Foreign Bodies Read online

  The expressions on the faces of the policeman and the private detective underwent a series of almost comically synchronized changes: admiration for the boldness Madame de Rouvres had shown, anxiety about the risk she had run, and horror at the thought of the barbaric treatment she might have received.

  Madame de Rouvres’s face, powdered and pampered, was coloured by a retrospective anguish and, it must be said, by the reflection from the salon wallpaper. An irreverent Anglo-Saxon might have described the lady as a ‘dear old thing.’

  Not that she was old. She confessed to being forty. Maybe just a little bit more. Well, scarcely more than fifty.

  She was from the top drawer, of ample charms, and had been extremely seductive around 1910—the same year that her salon had been the most ravishing example of Louis XVI, thanks to a happy choice of furnishings.

  Alas, the auctioneers had come and gone, and the Aubusson-covered armchairs and the rest of the inlaid rosewood furniture had finished up under the hammer. Only the old pink wallpaper remained as a reminder of the opulent past. And Madame de Rouvres’ features had, alas, also been marked by time, that pitiless auctioneer of beauty. Only the sparkle in the eyes and the carnation-coloured cheeks remained—enhanced by kohl and make-up, it must be admitted.

  ‘So, madame,’ prompted Marcel Fermier, ‘the frightful individual comes at you and knocks you down—.’

  ‘No, detective,’ corrected Madame de Rouvres with an ambivalent pout, ‘he didn’t knock me down! He gagged me and bound me to a chair from the corridor.’

  ‘Then,’ suggested Jean Martin, ‘he went into the green room?’

  ‘No, inspector,’ corrected Madame de Rouvres again, ‘he didn’t go into the green room, but into the dining room, where he helped himself to my silverware. Then he went into the salon where we’re sitting and helped himself to a small clock and two silver chandeliers. After that…’

  Madame de Rouvres got up, moved a screen aside and pulled back a curtain to reveal a small safe. It had been forced open.

  ‘In addition to family papers, this safe contained three thousand francs. The thief took them, naturally.’

  ‘What about your jewels?’

  ‘I don’t keep them here, as a precaution. I imagine safes attract burglars like bears to honey. I keep my valuables in the drawer of a bedside table.’

  ‘Just like Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter,’ murmured Fermier. ‘The best way to hide something is not to hide it.’

  He asked:

  ‘So after he left the salon the thief went into the green room and made off with your jewels?’

  ‘My jewels, thank God, are safe,’ replied Madame de Rouvres, with a deep sigh.

  ‘The thief didn’t go into my bedroom. The fool just poked his head in from the doorway, then left with the clock, the chandeliers, the silverware, and the three thousand francs. I had to wait until eight o’clock in the morning, when my maid arrived, before I was untied and the gag removed.’

  Madame de Rouvres had now retired to the green room, leaving the rest of the apartment to the two men and their investigations.

  ‘It’s completely against all the rules!’ muttered Fermier.

  ‘What?’ said Martin. ‘What’s against all the rules?’

  ‘This break-in! Why didn’t the thief go into the green room?’

  Martin made a vague gesture.

  ‘I don’t see what’s so surprising. The green room had been Louis XV, just as the salon had been Louis XVI. But apart from the divan, the bedside table, and the chairs, there’s nothing left but the wallpaper.’

  ‘But what about the jewels? It’s public knowledge that Madame de Rouvres owns a very valuable pearl necklace and a string of diamonds. They’re estimated to be worth eight hundred thousand francs!’

  ‘A tidy sum,’ replied Martin.

  ‘Those valuables are all that remain of her fortune. She’s so attached to them that, rather than sell them, she preferred to let everything else go—her furniture, her carpets, and her paintings—and lead a more modest way of life. Everyone knew that. The thief must have known that as well!’

  ‘All right,’ muttered Martin, becoming irritated. ‘We’re dealing with a beginner, that’s all there is to it. Obviously he couldn’t have imagined the jewels would be in the drawer of the bedside table.’

