Sacred Ends

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘And where does all this money come from? Business can’t be very good at the moment,’ Durand grumbled.

  ‘Did Madame not mention it to you? I think it is money that Danuta got from her gentleman. Auguste repeats over and over, while he douses himself with the liquor he has bought with her money, while he weeps and beats his chest and beats Rama, “If only there had been no emperor, if only…”’

  Marguerite and Durand looked at each other. ‘Can you remember exactly what you did and said that led to this beating, Monsieur Rama?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘I wanted to practise my riding on Danuta’s horses. To improve my act. It was when I was mounting. He heaved me off. He said I wasn’t to go.’ Rama shook his head slowly. ‘The alcohol has destroyed his seeing, perhaps. He mistook me for Danuta. He threw my turban to the ground and said I didn’t need feathers on my head for what I was about to do.’

  ‘I think we need to see your Auguste,’ the inspector murmured.

  ‘Not with me. Not with me, Inspector. I have enough marks on my body. I am not a brave man.’

  The inspector patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘But you are a brave man, Monsieur Rama,’ Marguerite intervened. ‘You have travelled halfway around the world with your serpent. That takes far more courage, I imagine, than the kind that can be found in a bottle.’

  Monsieur Rama considered her.

  ‘And to give up your work, your friends, because a strongman has decided to use his strength in the wrong way, is not a solution. Come with us, Monsieur Rama. We need you.’

  ‘If Madame really believes so.’

  ‘I do. But since my horses do not seem to feel kindly towards your Nasa, we will meet you at the site.’

  The travellers’ camp looked desolate in the late afternoon gloom. Many seemed to have abandoned it. Smoke rose from a single metal barrel situated in the midst of the semicircle the carriages made. Two ragged boys played round it in a half-hearted manner, aiming pebbles that pinged against the tin. A man Marguerite didn’t recognise emerged from behind a wagon and stared at them with suspicious eyes.

  Durand tipped his hat. ‘We’re looking for Auguste,’ he said.

  The man pointed with a surly expression towards a carriage painted red and white.

  Monsieur Rama had now caught up with them and the stranger shook his head at him as if he were a lunatic.

  ‘I thought you were leaving.’

  ‘I’ve come back.’

  ‘You enjoy beatings, do you?’

  ‘I do not. But Rama will not run.’

  ‘No, he’ll limp.’

  The man shrugged and disappeared behind the wagon.

  The inspector was about to knock at Auguste’s door when Rama pointed into the distance. The strongman appeared in the shadow of the castle wall. He wasn’t alone. He was accompanied by a man in a brown habit.

  Marguerite stopped in her tracks. ‘How fortunate. I wanted to talk to the brother again. I’ve been thinking about him.’

  Durand looked at her as if she had lost her wits.

  ‘It’s Frère Michel.’ Marguerite started to walk towards the friar and Auguste. The ground was cold and muddy in the drizzling rain, but she carried on regardless. Durand was right behind her.

  ‘Don’t do anything silly now, Madame. The man is dangerous.’

  Auguste didn’t turn as they approached. Marguerite wasn’t even sure he saw them. His head was bent, his shoulders slack. He stumbled across the uneven ground. At one point he fell to his knees and tugged at Frère Michel’s habit. The brother helped him up.

  ‘Let’s wait,’ Durand said.

  When the men had come closer, he called out. ‘Auguste, a word, please.’

  ‘Excuse us, Monsieur, Madame.’ It was the cleric who responded, bowing slightly in Marguerite’s direction as well. ‘My friend here has an urgent errand.’

  ‘Our matter is urgent, too. Auguste has assaulted a fellow artiste, has chased him away from the only home he knows. Monsieur Rama is poorly, is distraught, and I suspect penniless, while Auguste squanders his dead fiancée’s ill-gotten gains on drink and…’

  A savage howl from Auguste interrupted the inspector’s speech. ‘Rama! Rama!’ the man shouted. He was still drunk. Barely upright, he lunged towards the Indian. The inspector interposed himself.

