The Crime of My Life, page 20
The two men, one behind the other, turned to the left. The third building just ahead of them was the Café de la Paix, with its bright lights and comforting warmth. The regular customers were at their tables and Firmin, the waiter, was watching them play cards. Monsieur Labbé took off his overcoat and shook it, and Firmin hung it on the rack. When Kachoudas came in no one helped him off with his raincoat. Naturally, for he was only Kachoudas. The card players and those who were looking on at their game shook the haberdasher’s hand, and he sat down just behind the doctor. They gave a curt nod, or perhaps no sign of recognition at all, to Kachoudas who could find no better place to sit than right up against the stove. As a result steam began to rise from his trousers.
The steaming wet trousers led the little tailor to make his discovery. He looked down at them and said to himself that because the cloth was not of very good quality they would probably shrink again. Then, with a professional eye, he examined Monsieur Labbé’s trousers to see if their material was better. Of course he did not make Monsieur Labbé’s suits. None of the highly respectable people who frequented the café at this hour came to him for their clothes. At most they gave him linings or patchwork to do.
There was sawdust on the floor and wet feet had left irregular marks in it and clumps of mud here and there. Monsieur Labbé was wearing expensive shoes and dark gray, almost black, trousers. On the cuff of his left trouser leg there was a tiny spot of white. If Kachoudas had not been a tailor he would probably never have noticed it. He thought right away that it must be a thread, because tailors are given to pulling threads out. If he had not been such a humble little tailor he would probably not have leaned over to pick it off.
The haberdasher noticed his gesture with some surprise. Kachoudas seized the white spot, which had slid down into the cuff, and it turned out to be not a thread but a scrap of paper.
“Excuse me,” he murmured.
The Kachoudases were always excusing themselves. Centuries ago, when they were driven like cattle from Armenia to Smyrna and Syria and other such places, they had acquired this cautious mannerism.
It must be stressed that while Kachoudas was straightening himself up there was not a single thought in his head. Or, to be exact, he thought only: “It isn’t a thread, after all. . .”
He could see the legs and feet of the card players, the cast-iron feet of the marble-topped tables, and Firmin’s white apron. Instead of throwing the scrap of paper on the floor he held it out to the haberdasher, repeating:
“Excuse me. . .”
He felt that he must apologize because the haberdasher might wonder why in the world he had poked about in his trouser cuff.
But just as Monsieur Labbé took the paper, which was hardly bigger than a piece of confetti, Kachoudas suddenly stiffened and a most unpleasant shiver ran across the back of his neck. The worst of it was that the haberdasher and he were looking straight at each other. For a moment they went on staring. No one was paying them any attention; the players were at their cards and the others were watching the game.
Monsieur Labbé was a man who had been fat and then lost a good part of his weight. He was still fairly voluminous, but there was a flabby look about him. His drooping features were generally expressionless, and on this critical occasion they did not flicker. He took the paper, rolled it between his fingers until it was no bigger than a pinhead, and said:
“Thanks, Kachoudas.”
This caused the little tailor any amount of reflection; for days and nights after he asked himself: Was the haberdasher’s voice natural? Ironical? Threatening? Sarcastic?
The tailor trembled and almost dropped the glass that he had picked up in order to keep his self-control. He must not look at Monsieur Labbé. It was too dangerous. It was a question of life and death—if, indeed, Kachoudas could hope to hang on to his life at all. He sat glued to his chair, apparently quite still, but with a feeling as if he were jumping up and down. There were moments when he had to hold himself back from running away as fast as he could go. What would happen if he were to get up and shout:
“This is the man!”
He was hot and cold at the same time. The heat of the stove was burning his skin and yet his teeth were on the point of chattering. All of a sudden he remembered how on the Rue des Prémontrés fear had caused him to follow the haberdasher as closely as he could. This was not the first time he had clung to his shadow, and he had done so only a quarter of an hour before. They had been quite alone in the dark street and now he knew that this was the man! The little tailor wanted to look at him on the sly, but he did not dare. One look might seal his fate.
Above all he must not run his hand over his neck, as he had a violent longing to do, akin to the temptation to scratch a bad itch.
“Another white wine, Firmin.”
A further blunder. Usually he let half an hour go by before ordering a second glass. What should he do? What could he do?
The walls of the Café de la Paix were studded with mirrors, which reflected rising coils of cigarette and pipe smoke. Monsieur Labbé was the only one who smoked cigars and Kachoudas occasionally caught a whiff of them. At the other end of the room, on the right, near the washroom, there was a telephone booth. Under the pretext of going to the toilet, couldn’t he slip into it?
“Hello. . .Police? Your man is here. . .”
What if Monsieur Labbé were to push into the booth behind him? No one would hear, for it was always done quite noiselessly. Not a single one of the six victims had cried out. They were all old women, to be sure. The killer had never attacked anyone but an old woman. That was why the men were so bold and did not hesitate to go out on the streets. But there was no reason why the killer should not break the rule.
“The man you’re after is here. . .Come and get him. . .”
