The Blood of Lorraine (22 page)

“I’ll tell you what we must do, my dear. We must make a plan. Get you out of here. Tomorrow when I come at four, I expect you to be fully dressed. We’ll take a walk, look in the shops, and go around the corner to the cathedral. Then we’ll light a candle for Henri-Joseph and pray to the Virgin together.”

Clarie picked up her spoon and stared into the bowl. All Madeleine had to do was to turn her indifference into acceptance.

M
ARTIN SWORE THIS WOULD BE
his last session with Hémonet. He had spent a day and a half questioning the priest and going over police reports. During that time, Jacquette and his men had grilled ten of the most vocal habitués of the working-class cafés. None had a particular motive for stalking and killing Ullmann and Erlanger. Neither did the venomous bookseller, Villiers, whom Martin had placed in the tender inquisitorial care of his inspector. As for Martin’s witness, by late Wednesday afternoon, Hémonet had deteriorated into a shaking, red-eyed mess, reeking of his own vomit. “Drink,” Jacquette told Martin. “Give him a few days and he’ll get over it.” But when? Martin wanted answers now. Did the priest have associates? Had he incited anyone in his parish to do violence against the Israelites? Or did Hémonet possess the cunning and nerve to stalk and kill two men on his own?

As before, their encounter threatened to end in a shouting match:

“What do you know about the incident in the Place Saint-Jean?”

“Nothing! Like I told you, I heard it from another priest.”

“A priest you claimed died last year.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” voice more tremulous, as the head of clumped brown hair lolled this way and that, like one of the hysterics in Charcot’s famous asylum photographs. The torn and stretched-out sweater, undoubtedly the product of his mother’s or sister’s knitting needles, added to the aura of madness, which Martin suspected the cunning priest was knowingly spinning around him.

“Don’t pull that act on me!”

“What?” a smile oozed across Hémonet’s lips as saliva dribbled from one side of his mouth into his filthy beard. “See these?” The priest raised two impotent, trembling hands. “Who could I kill? I’m a sick man.” His laugh ended in a sneer.

A sneer Martin had seen all too often. Are all Israelites the enemy? he had asked last time. Even women and children? Children grow up to be cheats, exploiters, traitors, the priest answered, and women are their breeders. We should drive them all out, let them crawl over the border with whatever they can carry on their backs, and keep the rest where it belongs. Here, for real Frenchmen.

“Look at you,” Martin hissed in exasperation, despite his knowing that the priest was beyond shame. “You’ve ruined yourself with drink. You’ve dishonored your Church, your country, your mother, whoever has been good to you.”

“Look at you, Jew-lover,” Hémonet spit out, “you have no idea who they are and how they have you and everyone else in this courthouse on a string. A string, a string,” he intoned, “idiot little marionettes on a string—”

“That’s it. Get him out of here.” Thank God Martin had taken the precaution of always having a brawny guard in his chambers. He would not have to wait long to get the priest out of his sight. With little effort, the young blond policeman lifted Hémonet out of the chair and yanked one of his quivering hands behind his back.

“Jew-lover, Jew-lover, Jew-lover, Jew-lover.” At first the epithet blared out as sharp as a trumpet call, but by the time the policeman had dragged Hémonet into the foyer, his words had slurred almost into a snore. Martin closed his eyes and clenched his teeth until he heard the door slammed shut.

“Charpentier, a summary today. Then we’ll let him rot in a cell until I can figure out what to do with him.”

Martin hardly needed to give this order. His clerk had been diligently taking notes and just as certainly taking in the inefficacy of the interrogation. Martin pulled his cravat away from his stiff white collar and scratched at the beard under his chin. Not only had he failed to find any connection between the two murder victims and the priest, he had not even come up with a list of associates to hand over to his inspector for investigation and surveillance. Instead, Martin had become convinced that Hémonet had acted alone and that his only weapon had been his pen. Martin could well imagine how it had been, the once-ambitious priest stuck in a shabby country parish, imbibing the communion wine by candlelight as he spewed his hate and paranoia into his notebooks. Only the bishop’s interdict had stopped him from causing more damage. Jacquette assured Martin that there were no more copies of
Nancy-Juif
in the bookshops. As for the ostracized Hémonet, he had become so isolated that he had, according to his repeated, invective-filled testimony, not even read a newspaper for months and had no knowledge of the Thomases, or their pitiful wet nurse, or the ritual murder rumor that seemed to have started it all.

