Bricart huddled up even more. He gave Nicolas a shifty, suspicious look.
‘We’re dealers, that’s all. We buy things and sell them.’
‘You can’t tell me that you’re afraid of being put in the hospital and at the same time claim that you’re a tradesman. You’re not going to make anyone swallow that.’
‘Rapace was the one with the cash. I’ve got nothing. I just helped him.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Finding bargains.’
‘And the cabriolet, was it a bargain?’
‘Rapace was the one who dealt with it.’
Nicolas realised that Bricart had chosen solid ground from which to defend himself: blaming everything on Rapace, who was no longer around to contradict him. The long account of his life as a soldier had merely been a diversionary tactic. By talking about unimportant things he would say nothing about what really mattered. Nicolas needed to attack him from a new angle.
‘Does your leg hurt a lot?’
Relieved, Bricart jumped at the opportunity to talk about something else.
‘Oh, my dear Monsieur, the bloody thing never gives me a moment’s peace. Would you believe it, I still think it’s there. I can feel it itching. I even go numb in the toes. Ain’t it a shame and an ordeal to have to scratch away at nothing. And the stump still hasn’t healed up. It hurts terribly.’
‘Your wooden leg looks solid enough.’
‘I should say so. It was made from the oak of a sling-cart destroyed at Fontenoy.2 A carpenter carved it for me. This leg’s an old friend who’s never let me down.’
He lifted up the tip towards Nicolas, who took hold of the end firmly. Bricart was flung back against the wall and banged his head.
‘God, what does this shuffler want from me?’ he growled.
‘I think you’re a lying rogue,’ Nicolas replied, ‘but I intend to get the truth out of you.’
While keeping hold of Bricart’s wooden leg with one hand, he took a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket with the other. He carefully put the metal tip of the prosthesis onto the centre of the document.
‘This is clear proof,’ he declared. ‘Jean-Baptiste Lenfant, also known as Bricart, I hereby charge you with having been to Montfaucon on the night of 2 February, along with Rapace your accomplice, in order to deposit there the remains of a murdered body. You went there in a horse and cart.’
The prisoner’s terror-stricken expression showed he was desperately searching for a way out. Nicolas had already seen this look on a fox caught in a trap, surrounded by angry dogs. He felt no pride at having reduced a man to such a state of panic but he had to make him talk. He let go of the wooden leg, which banged against the plank-bed on its way down.
‘You’re lying and making it all up,’ protested Bricart. ‘I don’t know anything. Let me go. I haven’t done anything. I’m just a poor old invalid soldier. An invalid!’
He was shouting and the light now showed the sweat pouring down his face.
‘Would you like me to give you some more precise details?’ Nicolas asked. ‘Why can I state categorically that you were in Montfaucon that evening? Because I noted down imprints in the frozen snow.’ He waved the little piece of paper. ‘Imprints of what? Those of a small six-sided object with an irregular outline, which happens to be identical to the tip of your wooden leg. I should add that you were not on your own in Montfaucon …’
‘Hell. There was only Rapace. Go to the devil!’
‘Thank you for confirming that you were with Rapace at the knacker’s yard. Even if you’d sworn the opposite I would have told you that a witness had seen you there. For the last time, my only advice to you is to speak the truth. Otherwise people more skilled than me in such matters will drag it out of you by working on your other leg.’
He was horrified by his own brutality. Its sole justification was that he believed his suggestion was Bricart’s only chance of saving his life, or at any rate of suffering less. The man before him probably was a criminal, but could you judge his misdeeds without seeing them against the background of a life of misfortune? He imagined Bricart as a child, a young man, a wounded soldier and all that suffering went through his mind …
‘Fair enough,’ the other conceded, ‘I was in Montfaucon with Rapace. So what? We were carrying a dead old nag we’d cut up.’
He was struggling to speak, sighing after every word, as if he were short of breath.
