“Could have been learning French. Maybe he wanted to set up a business in Quebec.”
“And the McGill professor?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to see how he fits in. If he does.”
“But wait a minute, sir. Even if the school is the contact point, maybe it isn’t a teacher. Could be one of the students.”
“Over a period of six years?”
“All right. A teacher, then. So what do we do now?”
“We go talk to somebody. See if we can find out which teacher is ours.” LaPointe rises.
“Aren’t you going to finish your coffee, sir?”
“This swill? Just tip the greasy kid and let’s get out of here.”
Considering the slop and dregs he has had to drink with the Lieutenant in Chinese, Greek, and Portuguese cafés, Guttmann doubts that it is the quality of the coffee LaPointe is rejecting.
“…so, out of a total faculty of thirteen, that would make a full-time equivalency of nine or nine and a half, considering that some of my teachers are only part-time, and some are university students training in our techniques of one-to-one intensive language assimilation.” Mlle. Montjean lights her cigarette from a marble-and-gold lighter, takes a deep drag, and tilts her head back to jet the uninhaled smoke upward, away from her guests. Then she lightly touches the tip of her tongue between thumb and forefinger, as though to pluck off a bit of tobacco, a residual gesture from some earlier time when she smoked unfiltered cigarettes.
Many things about her put Guttmann in mind of a fashion modeclass="underline" the meticulous, underrolled coiffure, that bounces with her quick, energetic gestures; the assured, almost rehearsed moves and turns; the long slim arms and legs; the perfectly tailored suit that is both functional and feminine. And, like a model, she appears to be aware of herself at every moment, as though she were seeing herself from the outside. Guttmann finds her voice particularly pleasing in its combining of great precision of pronunciation with a low, warm note just above husky. She laughs in exactly the same key as that in which she speaks.
“I suppose that seems quite a large faculty for a little school like ours, Lieutenant, but we specialize in intensive training with a low student-to-teacher ratio. We submerge the student in a linguistic culture. The student who is learning French, for instance, doesn’t hear a word of English for six hours a day, and he even takes lunch with instructors and other students in a French restaurant. And at night, if he wishes, the student will be taken to French nightclubs, cinema, theatre—all in the company of an instructor. We concentrate on the music of the language, you might say. The student learns to hum in French, even before he learns the words to the song. Our methods were pioneered at McGill, and indeed some of our student teachers are graduate students from there.” Mlle. Montjean suddenly stops and laughs. “I must be sounding like our promotional material.”
“A little,” LaPointe says. “You have a connection with McGill then?”
“No formal connection. Some of their students get experience and credit by working with us. Oh!” She butts her cigarette hurriedly. “Excuse me just a moment, won’t you.” She leaves the “conversation island,” consisting of deeply padded white leather “comfort forms” around a kidney-shaped, glass-topped coffee table, the whole sunken two steps below the floor level. She goes quickly to her desk overlooking Carré St. Louis, and there she presses the button of a concealed tape recorder and speaks conversationally: “Maggie, remind me tomorrow to get in touch with Dr. Moreland. Subject: Evaluation Procedures for Part-time Students.” She releases the button and smiles across at the policemen. “I would have forgotten that completely if I hadn’t happened to mention it to you. I’ve got a brain like a sieve.”
This is a social lie and an obvious one. Mlle. Montjean runs her specialized and very expensive school with such great efficiency that she appears to have free time for people who drop in unexpectedly. Even policemen.
The school occupies a double building: the façades of two former homes have been gutted and renovated to contain “conversation foyers,” “learning environments,” and audio-visual support systems on the first two floors, while the mansard-roofed third story houses Mlle. Montjean’s living and working quarters. Guttmann is impressed by the way she has folded into her large living room the equipment necessary for running her business. Files are concealed within Victorian court cupboards; her hi-fi system is tied in with her dictation instruments; her business telephones are ceramic French “coffee-grinder” models; her desk is an inlaid feminine escritoire; the “conversation island” would serve equally well for staff meetings or a romantic tète-à-tète. The walls and ceiling are white stucco with attic beams revealed and varnished, and this neutral background helps to blend the improbable, but not offensive, mélange of modern, Victorian, and antique furniture.
In theory it ought not work, this mixture of furniture styles, the stucco walls and dark beams, the Persian carpets, the modern and classical prints on the walls. But any feeling of discord and jumble is avoided by the sense that everything has been selected by one person of firm personality and taste. All the elements are aligned by one coign of vantage, one articulation of preference.
LaPointe doesn’t like the place.
“I haven’t offered you a drink, have I?” she says, shaking her head as though to imply she would forget it if it weren’t attached. “What do you take before lunch? Dubonnet?”
Guttmann says Dubonnet would be fine.
“Lieutenant?” she asks.
“Nothing, thank you.” After being shown up to the office apartment by a fussy man of uncertain function, LaPointe presented his identification card and introduced a question about the faculty of the school. Graciously, indeed overwhelmingly, Mlle. Montjean took up the cue, describing her business with a glibness that had a quality of rote. Even the asides and pauses to light a cigarette seemed considered, rehearsed. She said more than he wanted to know, as though attempting to drown questions with answers.
LaPointe sits back and lets Guttmann be the focus for her talk. This kind of woman—educated, capable, confident of her attraction and gifts—is alien to LaPointe’s experience.
Of one thing he is sure; she is hiding something.
“Are you sure I can’t tempt you, Lieutenant? I have everything.” She gestures toward a bar at the end of the room, near a wide marble fireplace.
“Say, that’s a real bar,” Guttmann says in surprise. “That’s fantastic.” He rises and goes with her as she crosses to pour out the drinks. It is indeed a real bar, complete with back bar and beveled mirrors, a brass rail, copper fittings, and even a spittoon.
“I like to believe my guests will treat that as a mere decoration,” she says, indicating the spittoon.
“Where did you get a turn-of-the-century bar like this?” Guttmann asks.
“Oh, they were tearing down one of those little places up on the Main, and I just bought it.” She grins mischievously. “The workmen had a hell of a time getting it up here. The walnut top is one piece. They had to bring it in through the window.”
Guttmann tries the bar on for size, putting his stomach against the polished wood and his foot up on the rail. “Fits just fine. I’ll bet the neighbors wondered what you were up to here. I mean, a whole bar. Come on!”
“That never occurred to me. I should have had my bed brought in through the window, too. That would really have given them something to gossip about. It’s one of those big circular waterbeds.” She laughs lightly. Guttmann realizes she is a very attractive woman.
LaPointe’s patience with this social nonsense is thin. He rises from the deep cushions of the “conversation island” and joins them at the bar. “I would like a little Armagnac after all, Mlle. Montjean. And I would like to know something about Antonio Verdini, alias Tony Green.”