by Claude Izner
‘I know, Boss, I never cease to amaze myself. Are our two chaps in cahoots or is someone else pulling the strings? As for Noémi Gerfleur, her goose is cooked: exit one Baroness Saint-Meslin, and Élisa who was unfortunate enough to have a thief for a mother.’
‘Yes, but where does Louis Dolbreuse fit into all this?’
‘Nowhere yet, Boss. But I’m keeping him up my sleeve, because yesterday the other two were after him. Where to first?’
‘The pawnshop is nearest to here.’
‘That’s just what I was going to suggest. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch him coming out for his lunch break.’
‘…and we can grab a bite ourselves,’ added Joseph, ever hopeful.
A stream of clerks and office workers filed down Rue des Franc-Bourgeois, but the tubby, bearded fellow was not among them. Victor collared a stooped young man with bushy eyebrows.
‘I must have missed one of your colleagues, Prosper Charmansat…’
‘I’m not surprised. He’s ill.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since this morning. I’d be telling a lie if I said I missed him. People like that make you wish the plague still existed.’
‘Why? Is he an unpleasant sort?’
‘Worse than that, he takes himself seriously,’ replied the young man, whose shoulders looked as if he were bearing the weight of the whole world upon them. ‘There are times when he behaves as though he owned all the rubbish these poor people come here and dump on us. Oh, and it’s thanks to him, too, that the wheel was invented. Well, all I can say is with well-oiled cogs like him, the machine of state will never cease to turn,’ he declared, spitting in the gutter.
Victor and Joseph looked at one another and hailed a cab in unison.
The ex-jeweller was not at home. They ran after their cab and shouted to the driver to take them to Rue Monge. Victor left the famished Joseph in the carriage and went to knock on Aubertot’s door. The mute valet he had met on Saturday gave him a pained look.
‘Monsieur is not at home,’ he said through gritted teeth.
Victor produced a coin from his pocket, and by his customary sleight of hand transferred it to that of the servant, whose mouth, forming an O as if he were about to emit a smoke ring, miraculously began to move.
‘A messenger delivered a note to Monsieur while he was in the middle of lunch and Monsieur left for the Salpêtrière immediately.’
The servant snapped his jaw shut, exhausted after such a long communication.
Nobody on Mazarin or Lassay Wings could boast having received a visit from Doctor Aubertot that morning. Victor cursed the ill-fortune that had sent him on so many wild goose chases in one day. Joseph, as wet as he was hungry, found it hard to keep up. He swore never again to go off on a case, however exciting, without enjoying a hearty meal first.
‘Hey! I’m getting wet here under this so-called umbrella.’
‘What are you complaining about now?’
‘Nothing, I’m just talking to myself.’
They walked alongside the Chapelle Saint-Louis, which looked like an animal crouching beneath the overcast sky. A tiny hunched figure stirred near the entrance and a voice cried out:
‘Help! A ghost!’
Victor looked at Joseph and passed him the umbrella.
A woman as thin as a reed with a halo of white hair clutched his arm.
‘I came to listen to the music of God. I was floating up with the angels when I saw him,’ she breathed. ‘He’s in there, waiting.’
Victor recognised the little old lady from Cour Manon, who only a few days before had been recalling her first kiss. She looked back at the chapel and, regaining her composure, spoke in a barely audible voice.
‘I saw him, I saw him, he’s come back, the sly devil, and he’s dancing like a pendulum, right, left, ding, dong, ding, dong, black as a ghost under a red moon. I know who is; he’s come for Zélie Bastien.’
Fear in the eyes of another, even an old lady lapsed into second childhood, strikes at the heart. Joseph gulped. The sinister Cours des Comptes31 took the place of the squat shape of Chapelle Saint-Louis and suddenly his appetite had vanished.
‘Please don’t leave me alone,’ begged Madame Bastien, looking like a terrified child who has seen a wolf. Her knees buckled and she propped herself up against a sculpture depicting Cain and Abel, which Victor would not have wished to encounter in any forest. He motioned to Joseph.
