The Nicolas Le Floch affair

by Jean-FranCois Parot

  ‘And what observations have you made?’

  ‘Some quite surprising ones, actually. First of all, the fire is out, but that’s normal. It’s nearly six o’clock. But the fact that the windows are closed and the curtains drawn – now that’s not in keeping.’

  ‘Not in keeping with what?’

  ‘With Julie’s habits. She always demanded a raging fire – which I hate, as you know – and, to make up for it, she kept the windows half open and the curtains half drawn. Now, unless things haven’t been left in the state they were in when the body was discovered, which I don’t believe to be the case …’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Look at those candles on the chest of drawers. The doctor who came examined the body by their light. They weren’t usually kept there, any more than there were usually all these jewels scattered about. When there’s a dead body and it’s winter, it’s best to let the cold in from outside … I also see a half-empty glass of white liquid on the night table, and a plate with what seems to be a chicken wing in sauce. Now that’s impossible, in fact totally absurd.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because Julie hated eating in bed. She would never have had food brought in to her. She never allowed me to satisfy my hunger at her bedside. That’s why the presence of this plate bothers me.’

  In the dark, he blushed at the thought of these intimate details.

  ‘Another thing,’ he went on. ‘Why would she have wanted to eat in bed or during the night when she had just finished a sumptuous dinner? It makes no sense.’

  He looked pensively at the little writing case that lay on a rosewood table, surrounded by scattered sheets of paper, along with a quill, a seal and a stick of green wax.

  ‘So much for the room,’ said Bourdeau. ‘What about the body?’

  ‘We’ll have to take a closer look at it. It reminds me of the body of an old man who was stung on the throat by wasps in Chaville, one night last summer. The position of the hands was identical. At first sight, poisoning is an obvious conclusion, as is suffocation. The throat looks swollen, even seen from a distance. The autopsy will tell us more, I hope. We need to take the glass and its contents with us, as well as the leftovers on the plate.’

  ‘There are a lot of footprints,’ said Bourdeau. ‘Muddy ones, too.’

  ‘The police and the doctor. We won’t get much from them.’

  They walked around the room, looking for other clues. Bourdeau pointed to a concealed door in the partition wall. ‘Where does that lead?’

  ‘To the servants’ pantry, by way of the wardrobe, the toilet and the service rooms.’

  Bourdeau opened the door, and walked through a small room full of cupboards which led to a larger one furnished with a mirrored table and a bergère. He opened a second door and found himself in a long corridor with jute-covered walls.

  ‘Through here, the prints are more distinct,’ he observed. ‘A man seems to have walked along it in both directions.’

  Nicolas came and joined him. Bourdeau stared at the floor in amazement.

  ‘That’s quite strange,’ he said. ‘I’ll be damned if these prints aren’t the same as those your boots are leaving on the carpet. See for yourself.’

  They both knelt. After a moment, Nicolas broke the silence.

  ‘Identical. Absolutely and totally identical.’

  Nicolas took a few steps, crouched, took a sheet from his little black notebook and a lead pencil, and noted down the pattern of marks on the parquet floor.

  ‘In fact, they’re not completely identical,’ he said. ‘There must have been a nail loose on the sole, and it’s scratched the floor. Look.’

  ‘And what’s more, these prints are fresh,’ murmured Bourdeau, embarrassed. ‘Or at least, from last night.’

  ‘I see what you’re thinking. There is an explanation.’

  He went back to the wardrobe room and opened one of the closets. Hanging on a rail was a cloak which Bourdeau recognised as one of Nicolas’s, and on a side shelf there were folded shirts and handkerchiefs. But something did not correspond to what the commissioner was expecting, and Bourdeau sensed Nicolas’s dejection.

  ‘Vanished! My second pair of boots, identical to this one, vanished. I always keep some of my things here.’

  ‘Perhaps the servants took them away to be cleaned.’

  ‘I’d like to see that!’ said Nicolas. ‘I learnt from my father, the marquis, never to entrust that task to anyone other than myself. Otherwise you’d never obtain the right polish and brilliance. The surface leather has to look like that of a well-rubbed horse chestnut.’

