The tears of buddha, p.1
The Tears of Buddha, page 1
The Tears of Buddha
A Montclaire Mystery
E.A. Allen
The Tears of Buddha
Being a Record of the Horrible Murder
of Marie-Claire Bernard and
The Remarkable Events That Followed
From the Journals of Colonel Sir Francis FitzMaurice

Addison & Highsmith Publishers
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022940454
ISBN 978-1-59211-175-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-59211-243-2 (eBook)
Copyright © 2022 by E.A. Allen
Contents
Contents
An Editor’s Foreword
Prologue Madame Courbon Hears a Noise
PART ONE Tang Bowls and Tragedy
Chapter One “Wake Up!”
Chapter Two Picot Explains
Chapter Three Bloody Murder and Art
Chapter Four A Grieving Family
PART TWO Spies, Thieves, and Gamblers
Chapter Five A Secret Life
Chapter Six Mademoiselle Claude Summons Us
Chapter Seven The Tears of Buddha
Chapter Eight Assassins
Chapter Nine The Code Breakers
Chapter Ten Elsie Boudreau
Chapter Eleven Madame Soyeuse and the Professor
Chapter Twelve The Prisoner in La Santé
Chapter Thirteen “The Gambler King”
PART THREE Lovers and Assassins
Chapter Fourteen Madame Joffre Visits
Chapter Fifteen Who Knew?
Chapter Sixteen Egon Renzler
Chapter Seventeen Montclaire’s Rage
Chapter Eighteen “I lied to you”
Chapter Nineteen The Laughing Girl
Chapter Twenty The Exchange
An Editor’s Afterword
We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.
— Heinrich Heine
An Editor’s Foreword
It is said that about the year 765, during the reign of Li Yu, The Daizong Emperor of the Tang Dynasty, in the far western Buddhist Monastery of Wenshu, the potter Bai Fu fashioned a group of three identical bowls, in the new tricolor style of porcelain making. The monks of Wenshu found the bowls so perfect in their simplicity of style and form that they presented them to the monastery’s great temple statue of Buddha. It is said further that as the monks prayed their offering the Buddha’s statue began to weep and three tears descended upon its cheek. Thereafter, the three bowls were prized by the monks and later by Emperors of the Tang, and they were called The Tears of Buddha.
Prologue
Madame Courbon Hears a Noise
Paris, November 1907
“What!” she gasped, jolting from a sound sleep and sitting bolt upright in her bed. “What is it?” Groggy, confused, and at first unaware of what had awakened her, Madame Courbon groped in the darkness at her bedside table, searching for a match to light her lamp. Now, listening intently, there came from somewhere above a noise of furniture crashing and of a door banging, and as quickly as it had begun, the noise stopped. Next, she heard the shuffle of feet on the stairs, and then silence. A frightening silence.
A concierge is duty-bound to ensure good order in her building. Such noises in the night demanded investigation. Madame Courbon dressed hurriedly, not bothering to remove her kerchief. Holding a small lamp, she opened her door a crack and peered out to the stairs. All quiet. She climbed slowly, warily to the upper story where the noises had come from; listening for any sound that might signal danger. All was still quiet.
There were two doors to apartments on that level. The door to one was slightly ajar. She pushed it reluctantly, holding high her lamp to see inside. Even in the dark, she could see overturned furniture.
Fearing an intruder might still lurk inside, she considered retreating, but duty required an investigation, so she pushed the door wide and strained to see inside. It was then she saw it. There on the floor of the sitting room. The horror of it caused her to scream and then to run out to the stairs and down, shrieking all the while. When she reached the Rue des Vignes, she shrieked all the louder, hoping to rouse the gendarme who walked the neighborhood at night. She had forgotten her whistle on the table by her bed, so she could only shriek and scream for him.
Finally, after what seemed like hours but was only a few minutes, the policeman rounded the corner from Rue Pajou, and by the glow of the gaslight at the corner, ran to Madame Courbon. By then her shouting had roused the neighbors, who threw open their windows and peered down into the street, curious to see what the matter was.
“What is it, Madame,” the gendarme asked, breathless. Pointing to the open portal of her building she gasped, “There. Go there.”
Not waiting for further explanation the gendarme entered, with Madame Courbon close behind. “Up there,” she urged, still holding her lamp. “The second level.”
When they arrived, the door lay open. Taking the lamp from Madame, the policeman entered, turning up the wick as he went.
It lay on the floor, now fully visible. The body of a woman lay in the middle of the room, her head a mass of blood. Here and there blood had splashed on the floor and on the wall, where there was also the bloody print of a hand. A small hand. Madame drew a deep breath at the ghastly mess. Even the gendarme recoiled in horror to see it and then retched.
As the policeman found a lamp in the room and turned it up to the full flame, his heart stopped to hear a noise from behind the large chair to one side. “Come out!” he ordered, thinking it must be the murderer. Nothing. “Come out, I say!” Still no response. Finally, as he and Madame Courbon prepared to look behind the chair, out crawled a baby, her clothing soaked in blood. The little girl crawled over to the corpse and there, began to tug at the victim’s arm and to plead — “Maman... Maman... Maman.”