‘Stay with her. I’m going to see what it is.’
As he entered the icy interior of the building, he had the impression of walking into a cave where a wild beast has its lair. The gloom was mitigated by the sputtering flames that cast a yellow light on to the figures of the paintings hung round the walls – copies or imitations of the old masters – that flickered briefly to life as though animated by a desire to exist in three dimensions. He recalled the terrifying English gothic horror novels he had read, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which Kenji had given him one summer when he was thirteen, to Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which he had devoured when it first came out in 1885.
His steps echoed as he walked into each of the side chapels. When he reached the third he saw something. He moved between the rows of prayer benches.
‘Are you all right, Boss?’ Joseph called.
‘Yes,’ he replied.
His voice sounded as if it were coming out of an organ pipe and the noise bounced off the walls of the nave. The waning daylight filtering through the stained-glass windows depicting saints gazing up at azure skies mingled with the encroaching darkness and cast terrible shadows. Victor paused. He felt his legs turn to jelly. On one of the walls a huge, black shadow was swinging. He turned round slowly.
Terrified, he tried to calm his wildly beating heart. He stumbled and grabbed hold of the rail round the altar.
‘Get out! Get out!’ a voice whispered inside his head.
He had seen many corpses, but this one was different.
The body was suspended from the pulpit by a rope round its neck. One end of it had been tied in a double loop and was lying under the dais. The man’s feet were dangling some eight inches above the tiled floor. In front of the corpse a chair lay knocked over.
Victor found a candle and put the chair upright. Doctor Aubertot would be giving no more consultations. His head was bare and his face stained with the blood that had poured from his nose and ears. There was some severe bruising beneath his left ear.
Victor’s first instinct was to call for help, and yet there was something about the corpse that intrigued him. It was the expression. He had never dealt with a hanging before, but he couldn’t help feeling this one had a staged quality about it. There was no swollen tongue sticking out of the corpse’s mouth and the half-open eyes stared at him from an ashen face. He lowered the candle. A pool of red was spreading across the floor.
All of a sudden a cackling laugh rang out from behind a pillar.
Victor jumped out of his skin. In the gloom he made out a screwed up face and a bulging neck. It was a woman, a wretched woman with goitre who was pointing her finger at him and shaking with laughter that seemed more like sobbing. He moved back, horrified, and ran out into the fresh air where he stood for a long time letting the rain run down his face.
The hospital attendant hurrying in the direction of the main building tried without success to avoid the stranger running towards him waving his arms. Victor seized the poor man by the wrists and ordered him to go and cut down the body hanging in the Chapelle Saint-Louis. Panting, he hurried back to Joseph, who was only too relieved to be delivered from Madame Bastien’s lamentations.
‘Anyone would think you were being chased by demons, Boss!’
‘Aubertot has been murdered! There’s not a moment to lose!’
Joseph, astonished, and still clutching the umbrella he had closed in order to be able to move faster, set off behind Victor in the direction of Boulevard de l’Hôpital.
; The widow Galipot was blocking their way. Sprawled across the bottom step, she was brandishing an empty bottle and railing against the bastards who had stolen her drink. Unruffled by her haranguing cries of ‘fools!’ and ‘rascals!’ they managed to climb over her and up the stairs.
‘On the left, Boss!’
Victor was about to push against the door when it flew open. A man in a sombrero, wearing a check jacket, knocked Joseph off his feet and leapt down the stairwell.
‘Dolbreuse!’ roared Victor.
‘Stop him!’ shouted Joseph at the top of his voice.
There was a high-pitched shriek and the words: ‘Your dough, you imbecile!’ rang out, followed by the dull thud of a hard object coming down on someone’s head, and then a general commotion. Joseph went downstairs to find out what was going on, and Victor searched the apartment, ending up in the bedroom, where he found a man hanging from the window latch by a piece of gauze. It was Charmansat. Victor rushed forward, hoisted up the wretched man, who was twisting about frantically, and managed to untie him, but failed to stop him from falling.
‘If he isn’t already done for, that might have finished him off,’ he murmured, kneeling beside the ex-jeweller who lay in a heap.
