“Could you be looking for this?” she asked, turning her attention from the book to his face.
Martin backed away, demurring, insisting that—
“No, please,” she interrupted. “We have a copy in English at home. I was only interested because. . . . Look here, see.” With one white-gloved finger she pointed to the title page. “It is translated by a woman, Clémence Royer. I heard her give a series of lectures on philosophy and science in Paris.”
“Yes,” Martin answered, “very brilliant, isn’t she? But also something of a scandal, no?” hoping that by conveying this knowledge he would conceal how much he shared the opinions of those who hooted and howled at the very idea of a woman speaking in public about such matters.
“You’ve heard her, then? You’ve lived in Paris?”
“Only for three years. I was at the Law Faculty, spending most of my time being boring, I fear, while studying for my exams.”
He often asked himself why he had said so much. He kept coming back to the admission that he had wanted this woman, this beautiful stranger, to argue against his modest assessment. He remembered that her eyes, so merry and direct, were green, and that they matched the emeralds in her earrings. Never had he noticed this much about a woman before.
“Very well, then, you must have this,” she said as she thrust the volume into his hand. Then she introduced herself and invited him to one of her salon gatherings on Thursday evening. “Cours Mirabeau, 57, second floor. At eight,” she said. “Men of letters and learning of all opinions.” Professor Westerbury, she explained, was the leading voice of the group. He was the Englishman whose name appeared on posters all over town, announcing separate lectures on geology for ladies and gentlemen. Without waiting for Martin’s answer, which surely would have been some kind of an excuse, Solange retied her hat, saying that she had to go. Then she put one gloved hand upon his. “Really, you must come. You could be one of the interesting ones.”
Neither her smile nor her eyes told Martin whether she was praising or mocking him. Now he would never know.
He had not gone to any of her “Thursdays.” Since that day, he had seen her only from afar, always recognizable by the boldness of her carriage and the glimmer of that mass of shining, golden-red hair. Usually he had spotted her on the Cours. But he also saw her entering or leaving the Madeleine Church as he went to the Palais de Justice, or out for a Sunday stroll. The last time he had seen her was only a few days ago, at the procession for the Feast of the Assumption. He watched from across the cathedral square as she crossed herself and genuflected as the statue of the Virgin passed. What kind of woman reads Darwin and kneels before the Virgin?
“Sir?” Franc was addressing him and holding up a religious medal hanging by a thick white string cord. “Looks like a crime of passion. Someone tried to strangle her with this. I found it wrapped around her neck. And then he stuck a knife in her.”
“But why?” Why? What a lame and childish thing for a judge to say, or even think. Fortunately, it did not give Franc pause.
“Who knows? That’s what I was saying, sir. I’ve been keeping an eye on her and her paramour, that Englishman Westerbury, ever since they came to town. Never trusted him. Seemed like a charlatan. And her,” he shook his head with distaste. “A loose woman with lovers, trying to set herself up as some kind of lady. And then she has the nerve to wear the Virgin’s medal.” He gave it one last look before he pocketed it. “We don’t need that kind of Parisian behavior down here.”
“How do you know she had lovers?” Martin hoped he did not sound too curious.
“That’s my job, sir. To keep the town clean and quiet. So when people like that come in, I watch. I can probably get you the whole list of the professors and big shots that hung around their apartment. But I’ve also got my own personal suspicions.” Franc patted the pocket of his jacket holding the folded canvas. “I saw her hanging around with the banker’s son, Cézanne. The one who calls himself an artist.”
“Mme Vernet and this Cézanne, alone?” Martin stole a quick glance at the body of Solange Vernet, a pious woman with lovers.
“Yes, at least once outside the apartment, and who knows what took place inside. I wonder what the Englishman thought about that.”
“Or if he even knew,” Martin added quietly.
“Right, sir. Or what he did when he found out.” Franc gave him an encouraging look, as if to say, now you’re on the right track.
Neither the buzzing in Martin’s head nor the nausea had let up. Still, he needed to be in charge. “I take it you did not find the knife?” he managed to ask. “We should be looking for it while there is still some light.”
