The Blood of Lorraine (15 page)

Thursday, November 29

S
TILL NO CONFESSION
. M
ARTIN HAD
come in late Thursday morning and was sitting across from Jacquette delivering his instructions. Question the Ullmann’s housekeeper. Go the woolen mill to ferret out the discontents. Keep grilling Thomas.

Jacquette crushed the stub of his cigarette into the ashtray on Martin’s desk. “I don’t think he did it.”

Martin eyed his inspector. In some ways he considered Jacquette to be better reader of men than he. Jacquette knew the streets. Jacquette used his instincts. Martin probed, reasoned, and analyzed his way to a verdict. Whenever the two of them, together, came to the same conclusions, they were invariably right. Martin sighed. He also was becoming more and more convinced that Thomas was not the killer; that, indeed, they had stepped into the kind of nasty conflict between man and wife that Didier had so dismissively labeled a “sordid lower-class drama.”

Yet Thomas’s presumed innocence brought no relief. Instead, it filled Martin with a new anxiety. Despite all their efforts to squelch the ritual murder libel, at least one man had gotten wind of it and had willfully turned a sordid little drama into a full-blown tragedy. But who? Without the tanner, the investigation threatened to become amorphous, unmanageable, fanning out to all the haters of the Israelites.

“You’ve made sure that he would not
know
anyone who did it?”

Jacquette nodded, his face more downcast than usual.

“Sir, I’m sorry about your son.”

Martin was stunned. But he should not have been. He had rushed into his chambers, making it clear that he was only there to give orders, and had not let anyone else get in so much as a word of greeting. Now he knew why. He had been avoiding just this moment. “Thank you,” he said, and pulled his chin in as if that would slow the trembling in his chest. “Thank you,” he whispered again. “You understand, then, why I must get back as soon as possible.”

Perhaps to cover his own emotions, Jacquette concentrated on patting his jacket down, searching for another Blue Jockey. “Yes,” he mumbled, “and I’ll keep nibbling around the edges of Ullmann’s life.”

“No!”

Jacquette looked up, startled.

“No,” Martin said again, more quietly. “We need to do more. You need to keep your ear to the ground and use all your informers to look for anyone who might be talking about ‘ritual murder’ or who is speaking out against the Israelites in general. Then you must nibble around
his
edges. I’ll pick up all the anti-Semitic rags I can find at the newsstand and scour them for local priests and politicians who might have developed an entourage.” When Jacquette did not grunt his agreement, Martin added, “That’s the direction that Singer and Didier wanted me to take from the beginning, and that’s what we are going to do.”

Jacquette had captured a cigarette and was tapping it on the desk. “But don’t you think that we should first deal with someone who
knew
Ullmann, someone with a personal grudge?”

“That, too.” Martin was in no mood to argue. “But we cannot ignore the possibility that Ullmann was killed simply because of his race.”

Jacquette struck a match against the bottom of his boot to light his cigarette, then gave Martin a reluctant nod. Despite his own best instincts, Jacquette would make an attempt to carry out his superior’s orders. It was a rare discordant moment between the two of them, and Martin tried to cover it over by asking his inspector if he had anything else to report.

“Well, of course, there’s Mme Thomas.” A grin grew on one side of Jacquette’s face and eventually conquered the other. His tawny eyebrows arched expectantly.

“Yes?” Leave it to the trusty Jacquette to find some way to break the tension.

He took a long draw from his cigarette and blew it out with obvious pleasure. “A piece of work, that woman. Still shouting. Now she’s complaining about the food. Not fine enough for her. No silver, no gold plate. At the jail they’re all grateful that Didier has seen fit to keep her locked up for only six weeks. Although, if she were out and about she’d be my prime suspect.”

“With both of them in jail, you think we’re keeping the town safe?” Martin commented, continuing the joke.

“Let’s hope so.”

Martin got up to signal the end of their meeting. Jacquette quickly pocketed his notebook and stuck the cigarette in his mouth. He stood and reached to grip his superior’s hand. In that handshake, Martin felt Jacquette’s strength and sympathy. Neither of them had forgotten about Martin’s son.

