Duke Elric - Michael Moorcock [101]
The French detective acknowledged this compliment with a small, self-deprecating shrug.
Taffy, taller than the others, murmured his own discreet appreciation.
“I gather, Dr. Sinclair, that you are recently back from the Republic of Texas?” Lapointe courteously acknowledged the pathologist, whose expertise was internationally famous.
“Indeed.” Sinclair removed his wide panama and wiped his glistening head with à large Voysey-patterned Liberty's handkerchief, which seemed an uncharacteristic part of his otherwise muted wardrobe. Save for his taste in haberdashery, no-one would have guessed that during his time at Oxford he had been a leading light in the post-PreRaphaelite revival and that women had swooned over his massive head of hair and melancholy features almost as much as they had over his poetry. Like his friend and colleague, he wore a cream-coloured linen suit, but whereas Begg's tie was a rather flamboyant bow, Sinclair's neck was adorned by his old school colours. Indeed his tie was identical to LeBec's. The two had been contemporaries at Blackfriars School and later had attended the Sorbonne before LeBec, eldest son of a somewhat infamous Aquilonian house, entered the service of the Quai D'Orsay and Sinclair, after a spell in the army, decided to follow his father into medicine and the civil service.
“You are familiar with the shopping arcades which radiate off the Place de l'Opera?” asked Lapointe once they were strolling down a broad avenue of chestnut trees towards the gardens’ rue Guynemer entrance. “And you are aware, I am sure, of the reputation the area has at night, where assignations of the heart are pursued, and men and women of a certain inclination are said to come together.”
“I have read something of the place,” said Begg, while Taffy nodded gravely.
“These arcades are the most complex in Paris, of course, and extend into and beneath the surrounding buildings, in turn becoming a warren of corridors and suites of chambers connected to the catacombs. They have never been fully mapped. It is said that some poor devils have been lost there for eternity, cursed to wander forever beneath the city.”
Begg smiled. “I am familiar with Smith's Kitchen in London, which is similarly configured. I know the stories of the arcades, yes. How fanciful they are, I have yet to judge. I know, too, that they were spared destruction by Haussmann, when he was building the boulevards of Paris for Louis Napoleon, because the emperor himself wished to preserve his own somewhat lavish pied-de-terre where he maintained the notorious Comtesse de Gavray.”
“Exactly, my friend. Whose favours he was said to share with Balzac the Younger. I gather there was some scandal. Didn't Balzac denounce her as a German spy?”
“In 1876. Yes. It was the end of her career. She fled to Berlin and finished her days in penury. Strangely this present case has echoes of that one.”
As he reached the little glass and wrought-iron café across from the Theatre du Marionettes, Lapointe paused. “The coffee here isn't too bad, and I see there is a table just over there where we are unlikely to be disturbed.”
With the acquiescence of the others, Lapointe let them seat themselves at the dark-green metal table and signaled for a serviteur, who came immediately, recognizing a regular customer. A brief exchange followed. Typically, the Englishmen ordered café crème, and the Frenchmen took theirs espresso. They sat in silence for a little while, admiring the merry-go-round with its vividly painted horses rising and falling in comforting regularity, circling to the tune of a complex steam-driven fairground calliope, as excited little boys and girls waved to waiting parents. The puppet theatre was yet to open and many of the children, Begg knew, would disappear into its darkness soon enough to witness the traditional bloody escapades of Guignol which had entertained French children for the past century or more.
It delighted Begg to see that the same diversions which he had enjoyed as a boy were equally pleasing