Franc nodded his assent, and they began to search.
Martin was relieved to move away from the remains of Solange Vernet. They scoured the quarry for almost an hour. Finally they had to give up. There was no lamp on the wagon, and they needed to get back to town while they could still see the road. Martin told Franc to make sure that his men were in full force the next day and to send some of them back to continue the search.
Then the grisly task began. Franc took Solange Vernet by the shoulders, while Martin folded her dress around her feet, firmly holding her ankles together. Under Franc’s less tender care, her head hung back almost out of Martin’s sight. He was grateful not to have to catch glimpses of her swollen face.
Concentrating as hard as he could on keeping his footing and holding together the folds of her dress, he almost managed to block out the smells and sounds around him. It was with tremendous relief that he finally joined Franc in hoisting Solange Vernet’s body into the cart, and covered it with an old blanket. After these silent rites, Franc began to brush the dirt of the quarry off of his clothing. Martin tried to follow suit, but his hands were so sweaty that he only succeeded in pasting the orangish-red dust more securely onto his jacket. Finally, they mounted the seat of the cart.
Martin stared straight ahead as Franc maneuvered the mule back onto the Bibémus road. He tried to calm his breathing and to block the image of what lay behind them. Fortunately, Franc was in the mood to talk. Martin was not sure whether the inspector’s loquacity was an act of kindness, designed to take his mind off the mutilated body of Solange Vernet, or whether the veteran was simply attempting to impress him. It didn’t matter. He was grateful for the diversion.
Franc had fought against the Prussians in 1870, which, he told Martin, explained why one murdered corpse did not bother him very much. Franc had seen things. Terrible things. Trees cracking overhead in the heat of battle. Comrades fallen. Women raped. Children hung on bayonets. Faces blown off. And you can be certain, he assured his listener, that he had made many a Hun pay for his sins. He recounted his heroic exploits in great detail.
Although Martin could feel their hideous cargo rolling from side to side with every jolt of the wagon, he tried to demonstrate an interest in Franc’s war stories by reporting how, as an eleven-year-old boy, he had watched all of Lille panic when the Prussians crossed the border, and how hard his mother had cried when his father went off to defend their home. In the end, the German armies bypassed the fortified city, and his father, a meek, bespectacled clockmaker, never saw battle. He would die two years later, in his bed.
Compared to Franc’s boastful stories, this seemed insignificant. But it wasn’t. It only reminded Martin of the death that had done so much to determine the course of his life. He could still see his father, lying in bed, surrounded by the flickering wake candles. He would always remember the smell of incense, the odor of a sanctified death, and the sobbing relatives. He had not cried. It would have been unmanly. He had promised his father that he would comfort his mother, so he saved his tears for his walks in the woods, where no one else could see or hear. How he had missed their little private jokes, and his father’s constant praise and embraces, and gentle admonitions to continue to do well, to do right always.
Martin’s father had been a kind man. Perhaps too kind. He had not manag
ed his property well. After his death, they discovered that far too much of his income had gone to indulge his wife’s wishes and in loans to poor employees, which would never be repaid. His debts had made Martin and his mother dependent on her wealthy relatives. Martin glanced over to Franc. In a world of brute facts and evil deeds, there might be something to learn from a man of Franc’s experience. A man who, unlike Martin, confronted death without being affected by it.
By the time they reached Aix, the town was already shrouded in darkness and the intrepid inspector was expounding on why it was important for them to solve the case before the other judges and prosecutor reappeared. Martin and he, Franc observed in a confidential tone, were both outsiders who had come to Aix to seek their fortunes. If it hadn’t been for the war and the new world it opened to him, Franc explained, he would have never escaped the poverty of his native village. Solving this murder case could make him a commissaire, a man that everyone would have to look up to. That’s as high as he could ever hope to rise. But Martin, Martin was young and educated. Even though he came from the opposite corner of France, there was no telling how far this case could take him. It could get him on the promotion list for a post in the north, near his family, or even in Paris, if that is what he wanted.
