The Saint-Florentin Murders

by Jean-FranCois Parot

  ‘The things I’ve seen on the field of battle without whining,’ muttered Catherine, who was dying to hear the rest of Bourdeau’s story.

  But she obeyed and led Marion to her quarters. She was soon back.

  ‘Why was Sanson so interested in the body of Marguerite Pindron?’ asked Nicolas. ‘What did he want with it?’

  ‘With his plaster, he took a cast of the wound to the neck. The way they do with death masks.’

  ‘Aren’t they usually cast in yellow wax?’

  ‘You’re both right,’ Noblecourt said, smiling wickedly. ‘Before they bought themselves into the nobility of the robe, my ancestors were master wax moulders …’

  There was a general cry of surprise.

  ‘Now I understand why you’re so interested in those theatres of corruption in your cabinet of curiosities,’1 said Nicolas.

  ‘An ancestor of mine helped to take the death mask of King Henry II in 1559, after he was mortally wounded by Montgomery’s spear. It made a big impression on him, as the mask, cast only a few moments after death, cruelly revealed all the suffering that had preceded it. To go back to what I was saying, to make this kind of mask, you need to use thick strips of cloth, which surround and pull together the oval of the face, from the skull to the chin. You pour in the plaster paste, which, once solidified, gives a cast of the features, from which you can make a copy in wax.’

  ‘What do they do with these masks?’

  ‘Are you unaware, gentlemen, that the bodies of our kings are put on display except for the last one because of the risk of contagion from smallpox? Actually, they’re just models wearing wax masks and the royal insignia, and the people troop past them to pay tribute. The impressions are preserved at Saint-Denis, where you can admire the collection.2 But we’re getting off the point.’

  ‘There’s always something to learn, Monsieur, from your wide experience.’

  Noblecourt nodded, at the same time grabbing from the plate which Catherine had placed on the table a few quince pastries freshly removed from their moulds and put onto small lozenges of unleavened bread.

  ‘It’s a good thing Marion isn’t here!’ muttered Catherine.

  ‘Let’s get back to our corpses,’ said Bourdeau. ‘Sanson took the impression he’d made from Marguerite’s body, and placed it on the wound of the unknown girl from Rue Glatigny. There was no room for doubt. Remember, Nicolas, that horrible funnel? The impression matched it almost exactly, with identical tears and compressions of the skin, looking for all the world like a shapeless hand.’

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Nicolas.

  ‘Yes. The victim bears a strong resemblance to Marguerite Pindron. I mean, she’s the same type of young woman, even though the two may differ in certain details.’

  ‘An interesting comment. Do we have any idea of the time of death? It’s vital to determine that. We already have many suspects for the murder in the Saint-Florentin mansion. Now we have another murder using the same method, with the added curiosity that the victims resemble one another. We need to find out if any of the possible suspects for the first crime could also have been the perpetrator of the second. If we know when death occurred, we can then check each of the suspects’ whereabouts at the time.’

  ‘It’ll be no easy matter, Nicolas,’ replied Bourdeau. ‘The body is in very poor condition. It’s not so much that it’s been submerged in water at times, but rather that dogs, rats and crows have been at work on it. All things considered, Sanson estimates that death could not have occurred more than twenty-four hours earlier. We examined the corpse at one o’clock this afternoon.’

  ‘Could it have been thrown in the river and then washed up?’ asked Noblecourt.

  ‘I don’t think so. I went to the place. There are traces in the mud, tracks rather, suggesting that the body had been brought from the Cité, and before that from town. That bank of the island, opposite Quai Pelletier, is almost deserted at night.’

  ‘All right,’ said Nicolas. ‘But nothing that would tell us more? Footprints, the marks of shoes?’

  ‘Yes, lots, because people had started to gather before the watch arrived. I had a good look around. The mud is thick, and the backwash from passing boats and barges doesn’t help. However …’ He searched in his coat skirts. ‘I did find this on the steps leading down to the river.’

  He handed Nicolas a small stone that shimmered in the candlelight. The commissioner lifted it to his face.

  ‘The button from a garment. It could be a gemstone, or—’

  ‘An imitation gemstone,’ Bourdeau hastened to say. ‘I had it checked by a jeweller. Nothing but coloured glass.’

  ‘It may have nothing to do with our case.’

  ‘That’s possible. We’ll see.’