‘Cutting up a horse in the dead of night? Stop fooling around, Bricart. You know very well it wasn’t a carcass but a corpse.’
Bricart was picking at a brownish scab on his bald skull, making it bleed. He was shaking his head as if trying to escape from a cruel and haunting thought.
‘I’ll tell you everything,’ he sighed. ‘You don’t look a bad sort. Rapace and I were caught stealing wood in the warehouses of the port of La Rapée. To keep us warm, of course. Winter is hard on the poor.’
‘Go on.’
‘The man who arrested us seemed to know Rapace. He offered us a deal. He asked us to do a favour for one of his friends. He knew everything about us: our names, the barn … He was the devil with a face like an angel. As he talked he had a grin on his face that scared the wits out of us. There was no way out of it. On Friday evening at around ten o’clock we were to be waiting next to the building site of the new square at the bottom of the Tuileries, with a cart and two barrels. We were promised a good reward for a few hours’ work. He even gave us an advance, in louis d’or!’
‘So on the Friday …?’
‘We turned up as arranged with the cart. What could we do? At ten o’clock precisely we were at the corner of the building site, on the town side. There we saw three people arrive in masks.’
‘And the man who’d arrested you, was he there?’
‘I don’t know. There were three in masks with big black capes. It was Carnival.’
‘Did you notice anything in particular?’
‘There was a devil of a cold wind. One of the masks nearly fell off. The hood of the cape swelled out. I thought I saw a woman.’
‘Then what?’
‘They took us to Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré and left us there. An empty cabriolet arrived at about half past eleven. It was driven by a negro. He was the one who had to do all the work while his master was having a good time in a nearby brothel, he told us. He lay in ambush. A man also wearing a mask came out of a house. The negro jumped on him, knocked him unconscious, dragged him into the carriage and stabbed him. Then we went to the edge of the river. He cut up the body on the riverbank. Rapace helped him – he used to be a butcher. We put the pieces in the two barrels. Then he ordered us to dump everything in the knacker’s yard and paid us our dues.’
‘Did you see the dead man’s face?’
‘Yes, a bourgeois, of about fifty.’
‘Then what?’
‘Off we went to Montfaucon. There was a hell of a wind; it looked as if it was going to damn well snow. An awful place. Once we got to the knacker’s yard we emptied the barrel and, to be frank with you, we even messed up the head a bit, like the negro wanted us to.’
‘Was he there?’
‘No, no. He’d left us by the river. He had to disappear to pretend he was the one who’d been killed.’
‘Did he say anything else?’
‘Rapace did try to find out who the dead man was. All he said was it was a married man who’d got in his master’s way.’
‘Very well. What time was the meeting on the building site of Place Louis XV?’
‘Around ten o’clock, I told you. Then the man was killed at around midnight. After he’d been moved from the riverside we set off for La Courtille. Half past two was sounding on a bell tower. One hour later everything was finished.’
‘What did you do with the cart and the barrels?’
‘Your men must have found them, if they know how to look.’
‘Bricart, your version of events will be checked and you’ll be faced with w
itnesses. I hope for your sake you’ve been telling the truth. Otherwise I can assure you you won’t escape torture.’
The man did not reply. He was lost in thought. Now all Nicolas had before him was an old man on whom he could have taken pity, except that the horror of what he had reluctantly admitted to suggested he was capable of even worse. Nicolas picked up the lantern again and banged on the door for the gaoler to let him out. The cell was left in darkness once more.
