A Prince Without a Kingdom

by Timothee de Fombelle

  “Perishing cold!” muttered the superintendent as he shuffled over the parquet floor in his slippers, trailing a woolen blanket behind him and cursing the arctic temperatures.

  He was trying to find somewhere less freezing cold to sleep a while longer, as he had done in the early hours for several weeks now. It was always the same story: Boulard would doze off under his desk at eleven o’clock, only to wake up in the middle of the night with feet like blocks of ice. He would then stride energetically up and down the corridors for an hour before hunkering down somewhere.

  This morning, he pushed open the door to the HQ archives and came to a stop in an aisle. The mass of paper seemed to be giving off a particular kind of warmth, and he felt if he could only lie down between the boxes he would soon drop off. In the end, he found a warm spot by the shelf for Homicides, under the archives for Crimes of Passion. He wrapped his blanket around him and closed his eyes.

  Since his poor mother had gone away, Boulard hadn’t set foot outside Police Head Office at the Quai des Orfèvres. But before seeking refuge there, he had taken a stroll around the back of the Sorbonne University in order to knock on the door of his faithful second-in-command, Avignon, who had been extremely embarrassed. After half an hour of talking in the communal hallway, Avignon had agreed to let his boss step inside his small apartment.

  Boulard was dumbstruck by what he saw. It was the first time he had crossed the threshold of the man he had been working with for twenty years. Augustin Avignon lived alone in three dark rooms. The walls were covered with documents and newspaper cuttings relating to every case he and Boulard had ever solved together. There was no sign of any personal belongings. A mattress lay in the corridor. The doors to the kitchen cupboards had been dismantled so that books and files could be stacked inside. Boulard pretended not to notice the large photograph of him that was displayed in the tiny living room.

  “May I?” ventured the superintendent, sitting down beneath his own portrait.

  Avignon cleared the clutter from the sofa.

  Boulard ran his finger over a dusty table flap.

  “Do you own this apartment?”

  It was the only polite question he could think of, faced with such a pigsty.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. . . .”

  Boulard pursed his lips enthusiastically and scanned the room, as if he thought Avignon were sitting on a gold mine.

  “Have you got any coffee, my boy?”

  Avignon’s eyes bulged.

  “Coffee?”

  You’d have thought Boulard had asked for six bottles of Château d’Yquem 1921. Avignon headed into the kitchenette.

  The superintendent began to explain his situation. The threats from the Russian, his mother’s departure, his need to find a refuge, to get down to work properly again. And above all his desire to be done with the Vango affair once and for all.

  From the other side of the room, Avignon avoided Boulard’s gaze.

  “Does anyone know you’re here?” he asked suddenly.

  The superintendent looked surprised.

  “Why?”

  Avignon seemed even more agitated. He rummaged about in a box, perhaps looking for a coffee press.

  “I don’t know. . . . Someone might have followed you.”

  “Relax,” said Boulard, shaking his head.

  Avignon stopped what he was doing and turned toward Boulard, who glanced briefly around him, taking in the closed shutters and the photos on the walls. He felt stifled. What was going on in this man’s life? He understood Avignon’s absences for the past few months rather better now. His deputy was in a bad way.

  “You’ve been working too hard.”

  Such words had never been expressed before by the superintendent.

  “Haven’t you got a lady friend?”

  He had never asked a question like that either.

  “You take things too seriously. You should lighten up.”

  This was a feast of expressions that had never escaped Superintendent Boulard’s lips before, of which the last was not the least.

  “Can I sleep at your place, my boy?”

  Avignon broke into a sweat. His eyes had glazed over. Boulard could sense his discomfort.

  “Of course, if it would cause any problems with your neighbor . . .”

  “Why do you mention my neighbor?”

  “I bumped into him, and he said hello.”

  Avignon nearly leaped out of his skin.

  “So someone did see you come in here?”

  The superintendent went over to Avignon.

