The Blood of Lorraine

by Barbara Corrado Pope

  11

  IT WAS A MOMENT OF rare quiet. Clarie and the baby were sleeping, Madeleine had taken Martin’s mother to High Mass, and Giuseppe was sitting in the chair by the fireplace only half-awake, the newspaper hanging limply from his thick, callused hands. Martin tiptoed to the living-room window and was staring out, worrying about Clarie, when he caught sight of an unlikely threesome three stories below, in front of the Steins’ shop.

  He stretched his neck forward, squinting in disbelief. The man in the tophat was his colleague David Singer. Beside him, an elegantly dressed woman was engaged in an intense conversation with a shabby peddler, who stood holding on to the long extended arms of a wooden cart. In the middle of the cart was a stone wheel of the kind used for sharpening tools and scissors. Martin pulled back the heavy lace curtain and leaned to the side for a better view of the trio. The peddler’s face was framed by a long, scraggly gray beard. He wore a tight-fitting cap without a rim and a long black coat that Martin could see had been patched over and over again. He did not look quite French. Was this one of those poor Jewish immigrants that Rocher had complained about? And how would Singer know him? Could it be that Israelites of all classes were on familiar terms with each other?

  The one thing Martin did not want to believe was that Singer had come to see him. Such an unannounced visit would be too extraordinary, a sure sign that something was terribly wrong. During the last few tumultuous days, Martin had not thought about the courthouse. And if something had gone badly at the Palais, he certainly did not want to think about it now.

  Suddenly Singer backed away from the other two; and when he did, the woman urged a package into his hands. Then she reached into a little sack hanging from her wrist, withdrew a coin, and placed it delicately on one of the wagon’s handles. Singer quite abruptly turned and disappeared out of sight. Martin was sure that he had entered the building and was climbing the stairs. But he didn’t know whether Singer intended to stop at the second floor to visit the Steins’ apartment or was coming up another floor, to the Martins’. Troubled, Martin let go of the curtain. For a moment, he considered hurrying to the door and warding off the visit, if indeed Singer was coming to see him. Instead, he convinced himself, calmly and rationally, that his colleague was visiting the Steins. A tentative tapping on the door told him otherwise.

  “I’ll get it,” Martin said, as he straightened out the curtain. He smoothed down his shirt, tucking it into his trousers, and went to the door.

  It opened upon an abashed David Singer, gingerly holding up a large cake box wrapped in thin orange paper and crowned by a blue and silver bow.

  “My wife,” Singer said, as if that were enough to explain his presence, his red face, and the extravagantly adorned offering. It was almost comical enough to get Martin out of his bad humor.

  “Come in, David. Pleased to see you,” although Martin was far from pleased, and very perplexed.

  “When she heard I was going to try to talk to you, she insisted on my bringing something for your family and your visitors.” Singer lowered the cake to waist level and stepped into the foyer. “Oh, sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. First I should say congratulations on your son. I….”

  Singer was not a man to countenance looking ridiculous for even a moment, which is why he kept trying to get Martin to take the cake box. Martin hoped that he was equally flustered by arriving unannounced.

  “Come,” Martin repeated and stepped aside. “I want you to meet my father-in-law.”

  Giuseppe had already risen from his chair, ready to offer his hand to the visitor. But the cake was still a barrier.

  “Here, let me take that from you,” Martin said. “I’ll put it away.

  As soon as Martin took the package from him, Singer gave out a sigh of relief and took off his black beaver tophat.

  Martin carried the cake to the dining-room table and stood with his back to the living room, listening intently to the introductions for any ominous tones in Singer’s voice. He placed his hand lightly on the box, to make sure it was steady. He was torn between apprehension and anger. No matter what had happened, Singer had no right to bring professional problems into his home, most of all not now.

  Determined to keep his feelings to himself, Martin returned to the living room with a smile plastered across his face.

  “Why didn’t Mme Singer come with you? I’d like to thank her.”

  Singer scowled. “Oh, she came,” he said, clenching his jaw. “She’s still downstairs.” After making a slight bow to Giuseppe, he shot a glance at Martin and gestured with this chin toward the window. “May I?” he asked.

