Paris Requiem (42 page)

Durand stared at him with narrowed eyes for a long moment. Then he let out a guffaw. ‘Perhaps you also arrived in Paris rather earlier than we all surmised, Monsieur Norton, let us say on a certain Thursday morning. I know, I know. We must defend our kin. It is admirable of you. Ah, the daube. You will tell me whether you have ever tasted a better one.’

The waiter spooned chunks of beef and onion and carrot in a thick sauce from a copper dish. He added parsleyed potatoes. Durand watched, his face avid, as James tasted.

‘Excellent,’ James said honestly. ‘A true feast.’

‘Good, good.’ The Chief Inspector tucked in. ‘Now, where were we? Oh yes. The things we know. We also know that Madame de Landois and Olympe Fabre were involved in some kind of blackmailing ploy, though Madame evidently refused to tell you at whom it was aimed. Nor do we have any more than her word about the date of this feminine escapade. What we do know is that Olympe Fabre kept the letter in her possession. We could speculate that Madame is not telling us
the whole truth and that for whatever reason of need, Mlle Fabre had determined to use the past against her patroness, had perhaps even begun to do so in order to get that
scoundrel
Bernfeld off her back and that this hardly suited Madame de Landois. So she, too, has motive.’

The Chief Inspector was evidently pleased with this little speech for he dug into his daube with gusto.

James watched him and considered. ‘I am forced to take you into my confidence, Chief Inspector.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I would wish what I say to go no further. I was trying to preserve Madame’s honour, but she did in fact tell me the gist of the blackmail.’

‘Really!’ Durand scowled.

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. It was aimed at her husband. She wished … well, she wished to be rid of him. He was … he preferred boys. And the blackmail, which involved very little money, was a way of coercing him into living a separate life.’

The Chief Inspector stared at him for too long. Then he wiped his lips primly. ‘These aristocrats. Their blood has grown weak. They have become feminised.’ He tsked beneath his breath. ‘And this is why the beautiful Madame de Landois has no children. Still, still …’ he squared his shoulders, ‘none of this explains why Olympe Fabre held on to the evidence. She may still have used the letter to pressure Madame de Landois.’

‘We are no longer in the realm of what we know, Chief Inspector. We have careened off into speculation.’

‘You’re right. You’re right. If only we had found Olympe Fabre’s clothes, they might have provided us with a clue. Were they ripped? Had she taken them off willingly. They weren’t in your brother’s apartment. Oh yes, we searched there, of course.’ Durand smiled. ‘Though not Madame de Landois’s premises, since the lady could so easily deflect us with an assertion that whatever we found belonged only to her.’

James evaded the matter of the clothes. ‘Let’s be practical, Chief Inspector. The next thing we do know is that Judith Arnhem was found hanging at the Salpêtrière, that Comte was one of her doctors, that Marcel Caro, who was engaged in trafficking girls, Jewish girls from the East, attempted to kill him. Comte tells us that the murderous assault was an attempt to silence him. We have only his word. It could just as well have been because Comte saw Caro at the Salpêtrière, where he had gone to silence Judith – Judith who in her brothel days may have witnessed a crime he committed. You see, the younger Judith and Olympe were very much alike. Caro might have mistakenly had Olympe killed off and then realising his mistake, gone for Judith.

The Chief Inspector shook his head. ‘There are too many if’s in all this, Monsieur Norton. And a man in Dr Comte’s condition has no reason to lie.’

‘In my experience, Chief Inspector, people always find reasons for lying. During my earlier meetings with Dr Comte, he did not strike me as a particularly moral individual. He fulminated against the Jews, said that far too many of them found their way into prostitution or into that dank asylum where he works.’

‘Hardly a new observation.’ Durand was studying his plate where only the sauce remained. He dabbed it up with bread.

‘But his idea seemed to be that they were doomed to this as a matter of birth. A ridiculous notion, utterly unscientific. You see very well from our own brief example with Caro, how it is poverty, duress, trickery, coercion which puts these girls on the streets or into the brothels. And I dare say, it is the
conditions
under which they then live which drive them mad.’

‘We are not engaged in a scientific debate, Monsieur
Norton
. We are engaged in an investigation. Are you now
suggesting
that Dr Comte was killing off his own patients? I don’t believe it. Not for a moment. I had his record checked.
He is an excellent public servant. A man devoted to national hygiene. That is why he works in that pithole of Saint-Lazare. That is why he conducts sanitary checks in the brothels. As well as carrying on his clinical work at the Salpêtrière. Why, he could be in private practice and earning far more and far more pleasantly. No, no. The man is a good Republican.’ Durand moved closer. ‘You know his father died of syphilis.’

