Paris Requiem (37 page)

Marguerite still hadn’t acknowledged him directly. Her confession stood between them like a barricade, too high with spikes to be tackled. He sensed that she must be wondering if he had yet told Raf of her collusion with Olympe in the blackmailing of her husband. He hadn’t, of course, and part of him hoped that the need to would never arise. He didn’t want to be thrust into the punishing role again, the elder brother who inevitably punctured ideals and sent them hurtling into the mud.

Watching Marguerite now, he also felt a new kind of admiration for her, as if the taint of experience had given her a greater depth; as if tawdry truths augmented mystery, rather than dispelling it. The fascination she held for him had grown despite his earlier disapproval of her treacherous behaviour.

‘Do we know if anyone came to visit Judith in the days before her death?’

James forced himself to focus on Marguerite’s question. Raf exchanged a glance with Arnhem, then answered. ‘The Chief Inspector did put that to the nurse. She said she thought there had been someone yesterday, when Judith was still in the main ward. She didn’t know his name. All she said was that he was dark and black-hatted.

‘It was Bernfeld.’ Arnhem’s voice was barely audible.

‘Bernfeld?’

‘Yes.’ The man’s eyes were as sombre as a tomb. ‘He more
or less told me he was going to see her when he came by the other day.’

‘What passed between you?’

‘Family matters.’ Arnhem was curt.

‘Look here, Arnhem. There’s no reason to be difficult,’ Raf burst out. ‘We’re trying to help.’

A tense silence settled on the room. His back to them, Arnhem stared at the massed ranks of books. When his voice came at last, it felt too sudden.

‘Bernfeld bears me a grudge. Rightly. Quite rightly. I owe him a debt I still can’t repay.’ The features he turned on them were desolate.

‘When Bernfeld came by, I railed at him. I asked him how a man of honour could go and vent his rage on an innocent woman, torture her with a debt she didn’t even know about. Why hadn’t he come to me for repayment? Why go to Rachel? He railed right back. He accused me of setting the police on him.’ Arnhem threw James a hostile look.

‘But strangely it was against Rachel that his principal ire was directed. After all these years he still hadn’t been able to swallow her dismissal of him. His pride had been shattered. Only she could make that good. And he had initially wanted vengeance as much as money. He told me so bluntly.

‘So he wanted her dead, I shouted at him. No, no, not dead, he replied. Certainly not dead. Because now he was doubly lost. Through his own fault. Now no one could make good the wound or the debt. He might as well be dead too.’ Arnhem emptied his glass.

‘But what about Judith?’ James asked.

‘I’m coming to that. I’m coming to that.’ Arnhem ran his hand through his tangled mane. ‘We screamed at each other. We said things we shouldn’t have said. You know, once
Bernfeld
used to respect me, honour me. When my wife was still alive. We were an example to him. That’s why …’ He paused,
then raced on. ‘We were like two madmen that night. And then in the midst of the recriminations and the insults, he suddenly asked me with a kind of tortured sadness whether Rachel had ever talked about him in all those years.

‘It was as if he was begging for some form of recognition. But I couldn’t give it to him. I told him that Rachel didn’t talk to me about such things. They were women’s matters. If she talked to anyone, maybe she talked to Judith. He remembered Judith. He started to ask me all kinds of questions about her and I told him honestly that she was ill by turns, but often quite sensible. He grew strangely quiet then and the idea lodged itself in his mind … maybe it came from me … that perhaps he and Judith could live together. Perhaps they could do each other good. Judith used to be pretty, you know. She was the beauty. Anyhow the idea came. Like a joint fantasy. Which is why I suspect it was Bernfeld who went to see her.’

Arnhem looked at them each in turn, as if waiting for judgement.

‘What are you saying, Arnhem? We have to alert the Inspector. Bernfeld needs locking up. You’re telling us that the man was a twice rejected suitor, who took out his
viciousness
first on Olympe and then on your poor mad daughter.’

Raf didn’t pull his punches. Marguerite shushed him with a look and James muttered that Durand had already put a man on Bernfeld’s tail.

‘No. No. You misunderstand,’ Arnhem wailed. ‘It’s my fault. All my fault. What I’m saying is that Bernfeld upset Judith with his proposals, which were also mine. Upset, she was often wild, so they put her in isolation. And that’s what facilitated her death.’

‘Yet Raf said earlier you had discounted suicide.’
Marguerite
spoke softly.

