Sacred Ends

by Lisa Appignanesi

  She was just taking in the box of neatly folded bandages, gleaming instruments, the washing bowls, the range of stethoscopes, the diploma from the ancient and high-ranking medical school at Montpelier, when she noticed a sheet of paper on the desk. It must have been left in haste. The top line read ‘Report on Cadaver’.

  She heard a step behind her and sat back abruptly.

  ‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I’m afraid I had … certain duties to perform today. How can I be of assistance, Madame?’

  His words held a greater politeness than his taut, impatient presence. Marguerite took in a tall man, probably not much older than herself. He had sparse black hair and a narrow face that might have been carved out of stone, so steep were its planes. It abutted a dark, close-cropped, professorial beard trimmed in evident haste. Through it his lips shone a fleshy pink. His clothes were not of the best, the elbows of his brown jacket threadbare, which meant there was probably no wife to sew on patches. Eyes like polished pebbles met hers with a piercing directness, which at once assessed her status, her clothes, perhaps what lay beneath. Oddly there was also something lulling in the gaze, a mesmeric quality.

  She decided to return the directness at least. ‘I’m afraid I’m not here for a consultation, Monsieur.’

  The doctor’s disappointment was palpable. Paying patients were not in great supply, it seemed. But his eyes remained unblinking. ‘How can I help you then?’

  Only now, as he put it down on the desk, did she take in the photographic apparatus he was carrying. So it had been a camera flash she had seen in the field.

  ‘I’m here on behalf of a friend. But let me assuage my curiosity and ask you first, because it troubles me: were you bent over a dead body atop a table in the neighbouring field not so very long ago?

  A shiftiness took him over. He found refuge in the papers on his desk and mumbled so that she could barely hear. ‘Bodies of all kinds make up my practice.’

  ‘You work with corpses?’

  As if his nervous impatience had now got the better of him, he thrust his response at her. ‘I work with the sick. If it disturbs you to consult a doctor who also performs autopsies on behalf of the judiciary and the police, then let me apologise in advance. But we are now in the twentieth century. And such scientific work is necessary. Even in the provinces.’

  The portentous way in which he pronounced the word ‘scientific’ and underlined the new century reminded her of some of the earnest young students with whom she had attended lectures at the great Parisian hospitals. The body was still uncharted terrain, the abode of chemical mysteries, which called out for mapping and taming.

  ‘Indeed, it is. Very necessary.’ She smiled her respect.

  His tension went with it, leaving only its ghost in the lines around his eyes.

  ‘Who may I ask were you examining?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say, Madame.’ He glanced out of the window, then lowered his lanky shape into the chair behind his desk. ‘Perhaps you’ll be kind enough not to spread word of my secondary activities too far and wide either … Some of the old people here can be a little superstitious, which I sense Madame approves of as little as I do.’

  She nodded. ‘Yet you perform your autopsies outdoors? Is that not irregular and a little too public?’

  ‘You must have had the good fortune of spending much of your life in an advanced modern city, Madame. Here in the provinces, we are not in Paris.’ He uttered the name of the capital with a mixture of awe and resentment. ‘When it’s colder outside than in, we work where we can and as quickly as we can. Bodies decompose, you know. There’s also a question of light.’ He was warming to his subject. ‘Particularly in this dark time of the year. Candle and gaslight flicker too much for the delicate work.’

  ‘I see. And you remove the organs?’

  ‘When it seems to be called for. For laboratory examination. And I take photographs. I’m afraid in Montoire there is a lack of professionals, not to mention facilities. Ascertaining the manner of death is still a new science. But we are making great strides.’

  ‘And the manner of death of the man you were examining was suspicious in exactly what way?

  He was instantly on his guard again. ‘May I ask why you are interested in these questions, Madame? You say you saw me in the field. Could you see the cadaver as well? Was the person known to you? Is that the reason for your interest?’