James reflected on all this in silence. At last he murmured, ‘There’s something there. In that hospital. I can’t put my
finger
on it. Has your police pathologist done a post-mortem on Judith Arnhem?’

‘Calm yourself, Monsieur Norton. You’ll curdle the flavour of this crème brulée. I put some pressure on him. He should have gone to the Salpêtrière this morning. Now let us
concentrate
on Marcel Caro.’ Durand frowned. His voice grew lugubrious. ‘You know what we need, Monsieur Norton. We need a moral vaccination for women, one which could inoculate them against the hypnotic influence of scoundrels like Caro. Indeed against any of those lurking interlopers who wish only to lead them astray and whom unfortunately they find so seductive.’

‘Really, Chief Inspector!’

‘I am taking a big chance on all this, Monsieur Norton. If only Comte had named the politician he was intending to register his plaint with. Our corrupt officers make my life difficult. Exceedingly difficult. Now even a dying man refuses to trust me.’

Which was why, James thought, the Chief Inspector had chosen a visiting and not altogether reliable American as a lunch companion.

C
aro sat at a table in a grim little interrogation room. He was handcuffed. Beside him stood a uniformed officer. There was a gleaming white truncheon in his hand. He swung it against his palm from time to time in a display of menace.

The swarthy Caro looked not in the least frightened. His broad shoulders were bolt straight. There was an
arrogant
snigger on his square face. His lids were lowered in a mask of indolence. Only the flash of the pupils beneath
signalled
anger.

‘Marcel Caro,’ Chief Inspector Durand declaimed.

‘You know my name. I know my name. Get on with it. We’ve wasted enough precious time as it is.’

Durand gestured James towards the chair beside him.

‘Who’s he?’

‘He is helping us with our investigations.’ Durand
enunciated
slowly. Another uniformed officer had followed them into the cramped room and was taking notes. ‘This is the man you attacked in the early hours of Sunday morning.’

‘He attacked me. I defended myself.’ Caro’s posture
threatened
. ‘Next time, I’ll defend myself better.’

‘Marcel Caro.’ Durand was sharp. ‘You are charged not only
with this first assault, but with the attempt on the life of one, Dr Henri Comte, who has named you as his assailant. You are also charged with illegally bringing underage women into the country and selling them on to houses of ill-repute which continue to line your pockets. We have several witnesses. We will soon have more.’

Caro scoffed.

‘All of these women wear your mark, a charm with a Hebrew letter on a chain around their necks. We now have several of these in our possession, together with statements testifying that they have come from you.’

A slight frown formed on Caro’s low forehead.

Durand continued. ‘One such charm was found on the site where a certain Mlle Eliane plunged to her death. What was your relationship with Mlle Eliane?’

‘None.’

‘Witnesses say otherwise.’

Caro glowered. ‘All right. I knew her.’

‘Did you see her on the night of 29 March 1899.’

‘Stupid question. You know how many women I see.’

‘This would have been a rather unusual place for a meeting. The construction site of the new Vincennes-Porte Maillot line.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I trust you’ll remember after you’ve spent a few more weeks here.’

Caro jerked forward. ‘You’ve got nothing on me.’

‘Only aggravated assault and attempted murder. Have you ever met a woman called Olympe Fabre?’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘The actress. Only if she was a whore.’ He laughed loudly at his own joke.

‘We contend that on the night of the 1st of June you beat
her and forced her into the waters of the Seine, thereby killing her.’

Caro leapt to his feet. ‘What?’

A truncheon fell on his shoulder. He sat down again with a bump.

‘Now you’re going to try and lay all the unsolved crimes in Paris at my feet. I wasn’t born yesterday, Durand. I know what you’re up to. I didn’t work in this force for all those years to no avail. I won’t have it.’

‘That’s enough, Caro. Last Saturday, you broke into the room of one Judith Arnhem at the Salpêtrière, tied a noose round her neck and hung her from the ceiling.’

‘Oh no. Oh no. That’s that bastard Comte trying to put all his sordid little crimes on my shoulders. And don’t tell me he didn’t enjoy my girls eh? It’s just that he gets his kicks by prodding his instruments up their …’

‘We’ve heard enough. Take him back to his cell, Officer. We’ll interview you again, tomorrow, Caro. Maybe you’ll have come to your senses by then. Maybe you’ll have remembered a few things you want to tell us.’