Martin was not sure what he wanted except, finally, to be his own man. He had not come from the opposite end of the country by chance. He came to escape the entanglements that threatened to pull him in directions that he did not want to go. His heart lay with the democratic ideals he once shared with his oldest friend Merckx. But Merckx’s descent into anarchism and his increasingly violent harangues against the rich and powerful had become more and more troubling, even dangerous, for Martin, who had pledged to uphold the law. And then there were the rich and powerful themselves, the DuPonts, who had sponsored his schooling and expected him to ask their eldest daughter for her hand. This marriage would guarantee Martin status and wealth. As long as he was willing to accede to the reactionary opinions that went with it.
Martin fervently believed that he could find a middle way, a reasonable way between reaction and anarchy. Much to Merckx’s scorn, Martin had chosen to be a judge rather than a lawyer dedicated to defending the poor, because the magistrature was a safer path for someone without family money. Unlike Merckx, he believed in the Republic. He believed that if everyone held on to its ideals of liberté, fraternité, and egalité, justice was possible for everyone, rich and poor alike.
These are things he would never say to Franc. Or anyone else in the snobbish inbred world of the Palais, where the Proc and the other judges regarded Martin almost as a foreigner, worthy of handling only the most minor and sordid cases. The inspector was right about one thing, Martin thought as the cart jolted to a halt in front of the massive courthouse: solving a murder case was a way to win respect. But at what price? To think of personal ambition while Solange Vernet’s corpse was rotting behind him filled him with disgust.
“With your permission, sir,” Franc said as he laid down the reins, “I’ll let you off here and take the body to the prison myself.”
“Fine, Franc. Thank you.” Martin was grateful that the inspector was releasing him from the miasma of death and decay that was enveloping the stilled wagon. At least he had the presence of mind to ask Franc if he knew where Riquel, the biology professor who performed autopsies for the police, might be.
“If he’s in town, I’ll find him tonight,” Franc promised. “As soon as I lay the body out on a slab.”
The body. Already she was only a body.
“And I’ll send the boys to find the lover first thing in the morning,” Franc continued, in full command, eager to begin the investigation. “And I’ll get ahold of Old Joseph for you.” Franc had thought of everything, even Martin’s clerk. The courthouse had quite naturally assigned its oldest and most decrepit greffier to Martin. As such, Joseph Gilbert was unlikely to be out of town.
Martin offered his hand, and Franc took it eagerly.
The handshake sealed their partnership.
Swaying as if drunk with the flood of images that the inspector’s bluff conversation no longer deterred, Martin headed toward the cathedral. When he turned a corner, out of Franc’s sight, he grabbed at his stomach. Unable to hold it in any longer, he bent over and vomited into a sewer. Then he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, leaned against the wall, and took several deep breaths. The gaslight lamps cast strange shadows on the narrow, empty streets, but his ears were no longer assaulted by the buzzing of insects. Instead he heard the comforting, civilized sounds of Aix’s many fountains, gurgling, as they brought the city’s famous waters up from the earth. Martin took advantage of this bounty at the side of the cathedral, cupping his hands and filling his mouth with the cool, clear liquid. He dipped into the stone fountain again and again, washing his hands and face until the water poured over his beard and ran in rivulets under his collar. He watched as the grit of the quarry swirled away from him.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” So said the priests, and his mother, quite often. But even she knew it was not so simple a process.
Martin took a few steps back to look up at the great church and caught a glimpse of a smiling statue. When he was a boy, his mother had taken him to many churches, in an endless search for the right altar, the right saint, and the one prayer that would grant her a second child. At every stop she taught him lessons of faith and morality.
“Look, my boy,” she once instructed, pointing to a beautiful figure on the façade of some great church. “She represents the impious Worldly Woman. Her smile seems so comely, so benevolent, but look here.” She had made him twist around so he could see the serpentine figures etched on the back of the statue. “See those worms eating at her. It happens to all of us, of course, when we die. The body rots. But this, this is what happened to her soul—and the soul of everyone who touched her, who was corrupted by her, when she was alive!”
