‘The savages of the North?’
‘Yes, the Muscovites. We don’t get hides from New France any more, so he had to look for other suppliers. But he was cheated by a smooth-talking swindler who took all his money and left him with nothing but a single sample, a piece of sable you couldn’t even make a handkerchief out of!’
‘And the sisters?’
‘They lack common sense. Especially Camille, the younger one.’
That made Nicolas sit up: his initial impressions would rather have led him to doubt the elder sister’s reason.
‘She idolises her brother and bullies her sister. No one finds favour with her. It goes without saying that she hates her sister-in-law, just as much as the first wife, in fact. As for the elder sister, the poor woman finds refuge in dreams to escape her constant obsession.’
Decidedly, thought Nicolas, he had been right to save the cook until last. Things were starting to fall into place. But he remembered that witnesses can often be biased, and that what they say does not always correspond to the truth.
‘What about Jean Galaine? He seems quite a melancholy young man.’
‘He takes after his uncle. He loves his father, but he’ll rebel against him one of these days. Alas, his melancholy is easily explained: he was mad about his cousin! She played with men like a cat with a ball. Hard not to get scratched!’
‘So that’s what she was like, is it?’
It occurred to him that this was the first time anyone had talked about the victim.
She seemed to retreat into a grumpy silence. ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘It’s wrong to speak ill of the dead. Especially now.’
‘Why especially now?’
She pushed her stool close to him. ‘Because there are strange things happening in this house. And you’re making me talk like an old fool. Of course, I know that’s what you’re here for. Police commissioners don’t usually come and stay in private houses, even when there’s been a crime. There’d have to be something more serious. It’s really true, there’s a curse on this house: it makes my flesh creep. It was quite something to see Miette like that. She has the devil in her body. It gives me the shivers to sleep in the room next to hers.’ She crossed herself.
‘What do you think’s happening to the poor girl, in your opinion?’
‘Oh, she’s been brooding for a while now. I don’t know what’s going on with her. I was the one who taught her the job, and it’s such a shame to see her in that state. I tell you, she’s not a bad girl, but there’s something in all this I can’t get to the bottom of. She’s a brave young thing, even though Madame drives her to despair. She’s her whipping boy; she takes out her moods on her. Miette just hasn’t been herself since Mademoiselle Élodie died. Well, they did use to be thick as thieves, the two of them, always giggling, always playing tricks. They were the same age, after all … It makes me feel sick at heart to think about it.’ She put her right hand to her cheek, as if life had just given her a slap in the face. ‘I can feel terrible things coming, Commissioner! It gives me the creeps. You should have seen Miette on the ceiling, surrounded by the fire of heaven!’
Her chin collapsed into the folds of her neck, a grey lock escaped from her mobcap, and she began to moan softly, then to snore. Nicolas coughed and she woke, wild-eyed.
‘Please forgive me,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to ask you where the assistant fits in to all this?’
‘Dorsacq? A rascal, with his tongue out at the first petticoat he sees.’
‘That innocent-looking young man?’
‘Innocent? That one? He’s involved in all sorts of shady business and thinks only of chasing skirts. If you ask me, Commissioner, he spent far too much time sniffing round Mademoiselle Élodie.’
‘And what about Madame?’
‘Pah! That’s all talk. He’s just showing off. He’s only interested in young girls.’
‘Before we go to sleep, could you tell me your whereabouts on the evening of the firework display?’
‘That’s easy. In the afternoon I’d made dinner for those who were staying at home.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Charlotte and Camille, little Geneviève, who was poorly and had to stay and be looked after by her aunts, and the … savage.’
‘Naganda?’
‘Yes. Oh, he’s not a bad person, but his face scares me. Monsieur has kept him locked in his room since he returned. He’s fed twice a day.’
‘On what?’
‘A little boiled meat with vegetables and bread in sugared milk.’
‘What did you do after that?’
