The Blood of Lorraine (13 page)

“Léonine, the judge is only doing is job.”

She swirled around with unexpected force. “Then he doesn’t know his job,” she said to Rabbi Bloch. As she turned back to Martin, she no longer seemed diminutive or fragile.

“At this moment someone is holding my husband’s cold feet and asking for forgiveness for any wrongs they may have done to him during his lifetime. Someone is closing his eyes. That should be his own eldest son. But it cannot be, because my husband died in a frozen woods, not, as he should have, at peace, in his own bed, with his children gathered around him helping him into the next world. We don’t even know if he had the time to say the prayer to his God declaring his faith. We know nothing. And that is because someone murdered him and left him there, alone, while we were,” she closed her eyes and began swaying back and forth, “while all of us were far away.”

“I am so sorry,” Martin said as he rose to his feet. The rabbi had already come behind her and was holding on to her shoulders, so that she would not fall.

She righted herself and pressed her two hands on her heart, as if to suppress a sharp pain. A pain communicated so nakedly to Martin that he had to look away so no one would see the fear and grief written on his face.
My son
, he thought,
who will be to blame if he dies?

“Look at me!”

Martin forced himself to face her.

“Look at me,” she repeated. “I know what you see, what you think you see. A frivolous woman, arriving from Paris with her striped hat boxes and frilly dresses. A spoiled woman.” She stretched out her arms. “Do you want to know why? Because,” she said almost in a whisper, “because Victor always protected me, spoiled me since I was practically a child. But now,” she let her arms fall to her side and drew herself up to her full height, “that woman no longer exists. As soon as my sons arrive, we will bury my husband. I will follow him on foot to the grave. I will pour dirt upon his body. And when I return, all this,” her eyes scanned the room, “all this will be black. I will sit on a low wooden stool for a week. I will eat hard eggs and drink water. I will wear a veil to cover my face and tear my dress to show my grief. But that will be nothing. The hard stool, the fast. That will not begin to express what is happening here,” she pounded her chest, “in my heart. I will no longer be a beloved wife. Inside of me there will be an emptiness and a howling, a cry that will never, never end.”

A howling, an emptiness
. Martin wanted to sink back into the sofa, but he stood still, receiving the punishment he might well deserve. Neither the widow nor the rabbi yet knew about Pierre Thomas.

“Find my husband’s murderer, Monsieur Martin, that’s all I ask of you.”

She turned and with a glance at Rabbi Bloch sat down again. All three of them knew the interview was over.

Martin’s knees wobbled a little as he bent down toward the widow and bid his goodbye.

“I will see you out,” the rabbi said as he followed Martin through the salon doors. After Bloch closed the doors behind them, he came up to Martin. “You can call on me if there is anything I can do to help,” the rabbi said quietly. “I, too, want you to find Victor’s killer.”

“Yes, of course.” Martin kept his head down. It had been a truly amateur performance from a presumably experienced judge.

“You can always find me at the synagogue, and perhaps I can help you with the community,” the rabbi continued.

With the turbulent storm of Léonine Ullmann’s emotions muffled and closed behind the salon doors, Martin was getting his wits back. “One thing,” he asked the calm, compassionate clergyman: “will I be able to see the housekeeper before the seven days are up?”

“Yes, I’ll see to it. I’ll send her to you,” Bloch said as he picked up Martin’s bowler and gave it to him.

This time there was no confusion as Martin took the rabbi’s hand and shook it warmly. Only gratitude and renewed determination. He was going to haul the tanner and the brazen Antoinette Thomas into his chambers, confront the brute with his wife’s lies, and get both of them to confess their sins. He was going to find the killer.

A
S SOON AS
M
ARTIN OPENED
the door to his chambers, he encountered the wispy gray tendrils and acrid aroma of Jacquette’s beloved Blue Jockeys. Evidently Martin’s inspector, who jumped up to greet him, had been waiting for a long time.