  “Of course.” Martin hadn’t dreamed that the mention of his wife would put Singer in a dark mood.

  Singer pulled back the curtains, as Martin had done moments before.

  Martin approached him. “What’s wrong, David?” he asked quietly.

  Singer swallowed hard and let the curtain go. “It’s him. The tinker,” he whispered. “The purveyor of old wives’ tales and superstitions.” When Singer turned away, Martin thought he heard his colleague mutter the word “Polaks.”

  “What did you say?” Martin asked in disbelief.

  “That he’s Polish or Russian, not French, not modern, not rational. He’s the reason that so many people around here despise the Jews. Take a look. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Martin peered out the window. Mme Singer was waving good-bye to the peddler as she headed toward the door. Suddenly, perhaps as a result of Singer’s contempt, it occurred to Martin that the tinker was exactly the type of old-fashioned, traditional Jew that had inspired the dangerous fabrications of the wet nurse and Antoinette Thomas. Martin was certainly not about to voice this observation, or do anything else that might prolong this particular conversation. He desperately wanted to know the real reason for Singer’s unprecedented arrival. So Martin merely shrugged. “He looks like a harmless old man to me. No different from other beggars and peddlers and water carriers you see on the street.”

  “Harmless?” Singer looked up at him. “Imagine if you had a fanatical priest visiting Mme Martin every week. This one comes to my kitchen and fills my wife’s mind with fantasies of the way it used to be, when all the Israelites were supposedly happy and pious and poor. As if it were a good thing that we were forced to live in villages outside the city. As if it were a good thing that most of our grandfathers spent every week, like he does, wandering from town to town, selling cattle or pots or rags to Christian peasants.” Singer closed his eyes and pursed his lips. “Sorry, that’s not why I came. All this has nothing to do with you. It’s just that I didn’t expect him to crawl out of his hole on Sunday. Wherever his hole is,” Singer added caustically.

  Martin put a hand on Singer’s shoulder. “Let’s open the door for your wife.”

  “I’ll do it.” Although Giuseppe had not gotten far from the foyer, evidently he had heard everything. He went out to the head of the stairs to greet her. They heard his voice from the hallway. “You must be Madame Singer. I’m Clarie’s father. And”—one could well imagine the pride swelling his chest—“Henri-Joseph’s grandfather.”

  “Monsieur,” a high, sweet voice responded, and its owner arrived at the door. Mme Singer was a very beautiful woman, perhaps made even more beautiful by the fact that her delicate oval face was flushed with some anticipated or recently experienced pleasure, for her hazel eyes glistened merrily as she entered the living room. Martin got the impression that she was also something of a fashion plate. She wore a crimson coat trimmed with a shiny sable fur collar and cuffs. Most of her thick chestnut-colored hair was hidden underneath a dark red velvet bonnet adorned with ebony feathers. If there was anything exotic, or Jewish, about her, like the slight upward slant of her eyes, it only added to her allure. She strode over to Martin with the confidence of a woman accustomed to wealth, station, and admiration. “Monsieur le juge Martin, David has told me so much about you. Congratulations on your son.”

  M
artin reached for her black-gloved hand which, for just an instant, she hesitated to give to him. This barely perceptible gesture did not escape Singer. “This is how you act after five minutes with him,” he bristled. “Martin is a modern man, not like your tinker. And you,” he said pointedly, “are a modern French woman. You can touch each other.” She let her hand drop to her side, and the glimmer in her eyes dimmed into a plea that her husband not ruin the occasion. Singer’s angry reproof hung uncomfortably in the air, until Giuseppe offered to take “Madame’s coat.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. I’m afraid we’re intruding. We were just out for a stroll, and I thought—”

  “The cake is lovely. Thank you,” Martin intervened. At any other time, meeting Mme Singer might have been a pleasure. Not now. Not with Singer at his shoulder, waiting to tell him something.

  Just then, they heard a thin cry from the bedroom.

