The Assassin in the Marais

by Claude Izner

  ‘You are just as she described. Very well then, I accept your offer despite the dubious origin of your funds.’

  ‘Are you really that naïve? What can you do without money these days? Starve to death? What is it you want me to justify? Let’s see, I do possess a portfolio of shares left to me by my father, it’s true, but I would never speculate on the stock exchange. I’m a professional bookseller, which allows me to earn my living and which is perfectly honourable.’

  He turned to Tasha. ‘Tasha, I have rarely demanded anything of you, but from now on it is me who calls the shots and you’re going to listen. No more each of us going our separate ways.’

  Tasha smiled at him and he felt serene. The balance was tipping in his favour. He was no longer afraid to be firm with her.

  Pinkus looked at them mockingly. He sounded amused. ‘In that case, Monsieur Legris, I will pay you back as soon as I am able. In truth, I had hoped to be able to manage without asking for my daughter’s help, because as they say in Yiddish, “When a father helps a son, they both smile, but when a son has to help a father, they both cry.” ’

  ‘Papa, please drop your cynicism,’ exclaimed Tasha.

  Pinkus patted her on the head. Although he was dark and she was a redhead, there was a strong resemblance.

  ‘She’s annoyed with me for having deserted my family, Monsieur Legris. I left Russia in 1882, after a particularly violent wave of pogroms, and it was several years before my family heard from me. My socialist beliefs put my family in danger and I love them too much to harm them, so it was better that I disappeared. I went to Vilna, where I helped organise the Jewish workers’ strike.’

  ‘A miscreant like you welcomed like a prophet in the Jerusalem of Lithuania! I can hardly believe it,’ declared Tasha, laughing. She was clearly very proud of her father.

  ‘Do you support the bombers?’ asked Victor, suddenly alarmed.

  ‘No, I can assure you I condemn the bombings. I would have nothing to do with those murderous demonstrations. You cannot defend the oppressed by such means. I aspire to a society founded on principles of justice, but not all socialists do. In Russia, the Tsar instigated the most barbarous and repressive policies towards the Jews. Even women and children were not spared. The intention was that a third of Jews would convert, a third would die and a third would emigrate. In these past ten years the streets have run with blood in Jitomir, Kiev, Odessa and twenty other cities. The civilised world was outraged. When these massacres began, a committee was created to aid the Russian Israelites, presided over by Victor Hugo. I helped by organising a fund to help feed the most needy. But eventually I was traced to Vilna by the Tsar’s secret police and had to flee again, this time to Berlin. That’s where I met up with my wife, Djina, again. I wanted to support her and make sure she was all right. But,’ he concluded, avoiding Tasha’s eye, ‘she insisted I should get myself to safety.’

  He sighed, turned and took a rose from a vase. He sniffed it delicately, as if the scent might banish his regrets.

  ‘Sometimes my emotions run away with me,’ he murmured to himself.

  He took a newspaper from his pocket and held it out to Victor. ‘La Libre Parole,2 what’s that?’ Victor asked.

  ‘It’s a new extremely nationalistic rag aimed at stirring up anti-Semitism. I warn you, Monsieur Legris, unless you feel affronted by these views, don’t take up with my daughter.’

  ‘What do you take me for?!’

  ‘For a man in love. In France there isn’t discrimination yet, or beatings, but since the dawn of time people have felt the need for scapegoats to exorcise their own demons.’

  ‘Papa, that’s enough. We are in a democracy, in a republic, where the rights of man and personal liberty are respected. That sort of thing would never happen in France.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ she retorted, before leaving the room.

  An embarrassed silence fell.

  ‘Have you read the legend of Mélusine?’ Pinkus asked bluntly.

  ‘I’ve read some of it. It’s the story of a fairy that changes into a creature that is half woman, half serpent.’

  ‘Yes, only on Saturdays. She married Raymond, Lord of Lusignan, and implored him not to try to see her on Saturdays. Alas, his curiosity got the better of him and he caught sight of his beloved bathing naked, her serpent’s tail swishing in the water.’