As Martin grasped the inspector’s hand, he realized that nothing could have been more comforting at that moment than Jacquette, his cigarettes, and that deceptively lugubrious face. For the fact was, the forty-year-old inspector was anything but mournful, although his physiognomy—the long nose coming to a rather bulbous end punctuated by a thick tawny brush of a mustache—had, indeed, helped earn him the nickname “the hound dog.” Martin knew from happy experience that this stationhouse sobriquet was also a tribute to the inspector’s tenacity and investigative skills. He was every bit a cop in love with his work. The chin was always slightly grizzled, a seeming requirement of the job, and his features fittingly mobile. Martin had often observed with pleasure the way the bushy eyebrows above Jacquette’s dark brown eyes arched in amazement or glowered with anger, depending upon what he hoped to get out of his prey. Yet Martin knew him to be essentially unfazed by stupidity, venality, cruelty, or gore. Jacquette credited this sangfroid to his peasant stock, firmly rooted in the soil of Lorraine—“all that dirt, shit, blood, and the squealing of pigs at the slaughter,” he explained to Martin more than once. Yet he also admitted to being one generation removed from the country, and was as sophisticated an investigator as any judge could want by his side.

Martin had gotten himself into a mess, but, at least, he was not alone. The two men sat down and agreed upon a tried-and-true strategy. Jacquette would continue to press Antoinette Thomas to confess everything, while Martin had his way with the husband. Then they would bring them together and pit them against each other.

Two hours later, despite his questions, threats and specious offers of mercy, Martin had not gotten very far. Pierre Thomas was quite willing to own up to any number of sins, including the drinking and brawling that was par for the course where he came from. But he was not ready to confess to murder, to talk about his political beliefs (if, indeed, he had any), or to admit that he knew his wife had told a vicious, dangerous lie. It was time to send Charpentier to fetch Jacquette.

When the clerk returned, he headed straight for his desk with his nose in the air and his hands folded over his waist as if avoiding contamination. This was the irritating attitude that the fastidious Charpentier always took on when they were dealing with what he called “the lower orders.” The stalwart Jacquette, who feared neither man nor contamination, soon followed, dragging a resisting and cursing Antoinette Thomas by the arm. “Sit and keep your mouth shut,” the stocky inspector barked as he shoved her into a chair opposite her husband. For once she complied, crossing her arms defiantly. Even in relative stillness, she crackled with energy as she glared across Martin’s wide desk at him, before shooting a contemptuous look at her husband.

“Why is she here?” Thomas asked, alarmed.

“To tell you the truth about your son. To make you see how useless your denials are.” Martin softened his voice. “To make it easier for you to confess and get it over with. If you do, the judges might offer you clemency instead of the guillotine.”

“I told you,” the tanner shouted and leaped out of his chair toward Martin, “I did not kill anyone!”

“Your lovely wife has told me everything,” Jacquette mumbled under his tawny mustache as he pushed Thomas back down in his seat. The inspector gave a nod of confirmation to Martin.

So Jacquette finally got it out of her
, Martin thought.
This may be it
. He kept his demeanor stern and impassive, despite the turbulent cross-currents of emotions swirling inside of him. It was Martin’s duty to salvage some measure of justice for the Ullmann family. Yet what he should fear more than anything else is that Pierre Thomas confess to the murder. If he did, Martin would be implicated in the death of an innocent man because he had foolishly released the volatile tanner from prison. It could mean the end of his career. But then, every minute he spent with the lumbering tanner was a painful reminder of something else, what they had in common: a little son, ill or injured beyond anything a desperate father could do. If it ended now, today, perhaps Martin would be released too, to be in that other place that duty called. By his infant son. By his wife. The tension in his body was so keen that he realized he had bent his pen almost in two. Without moving a muscle in his face, he opened his hand and let it go.

“There’s nothing to tell!” the miserable tanner insisted, breaking the silence.

“Ah,” Jacquette gave Martin a crooked smile as he leaned over and, with his mouth close to Thomas’s ear, spoke in a stage whisper meant to be heard by everyone in the room. “She told me how she found your son stone cold in the wet nurse’s cottage, how she was afraid you would blame her for not taking care of him, how she plotted with the feeble-minded Geneviève Philipon to make up some story about a Jew.” Jacquette paused before building to the climax. “Finally, how she took her own baby to the river bank, opened him up, and gutted him.”

