Duval and the Empress's Crown

by Michele McGrath

  2

  8 Frimaire Year XIII

  (Thursday, 29 November, 1804)

  We left the tavern and parted company. Fournier and I walked to the workshop where the theft had occurred, which was some distance away off the Rue de Rivoli. Margueritte lived in rooms over the working area, on the first and second floors of a tall and spindly building. When we asked for him, one of the apprentices showed us up the stairs to his salon. It was furnished tastefully. Gilt mirrors hung on the wall, dark furniture shone with polish and a fine rug on the floor. It seemed as if Margueritte’s business was doing well, or had been up to this moment.

  Margueritte was a middle-aged man, somewhat stooped from bending over his work bench for many long hours. He wore a coat of mulberry wool and black breeches. Both of his garments looked dusty. I noticed that the linen cuffs of his shirt were full of cobwebs. His face was white and anxious. He was pacing up and down in front of the fire, his feet almost cutting a pathway into the thick pile of the carpet. He barely stood still to greet us before he began pacing again. His wife hovered near him, obviously trying to show him her support. Her hands fluttered nervously and her cheeks were stained with tears.

  “It is inconceivable, Messieurs,” Margueritte moaned, waving his hands about. “I have definitely been robbed, of that there can be no possible doubt. We’ve searched everywhere, but the crown is no longer here. I have been unworthy of the Emperor’s trust.”

  “Calm down,” I said sharply. “If we are to help you, we need to hear your story clearly and without embellishment. I will ask you some questions and my colleague here will note down your replies.”

  Fournier writes more quickly than I do, so in these situations we always work like this. He sat down, took out his notebook and waited for me to begin.

  “Madame,” I said to Margueritte’s wife, “your husband might be better for a glass of brandy.”

  “I have tried to give him one, Monsieur, but he will not drink it.” She pointed to a glass, which stood half full on a side table.

  “Monsieur, you have had a shock. Drink the brandy and think hard. Then perhaps we will be able to retrieve the crown more quickly.”

  Madame Margueritte handed the glass to her husband. He drank it down in one gulp. Then he shook his head, almost as if he was trying to rearrange the thoughts inside.

  “Do you need my wife to be here?”

  “I would like to ask her what she knows, but it would be better if she did not listen to what you have to say. Witnesses sometimes get muddled when they hear someone else’s testimony.” I smiled at them. “I am not setting a trap for either of you, please believe me, but if you would leave us alone for a little while, Madame?”

  “I shall bring you some refreshment,” she said. She looked nervously at her husband and left the room rather hurriedly as if she was glad to be gone for a while. I shut the door after her and then turned to Margueritte.

  “Monsieur, please sit down and attend to me. When precisely was the last time that you saw the crown?” Margueritte dropped into a chair by the fire and put his head into his hands.

  “After I showed it to the Empress this morning,” he groaned.

  “Here, in this room?”

  “No indeed. In the workshop downstairs.”

  “The Empress came into your workshop?” I asked in surprise. We had passed through the working area on our way to the salon. The shop was well run, but it was dusty and rather dark. I could not imagine Joséphine there, in her trailing white draperies. Few people wear white because it is so hard to launder. That wasn’t a consideration for the Empress, of course. She has servants to look after her clothes and enough money to replace them if they become soiled. Nevertheless she seemed to me to be an unlikely visitor.

  “But yes, Monsieur,” the jeweller hastened to assure me. “The Empress is interested in the regalia that we are making for her. She approved the original designs and she has visited us several times during manufacture. She seems fascinated by the process. I don’t suppose she has ever seen anything like it before. Today she even brought the famous coiffeur, Duplan, with her. She wished to try on the crown, so that he could arrange her hair around it. It must be anchored firmly, of course, when it is in place, so that is does not fall off as she moves.”

  “No,” I agreed, “that would not be a good omen to begin her reign.”

  “It would be a catastrophe, but better to fall off her head than never be put on it at all. Oh, my God, what will the Emperor say to me if we don’t find the crown?” Margueritte wailed.

  The man was in a terrible state and I wasn’t surprised. Napoléon would be angry if he ever found out, even if the crown was recovered intact and in time for the ceremony. I shuddered to imagine what would happen if it were not. I would certainly share in his displeasure. I felt again the heaviness of the responsibility which had been so unexpectedly thrust upon me this morning.

  “Tell us what you know and then leave it to us,” I said heartily. I glanced at Fournier who raised his eyebrows at my hopeful words but said nothing and continued writing. I have found, though, over the years, that you discover more by being gentle rather than rough with a witness. This man had been frightened enough already. Better to give him some hope than leave him in despair.

  “At what time did the Empress leave?”

  “About eleven this morning.”

  “And the crown was still here after she had gone?”

  “Yes, I continued to work on it for another hour at least.”

  “Did the hairdresser leave with her?”

  “He left at the same time but he did not get into her carriage. I myself led them out. They parted at the door and he walked down towards the Rue de Rivoli.”

  “Neither of them returned?”

  “No.”