Martin put his elbows on his desk and rubbed his eyes. There had to be a connection somewhere. How else could it be that Ullmann and Erlichman were killed so soon after the death of the Thomas boy? Martin reached for the pile of reports he had pushed to the side of his desk. He tapped his fingers on top of them while he settled his taut stomach to the task of reading through them one more time. He had to squeeze some clue out of them, just one tenuous connection between the victims and the anti-Israelite invective. Martin’s fingers stilled as he stared at the white, blank wall in front of him. If he didn’t find connections, if the killer was still out there, would other Israelites be in danger? Was it even remotely possible that he would lose another friend, that David Singer might be danger? That once again, his actions had not been swift enough, decisive enough.

He lifted the first sheet, written in Jacquette’s firm strong hand, a report on a tanner who worked and drank with Pierre Thomas. Martin had to focus on what he was doing. Forget the disgust that Hémonet aroused in him. Put Clarie and the baby out of his mind. She’d understand, some day.

And if he found nothing? He’d concede that Jacquette had been right all along, that they should be looking for a murderer closer to home. Contrary to Didier’s views, against Singer’s expressed wishes, he’d order a full scale investigation of the Jewish community, whatever that meant. Even though Singer had exhorted him not to excuse the haters and accuse the Israelites.
If I do it, Singer,
Martin thought to himself,
it will be to keep you safe.

An hour later, as Charpentier was floating around Martin’s chambers turning up the gas lamps, a sharp knocking at the door startled both of them. It was Jean, the Palais’s concierge, announcing that the Grand Rabbi of Nancy wanted to speak to the judge in charge of the Ullmann and Erlanger murders.

“Please ask him to wait a moment,” Martin said as he stood up and hurriedly straightened his cravat. Although he had no idea what had inspired this sudden visit, he felt little apprehension about meeting the gracious Isaac Bloch a second time. Perhaps he had even come with some useful information about the two dead men.

As soon as Martin caught a glimpse of the rabbi’s grim face, however, he understood that the cleric was in no mood to take on the kindly intermediary role that he had played in the Widow Ullmann’s house.

“Rabbi Bloch, good to see you again,” Martin said as he offered his hand.

Bloch’s grip was cold, not only because of the weather.

“Shall I ask my clerk to leave while we talk?” Martin kept his eyes fixed on Bloch’s. Martin did not pose this question merely out of a polite respect for the Grand Rabbi’s station. He knew all too well that his clerk would like nothing better than to report such a unique confrontation to his peers.

“That would be best,” said the rabbi as he stepped back from the desk.

Both of them stood in silence while Charpentier slipped out of the room and closed the door.

“Please sit down.”

“That won’t be necessary.” With slow, precise movements, the Grand Rabbi unbuttoned his heavy black coat, took it off, folded it in half lengthwise, and hung it over the back of the proffered chair. He did not take off his hat. When he straightened up, Martin noted that he had pinned three medals, of the kind the French Republic bestowed in appreciation of exceptional service and accomplishments, to his cassock. Well aware that rabbis and priests were used to putting on the performances that were part of their sacred rites, Martin was beginning to grasp that he was about to be witness to one.

“I am angry,” the rabbi announced. “Angry. I have just returned from grieving with another of our families. The Singers, whose uncle Daniel Erlanger, a good and innocent man, was felled in his own kitchen. So I come here with a question. An important question, Monsieur le juge.” He held his right fist aloft. “One question. Today is Wednesday. Will we find another body of an Israelite tomorrow? Frozen in the fields or hurled down in his very own home.”

“There’s no reason to believe—”

“Who would have believed it two weeks ago, even a week ago, that two leading members of our community would be dead, slaughtered like sheep?”

“I repeat, we have no reason to believe that anyone else is in danger or has been hurt.” Martin hoped that the quivering inside his chest did not resonate in his voice. He could not let on that only a short time ago, he had been torturing himself with fears about Singer.

“Oh,” Bloch spread his hands over his chest and threw his shoulders back in a theatrical pose. “You have no reason to believe that anyone is in danger? Is that because you have the police protecting their homes? Because you have placed a guard in front of the Temple? Do you even have a list of leading Israelites who may need to be protected? Of the three remaining Consistory members?”

