He had cut off her left nipple. Most of the more than twenty-five subsequent slashes were directed at the abdomen and sexual organs. Even without magnification, I could tell that the knife was not the one that had been used on Rosalba Lombardi—the blade was broader, the weapon much larger and clumsier. The report did not say whether traces of semen had been found.
From the police report, I knew that Eugénie Colombe had left the textile mill where she worked shortly after lunch, with the explanation that she felt unwell and thought a little fresh air might help. The factory overseer, apparently one of the more humane of his kind, had agreed to this and had merely specified that she had to be back within an hour if she wanted to be paid for the day’s work. He had told the police that Eugénie was a dependable and skillful weaver who normally did her work quickly and well. There was “no trouble with Eugénie.” When she did not return to work, he noted as much in the pay book but did not give it further thought. It was not until her mother wondered why she had not come home from the factory that a form of alarm was raised. The concern at first was limited to asking around among Eugénie’s friends and colleagues. One of them revealed that Eugénie had a “secret sweetheart,” a twenty-three-year-old cooper’s journeyman from the neighboring town of Saint-Pierre-sur-L’eau. He was not all that secret since most of the factory’s girls knew him and had seen him and Eugénie together on several occasions. But he insisted that he and Eugénie had not planned to see each other before Saturday and that he had not heard from her.
On the way to the factory the next day, one of the weavers had noticed a shoe in the grass next to the path. It was Eugénie’s. When they followed the trail through the hay field from that starting point, they found first the spot where she had been killed and later poor Eugénie, half hidden in the shrubbery.
The police immediately arrested the sweetheart, just to be on the safe side. But luckily for him he had been at work all day and had then gone out to a tavern with the other journeymen. They had to let him go. For the time being, the authorities had no other suspects and no other leads in the case.
Eugénie was nineteen. She had worked at the mill since she was twelve. She was, according to her mother and the neighbors, a good girl who went to mass every Sunday and every Saturday paid her mother half of her weekly wages for room and board. She had apparently never had any beau except for the cooper’s journeyman, and he insisted that his intentions were honorable and that he had not “forced himself” on her. He wanted to get married as soon as they could afford it. One of Eugénie’s closest friends said that Eugénie did not feel quite as sure, and that was the reason she had not told her mother about the relationship.
“What do you think, Madeleine?” asked the Commissioner, who had read the reports behind me and now sat turning one of the photographs in his large hands. “Have we acquired a Jack the Ripper of our own?”
I shook my head and sipped my café au lait. It was lukewarm because I had forgotten it while concentrating on the report.
“I would prefer not to think that in peaceful Varonne there are two men on the loose who would maltreat women and women’s bodies in this way,” I said. “Two young women, in the same district, within a month and a half . . . one would think there had to be a connection. Yet there are also many differences. No organs are missing in the case of Eugénie. The knife is different. The professions of the two women are entirely different; they are not even of the same nationality.”
“Do you think that it is relevant that Rosalba Lombardi is Italian?”
“I don’t know. I definitely do not think she was killed in a fit of xenophobic rage; that does not fit the evidence. My point is just that they are so different that there are unlikely to be many people who have met them both.”
“You are right,” the Commissioner said thoughtfully. “If it is the same murderer, that would be a way to look for him—to find a man who could have met them both.”
“And if it is not the same murderer after all, that effort would be a complete waste of time,” I said.
“That is the way of it with police work,” sighed the Commissioner. “But Marot is in charge, not I.”
June 28–30, 1894
The following days, the newspapers were full of speculation and comparisons, and the persistent “Christophe” from Varonne Soir even related a “conversation by telephone” with Dr. Horrocks Openshaw, an English surgeon and coroner who had examined the kidney Jack the Ripper had reputedly mailed to George Akin Lusk, the head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Dr. Openshaw had subsequently himself received a letter purporting to be from the killer—that is, if it was the notorious murderer who was the source of the letter, and not, for example, an interfering journalist who wanted to have something to write about . . .
Unfortunately, Dr. Openshaw had not felt like telling “Christophe” very much and almost nothing of medical relevance. Such a pity. As Dr. Openshaw was also the curator of the London Hospital’s Pathology Collection, he was someone with whom I would have dearly liked to discuss our own homicides, had I been fortunate enough to converse with him over the telephone.
I did not know if Inspector Marot paid any further notice to what he called my “theory.” But as the Commissioner had pointed out, the investigation was now in the hands of Marot and his staff, and there was not much we—he, Papa, and I—could do about it. Life went on—and with it, also death. The following week, I helped my father examine four bodies that are not relevant to this story. One was a weaver, like Eugénie Colombe had been, it is true, but her death was neither violent nor inexplicable. Her lungs were so full of textile dust that she had finally given up the fight to breathe.
