The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot (29 page)

PETIOT
Are you sure?

The spectators turned and stared at him in stupefaction.

PETIOT
You just said that Lombard is alive. Can you give us his address? Don't ask
me
where he is.

No one did. Floriot, at least, already knew perfectly well. Lombard had been a codefendant in the trial of the rue Lauriston Gestapo three months earlier—the trial at which Floriot himself defended Lafont. Lafont's last words as he went off to be shot had been: “Maître Floriot, you have been admirable. I hope, in the future, you will have better causes to defend.” That future had apparently not yet arrived.

FLORIOT
Your investigation seems to have been conducted very hastily.

Batut glanced at Floriot's assistants—seven of them today.

BATUT
I don't have a dozen secretaries working for me, Maître.

PETIOT
How many patriots did you arrest and turn over to the Germans to be shot?

Batut was speechless with rage.

PETIOT
Yes, of course, you didn't count them. There were too many.

VÉRON
Remember, Petiot, you're the murderer here.

PETIOT
To conclude with this witness, I—

LESER
If anyone is going to do any concluding around here it will be me.

An Inspector Pascaud came next. He looked like a scholar fallen on hard times and was terrified of Floriot. He had questioned the Spaniards at Levallois-Perret and found that Petiot had never worked with them.

PETIOT
I think someone is confused. My group of Spaniards didn't live at Levallois.

Floriot brought up the Braunberger case. It was found that a set of detachable cuffs had disappeared, and an hour was spent trying to find out when they had been misplaced.

FLORIOT
Are you policemen or magicians? Everything seems to vanish around here. Inspector Pascaud, who broke the seals on the suitcase?

PASCAUD
I didn't.

FLORIOT
Who
did
break the seals on the suitcase?

PASCAUD
I'm the only one who would have opened it for Madame Braunberger.

FLORIOT
How strange. If you didn't open the suitcase, and if no one else opened the suitcase, how did the suitcase get open?

PASCAUD
I don't know.

An Inspector Casanova was more confident, though his voice tended to come and go like a weak radio broadcast. The first part of his testimony was lost completely when all eyes turned to the actress Paulette Dubost, who entered the courtroom and sat on the steps. The Petiot trial was turning into something of a social event.

CASANOVA
The two people found dead near the forest at Marly could not possibly have been killed by Petiot. They were buried there in July 1944, and were not even dead before March 11. We know who executed them. There were eleven men, and one of them has made a complete confession. They judged the men at the rue de la Pompe Gestapo office and machine-gunned them. There is a complete dossier which gives all the facts.

Floriot sat leafing through his papers and taking notes.

Captain Henri Boris was called by Véron. During the war he had directed aerial operations for de Gaulle. He had been arrested by the Germans and imprisoned at Compiègne, where he shared a cell with Dreyfus. He testified that Dreyfus had supplied the Resistance with radios, and claimed the man would never have betrayed his country.

FLORIOT
What about the agreement he signed?

BORIS
He was compelled to sign those letters. I would have done the same thing if I had been in his place and the Germans had offered me a way out of prison—so would anyone. And I would have forgotten about the letters as soon as I was out. While we were in prison, I gave Dreyfus all sorts of names and information. If he had been a collaborator he could have turned them over to the Germans. I never had any reason to regret these confidences.…

VÉRON
Petiot, how did you obtain your plastic explosives?

PETIOT
We got sheets of it from—

VÉRON
Plastic explosives don't come in sheets.

PETIOT
I knew about detonators when you were still breastfeeding. You've never even seen plastic explosives.

VÉRON
No, I've only driven around with one hundred fifty kilos of them in the trunk of my car.

BORIS
There were no plastic explosives in France at the time Petiot says he used them.
*

PETIOT
A man parachuted in from London brought them.

BORIS
I was in charge of all parachute operations. What was his name? I'm sure I must know him.

PETIOT
I don't know his name. I didn't ask questions. I think the Germans found out about him and he fled to Corsica, where he committed suicide.

The audience broke into laughter. Yet another possible witness had conveniently disappeared.

VÉRON
How did you detonate your plastic explosives?

PETIOT
I put them between two German grenades and set them off.

BORIS
You couldn't detonate plastic explosives like that.

PETIOT
They didn't go off.

VÉRON
Captain Boris, have you ever heard of a Resistance group called Fly-Tox?

BORIS
Neither I nor anyone else has ever heard of it.

PETIOT
Captain Boris, since you know everyone in the Resistance, do you know the student who killed a German named Ritter?

Boris smiled. “No, I don't.”

PETIOT
Well I do.

LESER
Petiot, can't you try to control yourself a bit?

PETIOT
We've know each other for six days now. Do you really think I can control myself?

Jean Hotin, the former husband of Denise, managed to amuse everyone. He described the search for his wife that he had undertaken six months after her disappearance.

HOTIN
It was four-thirty. I went to the doctor's office and saw a sign on the door saying his hours were from five until seven. I didn't dare ring. Besides, I had a train to catch, and there was work to be done at home. So I left.

PETIOT
I never had such a sign on my door.

The audience laughed throughout Hotin's testimony. The newspapers all agreed that he must have escaped from a novel. “It is Zola,” Floriot said, “it is Balzac, but it is not Petiot.” The lawyer questioned the farmer with barely restrained amusement.

FLORIOT
When did your wife discover she was pregnant?

HOTIN
I don't know.

FLORIOT
Well, when was her last period?

Hotin blushed.

FLORIOT
Surely you know about these things. You must know when she became pregnant?

HOTIN
No.

LESER
Look, man, when were you married?

HOTIN
Um …

LESER
Forget it.

