The Man with the Lead Stomach (11 page)

Nicolas did not respond but left his old friend to his thoughts, surrounded by his alembics. He still needed to find out what his spy Rabouine had seen from the outside of the monastery. After retrieving his mare, who showed her impatience by snorting and neighing, he went on to Rue de Vaugirard and began to imitate a blackbird, the agreed signal, to bring the man out of his
hiding-place.
A carriage gateway opposite the entrance to the monastery creaked open and Rabouine emerged, wrapped in a baggy cape. He was sharp-featured but had a friendly twinkle in his eyes. He would have gone to the stake for Nicolas. He stayed in the shadows while his superior, the horse’s reins around his arm, came closer then stopped, pretending to tighten the saddle-girth. The mare stood between them, hiding Rabouine from view.

‘Let’s have your report,’ said Nicolas.

‘I arrived at three o’clock. At half-past I saw you go inside. A few minutes before four—’

‘Are you sure? The bells didn’t ring.’

Nicolas heard the discreet sound of a repeater watch striking. He smiled.

‘As I was saying, at five minutes to four a vehicle arrived and an elderly woman alighted and entered the church.’

‘What about the coachman?’

‘He didn’t move from his box.’

‘Then what?’

‘The street remained empty until a monk rushed out in a panic before coming back with two men in black.’

‘Thank you, Rabouine, you can stop watching now.’

He took out a silver coin from his coat pocket and threw it over the saddle. It was caught in mid-air because he did not hear it fall.

Nicolas set off at a fast trot. He needed to see Monsieur de Sartine as soon as possible and give him an account of events in order to justify his very serious decision. The main reason for bending the rules in this way was to avoid antagonising the Comte de Ruissec and his protectors. He was also aware that the comtesse was lady-in-waiting to Madame Adélaïde. Any scandal was bound to tarnish the monarchy’s reputation and, in these times of war, in full view of the enemy. The more he thought about it the more convinced he was that he had taken the right decision and that his superior would approve.

Monsieur de Sartine was not on Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. A clerk told Nicolas in confidence that the Lieutenant General of Police had been called away to Versailles by Monsieur de
Saint-Florentin,
the Minister of the King’s Household. He led his mount to the stables and instructed the groom to give it a double peck of oats, then he set off in the gathering dusk towards the Châtelet.

The dim, poorly lit outline of the ancient prison loomed up before him, as did the statue of the Virgin above the doorway, eroded by the elements and blackened by the city smoke. After exchanging a few words with old Marie, Nicolas went to the duty room to check the latest reports and to write a note to Monsieur
de Sartine relating in detail events in the Carmelite monastery. Having crossed it out and rewritten it several times, he sealed it with the Ranreuil family arms, the only concession to pride that he allowed himself, and entrusted it to the elderly usher, asking him to have it delivered as quickly as possible; there was always a reliable young boy loitering under the archway in anticipation of some paid errand.

Nicolas decided to have a nap and, pulling his tricorn over his eyes, soon nodded off. When Bourdeau came to find him for their meeting with Sanson he saw he was still dozing and reluctantly woke him. The young man was startled to see Bourdeau.

‘Nicolas, you’re like a cat. You sleep with one eye open.’

‘Yes, sometimes that can save one’s life, my friend. But right now I was sleeping like a log.’

He gave him a detailed account of recent events. The inspector’s face was tense with concentration.

‘What a strange theatre ticket and, knowing you, I assume …’

‘That tomorrow I’ll be paying a visit to the
Comédie-Italienne,
as the crypts of monasteries do not tend to issue these sorts of things spontaneously.’

Once again Nicolas was lost in silent thought; this theatre business evoked a vague memory. But he must stop thinking about that for now. If it was going to come in useful, something would spark off the recollection later on.

They were now deep inside the cellars of the ancient fortress. The torture chamber next to the court record office was where bodies were usually opened up. Every time he approached this place of suffering, Nicolas felt a deep sadness well up within him, even though he had by now managed to overcome his feelings of
revulsion once and for all, strong in the knowledge that his job required him to set aside any sense of compassion.

