The Devil in Montmartre: A Mystery in Fin de Siècle Paris

by Gary Inbinder

  She held his hand and kissed it softly. “I’m sorry, darling; how thoughtless of me. Go relax in the sitting-room, and I’ll join you. Would you like a cognac, or sherry?”

  Achille smiled. “A cognac would be heaven.” Adele went to fetch the brandy. He wandered into the sitting room and collapsed in his favorite, well-stuffed armchair. Placing his aching feet on a footstool, he rubbed his eyes and yawned. Achille wanted to forget the case and get a good night’s sleep, but he knew he wouldn’t; it would occupy his thoughts, day and night, until the murderer was brought to justice.

  Adele returned with a decanter and two glasses on a silver tray. Her husband did not seem to notice her; he was staring into the darkness like someone sleeping with his eyes open. She set down the tray on a small round table and then turned up the lamp. “It’s too dark in here.”

  Achille murmured, “Huh,” as if coming out of a trance. Adele was about to sit next to him on a settee. He reached out, took her hand and pulled her onto his lap. She giggled as he nibbled her tiny earlobe and nuzzled her fragrant neck. Achille wanted her; he needed to forget his job, to erase the horror of it from his mind. His hands cupped the soft material over her breasts. She sighed, and his mouth covered hers, his tongue making a gentle entrance into her sweet mouth. He closed his eyes and started lifting her dress until the naked torso on the dissection table broke into his mind like a thief in the night. Achille shuddered, and then pulled away from her gently. Smiling nervously, he muttered, “You see how much I’ve missed you? Anyway, I’m ready for that brandy.”

  Adele frowned with disappointment, but she poured the drinks without complaint.

  6

  OCTOBER 16, MORNING

  The regulator clock on the wall facing Féraud’s desk registered five A.M. On the walls and ceiling, gas jets hissed and glowed greenish yellow. The chief sprang the guillotine; the blade clipped the tip of his cigar neatly. Féraud plucked the severed “head” from a little basket and dumped it into the ashtray. He struck a match, lit up, and took a few deep, satisfying puffs.

  Fat Rousseau mopped sweat from his low forehead. The chief had an old-fashioned aversion to night vapors and kept the windows shut tightly until dawn. Achille sat next to his partner across from the chief, nervously anticipating Féraud’s response to his report. Rousseau turned to Achille and gave him a furtive wink, as if to say: Don’t worry professor, we’ve got it covered.

  Féraud closed the file, rested his cigar in the ashtray, and leaned back in his chair. He closed his eyes as if in deep concentration and fiddled with a charm on his watch chain, a golden skull with glowing ruby eyes. After a tense moment, he leaned forward, stared at his subordinates, and cracked a smile. “Good work, men.”

  Achille and Rousseau breathed sighs of relief.

  Féraud continued: “Achille, you’re going directly to La Villette to sift through the muck?”

  “Yes, sir. The cesspit contents are being held in a shed near the quay. When I’m finished, I’m returning to the Morgue to meet with Chief Bertillon and Dr. Péan.”

  Rousseau laughed. “I pity you, professor. From the slaughterhouse and shit barges of La Villette to the putrefying stiffs. You’ll need to bathe in perfume before you go home.”

  Achille tried to smile in response to his partner’s crude humor, but it came off looking like a wince of pain. He continued with his itinerary. “Following the meeting, I’ll go to Bertillon’s laboratory to pick up a copy of the pathologist’s report, a chemical analysis, and some information concerning the cloth, the footprints, and the cigarette butt. All we’ve got so far is a headless torso. Bertillon will provide an estimate of the woman’s height, weight, and physical appearance, including the distinguishing marks. From there, I’ll go to records to check the missing persons’ reports.” Achille paused a moment; then: “I assume you don’t want to put the cadaver on display?”

  “Hell no!” Féraud growled. “No need to stir up a hornet’s nest, at least not yet.” Then to Rousseau: “What’s your plan for today?”

