Paris Requiem

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘Well, I had another look. Looked in French, rather than English, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I don’t really.’

  ‘Well the sounds of the letters are different in French, i’s are e’s and so on.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And when we spoke about it, we spoke in English. But when I looked again, I read in French. So that your sister’s name appeared as a mingling of two initials. For all her other talents, Olympe was not a great writer. She rarely even managed a letter. Hence, that earlier embarrassment of mine.’

  He stared at her.

  ‘About the letter to my husband. It was why I wrote it out for her to copy.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What you don’t perhaps see is this.’ She opened her small pearl-beaded purse and took out the daybook. She flicked through pages. ‘Look, here. This is how I noticed it. I’m MDL. And this, this LI is your sister, Ellie. We all had lunch together that day. That’s really how it came to me.’

  ‘Of course. How clever of you to notice.’

  ‘You may not think it very clever of me in a moment.’ She flicked through some more pages. ‘Here. On the day Olympe vanished. The LI comes again. Which means that Elinor may well have been one of the last to see Olympe alive. Did she mention it?’

  James looked from the notebook to Marguerite and down again in consternation, as if one or other of them might provide him with a revelation. His stomach seemed to rebel against the difficulty of digesting this new piece of information. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said at last. ‘She hasn’t been very well these last weeks.’

  ‘No. And it’s probably nothing. Olympe was obviously waylaid.’

  ‘Marguerite, I had to come and pay my respects. You’re looking ravishing.’ A tall bearded man was suddenly upon them. ‘And Monsieur Norton. Charmed to see you again.’

  ‘Gustave. James, you remember Gustave Fromentin. Will you join us for a few minutes, Gustave?’

  ‘Happily.’ An ever present waiter pulled out a chair. ‘I just wanted to tell you that the picture was finished.’

  ‘That’s wonderful. When can I see it?’

  After an initial sense of displacement, James felt something like relief. He needed to brood and the quick flow of repartee between Marguerite and the painter, gave him a breathing space. The breath, however, clutched at his throat.

  It was only later as he lay in his hotel-room bed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and tried not to scratch his wound which had started to itch, that it came to him. The young man he had seen leaving Marguerite’s, of course he knew him. He simply didn’t know him in formal attire. He knew him in a white coat. He knew him from that cold room which stank of chemicals and death. He knew him as the fervid dissector of corpses. Steinlen. The man who had followed the dead Judith Arnhem on her stretcher. The young doctor who idealised Professor Vaillant and swallowed his theories about Jews wholesale.

  Rueing his blindness, James could barely wait until morning.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘I don’t like to admit it, Monsieur Norton, but your brother has been singularly useful in the matter of the prostitutes. When he puts his mind to it, his reasoning is excellent, almost as good as a Frenchman’s.’

  ‘On his behalf and on mine, I’m grateful that you’ve come round, Chief Inspector.’

  The note of irony was lost on Durand. It was Friday afternoon and the carriage was taking them to the Salpêtrière. Despite James’s plea of urgency, the Chief Inspector had been too busy to arrange for the visit sooner. It entailed bullying Professor Vaillant into a meeting as well as rounding up the police pathologist to accompany them. Arthur Marquand was sitting opposite them now – a desiccated turtle of a man, whose entire energy seemed to be located in his bright, darting eyes.

  ‘You approved of the article about you and this whole sordid matter which appeared in this morning’s Figaro?’

  Durand nodded, warred against the gleam of vanity which flashed across his face. ‘It was almost accurate. Some of my colleagues, however, are less than pleased. Any intimation of police corruption has a way of inducing a closing of the ranks. I may soon find myself a pariah.’

  ‘Or you may find new supporters.’

  ‘Let us hope so. But I must tell you about my most recent interrogation of Caro.’ Hard lines etched themselves around his mouth. ‘If nothing else, I shall always be content that we have managed to secure that brute behind bars.’ The Chief Inspector looked out on the jostle of a marketplace. His expression was that of a man who had just saved its clustered citizens from certain disaster. ‘I trust the judge will confer the severest sentence. My new friends will have to arrange for the best judge, of course.’

  ‘What did Caro reveal?’ James was all tense anticipation.

