Eight more days before we reach Le Havre, and a brief train ride from there to Paris! I cannot wait to step upon solid ground again!
*****
She put the pen down, blotted the ink, quickly reread what she had written and closed her notebook, then went to the minuscule bathroom to rinse her face with cold water before returning to her bunk. Moments later Frederick returned, slightly disheveled, slightly drunk. He gave her a wan smile, lurched into the bathroom and latched the door. He was in there a long time.
Chapter 3
There were times when Landru opened his eyes early in the morning having forgotten who he was. He didn’t like the feeling; it implied a weakness easily exploited, so he would lie in the bed and rediscover himself by staring at the woman sleeping close by. Was it his wife of 18 years? His most recent lover? The latest war widow from the personal advertisement in Le Matin? It was easier if there was no woman, no middle-aged Dômestic with folds of pale skin beneath her chin and a government pension. Then he could choose who he was that day.
He had worn so many names. His life had been a series of small crimes marred by unforeseen evidence and followed by arrest, prosecution and sentence, parole and release. Then, a new name and a new identity. He was a failed criminal, what the gendarmes called a petit forban, rarely showing a profit from his schemes. If there was money, it sifted through his fingers, apportioned to his wife and four children, to his mistress of the moment, to planning the next doubtful adventure. He considered himself an exemplary father and a doting husband. His own father, an honest provider, had been so ashamed of his son’s endless skirmishes with the law that one somber day in October 1913 he had hanged himself in the Bois de Boulogne.
Henri Désiré Landru (the “Désiré” reflected his mother’s desperate desire to have a boy) hardly noticed his father’s suicide. He did not attend the funeral; he did not send flowers or a card expressing his sympathy. He did not tell his children that their grandfather had passed away. He did, though, find and keep the man’s identity papers, birth certificate, and bank book, since these might come in handy. Landru’s years in jail had been spent with petty thieves, pimps, addicts and suppliers, strong-arm men, bigamists, deserters and other truants. He knew the value of a dead man’s personals.
He was dapper if not elegant, with piercing eyes. One woman had called him “parfaitement proportionné sauf pour ta tête,” and it was true. His arms, legs, feet, torso, were the stuff of a sculptor’s model, but his head was overlarge on a thin neck punctuated by a lump of an Adam’s apple. His mustache and beard were perfectly trimmed, his fingernails clean and well cut. He had smooth, taut skin stretched over perfect bones. He neither drank nor smoked, though he had a fondness for dark chocolate from the colonies. At the height of his infamy, he had seen himself declared in print as a student of Franz Mesmer.
In reality, he had been an undecorated soldier, a bicycle mechanic, a brilliant but tragically unappreciated inventor. Still, he was well-spoken, smelled of cologne and ironing starch. If he wished to amuse, he could contort his body like an acrobat and juggle plates and glasses. He could sing the aria of the day’s operetta. He had discovered in himself a charm that, nurtured and played properly, provided a steady stream of goods he could sell, and bank accounts he would pilfer.
His attitude toward earning a living had changed over the years. At first, he had abhorred the idea of a steady job, and had searched for easier, quicker roads to profit. He had hoped to be an entrepreneur, manufacturing motorcycles, but had little success. There had been other businesses, other initiatives, endeavors that had worked for a while, then failed. Mostly there had been widows.
In 1915, France was creating 12,000 widows a day and Landru was corresponding with more than 250 of them. They were young, old, seldom well-educated, though he insisted they be able to read and write. When they responded to the small advertisements placed in the personal section of Paris newspapers, they were hopeful, delighted by what he claimed to offer, easily wooed and trusting beyond the norm. They knew him as Monsieur Petit, Monsieur Legrand (a small joke he allowed himself), Monsieur Freymier, Monsieur Dupont. He was an international engineer, the owner of a rubber plantation in Brazil, a secret government agent soon to be sent overseas to promote the war effort, or the next consul to Australia. He wrote charming letters, sent flowers and candy, squired them about town. They found his habit of noting every expense in a small cahier charming and responsible. In bed with him, they discovered passions never before explored, and when over a lunch of pâté et fromage he held their hands in his, stared deeply into their eyes and proposed, they accepted immediately and with gratitude. Soon, he would suggest they move in together, since they would shortly be going abroad for his next posting. He would volunteer to sell their furniture, and arrange for the banks to open new accounts that could be accessed from wherever they might be assigned.
He was a man of mystery, of taste and refinement. The widows gloried in his company.
Chapter 4
On the fifth day of the voyage, La Savoie was struck by a gale-force storm that came from nowhere and stayed. Only the hardiest passengers ventured from their cabins, and Frederick watched as seamen from the engine room tied down the first and second-class decks. The men were bare-chested brutes with grimy hands and sullen expressions, unshaven and heavily tattooed. They worked methodically in the driving rain, securing deck chairs and tables, parasols and recreation equipment. They were unconcerned by the weather, and the male passengers gave them wide berth. The females stared covertly and whispered behind their hands.
One of the wealthier passengers, a Texan with three master suites for himself, his mistress and their entourage, took a nasty fall and broke a leg and an arm. A Jewish woman from the Bronx was mildly bruised when a brutal swell threw her against a bulkhead. Dozens took to their bunks, whispering of the Titanic. A Portuguese deckhand was crushed when a supply locker accidentally opened and released cylinders of compressed oxygen.
The galleys were shut, and the few passengers capable of eating had cold sandwiches and salads. The captain ordered the liquor supply—wine included—secured and locked, and the bars on every deck were closed. Passengers complained and resorted to their private stocks of spirits. The injured Texan, a hard-drinking man, threw a party in his suites for all first-class passengers. Some 50—mostly men—attended and found no shortage of alcohol, though the canapés were marginal at best. Working in his overwhelmed infirmary, the ship’s French physician, aided by two nurses, ran out of bismuth and dispensed white chalk tablets.
In their cabin, Frederick and Easter had surprising reactions to the storm. As his complexion grew sallow, hers took on color. She began to laugh, clapping her hands every time lightning burst. She jumped up and down like a child, and when the wind howled loudest, she insisted on going outside. Frederick forbade it, but she wrapped herself in a shawl and did so anyway. Furious, he chased her, grabbed her elbow, and when she turned to face him, he saw a wild glow in her eyes. She set her jaw, wrested her arm away and resolutely walked to the deck’s nearest entry. Frederick, weaving, followed as each swell threatened his balance. When Easter reached the door, it was locked. She turned, marched in the other direction until she found a porthole. That had also been sealed shut, but she unscrewed the four brass wing nuts and fought it open. A blast of wind and rain hit her squarely in the face and she laughed. Frederick, astounded, kept his distance. Sheets of lightning exploded across the low sky. The corridors were bare, and the dim light gave the area an ethereal radiance. For a moment, Frederick thought he and Easter might be the only two passengers aboard, so empty and desolate was it in the fury of the storm. Then Easter turned, took his face in both her hands and kissed him hard on the lips. She led him back to the cabin, shed her clothes, and reclined on the bunk, uncovered. The cabin light swept across her in geometric patterns to reveal hollows and valleys he’d never seen. He looked away, embarrassed, and she reached across the small space to take his hand and pull him to her.
The