‘I went out about six to spend the evening with my friends a few doors away. We’re too old for crowds. I must have had a hunch something would happen. We played bouillotte, drank coffee with cold milk and ate oublies.1 I got back here about ten and went straight to bed. I’m not as strong as I used to be, and the days are long.’
‘Did you notice anything unusual?’
‘No … Or rather, yes, one small thing. I’d made some soup and left it in plates. Only one of them had been touched. I thought that was a bit odd.’
‘Is that all?’
‘It’s quite enough. The next day, everyone was in a panic.’
‘Did you see Naganda when you got back that night?’
‘No, but I heard him walking up and down in his room.’
‘Were you listening at his door?’
‘No!’ the cook replied, looking shocked. ‘His room is just above mine, and the floorboards were creaking.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t an owl?’ Nicolas was thinking of the eagle owl which had haunted his summer nights at Guérande with its solemn footsteps and sinister calls.
‘Commissioner,’ said Marie Chaffoureau indignantly, ‘I can still tell the difference between a man’s footsteps and a bird’s.’
‘Anyway, you didn’t see Élodie that day?’
‘Not that day, not the days before that. They said she was poorly. The two sisters were looking after her.’
‘Thank you very much for all you’ve told me,’ said Nicolas. ‘It’s been extremely interesting. Now, would you be so very kind as to show me to my room?’
‘It’s next to our poor Élodie’s. Miette sometimes slept there too.’
She lit a candle and handed it to him. Nicolas noted that it was so small he would not be able to read for very long. He would have to get in his own supply of candles. He followed her as she climbed the stairs one step at a time, puffing, then opened a door to a narrow room, crossed herself again and bade him goodnight.
The room was not as grim as he had imagined, although it was no wider than a passageway and the window was a mere loophole. The bed was on the right. It had a palliasse, a woollen mattress with a check linen cover, a bolster and a brown blanket. The whole thing took up half of the space. The other furnishings consisted of a small table on which stood two brass candelabra, a stool, a toilet mirror in a brass frame, a jug of water and an earthenware washbowl. A commode covered with a red cloth occupied the remaining space by the window. Two thick linen sheets lay on the blanket. As he placed his candlestick on the table, he noticed that there was a door concealed in the woodwork, only its knob visible.
After undressing, he wrapped himself in a sheet like an ancient Roman or an Egyptian mummy. He knew from bitter experience all about the vermin which took up residence in the majority of bedsteads: as soon as it was dark, the bugs would come out of their lairs and attack their recumbent prey. Nicolas’s only defence against these hordes was to leave not an inch of his skin uncovered. He blew out the candle, and its foul odour pervaded the room.
Unable to fall asleep, he reflected on the curious situation in the Galaine household. Charles Galaine was a weak man, dominated by women and trapped in an unhappy marriage. His sisters had all the foibles of old maids, and everything about them was vaguely suspicious. Everyone was lying shamelessly: the wife, the son, the shop assistant and Naganda. It struck him that he ought to speak to
the little girl. Children often unwittingly revealed hidden truths. What a pity that Miette was not in a state to be questioned! As the closest person to Élodie, she might well know things that others didn’t, things that could be very useful to his investigation.
With this thought, he fell asleep.
… The condemned man had struggled for a long time before the blue-coated hangman, with the help of his assistants, managed to tie him to the wheel. Why the devil, thought Nicolas, was he wearing that blue coat? It went against the customs of his profession: a blood-red coat was the accepted dress at executions. Sanson seemed different. His mouth was twisted in a terrible grin. He raised his rod, and Nicolas closed his eyes and waited for the horrible noise of bones cracking beneath the skin. There was a kind of dull roll, and then someone knocked loudly, three times, as if in the theatre … He opened his eyes, but instead of a crowded Place de Grève, he recognised the dark little room in the Galaine house. He was bathed in sweat, wrapped in his makeshift protective sheet. It took him a few minutes to come to his senses. The dream had been so real, so vivid, he was not sure that this awakening was not still part of it. The insect bites on his ankle convinced him that he had indeed come back to reality. He dreaded to move or light the candle, fearing to see vermin swarming in the palliasse. Again, three distinct knocks were heard, and this time it was clear that someone had struck the concealed door.
