Bertie and the Crime of Passion, page 21
“This is his lucky day, then. I never carry sous.”
The man gave me a nod for my generosity. Instead of picking up the paper, he placed a finger on it and slid it across the table toward me. Then he moved on.
“My, you’re honored!” said Bernhardt. “They don’t usually let you keep it.”
“May I look at it now?” said I, unfolding it. And then I frowned.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Not sign language, for sure.” I turned to look for the dumb man, but he had left the café.
A message was inscribed in pencil:
7 rue Alexis
8 p.m.
Claudine Jaume
I handed it to Bernhardt and said, “Where’s the rue Alexis?”
“Across the river.”
“Do you think I should go? It may be a trap.”
“Of course we must go,” she said, slipping smoothly into the plural. “She wants to prove to us that she is innocent.”
“But she isn’t innocent. How did she know we were here? I don’t care for this, Sarah. I don’t like the way it was done. I don’t care for it at all.”
CHAPTER 17
I was deeply suspicious of the message. A strong, almost-supernatural impulse urged me to ignore it. I was hearing another message, the words my own wife had written to me: “I can see dreadful danger . . . Believe me, I fear for your life.” My dear, devoted Alix was speaking to me as passionately as if she was sitting at the table.
Whatever my failings (and I admit to plenty), I am no coward. It wasn’t a blue funk that made me hesitate, it was loyalty to Alix. And there were also practical reasons for caution. There was the knowledge that if I took up Claudine Jaume’s invitation, she would have the advantage over me. Up to now, every action of mine had been my own choice; she couldn’t possibly have predicted where I would go next or what I would discover about her. Now the advantage would swing to her. She had named the time and place.
There was, of course, another consideration. I had been handed a matchless opportunity of catching up with her. To reject it was to throw in the towel.
Bernhardt, seeing me of two minds, said, “If you like, I’ll go and meet her by myself. She doesn’t frighten me in the least.”
Ignoring the barb, I said, “Where exactly is the rue Alexis?”
“Near the Champ-de-Mars, where the Exposition was.”
“We’ll go together. I think there’s time for another cognac first.”
“Dutch courage?”
I preserved a dignified silence while pinching her under the table.
A little after half past seven, we hired a closed coupé. Paris was about its business as gaily as ever in the lighted streets and boulevards, the strains of violin and harmonium from the restaurants and brasseries competing with the clink of harness and the clatter of hooves along the roadways. Beside me, Bernhardt behaved as if we were blithely out for an evening of food and fun like everyone else. Leaning half out of the window, she gave me a commentary on everything outside, mocking the stuffed-bird trimmings on other women’s hats, urging me to sniff the appetizing odors wafting from open doors or to wave to friends she spotted in other carriages.
I was silent, unmoved, a coiled spring.
What was Claudine Jaume’s game? I kept wondering. Why risk a confrontation with me when she knew—she surely knew—I suspected her of murder? And I was at a loss to understand how she had discovered precisely where to reach me with the message—and recruited the dumb man to deliver it. The whole thing was mysterious and extremely unnerving.
Somewhere along the avenue Kléber between the Arc de Triomphe and the Trocadéro Palace, Bernhardt said, “Chin up, Bertie. Even if Claudine did it, which I dispute, I don’t think she’ll kill you.”
“You forget something. I am the only person in Paris who believes she is a murderess. My life is definitely at risk.”
“Then I shall make it very clear that I don’t share your opinion,” said she, unable to take anything seriously that night.
Our carriage swung around the terraces of the Trocadéro and crossed the Pont d’Iéna. I was so preoccupied that I failed even to comment on the ugliness of the Eiffel Tower when it loomed up, fully illuminated and soaring to the stars. We veered left and skirted the Champ-de-Mars for a few minutes before venturing up a short unlighted street.
“You said rue Alexis, monsieur?” our cabman called down.
“Number seven. And be sure to wait for us if you want the fare.”
They were tall tenement buildings. The darkness may have restricted my observation, but it seemed to me that Mademoiselle Jaume’s new address was even less desirable than the last. Most of the houses were boarded up and one end of the street was just a heap of rubble, left over, I guessed, from the Exposition.
“I should have armed myself,” said I.
“To meet a woman with a baby?” said Bernhardt.
“A murderess who shot a man in the back.”
“Allegedly,” said she.
“It’s not a risk that one should take.”
“But she doesn’t have the gun any longer.”
“She is also a poisoner.”
“Don’t drink the coffee, then.”
We got out. Boards had been nailed across the windows of number seven, not just on the ground level but to the roof. It looked most unlike a domestic habitation. The front door was solid wood apart from a small recess halfway down that was protected by an iron grille. I knocked boldly. After some delay, a hatch behind the grille slid open and a pair of dark eyes inspected us.
Stooping, I said, “We are here at the invitation of Mademoiselle Jaume.” I had no intention of announcing our identities, not to a pair of goggling eyes.
The scrutiny continued.
“Jaume,” I repeated. “Mademoiselle Claudine Jaume.”
