The Dream Killer of Paris

by Fabrice Bourland

  2. The sexual charge of the dream is undeniable and is not unknown in the malaise afflicting me. But why did the young woman insist that I record the contents of the dream on paper?

  3. (Note added at 8.15 a.m.) Took a long time to fall asleep again. When I got up, I checked that the bedroom door was locked. It was.

  In the morning, I bought a notebook at a shop on Rue Saint-Honoré and then sat outside a café where I wrote up the dream properly, having scribbled it down at three o’clock in the morning almost automatically, together with the observations I had forced myself to record with as much clarity as I could at the time.

  This I christened my dream notebook. It would come to play an important role throughout my life.

  Clearly, dreams were to be significant during my time in Paris. Having come to find out the real cause of the death of Gérard de Nerval, for whom dreams and reality had constantly merged recklessly, I myself was now experiencing the ambiguous nature of the realm of dreams, at once so alluring and so pernicious.

  Just for a moment, feeling suddenly fearful, I almost turned back and took the first train to London. But, as I was leaving the café, somewhere a bell chimed eleven o’clock and I instinctively hurried in the direction of the Seine, cut through the Tuileries Gardens and, crossing Pont du Carrousel, reached the Gare d’Orsay where Fourier and his constable, Dupuytren, were waiting for me on the platform for the express train to Orléans.

  Notes

  7 The Stavisky affair, which had come to light in December 1933, was still on everyone’s minds. Denounced by the press, the scandal of false credit bonds at Crédit Municipal in Bayonne had led to the fall of the Chautemps government. The investigation had revealed numerous fraudulent relationships between the police, the justice system and politicians. (Publisher’s note)

  8 On 9 October, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Louis Barthou, was killed in an attack committed by a Croatian nationalist organisation, along with King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, whom he had gone to welcome at the port of Marseille. There was an immediate debate about failings in the police protection provided for such a high-risk visit. (Publisher’s note)

  IV

  AT CHTEAU B—

  When we came out of Étampes station, the driver of an old-fashioned four-cylinder Colda called over to us.

  ‘Superintendent Fourier?’

  ‘That’s me!’

  ‘I am Monsieur Breteuil’s chauffeur – he’s the examining magistrate. He sent me. He’s waiting for you at the château.’

  ‘How considerate!’

  We drove for about three miles before reaching the entrance to the estate. Two sergeants were on duty, keeping an eye on the reporters and the curious who were crowding around the gates. Ever since the publication of the much-read article in Paris-Soir all comings and goings had been carefully checked in order to try to gather any snippets of information.

  The gates were opened to let us through and the car sped up the drive leading to the château.

  It was a charming manor house, a relic from a rich past – one of those houses that make the Île-de-France region so appealing today. The façade was fairly wide and two storeys high. Behind the imposing main body of the building were the narrow roofs of two medieval towers which could be seen from the direction of the village.

  In fact, the château hadn’t been built in the Middle Ages, but at the end of the sixteenth century and altered several times during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. One restoration project had left more of a mark than the others – there were signs that the front of the building had been added to an older section at the back or had at least been rebuilt from top to bottom along more modern lines.

  As Superintendent Fourier had had time to explain to me on the journey, the Marquis de Brindillac had bought Château B— twenty years earlier to escape the hustle and bustle of the capital which had become unsuitable for the work he was carrying out.

  Auguste Jean Raoul de Brindillac had been born on 28 April 1862. His father, Ernest Léon Honoré, had been an army surgeon, who in 1859 had married Marquise Joséphine Amélie de la Batte, granddaughter of a general during the Empire. They had had three children: Honoré, Auguste and Joséphine. After the death of his first wife, Auguste de Brindillac had in 1899 married Sophie Mathilde Van Doorsen, heiress of a wealthy Dutch family originally from Haarlem, with whom he had had two children: René, who had died in a hunting accident in 1926, and Amélie.

