Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  The Grand appeared before he had expected it. He lingered for an extra moment in the life of the boulevard. He found himself wishing he could lose himself in its careless extravagance, as if a roof and walls signalled a suffocating tomb from which he had too recently been released. These last days with Ellie, in fact the entirety of these last weeks, since he had witnessed Olympe’s dead body, had given him, he realised, a sense of his own precarious mortality and with it a sense that life was precious. It led him to confront the fact that he had not felt it to be precious before. Since Maisie’s death he had successfully shrouded himself in some stiff impermeable carapace where sensation didn’t penetrate. Years in limbo. Years of waste.

  He half remembered a line from Shakespeare. ‘I wasted time and now time wastes me.’ An unnameable fear coiled in his stomach. With it came a fleeting image of Marguerite brushing against him as they stood by the fireplace and an anxiety about what Raf’s ‘big night’ might entail.

  He hurried through the lobby of the hotel. Seeing the crowd at the elevator, he made for the stairs. By the time he reached his room, he was panting slightly. He turned the knob only to find the door locked. He knocked. There was no response. A second knock still failed to rouse his brother. Puzzled, he tried again, then after a glance at his watch which showed five minutes to eight, slowly made his way back down to reception. What could have led Raf to alter his stated plans?

  The clerk handed James an envelope. Beneath the formal reticence, his eyes were avid with curiosity. James turned away to read his letter. The note was briefer than a telegram. ‘Emergency at Salpêtrière. Raf.’

  Without pausing to deliberate, James headed for the door.

  A motley crowd had gathered in the stifling corridor outside Dr Vaillant’s ward. Passage was all but impossible. Nurses in billowing headdresses jostled with white-gowned doctors and orderlies bearing a stretcher. All of them were pressed backwards by a caped policeman, standing at the door of one of the cell-like cubicles. Working his way through the gaggle, James saw a lightning-like flare flash from the partially open door. Into the hush that followed it, came a commanding, ‘Don’t touch anything. Not a thing.’

  Chief Inspector Durand’s voice. James pushed forward, his pulse racing faster than a greyhound. Before he could reach the door, a man barged past him, his elbows like battering rams. Dr Comte. His face was set in an ugly scowl. James uttered his name, but the man was as oblivious to his surroundings as a locomotive at full steam. He rammed his way between the women and charged down the corridor.

  Torn between following him and making his way past the gendarme, James was momentarily transfixed by a second flash. He could smell the burning powder now, like rotting eggs.

  ‘Chief Inspector Durand’s expecting me,’ he shouted above the head of an orderly.

  ‘Name?’ the policeman barked officiously.

  James told him.

  He opened the door a fraction wider to squeeze through. James’s innards lurched. He saw the loose hospital gown first, swinging in the air as if a wind had propelled it upwards and refused to let it go. Beneath it, two limp stockinged feet turned in a ninety degree arc and back again with hypnotic slowness. Time was trapped in that infinitesimal motion.

  He forced his eyes upwards. From a knotted sheet hung a woman, her bent face all but obliterated by a fan of dark hair. The hair crackled with life. It was the only life left in her.

  ‘There’s no room for anyone else in there now.’

  James barely heard the gendarme’s words. His thoughts were too loud. Judith Arnhem. Judith was dead. Judith who had predicted her own death, who had forewarned them. How had they allowed this to happen?

  Immune to admonishments, he propelled himself back through the crowded hall in search of Comte. Why had Durand allowed the man to go? He pushed open the door he thought he had seen Comte enter. The cackles and screams of a ward besieged him. For a moment, in the pandemonium, he was disoriented. A stout matron emerged from the sea of rocking figures to block his passage. He asked for Dr Comte. With a shake of the head and a stern ‘not here’, she marched him backwards.

  James tried a second and a third door. Both were locked.

  From the far end of the corridor he now heard a new commotion. ‘Make way. Make way,’ a voice ordered. Stretcher-bearers moved in his direction. A sheet covered the figure between them. Keeping pace with the desolate retinue was the sticklike pathology student, Steinlen.

  James gripped his arm. ‘You remember me? That’s a friend of mine you have there. I’d like to come with you.’