  Auguste flung his arms around him, whether in order to attack or simply to hold on wasn’t clear.

  ‘Rama,’ he called again. ‘God is my witness.’

  Auguste was hugging the inspector, his head lolling over the smaller man’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m here, Auguste. what is it?’ Monsieur Rama moved from behind the inspector so that Auguste could focus on him.

  ‘Rama, my friend. I’m sorry. So very sorry.’

  Auguste had started to sob. As best he could, the inspector eased the bigger man on to his own feet. He brushed off his shoulders discreetly, then, catching the cleric’s eyes on him, he stopped.

  ‘Yes,’ Frère Michel repeated. ‘Monsieur Auguste has an urgent errand to attend to.’

  ‘I’m going to the police, Rama,’ the strongman shouted so that in the middle distance the two children stopped their play and followed them with their eyes. ‘The police.’

  ‘We have a policeman right here,’ Rama murmured.

  The inspector shook his head rapidly. ‘Best to go to Montoire.’

  ‘I have been bad, Rama. So bad. Bad to Danuta. When she came out of that house. I waited for her. I waited. I was so angry. It is a sin to be so angry, Rama. Frère Michel has explained it to me. It is a sin because it makes you lose yourself in rage, do terrible things, stay angry for ever. Angry at yourself. At the world. At God’s creation. Yes, Rama. At you, too. But when I told the brother, he took the rage from me. Held it. Held it away.’

  Rama shook his head sagely. ‘The brother is kind.’

  ‘I hit her Rama. So hard. Too hard. She fell. I took all her money and ran away.’ Auguste started to sob again. ‘When I came back, she wouldn’t move. I wanted to bring her, to bury her. But this boy came. And I ran. Ran from a boy.’

  ‘Antoine,’ Marguerite breathed. She must have said it louder than she assumed, because the man looked at her.

  So it was Auguste and not P’tit Ours or Olivier, as she had suspected by turn. Auguste, the strongman, battering her down in the woods, this side of the little clearing, as she tried to take in the dead figure of the dancer.

  Auguste was still staring at her. She shook herself. ‘Where did you follow Danuta to, Monsieur Auguste? Which house?’

  ‘The emperor’s house,’ Auguste said with a touch of pride. ‘She went to the emperor’s house. Beaumont.’

  ‘I see.’ So old Marchand had yet another property.

  ‘Come, Auguste. We must be on our way.’ The cleric’s voice was gentle, but firm. ‘Night is closing in.’

  Marguerite gestured to Rama and Durand. ‘Shall we walk with them?’ she murmured. ‘I would like a few words with Frère Michel.’

  The men took up her cue and positioned themselves on either side of Auguste, who had started to weep again.

  ‘Mon frère,’ she held the cleric back a little. She was struck again by his asymmetric eyes, one dark, one light, looking, it seemed to her, at different parts of human capability. She lowered her voice. ‘Mon frère, I wanted you to be amongst the first to know. I thought it might free you to speak about poor Yvette, Yvette Branquart. Napoléon Grandcourt Marchand is dead.’

  Frère Michel crossed himself and murmured something in Latin beneath his breath. Then he fingered the heavy rope around his soutane and examined her face. ‘I don’t understand why you have brought me this news, Madame.’

  ‘I thought … I thought your silence was due to him. That you were holding back her whereabouts out of fear of him, or perhaps out of some confidences garnered in the confessional?’

  The man looked up at the unbroken sheet of grey sky, then gave her a smile of startling sweetness. ‘Non, Madame.
Non. Please tell her sister that she will hear from Yvette when she is ready. May God be with you, Madame.’ He went quietly towards his charge.

  She caught up with Durand. They walked in silence for a moment. Then Marguerite burst out, ‘I need to see Dr Labrousse, Inspector. There is something I need to press him on. He knows something about Yvette. I don’t know what it is. But I feel it. And Frère Michel, despite his gentleness, has provided no enlightenment. None at all.’

  The inspector didn’t seem to be following her train of thought. His mind was elsewhere. ‘So that old scoundrel of a Napoléon wasn’t lying about Danuta.’

