The Dream Killer of Paris (4 page)

Diagram of the Marquis de Brindillac's bedroom

There were a few pieces of furniture in the bedroom (a corner wardrobe, an occasional table, a bedside table and two armchairs) but, apart from a faded wall hanging and a collection of small portraits (mainly of scientists) hung near the door to the study, the room was simply decorated. Stained-glass windows cast an unusual light, creating a subdued atmosphere conducive to reflection at any time of day.

‘So, it was here that it happened, was it?' asked the superintendent, approaching the bed.

‘Yes,' replied Second Lieutenant Rouzé hoarsely. ‘Last Saturday the servant from the château informed the gendarmerie that the Marquis had been found dead in his bed. I got here shortly afterwards, at ten thirty-five. Dr Leduc had arrived before me and was in the process of examining the body.'

‘Did anything strike you as strange when you entered the room?' asked the examining magistrate.

‘The dead man's face, sir, his face! His expression was one of indescribable terror. Never could I have imagined that such an emotion was possible at the moment of death.'

‘And yet,' resumed the judge, slight disappointment in his voice, ‘your investigation hasn't been able to determine the cause of this violent emotion.'

‘That is true, sir. There was nothing to go on. I fear that it will be the same today …'

‘We'll see, we'll see,' cut in Fourier. ‘Did the Marquise, or anyone else in the house, notice anything out of place? Or that anything had disappeared?'

‘No, nothing had been touched.'

The superintendent opened one of the two windows to let more light into the room and poked his head outside to assess the height. I joined him, to see for myself.

‘I think the theory of criminal activity is looking increasingly unlikely,' he muttered, tugging at his moustache.

It was at least fifteen feet from the bedroom window to the ground. It was impossible to get down the wall using only one's bare hands, particularly as there was a bed of flowering shrubs just beneath the window, which ran right along the façade of the château, and anyone landing there would have left clear traces.

Obviously, there remained the possibility of a ladder. But given that, on the morning of the Marquis's death, the windows had been found locked, just like the doors, then either scenario would imply that one of the three people who had entered the room together (the Marquise, the servant and the gardener) was an accomplice who had closed the window without the other two knowing. Admittedly, this seemed far-fetched.

‘Well, as you said, Superintendent, we must look at the problem from all angles.'

While Judge Breteuil questioned Second Lieutenant Rouzé and the clerk, Bezaine, recorded the information in his little notebook, I moved over to the four-poster bed and lightly tapped the wall with my hand. In detective novels the policeman always does that when confronted with a case of murder in a locked room. A secret passageway hidden behind a piece of furniture or a bookcase, a door concealed in a thick wall, and all of a sudden an impenetrable mystery finally begins to unravel.

‘Are you looking for something, Monsieur Singleton?' enquired the examining magistrate with an almost comical air of bemusement.

‘I'm checking that the walls aren't hollow in places and that there are no doors, niches, cavities or secret alcoves. You'd be surprised at the ingenious hiding places in these old houses.'

The operation didn't yield any results and after a few minutes I dropped to my knees and meticulously examined the floorboards.

‘Absolutely nothing!' I said in frustration, getting up. ‘This room leads to two others, doesn't it?'

‘Yes, the study and the library,' replied the gendarme.

‘Were the doors opening on to the corridor locked in these three rooms?'

‘Yes, they were.'

‘And this one,' I continued, pointing to the door in front of me,
between the corner wardrobe and one of the armchairs. ‘Was it closed like it is today?'

‘Yes, but not locked. Actually, there is no lock or bolt.'

‘And what about the door to the library?'

‘That one doesn't have a lock either.'

‘So these three rooms are a single space in which one can move about freely.'

‘That's right.'

‘Singleton,' said Fourier, seeing where my thoughts were leading, ‘don't you waste your time. Dupuytren, go and search the study and the library. See if there's anything unusual about the floor or walls.'

The faithful Sûreté constable, who until then had been discreetly standing by, calmly carried out the order.

‘Why don't we have a look at the other rooms?' continued Fourier.

‘An excellent idea,' said the judge, inviting us to go first with a gesture of his hand.

The so-called study, where Dupuytren had rolled up a large threadbare rug and pushed it against the wall in order to begin examining the floor, was a kind of antechamber between the bedroom and the library. It was filled with heavily laden bookshelves (in fact, the entire room was collapsing under the weight of words) and its only furniture was a desk buried under a heap of papers, notes, notebooks and magazines, and a worn armchair.

