The irony was that his most dangerous mistake was the one he would do all over again. Had it not been just to help his oldest friend, an exploited man of the people, escape from certain, torturous death?
Martin tugged at his beard and ran his fingers through his hair. No more! No more thinking. He had to prepare himself. The Picard dinner would be good place to start practicing concealment, something he would have to become an expert at.
He shoved his notes into the drawer, pushed his books against the wall on the shelf above his bed, and smoothed out the covers, in an attempt to hide every part of himself in case his landlord decided to come and fetch him. He left his copy of Le Courrier d’Aix in plain view. Having been forewarned by Picard, Martin had gotten up early to buy the local newspaper. The article had given a fairly accurate account of Solange Vernet’s murder and her circle, until it concluded with an unjustified polemic aimed straight at him. Martin picked up the newspaper and read the last paragraph again.
No one knows why Vernet went to the quarry where she met her tragic end. Unfortunately, the murderer struck just at a time when our prosecutor, Serge Lasserre, and many of the more seasoned magistrates are out of town enjoying the final week of the holidays. Thus it has been left to a young northerner, Bernard Martin, to carry out the investigation. So far, according to our sources, he has questioned only Westerbury himself. In our minds, he is a most unlikely suspect, but the forces of reaction, in the person of the church-going Martin, may want to take this opportunity to persecute the new ideas and their purveyors. We are hoping that the investigation will widen once the prosecutor returns to town. We cannot rest easy with a murderer in our midst.
Church-going? Martin thrust the paper aside. Had someone spotted him at the procession? Or did they label him as a believer simply because he had chosen to arrest a so-called promoter of science and progress? It didn’t matter. It was beginning. It was inevitable. This case would bring pressures from the left as well as the right.
As if on cue, he heard a knock. Martin took the three steps required to reach the door and opened it to find his landlord, smiling smugly, as if he were about to rub his hands together in delight and anticipation. Without being asked, Picard stepped into the room and walked over to Martin’s table.
“Ah, I see you have already read the Courrier. Well, I have something even more interesting downstairs. Can you join me for a talk before dinner?”
“Certainly. Give me a minute and I’ll be right down.”
They stood looking at one another, until Picard realized that he was supposed to leave.
“Yes, monsieur le juge, yes. I can hardly wait.”
As soon as Picard left, Martin dipped his hands in his washbasin and poured the water over his face in a vain attempt to wash away his weariness. As he wiped his face and hands with the towel hanging by his basin and tied his cravat, Martin rehearsed the system that he had devised for remembering the names of each of Picard’s brown-haired daughters. The eldest was Lucie, about twenty years old. The most lucide, reasonable and sensible of the lot. Bernadette, perhaps nineteen or so, had been named for the peasant girl who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. Undoubtedly this had been Madame Picard’s choice. Bernadette seemed to be the most pious of the sisters. The youngest was easy, eleven-year-old Amélie, amiable, as her name implied. She was plump and giggly, and so obviously the apple of her father’s eye. Martin smiled. Even he found her free-spiritedness amusing. The bustling matron, Mme Picard, was Marguerite, Martin recounted as he walked down the stairs. The cook was Hélène, the more-traveled cousin of Louïso, who was proud of the fact that she had once worked in a restaurant in Lyon. And M. Picard, if he once again insisted upon the intimacy of using their Christian names, was René. Martin was as ready as he’d ever be.
Apparently, so were the Picards. As soon as the door opened, Martin caught a whiff of the smoky scent of frying lardons, thick bits of bacon, coming from the kitchen at the other end of the hall. The hallway itself was overheated with cooking preparations and an overabundance of humanity. All three daughters were lined up to eye Martin as his landlord let him in. After the obligatory greetings, Picard shooed his daughters away. “Girls, girls, let the judge in the door. And do run along. Leave us men alone for a few minutes.”
“I thought that men only wanted to be alone to smoke after dinner.” Amélie was precocious—and emboldened because she knew she could never make her father angry.
