Landru's Secret Page 3

  “Your mother has no doubt told you about the departure of Robert Ballenger to Vannes, of Marcel Huber to Saint-Nazaire,” André rambled on to Max. “As you can see, almost all the lads have left.”

  Putting his loneliness to one side, André wanted to hear more about Max’s training horse: had Max already stroked its neck? Also, “the Bordeaux girls, my good chap!” André teased Max: “Are they to your taste?”

  Before he left Paris, Max had thoughtfully asked his mother to make friends with Mme Cuchet, for he knew that Jeanne constantly fretted about André trying to enlist as an underage volunteer. It soon became plain that the two women did not have a great deal in common. Mme Morin was a respectable, strait-laced housewife, ten years older than Jeanne, who shocked her new acquaintance by mentioning casually that she could not wed her fiancé because he was already married. Mme Morin could scarcely believe her ears when Jeanne added that this same monsieur had used a false identity.

  “Her account made me freeze,” Mme Morin recalled. “I felt I had to advise Mme Cuchet to break with this individual, who was not an honest man. She did not speak to me about him any more.”

  The two women stuck from then on to the safe subject of their respective sons. Mme Morin remembered how Jeanne was “heartbroken” that autumn at a false rumour that 17-year-olds would soon be able to volunteer for the army, without parental permission. Conversely, André was full of joy at the same unfounded news.

  André had at least persuaded Jeanne to allow him to attend weekly prearmy training classes for teenage boys at a barracks near their apartment. It was great, André reported to Max at the start of October, even though he could not train for the cavalry because the barracks had run out of horses. Instead, he was going to join the infantry, and this was great too. André and his classmates had marched one day around the quartier, singing patriotic songs.

  “We are taught in a really marvellous way,” André enthused to Max. “An infantryman who was passing through the barracks showed us this week how to dismantle a machine gun. He even taught us in a summary way how to fire it if necessary.”

  And then Jeanne stepped in. “I have to tell you that I haven’t been doing any military training for the past fortnight,” André informed Max in late October. “It was becoming completely useless, given that Maman does not want me to sign up.”

  André was determined to do something for the war effort, rather than stew at home with his possessive mother who seemed to have no desire to resume her old work as a seamstress. He soon found a job as a trainee mechanic at an automobile plant in north-west Paris that was making vehicles for the army.

  “My old chap, it’s just like barracks life,” André joked in his next letter to Max. His alarm went off at 5.30 am and after a quick breakfast with Jeanne he was on his bike, in time for the early shift.

  Even now, Jeanne could not leave André alone. One day, André was working on the assembly line when Jeanne turned up unannounced with Mme Morin to see how he was getting on.

  “You can just imagine how I felt!” André wrote to Max indignantly. “I had my hands full and completely filthy as I was in the middle of dismantling a car.”

  His new job lasted barely a month. In late November, Jeanne abruptly pulled André out of the factory without informing his employer. All of a sudden, she and André were leaving Paris for a new life in the country with Landru.

  ***

  Mme Oudry, 60, ran a property agency in Vernouillet, a quiet little town near a loop in the Seine, about 35 kilometres north-west of Paris. Towards the end of November, a bearded man called “Monsieur Cuchet” walked into Mme Oudry’s little office to enquire about an unfurnished house for rent with the curious English name “The Lodge”. She showed him around and he liked the place but explained that his wife would need to see it as well in order to give her final approval.

  Next day, Jeanne and André caught the train to Vernouillet with Landru to inspect The Lodge. It was a peculiar double-fronted property, standing near the bottom of a narrow street called Rue de Mantes that wound uphill to the town centre. The Lodge was really two houses in one, with a small annexe or “pavilion” on the higher side adjoining the main villa further down the hill. Confusingly, a garage formed the ground floor of the villa and provided access to the rear garden, while the first-floor front door was reached via a flight of external steps.

