Casanova and the Faceless Woman

by Olivier Barde-Cabuçon

  The marquise did not so much as blink, but she rewarded Volnay with the smile of a schoolmaster at the sight of an unruly pupil stepping back into line, at last.

  ‘What did you find on her body?’

  He will lie to me, she thought, but I know now that he has it in his possession!

  Volnay was not expecting so direct an opening. Rapidly, his analytical mind furnished the reply. Too many people knew now about the letter Mademoiselle Hervé had been carrying.

  ‘I found a sealed letter on her person, Madame.’

  She gazed at him, unblinking.

  ‘Have you read it?’

  ‘No, Madame,’ he replied evenly. ‘Because I knew the time would come when it would be reclaimed.’

  The marquise considered him in silence.

  Intelligent answer… He thinks carefully, and treads cautiously. Does he speak the truth? I must try to find out more. Really, this is a most remarkable man!

  ‘You have just seen the king. What did he say to you?’ she asked.

  ‘He wishes me to report directly to him, in my investigation.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  ‘Doubtless in order to wrest me from under Sartine’s control.’

  ‘Why?’ the marquise insisted, coldly.

  A second’s hesitation was a second too long with La Pompadour.

  ‘Because you asked him?’

  The man’s a devil!

  ‘And why would I do that?’ she asked.

  ‘The letter may concern you closely, and your trust in Sartine is limited…’

  She leant towards him, her eyes gleaming.

  ‘Do I take it that you have scant esteem for Paris’s chief of police?’

  ‘Indeed, Madame, I have none.’

  Her pale eyes assessed him in silence.

  Why such frankness, at times?

  ‘And whom do you trust?’ she asked, archly.

  ‘No one, Madame, other than my colleague the monk, and my magpie. A very fine bird—she speaks Latin quite as well as she speaks French. She would delight you, I’m sure.’

  The marquise looked at him in surprise, then gave a light shrug of the shoulders.

  Books, an intelligent bird, a heretical monk who was almost burnt at the stake, and the corpses in his morgue. Is this truly the extent of this man’s society?

  ‘Have you mentioned the letter to anyone?’

  ‘No one, Madame.’

  His tone lacked conviction, but it would pass, Volnay thought. Again, the marquise took her time before asking:

  ‘Can you bring it to me, here?’

  He will tell me he’s burnt it, but he has not, I’m certain.

  ‘Yes, Madame.’

  Such a disconcerting creature! Or else very clever… Well, let’s be done with it.

  ‘Why go to see Monsieur the Comte de Saint-Germain?’

  Another test of his loyalty, but Volnay knew the ties of friendship between the comte and La Pompadour. He knew how to react, and his reply was cunning.

  ‘I discovered that Mademoiselle Hervé had gone with you to visit the comte, on the night she died. I tried to find out more from him, while not confronting him directly on the subject. The visit brought me no further information.’

  The marquise rose quickly. Volnay did the same.

  ‘Bring me the letter this evening, after eleven o’clock, to my mansion. You will be handsomely rewarded.’

  Volnay bowed.

  ‘I ask no reward, Madame; I am merely doing my duty.’

  And he withdrew, under La Pompadour’s thoughtful gaze.

  Volnay emerged into a courtyard crowded with carriages and horses, and looked about for his own vehicle and team, which he had entrusted to a groom that morning. He sensed a presence close behind him, followed immediately by the press of a dagger against his back.

  ‘Chevalier,’ said a soft but firm voice, ‘make no sudden movement. You will turn to your right, then climb into this carriage. I will prick you and push you in myself if I must!’

  Volnay cast a brief glance over his shoulder. He saw a man dressed in black, with an upturned collar. The features were familiar, and with them the milk-white, almost translucent pallor of the skin, affording glimpses, here and there, of the blood pulsing just beneath. The lifeless eyes confirmed his identity: Wallace, the man who had attacked him at his home. And there could be no Wallace without his master, Father Ofag, and the Devout Party.

  ‘Oh, but after you, I pray, Monsieur Wallace!’ he cried loudly, in mock indignation. ‘We shall go together to see dear Father Ofag!’

