The Prisoner of the Riviera Page 7

Sunup and both of us hungover with various excesses, Pierre dropped me at the station. “A fine dinner,” he said. “A fine evening.”

  “If I can come into money, we must do it again. Perhaps at the bike race.”

  “In eight days, then.”

  “How will I find you?”

  “Look for the support cars for our regional team, Southeast France. You’ll see our colors. Allez la Sud-Est!”

  “Allez la Sud-Est!” I repeated.

  He paused as if he wanted to say something more, and perhaps he would have, but the express was called for Nice, Menton, Ventimiglia. I gave him a hug and started for the platform.

  “Francis.”

  I turned for a last look at him, standing straight and handsome, the early sun lightening his thick, curly hair.

  “Be careful,” he called. “Remember our politics are strange, and you are a stranger here.”

  Chapter Seven

  I had a lot to think about in the train. For one thing, there were my brand-new papers and my brand-new name, trifles in my sea of troubles, but easier to obsess about first thing in the morning than armed bully boys. Though I’d never much fancied the name, “Marcel,” I must now think of Proust and make my way through life as Marcel Lepage, furniture refinisher and decorator. I hoped said Marcel could stay clear of the glum, and probably corrupt, Inspector Chardin, who had detained me for reasons that seemed increasingly mysterious.

  Of course, my new cognomen came courtesy of the charming old Chavanels, which led me direct to another source of anxiety, since they might well have had connections to Desmarais during the war. If so, I guessed they would have a much better chance of locating their niece than I ever would, and what their game was with me, I couldn’t begin to guess. Even Pierre, with his splendid back and magnificent legs, was not safe for contemplation. He had told me a good deal but I guessed that he knew more.

  With all these considerations, I was well on my way to radical skepticism by the time we rattled into the belle epoque station at Nice, with its high glass canopy and fine ironwork, so airy, so elegant, so redolent of leisure and light. Being a creature of darkness, myself, I concluded that the faster I located Cybèle Chavanel, got a passport, and left the splendors of the Riviera, the better I’d be.

  Eight a.m. Too early for clubs to be open or nightlife to be awake. I stashed my valise in left luggage and set out in the morning air, perfumed with the smell of the newly washed sidewalks, sea salt, and uncertain drains. My destination was the Hotel Negresco, where the Chavanels’ cousin, assuming there ever was such a person, had worked. As soon as I reached the palm-lined Promenade des Anglais, I spotted the enormous pile, topped by a vast pink Easter egg dome with “Hotel Negresco” in huge letters stretched across the front.

  One look was enough. The doorman, as grand as an admiral, the mile-high windows, the ornate balconies, the splendid plantings, and the superb view of the aquamarine sea told me that unless I broke the bank at Monte Carlo, I wouldn’t pass muster as a guest. Not for the first time, I missed Arnold, who travels with an air of bourgeois rectitude and is always deemed acceptable, even with such as me in tow.

  Fortunately, my rackety early existence in Berlin and Paris taught me a number of useful skills. I made my way to the rear of the establishment where I knew that the cooks would already be well into a long day. Dining room and room service breakfasts would be going up, and that meant dishes coming down—sometimes literally, by the sounds issuing from the kitchen. I reached the doors in time to catch a florid bouquet of French profanity, followed by another crash, shouts, and banging doors. Oblivious to all this, a thin sous-chef with a white toque and a long white apron stood smoking on the step. He looked sallow and overworked, but the light eyes in his long, bony face were shrewd.

  “A busy morning,” I said.

  “Shorthanded as usual. The tourists stay for the summer now, but the hotel lets the extra winter staff go.”

  An opportunity for Monsieur Lepage. “Perhaps you could do with some assistance with the dishes.”

  He shrugged and looked me over. “Work in a kitchen before?”

  “Dishwasher,” I said, which, sadly, was true. “And some catering.” This was not true, unless helping with sandwiches for my wartime ARP post counted.

  “A day or two would be all,” he said. “There will be friends of friends interested.”

