The Great Swindle

by Pierre Lemaitre

  At last, the wick began to burn and give off heat. Édouard balanced the spoon, and the liquid began to bubble, sizzling faintly; he had to be careful, this was the most important part. Once the mixture was ready, Édouard had to wait for it to cool. He got up and walked over to the windows. A beautiful glow enfolded Paris. He did not wear a mask when he was alone and so caught his reflection in the glass, just as he had in 1918, in the window of his hospital room, when Albert had thought he just wanted some fresh air. What a shock.

  Édouard studied himself. He no longer felt distraught, one becomes accustomed to anything, but the sadness was the same; as time passed, the flaw that had opened up in him had grown and still it continued to grow. He had loved life too much, that was the problem. For those who did not care so deeply, things must appear much simpler, but for him . . .

  The mixture had now reached the perfect temperature. Why was he still haunted by the image of his father?

  Because the story between them was unfinished.

  The thought stopped Édouard short. Like a revelation.

  Every story must have an ending, it is in the nature of things. Be it tragic, unbearable, even ridiculous, there should be an end to everything, and with his father there had been none, they had parted as sworn enemies, had never seen each other again, one was dead, the other still alive, but no one had had the last word.

  Édouard tied the tourniquet around his arm. As he pushed the liquid into his vein, he could not help but gaze upon this city, marvel at the light. The flash took his breath away, light exploded behind his eyes, never had he dreamed of light so sublime.

  36

  Lucien Dupré arrived just before dinner; Madeleine had already come downstairs and had settled herself at the table. Henri was away, so she was dining alone, her father had asked that his meal be brought up to his rooms.

  “Monsieur Dupré . . .”

  Madeleine was so terribly civilized one might have thought she was genuinely pleased to see him. They were standing in the spacious hallway, and Dupré, standing stiffly in his coat, hat in hand, looked like a pawn on the chessboard of the black-and-white tiled floor, which indeed is what he was.

  He had never known what to think of this calm, determined woman, he knew only that she scared him.

  “Excuse me for disturbing you,” he said, “I was hoping to speak to monsieur.”

  Madeleine smiled, not at the request but at the formulation. This man was her husband’s closest collaborator, but he spoke like a manservant. She smiled helplessly and was about to say something, but just at that moment the baby gave a kick that left her winded, and her knees gave way under her. Dupré rushed forward and awkwardly cradled her, not knowing where to put his hands. In the arms of this squat but powerful man, she felt safe.

  “Would you like me to call for help?” he said, helping her to one of the chairs that lined the hallway.

  She laughed frankly

  “My poor Monsieur Dupré, I could be constantly calling for help! This baby is the very devil, he loves gymnastics, especially in the evening.”

  Settled in the chair, she caught her breath and clasped her hands over her belly. Dupré was still bent over her.

  “Thank you, Monsieur Dupré . . .”

  She hardly knew the man, good day, good night, how are you, but she never listened to the answer. Now she suddenly realized that, though he was very discreet and very submissive, he probably knew a great deal about Henri’s life and therefore about her marriage. The idea irked her. To be humiliated, not by this man, but by circumstance. She pursed her lips.

  “You are looking for my husband?” she said.

  Dupré straightened up, instinct told him not to persist, to leave as quickly as possible, but already it was too late, as though he had lit a fuse and now found the emergency exit double-locked.

  “The fact is,” Madeleine said, “I have no idea where he is either. Have you made a tour of his mistresses?”

  The question was voiced in the kindly tone of one who genuinely wishes to help. Dupré fastened the last button of his coat.

  “I can make you a list, if you wish, though it might take a little time. If you do not find him with any of them, might I suggest you try the brothels he sometimes frequents? Start with the one on the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, Henri is very fond of it. If he’s not there, you could try the one on the rue Saint-Placide, and there is another one near les Ursulines—I can never remember the name of the street.”

  She paused for a moment and then went on.

  “I don’t know why bordellos are so often located on streets with ecclesiastical names . . . The homage of vice to virtue, no doubt.”

  The word brothel from the lips of this blue-blooded, pregnant woman alone in this great house was not so much shocking as terribly sad. The pain that it implied . . . In this, Dupré was mistaken, Madeleine felt no pain, it was not her heart that had been wounded (love had long since faded), merely her pride.

  Dupré, at heart a soldier, remained stone faced. Madeleine, angry at herself for taking on this ludicrous role, made a little gesture—only for him to stop her: please . . . don’t apologize. This was the unkindest cut: he understood her. She quickly left the hallway with a murmured, barely audible good-bye.

  Henri laid his cards on the table with a desultory flourish—four of a kind—as if to say, what can you do, some days things just go right. Everyone around the table laughed, none more than Léon Jardin-Beaulieu, who had lost more than anyone, he laughed to let people know he was a good sport, and that he did not care—fifty thousand francs in an evening, so what? And it was true. Losing money hurt him less than Henri’s insolent success. The man had taken everything from him. Both men were thinking the same thing. Fifty thousand francs, Henri thought, another hour like this and I’ll have won back the money I gave that ministerial mediocrity, though at least the old tramp can buy himself some new shoes . . .

