The Châtelet Apprentice (10 page)

After a while, the solemn way in which Nicolas was staring at
her began to intrigue old Émilie. Out of habit she eyed him in a way that made him blush down to the roots of his hair. He was horrified at what her expression might mean. She immediately realised that she was on the wrong track, and resumed her slumped position. Then she rummaged around in a sort of green satin handbag, which had known better days, and spread out on her lap her remaining treasures: a hunk of black bread, a broken black onyx fan, a few sols, a small horn knife, a brass rouge box and a shard of mirror. She dipped a dirty finger into the rouge and, looking at herself in the triangular mirror, began to make up her cheeks. Gradually she rediscovered the customary and touching gestures of the woman she had once been. She blinked, moved her head back to take better stock of the result of her efforts, pursed her lips, smiled and tried to smooth her wrinkled brow. Instead of the beggar-woman opposite him, Nicolas thought he could see the silhouette of a charming, joyful young girl, who forty years earlier had enjoyed the company of the Regent every evening. Nicolas looked away, moved by this spectacle.

Soon they were outside the city walls and old Émilie, who had for some time been observing the landscape through the carriage window, recognised the direction they had taken. Pitiful to behold in her anguish, she looked at each of them in turn. Nicolas immediately regretted not having drawn the leather curtains and swore that in future he would pay more attention to this type of detail. Thus he was creating his own method of investigation, as circumstances dictated; the unwritten rules of his profession were impressing themselves upon him day by day. He progressed in his understanding of criminal matters by bringing to them his sensitivity, his skills of
observation, the wealth of his imagination and his instinctive responses, which were vindicated after the event. He was his own master, in charge of blaming or praising himself. Above all he had learnt that a flexible approach, based on experience, was the only way to get closer to the truth.

The carriage stopped and Bourdeau got out to speak to some labourers who had approached them, intrigued by their arrival. On a nearby hill a lone horseman watched them from near a great oak tree, whose branches were heavy with a multitude of crows. Nicolas noted the fact without dwelling on it and helped the old woman down. Her hand was clammy and feverish; she could hardly stand and seemed terror-stricken.

‘My God, I can't …'

‘Come, be brave, Madame. We are with you. You have nothing to fear. Show us the place where you hid.'

‘I recognise nothing with all this snow, good Monsieur.'

The sky was clear but the cold here was keener than in Paris. The snow crackled underfoot. They edged their way forward and eventually came upon some shapeless heaps, from which emerged hooves covered in frost. Bourdeau questioned one of the knackers.

‘How long have these carcasses been here?'

‘Four days, at least. With Carnival we haven't worked Saturday or Sunday. In any case the frost has set in in the meantime. Now we'll have to wait for the thaw to be able to handle the dead meat.'

Old Émilie held out her hand and pointed to one of the piles. Bourdeau swept away the snow covering it and revealed the
body of a horse. One of its thighs had been cut into.

‘Is it that one? Incidentally, what did you do with your trencher?'

‘I can't remember.'

Bourdeau continued to work away, kneeling on the ground. A glint of blue flashed in the snow. He lifted up a butcher's cleaver.

‘Would that be your implement by any chance?'

She grabbed it and held it tight against her as if it were something precious.

‘Yes, yes, that's my knife sure enough.'

Bourdeau had to wrest it from her.

‘I can't return it to you quite yet.'

Nicolas intervened.

‘Don't fret. You'll get it back. Just tell me where you were watching from.'

This calm voice reassured her. Automatically, she bent to the ground and huddled up to the carcass, peering towards the corner of a brick building situated a few yards away.

‘It's over there,' Nicolas said in a hushed voice, helping her to her feet and dusting the snow off her. ‘Don't be afraid. The inspector and I will go on our own. Stay here and wait for us.'

