Hugger-Mugger in the Louvre (27 page)

“All right, if you say so,” said Dr. Toudoux, reluctantly. “I'd much rather run him through, no matter about his social standing.”

“No telling what might happen,” said Homer. “Goodbye. I'll call you later. And please don't tell anyone else, at least until tomorrow, about the skewered heart. I'll notify Frémont in private, just to cover the law.”

The receiver had scarcely been balanced on the hook when the phone rang again. That time a female voice, with a Russian accent, introduced its owner as Sofia Alexandrovna Dargomyzshkov, speaking from the Restaurant Sérieux, at Luneville-sur-Seine, in behalf of her cousin Lvov and a big man named Hjalmar. Sofia repeated, word for word, the conversation the painter had overheard between Dr. Truc and Madame de la Rose d'Antan, and could not withhold her indignant comment. She could not believe it of the Marchioness. It was horrible that a gentle high-born lady should attach herself to an oily crook and thief and throw her fortune at him, even to get out of a madhouse. Perhaps the poor woman, after five years of torture, had actually lost her mind, the nurse suggested.

Another voice broke in on the line. “Monsieur Evans,” said the voice of The Singe. “Oh, the line's busy. Excuse me.”

“Don't hang up,” Evans said, anxiously. “I was talking with Luneville and have nothing more to say.”

Sofia hung up the receiver, and The Singe carried on.

“Could I see you for a few minutes? It's important,” he said.

“Are you in Paris?” Homer asked.

“Yes.”

“I'll meet you in an hour, at the Hotel Murphy et du Danube Bleu,” Evans said.

“Much obliged,” said The Singe.

Evans went back to his bedside and pulled an ornamental cord that set a small American flag fluttering outside his window. That was the signal for his barber, Henri Duplessis, to come over and shave him. It had seldom flown before mid-day, but the barber happened to see it and arrived with his implements soon afterward. While Homer was in the needle-bath, he had Duplessis telephone to Miriam, asking her to meet him at the Dôme for breakfast in half an hour. Sleep and the short walk from the
rue
Vavin had restored the color in her cheeks, for during roundups and wars with the sheep men she had grown accustomed to snatching a few hours of rest, often with only the sage brush for a mattress and the stars for a canopy overhead. Nevertheless, she approached Homer somewhat warily, for she had reflected that if he had the power to manipulate her thoughts he probably could read them, and would have figured out how she had dragged him into the complicated case that was beginning to look so black for old Lazare. His warm greeting dispelled her uneasiness instantly.

“I have news from all quarters,” he said. “My modest establishment, formerly obscure and tranquil, has become practically a telephone exchange. I shall have the instrument removed just as soon as this case is over.” Then he told her about the scene on the rustic bench beneath the apple tree beside a mossy path that had uncovered the asylum romance of the ages, the hole in the Marquis' heart that had been made with a steady hand by a party five feet seven inches tall, and lastly, about the S.O.S. from The Singe. That seemed to please Homer Evans more than all the information he had received.

“I want you to meet The Singe,” Evans said. “I've taken quite a fancy to the fellow. One meets so few people, you know, whose brains work well, in an orderly way, and whose nerves are functioning properly. He's a good-looking chap, blue eyes, six feet tall . . .”

“He might have stooped five inches,” said Miriam, more interested in finding a defense for Lazare than in the gang leader Homer liked so much. She wasn't jealous of his men friends, but her experience thus far had taught her to distrust the St. Julien Rollers.

Evans enjoyed a leisurely breakfast, then led Miriam to a taxi and they set out for the
place
de la Contrescarpe. The Singe was chatting easily with Bridgette Murphy, who had a weakness for strong men with cold blue eyes. He acknowledged the introduction to Miriam with a flicker of surprise on his face, pardonable when it is remembered that she had ended the careers, here below, of a round half dozen of his gangsters. He had expected something sterner than the rosy-cheeked clear-eyed young girl who, except for her rather sturdy handclasp and the style of her shoes, was as feminine as any maiden in his native Normandie.

Miriam was left to talk with Bridgette while the two men retired to an adjacent room. Once alone with Homer, the broad freckled face of The Singe showed some embarrassment.