A few steps away, a second door opened on to the library, the most imposing room of the three and also the most suffocating. Bookshelves took up every inch of space; they covered entire walls and surrounded the windows and door frames. It was as if the idea of having shelves right up to the ceiling had tickled the old Marquis. Against this backdrop of paper, leather and ink, a large mirror hung over the fireplace. Nearby, a wing chair, a desk and, in the middle, an immense table, also covered in paper, were the only pieces of furniture.

On the other side of the library, a large old door, rounded at the top, had been left open. Through the doorway we could see into the work room in the middle of one of the château's towers. Was it the thickness of the heavy door which had managed to hold back the frenzied march of books? In any case, the room didn't seem to suffer from the same excess. ‘Only' four or five hundred books occupied the shelves between two narrow windows. Otherwise, the room was remarkably austere, mellow and peaceful, particularly as a bed (yes, a bed, a little camp bed with a pillow and thick blanket) had pride of place in the middle, like an invitation to sleep and dream.

‘My word!' exclaimed the superintendent. ‘Never in my life have I seen so many books!'

‘The Marquis was amazingly methodical in the way he organised them,' I observed, examining the shelves. ‘In the study he kept his books on poetry and literature; in the library those on science. Over here we have medicine; over there anatomy; on the other side physiology and so on.'

‘And over there?' asked the judge, pointing to the work room.

I went through the low door and approached curiously.

‘Spiritualism, paranormal studies, occultism, alchemy—' I chanted as I consulted their spines.

Behind me I heard the deep voice of Dupuytren.

‘Superintendent! There's nothing in the study!'

The idea of carrying out the same task in the library couldn't have excited him but the impassive hound appeared to consider it a point of honour never to reveal his emotions.

‘Nothing on the floor and nothing on the walls!' he added.

‘I don't really think there's any point exhausting ourselves,' I said, coming out of the tower room. ‘We won't find anything in here.'

‘Fine, that's enough, Raymond.'

‘But there is one thing that's bothering me.'

‘What's that?'

‘Are you sure that the Marquis's bedroom was exactly as it is now?' I asked Second Lieutenant Rouzé. ‘Wasn't there something that was here on Saturday morning which isn't here today?'

‘No, sir. As I told the superintendent earlier, nothing has been moved, I'm sure of it. Nothing added, nothing taken away.'

‘It's strange. The Marquis was surrounded by books. He was an avid reader to put it mildly.'

‘And?' asked Judge Breteuil in surprise.

‘Well, someone like that doesn't go to sleep without reading first. It would have been as essential as eating or drinking. It's inconceivable that he went to bed without a book at his side.'

‘There was nothing, I can assure you.'

‘With all the hours he devoted to reading, I imagine he wanted to do something else when he went to bed,' said Fourier with a shrug.

‘I can't believe it,' I said, scratching my nose. ‘Either the book was put back accidentally by someone who thought they were being helpful and, with a bit of luck, that person will remember when we ask them. Or … it's still there!'

I crossed the library and the study briskly and bent down in front of the big four-poster bed. Fourier and Dupuytren followed me, but the examining magistrate, the clerk and the second lieutenant hung back, looking very sceptical.

First, I opened the drawer in the bedside table; it was empty. Then I got down on my hands and knees to look under the bed. The wooden frame was quite low and the bed so wide that I couldn't see anything beyond a few inches.

‘Gentlemen!' I called, getting up. ‘I need your help to move this bed. Ready? Heave ho!'

We pulled the bed towards the centre of the room. In the middle of a mound of dust was an octavo volume.

‘It must have fallen on the floor. Then someone rushing over to the Marquis's body must have accidentally kicked it under the bed.'

I picked it up and wiped the brown leather cover with my hand.

‘
Le Comte de Gabalis
,' I read out loud, opening the book. ‘
Discourses on the Secret Sciences
, by Montfaucon de Villars. Published by Éditions La Connaissance, Paris, 1921.'

I was bursting with excitement. The examining magistrate raised his eyes to heaven.

‘Madame,’ said the examining magistrate, ‘I know that Second Lieutenant Rouzé has already spoken to you at length over the last few days but we’d like to ask you some more questions.’

‘We’re grateful to the justice system for taking my husband’s death so seriously. However, I’m sure you’ll understand that the disruption has gone on long enough for me and my daughter. The sooner it is over, the better.’

