Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘Hush, Ellie.’ Harriet murmured. She spun Ellie’s chair round with an angry gesture and started to wheel her down the path.

  James turned away shamefaced. Catching Arnhem’s glance, he went over to the man to speak his condolences.

  Arnhem’s face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot. He listened to James, then gestured him up the incline away from the curious stares of his fellows.

  ‘Your brother is a stubborn man, Monsieur Norton.’ Arnhem’s voice held a tautness, poised on the very verge of rage. ‘I can speak to you. You are the elder. He is too stubborn, he will not let anything go. It will cause more problems.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  Arnhem looked round furtively. ‘I do not want him to pursue Bernfeld. ‘

  ‘He’s here?’ James asked quickly.

  ‘No, no. Though your brother doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t trust me. Look. He’s trying to ascertain everyone’s name.’

  Raf was indeed talking to the old Jew in the fur-trimmed hat.

  ‘But you’ve located Bernfeld?’

  ‘I have. And I’ve spoken to him. He has nothing to do with poor Rachel’s death. Nothing.’

  ‘You’re certain.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Will your certainty convince the police?’

  His eyes were suddenly fearful. ‘What have they to do with it? They haven’t asked me about him.’

  ‘But they may. Raf will undoubtedly alert Chief Inspector Durand and …’

  ‘No … no.’ Arnhem’s fists were clenched. ‘That would not be wise. Please, tell him …’ Tears suddenly leapt into his eyes.

  ‘Perhaps then it would be best if we were to interview him … to put my brother’s mind at rest. He’s grieving. He’s not himself.’

  Arnhem’s expression played over secret matter. He gripped James’s arm. ‘You … you can go and talk to him. You will not insult him. You will be respectful, considered. You will explain that we are deliberately keeping him away from the twisted minds of the police. You will not imply that you have greater rights over my poor Rachel than he does or I do, for that matter. And then you will see. You’ll be able to set your brother’s mind at rest.’

  ‘Fine. Where does he live?’

  ‘No, not at his home. That would be impolitic. You can find him at lunchtimes anywhere in the vicinity of the new national pavilions on the Universal Exposition site. He has a kiosque. Drink, food for the workers.’

  ‘How will I know him?’

  Arnhem let out a sardonic growl. ‘You will know him, Monsieur. I assure you.’ He drew a wide circle round his own face and walked abruptly away.

  The rain had stopped. The gathered mourners had split up into desultory groups. They seemed unsure whether to leave or stay. There were to be no speeches. Little Juliette and her brother were placing more pebbles on the grave, shaping them into patterns, as if they were at the seaside. Touquet was standing near them, gesticulating wildly to a man with a pugilist’s features. Off to one side, Marguerite was conversing with Oriane.

  Watching them, it came into James’s mind that there was something clandestine in their gestures, as if some hidden matter were being shared. He walked slowly towards them. As he approached, their conversation stopped abruptly. Marguerite’s smile came at him with too great a speed.

  ‘I believe you’ve met Oriane Martine.’

  James had time only to nod before he saw Raf beckoning to him with an urgent wave. He proffered excuses and hastened towards his brother. Chief Inspector Durand was at his side, a small but decided smirk on his face. Raf spoke in English.

  ‘This madman wants to take me in for an interview with the investigating magistrate. Now. I think you’d better come with me, Jim, or in my present mood I’m liable to punch them both in the face.’

  ‘Monsieur Norton. We meet again.’ The small man bowed, his jaw thrust forward, his eyes glinting in near-gleeful irony. ‘I believe your brother has explained. Our juge d’instruction, Maître Chardon, is waiting for him.’

  ‘I’ll accompany you, of course.’

  ‘That’s not altogether regular, Monsieur.’

  ‘I’m a lawyer, Chief Inspector. Therefore it can hardly be irregular. You have laid no charges on my brother, I take it. This is merely a preliminary interview.’

  ‘It is what it is, Monsieur. Maître Chardon must build the dossier. And we mustn’t keep him waiting much longer.’

  ‘Let’s get it over with, Durand.’ Raf was already walking towards the gate.

  ‘What about Ellie?’

  ‘Alert Marguerite. She’ll see to her.’