*
This interrogation left Nicolas feeling frustrated. Many aspects of Bricart’s account seemed odd. If the old soldier were to be believed, then Semacgus was once again the main suspect. In that case Saint-Louis, who was still alive and was acting as his master’s accomplice, had run away or was hiding somewhere. Who was this angel with the look of the devil, a description that inevitably suggested Mauval? And what about those three mysterious masked figures who had ordered the murder and its macabre enactment? Was it really a woman that Bricart had seen? The timescale tallied very well with all the witness accounts. He remained puzzled, however, and wanted to be quite honest with himself. Was it possible that his friendship with Semacgus had affected his judgement and was preventing him from admitting that the navy surgeon might be guilty? What worried him about Bricart’s account was that it was too polished, too perfect in its detail. Furthermore, it seemed unlikely that the motive for Lardin’s murder should have been so clearly expressed, with the risk that the two accomplices might use it against those behind the deed to blackmail them, or to defend themselves if accused … As for Mauval, whose baleful influence was again evident, he was so well protected that nothing could be expected from him as a potential witness.
In the end Nicolas kept coming back to Semacgus. Was it possible that passion had led him to crime? Was Louise Lardin his accomplice? Or Descart? Anything was possible, and the worst thing was that everything was inextricably linked. All this uncertainty made his heart pound.
To calm himself he began to write a detailed account for Monsieur de Sartine, just in case he was not able to have access to him the following day. In fact this exercise enabled him to marshal his ideas. Some things had still not become clear in his mind. He tried to pick up the thread of his dialogue with Bricart, remembering what had struck him in passing, what was missing from the account, and the fleeting impressions that had gone through his mind. He was just dozing off with his pen in his hand when Bourdeau appeared with that characteristic expression of his when he was the bearer of news.
‘Bourdeau, you’ve got something to tell me …’
‘Yes, Monsieur. We have, in the course of our search …’
‘Found a cart and two bloodstained barrels.’
Bourdeau smiled.
‘Congratulations, Monsieur. Bricart talked.’
‘Oh, don’t celebrate too soon. What he told me doesn’t simplify anything, it only makes our task more arduous. Any other discoveries?’
‘The place is full of items, stolen no doubt. I’ve searched Rapace. Apart from odds and ends I only found a broken brass watch.’
Bourdeau handed him a large handkerchief which, once untied, revealed a few sols, a small dark-wood snuffbox, a ball of string and the watch in question. Nicolas immediately launched into the account of Bricart’s interrogation. Three o’clock soon struck and they decided to take some rest. Nicolas returned by cab to Rue Montmartre.
Monday 12 February 1761
He had a short night’s sleep. He was up by six o’clock. After a quick wash he went down to the pantry where a horrified Marion helped him to change his dressings. He had time for a cup of chocolate and a freshly baked roll. The old housekeeper told him that the day before Monsieur de Noblecourt had suffered a severe attack of gout, as he had predicted. He had been forced to stay in his armchair with his foot wrapped in wadding. It was only towards morning that he had been able to lie down and have some rest. According to Marion it wasn’t so much his appetite for food as the white wine which was at fault, and the thirsty prattler had drunk it in copious quantities. She knew from experience its harmful effect on her master’s health.
Nicolas went on foot to Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. He derived a childlike pleasure from leaving his footprints in the overnight snow that was still virgin and clean. On arriving at the Hôtel de Gramont he asked a manservant if the Lieutenant General of Police were available, and was shown in almost immediately. Monsieur de Sartine, who wore a morning gown, was staring at a large open wardrobe containing dozens of wigs. Nicolas knew that every morning he enjoyed admiring and handling his collection.
‘As you have disturbed me so early, Nicolas, you are, I take it, bringing me what I’ve been waiting for. Don’t worry, I am joking. If that were the case I’d know already.’
‘No, Monsieur, but I’ve made progress. I’m following several leads.’
‘Several? That means you must think none of them are definite.’
‘It would be more accurate to say that we are dealing with several plots, all of them interconnected.’
He gave a brief summary of the latest developments in the investigation. The Lieutenant General listened with his back to Nicolas, busily grooming one of his treasures with a small silver brush.
‘You’re trying to pull the wool over my eyes, Monsieur. Everything is crystal clear. Semacgus is in your hands, and what’s more he’s the suspect in both cases. The circumstantial evidence, not to say the proof, is mounting.’
