The Saint-Florentin Murders

by Jean-FranCois Parot

  Out of curiosity, he opened a door, which revealed to him a magnificently prepared bedroom. Behind this room were a fine bathroom and water closet in the English style, such as he had not seen since his return from London. He went back into the study and rang the bell. The valet appeared. The man was about fifty, with a crumpled, colourless face and faded eyes. He wore a grey wig, and his silver-trimmed blue livery hung loose on his slender frame. The only thing striking about him was how nondescript he was.

  ‘What’s your name, my friend?’

  ‘Provence, Commissioner,’ the man said, avoiding his gaze.

  ‘What’s your real name?’

  ‘Charles Bibard.’

  ‘Where were you born?’

  ‘In Paris, in 1725 or 1726.’

  Nicolas had been right about his age. ‘Why Provence, then?’

  ‘It was my predecessor’s name. Monseigneur’s father, by whom I was subsequently engaged, didn’t like change.’

  ‘Well, Provence, can you tell me what happened here this morning?’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know much. Just before seven, I was busy making Monseigneur’s apartments ready for his return from Versailles when I heard cries and screams.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘In the bedroom. I went downstairs to the ground floor. The kitchen boy, the one who opens up in the morning, was screaming in terror and wringing his hands.’

  ‘Was he alone?’

  Nicolas noticed a slight hesitation.

  ‘Everything was so chaotic … I think the Swiss Guard was there. Yes, I can see him now, just buttoning up his livery.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Jacques – Jacques Despiard, the kitchen boy – was kicking up such a fuss, it was impossible to understand what he was on about. He was stamping his feet like someone possessed. The caretaker arrived and helped us restrain him, then we left the caretaker to watch over him and went down into the servants’ pantry.’

  ‘So the door was open?’

  ‘Yes. That was where Jacques had come from. The key was still in the door at the end of the passage.’

  ‘And what did you find?’

  Nicolas waited intently for the answer. Experience had taught him that a witness’s first observations often turned out to be the most enlightening.

  ‘It was still dark and the kitchen boy had dropped his candle. We went to look for another candle and lit it. There was nothing to see in the kitchen except some bloodstained footprints, but as soon as we got to the door of the roasting room we discovered Monsieur Missery lying face down on the floor in the middle of a pool of blood. We rushed to him, and I noticed there was a kitchen knife next to him.’

  ‘What was the position of his head?’

  ‘His right cheek was against the floor.’

  ‘And where was the knife?’

  ‘Also on his right. He was still breathing and, just as we were going to help him, the Swiss Guard turned and saw, slumped to her knees against the draining board, the body of a young woman. Her head looked as if it was detached from her trunk. The wound was terrible, Monsieur, she was like a pig that’s been bled.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘We carried Jean Missery to his room on the mezzanine.’

  ‘The floor where we are now?’

  ‘That’s right, Commissioner, but on the other side of the courtyard, where you find the service rooms, the linen room, and accommodation for the Swiss Guard and the caretaker. The caretaker went to fetch a doctor from Rue Saint-Honoré. At that moment, Monseigneur arrived and took matters in hand. He immediately went down to the servants’ pantry.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes. Then he came back up and asked for the key I’d taken from the door and double-locked everything. Here it is – he gave it to me to give to you.’

  Nicolas recognised the minister’s way: his insecure character did not exclude a certain decisiveness and the greatest concern for detail. The valet handed him a thick envelope bearing the Saint-Florentin family seal.

  ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘That he’d recover. He bandaged the wound in his side, and told us to let him rest and to keep an eye on him.’

  ‘We’ll continue this conversation later. These initial facts are enough for the moment. Please show me to the kitchens.’

  As they were leaving the room, Nicolas noticed that the valet’s shoes, and their heels, were immaculate. He recalled a quip by Semacgus, although he did not immediately see its relevance to his observation. His friend liked to say that the doors of gilded salons were not closed to those whose minds were full of dirt, but that those same people would be turned away if there was dirt on their shoes. It was an interesting detail, which it would be worthwhile investigating further. The man led him down a smaller staircase, no doubt used by the servants. Nicolas, who had lowered his head in order not to miss the poorly lit steps, noticed some brownish prints still visible on the wood. His first reaction was to make an ironic remark on the poor maintenance of this area, so out of keeping with the gleaming splendour visible elsewhere in the mansion. On the ground floor, they walked across a small inner conservatory, then through some pantries, and found themselves in a passage which emerged into a larger one leading on the left-hand side towards the courtyard of the mansion and on the right to the door of the kitchens. Nicolas opened the envelope and took out a large key. He would have to check if there were any duplicates. His concern for details like that, which were often the most significant, was what made him a good policeman. He unlocked the door and entered the first room, where the light came in through large high windows.

  ‘This is the kitchen itself,’ said Provence, continuing towards another room. ‘And this is the roasting room, this is where—’

  Nicolas did not let him finish. ‘Thank you,’ he said with an amiable smile. ‘I’d like to be alone now. Oh, there is one thing, though. Could you get a message to the duty office of the commissioners and inspectors at the Grand Châtelet?’

