Izner The Riddle of the Black Unicorn

A Paris Bookshop Mystery
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-596-2
Verlag: Pushkin Vertigo
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

Reihe: The Victor Legris Mysteries

Why would anyone strangle a humble seamstress with no known enemies? Newly-married bookseller Victor Legris is initially baffled by the murder of seemingly-unremarkable Louise Fontaine, in the abattoir district of La Villette. But as the investigation progresses, Victor, along with his assistant and brother-in-law Joseph, discovers that in belle-époque Paris young girls with no money or background are as ruthlessly preyed on as ever...

Claude Izner is the pen-name of two sisters, Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefevre. Both booksellers on the banks of the Seine, they are experts on nineteenth-century Paris. Liliane Korb died in March 2022.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Izner, Claude

Weitere Mitwirkende

Higgins, Jennifer

Leseproben

CHAPTER ONE

Sunday 7 January 1894

The storm was battering the Normandy coast. It had swept through the British Isles, attacked the Pas de Calais and had now reached the Cotentin peninsula, where it was venting its full force on the La Hague headland.

Corentin Jourdan lay fully dressed on his four-poster bed listening to the great gusts and squalls shaking the walls. The fire flickered. A piece of canvas hung from the mantelpiece to stop the smoke filling the room. The flames threw bright, fleeting tongues of light onto the copper cistern and the old grandfather clock. Two carved birds’ heads seemed about to fly away from the corners of the wardrobe. A raucous miaowing briefly made itself heard above the tumult: the terrified cat was scratching at the front door. Corentin sat up. A ball of dirty fur with a pink nose and curly whiskers hurtled in through the cat flap and burrowed into the warmth of the eiderdown.

‘Now, Gilliatt, is that any way for an old ship’s mascot to behave? There’s nothing to get excited about!’

An explosion of noise drowned out his words: the thatched roof of the shed had just been torn off. Corentin grew more and more anxious as he heard the tempest attack his stock of dry logs, and he tried to calculate the damage. He would have to get the roof seen to by old Pignol, a real crook but the best thatcher for miles around. A loud neighing suddenly erupted from the stable next door: Flip was getting nervous. Just as long as he didn’t start kicking the walls down!

No doubt hoping to evade the worst of the weather, the old tomcat curled up under his master’s arm, purring loudly. Corentin smiled.

‘Chin up, Gilliatt! It’s only a little shower!’

He had seen worse when he used to navigate the Marie-Jeanneton around the Channel Islands. If it hadn’t been for that confounded spar, which had split during a squall and crushed his foot, he would never have left the navy.

He sighed deeply. Even though his house was a quarter of a mile from the shore, the sound of the breakers filled his room like the baying of a ghostly pack of hounds. The pounding of the surf reverberated inside him, soothing him. He sank into sleep.

When he woke, he felt once again the subtle stirring of fear he had battled ever since the accident. He had had to make a supreme effort to prevent the combination of inactivity and physical suffering getting the better of him. He had hated lying immobile on a hospital bed, dependent on the goodwill of others and far away from the salt air of the open sea. The enforced confinement had left him with no choice but to reflect on his past. For weeks he tried to work out whether he had made a mistake; why the stupid accident? At forty, with two-thirds of his life already gone, what did he have to look forward to? He had quickly recognised the brutal truth that no ship’s captain would ever trust a cripple. At that realisation he had fallen into deep despair as he thought longingly of the familiar, reassuring atmosphere of the Marie-Jeanneton.

A sickly, yellowish dawn was struggling to break, and in its pale light he saw Gilliatt, perched on a cupboard with incriminating crumbs of meat and pastry stuck to his whiskers.

Corentin stretched, and remembered his dream. Once again, Clélia had appeared, transparent and inaccessible. The only woman he had ever loved, the only woman he had never possessed, still haunted him. The memory of all the others, kitchen maids or working girls, whose services were freely offered, faded as soon as his desire was satisfied: only the unattainable woman had been able to capture and hold his imagination for such a long time.

He decided to go out. There might be someone in need of his help. Despite his general misanthropy, he was careful to maintain good relations with his neighbours; after all, it had been his decision to limit his life to this little huddle of cottages.

