The Great Swindle

by Pierre Lemaitre

  He was not wearing one of the outrageous creations with which he had entertained the staff, but his “normal man” mask, the face that was frozen yet so lifelike. The one he had worn when he first arrived.

  It was something the like of which they would never see again, the manager thought, regretting that he had not arranged for a photographer. Monsieur Eugène, ever the fine gentleman, was doling out money to all and sundry (“Thank you, Monsieur Eugène,” they said, “See you soon”), distributing alms to those present, just like a saint—that must be why he was wearing the wings, they thought, though they could not help but wonder why they were green.

  Wings, what an utterly ridiculous idea, M. Péricourt was thinking, remembering his conversation with Pradelle. He was driving along the boulevard Saint-Germain, traffic was light, only a few automobiles, some hackney carriages, the weather was magnificent. His son-in-law had talked of “whims,” of wings, but had there not been some mention of chamber orchestras, too? The relief he felt, M. Péricourt finally realized, was the result of losing a battle he could never have won, because this world, this adversary, they were alien to him. It is impossible to win against something you cannot understand.

  What cannot be understood must simply be accepted, the staff of the Lutetia might have said, as they pocketed the blessings of Monsieur Eugène, who, still screeching, strode through the lobby, lifting his knees high, heading toward the doors open onto the boulevard.

  M. Péricourt had not even needed to come. Why had he set himself this absurd mission? He would be better off turning back. Since he was already on the boulevard Raspail, he would pass the Lutetia, take the next turning, and drive home. Be done with this. The decision came as a relief.

  The manager of the Lutetia was also eager for all the fuss to be over: the other guests found this carnival in the lobby to be in poor taste. And the rain of money turned his staff into beggars, it was indecent, let the man go!

  Monsieur Eugène must have sensed this, for he stopped abruptly, like prey suddenly aware of a predator. His contorted posture at odds with the frozen inscrutability of his mask.

  Without warning, he stretched his arm out in front of him and gave a loud, distinctive howl: rrrâââhhhhrrrr! He pointed to a corner of the lobby where a maid had just finished dusting the coffee tables. He ran over to her. Seeing this stone-faced man in a safari suit rushing toward her, she was terror stricken. “I can’t tell you how frightened I was, my God, but we laughed about it later . . . it was . . . the broom he wanted.—The broom?—Honest to God!” Monsieur Eugène snatched up the broom, stuck it against his shoulder like a rifle, and still roaring, marched about, soldierly and stiff legged to the rhythm of silent music everyone thought they could hear.

  And it was with a military step, his great wings beating the air, that Édouard stepped through the doors of the Hôtel Lutetia and onto the sunlit pavement.

  Turning his head, he saw a car speeding toward the corner of the boulevard. He threw the broom into the air and hurled himself into space.

  M. Péricourt had been accelerating when he saw the small crowd outside the hotel, and he was passing the entrance when Édouard rushed forward. What he saw was not, as one might imagine, an angel fluttering in front of him since, given his stiff leg, Édouard did not manage to get off the ground. He stood squarely in the middle of the road and flung his arms wide as the car approached, staring at the sky, trying to rise into the heavens; but that was all.

  Or almost all.

  M. Péricourt could not have stopped. But he could have braked. Panic stricken at the sight of this startling apparition—not the angel in the safari suit, but the face of Édouard, his son, unscathed, unmoving, transfixed, like a death mask, the eyes wide with surprise—he did not react.

  The car crashed headlong into the young man.

  It made a dull, mournful sound.

  Only then did the angel take flight.

  Édouard was catapulted into the air. It was an inelegant flight, like an airplane bound to crash, but for a fraction of a second everyone saw the young man hover, his body arched, his eyes turned heavenward, his arms spread wide, like an ascension. Then he fell, plummeting onto the street, his skull slamming against the curb, and that was all.

  Albert and Pauline boarded the train shortly before noon. They were the first travelers to board, she bombarded him with questions and he answered straightforwardly.