Madame Courbon began to cry.
PART ONE
Tang Bowls and Tragedy
Chapter One
“Wake Up!”
“Fitz,” I heard Montclaire’s raspy voice at my door. “Fitz!” he repeated. “Wake up!”
I reached for my watch on the table beside my bed and then turned up the lamp. Confused, eyes half-open and sensitive to light, I could make out that it was just short of three o’clock. My first thought was that no good can come of a chap being awakened at three o’clock and entirely against his will. No good at all.
As I sat up and searched for my robe, I heard voices — the sound of frantic conversation. Just outside my door, I came face-to-face with Petrovsky — Montclaire’s Russian manservant — still in his nightshirt. Odd, I never thought of Petrovsky in a nightshirt. I’d always imagined that Cossacks slept in bearskins or some such primitive costume. Coming face-to-face with Petrovsky at that hour of the morning was bound to startle. His bushy black beard and large, flat nose... well, he had the sort of face that causes people of a charitable disposition to say when they see it, “Let us hope for the best.”
“Petrovsky, what is it?” I finally managed to ask.
“There, Sir Francis,” he said, pointing toward the library. “They’re in there.”
When I opened the doors I first saw Montclaire, also in his robe, and then young Etienne Picot, the open-faced Sûreté detective who had become Montclaire’s protégé.
I don’t know why but the first thing that struck me was that Montclaire’s jet-black hair was perfectly coiffed and his cold blue eyes, perfectly alert — two things that seemed out of place at that hour.
“What is it?” I asked, knowing that only a tragedy could have brought Picot to our door at that hour.
“Picot here was just about to tell me, Fitz. You’ve arrived just in time to hear it too,” said Montclaire, drawing a cigarette from his case and lighting it with a firebrand from the hearth. “Please continue, Picot,” he said, taking a chair by the fire. Picot and I did the same.
“The Minister sent me, Monsieur,” he said breathlessly.
That made me sit up. French Ministers don’t usually roam about ordering the Sûreté here and there in the middle of the night.
“Ah, how is your uncle, Picot?” Montclaire asked in his nonchalant way. “And what is it that disturbs old Brouillard’s sleep? Poor fellow.” Just then Petrovsky arrived with coffee all round.
“He is almost apoplectic, Monsieur,” said Picot, a sigh in his voice. Montclaire tossed me a questioning glance.
“He was summoned from his bed at midnight, as I was also, and he has sent me to fetch you to the Rue des Vignes. There, I can assure you, you will find the most horrible scene of a murder that you have ever beheld, Monsieur. The Minister summons you to see it, undoubtedly because he wishes you to undertake an investigation.”
“But, Picot. Why me? You and the Sûreté a re surely capable of investigating a murder. Sadly, Paris is full of murders.”
“This is no ordinary murder, as you can well imagine, or else the Minister would not insist upon you. It’s only my speculation, but I assume he wishes you to act as Examining Magistrate.”
Montclaire’s head dropped, in resignation I thought. I knew his reluctance to become involved in any investigation at the moment. We’d just returned from London, exhausted by that sordid affair concerning the French Ambassador’s promiscuous daughter.
“Very well, Picot,” he finally said. “Sir Francis and I will join you in your coach as soon as we can dress.”
Chapter Two
Picot Explains
Once in the coach and moving south through empty streets, Picot explained.
“The victim is a young woman — a young widow, named Marie-Claire Bernard. She’d been stabbed several times and her throat cut. A bloody mess.” Picot shook his head.
“And how did she come to be discovered?” Montclaire asked.
“The concierge. A woman named Madame Courbon. Heard ‘something’ in the night and decided to investigate. Found the door ajar. Saw what was inside. Ran into the street screaming like a lost soul.”
Montclaire leaned back and looked briefly out the window.
“How is it you’ve come to me, Picot? You say the Minister sent you?”
“Oui.” Said Picot, pausing to gather his thoughts. “Marie-Claire Bernard is no ordinary victim, as it turns out. She is the widow of a military hero of North Africa fame — Charles Bernard….”
“Oh yes!” I interrupted. “Captain Bernard. The chap who was killed in that dust-up in Algiers last year. A hero indeed. Said so in all the papers, as I recall.”
“Oui, Sir Francis. But there’s more. Marie-Claire Bernard is also a daughter of the Joffre family — a very wealthy clan who as you may know have made their fortune in banking and such,” Picot continued.
“Yes,” Montclaire acknowledged, “and politically powerful as well, which is why the Minister is so interested, eh?”
“Exactly,” Picot confirmed, “and not just politically important, but very influential with the Nationalists, who the Government is particularly eager to placate at the moment.”
Montclaire’s eyes narrowed. “But surely the murder was motivated by ordinary villainy of some kind — theft or perhaps un crime passionnel.
“You say the concierge heard a noise. What sort of noise?” Montclaire probed.