  ‘All right,’ said Bourdeau, unaccustomed to hearing Nicolas mention his father. ‘But they could be the servants’ prints!’

  ‘Impossible, they always walk barefoot. Julie hated noise. She would have liked people to slide along the floor.’

  ‘The fact remains,’ the inspector went on hesitantly, ‘that the only footprints found in this corridor are yours …’

  He observed Nicolas’s impatient gesture.

  ‘Yours, or left by your boots … Let’s follow them, shall we?’

  The prints led them to the servants’ pantry, which was spick and span. In a larder, they discovered the remains of a chicken dish, which intrigued Bourdeau, but which Nicolas recognised as having been prepared in the style of the West Indies – it was a dish of which he was particularly fond.

  ‘We’ll have to collect all this and take it to the Basse-Geôle. Semacgus can take a look at it, and even test it on rats.’

  Bourdeau was stooped over, clearly in the grip of an inner dilemma. ‘I ought to report to Monsieur de Sartine …’

  ‘Oh, of course!’ Nicolas replied in a somewhat brusque tone. ‘And why not also tell him that you were accompanied by a clerk, a man nobody knew, who was wearing a fine pair of riding boots? Who then told you that he kept another pair in a closet, where the said clerk – a stranger, as I said – pointed out clothes belonging to a police commissioner at the Châtelet he’d obviously never met, but whose breeches he recognised! I told you this was a dead end … Now here you are, caught in a trap, and me with you. Our machinations have rebounded on us. I should never have accepted your generous proposition.’

  ‘Please, God,’ said Bourdeau, ‘let this death be from natural causes! Because if it isn’t …’

  Neither of them really wanted to consider the implications of that. What most hurt Nicolas was to think that he himself, in Bourdeau’s place, would not have been able to keep from wondering about those troubling boot prints.

  Notes – CHAPTER 2

  1. Mansion rented by Monsieur de Sartine and used as police headquarters.

  2. See The Man with the Lead Stomach.

  III

  TRAPS

  Jesuz mab Doue, n’eo bet kredet

  Piv en e vro a ve profed?

  Jesus, son of God, was not believed.

  Who would be a prophet in his own land?

  BRETON PROVERB

  Instructions had been given, decisions made, and everything was proceeding methodically. Bourdeau was very much in control. Messengers had been dispatched to Doctor Semacgus in Vaugirard, and to Sanson, the Paris executioner, who lived outside the city walls in a house he owned on the corner of Rue Poissonnière and Rue d’Enfer. For a long time now, Monsieur de Paris – as he was known – had been lending his skills to the performance of autopsies in criminal investigations. He was a discreet, cultivated man, although one who could conceal – as Nicolas had previously discovered – unexpected failings. The friendship Nicolas felt for him was genuine and compassionate.

  The two practitioners were to be brought to the Grand Châtelet by carriage and there, that very evening, an examination of Madame de Lastérieux’s body would be carried out. It was not a formality: everything hung on the results of this autopsy. If the assumption of premeditated poisoning proved correct, the machinery of the law would immediately be set in motion, with all the measures and procedures
that entailed.

  With a pang, Nicolas had moved back against the wall to let the porters take the body down to the wagon. As there was a risk that the body might undergo changes as the vehicle jolted over the Parisian cobbles, they had placed it on a bed of straw with the head held in place with splints to withstand the shaking. Beforehand, Bourdeau had plugged all the orifices of the body with shredded linen in order to prevent liquid requiring analysis from escaping.

  He had put off interviewing the servants and the dinner guests until later. It was not a priority for the moment. The two men watched as the wagon set off, had the seals put back on the front door of the house, and got back in their carriage. Bourdeau had with him, in a basket he had found in the servants’ pantry, the remains of the food discovered in the bedroom and the kitchen, as well as the white beverage, which had been decanted into a small bottle that had been duly corked.

