The Saint-Florentin Murders

by Jean-FranCois Parot

  ‘There’s no need, Monsieur Nicolas,’ said Rabouine. ‘I’m already on drinking terms with the minister’s coachman, who likes a tipple whenever he has a moment to spare. With a little bit extra thrown in, solid this time rather than liquid – I’ll put in my expenses claim as usual – I’ve managed to get the necessary information from him.’

  ‘Rabouine, you will have your reward, plus a bonus.’

  ‘There are always bonuses for immorality,’ said Bourdeau wryly.

  ‘It sometimes happens, Inspector,’ said Nicolas, ‘that men whom we believe to be without principles are strongly imbued with the religion of efficiency. We’re listening, Rabouine.’

  ‘Well, his magnificence the Duc de La Vrillière has not been sleeping at home for several months …’

  ‘There’s nothing new about that. There was the Beautiful Aglaé, and plenty of other loose women before her.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ continued Rabouine, ‘but at night, he asks to be driven to different places, then dismisses his coachman and disappears. His servants are very intrigued and have tried to follow him without success. Anyway, what that means is that the minister has no alibi for any of the three murders we’ve been investigating.’

  ‘My God!’ cried Bourdeau in alarm. ‘We know that these crimes are linked. Who knows the horrors that may have been committed before our attention was called to the Saint-Florentin mansion?’

  ‘Which makes your mission all the more important, my dear Pierre,’ said Nicolas. ‘We must find out if this shirt is indeed the minister’s.’

  Nicolas remained alone in the duty office. He needed this interlude to see how things stood with the investigation. He took out his little black notebook. As he read through it, he noted particular points on a separate sheet, making a list which, he hoped, would lead him to discern a clear, logical path to the truth. He had reached a point where any advance in his understanding of the case could only be brought about by a stark, deliberate demonstration of authority. The more he reread his notes, the more he realised that the testimonies he had gathered at the time of Marguerite Pindron’s murder had clouded his vision, confused his mind, and sent him off on false trails. Yes, he would have to go back to the beginning and drive the dubious witnesses into a corner. But he did not have time for persuasion. However distasteful he found the means of coercion available to the law, means that Sanson and his assistants could apply, he believed that the threat of torture should be enough in itself to convince the most stubborn. Only one thing held him back from resorting to it: being inclined to think that torture had the effect of making people confess even when they were innocent, he feared that its threat would do the same. Eventually, though, he made up his mind to play that trick, and he began reflecting on the best and most convincing way to put it into effect. He would have to choose the witnesses to be subjected to this test. It was useless to try it on all of them. After all, he could hardly put the Duchesse de La Vrillière in a torture chamber. He just had to pick the right targets. If a false picture had been built up about what had happened and when it happened, all it needed was one element to yield, and the whole thing would come crashing down. It seemed to him that Eugénie Gouet, the duchesse’s head chambermaid, was the ideal element in this strategy. She would be more than a match for him. Next, a proper interrogation of Jacques Blain, the caretaker who had been in love with Marguerite, was sure to be of interest. He recalled something Bourdeau had said: why make a stew of three rabbits without adding blood to the sauce? Finally, a friendly conversation with young Jeannette Le Bas might well shed some light on the life of Marguerite Pindron. What Nicolas was hoping for from all this was to speed things up, to find the one thread which, pulled out of the warp and weft of the crime, would cause the whole thing to unravel.

  He resolved to give himself a brief respite, unable for the moment to make a crucial decision. Wisdom dictated that he should wait for the results of the missions he had given his men. It was late afternoon by now, and he was starting to feel hungry. Leaving the old prison, he was caught up in the feverish activity of the surroundings. The smell emanating from an open-air pot of capons cooked in coarse salt tempted him, and he greedily devoured a bowlful of this stew. The grains of salt cracked beneath his teeth, and he closed his eyes and saw again the dazzling salt marsh at Guérande and himself as a little boy, licking his fingers as he collected marine crystals … He crossed the Seine on foot, the physical effort helping him to clear his mind of the clutter of contradictory thoughts and establish a clean slate on which he would then be able to map out a logical argument.

