The Saint-Florentin Murders

by Jean-FranCois Parot

  ‘But surely, Monseigneur, there is no need to hurry, if the disease is confined to the south?’

  ‘On the contrary! It has been reported that at Ploërmel in Brittany, several peasants have recently died of similar symptoms, after skinning animals who had died of putrid disease.’

  ‘Is there no way to prevent the spread of the contagion?’

  The Lieutenant General of Police smoothed his fine lace cravat with an ecclesiastical hand. ‘We’ve certainly tried, as you can well imagine. The only weapons against this contagion are killing and separation. It is necessary to exterminate everything which is infected. That is the only way to save the entire State from this destructive scourge. The government will grant an indemnity to the owners whose cattle are sacrificed. This painful but necessary sacrifice should become easier to swallow if there is a benefit to be had from it! Failing to take such precautions would be fatal, and would make us complicit in the blindness of a rabble who threaten both their own future and the public good.’

  ‘That implies that we must act on a large scale,’ objected Nicolas.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Lenoir, ‘we must not only stop animals moving from one province to another, using cordons of troops, but in villages where the scourge has struck, the cattle must be impounded and isolated. The experience of neighbouring countries proves that the slaughter of sick animals makes it possible to save the healthy ones. We need to convince the peasants of that, or their masters. The problem is when the promised indemnity is late. These delays lead some not to report the plague, in the hope, always a vain one, that their livestock might escape it. Severe measures are and will be taken by the intendants, aided by troops and by brigades of mounted constables. Everything will depend once again on good administration, on the vigilance, exactitude and efficiency of those who are given the task of applying these measures. It is also essential to permit neither the transport nor the sale of animals with the disease. Secret transactions and nocturnal transfers of animals must be suppressed ruthlessly. The worst kind of smuggling in the kingdom would be that of a single sick animal evading the cordons, bringing about the ruin of a whole province and threatening general prosperity!’

  ‘What do you expect of me?’ asked Nicolas.

  ‘I want you to make contact with the leading lights of the guild. The regulation of supplies to Paris falls within my jurisdiction. It is absolutely vital to make them realise, although as discreetly as possible, that their salvation and the common interest require them to observe, as if they were gospel, the instructions His Majesty has issued in the southern provinces. They need to be made aware of these instructions and persuaded of their rightness. If they don’t understand the reasoning behind these precepts, don’t hesitate to raise your voice and remind them in no uncertain manner of their responsibilities. Paint for them a vision of their dead animals, their empty stalls, their reversed fortunes. Paint a picture of Paris hungry or, worse still, decimated by this plague which they themselves will not escape. Make it clear to them how much resentment, indeed anger, there would be towards them on the part of the common people. And if all that is not enough, threaten them with lettres de cachet and the Bastille, where I shan’t hesitate to throw them if they disobey. But I know you are tactful and persuasive, skilful at brandishing the axe without bringing it down.’

  Having no way of defending himself, Nicolas sighed inwardly. Where would he find the time to pursue his investigation at the Saint-Florentin mansion if he had to accede immediately to the Lieutenant General’s three requests? Although he had no proof, he suspected Lenoir of deliberately wishing him to answer back, perhaps even to react impatiently or rebelliously, which, in the circumstances, would amount to a refusal to obey. He said nothing, bowed and withdrew without a word. With his hand on the doorknob, he heard Lenoir murmur a last request.

  ‘I almost forgot, Monsieur. While you are conveying my orders to the cattle farmers, make sure you question them about your Marguerite Pindron. You’ll find she’s quite well known in those circles in Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Oh, one more thing! I have to entertain a person of quality. I am told that you have incomparable taste when it comes to food and drink. May I have your opinion? I have had brought from Strasbourg at great expense a pâté de foie gras prepared according to the recipe of the Maréchal de Contades. What should I serve with it?’

  ‘A Hungarian Tokay would be ideal, Monseigneur, but if you want to stay French, I would recommend some quarter-bottles of Chaume, a wine found in Anjou which was a favourite of Madame Catherine, the widow of Henri II.’