  The Marquis de Brindillac, like his father before him, developed a vocation for surgery and anatomy very early on. He qualified as a doctor at the École de Médecine de Paris. An admirer of Bouillaud, and particularly Broca, he was passionate about physiology and the study of the human brain. He spent time at the laboratories of Marey, Berthelot and Vulpian. Following in the footsteps of Paul Broca, he focused his early scientific research on a better understanding of the limbic system or rhinencephalon, and on identifying the centre of speech in the brain. In 1894 he wrote a Clinical and Physiological Treatise on the Location of the Language Centre in the Brain which is still a standard work on the subject and led to him being elected to the Académie de Médecine de Paris in 1896. He was a professor of clinical medicine and physiology at the Hôpital de la Charité for a long time. The publication of his Clinical Treatise on Disorders of the Nervous System in 1909 definitively established his reputation as a leading scientist. In 1911 he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. In November 1924, he was elected to the Académie des Sciences. The Marquis was without doubt one of the country’s greatest minds.

  The chauffeur parked on the drive, near the main entrance to the château, next to two saloon cars in the deep-blue colour of the French gendarmerie.

  As we climbed the front steps, a short man of about sixty, whose hair and small goatee were as white as his skin, came to greet us. He was accompanied by a man who looked almost identical – same build, same pointed beard – but with slightly blonder hair, and twenty years younger. Behind him, a bald, plump individual was talking to a gendarme in the entrance hall.

  ‘Superintendent Fourier I presume?’ said the pale man. ‘I’m Judge Breteuil and I’ve been appointed by the Versailles prosecutor’s studyto handle this sad affair. Let me introduce Monsieur Bezaine, my clerk. Oh, and this is Monsieur d’Arnouville, the prosecutor’s deputy, who was just leaving, and Second Lieutenant Rouzé, from the local gendarmerie.’

  He indicated the two men from the hall who, having seen us, had come out on to the steps to join us.

  ‘Monsieur, let me thank you for sending a car to the station,’ said the superintendent to the examining magistrate.

  ‘Monsieur Breteuil considered, quite rightly, that it was essential for you to reach the château as quickly as possible,’ the prosecutor’s deputy interjected with feigned politeness.

  ‘It would certainly have been a pity if we’d lost our way.’

  ‘I was given to understand this morning that the police were about to open a new investigation into the death of this Pierre Ducros,’ continued the deputy. ‘The press is so powerful nowadays it can influence the decisions of the Seine public prosecutor’s studyand the Préfecture!’

  ‘I was under the impression that the Versailles prosecutor’s sudden volte-face was similarly influenced by the publication of a certain article.’

  ‘If you’re alluding to the decision to open a judicial inquiry into the affair which brings us here, you’re wrong. The public prosecutor never intended to close the case and he does not allow himself to be dictated to by anyone, especially not journalists.’

  ‘That is all to his credit.’

  ‘One thing is certain – the police don’t need another scandal.’

  ‘Neither does the justice system.’

  ‘Oh! But we haven’t reached that point yet, gentlemen!’ the examining magistrate intervened, fearing that tensions were rising. ‘Before you arrived, Superintendent, we – the prosecutor’s deputy, Second Lieutenant Rouzé and myself –
were discussing the article published in Paris-Soir. At the moment, the press is doing everything it can to create a scandal. By the way, do we know who this J.L. is?’

  ‘His name is Jacques Lacroix. No one has seen him at the newspaper’s offices in Rue du Louvre or at his home since Tuesday. It’s a pity. I have a great deal to say to him. We’ll soon track him down though.’

  ‘Would it be indiscreet to ask your opinion of the two deaths, Superintendent Fourier?’ asked the prosecutor’s deputy.

  ‘Well, I’m only here to investigate the death of the poor Marquis! And my investigations are only just beginning. It would surely be more instructive to hear Monsieur Rouzé’s point of view since he’s been involved in the Brindillac case all along?’

  The gendarme opened his mouth to speak but Fourier had not finished and turned to me.

