‘Dear Nicolas, I must be dreaming! Madeleine didn’t tell me you were coming! What a pleasant surprise!’
‘Alas, my dear fellow, I haven’t been invited, and I was only admitted because I was well dressed and mentioned your name. I’m looking for someone I need to question. A strange man, a writer, a printer, an unrepentant skirt-chaser and many other things besides.’
‘I know him well! You’re talking about Restif. He’s been invited this evening to add spice to the party, being such a great talker, indeed much more interesting in his conversation than in his appearance.’
The hostess approached, giving a half-amused, half-serious pout. ‘Darling, you’re neglecting me.’ She greeted Nicolas. ‘Good evening, Monsieur. Is it thanks to you that I’ve been abandoned?’
‘Beloved, let me introduce Monsieur de Sartine’s right-hand man, Nicolas Le Floch. The King is mad about him.’
‘But of course! I know Monsieur by reputation. The Maréchal de Soubise …’
La Borde made a face.
‘… who knew his father, the Marquis de Ranreuil, used to speak very highly of him. It’s said he performed some signal services for the late Madame de Pompadour.’
Nicolas bowed. ‘Madame, you are too indulgent …’
‘I invited him,’ said La Borde. ‘He’s not a man to be neglected.’
‘In that case, I wish I’d invited him myself! You are most welcome, Monsieur.’
‘Thank you, Mademoiselle. May I be so bold as to confess that I have long been an admirer of yours? Your charm both onstage and off and the perfect taste of your performances are inimitable.’
She smiled and held out both her hands, which he kissed. Monsieur de La Borde thanked him with a look, asked to be excused and followed her out.
Time passed quickly as Nicolas circulated among the groups, catching snatches of conversation and spotting a number of illustrious guests. A young girl took hold of his arm. She was a younger friend of Mademoiselle Guimard, and admitted quite openly that she was looking for a protector, rich of course, but also young and good-looking. He was forced to disappoint her. He stayed as close as he could to the room nearest the entrance. At about half past eleven, he saw a curious character answering to the description he had been given of ‘Monsieur Nicolas’ come in. He was slightly hunchbacked, and moved in such an awkward, tightly wound way as to appear like a savage. Neither fat nor thin, he had lively eyes beneath unattractively thick eyebrows, a long face, a slightly hooked nose, a ruby-red mouth and a bushy grey beard, all of which made for a very disparate overall impression. As for his attire, it was neither clean nor dirty, and between grey and black in colour. What he looked like, it struck Nicolas, was the foreman of a workshop in Faubourg Saint-Antoine. He went up to him, and the man drew back in alarm.
‘Please, Monsieur, no scandal,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay; I’m sure we can come to some arrangement.’
‘This isn’t about that. Are you Monsieur Nicolas Restif de La Bretonne? I’m a police commissioner at the Châtelet, and I need to ask you some questions.’
Restif sighed. The reference to Nicolas’s position seemed to have reassured him. He drew Nicolas towards two gilded bergères in grey damask.
‘You know perfectly well I can never refuse the police.’
‘Yes, we do know that. That’s why we expect a lot from you. Inspector Bourdeau caught sight of you outside a furrier’s shop in Rue Saint-Honoré this morning. You left quite abruptly. We’re curious to know why.’
‘May I be completely open with you?’
‘I ask for nothing less.’
‘Very well. I’m extremely fond of women, as you know.’ He seemed lost in thought, as if talking to himself. ‘What is more charming than a woman’s little foot in its slipper? Yes, in its slipper. She had such pretty feet and was so yielding. I wanted to see her again – that’s why I was waiting outside her house. There you are, Monsieur. That’s all it was.’
‘I see. But who are you talking about?’
‘Why, the shopkeeper’s wife, of course, Madame Galaine. She tried to conceal her name, but I followed her and found it out. When we met again, I told her I knew who she was.’
‘So you admit you had an affair with this woman?’
‘Of course. I not only had an affair with her, I’m still having it! In fact, I’m having her in every sense of the word. At least for the past few months, since I recovered from a sickness that took me away from the scene of my pleasures for a while. And I’m not the only one, either. She has many patrons.’
‘What do you mean by that, Monsieur? That you paid for Madame Galaine’s … services?’
‘Commissioner, I don’t think I have to teach you about life.’
‘Would you say that she … sacrificed herself to you because she enjoyed it, or for money?’
‘Why, for money, of course! Or rather, as she confessed to me one day in floods of tears, because of her wish to amass as much money as possible for her little daughter, since her husband is heading for certain ruin. I’m not demanding, and she overlooks my funny little ways. She has other customers, though, which means she’s been gradually feathering her nest. What an angel! What devotion!’
Nicolas had certainly not been expecting this. ‘I have one important question,’ he resumed, after a silence. ‘On the evening of the disaster in Place Louis XV, where were you?’