James lingered in Durand’s office. He shook his head. ‘Despite what I’d like to think, my instincts tell me he had nothing to do either with Olympe Fabre or her sister’s death.’

The Chief Inspector shrugged. ‘You never know, he may give us a few little gems tomorrow. His type needs beating down. Which reminds me, I have an appointment with a certain politician.’ He brushed the lapels of his dark suit, adjusted his tie and giving James a smile which mingled vanity and mystery in equal measure, dismissed him. ‘No, no questions. And yes, as soon as I have the post-mortem results, I’ll let you know.’

In the hall, James all but bumped into a rushing figure.

‘Ah, Monsieur Norton. Good, you can direct me to the Chief Inspector’s office.’ Touquet lowered his voice in complicity. ‘I have a list for him. Of the women.’ He touched his
neck. His white shirt, James noted, was remarkably clean and he had had his hair trimmed into spruceness. ‘You know the ones I mean. The articles, by the way, will begin immediately.’ He gripped James’s arm. ‘You have been a great help to us.’

‘It’s that one.’ James pointed. ‘You had better hurry. The Chief Inspector has an important meeting.’

All the heat of the day had gathered on the square flanked by the great H-shaped front of the Notre Dame. The pavements sizzled through leather soles. Vendors fanned themselves with their hats. Children, their faces reddened, dragged their feet despite mothers’ tugs. James felt as if he had been abruptly and forcibly immersed in a vast Turkish bath.

With sudden inspiration he headed for the shelter of the cathedral. Inside its massive stone walls, coolness reigned. He stood still, letting the chill envelop him and listening to the dense silence which reverberated through the darkened nave. The sudden explosion of light on the first great clustered pillars of the choir was like the materialisation of an
insubstantial
presence. It invoked awe. He walked slowly towards the light and looked up at the sides of the transept, its majestic windows stained a deep, imperial purple.

He had last been here with Maisie, all those years ago. The cathedral had frightened her by its immensity and they hadn’t stayed long. Now, he went to sit in a pew and gazed at the magnificent vaulting, the great soaring Gothic shafts. They lulled his mind into emptiness. He didn’t know quite how long he had sat there but when he rose, he felt calmed, as if the sordidness and the pain of these last days could
somehow
be contained by this great structure which spoke to him of human accomplishment, of hope and possibility.

He left the square behind him and walked in the small tree-dappled park by the river. He leaned on the balustrade and watched the fast-moving waters. Could it have been here
that Olympe had taken her plunge? No, certainly not. To his right, a feat of modern engineering, perhaps no less
ingenious
than the great cathedral, was under way. Scaffolding loomed from the waters beneath which a tunnel was worming its progress. With the new century, an underground train would speed between the two banks of the river. For the moment, the construction site barred passage downriver. So Olympe’s fall would have had to take place beyond it or on the other side of the Ile de la Cité. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

His steps took on a sudden quickness. He backtracked across the square and hailed a cab. He had no idea why he felt a sudden need to pay a visit to Olympe’s resting place. Yet he did, no matter that the drive to the northern edge of the city was long and slow. He kept his eyes shuttered, wanting to hang on to his strange, quiescent mood which brought with it a startling clarity.

A burial was taking place in the lower reaches of the cemetery. He avoided the black-clad mourners, the carriages, the giant wreaths of flowers, the priest intoning a benediction, and made his way up the path towards the looming wall. He found the still-unmarked grave soon enough. Raf’s flowers were there, a froth of colour decaying on the dry earth. He leaned against the wall and waited for Olympe’s presence to speak to him.

She was a stranger, yet he felt he knew her as intimately as he had ever known a woman. What matter the difference of situation, of nation or heritage. He could visualise her proud grace, imagine the fire in her eyes when she appeared on stage or the tinge of melancholy which stole upon her features in repose. In her brief life she had done so much, had explored realms which he himself would never experience except as a visitor. He sensed her courage and her thirst for life. She had cared for her family and had carried them as a burden,
even wanting to transport them to America should she make her way there. She hadn’t reprimanded her father for the debt which had fallen so heavily on her shoulders. She had helped her benefactress in the only way she could, even if it involved her in an illicit intrigue. And she was carrying his brother’s child, though she hadn’t told him. Could it be that she herself was not yet aware of it?

Something in James ached. He noticed that his fists were clenched, that his nails had left ridges in his palm. He walked slowly round the grave, wishing that he, too, had brought flowers.