“Today, my precious, we will talk before. Go on, now. Help your mother!” Picard gave Amélie a little pat on her well-covered behind, and sent his daughters off in a rustle of taffeta.
“Sorry,” Picard apologized, “they’re all a-twitter because of the murder.”
Just as Martin feared. Nonetheless, he managed a smile.
“Let’s go in here.” Picard led him into the parlor. “I have something to show you that you will find very interesting.”
Once Picard closed the door, the room was cooler and blessedly insulated from the smells that had set off sudden hunger pangs. Martin held his hand over his growling stomach. Oblivious to his plight, Picard led him to a small round table that held a decanter, two aperitif glasses, and a folded newspaper, which he thrust into Martin’s hands.
“Have you seen this?”
Martin read the masthead, La Croix de Provence, with a sinking heart. “No, but I have seen the northern version, La Croix de Lille.” It was his mother’s favorite newspaper, and during his last visit had been the starting point of religious and political discussions at the DuPont table.
“Well, then you know that it is run by the Assumptionists, the same priests that run all those sick people down to Lourdes.” Picard lowered his voice. “I had to make sure to bring this home with me last night or they would have never let me in the house. It’s got all the latest news on the National Pilgrimage. How many trainloads they managed to get down there. How many miracles, complete with heart-rending descriptions of every single cure.” He rolled his eyes to demonstrate what hogwash he thought it all was. “Women, you know.”
Martin certainly did know. If all had gone well, Marthe DuPont would be arriving home with her “poor sick ones” this very day. But why did Picard, presumably a liberal, bring the reactionary clerical paper into his home?
The notary grabbed the paper back and opened it up. “That’s not the most interesting thing in it. Not for us. They’ve got wind of you all over the region, my boy. Here.” He pointed to an article titled “The Hand of God” and left the Catholic newspaper in Martin’s unwilling hands. “Read it! And I’ll pour us some nice British port. You may need it.”
Martin settled slowly into the armchair while he began. The article was much less accurate than the one carried in the Courrier, and much more chilling.
The hand of God reached deep into the Bibémus quarry during the feast of the Virgin. While the pious women of Aix gathered to pay homage to Our Blessed Mother, a retired hatmaker, Solange Vernet, was being strangled in an isolated and deadly spot far from the holy celebration. Is it not striking that on the day marking the miracle of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary’s body into heaven, a worldly woman infested with ungodly ideas should be cast down into the deepest hole of our environs, prefiguring her descent into hell?
This was the tone Martin remembered so well from his last visit to Lille: righteous, arrogant, and wrong.
As is well known in Aix, the article continued, “Madame” Vernet was the paramour of George Westerbury, an Englishman who propagated the heresies of English science, spreading blasphemous lies about the origins of the world. These sinners even hosted a weekly “salon” to discuss their heretical ideas, in imitation of our foolish aristocratic ancestors, who opened their homes to the likes of Voltaire and Rousseau, and unwittingly brought Revolution and destruction on themselves. Fortunately the noblewomen of France have repented these sins and denounced the errors of the 18th century. True French noblewomen now bravely uphold Catholic and monarchical v
alues against the braying of republicans and socialists. But Solange Vernet was no noblewoman. She was a Parisian import of indeterminate origin, who enticed the so-called “men of ideas” into her web, where she ensnared them in the deadly sin of overweening pride in their own weak intellects. Worse, Westerbury and his paramour were not content to limit their evil deeds to men of weak morals and intellectual pretensions. They rented a hall so that this soi-disant professor could give public lectures, propagating the lie that the earth is millions of years old. They offered “courses for ladies” in a shameless attempt to capture the souls of the wives, mothers, and daughters of Aix.
