The Man with the Lead Stomach

by Jean-FranCois Parot

  ‘If you wish to see me again, Monsieur de La Borde will inform me.’

  As the carriage moved along the main driveway it passed a rider whom Nicolas recognised as the Life Guard in the tavern. He spent the return journey to Paris deep in thought. His private talk with Madame de Pompadour had left a bitter taste in his mouth. On the one hand he had found an unhappy woman, worried to the point of extreme anxiety about the threats to the King – but Nicolas was sharp enough to see that concern about her own fate also played a part in this anxiety. More generally, he had observed her reluctance to speak of certain things and her ambiguous choice of words, which he felt was a sure sign that she knew more than she would say.

  The idea that stopping the investigation was a manoeuvre, a pretence intended to deceive the enemy, seemed too good to be true. It was most probably a ploy slipped into the conversation to encourage him to persevere. In any case it mattered little because with Monsieur de Sartine’s blessing he intended to see the investigation through.

  One last question remained: did the Good Lady’s wishes and orders have the King’s approval?

  At Porte Sainte-Antoine he ordered his coachman to go to the Châtelet where he was hoping to find Bourdeau. Would he tell the inspector about his interview at Choisy? Should the meeting be kept secret? He thought about it long and hard. The inspector gave good advice and Nicolas had absolute confidence in his discretion. Sartine had urged him not to brush him aside. In any case the coachman would most probably talk, as he was not under instructions. Despite the choice of Choisy as somewhere distant and discreet Nicolas could have been recognised; his rapid promotion had made him conspicuous.

  He was held up by a tangle of vehicles on Rue Saint-Antoine, where a carriage had overturned after the horses had become uncoupled. A herd of passing cows destined for the butchers had taken fright; the chaos was indescribable. It was after seven o’clock by the time he reached the Châtelet. He found Bourdeau in a calm mood, smoking his clay pipe.

  ‘Was the hunt successful, Nicolas?’ He went over to close the office door.

  ‘I was at Choisy. The mistress of the house wished to see me.’

  Bourdeau’s face remained impassive. He merely took a few quick puffs of his pipe. He was obviously in the know.

  ‘Did you discuss our case at all?’

  ‘It was at the heart of the conversation.’

  Nicolas gave him a detailed account of his talk with the marquise.

  ‘With such influential protectors we’d be very unlucky to fail in our efforts. Even though the Good Lady doesn’t have the upper hand at the moment. As Choiseul’s influence is growing, hers is on the decline. On top of that the minister is at odds with Bertin on matters of finance, Bertin himself being one of the marquise’s protégés. His brother-in-law, the Comte de Jumilhac, is governor of the Bastille.’

  ‘It’s both an advantage and a disadvantage for us. Everything is allowed within certain limits that are unknown to you and me. But not everything is appropriate or useful. Monsieur de Sartine told me as much this morning. There are too many higher interests at stake, and they are beyond us. This murder, these murders, conceal something else. That’s the marquise’s opinion and I’m tending more and more towards it myself. We need to gather more information about the vicomte. We must find out everything about his life, meet his brother the vidame, his betrothed, his commanding officers and his friends.’

  ‘And we need to do all this with the greatest discretion. It will be difficult.’

  ‘And especially hard because if I belonged to his family I would not be fooled into believing we’d given up the investigation. The Comte de Ruissec will not lower his guard. And we have no new evidence at our disposal, none. I assume, Bourdeau, that you were prevented from doing anything in Grenelle?’

  ‘I was even forbidden from entering the courtyard. A mortuary chapel has been set up in the entrance hall. The funeral ceremony should take place tomorrow, in the church of the Theatines. The bodies will then be transported to Ruissec, where the family has a private chapel inside the church. All I could see were the tapers and the mourning band with the family coat of arms.’

  ‘Did you speak to anyone?’