  He tore a page from his notebook and, leaning against the wall, quickly wrote a note to Inspector Bourdeau, asking him to join him immediately at the Saint-Florentin mansion with a wagon, some officers and all the material necessary to transport a corpse. He knew that for the past few weeks his deputy had been spending every morning at the old prison in the always disappointed hope of a mission to be expedited. He searched in his pocket, found a piece of sealing wax, and used it to close his message. He wrote his signature across it with the lead pencil, in order to discourage inquisitiveness, and handed the whole thing to the valet, who seemed upset at being excluded from his exploration of the scene of the crime. This reaction seemed to him surprising. In his experience, witnesses connected with a violent crime usually preferred to avoid as far as possible the place where it had occurred. Once again he made a mental note of the fact. Perhaps, he thought, the man had been given the task by the minister of reporting back to him on Nicolas’s first observations.

  The floor of the roasting room was like that of a butcher’s shop after an animal has been slaughtered. It was impossible to draw any conclusions from the prints still visible in the mire of blood on the black and white tiles. What did seem clear, though, was that a body had been dragged across the floor, presumably that of the major-domo, Jean Missery. On the floor, a kitchen knife with a wooden handle and a single rivet drew his attention: it was one of those common objects known as an eustache. It was of medium size and its blade measured a little more than a hand in length. The mustiness in the room reminded him of other situations dominated by the sickly-sweet, metallic smell of blood. Nicolas climbed on a stool to get an overall view.

  The picture Provence had painted of the scene proved exact. First of all, the body of a young woman, slumped, as if kneeling, at the foot of a draining board. Her head was at a curious angle in relation to the rest of the body, and she had lost a lot of blood, which had spread, brown and glutinous, all around her. He noted an incong
ruous detail: her two feet, as white as ivory, as if spared by the outpouring of blood. A few steps away, another pool of blood, this one redder. You did not have to be very knowledgeable to realise that the two pools were of different origins: one from each of the two victims. Time, perhaps a long time – he would have to determine how long – had passed between the two effusions. He tried again to seek answers in the complex pattern of footprints, but was unable to discern anything other than a wild trampling. He went back to an examination of the body.

  The young woman was wearing a skirt, a loose blouse, and an apron knotted at the waist and above all – the distinguishing mark of a chambermaid – at the bib. The hair was held up in a bun, revealing a narrow neck, almost a child’s. The lace cap had slipped to the floor and lay in the blood. Nicolas was struck by the sight of two slippers lying a few paces from the body. These were not objects commonly associated with a young servant girl, but luxurious, even expensive items quite out of place here. He got off the stool and walked up to the body, making an effort to control his mixed feelings: apprehension at contact with a corpse and pity for a murdered human being. It was up to him to observe the state of the body and estimate the time of death. He realised that he had left his watch in Rue Montmartre. He had always been a stickler for accurate timekeeping, but, having had little to hurry him these past few months, he had become absent-minded. In his head, he tried to calculate how much time had gone by. He had left Noblecourt’s house at nine, his shopping expedition had taken two hours, after which he had strolled idly among the second-hand bookstalls and had even indulged in a little reading. It must have been about midday that the officers had intercepted him. The carriage having been delayed by traffic on the way to Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, he must have entered Monsieur Lenoir’s office at about half past twelve. Interview, cab, a conversation with the Duc de La Vrillière, another with Provence. It must now be about two o’clock in the afternoon.

  He knew that rigor mortis only set in gradually. The longer it took to appear, the longer it lasted. You had to take the conditions and temperature of the place into account. Kitchens were usually cold at night, when all the lights were out and there was adequate ventilation. It was October now, and starting to feel distinctly cold. The duration of rigor mortis was supposedly shorter in damp, warm air than in dry, cold air. In addition, it was a constant feature that rigor mortis took a long time to appear when death was sudden, as seemed to be the case here. Touching the body, he noticed that there was still some residual stiffness. He estimated that the murder must have taken place between ten and midnight.

  He leaned over to examine the terrible wound at the base of the neck. If a piece of wood had been driven in just below the right ear, the flesh could not have been any more bruised and shattered than it was. It was still possible to see, deep inside the wound, a piece of lace from the blouse. Life had fled from the poor girl’s body in an endless haemorrhage. Her eyes stared unseeing, the corneas already obscured by a slimy membrane. He shuddered at the sight of that face, contorted in death: the forehead was lined, the nose was pinched, the lips hung over an open jaw, and the skin, dry and livid, gave the whole face a twisted appearance, as if frozen in a cruel, dazed stupor. He searched in the pockets of the apron and the skirt, and found nothing except a handkerchief and a cross on a small, broken metal chain, which had slipped into a fold in the fabric.

