Bodies from the Library 5, page 26
In the 1950s Montgomery made several efforts to complete a novel, variously called Timor Mortis and Judgement at Paris, but he found the convolutions of the plot, involving the partial dismemberment of a beauty queen and impersonation, too complicated to resolve. After multiple false starts, he abandoned the idea of writing more novels, preferring instead to focus on his music, which was proving far more rewarding financially. He did continue to write, albeit only short stories, the majority of which appeared in the London Evening Standard, and he appeared from time to time on BBC radio programmes. He also reviewed books for the Sunday Times and compiled anthologies of science fiction, which he felt had ‘taken over the rationalism of the puzzle story where crime fiction has abandoned it’.
Montgomery suffered from ill health—the legacy of years of smoking and drinking to excess were catching up with him. To make matters considerably worse, his right hand became crippled by Dupuytren’s contracture, affecting his ability to play and therefore his ability to compose. The end was in sight, and shortly before his death Montgomery married his long-time secretary and nurse, Ann Clements. With her encouragement, he produced a final case for Gervase Fen, The Glimpses of the Moon (1977), a novel which owes a debt to Gladys Mitchell, who, along with Carr and Michael Innes, had been Montgomery’s favourite writers. While the novel had been extrapolated from the debris of the two books he had begun in the 1950s, its unevenness gives the impression that more than one person had a hand in the writing.
A year later, on 15 September 1976, Bruce Montgomery died at home of heart failure. In the words of the obituarist for The Times, he ‘could easily have become Britain’s most successful post-war writer of detective stories. He could have made a busy and lucrative career composing film music. His music was agreeable. His books are elegant, literate and funny. He might have done a great deal more, but what he did produce get much pleasure to many people.’
This is the first publication of the undated manuscript ‘The Year and the Day’.
MURDER IN MONTPARNASSE
John Bude
I
CAFÉ VAVIN
The door of Number 44, Rue Delambre slowly opened and a little hunchback emerged from the murky hallway and peered up and down the street. A nearby clock had just struck ten. Beyond the roofs to the north, the night sky glowed with the reflected lights of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and although the year had just moved into September it was hot and airless between the tall houses. Having paused on the doorstep long enough to light a cheroot, the hunchback went back into the darkened passage and reappeared wheeling an invalid chair. To reach the handles of this contraption the little fellow was forced to raise his hands above his head, but by the easy manner in which he manoeuvred the chair it was obvious that he was perfectly used to his job.
Prosper, in fact, had been chaperoning old Pierre Lebrun for nearly ten years. He knew the invalid’s idiosyncrasies so well that they exchanged no more than a dozen words a day. From the moment Lebrun had been worked into his clothes, the day, or rather the night, followed an unbroken routine. Lebrun never rose until seven in the evening and never went to bed until the small hours. He only existed at night. The daytime was something to be got through as quickly as possible and for the most part he dozed the hours away with his strange dreams overlapping his waking thoughts which were even stranger. Prosper looked after him as a nurse looks after a child. The hunchback did the shopping, prepared their scanty meals, cleaned up the single room in which they lived and pushed the wheelchair on its nightly journey to the Café Vavin.
Pierre Lebrun was a curious looking man and, although he was known the length and breadth of Montparnasse, nobody really knew how old he was, or what he looked like, for Lebrun suffered with failing eyesight and for years had looked upon a gloomy world through tinted spectacles. The whole of his left side was paralysed and, for reasons of economy, his own teeth, which had long been extracted, had never been replaced. It gave his cheeks a sunken look and put a downward twist to his mouth. But his lack of molars had ceased to worry Lebrun, for he ate no more than was needed to keep him upright in his wheelchair and looked upon conversation as an unnecessary luxury. Yet for all his dour, uncompromising, melancholic personality, the habitués of the Montparnasse cafés had a real affection for this broken-down bit of humanity. They knew his tragedy and were sorry for him.
Absinthe was the poison which had undermined his moral and physical health. And when the Government stepped in and made the sale of absinthe illegal, Lebrun, like thousands of others, became a Pernod fiend.