“No, she didn’t,” Thomas dumbly, stubbornly persisted.

Jacquette straightened up. “Ask her. And after you do, Monsieur Charpentier writing at his desk over there will take everything down and put it nice and neat in your dossier,” the inspector said as he raised his index finger right in front of Thomas’s nose and pointed in the direction of Martin’s clerk. “And then,” he continued, “the whole world will see that you are not only a murderer, but a fool who believes old wives’ tales about fairies and witches and wandering Jews.”

Martin held his breath as he observed Jacquette’s well-orchestrated provocation. Martin’s fate was as much on the line as Thomas’s.

“It can’t be. She wouldn’t.” The brawny blond tanner grasped the sides of his chair like a man ready to endure the most exquisite tortures without giving in.

“Did you hear what my inspector just said?” Martin asked, playing the role of the reasonable inquisitor. “The game is up. You’ve just heard that Mme Thomas has told us everything. So did the wet nurse. Now it is time for you—”

“Why did you do that?” Ignoring Martin, Thomas turned to his wife as his face collapsed into a grimace. “I would have never told on you. Never.”

“Oh yes, after you beat it out of me, do you think I was going to let him do it too?” Antoinette Thomas leaned toward her husband as if she were about to spit on him. Jacquette grabbed her shoulder and set her back in the chair. As she twisted out of his grasp, the mass of wild brown curls swirled around her handsome, insolent face. For an instant, Martin imagined them slithering and hissing like Medusa’s snakes. When she was through shaking off the inspector, she took on the judge. “You’ve got it all wrong if you think he killed Ullmann,” she told Martin scornfully. “He ain’t no murderer. He’s too much of a coward. And who cares about that dirty old Jew anyway?”

For the first time, as her mouth turned down in hateful distaste, Martin saw how this seductive woman would grow into an ugly, bitter old harridan. Would Thomas still love and try to protect her then? Martin doubted it. Besides, by that time she would have eaten him alive.

“I didn’t really beat her,” Thomas explained to Martin, imploring him to understand. “I’d never hurt her. Maybe a slap or two and some yelling. But she hits me back. That’s the way we are.”

“Of course, I gave back what I got. You fool.” Antoinette Thomas’s lower lip stuck out as she scornfully turned away from husband.

“Toinie, Toinie,” the big oaf pleaded with his wife, begging her to look at him.

“Stop it!” Martin shouted, disgusted with both of them. Then, catching himself, continued in a calmer tone, hoping that reason would finally bring the tanner around. “Monsieur Thomas, it is time to be a man and accept the terrible tragic mistake you have made. You killed an innocent man because you believed an Israelite murdered your child. You were,” and for just an instant Martin’s voice cracked as he mouthed the words, “a man maddened by shock and grief.” Martin recovered himself and asserted for the hundredth time that afternoon that the court would understand and have mercy on a grieving father.

“Why are you blaming me? I didn’t kill nobody. You don’t understand what this has done to me. Seeing my little boy like that, all cut up.” The distraught tanner stretched his two powerful hands toward Martin, pleading for him to understand. “A son. Someone who would look up to me. A little boy to show off to my comrades. A son to teach my trade to. Gone like that. My baby, dead.” He dropped his arms, bowed his head and broke into loud, inconsolable sobbing.

The lies, the shouting, the stupidity. The possibility that Martin had made a fatal mistake. All that was bearable. But not this full-blown grief shaking a grown man to his very core. At first a protective numbness spread over Martin as he watched Thomas break down. Then he realized that the dull, anesthetizing tingling would soon dissipate and the pain would seep through, for, unbeknownst to everyone else in the room, he understood only too well what Thomas was going through. Martin pushed himself away from his desk. “That’s all for now.” A judge should show no weakness, no emotion.

Jacquette lifted his bushy eyebrows in surprise. The job was not done.

