The Assassin in the Marais
Page 26
She shook her head. ‘I have something to read.’
He hoisted up the suitcase. She froze, as if suddenly understanding that they were about to be separated. A blast of military music mingled with the grinding sound of the axles. Victor frowned at the noise, which made him look even more strained. His face was already lined from several sleepless nights. She watched him anxiously, lightly brushed a stray lock from his brow, then ran her finger down to his lips.
‘My love,’ he murmured, pressing her to him. She closed her eyes, holding her breath.
‘How will it be?’
‘Everything will work out. You will go to your mother, nurse her better and bring her back. As quickly as possible.’
‘Promise me to be good: no investigations.’
‘That’s your idea of being good? What about women?’
‘You can see Iris and Euphrosine.’
He tried to smile, and helped her up into the carriage, supporting her under the elbow. ‘Go and sit down. I can’t stand goodbyes,’ he muttered.
She suddenly got down from the train again. Their lips were about to touch when a large family, worried that the train was about to depart, knocked into them on their way up the steps. Victor pushed Tasha in behind them.
She just had time to shout, ‘I’ll write to you,’ before the porter banged the door closed.
The whistle blew once, followed by a second more strident note. The carriage swayed slightly and began to slide away under the white clouds of the locomotive. Victor walked rapidly beside it, his eyes fixed on Tasha’s blurred face; he could tell she was crying. He ran for a moment or two as the train gathered speed towards the green and white lights of the night. He stopped abruptly and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand before wandering slowly back to the ticket hall.
Now that Tasha was gone, his sadness returned. All he wanted was the oblivion of sleep. Finally he collapsed into a cab. Rocked by the swaying he sank back against the seat and dozed for a moment.
He jolted awake. The cab had come to a standstill, hemmed in at a crossroads. He could hear a woman singing in an Italian accent.
‘Sometimes when my heart is heavy
I go out and take a stroll
In all the little streets and alleys …’
He leant over and recognised the Neopolitan Anna Marcelli turning the handle of her organ that was propped against a Wallace fountain.1 Near her, large and gawky, but standing straight, was the Gascon student – what was his name? Oh yes, Mathurin Ferrant. He opened his mouth and murdering the melody bawled.
‘Children on the dirty pavements
Playing hopscotch one-two-three’
Just as he was about to call out, the cab set off again. Victor felt reassured by the sight of them. At least the sinister affair that had overtaken them all had served some purpose. That reflection made him think about Rue Charlot, where the day before he and Iris had taken Yvette and her donkey, who Gabrielle du Houssoye had decided to adopt. He hoped they would be happy with her. He was sure it would be good for Yvette, who had suffered a terrible blow with the death of her father. As for Clampin, he would certainly have preferred to wander about in the hills of the Cévennes, following the example of his distant cousin Modestine, Robert Louis Stevenson’s donkey,2 instead of being stabled in the third arrondissement. His mind drifted to Pinkus, sailing to New York, and he pictured the enormous silhouette of the Statue of Liberty in the mists of the Hudson River.
The torrential rain of the preceding days had left many puddles in the uneven surface of the courtyard. He decided to go straight home. The sight of the sheets hanging on the line strung between the acacia tree and the second-floor window stopped him in his tracks. A breeze inflated them so that they looked like the sails on a three-master. An inexplicable wave of happiness washed over him. He imagined himself the captain of a ship dancing on the sea of life. He entered the studio and lit a lamp. The familiar disorder, embellished by the faint smell of benjoin calmed him. As he took off his overcoat and gathered up brushes and tubes of gouache, he made plans. He would buy a bicycle, go and potter about in Cité Doré, help Kenji put together their next catalogue, file away Yvette’s photographs.
Without being aware of it, he began to sing softly.
‘Sometimes when my heart is heavy
I go out and take a stroll
In all the little streets and alleys …’
SOME HISTORICAL CONTEXT TO THE MARAIS ASSASSIN
Anarchists
In the spring of 1892, a series of anarchist bombings brought fear to the streets of Paris. These bombings were acts of revenge for the capture and imprisonment of fellow anarchists. The bomber responsible was the notorious criminal, Ravachol.
On the eve of Ravachol’s trial, there was another bombing at the Restaurant Véry, the scene of his arrest. At the trial, despite the public prosecutor’s best efforts, Ravachol was spared the death penalty, and given a life sentence of hard labour. Two months later, Ravachol received the death penalty for a murder committed in 1891. He was guillotined on 11 July.
Ravachol was successfully arrested, tried and convicted thanks to the innovative method of ‘Bertillonage’. Invented by the biometrics researcher Alphonse Bertillon, it used anthropometrics, the comparative study of the sizes and proportions of the human body, to create a unique profile for every individual that could then be applied in the detection of a crime. The British polymath Francis Galton, who worked out the potential flaws of the method, later went on to discover the forensic value of fingerprinting.
