Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  Smoothing the lapels of his frock coat, he raced up the stairs in the direction the footman had pointed him. He found himself in a high-ceilinged hall, its floor a chessboard of vast black and white tiles. His hat and gloves were duly taken and his name asked. A moment later he heard it ring through a long rectangle of a room which bore little resemblance to the ones he had previously visited.

  This was a grand, formal chamber, its walls lined with portraits and gilt-framed mirrors, so that everything was reflected into a dizzying distance. In the corner nearest to him a quartet occupied a small platform, their instruments at the ready. At the far side stood a long table arrayed with food, close to it eight or nine smaller round ones, set for dining. He had an impression of some forty or fifty people in vivid, laughing groups, multiplied ad infinitum, jewels and silks shimmering, white ties stark against black.

  He held back, suddenly as timid as a boy in short pants preparing to confront an assembly of towering adults. An odd scene flew into his mind. He must have been about thirteen, maybe less. His parents had asked him to look after Raf and Ellie while they held a lunch party – a special one, for James had been strictly warned that there was to be no disturbance. The children insisted on standing on the stairs and peeking in through the half-open door and suddenly Raf had made a dash, quickly followed by Ellie. James had held back at the threshold, his heart racing, his ears waiting for the blast of his father’s stentorian voice, the censure first of his siblings, but then, most emphatically of himself.

  Only the last had occurred. Raf had rushed into his mother’s arms, Ellie into her father’s. The parents had laughed and embraced the children. James had watched, unsure whether he, too, was now to come in, but the set of his father’s eyes as they fell on him above Ellie’s tousled head, had communicated an emphatic ‘no’. Later that glance had taken on solidity, had been fleshed out in a long and severe reprimand. James had been negligent. Had failed in his duty.

  ‘James Norton. Enchantez, Monsieur.’ The sound of his name overrode James’s reverie. A burly, bearded man who looked as if he might be more at home in worker’s blues than in stiff shirt and frock coat was addressing him with surprising warmth. His eyes were a clear, vulpine blue. ‘I am a friend of your brother’s. You speak French, of course?’

  James nodded, noticed that a glass had somehow found its way into his hand. Cool champagne tickled his throat. How long had he been standing here?

  ‘I am Gustave Fromentin. You have seen my painting, I hope, in your brother’s home?’

  ‘Yes, yes indeed. It’s fine. Very fine. Altogether astonishing, in fact.’

  The man bowed slightly and, like a surrogate host, drew James into the midst of the room. He introduced him to a woman of haughty mien, great clusters of emerald at her throat, and then to a count with an unpronounceable name. He was very tall, monocled, and his Adam’s apple bounced up and down as he repeated James’s name with a lilting slowness which rendered it as multi-syllabic as his own.

  ‘A fitting night, isn’t it, Fromentin,’ the woman spoke, ‘for Marguerite’s last gathering of the season?’

  ‘You mean because of Dreyfus?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Her face was a mixture of impatience and exaltation. ‘At last. The poor man is on his way home from Devil’s Island. He boarded the Sfax today. After four gruelling years.’ She turned towards the count, her eyes narrowing ‘Not that my husband, here, is pleased.’

  ‘I’ve told you, Françoise, and I’ll tell you again and again,’ the count’s neck bobbed in mounting fury, ‘your so-called victory for the Republic marks the end. The end of everything we believe in.’

  ‘You believe in. Leave me out of this. I have no time for your friends in the General Staff and the Ministry of War and their atrocious conspiracies against our freedom. Our Republic.’ With a savage swish of skirts, she turned on her heel.

  The count shook his head in something like sadness. ‘Our women are turning into men, Fromentin. La Bernhardt triumphs as Hamlet. My daughter insists on studying the law. My wife backs her up. You know, until Zola wrote his blasted article, I don’t believe Françoise had ever heard of Dreyfus. Me, j’accuse Zola!’