  ‘It would seem not. Though if Auguste were less drunk, I would find his confession more palatable. Still, it makes sense. Jealousy. Another perversion of love,’ she added almost under her breath, but wouldn’t explain when the inspector looked questioningly at her.

  ‘And Auguste has given us a lead. About a third Marchand property. We shall need to check it out, Inspector.’

  ‘First things first, Madame. We accompany Auguste and the Friar to the local police and magistrate, so that his confession is definitely recorded. If old Napoléon chose for some mysterious reason to tell the truth, then we must consider believing him about other matters, too.’

  ‘If we’re talking about first things, Inspector, then the safety of my two charges is paramount. When will the police go to search the house I think of as the witch’s house?’

  ‘That’s precisely what I was going to organise next, Madame. Perhaps we might meet at the doctor’s?’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The rain prevented the doctor from working on Napoléon Marchand’s cadaver in the open field. She found him under a kind of lean-to at the back of his consulting rooms, the man she had first seen him with at his side. They were both clad in surgical green. A gas lamp was propped to one side of them, casting a murky yellow glow over everything.

  Both men’s eyes flew at her in a greeting that bore not a little irritation. Labrousse hastily drew a sheet over the naked corpse from whose pale, jaundiced flesh she had in any event instantly averted her gaze.

  ‘I’m sorry, Madame. But you’ve chosen a bad moment.’

  ‘I recognise that, Doctor. I just need five minutes of your time. Five minutes for the living. I think you’ll understand. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent. And it’s a private matter.’

  She glanced at his assistant and with a quick nod went round to the front of the house and waited.

  She waited for longer than she would have liked. It forced her to think impatient thoughts about Labrousse. She scanned the human parts diagrammed on his wall and wondered for a moment whether he cared more for the parts than for the whole, living person.

  What kind of man was he really, this doctor with his gleaming skin, his shrewd, unblinking eyes? What kind of man was he above and beyond his professed modernity, his love of science?

  ‘I’m sorry to keep you, Madame.’

  Marguerite jumped. Had she been maligning him out of sheer exhaustion?

  ‘Some things can’t be done too quickly. And I shall have to test the samples in my little laboratory at the earliest possible moment if we’re to find anything revealing.’

  She nodded.

  He took a deep breath and surveyed her. ‘You wanted to ask me something in private? I trust you’re not ill. Your arm hasn’t taken a turn for the worse…’

  She shook her head, shrugged. ‘I noticed, when we were with Madame Tellier yesterday, that some secret information passed between you. A glance of understanding. It came when the old man mentioned Yvette, who as you know I have a particular interest in.’

  ‘I too, Madame. Has her sister returned?’ he asked with a touch of fervour. ‘I have been worrying about her.’

  ‘No. I trust that has nothing to do with you?’

  He was out of his chair like a bolt of lightning. The movement was so aggressive that Marguerite scraped her own chair backwards and found herself tilting precariously. She had pricked a raw nerve in the doctor.

  ‘What has the woman told you to make you think like that? She’s pure venom.’

  ‘What could she have told me that would make you say that about a patient?’

  His hands rose to his face and hid it from her. When he emerged again, his brow was furrowed with worry. He gave her a dark look. ‘All right. You’re a woman of the world. I’ll tell you. But it isn’t pretty. And it reflects well on no one.’

  ‘I’m not interested in passing moral judgments, Doctor. I just want to find the girl. I’m afraid for her. As I am now for Martine.’

  He nodded, rubbed his brow with those long immaculate fingers, which he had scrubbed before coming in to her.

  ‘I’m not sure this will help you find her, but since you’re intent on the truth…’ He paused. ‘A great German philosopher, if one’s allowed to quote Germans around here – they were very good at laboratory medicine, you know – said, “Give me beauty. Truth is ugly. We perish of truth.”’

  ‘I will try to stay alive, Doctor. Please continue.’ Marguerite sighed. She was tired of the time these men took. In the name of gallantry. In order to preserve her from the experience any person with eyes could see.

