Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

Except that they had — the kidnappers had just left their grisly package on the wrong doorstep by mistake. And had they left a note with it, one that blew away in the morning wind? Who knows?

I told Leon that I would be sending the finger to Arthur Chase and that I would leave his name out of it.

Leon listened to this impassively. It was not Lila’s finger; this was good. But maybe in my voice he could hear that this was the last of the good news, because he showed no relief.

I told him.

I told him the whole story, I showed him Jerome’s book, I explained what had been going through Jerome’s head. Culhane stared me in the eyes through every word of it, showing no sign of anger, grief, or pain.

After a while I ran out of things to say.

“Job well done, Mr. Mickity,” he said. “You earned your money.” He turned to leave.

I stopped him at the door with a hand at the small of his back. I felt him recoil at my touch. “Please,” I said, looking up into his enormous eyes, “don’t hurt him too much.”

“I couldn’t possibly hurt him too much,” he said.

Marcel Sieurac’s Murder by Erich Obermayr

The opening at Galerie Lefevre was a listless affair. The artist, Marcel Sieurac, was an unknown, and his work was very ordinary. With only one exception, the luminaries of the Paris art world were unanimously absent, and the small crowd that was there was more interested in consuming the free refreshments than in viewing the paintings.

The gallery’s location was partly to blame. True, from its doors on Boulevard de Rochechouart me could throw a rock in any direction and hit an artist, or at least someone standing in a drafty room before a canvas, with brushes and palette in hand. The attics and crannies of Montmartre’s creaking old buildings, which hunkered shoulder to shoulder up and down the steep streets, had been partitioned into hundreds of tiny studios. But their inhabitants could seldom afford an afternoon glass of wine, let alone the price of even a cheap painting. The buying of art was the purview of more prosperous citizens, and they seldom wandered north of the Grands Boulevards.

The true connoisseur did keep an eye on obscure little galleries like Galerie Lefevre, in case some undiscovered genius happened to hang his work on its wall first. Mrs. Poll was a true connoisseur. She was also Paul Aichele’s nominal housekeeper. That is, she did some cleaning on Mondays and Thursdays but only because, as she said, those afternoons would otherwise be insufferably dull. Aichele was not a connoisseur, although he never lacked an opinion about a painting. When Mrs. Poll invited him to the opening at Galerie Lefevre, he gladly accepted.

On the way, Mrs. Poll mentioned that the young Henri Berhard had first exhibited at Galerie Lefevre, but once they arrived she was first to admit that Marcel Sieurac was no Henri Berhard. His work consisted of city scenes, meticulously true to their subjects but also very stiff, especially in their human figures, which looked posed even though they were supposedly engaged in everyday activities.

It took Mrs. Poll only one pass through the exhibit to exhaust whatever potential it had for her, but Aichele found himself enjoying the familiar Parisian sites the paintings presented. And like himself, the artist had taken more than a few long strides down the road of middle age. This was a point in his favor. It was also impossible to watch unsympathetically as Sieurac responded with smiling pleasantries to the vacuous comments of those low echelon denizens of the art world who were there.

The one person of importance was a M. Boucherot, who, Mrs. Poll explained, not only wrote artistic criticism for Le Figaro but authored an immensely popular weekly serial in La Gazette de France under the nom de plume of “Antonin.” The fact that “Antonin” and M. Boucherot were one and the same was, by M. Boucherot’s design, one of the worst kept secrets in the city’s artistic circles.

It was hardly necessary to point him out, since he was holding court in the center of the gallery. The group around him was never smaller than the little knot of spectators around Sieurac. He left after a few minutes, and took most of the crowd with him.

The event had been under way for some time when Aichele and Mrs. Poll arrived, and it seemed to be on the verge of simply ceasing to be, without a ripple of ceremony. Mrs. Poll suggested they adjourn for drinks and, courteous as always, surprised both Sieurac and M. St. Cloud, the gallery owner, by inviting them, too.

M. St. Cloud was a doleful, dark-haired man who had attended the opening in a black frock coat. He declined the invitation, looking appropriately weary and explaining there was work to do yet in closing the gallery. Sieurac, in contrast, readily accepted, and suggested Café Dancourt, half a block north on the square of the same name.