  ‘I’m impressed by your knowledge of French mythology.’

  ‘In my youth I liked to paint scenes inspired by the legends of different countries. Do you remember her downfall?’

  ‘I think I remember that Melusine gave a heart-rending cry and disappeared for ever. I see what you are implying, but I am no Raymond.’

  ‘Be careful. Tasha is her father’s daughter. She needs independence or she will take flight.’

  ‘And yet that’s what is going to happen, apparently. And you can see that I am not standing in her way.’

  Pinkus shook him by the hand. ‘I do see that, Monsieur Legris — Victor — and when she returns I want you to promise me that you will persevere. And in any case one thing is certain: thanks to you she has been able to pursue her art in the best possible conditions and she has made remarkable progress. I can’t thank you enough.’

  Pinkus went to join Tasha, leaving Victor to savour those last words while massaging his hand, which had been crushed by the rather vigorous handshake. His satisfaction at being complimented was succeeded by a niggling anxiety at nearly losing her and a sense of sadness at his own failings. He was about to give in to his misery at the prospect of solitude, but he pulled himself together and sprang out of bed, ignoring the searing pain across his chest.

  Gabrielle du Houssoye stood in the middle of the drawing room in which Victor and Kenji had previously interviewed her and Alexis Wallers. She was clutching an exercise book that she put down on a side table.

  ‘I was sure that you or your friend would come before too long, Monsieur Legris.’ She gestured towards an ottoman and sat down opposite him. ‘The inspector told me about your injury. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing serious. The bullet only grazed me.’ He gazed appreciatively at her low-cut lavender blue dress that complimented her olive skin and dark hair plaited into coils over her ears before continuing. ‘That poor inspector … he showed me what remained of the goblet. A meagre bounty that failed to satisfy his sleuth’s appetite.’

  ‘And what about your sleuth’s appetite, Monsieur Legris?’

  ‘I have quite a considerable advantage over the police. I know what the object looked like. I saw it and almost died because of it. But my problem is that I can’t for the life of me think what that goblet signified.’

  ‘It signified possible fame and fortune for my husband. But mainly it represented a way out of his troubles,’ replied Gabrielle de Houssoye.

  ‘I can hardly believe that such an ugly goblet made from the skull of …’

  ‘Permit me to tell you a tale that might help you to understand. As long as I have known Antoine, he has been passionately interested in evolutionary theories. He travelled several times to central and western Africa to study gorillas and chimpanzees who Darwin suggested are our distant ancestors. Are you aware of that hypothesis?’

  ‘Vaguely. The monkey descended from the tree, and man descended from the monkey.’

  Gabrielle du Houssoye smiled despite herself. ‘I suppose you could put it like that. Antoine was also interested in other types of primate. Because he was a specialist in the study of orang-utans — in Malay that means men of the trees — he went several times to Java, Sumatra and Borneo. During one of his trips to Java in autumn 1889, he heard about Eugène Dubois, a lecturer in anatomy at the University of Amsterdam, who had begun palaeontological excavations and who had just unearthed a skull in Wadjak that was very different in structure from a contemporary human skull. Antoine was unable to learn more, but when he returned to Paris he carefully reread the work of the German pr
ofessor of zoology, Ernst Haeckel, who had confirmed the existence of a morphological intermediary between the most evolved monkeys and man. Haeckel had even named this intermediary pithecanthropus. That is to say “monkey man”. Are you following me?’

  ‘So far, yes. But why look in Asia rather than Africa?’

  ‘Ernst Haeckel was struck by the astonishing resemblance between human embryos and those of gibbons, and the East Indies are home to the gibbon. Eugène Dubois believed Haeckel’s theories and so he decided to ask for a transfer to the colonies as military doctor, in order to see if he could verify them.’

  Gabrielle rose and rummaged in a cupboard. She filled a glass with cognac and offered it to Victor, then began to pace about the room.

  ‘I was happy to see that Antoine was dropping his veneer of the blasé scientist and reverting to the enthusiastic researcher I had first met. Our relationship was waning, but his renewed interest in the origins of man made life bearable again. Antoine soon came to suspect that Dubois was researching the pithecanthropus.’