Who could possibly be trying to wake him at this hour? He got up, took a lighter from his portmanteau and lit the candle. Smoke rose from it, along with the same acrid smell. He walked to the door and tried to turn the handle, but it resisted: it was well and truly locked. He decided to go back to bed. The sound could have been part of his dream. Or it could have been the house itself: these old houses always creaked, the timber shrinking and dilating with changes in temperature, dampness and dryness. Unless it was a rat. The city was swarming with them, far more than anyone could ever imagine. Whole armies lived in the cellars and came up into the houses at night. Servants were forced to keep their stocks of food and candles well away from their insatiable greed. The arsenic-based rat poison which people put down caused a thousand tragedies. From time to time, one of the fifty thousand skulls on display at the cemetery of Les Innocents started moving, an apparent miracle actually caused by a rat which had lodged inside a skull and was unable to get out. Amused by this image, Nicolas was about to sink unto unconsciousness when three more knocks were heard, this time at the door leading to the landing.
He held his breath and listened, but all was silent. His heart was pounding. He slid out of bed, rushed to the door and pulled it open. Nobody! And yet he was sure he had not dreamt it. He took a few steps out onto the landing, groping along the walls. Then he went back to his room, lit the candle, came out again and examined the next door, that of Élodie’s room. He opened it. In the flickering light of the candle, he looked at the flowered wallpaper and immediately spotted the door leading to his cubby hole. As he walked towards it, it was shaken by three more knocks. He ran back into the other room, certain that he would surprise the joker who was making fun of him, but it was empty. The Galaine house was quiet again. The merchant and his wife did not seem to have been disturbed by the knocking, even though their room was not far away.
What was going on? What strange phenomenon had produced these persistent noises? Nicolas was beginning to doubt his own senses. Was his tired mind concocting these apparitions under the influence of the strange events that had already taken place here? For the first time in his life, Nicolas, who had always been guided by reason, was calling that reason into question. He thought for a long time about what was happening to him, but could not find a plausible explanation, let alone an acceptable one. In desperation he went back to bed, his muscles as tense as if he were expecting a blow. What he had just experienced cast doubt on everything he believed in. He tried frantically to find explanations, hidden causes, hypotheses he would not usually have thought of. He recalled his childhood, and the old Celtic stories which Fine would tell him during vigils, as she roasted the chestnuts. He remembered listening with a mixture of horror and delight to detailed descriptions of tortures and the final journeys of the souls of ghosts, imprisoned in the bodies of black dogs and thrown into the youdic, the Breton Styx. These stories would be accompanied by the howling of the wind and the crackle of the fire, and, when they were finished, his old nurse loved setting his mind at rest. This memory soothed him and he fell asleep. It seemed to him that only happy childhoods gave you memories like that, full of the faces of people long gone.
Sunday 3 June 1770: Pentecost
At about four in the morning, he was woken by the light of dawn. His mouth was dry and his eyes hurt. Fortunately, in his linen shroud, he was untouched by vermin. No sound reached him from Rue Saint-Honoré, as his room looked out onto the courtyard. He stretched like a cat. His tiredness disappeared as he became aware again of the world about him. He seemed to hear a dull beating in the distance, accompanied by a repetitive chant. He found a little water in the jug and drank it greedily. It did not taste very good, but it refreshed him. He laughed, and sang:
The hypocrite has special skills
He knows how to conceal,
He’s far too clever to reveal
The gall his mouth distils.