  This is what Jeanne saw when she opened the door and stepped into a narrow hallway:

  • To the left, a living room and dining room, leading onto the twostorey annexe, where there was an oven;

  • To the right of the hallway, a staircase going down to the garage and up to three first-floor bedrooms and a spacious attic;

  • At the end of the corridor, a kitchen with no oven, a pantry and a washroom;

  • At the rear of the house, more steps leading down to the surprisingly long garden, flanked by drystone walls and incorporating a disused, tumbledown stable directly behind the annexe.

  Jeanne could see that the garden lacked any real privacy, because it was overlooked by the neighbouring house on the uphill side, while the wall on the downhill side had collapsed in places. It was not ideal for her purpose but she decided The Lodge would have to do. The three of them returned to Mme Oudry’s office, where Jeanne and André watched in silence as “Monsieur Cuchet” signed the short-term quarterly lease.

  A couple of days later, a removal van brought all Jeanne’s furniture down from Paris. Landru now decided to retrieve his camionnette from the farmhouse in Normandy where he had billeted his family, parking it in The Lodge’s substantial garage.

  Around Vernouillet, Landru and Jeanne soon aroused the same suspicion as in La Chaussée. Landru pretended to Mme Oudry that he was a designer of aircraft tailfins, prompting rumours that he might be a German spy. He also informed Mme Oudry that Mme Cuchet held a senior position with a leading Paris fashion house and had to go “constantly” to America. André, meanwhile, was rarely seen outdoors.

  ***

  At his training camp in Bordeaux, Max was fed up with André, who had not written to him for the best part of a month. Finally, just before Christmas, André got round to replying to Max’s last letter.

  “What a hassle!” André declared, blaming the move from Paris for the delay. “It has been worse I’m sure than fatigue duty,” André prattled on. “Enfin, that’s how it is, we are almost settled in and I am starting to get my breath back.”

  André did not explain to Max why he and his mother had left Paris; nor did André mention the man masquerading as his father. Indeed, André had never referred to Landru, alias Diard, alias Cuchet, in any of his letters to Max.

  Over Christmas, Jeanne received a letter from Mme Morin who – possibly prompted by Max – was worried that she had heard nothing from Mme Cuchet since her departure from Paris. It took Jeanne a week to reply, and when she did, her tone was guarded and unwelcoming.

  Jeanne began by explaining implausibly that she had not written sooner because she had not wished to “disturb” Mme Morin during her mobilised husband’s recent home leave. Besides, Jeanne continued, there was “the speed with which we decided [to move], in two or three days everything was rushed through.” Jeanne assured Mme Morin that she planned to come to Paris soon and would not fail to call on her.

  “Please believe me that I also look back fondly on the moments we spent together and I really hope that we don’t lose sight of each other.”

  On the other hand, a visit by Mme Morin to Vernouillet might be difficult because “at the moment the place is rather muddy”. Of course, Jeanne added, she would be pleased to see Mme Morin at The Lodge “as soon as the weather will allow”, which might not be till the summer. Jeanne’s hint to Mme Morin was obvious; for the time being, she wished to be left alone.

  Sometime in January, Jeanne wrote a similar letter to the sister of her late husband, who had also expressed a desire to visit Vernouillet. Once again, Jeanne explained that the “poor weather” me
ant such a visit was currently impractical.

  Even after a month in Vernouillet, the reclusive new tenants at The Lodge had made almost no impression on their immediate neighbours. The local butcher, who lived with his family at the bottom of Rue de Mantes, dimly recalled “Monsieur Cuchet” strolling up the hill one day with André, who was wearing mechanic’s overalls. The butcher’s wife thought she might have seen Jeanne and André heading off somewhere on their bicycles. On the other side, the young housewife whose property overlooked the rear garden of The Lodge could only remember later that the man might have been a secret German agent.

  In early January, Jeanne allowed André to travel twice to Paris to collect the post from their old apartment. It was probably on one of these trips that André picked up some fantastic news, at least from his point of view. France had lost around 300,000 men in the first five months of the war, a staggering casualty rate that had already forced the government to bring forward the mobilisation of young men born in 1895 and 1896, the socalled “classes” of 1915 and 1916. By the second week of January, the press was reporting accurately that the government was about to announce the call-up in the summer of 1915 of André’s contingent, the “class” of 1917. Suddenly, Jeanne faced the prospect of losing André to the army within a matter of months.

