The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot (25 page)

At 1:50 Petiot was ushered into the courtroom. He had asked that his handcuffs be removed outside, which was done. He wore a blue-gray suit, purple bow tie, and a gray overcoat, and carried a small sheaf of papers. Photographers began taking pictures. Petiot at first modestly hid his face, then struck several dramatic poses before politely saying, “I think that's enough for now, gentlemen.” He took off his overcoat, folded it carefully, looked at it, unfolded it, folded it again, and placed it carefully on the seat behind him. The court watched in silence. He turned to give everyone a pleasant smile, then glanced at President Leser to indicate he was ready.

The clerk of the court read the lengthy indictment, terminating with twenty-seven repetitions of the accusation that there existed sufficient evidence against Petiot, Marcel André Henri Félix, of having, either in Paris or any other place “on such a day 194[x], in any case within the statute of limitations [ten years for first-degree murder] willfully put to death [X], born at [such and such a place] on [such and such a date], and that this willful homicide was committed with premeditation and malice aforethought, for the purpose of preparing, facilitating, or effecting the fraudulent appropriation of clothing, personal items, identity papers, and a portion of the fortune of the above-mentioned victim.”

Petiot looked bored and drew caricatures of the prosecution on the back of his notes. The clerk read out the names of the eighty witnesses to make sure everyone was present. Colonel André Dewavrin, de Gaulle's chief of intelligence, who was supposed to testify on Petiot's Resistance activity, was found to be away on a mission.

FLORIOT
I wonder how long he'll be gone?

DUPIN
So do I.

FLORIOT
You have means I lack for finding out.

DUPIN
So I do.

At 3:15 the preliminaries were over and Leser began to read the summary of Petiot's past life that the police had pieced together. Petiot listened with bored amusement; from time to time he leaped up to correct a detail while Leser timidly, futilely, tried to maintain some semblance of order. His presentation was intended to be an introduction to the personality of the man they were there to judge, and, indeed, it was.

LESER
[reading] He was a mediocre student—

PETIOT
I only got “very good” on my thesis. I should be modest about these things.

LESER
You were involved in politics in the Yonne, but contrary to your statements you were never in opposition with Flandin.
*

PETIOT
I was the Socialist candidate. Do I have to draw you a diagram to show you my position with respect to Flandin?

LESER
You were well thought of as a doctor. Your patients found you quite seductive.

PETIOT
Why, thank you.

LESER
Nonetheless, a woman in the town, Madame Mongin, had several complaints about you, among them that you stole items from her house and replaced an antique stove with a copy.

PETIOT
If that's how we're going to begin, this is not going to go very well.

LESER
I'll begin however I please.

PETIOT
Madame Mongin wanted to sleep with me. I declined this honor. She lied.

LESER
Next you're going to tell me the whole dossier is false.

PETIOT
No, I wouldn't say that. Only eight-tenths of it is false.

Leser mentioned the theft of the cemetery cross.

PETIOT
Why don't we stop this farce right now? This story was made up by all the bigots and idiots in the country. In fact, this cross disappeared two hundred years ago. There must be a statute of limitations, isn't there, Monsieur le Président?

As Petiot launched into a long explanation, Dupin interrupted him.

PETIOT
[shouting] Would you please let me finish my story?

LESER
I forbid you to speak in that tone. Speak softly.

PETIOT
All right. But I don't care to be treated like a criminal.

And I beg the gentlemen of the jury, who will be the final arbiters of this fight, to carefully note all the lies in the dossier.

The theft of electricity started Petiot on another windy tale, and this time it was Leser who interrupted.

PETIOT
Will you
please
let me continue? I do think I have some rights here. This is
my
trial.

Leser threw his arms in the air. “I've never seen anything like this.”

PETIOT
Don't throw your arms in the air, Monsieur le Président.

LESER
[impotent with rage] I'll throw my arms in the air if I want to.

PETIOT
Oh well, if it pleases you. In another minute you'll have reason to throw them even higher.

Leser turned to the doctor's life in Paris and the leaflet he sent out upon his arrival. “This is the prospectus of a quack!” he remarked without thinking.

PETIOT
Thanks for the advertising, but I would appreciate it if you kept your opinions to yourself.

FLORIOT
A court is supposed to be impartial. I demand that you withdraw this characterization of “quack.”

LESER
Forget I ever said anything. You claim to have earned an astronomical salary, yet you declared only twenty-five thousand francs on your tax return.

PETIOT
I earned three hundred thousand to five hundred thousand francs yer year, which is hardly astronomical. When a surgeon earns eight or ten million, he declares a hundred thousand; it's a medical tradition. I didn't want to seem like some kind of dope. Besides, it proves that I'm a patriot: the French are notorious for tax evasion.

Leser asked about the death of his patient Raymonde Hanss.

PETIOT
The autopsy proved that my injection had nothing to do with her death. I even telephoned Dr. Paul at the time to find out the results of his inquest. He told me, “If you start asking questions about everyone who dies, you're going to be a very busy man.” Dr. Paul loves to joke, you know.

The subject turned to the theft at the Joseph Gibert bookstore.

PETIOT
I didn't steal anything. I put the book under my arm by mistake while preoccupied with my invention.

Leser tried in vain to stop him from going into a complete description of the machine with full anatomical details of its application. “All inventors are thought to be crazy.” Petiot added.

LESER
It was you who pretended to be crazy every time you had troubles with the law.

PETIOT
On the contrary, I always maintained I was quite sane. No one ever knows whether he is crazy or not. One can only be crazy by comparison.

Leser described the rue Le Sueur house and placed a sinister interpretation on the triangular room.