  ‘I didn’t even open my mouth when I was being insulted. But the arrogance of these aristocrats, this nobility that crushes—’

  He broke off and gave Nicolas an embarrassed look. The commissioner did not pick up on it. He was in fact unsure what he felt about his own origins, given that he had turned down the title. The signet ring he was wearing was merely the outward sign of his attachment to the Marquis de Ranreuil’s memory and he was not forgetting the venerable figure of Canon Le Floch who really was a man of the people, and of peasant stock at that.

  ‘Bourdeau, I’m beginning to think an expedition is in order. I’m going to think aloud, as if I were talking to myself … We need to go back to Grenelle and find a way of getting into the house. I really need to see certain things again and carry out another search of the vicomte’s bedroom. It would be possible at night. I had thought of getting Picard, the major-domo, to help us. I think he’s an honest fellow and he was the one who handed me the comtesse’s note; but I’m afraid I might put him in a difficult position. We can probably approach that wing of the building from the back but how can we get inside without breaking any glass or making a noise?’

  ‘Through the bull’s-eye.’

  ‘What bull’s-eye?’

  ‘Remember the dressing room. It has a round window fitted onto a swivel frame. On my last visit I disturbed the mechanism. If no one has noticed – and there’s no reason why they should have done as the rooms have been left unoccupied since the vicomte’s death – then all you have to do is push from the outside to get in. With the help of a ladder it would be easy, and there must be one lying around the grounds.’

  ‘In the garden shed. Bourdeau, I take my hat off to you. You’re amazing!’

  ‘I’ve just been thinking ahead. Given the turn of events and the complexity of the case I suspected we would be prevented from returning to the scene rather sooner than expected. It was important to retain a means of access. But we need to weigh up the consequences, Nicolas. If we are caught there, we’ll be shown no mercy and we’ll be ripe for attending the Tenebrae at the Poor Clares’ or going to New France to live with the Iroquois.’

  Nicolas burst out laughing. Bourdeau was right. It was a risky undertaking and potentially such a scandal that the authorities would be unable to take any action. However, he remained convinced that there were important clues to the mystery to be found in Grenelle. He was annoyed with himself for not spending more time examining the scene when the vicomte’s ‘suicide’ was discovered.

  ‘Bravo, Bourdeau, I can see in this your professional touch and your feel for detail. As for the rest, we’ll just have to trust to fortune. I admit I don’t like using roundabout methods but here the end justifies the means. That’s what reason of state is all about. Let’s draw up our plan of campaign. A carriage, a coachman. You and I, perhaps Rabouine as the scout and the lookout. We’ll leave the carriage some distance away so as not to arouse any suspicions. We’ll decide how to get over the wall once we’re there.’

  ‘We could break down the door.’

  ‘We could, and we have got the weapon to do it. But that’s not the solution; the door might creak or have a bell. We need to find the ladder again. The rest will depend on our agility and silence.’

  ‘I suggest,’ said Bourdeau, visibly delighted with the idea of the expedition, ‘we wear hats.’

  Nicolas agreed. This was an old joke they shared, dating from the time when the inspector had saved Nicolas’s life thanks to a miniature pistol of his invention fitted to the inside wing of his tricorn. He had given his superior an identical copy as a present.

  ‘When shall we set off?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘I already have the carriage. Find Rabouine, who can’t be far away. Before that I have to make an urgent visit to the Da
uphin Couronné.’

  ‘Aha!’ said Bourdeau.

  ‘You’re wrong there. It only occurred to me on my way back from Choisy that I might be able to gather some useful information about Mademoiselle Bichelière from our friendly madam. La Paulet can’t refuse us anything since we saved her from the poorhouse. I visit her regularly and her ratafia from the Antilles is not at all bad.’

  ‘It’s a good idea. She knows everything that goes on in her world of pleasure and illegal gambling.’

  ‘As for our little raid,’ Nicolas concluded, ‘one in the morning would seem to me the ideal time.’

  So Nicolas let Bourdeau prepare the expedition. Before leaving the Châtelet he wrote a brief new report for Monsieur de Sartine. He entrusted it to old Marie: the usher was to hand it to the Lieutenant General of Police in person if their raid on Grenelle went wrong. Otherwise he was to return it to Nicolas the following day. Having arranged this, he climbed back into his coach.