  ‘Thank you, Monsieur Le Floch. I am much obliged.’

  *

  Nicolas did not bat an eyelid, but clenched his teeth. Was he being mocked? As a connoisseur, he had to appreciate his chief’s final remarks. Had he hoped to impress a subordinate with a piece of information that was easy enough to gather for someone who had at his disposal the immense army of informers of a police force admired by all the courts of Europe? Nevertheless the conversation had been devoid of aggressiveness or arrogance, and the last question had perhaps been meant as a kind of teasing from a powerful man rather than a gratuitously unpleasant gesture. Lenoir might have been trying to demonstrate that, like his predecessor, he was maintaining standards with authority and perspicacity.

  As he was crossing the courtyard of the Gramont mansion, Nicolas felt himself being pulled by the skirts of his coat. Surprised, he turned to discover the jovial face of the young boy from the Grand Châtelet who, over the past few years, had so often taken the reins of his horses as he passed or delivered his letters for him. He had grown, but his cheap brown jacket had not followed suit, leaving his forearms largely uncovered.

  ‘Monsieur Nicolas,’ he said, ‘the Lieutenant General wishes to see you.’

  ‘I’ve just come from there!’ replied Nicolas with a laugh.

  ‘I meant Monsieur de Sartine,’ said the boy contritely.

  Nicolas strove to follow the boy, who was bounding along like a goat. He led him through a door in the orchard wall into the grounds of the adjacent mansion. It was here that Sartine had moved as soon as he had been appointed. He loved this new, spacious quarter, which was both well preserved and close to the vibrant centre of the city. Nicolas glimpsed an elegant building beyond the trees. On its steps, he was placed into the hands of an elderly valet who made no attempt to conceal his jubilation at seeing him again. He led him up the stairs to the first floor and admitted him to a sumptuous study of light oak with a barrel-vault ceiling bearing a painting of the Judgement of Paris. Sartine, standing behind a marquetry desk, noticed the visitor’s admiring gaze.

  ‘What do you think, Nicolas? The Judgement of Paris for the former Lieutenant General of the Paris police, isn’t that appropriate? They must have been trying to flatter me …’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry, it was already here when I arrived.’

  Nicolas recognised the jovial Sartine of old: entrance into the King’s councils seemed to have done him good. He had given up his black coat, and now he, too, wore, whether by chance or out of loyalty, a silky pearl-grey coat.

  ‘I owe my latest pleasure to you,’ Sartine continued. ‘What do you think of this wonder?’

  He lifted from beneath his desk a sumptuous mass of white curls that tumbled softly over his arms like a cascade of white horsehair.

  ‘Did I have something to do with that?’ asked Nicolas.

  ‘Have you forgotten? Not so long ago you told me about that incomparable English shop. Our ambassador went there and found this example. Apparently, it’s identical to the one worn by the Lord Mayor of the City of London during ceremonies.’

  He put down the wig, whirled round, and gave a little leap which brought him directly face to face with a stunned Nicolas. He took him by the shoulders and led him towards one of the walls of the study. Against it stood a cabinet of richly veined wood with bronze adornments. The most surprising feature was the dozens of ebony buttons, each marked with a number in ivory. The cabinet seemed t
o be some kind of extraordinary mechanism. Nicolas was immediately reminded of an organ case. With a childlike air of triumph that made him seem younger, Sartine pressed one of the buttons. There was a kind of hiss, as if air were escaping. Nicolas saw himself as a child beside a rock at Le Croisic that siphoned the great equinoctial tides. A series of clicks followed, a slow rattling noise, then jolly music. Again there was a hiss. A panel came sliding out softly, revealing, as if on a tray, a dummy’s head wearing a russet wig.

  ‘It’s the Würtemberger,’ said Sartine radiantly. ‘What do you say to my new library of wigs? I can’t find any other word for it. I shall have to question the academicians. Can you conceive of such a wonder? They’re arranged in an unchanging order, like police files, protected from dust and light, and always ready to spring up on demand.’

  ‘But who, Monseigneur, had the skill to imagine and build such a marvel?’

