Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris (11 page)

Massu asked about her husband’s bicycle and trailer. Georgette Petiot claimed not to remember exactly when he bought them, though
she believed that they had been acquired together. She knew that he used them when he went to the auction houses, where he often indulged his hobby of purchasing “
old books and antiquities.” Above all, in response to Massu’s probing, Georgette defended her husband as a “very gentle man” who took care of his family. His patients adored him. And if they were poor, or unable to pay his medical fees, she added, Petiot would not take a sou.

There was a problem about eight years ago, Georgette acknowledged. Her husband had ended up in a mental institution because, she told Massu, of “some troubles he experienced following the accidental death of one of his clients.” Georgette was referring to the thirty-year-old woman
Raymonde Hanss, who had lost consciousness after Dr. Petiot treated an abscess in one of her teeth. Hanss’s mother blamed the physician for her death, but an investigation was never made with any thoroughness.

W
HEN Massu asked about the events of March 11, 1944, Georgette said that her husband had spent the morning making house calls. They had eaten lunch together at the apartment and then, about three or three thirty, he left again “without telling me where he was going.” Marcel refused to keep her updated on his activities, she said, and this was her one reproach with their marriage.

About six that evening, Petiot returned home and received a client who had been waiting for a consultation. One hour and a half later, about seven thirty p.m., as she and her husband dined together, they were interrupted by the telephone call from the police, informing them of the chimney fire. As Massu called for specifics about her and her husband’s response immediately afterward, he observed that his questions disturbed Georgette. She sank into the chair and, raising her hand to her eyes, began to cry. Massu later said that he thought she would crack at any moment.

“
Pull yourself together. We do not want anything from you. We only want to know the truth. What did your husband say?”

“I heard the word ‘police.’ Marcel immediately grabbed his hat and left.”

“Did he not say where he was going?”

“No, he didn’t give me an explanation.”

“Did he often leave without saying where he was going?”

“Sometimes. I never questioned him.”

Georgette would only admit to following him down the stairs to see which direction he went, later adding that she had accompanied him around the corner onto rue Saint-Lazare. She never said anything about their conversation along the way.

When Massu asked her what she did after her husband’s departure, Georgette Petiot said that she had “waited all night in an armchair.” Did she always do that whenever Dr. Petiot left without giving any information on his destination? No, that night was different. “It was the word ‘police’ that disturbed me.”

“But this word should not have disturbed you since you know your husband is incapable, as you say, of doing an evil deed. Was there something else that bothered you?”

“You never know, these days, what is going to happen to a man who has business with the police.”

Georgette Petiot was right. The Nazi Occupation had vastly complicated criminal investigations, tarnishing respect for law and the police who enforced it. Massu later said that he admired her for her candid remark, which was uttered at no small risk to herself. He pressed on, however, with questions about her actions immediately following the discovered remains at the town house.

“That morning, did you think of going to rue Le Sueur to find your husband?”

“No, I decided to return to Auxerre,” she said, eager to be with her son, who then studied in that town and lived with her husband’s brother Maurice. She went to Gare de Lyon, looking for the seven or eight o’clock train, but learned that there were none leaving until Monday evening. “I returned to the neighborhood of rue Caumartin, but without returning to my apartment.”

“Why?”

“I do not know.… A feeling told me that there was danger there for us.”

“Was it not rather the sight of two policemen at the door that made you turn back?”

“I do not know. Yes perhaps.” She also said that she had hoped, despite everything, to find her husband somewhere on the street.

Georgette Petiot explained that she went to church, attending several masses, and then spent the rest of the afternoon at the busy train station Gare Saint-Lazare. She was not waiting for anyone, she told the commissaire, and she had not gone there to avoid being recognized. “I was afraid, and I felt more security in the middle of the crowd.”

Asked what exactly she feared, Petiot said that the evening newspapers had appeared at the train station kiosk about six o’clock, and she had panicked when she saw her name on the front page of
Paris-Soir
. That night, she went to one of her husband’s properties, at 52 rue de Reuilly, thinking that he might come there and give her an explanation. He did not. And as she did not know anyone there, she hid on a staircase near the attic, fleeing into the shadows when a door opened, or occasionally into the courtyard of the neighboring building, which her husband also owned. Fearing detection, she had not slept well.

Early Monday morning, she had gone back to the Gare de Lyon and found the train schedules. As the next departure was not until 5:20 p.m., she spent most of the day at a small hotel restaurant, the Hôtel Alicot at 207 rue de Bercy. She bought her ticket at the last minute and boarded the train for Auxerre. Arriving at 9:00 p.m., she went over to the apartment of her brother-in-law Maurice on rue du Pont. She hoped to find her husband, she repeated, but no one was home. She waited, terrified and uncertain of her next move.

“Perhaps rue des Lombards?” Massu asked.

The mention of this property shook her. She also seemed disturbed by the fact that the address had been posted on a sheet attached to the carriage door. As Massu described the scene, Petiot’s hand opened, her handkerchief fell to the floor, and she fainted. This would not be the last
time she would collapse—or pretend to collapse—in the middle of an interrogation.

W
IVES of criminals, Massu later reflected, were indeed an interesting lot.

In which category did Georgette Petiot belong? And what about Maurice? Massu was eager to find out.

The commissaire began the first interrogation of Maurice by exploring his background, establishing that he had, like his older brother, been raised by his aunt Henriette Gaston and educated by his uncle, Vidal Gaston, now deceased. The Petiot brothers had been close, but, in the early 1930s, Maurice told the commissaire, they had drifted apart. His relationship and then marriage to Monique had resulted in what he called “
a little chill.” After the wedding on September 22, 1934, the brothers did not speak for five years.