  To his satisfaction, the surprised faces of a number of courtiers and valets turned in their direction. He felt Wallace stiffen with anger, then contain himself. He climbed into the carriage. Wallace installed himself beside him, keeping the point of the dagger firmly against his ribs. The carriage windows were veiled, and Volnay felt quite disorientated when he climbed down from the vehicle once more. He found himself in a courtyard reached through a pointed, Gothic archway. He observed a central doorway with a round opening covered by an iron grille. The details might help him to locate the place if he escaped this encounter alive. He was taken to an austere building, its facade punctuated by isolated sash windows. A dark, deserted passageway led to a massive door guarded by a man with a sharply pointed chin. Wallace pushed him roughly inside.

  Volnay looked around him. The room was austere and cold, such that its decor seemed to have been devised with precisely that end in mind. The only visible note of luxury was a richly illuminated psalter lying open on the worktable at an image of the naked body of Mary Magdalene, thinly veiled by her own, long golden hair, being transported to heaven by a flight of angels. The repentant sinner’s finely modelled flesh, languid pose and rapt expression suggested divine ecstasy and extreme sensuality, in equal measure.

  Hunched in a tall armchair, a man with grey hair and a smooth, infantile face stared at him through half-closed eyes. His hands were buried in his sleeves, as if to keep them out of sight. His demeanour was honeyed and thoroughly unwholesome, thought Volnay. Wallace left his side and whispered something in the man’s ear. He seemed annoyed, then impressed as he pursed his lips and looked in Volnay’s direction. Plainly, the henchman had described how the inspector had shouted out loud in the courtyard in Versailles that they were paying a visit to Father Ofag, for this was he. Volnay took advantage of his release to step forward, holding his chin high.

  ‘You are holding an inspector of the king’s police against his will!’ he thundered.

  The man gave an elegant, rounded gesture of reply. His features struggled to affect an expression of welcome.

  ‘Greetings Chevalier. I am Father Ofag. Who is holding you, may I ask?’ His tone was sickly sweet. ‘You are my guest, and free to leave whenever you please. Though you might do better to listen, first, to what I have to say.’

  He shot a troubled glance at the psalter and clapped it shut before turning to Wallace.

  ‘You may leave us, my friend. Do go on, Monsieur the Inspector of Strange and Unexplained Deaths.’

  Volnay proceeded with caution. He knew he must tread very carefully indeed.

  ‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ he asked.

  ‘About a letter, taken from a corpse.’

  Father Ofag lifted his eyelids to reveal a pair of near-translucent, pearl-grey eyes pierced by large, dark pupils. Volnay lowered his gaze and saw a chaplet hidden in his capacious sleeves. Ofag seemed to be counting off its beads as they spoke.

  ‘I gave it to the Marquise de Pompadour with my own hand, this very afternoon,’ replied Volnay icily.

  He had answered almost without thinking. If Wallace and his accomplices, doubtless lurking behind the door, believed him to be still in possession of the letter, his days were very probably numbered. He might have claimed to have handed the letter to the king, but the Devout Party’s spies kept a close eye on the latter, as he well knew. To answer that the letter was now in the hands of La
Pompadour, their sworn enemy, was enough to prevent them from verifying the truth of his statement.

  ‘Have you read it?’ asked the priest.

  ‘It was sealed,’ said Volnay, unflinchingly. ‘It was safer for me to hand it over intact.’

  ‘Safer, indeed,’ Ofag nodded, with a thin smile. ‘Safer for an honest man, but not for anyone else…’

  The priest observed him attentively, with a mixed expression of innocence and cunning.

  ‘You are an honest man, are you not? That’s what they say about you, at any rate. You may be telling the truth, but how shall I know? I could have you tortured, just to be sure…’

  He intoned the words with the calm serenity of a man reciting his paters and his Ave Marias.

  ‘Tortured?’ retorted Volnay. ‘You, a man of God? He would never pardon you, and neither would I! You would be left with no solution but to dispose of my body, but my disappearance would not go unnoticed. I have just emerged from an audience with the king, and after that, his favourite. Questions would be asked. And as you know, I made certain not to accompany your henchman without a word or two to the assembled company.’