Arnhem stiffened. ‘I don’t know. From what I’ve said … maybe. But I still don’t think so. That hook was so high. How
could little Judith, a Judith who was sleepy from all the
chloroform
they give her to quieten her down, have managed it?’ He shook his head. ‘No, no. I feel there must have been something else. Someone else.’ His shoulders suddenly slumped, his tone grew raw. ‘Though I agree that poor Judith had little left to live for. Very little.’

His face told them he felt much the same about himself.

They all fell into a heavy silence. James broke it by addressing a direct question to Marguerite for the first time. ‘Have you learned anything, Marguerite? Anything from that intern you spoke of? Anything from Dr Vaillant?’

She didn’t answer him. She was staring at Arnhem. ‘Monsieur Arnhem, may I remind you that Dreyfus struggled through all those years on Devil’s Island, struggled while much of France turned its back on him. Take him as your example.’ Her voice was terse.

‘He didn’t lose his children. Only his public honour. That is perhaps expendable.’

‘You still have two. That’s two more than many of the rest of us. You must garner your strength for them.
Remember
, Monsieur Arnhem, suicide is ruthless. It murders us all. That’s why we find it so hard to accept, why we refuse to believe that either Olympe or even Judith wished that for us. Your remaining little ones could not bear that legacy from you. I suggest you go to them now. If I remember my own childhood correctly, I suspect that Juliette is lying awake in bed waiting to sleep until she has made sure of your presence.’

Arnhem rose slowly. ‘You are probably right, Madame.’

‘She is right,’ James underlined. He was once again struck by Marguerite’s depths. He wished that everything about her demeanour didn’t suggest that she now considered him an enemy.

‘Pierre will show you to your room. Try to sleep well,
despite your grief, Monsieur Arnhem. We all need your wits and your fitness.’

No sooner had Arnhem left them, than Marguerite turned the full force of her gaze on James. She didn’t speak for a moment. She was reading his features as if they were runes replete with secret significance. At last she shook her head slightly, like an animal emerging from the sea.

‘To answer your question, James, I don’t know. Yes, my friend’s son has reported back to me, but his researches are still cursory. He doesn’t have much time to go through files, and can only do so when it seems appropriate to the business he’s conducting. I asked him to check not only Dr Vaillant’s wards for the last two years, but another comparable one. Otherwise we have no way of knowing whether the deaths in one are out of proportion with the ordinary course of things. People die in hospitals. That is a given.’

‘What did he find?’

‘So far he found that there were five more deaths in
Vaillant’s
wards than in the other one. But that is not a significant enough number, I think, to make a difference.’

‘Was there a discrepancy in ages?’

‘Not a significant one according to my intern. The deaths are largely of people over fifty, though there are a few in their twenties and thirties – all women.’ She shifted her position, re-arranged her skirts reflectively.

‘And what about the proportion of Jews?’

‘Again, in percentage terms these tally with the numbers of inmates.’

‘So Judith was wrong.’

Marguerite shifted again, her agitation now more evident. ‘I’m not sure. Not now. Not in the light of her own death.’

‘Out with it, Marguerite.’ Raf’s impatience hovered on impoliteness.

‘I’m just trying to put it all together. It’s all happened in
the last four months. Three young women, two of them
self-confessedly
Jewish, have died. Two of them had only recently been admitted, the third had been there longer. She wasn’t in Vaillant’s ward. In any event, all three were listed as suicides. Two had hung themselves. One had somehow self-
administered
a killing dose of morphine.’ Marguerite paused. ‘One was named in the files as a prostitute; the other two as milliners, which could be a euphemism.’

Raf bolted from his chair. ‘Come on, Jim. There’s no time to lose. We can just about make that appointment.’

‘What appointment?’ Marguerite, too, rose.

‘Nothing. Nothing. We have to meet Touquet. He has some information. We need to move quickly.’

‘Hold on, Raf. I want to hear Marguerite’s impression of Dr Vaillant. We have to think this through.’

Marguerite had put a staying hand on Raf’s arm. Like a nervous colt, he shook her off. She surveyed him for a moment then turned to James. ‘Dr Vaillant is a gentleman. His views may not be mine, but I don’t really believe he would do anything underhand. Not deliberately. Coincidentally, since before you came that wasn’t the first thing on my mind, I asked him about suicides at the Salpêtrière and he shook his head in something like mourning and echoed Monsieur Arnhem. Many of these people haven’t much to live for, he said. And he added that their minds are confused. Noisy. They want to shut out the noise. The description made me feel rather sympathetic towards him.’