  The bony youth gave him a harassed look. ‘That’s against orders. Specific orders.’ He shook James off. ‘Besides, she’s no one’s friend now.’

  ‘Whose orders?’

  ‘Police.’ A smug smile tugged at his lips. ‘They’re the only ones allowed in.’

  James retraced his steps. He reached the cubicle just as the photographer struggled through the door, a tripod balanced in one arm. While he exchanged a word with the gendarme, James slipped unnoticed into the room.

  Bent almost double, Arnhem sat on the palette of a bed and swayed slightly. He didn’t look up. His gnarled hands covered his face as if he might never lift them from there again. Raf stood next to Chief Inspector Durand. Both of them were staring up at the ceiling where a beam traversed the room. Screwed into it was a hook of the kind that might once have been used for holding a candle tray. Stretched on the floor beneath them was the sheet he had last seen round Judith’s throat. It was tightly wound and regularly knotted like some giant’s primitive necklace. A toppled stool lay beside it. The air was stale, foetid with an aroma which could only be the stench of death.

  ‘Jim. You got here.’ Raf spoke first. ‘Olympe’s sister is dead.’ Raf’s eyes were vast with childlike wonder. A vein throbbed at his temple. ‘Monsieur Arnhem and the nurse found her hanging when he came to visit. It’s too awful. He had the presence of mind to insist on getting the Chief Inspector here.’

  ‘And I sent for you, Monsieur Norton. Your brother intercepted the message.’ Durand scowled at both of them. ‘A foul business. The matron told us the woman had been ranting of nothing but death for weeks. Which is why they had her in here on her own.’

  ‘Had her in here alone so they could do away with her more easily.’ Arnhem’s guttural hiss startled all of them. ‘You’re fools all of you.’

  ‘Be reasonable, Arnhem. I know it’s not easy when your child … your children … The point is if the medics wanted to get her, they could just give her an injection of something. A lot less trouble and you would have been none the wiser.’

  ‘Did you interview Dr Comte?’ James was so transfixed by the grief in Arnhem’s face, that his voice came in a whisper.

  ‘Comte raged. He had apparently just come on duty when I arrived. He gave his nurses a regular dressing down.’ Durand stroked his moustache reflectively. ‘I wouldn’t have liked to have been in their shoes. He told them when patients were put into solitary it was not so that they could be forgotten for days on end.’

  ‘What did the nurses say?’

  ‘Mademoiselle Laplanche …’ Durand checked his notebook, ‘said it was the weekend and they had all been run off their feet and that they were two short of staff, because of illness, and that they had indeed looked in on Judith Arnhem at noon and she was sleeping peacefully.’

  ‘I presume you’ve asked the pathologist to run a check on what chemicals she had inside her.’

  ‘You really don’t need to teach me how to suck eggs, Monsieur Norton.’

  ‘And your police pathologist will be assisting the young Dr Steinlen?’

  Durand grimaced. ‘In due course. Dr Comte tells us Steinlen is very able. A ferret for detail.’

  ‘Dr Comte is not to be trusted.’ Arnhem leapt up, suddenly as fierce in his stance as an unleashed tiger. ‘I have tried to explain my daughter’s fears to you, Chief Inspector. She may have been ill, but she could also be alert. More alert and sens
itive to her surroundings than the rest of us. She had a kind of sixth sense. Rachel always talked of it. It was I … I who was resistant to Judith’s observations.’ Arnhem tore at his hair.

  The air in the small room had grown intolerable. James looked with longing at the small, high window. Without thinking, he reached for the stool and was about to stand on it when Durand barked, ‘I want to fingerprint that. Don’t touch.’

  ‘Of course.’ James stepped back. ‘Sorry. It occurs to me that when we last came to see Judith Arnhem, this wasn’t the cubicle she was in. The last one didn’t have a window. Nor was there a beam. A beam with a convenient hook to hang from. Judith might have been induced, or rather, things might have been made easy for her …’ His thoughts trailed off. ‘Even if someone didn’t actually hang her while she was drugged.’