They soon came upon several heaps covered with snow. Nicolas stopped, thought for a moment and then asked Bourdeau to go and find an implement to clear away the snow. It was quite obvious that these were not animal carcasses. While he was waiting he poked around in one of the piles. His fingers touched something hard, broken into several pieces, like the teeth of a giant rake. He forced himself to grip it with both hands and pulled hard. A heavy object came away from the frozen
ground, and to his horror he saw rising up before him a lump of flesh that he immediately recognised as the remains of a human thorax. By the time Bourdeau returned with a broom, Nicolas, pale as a ghost, was vigorously rubbing his hands with snow.

A glance was enough for the inspector to grasp what the young man was feeling. Without exchanging a word they carefully cleared the ground all around, revealing a quantity of human remains mixed in with straw, and bones that were almost totally bare except for a few frozen and blackened scraps of clothing.

They placed the remains alongside each other and little by little reconstructed what had been a body. The state of the skeleton with its coating of snow showed well enough how savagely the scavenging rats and beasts of prey had attacked it. One didn't have to be a great anatomist to notice that many bones were missing, but the head was there, its jaw fractured. Near the spot where Nicolas had made his first discovery they found some clothes, a leather doublet and a blackish, torn shirt which appeared to be blood-soaked.

Their last find confirmed Nicolas's fears. Lardin's cudgel was revealed, with its strange sculpted designs on the silver pommel and the snake-like creature curled around the stick. The inspector nodded; he, too, had understood. Other clues followed: a pair of grey calamanco breeches, some stockings, sticky with a black substance, and two shoes whose buckles had disappeared. Nicolas decided to add these items to everything else they had found, and to examine them in more detail later. He gave Bourdeau the task of finding something suitable in which they could carry away their macabre harvest. The inspector soon came back with an old wicker trunk bought from a knacker
who had kept his apron and tools in it. They quickly filled it up, carefully wrapping the bones in the clothes.

Meanwhile Nicolas seemed to be searching for something else and was ferreting around, crouching, with his nose to the ground. Suddenly he asked Bourdeau to give him a piece of paper and he began to trace some small craters that pockmarked the ground. They had left their impression in the clayey soil before it had been covered up by snow and hardened by frost. Nicolas made no particular comment. He did not wish to pass on the fruits of his reflections, even to Bourdeau. It was not that Nicolas mistrusted him but he was quite happy to lend a certain air of mystery to a turn of events that put the inspector at a disadvantage. He did not enjoy having to be so cautious but he felt it advisable so long as he himself was unclear about things and had not found a satisfactory explanation for some of his own observations.

He responded to his companion's quizzical expression with a toss of the head and a sceptical look. They carried the trunk away. They had forgotten about old Émilie who was watching them with a dazed expression and recoiled as they walked by. Nicolas grabbed her by the arm as they went past and took her back to the carriage. She was crying quietly and her tears made her make-up run, disfiguring her face so much that Nicolas took out his handkerchief and with infinite gentleness wiped away the black and red streaks that were streaming down her cheeks.

The return journey was gloomy. Nicolas remained silent, deep in thought. Night was falling by the time they went through the toll-gate. Nicolas suddenly ordered the coachman to drive into an adjacent street and to extinguish the lantern. As he jumped down he had just enough time to glimpse a horseman
galloping along the main street; it was the same man who had been watching them in the knacker's yard.

At the Châtelet Nicolas had the trunk containing the presumed remains of the Commissioner put away for safe keeping in the Basse-Geôle. He also decided to keep old Émilie in his care so that he could question her again and he paid for her to be put in a cell with special privileges, and served a hot meal. He then withdrew to the duty room to write up a brief report for Monsieur de Sartine recounting his visit to Descart and the journey to Montfaucon, but omitting the conversation with Semacgus. His conclusion, subject to further checks that he planned to carry out, stated that the remains discovered could well be those of Guillaume Lardin.