‘Come on, Jim. It’s not Vaillant we’re interested in. It’s that bastard Comte. That’s who Olympe went to see. She must have been on to him. Maybe she even knew the girls.’

‘What are you talking about, Raf?’

‘I can’t explain now, Marguerite. Can we borrow Martin?’

She shook her head.

‘Why not? Oh no. No, you can’t. Not this time. It’s too
dangerous. And you have the children here. It’s absolutely forbidden.’ He threw James an apprehensive glance and James suddenly understood. Raf had inferred that Marguerite was about to don one of her male disguises and follow them.

‘Let’s go, Jim.’

‘Come back. Come back as soon as you’ve done,’
Marguerite
called after them as they raced down the silent hall.

H
eavy rain had turned to persistent drizzle. Mist drifted from the pavements, curled from the corners of the streets, hovered yellow round lamp posts. The weather and the
lateness
of the hour had all but emptied the city of life. Like luminous disembodied parts, the gloves and batons of two uniformed gendarmes rose from the dark before their strolling owners.

The carriage moved swiftly, bumping and tossing them so that the glistening dome of the Opera tumbled askew as they took a sharp turn into the boulevards where late-night
revellers
still gathered despite the weather. Here the lamps of the music halls were alight and the garish colour of the posters leapt and danced. A woman laughed, flashing brilliant teeth as she lowered her umbrella and climbed into a cab.

His thoughts clotted with everything that had occurred in these last hours, James prodded himself from reverie. ‘I still don’t know what this mysterious rendezvous with Touquet is about.’

Raf flinched. He, too, had been immersed in his private world. ‘It’s not exactly a rendezvous. Touquet may not be there. But he’s had information that Caro will definitely be
and perhaps Dr Comte. Apparently both frequent the place on a fairly regular basis.’

‘Where is there?’

‘It’s known as the “Jaune”. It’s a brothel. They specialise in foreign women. Touquet reckons at least four of the girls belong to Caro. Maybe more. And Saturday is the big night.’

‘Why may Touquet not be there?’

‘Well he may be. But we’re not supposed to recognise each other. Caro has found out who he is and he doesn’t like it.’

‘Judging from the other night, he doesn’t like me much either.’ James fingered his jaw.

‘But you have the advantage of being a paying client. Not to mention an American one.’ Raf winked.

‘I’m not in the mood for …’ James couldn’t bring the word out.

‘You don’t have to. It’s probably best if we go in separately and just hang around downstairs, keep our ears peeled. And then when Caro leaves, we follow him and corner him alone. Two of us should be able to beat some information out of him.’

‘What information exactly are we looking for?’

‘Come on, Jim. Wake up. We’re going to ask him about Olympe.’

‘And you think he’s just going to tell us. Say, “Hello friends, it was me. I did it.” Just like that.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jim.’ Raf shook his fist. ‘We’re going to persuade him.’

‘And then what?’

‘Let’s see how it goes. We’ll play it by ear. If we get what I think we’re going to get, we drag him kicking and screaming to the nearest Commissariat.’

‘I don’t know, Raf. The man’s not exactly a midget, nor compliant. I think we listen and report back to Durand.’

‘Who’ll procrastinate and procrastinate until the villain moves down to Marseilles and out of his jurisdiction.’

‘And what if he’s with someone? What if he’s with Comte, who knows us well enough?’

‘We’ll play it by ear. Just keep yours attuned.’

They had entered a warren of streets so narrow that the houses seemed to tilt and meet overhead, blocking the sky. The carriage inched along, as if the cobbles themselves had grown precarious. A woman with a mass of blonde curls stepped out from the darkened recess of a door. Her tongue played over scarlet lips. She beckoned with a salacious gesture. A few moments later, the mime was repeated, though this time, the woman lifted her skirts to reveal a swathe of leg. A man emerged to drag her into the shadows.

At the next turn, the carriage stopped. Raf leapt out with bounding alacrity, his eagerness for action barely
containable
. James noted that his fists were clenched again.

He paid the driver, waited until Raf was in, then followed more slowly.

The entrance to the brothel took him through a dank hall. Red wallpaper suppurated moisture like drops of blood. As the inner door opened, the mingled smell of warm flesh and absinthe and cheap perfume enveloped him. It brought with it an image of Eugénie, so very young and so very frightened, as she had stammered out her sorry tale. Rage kindled inside him, banishing hesitation. Caro was a brute.