Charmansat was in a sorry state. He sat up with difficulty, choking and spitting, his hand clasping his side. Victor helped remove his waistcoat and his ripped shirt. He was astonished to see that the man’s chest, which was protected by a leather breast plate, had only suffered a surface wound. Had it not been for this unusual corset, the knife attack would have proved fatal.
‘It’s a souvenir from the psychiatric hospital,’ Charmansat breathed, grimacing. ‘I strained my back struggling when they put me in that cell. This contraption keeps the vertebrae in place.’
‘It saved your life.’
Victor laid him out on the bed and placed a pillow under his neck. He had brought him a carafe of water and a glass when Joseph appeared.
‘That drunkard has good reflexes! She knocked Dolbreuse out cold with her bottle. The neighbours are bringing him round and they’ve gone to fetch the police.’
‘Lock the door. There are a few points that need clearing up.’
‘Do you think he’s in any state to talk, Boss?’ said Joseph, pointing at Charmansat, who was sipping some water.
‘Are you able to speak?’ asked Victor.
The ex-jeweller felt his throat and nodded.
‘Was it you who murdered Élisa, Noémi, Gaston and Basile?’
‘No, as God is my judge,’ whispered Charmansat.
His voice was hoarse and his breathing short and laboured. He complained of pains in his neck and jaw.
‘Why did Dolbreuse try to kill you?’
‘Because the doctor and I were about to…’
He drank another sip of water.
‘…eliminate him and make it look like a suicide. We planned to force him to confess to his crimes. He’s the murderer.’
‘But he was one step ahead. He turned the tables on you. He tried to hang you, and in the doctor’s case he succeeded…’
‘Is Aubertot…?’
Charmansat sat bolt upright, his face white as a sheet. His strangled voice took on a steely tone.
‘The swine!’
‘You hate the man. But who is he? Did he play some part in the affair that ended in a trial on 14 January 1887?’
‘You couldn’t know. The newspapers never reported what happened next. The doctor and I lost everything. Everything! His patients stopped coming because he was blamed for not having notified the prefecture about my confinement. And as for me…my fiancée broke off our engagement because I was suspected of having defrauded the insurance company. The fact that I was a victim didn’t save me from the vile calumny…’
He closed his eyes and continued to relate his story, punctuated by sighs.
‘After our release, Aubertot and I decided to join forces.’
‘You didn’t hate him then.’
‘He was as much a victim as I. And when I realised that I became his ally. We wanted revenge. We wanted to find the Baroness. We pooled the little information we had. The carriage that had taken me to Aubertot’s was green – a four-seater with a coat of arms still on the door. I had glimpsed a coach hire number on the back when I got out. The coachman was young and dark-skinned, possibly of Mediterranean origin. Aubertot made a tour of all the depots in and around Lyon. He traced the coach. It had been hired on 14 November 1886 by a man named Carnot, who had left a deposit that was returned to him on 17 November. This Carnot…he gave us a hard time but we finally located him. He was a hospital attendant on Professor Jardin’s ward. Only as it turned out…we were too late.’
‘Too late for what?’ exclaimed Joseph.
He had been sentenced to five years for insulting and attacking a policeman a week after the jewels went missing. We continued our investigations. Carnot had worked at the hospital by day and played the trumpet in a Lyon nightclub – La Taverne des Jacobins. His lover was a singer, Léontine Fourchon. She vanished shortly before his arrest. We needed to be certain. I went to visit Carnot in prison. We met in the visiting room without exchanging a word. I recognised the Baroness’s coachman and accomplice immediately and he recognised me.’
‘Why didn’t you go to the police?’
Charmansat laughed out loud, triggering a coughing fit.