  Reflecting on the relations he had established with the brothel-keeper, he considered what set a police officer apart from an ordinary citizen. He now exercised his profession without too much soul-searching. Monsieur de Sartine had once made him read Fontenelle’s eulogy of Monsieur d’Argenson, one of his great predecessors. In it he had noted this sentence: ‘To tolerate an industry of vice only in so far as it might be useful, to keep the necessary abuses within the required limits, to ignore what it is better to ignore than to punish, to enter families by covert means and to keep their secrets hidden providing it is not necessary to make use of them; to be everywhere without being seen and to be the active and almost unknown spirit of the teeming masses of the city.’ All these precepts led to close and regular links between the police and the world of pleasure. Each side benefited from the arrangement.

  Nicolas had a strange feeling every time he lifted the knocker on the door of the Dauphin Couronné. He had almost died in this house and he himself had killed a man here. He was still sometimes haunted by that look and that face when he could not sleep at night. And sometimes he relived the duel he had fought blindly in La Paulet’s drawing room against an opponent whose every move he had had to anticipate.

  He heard a cry of surprise and the door opened to reveal the face of the little black girl, who gave him a half-amused, half-frightened look.

  ‘Good evening,’ said Nicolas. ‘Is La Paulet available to see Nicolas Le Floch?’

  ‘Always for you, Monsieur. You please follow.’

  She pointed towards the entrance to the drawing room, tittering behind her hand. It was too early for the usual customers to have arrived and yet snatches of conversations were coming from inside. Nicolas stopped at the door and listened. A man and a woman were talking.

  ‘My dear child, you are delightful. Kiss me, I beg you.’

  ‘I’m only too willing.’

  ‘I was as stiff as a dog while serving at table because of you. I could hold out no longer.’

  ‘That was obvious enough and so I left the table to come and find you.’

  ‘I’ve got to take you here and now.’

  ‘Yes, but what if your master catches us?’

  ‘What does it matter, for God’s sake? I’d shag you on a boundary stone, I’m so desperate!’

  Nicolas gently pushed the door ajar. In the large drawing room with its furniture upholstered in daffodil-yellow silk, the curtain of the little theatre was raised. The trompe-l’oeil set depicted a boudoir. The only items on stage were a sofa and two chairs. A slovenly dressed young man and a young woman in a négligé were practising their lines. La Paulet directed the performance by waving her fan, her enormous bulk slumped in a bergère. She was wearing a red dress and a black mantilla, and was plastered with more ceruse and rouge than a fairground puppet.

  ‘Put a bit more passion into it, you fool. Can’t you tell you’re meant to be at the end of your tether? I know it’s only a rehearsal but we have to think you’re burning with desire. And you, slut, less restrained and more provocative. Remember we’re dealing with connoisseurs this evening …’

  Nicolas coughed to signal his presence. La Paulet let out a scream. The two actors drew back and the curtain fell. After recovering from the shock, the madam got up with great effort.

  She shouted towards the stage set: ‘There’s nothing to fear, children. It’s Monsieur Nicolas.’

  ‘I see that you have not given up the theatrical arts,’ he said. ‘Such spirit! Such passion! Such delicacy! Is Mademoiselle Dumesnil, the goddess of French theatre, on this evening’s bill with her covey of dashing lords?’

  La Paulet was all smiles.

  ‘We have to make a living somehow. I’m expecting only a few tax collectors on the roister who want to enjoy themselves after supper and revive their failing powers of virility by watching my young actors. So we were rehearsing. At midnight there’ll be a private performance and then my girls will satisfy …’

  ‘With an edifying spectacle.’

  ‘In a way. So Monsieur le Commissaire has not forgotten his old friend.’

  ‘My dear, you are quite unforgettable. As is your ratafia.’

  ‘Would you like a little glass?’ said La Paulet, delighted. ‘I’ve just had a shipment from the Antilles.’