After the exodus in the summer of 1940, Maurice claimed that he had returned home to find that his warehouse had been sacked. He had begun to make regular trips to Paris to replenish his stock and, in the process, mend his relationship with his brother. “I have eaten lunch with him on each trip,” Maurice said, adding that this was often followed by dinner with Marcel, his wife, and son. This occurred about every two weeks.

Massu asked what he knew about 21 rue Le Sueur. Maurice replied
that he remembered his brother, or perhaps Georgette, speaking at some point, probably in 1942, about the purchase of a new property in Paris. Maurice emphatically denied having any further information on the topic. “I have never known which street this private mansion was on, and I have never been there.”

When pressed, however, Maurice soon qualified this statement. Yes, he knew the address and he had in fact been there three or four times. In July or August 1943, Maurice had applied anti-mite treatment on the bug-infested furniture and rugs. A few months later, probably December 1943, he had gone to shut off the water in case of an accident with the sudden arrival of cold weather. The last time, January 1944, he had brought an architect to look for possible leaks that might be causing humidity problems in a neighboring building on rue Duret.

Asked if that was all he knew about the town house, Maurice Petiot said that it was. Massu, however, would soon have good reason to be skeptical.

C
URFEW, blackouts, air raid sirens, long lines outside shops, and the daily risk of unwarranted denunciations, which poured in to German authorities at a staggering rate, all compounded the hardships suffered from a lack of food and fuel. “
Paris had been reduced to a sham,” Jean-Paul Sartre said. He compared the occupied city to “empty bottles of wine displayed in the windows of shops which could no longer manage to stock the real thing.”

As a result, many Parisians resorted to Système D, a colloquial expression for a “do it yourself” approach that involved stretching meager resources as far as possible and finding the least unacceptable substitutes. Coffee was brewed with chicory, chickpeas, or roasted acorns. Tea was made from apple skins, and milk was skimmed and watered. Cigarettes were rolled with Jerusalem artichoke or nettles.
Potatoes were peeled after boiling to make them last longer. Thin leek soup was often served as dinner, accompanied by new dishes like turnips, previously viewed only as “cow food.” Chestnuts spiced up bland desserts, which were otherwise expensive and difficult to obtain.

Carrots, beans, and a variety of vegetables were grown in window boxes, on rooftops, and in large public spaces like the Tuileries, Luxembourg Gardens, and the Esplanade des Invalides. Rabbits and hens were
raised on balconies and in broom closets. Pigeons became an increasingly rare sight in parks. The prefect of Paris warned against the health hazards of eating “stewed cat.” During the Nazi Occupation, French men and women were consuming an estimated half the total calories that they had in the Depression, circa 1935–1938.
Wartime diets in France were probably the lowest in calories in Western Europe.

By March 1944, the cold winter was at last giving way to the arrival of spring,
the “ballet of buds,” as Massu put it, that danced on the quays, parks, and windowsills around Paris. Alas, the commissaire did not have time to enjoy it as much as he would have liked. There were seemingly endless meetings with the heads of brigades and principal inspectors—a council of ministers for the police, he joked. “I have never loved these chitchats where you lose precious time.” he said. He often arrived late, left early, and in the meantime, kept his eyes glued to the clock. Above all, he was consumed by the Petiot case.

After Madame Petiot recovered from her faint, or feint, at Massu’s office, the commissaire asked her to accompany him to her family’s apartment on the second floor at 66 rue Caumartin. Massu exited his office first, landing in a crowd of reporters and photographers who fired questions rapidly. “
Did she confess?” one journalist yelled. “Did she help dispose of the bodies?” another asked. “Did she help her husband flee?”

“
Gentlemen,” Massu said. “My secretary is going to speak to you.” As the reporters rushed off to hear the announcement, thinking no doubt of impending deadlines, the commissaire escaped down the corridor with Madame Petiot and slipped into a car waiting outside on the quay.

A few miles away, at rue Caumartin, a crowd of about one hundred people jammed the sidewalks and spilled over onto the road, and onto the nearby rue Saint-Lazare. Photographers and reporters were there looking for a scoop. “Those lads are everywhere like mushrooms,” the chauffeur said to Massu in the car. A motion picture camera was set up to shoot their arrival.

“
Assassins!” Georgette Petiot screamed as she tried to make her way to her apartment. “You are the assassins! You are jeering at my distress.” She had only gone to Yonne to see her son, she yelled.

After a locksmith hired by the police opened the door, which had been locked since the last visit, Commissaire Massu, Georgette Petiot, and a team of investigators entered the apartment. While detectives searched, Petiot sat in an armchair in her living room, adorned with Chinese vases, fine porcelain, and tapestries on the wall. The commissaire resumed his questioning: “How did you live here?”

“As the good middle-class citizens that we were,” she said in an angry tone that Massu suspected had been inspired in part by her encounter with the hostile mob. “We often went to the theater and the cinema. It is not forbidden, as far as I know.” Massu asked if her husband had a lot of free time. “Obviously,” she answered, although he often had to leave in the middle of a performance.

“Did he say where he went?” Massu asked.

“To the sick, of course.”

“Were you ever astonished by the jewels and the linen that your husband often brought in his cart?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did he ever give any explanations?”

“Yes, completely valid ones.” She told how he often made purchases at the House Drouot, France’s oldest and most prominent auction house, established in 1852 by Napoleon III and located a few minutes’ walk from the Petiot apartment. Both the auctioneers and the famous black-clad porters with the red collar could well vouch for him. Petiot spent a great deal of time there huddled in a corner like many other dealers, presumably discussing lots and bids.

“What about the many erotic prints that we found?” Massu asked.

“Simple mania of a collector.”