  There was gratitude in Arnhem’s haggard features. ‘That’s it precisely, Monsieur Norton. That’s what I have been attempting to say. Dr Comte trampled over all my questions.’

  ‘Until proved otherwise, Dr Comte is a respected servant of our national hygiene programme, Arnhem.’

  The man looked as if he was about to jump at Durand’s throat.

  ‘It’s not your fault, Monsieur Arnhem,’ Raf said softly. ‘None of us altogether took Judith at her word. Except Jim, here. And Olympe, as you said.’ He put his arm round the older man’s shoulders. ‘I think a brandy is in order, Jim.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. All of you go. My men will be here soon and I need the room cleared.’ Durand waved them off. James hung back behind the others.

  ‘Listen, Chief Inspector, if you’re going to have a second, a private interview with Dr Comte, I’d like to be there.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. The thing is that not only did I see Comte at the brothel the other night, but we think that Olympe may have gone to see him. Her daybook …’

  ‘What daybook?’ Durand cut him off with a vocal lunge.

  ‘Oh, just an appointments book that … that my brother came across.’ James swallowed hard.

  ‘In her apartment?’

  James nodded as Durand’s eyes bulged threateningly.

  ‘I want that in my office at the latest tomorrow morning or I’ll have you arrested for hindering a police investigation.’

  ‘Of course, Chief Inspector. Of course. But as for Comte …’

  ‘I think, Monsieur Norton, that you have more reason to trust me than the other way around.’

  ‘You’ll ask him about his meeting with Olympe as well as everything else? You’ll ask him delicately.’

  Durand thrust his head back with Napoleonic aplomb. ‘As I’ve said before, you hardly need to teach me my business, Monsieur Norton. Please remember that I harbour suspicions about everyone. Everyone, regardless of rank. And continue to, despite your letter about Madame de Landois.’

  ‘Indeed, Chief Inspector.’

  As if to provide further evidence of Durand’s words, Raf stuck his head back round the door and grumbled, ‘Listen, Durand. I don’t know how many men you’ve got to throw around. But you could just call the one standing right out there off my tail. He followed me here and he’s about to follow me out. And it’s a waste of time I tell you. Since I know he’s there.’

  Durand’s demeanour was icy. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He waved them off with a final admonishment to James. ‘The daybook. You won’t forget.’

  Outside angry clouds had gathered, dusky charcoal against the indigo of the sky. By the time they reached the gates, the first fat drops had begun to fall.

  Raf hailed a carriage. He was holding Arnhem’s arm, as if to keep him upright. ‘You come with us, Monsieur Arnhem. I’m sure the children will be all right with your friends for a little while longer.’

  He gave James a meaningful look and James reiterated the invitation.

  ‘No, I must go to them.’ Arnhem was adamant. ‘I have been away too long already.’ In the lamplight, his eyes glistened with tears. ‘I can take no more chances. No more chances.’

  The carriage clattered over cobbles. The storm burst upon them, as noisy on bonnet and pavement as the splatter of gunfire. Horses whinnied in protest. Walkers ran and huddled beneath streaming awnings. Pavements and road took on a glistening sheen.

  Arnhem was muttering, talking to himself like some ragged Lear on a blasted heath, his lips barely moving, his open eyes streaming tears. ‘Yes, that’s best. That’s best. We will all follow Judith. The dybbuk. Her mother in her. One by one. Taking them away. To her.’

  Raf and James looked at each other.

  ‘We can’t leave him,’ James whispered. ‘Why don’t we take them all, the children too, to Marguerite’s. And she may have had some news from that intern. It’s become more urgent now.’

  Raf glanced at his watch. ‘I promised Touquet …’

  ‘Get a message to him.’

  ‘We don’t even know if Marguerite’s in.’

  ‘We’ll wait for her. Someone’s bound to be there.’

  At their joint insistence, the children were picked up, half asleep, from a bemused neighbour and bundled into the waiting cab. They sat astride their father’s knees, one on each, and cast curious looks at the brothers.

  ‘Where are we going?’ the little girl asked.

  Arnhem didn’t answer, but his arms clutched his children as if they might be lifted from him at any moment.