The final witness of the day was Captain Mourrot of the Villeneuve-sur-Yonne constabulary. He raked up every old crime, and juxtaposed the murder of Louisette Delaveau with the accusation that Petiot had been driving without headlights. The original dossiers from Villeneuve were all in the record, and Floriot was able to show that the captain had almost invariably forgotten or distorted the facts. It was Mourrot who had testified, years earlier, before a judge, that Petiot's headlights had been lit but were invisible.

MOURROT
[concluding proudly] And I gave him seven traffic tickets. And besides that, he murdered Madame Debauve—I knew he was the killer all along.

FLORIOT
[laughing] There's only one problem, gentlemen of the jury. Before he accused Petiot, do you know how many other people he “knew” were guilty and interrogated? Nine, gentlemen, nine. If they hadn't closed the case, he would have accused the entire town.

Mourrot remained oblivious of the fact that his vituperation and petty charges were only whitewashing Petiot's past. Having completed his list, he prepared to sum up with a flourish.

MOURROT
And yet, Petiot was not a sorceror, he—

FLORIOT
Yes, I think we can see that.

The next day was Sunday. A day's rest seemed to do Petiot good, and he returned on Monday appearing much more relaxed than the previous week. So relaxed, in fact, that at one point he almost fell asleep; he lay across the front of the box, his fingers against his temples, his eyes staring dreamily into space, his back hunched in a caricature of boredom.

LESER
Come, come, Petiot, sit up straight.

PETIOT
Ummm?

The audience laughed again.

The first witness was Madame Guschinov, pale, feeble, “thin as an umbrella,” as one newspaper described her, with profuse blond hair.

GUSCHINOV
Petiot advised my husband to flee. On January 2, 1942, my husband left home. He told me Petiot was going to get him to Argentina, and that he had to have some injections because of health regulations.

PETIOT
That's idiotic. You just read about injections in the newspapers. Besides, there weren't any health regulations in Argentina. She's lying.

GUSCHINOV
My husband said he was worried about these injections.

PETIOT
Why should he have been worried? He was my patient. I had been giving him injections for the past year. Why should he suddenly start worrying? You're lying.

LESER
The witness is testifying under oath!

PETIOT
No she isn't.

LESER
What! You dare—

FLORIOT
The witness did not take an oath. She volunteered to testify as a witness in a civil suit and, as such, she did not have to take an oath.

ARCHEVÊQUE
If Guschinov was a regular patient of yours at the rue Caumartin, why did you have to take him to the rue Le Sueur?

PETIOT
We had to discuss the details of the trip. We needed privacy. I had a wife, a nurse, a housekeeper.

ARCHEVÊQUE
I still don't see why you couldn't talk at the rue Caumartin.

PETIOT
You don't know the rue Caumartin. But I will not invite you all over. I saw the mess you made of the rue Le Sueur the other day, and I don't care to have the same thing happen again.

ARCHEVÊQUE
A suitcase belonging to Guschinov was found at the rue Le Sueur.

PETIOT
I'm the one who told you it was his suitcase, and now you're using it against me! Look, you don't cross three borders carrying a big heavy suitcase like that. I told Guschinov, “You're not traveling first class,” and gave him a bag. He had a lot of suits, and I said, “They'll get wrinkled, but you can always have them pressed when you arrive.”

GUSCHINOV
Every month, I returned to Paris to ask for news of my husband. Petiot told me all sorts of stories about the passage, and said that my husband's business was going very well in Buenos Aires and that I should join him there. Petiot said he couldn't show me the letters, because they were too compromising and he had destroyed them. I cabled to some friends of ours there, and they said they hadn't seen my husband.

PETIOT
She's lying. I showed her the letters. She had found a young lover and didn't want to join her husband.

FLORIOT
She's lying! Everyone is lying!

DUPIN
Calm yourself, Maitre.

Archevêque began speaking again, but Petiot cut him off.

PETIOT
Wait, Maître, let me speak. I haven't finished.

ARCHEVÊQUE
You're very intelligent, Petiot.

Petiot bowed. “Intelligence is only relative, Maître.”

ARCHEVÊQUE
Madame Guschinov, your husband told you, did he not, that it was through the intermediary Lucien Romier, who was then a minister at Vichy, that Petiot had obtained the false papers?

GUSCHINOV
Certainly.

PETIOT
That's another lie. It was only much later that Lucien Romier or people associated with him began supplying me with false papers. Madame Guschinov, would you be so kind as to tell me—

LESER
If you wish to ask questions, will you kindly do it through me?

Petiot bowed again, excused himself, and clapped both hands to his mouth. He looked as though he were blowing kisses to the crowd.

FLORIOT
Madame, when your husband wrote asking you to join him in Argentina, why didn't you go?

GUSCHINOV
My health, business—

PETIOT
She had found a younger lover.

FLORIOT
But you had faith in Dr. Petiot?

GUSCHINOV
Yes, I had faith in him.

FLORIOT
During the investigation you said you didn't leave because you didn't have faith in Dr. Petiot.

LESER
We still have a lot of witnesses to hear. At this rate, we'll still be here in July.

Joachim Guschinov's business associate, Jean Gouedo, took the stand. He told of his partner's preparations for the trip, and mentioned that the five skins Petiot claimed were a gift to his wife had been intended for sale in South America.

GOUEDO
Petiot was going to send the money separately. My associate did not want to part with everything, and sewed some of it into the shoulders of a jacket.

PETIOT
If I had wanted to kill Monsieur Guschinov, I wouldn't have had any reason to ask him for his money ahead of time. I could have just taken it afterward.

They returned to the subject of the Alvear Palace Hotel. Petiot gave the name of the desk clerk.