by Charles Todd
Marie-Luc was exhausted, still, from her long ordeal with fever, but she was awake when I walked into her room.
She tried to focus on my face as I came up to the bed, and for a moment she couldn’t quite place me. Then she said, “Sister Crawford.” Her voice was hardly more than a thread.
We chatted for a few minutes—or to be honest, I talked to her about trivial matters, the weather, war news, the gossip I’d heard at the clinic about the Armistice that was being proposed, while she listened without comment.
Was she too weak to tell me what I wanted to know?
I said, “I’m aware that it’s not something you wish to discuss. But I have an obligation of my own, and I have no choice but to ask you. What do you know about Philippe Moreau? Is that his real name? Where does he come from? You called him a monster once, and you led me to think it was he who attacked you, not Jerome Karadeg.”
Not all of that last was true, but I asked the questions fast and without any time for her to think, in the hope that she might answer at least one of them, if only in anger. Instead, she turned her face to the wall, refusing even to look at me.
“Please. This is no longer a matter you can keep to yourself. You must tell me something.”
I waited, giving her time to reconsider. I hadn’t brought the packets with me. I hadn’t expected her to have the strength to look at the contents. Now I was wishing I had, that they might force her to talk rather than withdraw.
And then without warning she turned her head and met my gaze, anger in her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re meddling with. Let it be.”
“I know something. That you know who attacked you. That the priest in Petite-Beauvais is afraid of Paul Moreau. I know that Philippe was in Paris a matter of days ago, and most likely is still here. I think the police are following me, but I don’t know why. My side is slowly healing, and I must go back to the British lines soon. There isn’t much time.”
“The war is almost over—let it alone, I tell you.”
“What has he done? What is it you know about him, that he would wish to kill you, and let Jerome Karadeg take the blame? And then send him to his death in the Seine?”
I really didn’t think she would answer me.
And then to my surprise, tears filled her eyes, and she said, “I know the truth.”
Chapter Eleven
There was silence in the room for a time. I could hear voices in the distance, and somewhere a church bell striking the hour.
“The woman who lived in that cottage. Juliane Theissen. She was a cousin of the Moreau family. Her mother was living in Alsace when the war broke out that would give the province to the Germans. They couldn’t get away. Her father died in the fighting, an officer in the French Army. Some years later, when her mother died, Paul Moreau’s father went to Alsace and spirited her out, bringing her back to Petite-Beauvais without permission of the authorities. He told everyone that she was a German fräulein who had come as a governess to the young boy, his cousin, he had also rescued, and no one guessed it wasn’t true. It was the thing then to have a German governess. As for the child she brought with her, I don’t know that Mrs. Moreau was ever certain whether the boy was actually the girl’s younger brother or even Moreau’s natural son. He was desperate for an heir.”
She took a deep breath. “Soon afterward the child, Philippe, was adopted by the Moreau family. There had been no other children in that family, you see. And then Mrs. Moreau discovered she was pregnant. When Paul’s father died, his widow, Paul’s mother, sent the governess away. That’s how I came to know her. My parents hired her to care for me, and soon she was making her living as a governess. It wasn’t until years later, when I was older, that I learned about the child. Even so, she wouldn’t tell me who he was. I have suspected he was Monsieur Moreau’s natural son.”
Her voice faded, and I thought she’d finished, that she wasn’t going to tell me the rest of the story.
I was about to ask her to go on when she said, “What happened next is not clear. Philippe and Paul were in school; Philippe was twelve, Paul nearly ten. They went to spend a weekend in the house of the Lavaud family, near the Bois. The family’s son was a classmate of theirs. Paul went out riding in the afternoon. He said later that there was an argument in the family that had upset him. He came back at four o’clock to find everyone dead, and Philippe dazed, with blood on his hands. The police believed he’d killed them all, except for the Lavaud boy, who was in the kennels, and so he was taken into custody.”
“The Moreau children were connected to this murder?” I sat back stunned. I’d been prepared for anything except this. I had assumed that the newspaper cutting had been kept because the fräulein had known the family, yet she hadn’t kept any cuttings from the ensuing inquiry or trial, which was curious. I’d thought by understanding that, I would have more insight into the other papers she’d hidden, and any connection between the murders and the Moreaus. It was even more shocking now that no one had saved the rest of the story.
Marie-Luc was still talking. I tried to concentrate on what she was saying.
“—it doesn’t matter what happened next. Suffice it to say that somehow Philippe escaped before he could be tried. The police searched without finding any trace of him. I’ve always believed that he went to Alsace. He couldn’t have remembered his early years there, he was no more than two. But he must have heard Fräulein Theissen speak of her home.”
I realized what that must mean. “Are you saying that when war broke out in 1914, he was still in Alsace? He must have been of an age to join the German Army. Did he take part in the invasion of France?”
“I have seen him for myself, in a German uniform. Now you know why I want no part of him. He is a killer and a traitor.”
“But where is he now?” And was he the same man who’d called himself Philippe Moreau?