  Maître Chardon’s office in the interstices of the upper reaches of the Palais de Justice had a view far more appealing than its shabby interior, as if visitors needed to be reminded that freedom was out there – in the flow of the river, the bright awnings of the cafés, the kiosques of the booksellers, and not in the confines of this dusty cubicle, with its paper-strewn desk and bare floors.

  An extra chair had had to be sent for to accommodate James, who had imposed himself despite the lack of welcome. While they waited for its arrival, Raf paced a room too small for his strides. He gave off a sullen electricity. Like a caged animal’s, his face proclaimed, if you so much as touch, I’ll bite.

  James stared at the view and pretended a calm he didn’t feel. Every glance he stole at Maître Chardon’s pallid, spectacled face augmented his impression that they were dealing with a rat-like Robespierre of the judicial system, a man with a secret taste for the unsavoury, every whiff of which bolstered his narrow virtue.

  At last the clerk arrived bearing the necessary chair. They gathered round the desk – the clerk, pen poised for note taking, Chardon riffling through a thick pile of papers, Durand to his other side. James and Raf sat opposite the threesome.

  ‘We will begin now, Gentlemen. Yes?’ Chardon’s tone was pitched for a large, absent assembly of the terminally deaf. ‘And just to remind you why we’re here, let me put these in front of you.’ He took some photographs from the midst of his papers and spread them on every available space on his desk. Raf and James scraped their chairs backwards simultaneously.

  The photos all displayed Olympe’s dead body bathed in an eerie yellowish light. The lack of natural colour seemed to make details more vivid, as if the camera’s lens had taken in far more than James remembered seeing. There were closeups of her arms and legs, oddly elongated. There were strange speckles, like bites, on her fingers. Her face, ghostly with its closed eyes, was mottled too. A shadow, like that of a pointing finger, fell on her cheek. Another circled her neck, like a strangling knot of dark pearl. Beyond her, half hidden by a rumple of blanket, something white poked out.

  ‘This is altogether unnecessary, Maître.’ James was the first to find his tongue. ‘We’re fully aware why we’re here.’

  Chardon focused colourless eyes on him. ‘You, Monsieur, I will remind you again, are here under special consideration and in an unofficial capacity. I will harbour no interruptions.’

  James gave him a tight-lipped nod. He caught a whisper of a smile on Durand’s face. He couldn’t make out whether it hinted at mockery or at satisfaction with the proceedings.

  ‘Get on with it, Chardon.’ Raf was visibly distressed.

  Chardon began with a series of innocuous questions about Raf’s background – his place of birth, his childhood, his education, his family. But as these questions, which James had assumed were a mere matter of formal bureaucracy droned on, he felt a tingle of apprehension. The man was probing Raf about his childhood habits, his record of absenteeism at school, subjects he had failed or excelled at, his illnesses. It was all a long way from the matter at hand, yet seemed to have some malign purpose.

  The purpose only began to grow clear as Chardon asked Raf whether he had suffered any falls in infancy, any instances of trauma.

  Raf’s tension exploded simultaneously. He slammed his fist on the desk. Papers and photographs leapt. Ink spill
ed. The clerk dropped his pen.

  ‘Look, Chardon, if you’re thinking of turning me into some kind of lunatic for the benefit of your dossier, you can think again. I’m a perfectly sane and rational man – except when little … little officials like you get my goat. Is that understood?’

  Chardon’s eyes were lowered, his hands neatly crossed on his lap. But his voice held a menacing edge. ‘Believe me, Monsieur, if you co-operate with the investigation, things will go far more smoothly for you.’

  ‘Really. Is that right? The next thing you’re going to ask me is whether I’ve made any suicide attempts. Well the answer is no. No, no, no. Nor did I collaborate in Olympe Fabre’s suicide since there never was one. Have you taken that down?’

  The scratch of the clerk’s pen echoed in the sudden silence.

  Chardon cleared his throat with a politely muffled cough. ‘You have an excitable temperament, Monsieur Norton. Indeed your behaviour is altogether unruly. We shall certainly note that. In fact, I was going to ask you some further questions about your family, about all your forebears.’