  ‘We’re going very fast,’ the boy said with something like wonder.

  ‘I don’t believe I know your names.’ Raf smiled at the two.

  ‘I’m Adam,’ the boy said self-importantly. ‘And my sister is Juliette.’

  ‘Nice names.’

  Juliette gave James a bewitching smile. ‘What’s yours?’

  James introduced them both.

  ‘I never thanked you for the chocolates,’ Juliette said, her eyes serious. ‘They were delicious.’

  ‘Delicious,’ Adam echoed.

  ‘Hush,’ Arnhem grunted, as if the sound of his children’s innocent happiness only augmented the weight of his burden. ‘It’s no time to talk of chocolates.’ He added something in a language they didn’t understand and the children sat up straighter, their faces suddenly taut with fatigue and something else that James couldn’t understand. He wondered for a moment what exactly Arnhem had finally told them about Olympe’s death and whether his words now were a grim reminder of that incontrovertible fact, soon to be followed by one equally bleak.

  They were crossing the river and the children tried to peer through the rain-spattered window, all the while maintaining their stiff posture. Shadowy lights played over the great buttresses of the Notre Dame like will-o’-the-wisps. A motor car overtook them with a loud hoot of its horn. The children jumped. The horses whinnied loudly and reared. They could hear the driver cursing. For a moment all movement ceased.

  Juliette’s mouth fell open. ‘Is it an accident, Messieurs?’ she asked in a tremulous voice, the fear in her face unequal to the occasion.

  ‘No, no,’ James soothed. ‘Nothing to worry about. We’ll be there very soon.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To see a friend of your sister’s. A friend of Olympe’s. She’s called Madame de Landois.’

  Tears filled the girl’s eyes. She turned her face away from them.

  ‘You’ll like her, I think, Juliette. And I’m sure she’ll like you and Adam.’

  ‘Liking is no matter,’ Arnhem suddenly proclaimed. ‘Why are we going there? I have forgotten.’

  ‘Madame de Landois may have some information for us,’ Raf said lightly. As the carriage started to move again, he kept up an innocuous patter with the children, pointing out sights, an umbrella tossed by a gust of wind, a café where great philosophers had sat debating the future of France. ‘Do you know the name of your new prime minister?’ he asked.

  ‘Waldeck-Rousseau,’ Adam answered with no hesitation. ‘Papa says he is a fine orator and a good Republican.’

  ‘H
e’s right.’

  ‘Words can no longer help us.’ Arnhem muttered.

  ‘We’re here.’ James made an effort to be cheerful. He leapt out of the carriage, lifted the children one by one. ‘You’ll see, it’s a lovely house.’

  The children stood back in awe as Raf exchanged some words with the uniformed footmen.

  ‘Marguerite’s entertaining,’ he said to James in a low voice. ‘I’ve had a message sent up. We’ll wait for her in the orangerie. The children will be more comfortable there.’ He held back a little as Arnhem and the children were shown through. ‘One of her guests is Dr Vaillant,’ he whispered to James. ‘One can never accuse Marguerite of wasting her time. But I think it’s best for the moment that we stay out of the way.’

  It was in part a question and James responded, ‘Why don’t you go up?’

  Raf shrugged. ‘Let’s wait and see what she advises.’

  Juliette and Adam were standing at the threshold of the long room. They went in only with a little prodding. Their eyes were vast.

  ‘It’s so … so pretty. So bright. So many lights,’ the little girl sighed. She touched her fingertips to the side of the grand piano and for a moment, James held his breath. It was as if he had suddenly seen the young Rachel described to him by Marguerite walking into this room for the first time.

  ‘And so many flowers. Look, Papa.’

  Arnhem didn’t answer. His eyes were blind to the room. He perched on the edge of a hard-backed chair and stared into the middle distance.

  This younger Rachel, James remarked, was neither troubled, nor beset by shyness. Nor was her brother. He was leafing through a book that had been left on the side table. ‘Insects,’ he intoned, as Raf approached him. ‘A dung beetle. A huge one. Its head is just like a scoop. You can see each of its legs. And the antennae.’ The lad was excited.