Her autopsy was conducted under primitive conditions in a room at Saint Bernardine’s Chapel of Rest, since the death occurred in this hospital. My father remained there afterward to look after a living patient while I headed home. It was only a short stroll from Saint Bernardine to Carmelite Street, which was one of the reasons my father and mother had originally moved there. I had walked the route countless times since I was a little girl—knew every house, every sound, every shadow, and every bump in the road. I knew the people who lived there, and they knew me. I nodded to the people I met, called good evening up to an open window, was as usual waylaid by the raucous gaggle of boys playing in the yard behind the old cotton spinning mill.
“I don’t have anything for you tonight,” I said apologetically. And because they knew me, they believed me and turned back to their game.
I stopped for a moment when I reached Chez Louis. It was still dark and closed, with rough boards nailed across the empty windows. A young man had stopped like I did to take in the sad sight while he smoked a cigarette. It was Paul Tessier, the blacksmith’s eldest boy. He and I had played together as children.
“Evening, Maddie.”
“Good evening, Paul.”
“Idiots,” he said after a short pause, presumably referring to the vandals who had ransacked the restaurant. Paul had been a silent boy who did not spare a word if actions would suffice, and as an adult he had not grown much more garrulous.
“Yes,” I said. “All this hatred just seems pointless and cruel.”
“Geraldo?”
Paul was apparently informed about the rescue action.
“Healing well, but he is going home to Italy.”
He blew cigarette smoke out through his nostrils, accompanied by something between a snort and a grunt. I interpreted it to mean that he regretted Geraldo’s departure but could understand the reason for it.
“I have to go home,” I said. “Keep well, Paul.”
A nod.
It was not until I had started walking that he called after me. “Maddie.”
“Yes?”
“There’s a man.”
“Where?”
“At your front door.”
“Who is it?”
“Don’t know. Some gentleman.”
It was probably not August, then, becaus
e by now he was known to most of the neighborhood, not least because of the stir he caused when he occasionally showed up in his automobile.
I nodded again and continued. Paul was right. Leaning up against the wall outside the door to our house stood a gentleman wearing a boater and a light tweed jacket, for all the world as if he was on his way to a Sunday lunch in the country. I recognized him from the chaotic morning in Rue Colbert.
“Monsieur Christophe, I presume.”
“You are clever, mademoiselle. And brave.”
“What do you mean?”
“That you dare to walk the streets alone, and after dark, to boot.”
“Why should I fear to do that?”
“And you say that, knowing better than anyone what he is capable of? Tell me, mademoiselle, what was it like to stand there and look at what he had done to that poor young woman?”
I suddenly remembered—perhaps too late—the Commissioner’s warning. Say nothing. Even an unvarnished no can become a confirmation of some spurious theory before they have finished reworking the truth.
“Monsieur, I have nothing to tell you. Would you be so kind as to move, so I can pass.” He was currently barring my access to the door.
“I just want to have a few words with you,” he said. “I promise you that if you share some of your experiences with me, then the newspaper will only print what you wish us to print.”
“Move aside, please.”
“No one needs to know that I have this information from you,” he said quietly. I noticed a strong scent of anise on his breath—absinthe, I guessed. He would appear to be a devotee of the green fairy, as they called it. “Don’t you think the public has a right to know?”
“Not about everything,” I said. “And if you do not move aside immediately, I will scream.”
“Mademoiselle, you are hardly the type to scream . . .”
I took a deep breath, perhaps not to scream melodramatically, but a loud yell would serve the same purpose. When he realized I meant it, he was obviously surprised, not to say flustered. He tried to place his one gloved hand over my mouth.
“Mademoiselle, please stop . . .”
“Help,” I shouted, rather less positively than I had intended.
But it was enough. I was on my own street, in my own neighborhood. It was a warm evening, and the windows were open. Within seconds seven or eight neighbors were gazing down on us.
“Madeleine?” yelled the typographer who lived across the street. “Is there anything wrong? Who is that gentleman?”
“His name is Christophe,” I said loud and clear. “He works for Varonne Soir. And I think he is just leaving . . .”
The journalist stopped trying to hush me. He looked up and noted the many eyes and ears. Then he tipped his boater to me with a hint of gallantry.
“Touché, mademoiselle,” he said. “You win this round. But if you do not wish to speak with me, then I will have to compose the story myself—and I am not sure you will like what I write.”
Upstairs in the salon, Elise had set out some supper—the rest of the pâté with cornichons and toasted slices of the thin dark pumpernickel bread she bought at Dreischer & Son, the small narrow shop next to the market halls.
“I did not want to let him in,” she said. “That journalist. I told him that neither you nor the doctor was in. But he just stayed out there, and I did not know what to do.”
“You did well, Elise. If he comes back, just shut the door in his face.”
I was feeling quite smug about the whole encounter. I had said nothing he would be able to use, and though my actions had mostly consisted of calling for help at the right moment, I had nonetheless vanquished him.
Or so I thought.