Bourdeau took out his pipe, then thrust his hand into his coat and pulled out a snuffbox. Despite the coolness of the room and the salting down of the corpses, nature was still at work, and the insidious odour of decomposition, combined with the reek of sweat and blood from the torture victims, produced a more powerful smell than the damp coming from the walls covered in mould and saltpetre.

They soon emerged into the examination room lit by torches fastened to rings on the wall on which the shifting shadows of two men were outlined. The younger one, wearing the inevitable puce-coloured coat, had on a white wig, and was pointing at something that the other, older and bulkier, man was examining, bent over, hands on knees. The object of their attention lay on a large table. These men were Charles Henri Sanson, the public executioner, and Dr Semacgus. The latter, a navy surgeon and seasoned traveller, was a friend of Nicolas’s, to whom he owed a special debt for having rescued him from a very difficult situation. Nicolas had established the surgeon’s innocence in a murder case when all the evidence was against him: his reluctance to talk, his carelessness and even his liking for the fairer sex.

‘Here,’ said Nicolas, ‘we have experience backed up by medical knowledge.’

It was traditional for the tone of these encounters with death to be detached and ironic. It created the necessary distance by hardening the outer shell of those who were witness to such cruel scenes. The two men turned. Sanson’s youthful face, with its gentle expression, broke into a smile as he saw Nicolas. He waited
for the commissioner to hold out his hand before shaking it. Normally one did not shake hands with the executioner but the warmth of feeling between them from their first meeting made this gesture acceptable. Dr Semacgus’s full and florid face broke into a broad smile on seeing his friend.

‘Doctor,’ Nicolas resumed, ‘I am destined to always find you roaming the underground passages of the Châtelet.’

‘Monsieur Nicolas,’ Sanson interjected, ‘I am the one who asked our friend for assistance in a case that I will readily admit certainly taxes my modest abilities.’

‘Nicolas,’ said Semacgus, ‘surely you aren’t going to pretend that you haven’t noticed the extraordinary nature of this subject?’

There was a mischievous and contented sparkle in his brown eyes. He took a clay pipe out of his pocket and asked Bourdeau for some tobacco.

‘You might even say it’s a very weighty subject,’ he added, bursting into laughter.

Seeing the bewildered expressions on Nicolas and Bourdeau’s faces, Sanson, after a long look at the fingernails of his left hand, took it upon himself to explain the doctor’s words.

‘What Dr Semacgus wants you to understand,’ he began, ‘is that the corpse we have before us has a specific density that bears no relation to a member of the human species. We both lifted up the remains, or rather we tried to do so. We succeeded only after a huge effort, beyond anything we are used to when handling bodies. My assistants had also mentioned it to me.’

Sanson tugged at the lapels of his coat, as if wanting to hide his black waistcoat with its jet buttons, and stepped back a pace into the shadows.

‘What is your explanation for this phenomenon?’ asked Nicolas. ‘I did not notice that the body was wearing a breastplate or that his clothes were weighted down with anything.’

Sanson moved forward a pace and nodded in the direction of Semacgus, who was pulling on his pipe.

‘Have you examined the dead man’s face, Nicolas?’

‘I have never seen such a grisly sight. It looked like one of those shrunken heads I saw depicted in a work concerning the savages of the Western Indies written by a Jesuit father; I read it one day in Monsieur de Sartine’s library while waiting in his antechamber.’

‘Our friend Nicolas even manages to curry favour with the disciples of Loyola while he’s waiting for an audience,’ joked Semacgus. ‘The monstrous appearance struck us too.’

He disappeared into the shadows and reappeared holding a lancet that he delicately inserted into the corpse’s mouth. They were all leaning over the body and all distinctly heard the instrument make a metallic, clinking sound. Semacgus pulled out the lancet, then rummaged in his coat pocket for a pair of small tweezers that in turn he introduced into the corpse’s mouth. The observers shuddered as they heard the teeth gnashing on metal. The doctor persisted in his task for some time. When he removed the tweezers he had succeeded in collecting a sample of a
grey-black
substance that he raised above his head.

‘Heavy and ductile! Lead, gentlemen. Lead.’