“Take him back to his cell. Do what you want with him.” Martin waved his arm, pointing to the door. He had to gesture dramatically. It was beyond him to sound stern and righteous when all he wanted to do was to bury his head in his hands and block out everything he had seen that day and everything he feared to see that night.

“Yes sir.” Jacquette was a good man. Loyal, smart, able to pick up on signals.
Thank God for that
, Martin thought. His clerk was a different story. That’s why Martin had no intention of offering any explanations before rushing out of the courthouse to be with his own wife and son.

Only one ray of light greeted Martin as he entered the foyer of his apartment. He followed its narrowing path to the little dining room where the gas lamp, which hung over the round dining table, shone upon Martin’s mother and father-in-law holding each other’s hands and talking softly. At any other time, Martin would have found this scene, and the possibility that his snobbish, pious mother was succumbing to the charms of the burly blacksmith, heartwarming. Now seeing them in a tête-a-tête sent a wave of fear down to his belly.

“What has happened?”

Giuseppe got up and put his finger over his lips, signaling that Martin should be quieter. “Nothing,” he whispered. “The doctor is with Clarie and Henri-Joseph. They want to see you. First, though,” he said as he squeezed between the wall and Martin’s mother, “let me take your hat and coat.”

Martin peered at his mother who was smothering her nose with an embroidered handkerchief. Her sniffling spoke louder than any of Giuseppe’s words. Without taking his eyes off her, Martin let his father-in-law reach up and slip his coat down from his arms.

“Is there anything I should know?” Martin insisted.

“Clarie will tell you.” His mother’s blue eyes seemed to be imploring him to be patient and strong.

If only I loved this woman as much as a son should
, Martin thought. Sadly, because of Henri-Joseph, he was beginning to understand some of the sorrows he had caused her. He laid his hand briefly on her shoulder, thanking her as best he could.

“We sent Rose home. She was exhausted. So Mme Martin and I plan to cook up a big fat omelet together, don’t we?” Giuseppe said with false cheer. Adele Martin nodded as she bent her face into her handkerchief again. Only then did Martin notice that the table was not set for supper as usual. He could not fathom what his mother and father-in-law were conspiring about, besides providing him and Clarie with a comforting meal. Martin shook himself. What did he care about eating? His world was waiting for him in the bedroom.

As soon as he opened the door, he was assaulted by the effluvia of sickness and sour milk, and the sharp, vinegary scent of faithful Rose’s efforts to scour and wash it all away. Dr. Pinot, in shirtsleeves and suspenders, sat reading the newspaper in one of the dining-room chairs that had been commandeered for the bedroom. He stood up to greet Martin. “We’ve been waiting for you,” he said, like a man who had many other matters to attend to.

“I’m sorry. It’s the case. The murder of an important man.” Martin was in no mood to apologize to the doctor, a supposed friend, that somehow he held to blame for the illness of his son, even though he knew it was irrational.

“Martin?” Clarie’s voice was weak. She lay, as he had left her in the morning, lifted up by the pillows, with Henri-Joseph in the crook of her arm.

Martin hurried to her side of the bed, sat down in a chair, and kissed her hand. It was to her that Martin owed all his apologies. And the explanation he daren’t make: that in a case fraught with political danger, he had acted with a foolishness that might have had murderous consequences.

He touched her cheek. It was very warm. Someone had plaited Clarie’s thick dark hair into a single braid, which peeked over her shoulder. Perhaps because of the shadows of fatigue that surrounded them, her eyes seemed unnaturally bright. “Bernard,” she said, “I let them take Henri-Joseph.”

Her words took Martin aback. “But darling, he’s not gone,” he said with alarm. “He’s still here.” Martin opened the blue blanket and examined his son. It took a superhuman effort to keep from gasping. It was like seeing Marc-Antoine Thomas for the second time. His son, who had come ruddy and screaming out of the womb, had faded and shrunk into the yellowish pallor of a wizened old man. Henri-Joseph’s life force was all too evidently draining out of his weak little body. Was his wife also going mad? Martin smiled at her, in a feeble attempt to mask his growing dread.

And, almost miraculously, she smiled back and reached to shake his arm. “I know that. I know he’s here, silly.”