  Father Ofag nodded approvingly.

  ‘Indeed. Your instincts served you well, at Versailles.’

  The priest swept the air with his hand, as if to dismiss unpleasant thoughts.

  ‘Killing, torturing… I prefer to chase such vile things from my mind. I would far rather count myself your friend!’

  He smiled and added, thoughtfully:

  ‘Perhaps you have been handsomely rewarded by La Pompadour for handing over the letter intact. Honest and clever, too…’

  Volnay gave no answer: apparently, none was expected.

  ‘You left the letter intact,’ Ofag persisted, ‘and so you must have seen the seal.’

  Volnay knew that a show of cooperation was essential in such circumstances. He replied without hesitation.

  ‘It bore the royal seal.’

  Father Ofag struggled to conceal his astonishment. He thought for a moment, peering at Volnay all the while through narrowed lids.

  ‘To summarize the facts,’ he said, joining his hands in front of him on the table, inside his sleeves, as if in prayer. ‘A wig-maker in the service of the king and the entourage of La Pompadour is killed and disfigured. Ha! You see? I know a great deal. Has it not occurred to you that the crime might have been ordered by the marquise? She lives in constant fear of a younger, more attractive woman taking her place in the king’s affections. Imagine what the king’s letter might contain: a noble title for the girl in question, her appointment to a position of power at Court, the acknowledgement of a bastard, if ever she was with child, and who knows what besides?’

  Volnay pretended to play along, shaking his head.

  ‘Given the king’s notorious appetite for young girls, La Pompadour might as well try to hold back the ocean with her bare hands.’

  ‘But perhaps this time the king was passionately in love? Women have driven men to lose their reason since Adam and Eve! Our flesh is not for martyrdom alone.’

  Volnay stared at Ofag in surprise. The man was in a state of high excitement.

  ‘And the second murder?’

  Father Ofag frowned.

  ‘A warning from La Pompadour to any aspiring mistresses of the king?’ he ventured. ‘Such an appalling death would suffice to cool the ardour of many. It would likely affect the king very badly, too.’

  He fell silent. Volnay knew he was thinking of the king and his obsessive terror of death—the one thing that ensured the Devout Party remained in the royal favour, despite La Pompadour’s profound aversion to their cause.

  ‘Do you seek to harm the marquise, by means of this letter?’ asked Volnay.

  Ofag’s eyes narrowed to fine slits, filtering a gleam of pure hatred.

  ‘La Pompadour, first whore of France! Of course we seek to bring her down!’

  He hissed the words like a serpent. The king’s favourite was a source of vexation to the nobility and the clergy, thought Volnay. But not by virtue of her position at Court. What irked them most were her bourgeois origins. The first whore of France, as the Devout Party liked to call her, had established herself as a patron of artists and freethinkers, nonetheless, and Volnay was grateful to her for that, though he abhorred the official role of the favourite itself.

  ‘Jeanne Poisson!’ Ofag hissed the Marquise de Pompadour’s name. ‘Remember, Inspector, who she truly is: the daughter of a fishmonger! A cold fish indeed! With dead eyes and a scaly hide…’

  Volnay blinked briefly. Ofag was wrong, Jeanne Poisson was the daughter of a financier’s clerk—her family name left her open to any number of facile, callous puns in the mouths of her enemies.

  ‘What do you want of me?’ he asked calmly.

  Ofag shot him a calculating stare. He had the eyes of a fanatic, but an intelligent fanatic, capable of considering everything in its proper perspective. He was weighing up Volnay in his mind.

  ‘Truth be told, I do not know what to make of you, Chevalier de Volnay. Who is it you serve?’

  ‘I serve the king, of course.’

  Ofag shrugged.

  ‘We all serve the king, each of us in his own way. Either you are on the side of La Pompadour, with her coterie of heretic philosophers, bound for the eternal bonfire, or you are on the side of the Faith.’

  ‘I’m nothing but a simple police officer. Who cares what I think?’

  Ofag jumped to his feet.

  ‘We care, Volnay! Us! You’ve heard the verse doing the rounds all over Paris!’