  “You don’t look well. Don’t worry. Everything will be fine. I’ll base myself at the Quai des Orfèvres. Don’t mention to anyone what I’ve just told you. Let’s have a meeting tomorrow morning, when we’re both feeling calmer. I’m counting on you.”

  A few seconds later, Boulard was gone.

  He had left Avignon lying on the kitchen floor, both hands stuffed inside a cardboard box, with the handle of a steel meat cleaver clenched between his teeth.

  Avignon had intended to plunge this cleaver into his boss’s chest. It was a unique opportunity. Voloy Viktor would have been pleased with him. But he couldn’t bring himself to commit such an act against the man he had admired and betrayed for so many years.

  And so Superintendent Boulard had taken up residence in the police headquarters. It was the only place where Rasputin the Vulture wouldn’t come for him. Nobody, apart from Avignon, knew that Boulard stayed behind every night to sleep in this great building. One morning, a secretary had screamed when she discovered a pair of men’s underpants in her desk drawer. Boulard had taken the precaution of not reclaiming them from lost property on the second floor.

  On this particular January night, lying on his shelf at the back of the archive room, the superintendent couldn’t get to sleep. For the thousandth time, he was piecing together what he called his “constellations.”

  It was his way of cogitating.

  When he closed his eyes, he could make every element of his investigation appear in an imaginary night sky. In his head, he would draw all the links that might exist between the isolated stars. Boulard was now convinced that Father Jean, murdered in his bedroom at the seminary in 1934, had not been killed by Vango. No, the opposite was the case: Father Jean had died for refusing to hand Vango over to his killers.

  So there had to be a connection between the bullets fired at the facade of Notre Dame Cathedral as the young man tried to escape and the murder of Father Jean, as well as to the Russian who was still after Vango’s skin. The departure of the superintendent’s mother on account of the Russian was a dark planet to add to this constellation.

  From the outset, there had been a luminous triangle connecting Vango, Ethel, and the zeppelin in the middle of this sky. The triangle obsessed Boulard. He had gleaned some information from Ethel about the famous voyage around the world in 1929, but he knew that he hadn’t yet probed that particular constellation enough to make her talk.

  What he found interesting in this approach was the emergence of unexpected links from the gloom. And so, between one constellation and another, he might discover a connection — between Madame Boulard and Ethel, for example. Strange as it seemed, it was perfectly possible that such a connection existed. And in the same way, hopping from star to star, there might be a bridge between the predatory Russian and the round-the-world zeppelin trip.

  But in the early hours of the morning, as he breathed in the smell of old paper, the superintendent wanted to make his sky look even bigger. Whenever an investigation came to a standstill, he would attempt to link it to other investigations. With his eyes still closed he would review the important cases from recent years, conjuring up other starry canopies. He would recall unsolved murders, holdups, swindles, and cases of organized crime. This morning he lay in the dark for an hour, trying to match up the cases with the witnesses and dates from the Vango mystery. It was as if he were asking the hundreds of suspects he ha
d encountered in his life to try on Vango’s glass slipper.

  The room was almost silent. Right at the back, a gentle chewing noise was coming from the corner with the yearbooks: an archivist mouse was painstakingly at work.

  Suddenly, the superintendent leaped to his feet. He ran over to the door and pressed the big switch: one after another, the overhead lights came on. A maze of shelves appeared before him, ten meters high, as Boulard strode toward the middle of the archives. An extraordinary choreographed dance began to take place from one end of the room to the other. The superintendent kept pushing around a ladder on rollers, climbing up it, rummaging through piles of paperwork, then climbing back down again. He transferred the files clamped under his arms to a box, then ran to the other end of the room and peered hard at the labels of archive boxes while hopping from foot to foot. He selected one, pulled out a wad of index cards that made up an old diary or record of admissions to the police headquarters for 1935. Out of breath and only half-satisfied, he scratched his chest through his undershirt and started pushing the ladder on rollers again, like a soldier moving his catapult at the foot of a fortress. On reaching the intended spot, Boulard threw his head back and commenced his ascent of the great wall.