  “The baby,” Mme Singer’s face lit up again. “Your son.”

  “Noémie loves babies,” Singer said, and this time he looked at his wife with pride and affection. “My Noémie is a wonderful mother.”

  “Then we’ll see if Clarie and the little Prince are ‘receiving,’” Giuseppe said, chuckling at his own mock pretentiousness as he scurried into the bedroom.

  “Yes, you should meet Clarie and Henri-Joseph,” Martin urged. He was bristling with anxious curiosity. He wanted Singer to himself.

  “But we’ve intruded so much already,” Noémie Singer demurred again, even as she bit her pretty scarlet lip and lowered her eyes.

  “It would be a good idea.” Hands behind his back, Singer bowed slightly toward his wife.

  A second glance passed between them. This time it communicated the perfect understanding of husband and wife. David Singer had a professional duty to perform, and it was her role to find a way to let him do it.

  The two men waited until she was beckoned into the bedroom before they began with the serious business. As if in accord, they returned to the window, which offered two advantages, being farther away from the bedroom door and giving them both, in the mounting tension, something to look at besides each other.

  “I came to warn you.”

  “Of what?” Martin did not even try to hide his irritation.

  “The possible consequences of your actions.”

  The nerve. My actions. What about Singer’s actions, and Rocher’s, and Didier’s? Martin had thoroughly prepared himself for some grumbling about his release of the tanner, Pierre Thomas, who didn’t have the money or the lawyer or the wit to get himself out of trouble.

  “So I let Pierre Thomas go,” Martin retorted. “I charged the wife with a délit, a misdemeanor, and left Didier to decide how long he wants to keep her in prison while I try to wring a confession out of her. I warned Thomas that if he repeats any vicious lies, I will prosecute him to the hilt. As far as I am concerned he is still an innocent man, and still mourning for his son.”

  “And he may also be a killer.”

  For a moment, Martin’s mind went dead, silent, then his ears began to vibrate with a pulsating buzz. Could the fool have actually killed someone? Could this be a repetition of the nightmare he had lived in Aix-en-Provence, when he had had a murderer right before his eyes, and stupidly, tragically kept letting him off the hook? Martin leaned against the wall beside the window frame for support. Finally, he uttered, “Who would Thomas kill?”

  “A mill owner, an Israelite.”

  Martin moistened his mouth with his tongue. “Why do you assume that Pierre Thomas did it?” Despite all his efforts, the buzzing in his head did not subside, and his chest was heaving as his breath got shorter and shorter. He stared into the room, away from Singer. He heard Singer’s words as if they were disembodied, coming from an echo chamber. “The victim owned the mill where the Thomas woman worked.”

  Martin slumped, as his knees almost gave way. This could not be. Not again.

  “But,” Singer said, “we’re not sure yet.”

  “Of what?” Martin whispered.

  “That Victor Ullmann is dead—”

  “Oh my God,” Martin almost shouted, as he turned to Singer. “Then why did you come here?” he hissed. “Why did you—” Clammy with fear, Martin welcomed the hot anger that shot through his body.

  “Ullmann’s missing. Reported by the maid on Friday. There’s the slightest possibility that he went to Paris with his wife on a shopping trip, and he will arrive on the night train carrying her bags and hat boxes. But I doubt it. The maid insisted that he had stayed behind.”

  “Only missing since Friday?” Martin stepped around to Singer, forcing him back against the wall. He wanted to take his friend by the lapels of his elegant, expensive topcoat and shake him. “This Ullmann could be anywhere. With his wife gone, who knows where and with whom?” Martin prayed that Singer did not hear the desperation in his voice.

  “No.” Singer shook his head with maddening calm. “No. If he were here, he would have gone to the synagogue on Friday night. I know him. I know the family. He is a pillar of the community.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” Martin asserted as he stepped away, his hopes evaporating.

  “He is one of our leaders, I tell you, a member of the Nancy Consistory. And if someone could kill him, they could kill any one of us.” Singer’s tone grew more agitated, as if he were taking the possibility of such a murder personally.