  To listen to Albert, reality was simple.

  Every now and then Pauline glanced at the suitcase she had set on the luggage rack facing her.

  On his lap, Albert protectively clutched the hatbox containing the horse head mask.

  “So, who is he, this friend of yours?” she whispered impatiently.

  “A friend . . . ,” he said evasively.

  He did not have the energy to describe him, she would see for herself; he did not want her to panic, to run away and leave him now, because all his strength had drained away. He was shattered. Since his confession, Pauline had dealt with everything: the taxi, the station, the tickets, the porters, the inspectors. Had he been able, Albert would have fallen asleep where he sat.

  Time passed.

  Other passengers boarded, the train began to fill, a waltz of suitcases and trunks hoisted through the windows, children shouting, the thrill of setting off, friends, loved ones, parents on the platform, recommendations, people searching for their seats—excuse me, I’m here, do you mind?

  Albert had rolled down a window and stood, leaning his head out, staring toward the back of the train like a dog waiting for his master.

  People jostled him as they moved along the corridor, edging sideways since he was blocking the way; the compartment was full now, only one seat was empty, the one for the friend who had still not arrived.

  Long before the train departed, Albert realized that Édouard would not come. He felt overwhelmed by grief.

  Pauline understood, she snuggled against him, taking his hands in hers.

  When the conductors along the platform began to call out that the train was about to depart, Albert bowed his head and cried; he could not help himself.

  His heart was broken.

  As Mme Maillard would tell it later: “Albert wanted to head off to the colonies, all right, fair enough. But if he acts there like he acts here, blubbing in front of the natives, he’ll never amount to anything, you can take my word for it. But that’s Albert for you. What can you do? He was born that way.”

  EPILOGUE

  Two days later, on July 16, 1920, at 8:00 a.m., Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle realized that his father-in-law had played the last move in the game: checkmate. He would have killed him, if he had had the opportunity.

  The arrest took place at his home. Given the seriousness of the charges against him, there was no choice but to remand him in custody. He was not released until his trial in March 1923. He was sentenced to five years in prison, two of them suspended, and so was allowed to walk from the court a free—but bankrupt—man.

  In the meantime, Madeleine had sued for divorce, a process her father’s connections made swifter.

  The house at la Sallevière was seized and all of Henri’s assets sequestered. After he was found guilty, what with reimbursements to the state, the fines, and the legal costs, there was little left, but there was a little. The state, however, turned a deaf ear to his appeals for the return of his remaining assets. In despair, in 1926, Henri instigated a long legal action on which, over time, he squandered what little he still had without winning his case.

  He was reduced to a life of penury and died alone in 1961 at the age of seventy-one.

  The estate of la Sallevière, entrusted to an institution under the auspices of the Assistance Publique, was turned into an orphanage and continued to operate until 1973, when it was rocked by a scandal rather too sordid to mention. The institution was closed. Thereafter, since it would have required significant public funds to be renovated, the house was sold off to the private sector, to a company spec
ializing in symposiums and conference centers. In October 1987, it was home to a fascinating seminar entitled “1914–18: The Business of War.”

  On October 1, 1920, Madeleine gave birth to a son. Contrary to the practice, common at the time, where babies were given the names of relatives who had died in the war, she refused to name the child Édouard. “He already has problems enough with his father, let’s not make matters worse,” she commented.

  M. Péricourt said nothing; he understood many things now.

  Madeleine’s son never had a close relationship with his father and when he came into his inheritance, granted him only a modest living allowance and a single annual visit. It was on the occasion of his visit in 1961 that he discovered his father’s body. He had been dead for two weeks.

  M. Péricourt’s involvement in the death of Édouard was quickly dismissed. All the witnesses confirmed that the young man had thrown himself under the wheels of the car, something that further deepened the mystery of this astonishing coincidence.

