Sacred Ends

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘I see. Is she with her father?’

  He nodded. ‘Get her out of there.’

  The smell assaulted her even before she had reached the room, a low pungent reek of excrement combined with something sweet and sickly she couldn’t place. The body seemed to take up most of the free space on the floor of the room and all its air.

  Napoléon Marchand lay, huge, strangely slack-jawed and waxen-skinned, at the base of the sagging Restoration sofa. He must have rolled off it in some death agony. Or tried to reach for the whisky carafe, which stood empty by its side, and toppled off in a final spasm. His legs were splayed, one arm stretched outwards in an extravagant appeal that had gone unheard.

  Dr Labrousse was on his knees to the side of the corpse, tapping and prodding, lifting one arm after another, looking at hands and nails, lifting eyelids to show constricted pupils.

  Meanwhile Madame Tellier sobbed, her bosom heaving, her hair straggling free from its pins, her eyes wild. One hand trailed loosely across surfaces, tables, a display case, partly drawn curtains, as if the act of fingering were a necessary accompaniment to her grief. Dust flew in her wake. If the room had contained any foreign fingerprints, they were now certainly gone.

  Marguerite put a handkerchief to her nose and moved towards the woman. She had identified that other smell now. It was vomit. It covered the old man’s clothes. Perhaps he had gagged and choked on it.

  Before she could reach Madame Tellier, Dr Labrousse had her by the shoulders.

  ‘Now look at me, Madame Tellier. Concentrate. How many times did he wake up after we left you? You didn’t give him more of the medication than I prescribed, did you? I warned you.’

  Madame Tellier stared at him from red-rimmed eyes. Her sobs turned into violent hiccoughs. She shook her head, launched herself into an armchair that almost collapsed with the violence of her weight. Beside her the fire raged, recently stoked into fury. A white ash bearing all the aspects of burned paper lay heaped on the floor beyond its bounds.

  ‘But you let him get to the drink. I specifically ordered that there was to be no drink.’

  The sobbing grew louder. ‘Have you ever tried to stop my father if he was intent on something. Have you, Doctor?’ she shouted between sobs.

  Marguerite and Durand exchanged a glance.

  She walked towards the woman and put an arm around her. ‘Come with me, Madame Tellier. You need to relax. Deep breaths now. And a cup of tea. Madame Molineuf…’ She saw the woman lurking in the doorway and called to her. ‘Prepare a tray of tea, or whatever you can find for Madame. I’ll take her upstairs. Away from this. It’s too terrible for her. She can’t be sitting here with the corpse of her father.’

  ‘Quite right. Quite right.’ The chief inspector took Mme Tellier’s arm and together with Marguerite eased her out of the chair. ‘Let the countess look after you, Madame.’ He gestured towards the young uniformed constable. Marguerite thought the man might burst into tears.

  ‘I don’t know how I slept through it. I don’t know how…’ His refrain, directed at the chief inspector who gave him the full benefit of one of his Parisian shrugs, also earned a venomous look from Madame Tellier.

  ‘I tried to rouse you,’ she shrieked. ‘I tried. You’re a miserable lump of a boy. You’ll hear about this next time I bump into your mother.’

  ‘Please, Madame.’

  Marguerite noticed that the young man’s eyes, which had now filled with tears, were very blue, the pupils too small. It gave her pause. Like the dead man’s. She would have to check with Dr Labrousse. He must have given old Marchand morphine. Had some of it found its way into the constable? Via Madame Tellier? It would account for his heavy sleep.

  Madame Tellier was still sobbing. Durand spoke soothing words all the way up the stairs.

  ‘Shall we send for your husband, Madame?’

  She sobbed more loudly and the inspector shrugged again. He found an open door that led to a bedroom and with visible relief turned the woman over to Marguerite.

  ‘Now, Madame, I recommend you loosen your corset a little and lie down.’

  Marguerite plumped less than clean pillows. ‘Your tea will be here in a moment.’

  The room was large and shrouded in blood-red wallpaper embossed with a fleur-de-lys pattern. It was cold and dank. The high bed, with its heavy, dark, wooden headboard, stood prominently on one side. On the other there was a chest holding a vase of dusty dried flowers and an escritoire, its roll top shut. On the bedside table stood a bottle of rum, and another of Marchand’s opium pipes. It was a wonder the man had lived for as long as he had.

