The Blood of Lorraine (3 page)

Mercifully, as the Presiding Judge of the Court at Nancy, du Manoir enjoyed holding forth and ignored her most of the time. When he did give her his attention, he proved to be a solicitous host, exchanging innocuous pleasantries, and tacitly guiding her through the proper order of things by being first to pick up the appropriate utensil for each course. Clarie began to breathe more easily as the paté, the bisque, the turbot, and the roast beef succeeded each other.

Her particular purgatory did not ensue until the white-and-black-uniformed maids began to offer the tray of cheeses. The mistress of the house, Albertine du Manoir, could no longer suppress her curiosity.

“So, Madame Martin,” she began, almost shouting from the opposite end of the table, “you teach?”

“Yes,” Clarie said as she glanced at her husband through the branches of the candelabras.

“The upper grades?” Mme du Manoir spoke even louder this time, encouraging her prey to do the same. Her neck craned upward from her portly body. Clarie could clearly see all the white curls her elderly high-born hostess had so carefully arranged around her stern, powdered face.

“Yes, at one of the new public high schools for girls.” Clarie got it out quickly. Her heart began to pound. She had said it. She was working in a place that was “new” and “public,” certainly not the way the wife of a judge should spend her time. Perhaps all these facts run together would shock them into silence, at least for the moment.

It did. And the silence was unnatural. The clink of silver on plate had ceased. So had the murmur of conversation. Clarie took a sip of wine; her mouth was running dry.

“And how, my dear, did you learn to do
that
?” Mme du Manoir was not about to let her off the hook.

“I was trained at a boarding school, at Sèvres, just outside of Paris.” Clarie put down her knife and fork. She had no need for more food, and she certainly was not going to eat when all eyes were on her. If only she were sitting beside Bernard, he’d do something reassuring.

“You went off to Paris on your own?” asked the prosecutor’s wife, who sat directly across from her. She was younger than most of the other guests, perhaps in her thirties. A pretty brunette with an oval face, which expressed surprise, but, Clarie hoped, not disapproval.

Clarie nodded and looked down at her plate.

“How extraordinary.”

Clarie was not even sure who had interjected this comment, which was not meant as a compliment.

“Yes, it was extraordinary. Very competitive,” Bernard intervened, leaning over the table to get the attention of the diners.

“Still, a young woman, alone, allowed to roam the city with other young women. I understand there were no restrictions on travel.” Clarie could have sworn that Mme du Manoir’s jowls were shaking in disapproval. Her large diamond earrings quivered and shimmered in the candlelight.

“Only the restraints of a very strict morality. A Kantian morality, to be specific. I can tell you,” Bernard continued, “that I was more nervous about asking the headmistress for Clarie’s hand than her father. Mme Favre was much more exacting about who could court her students.”

“You actually asked the headmistress’s permission?” The prosecutor’s wife smiled in amazement. Clarie’s chivalrous defender had won at least one of them over.

“I did not drop to my knees,” Bernard paused before adding, “but let me tell you, I felt I should have.”

This even drew appreciative titters.

“Still,” Mme du Manoir laid her hand on Bernard’s as if to forestall more frivolity, “one wonders, what kind of woman would pursue such a difficult profession.” She stared in Clarie’s direction, waiting for an answer.

Clarie’s felt a rush of blood spreading across her cheeks and forehead. How could any of them possibly know how difficult it was? First there was the uncertainty about finding a place. And when you found one, facing all those eager girls, expecting you to teach them everything under the sun. Staying up until the early morning hours, preparing, almost crying with fatigue. “Actually,” she said trying to keep her voice as even as possible, “the students at Sèvres come from all walks of life.”

Mme du Manoir raised her eyebrows. “Surely not.”

Was this the point where Clarie was supposed to admit that her own father was an immigrant and a blacksmith, and Bernard’s had been merely a clockmaker? She held her hands tight under the table to keep from trembling. She was becoming a spectacle.

“Albertine,” Monsieur du Manoir came to Clarie’s rescue, “if our republican government has decreed that young women deserve a secondary education, who better to give it to them, a nun or someone who will become a wife and a mother?”

