The Montmartre Investigation (21 page)

‘No, my darling, I assure you I'm not.'

‘Because if I discover that you've been involved and the police question me I shall have to put on an act and that's not my forte.'

‘The police? Why would the police want to stick their nose in my business? I'm not dealing in stolen goods, I promise.'

‘Be careful you don't perjure yourself, my love,' she whispered, pressing her body against his.

They tried to outstare one another, Victor wearing an expression of pure innocence that broke down under her insistent gaze. He lowered his eyes and, embarrassed by her victory, she stood up to put out the light.

Monday 23 November

Victor asked the cabman to drop him off at Rue Linné, where he battled against the wind and rain that had transformed the morning into dusk. He wanted to have another peek at the building where Père Popêche, Gaston Molina and Élisa had all stayed. As he walked past the semi-detached house – the side wall of which was adorned with a painted advertisement for
Le Balnéum, Turco-Roman Baths
–he reflected on the proximity of the places where, as on a chessboard, the pawns of his investigation were laid out:

All seven squares were situated in the eastern part of the fifth arrondissement.

Without knowing how he got there, he found himself in Rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire. The gusty wind had been replaced by icy rain. He felt disheartened. He was well acquainted with the cycle that seemed to mark out human existence: the euphoria when an idea first occurs, followed by anxiety and misgivings. He carried on walking, his mind blank. He had the impression of being in a provincial town where, other than a handful of visitors bringing an orange or some brioche to the patients inside the bleak walls of the Hôpital Pitié, passers-by were a rare sight. The shops waited for their regular customers to rouse them from their lethargy. Indeed, the whole neighbourhood, largely inhabited by men of independent means, teachers and museum curators, had a sleepy feel, as though it had been placed under a spell, which the distant trumpeting of an elephant or the repetitive cry of a peacock could not break.

Servants carrying shopping, safe from the rain under their broad umbrellas, hurried past nannies walking arm in arm with soldiers. Pedestrians waited impatiently for the Glacière omnibus to go past before venturing across the slippery road. It occurred to Victor that the student hurrying towards him with a shabby briefcase under his arm must tread this same piece of pavement every morning at nine fifteen. He rejoiced at not being a slave to an invisible clock that ruled every minute of his life and, suddenly depressed by the thought, he looked up and found himself in Rue Monge.

The brass plaque advertising the clinic of Doctor Aubertot, psychiatrist at the Hospice de la Salpêtrière, was at number 68. Not without some trepidation, Victor stepped into the hydraulic lift. It was an invention which, unlike Kenji, he did not really care for, though he could see that it was useful. He was let in to the fourth floor apartment by a valet who appeared to be mute. He mumbled his name, and followed the man across a plush carpet that led from an entrance hall hung with dark red fabric, to a Louis XV drawing room that had been turned into a waiting area. A baby grand, an Empire clock and several pieces of medieval furniture broke the harmony of the décor.

Where does this craze for the pseudo-Gothic style come from? Victor wondered, deciding not to sit down on one of the oak choir stalls that ran along two of the walls. He opted instead for a bishop's chair with a latticework back which, despite its embroidered cushion, proved extremely uncomfortable.

Is this meant to give patients a foretaste of the torments to come or make them glad to leave such an unwelcoming place?

Indeed, the trembling old man, the bilious looking fellow with twitchy eyes and the woman bent double with curvature of the spine all sat staring with anticipation at the closed door of the consulting room.

Victor, his back aching and his legs stiff, stood up to avoid getting cramp. A window hung with chiffon curtain revealed a gap between two buildings, through which was a view of the Botanical Gardens, where the imposing cedar, more than one hundred years old, towered like an emperor over the other leafless trees in the maze. Smoke rising from the chimneys of Sainte-Pélagie prison and the Hôpital Pitié fused with the leaden clouds that hung like a menacing blanket above the quietly pulsating city. On the pavement opposite, a baker's boy carrying a basket covered in a white cloth was buffeted by the wind as he darted out of the pâtisserie and headed for the door of a dilapidated building. Victor amused himself by imagining the boy racing up the stairs to an attic room, where a bachelor and former squadron leader stood, watch in hand, awaiting the boy's arrival at ten o'clock sharp. The image saddened him, and he resumed pacing up and down the room, where someone suffering from ataxia had just been wheeled in by a nurse. He picked up a couple of magazines that were lying on an escritoire, but his own thoughts were already too clamorous for him to concentrate. He glanced at the painting above the fireplace: a professor of medicine examining a patient in an amphitheatre packed with medical students. Just as he was reading the caption at the bottom of the frame, a man's voice called out:

‘Monsieur Pignot?'