  While she filled two glasses with an amber liquid Nicolas looked about him. The layout had changed, the carpets now-being in different places. He realised that this alteration was meant to hide the part of the wooden floor stained with Mauval’s blood. Settling accounts with the past really did take a long time.

  ‘How’s business?’

  ‘I can’t complain. I always have plenty of customers. The pleasure we offer is varied, of high quality and with no nasty surprises.’

  ‘Any new recruits?’

  ‘Quite a few. Hard times always bring me young ladies drawn by the city lights.’

  ‘As you know everybody in Paris, does the name La Bichelière, Mademoiselle Bichelière of the Comédie-Italienne, mean anything to you?’

  ‘Doesn’t it just! A little slut, quite pretty, with lovely eyes. She’s making a pile at the Théâtre des Italiens. She almost came to me but decided she preferred to make her debut elsewhere.’

  ‘But she plays the innocent.’

  ‘She plays it on stage perhaps, but she began her career at a very young age. Oh yes, she can put on airs all right … Nowadays there are no morals left in the trade.’

  La Paulet began to tell the story. La Bichelière had come up to Paris from the country when she was very young with a group of gypsies that she then left in order to go begging. That was all she could do, that and dance. She had sunk to the depths of debauchery, reduced to earning her living by using her gentle, deft touch at night in the bushes around the boulevards, providing pleasure that was incomplete but without danger, a second best for the shameful and faint-hearted. Then she sold her main asset to a financier, whilst engaging in numerous amorous adventures with ladies’ men.

  ‘In fact,’ added La Paulet, ‘she renegotiated her main asset on many occasions. The customers fell for it.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘It’s like magic. A small amount of miraculous balm, such as “Du Lac’s Astringent Ointment” or an application of “Maidens of Préval Specific Water” and then a small pouch of pigeon blood in the right place and that’s it. Being gullible and in the right mood does the rest. It works every time. I came across her one day on Rue Saint-Honoré. She thinks she’s the cat’s whiskers. But mark my words, she’ll end up in Bicêtre like the rest of her kind.’

  ‘How about the gambling?’ asked Nicolas. ‘Is it still doing well?’

  The madam looked embarrassed and dubious. Not so long ago Nicolas had closed down the illegal gambling den that La Paulet had added to her list of activities. However, he knew via his spies that betting was still going on. It was tolerated as long as she proved amenable when called upon.

  ‘I no longer have a protector, so I’m keeping my head down.’

&nb
sp; ‘Which means you’re doing exactly the opposite. Do you really think I am foolish enough not to realise that you’ve found a way of keeping your little business going? Come, come, you should know not to try that with me.’

  She was wriggling like a worm on the end of a hook.

  ‘Very well, Monsieur Nicolas, I see I can treat you like a friend. La Paulet is a good sort; she knows how much she owes you. What information do you need?’

  ‘I’ve been given the task of making sure the honour of certain families is maintained, which means preventing some of our young men of quality from falling victim to swindlers and professional tricksters. I have one particular dissolute case in mind and I wonder if you know that person.’

  The little eyes, deep-set in their folds of flesh, stared at him impassively. ‘I don’t know them all by name.’

  ‘Don’t give me that, La Paulet,’ snapped Nicolas. ‘You’re too sharp not to find out information when it might be of use.’

  ‘That’s what you think. But I have a very mixed clientele.’

  ‘Ruissec.’

  ‘Wait a minute. That does ring a bell … Yes, a handsome young man. My girls fight over him. What a loss to the fair sex!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Yes, he’s going into the Church. Oh, of course that doesn’t mean much, but still, seeing a strapping young lad like that … well, it’s a real shame, a waste.’

  Nicolas realised that La Paulet was referring to the vicomte’s brother. Noblecourt had already mentioned this Ruissec forced by his father into a vocation to which he felt totally unsuited. He had not yet taken his vows and his brother’s death meant that he was now the elder son and free to take his life in a different direction.