This was a bigger salon than that at the Monpiquet. From somewhere came the brash sound of an accordion, but he couldn’t see the musician for the teeming crowd. They danced, they sang, they drank, they sprawled on sofas and chairs and on corners of the floor, bodies clasped so closely together that it obliterated the need for bedrooms. There was no attempt at refinement here. The men were in shirtsleeves. Half of them looked like gangsters. The women’s eyes were darkly kohled, their mouths crimson slashes, their clothes little more than bustiers with a gauze of skirt advertising an assortment of shapes.

A burly, bearded man in a striped fisherman’s shirt extracted a sum from him almost before he had crossed the threshold. When James tipped him, he raised an eyebrow in mock astonishment.

‘Les garçons, alors? C’est par là
.’ He pointed to a door behind him and placing his hand on his hip, swivelled it like some frenzied bee.

Shocked, James shook his head vigorously. No, no. He certainly didn’t want boys.

‘This way then.’ He jostled James through to a sofa, whisking off a clinging couple in the process. He whistled between his teeth and in a moment, a brunette with the plump features of a sleepy cat curled beside James. The cheek she turned to his displayed a livid scar.

James took a deep breath and looked round him. Raf was already dancing with a coltish redhead. Her features were voracious. As she pecked at his neck, she left the trace of her lips on his collar. He swung her round towards James and mouthed, ‘Signal when you spot him.’

James tugged his partner onto the dance floor. It was a way of moving and observing. The place was too noisy for speech. The girl pressed close to him and seemed to want to guide him towards a door through which couples came and went with surprising speed. James lifted her in the opposite direction. Her hair tickled his face like feathers. When she looked up at him, her pupils were unnaturally large and bright, fixed in an unseeing stare. With a start, he thought of Ellie. He tucked her face down on his chest.

He could see the accordion-player now, an elf of a man with a cigarette dangling from his lips, the ash precariously poised. At either side of him stood a woman. They were mirror images of each other; skinny tousle-haired urchins with veined necks, their breasts on display like apples on platters. They were singing, their voices raucous. The ditty must have
been salacious, because they moved in obscene pantomime.

He caught a refrain.

Something about streetwalkers with tired breasts and tired feet, James translated for himself and simultaneously caught a glimpse of Touquet’s sallow profile in the shadow of a pillar. He abandoned his partner and made his way towards Touquet. Before he could reach him, another woman danced herself into his arms. This one had a Mediterranean
complexion
and a frizz of dark hair. She looked no more than fifteen. Around her neck was the telltale charm. He asked her name.

‘Manou,’ she murmured.

Her eyes, too, were dilated, oddly luminous.

‘Excuse me, Manou. I must talk with someone.’

She clung to him and he realised her feet were unsteady. He propped her gently on the arm of a sofa and hastened towards Touquet. Raf reached him at the same time.

‘Damn it. He’s gone. Vanished about ten minutes ago.’ Touquet was visibly agitated. ‘He came downstairs, had a word with Madame Boule and then he just upped and disappeared. Must have slipped out. And Comte never turned up, as far as I know.’

‘Let’s go after him. He can’t have got far.’ Raf was already making for the door.

Touquet gave James a sceptical look, then shrugged. ‘Okay, we’ve got nothing to lose. You’re late.’

‘It was unavoidable.’

‘Meet you outside. We should stagger our departure.
There are eyes and tongues in these walls.’ Touquet veered off towards the singers.

Before James could reach the door, a great tub of a woman in a strawberry red dress accosted him. Something about her jowly face reminded him ominously of Mrs Elliott. He found himself bowing.

‘Ah Monsieur,’ she preened. ‘Not leaving us already, are you? I know, I know, my best girls are upstairs. But if you wait just a little longer, I’m sure …’

‘On another occasion, Madame. Thank you.’ He bowed himself out, kept his hands on the latch behind him, to make sure it didn’t move. As he stood there for a moment the door diagonally opposite him opened and a thin, dapper, top-hatted man stepped out. He lifted his hat to James ceremoniously. Behind him, James saw whorls of cigarette smoke, strange, lithe creatures moving as if in a cloud, their eyes brightly outlined, their cheeks rouged, their gestures feminine though they wore trousers. He steadied himself. The top-hatted gent tweaked his moustache and pointed his walking stick invitingly through the door.