N
ICOLAS
had returned quite late to Rue des
Blancs-Manteaux.
The house was silent and he hoped Catherine had left him some food keeping warm in a dish on the stove, as she usually did. Sure enough he found that the table had been laid for him with bread and a bottle of cider. He noticed a stew containing a strange vegetable – a root vegetable that Catherine had first come across when working in the field kitchens in Italy and Germany, and now grew in a corner of the garden at the back of the house. These stewed ‘potatoes'
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filled the kitchen with their aroma. He sat down to eat, poured himself a drink and filled his plate. It made his mouth water to see the vegetables in their glossy sauce with a sprinkling of parsley and chives.

Catherine had given him the recipe for this succulent dish. You had to choose good-sized potatoes, then proceed extremely slowly, giving the various ingredients time to combine together and not getting impatient, which was essential if it were to be a success. First she carefully peeled her large potatoes, preferring to round them off. Then she diced some bacon and cooked the
pieces gradually before removing them from the dish after they had given out all their fat but, most important, had not yet changed colour. Then, she specified, the potatoes had to be put into the boiling fat and left to slowly turn golden brown, together with some unpeeled cloves of garlic and a handful of thyme and laurel. This way the vegetables would be covered with a crispy coating. As they continued to cook they would soften right through. Then and only then should you sprinkle a whole tablespoonful of flour over them, stir the dish vigorously and a few minutes later pour half a bottle of burgundy over it. After adding salt and pepper you leave the dish to simmer slowly for a good half-hour. The sauce thickens and becomes soft and smooth, like satin, giving a light and moist coating to the potatoes that stay golden and tender beneath the sweet-smelling crust. The secret of successful cooking, said Catherine, was to love doing it.

Nicolas's plate was not level and he noticed that it was resting on a piece of paper on which he recognised the cook's poor and almost childish handwriting. The message was brief: ‘The slut insulted me this evening, tomorrow I will tell the whole story.' He finished his meal hurriedly. It was out of the question for him to go and find Catherine right then in order to question her; she rented a furnished room in a house a few doors away. He felt a twinge of remorse at the fact that, although he had lived at the Lardins' for more than a year, he had never been inquisitive enough to find out exactly where his friend lived. As he climbed the stairs Marie suddenly appeared on the landing and dragged him up a few more steps. She huddled up to him, so close that he could smell her fragrance. Her cheek brushed against his and he noticed that she was crying.

‘Nicolas,' murmured the young woman, ‘I just don't know what to do. This woman disgusts me. Catherine said horrible things to her that I didn't understand. They hit each other. She threw Catherine out. Catherine was a second mother to me. And what about my father? Where is he? Do you have any news?'

She clung to his coat. He was stroking her hair to calm her down when a noise made them start. She tore herself away from him, pushed him further up the stairs and pressed herself against the wall. A shadowy figure carrying a light walked to and fro on the landing, then all was normal again.

‘Goodnight, Nicolas,' she whispered.

She rushed off to her room, light as a bird, and Nicolas returned to his garret, vowing that he would have a long talk with her. Normally when his mind was preoccupied he had difficulty getting to sleep. On this occasion he had so many worries that he could not focus on one in particular, and he immediately fell into a refreshing slumber.

Nicolas left the house early in the morning. It seemed strangely silent. Postponing any attempt to solve the mysterious events of the night, he hurried off to the Châtelet, eager to continue his investigations. He had given orders for the remains found in Montfaucon to be deposited in a small closet next to the
Basse-Geôle.
This was often used to hide the most gruesome or offensive sights from the eyes of the public allowed inside the morgue. No visitor other than Nicolas or Bourdeau was to be let in.

This precautionary measure had proved useful; as soon as he
arrived he was told that a man had reported late at night to the inspector on duty. He claimed he had been delegated by Commissioner Camusot to examine the finds. Despite all his arguments, threats and outbursts of anger he had not been allowed to see the evidence. This confirmed Nicolas's
conviction
that he was being watched and had been since Monsieur de Sartine had given him this assignment. The individual in question was undoubtedly the mysterious horseman who had been spying on them in the knacker's yard. The first thing that came into his mind was that it was Mauval, Commissioner Camusot's confidant. If his hunch were wrong, he did not rule out the possibility that the spy had been planted by the Lieutenant General of Police, with the task of double-checking his own investigation.