  Suddenly, between two aisles, he bumped into someone.

  “Is that you, Avignon?” asked Boulard without bothering to stop. “Take this,” he said, picking up the box he had just dropped, “and follow me.”

  “Superintendent.”

  “Take the box. I’ve found what I was looking for.”

  “But . . .”

  “Leave the rest. This is the only thing that matters.”

  “It’s eight o’clock; the staff are arriving.”

  “What’s that got to do with me? Come on.”

  Avignon grabbed the box.

  “It’s all in there,” said Boulard.

  “Superintendent, I think you’ve got . . .”

  “You can think what you like, my boy. Let’s go to my office.”

  He switched off the lights and pushed the door shut.

  They headed down the corridor together: Avignon out in front, carrying the mound of paperwork, while the superintendent followed. People hugged the walls to let them pass.

  Boulard was on full display in his snugly fitting underwear. With his head held high, and the body of someone who likes tucking into his food, the superintendent took no notice of the astonished looks he was getting. He nodded at an archivist, who covered her eyes.

  Avignon was attempting to pave the way with apologetic glances. But Boulard was parading himself, with his belly thrust out. After shaking hands with the chief commissioner, who walked past with some of his advisers, he turned right and took the final corridor. When he reached the office marked BOULARD in gold letters, he ushered Avignon inside and shut the door.

  “Give me that.”

  The superintendent tipped the contents of the cardboard box onto his desk. Then he grabbed his trousers, which were hanging on the radiator.

  A crowd of curious eavesdroppers had gathered behind the door.

  “I may have found something, my boy.”

  Boulard was trying to do up his trouser buttons.

  “I don’t know where it’s going to lead us, but it’ll count for something.”

  First of all, he took out the thick register from the bottom of the pile and opened it on the table.

  “Does this date bring back any memories?”

  Boulard was putting on his shirt now.

  Avignon read the first line: “ ‘July 24, 1935.’ ”

  He took a few seconds to think about it.

  “No.” The lieutenant shook his head.

  Boulard went over to his door and kicked it. The eavesdroppers could be heard beating a retreat.

  “Now we can put our minds at rest,” he explained. “Right. Look at the twenty-seventh name on this page.”

  The document listed everyone who had passed through security at police headquarters on that day.

  “ ‘Ethel B. H.’ ”

  “Quite so.”

  “And now look at number forty-two.”

  Avignon gave an almost imperceptible frown before reading, “‘Drat That Rat! Pest Control.’ That’s —”

  “That’s Father Zefiro. Now, open this for me at the same date.”

  He held out a file. Avignon leafed through it and began to read the daily depositions.

  “Go straight to the end. Our dear Mademoiselle Darmon —”

  “‘Mademoiselle Darmon, forty-nine years old (age as reckoned by the complainant herself ), retiring in two months, secretary to Superintendent Auguste Boulard, declares that she saw a young man, who arrived via the roof, and who presented her with a letter signed Vango Romano.’”

  “Very good. Now go back to the previous page, first paragraph.”

  “‘Alert raised. Premises sealed off. Interrogation of a high-security defendant in the basement. See confidential files for identity.’”

  “That’s all, my boy.”

  “What?”

  “Ethel, Vango, Zefiro, and Voloy Viktor, on the same day in the same place: doesn’t that surprise you?”

  Avignon gulped and shrugged.

  “These things can happen.”

  “Yes, you’re right. These things can and do happen. So, take a look at this for me.”

  Boulard held out three stapled pages to his lieutenant, who began to read. It was an old statement on yellowed paper, dating from the early 1920s. A man who wished to remain anonymous, and who signed using the initials M. Z., gave the description of arms dealer Voloy Viktor, together with all the necessary information to capture him in a church at Faubourg Saint-Antoine in Paris.