We do not know what drove Solange Vernet to the quarry, where no decent woman would wander alone. Was she searching for some proof of Westerbury’s blasphemies? Or was she going there to commit a sin of the flesh, so heinous and so secret that she had to hide it even from her lover? Let us not be ensnared into the trap of committing sins of the imagination. God Our Father sees all, knows all, and judges all. And He decided that this woman’s sins would not go unanswered on a day meant to celebrate the Most Immaculate of all Women.
Martin could feel his jaw clench, and his fingers tightened around the paper. Everything he was reading was to be expected. Yet it still felt like a violation. The next paragraph almost made him cry out.
We are proud to report, too, that despite the pleadings of Solange Vernet’s maid and the request of our Republican judiciary, the brothers of the Madeleine Church refused to bury the woman’s body in holy ground. The rest lies in the hands of the godless Republican courts. Most of the agents of the impious government are now away, indulging in their leisures. Only the young, inexperienced Parisian Bernard Martin remains to pursue the case. Is his soul pure enough to see through the lies and deceptions of Westerbury and the other “men of science”?
The article left the question hanging, but did not leave a doubt about the last violation of Solange Vernet’s poor body. They had buried her in a potter’s field. And the boy? Where did they bury him? Why hadn’t anyone told Martin, especially Franc, who would have known about this final insult? It took all of Martin’s efforts not to squash the paper in his hands and throw it on the floor. Franc probably had not told him because he was a pious hypocrite who judged Solange Vernet every bit as harshly as the reactionary priesthood.
Picard was staring at him, waiting for some reaction.
“Your whole family has read this?” Even as he said this, Martin knew that there was little hope that they had not.
Picard lifted his glass and shrugged his shoulders. “If they didn’t read it here, I’m sure the priests would read it to them next Sunday, word for word. This is going to be big. Huge, in fact. It’s not often that we have a murderer on the loose in Aix.”
“Right,” Martin mumbled as he took his glass and sipped. “Right.” The port tasted sickly sweet. Martin really did not want to drink before he had something in his stomach. He set the glass down.
“This could make your career, my boy. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course, but that’s not why—” Martin was not at all surprised to hear his landlord echoing Franc’s crass words.
“Of course not! I wasn’t at all implying that that was why you would try to do the right thing. And,” Picard raised his fist in enthusiasm, “to stand up to these black-cassocked bullies in the bargain. Such scandal!” Picard shook his head. “Quite lurid. Had I read the local section before my eldest got ahold of it, I might have snipped it out, just for your sake today. Sorry. You can’t imagine what ideas are running around in their heads.” Picard tapped Martin’s knee with the refolded paper. “Just wanted to prepare you.”
Picard did not look at all sorry. He looked like a man anticipating an entertaining meal.
“I can’t really say anything about the case.” This would have to be Martin’s most effective defense.
“Oh, yes, yes, I know, but before they come in to get us, can you tell me if Solange Vernet was violated?”
Just then a breathless Amélie opened the door. “Dinner’s ready. And it’s Hélène’s special salad, so you have to come at once!”
“Salade Lyonnaise?” Picard’s eyes gleamed with pleasure as he looked upon his excited little daughter.
“Yes, sir,” the girl said brightly, then turned and ran off.
Picard rose and winked at Martin. “You know, in this house, the real boss is Hélène. So we’d better go. But before we do, can you tell me if she was—”
Martin shook his head. He had no intention of telling René Picard that Solange Vernet had been raped.
The first course went smoothly. As soon as they were seated in the airy sun-filled dining room, the Picard elders at either end of the table, and Martin beside Lucie and directly across from Bernadette, Hélène took over. She circled around them, placing a steaming poached egg on top of their individual bowls of vinegary mixed greens and lardons. “Eat before the eggs get cold,” she commanded, as she flew out of the room and closed the door.
“Eggs laid just yesterday,” was the only remark Picard allowed himself before digging in. Mme Picard tried to maintain a dignified posture, but the girls, who had been suffering through the torture of the inviting aromas for hours, pressed their forks into the slightly cooked yolks with undisguised relish, smearing the yellow contents all over the salad and dipping their bread to catch the runoff. Martin hesitated, and then followed suit. He had never seen a hot egg planted on a salad before, but the results were wonderful, especially since the creative urgency of mixing, stirring, dipping, and stuffing their mouths kept the girls well occupied.
