Page B

dressed and picked up the cards and envelopes. He was not sure exactly what to write, but it would come to him on his way there. He looked at his watch; it was a quarter past six. He glanced about the street. A couple of servants were chattering beside a carriage entrance, and a little girl hopped along the gutter clutching a small loaf of bread to her chest. It was drizzling. He pulled his hat down over his forehead, and turned up the collar of his grey overcoat. He must remember to remove the stains from the sleeve. He walked down the street, unaware of a chubby little man with a bushy beard, in a threadbare frock coat and shabby bowler hat who was standing on the corner next to the dairy.
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    The city’s cosmopolitan neighbourhood around Rue Auber, with its English tailor, American optician, telegraph and cable office and travel agent, was alive and bustling. Shop girls, purveyors of the latest fashions, and accountants were all racing for a seat on the omnibus. The man in the grey overcoat strode through the revolving door of the travel agent. Inside, well-dressed customers sat at green-topped desks in leather chairs writing letters to loved ones abroad under a bluish lamplight. At the far end of the room the model of an ocean liner was an invitation to travel. The man went over to a display counter and flicked through one of the shipping company’s catalogues until a chair became free. Then he sat down at a desk with a metal inkpot, put down the cards and envelopes, nibbled the end of his pen and proceeded to dash off the following message:
    To the Jewel Queen, Baroness of Saint-Meslin, a gift of ruby red roses in fond memory of Lyon – from an old friend.
    He signed himself in careful, rounded letters: A. Prévost, slipped the card into an envelope and addressed it to the recipient:
    Madame Noémi Gerfleur
    Théâtre L’Eldorado
    Boulevard de Strasbourg
    Indifferent to the rain, the chubby little man stood pressed up against the window of the travel agent’s, pretending to peruse the price lists of the brightly coloured brochures. His dull protruding eyes gave an impression of blindness, and yet they were fixed on the back of the man in the grey overcoat as he sealed the envelope. The man rose and headed towards Rue Caumartin, followed at a distance by the little man who hopped about like a sparrow through the crowd. They walked past a brightly lit tea room, where Singhalese waiters in traditional dress moved deftly between the rattan tables occupied by elegant ladies. The figure in the grey overcoat stepped into a florist. The little man leant against a Wallace fountain 12 and watched as the man pointed out some red roses to the shop assistant and handed her an envelope and some money before leaving. He waited until the man was far enough away from the shop and went in.
    *
    The edition of Marot safely tucked in his pocket, Victor dined at a smoky brasserie decorated with stained-glass windows. As he left that shrine to the consumption of tough meat and bad wine he noticed the hands on the shiny face of the pneumatic clock were pointing to seven thirty. The show started at eight o’clock.
    The busy boulevard was lined with brightly lit pleasure palaces and shimmering signs: a foaming beer glass; a silvery fork, green and red billiard balls. Thousands of shoes clattered over cobblestones glistening in the rain and people leant from cab windows. A coach and four stuck between an advertising vehicle and an upholsterer’s cart managed to break free, spraying the passers-by with dirty water from the gutter.
    The façade of L’Eldorado, lit up in blaze of electricity, held the night at bay. The audience, a mélange of middle-class families, shop girls, workers and students had gathered on the promenade. As he approached the ticket office, Victor spotted Stanislas and Blanche de Cambrésis – he tall and potbellied in a tailcoat, she larger than life in her furs – who