They agreed to meet again on Friday at ten o’clock. In the meantime, they could hope that they were, indeed, keeping the town safe.

Friday, November 30

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, M
ARTIN ARRIVED
according to plan exactly at ten. By ten-thirty he was drumming his fingers on his desk.
Where the hell was Jacquette?
It was not like him to be late, especially when he knew that Martin was in a hurry to dispense with business and get home.

“Are you sure Inspector Jacquette did not leave any message?” he asked Charpentier, who sat behind Martin doing whatever he did, copying, organizing, preening.

“No, sir. Should I go to the station and inquire?” Martin heard the eagerness in Charpentier’s voice. Martin had been gone much of two weeks; his clerk was restless too.

“Good idea.” Martin would love to be able to vent his impatience without his notoriously curious clerk around.

“Yes, sir.” Charpentier jumped up to begin his leave-taking, which was never easy or straightforward. Martin did not have to look behind him to sense every movement: stacking papers in perfect piles, plugging the inkwell, lining up every damned thing on the desk to be parallel or perpendicular to something else. Martin closed his eyes and listened until he heard footsteps scurrying to the coatrack, then he watched as Charpentier wound his long red wool scarf around his neck no less than three times.

Ten minutes later, Jacquette strode into the room, panting and sweating. He swiped off his cap and plopped down in the chair in front of Martin’s desk. “Sorry for being late,” he muttered. The doleful look in Jacquette’s face put Martin on edge. Every instinct in his body told him that Jacquette’s lateness was about to be the least of his concerns.

“What happened?” he demanded. “Did Thomas confess?”

Jacquette shook his head and shifted uneasily in his chair. “We’ve found another body.”

“No. It can’t be.” Martin sank back, hardly breathing. “Who? Man? Woman? Israelite?—”

Jacquette pressed his lips together, as if he were considering how best to break it to him. “This is where it gets sticky, sir. Another Israelite, Daniel Erlanger. The uncle of Judge Singer’s wife. Killed in his own kitchen.”

Martin’s mind went blank. His mouth fell half open, but no words came out.

Fortunately, Jacquette provided them. “I know, sir, I know. Too close to home. We gotta get him. Whoever is doing this.” He stared at the floor and began to turn his woolen cap slowly in his two thick hands. “Maybe I was wrong, sir, maybe we’d better start by tracking down some of those anti-Semites.”

“Let’s worry about that later.” Martin had trouble absorbing the fact that someone so close to the courthouse had been murdered.
Incredible
. Martin got up and began to pace, which did not help. He stopped by Jacquette’s chair. “What can you tell me?” Martin asked. “How did it happen? When?” It was good to be able to get out these normal questions, in a situation that went far beyond any norm that Martin could have imagined.

And Jacquette seemed just as eager to answer them, to perform the duties that were well within his ken. “Erlanger’s maid found him late yesterday afternoon when she came in with the shopping for dinner,” he reported. “She thinks he was making some tea. Pot left burning on the stove. Blood fresh, but she was sure he was dead. She’d been gone two hours. She ran to find Singer, who sent for me. I went over the scene, looked for the weapon and talked to her for over an hour. She has no idea who could have done it and claimed there was nothing missing. The old man was a bachelor, a notary. She kept saying that everyone loved him. When I went over to the morgue this morning, Dr. Fauvet was still examining the body. He finally told me that a single wound to the heart was all it took. Came back here as soon as I could. Singer’s still there, with—” Jacquette halted this rapid recitation for just a second before going on. “He wants to talk to you right away.”

“Then he may have something to tell me, some idea about the killer?” Martin went back behind his desk.

“No, I don’t think it’s that, sir.” Jacquette shook his head. “You’d better talk to him yourself.”

Martin did not like the sound of that. He dropped into his chair. His desk, his papers, the pure white wall, all that had appeared in sharp relief just moments ago, suddenly blurred and curved, turning in on him. Could Singer be blaming him for what had just happened? Would he come to take Didier’s part against him? No, Martin slouched back. That would not be the worst of it. Feeling responsible for the murders, losing Singer’s friendship and trust would.

Jacquette cleared his throat, retrieving Martin’s attention. “Right away, sir. That’s what he kept saying.”