“Hear! Hear! Let’s raise a glass to that!” cried out Alphonse Rocher, the senior examining magistrate, whose face was already ruddy with drink. A dozen diners, in various stages of reluctance and bewilderment, lifted their glasses. Relieved at the distraction, Clarie again refused the cheese plate. After the anemic toast, the table dissolved again into the sharp clink of silverware and the soft murmur of private conversations. Still flustered, Clarie surveyed the scene under lowered eyes. When she saw the servants arranging ices and cakes on the sideboard, she let her hands slip apart and breathed a sigh of relief. It was almost over.

Martin touched the tips of Clarie’s fingers with his own as he passed her on his way to the library with the other male guests. This was his unspoken apology. He didn’t like having to leave her at the mercy of “the ladies,” but there was nothing to be done about it. As soon as he consulted with Théophile Didier, the prosecutor, Martin had every intention of getting Clarie away.

Martin paused at the entrance to the library and took a deep breath. Unless there was some truth to Singer’s assertions, this should be easy. If the Proc refused to let him lead the investigation, then Martin would explain to Singer that he had done his best. If Didier agreed to hand the case over to Martin, a much more likely possibility, then he would begin to concentrate on formulating a plan of action. Either way, Martin told himself as he pulled down his dinner jacket and forged ahead, a definitive decision should help him get through the weekend without seeing flashes of that little corpse in his mind’s eye.

The rest of the men were gathered around du Manoir’s gargantuan mahogany desk, where the servants had set out the cigars and cognac. Big as it was, the desk was dwarfed by a room lined with books reaching up to a very high ceiling. The Presiding Judge had even installed a movable ladder so that he, or his servants, could reach the top shelves. Martin doubted that this device was used much. Du Manoir had never struck him as a very deep thinker.

Martin refused a cigar and picked up a snifter of cognac, planting himself at the edge of the conversation, waiting for his chance. When Didier broke off from the rest of the smokers to peruse a shelf of books, Martin immediately approached him.

“Singer came to see me this afternoon,” he began.

“Oh, really?” Didier arched his eyebrows and took a sip from his tiny round glass of cognac. He was a tall, thin man with curly, close-cut sandy hair. He usually wore the severe expression appropriate to his calling on his clean-shaven face. Even in this social situation, he demonstrated one of his many well-known tactics, forcing the witness to fill in all the details and, possibly, to stumble.

“He was upset about the case you just handed him, the mutilated baby and the accusation of ritual murder.” Martin lifted his glass to his lips, although it hardly sheltered him from Didier’s unflinching blue-eyed gaze.

“And?” the prosecutor asked.

“And, he’d like me to take it over.” There, now it was Didier’s turn. Martin took a gulp of the warm amber brandy.

But instead of responding, Didier whispered a warning. “I think Rocher is heading our way.”

There was a general, unspoken disdain around the courthouse for the portly Alphonse Rocher, Nancy’s senior examining magistrate, who somehow had blustered his way to the top. Reluctantly, Martin stepped aside, allowing the man who had offered the clumsy toast to Clarie to join their circle.

“What’s this? Talking business?” Rocher asked, before sucking contentedly on his cigar.

“You might say that.” Didier’s smile went up one side of his face as he gave Martin an expectant look.

“Well, let’s hear it then!” Rocher exclaimed, the dinner’s drink having made him even more voluble than usual.

“It’s nothing,” Martin muttered as he took another sip and tried to step back further from both of them.

“Well, I’m not so sure about that. I bet it is something.” With his rosy cheeks, walrus mustache and generous mane of white hair, Rocher could have been any child’s jolly grandfather. But he wasn’t supposed to be indulgent and jocular. Judges were supposed to be serious about their duties and their responsibilities. Martin had no desire to discuss Singer’s request with him.

“It’s the case I offered to you and that you urged me to give to Singer,” Didier said, casting a significant glance toward Martin. The wily prosecutor’s few words had economically delivered two messages: that he did not feel the case would be hard to solve, or he would not have given it to Rocher, and it had been Rocher who had suggested that Didier assign it to their Jewish colleague.

“Yes, yes, yes, that one,” Rocher said as he began puffing on his cigar with pleasure.

“Why Singer?” Martin asked. He would have liked very much to wipe that stupid, merry expression off Rocher’s face.