  The Chief Inspector smoothed his moustache. ‘Well, we now have some twelve young women, some very young, mere children, who wear his mark – the chain you know. They are all willing to testify. And the latest news is that Dr Comte is mending, so he will be able to act as a witness as well. Faced with all that, Caro has given us some names – contacts whom he claims are the planners, while he is just a lowly cog in the machine.’

  ‘Good, very good.’

  ‘But that’s not all.’ The Chief Inspector’s smile was wily. ‘Confronted by my insistence that he was responsible for the deaths of Olympe Fabre and her sister, according to one of your earlier understandings of the case – that is, that he did away with them because he feared that Mlle Fabre would use her friends and status to expose his doings, he capitulated. He refused any link with the deaths of the sisters. But he confessed that he might have been responsible for the death of the young woman in the metro shaft. She was running and he was chasing. He caught up with her at that spot. They fought. She fell. It was never his intention, he claims, to kill her. But fall she did, and not of her own volition … Are you not going to congratulate me?’

  ‘I congratulate you, Chief Inspector. But we still have work to do.’

  They had arrived at the gates of the Salpêtrière. The pathologist, Marquand, leapt out with the speed of a lizard just warmed by the sun into activity. James and the Chief Inspector followed more slowly.

  ‘You’ve briefed him, have you? He knows what’s at stake?’

  ‘Yes, yes, Monsieur Norton. Calm yourself. I assure you. He is an excellent man, more at home with corpses than with the rest of us. One doesn’t need words to interrogate a corpse.’

  ‘And you told Vaillant not to alert the young Dr Steinlen. He mustn’t know our suspicions.’

  ‘I did my best. The good doctor doesn’t countenance orders easily.’

  James took out his pocket watch. ‘We’ll be five minutes early.’

  Marquand evidently knew his way. He led them along an intricate route through the labyrinthine complex. They passed a group of inmates taking the afternoon sun in the gardens. One grizzled man, lazing on a bench, thrust out his hand in an erratic motion just as James approached. James stepped back. But it wasn’t James at whom he was aiming. The fly caught, he examined it, brought it to his mouth and swallowed. A beatific grin appeared on his face.

  James hurried after the others who had now entered a building. He didn’t recognise the door, but it led them quickly to the chill of the subterranean floor. They looked at each other, then Durand knocked and without waiting for a response turned the knob. The door was locked. He rattled it, knocked again.

  At last a voice grumbled. ‘One moment, one moment. I’m busy.’

  ‘So are we. Hurry up.’ Durand barked.

  Steinlen stood at the door, blocking their passage. ‘What is it? Oh it’s you, Dr Marquand. I was in the middle of a delicate operation. Professeur Vaillant asked me to check on something for him.’

  ‘That’s all right. We just wanted to have a look at Judith Arnhem again. This is Chief Inspector Durand and his colleague, Monsieur Norton. You’ve kept the cadaver, as I asked.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’ Steinlen
wiped his hands a little nervously on his coat. It had patches of blood on it. He didn’t seem to recognise James.

  ‘Bring her out then,’ Durand commanded. He gestured at Marquand who instantly started strolling round the long room, holding up jars to the light, turning over what looked like nothing so much as slabs of liver in butcher’s trays.

  ‘Here she is,’ Steinlen lifted a sheet from an end table. ‘I … I’ve been doing some work on her.’

  James glanced at the figure which only half resembled a human. She was turned on her stomach. The skin of her back had been cut away to reveal the spinal column beneath, a pale twisted line with innumerable branches. The hair had been shorn, the scalp sawn in half. He averted his eyes. The queasiness which had accompanied his entry into the laboratory reached dramatic proportions. He stumbled onto a stool and covered his face with his hands. Somewhere above his nausea, he heard Marquand ask, ‘What have you done with the brain?’

  ‘Just over here, Doctor.’

  ‘Messieurs.’ A stentorian voice from the other side of the long lab called them to attention. ‘I apologise for the short delay. It was unavoidable. Now what can I do for you?’

  James looked up. Professeur Vaillant had come in, impeccable in his white gown. It gave him a saturnine aspect, emphasising the blackness of his military beard. Steinlen, he noted, was standing as he would for a general, though his face had taken on a sallow cast and his lower lip trembled slightly.