  A longer walk took him beyond the boulevard, towards the Observatory. He knew there was an entrance here to the quarries which abounded in that area. It was late, and the porter was reluctant to guide another visitor, but Nicolas’s position and the promise of a substantial reward soon overcame his reluctance. They plunged into a complex, shadowy labyrinth. It was easy to lose your way here, and the porter had to warn him frequently. The thing that Nicolas, who hated confinement, most dreaded was that their torches would go out, plunging them into darkness. He discovered to his astonishment a vast underground city, filled with weirdly shaped streets and crossroads and squares. Most of the galleries were of uneven height, and they were sometimes forced to stoop. There were stalactites in places, and the porter claimed, boastfully, that the river was just above their heads. Nicolas, who was well aware of the distance they had come, strongly doubted this.

  For years, he had heard people talking about the danger these quarries posed for the city up above; it had been supported by them for many centuries, retrieving in the light of day what it borrowed from the earth. He noticed pillars half crushed beneath the weight bearing down on them and apparently on the verge of collapse,4 and quarries on two levels where the pillars of the upper level were precariously balanced.

  Engaging his guide in conversation, he learnt that some of the poorest families in the city took refuge in this place, especially in the dead of winter. Others used it as a hiding place, only coming out at night to gather provisions or commit crimes. These people included escaped convicts, deserters, and a whole collection of rogues and vagabonds, a true court of miracles. Lowering his voice, the porter said that there were also rumours of strange meetings held here, of groups indulging in reprobate practices. Nicolas tried to get him to say more, but to no avail.

  This visit gave him an opportunity both to assess the dangers of this maze of galleries piled one on top of the other, and to get some idea of the uses that were made of it. The safety of Paris depended on the dimensions of this underground complex being duly noted by the King’s engineers, a detailed plan being drawn up, structural weaknesses being identified, and stricter controls being put in place concerning the disquieting collection of individuals who haunted it. As far as his present investigation was concerned, the visit confirmed the plausibility of the rumours reported by Bourdeau about the very special use that some people made of the seclusion and intricacy of these hidden depths.

  He found Monsieur de Noblecourt reading Montluc. Mouchette climbed on him and settled in her favourite place on his shoulders.

  ‘I’ve just returned from the underworld,’ he said simply.

  ‘Monsieur de Sartine is right,’ Noblecourt said with a smile, ‘you create havoc. The whole of Rue Montmartre is talking about the High Mass this morning and the untimely appearance of the devil in the appetising form of a dazed and angry fatted ox. I think it deserves an inscription in marble, in gold letters, a fine lapidary formula we can ask Louis to translate for us, something like, Here Nicolas Le Floch slew the minotaur, adding this exploit to his many others!’

  ‘You may well mock, I saw you leaping onto your pew like a young man! As for me, having already confronted the minotaur, I’ve now had to suffer the torments of the labyrinth and the terrors of confinement!’

  He told Noblecourt of his descent into the quarries.

  ‘They were always places,’ said Noblecou
rt, ‘conducive to strange practices, even satanic meetings. The Regent, the Duc d’Orléans, once tried to summon the devil there. It’s beyond me how, in the century in which we live, people can still believe in such nonsense! It’s been too long that people have been tearing each other to pieces, with the tongue and the pen, over the contents of a papal bull or a billet de confession, and that the parlement has been defying the authority of the monarch to the renewed cries of agitators foaming at the mouth over the tomb of an obscurantist deacon. Is this really the triumph of reason and philosophy? There is a balance to be struck. Look at the regent, a rational man apparently, a chemist, an engineer, a fine musician and a statesman. How could he become involved in such things? Now everyone’s trying to go beyond the bounds of knowledge, striving to explore the treacherous regions of the garden of evil. I tell you this: we will see far worse things before the end of this century!’