Intrigued by what he had read, he walked into the consulting room. Its bareness was in stark contrast to the cluttered waiting area: a desk strewn with books, three chairs and a few engravings, all with a medical theme. Doctor Aubertot smiled politely and asked him to take a seat. His stern manner and serious expression lent him the air of an office clerk. In fact his face, which was still youthful despite the greying hair, was familiar to Victor, though he could not for the life of him recall where he had seen him before. The doctor took a sheet of paper and dipped his nib in an inkpot.

‘First name, surname, date of birth and profession, please.'

‘Pignot, Joseph, 14 January 1860, shopkeeper,' Victor stated.

‘What are your symptoms?'

‘Well, I…er, they are difficult to describe, a sort of generalised pain, and…'

‘Do you suffer from headaches?'

‘Sometimes, yes, but…'

‘Do you feel any pressure around your skull? Do you have pains in your stomach?'

‘Yes, especially after a meal.'

The doctor glanced up at him.

‘And your sexual function?'

‘No problems in that department.'

‘Please remove your clothes.'

‘Look, I'm afraid I haven't been entirely honest with you,' Victor hastened to explain. ‘I'm a journalist and I'm writing a series of articles about people's fascination for certain types of murder. One motive that particularly interests me is vengeance. I would very much like to have a psychiatrist's point of view. However, I imagine you must be terribly busy.'

‘And you waste even more of my time with such convoluted preambles! I dabble in journalism myself, and one of the first things I learnt was to be concise!'

He softened and, putting down his pen, went and stood with his back to the window.

‘What is it you would like to know? Crime is not my speciality. The patients who come to my clinic seek words of reassurance rather than drugs. What they tell me rarely gives me an insight into the darkest recesses of their psyches. Indeed, they are usually the primary victims of their inner demons.'

‘Are any of your patients obsessed with revenge?'

‘A string of them, yes, but they rarely act on it.'

‘What do you think motivates someone to seek revenge even though it might take years?'

‘The conviction that without the intervention of another, their life would have taken a more favourable course, would have flourished instead of being destroyed. The more they suffer, the more they want to punish the person they feel is responsible for their suffering.'

‘Is there any other driving force behind this need to punish?'

‘A corollary of suffering is hatred – a violent emotion that drives people to destructive acts.'

‘What does someone who takes revenge feel? Revenge cannot right the original wrong.'

‘No. What is done is done. However, whether or not they seek real or – as is more often the case – fictive vengeance, what they desire is to recover their self-esteem. You have picked a vast subject, my friend, and one that is as dear to novelists as to their readers, a fact that suggests that people fascinated by crime and punishment are legion. From the beginning of time, the world has been governed by the universal law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Whether this is meant to compensate for the shortcomings of human systems of justice or is believed to be God's will, it is an endless cycle. It leads to wars between nations. What can I tell you that you don't already know? If any of my patients were potential murderers, their motives would be too complex to be reduced to some literary cliché such as: “For a Spaniard there is nothing sweeter than revenge.”'
²⁸

He had walked up to his desk, and was leaning over it, drumming his fingers on a medical dictionary. Victor understood that the interview was over.

They crossed the waiting room, watched by the patients, who followed them with their eyes. Victor wanted to be clear in his mind about the painting above the fireplace, and he pointed to it.

‘Is that a Gauthier?'

‘No, it's by Jaubert, a minor artist. I'm not terribly keen on it, but it's a souvenir of my distant days in Lyon, when I studied under Professor Jardin. I'm the third on the left – the beanpole with the goatee. It was a long time ago now.'

‘The Medical Faculty there is reputed to be one of the best.'

‘Indeed. If you are interested, you should come to the Sâlpetrière. I lecture there in the amphitheatre on a Wednesday afternoon. You can keep me abreast of your research.'