The hatch closed, the door opened a short way, and I had my first shock of the night. Behind it was a dwarf, a proper dwarf about a foot shorter than Toulouse-Lautrec and with a head too large for his body. He was dressed in a cockaded red turban, white shirt, black suede waistcoat, pink satin pantaloons, white stockings, and red Turkish slippers with pointed, curling toes.
“How many cognacs did I get through?” I muttered to Bernhardt. Then I told the little man, “I think we must be mistaken. We wanted a young lady.”
He piped, “Claudine Jaume?’
“Well, yes.”
Then he beckoned me inside. Naturally, I stepped back to let the lady pass through the door first, but Bernhardt had an extraordinary effect on the dwarf. He raised both hands to bar her entry and jabbered something excitedly in his own language, which was neither Bernhardt’s nor mine.
“The lady is with me,” said I in a civil tone calculated not to excite him more. “We are together.”
He shook his head vigorously and wagged a finger at Bernhardt, who said, “This is utterly absurd.”
“For some occult reason, he doesn’t wish you to enter,” I said superfluously.
“Who the devil is he?” said she.
“By his dimensions, he appears to go with the door,” said I. “The peephole is exactly his height.”
“He can’t be the concierge, can he? Well,” she said, articulating her words as if she was on the stage, “it’s apparent that Sarah Bernhardt is persona non grata here.”
But the dwarf didn’t exactly jump to attention at the sound of Bernhardt’s name. He continued to stand in her way, scowling ferociously.
She said, “You’d better go in without me, Bertie.”
“That’s out of the question.”
She said, “I shall wait in the cab. You go in.”
I was reluctant to leave her outside, for my own convenience as well as hers. I’d counted on her support in extracting the truth from Claudine Jaume. I made one more attempt to communicate our intentions to the dwarf, this time introducing myself as the Prince of Wales and my companion as the celebrated Madame Sarah Bernhardt.
I might as well have said she was Medusa. He shook his head so hard that the turban swiveled.
Sarah told me, “You’re wasting your breath, Bertie. You’ll have to go in alone. If it’s a misunderstanding, you can send for me, but don’t send him. If he wags his little finger at me once more, I’ll pick him up by the seat of his pink satin pants and toss him in the river.” She strutted back to the waiting cab.
I called out to her, “I have an uncommonly nasty feeling about this.”
She retorted, “Oh, get on with it, Bertie! I shan’t wait out here forever.”
The dwarf pulled the door fully open. With a troubled sigh, I stepped inside. He shut out Paris with a thud.
At least the hall was carpeted, which was an improvement on Claudine’s previous address. A miserly light gave me little chance to inspect the interior. It was as much as I could do to follow the bobbing turban along a passage that eventually led completely through the house, down a couple of steps, and into what looked like a conservatory but turned out to be a glass-sided corridor that evidently connected number seven rue Alexis with another building.
“Where are you taking me?” I demanded without any expectation of being understood.
Of course I was given no answer.
The dwarf opened a door at the end and gestured to me to go ahead. Having begun this bizarre adventure, I was obliged to continue it. Greatly to my surprise, I stepped into a spacious, well-lit octagonal room with a tiled floor and a fountain playing in the center. An ornate wooden screen exquisitely carved in an Ottoman design formed the surround. Four archways were incorporated in the screen. A number of marble benches provided the only furniture. Looking up, I saw that this elegant place was sited under a large cupola painted deep blue and intricately decorated with stars, crescents, and lozenges.
Behind me, the door shut, and to my disquiet, I heard a bolt forced home with vigor by the dwarf on the other side. I was abandoned in this alien place. I stood uncertainly, extremely doubtful now that Claudine Jaume would materialize. I could think of no possible connection between an unmarried mother and this vestibule of what appeared to be a Moorish palace. I had never heard of such a building in Paris. One could only speculate that it was one of the many exotic pavilions put up for the Exposition. I thought they had all been dismantled except Monsieur Eiffel’s enormous offense to good taste, but obviously this place, too, had been reprieved.
The Exposition must be the connection, I thought. Claudine was employed here. Mimi, the demimondaine, had told me of meeting Claudine with Letissier in the Indian Pavilion. Obviously, she had come to know this building while she was working at Champ-de-Mars. I felt a little easier in my mind at having worked this out for myself. That wretched dwarf had undermined my confidence.
Then a naked man walked in.
I had better qualify that. He was wearing sandals. He also carried a towel. Regrettably, he carried it without the slightest concession to decency. He was an unprepossessing sight, too, pink as a flamingo, corpulent, hirsute, and without any attribute that I would have thought worthy of putting so flagrantly on display.
I cleared my throat to attract his attention or he would have walked straight past, I am certain. “Do you speak French, monsieur?”
He hesitated, stared at me as if I were the naked man, gave a Gallic shrug, crossed the floor to the archway opposite, and disappeared from my view.
I am not used to such rudeness.
I followed him. Through the archway on the other side of the screen was a tiled passageway with latticed half doors to a series of cubicles that I took to be changing rooms. The man’s head and torso were visible in the nearest of these. He turned and stared at me over the half door with the expression of a horse reluctant to be saddled.