  ‘But isn’t that exactly what writers are for, mon ami?’ Madame de Landois was suddenly at their side. She was wearing a dress of some rich, silvery concoction which nonetheless gave an impression of warmth and lit her eyes. Her bared shoulders and arms were white and beautiful.

  ‘Ah, Monsieur Norton,’ she addressed James in French. ‘I am so glad you could join us.’ She gave him her hand. ‘You will be at ease in no time. I promise you.’ Her mouth moved in complicit laughter. ‘And there are some people who might interest you.’

  ‘Is my brother here?’

  She looked round in what he felt was a feint of casualness. ‘I do not believe so. But I fully expect him. His favourite musicians are here.’

  As if the words were a signal, James heard strings being tuned. Voices fell away. A lingering melody began to undulate through the room, haunting the corners, turning back on itself with a rising nostalgia. James sought out a chair and let the music play through him.

  The violinist was a slender young woman with the purest of profiles. His thoughts turned inevitably to Olympe. She had performed here Madame de Landois had told him, but not in what capacity. Was it in this room that she had met the man who signed himself as Marcel? James studied the rows of faces – clean-shaven, moustachioed, bearded. Any one of them might do for the part.

  His eyes fell on a familiar figure. Durand, the Chief Inspector. He had last seen him coming out of Olympe’s apartment. Now his deliberately casual stance belied a certain nervousness. His square chin was an inch too high, his short, strong legs firmly planted, his arm crossed over his stomach in Napoleonic mimicry. One hand delicately teased the curl of his dark moustache. He was certainly not one of Marguerite’s regulars, James thought. So she must have invited him for a purpose. He sought out her face, but her back was to him, the burnished curls piled high with an intricacy of combs. Maisie had once had her hair arranged with that kind of sophistication. He hadn’t told her, but he had found it troubling, as if a stranger had taken over her person and obliterated the sweet simplicity of her face.

  He returned his attention to the Chief Inspector who was swaying slightly on the balls of his feet. Their eyes met and Durand nodded with evident pleasure. Surprising that the man should recognise him. They had never been properly introduced. Perhaps it was less recognition than a happy acknowledgment of familiarity in a place where few were familiar to him. He would seek him out later, James promised himself, returning the greeting. It would be useful to find out how the police inquiries were progressing.

  The music had taken on an aching dissonance. He watched the young violinist, then surveyed the room in search of another figure he had to admit he was interested in – Marguerite’s husband. He examined faces, settled on a tall loose-limbed man who had aristocracy written into the bridge of his nose and the indolent cast of his features. He was standing to one side of the gathering, his expression marked by boredom and reverie in equal measure.

  As music gave way to applause, James found Fromentin once more at his side.

  ‘Which one of these gentlemen is our host?’ James heard himself asking before he could stop himself. Fromentin’s eyebrow arched in momentary consternation. He chuckled. ‘Of course. There is no reason for you to know. Our dear Marguerite and the Conte de Landois have lived their separate ways since – oh I don’t know. Certainly before I met her. He has a property in the Loire, I believe.’ He waved his arm as if the distance were more than one could begin to consider.

  ‘I see. Excuse my curiosity.

  ‘No, no.’ He seemed about to say something more on the subject when a brunette with vivid, laughing eyes put her arm through his.

  ‘So when will you at last decide to take up this promised portrait, mon cher?’

  ‘Tomorrow, if I could. But alas … Let me in
troduce you to Monsieur Norton.’

  The woman sat down beside them at one of the round tables. A man followed. He had granite features and oddly small hands which he used to execute large, sweeping gestures. James soon learned he was a deputy though he didn’t catch his party affiliation. Durand startled him by joining their group and for a moment, James had the impression that the little man’s smile was less friendly than stealthy. He made his own deliberately candid.

  Two women followed Durand, the first was the violinist who had entertained them. Close to, she looked barely old enough to be out so late. The second was a thin, but striking redhead with a wry curl to her lips. Finally the indolent figure he had wrongly picked out as Marguerite’s husband took up a place. Fromentin introduced him as a writer.