  ‘And music! Music! I’m sure you recognised the tune of the pagodas from Rameau’s Paladins. And that’s not all. The man who made this has other strings to his bow. This master of the arts, who is attached to Monseigneur the Comte d’Artois and honoured with his protection, is also the inventor of various methods for writing codes. The main one, entitled Unum toti uni totum, was shown, in 1769, to the Duc de Choiseul, who granted its maker a bonus of six hundred livres. As the father of four children, he now finds it difficult to make ends meet and, despite the commission he received from me for my dear wigs, is looking for employment.’

  ‘What kind of employment?’

  ‘The kind that particularly interests us. He wishes to build a steganographical arcanum. It would be a desk six feet high and three feet wide, with a decagonal cylinder inside it, worked by a stirrup of ten pedals. On different frames, and without using his hands, he claims to be able to write coded messages as rapidly and simply as on a single board, with more than sixty thousand variations – all without any other frames than the ones attached to the cylinder. You see what I’m getting at.’

  Nicolas did not see anything at all, but had no desire to disrupt Sartine’s good mood. ‘Of course, Monseigneur.’

  ‘We know through the Abbé Georgel, secretary to Cardinal de Rohan, our ambassador in Vienna, that our encoding methods have been discovered. He learnt from an informer that Maria Theresa has been intercepting our messages for many months, uncovering our schemes and reading them like an open book. We can hardly be surprised, then, at her ostentatious hostility towards our ambassador – who, incidentally, hasn’t made things any easier with his escapades! In short, I am interested in this machine, and I need several things from you. Make enquiries about this inventor, whose name is Bourdier. The last thing we need is to be dealing with someone who is in the pay of a foreign power, someone who makes us a machine and then hands its secrets over to our enemies. I understand your misgivings, but this is a service I require of you. And that’s not the most delicate thing I expect of you. You know both the Court and the city, and you know what the situation is. I am opening my heart to you …’

  Nicolas shuddered at these words.

  ‘His Majesty, alas, has ideas and judgement, but he is limited by an apathy of mind and body. He seems still unformed. Of course, there is no lack of common sense, although hampered by his paralysing laziness of conception and his awkward behaviour. The smallest trifle disconcerts him, as if he were revolted by objections and difficulties. Above all, he is completely lacking in firmness of character and will, the cardinal virtues of a monarch. Anyone who approaches him is soon convinced of that. Of course he knows a certain amount about particular fields …’

  ‘He speaks of many things intelligently and with wide knowledge, as I myself can testify,’ said Nicolas.

  ‘That’s true, but where is the determination to put things into practice? His brother Provence puts it well: “Berry is like those oiled ivory balls which cannot be kept together.” He is crucially lacking in egoism and toughness. He is a prince of idylls and moral tales. That is not what the French expect …’

  Completely horrified by Sartine’s words, Nicolas realised that the death of Louis XV had changed many things. This implacable judgement certainly bore the mark of Sartine’s cynicism, and such remarks, coming from his former chief, would not have surprised him on any other subject, but they were about their young monarch. That was something to raise alarm bells.

  Sartine continued to hold forth as if he were alone. He was now walking up and down the room. ‘Since his accession,’ he went on, ‘the King has proclaimed that he was taught nothing but that he has read a little history and believes that the misfortune of this State was the King’s wives and mistresses. Let us pray that he applies this precept to himself! I like the Queen, who protects me. Nevertheless, I fear the consequences of her inexperience, both for her and for us. The future is getting darker, and I do not believe she has any of the qualities necessary to see the dynasty through possible unrest or to restore it amid all these troubles.’

  ‘And what lessons do you draw from all this, Monseigneur?’ asked Nicolas softly.

  ‘My dear Nicolas, two names are currently in the spotlight. One is that of d’Aiguillon whose dubious intrigues you yourself have suffered.6 The other is Choiseul, my protector, to whom I have, since his fall from favour, remained secretly loyal. He has superior talent and intelligence and the dazzling memory of a long and glorious ministry.’

  Nicolas sighed, thinking of his Micmac friend, Naganda, and all those orphaned by the abandonment of New France. What was so glorious about the loss of Canada and the Indies?