  “Ideal. I find myself temporarily embarrassed.” This was Marcel talking. I am almost never embarrassed, but Monsieur Lepage was a different item. “A run of bad luck.”

  “Better temporarily than permanently,” said the sous-chef. He carefully extinguished his cigarette and tucked the butt in his pocket before ushering me into the kitchen, a maelstrom of sweaty line cooks and dishwashers, of white-coated waiters demanding croissants and pots of chocolate and English breakfasts and plates of cheese and fresh fruit. The staff squeezed between racks of clean dishes and of breakfast trays set up and waiting for their entrées; they dodged stoves with huge burners throwing out hellish heat, and ovens, likewise, full of lunch pastries. Cooks were cutting up vegetables, their big knives flashing; others were scaling fish or cutting up beef or preparing chickens or tending the vast stockpots. Behind all this were the massive sinks overflowing with piles of dirty dishes.

  “Marcel,” said my cicerone to the head chef, a fat man with a face like a thundercloud and angry little black eyes buttressed by big jowls the color of uncooked meat.

  I put out my hand, but Marcel Lepage, down on his luck and temporarily embarrassed, was not worthy of such notice—or even of complete sentences. “Get him to the sink. Breaks a dish, see he pays for it. Staff lunch at eleven thirty.”

  With this I was dismissed. The sous-chef, whose name was Gaston, handed me an apron, and I went to work. While a skinny kitchen boy with bad teeth and a broken nose scraped off the crumbs of bread, rolls, and croissants, the slop of egg yolks, the dried fats of bacons and sausages, the squashed remnants of melons and tomatoes, the thick crusts of oatmeal, I plunged the plates and bowls and cups and saucers into a gray, pond-sized water, parboiling my hands and halfway up to my elbows. Monsieur Lepage was going to earn his passport.

  By time for staff lunch, I was wrung out with heat and humidity, as red as the boss, and nearly as shaky as my kitchen boy, whose tendency to let dishes slip had lent excitement to our morning. I was becoming nostalgic for my hitherto despised stint as portrait artiste, when I was seated with the rest and served a respectable stew with a salad, a glass of local red, and a big carafe of water.

  Starvation, happily, was not in my future, but amid the noise of the staff table, I found no chance to talk to Gaston, who I sensed would be my best source. Forget the head chef. The Napoleon of the kitchen was as high-strung as a generalissimo before an invasion. He sure had the touch with food, for even the simple staff meal was delicious, but he was terrifying with underlings. Gaston’s role, besides actual work with knives and spoons and tricky sauces, was to solve what I guessed were frequent problems with the workforce. He was the one who pulled replacements out of his hat and tempered the storms that overcame the great man at the slightest provocation. If anyone remembered Jerome Chavanel, it would be Gaston.

  By late afternoon, our shift was winding down, the Everest of dishes reduced to a humble plateau. I stepped out for a breath of air, my shirt sodden with sweat and dishwater. The lung-catching fumes of Gaulouises Bleu led me to Gaston, who was taking the shade under one of the palm trees.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “I’ve had worse jobs but none hotter.”

  “Better in the winter,” he said, “though you get acclimated.”

  “That would take me a while.”

  “From the north, eh?”

  “That’s right. And it’s funny,” I said sensing an opening, “that I wound up here today. One of my distant relatives worked here for quite
a while. I’d hoped to meet him on this trip, but I learned recently that he had died.”

  “Who was that?” Gaston asked.

  “His name was Jerome Chavanel. I believe that he was a waiter here.”

  “You’re related to Jerome?” Gaston’s expression changed subtly. “Yes, he was in the main dining room—well, it must have been twenty years. Longer than I’ve been here.”

  “He must have been good,” I said.

  “He was good at his job. No one stays at the Negresco, otherwise.”

  “I had hoped to trace another cousin through him, but I’m out of luck unless you know someone in his family.”

  “Who’s the cousin?”

  “A dancer and singer named Cybèle Chavanel. She came south at the end of the war. I thought she might have been in touch with him, since he must have had contacts in the various restaurants and clubs.”