  A single chair remained empty and James looked round, assuming it was intended for his absent brother. But there was no sign of Raf. As if he had read his mind, Durand murmured, ‘I, too, had hoped to meet your brother here, Monsieur Norton.’

  ‘I dare say he’ll turn up in due course.’

  The Chief Inspector nodded, placidly enough, but there was something in his manner that put James on edge even when he turned to speak to his neighbour.

  Conversation leapt and bubbled. James surprised himself by being able to follow its course. Caught in a sea of French, he had to swim or drown, so he swam, but the effort meant that he almost failed to appreciate the excellence of the pâté, the creaminess of a soup subtly tinged green, the delicate slivers of fish served with a medley of vegetables.

  The deputy’s voice rose above the others at the table. The flourish of his hand gestures silenced everyone.

  ‘You’ll agree with me, Monsieur l’Inspecteur. It’s not a question of left or right.’ He waved his wine glass dangerously. ‘The press has abdicated all sense of responsibility and replaced it by a love affair with sensation. It’s bad for the health of the nation.’ His eyes targeted the writer. ‘It’s not only their daily tittle-tattle, the smut, the attack on reputations, so that not even the president is safe. It’s the torrid language. Politics, the news, world affairs – everything is now conveyed to us in the sensationalist manner of the roman feuilleton. Everything has become a cheap novel.’

  The writer raised a languorous hand as if to stifle a yawn.

  ‘You can mock. But have you read the scientists on this, the doctors? Why just the other day, Bernheim was arguing that the vivid images you writers give us leave a lurid photographic imprint on the ordinary mind – without our even being aware of it. They act insidiously, suggestively. They induce a neurophysiological disinhibition which lessens responsibility. They stir, they hypnotise. Look at the way people will follow any self-styled leader. Look at the way they mass together in strikes, in protests. Your images, your language provoke …’

  ‘Yes.’ Durand was suddenly excited. ‘And they provoke imitation. People, simple ordinary people behave as if they were in some kind of trance, on the edge of madness. They imitate violent crimes.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the deputy nodded. ‘Look at our recent crimes, all recounted by your cohort in gross detail so that they provoke more and more imitations. Women throwing vitriol in the faces of their lovers, disfiguring them for life, taking up pistols like demented furies in a cheap drama …

  ‘Ah really, Monsieur Parmentier. Next you’ll be telling us that it is only women who are suggestible. We poor women who are prone to crimes of passion. I hardly expected this of you.’ The woman with the striking red hair challenged the deputy with a look James couldn’t quite interpret.

  The man shrank into his chair, his face sheepish, his eyes downcast. ‘No, no,’ he murmured.

  ‘But that is precisely the case, Madame. The statistics prove it,’ Durand intervened. ‘Why just this week a woman …’

  Madame de Landois slipped into the empty place at their table. She had, James now realised, been making the round of them all.

  ‘What is precisely the case, Chief Inspector?’ She smiled encouragingly at Durand.

  ‘We were just talking, chère Madame, about how suggestible wom …’ he faltered, ‘yes, how open to suggestion people can be. I was about to mention the tragic case of your acquaintance, Olympe Fabre.’

  James sat up straighter in order not to miss a word.

  ‘Your evidence has given you a lead?’ Marguerite asked, her head tilted at an attractive angle.

  Durand cleared his throat. ‘I believe so. As Monsieur le Deputé has said, the factor of the vivid imprint left on the mind by strongly emotional words and images plays its part. The rational mind may be quite unaware of its intentions under the influence of such suggestion. And as we know actresses are highly suggestible creatures.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The redhead at James’s side released an exaggerated breath.

  Durand puffed up his chest perceptibly and cast James what was decidedly a canny glance.

  ‘Monsieur Norton, our advocate friend from America, will know exactly what I mean, from his own experiences of the criminal court, when I talk about the sway of irrational impulses. I glimpsed him at the Vaudeville last night.’

  James leaned forward nervously. He hadn’t noticed the Chief Inspector at the theatre. Nor did he know where the man had learned quite so much about him.