 

In the carriage on the way back to Rue des Saints-Pères, the word
Lyon
occupied Victor's thoughts.
Lyon
. Everything was linked to that name, even the animal that had killed Pôpeche. Yet what was the psychiatrist's involvement in this affair? Was it a mere coincidence that he had lived in Lyon? It couldn't be. Aubertot's name appearing alongside Charmansat's on the note found in Gaston Molina's shirt clearly implicated him. He only had to find out how. Victor decided to abandon logic and follow his intuition.

He felt besieged by a flurry of contradictory ideas. As he turned to look out of the window, he noticed a sign that read:
Bill stickers will be prosecuted
.
Bylaw of 29 July 1881.
Beneath it was a Grasset advertisement for L. Marquet ink. The ornate black lettering reminded him of the big black cat associated with Rodolphe Salis's cabaret. Suddenly he remembered where he had seen Aubertot: at Le Chat-Noir, the day before Noémi Gerfleur's body was discovered.

‘I caught a glimpse of the fellow Louis Dolbreuse was talking to – was it Aubertot? Except the name wasn't Aubertot. No, I must be mistaken. What would a big shot from the Sâlpetrière be doing at a place like Le Chat-Noir? Although he did say he dabbled in journalism…'

He remembered seeing a few copies of
L'Écho de Paris
in the waiting room, the journal Dolbreuse had mentioned after his tête-à-tête with this Aubertot who was not Aubertot. What was the name of the man he'd been introduced to? He needed to speak to Dolbreuse, but he didn't know his address. If he asked Tasha, she would immediately accuse him of jealousy. He had better ask Eudoxie Allard. It would mean having to put up with her advances, but he considered the game was worth the candle. She had given him her card and he seemed to recall slipping it into the letter tray where he kept his papers. He must act quickly, though. Aubertot might also suddenly remember having met him at Le Chat-Noir. He got out of the cab at Quai Malaquais.

 

The bookshop was deserted. Victor was about to go upstairs when he heard the drone of voices at the back of the shop. He crept over quietly. Jojo and Iris were sitting side by side next to the glass cabinet where Kenji kept the books and other objects he brought back from his trips abroad. They were leafing through a volume bound in gold and red that contained risqué illustrations. Standing on tiptoe, Victor was able to read the title of the book upside down:
Dangerous Liaisons
. The choice of book and the behaviour of the two young people suggested an intimacy he felt was inappropriate. How could an educated young lady jeopardise her reputation with a mere clerk in a bookshop!

‘Who gave you permission to leave your post?' he barked, so ferociously that Jojo nearly fell on the floor.

Iris stood up calmly.

‘What have we done to deserve such a display of bad manners, Captain?' she asked merrily.

Victor realised that his outburst had been completely unwarranted.

‘Forgive us, Captain,' she continued in the same unruffled tone, ‘we were sailing at a few cables from the coast and as the lookout reported no giant squid or squalls in the offing, we retired to the poop deck. Did we do something wrong, my Admiral?'

Irritated by this impudent mockery, Victor snapped rudely at Joseph.

‘Did you hear me? What are we paying you for? Get back to your post!'

He looked sternly at Iris and muttered: ‘Is Kenji here?'

‘No, he went to see a customer.'

‘There's another good reason why you should not be here alone. In your godfather's absence it falls to me to look after you.'

‘I was in pleasant company.'

‘That is precisely the problem. Be careful not to cross the line, Mademoiselle.'

Aware of how ridiculous he must appear, he turned on his heel and walked over to the stairs, trying his best to ignore Joseph's grumbling.

‘Back to your post! Back to your post! He's never at his post! The ship could be sinking and he wouldn't even know it! And what about liberty! And equality! Liberty, equality, fraternity, my eye! They might be carved on our monuments, but not everybody enjoys them in equal measure. A fellow would be lucky to receive any sort of justice in this place!'

 

Victor rummaged furiously through the letter tray, but stopped suddenly, troubled by a tune that was coming from behind him. He turned around. Iris was nodding her head in time to the music and swinging a chain. On the end of it hung the watch Victor had given Kenji for his birthday two years earlier.