  ‘By the way, allow me to introduce Monsieur Andrew Fowler Singleton. Monsieur Singleton and his associate, Monsieur Trelawney, who is currently detained in London, helped the French police with a case that was in the news last year.’

  ‘Singleton! Trelawney! Yes, of course, I remember it well!’ exclaimed the examining magistrate. ‘Your names certainly made the papers at the time. I didn’t realise you were so young though.’

  After his initial enthusiasm, the magistrate’s face darkened, as he reflected that, all things considered, my presence would cause a few problems.

  ‘Good heavens, Superintendent,’ he remarked with some embarrassment towards me, ‘do you not think that this investigation has had enough publicity already?’

  ‘On the contrary,’ retorted Fourier, unflustered. ‘As the prosecutor’s deputy confirmed, we need all the help we can get to solve this case as soon as possible. What’s more, if, as the Versailles prosecutor’s study believed less than twenty-four hours ago, the only strange thing about this death is the rather unusual circumstances surrounding it, then everything will be sorted out in no time. The Sûreté is going to use its expertise. With the help of our friend here, I wager that the mystery will melt away within two days. If the Préfecture acts with the same efficiency, it will be all to the good.’

  ‘That is exactly the attitude Monsieur d’Armagnac, the Versailles public prosecutor, asked me to convey, “Everything must be resolved as soon as possible!” I am glad that, on this point, we are all in agreement.’

  Standing on the top step, the prosecutor’s deputy concluded: ‘I’ve just hand-delivered the burial certificate to the Marquise. The funeral can be held this weekend. The Marquise would like the body to be returned to her today but I managed to convince her that, after five days, it was not a good idea. A van from the morgue will therefore take the body to the burial site once the date of the funeral and its location have been fixed. I’m sure that will be a great relief to the family. And now I must leave you, gentlemen. I’m expected in court.’

  Monsieur d’Arnouville marched down the steps towards his car and Judge Breteuil invited us to follow him into the château.

  ‘I really don’t like the way this investigation is looking,’ he said. ‘You’ll see, it will be one of those cases we never manage to get to the bottom of. And I don’t like this atmosphere of suspicion everywhere either. And I’ve been landed with it just a few weeks before I retire.’

  ‘Well, we’re here to find the explanation, whatever it is.’

  ‘Dying in your sleep is allowed,’ continued the judge. ‘It was even considered to be a very good end until last Saturday.’

  ‘It has long been said that Charles Dickens passed away in his sleep,’ I said as we entered the building. ‘Actually, the celebrated author died of a cerebral haemorrhage.’

  Monsieur Breteuil and the clerk, Bezaine, exchanged baffled looks. Clearly, they had no idea what the British writer had to do with Château B—.

  ‘But as for the Marquis de Brindillac,’ I continued, ‘don’t forget the look of terror on his face. Although it’s not unheard of to die in one’s sleep, it is a little more unusual to die during a nightmare!’

  ‘True, very true,’ conceded the judge, rubbing his head.

  We had crossed a large hall and stopped in front of a door where a servant was waiting unobtrusively.

  ‘The Marquise and her daughter are in the sitting room,’ explained the magistrate. ‘They, and the château’s staff, were interviewed by Monsieur Rouzé and his men during the first days of the investigation. As Monsieur d’Arnouville said, the burial certificate has just been delivered to them. The ladies are very distressed, gentlemen. Let us proceed with tact and sensitivity.’

  We had come to a large stone staircase.

  ‘Of course,’ Fourier said. Pointing upstairs, he suggested, ‘Why don’t we leave them in peace for the moment and ask Monsieur Rouzé to show us where the Marquis was found? That will shed some valuable light on the matter.’

  The magistrate agreed with this suggestion. He asked the servant to inform the mistress of the house that he and Superintendent Fourier would speak to her in a few minutes’ time and then invited us to follow him.

