Casanova and the Faceless Woman

by Olivier Barde-Cabuçon

  He walked the length of the great mirrored gallery, splashed with the reflected light of its chandeliers. Above him, the lavishly painted vault extended over thousands of square feet. Allegories and heroic exploits were depicted against azure skies. The inspector narrowed his eyes, dazzled by the sunlight blazing on the gallery’s gilded decorations.

  His grave, austere appearance nonetheless impressed the king’s officer, to whom Volnay handed his letter. Whether they had been summoned to the royal presence or not, all visitors met with the same fate—a long wait under the indifferent gaze of the Greek gods and goddesses overhead, while the sun embraced the marbled hall with its warm rays. Stoically, Volnay waited until two o’clock in the afternoon, keeping boredom at bay by enumerating the colours in the paintings lining the walls: cream, beige, rose, sand, ivory, Veronese green, crimson…

  At last, he was admitted to one of the king’s offices. The royal desk was of Chinese lacquer. Mirrors lined the walls, their joints masked by magnificently worked, gilded flowers. The panelling was painted with small, picturesque subjects, picked out in gold and silver. The monarch dispensed orders to one of his servants. His coat and jerkin were richly embroidered with silver and gold thread, sequins and gems. Despite his magnificent appearance, Louis XV seemed dry and aloof, thought Volnay. The king glanced quickly at his visitor, and his eye was grey, dull and glassy. His demeanour communicated a total lack of interest or compassion for the human race.

  At length, Louis XV dismissed his servant and turned his icy face to Volnay. He had just returned from one of the interminable hunting expeditions with which he sought to quell his burning sensuality. He treated his women as simple objects of desire, and abandoned them without regret, but the sins of the flesh terrified him, too, for he lived in fear of the Devil. The eternal contradiction between the king’s vices and his near-obsessive fear of death was a source of unending torment.

  One foot in hell, already, thought Volnay, beneath the mask of his impassive expression.

  ‘Come closer, Chevalier, over here,’ said the king impatiently. ‘Monsieur de Sartine has given me a report of your business of the corpse without a face.’

  ‘One of your wig-makers, sire, Mademoiselle Hervé.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ The king’s dismissive tone betrayed his complete indifference.

  At closer quarters, Volnay observed the king’s leaden complexion, and the sardonic, almost dissolute smile playing at the corners of his lips. The result of his assiduous cultivation of women of low life? It was said the king delighted in their foul-mouthed talk, and that he liked to give his whores nicknames—‘Rag’ or ‘Scrap’—a measure of the esteem he felt for them.

  ‘Chevalier,’ said Louis XV, ‘you saved my life once, and I trust you implicitly. But you’re playing a dangerous game.’

  Volnay stood beneath the royal gaze, unsure what to think. The king’s character was secretive and impenetrable. Who could truly exercise a hold over him? Only La Pompadour.

  ‘Will you tell me the truth, Volnay?’

  The inspector blinked nervously.

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  ‘There are unpleasant rumours circulating about me in Paris, are there not?’

  There could be no mistake—this was a test, and Volnay’s answer was frank:

  ‘They say that you snatch children, to satisfy your desires.’

  The monarch’s stare hardened alarmingly.

  ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘That these rumours are in part due to the many cases of children and vagabonds who are taken and sent to Your Majesty’s colonies,’ replied Volnay evenly, without looking up.

  The king gave a start of surprise. He frowned as he tried to discern a possible hint of insolence in Volnay’s words, then shrugged and turned his back. Volnay remained where he stood, unsure quite how to proceed.

  The monarch walked to the window and gazed out, with a bored air. Suddenly, he stiffened. His attention focused on a group walking outside in the gardens. Volnay stepped silently to one side, to get a better view of the object of the royal interest. The king was watching a group that included a very young girl, barely more than a child. He understood. The king was a wild beast, forever on the lookout for fresh prey.

