‘I’m very interested in old Gothic streets, as it happens. How long have you been living here?’
‘Since I came back from the siege of Prague with Monsieur Chevert.’
Nicolas took off his tricorn and saluted. ‘A great soldier, my friend.’
‘He knew how to talk to his troops. He was a small man, but bighearted. It was thanks to him that I got enough money on my discharge to open this workshop. So I never fail to have myself rolled …’
Lifting the sheepskin, he indicated an open crate mounted on castors and with a shaft attached to it for pulling. He noticed the commissioner’s puzzled expression.
‘It’s Fritz, my dog, who pulls it. Yes, I have myself rolled to Saint-Eustache to salute his grave and the fine inscription I’ve had read to me.’
‘My friend,’ said Nicolas, touched, ‘in Rue Montmartre, at the third house after the cul-de-sac, ask for Catherine Gauss, and say Nicolas sent you. There’ll always be a bowl of soup, some bread and stew for you.’
Genuinely moved, the man tugged at his moustache. ‘Not everyone talks like that to an old soldier,’ he muttered. ‘If you tell me what you’re looking for, I’m the man to help you find it.’
‘Well,’ replied Nicolas, casually, ‘there are a few things I’m curious about. I need someone who’s known the street for a long time.’
‘You’ve found him! I was ill for ages in Bohemia, but then in 1747 I hung up my hat here, and I haven’t moved since. I live here, I work here. Let me see your boots, Monsieur, I’ll shine them up for you as we talk.’ He clicked his tongue. ‘They’re worth the trouble.’
Nicolas stretched his leg out in front of him. The man smeared a viscous brown paste on the boot.
‘You wouldn’t by any chance know a grain merchant named Hénéfiance in these parts?’
‘Hénéfiance … Hénéfiance? Wait, the name sounds familiar. Oh, yes! Just down there, after the old wall, you’ll see a house that’s been long abandoned. A nasty story. None of us knows all the ins and outs of it. Old man Hénéfiance was rich, one of those leeches who suck the blood of the people and traffic in grain with other disreputable characters. When he died, his son took over the business. Soon after that, he was arrested without anyone being sure why. One day, the officers came and seized everything. Apparently, he was sentenced to the galleys. There was a rumour that he escaped. Why are you so interested?’
Nicolas ignored the question. ‘And since then, the house has been abandoned?’
‘To tell the truth, I don’t really know, I don’t keep an eye on it all the time, but if there had been any movement in it, I’m sure I would have noticed. I’m a kind of permanent porter. Given my position here, nothing escapes me.’
Both boots having now regained an unparalleled sheen, Nicolas rose from the stool where he had been sitting. He generously rewarded the cobbler, who promised he would visit Rue Montmartre. He had the impression he had gained not only a friend, but also an observer in Rue du Poirier who would be sure to inform him if anything unusual happened. A good turn never went amiss, and what you got back was often greater than if you had consciously asked for it. He advanced along the street, which was deserted at this hour of the day. There was nothing opposite the Hénéfiance house apart from an old mansion, itself abandoned, with a peeling façade. The oldest dwellings in the district were gradually being demolished in order to build blocks of apartments, sometimes six or eight storeys high. There was always an interval after the sale and before demolition started. The Hénéfiance house had a stone wall in front of it, with a wooden carriage entrance in the middle, surmounted by a moss-covered capital. This outside wall was joined to the wall of the house itself, a two-storey construction with boarded-up windows. Nicolas tried to open the heavy door, but in vain: a strong lock prevented any movement. He searched in his pocket and took out a picklock and a small box. In the box was tallow, with which he greased the picklock before inserting it. Within a few seconds the bolt had sprung, but the door still would not open. He decided to try a more violent method and gave it a powerful shove with his shoulder. He had to repeat the action before the door finally yielded with a great creaking of its hinges. He went in and carefully closed the door again behind him.