  “Henri . . . !”

  He looked up. Someone nodded to him, it was his turn to call. Pass. He felt angry at how he had handled the affair. Why had he given the man a hundred thousand? He could have achieved the same result for half as much, less perhaps. But he had been flustered, he had been hasty, he had failed to keep his head. He might have got away with thirty thousand . . . Luckily, Léon the cuckold was on hand. Henri smiled at him over his cards. Léon would reimburse him, if not the full amount, then most of it, and thinking about it, about Léon’s wife and his fine Cuban cigars, more than made up the difference. It had been a splendid idea to have him as an associate . . . though not the golden goose, there was great sport in the plucking.

  A few hands later, forty thousand francs, his winnings were dwindling slightly. His instinct told him it was best to stop now, he stretched languorously, everyone got the message, someone claimed to be tired, people called for their coats. It was 1:00 a.m. as Henri and Léon strolled back to their cars.

  “Honestly,” Henri said, “I’m shattered.”

  “It is late . . .”

  “The reason, my dear man, has more to do with the ravishing mistress I’ve been seeing (a married woman, I shall say no more). So young, so shameless, you cannot imagine. Insatiable!”

  Léon slowed his pace, he felt himself choking.

  “If it were left to me,” Henri said, “I would award a medal to cuckolds—they deserve one, don’t you think?”

  “B . . . but . . . your wife . . . ,” Léon stammered.

  “Oh, Madeleine is a different matter, she is a mother now. As you’ll realize when your time comes, it is something rather different from being a wife.”

  He lit a last cigarette.

  “And you, dear fellow, happily married?”

  At that moment, Henri thought, his pleasure would be complete if Denise had made some excuse about visiting one of her girlfriends and was somewhere where he could go to her right now. Failing which, he decided that a detour via the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette would not take too long.

  As it turned out
, it took an hour and a half . . . It’s always the same, you tell yourself you’ll just drop in for a minute, you have the choice between the two girls free and you take them both, one after the other . . .

  He was still smiling when he arrived back at the boulevard de Courcelles, but the smile froze when he saw Dupré. At this time of night, his being there could not be a good sign; how long had he been waiting?

  “Dargonne is closed,” Dupré announced without the courtesy of a greeting, as though these three words were enough to explain the situation.

  “What do you mean, closed?”

  “And Dampierre. And Pontaville-sur-Meuse. I’ve telephoned the others, but I haven’t managed to get through. I think all our sites have been shut down.”

  “Shut down by whom?”

  “By the préfecture, though they say the order came from higher up. There is a gendarme outside every cemetery . . .”

  Henry was in shock.

  “A gendarme? What the devil is going on?”

  “Apparently they are sending in inspectors. In the meantime, all work has been suspended.”

  What was happening? Had that ministerial mediocrity reneged on the promise to withdraw his report?

  “All the sites?”

  There was no need to repeat himself, his boss had understood perfectly. But what still seemed to escape him was the scale of the problem. Dupré cleared his throat.

  “There’s something else I wanted to say, sir . . . I need to go away for few days.”

  “Not now you don’t, my friend. I need you here.”

  Henri’s voice conveyed his usual brusque arrogance, but Dupré’s silence lacked the usual meek deference. In the confident tone he used when giving orders to his foremen, a tone less timorous and submissive, Dupré said:

  “I have family matters to attend to. I don’t know how long I will be, you know what it’s like . . .”

  Henri shot him a look, the harsh glare of a captain of industry, and was alarmed by Dupré’s reaction. The situation was more serious than he had supposed, because Dupré merely nodded, turned on his heel, and left. He had delivered his message, his work was done. Once and for all. Another man would have hurled abuse, Pradelle simply clenched his teeth. Henri thought, as he had many times before, that it had been a mistake to have underpaid him. Dupré’s loyalty should have been rewarded. Too late now.

  Henri checked his watch: 2:30 a.m.

  As he climbed the steps, he noticed there was a lamp still lit in the hall. He was about to push the front door when it was opened by the maid, the brunette, what was her name? Pauline, that was it, a pretty little thing, why had he not screwed her already? But he did not have time to think about such things.

  “Monsieur Jardin-Beaulieu telephoned several times . . .” she said.

  Henri intimidated her, her chest heaved.

  “. . . but the telephone kept waking Madame, so she took the phone off the hook and asked me to wait up and give you the message: you are to telephone Monsieur Jardin-Beaulieu as soon as you arrive.”

  First Dupré, now Léon, whom he had seen less than two hours ago. Henri instinctively eyed the breasts of the young maid, but he was beginning to lose his footing. Could there be some connection between Léon’s telephone call and the cemeteries being shut down?

  “Very well,” he said, “very well.”

  The sound of his own voice reassured him. He had panicked needlessly. He needed to check. It was possible that one or two cemeteries had been temporarily closed, but it was hardly likely they would close all of them, since to do so would magnify a minor problem into a major scandal.

  Pauline had obviously been dozing on one of the hall chairs because her eyes were puffy. Henri continued to stare at her as he thought about other things, but the look was the one he always used with women, it made them uncomfortable. Pauline took a step back.