“It was cheeky to call you,” he began.

“Not at all. I'm glad to hear from you,” Evans said.

“As a matter of fact, perhaps I can do you a favor,” The Singe continued. “You've been looking for a little painting . . .”

“Ah,
The Pansy,”
Evans said surprised. Then the Marquis must have delivered it, after all, he thought. How could he have delivered it, three days or so after his death? The painting was in the Louvre until Tuesday afternoon.

“It's the one the papers made such a row about not long ago. I can lay my hands on it, if that will do you any good,” The Singe continued.

Homer smiled in his most winning way. “Monsieur,” he said, facing the stalwart Norman squarely. “Let us be frank. Why not say that you have the painting, and want to be rid of it.”

The Singe grinned appreciatively. “I have to get used to talking with a sensible guy like you,” he said. “Most people can't stand the truth. It rattles 'em. You have to beat around the bush . . .”

“Exactly,” Evans agreed. “Now I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take the painting, and never disclose where I got it, if you'll tell me how you came by it.”

“I didn't steal it,” The Singe said. “I wouldn't be stupid enough for that. Might as well steal Notre Dame.”

“I'm sure of that. And I'm not interested in any deals you might have made, in which the painting was involved. I want to know simply how it came into your hands just now.”

The Singe struggled with a look of annoyance, not directed at Evans, but some unknown person or persons not then in the room. “My gang isn't organized yet,” he said.

“I've noticed,” Evans said, but not unkindly.

“I may as well come out with it. One of my boys, a sap called Godo the Whack, took it on himself to get the Watteau from somewhere where a certain party had cached it . . .”

Homer laughed good-naturedly. “Which French philosopher was it who said,
‘Surtout, pas de zêle?'
(Above all, no zeal).”

“Talleyrand, God blast it all,” muttered The Singe.

“Well,” said Evans. “Send me the painting, carefully wrapped. Have your messenger leave it on the table in my outer hallway, any time at all. No one will bother him. If the concierge asks questions, tell her the package is for me . . . And, by the way, if by any chance you should be tempted to kidnap a fellow named K. Parker Seldon, alias K. S. Porker, or Porcière, lay off, like a good fellow. The man's particularly hot. To make up any loss of money such forebearance would entail, why not buy a block of American Jar and Bottle stock while it's down in the cellar.”

“No, thanks,” replied The Singe. “I've had temptations before to play the market. It's just as risky as my game, and if you win you never know where the money comes from. I appreciate the tip, though. Well. So long.”

As The Singe, after bidding
au revoir
to Bridgette Murphy, was passing out the doorway, the Chief of Detectives Frémont came down the stairs, followed by Hydrangea, in a natty street costume of Nile green with a fluffy summer fur almost white in color, to set off her ebony skin.

“Who was that chap?” the Chief inquired, who had got used to having Evans turn up at all times and places.

“Oh, someone you've never seen,” answered Homer, nonchalantly. Again he excused himself from the others and led Frémont into the room where his erstwhile captor had been standing just a minute before. There Homer told the Chief about the Marquis' diminutive stab wound, and hesitantly added the items about the height of the murderer and the steady hand.

“Don't be obstinate,” Frémont said, while Evans was still debating with himself as to whether to mention the pickled innards of two other victims in Lazare's little shop. “Lazare's our man, without a doubt,” the Chief continued. “I'm as sorry as you are, but what can we do?”

“My friends,” Evans said. “I warned you last night that if you put your money on Lazare your choice would not be in at the finish.”

“But the motive, the pickled parts, the collapse in the Louvre, his lifelong experience in stuffing things . . .”

“That will all be explained when the murderer is found,” Homer said.

The Chief looked more than doubtful. Hydrangea, however, had made up her mind. “Bertram,” she said, severely. “Don't you do nothin' Mistah Evans says not to do. You'll go get yourself in trouble.”

Frémont sighed. “I may as well join the prefect on his fishing trip,” he said.

At that Hydrangea brightened. “Now you're talkin',” she said, with a gleaming smile. “You better jus' let Mistah Evans handle his case his own way, an' show me a river where I can catch some croakers.”