  ‘Like me, he was inevitably thinking of the impact the play Olympe Fabre performed in night after night might have had on her tragic actions. As you know, Madame, in the play there is a suicide pact. The heroine commits a crime of passion. She kills herself, in the full expectation, I imagine, that her lover will do the same.’

  A hush had settled on the table. Everyone stared at Marguerite. Her brow was gathered in serious consideration.

  ‘I see, Chief Inspector. I do see. With the slight difference that Olympe was neither a woman married to a man twice her age, nor had a child, it now only remains for you to find the absent party to her double suicide. Are you hoping that another body, this time a young man’s, will turn up in the Seine? Do you know who this person might be?’

  Marguerite’s tone bordered on irony without quite toppling over into it. James was unsure of her intent and was about to intervene when the leap of emotion in Durand’s face held him back. The man’s features held all the marks of someone who had just suffered a savage slur on his reputation.

  If Marguerite were a man, James felt certain, Durand would now challenge her to one of the city’s famed duels. Instead he fingered the edge of his knife, which lay innocently enough on the table. As if unaware of his action, he tested its sharpness on his thumb, back and forth, forth and back, until a tiny drop of blood appeared. Surprised, Durand blotted it quickly on his napkin and said with steady authority. ‘Surely, this is not the moment for such speculation, Madame.’

  Marguerite gave him a charming smile. It wiped away any negative interpretation he might have made of her earlier comments. ‘You are altogether right, Chief Inspector. I am, as you must know, very pleased that you are putting all your skills into the matter of my young friend’s death and that it haunts you as it does me. Your Commissaire speaks very highly of you.’ With that, she rose from the table. ‘We shall talk more in due course.’

  James followed her with his eyes, saw her sinuous form move in and out of the mirrored maze until it vanished mysteriously. He had a sense that he had missed some important cue, but he wasn’t certain quite what it might be.

  Later, after they had all risen from their tables and he had been introduced to more people than he could hope to remember and the quartet was playing again, he caught a glimpse of the Chief Inspector and Marguerite half hidden behind a column on which a bronze dancer stood. He moved in their direction, placing himself casually in front of the pillar. He was almost certain that in the intensity of their conversation, they wouldn’t see him.

  ‘Frankly, Chief Inspector,’ Marguerite was saying. ‘I do not think you are on the right track. Rafael Norton is not capable of such foolishness.’

  James stiff
ened. His mind careened. He almost abandoned his hiding place for direct confrontation, then thought better of it. Marguerite was doing his work.

  ‘Double suicide. No. No. It is not in his style.’

  ‘People we admire,’ the Chief Inspector italicised the word, ‘can often blind us to their less honourable, less rational parts.’

  ‘That may be so, Chief Inspector, but I doubt this particular intrigue that you have invented. Olympe may have been capable of suicide, but not as part of such a banal plot. There was no reason.’

  ‘Monsieur Norton could well have feared the arrival of his older brother. A Jewess, after all, a Jewess with a less than immaculate past would hardly be someone to bring into a respectable family.’

  There was silence for a moment and James imagined Marguerite shaking her head emphatically.

  ‘All the gossip at the theatre points only to him,’ Durand was insistent. ‘If you think that they didn’t mutually persuade each other into suicide, the romantic suicide of doomed, despairing lovers, and that he was somehow interrupted in the act, then the crime becomes even more serious. We will have to suppose that he persuaded or helped her to her death in a fit of jealousy or out of a sense of dishonour because she had betrayed him with some unworthy rival. There was another man, someone at the theatre mentioned. But I don’t have a name. Yes. Either that, or Monsieur Norton’s love had grown cold and he found an expedient way of ridding himself of a mistress who had become too persistent.’

  ‘No, no, no, Monsieur l’Inspecteur. None of this fits at all with my knowledge of these two people. You will have to find some evidence to convince me.’ Marguerite’s voice had a tremor in it. ‘My own sense is that you need to cast your net wider.’