I said with such deference as I could muster, “You must excuse me. I am a visitor. Do you happen to have seen Mademoiselle Jaume?”
He said in a squawk of outrage, “Mademoiselle? Where?”
“That is my difficulty. I don’t know where. I was brought here.”
“Brought? Who brought you?”
“A Turkish dwarf.”
“Oh?”
“Before that,” I went on, “I received a message, but that needn’t concern you.” I was beginning to sound as confused as I felt.
“A message?” said he dubiously.
“To come here and meet Claudine Jaume.”
“You came to this place to meet a woman? How did she get in?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
He said, “Well, who are you?”
“The Prince of Wales.”
This was the last straw as far as he was concerned. He said firmly, “Just move away from me, will you? I’m sure somebody will come for you.”
Crushed, I gave up. I would be better employed making a tour of the cubicles in search of somebody who would help me. And so it turned out. I had not gone more than a few steps when a figure—a clothed figure—approached from the opposite direction. My rising hopes dived again when I saw what clothes they were. He was dressed like the dwarf in baggy trousers and a turban. However, I could now be reasonably certain of one thing that had gradually been dawning on me: I was in a Turkish bath and this was an attendant. Make of it what you will, reader, and you will probably be as mystified as I was.
Ever the optimist, I said in French, “Good evening, can you help me? I am the Prince of Wales and I was directed here in the expectation of meeting a young lady, Mademoiselle Jaume.”
The attendant smiled, nodded, pushed open the door of the nearest cubicle, and ushered me inside.
“I don’t think you understand,” said I.
He pointed to a towel hanging over the door, as if that explained everything.
“But I haven’t come for a bath.”
He folded his arms in a way that I could easily have taken as menacing. They are muscular fellows, these Turkish bath attendants.
My beleaguered brain struggled to make sense of this pantomime. There had to be some logic to it, some reason why I had been led or lured here. Clearly, I was in the gentlemen’s section of the baths. Perhaps Claudine had sought sanctuary in the ladies’ half—if such a facility existed. I had once been shown a postcard of a French painting in the Louvre of twenty or more ladies in a state of nature disporting themselves in a Turkish bath (presumably in Paris), drinking tea, playing a mandolin, and passing time in other ways I shan’t go into, except to state that it wasn’t the sort of place where a man would have been welcomed. It made me curious how the artist (a man) had obtained permission to set up his canvas. I remembered noticing an unusual feature, and that was that the painting had been circular, giving the impression of a view through a window, or peephole. Knowing mankind’s insatiable curiosity, it would not surprise me to know that there were secret arrangements between the attendants of both sides of the baths. No, I would not abandon hope of meeting Claudine Jaume.
There remained the matter of my clothes. Clearly, I couldn’t walk around a Turkish bath in a silk hat and overcoat. On the other hand, one feels so vulnerable with only a towel for protection. An English gentleman is not comfortable in the buff. In London, I occasionally visit the Jermyn Street Turkish bath, which is conveniently close to my club. There, bathing drawers are de rigueur. The likelihood of obtaining a pair in this place was negligible. The French are shameless in their attitude to the human form.
I came to the reluctant decision to remove all my clothes, reflecting, as I stepped out of my trousers, that the dwarf, after all, had acted properly to exclude Sarah Bernhardt from this baring of the flesh. I’m not coy where Sarah is concerned and I can’t believe she would object to parading au naturel, but who could say what sights lurked in the inner sanctum of the baths?
Taking care to tuck the towel securely around my middle, I slipped my feet into the sandals provided. Only then did my attendant unfold his arms and allow me out of the cubicle.
“Now will I have your cooperation?” said I with a withering stare.
He took a step back and pointed to a set of swing doors, making it patently clear that he would not be coming with me. Wisps of steam were escaping through the slot at the center.
I pushed open the doors and entered a white vault. The heat inside was palpable. The modern Turkish bath is supposed to function with hot, dry air, but they are always full of vapor and it was far from easy to see anything. It took some time before my vision adjusted sufficiently to show me another set of doors ahead, streaming with condensation. The idea is that one progresses through a series of rooms of increasing temperature. This was merely an antechamber. Staunchly, I persevered. The second chamber was so hot that I felt the moisture rolling steadily down my torso. It was necessary to remain some minutes there before even thinking of moving on, so I sat for a while on one of the marble benches provided. No one else was present. If I had come here from choice, I would have endured the sensations in the happy knowledge that I was purifying my blood, protecting myself against scrofulous diseases, gout, sciatica, rheumatism, corpulence, baldness, and ennui. Because it was involuntary, I resented every second of it. I was beginning to suspect that I had made myself a laughingstock. Bernhardt would think this risible if I emerged pink faced to announce that I’d been through a Turkish bath and learned absolutely nothing.
Passing swiftly through another sweltering room, I penetrated to the steam room itself. There, I was obliged to halt. It was the nearest thing to hell that I am ever likely to encounter. I held the door open a moment and the steam rushed past me as if I was in a railway tunnel—traveling outside the train. I couldn’t see much at all. There was no other way through, so I took a deep breath and stepped into this inferno and out by the opposite door as swiftly as possible.