  ‘Sire…’

  The king turned, and his expression was hard as ice. His heavily lidded eyes were utterly without life.

  ‘Find the murderer of these little white chicks but report your discoveries to no one but me.’

  Little white chicks. Dear God, in the eyes of our king, we are mere livestock.

  Louis XV returned to his desk, took a sheet of paper and began to write.

  ‘This letter places you solely in my service for the duration of your investigation. You will report to no one but me. My steward will bring you sufficient funds for your requirements.’

  Volnay’s heart beat fast. Under the direct orders of the king! Sartine would not like that.

  ‘Sire, permit me to ask if I might question your first valet of the bedchamber, Le Bel? He may have valuable information concerning Mademoiselle Hervé.’

  The king span around.

  ‘Question Le Bel? The very idea!’

  He shook his head and said again:

  ‘The very idea!’

  ‘Sire, this is of great importance for the investigation. I need to know more about the victim.’

  ‘The victim? Ah, yes…’

  His tone hardened.

  ‘Wait outside in the antechamber. I’ll send him to you, but you are not to bother him excessively.’

  Volnay felt suddenly as if he had ceased to exist in the king’s eyes. Louis’s dark melancholy, his irrepressible ennui, had swept over him once more. He stared vacantly into space. He held out the letter with no sign of irritation or anger, merely indifference. Respectfully, Volnay took his leave.

  When the police officer had left the room, Louis XV pulled a bell rope. Le Bel slipped into the office like a faun. He had been waiting for the summons behind a door.

  ‘Le Bel,’ said the king, ‘I have seen a ravishingly beautiful child in the Marble Courtyard, thirteen years of age, blonde as wheat, wearing a blue dress. She was walking between two women. Try to discover who she is, and bring her to me.’

  ‘At once, sire.’

  The king pressed his forehead to the windowpane.

  ‘I am like the ogre of folklore,’ he sighed. ‘I hunger after fresh meat, but I am cursed never to be sated. Never! Do the pangs of hunger plague you still, Le Bel, when you have eaten your fill?’

  The first valet fidgeted uncomfortably. He had no idea how to respond.

  ‘Go, Le Bel. Go and bring her to me here, for a drink of chocolate!’ said the king, at length. ‘Ah, I was forgetting… and when that’s done, you will see the Chevalier de Volnay, that police inspector. For strange and unexplained deaths. He’s investigating the murder of a young woman with no face.’

  He turned and added, in an offhand tone:

  ‘Mademoiselle Hervé, were you aware?’

  Le Bel swallowed hard.

  ‘Sire, permit me to ask what I am to tell him?’

  The king raised an eyebrow in surprise.

  ‘Why, nothing, Le Bel. Nothing!’

  The Inspector of Strange and Unexplained Deaths sat on a bench seat waiting for someone to fetch Monsieur Le Bel, first valet of the king’s bedchamber, a person of considerable power and influence, for no one lived at closer quarters to the monarch than he. Time seemed to stretch out for ever, like the marshmallow sweets of his childhood. Here at Versailles, no one cared how long you were made to wait.

  One day, sooner or later, he thought, someone must put a match to all of this, and hang the king from the nearest lamp post. But patience. The people’s suffering cannot continue much longer, and enlightened minds aplenty are working to awaken them.

  Inevitably, affectionately, his thoughts turned to the monk. Throughout his youth, Volnay had chosen the path of violent action, fighting the vagaries o
f power and the accident of birth by joining the Brotherhood, in secret, while the monk had taken the path of wisdom and learning, to open the minds of others. That said, even the monk was capable of drawing his sword, on occasion, and dispatching his fellow man in the time it took to say two paternosters and an Ave Maria.

  Volnay smiled sadly. He knew he was born to a solitary existence, shunning life in society. His intelligence, and his powers of deduction, had found the perfect outlet in the solving of complicated cases, and his values found expression in the service of justice and truth. Besides his habit-wearing colleague, his only friend was the magpie, to whom the monk had diligently taught the very direst oaths and heretical propositions.