  Nicolas slipped the button into his pocket.

  ‘In the meantime,’ resumed Bourdeau, ‘I investigated a little more. There wasn’t a body on the steps by the river between eleven o’clock on Monday night and about six o’clock this Tuesday morning, when it was discovered. As the murder was not committed on the spot—’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘By the fact that there’s hardly any blood around. That gives us, let’s see … one in the afternoon, take away twenty-four hours … Yes, a period on Monday between two in the afternoon and eleven o’clock in the evening, when there was still nothing on the bank.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘A man who lives in the area and walks his dog there every evening. Someone above suspicion, I checked.’

  ‘And the victim?’

  ‘Not many clues. A handkerchief, a key, a comb made of bone. A girl of lower class. However, I did find twenty-five livres and six sous in her pocket.’

  ‘Good Lord, that’s quite a lot for a girl of lower class. Was she wearing shoes?’

  ‘No, we looked. Of course, so many people had been hanging around the corpse that they may well have been stolen.’

  ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘The old gardener from the priory of Saint-Denis-de-la-Chartre. He’d gone there to fetch water.’

  ‘Doesn’t the garden have a well?’

  ‘It recently caved in.’

  ‘Was the victim pretty?’

  ‘Judging by what remained of her face, probably.’

  ‘A prostitute?’

  ‘The victim was dressed modestly but smartly.’

  ‘Put your spies on the case,’ ordered Nicolas. ‘Speak to Tirepot. He’s getting older, and doesn’t get around as much as he used to, but his network of informers is still unequalled. I need everything on this girl, and fast. For the rest, my dear Pierre, I rely on your discernment. I’ll leave you the chore of checking our suspects’ alibis for the time period you’ve mentioned. For my part, I have to go to Versailles tomorrow.’

  ‘Are you seeing His Majesty?’ asked Noblecourt.

  ‘The King if I can, the Queen if I must, and two gardeners. I’ll also pay my respects to Monsieur de Maurepas.’

  ‘All the powers of the day united,’ Bourdeau said, gently sardonic. ‘You’re young Court now!’

  ‘Don’t mock,’ said Noblecourt. ‘It’s wise to conduct oneself well. Remember me to Monsieur de Maurepas. I knew him when I was young. In the thirties, he and I, along with the Chevalier d’Orléans, the legitimate son of the Regent and the Comtesse d’Argentan, d’Argenson, the minister of war and Caylus, would go, disguised in frock coats and round hats, to watch the parades at the Saint-Germain fair …’

  He poured himself a full glass of wine and swallowed it in one go. ‘Especially,’ he went on, dreamily, ‘when the strolling players took scenes from plays and parodied them. They were hilarious, with their bawdy ways and their strange pronunciation. God, how we laughed. With our mouths wide open and our breeches unbuttoned …’

  But Nicolas was in a hurry to get back to the new case. ‘Anything else, Pierre?’

  ‘I thought I’d draw up a detailed chart of the activities of the various suspects on th
e night of the murder.’ He moved his apron away from his coat skirts and took out a bulky document, the sheets of which were tied together by pieces of sealing wax. Seeing this, Nicolas stood up and, taking Bourdeau in his arms, kissed him on both cheeks, much to the amazement of the company. The inspector blushed with pleasure at this rare and unexpected demonstration of esteem from his chief.

  ‘I tell you this,’ proclaimed Nicolas, ‘when it comes to rillettes, hens and investigations, he’s irreplaceable. Now he even anticipates what I’m about to ask him to do!’

  ‘Fourteen years of working together will do that,’ said Noblecourt, clearly moved.

  ‘Here in the first column,’ resumed Bourdeau, ‘you will find the names of the victim and the witnesses, including’ – he lowered his voice – ‘the Duc and Duchesse de La Vrillière.’

  ‘Good for you,’ remarked Nicolas. ‘I have it on good authority that the duc was not at Versailles on Sunday evening as he claimed. And that he spent the night in Paris.’

  ‘With the Beautiful Aglaé?’

  ‘That would be surprising, given that she’s in exile.’

  Bourdeau nodded with a knowing air. ‘The second column indicates the whereabouts of each person from ten o’clock to midnight on Sunday evening. The third shows their various activities the following morning. The fourth has each person’s observations, the fifth my own observations, the sixth the clues found at the scene of the crime, the seventh the various opinions of the victim, and the eighth and last column the doctor’s diagnosis of Jean Missery and his wound.’