  “Follow up on my leads, chief. I’ve interviewed several people on the Rue Tourlaque and Rue Caulaincourt; no eyewitnesses, so far. I heard some gossip about Toulouse-Lautrec and his lorettes. Drunken brawls and late night shouting matches; that sort of thing. Evidence of jealous rage—one of the oldest homicide motives in the book. But you wonder why any girl would take up with a monkey like that; money and title, I suppose. Anyway, I’ve got my snoops in Montmartre and Pigalle keeping their ears open for chatter about missing girls, especially models. Do you want me to interview Lautrec?”

  Féraud frowned and shook his head. “No, not yet. He’s the son of a count, not an apache. But I want him tailed. Pick your two best men, and put them on twelve-hour shifts. Include their findings in your daily reports.”

  “Right, chief. And I’d sure like to get a look at that studio. Wouldn’t you, professor?” Rousseau grinned at Achille, a gleam in his piggish eyes.

  “I would indeed, but we don’t have enough evidence for a warrant.”

  Féraud leaned further over his desk and lowered his voice. “Listen, boys, what the juge d’instruction doesn’t know won’t hurt him. This is strictly between us. Within the next day or two, I want you to have a look at Lautrec’s studio—without a warrant. Rousseau, you know who to use on that job.”

  “Right chief; just leave it to me.” He turned to Achille: “You O.K. with that, professor?”

  Achille did not like the old extrajudicial methods, but he figured in a case like this the ends justified the means. And he was not about to harm his career by crossing Féraud. “As long as the chief approves, it’s fine with me.”

  The stench of La Villette on an unseasonably warm autumn morning struck Achille like a punch to the gut. Home to the stockyards and great abattoirs that provided meat for the tables of two million Parisians, La Villette was also a hodgepodge of factories, warehouses, working class dwellings, boîtes, cafes, administrative buildings, and markets. Located in the northeastern corner of Paris, a district annexed during the reign of Napoleon III, the modern industrial site and docklands were built around a large basin and main canal that flowed into the Seine through a system of locks.

  The main canal was itself fed by a network of smaller canals polluted with industrial waste and slaughterhouse effluent criss-crossed by iron footbridges and railway bridges. The emissions from hundreds of locomotives and factory chimneys enveloped the area in a yellowish-brown haze. A steel spiders-web overspread the vast acreage, traversed day and night by smoke-belching engines pulling long trains of cars loaded with lowing cattle, bleating sheep, grunting and squealing pigs, brought by the thousands to be offloaded into the slaughterhouse pens. Trains with ice-cooled boxcars conveyed the butchered product to the Paris markets.

  La Villette was also a collection point for sewage pumped from the Paris cesspools. In the early morning hours, hundreds of wagons filled with human waste lined up on the quayside, waiting to pour out their cargo into tanker-barges bound for the suburban sewage farms. Achille supervised two workers in a dark shed near the quay as they raked and sifted through excrement removed from the cess-pit where the torso was found, looking for clues. The foul sludge had been pumped into a galvanized iron vat and sprayed with disinfectant, but the odor in the stuffy shed was still overwhelming.

  Does filth breed crime? Achille pondered this question as he anxiously awaited a discovery that might shed light on his case. He had read Zola and was familiar with the author’s literary theory of naturalism, according to which character was formed by a combination of social conditions, heredity, and environment. That might hold true for the common criminal, but would it apply to a monster that could murder and horribly mutilate a woman? Try as he might, Achille could not picture the individual who committed the crime.

  Lombroso, the celebrated Italian criminologist, believed the criminal was a definite anthropological type bearing physical and mental stigmata, the product of heredity, atavism, and dege
neracy. Could you read evil in a face, a body, mannerisms, and gestures? Would the man Achille was looking for be simian and grotesque like Lautrec? Perhaps alienation from decent society had motivated him to destroy beauty in revenge for the rejection brought on by his deformity. Achille pondered another literary association, Hugo’s hideously deformed Quasimodo. According to Lombroso’s theory of criminal physiognomy, Quasimodo would have been a prime suspect in a Ripper-type murder investigation. Nevertheless, Hugo had portrayed the hunchback as a noble, self-sacrificing character who loved the beautiful Esmeralda. But then, Hugo was a great Romantic of the previous generation, not a modern scientist.