  “Jerome had contacts everywhere,” Gaston said with the faintest hint of disapproval. “And, yes, a young woman did come. That was just before he was killed.”

  “Killed?”

  “Didn’t you know? Jerome Chavanel was murdered.”

  I was uneasy, but Marcel Lepage was horrified. First “Monsieur Renard” shot in London, then “Madame Renard” murdered on the Riviera, followed by the attempt on yours truly, and now this. The old ladies must know how their cousin died and maybe their niece did, too. I wondered if her arrival had precipitated his death.

  “Here in Nice?”

  “Stabbed as he left work.”

  After my near miss the other night, I didn’t like this at all. “Who did it?”

  “The killer was never caught. Well, you can understand, Marcel. Total chaos at the end of the war. Fighting along the Rhine; politicians angling for power. Things got out of hand between the Milice and the Resistance. In all that turmoil,” he concluded, “one death more or less—” He gave a particularly expressive shrug.

  “I would still like to locate his niece. I have a particular interest in genealogy. I know, I know. Even my family finds that eccentric.” Actually, my own family considered me a thorough nuisance and couldn’t wait to see the back of me. Monsieur Lepage, I’d decided, had a more conventional rearing.

  Gaston did something complicated with his wide thin mouth that managed to express doubt and reluctance and distaste all at once. “Such ladies are floaters,” he said. “She started at the Blue Dolphin near the port. She will have moved on, but you might start there. Jerome did claim she had talent.”

  I thanked him and said that I would. I took counsel with one of the other dishwashers about a room, and by the time the sea faded to black and the lights came on along the Promenade des Anglais, I was dressed up in a dinner jacket and off to find Mademoiselle.

  I do like night and going out and drinking and generally carrying on. The ritzy hotels, the ancient port, the mix of fancy money and folk on the make formed a particularly appealing atmosphere, especially when my efforts were all in the interest of duty. That was a novelty, believe me.

  After a bit of wandering, I found the Blue Dolphin, a pit with aspirations to becoming a dive. It had a small stage, a greasy bar, watered beer, and an overweight chanteuse in a red gown who gave me the eye. I winked back and he ran his hands through his wig and launched into “The Man I Love” in heavily accented English. The barman, unfortunately, was less susceptible to my charms. He had one of those broad open faces associated with innocence and simplicity, but somewhere along the line both had curdled for him. His expression was blank in repose and sour when engaged. Nice must be very hard up for publicans if he was employed to peddle drinks. He told me that he was relatively new, and he never remembered “the talent.”

  “This one was young, definitely of the female persuasion, short dark or blond hair. Could dance.” I took out the photo the old ladies had given me. “Cybèle Chavanel. I don’t know her stage name.”

  “You don’t know much,” the barman said.

  I bit back a smart answer and launched into my great interest in genealogy, my disappointing visit so far, the brevity of my stay. I also bought him a cognac. It was the latter that inspired him to study both the photo and a little drawing I had made of Cybèle with light hair.

  “Oh, yes, Justine,” he said after a minute. “Yeah, she could sing. Nice legs, too. Pulled in the Yanks for us for a while.”

  “Do you know where she went? Or if she is still in the area?”

  “She got a gig at one of the fancier clubs. She won’t still be there—they shift the headliner every few weeks, but I think she is in the city.”

  “Justine,” I said. “Just the one name?”

  “Mademoiselle Justine. That’s her stage name.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was more than I’d known earlier. I gave the singer a wave and headed for the glossier clubs around the port and up in the old city. Some had their musical attractions posted, which saved me time but left me thirsty. Others required a drink and a tip for the barman, which was more amusing but emptied my pocket and ate up the evening.

  In my pursuit of Mademoiselle Justine, née Cybèle Chavanel, the violet hours turned to midnight and beyond. I was ready to call it a night when I heard music issuing from a café with a few patrons lingering at the sidewalk tables. I went inside and ordered up a Chablis.