  “If you have no further need of me, monsieur?”

  He shook his head, and the girl immediately fled.

  He took off his jacket. Telephone Léon. At this hour. As though he did not already have enough on his plate, he had to take responsibility for that midget!

  He went into his study, reconnected the telephone, asked the operator to put him through, and as soon as the call was answered, said:

  “What the hell is it now? Still on about that damn report?”

  “Not that one,” said Léon. “Another one . . .”

  Léon did not sound panicked, indeed he sounded calm and controlled, which was surprising in the circumstances.

  “It’s about . . . um . . . Gardonne.”

  “No, no,” Henri interrupted irritably, “Not Gardonne, Dargonne! And anyway . . .”

  Suddenly Henri realized, and he fell silent, dumbstruck by the news.

  This was the report he had paid a hundred thousand francs to bury.

  “Three inches thick,” Léon said.

  Henri frowned. What could he possibly have written, the fucking pen pusher who had taken his money, to make the file so thick?

  “They’ve never seen anything like it at the ministry,” Léon said. “There was a hundred thousand francs with the report, in large bills, all carefully clipped to the pages. There is even an appendix listing the serial numbers.”

  He had handed in the money. It was unbelievable.

  Henri, shaken by this piece of information, could not manage to piece together the puzzle: the report, the ministry, the money, the closed sites . . .

  Léon filled in the blanks.

  “The inspector details serious lapses at the cemetery and further alleges attempted suborning of a duly sworn civil servant, claiming the hundred thousand francs as proof. They constitute an admission of guilt. Which means that the allegations in the report are founded, because you don’t try to bribe an official for no reason. Especially not with that much money.”

  Calamity.

  Léon said nothing for a moment, to allow time for this revelation to sink in. His voice was so calm that Henri had the unsettling impression of listening to a perfect stranger.

  “My father was apprised of the situation this evening,” said Léon. “As you can imagine, the minister did not hesitate for a second, he has to cover his own back, so he ordered that all the sites be shut down. Logically, he’ll take some time to gather evidence to corroborate the complaint, have inspections conducted of some of the cemeteries, and then—in about ten days—he will probably issue a writ against your company.”

  “You mean our company.”

  Léon did not respond immediately. Evidently this was an evening for pregnant pauses. What with Dupré and now this midget . . . At length, Léon spoke, his voice soft, measured, as though vouchsafing a secret.

  “No, Henri, my mistake, I forgot to tell you . . . I sold all my shares last month. To small shareholders who are counting on your success, I do hope you won’t disappoint them. This affair no longer concerns me personally. I am calling to warn you simply because you are a friend . . .”

  Another loaded silence.

  Henri would kill the midget, rip him apart with his bare hands.

  “Ferdinand Morieux sold his shares too,” Léon said.

  Henri said nothing, he slowly replaced the receiver, utterly drained by this news. Had he wanted to stab Jardin-Beaulieu, he no longer had the strength to hold the knife.

  The minister, the shutdown of the cemeteries, the bribery charge, it was all too much. The situation was spinning out of control.

  He did not take a moment to think, did not check the time. It was almost three o’clock when he burst into Madeleine’s bedroom. She was wide awake, sitting up in bed—with all the commotion going on in this house, it’s impossible to get a wink of sleep. Léon was calling every five minutes, you really need to talk to him . . . I disconnected the telephone. Did you call him back . . . ? Madeleine trailed off, startled by the look of sheer panic on Henri’s face. She had seen him anxious sometimes, angry, shamefaced, worried, she had even seen him distraught—only
last month, for example, when he put on that little show of a man in desperate straits, but the following morning there had been no trace of concern, he had settled the problem. Tonight his face was ashen, he was agitated, his voice quavered, and most worryingly, there were no lies. His face betrayed not a vestige of his customary cunning, his guile; she could tell at a glance when he was shamming, but tonight he seemed so perfectly sincere . . .

  It is simple, Madeleine had never seen him in such a state.

  Her husband did not apologize for bursting into her room in the middle of the night, he sat on the edge of the bed and he talked. He resolved to say only as much as he could without permanently besmirching his image. But even an account of the bare facts meant saying things that were disagreeable to him. The undersized coffins, the greedy, feckless laborers, foreigners who hardly spoke a word of French . . . And the enormity of the task. It was unimaginable! Even so, he had to admit: the German bodies in French graves, the coffins filled with dirt, the pilfering at the sites, there were official reports, he had thought he was doing the right thing by offering a little money to the investigator, a foolish blunder, but it was done . . .

  Madeleine nodded, intent on what he was saying. She felt it could not all be his fault.

  “But why should you have to take all the blame in this affair? That seems very unjust . . .”

  Henri was amazed—at himself for being able to say these things, to admit to mismanaging the situation; amazed at Madeleine, for calmly hearing him out and, if not defending him, at least understanding; amazed at the bond between them, because this was the first time they had treated each other as adults. They spoke without anger, without irritation, as though chatting about renovations on the house, as though discussing a vacation or a domestic problem, in fact this was the first time that they had truly understood each other.