  ‘Please, Doctor,’ Marguerite cut him off. ‘There’s no need for misgivings. My interest is altogether general. I have a friend in the police force in Paris and we sometimes discuss such things. In fact, I’ve come to see you on quite another matter. On behalf of a friend of the family, as I said. A Mlle Branquart. Her sister, Yvette, is causing her some concern. She hasn’t heard from her in several months. She was working at the Tellier house and it was from there I was directed to you.’

  His wariness failed to dissipate. Quite the contrary. He deftly moved the police form off the table.

  ‘Really? Now that surprises me. Madame Tellier has rarely put a high value on directing attractive women my way.’ He bowed with a gallantry that seemed foreign to his earnest demeanour.

  ‘Is that so?’ Marguerite smiled. ‘But then Madame Tellier was away. The person who mentioned you was a Madame Molineuf. The housekeeper, I imagine.’

  He considered her again, his eyes astute. She could feel him wondering whether she was someone he needed to dissemble to.

  ‘Put your mind at ease, Dr Labrousse. I have no intention of reporting our conversation to anyone in the Tellier house. You can be frank about Yvette with me.’

  ‘Her sister, you say? I didn’t know she had a sister. She never mentioned one. So her sister is worried about her health?’

  ‘That too.’

  He tapped out an impatient rhythm on the desk. The nails of his fingers were buffed and manicured. It surprised Marguerite.

  ‘The girl wasn’t well. A little high-strung compared to the usual maids I see. I wanted to conduct a thorough examination, but Madame Tellier prevented me. I recommended that she come and see me here. Recommended it to her rather quietly and, to be utterly frank’ – he smiled in a disarming manner – ‘secretly. Madame Tellier gave me every reason to understand that she wasn’t interested in paying for Mademoiselle’s invented ailments.’

  ‘What had brought you to the Tellier house in the first place?’

  ‘Madame Tellier suffers from two unmarried daughters, amongst a number of other perennial complaints. She is a frequent patient. But the family is hardly amenable to scientific diagnoses. So I usually prescribe a tonic and go on my way. But on one of my visits, her little maid, Yvette, as you say, fainted in my presence. I feared she was seriously anaemic … But I’m speaking out of turn.’

  ‘No, no. Not at all. Please go on. So Mlle Yvette came to see you here?’

  He leapt up abruptly. ‘She didn’t. No. I gave her a prescription. The chemist will know whether she heeded it. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you, Madame. I have not seen her in some months either, come to think of it.’

  ‘How did the girl seem to you generally, Monsieur?’

  He shrugged. ‘I sense the household she was working in was hardly the most wholesome of environments. Need I say more?’

  ‘Was it Monsieur Tellier? Did they beat her?’

  He looked around nervously. ‘I know nothing about that.’

  ‘Do you have any notion of where she might have gone? Did she have any friends to turn to?’

  ‘She was from the region … She probably knew as many people as I do, if not more. I wish I could be of more help, Madame, but I’m afraid I must get on.’ He pulled a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and studied it with too much attention, simultaneously taking a sheet of paper and a quill from his desk drawer.

  ‘Her sister is very distressed. If you hear anything, or something significant occurs to you, please do come to see me at La Rochambert.’ Marguerite gathered her skirts.

&nbs
p; ‘Yes, of course. Of course. La Rochambert.’ He straightened his shoulders in military fashion at the mention of the address, and flicked specks of lint from his lapel.

  She hesitated. ‘Tell me, Doctor, your police case? Was it the man found on the tracks. The suicide?’

  ‘Yes, the self-murder.’ Gloom took the energy out of his features and made them almost ugly. ‘Or so I was told by the police.’

  Marguerite leapt at the casually offered information.

  ‘You mean the poor man didn’t fling himself in front of the train?’

  ‘He was certainly under the train. Whether that’s all that killed him, we have yet to learn…’

  She stared at the doctor. So little blood. She had wondered at that. And that vacant eye, too soon after the supposed death.

  ‘You mean he died of a prior dying?’