  André could not wait to tell Max, who had just been posted to the front. “Ah! You lucky dog,” André wrote enviously on 20 January, before alluding to his own good news. “I believe I too will soon be savouring the pleasures of garrison life,” André continued. “Perhaps you and I will meet one day in the trenches, you as a dragoon and me as a foot-soldier, for I am sure in advance that I cannot avoid this destiny.”

  André was still pumped up with patriotic fervour a week later when he wrote to his mobilised uncle, the husband of Jeanne’s sister-in-law. André had heard that his uncle had just been promoted from private to the lowly rank of adjutant. It was a signal honour for the family, André believed, and he felt obliged to convey his congratulations.

  Then André and Jeanne fell silent, as if they had simply disappeared.

  Chapter 3

  The ‘Carnet Noir’

  Max was furious about André’s failure to reply to any more letters. “He’s a little fool,” he told his mother that spring, when he was home on leave. Max even wondered whether to catch a train to Vernouillet to give André a piece of his mind.

  At the end of March, Mme Morin sent another letter to Jeanne, expressing concern that she and Max had heard no more from their friends. A few days later, a short, bearded man, wearing a top hat and smart gloves, called at the Morins’ apartment in northern Paris. Landru introduced himself as a “friend” of Mme Cuchet who, he explained, had gone to England with André. He tipped his hat and was on his way, before the startled Mme Morin could probe a little further.

  She had little doubt that her caller was Jeanne’s fiancé and assumed that Jeanne must have broken off their engagement. Gradually, Mme Morin and Max stopped dwelling on Jeanne and André’s rude behaviour. It was clear that this strange mother and her immature son did not wish to see them, which was all a bit sad, Mme Morin reflected.

  ***

  Landru was busy that spring – so busy that he acquired a little black moleskin diary or “carnet” to keep track of his hectic schedule. On 1 May 1915, Le Journal, a mass circulation daily, published a lonely hearts advert he had concocted, which read in French:

  M. 45 ans, seul, s. famil., situation 4.000, ay. intér. désire épous. dame, âge situation rapport.

  Meaning:

  Monsieur, aged 45, single, with no family, savings of 4,000 francs, having own home, wishes to marry a lady of a similar age and situation.

  Landru had pitched his advert cleverly. He was neither an obvious swindler, like the monsieur in the same column who claimed to own a chateau, nor too poor to attract interest. A middle-aged man in his forties with savings of 4,000 francs (about 12,400 euros) sounded solidly respectable, a good catch for a woman seeking bourgeois security.

  Next morning, the first replies began to arrive at the PO box attached to Landru’s advert.

  “Excused me having seen your announcement in the newspaper,” Célestine Buisson wrote. “I am a widow with 12,000 francs I am 44 years old I have a 19 year old son in action so I am alone I would like to change my situation if my situation pleases you Accept my respectful sentiments, Buisson.”

  A photograph of Célestine, taken shortly before the war, showed her as she was: a hard-working domestic servant from south-west France, scarcely educated, with a warm, trusting nature and a strong desire to show the right man that she would make a good wife.

  Célestine was the widow of an innkeeper in Montpellier and had moved to Paris after his death in 1912 to be closer to her two sisters, taking a job as a housekeeper. One of her sisters, Catherine, was married with young children and lived near Célestine’s apartment in south-east Paris. The other, Marie, was in reality a half-sister with a different father from Célestine and Catherine. Now in her late twenties, Marie worked as a housemaid for a well-to-do family in the fashionable third arrondissement. Marie walked with the help of a cane because of some illness or injury to her leg, a disability that perhaps explained why she was still single.

  Naturally honest, Célestine had permitted herself two little omissions in her letter to Landru. Firstly, her son Gaston was illegitimate, born sometime after Célestine’s marriage. In addition, Célestine had until recently been the mistress of a gendarme who had been killed during the early months of the war. This was why she had spotted Landru’s lonely hearts adverts; the term exactly described how Célestine felt.