“I can assure you we are doing our best, questioning all suspects, every day without cease. Using all of our men. We are getting closer.” A blatant lie. The kind that always made Martin’s mouth run dry. The kind one tells during the worst moments of every investigation. “We’d be glad to accept any help you can give us,” he added, employing the old judicial trick of turning the tables in order to go on the offensive.

“
My
help! But that is
your
job. The job of the Republican courts and the Republican police.” Bloch’s voice crescendoed, higher and louder.

“Why don’t we both calm down.” Martin did not want to spend his time matching wits with the rabbi or standing on ceremony as a judge who had the right to ask all the questions. He wanted desperately to catch the killer before anyone else got hurt. “Please sit, Rabbi Bloch. And tell me anything you can to help me.”

Bloch blinked a few times, considering. Then he walked to the chair in front of Martin’s desk and sat down. Martin followed suit.

“What can I tell you? I have received no threats. I am not personally acquainted with anyone who hates us enough to kill us.”

Martin took up his pen. “Let’s start here,” he began quietly. “Can you think of any way the two men and their deaths are connected?”

“Besides the fact that Thursday, tomorrow, seems to be the killing day?”

Martin wanted to say two days do not make a pattern, but he bit his tongue. “Please go on.”

There was a movement under the cassock as the Grand Rabbi crossed his legs, and thought. “They were both members of the Consistory. Well, not exactly. Erlanger volunteered to be our secretary. But Ullmann was fully elected.”

Martin nodded. On the day after Ullmann’s body was found, Singer and Martin had discussed the factory owner’s membership in the Consistory, the small committee comprised of the rabbi and leading Israelites, which regulated everything that had to do with their religion in the region. There had been no mention of Noémie Singer’s uncle. “Who would know about Erlanger’s participation?”

“His name would be on all the decrees, because he signed them.”

“And what would these decrees be about?” At last, a possible connection. Anyone reading the decrees might believe that Erlanger was a full member of the Consistory. Martin sat up, alert, his fingers gripping the pen. Then the thought that he should have already known about Erlanger’s role in the “community” punctured his momentary elation. Clarie. The baby. That’s why he was so tardy in finding out about the kinds of decisions the two victims might be identified with. He slumped back. There really was no excuse. He should know. At this point in the case, he should know so much more.

The rabbi did not seem to notice Martin’s embarrassment. Rather, he acted as though there was something impertinent about trying to make any connection between the followers of his congregation and the murders. “I don’t see what you are getting at. What we decide only affects the Israelites.”

“Please.”

The Grand Rabbi sighed and sat back, letting his eyes wander over the ceiling. “There is nothing remarkable in what we do. We are mostly charged with carrying out reforms ordered by the Central Consistory in Paris. You can come to my office and get a full list if you need them.”

Martin made himself a note. He would do that. The governance of Judaism, like that of the Protestant sects, had been centralized in the French capital since the beginning of the century. He circled the word “consistory.” Would everyone in Nancy appreciate following edicts emanating from Paris?

“And you agree with these reforms?” he asked. “Everyone agrees with them?”

“Yes, yes,” Bloch waved away the irrelevance of the question.

“Are there any financial issues? Do these men control a great deal of money?”

“Control money? The men of the Consistory
give
to the community, they do not take from it. We provide charity for our poor. We educate the young about our faith. We preach love for family, religion, and country. Just as important,” Rabbi Bloch tapped the desk with his finger for emphasis, “we have worked hard in Lorraine to bring our rites and ceremonies into the nineteenth century. We are modern while upholding a great tradition.”

“And no one objects to that?” Martin could not imagine that many Catholics would accept changes in the ritual of the mass, or that women like his mother would willingly give up their pilgrimages and rosaries, and their belief in miracles and the intercession of the saints. He wrote down “changing religious practices.”

The rabbi shrugged. “There are those who might object to the fact that we let women enter in the same door with men and have an organ in the Temple, but none of these things are worth killing over. Jews argue. It is part of our heritage. We’ve disputed everything about our religion for centuries, as recorded on the very margins of our greatest books. We are men of free minds and strong hearts.”