  ‘That’s a quaint way of putting it. But yes, that’s what I think. A prior dying. A double death, if you like.’

  ‘Someone else brought him to the tracks?’

  ‘So the bodily evidence would lead me to believe. So far in any case.’

  ‘A murder then?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘And do you know what killed him?’

  ‘Not yet.’ He shrugged, rubbed his eyes and suddenly looked tired. ‘Not that the police, let alone the investigating magistrate, will necessarily believe me. But I shouldn’t be saying all this. I talk too much. I must be very tired. You’ll forgive me, Madame. This is no conversation to be having with a woman.’

  ‘This woman promises that it will go no further.’ Marguerite smiled. ‘If you tell me who the man is.’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s just it. No one is certain. There was no identification on him. He’s quite unknown to me, as he seemed to be to the two men who came to have a look at him. The people around here can be strangely secretive, you know. There’s a chance of course that he’s not from around here. No one seems to have reported an absence.’

  ‘Well, if I can be of any help to you in the future, Doctor, please don’t hesitate. Or if you need any support in your researches … I can sometimes facilitate things.’

  He bowed. ‘Thank you, Madame. That is very kind.’

  She had almost reached the door when she turned back. ‘By the way, Doctor, there is something else you might be able to help me with. Have you or any midwives you know come across a woman who might have lost a child recently?’

  He didn’t respond. She hadn’t made herself clear.

  ‘A baby has been found. In the river.’

  He leapt up from his chair. He had misunderstood her.

  ‘I’m not in the habit of throwing out babies, no matter what state they’ve arrived in, Madame. There are enough infanticides in these blighted provinces without my help. The Republic must do something about it, must somehow make men and women equally responsible for their offspring …’ He stopped himself, then rushed on, his eyes burning, ‘And if you think … if you think Mlle Yvette was pregnant, I know nothing about it. Nothing. You, Madame, if I may say so, have an unhealthy preoccupation with death.’

  SIX

  Outside the mist had grown denser. But Martine was not waiting in the carriage. The coachman informed Marguerite that the girl had grown impatient and gone for a stroll. She had gone in the direction of the market square. Perhaps she had remembered a contact, Marguerite thought. It didn’t really matter that they would be late home. As it was, she had taken far too long with the doctor.

  Was he right about her? Had this last year of the century, heavy with loss, left her with an unhealthy preoccupation with death and the ordeals of the past?

  She gathered her long fur more closely round her and sat back into the seat as Georges moved the horses slowly towards the square. Passers-by had the wavering outlines of phantoms. The hawkers, muffled against the cold, seemed to be performing their business in some kind of shadow play, their arms waving in random gestures. The gas lamps in front of the shoe shop were already lit. The trees shivered. Drops of moisture clung to the bare branches despite the lack of rain.

  Marguerite watched. Yes, it was true. She was being thrust into the company of the dead again. Her very fascination seemed to propel corpses into her path. Much as she might refuse this line of reasoning, it had its own logic. Death had long ago started to weave its fatal web round her. As if it was toying with her. She heard its call in the strains of certain melodies, in the judder of a piano chord or sweet sigh of a violin, in the sudden panic of a nighttime awakening.

  Here, now, in these old haunts, it seemed to her it must all date back to that childhood moment when her father had announced that her mother was dead. Had she seen her lying there on that bed her father had always called her mother’s bed? She didn’t know. Nothing about her mother was accessible to her, except that portrait, and very occasionally the soft pitch of a woman’s voice.

  The deaths she remembered had started with her animals. First the kitten she had nursed, who had grown into a sizeable enough creature before vanishing into the woods where, distraught, she had found him bloated with maggots, his fur matted and bloody. She had wanted somehow, against all odds, to revive him, and when that proved impossible, she had wanted more than anything to join him. She remembered lying on the leaf mould beside him, the earth damp and cloying and giving off some heavy smell that was simultaneously sweet and acrid.