  ‘I can’t believe it, Madame. I can’t believe it.’ Madame Tellier must have heard her thoughts. She was propped against the bed’s headboard, a wrinkled handkerchief to her face. ‘He was a fine man, Madame. A towering figure. I’m only sorry that you had to see him when he wasn’t at his best. That fall he suffered … it affected his temper as well as his manners.’ The woman’s face with its vast reddened eyes was a tragic mask.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Don’t worry yourself about that, Madame. I know you loved your father.’ And she had in her way, Marguerite thought. Love was a dangerous passion.

  ‘But now, you must close your eyes and relax. I’ve learned in these circumstances it’s a good thing to breathe deeply.’

  The woman did as she was told. ‘It’s kind of you to look after me. Really it is, Madame.’

  Marguerite hushed her, made soothing noises. All the while, she examined the room. The light fell in slashes from the corners of the drawn curtains. It cut the bed, the oval table and zigzagged along the escritoire. A piece of paper protruded from the base of its roll top. That hadn’t been visible yesterday. At least she didn’t think so.

  She glanced at Madame Tellier’s bulky form. Her breath came evenly now. She moved towards the desk and gently lifted the lid. Beneath, a pile of documents and letters lay in disarray. They had been heaped higgledy-piggledy by someone in a hurry. One slipped to the floor.

  ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’ Madame Tellier’s hiss startled her.

  ‘One … one of these papers was protruding. I was trying to put it back.’ Marguerite smiled reassurance.

  ‘Make sure you do. Just make sure you do.’ The woman threatened. There were no longer any tears in her eyes. The hysteria or its semblance had metamorphosed into cold control. ‘That’s Napoléon Marchand’s desk.’

  Her emphasis made it clear that Marchand had now joined his namesake the French emperor in importance, having always surpassed him in stature. But there was something else in Madame Tellier’s voice that gave Marguerite pause. It was as if she were hearing old Napoléon Marchand himself, as if his daughter had now become the old man. Incarnated him in a new form. The realisation created a pit in Marguerite’s stomach. She smoothed her pale grey dress unhurriedly.

  ‘You heard me.’

  Madame Tellier’s eyes bore down on Marguerite so furiously that the eruption of noise from downstairs came almost as a relief. There was a resounding clatter that sounded louder than gunfire.. Fear flashed across Madame Tellier’s face, robbing it of its cold authority. A convulsive shiver took her over.

  ‘No, no. It can’t be. Can’t be him.’

  Marguerite preceded her down the stairs, her skirts swinging with the speed of her movement.

  On the ground floor, they all but collided with Dr Labrousse and the constable, who were heaving the dead man through the hall. Madame Tellier leapt on them, grabbed hold of first the doctor’s arm, then her father’s hand.

  ‘Not yet.’ A sob broke from her. ‘No, it’s too soon.’

  ‘We must, Madame.’ Labrousse shrugged her off. ‘We need to … to ascertain the cause of death.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ She repeated the words twice, her wild eyes aiming daggers at the doctor. ‘No, no. I don’t give you permission. Never. He’s not to be cut up.’

  The front door was already open, the police wagon parked directly in front of
it.

  ‘He stays here. With me. The family will want to see him. The priest must come. No.’ She clung to her father’s body. In her struggle with the doctor, the corpse of Napoléon Marchand tipped towards the floor.

  The inspector appeared just in time to tilt the balance. Another loud noise erupted from somewhere beneath them.

  ‘What is that?’ Marguerite asked.

  ‘That’s just what I was rushing to find out. Now leave the good doctor, Madame.’ He took the woman’s arm and manoeuvred her skilfully away. ‘Your father’s body will be returned to you. Perhaps even later today. Soon enough, certainly. By Monsieur, the undertaker. You must prepare your father’s best clothes. From what I understand of his position here, many will want to come and pay their respects.’

  Madame Tellier nodded, assuaged. ‘A great many. My father was well connected. Before he started his travelling, he was in demand everywhere. Everywhere.’