  “If Ullmann is so important to you, then why don’t you—” What? Take the case back. Make up for my mistakes. Martin had no defenses left.

  “Didier was very clear,” Singer said. “He told me it was your mess, and you are going to clean it up. He’s furious. That’s why I came. To warn you. You’ve got to see him as soon as possible tomorrow. We arrested Thomas late last night, and the police are looking for the body.”

  So Didier and Singer were already convinced that the man had been murdered, and that the killer was that drunken sot, Pierre Thomas.

  “I’m sorry,” Singer finally said. “I feel responsible for getting you into this.”

  The apology stopped Martin short, mollifying him. Of course, Singer was no more responsible for what Martin had gotten into than the demonically clever Didier. Or that idiot Rocher, who had passed the case on to Singer as a cruel joke. Martin glanced at his friend who was staring at him, waiting for some response. He had no intention of ever telling Singer about his encounter with Rocher. He did not need to stir up the waters more. They were already roiling. In his chest. In his head. At the courthouse. Well, all of them could go to hell.

  “I can’t come in first thing tomorrow,” Martin said, defiantly. “I’ve got to fetch the doctor for Clarie. I promised her.”

  “Get him today.” Singer’s voice was quiet, insistent.

  “No, it’s Sunday. It wouldn’t be right. I’d only go if it were an emergency.”

  “No one cares about bothering me when it is my sabbath,” Singer blurted out.

  Martin was shocked that at this moment, this terrible moment, Singer had the nerve to be so sensitive about being an Israelite. Who cared when his sabbath was? Why couldn’t he be like…Martin clenched his fists, pressing his nails into the palms of his hand, in an attempt to dam up the angry flow of his thoughts. He had always assumed that Singer was like everyone else. Like him, in fact. Now he was beginning not to know what to think.

  “Bernard, listen. Maybe Ullmann is not dead. Or if he is, maybe someone else did it. But you’ve got to take charge. Your career depends upon it. And, perhaps, someone else’s life.”

  Singer was imploring him, again. Not to take on the case this time, but to make Martin realize that he had no choice. At the very least Martin realized, his reputation at the courthouse depended on what he would do next.

  Both of them were startled when Giuseppe came out of the bedroom. “They’re talking. Your beautiful wife is giving Clarie some good advice,” Giuseppe announced with a grin. “And you are watching the snow fall.”

&
nbsp; It was snowing. How could you stare out the window and not even notice the first scattered flakes of the season?

  “We don’t get enough of it in Arles. It makes everything new, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes, of course,” Singer answered Martin’s father-in-law. “New snow for new life. Although,” he glanced out the window again, “it doesn’t look like it’s going to stick.”

  Having no interest in the weather or trying to be polite, Martin moved away from both of them just as Noémie Singer emerged from the bedroom. Martin thought he caught a look of alarm on her pale face, as she glanced at him before going up to her husband. “We must be going,” she said to Singer, taking him by one hand, “dinner, the children.” She took a big breath before turning to Martin. “You have a beautiful son and a lovely wife.” Martin sensed something forced about this praise, something held back. It made him want to rush into the bedroom to see if Clarie and the baby were all right.

  Instead, he stood rooted to the ground, watching as the lovely Mme Singer implored her husband with her eyes to follow. She had something to tell him, Martin was sure of it. Then as if in some slow silent waltz of perfect understanding, Singer looped his arm in hers and led her into the foyer. The ringing in Martin’s ears grew louder. Could he be wrong about the baby too? Giuseppe and his mother had kept telling him that all new mothers worry, that all new babies cry all the time. Should he have been listening to Clarie instead?

  For the next few moments, he felt as if he were pushing his way under water, desperately trying to emerge at a safe destination, at the very place where Noémie Singer smiled and cooed about his tiny son.

  In the foyer he saw only the bowed heads of his guests. He swallowed hard and reached out to shake Singer’s hand. “I think you were right,” he said, keeping his voice steady, not wanting to alarm his father-in-law. “I will fetch the doctor tonight and come to the Palais first thing in the morning.”

  12