“Ahh.” Picard pushed his bowl forward. “One of Hélène’s specialties. But only a preview of her skills. Next, duck with olives. Duck fresh from the country.”
“And old olives from last year!” Amélie loved teasing her father as much as he loved teasing her.
“Amélie!” The mother nodded her head toward Martin, signaling that they had a guest, and good manners were expected.
Bernadette wiped her mouth with her napkin and shot her sister a look across the table. Martin was not sure which member of their family the older girls were passing judgment on. Before anything else was said, Hélène set a large, steaming tureen in front of Picard. “At last, I can turn off the oven. Your cheese and pears are on the sideboard. Call me when you need dessert.” She waddled away with a huge sigh, fanning herself with a towel.
“Dessert, and not before,” remarked Lucie, having her own fun. Then she bent toward Martin as she explained, “Our cook hates to use the oven in the heat.”
“Hélène or no Hélène,” Picard declared, “surely we need to put forth some effort when we have such a special guest.” All eyes once again fell on Martin. He cleared his throat and tried to act as if Picard’s distribution of the stew were all he had on his mind. When everyone had a full plate in front of them, they began the intricate work of cutting the flesh away from the bone. This took some effort, but not enough to discourage conversation.
Mme Picard was the first to speak. “Before the investigation, M. Martin, did you know Solange Vernet?”
The dark stew was delicious, much more earthy than anything he would have gotten at his mother’s table. The food and wine were putting Martin in a better mood. He realized that to be sociable he would have to say a little. “Not really,” he said, then put a piece of duck into his mouth, chewing slowly to discourage other questions.
“Well, I did.” Forks almost dropped as the three daughters turned to their mother. “Mother!” exclaimed Bernadette, “you never told—”
“There was no reason to,” said Mme Picard as she popped an olive into her mouth and smiled at her husband. The plain brown hen was enjoying her chance to trump the peacock at the other end of the table.
“How? Where?” Lucie leaned past Martin to get a better look at her mother.
“At two of our charity meetings.”
“At the church?” Bernadette asked, surp
rised. Although Martin kept his silence, he was every bit as interested in the answers as the Picard girls.
“Yes. You see, your father is not the only person in this household who gets to meet interesting people. She came and wanted to help out, although I must say she did not have a proper idea of what a ladies’ organization does. She asked if we helped poor abandoned girls and babies and little children, as if we went directly to their homes to feed them and change their diapers. We told her about our yearly fair and the annual charity ball, and how this provides money for the sisters, who are in a much better position than we are to go directly to the poor. After two meetings, she seemed to lose interest, and I must say, although we invite everyone in,” she emphasized to Martin and Picard as if she knew that men would wrongly accuse her of small-mindedness, “most of us were not that interested in having her, either.”
“So you’ve both seen her,” Amélie said, looking from her mother to her father, “and maybe you too.” She had caught the ambiguity in Martin’s answer about whether he “knew” Solange Vernet. “I mean,” she suddenly blushed, “did you see her before she died?”
“Amélie, please.” Bernadette nudged her little sister. “Let’s not talk about corpses at the table.”
“I just wanted to know if she was beautiful or intelligent.”
Oh yes, Martin thought, she was all that and more. How much more? Had she really thought the upper-class women of Aix would welcome her into pious circles? Perhaps, unlike them, she was willing to go into hovels to feed and care for the poor. Clearly Solange Vernet had had no understanding of how well-brought-up women like Mme Picard and Marthe DuPont performed their “charities.”
“Well,” Picard was not one to lose an opportunity to be the center of attention, “I think some people might have found her attractive. She certainly was fashionable. In a Parisian sort of way, of course. And, yes, I would say she was intelligent—”
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