“Yes, of course,” Martin said, still staring, unable to focus on what was right in front of him.
Of course
.

Jacquette stood up and put on his cap. “All right, sir. Then I’ll start making up the list of possible rabble-rousers for you.”

Martin nodded.

“And—” Jacquette waited until Martin looked up. “I’d stop by Fauvet’s office and talk to him first before you head down to see Singer and the body.”

Their eyes met. Coming from Martin’s trusted right-hand man, this was a warning.

Martin decided to go on foot to the Faculté de Médicine. He needed a brisk walk to clear his head, or so he told himself. Since it was not easy to speedily wind his way through the crowd on the busy rue Saint-Dizier, he had to acknowledge something else, what he was avoiding: the enclosed forced humanity of the tram, the onslaught of feelings that would assault him if he had chosen to take the shortcut past his apartment on the rue des Dom. Holding his bowler down with a leather-gloved hand, Martin strove for an anonymity as gray as the winter morning. He needed to be alone. This determination carried him almost past the central market, where he caught sight of a flower stall at the entrance. He stopped and stared at the bright, greenhouse blooms, remembering. Every few weeks he had made it a practice to surprise Clarie with a little bouquet, because this small, unimaginative gesture always gave her so much pleasure. When, he wondered, would those days return, the happy meals, the talk about their work and colleagues, their laughing together? No, Martin wasn’t merely alone. He was lonely. Lonelier than he ever imagined he would be after he married Clarie and they settled down in Nancy, each to their own profession, joined in their own little home, both of them of one mind about what they held most dear.

Martin had to believe that this happiness would return, but he had no time for daydreams or wishing. He continued his headlong rush to the Faculté, even faster this time, as though something was chasing him instead of pulling him toward his duty. He would have missed the turnoff if it hadn’t stood at the corner of the towering Saint Pierre Church. The short block between the broad Avenue de Strasbourg and the enclave that held the Faculté gave him time to catch his breath and take heed of Jacquette’s warning to see Fauvet first.

Not wanting to alert Singer to his presence, Martin made a quiet entrance and went directly to Fauvet’s office. He tapped lightly on the clouded window that comprised most of the top half of the heavy oak door.

“Come in.” Martin found Fauvet ensconced, as usual, in a pungent blue-gray haze of tobacco smoke. He laid his pipe on a large, heavy glass ashtray before standing up and reaching out to shake Martin’s hand.

“Another body,” he said, almost cheerfully.

“Yes,” Martin responded quietly as he sat down in front of the desk. He was always a bit unnerved by Fauvet. His delight in the grisliest aspects of his work was one reason. The other, Martin had to admit, was his all-too-apparent youth, despite his barely sprouting blond mustache and ever-present pipe. Fauvet’s bouncy enthusiasm, his rosy cheeks and the gold-rimmed round student glasses always had the effect of making Martin feel old, although he was only thirty-five. Martin could not imagine that Fauvet, who seemed to work endless hours in his classroom, his office, and in the morgue, had a lover or a family, except perhaps for the mother he had spoken of, who told “old wives’ tales” to her skeptical son. Fauvet treated the tragedies of life as interesting matters of fact, to be dissected, categorized and filed away. Martin doubted whether the avid scientist could tell him what he really needed to know, what Singer was thinking and feeling.

“Quite a crowd down there,” Fauvet commented as he pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows with incomprehensible amusement sparkling in his blue eyes.

“Crowd?”

“Yes, Singer’s co-religionists. He’s the judge. I couldn’t stop him from bringing them in. Although,” Fauvet said as he picked up his pipe and tamped more tobacco into it, “he would like your permission before they clean up and carry away the body, since it is your case.”

“Where are they taking the body?” Martin said, surprised by this request.

“To the victim’s home, I think,” Fauvet said with a sigh, then struck a match and lit up his pipe with the help of a few hard sucks. “They told me it has to be done as soon as possible. Don’t ask me why,” he said as he waved the flame into extinction.

Martin did not understand the need for such a hasty burial either. It sounded too much like a special favor. He pressed his fingernails into his legs, reminding himself not to show any emotion. If he was about to have a confrontation with Singer, he did not want Fauvet involved in any way.