  M. Péricourt brooded endlessly on the circumstances of this tragic end. The realization that his son had been alive during all those months when he had longed to hold him for the first time plunged him into abject despair.

  He was also overwhelmed by the vast web of contingencies that had led to his Édouard dying beneath the wheels of a car that he drove only four times a year. He had to face the facts: though inexplicable, it was not a misfortune, it was a tragedy. The end—whether this or another—had to come because it had been written long since.

  M. Péricourt claimed the body of his son and had him buried in the family vault. On the stone, he had engraved: “Édouard Péricourt 1895–1920.”

  He reimbursed all those who had been swindled. Curiously, though the scheme had raised 1,200,000 francs, the invoices submitted amounted to 1,430,000 francs—there are crafty devils everywhere. M. Péricourt looked the other way and paid in full.

  Gradually, he gave up his professional responsibilities, divested himself of his businesses, sold much of his property, and invested the funds for his daughter and his grandson.

  For the remainder of his days he would see Édouard’s face in that moment when the car hurled him into the air. He spent a long time attempting to interpret his expression. There had been a joy there, and a relief, too, but there had been something else, something he could not name.

  One day, the word came to him: gratitude.

  It was idle fancy, of course, but when it comes, such an idea is impossible to dispel . . .

  He hit upon the word one day in February 1927. Over dinner. When he left the table, he kissed Madeleine on the forehead as always, went up to his room, lay down, and died.

  Albert and Pauline arrived in Tripoli and later settled in up-and-coming Beirut in the Lebanon. An international warrant was issued for the arrest of Albert Maillard.

  Louis Évrard, however, had no trouble finding someone to sell him identity papers for thirty thousand francs, a sum Pauline considered ruinously expensive.

  She haggled them down to twenty-four thousand.

  On her death, Mme Belmont left her daughter the family house on the impasse Pers, which, for want of maintenance, had lost much of its value. In addition, the lawyer sent Louise a considerable sum of money and a notebook in which her mother had scrupulously noted the investments made on her behalf—down to the last centime. It was then that Louise discovered that the original capital was composed of monies left to her by Albert and Édouard (forty thousand and sixty thousand francs respectively).

  Louise did not have a particularly remarkable destiny, at least not until we meet up with her in the early 1940s.

  This leaves only Joseph Merlin, whom no one remembered.

  Probably not even you.

  Don’t worry: this was the one constant in the life of Joseph Merlin—everyone despised him and, as soon as he was gone, forgot him; whenever his name did crop up, it was invariably an unhappy memory.

  He had spent a whole night sticking the bills given him by Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle onto the pages of a large notepad using gummed paper. Each bill was a fragment of his story, of his failure, but that you know already.

  Having submitted the report that would methodically damn Henri, Merlin went into hibernation, his career was over and, he believed, his life was too. In that he was mistaken.

  He took his retirement on January 19, 1921. Until then he had been moved from one department to another, but the blow he had dealt the government with his reports and his cemetery inspections was not the sort of thing to be forgiven. The scandal! In the ancient world, when a messenger brought bad news, he was stoned to death. Instead of which, every morning, regular as clockwork, Merlin showed up at the ministry. All of his colleagues wondered what they would have done had they been handed the equivalent of ten years’ salary; they despised Merlin all the more that he had not kept even twenty francs to polish his ugly clodhoppers, launder his ink-stained jacket, or buy a new denture.

  And so, on January 29, 1921, he found himself on the street. Retired. Given his rank, his pension amounted to little more than Pauline’s salary at the Péricourts.

  For a long time, Merlin brooded over the night he had turned down a fortune in favor of something less fulfilling but more ethical—though he disliked high-flown words. Even after his retirement, the scandal of the exhumed soldiers continued to trouble him. It was through the pages of the newspapers that he followed Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle’s arrest and the spectacular trial of those dubbed the “profiteers of death.” With immense satisfaction, he read the accounts of his own evidence at the tribunal, though they were hardly flattering, the journalists had not taken to this dreary witness who dressed appallingly and shoved past them on the steps of the courthouse when they tried to question him.