‘With her, in my garret in Collège de Presles. We ate first in a restaurant, then went back to my place. Afterwards … she fell asleep. When she left me it was very late, or rather, it was very early the next morning.’
‘From what time to what time?’
‘Between half past six and three o’clock in the morning.’
‘One last question, Monsieur. You don’t seem to be rolling in money. How have you been able to help this woman?’
‘That’s precisely why I’m so poor, Monsieur! I only spend money on my pleasures.’
They were interrupted by cries and cheers, and were swept up in a movement of the crowd that carried them into the reception room. There, Monsieur de La Borde was standing on a table in his shirtsleeves, with a glass in his hand, and reading aloud a poem of his own composition in honour of Mademoiselle Guimard:
As Aesop rightly said,
A bow we stretch too tight
Will doubtless always break.
If we put ours to bed,
And let it rest one night,
We do it for your sake.
For, ladies, it is said,
And surely this is right,
This rest we all must take.
To rest our bow a while
Will give it added might
To go that extra mile.
The poem was greeted with thunderous applause, and the party became even livelier, taking here and there a distinctly indecent turn.
‘You see, Commissioner?’ said Restif, pointing to the assembled throng. ‘You see what makes the world go round? May I join that beauty over there?’
‘You are free, Monsieur. Go and enjoy yourself.’
Nicolas fled, having no desire to see or hear more. He found himself back out in the street, where onlookers still stood gazing in awe at the festivities. He felt tired, and this tiredness coloured his thoughts. There was good reason, it seemed to him, for the present time to be condemned. It was a time in which there was no interest that was not despised, no honour that was not trampled, no dignity that was not sacrificed, no duty that was not tarnished for the sake of passion. The headlong rush to pleasure brought dishonour to even the best of men. And it was those above who set the example. But who was he to judge others, when his own destiny had led him into the arms of a courtesan who was now on her way to becoming a madam, the glorious successor to La Paulet? Yes, who did he think he was, and what gave him the right to throw stones at other human beings for their erring ways?
NOTES – CHAPTER X
1. Where banned works were printed.
2. This was done to distract the
customer from the bitter taste of the medication.
3. A highly malignant disease that makes the skin appear dead.
XI
THE HEARING
It is only in the person of His Majesty that the plenitude of Justice resides, and only thanks to him that the magistrates hold their position and the power to give Justice to his subjects.
MAUPEOU
Wednesday 6 June 1770
Nicolas rose early. He wanted to be alone for a while to write a short explanatory memorandum. He would make two copies and send one to the Lieutenant General of Police, the other to the Criminal Lieutenant. He spent most of the morning in Monsieur de Noblecourt’s library, and at about eleven, when the task was completed, he decided to get some fresh air in order to reflect on that evening’s decisive hearing. Walking always set his mind racing intensely in a way that was at once passionate and unconscious, the results of which were not to be used immediately, but deliberately stored, ready to be brought out at the least command, like reserves of ammunition held ready in case of emergency. He set off at a brisk stride towards the Tuileries, giving free rein to his imagination, helped in this by the spectacle of the streets.
The gardens were very pleasant on this beautiful June day. The great avenue was lined with two rows of young women in light dresses, while here and there children chased one another. For some time now, the officers of the vice division had been observing the prostitutes who occupied strategic positions on their hired chairs. From there, they would solicit passers-by with glances that made even the boldest lower their eyes, let alone the straight-laced. They would wait all morning for someone to offer to buy them a meal, and they rarely failed. The district commissioner had opened his heart about it to Nicolas, although he had to admit that the Tuileries were an enclave outside his jurisdiction, since responsibility for the royal gardens lay with the Hôtel de Ville. But the agents of this institution were infinitely less strict than the police. It was in fact rumoured that they were easily corrupted, and were perfectly happy to levy a tribute in the form of free pleasures in return for agreeing to turn a blind eye to the evil trade of the maidservants of Venus.
These reflections reminded him of his conversation with Restif de La Bretonne, and his surprising confession. So even Madame Galaine had taken up that profession! The respectable wife of a master furrier had seen it as the only way to ensure her child’s future after the imminent ruin of her household. Nicolas found it hard to believe, although his informant, who had such close ties to the police, had proved, thanks to his own habits and vices, an absolutely reliable witness. Nicolas suspected that he had been misled by his own innate naivety: he was still a little bit of an innocent in some matters, even though his innocence had been battered repeatedly over the years by contact with real life. The fact was that Madame Galaine, who was still young, might have given pleasure to a whole host of respectable bourgeois repelled by the vulgarity of her fellow practitioners. She could well have built up a regular clientele in this way and, week after week, happily accumulated her nest egg. The Galaines’ marriage had clearly disintegrated. The husband paid hardly any attention to his wife’s frequent absences. Excursions to the theatre or the Opéra, the expense of which did not worry him because he was not asked to contribute, were a good pretext for his wife’s nocturnal absences. As for Dorsacq, the shop assistant, whose part in all this still had to be clarified, at best he played the thankless role of an escort, at worst that of a pimp, soliciting for the woman in return for financial rewards and perhaps a few little favours. The outcome of this surprising piece of information was that Madame Galaine, as one of the suspects, now had an alibi – not that this necessarily meant that she was entirely innocent of the crimes committed in Rue Saint-Honoré. Sometimes, being an accomplice was worse than being a perpetrator.