  He had raised his voice so much that Cyrus began howling lugubriously.

  ‘You see, you’ve awakened the dog Cerberus!’

  The evening continued with a light supper and a long discussion of the practice of tremolo in playing music, while from the servants’ pantry there rose the delicious smell of quince jelly.

  Notes – CHAPTER XI

  1. Jean-Baptiste Massillon (1663–1742), French Catholic preacher.

  2. This incident actually happened.

  3. A reference to a revolving fireplace used by the Maréchal de Richelieu during an amorous adventure.

  4. Many houses collapsed at the time.

  XII

  CONFRONTATIONS

  Assist me and stay by my side,

  because I am about to attack them.

  Montluc

  Monday 10 October 1774

  Sanson was operating while Nicolas watched attentively, sickened by this morning autopsy. Was it the sight of the executioner’s clothes brushing against that mutilated face, or the feeling that he was getting close to the end of his investigation? He was restless with exhaustion and impatience.

  ‘A man of about twenty-five,’ announced Sanson. ‘Well built. The face has been torn to pieces by a discharge of small shot. In my opinion, it’s quite impossible for such a terrible wound to have been caused by the pistol you found beside the corpse.’

  ‘As it happens,’ said Nicolas, ‘my examination of the inside of the cab did puzzle me: the shot had been scattered far too widely, and the windows had been broken. From which I conclude—’

  ‘That it can’t have been a suicide.’

  ‘In which case, what weapon could have been used?’

  ‘A hunting rifle seems a likely hypothesis, but I’m not happy with it. It would have had to be fired from quite a distance in order to produce such scattering.’

  ‘So the mystery remains impenetrable.’

  ‘Oh, no! There are weapons that could produce such a result, such as a blunderbuss.’

  Nicolas began thinking aloud, while Sanson, who had broken off his work, looked on curiously. ‘Now that’s strange. When I was faced with that scene of carnage, two things struck me. I couldn’t help thinking that someone had tried to arrange things in such a way as to deceive a superficial examination. It seemed to me that all the elements were too neatly in place, and all led to the same observation: the body was that of a man who had killed himself, and the weapon he had used lay at his feet. And yet … several details had already attracted my attention: the shot scattered around the interior, but also the body itself. My friend …’

  The word moved Sanson, whose amiable face lit up.

  ‘… could you examine the hands and feet of this corpse and tell me the results of your observations?’

  Sanson proceeded with a meticulous investigation of the parts concerned, then looked up with a puzzled expression. ‘I’m not sure what I’m looking for. The only thing I can say for certain is that, despite the rich garments he’s wearing, this was a young man of lower class. A worker rather than a bourgeois. I would even say a peasant. The hands are callous, the nails black and soiled with earth, and scratched by thorns. The feet are wide and also possess particular characteristics. Frequently walking barefoot hardens the heels. Not very well cared for generally. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘It confirms my suspicions. And when we know what this corpse was supposed to represent, or rather what it had the task of making people believe, there is, I think you’ll agree, good reason to wonder about the fairy tale they were trying to dish up! Added to which, apart from a letter obligingly telling us the identity of the corpse, we discovered nothing in the pockets of his coat, none of those trinkets that everyone carries with them. Nothing!’

  ‘Not even a little black notebook?’ said Sanson with a smile.

  ‘Nothing at all. All of which means that this was an attempt to lead us astray. However, it appears to me so obvious – so obvious in its very falsity – that I’ve even started to wonder if we were meant to notice the attempt.’

  There was a thought lurking at the back of his mind, a thought he did not want to formulate too hastily. He had not yet seen everything, and other elements might emerge to confirm the possibility. Perhaps … No, it was too soon. There was not much more to be learnt from this corpse. Everything pointed to the fact that it could not possibly be the younger Duchamplan, but was actually Vitry, the young gardener rescued from Bicêtre to become a coachman, engaged for God knows what dubious errands. It was he who, by pure coincidence, had driven Nicolas to Popincourt: the number of the cab proved that.