  While the others began to climb the stairs, I stopped in front of a full-length mirror in the hall and considered my reflection. Despite all my efforts to make myself look older, my face remained as youthful as ever. It was exasperating. My bow tie and ragged moustache did nothing to improve the situation. Disappointed, I pushed my trilby more firmly on to my slicked-back hair and, frowning to make myself look sterner, caught up with the group in a few strides.

  Upstairs, a corridor ran the full width of the château, dividing it into two parts of roughly equal size. On one side, at the front of the house, were the Marquise de Brindillac’s bedroom and her daughter’s apartments; on the other, Auguste de Brindillac’s rooms, consisting of the bedroom where he had been found dead, a study and a large library. This perfectly geometric distribution was complemented by two spare bedrooms and, at the back, the two circular rooms situated in the towers. The first adjoined the Marquis’s library and he used it for his experiments. The second opened on to one of the spare bedrooms but, for reasons still unknown to me, it had been sealed.

  To help the reader visualise the layout of the château, I have appended a sketch of the first floor of Château B—, as well as a sketch of Auguste de Brindillac’s bedroom (see page 50).

  Second Lieutenant Rouzé preceded us to the door of the Marquis’s bedroom. When the door had been forced, the servant and gardener had broken the lock so now all it needed was a push. The gendarme did this extremely slowly, as if he feared that the old scientist’s body was still lying on the bed.

  The room was large. To take it all in, we had to advance a few paces into it in order to see past the area on the right-hand side of the entrance which had been turned into a bathroom with all mod cons. Pushed up against the wall, an enormous four-poster bed immediately caught the eye. Its posts, made of high-quality wood, supported large sheets of fabric on which pink, round-faced cherubs few through bucolic landscapes. From looking at the bed, neatly made under the joyously festooned canopy, the sheets and covers pulled taut without a crease, no one could have imagined the tragedy that had occurred there.

  Diagram of the first floor of Château B—

  Diagram of the Marquis de Brindillac’s bedroom

  There were a few pieces of furniture in the bedroom (a corner wardrobe, an occasional table, a bedside table and two armchairs) but, apart from a faded wall hanging and a collection of small portraits (mainly of scientists) hung near the door to the study, the room was simply decorated. Stained-glass windows cast an unusual light, creating a subdued atmosphere conducive to reflection at any time of day.

  ‘So, it was here that it happened, was it?’ asked the superintendent, approaching the bed.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Second Lieutenant Rouzé hoarsely. ‘Last Saturday the servant from the château informed the gendarmerie that the Marquis had been found dead in his bed. I got here shortly afterwards, at ten thirty-five. Dr Leduc had arrived before me and was
in the process of examining the body.’

  ‘Did anything strike you as strange when you entered the room?’ asked the examining magistrate.

  ‘The dead man’s face, sir, his face! His expression was one of indescribable terror. Never could I have imagined that such an emotion was possible at the moment of death.’

  ‘And yet,’ resumed the judge, slight disappointment in his voice, ‘your investigation hasn’t been able to determine the cause of this violent emotion.’

  ‘That is true, sir. There was nothing to go on. I fear that it will be the same today …’

  ‘We’ll see, we’ll see,’ cut in Fourier. ‘Did the Marquise, or anyone else in the house, notice anything out of place? Or that anything had disappeared?’

  ‘No, nothing had been touched.’

  The superintendent opened one of the two windows to let more light into the room and poked his head outside to assess the height. I joined him, to see for myself.

  ‘I think the theory of criminal activity is looking increasingly unlikely,’ he muttered, tugging at his moustache.

  It was at least fifteen feet from the bedroom window to the ground. It was impossible to get down the wall using only one’s bare hands, particularly as there was a bed of flowering shrubs just beneath the window, which ran right along the façade of the château, and anyone landing there would have left clear traces.

  Obviously, there remained the possibility of a ladder. But given that, on the morning of the Marquis’s death, the windows had been found locked, just like the doors, then either scenario would imply that one of the three people who had entered the room together (the Marquise, the servant and the gardener) was an accomplice who had closed the window without the other two knowing. Admittedly, this seemed far-fetched.