With his other hand he struck the dead man’s chest.

‘This man has a lead stomach. He was killed, tortured,
slaughtered
even … He was made to swallow molten lead, which burnt up his insides, made his head shrink and destroyed his entrails.’

There was a heavy silence, which Nicolas eventually broke, his voice trembling slightly.

‘What about the bullet,’ he asked, ‘and the pistol shot?’

Like a well-practised dancer Semacgus stepped back a pace and nodded to Sanson to come forward and explain.

‘There is indeed the impact of a firearm,’ he said. ‘The doctor and I have probed the wound. The bullet is lodged in the vertebrae, but it was not the cause of death for the reasons that have been outlined.’

‘But still …’ said Nicolas.

‘It’s up to you to tell us what you observed.’

Nicolas took out his notebook, turned over a few pages and began to read aloud: ‘“Face shrunken, convulsed, horrifying. Shot point-blank. Muslin fabric of tie and shirt burnt. Dark wound. Aperture as wide as bullet half closed on skin. A little congealed blood visible, but mainly bruising.”’

Semacgus applauded.

‘Excellent. I’m taking you on as my assistant. What a keen eye. Master Sanson, what are your conclusions?’

The executioner looked at his left hand once more and after this inspection pronounced his verdict.

‘Dear Monsieur Nicolas, I share my colleague’s – I mean Dr Semacgus’s – feelings. He is the expert, and has written
authoritative
works on the subject.’

He blushed. Nicolas understood his embarrassment and felt sorry for him. Sanson’s sole colleagues were the public
executioners
of the other great cities of the kingdom, all entrusted with the same gruesome task and sentenced to the same solitude …

‘Such perceptive comments make our task easy,’ Sanson
continued. ‘It is almost impossible to confuse wounds inflicted shortly before death with those caused several hours after.’ He leant over the body once more. ‘Look at this retraction of the wound and how the aperture to the skin is closing up. You noticed, I believe, the signs of bruising, which go to show that the bullet wound was inflicted shortly after death.’

‘Could you specify this time lapse?’

‘A few hours, six at most. I should add what we already know, that the wound cannot have been the result of suicide. A shot was fired at point-blank range into a body that had choked from absorbing molten lead. I have seen many things in my life and have inflicted terrible torture in the service of the King, but this is beyond me …’

He paused, white-faced, and mopped his brow. Nicolas thought of the terrible account Charles Henri Sanson had given him of the ordeal of Damiens, the regicide, when they first met. The man was a mystery with his gentleness and sensitivity. Bourdeau seemed impatient for Nicolas to intervene.

‘I can see that our friend Bourdeau is urging me to tell you what I really think, which is probably what he thinks too. I’m going to give you the full story.’

He glanced round, though no one else could hear them in the dark entrails of the Great Châtelet, and began: ‘Once I had entered the vicomte’s bedroom and examined the body I immediately noted, apart from the horribly disfigured face, that the shot had struck the base of the neck on the
left
side. At first I did not attach too much importance to this. Next I discovered something written in capital letters – I emphasise in
capital
letters. The position of the piece of paper, that of the hurricane lamp and
of the quill to the left of the note did not in the first instance surprise me. Things became more complicated when I visited the dressing room. I stood for some time in front of an elegant dressing case of silver gilt and mother-of-pearl. Something intrigued me and I let my mind wander. I thought that it was only the beauty of the object that had made an impression on me …’

‘Our sleuthhound had caught the scent,’ said Semacgus.

‘It’s my hunter instinct and the result of following the pack. In short, after a moment it was the brushes and razors that gave me the answer and then I understood. I’m sure that Bourdeau will be able to tell you the rest.’

Nicolas wanted to give the inspector the pleasure of doing this. He knew he could count on his loyalty. An old police hand, his deputy had accepted the unbelievable rise of a young man twenty years his junior without any apparent reservations and with good humour. He had taught him the job, revealing its hidden workings, and had even saved his life on one famous occasion. He felt not only fondness but also respect for him. What meant little to Nicolas would give Bourdeau a certain satisfaction; it was away to build the self-esteem of a man convinced of his own worth.