“She’s not sure. Just a noise that was loud enough to rouse her from a sound sleep, and from a floor away. Then, she says she heard the shuffle of feet on the stairs, and that was when she decided to rise and investigate.”
“Aside from the body, did the gendarme find anything else in the apartment?
Picot paused. “Oui, Monsieur. He found the victim’s daughter. A baby of two years. Apparently, the child was….” He paused.
“Was what?” I almost hesitated to ask, fearing the worst.
“She was crawling about the floor, with her clothing soaked in her mother’s blood.”
Picot closed his eyes. The image he described made me gasp. Montclaire’s mouth opened a tad and then he made one of those little noises French people make that have no equivalent in English. I recognized this one as a combination of surprise and sympathy, and then his eyes grew cold.
Chapter Three
Bloody Murder and Art
As we descended from Picot’s coach at 12 rue des Vignes, I glimpsed a considerable crowd of gawkers, observing from across the street. The gendarmes were busy keeping them away from the front of the building. Picot guided us up the stairs and directly to the victim’s door. Though we were forewarned, our first glance inside was horrifying.
A gaggle of gendarmes lolled about the sitting room, where the body still lay, now covered by a bloody sheet. Splattering and smears of blood-covered one wall and the room had been ransacked. Books had been thrown from the shelves and, at one corner, a writing desk had been torn to pieces and lay scattered on the floor. From another room, we could hear the sound of a child crying and occasionally whining “Maman.” En semble, it was ghastly.
Montclaire paid little attention to the mess but immediately began to glance about the room. Soon, he knelt beside the body and lifted the sheet, to reveal the true horror of what had happened. The young woman’s glazed eyes were open wide in the horror of her last moments of life and her head was almost severed. She’d been stabbed, hacked, and sliced. Butchery was the word that came to mind. I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, I could see that the woman’s clothing had been torn away and it appeared at first glance that she’d been violated.
Looking up, Montclaire asked Picot, coldly.
“Have you found the knife?”
“No.”
“Took it away with him, eh?”
“It would seem so.”
Montclaire covered the body back up and ordered the waiting men from the Paris Morgue to remove Marie-Claire. “Release the body to her family,” he ordered, “but only after a full examination. Tell the director, eh? And see if he can confirm that the young woman was raped.”
At first Montclaire looked about the room in his way, examining everything closely. He seemed to find nothing of interest. Then he went into other parts of the house, stopping in the kitchen. There he found a large towel, clearly with blood on it, beside the water bowl. He picked up the towel, examined it carefully, and then returned it to the cabinet.
“The murderer wiped his hands and face and even wiped his knife.”
Then, as if an afterthought, he picked up the towel again and held it to his nose. Still holding it to his nose, he said more to himself than to me, “Wiped the blood from his face too. Left the smell of his eau de cologne. An inferior scent called Hoyt’s. Made in Germany, but available at a modest price in France too.”
There’s a man with a nose for crime, I thought to myself when suddenly I heard sounds of a ruckus outside on the landing. When the door opened, two gendarmes entered, holding fast by each elbow a pink little man with a bald head, red nose, and bushy eyebrows.
“Monsieur!” he pleaded at Montclaire as we reentered the setting-room. “Monsieur!”
“Who the devil are you and what’s your business here?” Montclaire demanded. “Release him,” he told the gendarmes. Indignant, the little man straightened his cravat and suitcoat and then stood upright, his chin defiant.
“Edouard Dulac, Monsieur,” he said with a sense of importance, as he took from his waistcoat a card and handed it to Montclaire.
“You are a ‘Dealer in Fine Art,’ it says.” What business have you here?” Montclaire asked, still thumbing the card.
Monsieur Dulac glanced about the room and then gasped to see the bloody sheet on the floor. He fell back and when he swooned a little, Picot took his arm.
“Is that…?” he asked, his eyes fearful.
“Never mind who that is, Monsieur Dulac. Again, what is your business here?” Montclaire demanded, this time with an angry tone in his voice.
Dulac stood to his full height, which was not very much, and answered, “I am here, Monsieur, to see Madame Bernard, on a matter of business.”
“I am Gérard de Montclaire and I am here leading an investigation of murder, Monsieur Dulac.” Dulac recognized the name and it seemed to unsettle him. He quickly regained his composure, as Montclaire continued.
“What business precisely was it that you had with Mme. Bernard, Monsieur?”
Dulac hesitated to answer, but faced with what was going on around him, he quickly relented.
“I had an appointment with Madame Bernard this morning to discuss the purchase of some objet d’art.”
Montclaire’s eyebrows lifted a little. “Come, Dulac. Do not hold back. There is no use to be reticent.”
“We were to discuss the sale of three bowls, Monsieur, belonging to Madame’s family. The Joffre. Her father, Monsieur Pierre Joffre is a well-known financier, eh?”
“Yes, I know. And…?”
“I was told the family wished to sell the bowls, which have been in their possession for many years, but that the sale was to be very discreet. That’s why Mme. Bernard was the go-between.”