In front of him was a poorly paved courtyard: grass was beginning to grow in the cracks. To his left, the house, with a small flight of steps leading up to the entrance. To the right, and facing him, other buildings, barns or sheds. He decided to conduct a thorough inspection. His picklock allowed him to enter the house quite easily. He took a few cautious steps in the shadows of a bare room that seemed to him to have been the servants’ pantry. He advanced some more, and suddenly the floor gave way beneath his weight with a sharp crack and an explosion of dust. He had thrown both hands out in front of him and was able to catch hold of the solid part. His legs dangled in emptiness. He finally managed to get back on his feet on one side of the gaping hole. He struck a light, took a sheet from his notebook and set fire to it to make an improvised torch. Through the hole, he could see a cellar filled with shadows and indistinct objects. He lit some more pages and finally found some pieces of candle next to a passageway. He went back to the hole in the floor and looked carefully at the floorboards that had given way. Kneeling, he checked the places where they had broken. He passed his finger over them, bent further over, and felt the wooden fibres. There was a mystery here: the floorboards were of solid oak and in no way rotten or even perforated by furniture beetles, which in Guérande were known as ‘timekeepers of death’ because of the regular noise they produced. They certainly should not have given way. On closer inspection, it was clear that the boards had been neatly sawn through – and recently, too.
His mind began working at high speed. If this act was as recent as it seemed, the house, far from being long abandoned, was still receiving visitors. Had a trap been set? Once again, questions crowded into his mind. Either this was a precautionary device intended to protect the place from prowlers – but what was there to preserve in these ruined premises? – or someone had known he would come here, had preceded him and had sawn through the floor. In the first case, an objection arose immediately: the trap had been set only recently; he knew enough about wood to be sure of that without fear of error. In the second hypothesis, had the intention been to kill him, or any other intruder? He leant over towards the hole. The ground was not a long way down. There was a good chance one might survive, although there was an equal chance of being maimed, or even killed if one fell head first onto the stone. It was possible that this was simply the best way of not drawing attention to the cellar. Making any unwanted visitor in the Hénéfiance house fall into it might be a way of saying that it did not contain any incriminating evidence. He knew he was thinking too fast, and tried to slow down, convinced that he would never reach any logical conclusion while his mind was overwhelmed with the emotion of the moment.
Whatever the hidden intention of whoever had planted this trap, he would get nothing for his troubles. Nicolas was not only unscathed, he would now most certainly visit the cellar.
He continued his inspection, cautiously, finding only empty rooms with peeling walls. The furniture must have been confiscated when Hénéfiance was sentenced to the galleys. The living quarters did not contribute anything he could use. He needed to look at the outbuildings. He started with the shed facing the house. As he approached it, he began to hear furtive, hurried noises, followed by prolonged silences. He froze, all his senses on the alert, as if he were at the hunt. The sound of movement was increasing. He put his hand into the wing of his tricorn where he kept the miniature pistol he had been given by Bourdeau – always the final argument in difficult situations. He cocked it and, with his finger on the trigger, opened the door of the shed, holding his breath, his heart pounding. An unexpected sight stopped him dead. Dozens of rabbits, dazzled by the sudden daylight, stared at him, their ears up. He realised that the ground was like a warren, full of holes and burrows. An involuntary movemen
t of his arm provoked general panic. In an instant, the animals rushed into their underground refuges. He noticed a heap of half-eaten cabbages. He smiled. The mystery had definitely deepened. A house long abandoned and boarded up, and yet a human presence who set traps and raised rabbits! Was the same malicious mind behind both things, or was he dealing with two acts performed by two different people? He inclined towards the first of these possibilities. If some local inhabitant had decided to raise rabbits, he would surely have built hutches instead of this improvised warren. He summed up: the house was frequented by a person or persons unknown who, while doing their best to make it seem as though it was indeed abandoned, set traps, raised rabbits, and even fed them cabbage. This last detail struck him as significant. After the winter the kingdom had endured, cabbage was a highly expensive luxury. Why was so much money being spent for such a trivial purpose? He examined the turned-over earth, hoping to detect human traces on the soft soil. All he could see were some curious, even inexplicable prints. He turned to the left, where there was a door leading to another barn. Nothing there drew his attention. It in turn led, through a kind of corridor between two supporting walls, to a room directly adjoining the house.