  After that, there had been her father’s dog, who was also her own, a glowing, russet setter with a soft, unforgettable gaze. He had gone to sleep in front of the fire one night and never opened his eyes again. She had lain on top of him and sobbed. She had pounded and pummelled him in the hope of response. She had wondered what it was that made him dead rather than alive, since he looked exactly as he always looked – except now he was motionless.

  Marguerite abandoned the carriage and began to cross the bridge. She found herself staring into the waters and thinking about the foundling who had miraculously escaped drowning. Escaped death. Was that what made him so dear to Olivier? Or was it rather that he had been saved from the clutches of death by Olivier himself?

  When she looked up, she realised she was standing close to a riverside blanchisserie. Steam leaked from the cracks in the door and the frames of windows. Of course. Where did maids go, when they wanted to leave the world of service, if not to a laundry or a milliner’s? The work was often supplemented, in Paris at least, with sexual service. Many of the great horizontales had followed that trajectory. The women in the blanchisserie might be able to supply some clues and not only about the whereabouts of an Yvette her sister imagined brave enough to inflict harm on a rampaging male.

  Marguerite slipped through the door and found herself in a fair-sized room. Sheets and clothes hung everywhere on wires to dry, giving the place the look of a washerwoman’s garden on a hot afternoon. Pushing aside whites and embroidered tablecloths, she picked her way between petticoats and drawers and shirt fronts to arrive at a large table covered with calico at which six or so women were engaged in ironing everything from bodices to pockets. Their bonnets kept the perspiration from running down their faces. Their cheeks glowed pink. A sprite of a girl fed coke into the stove on which the irons heated.

  ‘What can I do for you, Madame?’ a portly older woman addressed her.

  Marguerite met the woman’s eyes and smiled confidentially. ‘I wonder if I might have a word, Madame? In private, perhaps.’

  She gestured the woman behind a large white sheet that hung to the side of the room, then asked her first about Yvette Branquart. There was no whiff of recognition in the woman’s face, but she promised that she would ask all her girls. If Madame could return later in the week…

  Marguerite nodded acquiescence, then tried to phrase her second question about the abandoned babe with enough delicacy so that it didn’t solicit the kind of reaction she had had from Dr Labrousse. It didn’t prevent the woman’s face from shutting down and her shoulders taking on a disapproving rigidity.

&
nbsp; ‘There is nothing like that amongst my girls, Madame can be certain. They are good girls, all of them. I wouldn’t allow for less. Not in my establishment.’

  ‘But perhaps, Madame,’ Marguerite asked solemnly, ‘one of them might have heard something from a friend or…’

  The woman’s lips formed into a tight and even primmer line. ‘I shall ask, Madame. But don’t expect to learn anything here.’

  Leaving the premises, Marguerite realised that her search for the foundling’s parents might prove far more difficult than she had bargained. Even if anything was known, it would be buried, certainly in front of someone of Marguerite’s class.

  One would think that the spiralling rate of illegitimacy, some said as much as 50 per cent, or of children given up to orphanages, was provoked by disembodied creatures or the proverbial stork, who never stepped into a laundry or a hospital or indeed anywhere that Marguerite might choose to direct her questions.

  She noticed the old Benedictine priory just across the way. The door into the grounds was open, beckoning her through. She slipped round a single marked grave into the tiny ancient chapel with its trefoil of apses. It was empty, hushed. She let the silence play through her and breathed deeply.

  The fresco depicting the virtues and the vices, which had always intrigued her as a child, was still there, the eyes of its gathered figures blind, unseeing. It gave them an otherworldly aspect: they could see into the invisible, she had thought. It was exactly what she needed to do now.

  Not so long ago, she had read that the painted saints’ blindness wasn’t intended by their makers. The fresco artists of the Romanesque period had simply added eyes and beards to their images when their plaster was already dry. Over the centuries time had eaten away these superficially embedded features and deepened the mystery of the remaining figures.