  He thanked Sanson and prepared with him the interrogation he was planning of some of the servants from the Saint-Florentin mansion. The instructions he gave were specific: what they had to do was inspire fear merely by displaying the instruments of torture. He hoped that the terror this display would instil in witnesses who were little accustomed to the ways of the law would dissuade them from lying. His method consisted of paralysing the will to resist, but without, however, going as far as to exert direct pressure, which would take away any likelihood of honest answers.

  At that moment, Bourdeau appeared, with a package in his hand. He greeted Sanson in a friendly manner.

  ‘So, Pierre, anything to report?’

  ‘I put all the servants at the minister’s house through hell, and finally, having wooed the linen maid in the wash house, I obtained what we were looking for.’

  He untied the package and took out two shirts, one bloodstained, both freshly ironed, both identical in style and size.

  ‘That’s very good,’ said Nicolas. ‘I hope the linen maid was comely.’

  The three friends laughed, then Nicolas summarised the results of the autopsy for Bourdeau.

  ‘You’re losing me,’ said the inspector.

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ said Nicolas. ‘But let’s look at it logically. Either we’re wrong in our observations, and this body is that of Eudes Duchamplan. In that case, which is highly unlikely, for the reasons that I’ve stated, in whose interest was it to kill him? Or else the body we see here is that of the cab driver, Anselme Vitry, the gardener from Popincourt and Marguerite Pindron’s former fiancé, and if we take into account a few doubtless deliberate blunders, it seems as though someone wanted us to assume, thanks to that bloodstained shirt, that the Duc de La Vrillière had been involved in another murder. Having been implicated in this latest one, that would confirm him as a suspect for the others.’

  ‘How could anyone have foreseen that we would search the apartment in Rue Christine?’ asked Bourdeau.

  ‘It was an easy assumption to make! Whether we took the body at the pleasure gardens for Duchamplan or someone else, the note found on the body was bound to take us to Rue Christine. What they hadn’t counted on was how quick we’d be. We arrived so early that we surprised Lord Ashbury.’

  ‘And what if all this was the work of the minister? What a brilliant idea, to implicate himself in such a way as to give us good reasons to exonerate him! He may be in league with Eudes Duchamplan, having prob
ably frequented the same places of ill repute, with his major-domo as the go-between. That would tally with what the elder brother told us.’

  ‘Let’s not go too far,’ said Nicolas, ‘but stick as closely as possible to the facts. We have a corpse which someone tried to pass off as that of a suicide. We find a bloodstained shirt in the lodgings of the supposed victim. Whom does it implicate? The Duc de La Vrillière.’

  Nicolas was pacing up and down.

  ‘It may be that we came in on the first part of something that had not been completely thought through,’ he resumed. ‘The linstock hasn’t yet reached the fuse. Imagine this shirt linked with the corpse at the pleasure gardens; the staging increased the horror of the crime and pointed to the supposed perpetrator.’

  ‘What are you planning to do now?’

  ‘I’ve given instructions to our friend Sanson here.’

  ‘I’m going to prepare everything in total earnest,’ said Sanson, ‘just as you asked.’

  ‘Are you going down that route, Nicolas?’ said Bourdeau, with a disapproving look on his face.

  ‘I have to, but it’ll only be a piece of play-acting.’

  ‘You do realise that, in such cases, a confession is merely a way of avoiding pain.’

  ‘I’m not necessarily after confessions, but information which has been concealed from the eyes of the law. I know I’m disregarding all the rules, since those I am summoning have not been accused. It’s just a question of flushing each one out from his position, using the elements of surprise and threat. Some of them, I fear, are concealing a great many secrets.’