“Now, now, don’t get your dander up,” Rocher said as he laid an unwelcome hand on Martin’s shoulder. “We just wanted to see what he would do. And besides, it’s about his people. We thought it would be best if he handled it.” Rocher winked at Didier, who remained stone-faced.

“The Republic is for all people. I believe we have held to that principle since 1789.”

Rocher laughed and glanced at Didier. “Oh my, a history lesson yet.”

“All right. Sorry,” Martin said. Somehow whenever he began to speak about the things he held most dear, he ended up sounding like a prig. Still, he didn’t appreciate being mocked. He took a swallow of his cognac, letting its warming effect fortify him before going on. “So,” he said, turning to Didier, “since the case has gone from one judge to another, I assume it doesn’t matter if I take it over.”

Didier pursed his lips and nodded.

“Yes, take it if you must,” Rocher intervened, even though it was no longer his call. He blew a circle of smoke before bending toward Martin and adding, “That is, if you consider yourself a friend of the Israelites—”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Martin could barely conceal his anger.

“Did you know,” Rocher asked, “that the Singer family ‘opted’ to come to Nancy when the Germans took over the other half of Lorraine?”

Although Singer had never told him, Martin was not surprised. After France lost Alsace and half of Lorraine to the Prussians in 1871, many Frenchmen chose to become refugees in their own country rather than remain under German rule.

“I don’t think he understands,” Rocher remarked to Didier, as if Martin were a schoolboy failing a lesson. “They are,” the old man insisted, raising his voice slightly, “taking over. It’s not enough that the city was flooded with them in the seventies. They’re even coming from Russia. Beggars all.”

Martin could hardly believe his ears. He was torn between a desire to show his senior colleague what he thought and extricating himself as expeditiously as possible. Because of his experiences in Aix, where his involvement in the Vernet case had turned most of the courthouse against him, he knew he needed to tread carefully. He glanced at Didier, who had chosen to observe rather than take sides.

“You’ve noticed, haven’t you,” Rocher continued, “how many children they are having. Singer has three of his own already. You, my boy, are only working on your first. How will we keep up?”

“How, indeed?” Martin seized the opportunity offered by the fool’s last, maddening remark, “It’s good you’ve reminded me, Rocher. It must be very late. I should be getting my wife home before she gets overtired.”

Didier’s only response was a crooked, mirthless smile. But Rocher, drunk as he was, couldn’t stop talking. “Yes, go to her,” he said to Martin, waving his cigar as his voice trailed off. “Charming woman, that one, charming….”

Martin backed away with a slight bow. “Gentlemen, until Monday,” he said, as he left to seek out his hosts to say his good-byes. And to calm down.

Mme du Manoir repeated her offer to rouse the driver of the family coach, until Clarie finally convinced her hostess that the walk home would do her good. Warmly wrapped and much relieved, the Martins escaped at last into the cold autumn night, exiting onto the northern corner of the Place de la Carrière. As he listened to Clarie’s complaints, Martin hoped their midnight stroll would remind his dear Provençal girl of the things she loved most about Nancy. Arm in arm they scuffed through the hoary leaves glistening gold under the flickering gas-lit street lights.

“They suspect,” she said, “that I will bear a monster because I’ve overheated my brain by using it too much.”

Martin suspected, in turn, that Clarie was exaggerating. “Come,” he said, as they passed the Palais de Justice, which lay at the southern end of the block, “let’s take a peek at the park.” He turned the corner towards the gate to the Pépinière, the vast public park which had once been the private hunting grounds of the nobility. The Martins had often strolled through its gardens, imagining their own child there, playing ball or pointing with delight at the animals in the zoo.

“It’s cold. I would rather not.” Clarie shrank away from him, still mulling over her time with the other women. She kept walking straight ahead toward the Arc de Triomphe.

“All right, then. But remember, this is the only formal dinner we have had to go to in two years,” he said as he hurried to catch up, “and by the time you have to go again you will have a beautiful baby to brag about.” Even though her head was turned away from him, he knew he had made her smile. “Besides,” he continued as they entered the Place Stanislas, “we have all this. The theater, the opera, the cafés, the shops, the gallant officers flitting about, flirting with the ladies.”