  Landru replied swiftly to Célestine, introducing himself as “Georges Frémyet”, a manufacturer and bachelor from the city of Lille, close to the Belgian border. When the Germans occupied Lille in October 1914, he had abandoned his home and factory and fled to Paris, a wrenching experience. To be clear, it was not Célestine’s money that interested him, Landru explained in his devious letter. No, it was the depth of the sentiments she had expressed in her response. Would it perhaps be possible to arrange a meeting?

  “I agree with you a meeting is preferable,” Célestine wrote straight back, “for what you tell me is really true money is all very well but if one has a wife who is loose disorganised and who does not like her home and does not have affection for her husband it is a very sad existence for one and the other as for me I believe that one will not be able to reproach me for that for if I take a husband it is to love him and cherish him as a wife who loves her husband must do.”

  They met at Célestine’s apartment near the Gare d’Austerlitz and again the following day. At this point, Célestine decided she had better doublecheck the investment certificates that she kept in her wardrobe, just in case “Frémyet” proposed to her. To her horror, she realised her stocks and bonds were only worth about 10,000 francs, not 13,000 francs, as she had mistakenly told him. Célestine confessed all in her next letter to Landru, hoping he would forgive her.

  “There is no doubt at all that you will find I make you a good wife,” she pleaded. “You have suffered a thousand misfortunes from the Germans I will make you forget them certainly my situation is a lot more modest than yours but the affection I will give you really counts for something.”

  Landru felt he had got far enough with Célestine to start one of his case files. “44”, he wrote in Célestine’s dossier. “A son of 19 at the front… Got her loot and furniture on the death of her old man.” He then considered how to classify Célestine in his filing system. “In reserve”, he eventually scribbled.

  ***

  Landru continued to work his way through the other respondents to his advert in Le Journal. At 8.00 pm on 18 May, he arrived at an apartment on Rue Rodier, a few blocks west of the Gare du Nord.

  “I am 39 years old,” Anna Collomb had written to him. “I am a widow with no children and thus have no family. I make 210 francs per month in an office and,
being economical and fairly astute, I have managed to build up some savings, which, with the little I received from my husband when he died, amounts to 8,000 francs.”

  Anna was an attractive, dark-haired woman who worked near the Paris Bourse as a typist for an insurance company. Her letter, like her personality, was not entirely candid. Her real age was 44, and she had an illegitimate little daughter who had supposedly been placed with nuns in the Italian port of San Remo. This story may also have been untrue, for Anna’s concierge later recalled seeing the infant at Rue Rodier.

  Anna omitted another detail in her reply to Landru. Her elderly father, a retired salesman, and her mother lived in an apartment in eastern Paris with her much younger sister Victorine, 24, who was engaged to a soldier serving at the front. Anna was especially close to Victorine, or “Ryno” (pronounced “Reeno”), as she was known in the family. For her part, Ryno kept a fond, watchful eye on Anna, mindful of her elder sister’s sorry history with men.

  Anna had originally married a silk trader, living with him in the 1890s in Guatemala, childless and increasingly miserable, as he steadily went bankrupt. On their return to France, Anna’s husband had cadged a job managing an uncle’s farm in the French Alps, where Anna had watched him steadily drink himself to an early death. After a brief stint as a lady’s companion in Marseille, the widowed Anna had moved back to Paris. Over the years her concierge at Rue Rodier had observed a string of gentleman callers going up to her apartment and often staying the night.

  Landru, alias “Monsieur Frémyet”, an industrialist from Lille, may have been tempted to sleep with Anna on this first visit. Certainly they got on well enough to fix another rendezvous.

  ***

  Next morning (19 May), in showery weather, Landru dashed around Paris in his best suit and bowler hat, meeting other women who had answered his advert in Le Journal. His first rendezvous, jotted in his carnet, was at a café near the Gare de Lyon where he met “Mlle Lydie”, whose accent must have given her away immediately. She was in reality a German-born widow of a Frenchman, desperate to find another French husband to avoid imprisonment as an enemy alien.