  The methods of the policeman and the private investigator differed profoundly. Martin, a big man with a large moustache, applied the principles drilled into him by his police training. He studied the furniture and the surface of the mantelpiece, examined the safe and the dresser, scrutinized the parquet floor, and probed the front door-lock. He searched methodically for prints and other clues.

  Footprints, fingerprints, cigarette butts, gobs of spit. He even sniffed them like a retriever. And it certainly wasn’t the violet fragrance that permeated the apartment, so beloved by Madame de Rouvres and so redolent of 1900, that his olfactory senses were seeking. It was an infinitely more vulgar odour, far removed from perfume—except for the canine species. Inspector Martin had learned, during his police classes, that many burglars could not resist the temptation to leave an excremental ‘signature.’ But nowhere could he detect such a Gallic visiting card. He reasoned: no excretions, so the man is of a reasonably elevated social level; no fingerprints, so the fellow had worn gloves to work.

  Fermier, planting himself in the middle of each room, confined his activities to pivoting slowly on one heel and taking note of all the objects in there.

  He was a frail, bespectacled young man. Weaned on a diet of specialist reading, his methods were of a more literary nature, modelled on those of Poe’s gentleman detective Auguste Dupin.

  While the policeman looked for clues, Fermier tried to determine the motive. For it was ridiculous to think that the theft of the clock, the chandeliers, the silverware and the three thousand francs was the objective of the expedition.

  From time to time, Martin would cast sardonic glances at the investigator, then thrust his hand into his jacket pocket to caress the cold bowl of his beloved pipe. He was refraining from smoking, not so much out of deference towards the lady of the house seated in close proximity, but more out of the respect that the prestigious Louis XV and Louis XVI furnishings—long gone, no doubt, but with the old pink and Trianon green wallpapers still there to stand testimony—inspired in a common man like himself.

  Abruptly, Fermier approached him.

  ‘You’ve read Gaston Leroux’s Mystery of the Yellow Room, of course?’

  Martin shook his head.

  ‘If you think I’ve got time to waste reading that stuff—’

  ‘It’s not always a waste of time.’

  Martin shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘In his book,’ continued Fermier, ‘Leroux posed what’s called a “locked-room” puzzle.’

  Martin sneered.

  ‘I saw that one coming. The business about the hermetically sealed room, under constant surveillance, where it’s impossible to enter or exit without being seen—which doesn’t prevent the murderer getting in and out, nevertheless. That kind of poppycock is all very well in fiction, but in reality…Anyway, what has that to do with the case?’

  ‘Well, what strikes me about the green room puzzle is that it’s exactly the same as the yellow room puzzle in the sense that it’s the precise opposite! The problem that’s posed is, if I may use the expression, an open-room puzzle. In actuality, the thief could very easily have gone into the green room and come out again.’

  Martin burst out laughing.

  ‘And he spared himself the trouble. If that’s what’s bothering you, it doesn’t take very much.’

  Moments later, while Fermier was pursuing his meditations, Martin expressed the desire to examine the diamonds. They were splendid. The inspector was dazzled. Next to the window, in the bright light of that June morning
, Fermier, too, admired the jewels before handing them back to their owner.

  The inspector and the private detective left shortly thereafter. Martin was sullen. This business didn’t interest him at all; what interested him were real crimes, bloody crimes, investigations that were worthy of his talents, that could demonstrate his gift for detection for all to see. Not this vulgar burglary. An exercise for beginners, maybe not even that. Fermier, on the other hand, seemed particularly agitated.

  He said, in that emphatic tone that is so often used for quotations:

  ‘The necklace has lost nothing of its charm and the diamonds none of their brightness.’

  Martin looked startled.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Nothing. I was just amusing myself by paraphrasing a vital message from the Yellow Room, involving a presbytery and a garden.’

  Martin’s shoulders shook uncontrollably, while the inspector looked at the private investigator with pity.