Two years before this particular September night he had attempted to commit suicide by slipping a dose of arsenic into his Pernod. Only the quick-wittedness of Monsieur Bonnard, the proprietor of the Café Vavin, had saved him from a very uncomfortable death. Thereafter Prosper kept a watch on his master and went through his pockets every night before they set out on their little pilgrimage.
Proceeding rapidly down the Rue Delambre, they turned into the blazing river of the Boulevard Montparnasse. Prosper was forced to peer round the side of the wheelchair in order to steer it through the crowd of idiots which drifted ceaselessly up and down the broad pavements. They passed the Dôme and the Coupole and eventually came abreast of the Café Vavin. Lebrun’s table was never occupied. He had long ago staked his claim in the corner under the glass screen, where Prosper could park his wheelchair without it being in the way.
Several people nodded or waved a hand as the couple moved up between the tables. Leaving the hunchback to bow his grotesque acknowledgments from side to side, Lebrun made no sign. The chair was wheeled up to the table and Monsieur Bonnard himself came forward and flicked a napkin under the old man’s nose.
‘Good evening, M’sieur. Henri! M’sieur Lebrun is waiting for his Pernod. Vite! Vite! You will pardon any delay, but our old clients are returning from their holidays and each night we grow more crowded. But it is good to see the familiar faces back again.’
Lebrun nodded.
‘M’sieur Blake is back,’ he croaked in a barely audible voice. ‘I see him there under his usual box-tree.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘He did not treat that little girl at all well. You remember Madeleine? Ah—she was a beauty! He was cruel to her.’
Lebrun turned slightly and looked through his black glasses at the hunchback, who was standing beside the chair picking his teeth.
‘Dismiss, Prosper!’
The hunchback grinned, saluted, slunk off among the tables and disappeared up the boulevard to his favourite bistro. There he would stay until the early hours drinking bock and playing dominoes, until the spirit moved him to collect his master and return him to the Rue Delambre. Pierre was never impatient. After all—wasn’t he Emperor of the Café Vavin? He had sat at his corner table when most of the faces round him had been buried in school-books. He remembered the first day when Noel Blake, the English painter, had sat beneath the third box-tree from the right. He remembered the April night, when the braziers had been glowing … the night when little Picôt had brought the news of Madeleine’s suicide. Only an hour before, close to the Pont d’Austerlitz, Picôt had seen the gendarmes fishing the dripping figure out of the Seine. Blake had not shown up for many nights after that and the rumour was adrift that the little model had taken her life because of the Englishman. It made Lebrun very angry because he knew that Madeleine had been Blake’s mistress and he still had enough moral integrity to realise that a man who discards a mistress when she is in love with him is not exactly a bon garçon. Madeleine had given up everything for her Englishman. She had even refused to sit for any other painter because she believed Blake would be jealous. She had been the mistress of other artists before, but she had never been in love until she met Noel Blake. Old Lebrun sighed. Was it yesterday or years ago that little Picôt had run white-faced to the café? Now the lovely Madeleine was merely a memory, another legend drifting up and down the boulevard like a ghost.
Prosper leant against the zinc of his favourite bistro in the Rue de la Gaîté and chatted with the blue-chinned proprietor. He was not drunk, just happy and benevolent. Suddenly the big kitchen clock above the rows of multi-coloured bottles whirred frantically and struck three. Prosper set down his empty glass, settled his billet and solemnly shook hands with Jean Dancourt as if setting off on a very long journey. Then with a quick bow or two to the few habitués still seated in the tiny café, he passed out into the street.
There were few people about as the hunchback sidled along the shuttered walls of the houses and crossed the Boulevard Edgar Quinet, but just as he was about to turn into the Boulevard Montparnasse a figure detached itself from a shadowy doorway and caught him by the arm. Prosper stopped dead and began to tremble. The man’s face was hidden beneath a broad-brimmed hat and it was not until the figure spoke that the hunchback recognised his companion. He let out a sigh of relief.