Nicolas’s thoughts continued to wander, drawn to the little white clouds that sped towards the boulevards above Place Louis XV, where the vestiges of the fire had almost disappeared. A thinner cloud than the others reminded him of the attack on Naganda. He saw again the weapon being carefully withdrawn by Semacgus from the Indian’s back. It was a kitchen knife with a wooden handle and one rivet – the kind that were sold in their hundreds in the area around the central market. He regretted now that, in the chaos of that mad night, he had not investigated further an act which, although it had not cost Naganda his life, nevertheless constituted a crime, one of a succession of criminal acts committed in the Galaine household since the disappearance of Élodie.
Thinking about it, Nicolas came to the conclusion, which them in the clothes of Élodie and Naganda, and even the strongest characters might be thrown.
For the first time since the exorcism, he remembered the extraordinary phenomena he had witnessed. He had been trying to repress them, to act as if they did not belong to the real world. Part of him had rejected them for fear that the mere thought of them would reawaken his terror. What guarantee was there that Miette would not revert to that same state? What was the nature of the force or influence he had confronted? What he had felt in his room in Rue Saint-Honoré seemed to be a kind of sign, an encouragement to pursue his investigation, whereas the manifestations connected with Miette’s possession had simply revealed the presence of evil, and did not contribute in any way towards a resolution of the mystery. The proof of this was that, once the exorcism was over, it was a calmer, liberated Miette, although a somnambulistic one – a strange state, certainly, but not unnatural – who had led them to the cellar and the place where the murdered baby had been hidden.
Gradually, the June sun penetrated Nicolas’s body. He had sat down on the Terrasse des Feuillants, and a plump woman had come to him and demanded two sols for the hire of the chair. Now, with his eyes closed, the cooing of the pigeons in the big chestnut trees and the shrill cries of children drowning out the distant noise of horses and carriages trotting across Place Louis XV, he felt pleasantly lethargic. This state, brought about by the accumulated fatigue of relentless days and sleepless nights, lasted until well after midday. Then he walked back across the gardens to the quais, and from there to the Grand Châtelet.
He found Old Marie in his room under the staircase of the medieval palace, dining alone on a piece of veal and a steaming stew of eggs and bacon spread on thick slices of fresh bread. The usher invited the commissioner to share his meal, adding, to entice him, that it would be washed down with a new beer from a local tavern. Nicolas did not need to be asked twice. As he ate, he listened in amusement to his host’s complaints that the meat, which he had taken that very morning in its earthenware dish to the oven in the neighbouring bakery, had come back reduced in both weight and quality – a clear case of fraud, in his opinion. Nicolas reassured him, recalling that, back in Guérande, his nurse, Fine, used to say the same thing every time she took her famous dish of duck with apples to be baked. He pointed out that, for such rustic dishes, there was nothing to equal the intense heat of a baker’s oven, and that the results were well worth the few disadvantages, which in any case were largely imaginary. They talked about their native Brittany, and Old Marie said that they absolutely must drink some of his lambic beer, which was very strong, inflamed the entrails and woke the dead. Nicolas had no choice but to accept, for fear of upsetting him, although he did manage to surreptitiously pour some of it on a slice of bread. They then discussed the arrangement of the exhibits, currently being kept in a cupboard in the duty office. Old Marie knew a little dressmakers’ workshop that, for an honest remuneration, could lend them two dummies.
Bourdeau suddenly appeared. Nicolas informed him of the latest elements in the investigation and asked him to go and fetch the second-hand clothes dealer in whose shop some of the exhibits had been pawned. Then, with his little black notebook in his hand, he went to the Lieutenant General’s courtroom to think in peace. He needed to reflect on the best way to handle the hearing and obtain a result. His belief in reason made him feel certain that the key to the case would emerge from a
clear demonstration of the results of the investigation. He was aware, though, that the narrow framework of a police inquiry could not express all the subtleties of living people and the human condition. Only intuition – his own personal, private feelings about the suspects, including even sympathy and understanding – could bring the truth to light.
At about four thirty, the torches were lit in the great Gothic room, into which the light from outside barely penetrated through narrow windows. There was a worn old wall tapestry with the arms of France and, on a dais, two chairs awaited the magistrates. Guarded by police officers, the suspects would take their places on the left-hand side. Nicolas, in his black robe and his wig, would be opposite them, at a table bearing the exhibits, flanked by two dummies wearing the clothes of Naganda and Élodie. In the flickering torchlight, the shadows cast by these figures would create a disturbing image.
The Phantom of Rue Royale Page 26