The door to it was a heavy one. He picked the lock and entered. It slammed as it closed behind him. He opened it again and noted that it was slightly out of kilter, an effect accentuated by pieces of lead nailed to its perimeter. Yet another mystery, on the meaning of which he could only conjecture. Perhaps it was to stop the rabbits from getting into the house. Yet there was no way through. In comparison with the other rooms, this one seemed less dilapidated. It had pine panelling and a hearth with a brazier that had only recently been used. A pervasive smell tickled his nostrils. He lifted his candle for a closer look at the walls of the room. Facing the door, he found the explanation for this strange smell: there, on the panelling he saw, shining in the light, a large coal-black capital K over which a line had been drawn, and a green capital I. He held out his finger: the paint was still fresh! Someone had been here very recently – doubtless the same person whose presence he had already detected – to trace these mysterious signs. He had to find out how this person gained access to the house and, in order to do that, he would have to go through the whole place again. He was about to turn when he noticed some balls on the floor which took him back twenty-five years.
As a child, he would occasionally sleep in an isolated room high in one of the towers of the Château de Ranreuil. Several times, in the early hours of the morning, he had heard a heavy step pounding the floor of the attic above him. This irregular noise, which struck terror into him, suggested the presence of someone staggering and stamping, then silence would fall again, even more oppressive than the preceding manifestations. His nurse, Fine, to whom he had had the unfortunate idea of confiding his terror, had convinced him that a ghost wandered the upper reaches of the château.
‘Doue da bardon an Kraon!’ she had cried. ‘God forgive the dead!’
Then, after making sure that Canon Le Floch was not in the vicinity, she suggested to Nicolas that, in case it happened again, he should utter nine times, without taking a breath, the sentence: ‘Mar bez Satan, ra’z i pell en an Doue.’ ‘Go away in the name of God if you are the devil.’ The marquis, informed of this, nobody knew by whom, had lost his temper and, one morning, had taken his godson by the hand. They had gone up to the attic and, as dawn broke, a dark shape had appeared in one of the loopholes and jumped down onto the floor. Forbidden to scream, Nicolas had opened his eyes and recognised an eagle owl, which strutted solemnly before going over to a heap of branches, bones and castings and beginning to tidy it. The lesson had not been forgotten. From that day, the boy convinced himself never to judge by appearances alone. His father had belonged to that class of happy sceptics for whom only one criterion mattered: that based on reason and empirical examination. He dreaded above all those false minds ready to accept anything without analysing it. Quoting the hermit of Ferney,1 he did not believe that, in order to ‘pay court to the Supreme Being’, it was necessary to chant, whip yourself, mutilate your flesh, run about stark naked, fast, or perform any one of a thousand other outrageous acts. Reason, for him, had to reject all forms of prejudice, which were obstacles in the way of progress. Only progress held the key to truth, he would tell Nicolas, with a lofty but amused air. That combination of qualities made an honest man. He respected the normal dogmas of religion as long as they went along with the most universally held beliefs. This influence survived in so far as Nicolas, whose simple faith was unshakable and part and parcel of his loyalty to himself, was nevertheless a child of his century, always looking beyond appearances. That this could give rise to contradictions, he knew and took into account.
The problem was that if the castings had come from an owl, of which there were many in the city, what were they doing in this closed room? He examined the hearth. Perhaps the bird had been nesting on the roof and the balls had fallen down the flue. Although not very satisfied with that explanation, he decided to accept it for the moment. All these isolated clues were multiplying and posing questions that were by no means easy to answer. A further tour of the house, from the cellar to the attic, yielded nothing. A persistent, almost sweet odour hovered here and there, which he could not define, but which was nevertheless familiar. Where could he have come across it before? He finally gave up, left the house and decided to place it as quickly as possible under the surveillance of a network of spies.