‘I am sorry. M’sieur. In the dark I did not recognise. And how should I know—?’
‘Don’t worry about that. I’ve been waiting to see you—on your own. Understand, Prosper? You can spare me a few minutes, eh?’
The hunchback chuckled thickly.
‘I do not think the master will worry his head off if I do not collect him before dawn. You know him, M’sieur?’
‘Quite. Well, we can’t talk here. Follow me to Rue Auguste Comte—the house with the yellow shutters—the second floor studios. I have friends there who wish to meet you. A little business discussion, my good fellow. But I think it would be best if we don’t arrive together. You must remain some hundred metres behind me. You will find the street door open. I will be waiting for you at the top of the stairs.’
‘Very good, M’sieur.’
‘And Prosper.’
‘Yes, M’sieur?’
‘I must warn you that your silence over this meeting is essential. A single word to your master or anybody else and—’
The tall, thin figure made a significant gesture, the import of which the hunchback did not fail to understand. Some ten minutes later the couple were reunited at the head of the stairs which led up from the level of the Rue Auguste Comte.
Only a few belated drinkers drowsed at the tables of the Café Vavin. Lebrun was fast asleep with his face hanging down in the folds of his big, black coat and his incongruous képi, which had once seen service in the Foreign Legion, comically askew on his head. A yawning waiter lounged in the doorway of the restaurant, idly turning the pages of a week-old pictorial. Under his special bay-tree Noel Blake stared owlishly at the pile of saucers which served as a tally for the drinks he had knocked back during the course of the evening. A half-empty glass of Cinzano and soda-water, in which floated a lump of ice, stood ready at his elbow. He was thirty-six but any man surprising him at that moment would have allowed him another twenty years and wagered on his good judgment! With his ragged black beard, his brightly patterned ‘sportings’ and his small, black béret, Blake looked more French than a Frenchman. He had not set foot in England for fifteen years.
Summoning the waiter, he paid his bill, lit a cigarette and wandered off slowly down the deserted boulevard. Some few hundred yards along he turned right into the Rue Campagne-Première and presently, drawing level with a wrought-iron gate, drew out a key and let himself into the courtyard of the Ateliers Daubigny. His own studio lay directly ahead through a little arched passage, the entrance flanked by two badly-chipped Tritons blowing on conch-shells. Two or three steps led up from the passage to the level of his studio-door. He went in and switched on the lights.
II
MURDER IN MONTPARNASSE
It was on September 10th that a strange phenomenon was noticed at the Café Vavin. Ten o’clock, eleven, twelve—the hours struck—and the table of Monsieur Pierre Lebrun remained unoccupied! It was something that had not happened for years during the warmer months. Bonnard was bombarded with enquiries as the tables filled and his clients noticed the vacant space under the glass-screen.
‘Oh, but it is nothing to worry about, messieurs. M’sieur Lebrun is not ill. It is an unexpected visit he is paying to the country.’
‘But Lebrun said nothing about it himself when I spoke to him last night,’ objected M. Mabille. ‘It is curious that he should fail to let us know of such an important event. Why, for all the years that I have known him, I have never known him to leave Montparnasse, let alone Paris. We can only hope that he will get his Pernod bottle wherever he may be! Without it I think he would have nothing to live for.’
‘That’s true enough,’ broke in a fresh voice from a nearby table. ‘Several times I have stopped to chat with Lebrun and each time he has spoken of his unhappiness. “Why did they not let me die before?” That’s what he asked me. He holds you responsible for that failure, Bonnard. You were only just in time.’
The others nodded. Ever since the night when Lebrun had put arsenic in his Pernod, the Café Vavin had anticipated his suicide. They put down his continued existence in a harsh and ungenerous world to the hunchback’s unfailing watchfulness.
And then, ten days later, on the night of September 20th, old Lebrun suddenly reappeared. It was nearing midnight when Prosper wheeled his master into the Café Vavin. Lebrun seemed to be asleep and when Bonnard came forward, beaming with delight, to welcome back his oldest customer, the hunchback raised a finger to his lips and quickly shook his head.