  Nicolas thanked heaven for his disguise. It allowed him to sink into a kind of drowsiness, a mixture of stupor and grief. He felt a sense of foreboding, all the worse now that night had fallen. He looked out with unseeing eyes at the people passing by, all of them wrapped against the biting cold, their faces hidden behind the turned-up collars of their cloaks. A damp fog had descended, blurring the colours of the streets. The street lamps gave off hardly any light. The sight of the hurrying crowd reminded him of a Flemish painting he had seen in the King’s collection, in which, against the background of a snowy sky, faceless people walked in procession towards a cemetery in the distance. Bourdeau tried to suggest to him that they should stop at the tavern in the Grande Boucherie where they usually went to fill their stomachs before autopsies, but Nicolas did not feel like doing anything. The way he was dressed, he observed curtly, risked drawing attention to himself. The tavern-keeper had known them for years and liked nothing better than to chat with his customers: he was sure to see through his disguise.

  The noise of the wheels echoing under an archway drew him from these reflections. The carriage came to a halt. With a fatherly air, Bourdeau lifted the muffler over the lower part of Nicolas’s face and made sure that the smoked glasses were well adjusted, then had a careful look at the area around the entrance to the Grand Châtelet. The way was clear. No one was lurking in the shadows and even the errand boys had abandoned the place for warmer retreats. They descended to the Basse-Geôle. At the beginning of his career, Nicolas had organised autopsies in the ogival torture room, near the office of the clerk of the criminal court. Since then, as the number of autopsies had multiplied, a small cellar containing a stone slab with grooves in it had been pressed into service. It had the advantage that the morgue, which was open to the public, was close by. When Nicolas and Bourdeau entered, they were surprised to find Semacgus and Sanson already there, engaged in an animated conversation. But they had not been brought from their respective residences in such a short space of time: they had both been summoned to take part in a delicate gallstone operation on a patient in the Hôtel-Dieu, and when it was over Sanson had invited Semacgus to the Châtelet to admire some new instruments from Prussia, which had just arrived on the mail-coach.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said Bourdeau, smiling.

  The two men turned round. Nicolas held back, taking care not to stand within the circle of light thrown by the candles. He noted that Sanson was elegantly dressed in green. It was the first time he had ever seen him without his perpetual puce coat. It made him look younger and compensated for the solemn air his growing paunch gave him.

  ‘Won’t Nicolas be joining us?’ asked Semacgus, peering inquisitively into the shadows where the false clerk was standing. ‘Not this time,’ said Bourdeau. ‘Monsieur de Sartine did not think it right that he should be involved in an investigation, or rather, in a preliminary inquiry, which touches him so closely.’ He made a sideways movement of his head to indicate Nicolas. ‘Monsieur Deshalleux, clerk of the court. He will make notes on our conclusions.’

  Nicolas bowed.

  ‘Inspector,’ said Sanson, ‘our friend has told me the facts. I’d like you to convey to Commissioner Le Floch how much I feel for him in his hour of grief—’

  He was interrupted by the arrival of the stretcher, carried by two men and preceded by an officer. The body was placed on the stone slab, and Semacgus and Sanson began preparing their instruments in silence. There followed a terrible ordeal for Nicolas. He would never know how he had been able to bear the scratch of the scalpel cutting into the skin, the cracking as the ribs were separated on either side of the trunk, revealing the nacreous tints of the organs, and the various noises and smells of the operation. More unbearable still were the comments and remarks which accompanied this work. This body, once so passionately loved, was nothing more than a wretched, bleeding scrap of flesh. Once they had sewn it up again, salted it and wrapped it in a jute sack, Bourdeau and Semacgus conferred for a long time, then spent more time debating politely which of them would dictate the conclusions. In the end, it was Sanson who took it upon himself to sum up their observations. Bourdeau nudged Nicolas with his elbow, to remind him that he had to note down everything that was said.