  The doctor and the constable had managed to use the interruption to ferry old Marchand towards the door. The inspector was already making his way downstairs urging Madame Tellier before him. Marguerite followed after.

  As they opened the door to the kitchen, they were met by a scene of devastation. The shelves had been hit by what might have been cannon fire. Crockery lay shattered amidst an assortment of pots and toppled spice containers, their contents spilling reds and blacks on the tiled floor. A large carpetbag, partly obscured by a burlap sack, spilled forth hams and condiments. An iron casserole had landed upside down on the table.

  ‘I tried to stop him, Madame. I tried. But it’s no use now. He’s too big.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My son, Inspector. I know you wanted to see him. He pushed me away and rushed out.’

  ‘How could you let him go, you stupid woman? It might have been him. Him who gave my father the lethal quantity of alcohol. You hear that, Inspector? Get the lout. I always knew he was no good. He’s killed my darling father.’ Madame Tellier tore at her hair, her eyes wild.

  ‘What you talking about?’ Madame Molineuf strode towards her, hand on bulky hip. Her voice came with low menace. ‘Just watch what you say, you hear … Remember all the things I’ve seen around here. And don’t get too big for your boots. P’tit Ours loves his old master. If he’s run off, it’s because he’s got some woman with him. I know he has. All that food he took.’

  ‘A woman?’ Madame Tellier echoed.

  The inspector was already running up the wooden steps that brought him to a storeroom. Marguerite lifted her skirts and followed after him. Behind her, she could hear Madame Tellier’s heavy tread.

  The external door was open. It led into a dank field where stray bits of iron and old carriage wheels littered the ground. In the distance, jumping over a stile, they made out P’tit Ours. He had a bright sack in one hand, which looked stuffed to the brim, and some kind of iron box in the other. Marguerite recognised the bag. It was the one that had thrown Madame Tellier into a rage. It belonged to her half-sister. P’tit Ours had surely been in the house for some time and with his soft tread managed to help himself to whatever Amandine had asked him for. Marguerite had no doubt that the strange youth was now following a new set of orders. She hoped they were less violent.

  ‘Stop him, Inspector. He’s stolen things. Stolen things from my father.’ Madame Tellier’s voice was a shriek.

  ‘In due course, Madame. We won’t catch him now. And we have other matters to see to. More important matters.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The room the inspector led Marguerite to was tucked away in a far corner towards the top of old Marchand’s house. It was an odd place, a cross between a child’s room and servant’s quarters. A china doll cloaked in an elaborate Empire gown trimmed with gold sat in pomp in a small rocking chair in the corner. The rest of the dusty space had nothing to show but a narrow bed topped by a bare horsehair mattress and a wooden chest on knobbly legs. The window was high and dirty and had a wall of old heavy curtains on each side.

  They had left Madame Tellier, who had at last drunk the calming powder the doctor had provided, to her housekeeper’s erratic ministrations.

  ‘Do your instincts tell you she helped her father through that final frontier, Madame?’ The inspector shut the door behind them and addressed her in a low voice.

  ‘Probably. If only so as to prevent him making his other daughter public. And she burnt some telling documents.’

  ‘It’s true. I searched and couldn’t find a will anywhere.’

  ‘Though he might have deposited it with a notary. In Tours, I imagine. For all his excesses, old Napoléon Marchand seemed to be a shrewd businessman.’ A sigh escaped her. ‘Families, Inspector! The things that go on behind closed doors.’

  ‘They are the backbone of the nation.’

  ‘Yours is undoubtedly, Inspector.’ She smiled at him, then changed the subject. Durand idolised his children and spoke of his wife only in terms of the greatest respect. ‘Why have you brought me up here?’

  With a dramatic flourish he pulled back the dank curtains to the left of the window. ‘Because of this.’

  The curtain gave way not to more windows, but to an alcove that contained what she could only think of as a shrine. There was a pretty little statue of the Virgin Mary, all blue and white and gold, her head inclined in prayer. The walls around her were in a deeper, almost midnight blue, through which gold stars peeped. At the Virgin’s feet lay an assortment of shells and candles, some of them the old stubby tallow kind that servants used, but the others tall and slender wax. Amidst the shells there were two locket-like hearts that gave Marguerite pause. One of them was remarkably like the incense-filled sacred heart that always lay by little Gabriel’s side.