“I don’t know. I’d thought he was dead, you see. The fräulein spoke of him as if he were. But somehow he managed to visit her. Just before I arrived to care for her. As she lay dying, she told me. Not until then.”
I stared at her. “That’s why you believed you’d seen him on the streets of Paris. Because he’d just been to Petite-Beauvais.”
Had he taken that black lacquer box? Was that what had become of it?
“But how could he have attacked you? The man I knew as Philippe Moreau could hardly put one foot in front of the other. He could barely stand.”
And yet I’d seen him in a taxi just after I’d arrived in Paris. I was certain of that. All I could think of was that his wounds must have healed faster than anyone had imagined.
She turned away from me again. “He came at me from behind, that one. It wasn’t Jerome. He never wears his uniform—he wasn’t wearing it that afternoon. But he was wearing one, I’d swear to it.” She closed her eyes, as if to shut out the memory. “He struck me on the back of the neck, and then as I raised my arms to protect my head, the knife came. It was there, sharp and ripping from one side to the other with such force that I reared back into him, one hand clutching at the arm driving the knife, and I felt the fabric of a uniform. Then he was gone, and my knees buckled. I was kneeling there, watching the blood run down my clothing into the gutter. Someone was calling to me, but I don’t remember much after that.”
I sat there, letting the silence lengthen between us.
I could hear her breathing. Ragged and unsettled.
“Now, God help us, I have told you everything. What good will it do you, or me?”
Her voice was so low I could barely make out the words.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I wish I did.”
After a time, I said, “Why would Philippe Moreau risk everything to kill you, a woman he hardly knew?”
“Because I had seen him in Belgium. And I never told Fräulein Theissen that I had. Not even the last time I had come to visit her. That was months ago, before she took ill.”
The door opened, and Sister Claire bustled in. �
�Ah. You have a visitor,” she said, smiling. “And we are much better this morning, are we not? The poultice helped to stop the infection.” She came around the bed, intending to take Sister Marie-Luc’s temperature. “What is it?” she asked sharply. “You’re as pale as your sheets.”
“I’m very tired. I have asked Sister Crawford to go.”
“And just as well, if you’re feeling this low.”
I rose, said farewell, and walked to the door.
Sister Marie-Luc turned her head to watch me go, but didn’t say good-bye.
I had a great deal to think about.
In the taxi on the way to the hotel, I went over in my mind what I’d just been told. But as we pulled up in front of the clinic, I was still trying to absorb it.
It struck me suddenly that if what Marie-Luc had told me was true, Philippe Moreau was indeed from Alsace, just as Matron had suggested at Base Hospital Three. And that was something to consider. When the attack on the family living near the Bois had come to light, France was in the midst of “L’affaire Dreyfus.”
The Dreyfus Affair was a notorious scandal involving the Army and the government and the Catholic Church. An innocent man, a Jewish army officer, was found guilty of treason for passing Army secrets to the Germans, and sent to the infamous Devil’s Island prison in French Guiana—as it turned out, on falsified charges. In the midst of the uproar that ensued, the truth came out, and finally he was given a new trial five years later, in 1899—and found guilty a second time. The judges managed that only because he was sentenced to time served. Even the great writer Émile Zola had fought for him, as well as Georges Clemenceau, later one of France’s most popular wartime prime ministers. This fight kept French politics in an uproar for ten years, making and breaking reputations. And the fact that Dreyfus was Alsatian had made his spying seem even more plausible, although it was his religion that had made him a target. Any reason for showing sympathy toward Germany was enough.
Had Philippe’s background played any part in the boy’s being charged with the murders? It must have been discovered—the newspapers would have found it out if the police had not—that he’d been adopted by a French family.
At any rate, there had never been a trial that might have cleared Philippe’s name—or sent him to the guillotine. What had become of the child Juliane Theissen had brought to France with her? Where had he fled to? A place where the family’s former governess might still have relations? She must have helped—someone surely had spirited him away. He was only twelve at the time. How could he have survived on his own, even if he got away from the place where he was being held?
I dug into the bottom of the box of toy soldiers and brought out the envelope for another look.
I read it with renewed interest.
There had been five people in the house that day: two housemaids; an older woman, Madame Lavaud, the mother of the owner; and her son Georges and his wife, Thérèse, parents of the boy whom the two Moreau children, according to Marie-Luc, were visiting. The son of the house, Victor, was in the kennels with the dogs. He was not aware that anything had happened. A groom had seen him there, playing with the puppies. A friend of the family had gone riding—this must have referred to Paul Moreau.
Five adults, alone in a house. How had a twelve-year-old boy managed to kill them?
And why was he in the house with the adults, and not out riding with his brother or visiting the kennels with his host? Had it been a matter of bad luck? Or of intent?
In this account, another guest was found dazed and wandering, and this must have been Philippe.
The two maids had been in the kitchen. It was the cook’s afternoon off, and they had been making coffee. One was found in the pantry, next to a shattered jug of milk, the other by a kitchen table. The owner was in his study, and his wife died in their sitting room; the older woman, the man’s mother, in the passage outside. The murder weapon was a large hunting knife taken from the room where the shooting rifles and shotguns were kept. It was found in the hall near the older woman.