  ‘We were just having another look at the body of Judith Arnhem, the patient, you remember, who was unaccountably found hanging in one of your wards. We were wondering why Steinlen, here, had removed her brain before Dr Marquand had had a chance to join in the autopsy. You’ve met Dr Marquand, Professor?’

  ‘Indeed. Show them the brain, Steinlen.’

  Steinlen moved clumsily across the room, half tripping over a stool.

  ‘My young colleague is sometimes a little too eager to get on with our researches, Chief Inspector. I’m sure you must have some fledgling detectives who do the same.’ Vaillant smiled slightly as if bestowing a favour on the Chief Inspector with his comparison. ‘Ah yes, here it is.’ Vaillant took the large jar Steinlen had handed him. He twirled it round in his hand so that the chemicals lapped round the floating shape. ‘Interesting. The left hemisphere is well developed, surprisingly so for one of our patients. I shall have to look into her records. Mlle Arnhem, did you say?’

  ‘Don’t you label your organs, Steinlen?’ Marquand grumbled. ‘How am I to know this part belongs to Mlle Arnhem, if no one has labelled it. In fact, it rather surprises me. The colour is somewhat paler than it ought to be for one so recently deceased, particularly since you removed it so quickly.’ A frown wrinkled his features, so that he looked more than ever like a turtle. His eyes bulged. ‘And look, look just there in the back, Professor, the sawing has been so clumsy that some of the folds have been destroyed. There really was no need to be so hasty in your dissection, Steinlen.’

  Vaillant examined the organ more closely. Steinlen stood by. He had taken a corner of the sheet from the pallet on which the cadaver lay and was twisting it. Twisting and twisting so that it became a tight coil. James watched, riveted.

  ‘And here,’ Marquand spoke again, ‘halfway up the temple lobes. Saw marks again. Bad practice. You know, Professor, I found far too large a residue of chloroform in the young woman’s blood for any administration of a normal dose. Unfortunately Dr Comte is indisposed, but I will need someone to verify for me who was in charge of her.’

  Steinlen had just tied a knot in the twisted sheet. He pulled it tight, utterly unaware of what his hands were doing.

  James prodded the Chief Inspector and pointed. Durand’s mouth dropped.

  Vaillant was still staring at the brain. He took his spectacles out of his pocket and slipped them onto his nose. ‘Dr Marquand is quite right, Steinlen. This is shoddy work. I have taught you to do better than this.’ He peered. ‘And are you sure this is the brain of the patient in question?’

  Steinlen’s hands were tying a second knot. He shuffled his feet. ‘I’m sorry, Professor. It’s that I cut up Mlle Arnhem’s brain. I didn’t like to say in front of these gentlemen. I didn’t think it would be needed any more. I … I wanted to weigh the separate hemispheres, to get a precise calculation.’

  ‘And whose organ have we here then, Steinlen? Speak up.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘I can tell you whose organ it is.’ Chief Inspector Durand leapt into action, interposing himself between the two men. His shortness was made up for by the belligerence of his stance. ‘Robert Steinlen. I am taking you in for questioning in connection with the suspicious death of Judith Arnhem and for the vandalising of the grave of her sister, one Olympe Fabre. On our way to Headquarters you will lead me to your locker, or wherever it is that you keep your personal possessions. We will also make a short stop at your lodgings.’

  Before the Chief Inspector had finished speaking, Steinlen made a break for it. He dodged between the pallets, tipped a stool, threw a jar from one of the shelves in the path of the pursuing Chief Inspector and a slightly slower James. It splintered as it hit the floor releasing a foul smell and a slithering gob of innards. Both of them skidded, only righting themselves with difficulty.

  From behind them, the Professor was shouting. ‘Steinlen. I order you to stop. I will not tolerate such behaviour from my students. I will not have my school brought into disrepute. Stop, I tell you.’

  Steinlen didn’t stop. He was already at the door. The look he cast back at the Professor mingled sorrow and fear and something else, something which was unmistakably arrogance.

  ‘Hold him, lads. Don’t let him go,’ the Chief Inspector shouted as the door opened.