  He closed his eyes as if to call the words, and recited them all at once:

  ‘Versailles, of old the height of taste

  Now seethes with vermin,

  Lay it waste!’

  Ofag looked up, and beheld Volnay’s manifest lack of interest. Clearly, the lines had left the inspector unmoved. He frowned.

  ‘You may be indifferent to the ills of France, but less so, I hope, to my arguments. You know the king’s temperament…’

  It was Volnay’s turn to frown. He had not expected to hear this.

  ‘The king demands ever-younger girls. Some are barely formed, mere children… God in heaven! Where will it end? And the Marquise de Pompadour supplies them, together with Dominique Le Bel, that pimp in a valet’s coat! We must lock her up! She has corrupted the king, Versailles, France itself… She and her enlightened friends have dared to trample the sacred boundaries established by the Faith. They will lead us all to damnation!’

  And so Volnay understood the extent of Ofag’s intelligence. He hoped to win Volnay to their side by appealing not to his sense of duty, but to his sense of virtue. Clearly, they knew him well enough to see how little he cared for the king, and all his government. But protecting the lives of children was quite another matter.

  ‘Very good.’ The inspector had made up his mind. ‘Help me, and I’ll help you.’

  ‘Ah! You’ll agree to an exchange of information? Very good! Very good!’

  Ofag’s mood brightened visibly.

  ‘Wallace!’ he called.

  The door opened almost instantly, and Volnay turned to face Ofag’s henchman, rather than show his back.

  ‘You heard everything, I take it?’ asked Ofag, with a knowing look at the inspector.

  ‘Yes, everything,’ said Wallace, evenly.

  ‘In that case, we can explain to the chevalier the concatenation of events that led you to become a front-row witness to murder!’

  Wallace gave a swift bow of the head.

  ‘I was following La Pompadour’s carriage; she was returning from a visit to the Comte de Saint-Germain.’

  He pronounced the name with a shudder of disgust, then continued in the same, toneless voice:

  ‘The carriage stopped for a moment, and a young woman climbed down. It was Mademoiselle Hervé, the king’s wigmaker. La Pompadour had just secured her services, doubtless to distance her from the king, because
she was a brazen little thing, and liable to pervert him still further.’

  ‘One moment!’ Volnay interjected. ‘Why were you following the royal favourite’s carriage?’

  Father Ofag unlaced his fingers and shook his head disapprovingly.

  ‘Don’t answer, Wallace!’

  He turned to the inspector and glared at him like a furious schoolmaster.

  ‘Your question is quite irrelevant, Inspector! And utterly unconnected to the matter that interests you. Pray continue, my dear Wallace.’

  ‘Mademoiselle Hervé climbed down from the coach. She exchanged a few words with the Marquise de Pompadour, and then the vehicle went on its way,’ said Wallace. ‘I chose to follow the young woman.’

  The small smile playing at the corners of his lips sent shivers down Volnay’s spine.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he explained, ‘in my trade, one needs to follow one’s instinct…’

  Volnay didn’t dare to ask what his trade might be.

  ‘Something in her behaviour intrigued me,’ Ofag’s servant continued. ‘She seemed to be carrying something in her hands, and looking all around her. She seemed impatient and, how can I put this?…’

  He struggled to find the right words, and turned to his master.

  ‘Excited?’ suggested Ofag, quite unruffled.

  ‘Indeed! That’s it!’

  Wallace’s satisfaction showed in his face. A thin smile lit his cruel lips as he continued his account:

  ‘She hesitated, then, as if she could wait no longer, she hurried into the small courtyard. My first instinct was to follow her, but then I held back, so as not to betray my presence. After a few moments, I heard a terrible scream. It was my turn to hesitate. What if she was not alone? With a lover, perhaps?’

  He blushed violently, and Father Ofag cleared his throat.

  ‘I heard a hideous, gargling groan. I froze where I stood,’ he went on, with his head lowered. ‘I was about to rush forward, when I saw her emerge, staggering and clutching at her face with her hands. She gave a last cry before sinking to the ground. Clouds covered the moon. I heard footsteps, and snatches of conversation. I hid myself, quickly. The man they call Casanova was approaching, with one of his conquests.’