As the Chief and his sweetheart strolled down the hill toward the Pantheon, it looked from behind as if he were having a hard time explaining just why such an excursion was not feasible.

Evans and Miriam were not long in descending the hill, where in the
rue
des Ecoles they found a taxi.

“No. 12
place
Dauphine,” Evans said to the driver, and to Miriam: “We've got several calls to make this morning.”

When the door of Professor de la Poussière's apartment was opened softly by his charming wife, Evans apologized for calling at such an hour. The professor was asleep, having worked on his book about Tout-or-Nada all night, but Homer, having learned from Dr. Toudoux that Hélène de la Poussière and the Marchioness de la Rose d'Antan had been schoolmates in the same convent, did not seek enlightenment concerning Egypt, but Madame's recollections of her unfortunate friend.

“I have never thanked you properly for rescuing my husband,” Madame de la Poussière began.

“It was a pleasure,” said Evans. “And I shall ask but one reward, namely, that when this case is over your husband shall forget Egyptology for a while and take you on a trip to New York. It's time you both saw the modern world, for purposes of comparison.”

Her gratitude was so touching that Miriam placed an arm around the older woman's shoulders. On the subject of the Marchioness, it was not difficult to get Helene to talk.

“Was she normal, like other girls, I mean, in the convent?” Evans asked.

“She was more sensitive than most of us,” Madame said, sadly. “At times more given to day dreams, and always more intelligent. The sisters were troubled by her thirst for information and her gift for logic. I am sure the restricted nature of our life there irked Eugenie more than she let it be known. To me and a few other intimates she said she would marry the moment she was released from school, that she would see the world for herself and learn of its freedom and the joys of privacy and solitude. Her nature was contradictory; in a way, she was finer than her classmates, more responsive, and at the same time more determined and capable of higher initiative.”

“She was rich?”

“Very rich.”

“And her dot? Do you know anything about the arrangements?”

“She never mentioned them, even to me. You see, she had never known about money matters and her parents, ultra-conservative and pious, liked to think of her as feminine and innocent. But the marriage contract . . . It must be on record . . .”

“Many thanks,” Evans said.

Madame de la Poussière leaned forward and for once her eagerness showed through her remarkable restraint. “Monsieur Evans, I trust you. You have done for us what never can be forgotten. If you could help that unfortunate woman, if you could be instrumental in saving for her the last years of a cruelly thwarted life . . .”

Miriam could contain herself no longer. “You will, Homer?” she asked breathlessly. “You won't let her stay in that terrible place?”

“I will do what I can,” Homer said. “But tell me, madame. Was her mind unsettled? And what led up to her incarceration?”

“The Marquis,” Madame de la Poussière said bitterly. “He hated women . . . I don't mean that there has been any scandal, in the obvious way. But he has always been surrounded by men, who, like himself, thought of our sex as distasteful, as property, one might say. He married Eugenie believing she was submissive and inconsequential, and was enraged when he found she had a will of her own and a faculty of seeing through his subterfuge. I tried to keep up our friendship, but he made it impossible. After she was sent to that institution, I made repeated attempts to visit her and always was dissuaded, on the ground that my presence would aggravate her condition. I wrote letters, and received no replies. No doubt she never saw them. The doctors who testified that she was ill and irresponsible were both cronies of the Marquis, the judge was a bachelor and in his dotage. Her parents were dead!”

“Then you've never seen her in the Sanitorium Sens Unique?” Evans asked.

“Once I gained admission there,” said Madame de la Poussière. “For several days and nights I had been thinking about her, and seeing her in my dreams . . . Two years ago, I think it was. To impress the doctor in charge, I got a letter from my lawyer, Maitre Francois Ronton . . .”

“Oh, he's my lawyer, too,” said Miriam, relieved that she belonged to such a respectable clientele.

“Eugénie was especially troubled about her clothes,” the professor's wife continued. “The beastly Marquis had sent her only heirlooms his own mother had worn, outmoded dresses, hats, shoes and even underclothes he had kept in mothballs in the attic since the old Marchioness had died. To be dressed so ridiculously preyed on Eugénie's mind and the other patients looked at her askance. I promised to send what she needed, and did so . . .