Nicolas continued to believe that Monsieur de Sartine was not playing fair with him. He could understand why but he considered the consequences of this lack of trust, which was a sign of his junior status and insignificance. His superior could not explain certain facts to him, at best for higher motives, at worst because he, Nicolas, was a mere plaything caught up in the workings of higher political interests, a blind pawn moved around a chessboard to mislead the opponent. In fact, Monsieur de Sartine had opened the way for him but without seeking to influence the course of the investigation.

Once more Nicolas's roving imagination led him to constantly question his own ability; he was incapable of simply waiting for events to unfold. Nicolas realised that he still had a lot to learn, but he vowed that he would give as good as he got, with weapons of his own choosing.

He took comfort from this decision and, on Bourdeau's
advice, he gave orders for the human remains to be examined in the torture chamber next to the record office of the court. It was a dark room with a vaulted ceiling, lit only by narrow mullioned windows, whose openings had metal hoods intended to prevent any screams being heard outside whilst stopping anyone from having too good a view of the bloody proceedings down below. Several solid oak tables, chairs and stools provided sparse comfort to the magistrates, police officers and clerks of the court who worked there. What caught Nicolas's attention were the executioner's implements, carefully lined up along the walls. Racks, wooden boards, wedges, hammers, mallets – all of varying sizes – pincers, buckets, funnels, trestle beds, metal rods, swords, execution axes – the whole
nightmarish
arsenal of instruments of torture and judicial death was here on display. Nicolas could not help shuddering at the sight of this equipment, all the more threatening as it seemed to have been neatly put away by a tidy workman after his day's labour.

Awaiting Nicolas were Bouillaud, the Châtelet staff physician on duty,
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and his second-in-command, Sauvé, a surgeon, both looking stuffy and impatient. Bourdeau had sent for them early in the morning, one from Rue Saint-Roch and the other from Rue de la Tissanderie. Both of them had obeyed the summons with bad grace, as it upset the regular pattern of their work. They seemed annoyed and looked Nicolas up and down. The young man immediately realised that he had to impose his authority from the outset: above all he must not waste words. Giving the two important figures a dark look, he took the Lieutenant General's commission out of his pocket and, unfolding it, handed it to the two physicians. They glanced at it frostily.

‘Gentlemen,' Nicolas began, ‘I have asked you here to help throw some light on this matter. In the first place I have to tell you that the opinions you give me must on no account be divulged. They are intended for Monsieur de Sartine who is in sole charge of this case and who relies on your discretion. Do I make myself understood?'

The two doctors silently acquiesced.

‘You will be paid your usual fees.'

Two sighs of relief were heard and the atmosphere became more relaxed.

‘Gentlemen,' Nicolas resumed, ‘here is what was found late yesterday afternoon in Montfaucon, under several layers of snow. The clothes you see were not covering the limbs. We have reason to believe that these remains are those of a man murdered in the night of Friday to Saturday last. We shall first proceed to list the clothes, then you will give your opinion on the bones.'

They all approached the large table. Bouillaud and Sauvé, overcome by the smell, unfolded large white handkerchiefs. Bourdeau took a pinch of snuff. Nicolas would have liked to do the same but it was his job to handle the clothes so he held his breath instead.

‘A pair of torn breeches, stained with a blackish matter. Ditto for a shirt, two black stockings, a black leather doublet …'

Suddenly inspired, he discreetly searched the pockets of this item. In the right-hand one he felt under his fingers a scrap of paper and a metal disk. He was about to examine them but decided to conceal them in his hand. He resumed his inventory.