PETIOT
Look, I planned to put a radiotherapy machine in that room. I installed the false door because I found it decorative and because I ran out of wallpaper. As for the viewer, it was under the wallpaper. Does that suggest anything to you? You can't see through wallpaper very well, can you? These are all lies told by the German press, so let's just stop talking about them. Or else, rather than asking me what I did, why don't you ask me what I didn't do. Things would move along much more quickly.

LESER
Your arrival at the house was rather strange.

PETIOT
When the police telephoned, I came at once. That proves I was innocent. They say it took me half an hour to arrive. That annoys me. It took me twelve minutes to go from the rue Caumartin to the rue Le Sueur and ten minutes to return. They made up the story of my lateness to justify the fact that they had forced open the door, which I find astonishingly presumptuous.
*
A heater which is operating scarcely constitutes the beginning of a fire.

LESER
But you said, “I am risking my head.”

PETIOT
I was. And I'm still risking my head here today, even though I am innocent.

LESER
You refused to answer Judge Goletty's questions.

PETIOT
That's not altogether true. I told Monsieur Goletty, “Perhaps I will answer you with a pair of slaps.”

Petiot repeated his story of finding bodies in his house when he returned from Fresnes and told how his Resistance comrades had helped dispose of them.

DUPIN
What comrades? Give us names.

PETIOT
I will not give you my comrades' names because they are not guilty—no more than I am. Several of them offered to come and testify on my behalf, but I didn't want them to. They deserve the Liberation Cross for liquidating thirty krauts, and you would decorate them with handcuffs.

DUPIN
Let them come and I will give them the Cross. You have my word.

PETIOT
No, I will not tell you their names until the purge is complete. Not as long as men who pledged allegiance to Pétain are still free.

Leser was troubled by Petiot's assertion that he had joined the Resistance as soon as the Germans arrived. “But there was no Resistance at that time,” the president stated. The audience shouted in protest at the suggestion that France had peacefully let itself be conquered. “No organized Resistance, I mean.” Leser apologized, and hastily went on to ask about Petiot's secret weapon. It was evident that Leser had already lost control of the trial and would have difficulty wresting it back from the glib and confident Dr. Petiot.

PETIOT
I'm not going to tell you anything. This is certainly not the place to discuss it. It is a short-range weapon, useful primarily for defensive purposes. The only people who would use it now are the Germans, who would love to get rid of the Allied occupying forces and prepare for another war.

He went on to tell how he had killed a German on horseback in the Bois de Boulogne. Someone in the audience shouted, “Call the horse to the stand!” Petiot spoke vaguely of Rainbow, Fly-Tox, Cumulo, and the Englishman who had taught him Resistance tactics. He mentioned for the first time that his group had blown up German trains in the Chevreuse Valley near Versailles.

Pierre Véron really was a Resistant, and his credentials as such were so impeccable that he had been asked, for strategic reasons, to codefend Maréchal Pétain (he refused). During the Occupation he was part of a group that helped downed Allied pilots escape from France, concealing them in his apartment for days while carrying on his practice. After the D-Day invasion, he left Paris and blew up, if not trains, bridges all over France, as his group covered the flanks of the two Allied forces converging on Paris from the west and south. Véron began firing questions at Petiot.

VÉRON
What are plastic explosives?

PETIOT
…

VÉRON
How do you transport plastic explosives?

PETIOT
Wait a minute, it's coming back to me. Several comrades filled a suitcase with plastic explosives and detonated them with a bomb with a timer, and then came to hide at my house.

VÉRON
What is this “bomb with a timer?”

PETIOT
A German grenade … you know … the ones with the handle. We heard the explosion thirty minutes later—

VÉRON
German fragmentation grenades have a seven-second fuse!

Petiot mumbled something and fell silent, glaring sullenly.

FLORIOT
Is this a trial or an entrance exam for the Polytechnic Institute?

VÉRON
This is an examination on the Resistance, and it didn't take long to show that your client is an impostor.

Petiot hastened to say: “You didn't let me finish. I wasn't going to say that it exploded half an hour later, but that half an hour later the Germans came to my house.” But he knew he had erred seriously, and Véron listened with an indulgent smile. “What right do you have to talk,” Petiot shouted, “You defender of traitors and Jews!”

Leser ended the day's proceedings at 6:30. Petiot, having regained his composure, said: “I hope you're not stopping on my account. I'm not in the least bit tired.” He smiled pleasantly.

The theatrics of the first day drew an even larger crowd the second. Leser opened with the Resistance again.

LESER
How did you go about detecting and liquidating these alleged German informers?

PETIOT
It was very simple. My comrades and I observed the civilians who came out of the rue des Saussaies. We followed them in a truck. In a secluded place, we stopped them and said we were the German police. Their reactions gave them away. We shoved them in the truck and buried them in the forest near Marly.

DUPIN
Give us some names.

Floriot whispered, “Adrien Estébétéguy.”

PETIOT
Adrien Estébétéguy.”

DUPIN
Did you kill them yourself?

PETIOT
I killed two German motorcyclists with my secret weapon.

VÉRON
Where? How? This is not the sort of thing that passes unnoticed. We could check up on your statement.

PETIOT
You're just searching for dramatic effect!

VÉRON
No, but I won't tolerate having you dirty the name of the Resistance for your own ends!

The audience applauded.

PETIOT
Shut up, you defender of Jews. You're working for the traitor Dreyfus and you're a double agent yourself!

Véron raised his fist and took a step toward Petiot. “Take that back or I'll knock your teeth in!”

The audience laughed, and this interchange furnished headlines for all the newspapers. Even before Véron returned home that evening, his wife had read exaggerated accounts of the accused and the lawyer almost leaping at one another's throat. Leser placated the two men and restored order. Floriot had slept through most of the interchange, sprawled across his desk.