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Fiction
The Case of the Novel Crime
Andrew Belsey tells it like it wasn’t.
I was lying on the bed in my garret just off the Boule Miche. Paris in the heat sizzled like a fat steak on a barbecue. Could life like this have any meaning? To get the air circulating I was shooting flies off the light bulb with a forty-five. I guessed flies weren’t too bothered by the meaning of life. Maybe they were lucky. Then the phone rang.
“I haf some information that will interest you.” Whoever it was wasn’t –
Hey, hold on there, buddy! You can’t say “Whoever it was wasn’t” – “was wasn’t” is a contradiction.
Look, just get lost and let me finish. Whoever it was wasn’t giving much away, except a strong Silesian accent. I guessed it was a strong Silesian.
“Who is calling, please?” I asked.
“Nefer mind about that. There’s a stiff in the House of God. The big one, downtown.”
Click!
I replaced the receiver, thinking over what he had said. He must have meant Notre Dame. Sounded like a messy business. I’d better take a look.
The body lay face down in front of the high altar. It was dead all right – the dagger sticking up between the shoulder blades of the priest’s habit said as much. Somewhere in the background the choir was singing a kyrie. This wasn’t just murder, this was sacrilege.
There was a guy looking at the body. I’d often noticed him hanging round the place, so I reckoned he might have seen something.
“You see anything, Quasimodo?” I asked.
“Nope. But I got a hunch who killed him.”
“You can have your hunch back. You ever see a priest wearing black nylons with seams up the back? It ain’t a him, it’s a her.”
I turned the body over, and the pale, lifeless face of a beautiful young woman looked up at me. There was still a smile on her lips. It was tragic. I was moved. Whoever did this wasn’t going to get away with it.
“Someone put the priest’s habit on her before killing her to throw us off the scent. But no one can fool me that easy. I know who killed her. It’s written all over her face. That telephone call was a give-away too. You want to know a well-known fact, Quasimodo? When four-foot dwarves try to disguise their voice, it comes out with a strong Silesian accent. Every time. You killed her, Quasimodo. You told her you loved her and she just laughed. She taunted you with your deformity. And that you couldn’t take. So you killed her.”
“You got no proof,” said Quasimodo.
“I got plenty. I told you, it’s written all over her face. You much of a reader, Quasimodo?”
“Nope, kinda missed out on reading when I flunked lycée.”
“I guessed as much. You killed her, Quasimodo. But before she died she had time to take out her lipstick and write across her face ‘Quasimodo killed me’.”
With a snarl Quasimodo grabbed a passing bell rope and swung himself up into the spire. But before I could make a move, the Suretée arrived.
“Bonjour, monsieur, je suis Inspecteur Maigret. That was a very interesting hypothesis, mon brave. But unfortunately for you, we checked on your story. There is no telephone in your garret. You killed her. You met her on the Rive Gauche and discovered she was a doctoral student from Yale, writing a thesis on deconstructive techniques in the American crime novel. And that was more than you could take. You arranged to meet her here and persuaded her to dress up in the priest’s habit for some kinky sex. And when that was over you killed her, and pulled that dumb stunt with the lipstick. Then you went back to your garret to write that piece about the phone call, adding the bit about shooting flies off the light bulb to provide verisimilitude. Then you returned to the scene of the crime to try to pin the rap on Quasimodo. But you overlooked one thing, mon ami. The Death of the Author.”
With a snarl I grabbed a passing bell rope and swung myself up into the spire.
“Howdy, Quasimodo. You looking for a partner?”
THE END
Except that real-life stories have no end. They merely have dislocations in their space-time trajectories, which can take you back to where you started. Just like waking up from a dream.
I was lying on the bed in my garret just off the Boule Miche. Paris in the heat sizzled like a fat steak on a barbecue. Could life like this have any meaning? To get the air circulating I was shooting flies off the light bulb with a forty-five. I guessed flies weren’t too bothered by the meaning of life. Maybe they were lucky. Then the phone rang.
“I haf some information that will interest you.” Whoever it was wasn’t–
Hey, hold on there, buddy! You can’t say “Whoever it was wasn’t” – “was wasn’t” is a contradiction.
Look, just get lost and let me finish. Whoever it was wasn’t giving much away, except a strong Silesian accent. I guessed it was a strong Silesian.
“Who is calling, please?” I asked.
“Nefer mind about that. There’s a stiff in the House of God. The big one, downtown……”
[Editor’s interjection: That’s quite enough of that for now, thank you very much.]
© Andrew Belsey 1992
Andrew Belsey lectures in philosophy at University of Wales College of Cardiff