CHAPTER 37
PARIS
Victor Constant folded the newspaper and placed it on the seat beside him.
Carmen Murder – Police Seek Son!
His eyes narrowed with contempt. ‘The Carmen Murder’ . It offended him, after all the help he had given them, that the gentlemen of the press were so predictable. No two women could be less alike than Marguerite Vernier and Bizet’s impetuous, flawed heroine, in terms of character or temperament, but the opera had seeped into French public consciousness to a distressing degree. All it took for the comparison to be made was a soldier and a knife, and the story was written.
In the space of hours, Du Pont had gone from prime suspect to innocent victim in the columns of the newspapers. At first, the fact that the Prefect had not charged him with the murder aroused their interest and made them cast their literary nets a little wider. Now – thanks in no small part to Constant’s own endeavours – the reporters had Anatole Vernier in their sights. He was not yet quite a suspect, but the fact that his whereabouts were unknown was seen as suspicious. It was said the police were unable to locate either Vernier or his sister to inform them of the tragedy. Would an innocent man be so hard to find?
Indeed, the more Inspector Thouron denied that Vernier himself was a suspect, the more virulent grew the rumours. Vernier’s absence from Paris became, de facto, a presence in the apartment on the night of the murder.
It served Constant well that journalists were lazy. Present them with a tale, neatly wrapped like a parcel, and they would offer it, with little modification, to their readers. The suggestion that they might independently verify the information they had been given or satisfy themselves as to the veracity of the facts they had been fed did not occur.
Despite his hatred for Vernier, Constant was forced to admit that the fool had been clever. Even Constant, with his deep pockets and web of spies and informants, working all night, had at first been unable to discover where Vernier and his sister had gone.
He threw an uninterested glance out of the window as the Marseille Express rattled south through the Parisian suburbs. Constant rarely ventured beyond the banlieue. He disliked the views, the indiscriminate light of the sun or dull grey skies that bleached everything under their broad and ugly gaze. He disliked wild nature. He preferred to conduct his business in the twilight of artificially lit streets, in the semi-darkness of concealed rooms lighted in the old-fashioned way with tallow and wax. He despised fresh air and open spaces. His milieu was the perfumed corridors of theatres filled by girls with feathers and fans, private rooms in private clubs.
In the end, he had unravelled the maze of confusion Vernier had attempted to build around their departure. The neighbours, encouraged by a sou or two, claimed to know nothing definite, but had overheard, remembered or absorbed sufficient fragments of information. Certainly enough for Constant to build a jigsaw of the day of the Verniers’ flight from Paris. The patron of Le Petit Chablisien, a restaurant close to the Vernier apartment in rue de Berlin, had admitted to overhearing a discussion about the medieval city of Carcassonne.
With a purse full of coins, Constant’s manservant had easily tracked down the cabman who had transported them to Saint-Lazare on the Friday morning, then the second fiacre that had taken them thence to the Gare Montparnasse, something he knew the gendarmes of the 8th arrondissement had thus far failed to discover.
It was not much, but it was enough to convince Constant it was worth the cost of the train ticket south. If the Verniers were staying in Carcassonne, that would be easier. With the whore, or without her. He did not know what name she lived under now, only that the name by which he had known her was carved upon the tombstone in the Cimetière de Montmartre. A dead end.
Constant would arrive at Marseille later that day. Tomorrow he would take the coast train from Marseille to Carcassonne and there would install himself, like a spider in the centre of a web, waiting for his prey to come within range.
Sooner or later, people would talk. They always did. Whispers, rumours. The Vernier girl was striking. Amongst the black-haired, coal-eyed, dark-skinned people of the Midi, such white skin, such copper curls would be remembered.
It might take time, but he would find them.
Constant took Vernier’s timepiece from his pocket in his gloved hands. A gold casing with a platinum monogram, it was a distinguished and distinctive watch. It gave him pleasure simply to possess it, to have taken something of Vernier’s.
Tit for tat.
His expression hardened as he pictured her smiling at Vernier, as once she had smiled for him. A sudden image flashed into his tortured mind of her uncovered before his rival’s gaze. And he could not bear it.
To distract himself, Constant reached inside the leather travelling valise for something to help the journey to pass. His hand brushed over the knife, concealed in a thick leather sheath, which had cut the life from Marguerite Vernier. He pulled out The Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm and Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, but found neither to his taste.
He chose again. This time he took out Chiromancy by Robert Fludd.
Another souvenir. It suited his mood perfectly.