  After an hour’s wait, Volnay was shown into a small salon, where a glass of cordial stood waiting. He did not touch it.

  I want nothing from these people.

  A door opened, and Le Bel entered the room. There was nothing remarkable in the man’s looks, but his attitude oozed smug complacency, and an exaggerated self-confidence.

  Rumours about the man were rife. It was said that once, when the royal park was filled with dense crowds for an evening of festivities, the king had spotted a fourteen-year-old girl being crushed and jostled in the throng. Enflamed by her adorable little face, he had ordered his valets to extricate her and bring her to him. Next day, Le Bel, first valet of the king’s bedchamber and royal pimp-in-chief, was sent to purchase the girl from her aunt, a candle-maker. The aunt struck a hard bargain, and eventually sold her niece for fifty louis d’or and a contract to supply candles to the royal chapel. The girl was a virgin, and so, naturally, Le Bel saw to her deflowering personally. For eight days, this vile individual trained her in the service of a gentleman’s pleasure, to His Majesty’s subsequent delight.

  This, then, was the slime-coated, slug-like creature before him now.

  ‘Monsieur Le Bel,’ he said, icily. ‘I have a few questions for you.’

  ‘Here?’ said the other man in astonishment.

  ‘Why ever not? We are alone.’

  The valet smiled fleetingly.

  ‘Clearly you do not know Versailles! Follow me.’

  Once again, Volnay found himself walking down a series of corridors to a smaller, less richly decorated room. The window enjoyed the same view over the gardens, with their neatly trimmed avenues of box.

  ‘I want to talk to you about Mademoiselle Hervé.’

  Le Bel lowered his gaze in a faked show of deference.

  ‘But I know nothing about her.’

  ‘It was you who introduced her to the king!’

  Le Bel’s expression turned to outrage.

  ‘You should know, Chevalier, that the king’s private affairs are no concern of yours.’

  For a moment, Volnay toyed with the idea of questioning him about the second victim, Marcoline, the occasional boarder at the Parc-aux-Cerfs, but he knew he was facing a wall. There was no sense in revealing one’s hand more than necessary.

  ‘Do you know of anybody who knew Mademoiselle Hervé?’

  ‘I have told you, I know nothing about her at all,’ repeated Le Bel, obstinately.

  Volnay saw he would get nothing more.

  Deep in thought, Volnay descended the great marble staircase, running his hand along the balustrade. At first, he failed to notice the gentleman waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, holding a plumed hat in his hands.

  ‘Chevalier de Volnay?’

  The man flung back the grey silk cape he wore around his shoulders and bowed. He was young, and his face wore a frank, open smile. His manners were polished, his smile courteous. He addressed Volnay with a measure of deference.

  ‘Chevalier, the Marquise de Pompadour would be delighted to make your acquaintance.’

  Volnay followed him without a word to the marquise’s private apartments. All was delicacy and refinement. The rosewood furniture was inlaid with precious marquetry, and the armchairs were upholstered in blue silk, with a pattern of intertwined foliage. Perfume burners dispensed an agreeable aroma of incense and roses. On a side table, he noticed a copy of Il pastor fido, a tragicomedy by Guarini, hinting at La Pompadour’s taste for the theatre and acting. The marquise wore a pink dress with a ruched and flounced overskirt of white satin, decorated with appliquéd threadwork and fringed flowers. She rose as he entered and presented her hand to be kissed. A tiny hand, burning hot. It was said that La Pompadour was in fragile health, constantly on the alert, at the beck and call of an egotistical monarch, and ever watchful of her innumerable enemies at Court.

  ‘Chevalier de Volnay, I have been so impatient to meet you!’

  Her practised eye quickly gauged the inspector’s plain but elegant clothes, but she lingered on his face, as impassive and inexpressive as stone. She was unsurprised. Her spies had forewarned her:

  He takes no sides, has no friends. An indefinable creature. Nothing seems to move him.