  The pages quivered between Avignon’s fingers. That day, in the parish of Saint Margaret, when the entire police force had believed the arms dealer was in their grasp at last, Avignon had betrayed Boulard for the first time by overseeing Viktor’s escape. And since that time, he had never stopped lying. It was he, Avignon, who thirteen years later had undone Viktor’s metal belt so that, with one head-butt, the dealer had been able to shine the light on Zefiro. And it was he who had made Viktor’s flight via Spain possible in a special train a few days later. For fifteen years he had filed weekly reports to this criminal, updating him on all the latest news from the French police.

  Avignon had stopped reading. Boulard was staring at him.

  “Are you going to go on?”

  “Yes.”

  In a flat voice, the deputy read the list of accusations made by this anonymous priest against Viktor. The litany was terrifying.

  “Can I stop n-now?” stammered Avignon.

  “No.”

  He kept reading as Boulard paced to and fro in his office. Avignon had reached the end of the document. He fell silent.

  The superintendent raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

  “Well?”

  “Well . . . I don’t understand,” spluttered Avignon.

  “Well?” asked Boulard, beginning to lose his temper. “Aren’t you going to read the last line?”

  The lieutenant dived back into the pile of papers. Zefiro, the author of the document, had added a few sentences at the bottom of the page.

  “‘After the capture of Voloy Viktor, no contact is to be maintained with me. In the event of circumstances beyond my control, the sole point of contact should be: Commander Hugo Eckener, of the Zeppelin Company.’”

  Superintendent Boulard looked serious.

  “There it is.” He sighed. “That’s it: the missing star! The zeppelin! This final link leaves me convinced that the Vango affair is connected to the Viktor affair. As sure as my name’s Auguste Albert Cyprien Boulard.”

  He tore the three pages out of his lieutenant’s hands.

  “And that link is M. Z.”

  “Who?”

  “Vango knows Zefiro!”

  Part of Avignon was relieved, but the other part was panicking. He had been worried that he’d been fou
nd out, which wasn’t the case. This should have reassured him. But Boulard’s discovery was problematic. Thanks to Viktor, Avignon had been aware for over a year now that Zefiro and Vango were close. He was convinced that the superintendent would make the most of this finding, which meant that Voloy Viktor’s file risked being reopened.

  More serious still, Boulard was going to hunt down Zefiro. And Zefiro had already discovered Avignon’s betrayal. A telegram denouncing the lieutenant had been sent from New York to Paris, although Avignon had managed to intercept it before it reached Boulard.

  “Superintendent . . . I’m not clear about what you want to do here.”

  Boulard picked up a piece of chalk from the blotter in front of him. He turned to the blackboard and tore off the papers that were stuck to it. Then, launching himself at the board, he drew a large white cross.

  “There you go. These are our options: the four routes to finding Vango,” he declared, adding an arrow at each extremity of the cross before chalking up their initials: “Viktor, Ethel, Eckener, and Zefiro.”

  “Viktor to the west. Twice we’ve heard about him being in America. Ethel to the north. Eckener to the east. And Zefiro . . .”

  Avignon was hanging on every word.

  “Zefiro to the south.”

  For four years, Avignon had been trying to find out where Zefiro’s base camp was situated. It was something that obsessed Voloy Viktor, who knew about the existence of the invisible monastery but had never been able to locate it.

  “We’ll have to set off in all four directions,” the superintendent concluded.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in!”

  “Superintendent, your candidates are waiting for you in the blue room, sir.”

  “Is it today?”

  “It’s every Thursday, Superintendent.”

  “I’ll be down,” groaned Boulard.

  “And the chief commissioner would like to have a word with you.”

  “What about?”

  “The incident, I believe.”

  “What incident?”

  “This morning’s incident, sir.”

  Boulard didn’t understand. Avignon, who was standing next to him, ventured a guess.