Twenty thousand francs would be coming to him. This was the reward that everyone was trying to win—so many people, indeed, that the police were at their wits’ end with the number of wild clues they were asked to follow. If he had twenty thousand francs. . .But, first of all, who would believe him? He would say:
“It’s the haberdasher!”
And they would reply: “Prove it.”
“I saw two letters. . .”
“What letters?”
“An n and a t.”
He really wasn’t sure about the t!
“Explain exactly what you mean, Kachoudas. . .”
They would talk sternly to him; people always talk sternly to a Kachoudas.
“. . .in the cuff of his trouser. . .Then he rolled it into a tiny ball. . .”
Incidentally, where was that tiny ball now, the ball the size of a pinhead? Just try and find it! Monsieur Labbé might have let it drop on the floor where he could grind it with his heel into the sawdust. Or he might have swallowed it.
What did it prove anyhow? That the haberdasher had cut two letters out of a newspaper? Not even that much. He might have picked up the scrap of paper almost anywhere without even noticing it. And what if he had had a whim to cut the letters out of a newspaper? It was enough to unsettle a much stronger man than the little tailor, to upset any one of the respectable businessmen sitting about him—shopkeepers, an insurance agent, a wine merchant, all well enough off to spend a good part of the afternoon playing cards and to drink several aperitifs every day.
They didn’t know. No one knew except Kachoudas. And the man was aware that Kachoudas knew. . .The little tailor was perspiring as if he had drunk hot grog and taken a powerful dose of aspirin. Had the haberdasher noticed his nervousness? Did he look as if he had caught on to the meaning of the scrap of paper?
How could he think over these critical matters without betraying his thoughts, when the other man was smoking his cigar less than six feet away and he, Kachoudas, was supposed to be watching the card players?
“A white wine, Firmin. . .”
He spoke up quite unintentionally, almost in spite of himself, because his throat was so dry. Three glasses of white wine were too many, more than he had ever drunk at a time except when his children were born. He had eight children now and was waiting for a ninth. No sooner was one born than another seemed to follow. It wasn’t his fault, although every time people looked at him accusingly.
How could anyone kill a man with eight children and a ninth on the way, and probably a tenth after that? Just then someone, the insurance agent, who was dealing out the cards, said:
“Queer, he hasn’t killed an old woman for three days now. . .He must be scared. . .”
There was Kachoudas, knowing what he knew, obliged to listen to this remark without so much as a look at the haberdasher. Then he had a stroke of his usual bad luck. As by dint of a tremendous effort he looked straight ahead of him, he saw Monsieur Labbé’s face in a mirror on the wall. Monsieur Labbé was staring right at him. He was perfectly at ease, but none the less he was staring and it seemed to the little tailor as if there were a slight smile on his lips. He began to wonder if the haberdasher wasn’t going to wink at him, the way he might wink at an accomplice, as if to say:
“A good joke, eh?”
Kachoudas heard his own voice say: “Waiter. . .”
A very poor idea. Three glasses of wine were enough, more than enough, especially as too much made him sick.
“Your order. Monsieur?”
“Oh, nothing. . .thank you. . .”
After all, there was one perfectly reasonable explanation. It was a bit hazy in the little tailor’s mind, but it did hold water. There might be two men instead of one: one of them the killer of old women of whom nothing was known beyond the fact that he had done away with six of them in the last three weeks; the other merely someone who wanted to amuse himself and mystify the town—an eccentric, perhaps, who sent the famous communications addressed to the Courrier de la Loire made up of single letters cut out of newspapers. Why not? Such things have been known to happen. There are people who get strange ideas in their heads where crime is concerned. But if there were two men instead of one, how could the second one, who cut out and pasted up the letters, prophesy what the first one would do next?
For at least three of the murders had been announced ahead of time, all of them exactly the same way. The communications came to the Courrier de la Loire in the mail and usually the words in them had been cut right out of the Courrier itself and carefully stuck one beside the other. For instance:
It was no use to call out a special squad. Another old woman tomorrow.
Some of the communications were longer. It must have taken quite some time to find the right words in the newspaper and fit them together like a puzzle.
Inspector Micou thinks he’s smart just because he came down from Paris. But he’s only a choir-boy. He’s foolish to drink all that brandy; it only makes his nose red.
By the way, didn’t Inspector Micou, whom the Sûreté Nationale had sent to organize the hunt for the killer, stop in every now and then for a drink at the Café de la Paix? The little tailor had seen him there. It was quite true that he liked brandy, and people would question him quite casually.
“Well, then. Inspector?”
“We’ll get him, never fear. Maniacs of his kind are sure to slip up on something. They’re too pleased with themselves and they have to boast of what they’ve done.”
Yes, the haberdasher had been right there when the inspector had spoken these words.
Some fools say it’s cowardice that makes me kill only old women. What if I simply can’t stand old women? I have a right to dislike them, haven’t I? But if they go on with this slander I’ll kill a man, just to please them. A big, strong man, too. It’s all the same to me. That will teach them a lesson!
Kachoudas was small and thin, no bigger than a fifteen-year-old boy.
“You see. Inspector. . .”
The tailor jumped. Inspector Micou had just walked into the café along with Pijolet, the dentist. The inspector was stout and hearty. He turned a chair around and sat astride it opposite the card players.