  “What happened next?”

  “We went back to work.”

  “Who are ‘we’?”

  “Myself and my employees.”

  “What are their names?”

  “I have six in total, but only three were with me this morning. Robart, who is my head journeyman, Christophe, who is another journeyman and young Jacques, one of my apprentices.” Fournier scribbled furiously.

  “Where were the others?”

  “Paul had gone to deliver a finished piece to a customer. Benoît and Joseph, the other apprentices, took the cart to fetch some supplies.”

  “They did not return before the theft was discovered?”

  “No.”

  “Then there were only the four of you on the premises?”

  “Four in the workshop. My wife and our two servant girls were in another part of the building.”

  “Did they come into the workshop at all?”

  “Louise, who is one of the servants, brought us some bread and cheese at lunchtime. She put the tray down and left almost at once.”

  “You eat in the working area?”

  “We don’t usually, but we have been working night and day to get everything ready in time. We were given very little notice of the Empress’s coronation as you may know.”

  I nodded. Paris had been talking about nothing else for weeks. The Emperor’s family did not want Joséphine to be crowned and had fought bitterly against it. Not all of their arguments with the Emperor had taken place in private. There was much speculation in the salons. Bets had been laid for and against whether it would happen.

  “What use is a barren wife?” the Emperor’s family had asked him pointedly. He had not answered as the weeks and months dragged on. All the other preparations for the coronation had been going forward, but no orders had been given about the Empress. In the end, Napoléon had decided to crown her, although he told no one his reasons. Personally, I believed that he had got tired of the arguments and was doing it mainly to annoy his family. Once he made the final decision, there had been little time left to make her regalia. Now her crown was missing, so she could not be crowned after all! They would never be able to manufacture another in time. A c
rown, by its very nature, is a rare object. If they ever found out about the theft, how the Bonapartes would gloat.

  “What does the crown look like?” I asked. A stupid question really because how many crowns could there possibly be adrift in Paris? I wanted to keep the man talking, though, and I was afraid that the more he thought about his circumstances, the more his fear would make him reticent.

  “It is small but heavy,” he replied. “There are eight branches set with diamonds, under a gold globe surmounted by a cross. Four branches are shaped like the leaves of a palm tree, four resemble myrtle leaves. Around the rim is a ribbon, inlaid with eight emeralds. The frontlet is encrusted with amethysts.” For a few minutes, the man’s voice was full of his professional pride.

  “Distinctive,” I said, dryly.

  “It was almost finished,” he lamented. “Only the final banding at the rim was left to be adjusted. It had been giving trouble and took longer than I expected, but I hoped it would be completed today. I promised the Empress that I would deliver the regalia to her on the day after tomorrow.”

  “Has anything else been taken?” I asked.

  “No. The diadem and the girdle are still here with the rest of the jewels and gold. Only the crown is missing.”

  “Let us go back to the last time you saw the crown. You showed it to the Empress, you said, and then what happened?”

  “She examined it and tried it on while Duplan fiddled about with her coiffure. He kept piling her hair up in different ways. Then he put the crown on and made her shake her head, to see if it would work loose. It took quite a while until they were both satisfied. Then the Empress handed it back to my journeyman, Robart, while I showed her out.”

  “You saw this yourself?”

  “Yes, Monsieur, I did.”

  “What happened to the crown after that?”

  “I continued to work on it for another hour, as I told you before, until I had to go out to meet a business acquaintance. Robart said he would complete the task of fitting the banding for me. He is a good workman. I gave it to him when I went to change my coat and shoes ready for my appointment. I did not return for several hours. By then the crown was missing and everyone was searching for it.”

  “A moment, Monsieur.” Fournier put down his pen and broke into the conversation for the first time.

  “Yes?”

  “This appointment that drew you out of the building. Who was it with and when did you arrange it?”

  “It was with Monsieur Acart, another jeweller and a close friend of mine. He sent me a note yesterday asking me to meet him at a tavern where we often have a drink together.”

  “What did he want with you?”

  “He has an important commission which he is too busy to undertake at the moment. He wondered if I could help him with some of the finer work. I had to refuse, of course. I, too, am very busy and the client wanted the piece as soon as possible.”

  “Your refusal could not have taken a long time in that case,” Fournier said, “even if you had a drink once the business was over. You told us earlier that you were away from the workshop for several hours. Is that true?” Fournier turned over the pages in his notebook to find the exact words. He stared at the man who nodded his head.

  “Indeed, Monsieur, my meeting with Monsieur Acart took hardly any time at all.”

  “Then why did you not return here immediately? What happened to stop you?”

  “We had just finished our wine and I was saying goodbye to Acart, when my apprentice, Jacques, came to find me. One of my clients, a Madame de Herlay, wanted to see me urgently. She sent her servant to the workshop to ask me to visit her. She is an important customer. She’s rich and likes giving presents to her friends, so we do a lot of work for her. Naturally I went off to her hôtel at once, but when I got there, she wasn’t in. I waited there for a long time. When she finally came back, it was odd, Monsieur. She had not sent for me at all. I thought Jacques must have made a mistake, although he is not like that as a rule or I would not keep him in my employ. When I spoke to him later, he told me that he had repeated the servant’s message exactly. It was all very strange, a waste of my time and most inconvenient. Perhaps if I had been here…” His voice trailed off into a moan.