“Do you have all the information you need from the victim’s body? What can you tell me now?” There, Martin thought, rational questions. Answers that can provide a way to deal with Singer.

“Very simple, really,” Fauvet said, laying his pipe down again. “One wound, almost directly to the heart. Although this Daniel Erlanger was a healthy man—portly really—in his sixties, it would not have taken him long to bleed to death. A big cut across the right hand as if he had tried to grab the knife and caught the blade.” Fauvet imitated the motion with one of his own smooth, hammy pink hands. “Big knife and sharp. Tanning? Butchering? Or just cooking? No way to be sure. Strange thing, although he tried to save himself, there was a peaceful look on his face, not the shock or rage you would expect. Singer told me that was because he had time to say his prayers before dying. At least he hoped Erlanger had time. Singer almost broke down when he was talking about it. I didn’t know he was that religious.” Another shrug, sloughing off everything that did not have directly to do with the “science” of the case.

Martin realized that he had no sense of how religious his colleague was either, except that Singer felt that his Jewishness determined the way people saw him. Perhaps it was anti-Israelites like Drumont who made it so important, who forced David to think about being a Jew all the time. Yet here he was thinking and talking about his relative’s final prayer with, apparently, as much emotion as the Widow Ullmann had. Martin shook his head. Now was not the time for philosophical questions.

“Anything else you could find out from the body?” he asked Fauvet.

“No. It was fresh when they brought it in last night, maybe only four or five hours after he died. It will all be in my report.”

“Then you don’t see any reason why—”

“No, I think I have everything I need. I’ve measured the wound. The best thing would be to find the weapon, but apparently Jacquette had his men search the house—that’s where it happened—and the yard. Nothing.”

“So I can release the body,” Martin confirmed.

Fauvet waved his hand as he reached for a pile of papers on his desk. “I’ve nothing more to learn. I’ll write up the report tonight and leave Singer and his friends to you.”

As it should be, as it must be, although the thought of having to talk to Singer and deal with his special request filled Martin with dismay. He thanked Fauvet, put on his bowler, and left the medical professor reading and sucking on his pipe. As soon as Martin closed the door, he paused and leaned against it. It was his job to assure the relatives of the maimed and murdered that their loved one would get justice. With due process and time. To treat each victim, each family, as equitably as possible. His job, even if the victim was related to a judge.

Walking down the stairs, he heard the prayer before he reached the door to the morgue. Someone was chanting in a language that was neither French nor German. He knocked, giving warning, then went in.

Martin was shocked to find about a dozen men in the morgue, including Singer and the rabbi, all of them wearing close-fitting skullcaps and white silk shawls bordered by blue stripes and long fringes. Erlanger’s body was covered with a sheet, except for his feet. A man holding these swayed ever so slightly back and forth in a kind of a trance, chanting. This was not right. The room should not be filled with strangers. No one should be handling the corpse. It was presumptuous on Singer’s part to have allowed this. Martin coughed to get his attention.

Singer was standing by the dead man’s shoulder. When he looked up, everything stopped for a moment, and all heads turned toward Martin. “Martin,” he said, “I’m glad you have come at last.”

Come at last
? Martin had come as soon as he had heard. Thoroughly irritated, Martin made a slight bow of his head to the other men before opening the door and signaling to Singer to join him outside. He had no intention of carrying out any discussion in the midst of the Israelites. It was annoying to feel like he was the interloper when he was the one who had every right to be there.

As soon as Singer stepped into the hallway, Martin closed the door behind him.

“What’s going on, Singer?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” Singer straightened up and gave Martin the supercilious look which had made him unpopular with others at the courthouse.

“All these men, in this—”

“We are practicing our faith.” Each word clipped.

Martin could not take his eyes off the skullcap and the shawl. He had never imagined Singer in this guise. “This is not the place.”

“Where, then? I am a judge. I have a right to be here. I made sure that Fauvet had full opportunity to examine my uncle. But I never had any intention of leaving him. We do not leave our dead loved ones alone. We honor them. That’s why we need to take him home and get him ready for burial as soon as possible. Even so, we won’t be able to do it before our sabbath.”