  Two men in blue charged at Steinlen. He struggled, somehow managed to escape them, his thin limbs slipping through their hands like some ghostly shadow. They raced off in pursuit, dodging passers-by, upsetting a trolley. Only at the front door did they manage to get a proper grip.

  ‘Get some handcuffs on him, lads, and hold on tight. I just want a quick word with the Professor.’

  James felt Steinlen’s gaze on him. Beneath the thick black brows which stretched seamlessly across the narrow face, the eyes were malevolent. He suddenly spat in James’s direction. ‘Jew,’ he hissed. ‘I knew you were poison from the minute you stepped in here.’

  After the initial shock, James felt a smile crease his face. So Steinlen had recognised him, after all. If not altogether for what he was.

  When he stepped back into the lab, Durand had his most commanding voice on and seemed to have grown a foot taller. ‘And there’s another thing, Monsieur le Professeur. How long has this young man been in your service?’

  ‘Almost a year now.’ Vaillant was shaking his head. ‘And he seemed such a promising student. A passionate researcher. I can’t but feel that if he is responsible for all you say, there will be some good explanation.’

  ‘We’ll see. Meanwhile I want your records for any deaths that have occurred over the last year. I want you personally to go through them before they are handed on to me.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’

  ‘And Dr Marquand will do a thorough investigation of your laboratory. I trust you will help him with anything he needs.’

  ‘I am at your service, Doctor.’

  Steinlen’s locker was padlocked. He tried to make a run for it, while one of the uniformed officers searched his pockets for the key. But he only managed a few steps. His lips were set in a grim line as the men pushed and prodded him back towards the Chief Inspector.

  James had a moment’s worry as he imagined how easily one could get lost in the maze of corridors and buildings. The men must have had the same thought, for they now held on to him as if he were a wild beast poised to spring at any instant.

  Steinlen had good reason to want to flee. When they finally opened the locker, apart from an evening suit, two hats and some grimy trousers and soiled shirts, t
hey found a large canvas drawstring bag, the kind sailor’s use. Inside it, was a good-sized spade and a small medical saw.

  Durand’s eyes gleamed as if he had unearthed a treasure chest. ‘Get him into the wagon, lads. We’ll help you with all this. And then Monsieur Norton and I will pay a little visit to his quarters, while you get him safely behind bars. Don’t lie about your address, Steinlen.’ The Chief Inspector dangled the ring of keys in front of the man’s nose. ‘It’ll just make things harder on you later. I want you singing, tonight, wrapping up all our little problems. Well, go on. What is it?’

  ‘Seventeen Rue Jeanne.’

  ‘In the 13th?’

  Steinlen shrugged.

  ‘Walking distance, then. Do you live with anyone?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Never mind. We’ll find out in due course. But I warn you, Steinlen, when I come and see you in your cell later, I want co-operation. Full co-operation. Think it over. You can’t hide behind Vaillant’s reputation. If he has to, he’ll drop you into the lion’s den faster than a piece of rotting meat. Take my word for it. Faster than I can put these mud-stained trousers into this sack here.’ He illustrated his words with speedy action, stuffing trousers and soiled shirts into the drawstring bag which contained the spade and saw. ‘Let’s go.’

  Steinlen shot them a last look as the men prodded him into the black police wagon. There was desperation in his eyes. For a lightning second, pity flashed through James. He wondered at the depths to which Steinlen’s ruling passion had brought him.

  ‘Not a bad day’s work, if I do say so myself.’ The Chief Inspector was chuckling. ‘I almost feel like stopping off for a celebratory drink.’

  ‘Let’s go and visit his quarters first, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘All right. We can walk. It’s not far. But you don’t seem happy, Monsieur Norton. Yet your hunch paid off. I shall have to make you an honorary member of the Judiciaire after this. What’s troubling you?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  James was taciturn. They walked in silence along the Boulevard de l’Hôpital and then turned into the small shabby streets of a worker’s quarter. Haussmann’s reconstruction of the city hadn’t extended here. The houses were higgledy-piggledy, thin or squat or tall, with no over-arching symmetry. Garbage reeked in the gutters. Dark-clad matrons sat on stools in front of doors and shelled peas or attended to sewing.