  On a little stage toward the back, a piano player with an ebony face and spidery fingers worked out some complicated chords, while a bass player plucked away half asleep, his face hidden by the brim of a porkpie hat.

  I turned to the barman, gray but still spry at the back end of the evening. “You ever book Mademoiselle Justine?”

  “Funny you should ask. You’re about”—he turned to check the clock behind the bar—“twenty minutes too late. She just finished her last set.”

  “Marcel Lepage,” I said, sticking out my hand. “We’re distant relatives, if this is the right Mademoiselle Justine. I’m down from Rouen. Business trip. I’ve been trying to track down cousins and such for a genealogical chart. Family thinks I’m crazy, but it’s a fun hobby.” I was set to go on, as Monsieur Marcel is quite passionate about his avocation, but I could see that the barman was already retreating behind the noncommittal half smile that he doubtless employed on every bore who leaned against his bar. “Any chance I could send her a message or stop by tomorrow and meet her?”

  “She starts at ten tomorrow night though she might still be in her dressing room.” He leaned down and pressed something under the counter. “I’ll just give her a heads-up. Mademoiselle Justine does not like to be caught in dishabille.”

  I thanked him and tipped him and made my way past the semisomnolent musicians to the corridor that ran past the toilets. The establishment’s offices were dark, but I saw a strip of light underneath the last door. I knocked twice and called, “Mademoiselle Justine?”

  “Entrez.”

  The room was small and cramped with a strong tang of perfume, sweat, and face powder that immediately set me sneezing. “Pardonnez-moi,” I said. My eyes were watering, but I could see that the room was empty. Dressing table strewn with cosmetics, street clothes thrown over a chair, a large coatrack holding several gowns with sequins and ruffles. A variety of shoes on the floor. A bunch of flowers in a big glass vase. The only thing missing was Mademoiselle Justine. I only saw her when I looked into the mirror. She had concealed herself behind the door and now she stepped forward. There she was, the woman from the Villa Mimosa, with the same wide face, good features, alert eyes. She was dark now—the blond hair must have been a wig—and she was wearing a scarlet dressing gown instead of the white capris, but what really drew my eye was her new accessory.

  I’m no expert on handguns, but this one looked large enough and close enough to do serious damage to both Monsieur Lepage and yours truly.

  Chapter Eight

  “Ah, Madame Renard that was,�
�� I said and made a little bow.

  She started and took a step closer. When she exclaimed, “Oh, it’s you!” I guessed that she was seriously nearsighted.

  “Marcel Lepage, at your service. Unarmed.”

  She took the precaution of patting my pockets before motioning for me to sit down on the dressing table stool. “Last time you brought me a package.” She leaned against the doorjamb, revolver in hand.

  “Last time you were expecting me.”

  “No, Monsieur, I was expecting someone unknown.”

  “Now you’re expecting someone dangerous.”

  A moment’s hesitation. “At this hour of the night, one can get difficult visitors.”

  “So I can imagine. But I’m here on a goodwill mission.”

  She laughed and dropped the revolver into the pocket of her dressing gown. “The aunts sent you.”

  “That’s right. They’re worried about you.”

  She agreed that was possible.

  “The deal is this nice new identity and, if I find you, a new passport.”

  She sniffed. “Is this your usual line of work?”

  “Not at all, but I need a passport urgently.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “I was seen leaving the Villa Mimosa. Correction, I am the only person who was seen leaving the villa. Hence I was first a suspect and then a witness.”

  “I can’t be blamed for the neighbors,” she said with a shrug. “They are not responsible for watching the villa.”

  “Highly selective watching, Mademoiselle. I’m guessing that they were afraid of your associates. And now you are, too.”

  “Look, Monsieur, I needed money and I did a job. I waited around the villa for four days before you showed up, played the grieving widow, collected the package. That was it.”

  “And what about Madame Renard? What about her?”

  “She never existed,” Cybèle said airily. “No more than her husband, I’d guess.”

  “Yet someone is dead. Someone like you who was pretending to be Madame Renard.”