  ‘You poor fellow. I’m starting to worry about you.’

  Fermier looked at his watch.

  ‘Eleven-thirty. What would you say to a drink?’

  They found a table on the terrace of a nearby café.

  The Pernod slowly changed colour as the sugar cube melted, helped on its way by a gentle stream of ice water from above. Transparent dresses went by, inhabited by pretty young girls that made them worthwhile. Martin was all in favour of the free street show.

  ‘One could think of an explanation to the mystery of the green room,’ announced the private detective suddenly. ‘Suppose that Madame de Rouvres’ jewels are fake.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said: suppose…Let’s suppose the jewels, at sometime in the past not yet determined, and without Madame de Rouvres’ knowledge, had been replaced with almost perfect copies. And, while we’re at it, let’s also suppose that last night’s burglar, at some point, had found out about the substitution. Given those two assumptions, it’s easy to see why he didn’t bother to go into the green room. What would have been the point, since he knew the jewels were just paste?’

  ‘You’re letting your imagination run away with you,’ was all the inspector would say.

  Fermier gave him a dirty look from behind his horn-rimmed spectacles. He looked at his watch.

  ‘Gosh! Almost an hour already. It’s time to go and eat red meat.’

  Not having read The Mystery of the Yellow Room, Martin couldn’t know that, once again, Fermier had paraphrased a well-known text from Leroux’s celebrated novel. He took the witticism at its face value and replied in all seriousness:

  ‘You’re lucky. As for me, it’s white meat in perpetuity, I’m afraid.’

  And he started to talk about stomach pains, flatulence, etc. Fermier listened with half an ear.

  They parted ways. After a short distance, the inspector turned round: he spotted the detective in front of a second-hand book store. Yielding to his favourite pastime, Fermier was fingering the dirty, dog-eared books, perfect hiding-places for microbes.

  ‘Too much reading will drive him crazy,’ thought Martin.

  That afternoon, the policeman had a number of appointments in town that had nothing to do with the de Rouvres case. As he walked, he passed by numerous shops: hatters, furriers, tailors, milliners, almost all empty of customers.

  ‘There it is,’ he thought. ‘The problem of the open room, where nobody feels like going in…’

  But inspector Martin was quickly made to realize that the private detective was more subtle than he had previously thought. Indeed, the affair of the Rue Sablons burglary took a sudden and unexpected turn.

  Worried, Madame de Rouvres had decided to take her valuables to the jeweller who had sold them to her many years ago. The response almost caused her to faint: the jewels were fake.

  Madame de Rouvres filed a complaint against persons unknown and put the Sirius company on notice to pay the indemnity.

  ‘I’m afraid the company is going to balk at paying out,’ Fermier confided to Martin.

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘Because,’ the detective said comically, ‘this business resembles the Yellow Room more and more, in the sense that it’s exactly the inverse.’

  ‘The best jokes are the shortest,’ replied Martin gruffly.

  ‘I’m not joking.’

  ‘Well, then, explain yourself.’

  ‘It’s very simple. I find a parallelism of opposition between the two cases quite striking. Thus, in Leroux’s imaginary adventure the villain gets into the yellow room despite all the difficulties. But in the present case, the villain—’

  ‘—takes great care not to enter the green room despite the open invitation. You’ve already told me that. Now what?’

  ‘The parallelism continues. In the case of the yellow room, the villain uses his cunning to make us believe that the attack, executed beforehand, actually came later. Conversely, in the case of the jewels, I get the impression that someone wants us to believe that the job, executed afterwards, was done beforehand.’

  ‘Someone? Who the devil do you mean?’

  ‘Madame de Rouvres, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘Inspector, think about this: Madame de Rouvres is far from being rich. In fact she’s in desperate need of money. Little by little, armchair after armchair, table after table, she has had to relinquish her Louis XV bedroom and her Louis XVI salon. But now, once again, she needs money. There’s only one option left: sell her valuables. That, Madame de Rouvres does not want. She cannot bring herself to do it.