  He recalled something from his religious instruction that had troubled him since his youth: Intra feces et urinas nominem natus est—Man is born between feces and urine. Achille thought that a singularly offensive way of saying we were born in sin and must be ritually cleansed by baptism. But he would not have dared express his opinion to the brother who had taught him the religious adage. At any rate, the odious quote brought to mind another literary association, again with Zola. Achille recalled a satirical cartoon reference to Nana, in which the author presented his protagonist as Venus rising from a chamber pot. The infamous courtesan had, like The Great Stink, arisen from the sewers of Paris. She was disease carrying excrement behind a façade of female beauty, polluting society and ultimately leading to the humiliating defeat of 1871. Achille remembered Zola’s metaphor, Nana’s horrible death from smallpox; corruption oozed from her countless festering sores while beneath her window jubilant soldiers on their way to the debacle marched past crowds cheering, “On to Berlin!”

  “Monsieur, we’ve found something!”

  Achille stopped pondering and ran to the vat. One of the workers had fished out a shiny object and set it on a table; Achille put on a pair of rubber gloves and examined it. It was a gold cigarette case, monogrammed with an ancient coat of arms. He opened the case, and found three cigarettes.

  Toulouse-Lautrec? But this is too obvious. He might as well have left his carte-de-visite. Achille took out a magnifying glass and examined the surface of the cigarette case. There were barely visible fingerprints on both the front and back, and no one had touched the case since it had been dropped in the pit—at least not with their bare hands.

  “The Devil!” he exclaimed. A common expression, but under the circumstances he might have meant it literally.

  Dr. Péan completed his examination. He walked from the dissection table without uttering a word, and went straight to a washstand where he scrubbed his hands and forearms in chlorinated lime solution. Bertillon and Achille watched silently as the surgeon completed his ablutions with a vigorous application of the nail brush.

  After inspecting his hands and fingernails carefully, Péan rolled down his sleeves, fastened his cuffs, and retrieved his frock coat from a peg on the wall. Then he turned to Bertillon and stated matter-of-factly: “Based on the pathologist’s report and my examination of the corpse, I conclude that a vaginal hysterectomy has been performed on this individual, and that the operation was done recently, perhaps within the past few days. Moreover, I concur with the pathologist’s conclusion that the head and limbs were surgically removed. However, I have no way of determining whether or not the hysterectomy contributed to the cause of death. For all we know, the operation might have been performed on a corpse.” Péan stood silently without a gesture, a twitch, or the slightest change in his stony expression.

  Achille questioned: “Doctor, do you know of any other surgeon in Paris who performs the vaginal hysterectomy?”

  “No, Inspector, to my knowledge I’m the first surgeon in Europe to have used this technique successfully. I have only done this once, and very recently at that. But I assure you, my patient is alive and recovering splendidly.” Péan paused. Then: “Am I under suspicion?”

  The tension in the dissecting room was electric. Bertillon, as the senior man, answered immediately: “Of course not, Doctor Péan. However, we must ask questions, and we greatly appreciate your cooperation.”

  Bertillon’s response eased the tension—somewhat. “I understand gentlemen, and I shall do what I can to assist in your investigation.”

  “That is most kind of you, doctor,” Achille said respectfully. “You’ve indicated you performed this operation just once. Can you tell us when?”

  “Yes, Inspector, I operated Wednesday afternoon, the 14th. It’s documented in the medical record.”

  Achille did a quick mental calculation. According to the night soil collection schedule, the body must have been dumped in the pit between the early morning hours of the 13th and the 15th. That timeframe was consistent with Bertillon and the pathologist’s estimate of the time of death. Could the murderer have witnessed the operation on the afternoon of the 14th and then committed the crime sometime between that afternoon and the early morning hours of the following day? Based on the state of decomposition, death must have occurred on the early end of the scale, either shortly before or immediately after the operation. Then the body could have been disposed of several hours later, under the cover of darkness and at a time when the act was least likely to have been observed.

  After a brief pause, Achille continued: “And I assume you also have a record of those attending the operation?”