  ‘“We,”’ began Sanson, ‘“Guillaume Semacgus, navy surgeon, and Charles Henri Sanson, executioner for the viscountcy and seneschalcy of Paris, residing separately in this city and its dependencies, hereby certify and attest that on this day, 7 January 1774, in response to the summons issued this said day by Pierre Bourdeau, inspector at the Châtelet, we went together to the prison of the Grand Châtelet, and in a cellar situated near the Basse-Geôle performed an autopsy on the corpse of Madame Julie de Lastérieux and are now making a statement of this internal and external examination. We report in all conscience that we found the body of Madame de Lastérieux to be healthy and intact in all its external parts, without wounds or contusions, and in its natural state, apart from stiff joints and stretch marks on the thighs and legs, a natural effect of a violent death. Proceeding to the opening of the corpse, beginning with the lower abdomen, we found the organs healthy on the outside. From the interior of the stomach we took out about a pint of a brownish liquid mixed with clots of blood, the surface of this organ appearing irritated and tinged with a redness which could not be wiped away with a towel. As for the colour—”’

  ‘If you’ll allow me, my dear colleague,’ Semacgus cut in, ‘I fear you have omitted certain details.’

  ‘You’re quite right, forgive me. I’ll resume. “The stomach appeared empty of all solid substances apart from a small amount of liquid. As for its strange colour, it was not found again in the first intestine, which was very healthy, as was the rest of the canal. We then proceeded to open the chest. The lungs were healthy, as was the heart. The oesophageal duct appeared very irritated. The muscular and mucous masses of the neck were very swollen. On examination of the mouth, we found no lesions, and no fractures of the teeth, which clearly indicates that no violence was used to make the subject swallow any harmful foreign substance. An examination of the sexual parts of the said corpse showed, from what we were able to collect, that coitus may have taken place not long before death. Accordingly, we salted the corpse of the said Madame de Lastérieux, in order to be able to preserve it for further examination. This statement hereby completed and signed this day, 7 January 1774, by Guillaume Semacgus, Charles Henri Sanson and Pierre Bourdeau, and counter signed by clerk of the court Deshalleux, who has faithfully copied it.”’

  Grief-stricken as he was, Nicolas was nevertheless aware that this had been a somewhat unusual session. Even though Bourdeau was conducting the case methodically and with great determination, the autopsy had been carried out with no commentary other than medical jargon. What had been missing as it went on were those ingenuous, commonsensical remarks which only he could make at appropriate moments. Admittedly, this time, the object of the operation was so close to him that he might not have been able to find the words to express his doubts and questions. It was as if he had been listening to a quartet which lacked one in
strumentalist, the very one through whom everything was organised and made clear. Admittedly, judicial practice prevented those engaged in such examinations from expressing their opinions, their function being limited to making a certain number of observations which could later be used to help the detectives and the judges form their own opinions. The investigation could only be completed through the finding of further evidence and the interrogation of suspects, even involving torture in the most serious cases. The inspector, probably assailed by the same doubts as his chief, also seemed puzzled and disappointed by what he had just heard.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘that’s all well and good, but I find it hard to discern the most significant elements in what you have said. What of the causes of Madame de Lastérieux’s death?’

  Semacgus and Sanson looked at each other. The navy surgeon coughed and put his big hands together, making the finger joints crack.

  ‘It is still too early to express an opinion,’ he said. ‘It is likely that this woman died as the result of poisoning. That would explain the irritant lesions observed in the organs, especially the curious oedema on the neck. I hesitate to consider it the principal cause of death, but it may have been a major contributory factor.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Sanson, ‘that the swelling of the skin caused her to choke. In which case the heart may have given way.’

  Again, silence fell. Bourdeau stared at the body in the sack, apparently lost in thought.

  ‘There are other observations we could make,’ said Sanson. ‘For example, it is likely that there was carnal conjunction, although the traces are ambiguous.’

  Nicolas found this qualification nonsensical.

  ‘The strange thing,’ Semacgus said, ‘is the absence of food in the victim’s stomach. A few excreta and traces of liquid, and that’s all.’

  ‘Which makes it all the more vital,’ said Bourdeau, ‘to analyse the whitish beverage found on the victim’s bedside table, a kind of milk. I am surprised, though, gentlemen, that no food was discovered, despite the fact that we know for certain that the victim had just had a large dinner.’