  “It would probably have made no difference.” I hurried to reassure him. I did not want him to return to thoughts about his predicament and lose the thread of our conversation. “This sounds as if someone wanted you to be away from the workshop today and that is how they managed it.”

  “But why would anyone do that?”

  “Perhaps they thought you would be more observant than your workmen when the thief attempted to steal the crown.”

  Margueritte put his head into his hands. “And I fell for their trick,” he groaned.

  “Caution, Monsieur, we do not yet have proof of anything. This is only supposition at the moment. We have a lot of work to do before we can say what really happened and who was responsible.” Fournier nodded to me to continue and picked up his pen again.

  “When you came back to the workshop after your fruitless errand, what happened next?”

  “Robart was waiting for me to tell me about the loss. I ordered another search and joined in the hunt myself this time. We were very thorough, I made sure of that. When we couldn’t find the crown, I realised I must report the theft to a Monsieur Réal at the Ministry of Police.”

  “Réal? You know him? You spoke to him yourself?”

  “But yes, Monsieur.”

  I was surprised but no wonder Réal had known all about it.

  “Réal doesn’t see every chance caller at the Ministry. How is it you were able to speak directly with him?”

  “I have had dealings with him before, Monsieur. He was aware that we had been commissioned to make part of the regalia here. Once I sent in my name on an urgent matter, there was no difficulty.”

  “I see.” I didn’t really. I thought I knew most things that went on in the building where I had worked for the last four years, but I didn’t know this. No reason why I should, I suppose, until now.

  “He said he would send someone to help me.”

  “Well, we are here, as you see. Has anyone else come to visit you since?”

  “No, Monsieur.”

  “And you have told no one about the theft?”

  “Indeed not.”

  “So the only people who know the crown is missing are the three of us, your three workmen, the two maids, your wife and certain people at the Ministry. Is that correct?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, Monsieur, it is. Certainly I have spoken to no one else.”

  “Is there anything more you can tell me?”

  “Robart says…”

  I stopped him. “We will question Robart ourselves. I only need to know about what you have seen with your own eyes or heard with your own ears. Is there anything else?”

  “No, Monsieur.”

  “Very well. Then we must speak to Robart.”

  Margeritte got up slowly from his chair. His face was white, in spite of the heat of the fire, with black rims around his eyes. He looked like a living corpse. I suppose he thought he might soon be one, from shock if from nothing more sinister.

  “Oh, Monsieur, what do you think will happen to me if we cannot find the crown in time for the coronation?”

  I opened my mouth to make some facetious remark about prisons or guillotines as I might have done with my colleague. Then I caught Fournier’s eye and thought better of my black humour. He shook his head at me, so I said simply,

  “We’ll find it, never fear. We must. And if we are to find it in time, we have to begin at once. Where is Robart?”

  “He is waiting in the workshop.”

  “Call him in, please, and then leave us to question him alone.”

  3

  8 Frimaire, Year XIII

  (Thursday, November 29, 1804)

  Robart was a small, elderly man, wearing the sabots and leather apron of his trade. In
other circumstances, he looked as if he would be a cheerful companion, but at the moment, his face was deeply furrowed and his eyes anxious.

  “For such a thing to happen here, Monsieur, it is unbelievable!” he said to me, almost crying with his fear. He gazed at us with big scared eyes and he was shaking so much I thought he might fall over.

  “Sit down,” I said hastily, pushing a chair towards him. He sat on the edge of the seat, twisting his hands in front of him. Fournier asked him his name and where he lived. Here, he told us. He had some rooms at the very top of Margueritte’s house.

  “You’re not married?” Fournier queried in surprise, for the man must be well paid as a senior journeyman and he was not ill-favoured. Eugénie might even call him handsome, despite the flecks of grey hair at his temples.

  He looked startled. “No. I never had time to look for a wife and I’m comfortable here.”

  So he does not possess an expensive family, I thought, one less reason for him to be the thief.

  “Your patron has told me that he left you working on the crown when he went out to meet Monsieur Acart. Is that true?” I asked and Robart nodded. “Did a message come for Monsieur Margueritte after he had left?”

  “Madame de Herlay’s lackey, Simon, came, asking the patron to call on her. So I sent Jacques to the tavern to give him the message.”

  “You knew this servant?”

  “But yes, Monsieur. He often comes here on errands for his mistress.”

  I looked at Fournier and he frowned.

  ‘We must check on this,’ I thought. ‘Lefebvre will be able to question the servant better than we can.’ One of Lefebvre’s strengths is that he can work effectively with that type of person as well as many others.

  “Very well,” I said. “Monsieur Margueritte told us that he gave you the crown when he went out. Is this correct?”