James shook his head and raced down the darkened
corridor
. Marguerite came into his mind. Marguerite and the husband she and Olympe had blackmailed into departure. Emotions warred within him. Disgust and pity and over it all a sense of awe, as if he had come across a mysterious, uncharted island, filled with a multiplicity of life forms which hadn’t yet found their way into public classification systems. Yet these were secretly known to many of the people he had met here and Olympe ran like a scarlet ribbon between them, linking them all.

‘Jim.’ Raf’s voice nudged him from his thoughts. Nudged the top-hatted man behind him, too. They both turned to see Raf leaning against the corner lamp post. The man gave James a knowing smile and with a nod took off in the opposite
direction, his walking stick tapping out a desultory rhythm on the wet pavement.

‘What took you so long? Good, here’s Touquet at last. Which way Touquet?’

Touquet shrugged. ‘We could try Renard’s. It’s not far. And he apparently goes there, too, from time to time. There’s a short cut through the back here.’

Touquet cut into a narrow alleyway. But for the glimmer of a light from an upper window, the lane was blacker than the night, the buildings on either side weighing in on them like looming ramparts. They walked in single file over uneven cobblestones, slippery from the rain. A rat slithered out of a gutter and ran between them. From somewhere a dog barked. They didn’t speak. The atmosphere weighed on them, far heavier than the warm, curling mist.

They had arrived at some sort of tiny square or courtyard, a stone figurine at its midst. Touquet led them across it and then to the right where they plunged into another dingy alley. When they reached the next corner, a scream pierced the silence. It hurtled through the lane like a banshee, ricocheting off the stone walls, gathering an echoing force as it went. They stopped in their tracks. A thud followed, like a sack hitting stone and then the sound of running footsteps, a clacking on cobbles which reverberated through the canyon of the buildings.

‘Come on,’ Raf roused them. He was already dashing in the direction of the sound. They raced after him, all but colliding with his motionless form in the next lane.

James’s foot touched something soft, but inert. He looked down, felt as much as saw an ungainly bundle. Old clothes, heaped on the ground. Raf was kneeling.

‘Touquet, get the police. Quick,’ he lashed out.

‘Where? Why?’

‘It’s a body, you idiot. Where’s that brothel of yours?’

‘At the next corner.’

‘Well get over there. Bring a lantern back with you.’ He shouted after him.

From a window above them, a light flickered. A curtain had been pushed back. Through the shadows, James made out a shape. ‘
Venez
,’ he shouted and waved. ‘Bring a lamp.’ He repeated his injunction.

‘Jesus, Jim. This is just what we needed.’

‘Is he alive?’ He kneeled to take hold of a cold, dank wrist. ‘There’s still a pulse. Faint though. Should we turn him over?’

‘I don’t know, Jim. The guy needs a doctor.
Au secours! Un médecin!’
Raf yelled at the top of his lungs.

Light suddenly illuminated them. A man, a boy really, with tousled hair and sleepy eyes was holding a lantern above them.

‘Bring it closer,’ Raf ordered. He gestured to James and together they slowly turned the body over.

The man’s suit and waistcoat were rumpled, but it was a good enough suit and the shirt was white, except for the red stain which crept up its midriff. At the dark centre of the stain, the shirt was slashed. So was the flesh beneath. Blood oozed from the man’s belly in a pumping rivulet.

‘Jesus!’ Raf repeated. ‘What do we do?’

‘Try and bind it I guess.’ In a split second, James had his jacket off and was unbuttoning his shirt. As he did so, he noticed a small crowd had gathered round them. A second lamp had arrived. A woman was gesturing at him. ‘Here, here. This will be better.’ She was tugging at her petticoat. ‘It’s bigger. He’s a large man.’

She handed Raf the garment and knelt down beside him. ‘Prop his head up slightly. Just in case. And untie his collar.’

Someone passed them a rolled-up jacket and James moved to tuck it under the man’s head. It was only then that he became aware of the man’s face. The pucker at the brow, the stubby nose, the corpulent cheeks, blotched with dusky blue now. He let out a noisy breath. ‘Raf, Raf! It’s Dr Comte.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, it’s him.’

‘Police. Make way. Make way.’ A stentorian voice reached them. The crowd moved aside and in a moment a young, lavishly moustachioed man in a bowler hat and ordinary clothes was at their side.

‘You.’ Raf scowled, then grinned. ‘Well, for once I have to say I’m happy to see you. We need an ambulance here. And you’d better try and get someone to wake Chief Inspector Durand. This man here isn’t quite a corpse yet and his name is Henri Comte. Dr Henri Comte. Meet my shadow, Jim.’