It was then that he noticed it. The pebbles. The ritual
pebbles
they had all placed on the grave were no longer there. Only one or two remained. And the earth, despite the heat of the day, had a moisture about it, as if it had been recently turned. More recently than a week ago. Certainly more recently than Olympe’s burial.

What was it that Arnhem or someone else had told him? James shivered despite the warmth. The pebbles were there to stop the dead from rising before the appointed day. He stilled himself. He bent to touch the soil. Yes, the topmost clods might have a dry greyness to them, but their underlayer was damp. He walked until he found another recent grave, not yet covered by a tombstone. With a swift, guilty look round to check that he was alone, he bent to feel the texture of the earth. It was quite dry. Dry and chalky. It crumbled into dust between his fingers.

With a grim determination which bordered on rage, he hurried from the cemetery. He considered going straight back to the Quai des Orfèvres to catch the Chief Inspector. But Durand would probably still be out. Instead, he stopped off at a post office and sent the Chief Inspector a bleu. The letter would get to him in two hours. With luck Durand would read it before he went home for the evening, not that
anything would be managed before tomorrow. And then? A pit opened up in James’s stomach. It had the dimensions of Olympe’s unquiet grave.

The area around the Grand Hotel had an air of busy normality. But for the proliferation of uniformed officers, who paraded in two’s at regular intervals along the length of the boulevard, their were no traces of the anarchist incident Raf had mentioned. After a moment’s hesitation, James shunned the entrance of the hotel. He didn’t want to see Raf yet, who might just be in his room. He wasn’t ready for disclosures nor the painful speculation which would inevitably follow.

Instead he headed a little further along the Boulevard des Capucines and allowed himself to be ushered into a café which displayed a placard announcing ‘
Cinématographie – fondée par les Frères Lumières de Lyon
.’ Beyond the tables, rows of chairs had been set up for a theatrical presentation. He sat down near the front, just as the screen before him flickered into life. There was a collective gasp from the audience. A locomotive lurched towards them, gathering speed as it went. A woman screamed. So lifelike was the train’s motion, that James too ducked uncomfortably in his chair. He had seen magic lantern shows before, but never anything quite like this.

The locomotive dissolved into pinpoints of light. From somewhere behind him, there came a loud whirring sound and then the screen filled again, this time with a dappled, magical spray of water. A man was holding a garden hose. Its stream caught passers-by unaware. Their faces were so close, James could feel their astonishment, the impact of the water. They skipped and ran and the man laughed. He laughed and laughed, like a vaudeville comedian, and the audience laughed too. They all tumbled and laughed and waited in breathless anticipation. Because it was clear that at any moment, the
sprayer would become the sprayed. When the sunlit stream finally soaked him, tension exploded into raucous applause.

How could he be applauding a mere illusion, James wondered. And laughing, laughing so that his stitches tugged and prickled, laughing in the midst of these last weeks’ sorrows.

After the flickering blacks and whites and greys of the
cinématographe
, the brightly painted world of the boulevard itself looked illusory. People and carriages hurtled at him. Mouths moved in exaggerated motion without producing sound. He dived into the safety of the hotel, collected keys and post, and went up to his room.

Raf wasn’t there. James washed. He examined himself in the mirror and felt for a moment that his powers of observation had been sharpened by the screen. His face had an
unfamiliar
cast. It had grown more gaunt where the light caught his cheekbone. The bruise at the edge of his jaw had a yellowish tinge which moved into purple at its centre like a discoloured pool of stagnant water. He shaved round it carefully, his eyes looking out at him with cool, blue amusement. He refused their steadiness. They reflected nothing of his preoccupations.

With a shrug, he went to find the portrait of Olympe. He positioned it on the desk in such a way that he could study it when he stretched out on the bed. Seeing Olympe’s notebook, he popped it into his jacket pocket. Tomorrow he would give it to the Chief Inspector.

Taking his post with him, he lay down. Olympe stared out at him with that direct gaze which only augmented her mystery. He looked back at her, then with a sigh, tore open the envelopes.

His mother’s first. He breezed through the script hardly taking it in and put it aside. Mrs Elliott asking whether he might join them for lunch today. Too late. He didn’t recognise the handwriting of the last. It was Harriet’s, conveying Ellie’s greetings and saying they missed him.

He lay there a little longer, gazing at Olympe, then with sudden urgency, he donned fresh clothes, and having left a telephone message for Marguerite saying he would stay at the hotel tonight, he went out into the streets.