  ‘So, discreetly, she has a copy made. Then, later, she creates a burglary, a complete fabrication: she breaks into her own safe, steals three thousand francs from herself, a clock, a couple of chandeliers, and some knives and forks. After that, when we arrive on the scene, she draws her attention to the fact that the burglar didn’t go into the green room. What was the point of that manoeuvre? To make us think that the thief spurned the valuables. To lead us to suspect they might be false, and from there to conclude that the real jewels had been stolen a long time ago. And, speaking personally, I must admit I fell for it.

  ‘The rest follows as night follows day. Visit to the jeweller. Discovery of the fake jewels. Complaint filed against persons unknown. Indemnity claimed from insurance company. An indemnity of four hundred thousand francs. Well worth a few hours tied up—not too tightly—on a stool.’

  ‘Pretty complicated, but not so dumb, your theory,’ murmured the inspector. ‘That stage production would constitute a kind of moral alibi for Madame de Rouvres.’

  He thought about it.

  ‘Unless…’

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘I can see another possible suspect: the jeweller who previously sold her the valuables. He was in a better position than anyone to create copies. Let’s suppose he organized the burglary. All he has to do afterwards was to wait for Madame de Rouvres, anxious because the thief had scorned her jewels, to bring them to him to be examined. He swaps them, and the deed is done. Who’d suspect him?’

  ‘That’s possible, too,’ conceded Fermier. ‘But, in either case, how do we prove it?’

  Four days later, Inspector Martin found the proof. In the course of a search of the jeweller’s premises he discovered, in a corner of the cellar under a pile of empty cartons, Madame de Rouvres’s clock, chandeliers, and silverware.

  As expected, the jeweller protested his innocence, claimed he had no idea how the objects had found their way into his cellar, and swore he was the victim of a plot.

  He was arrested nevertheless. Even so, it proved impossible to find the real jewels.

  Fermier, meanwhile, didn’t hide his opinion from the inspector. He remained unconvinced of the jeweller’s guilt and continued to suspect Madame de Rouvres.

  ‘She could quite ea
sily have hidden the clock and the chandeliers in the jeweller’s cellar.’

  ‘Come off it! You’ve been reading too many detective stories.’

  Two weeks went by.

  Fermier diligently watched the area around Madame de Rouvres’s home; he followed her every time she went out.

  Even though nothing came to light as a result of his tenacity, he kept going.

  Finally, one afternoon around three o’clock, as he was again lying in wait at the Longchamp roundabout, he ran into Martin.

  ‘Not discouraged yet? You certainly don’t give up.’

  ‘As long as the valuables have not been found, my friend, I feel we must give the jeweller the benefit of the doubt.’

  Martin, full of himself, smiled condescendingly. He took the private detective’s arm.

  ‘I didn’t come here by accident. I came to relieve you of your duties.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The jeweller is indeed innocent; he’s just been released. And it turns out that Madame de Rouvres is innocent as well.’

  ‘Do you have any proof?’

  ‘Cast iron! I laid my hands on the valuables—the real ones.’

  ‘Where did you find them?’ asked Fermier, alarmed.

  ‘Come now, you must be joking. They were in your bedroom, carefully hidden under one of the parquet blocks.’

  The detective went as white as a sheet.

  Martin hailed a passing taxi.

  ‘Police headquarters, please.’

  The two men sat down in the back.

  ‘You see, Fermier, you made a big mistake in drawing my attention to the parallelism of this affair and the Yellow Room. I finally bought the book and—I who never read—read it.

  ‘That’s when I had an idea. A crazy idea. “Suppose the parallelism applies all the way through?” I said to myself. “Suppose the mystery of the green room turns out to be the exact opposite of the Yellow Room, even at the very end?” I wanted to see what would happen.

  ‘And, my goodness, the result was pretty intriguing.