A knife.
But the cutting, while it named the Lavauds, didn’t give the names or ages of either of the guests, who were unharmed. The shocking story was complete without identifying them. And this made it all the more curious that the fräulein had kept it but none of the later articles that must have appeared.
For that anonymity was about to change.
I searched again through the papers, just to be sure there were no more cuttings or other references to the crime that I might have missed.
How on earth was I to find out more about these murders?
In Paris, away from all that was familiar and understood, where the language was one I could speak reasonably but not well enough to expect anyone to take me for a native, I was at a disadvantage.
Where to turn?
I went to find Madame Ezay.
She was paring carrots for our dinner.
“The scullery maid’s mother is ill,” she said when I walked into the kitchen. “I have been asked to help.”
There was a pail of carrots by the table.
“I’ll wash them while you pare,” I said, taking the pail out to the pump. It was far heavier than I’d expected, but I soldiered on, washed the thick orange vegetables, and brought them back. She handed me another knife and I removed the tops.
“Alors,” she said with a smile. “There is something you wish?”
We had the kitchen to ourselves. On the cooker a tall pot was simmering quietly, and I could smell chicken broth with onions. We had had roast chicken last night, and I would not have been at all surprised if the bones were in that pot.
“Something occurred eighteen years ago. An account of it appeared in a newspaper, a Parisian one, I should think, although there’s no name on the cutting I have found. I need to know more about what happened on that date. How the story ended.”
“Ah. Newspapers and periodicals came and went for some years. A man would start one up, declare his principles, write editorials in support of them, and then public interest would wane and the paper would go away. It was more about politics than what was happening that might be news. Unless of course it was a scandal.”
“We call that a nine days’ wonder,” I said, grinning at the carrot top I’d just cut off.
“Yes, of course, nine days. Absolutely.” She chuckled, a merry laugh. “Very well, what is the subject of this cutting? Is it about that poor man Dreyfus? I was in the school at Rennes when the new trial began. I saw him myself, a broken man physically. Did you know he is an officer now? Fighting for France, after all France did to him?”
“No, I didn’t know,” I said, surprised. I knew he’d been pardoned—accounts reached us in India, and letters from friends living in Paris had been full of the story. I’d heard my parents discussing it in 1906, when Dreyfus was given back the rank he would have held but for the trials and his imprisonment. My father, an officer himself, had been surprised that Dreyfus would accept reinstatement in the Army that had turned against him.
“If it is not that, then what? It was all the news there was for ten years. Everyone had an opinion. One could start an argument with a word, and there would be a fight in the street before it was done.”
“A murder,” I said, gauging her interest in the subject. “In fact, five murders. A man, his wife, his mother, and two housemaids.”
She stopped working and stared at me. “In one house? God in heaven, who would do something so monstrous?”
Sister Marie-Luc had called Philippe Moreau a monster too.
“The cutting was only about the discovery of the bodies. I have no idea if the police ever solved it.”
“Here in Paris?” she asked, as if expecting me to tell her it was in Berlin or London. Somewhere that such things could happen.
“The house was near the Bois. A large house, I should think, because it had grooms in a stable yard and puppies in the kennel.”
“Zut alors.”
We
had begun to chop the carrots into short lengths. For a moment there was only the sound of our paring knives slicing through them with a crunch and thump.
“Where would I go for such information?” I asked.
“The booksellers along the Left Bank. Many are gone, the war. But you will find books and old copies of papers.”
I thanked her, finished helping her with the carrots, and hurried upstairs. Catching up my coat, I went out to find a taxi.
Down the street from our gates a man loitered at the corner of a building. I couldn’t see him well enough to judge whether he was minding his own business or minding mine.
When the taxi had crossed the river and stopped where the stalls lined the walk under the trees, I got out, asked the driver to wait for me, and began my search. The air was chilly, and I pulled my coat collar closer. The booksellers looked up with expressions of bored interest.
The men standing in the stalls were all older, past the age of military service. One seller was a woman, her hair cropped short and her coat oversized, as if it had been her husband’s or father’s. Her hands were jammed into the pockets, her cap pulled down.
Most of the books on display were in French, as one would expect, although I found a surprising number in English and even Russian.
Many people in England had burned all their German books in the first days after war had been declared in 1914. I thought it must have happened here as well, because I didn’t see any. Still, they might have been kept out of sight unless someone knew to ask for them.
I spoke to each seller in turn, asking if the stall sold newspapers from 1900. One asked if I actually wanted 1899, when the second trial of Alfred Dreyfus had taken place.
“Non, merci. For something that happened in the Bois. A serious crime.”
He brought out an assortment of newspapers. I didn’t recognize the names of most of them. There were old issues of Le Mot, L’Illustration, and L’Aurore. I thought perhaps they were important enough to keep because of their articles. I remembered what had been said about newspapers reflecting the political controversies of the day, and I could see that it must have been true. Some of the papers had lasted only a matter of months, others several years.