Son of Holmes

Henri lived in a large apartment overlooking his shop. It was a good distance from La Couro

“Bonjour, Monsieur Giraud.”

Likewise, it seems to me that all children remember my name and glory in greeting me this way.

We shook hands.

“Good morning. Is your father here?”

“He’s above.”

“Thank you.”

Smiling to myself, I walked over to the door that opened onto the staircase and knocked. The boy had followed me over and he turned the knob for me.

“That’s all right. Go on up.”

Henri sat at the kitchen table, leaning back in his blue work pants and apron. None of the other children were about, though noises behind me suggested their presence somewhere in the flat. Madame Pulis was cutting onions and putting them in a large skillet over the fire. I stood in the archway for a moment looking at the scene before knocking on the doorjamb.

They both turned at once. Madame Pulis’s eyes were filled with tears, I assumed from the onions. Henri, seeing me, immediately jumped up and put out his hand in greeting. He seemed even more nervous than usual.

As we sat at the table, we watched his wife finish cutting the onions, and then he ordered her from the room. My Greek friend, now slumping slightly over the table, hands clasped tightly in front of him, was a study in anxiety. His hair was disheveled, as though it had been combed earlier but something, perhaps nervous hands, had disturbed it. There was an unfamiliar tic over his right eye, which further enhanced his harried mien. He looked a wreck.

When his wife had gone, he looked at me heavily.

“What’s wrong, Henri? You look terrible.”

He got up abruptly and paced back and forth slowly across the kitchen, pulling-jerking, really-all the while at his mustache. “It all started yesterday with Renee. You remember? At the funeral? She was crying a lot? Well, it really got to her, all the folks there were treating us as if we were guilty of something, and so she was crying. She cries easily.” He stopped walking and looked at me imploringly.

“All that was fine. If you know Renee, you’d know crying is no special event. But some plainclothes flic at the funeral thought it was strange that one of the ‘suspect’s’ wives should even bother coming, much less be in tears, so he thought we might know something and followed us home.” He sat down again. “You know me, Jules. I get nervous easily and, when he came around, I got rattled. And with Renee crying all over, I just walked out. I know, I know, a mistake. I snuck out, really. I’m a fool.

“So then he started in on Renee. What were my feelings about Marcel? How well had she known him? You know how insinuating they can be, and he was, but she’d only met Marcel maybe twice, so what could she say? Finally, he asks if he can look around the house, and she says we have nothing to hide, so he goes poking into everything and finds the supplies for Robert-you know my second son? Anyway, he finds Robert’s supplies for taking photographs, which is his hobby, and right there in a drawer is plenty of cyanide to kill Marcel and a hundred other people, so he says, ‘Uh-huh, interesting,’ and leaves. So when I got home at about six o’clock, there’s no di

“Not wanting to wait for her to come back, I decided to go over there and find out what happened, and who do I run into on the street but this same flic, come to ask Renee some more questions. He looks at me for a minute and then says, ‘You’re not a French citizen, are you?’ ”

He paused for a moment. “I’d like a drink.” He rose and got two glasses, filling one nearly to the top with pastis. In the other glass, he put a standard shot and added water. He gri

“Are you a French citizen?”

“That’s right, French citizen. Well, I told him that my papers were in order, that he could see for himself if he came back to the house, but he just started asking more questions about everybody. You, Georges, Paul, even Tania. Wanted to know if I knew where that fellow Lupa lived. I told him I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know Lupa, I hardly had known Marcel. Then he started going on again about how well had Renee and Marcel known each other, and it got fairly heated. He said he was going to check all the other houses-Tania’s, yours, Paul’s-and then get back to me, so I’d better find my wife and be available.”

“What did you do after that?”

He was loosening up, as he always did when he drank. “Well, I went to get Renee. Then we all came home and tried to sleep. Goddamn it, Jules, can’t a woman even cry at a funeral?”

He put his hand down, looking on the verge of tears. I put my hand lightly on his shoulder.

“Take it easy, Henri. It’s just the way of investigators. They bother you, they try to find breaks in stories. Don’t worry.”

But I was worried. Cyanide was not so common a poison that anyone else would likely have it.

“Where did you go yesterday afternoon,” I asked, “when you went wandering around?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just around. You know, when I’m upset, I walk.” As if to prove his point, he got up and started pacing again. I didn’t want to press it, so I changed the subject.

“I’d like to have everybody meet again next Wednesday. That’s the real reason I had for coming up. Do you think you can make it?”

“I don’t know,” he said simply. “At your house?”

“Probably not. I’ll send you a note. I thought it would be good for us all to try and… well, you know.”

He nodded. “Will Lupa be there?”

“Yes. Do you suspect him?”

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. How well did he know Marcel?”

I laughed. “You thinking of joining the police force?”

He smiled weakly. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry, but it’s just that you get to suspecting everyone. But how well do you know him?”

“Fairly well.”

“All right. Renee!” he yelled suddenly. “The onions are burning.”

His wife came back into the room, apologetic. It was the first time I’d seen her without tears in her eyes. She was attractive in a tough sort of way-the kind of woman I’d expect Henri to be with-short, dark, buxom, subservient. She stood silently by the stove, stirring with a practiced rhythm.

“It might do you good to go down to the store,” I suggested. “Take your mind off things.”

I hadn’t touched my drink. I offered it to him. He drank it off in a gulp.

“Let’s go,” he said.

On the staircase, we stopped again.

“If it’s any consolation,” I said, “no one came by to see either Tania or myself last night. Maybe you’ll have no more trouble with him.”

That seemed to make him nervous all over again. “He said he’d be back here this morning.”

“Well, morning’s nearly gone,” I said. “What time did you run into him last night?”