He hummed as he dressed, and resolved to wash himself at the pump in the yard. The anguish of the night had vanished, giving way to a renewed desire to untangle the mysteries of the case, even those beyond human understanding. He went out onto the landing, careful not to make any noise for fear of waking the Galaines. There, he heard more distinctly the melody whose distant echo had reached him earlier. It was coming from the top of the house. He climbed the stairs, and the higher he climbed, the louder it became. But what struck him from the beginning was a strange, sweet smell that pervaded the attic like a cloud of incense in a shrine. The key was in the lock of Naganda’s room. He turned it.
Sitting cross-legged on a mat on the floor, dressed only in his fringed loincloth, the Micmac was swaying back and forth, and beating a kind of tambourine. He seemed to be worshipping the idol whose coarse features had struck Nicolas during his first search. In front of it glowed an earthenware dish filled with hot coals, on which dried herbs were burning. It was a spectacle at once savage and serene. The light of dawn entering the garret gradually lit up the Indian’s back, and his skin moved from dark red to bright amber. Nicolas made up his mind to advance, and put his hand on the man’s left shoulder. Naganda did not react. Nicolas walked round him. His face was impassive, as if focused on some distant thought, his open eyes pursuing an inaccessible dream.
Such phenomena were not unknown to Nicolas. Sartine had told him about the strange case of a sleeping man who had risen from his bed, taken his sword and swum across the Seine, all without waking up. He had gone to Rue du Bac and killed a man he had threatened with death the previous day. Once the deed was done, he had returned home, still fast asleep, and gone back to bed. The following night, he had repeated the journey and had been seen by the dead man’s family, who were in the middle of the wake. He had been tried and found guilty of murder.
Nicolas hesitated to shake the Indian, having heard that it could be dangerous to wake someone from a trance. He was nevertheless about to do so when a shrill cry echoed through the house. There was something inhuman about the cry, and it continued at a pitch high enough to burst the eardrums. Naganda had not even blinked: he continued chanting incomprehensible words, among which Nicolas noticed the repetition of the word gluskabe. He retraced his steps, locked the door and quickly descended the stairs from the attic. He almost fell into the arms of Charles Galaine and his son, who were just arriving on the landing in their nightshirts. Marie Chaffoureau was on her knees, pressing her hands into her old cheeks and muttering prayers. The cry had come from the room where Miette slept. They broke down the door.
The scene which greeted them went far beyond anything Nicolas had ever seen before
. Miette was on the bed, her shift in disarray, her legs and breasts bare, her body arched in a state of extreme tension. Beneath her, the palliasse was torn, and spilling straw. Her veins and tendons stood out as if on an anatomical specimen: Nicolas was reminded of the terrible wax figures of the ‘theatres of corruption’ in Monsieur de Noblecourt’s cabinet of curiosities.2 Miette was howling like a wolf in the moonlight. But what struck terror into the witnesses was the sight of the bedstead rising a few inches from the floor and shaking, as if carried on a swell and moved by invisible hands. Nicolas had to get a grip on himself before he could do anything. He ordered the Galaines to help him keep the bed down on the floor. When they laid their hands on it, it felt as if they were touching a boat on the surface of the water. Suddenly, the bed dropped with a dull thud, but then they were astonished to see Miette’s taut body gradually rise into the air. Nicolas seized both her feet and the Galaines her hands. Her skin was burning and hard beneath their fingers. They pressed on her with all their weight. As Miette moved, the three men moved with her, undulating like a wave. But, after a while, she stopped howling and fell heavily back onto the bed; her body went limp, and her breathing eased. They were expecting to see the phenomenon recur, but nothing happened. Nicolas asked Marie Chaffoureau to stay with Miette and call them if the girl suffered even the slightest new attack. He continued to call her ‘the patient’ even though, faced with the increasing number of incomprehensible manifestations in this house, he was starting to have his doubts. Both father and son were too stunned to say a word, and he had to force them to go downstairs. There was one thing he still had to do.
He climbed back up to the attic. Naganda had finished his strange ceremony, and was now sitting with his arms round his legs and his chin on his knees. He looked at Nicolas with an ironic smile.
The Phantom of Rue Royale Page 15