  She fingered it.

  ‘Relics and amulets,’ the inspector said. ‘Not quite what one would imagine that old pit of corruption that was Napoléon Marchand bending his knees to.’

  ‘No.’ She paused. ‘You remember how he said he thought Yvette was a saint. Could this have been her room? Her secret shrine.’

  ‘That’s why I wanted you to see it. But odd that she should have a room here as well as at the Telliers’.’

  ‘A saint who also blackmailed him,’ Marguerite mused.

  They went softly downstairs. In the front hall, with its massed guns and walking sticks, they bumped into Madame Molineuf. The woman was grumbling again, her back to the door that she seemed just to have shut.

  ‘Vultures. All of them. Fighting over the remains of the old master already. Barely cold, he is.’

  ‘Who was that, Madame Molineuf?’ Durand asked amiably.

  ‘The curé, that’s who it was. Missed the last rites, I told him. Special masses, he offered. But really came for his envelope, didn’t he? I told him there was nothing. Nothing at all for him.’ A triumphant beam illuminated her face.

  ‘The curé?’ Marguerite queried. ‘You don’t mean Père Benoit?’

  ‘Who else might I mean? Always here this last month. Christmas greetings. New Year’s greetings. Family greetings. Epiphany greetings. Any old greetings.’

  ‘Our greetings to you, Madame.’ The inspector tipped his hat. ‘Take good care of your mistress. Tell her we’ll see her later.’

  Close to Montoire, where the inspector had rushed them in order to see the investigating magistrate, they saw a lone figure in a red jacket limping towards them. There was no turban on his head, though as they watched he paused, put down the large box he was holding together with a bag, took from it the missing headgear and adjusted the jewelled turban. He looked altogether forlorn. As they drew nearer, they could see that the Indian’s face was bloated, one eye black and blue.

  ‘Mr Rama,’ Marguerite called to him in English.

  The man bowed. The horses whinnied and reared.

  ‘It’s that blasted snake of his,’ Durand mumbled. ‘Tell him to put it down or we’ll have runaways. The animal stinks. The police mares weren’t very happy, I can tell you, when we brought
it back for him yesterday.’

  Rama didn’t have to be told. He had already put his serpent down carefully by the side of the road.

  ‘What’s happened, Monsieur Rama? Have you been in an accident?’ Marguerite asked in French for the inspector’s benefit.

  Durand helped the man into the coach. His face, usually so fine and smooth, showed cuts and contusions.

  ‘I fear so. A kind of accident.’ He sat back in the seat opposite them, his posture stiff. They waited for him to say more.

  At last, with a shrug, he offered, ‘Auguste got very drunk. He mistook me for an enemy. Or maybe even a wall, to practise his kicks and punches on.’

  ‘How terrible.’

  ‘The man is a danger. We should lock him up.’ Durand exploded. ‘This can’t be allowed. I’m surprised you didn’t set your beast on him.’

  Mr Rama looked from one to the other of them.

  ‘I don’t like to make this confession and it is only for your and Madame’s ears. My poor Nasa long ago had his poison centres removed. He is a cobra with only the appearance of venom. He can leave his mark, but he cannot kill.’

  ‘And he left it on the neck of Xavier Marchand,’ Marguerite murmured. ‘I couldn’t identify what those little marks were when I saw the man on the doctor’s autopsy table.’

  ‘Your fairground friends don’t know that Nasa had lost his venom?’

  ‘It is best in this work of mine not to reveal all one’s secrets.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to have worked for the best today…’ Durand smiled, not without a trace of wickedness.

  ‘Ah that…’ the Indian looked down at his lap, his expression weary.

  ‘Where are you heading, Mr Rama?’ Marguerite asked.

  ‘To be honest with you, Madame, I do not know. I am simply heading. I cannot stay with my one-time family any longer. They are not my friends. Auguste, I fear, may kill me.’

  ‘Kill?’ Durand asked.

  The Indian waved his arm weakly. ‘It is a manner of saying. But it is true, he has become a belligerent leader since Danuta’s death. It is the grief, perhaps. And the drink. He has too much money to spend on drink. Rama has suffered for it.’