A squall of rain whipped his face. He jammed his hat more firmly on his head, glanced at the increasingly grey sky and pushed open the stable door. Flip’s tail and mane were ruffled by the wind. The mice feasting in the hay ran off, squeaking. He lit his lamp.

‘Hello there, Flip!’

The horse quivered at the sight of his master. Corentin patted his flank and fed him a sugarlump from his open palm.

‘A little treat from your groom, you old misery. There there, easy now, the storm’s dying down.’

The horse slowly rubbed his muzzle against the wood of his stall before deigning to accept the titbit.

‘Heavens above, Flip, stop looking at me like that!’ cried Corentin, rummaging in the bag full of grain. Flip pawed the ground happily and plunged his nose into the handful of oats that was offered to him.

‘Don’t make a mess, now.’

Corentin patted his neck, put fresh hay in the rack and extinguished the lantern.

‘Be good now, won’t you? Don’t kick anything over,’ he said, fastening the door.

Outside, a cold wind raked the distant hills. Corentin walked on, past the Chaulards’ farm, huddled behind its hillock like a frightened animal. The windows rattled in their frames and the whole building creaked. He couldn’t see a living soul.

He staggered down the slope, tossed about in the wind like a skiff bobbing on the sea. It was at times like this, when there was a big storm, that he most regretted the loss of his own boat. On board a ship, he used to be able to grapple with bad weather in an equal fight; on dry land, he was at the mercy of the slightest squall.

Looking out to sea, Corentin could see the waves tipped with glints of silver. He crossed a stream, now a torrent, gazed briefly at the cliffs obscured by clouds of sea-spray and turned his back on them. The main street in Landemer zigzagged between fishermen’s cottages and a few large villas converted for the summer into family boarding houses. The customs officer’s house had lost its ostentatious ceramic decoration and the smashed remains lay forlornly in the middle of the front garden. Corentin slowed down as he reached the inn, turning up the collar of his oilskin jacket. At this time of day the fish market was usually in full swing, but today the place was eerily empty. He turned towards the beach, dodging as best he could the buffeting breath of the invisible demon.

The raging waves had thrown up a wall of pebbles at the edge of the sand, which was now gradually emerging as the tide receded. The boiling cauldron of the sea was capitulating regretfully. To the right of the fort, there was a pale patch in the water – a flock of birds? Corentin had previously spotted storm petrels here, blown off course from the Orkney Islands.

He walked on for another hundred yards, happy to find himself in the deserted spot where he had spent so many hours observing wildlife and combing the beach for driftwood and curious stones. His solitary walks here had brought him a sense of peace and security. Except for occasional conversations with Madame Guénéqué, who came to clean his little house and to cook for him, Corentin led a solitary existence.

Leaden clouds raced along the horizon, and an angry wind whipped the waves into crests before flattening them again. Corentin squinted into the distance. No, that wasn’t a flock of birds, it was something much bigger. Driven against the reef, a schooner must have struck a rock, where its boom and bowsprit had shattered. The broken mast hung at a sickening angle; people on the bridge ran to and fro, dropping lines to evacuate the vessel. Small boats were bustling around the great carcass. So that was where all the inhabitants of Landemer and Urville had gone. They would have to work fast: the waves would soon pull the wreck under the sea.

He thought of all the fishermen who must have died, and of the captain of the vessel who, probably heading to France from England, had been presumptuous enough to defy the warning of such a troubled sea. Corentin, too, had often thought himself invincible.

Near Gréville, several small, wide skiffs were setting off towards the wreck, and he hurried on, impatient to join them. Suddenly, he stopped, still and attentive. A dark mass undulated in the ebbing tide. For a few seconds he stood motionless, shading his eyes, until all at once he understood, and began to run. A little girl or a woman lay in the foaming water, like a siren caught in the sticky net of seaweed.

Half carrying, half dragging the unconscious form out of the water, he staggered up onto the beach, and gazed in shock at the young woman’s face. Clélia? No! Clélia had been dead for twenty years. Acting instinctively, he loosened her clenched teeth with the stem of his pipe, cleared the mucus and seaweed out of her throat with his fingers and put his ear to her chest. Her heart was beating weakly. He knelt down and, seizing her wrists, began to raise and lower her arms vigorously, pressing on her...