  He shrugged. ‘After refusing the girl the care she needed, Madame Tellier sent her to me. She wanted me to induce…’

  He stopped and surveyed Marguerite carefully. She had to urge him on again.

  ‘She was certain the girl was pregnant. That she had been carrying on with every Jules in the region, the chemist’s son included. She wanted me to induce a miscarriage.’

  He said it evenly, but his eyes were on the floor.

  ‘I told her I couldn’t do that. She offered to pay me handsomely. She left money for me in an envelope on my desk. I tried to return it to her. She refused it. She said to keep it to buy myself some new instruments, the latest. She said she liked the girl, didn’t want her life to go astray. I later realised that she suspected the child was old Napoléon’s, her father’s. So she’d do almost anything to get rid of it, and Yvette.’

  ‘The girl was his favourite?’

  ‘If you mean in receipt of his questionable favours, then certainly Madame Tellier assumed so. His actions put her in a fury. I learned this from Yvette, not from her. Madame Tellier came to me, I imagine, only because I was new to the region and would suspect nothing. In any case, I told her to send Yvette to me and I would examine her. She didn’t come, and I thought the whole thing had passed. It happens, you know. Girls think they’re pregnant. Then suddenly realise they’re not.’

  ‘Was she? She did finally come to you, didn’t she? That’s what Madame Molineuf’s son said. It was the first thing I learned about Yvette.’

  He nodded. ‘She appeared late one evening. I was eating. Alone in the kitchen. Reading at the same time. It was summer, so there was still a little light in the sky.’

  ‘And?’

  He was staring out of the window, as if he could see the girl. He didn’t answer.

  ‘You were fond of her,’ Marguerite urged him on.

  ‘Yes, she was a brave girl.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, she told me she thought she was with child. It was a sin. But it would be a far worse sin to try and get rid of it, which is what Madame Tellier had been urging her to do. So she had run away. Yvette was a pious girl. She had spent the last two days in the caves. Praying, she told me. That Molineuf lad kept an eye out for her. She liked him. But she couldn’t stay there. And she wanted my advice. I was the only person she could turn to. She wanted to know if there was a place where she could go and be safe.’

  ‘You kept all this from me?’ Marguerite looked at him in despair. ‘All this time, you knew. All this time while her sister was in misery.’

  He shrugged. ‘Yvette was my patient. What patients confide in their doctor is as confidential as what they tell their priests. It’s the nearest thing we men of science have to a sacred trust.’

  She st
ared at him.

  ‘Even if it ends up by harming your patient?’

  ‘Who are you to say what might be harm for Yvette? The choice was hers to make. She wanted secrecy. She made me swear.’

  ‘But you’re telling me now.’

  ‘That Tellier woman will land me in jail, if she carries on. So you might as well have my version. And whether the poor girl was pregnant or not, it’s now long over. She didn’t want me to examine her.’

  ‘So where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know that either.’

  ‘You know. You won’t tell me.’

  ‘I gave her a bed for the night. I gave her money. All the money Madame Tellier had left for me. I told her there were some Poor Clares working on the far side of town. They had come from Blois to help with the sick. They would know better than I where she might go. I hadn’t yet met Madame Germaine or I would have consulted her. But Yvette was very happy with what I had suggested. “Poor Clares,” she kept repeating, as if the name itself was some kind of prayer. I took her to them. She said if she needed any more help, she would come back to me in the evening. She never did. She told me she knew I was doing her a special favour and if Madame or her father found out, they would be very angry. She was frightened of them. A lot of people in the region are. With better reason than I had initially thought, it seems. I asked her to write to me to tell me how she was getting on.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Yes, once.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘There was no return address. No stamp either. A crumpled note arrived at my door. It hadn’t been delivered by the postman.’

  ‘So she came back?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think it was her. I would like to think if it had been, she would have knocked.’

  The man was half in love, Marguerite thought. ‘What did the letter say?’

  ‘It thanked me. Said she was as well as could be expected. And that maybe one day we would meet again. In this life or the next.’