The Titanic Secret (Isaac Bell 11)

Bell entered the lobby restaurant at a little past eight and saw that his guest was already seated and enjoying a pot of tea. Cigarette smoke coiled from the cut-glass tray at his elbow. He smiled when he saw Bell but did not stand. Bell crossed the room, noting the other patrons, mostly businessmen or gentleman tourists who’d come down early while their wives readied themselves upstairs. Paris being Paris, one does not act the tourist unless elegantly turned out at all times.

The Van Dorn Agency was slowly expanding into Europe. Joseph saw, and Bell heartily agreed, that the world was becoming much smaller due to the speed and safety of the Atlantic express liners and the interconnectivity of burgeoning international trade. It was inevitable that cases originating in the United States would spill over into countries lying across the pond. Therefore, they currently had an office in London, and a one-person contingent in Berlin, but they had yet to establish a formal presence in France. They’d had one man, Horace Bronson, for a short time, but it hadn’t worked out. This left Bell relying on a personal contact he’d cultivated on the few trips he’d taken to Paris, always with his wife, who loved the City of Lights more than any other in the world.

Bell and his best friend and fellow investigator, Archie Abbott, had been trying to come up with an appropriate name for such an underhanded business contact. The best they’d managed was “fixer.” Bring the person a problem and they fix it for you no matter what.

He missed Archie on this trip. He could have used the help, but Abbott was off tracking a lawyer who’d facilitated bogus contracts for companies doing business in Panama, building the great canal. That case had turned scandalous when it was found the absconding attorney had a young mistress in the family way. Bell had no doubt that Archie was just eating it all up with wolfish delight.

“Henri, old boy, good to see you,” Bell said by way of greeting the man at the table. He slid into a chair opposite the Frenchman and, only when settled, reached across to shake his friend’

s left hand.

Henri Favreau had lost his right arm as a boy during what the French call the War of 1870 and what Isaac Bell knew as the Franco-Prussian War. He had been an unwitting civilian caught in the cross fire of an attempted breakout from the city of Metz, which the Germans had besieged. His younger sister and his mother had been killed. His father, a conscript, died later in the war, leaving young, crippled Henri to fend for himself in a nation afflicted with chaos and strife.

Whatever lessons he’d learned in those early days when the beleaguered country saw so many starving, they had served him well. Henri Favreau was now a man who exchanged favors for a living. He knew practically everybody from every stratum of society, from politician to prostitute—who, in Henri’s eyes, were one and the same.

Joseph Van Dorn had written a letter of introduction for Bell years earlier when he and Marion were on a European holiday. Van Dorn didn’t know Favreau personally but shared enough mutual friends to give the letter import. Despite their age difference, the French fixer and the American investigator had an instant rapport, one that only grew stronger on their subsequent meetings.

“Isaac, mon ami.” Henri smiled with tobacco-stained teeth. His English was much better than Isaac’s French. “You are too handsome and refined not to be a Parisian. How is that beautiful wife of yours?”

“Upset that I’m here without her but doing well. What about Claire?”

“If she is not nagging me, she is not happy. So, she is very happy indeed.” He laughed at his own joke.

Favreau was a plain-featured man in most all ways. But not when he let his guard down and the intelligence and shrewdness behind his dark eyes shone through. It was in those tiny flashes that his brilliance suddenly made him seem much more extraordinary and gave him a natural charisma that drew people to him without their having the slightest understanding why. Bell once told him it was the beguilement of the cobra.

Bell caught the eye of a waiter in a white uniform and indicated he wanted coffee. No one was within earshot, so the two old friends could talk freely. But they kept their voices well modulated.

“I am delighted to see you again, Isaac, but I confess I am not so pleased at your reason to be here.”

One of the cables Isaac had had sent from the Van Dorn office in New York was a request for Henri Favreau to get background information on the Société des Mines de Lorraine and, specifically, where their employee Yves Massard kept an office if Favreau was unable to find the home of his deceased twin, Marc.

“I’m not thrilled either, if truth be told,” Bell admitted.

Favreau grunted. “Let me start by saying municipal records show out of a population of two point eight million people, Paris boasts no less than one hundred and twenty Marc Massards and exactly none mention a wife named Theresa.”

Bell’s plan to reach Joshua Hayes Brewster rested on his ability to find Theresa, the woman from Marc Massard’s photograph, and gain her trust. His assumption being they had married, or were at least still together, and she was privy to some aspects of his work.

“I figured it would turn out like that. Even if it’s a long shot, you still have to—”

“Pull the trigger,” Henri said for him, and held up a discreet hand to pause the conversation while a waiter approached with Bell’s coffee and a basket of warm croissants, nestled in fine linen, with a plate of fresh country butter as yellow as a daffodil and some fruit preserves.

When the waiter moved on, Favreau pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket and slid it over to Bell. Bell opened it and gave it a quick glance, memorizing the address of Yves Massard’s office. He slid it back. The scrap was soon turning to ash next to the stubbed-out butts of the Gauloises Henri smoked in an unending chain.

“Okay, that covers the favors you asked for. Now I am going to do you for another by saying whatever this is, Isaac, drop it. The Société des Mines is not a company you want to trifle with. They are like Germany’s Krupp. Their tentacles are everywhere, not just in mining but in foundries, shipbuilding, heavy industry, arms. The list is endless, and they did not grow so big by being the nicest or the fairest. The company is run by a ruthless family dynasty. The employees are treated like serfs and live in constant fear. If the company wants something, they simply take it and legalities be damned.

“There was a fire at one of their facilities here in Paris. Eight men were killed. The investigation was inconclusive, though poor working conditions were considered partly to blame.”

“Factories are dangerous places,” Bell pointed out.

“That’s not the whole story. That part wasn’t covered up. What came next was. The families of those who died were evicted from company housing that same day. Utter heartlessness. It was a scene of bawling widows and their wailing children. One reporter tried to get the story printed. His editor refused, naturally, because the newspaper sold plenty of advertising to Société subsidiaries. When the reporter complained to others about the deplorable actions taken by the company, word got back and he was visited by two men who broke each of his ten fingers.”

Bell couldn’t help but swallow involuntarily. He said, “I was told a story about a village in Russia where the elders were burned alive to stop complaints about water contamination coming from a Société lead mine.”

“Such a tale does not surprise me. The government won’t act against them because they represent such a large part of the French economy. When the socialist Prime Minister, Émile Combes, was in office, he tried to take them on. He was told in no uncertain terms that if the government ever tried to interfere with Société business again, they would immediately fire every employee and shutter every factory and office. Such a move would have toppled the government and crippled the country. Combes backed off, and the Société continues to run its affairs with impunity.”

With nothing to be gained discussing their ruthlessness, Bell changed tacks. “Is there a connection between the Société and Marie Curie?”

The Frenchman gave it a few seconds of thought. “Not that I am aware of. I read a news account that she and her team had to process tons of pitchblende ore for mere milligrams of radium. Someone had to be her supplier for the raw material. It very well could be the Société. They are a mining concern, after all. Do you know if there is a link?”