‘We reckoned that when the villain was released the first thing he’d do would be to look for Léontine – who we supposed had cheated him too. Who better to lead us to her? We decided to sit and wait. If it hadn’t been for the doctor, I don’t know how I would have survived. He took me under his wing. We moved to Paris. He procured a post for me at the pawnshop and in the meantime he started a new career under Professor Charcot. He sold Les Asphodèles and opened his practice on Rue Monge. I’ve been his patient all these years. A few months before Carnot’s release from prison the doctor hired a private detective who followed our man to Montmartre. Carnot was definitely an artistic type. He was a poet who recited his work at Le Chat-Noir under the pseudonym…’
‘Louis Dolbreuse,’ whispered Joseph, who was taking notes.
‘So the doctor also assumed the identity of Navarre, a man with literary interests, and got to know Carnot. From then on we never let him out of our sight. One of us was constantly on his tail. That’s how we discovered that his revenge included killing Léontine’s daughter, Élisa. He paid Gaston Molina, a ruffian he had met in prison, to seduce the girl and deliver her to him. He killed the two of them and then unmasked Léontine, who was masquerading in her faded finery as Noémi Gerfleur. He strangled her.’
‘And also killed Basile Popêche, a troublesome witness…But you stood by and did nothing to prevent these murders. And you dare to swear your innocence before God!’ cried Joseph.
‘You considered yourselves cunning, but Dolbreuse outwitted you,’ added Victor. ‘He murdered his former lover and her daughter according to a well-thought-out plan intended to throw suspicion on to you and Aubertot. He outwitted me too…’
‘He outwitted all of us, Boss!’
There was a loud knock at the door. Charmansat opened his watery eyes with a look of profound weariness.
‘The doctor is dead. He won’t be able to look after me any more. What will become of me? Is there no justice?’ he snivelled to Victor, his expression lifeless.
Chapter 14
Sunday 6 December
Joseph sat at his packing-case desk, staring at the bundle of manuscript pages. Euphrosine was pottering about in the kitchen; he could make out her every movement. She was rinsing the dishes, removing an iron ring from the cooker to put the coffee pot on it, talking to herself: ‘If only money grew on trees!’ She went heavily over to the stone sink to empty the greasy water into it, dragging her leg and then letting herself sink on to a stool, groaning: ‘What will become of us if I can’t work any more! Oh, the cross I have to bear!’
Since he had finished dinner
, Joseph had not been able to write a single word. He imagined his mother, head resting on her chest, eyes closed, pale; at the end of her tether. He had to act. He must. He was going to become someone; he wanted it so much! And he had also boasted about it to Monsieur Legris, to Valentine, and to Marcel Bichonnier.
‘How I bragged! Mademoiselle Iris is right: people who talk don’t act; their life dissipates in words and they persuade themselves that reeling off words is an achievement in itself. I’ve put it off for too long. I’m going to take myself in hand and launch in.’
He was already imagining the day on which he bought a newspaper and saw his work published:
THE STRANGE AFFAIR AT COLUMBINES
By Joseph Pignot
What a beautiful dream! He would go tomorrow to Le Passe-partout and submit his serial. And if Le Passe-partout turned him down, he would plead his cause with all the Parisian papers. Whatever it took, he must succeed in getting it published. Who knows, perhaps one day his name would figure alongside those of Xavier de Maistre, Washington Irving and Tolstoy in guides to popular literature.
Oh, yes. His mother would no longer be a slave to her cart.
He took up his pen, and threw himself feverishly into his work. Without pausing to search for the perfect phrase, racing to finish his prologue so that the dream could become reality, he dashed off:
The clock was chiming ten o’clock as a Brougham driven by a liveried coachman drove up to the villa named ‘The Columbines’. It skirted a fountain and drew up in front of the steps of a small manor house. A woman, her face hidden behind a veil, stepped out of the carriage, hurried up the steps and pulled the bell. A lady’s maid showed her into the drawing room. When she was alone, the woman looked at herself in the large looking glass, and then turned her attention to the picture of a medical professor performing an operation that hung over the fireplace.
‘Hmm! Elegantly attired, proud bearing, vicuña wool coat, expensive jewellery! Young or old? Damned veil, but what does it matter, this smells like nobility,’ murmured Dr Eusèbe Rambuteau, leaning towards a two-way mirror that allowed him to spy on his visitors without them knowing.