  Nicolas spent a while looking through the document. ‘This is a very striking picture you paint. What are the first conclusions you draw from it?’

  ‘Nothing really fits, neither the times, nor the testimonies. How to distinguish in all this what is the truth and what is a careful concealment of the truth? It all seems to me like one big conjuring trick.’

  ‘I’d say the same,’ said Nicolas, ‘about the major-domo’s sister-in-law, the nun. It’s impossible to believe a word she says. She appears to tell the truth the better to lie, spends the night away from her convent but conceals the fact, and, note this, had a long conversation this very morning with the Duchesse de La Vrillière. What does it all add up to?’

  ‘Is she a Carmelite?’ asked Noblecourt.

  ‘No, a Daughter of Saint Michel, a Eudist. Why do you ask?’

  ‘The great King said one day to Monsieur, his brother, that he was well aware that the Carmelites might be deceivers, intriguers and weavers of yarns, but that he did not think they were poisoners. Admittedly, they had almost killed his niece with one of their medicines!’

  Nicolas then recounted his day and his discoveries at Popincourt.

  ‘Heaven,’ said Noblecourt, ‘has chosen you to untangle the most complex but also the most dangerous cases. Listen to a man who, although a recluse, lives with men …’

  ‘And may on occasion be imbued with their prejudices, as Rousseau says,’ Bourdeau cut in.

  For the second time that evening, the inspector went red in the face as his two friends turned their appreciative gaze to him.

  ‘So you read and esteem Jean-Jacques?’ exclaimed Noblecourt.

  ‘I admit I am quite infatuated with his work. Believe me, his ideas will change our world. There is a fervour in him, the fervour of the citizen. “The great man becomes small, the rich man becomes poor, and the monarch becomes a subject. We are approaching a state of crisis and a century of revolutions.”’3

  ‘That may be so,’ said Noblecourt. ‘Our philosopher Bourdeau should, however, beware for, if the passionate man reasons badly and contrary to the laws of logic, the fool finds reason in the same source, for his passion is cold. My children, I am grateful to you for this evening, but I am feeling sleepy now.’

  He stood up and walked to the staircase, escorted by Cyrus and Mouchette. On the top step, he turned.

  ‘In this case of yours, remember that you have to look for the least likely solution, even if it seems to you highly unusual. Goodnight, gentlemen, goodnight …’

  As soon as the familiar figure had disappeared, Bourdeau turned to Nicolas with a touch of anxiety in his voice. ‘Didn’t he strike you as strange this evening? That parting shot … the things he was saying …’

  ‘Don’t look so worried,’ replied Nicolas with a laugh. ‘You don’t know him as well as I do. He has a surprising ability, of which I have often been the fortunate beneficiary, of seeing through to the kernel of a case even before we have all the facts. He cannot even explain it himself. It manifests itself, as it did a moment ago, in sententious phrases whose primary meaning escapes us, but which always conceal a truth that has somehow been revealed to him. In addition, thanks to your Chinon wine, he drank more than usual this evening. That’s why he was so cheerful and so talkative.’

  They conversed a little more, constructing hypotheses each of which fell short because of some detail they had neglected. No sooner were they formulated than they collapsed like so many houses of cards. Beside the stove, on a straw chair that looked more like a prie-dieu than any other piece of furniture, Catherine sat darning, her head drooping from time to time with tiredness. Old pains were reawakened, memories of long bivouacs in the icy rain on the battlefields of Europe. Her hearing, however, was still sharp, and, without appearing to, she was listening out to make sure that the stock she had prepared for next day’s meals from three meats and some roots was boiling away nicely. Bourdeau took his leave, and Nicolas walked with him along Rue Montmartre. He was laden not only with the basket containing the pot and the bottles, but also with a lantern. The commissioner had insisted in spite of Bourdeau’s refusals: at this hour, the spaces between the street lamps were wide enough to attract prowlers who were only held at bay by the watch and by a light, however feeble.

  Nicolas went back up to his room, which had been deserted by Mouchette: the strumpet shared her favours, and sometimes preferred to nestle in Cyrus’s fur, where she soon began to purr with the regularity of an automaton. That reminded Nicolas of the promise he had made Monsieur de Sartine to investigate Bourdier, the eminent creator of the library of wigs and the inventor of a new encoding machine. With this thought, he undressed and went to bed.