  Raf leaned back in his chair with an air of absurd nonchalance. ‘Ask away. Waste everyone’s time. But I can tell you there is no madness in the family, no dark history of murderers and suicides, not even any cousins behind bars. Or are there some I don’t know about, Jim?’

  James shook his head and wished he could tell Raf to show less contempt, though the line of questioning was certainly contemptible.

  ‘Nor does anyone drink any more than you do, or maybe you don’t, but certainly no more than our honoured French Presidents do. So the question of any hereditary predisposition to crime or abnormality or alcoholism is out. Does that answer your next questions, Chardon?’

  Chardon shuffled his papers. ‘Yet your sister, Mlle Elinor Norton, has been to see several of our nerve specialists.’

  James edged forward on his chair. He hoped his gasp wasn’t audible.

  ‘Women’s problems.’ Raf muttered. ‘My sister is a woman.’

  ‘Indeed, born of the same parents, nonetheless.’

  ‘You’ll have to go and ask them, I guess. I wasn’t present at her conception.’

  ‘Raf!’ James heard the syllable tumble from his lips.

  Chardon met his eyes with a glint of triumph.

  ‘And while you’re at it, I suggest you have a word with our Ambassador. You know, Durand,’ Raf turned to the Chief Inspector, ‘I really had this wild notion that we were working on the same side. I don’t know where I could have got it.’

  Chardon cleared his throat, more loudly this time. ‘All right, Monsieur Norton, since you seem averse to our establishing a thorough moral dossier, can you please tell me about your movements from the night of the 1st of June when Mlle Fabre vanished from view and during all the subsequent days until her body was found.’

  ‘That’s more like it, Chardon. A little good old American empiricism to scupper the battleship of your Gallic hereditary theories. All right, I last saw Olympe around midday on Thursday.’ He hesitated. ‘That was the day, you’ll remember, that Paul Déroulède was acquitted and his patriotic comrades gathered in not insubstantial numbers around Sainte-Antoine. I went to cover their celebrations, their demands for a plebiscitary Republic …’

  ‘Did anyone see you there?’

  ‘I’m hardly invisible.’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Chardon. It was a public rally. I spoke to some guys, but …’

  Chardon glanced at Durand with the glimmer of a smile. ‘And that night, Monsieur Norton, where did you sleep?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘I don’t remember doing much sleeping. But I went home eventually.’

  ‘To the Boulevard Malesherbes?’

  ‘Yes, to the Boulevard Malesherbes.’

  ‘Can anyone confirm that?’

  ‘I live alone, Chardon.’

  ‘So there’s no one?’

  James was about to prompt and mention Arlette when a look from Raf made him bite his tongue.

  ‘Go on. Tell us about Friday.’

  Raf suddenly screeched his chair back and got up. ‘This is utterly pointless, Chardon. But just to give you a sense of how very co-operative I can be, I’ll tell you.’ He waved his arms and started a countdown on his fingers. ‘On Friday, I wrote and telegraphed my piece. Then went round to see various friends at various papers. I’m a journalist, if you haven’t realised. Now I know we may not be your favourite people. Or the Chief Inspector’s here.’ He gave Durand a provocative grin. ‘But we’re a necessary lot. And hardly criminal. And there’s been a lot going on in this blasted city. You’ll remember there was a major arrest on Friday night and on Saturday, the court made its announcement about Dreyfus. When I heard, I decided a little journey to Rennes was in order, to see how the citizenry there were reacting to the prospect of having the great traitor foisted on them. Not good. Not good. Duels. Rows. Sunday morning I travelled back to Paris. I was due to meet Olympe, but she wasn’t there. So I went to those memorable races. When I got back, Olympe still wasn’t there.’

  Chardon interrupted him. ‘You have a key to her rooms?’

  Raf hesitated. ‘I do.’

  ‘Please sit down, Monsieur. During the period that we’re talking about, when was the first time you let yourself into Mlle Fabre’s apartment?’

  ‘Sunday. Sunday around lunchtime and again that evening.’

  ‘Did you take anything of hers with you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Durand and Chardon exchanged a look.

  ‘You’re certain of that?’