Martin smiled, remembering the nightmares that lesson had inspired. He had been too young to understand the allure of worldly temptations. So contrary to his mother’s intentions, he had become far more frightened of the consequences of earthly death than of spiritual decay. Today he had witnessed that natural reality in the poor human body of Solange Vernet. Had he also seen proof of her spiritual corruption? As he turned toward his room, Martin wondered what kind of dreams he would have that night.
Wednesday, August 19
Judges of Instruction are a Pouncing sort of race.
—Nicolas Freeling, Flanders Sky2
2
“WAKE UP, WAKE UP, M. MARTIN.” The rough hand of Louïso shook Martin into consciousness. “You must have had quite a night,” the old woman muttered in her Provençal drawl. “Your bedcovers are all over the place.” Martin struggled to focus on the gnarled, disapproving finger pointing down at him. As he lifted his eyes, he caught sight of an empty wine bottle and lump of stale bread held firmly against Louïso’s ample chest. He groaned as he recognized the debris from his table. No wonder the Picards’ day woman was in such a bad temper.
“I did not think you would want to sleep all day, so I brought you some bread from the baker and made you a bowl of café au lait,” she continued. “I’ll leave you so you can get dressed.” Before Martin could respond, she turned and, swaying heavily from side to side, headed out the door.
Martin leaped out of bed and opened the shutters. The bright sunlight confirmed his fears. He was late. He slumped down in the chair in front of his table. His first murder case, and he felt terrible. It was that wine, drunk to get him through the night without thinking about the grotesque being that Solange Vernet had become. Martin grabbed the covers lying on the floor and flung them onto the bed. Even with the wine, Solange Vernet had still managed to haunt his dreams, mouthing soundless pleas that he could neither hear nor answer.
Martin’s hand trembled slightly as he reached for the bowl of coffee and milk, but as soon as he got it to his lips, he drank greedily. Once h
e had consumed half the bowl, he set it down and began to tear at the bread, stuffing it in his mouth to settle his stomach. Today he must try to answer Solange Vernet’s pleas. Today he might confront her killer. He needed all his wits about him.
Martin dressed, not even bothering to wash up, and dashed out. He deliberately avoided the cathedral district and the images it might evoke. While moving at a fast pace, he forced himself to clear his mind and remember: what were the main points of the lectures that he had attended on the art of interrogation? Put the suspect at ease. Make him think you are on his side. Listen. Take the measure of his character. If you know his character, you will understand the motive. If you understand the motive, then you will understand the crime. And when he makes a false step, pounce! Yes, and, most importantly, trust in your instincts. Martin was not certain how he was going to fulfill this last dictum. Reason and patience were what had always gotten him through. He often wondered if he had any instincts. Or imagination.
Martin’s route took him past the open market in front of the Hôtel de Ville, where farmers and their wives proclaimed the virtues of their fruits and vegetables to anyone who would listen. Women carrying baskets bumped into Martin as they hurried to their favorite stands to inspect the produce and haggle over prices. After the quiet days following the Virgin’s feast, it was good to see the town come alive again.
Unfortunately, the aura of renewed vitality did not follow Martin to the more sedate square that stretched from the great Madeleine Church to the Palais de Justice. The sight of the massive courthouse always made Martin’s heart sink a little. His friend Merckx surely would have pointed out how much the broad pretentious façade, with its eight oversized columns, resembled the entrance to the Bourse, the Parisian stock exchange where the nouveau riche made their fortunes by exploiting the labors of the poor. Of course, the builders of Aix’s Palais de Justice had intended to convey a much loftier purpose, a courthouse dispensing the greatest legal system known to man. Yet social distinctions were impressed upon those who entered the Palais every step of the way. The wealthy arrived directly at the main entrance in their carriages via a narrow cobblestone driveway that arced around the back of a set of low stairs. Aix’s lesser citizens reached the courts by climbing those stairs and crossing the narrow driveway designed for the privileged. As they made their way, the middling and poor were forced to pass between two large statues of famous jurists, forever seated in stony judgment of them and their woes.
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