  Wednesday 5 October 1774

  Monsieur de Sartine grimaced as he manipulated the ivory and ebony keys of his library. The mechanism was no longer playing the joyful music of Rameau, but a grim chant, a kind of Dies Irae. The drawer sprang out with a snap. Sartine clutched Nicolas, who was horrified to see, instead of the expected wig, the bloodstained body of a young woman. He turned. The minister had disappeared, and cut flowers were strewn on the ground. In a panic, he saw a man striking the trunk of a great oak with an axe. He seemed to be moved by strings, like the puppets sold on Pont-Neuf. Nicolas recognised Bourdeau’s impassive face. He saw the flash of the blade as it struck his chest, but felt nothing except a light tap. He opened his eyes. Mouchette was treading on him, and affectionately pressing her nose to his chin.

  As he dressed, he felt weighed down by this nightmare, whose meaning eluded him. He prepared his trunk, checked the rifles Louis XV had given him, then brushed his spare coats, his ceremonial dress, and his hunting costumes. Since Monsieur de La Borde no longer had an apartment in the palace, Nicolas was putting up at the Hôtel de la Belle Image in Versailles. His arms and his clothes now had to follow him wherever he went, an inconvenience which was a source of silent irritation. He did not wake the household, where even Catherine was still sleeping. A baker’s boy from the shop on the ground floor ran to find him a carriage. Day had not yet risen, and it looked as if rain was on the way. It began to fall as soon as he had passed the Porte de la Conférence and did not stop, accompanied by a squally wind.

  Nicolas, haunted by dark thoughts and sombre presentiments, remembered Monsieur de Noblecourt’s fainting fit. He thought of how much he owed the former procurator and how fond of him he was. He felt a sense of anguish at the fleetin
g nature of life. Of all those who had mattered to him, many had already gone. His guardian, Canon Le Floch, to whose affection and kindness he owed his moral conscience. His father, the Marquis de Ranreuil, a model of intelligence and courage. Sartine, who had taught him so much. Even Commissioner Lardin,4 whose death he had avenged without underestimating his faults, and whose cold, grim face often came back to him. Without showing Nicolas any real friendship, he had been an efficient, demanding and conscientious master.

  The carriage drove along the Champs-Élysées, which looked wild and sinister in the pale light of this early morning storm. The late King, with his benevolence, had reinforced the innate devotion Nicolas had felt as a child seeing his finely chiselled face on the louis d’or. In their different ways, Sartine, Bourdeau and Semacgus had also made him the man he had become, and of course Noblecourt had had a very special place in those years when his character had been moulded. He realised with a kind of almost sacred terror that, in their concern for him and their generosity, they had been like a succession of fathers to him. All of them had prepared him for life and its threats, had armed him from head to foot. Yes, he really did owe them a lot. This thought chased away his feelings of gloom, and encouraged him to face his destiny with renewed strength, in the service of the King – God and Saint Anne willing.

  Just before Versailles, as the carriage was crawling through the Fausses Reposes woods, the storm increased in intensity. It was one of those heavy, blustery autumn downpours that lashed the ground and laid waste to everything. Nicolas was gazing out, spellbound, at this upheaval when something strange attracted his attention. At first, it was a blur, like something seen through the lens of a badly focused telescope. An indistinct shape had collapsed on the ground not far from him. He knocked on the partition to stop the carriage. The vehicle swerved and slid, and finally came to a halt in a chorus of cries and neighing. He rushed outside. A woman was lying unconscious on the ground. He bent down and took her in his arms to raise her. She was so light that he quickly got her into the carriage. She had a thin, pale face framed by unruly brown curls that tumbled down over her bodice. There rose from her warm, wet body an imperceptible scent of verbena, along with wilder autumn aromas, the smell of wet earth and dead leaves. He took his handkerchief and wiped her hands, which were covered in scratches from the gravel. She stirred, moaned, and stretched her body against his. Her mouth brushed his chin. He thought of Mouchette, so fragile … She regained consciousness completely, and colour came back into her face. Her eyes opened inquisitively; grey, he noted, with dark-blue flecks. She folded her spotted lace fichu over her chest and sat up.