  ‘In addition,’ Sartine went on, ‘he has the support of the parlements, whom we always have to go along with, the better to control them. The philosophers’ party constantly praises him to the skies. Only the King is against him, having been led to believe that he poisoned his father. Gossip picked up along the way by his nurse, Madame de Marsan, and taken up by his aunts. That’s all Mesdames ever talk about, the birdbrains!’

  ‘What about Maurepas?’ said Nicolas.

  ‘He carries no weight in this matter, and it will blow up in his face in the end. Maurepas is a puppet, an automaton from the past. Ingratiating and fickle, a subject for amusing anecdotes. He’s just for show! He’ll fizzle out, he has the same faults as the King. We will have to choose. The Queen will make all the difference, she hates d’Aiguillon.’

  He sank gracefully into his armchair and immediately plunged his hands into the wig spread out in front of him, as if trying frantically to untangle its curls.

  ‘Many ministers of the late King are still in place,’ he went on. ‘They are obstacles that will have to be put aside.’ He struck the flat of his desk with his hand. ‘The Duc de La Vrillière first of all. I gather he’s given you the task of investigating a death that took place in his mansion? Your fall from favour has been brief, you have bounced back even higher than before.’

  ‘Yes, Monseigneur.’

  ‘Yes for the investigation, or for the bouncing back?’

  The tone was inquisitorial: this, Nicolas thought, was the Lieutenant General of old.

  ‘You should know,’ said Sartine, ‘that, contrary to what you think, the master was not at Versailles last night, but in Paris for a romantic assignation – if my information is correct, and it usually is, as you know better than anyone.’

  ‘I will take note of it, Monseigneur,’ answered Nicolas prudently.

  ‘It is not enough to take note of it, Monsieur Le Floch. You must also get down to work and, if you believe me, put me in a position to help you.’

  ‘I am your humble servant.’

  ‘This affair is bound up with our interests. Anything that helps to bring down La Vrillière will hasten Choiseul’s return. The salvation of the State is at stake. And should you feel any misgivings, think of the unworthy manner in which that depraved individual treated you at the time of the King’s death.’

  Nicolas, who had not lost his independence of judgement, recalled that Louis XV had
shamelessly chosen him as the instrument of a final intrigue. All that La Vrillière had been doing was following his master’s example. But, although long initiated into the ins and outs of the secret world, he was left speechless by Sartine’s proposition. Sartine himself walked towards the hearth, seized the poker and again began stirring nonexistent embers. Nicolas saw in this gesture a sense of unease perhaps equal to his own. The minister knew his loyalty and rectitude. He could therefore imagine the revulsion his suggestion must have provoked, and might well be regretting having exposed himself to such a degree.

  Nicolas was torn between a number of feelings. Of course, he could take all this quite simply as a mark of the renewed confidence placed in him by Monsieur de Sartine. However, he recalled some unfortunate previous examples of the man’s love and inclination for manipulating things behind the scenes. Beneath the veneer of the courtier, beneath the punctilious courtesy of the gentleman, there sometimes reappeared the coldness and inflexibility of someone dealing in hidden things that crouched in the darkness like nocturnal animals. Nicolas, despite his affection and gratitude, suspected him of finding a strange pleasure in such things, a pleasure nourished by a deeply felt contempt for human beings that was born of long years of familiarity with crime and human baseness. In so doing, was he not trying to exert an obsessive control over Nicolas, like the trainer of an animal that has finally been tamed tugging the end of its lead to make sure it is truly submissive? Or perhaps he just wanted to feel that his trust was still considered a favour and thus convince himself that all was not lost in this sad world. As for Nicolas, whatever answer he gave would place him in an ambiguous position. Whether he agreed or refused to yield to Sartine’s injunctions, the reasons ascribed to him would not be the correct ones, and the most plausible would appear the least convincing. Bowing to his former chief’s request would certainly make him lose his own self-esteem. He was a police officer, not an informer. He decided to be himself and to trust in fate, which had got him out of difficult situations so many times before.