  ‘I think I can guess what’s coming.’

  ‘Antoine kept pestering the museum to be allowed to go on a new study mission to the East Indies, and permission was finally granted last summer. The official subject of the study was unchanged: the life of the orang-utan in its natural habitat. I insisted on going along too, and was authorised to do so, along with my maid, Lucie Robin, Alexis Wallers and my husband’s secretary, Charles Dorsel, who had been taken on in Java in 1888 and lived under our roof ever since.’

  ‘The protagonists of the drama were assembled,’ murmured Victor.

  ‘Two of them only played a minor role, Monsieur Legris. This time, Antoine arranged to meet Dubois and pressed him to reveal what he was aiming to find, aided by our secretary, who spoke fluent Dutch. Eugène Dubois had moved his dig near to a village called Trinil on the River Solo, a rich source of fossils containing sediments from the Tertiary period and the Pleistocene period.’

  Gabrielle sat down again and leant towards Victor, affording him an excellent view of her plunging neckline.

  ‘Shall we continue, dear sir?’

  ‘Uh … yes.’

  ‘In September 1891, a primate’s upper molar was unearthed and then in October the skullcap of what Dubois immediately assumed was a pithecanthropus was discovered.’

  ‘Palaeontology sounds just like a criminal investigation; you always end up with a corpse,’ murmured Victor, looking away. ‘Was Dubois willing to discuss his findings?’

  ‘You must be joking! He agreed only to speak to Charles about the teeth of the orang-utan. So my husband decided to try to coax some information from the Malaysians working on the site by offering to line their pockets.’

  ‘A tried and tested method I often use myself.’

  ‘Antoine’s dream was to be able to produce the missing link before Dubois; in other words he also had to lay his hands on a cranium that was too small to be human and too big to have come from one of the monkeys we were studying.’

  ‘I see. Antoine thought he would win fame and prestige if he were the first to reveal the link.’

  ‘At that point we had a stroke of luck. A young Javanese told my husband how his father, a bone sculptor, had dug up a cranium similar to Dubois’s, and had mounted it on a little metal tripod decorated with diamonds and a cat’s head to make an incense burner.’

  ‘John Cavendish’s goblet …’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘No, nothing. Please go on.’

  ‘The incense burner had been given to a Chinese merchant from Surabaya. Antoine dashed off to see the merchant, who remembered having sold it to a botanical explorer staying at the Hotel Amsterdam. The explorer was completely taken in and, believing he was acquiring an antique, had paid up without negotiating. Antoine immediately scoured the hotel’s registers, trying to identify the man.’

  Gabrielle du Houssoye leant closer in a deliberately provocative manner. ‘It was indeed John Cavendish,’ she murmured.

  ‘Your husband told you that?’ asked Victor, looking at his shoes.

  ‘I was his only confidante. He distrusted Alexis, who had always lived in his shadow and was desperate to emulate him, and he didn’t tell Charles Dorsel either. But he had the unfortunate habit of writing about his findings in a notebook. As soon as we returned to Paris that December, Antoine wrote to John Cavendish who was living with his sister, Lady Frances Stone. She replied that her brother had died in Paris in 1889. So he decided to take advantage of a conference in London to visit Lady Frances Stone.’

  ‘But he was spied upon, and the lady was killed after he left her, having been given Kenji’s name.’

  ‘You already knew that? So you will know that Lady Stone’s murderer also murdered my husband,’ said Gabrielle du Houssoye.

  ‘And Lucie Robin, Léonard Dielette and Achille Ménager. And he almost murdered me and Monsieur Mori. Was it ambition that drove Charles Dorsel to commit these crimes?’

  ‘Oh, no; far from it. At first I suspected Alexis. It was only the appalling sight of Lucie’s body that gave me pause – she had after all been Charles’s mistress. I hesitated to intervene; I feared for my life and for my family. But I wasn’t mistaken – although Charles was very fond of my father, he tried to kill him.’