‘Two leather slippers, apparently belonging to the same pair. The buckles have been torn off. Finally, a carved wooden cane with a silver pommel. Gentlemen, I am listening.'

Bouillaud looked at his colleague hesitantly, then after a sign of encouragement from him put his hands together and stated:

‘We have before us human remains. A corpse, if you prefer.'

Nicolas gave him a sardonic look and said:

‘I have the greatest pleasure in noting that your hypotheses are in line with my own. We are therefore making great strides. Having stated the basic fact, would you be so kind as to move on to the details. Let's take the head, for instance. I note that the top of the skull is intact, smooth, without any trace of hair …'

He leant over the table, pinching his nose and pursing his lips, and pointed to a precise area at the summit of the skull: a darker mark, with a sort of deposit.

‘In your opinion what could that be?'

‘Congealed blood, without the slightest doubt.'

‘The jaw seems to be broken, the teeth have not been found, except for the molars that remained on the bone. The head was severed from the torso. As to the latter, it looks flayed. What's the cause of this appearance?'

‘Decomposition.'

‘Can you tell me if it's a man or a woman, and above all how long the person has been dead?'

‘It's difficult to say. It was covered with snow, did you say? It was doubtless frozen.'

‘So what can you conclude?'

‘We do not wish to commit ourselves in a case so far removed from the normal run of things.'

‘Do you think that any crime is normal?'

‘We consider abnormal, Monsieur, the conditions you impose on the exercise of our profession. This secrecy and air of
mystery do not suit us. To put it in a nutshell, you have here the fragments of a naked corpse eaten away by frost. There is no more to add. In any case this is not unusual and you seem unaware, Monsieur, that every year the records of the
Basse-Gêole
provide descriptions of the sorry remains of corpses found on the banks of the Seine that were used by medical students for anatomical demonstrations.'

‘But what about the clothes and the blood?'

‘The body had been robbed. It was dumped in Montfaucon.'

The surgeon kept mechanically nodding his head in time with the pompous-sounding phrases of his colleague.

‘I am grateful for the valuable help that you have agreed to give me,' said Nicolas. ‘You may rest assured that Monsieur de Sartine will be informed of your zeal in serving his justice.'

‘We do not come under Monsieur de Sartine's authority, Monsieur, and do not forget our fees.'

They left the room rather stiffly. Bourdeau had to step aside to let them by.

‘So much for that, Bourdeau,' sighed Nicolas. ‘How can we establish the identity of our corpse?'

He had forgotten about the scrap of paper and the round, metal object he had stuffed into his pocket.

‘Gentlemen, may I be of assistance to you?'

Nicolas and the inspector turned round, surprised by a soft voice coming from the darkness at the far end of the room. It went on:

‘I am so sorry to have taken you by surprise. I was here well before you came and out of discretion did not think it right to
interrupt. You know, I am part of the furniture.'

The character stepped forward into the light streaming through one of the windows. He was a young man of average build, about twenty years old, already plump. He had a full, handsome face, with honest-looking eyes, and even a white and well-groomed wig did not make him seem any older. He was wearing a puce-coloured coat, with jet buttons, a black
waistcoat,
breeches and matching stockings. His shoes were so highly polished that they mirrored the light.

Bourdeau went up to Nicolas and whispered to him:

‘It's “Monsieur de Paris”, the hangman.'

‘I presume you know me,' continued the latter. ‘I am Charles Henri Sanson, the public executioner. Don't introduce yourselves. I've known who you are for a long time, Monsieur Le Floch, and you, too, Inspector Bourdeau.'

Nicolas stepped forward and held out his hand. The young man moved back.

‘Monsieur, I am honoured, but that is not the custom.'

‘Monsieur, I insist.'

They shook hands. Nicolas felt the hangman's hand tremble in his own. His reaction had been instinctive: he had experienced a sort of solidarity with a lad of his own age who, admittedly, practised a dreadful calling but, like Nicolas, served the King and his justice.