Java Man
In the late nineteenth century, the debate was raging between the creationist beliefs of the Church and its adherents, and the scientific establishment who supported Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
The German evolutionary biologist, Ernst Haeckel, who had studied the theories of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, developed the idea of the ‘missing link’, a supposed evolutionary stage between the great apes and man. Struck by the similarity between the embryos of humans and gibbons, he speculated that the missing link might have lived in the locations where gibbons were still to be found. Inspired by Haeckel, Eugene Dubois, a young Dutch anatomist working as a military surgeon in Sumatra, made some extraordinary archaeological discoveries in Java in 1891. On the banks of the River Solo he unearthed a skullcap, femur and some teeth belonging to a hominid that became known as Java Man. The skullcap was too large to be that of an ape and smaller than a human skullcap.
This apparent discovery of pithecanthropus, an intermediate stage between man and the apes, caused much controversy and debate throughout the world. However, we now know that Java Man was not in fact the missing link, as his skeleton, though primitive, is that of a man of the Middle Palaeolithic era.
NOTES
CHAPTER TWO
1
French writer (1848 – 1917) Mathilde Georgina Élisabeth de Peyrebrune.
2
French author (1851 – 1922).
3
See The Montmartre Investigation, Gallic Books.
4
At 22 Boulevard Magenta.
5
‘Ravachol’s Ballad’ by Jules Jouy.
6
Serialised from 20 February to 21 July 1892.
7
Charles Nègre, 1820 – 1880, French photographer known for his architectural photographs of French cities; Charles Marville, 1816 – 1879, official photographer for Paris in 1862.
8
An event in which cyclists had to catch up or overtake an opponent, following a trail of papers dropped by them.
CHAPTER THREE
1
1857 – 1908. Of Polish origin, she was a pianist and poet and part of the avant-garde movement of the 1880s. She was also one of the first proponents of free verse.
2
Berthe Morisot (1841 – 1865). The first woman to join the circle of French Impressionist painters.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
/> Ravachol set off his second explosion at Rue de Clichy on 27 March 1892. It was an attack on Solicitor-General Bulot. Twenty-seven people were injured.
2
Émile Loubet.
3
See Murder on the Eiffel Tower, Gallic Books.
4
Hubert-Martin Cazin, publisher and bookseller, 1724 – 1795. In Rheims he began to publish small books in certain formats, octodecimo or vincesimoquarto, which came to be named after him.
5
Agnès Hellebick.
CHAPTER FIVE
1
Encyclopédie des sciences occultes (Edition Georges-Anquetil, 1925).
2
In order to appropriate the immense wealth of the Knights Templar and to destroy their power, King Philip the Fair (1268 – 1314) had them arrested. Following an unfair trial, the last grand master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake, cursing the King and his descendants as he was executed.
3
Drama in prose by Alfred de Vigny performed on 12 February 1835.
4
Song by Pierre-Jean Béranger, French songwriter (1780 – 1857).
5
A work by Théodore Bénard (Paris, A. Colin, 1874).
CHAPTER SEVEN
1
One of the Paris toll gates.
2
Now known as Gare d’Austerlitz.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1
Nickname for Palais de Justice.
CHAPTER NINE
1
Gérard de Nerval ‘Le Roi de Thule’ in Lyrisme et Vers d’Opéra.
2
Popular novel by Maricourt.
3
Absinthe.
4
It’s so cold!
5
Song by Maurice Marc.
6
Coward.
7
Bastard.
CHAPTER TEN
1
A famous gold and silversmith situated on Boulevard des Italiens.
CHAPTER EVELEN
1
Old German saying.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1
‘I love … but my love is without hope’.
2
Situated on Place de l’Alma.
3
A reddish clay that takes the appetite away and can be lethal.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1
‘Darling’ in Yiddish.
2
Little bird.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1
President of the Association of Latin Scholars.
2
Celtic warrior chief who resisted the Romans, popularised by the Asterix comics.
3
Metro line that encircled Paris with a single track.
4
Battle of 52 BC, between the Romans and the Gauls, and led by Vercingetorix.
5
The last major battle, in September of 52 BC, between the Romans led by Julius Caesar and a confederation of Gallic tribes led by Vercingetorix – the Gauls were comprehensively beaten.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1
My heart is hurrying towards you, my sweet girl. (Translation from Yiddish.)
2
In 1886 Éduoard Drumont published La France juive. He led a movement of neo-anti-Semitism that attracted numerous adherents. On 20 April 1892 he launched La Libre Parole whose views were also anti-Semitic.
EPILOGUE
1
Drinking fountains scattered throughout Paris, fifty of which were donated to the city by British philanthropist Sir Richard Wallace in 1872.
2
Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1879.
Also by Claude Izner
Murder on the Eiffel Tower
The Disappearance at Père-Lachaise
The Montmartre Investigation
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE ASSASSIN IN THE MARAIS. Copyright © 2004 by Éditions 10/18, Département d’Univers Poche. English translation copyright © 2009 by Gallic Books. All rights reserved.
For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
eISBN 9781429973670
First eBook Edition : September 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
First published in France as Le secret des Enfants-Rouges by Éditions 10/18