“Don’t bother to move,” he said to them.
“How’s the hunt going?”
“Getting along, thank you, getting along.”
“Any clues?”
Kachoudas could still see Monsieur Labbé starting at him in the mirror, and he had a new and frightening thought. What if Monsieur Labbé were innocent—innocent of the murders and of writing to the newspaper about them? What if he had got the scrap of paper into his trouser cuff by mere chance, as one sometimes gets a flea?
He must put himself in the other’s place. Kachoudas had leaned over and picked something up. Monsieur Labbé couldn’t know where the scrap of paper had come from. Perhaps the little tailor himself had let it fall and tried to make it disappear on the floor, then nervously picked it up and held it out to his neighbor. Yes, why shouldn’t the haberdasher suspect him just as much as he suspected the haberdasher?
“A white wine. . .”
Never mind! He had drunk too much, but all the same he wanted more. There seemed to him to be more smoke than usual in the café; faces were blurred and the card players’ table faded away into the distance.
Yes, think of that. If Monsieur Labbé suspected him in exactly the same way. . .Would he too set his mind on the twenty thousand francs reward? People said that he was rich, that it was because he didn’t need money that he let his business slide. Otherwise he would clean his windows or even enlarge them, add more lighting, and get in some new stock. He couldn’t hope that people would come to buy the hats in the styles of twenty years past that lay on his dust-covered shelves.
Yes, if he were a miser the twenty thousand francs might be a temptation. He had only to accuse Kachoudas, and most people would believe him. For Kachoudas was just the sort of fellow everyone inclines to distrust. Because he hadn’t been born in the town, or even in the country, and he had a queerly shaped head which he held a little to one side. Because he lived among an ever-increasing brood of children and his wife hardly spoke a word of French.
But what of that? Why should the little tailor attack old women in the street without bothering to steal even their jewels or their handbags? So Kachoudas reasoned to himself, but the next minute he saw that the same argument held good for the haberdasher.
“Why should Monsieur Labbé, after living sixty years as a model citizen, suddenly feel an urge to strangle old women in dark streets?”
The problem was a complicated one. Neither the familiar atmosphere of the Café de la Paix nor the presence of Inspector Micou was reassuring any longer. Let someone merely suggest to Micou that Kachoudas was guilty and Micou would take him at his word. But if it were a question of Monsieur Labbé. . .
He must think it over seriously. It was a question of life and death. Hadn’t the killer announced in the newspaper that he might attack a man next? There was the badly lighted Rue des Prémontrés to walk through, and his shop was just across from that of the haberdasher, who could spy on everything he did. Then there were the twenty thousand francs. Twenty thousand! More than he could earn in six months. . .
“Tell me, Kachoudas. . .”
He felt as if he were coming down to earth from very far away, back among people whose presence he had for several minutes completely forgotten. Because he did not recognize the voice his first impulse was to turn toward the haberdasher, who looked at him as he chewed his cigar. But it was not the haberdasher who had spoken to him, it was the inspector.
“Is it true that you work fast and don’t overcharge?”
In a split second he realized what an unexpected piece of good luck this was, and he almost looked over at Monsieur Labbé to see if he had noticed the relief in his face. Kachoudas would never have dared go to the police. And he would have hesitated to write them a letter, because letters go into the files and one can never tell when they may cause trouble. And now the inspector himself, the representative of the law, had practically offered to come to him.
“When it’s for mourning I can deliver a suit within twenty-four hours,” he said modestly, lowering his eyes.
“Then pretend that I’m going into mourning for the six old women and make me a suit just as fast. I brought hardly anything with me from Paris and the rain has been hard on my clothes. You have some good wool cloth, I hope.”
“The best there is.”
Good Lord! The little tailor’s thoughts were running away with him! Perhaps it was the effect of four glasses of white wine. So much the worse! He ordered a fifth glass, in a more self-assured tone of voice than usual. Something wonderful was going to happen. Instead of going back alone, stricken with fear of Monsieur Labbé at every dark corner, he would get the inspector to go with him, under the pretext of taking his measurements. And once they were in the shop, behind closed doors. . .What a magnificent chance! The reward would be his! Twenty thousand francs! And without the slightest risk!
“If you can come with me for five minutes. . .My place is near by.”
His voice trembled. This was luck of the sort a Kachoudas can’t count on, not after centuries of having been kicked around by his fellowmen and an unkind fate.
“I could take your measurements and have it ready for tomorrow evening at the same time. . .”
How happy he was to get off to such a good start. All his worries were over, and everything was turning out all right, as if this were a fairy story. Men playing cards. . .good old Firmin (everyone looks good at a moment like this) watching the game. . .the haberdasher, whose gaze he sought to avoid. . .the inspector coming. . .they would go out together. . .he would close the door of his shop and no one would hear. . .
“Listen, Inspector, I know who is the killer. . .”
Then his hopes were dashed to the ground. One little sentence spoiled everything.
“I’m not in that much of a hurry, you know. . .”
The inspector wanted to join in the card game and he knew that someone would give him a place as soon as the hand was over.