Two days later, in the Saturday edition of Varonne Soir, it was no longer “Varbourg’s Jack the Ripper” who dominated the headlines—at least not directly. On the cover there was a photograph of the coal merchant’s yard. You could see the Commissioner standing off to the right, but at the center of the picture knelt a young woman—me, I noted in some shock—next to the only partially shrouded corpse of another young woman. The headline was no less shocking.
MADEMOISELLE DEATH
it screamed, in bold type. The caption was hardly any less alarming:
Does it take a woman to catch a killer of women? Varbourg’s own Mademoiselle Death is on the trail.
My father was predictably furious. At me, at the Commissioner, at the newspaper, and apparently at most of Varbourg’s population, or at least at the not insignificant portion of it that bought and read Varonne Soir.
“How can they write such offensive twaddle? How can people read it? Why do people continue to support a scandal rag like that? Have they nothing better to do with their money and their time?”
“We buy it too . . . ,” I interjected, though I felt little inclination to defend the newspaper or its readers right now.
“Not anymore! I can assure you of that.”
He was so angry that his entire body was trembling. I almost wished he would start pacing about the salon, as he sometimes did when he was agitated or annoyed, but the emotional turbulence was apparently too great. He merely stood, on shaking legs, pressing two powerless fists against his thighs, as if he could, by these means, prevent himself from hitting the next person who came close enough.
“Papa, please sit down.”
He paid absolutely no attention to my attempt to calm him.
“If your mother had seen this . . .” Even his voice shook. I could literally hear his teeth clatter against one another, a faint porcelainlike tinkling.
At least he did not say that he was happy she had not “lived to see this.” At least he did not say that.
“How could it happen? How could he do this to you? This time the “he” was the Commissioner. “What would August say if he heard about it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I suppose we will find out when he comes tomorrow.”
I reached for my hat and gloves.
“Where are you going? Madeleine, you are not going anywhere! We have to talk about this!”
I carefully placed my hand on his tense arm. “But, Papa, we can’t talk about it. Not as long as you are so upset. You are not listening to a single word I am saying.”
“You are the one not listening to me!”
I kissed him on the cheek. To the great regret of my aunt Desirée, I had grown tall enough to do so without stretching. (“And your mother who was so tiny and lovely,” she moaned on a regular basis. “Une petite. Une vrais petite.”)
“Papa, I love you. And I admire you greatly. But I cannot be precisely as you wish me to be, or do everything exactly the way you wish me to do it.”
He looked at me with his mouth half open, caught in the midst of yet another flare of anger. He looked as if I had tricked him with my declaration of love—we did not often talk about emotions in our little family.
“You might at least tell me where you are going,” he exclaimed at last.
“I think I know who took that photograph,” I said, and pointed at the front page of the newspaper, knowing well that it would probably make his anger erupt again. “I want to ask him why and how it ended up in a newspaper.”
“I will go with you.”
“No, you will not. You are too upset. I don’t want you trying to hit the man.”
“Violence is for boors.”
“Precisely. Do not expose yourself to that temptation.”
“Well, then bring Elise, at least.”
I smiled a bit stiffly.
“Isn’t it a bit late to equip me with a chaperone?” I said. “Keeping up appearances was never my main ambition in life, which is probably just as well. I am sorry, Papa. I cannot be the sort of well-bred young lady Madame Aubrey would approve of.”
“Perhaps you prefer to be known as Mademoiselle Death?”
“No,” I said. “But it appears I have no choice . . .”
Abruptly, the anger in
him extinguished itself as if someone had flicked the switch of an electric lightbulb.
“It is my fault,” he said quietly. “I should never have . . . If your mother had lived, then . . .”
It was the second time he had mentioned my mother. Of whom we never spoke. Never. This time, it was I who found it difficult to keep my voice steady.
“If Mama had lived,” I managed to say, “I hope she would have supported and approved of her daughter’s ambitions to accomplish something in this life. She taught me to read when I was five years old. If she knew what I was doing now, if she knew that I had been accepted at the university—the university, Papa—don’t you think she would have been just a little bit proud?”
But I should not have mentioned her, I could see it in his face. It froze. Stiffened. Lost any kind of expression that was not raw pain.
“Well, then go,” he said coldly. “I won’t wait up for you.”
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Forgive me. Please don’t be angry with me!
A year ago, I would probably have said the words out loud. Now I held them in.
“It will not be late,” I said, and walked quietly down the stairs.
Aristide Gilbert’s studio lay in a narrow passage leading off Rue Germain. The straggly ivy outside his windows lent the otherwise somewhat dismal and unappealing alley a forlorn charm. I had been here only once before, in the company of the Commissioner, who had stopped on his way to the préfecture in order to pick up some overdue photographs.
The windows facing the passage were partially obscured by dusty tulle curtains, and a plaque announced that here resided A. GILBERT, PHOTOGRAPHER. PORTRAITS DONE BY APPOINTMENT. I knew that Gilbert lived in the little apartment above the studio, but it looked as if he was still at work. There was a light on behind the dusty curtains.
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