  “Of course, my assistants were in attendance, but I assure you they are young gentlemen of spotless reputation.”

  Achille smiled in an attempt to put the surgeon at ease. “I have no reason to doubt that, doctor, but you do understand that I may want to ask them some routine questions?”

  “Of course, Inspector, I shall provide you with their names and addresses, as well as the hours when they may be reached at the clinic.”

  “Thank you, doctor. I believe there was also a small group of visitors who witnessed the operation?”

  “Yes, a few of my trusted colleagues were present, and an artist, Monsieur de Toulouse-Lautrec. He made a sketch of the operation. The gentleman’s cousin is one of my assistants.”

  “Do you have a list of the attendees?”

  “Yes, Inspector; attendance is by invitation only. My clerk at the clinic keeps a journal containing the names and signatures of those present, the time they arrived as well as the time they signed out.”

  “I would very much appreciate having a look at that journal.”

  “Very well, you may contact my clerk,” Péan said with a hint of annoyance in his voice. “I’ll leave you a card with his name. Now, if you gentlemen are finished, I must go to the hospital. I have a very busy day ahead of me.”

  “Thank you, doctor. I apologize for the inconvenience. I have one more question. In your professional opinion, do you think a layman who witnessed the operation could have performed the surgery?”

  Péan’s face reddened; his hands shook visibly, as if the question were a gross insult. “Absolutely not! The amputation of the head and limbs was skilful enough, but the hysterectomy is a procedure of the utmost delicacy. Only the most proficient and experienced surgeons would attempt it.”

  Achille was put off by the doctor’s reaction to a perfectly reasonable question. Nevertheless, he smiled and spoke very respectfully in an attempt to placate Péan. “Thank you so much, doctor. You have been most helpful.” He turned to Bertillon. “Do you have any questions for the doctor, Monsieur Bertillon?”

  Bertillon frowned and shook his head. “No, that will be all for today.” Smiling sheepishly he turned to the fuming Péan: “Thank you, doctor, for your cooperation. This is a difficult case, and we very much appreciate your assistance. I would ask that you do not discuss this matter with anyone. If your colleagues or employees have questions, you may refer them to Inspector Lefebvre or to me. We will be discreet in our questioning, and would like to keep this matter out of the newspapers for as long as possible.”

  “That goes without saying, Monsieur Bertillon. Nobody wants the press poking round in his business. At any rate, I knew your father well; a fine
physician. Now I must be off.” Péan turned abruptly to Achille. He pulled out a card and a pencil, scribbled his clerk’s name, and handed it to Achille. “Good-day, Inspector.” Then he grabbed his hat from a rack and left before Achille could reply.

  Bertillon’s laboratory was located at the top of a dark, secluded stairway in the Palais de Justice, a grand white marble Second Empire edifice not far from the Morgue. Pale light flooded in through large, grimy rectangular windows; natural light was supplemented by several large, overhead brass gas jets. Long wooden tables in the center of the room were covered in paraphernalia: microscopes, test tubes, alembics, and retorts. Achille and Bertillon conferred in a corner, where they stood next to a cluttered desk and a row of dusty filing cabinets. For the moment, they were alone. Gilles was to meet them shortly to present his photographs of the prints on the cloth.

  “I’m afraid Dr. Péan didn’t like my question about a layman performing the surgery. Nevertheless, it’s a question that had to be asked.” Achille frowned.

  “Don’t worry about it, Inspector. Péan’s a proud man and rightly so. Naturally, it troubles him to think that a member of his profession might have committed such a heinous crime, especially since our suspect might be a trusted colleague or friend. What’s more, he’s a man of spotless reputation. Imagine how it would look in the newspapers if our murderer turns out to be a well-regarded doctor of Péan’s acquaintance.”

  Achille was well aware of the situation; he also knew that Bertillon’s late father had been a physician. This case could cast a shadow over the entire French medical profession. “That’s understandable, but the doctor’s professional opinion has put another twist to this convoluted case. So far, most of the evidence has pointed to Lautrec; now Péan seems to have exculpated him. Of course, we can’t go much further until we identify the woman.”