  ‘Of course, I’m certain. What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I ask the questions, Monsieur Norton. And now I wish to ask you where that black eye and those cuts on your face came from?’

  ‘They probably came from one of your thugs, Chardon.’

  ‘Raf!’ James exclaimed again.

  ‘Well I didn’t get the man’s name, did I, Jim? It was somewhere outside the court in the 10th where the Auteuil royalist gang are being tried. Great day. Government falls. Would-be presidential assassins on trial. Lots of life in the old streets. Do you ever get out in the streets, Maître?’ He smirked at Chardon.

  ‘But you had time to make a visit to the Salpêtrière Hospital. Can I ask what you were doing there?’

  Raf and James stared at him in unison.

  ‘I wanted to visit a patient.’ James spoke up.

  ‘Indeed. Kind of your brother to accompany you. The patient was your cousin, I believe.’

  James swallowed hard. Comte. That oily Dr Comte had been babbling.

  Raf laughed loudly. ‘More of a kissing cousin. Or don’t you have that expression in French? I’ll say this much for you, Durand. You’re being assiduous. Just wish your instincts were on a par with your diligence.’

  Chief Inspector Durand looked as if he were about to add another black eye to Raf’s first. James distracted him. ‘Do you know, Dr Vaillant, Chief Inspector?’

  Chardon answered for him. ‘Why do you ask, Monsieur? Do you think the good Dr Vaillant might step in and help us prove your brother’s fundamental irresponsibility.’

  ‘Hold on a minute …’ Raf muttered.

  ‘So you know Dr Vaillant?’ James overrode him.

  ‘Dr Vaillant is one of our foremost authorities in forensic medicine. He often acts as an expert witness. He is quite brilliant at assessing the fine dividing lines between controlled responsibility and madness.’

  ‘I see.’ James paused. ‘There have been a rather large number of deaths on his wards of late.’

  ‘It’s a hospital, Monsieur. People, even cousins, do not go there when they are in the best of health.’ There was a distinct sneer in Chardon’s voice. ‘In fact, many of them go there to die.’

  ‘And death, I take it, has a preference for certain races above others in that great hospital.’ James countered. ‘If I were in your
shoes, I would certainly check it out.’

  The man removed his spectacles and wiped them slowly. Beneath them the vapid eyes were now tinged with anger. ‘Let us get back to nearer matters, Messieurs.’

  He gestured towards Durand who brought a sheet of paper out of a file and tidying the photographs into a pile, positioned the paper in front of Raf. With an air of distinct malice, he handed him a pen.

  ‘Monsieur Norton. We would like you to write something for us. To be precise we would like you to write the words, “This is what you need to copy and send”.’

  Raf looked at him aghast. ‘Could you repeat that?’

  Chardon repeated himself slowly and clearly, as if he were conducting a dictée for a six-year-old.

  ‘You’re trying to do a Dreyfus on me, Chardon.’ Raf was up on his feet again. He was shouting. The room echoed with his voice. ‘I’m not having it. Jim, go and get hold of the ambassador. They’re trying to play a memorandum number on me, expertly pretend my writing looks like something incriminating. I’m not having it, Chardon. I tell you I’m not having it.’

  ‘Where do these words you want my brother to write out come from, Monsieur?’ James confronted the man. ‘It’s all highly irregular. My brother is right. In America this would not be countenanced. I wish to see the document from which you have taken these words before he offers his co-operation.’

  Chardon looked at Durand, who made a slight nod.

  ‘All right. But we cannot show you the words themselves. It would ruin the proof.’

  ‘I really have had enough, Jim. This borders on the absurd.’ Raf mumbled in English.

  ‘It won’t be the same as your writing, Jim.’

  ‘It wasn’t the same as Dreyfus’s either. But he spent almost five years on Devil’s Island all the same.’

  ‘What are you saying, Messieurs?’

  ‘Learn some English, Chardon. It might clear your mind of all this idiocy.’

  ‘Really, Monsieur, I shall be forced to …’

  Durand stood up and deliberately sidestepping Raf, handed James a sheet of typed paper. The top of it had been folded down and when James made to turn it, Durand uttered a loud ‘No. You can read what I have shown you. Only you.’