  ‘So your father was right about that.’

  ‘Oh, you know about that too? I’m impressed, Monsieur Legris – you are all-seeing. Yes, someone did indeed shoot at my father, but he was lucky enough to bend down at the right moment. The bullet embedded itself in the eye of one of his stuffed dogs.’

  ‘You chose to remain silent even though your secretary was on a killing spree!’

  ‘I regret that I endangered your life. I planned to alert the police the day before yesterday, but you beat me to it.’

  ‘Investigating murders is one of my little hobbies.’

  ‘The funniest thing about all this is that the goblet would probably have been useless to us anyway. Alexis confirmed that after I had filled him in on everything that had happened. Antoine thought the skull would have been enough to prove the existence of the pithecanthropus and establish his reputation. But he would have needed other bones as well, especially from the lower limbs, in order to prove that the skullcap belonged to a pithecanthropus and not a monkey. Besides, the cranium would almost certainly have been cut down and sandpapered to make the incense burner, so that I imagine the brow ridge was missing.’

  ‘It was; I can confirm that.’

  ‘Antoine was killed for nothing. And even after his death I clung to my false hopes,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘I understand now: you took over the quest from your dead husband. That’s the real reason you kept silent! Did you really think you would be able to reason with a criminal?’

  ‘It’s easy to win men over, Monsieur Legris; they all have the same desires. You just have to use the right arguments,’ she replied, languidly adjusting the front of her dress.

  ‘Poor Lucie Robin wasn’t able to.’

  ‘I’m made of sterner stuff.’

  ‘But Charles Dorsel could just have limited himself to obtaining the goblet. Why did he feel the need to murder everyone who touched it?’

  ‘The key lies in his past. He was born in 1868, the eldest of three children, in a little town in Holland, Nijmegen. His father was an extremely puritanical Lutheran pastor and his mother, a Belgian immigrant, blindly obeyed her husband in everything. About ten years ago the family moved out to the Dutch East Indies to convert the natives. They moved to Tjaringin, a mission by the sea. Shortly afterwards Charles was sent to board with a pastor in Batavia in order to follow a course of religious study. On 27 August 1883 Krakatoa erupted and the entire Dorsel family perished in the tidal wave that swept the coast. Charles was traumatised.’

  ‘That wouldn’t necessarily turn you into a murderer.’

  ‘No, but you have to take into account the added effect of the education he received. His tutor encouraged hi
m to think of the catastrophe as an early warning sign of the Apocalypse. Charles was the product of a rigorous and puritanical upbringing. Later, when he was with Antoine and me, he pretended to laugh at it, but deep down it was still what he believed in. He was a gifted orator and wrote sermons, but feeling that this was not enough to fulfil him he joined the army. Later, he was introduced to Antoine at a dinner and was taken into his service.’

  ‘You had no idea he was so unstable?’

  ‘He was impulsive and would sometimes fly off the handle, but he also possessed great charm and was very attractive to the opposite sex. He was like a son to us. We were unaware he felt he was God’s emissary. But he never got over the loss of his family and apparently thought he had been spared as part of a Divine plan. Given his education it was natural that he should abhor evolutionary theories. The implication that man was descended from orang-utans or gibbons was sacrilege to him – heresy. And to be employed by Antoine to demonstrate that lineage only heightened his fury. Yet he managed to contain himself. The turning point came on 27 March when he happened to witness one of those frightful explosions that have so terrorised Paris.’

  ‘The explosion in Rue de Clichy on 27 March! It was horrifying – and must have given Charles an emotional jolt that revived a buried memory.’

  ‘Exactly. Charles felt he had been called upon to act. Can I pour you another glass, Monsieur Legris?’

  ‘No thank you, do go on.’

  ‘Yesterday I searched through Charles’s bedroom and found his journal. He’d meticulously recorded everything he’d done from the point at which he followed Antoine to Scotland, but the journal also contained some more impassioned writing.’

  She went over to the side table, gave him the journal and sat down again.

  ‘Take a look at that, Monsieur Legris.’