  Volnay was laying eyes on the marquise for the first time. She had been beautiful, he decided, but what remained of her considerable charm was cruelly diminished by her extreme pallor. Volnay had heard it said that she had suffered the torments of Calvary on the deaths of her daughter and father, a few years before. To his great surprise, she produced a large sheet of paper and addressed him vehemently:

  ‘Perhaps you have something to say about the effectiveness of His Majesty’s police! Yet again, the servants found this pinned to the door of my mansion in Paris, this morning.’

  The poster read: Residence of the King’s Whore.

  Volnay nodded in sympathy.

  ‘This is truly scandalous, Madame, but it is not within my remit. I am in charge of—’

  ‘Strange and unexplained deaths in Paris, and nothing more.’ La Pompadour cut him short. ‘I know. Must I kill someone to merit your attention?’

  Volnay froze, but she seemed to recover herself just as quickly. Was she trying to throw him off his guard? All of a sudden, her attitude changed. She enveloped him in her warm gaze, and gave an exquisite smile.

  ‘People have praised your exceptional talent at solving tangled mysteries. And with the use of new scientific methods known only to yourself.’

  She seemed to be deploying all her charm to force him into submission and lure him into her camp. Volnay knew she could be dangerous, but she was not cruel, and was often compassionate, provided one did not stand in her way.

  La Pompadour, the Belle Marquise,

  Brings many a courtier to his knees.

  ‘And so you are in charge of this extremely delicate inquiry into the death of a poor young girl with no face,’ she observed.

  ‘Alas, I have no clues to follow. Nothing at all, for the moment, I am sorry to say.’

  ‘Really nothing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  She was getting nowhere with this stern-faced policeman.

  There it is, she thought. One upright, honest man in all Paris and here he stands, before me, when what I need is a sinuous type with a spine like a snake. But integrity may go hand-in-hand with loyalty. He may not be such a bad choice after all. My adversaries stand little chance with him, and if he tips in my favour, there will be nothing more to say.

  With that in mind, her tone shifted to a more direct threat.

  ‘Your role in the police force is quite unprecedented, and it hangs by a single thread: the goodwill of His Majesty the king. Monsieur de Sartine is unhappy at having a new inspector thrust upon him, for strange and unexplained deaths. He holds it against you, as you are no doubt aware?’

  She leant closer, and Volnay was overwhelmed by her perfume, as if she had chosen to share the sumptuous bouquet of white flowers, with soft, velvety base notes, with him alone. Her tone was confidential now. That of a person of power, sparing a moment of her precious time to enlighten a subordinate whom she has judged trustworthy.

  ‘Monsieur de Sartine is plotting to be appointed lieutenant general of police for the whole of France.’

  Her gaze ling
ered over his face, and she added, with a hint of regret:

  ‘Alas, if he succeeds, it will mark the end of your very particular status.’

  She fixed him with a kindly expression, and Volnay knew what she was about to say.

  ‘That said, everything in this kingdom depends on His Majesty’s goodwill. A word at the right moment is all that’s required… but do any of your friends have the king’s ear?’

  Volnay understood very well what she was after. He shook his head regretfully. The marquise’s expression was radiant.

  ‘What an idiot you are! Why would you not befriend me?’

  She spoke now like a powerful minister to a valued but somewhat obstinate servant. Volnay struggled to contain himself as he replied:

  ‘That would indeed be my dearest wish, Madame!’

  Something in her attitude suggested that she had relaxed, very slightly.

  ‘Well then, Chevalier, enough of this hide-and-seek. Who is the young woman whose face was torn off?’

  The victim’s identity remained a relative secret, but Volnay judged that it was known to too many already for the name not to have reached the ear of the most powerful person in France after the king himself. This, then, was a test of his loyalty.

  ‘She was Mademoiselle Hervé, one of the king’s wigmakers.’