  And then it was no longer news, everyone lost interest in the affair.

  All that remained were the commemorations, the dead, the glory. La France. Guided by some sense of duty, Merlin continued to read the newspapers every morning. He did not have the means to buy them all, and so he would go to various places—libraries, cafés, hotel lobbies—where he could read them for free. It was in their pages that, in September 1925, he saw an advertisement to which he responded. A caretaker was wanted for the Saint-Sauveur military cemetery. Merlin was called for interview, presented his service record, and was appointed.

  For many years, if you visited Saint-Sauveur, fair the day or foul, you were sure to see him, big boots driving his spade into the earth sodden with rain, tending the flowerbeds and the paths.

  Courbevoie, October 2012

  IN CONCLUSION . . .

  All those I wish to thank here bear no responsibilities for any infidelities in my “true history” novel.

  The war memorial swindle is, to the best of my knowledge, a fiction. The idea occurred to me while reading the famous essay by Antoine Prost about war memorials. On the other hand, Henri d’Aulnay-Pradelle’s misappropriation of funds draws, in large part, on the “military exhumations scandal” that broke in 1922, presented and analyzed in the magnificent studies by Béatrix Pau-Heyriès. So one of the plot threads is real, the other is not; the reverse might easily have been true.

  I read many books by Annette Becker, Stéphane Audouin-Rouzeau, Jean-Jacques Becker, and Frédéric Rousseau, whose insights I have found invaluable.

  I owe a more particular debt to Bruno Cabanes and to his fascinating book La Victoire endeuillée.

  The Great Swindle owes much to the novels of the immediate postwar period, from Henri Barbusse to Maurice Genevoix, from Jules Romains to Gabriel Chevallier. Two novels were particularly useful to me: Le Réveil des Morts, by Roland Dorgelès, and Le Retour d’Ulysse, by J. Valmy-Baysse.

  I don’t know what I would have done without the invaluable services of Gallica, the Ministry of Culture’s Arcade and Merimée databases, and especially the librarians at the Bibliothèque Nationale Française, to whom I offer my profound thanks.

  I a
lso owe a particular debt to Alain Choubard, whose fascinating inventory of war memorials proved very useful; I am grateful to him for his help and support.

  It is only right that those who helped me throughout the long process be thanked here: Jean-Claude Hanol for his early readings and his encouragement; Véronique Girard, who always gets to the heart of the matter with such gentleness; Gérald Aubert, for his perceptive reading, his advice, his friendship; and Thierry Billard, an attentive and magnanimous editor. My friends Nathalie and Bernard Gensane, who have been unstinting in their time, and whose observations and comments have always been so constructive, deserve a special mention. As does Pascaline.

  Throughout the book, I have borrowed here and there from various writers: Émile Ajar, Louis Aragon, Gérald Aubert, Michel Audiard, Homère, Honoré de Balzac, Ingmar Bergman, Georges Bernanos, Georges Brassens, Stephen Crane, Jean-Louis Curtis, Denis Diderot, Jean-Louis Ézine, Gabriel García Marquez, Victor Hugo, Kazuo Ishiguro, Carson McCullers, Jules Michelet, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Antoine-François Prévost, Marcel Proust, Patrick Rambaud, La Rochefoucauld, and one or two others.

  I hope they will consider my borrowing a homage.

  The character of Joseph Merlin, freely inspired by Cripure,15 and that of Antonapoulos, inspired by the character of the same name, are a sign of my affection and admiration for Louis Guilloux and Carson McCullers.

  I would also like to thank the whole team at Albin Michel. I am grateful to everyone, first and foremost my friend Pierre Scipion, to whom I owe much.

  It is perhaps understandable that my most poignant thoughts are for the unfortunate Jean Blanchard, who quite unwittingly provided the French title for this novel. He was shot for treason on December 4, 1914; his name was cleared on January 29, 1921.