*
He returned to his carriage and rode back to the Grand Châtelet. On the way, he passed a few detachments of mounted musketeers. Order was being restored and arrests being carried out. Daylight was fading over a city so silent, it seemed to have been struck dumb after the day’s events. He climbed the steps of the great staircase four at a time and sighed with delight when he saw that Bourdeau was already there. He immediately recounted his visit to Rue du Poirier. His account left the inspector intrigued, if puzzled.
‘We’re being deceived,’ he said. ‘It seems to me that someone is trying to lead our investigation astray.’
‘Indeed! It could be that this whole display of clues, meaningless as it seems, is deliberately meant to mislead us and play on our lack of understanding. Its aim is either to draw us to the Hénéfiance house or drive us away from it. I already have an eye on the place, unfortunately a legless one …’
Bourdeau laughed. ‘You are making an enigma out of a mystery!’
‘He’s a crippled old soldier who has a cobbler’s workshop not far from the house.’
‘And you won this man over into working for us?’
‘Dear Pierre, all you have to do is know how to listen. But we also need two spies keeping watch on the house. They can take turns, one by night, the other by day, until further orders.’
On a piece of paper, he drew a map of the street and the position of the Hénéfiance house.
‘And you, quid novi?’
‘La Babine gave me the name of Mourut’s notary. She kicked up a bit of a fuss at first, pleading loyalty and discretion, but the animosity she feels towards her mistress and Caminet prevailed.’
‘And what happened?’
‘I went to see this Master Delamanche in Rue des Prouvaires, on the corner of Rue des Deux-Écus. Without any hesitation, he revealed some hidden aspects of this case that ought to be of great interest to you. Just imagine, the baker paid for Caminet’s apprenticeship himself. That’s nothing: he could have been doing that in secret for the son of a friend. But his will makes Caminet his sole heir, and in fact recognises him de jure as his natural son.’
Nicolas was silent for a moment, as if weighing up the full significance of this revelation. ‘Did Caminet know?’
‘Hard to say. Even the notary couldn’t tell me.’
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions. This revelation suggests several things, some of which are contradictory. Even if the apprentice knew his origins, he would have to have been informed of the content
s of the will and to know that he was the sole heir. Judging by Madame Mourut’s misalliance, she came to the marriage with nothing, neither a dowry nor a donatio propter nuptias.’
‘Mercy!’ cried Bourdeau. ‘Unlike some, I was never a notary’s clerk in Rennes.’
‘Forgive me, Pierre. I mean that there was no stipulation in the marriage contract that she could claim part of the inheritance in the event of her husband’s death.’
‘And therefore?’
‘Therefore the lady can expect nothing and will find herself in the street, with no more than she had before. A prospect which, as I’m sure you can imagine, must be intolerable to someone so preoccupied with her standing.’
‘But did she know?’
‘That’s the question! It’s quite possible the two of them plotted the husband’s death in order to enjoy his estate undisturbed. Is it large, by the way?’
‘Larger than you might assume, certainly larger than you might suppose of a Parisian baker. This case is becoming ever more complicated, and now there’s this business of the Hénéfiance house, which—’
‘Not so fast! Let me stop you there. There’s nothing yet to prove that there’s a connection between the two things. It remains a subject for further investigation, especially as, if the money passes to the apprentice, the lady is saved.’
‘There’s another possibility,’ said Bourdeau, slyly. ‘Perhaps he wanted to kill the husband in the hope the wife would inherit. Judging by what people say about him, he wasn’t likely to spend much longer in the bakehouse. He would have squandered his fortune soon enough. He’s quite young and the lady’s already a bit past it …’
‘All of which makes it an urgent priority to question Madame Mourut again. I was already planning to, and now I shall do so immediately. After which, let’s meet back here to organise our entrenchments.’
Bourdeau smiled at this warlike vocabulary. It was not something that Nicolas had picked up as a notary’s clerk in Rennes, but rather from his father the Marquis de Ranreuil, a great soldier.
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