He swung round and continued his train of thought.
‘If everything is connected and if Lardin is dead it should be easy to find you-know-what.’
‘I think, Monsieur, that nothing in this investigation is simple and I doubt whether Bricart told me the whole truth.’
‘Threaten him with torture and use it if necessary.’
‘He’s an old soldier …’
‘First and foremost he’s a gallows bird. So none of this sensitivity for him or for Semacgus, who I know is a friend of yours. Don’t forget that this involves the King and the State. Leave the sentimentality to our philosopher friends. The very things they criticise in their own country are commonplace in the states of the foreign princes they praise to the skies and expect pensions from. By the way, Bourdeau spoke to me about your accounts. I’ve ordered my officials to allocate you more funds. Don’t economise. The stakes are high. You don’t have much time left but you seem to be making progress. Thank Bourdeau on my behalf for having kept you with us.’
Nicolas went back to the Châtelet, his head full of Monsieur de Sartine’s words. Should he subject Bricart to torture? The decision was his and it tormented him constantly. He had already been present at some sessions – like other things it had formed part of his apprenticeship at the Châtelet – and he knew that very few of its victims could endure it and all too often it led to false confessions. He remembered having had a long discussion with Semacgus on this subject. The surgeon considered that excessive pain destroyed the ability to reason in those who suffered it, and that torture, which was inhumane in itself, should be abolished like all abuses inflicted by man on his fellow creatures. Nicolas had not been able to find convincing arguments to counter these observations that further undermined his already shaky belief in the practice. The worst thing was to imagine Bricart tortured, his body swollen by water he had been forced to swallow, or his only good leg imprisoned between wooden planks. They would not even be able to drive the wedges in. Nicolas was quite prepared to accept that the old soldier was a criminal, but he still imagined him as a raw recruit, torn from the bosom of his family. Today he was merely an old man who might be experiencing remorse, but Nicolas could see the desperate adolescent that the royal militia had cast into the horrors of war.
With this thought he arrived at the Châtelet where he found Bourdeau putting the finishing touches to his report on the events of the previous night. When he looked up at Nicolas, the young man was struck by the unusual gravity of his expression.
‘Monsieur, I have some bad n
ews for you. Bricart hanged himself during the night in his cell. The gaoler discovered the body this morning when he was doing his rounds.’
Nicolas remained speechless for a moment.
‘What did he hang himself with?’ he stammered at last. ‘He’d been searched when he was admitted …’
‘A leather strap.’
Bourdeau turned away to avoid the look of horror on Nicolas’s face. The young man pictured himself again untying the prisoner’s hands. At the end of the interrogation he had forgotten the long leather strap that had fallen to the floor. The narrow beam of light from his lantern had prevented him from seeing it.
Bourdeau handed him his report along with the tied handkerchief containing the items found on Rapace. He slipped it all into his coat pocket mechanically.
Notes – CHAPTER XII
1. (1725–1793). Son of the Comte de Toulouse, himself the legitimate son of Louis XIV. He succeeded his father in this office in 1734.
2. A cart for transporting a cannon.
XIII
IN AT THE KILL
Where is the wingèd flight
Or the escape to the depths of the cave
That would save me from a death by stoning?
EURIPIDES
IN the cell nothing had been touched. They gazed at Bricart’s body, hanging at the end of its rope like a dangling puppet. The strap, which had been slung around a bar, had been tied with a slipknot. The prisoner had hoisted himself on to the plank-bed, then flung himself backwards with the help of his wooden leg, which remained jammed at right angles to the wall. This accidental arrangement added a grotesque touch, as if the old soldier had been in the process of climbing up the wall. Bourdeau shook his head and put his hand on Nicolas’s shoulder.
‘This is one of those misadventures that are common in the job. Don’t fret about it and don’t blame yourself for this mistake.’
The Châtelet Apprentice Page 26