‘Pardon, M’sieur—but the journey. Only late this evening we arrived in the Rue Delambre. The master is worn out with so much excitement. I insist that he go to bed. But no—he is as obstinate as a she-mule. “Prosper—we will hold court at the Café Vavin tonight,” he said, “Or I will get another fool to take your place.” So you see, M’sieur, I get him into the chair and now he is fast asleep.’
‘Well, my friend, he is perfectly safe with us. Henri—a Pernod in case M’sieur Lebrun should wake. That is all right, Prosper. See that M’sieur’s cloak is wrapped well around him. Even in his corner it is a little chilly in this wind.’
As Prosper wrapped the cloak closer round his master’s huddled body, Henri whisked forward his tray and set the glass on the table. Then with a bow to the proprietor, the hunchback, buttoning his own ill-fitting coat, passed out into the windy funnel of the boulevard.
Prosper quickened his step until he reached the Boulevard Edgar Quinet. A group of three men stood talking in a doorway and, as the hunchback drew level, he caught the eye of the man facing him and nodded. The other two men did not turn their heads but continued earnestly with the discussion. As soon as Prosper was out of sight, the group broke up suddenly and melted away in different directions. An observant onlooker would have noticed a certain hurried anxiety in their walk. They seemed to huddle into the upturned collars of their coats. For all their seeming disinterest in each other’s destinations, it was curious that this trio, some three-quarters of an hour later, should be pacing the platforms of the Gare du Nord. No sign of recognition passed between them. They merely prowled up and down with their noses in their newspapers like all impatient travellers who find they have time to kill.
Prosper did not stay long at the bistro in the Rue de la Gaîté. Just long enough for a couple of demis and a talk with the proprietor about his stay in the country. Dancourt enquired which district he had visited.
‘Perhaps,’ said the proprietor in a wistful voice, ‘it was my own beloved Burgundy? I was born there in Dijon, but I have not been out of Paris for forty years. Except, of course, for the war.’
‘You do not know Normandy?’ enquired Prosper.
‘No, mon ami.’
‘It was there that we stayed,’ said Prosper promptly. ‘In a little village. It was so small that I do not even remember if it had a name. It had a bistro. But it was no good. In Normandy they don’t understand the art of drinking as they do in Paris.’
Presently, Prosper glanced at the clock. Twelve-thirty. It was time he returned to the Café Vavin.
Only a handful of customers remained in the café, although Bonnard himself had not yet retired to his bed. The hunchback’s glance sped swiftly to the figure seated in the wheelchair. It looked as if Lebrun had not yet awakened, for an untouched glass of Pernod still stood at his elbow, and his face was still half-sunk in the folds of his voluminous cloak.
Bonnard made a gesture towards Prosper’s master and shrugged his shoulders. Prosper nodded.
‘It is as I thought, M’sieur. He is exhausted. He would have done better to have stayed on his couch.’
‘He has not raised an eyelid since he arrived,’ said Bonnard. ‘But I will leave the drink in case he should wake. I am sorry not to have greeted your master on his return. Tell him from me, when he wakes, that Monsieur Bonnard offers his felicitations.’
Prosper bowed and hitched himself up like a child on to a chair which he had drawn up beside Lebrun’s table. Bonnard went into the restaurant, above which he lived with his family. Henri dozed at the cash-desk. The few customers murmured sleepily over their final drinks in a far corner of the café.
Some twenty minutes later the Café Vavin was deserted save for Prosper, his master and the nodding Henri. The hunchback rose stealthily, crossed to the restaurant entrance and glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes past one. Then, on tip-toe, he returned to his seat at Lebrun’s table and called for Henri. The waiter awoke with a start, snatched up his napkin, flung it over his arm and hurried out on to the pavement. Instinctively he glanced at Lebrun’s glass and was surprised to see it half-empty.