  There was nothing else to do while waiting for the arrival of the stretcher which would take away these remains to the operating table in the Basse-Geôle. Whatever observations were made there could well open up new paths for the investigation. He still had to undertake a delicate experiment. As there was nothing to be learnt from the bloody mire on the floor, he would have to examine the surroundings. There, doubtless, there would be fewer traces and he would be able to read them more precisely. The kitchen and the roasting room were full of footprints: that was quite normal, given the servants who had come to take the wounded major-domo to his room on the mezzanine. In the kitchen, he found a whole series of knives identical to the one he had found on the floor. Was this latter a utensil that belonged to the mansion, or had it been brought in from outside? This was a good house, and the gleaming state of the whole area showed that it was well maintained. Perhaps an inventory … With one thought leading to another, he realised a startling fact: the broad, deep, prodigious wound to the young woman’s neck could not have been caused by the eustache. He would have to examine Jean Missery’s wound to see if the same knife had been used on him as on the maid. The result of this examination might point in a different direction.

  He came back to the problem of prints. He was still obsessed by those found on the staircase between the mezzanine and the ground floor. He walked on tiptoe, trying to avoid the soiled areas, but still managed to add a few of his own prints to those already existing. A brownish trail took him to the passage leading to the courtyard. He took off his shoes to cross a section that was apparently untouched. He saw nothing in the wash house, in the small adjoining courtyard, or on the steps down to the cellars. He decided to go back along the route he had taken with Provence as far as the staircase. Nicolas carefully cleaned the soles of his shoes with water from a watering can he found in the small conservatory, then hesitated a moment. Should he continue to the first floor, where the minister’s apartments were located? But where was the risk? Nobody would blame him, and besides the lead might turn out to be pointless. Provence, who had discovered the bodies, might have taken that staircase and, noticing that his shoes were dirty, immediately changed them. While he was thinking this through, a small inner voice whispered in his ear that he was right to persevere and to listen to his intuition, which, in all these years as a police officer, had stood him in good stead, on an equal level with his reason.

  The trail continued, becoming increasingly indistinct. But Nicolas knew that blood, being thick and viscous, took a long time to vanish completely. He reached an empty room furnished with two old red velvet benches, with a stock of logs piled up against the panelling. He immediately realised that this was not the way to the Duc de La Vrillière’s apartments, but rather a kind of halfway stage before you got to the upper parts of the mansion, given over, in this kind of dwelling, to the servants’ rooms or to storerooms. He immediately began examining the state of the staircase, this time with a piece of candle he found lying in a corner. He lit it, and the flame illumined the steps. He looked as hard as he could, bent down, even lay down, his nose almost against the oak, but could not find any traces of blood. On the other hand, he did find some on the floor of the room, a trail leading to the French window at the corner of the building. As he approached, a cold draught made him shiver.

  Why was it open? He saw that the catch was up. He opened the window, and immediately a keen wind lashed his face. The window led out onto a balcony with a balustrade, facing Rue Saint-Florentin. His heart beat faster: there were clear traces of blood on the stone. Bloody footprints led to the corner of the building, in the direction of the gate in the main courtyard. He followed them and leant over. Here, another surprise awaited him: he observed that there were also spots of blood on the narrow cornice of the wall, which was supported by columns. He decided to go and see at close quarters where that might lead. Luckily, unlike his friend Semacgus, he did not suffer from vertigo. During all his travels on the King’s vessels, Semacgus had never been able to climb the top mast. Admittedly, he would say with a laugh, his functions as a surgeon rarely required this kind of exercise from him. Nicolas dreaded confinement and enclosed spaces, but, faced with a drop, he was as agile as a cat. Pressing his back up against the wall, he slid to the cornice above the gate. As he placed his feet on the projecting edge, he was struck by a stronger gust of wind and almost lost his balance: throwing his head back steadied him. He obtained a foothold on the cornice, holding on to the top of the upper parapet with his hands. There, the traces petered out. He sat down with his legs dangling, then lay on the edge to examine the underneath. H
e immediately realised that by putting his legs around the top of the column, he could easily get down as far as the spikes of the iron gate – they were only a few feet below him – and from there slide to the ground. There was one point where it could be dangerous, but the rest was child’s play. He decided, however, not to go all the way with his experiment, as the flagstones, being muddy, seemed unlikely to reveal any further clues.

  So someone had left the scene of the crime, gone up to the first floor of the mansion, opened the French window, and had escaped by performing a feat of acrobatics. That suggested several things: that the unknown person had a precise knowledge of the layout of the house, that his escape had taken place in the middle of the night, when there was less risk of being surprised, and, above all, that the individual was young, capable of such a difficult exercise, in which you might either fall or be impaled on the spikes of the gate. That raised some interesting questions about the sequence of events, and seemed to contradict the initial hypothesis of a murder committed by the major-domo, followed by an attempted suicide.

  Nicolas put his feet back down on the balcony, but, as he was about to enter the room, he realised that, during his brief absence, the French window had been closed from inside. Whether this had been caused by a gust of wind or a human hand, he was faced with the problem of getting back inside. He thought for a moment of taking the perilous route adopted by the mysterious acrobat. He soon gave up the idea: that was all he needed, to be crushed to death in the street! He could not take the risk. He took a few steps and glanced in through the next window. There, in a kind of boudoir, was the Duc de La Vrillière, motionless and lost in thought. Unless he broke a pane in the first French window, the only thing he could do was make his presence known as naturally as possible. It took him several attempts to attract the attention of the minister, who eventually opened to him.