Apart from Dupuytren, who was standing by the window with his arms folded, we were sitting in comfortable armchairs around a low table in the sitting room. A young servant was serving coffee and lemon tea in white china cups.

Opposite me sat the Marquise, a fine-looking woman of about sixty with touches of grey in her hair. She was wearing a long black dress which came down to her ankles. She spoke with a very slight Dutch accent.

On her left was her charming thirty-year-old daughter, Amélie. Her chestnut hair, artistically pulled back and arranged, set off her extraordinarily lively hazel eyes. She was wearing black flannel trousers and a velvet jacket which gave her a tomboyish air.

‘Madame,’ Judge Breteuil went on, ‘you must be aware that the investigation has been reopened because of a possible link between your husband’s death and the death of a poet in strangely similar circumstances in Paris this summer.’

‘How could I fail to be aware of it? Reporters have been stationed
outside the gates of the château since yesterday morning, asking to speak to us. Please assure us that it will soon be over.’

‘It is just a matter of a few hours, Madame.’

‘Have you read the article that mentions the death of the young man?’ asked Superintendent Fourier.

‘Yes. Well, my daughter read it to me.’

‘Had you already heard of Pierre Ducros?’

‘Never.’

‘And what do you think of the circumstances in which these two deaths occurred?’

‘I don’t know, Superintendent,’ said the Marquise wearily. ‘My husband had got certain unhealthy ideas into his head and it is never good when the imagination takes over from the intellect.’

As she spoke she glanced tearfully at a portrait hanging over the fireplace. It was a fine picture of a man in the prime of life, who had an enormous, badly trimmed beard and a bald pate with a few locks of grey, slighty frizzy hair visible at the temples and the back of his head. He was looking to one side, stiff in evening dress, his chest covered in decorations of all kinds. Nonetheless, his small laughing eyes and restrained smile betrayed a lively, mischievous temperament. Despite the formal pose for the occasion, he looked as if all he wanted to do was throw his tails on the floor and start dancing.

‘That portrait of my husband was done when he was elected to the Académie des Sciences in 1924. The artist has captured the different aspects of his personality perfectly. He was sensitive, passionate, a devotee of opera and music. He adored literature and baroque poetry above all else.’

‘I’ve been told that he was particularly curious about the mysteries of nature,’ I said, ‘and especially the most extraordinary of all: sleep.’

‘He’d kept a diary of his dreams since he was fifteen. He liked to boast that few people wrote them down as religiously as he did, and he rarely forgot them. In the morning my children and I were often given a detailed account of a dream which had particularly struck him and he would recount it candidly and unselfconsciously. I think he became a physiologist because of the dreams. He tried, at least at first, to find a scientific explanation for how they are created in the human psyche.’

‘When you say, with regard to your husband, that imagination had taken hold of reason,’ I continued, ‘you are no doubt referring to his psychic work?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did that begin?’

‘Shortly after he was elected to the Académie des Sciences. He met a Professor Charles Richet who made a strong impression on him and who became his friend. Professor Richet is an internationally renowned physiologist. He also founded the Institut Métapsychique
9
. Certain great men who make key discoveries in science and medicine also seem to be taken in by the most hackneyed fantasies.’

‘Mother!’ Amélie exclaimed. ‘I don’t believe that Professor Richet led anyone down the wrong path, as you are implying. Papa didn’t need anyone else’s encouragement to throw himself into the work you disapproved of so much.’

‘Yes, my dear, you’re probably right. It’s grief which makes me speak with such bitterness.’

‘I’ve heard that he was working on the possibility of controlling his dreams. Is that true?’

I had addressed the Marquise. The subject seemed to sadden her greatly and her eyes brimmed with tears again. Amélie, who seemed more at ease in this area, answered for her.

‘To some extent, yes. He was convinced that dreams enable one to attain a higher level of knowledge. But he didn’t generally discuss the results of his research with us.’

‘Did he see people from the Institut Métapsychique often?’

‘To begin with, my father visited the Institut at 89 Avenue Niel in Paris once a week. Later, his work became very demanding so he went there less frequently and the metapsychists came to him.’

‘Have any of them been here recently?’

‘Professor Richet came to see him three weeks before his death; Dr Osty just before that.’
10

‘Over the last few days, did the Marquis receive any visitors, anyone at all?’ asked Superintendent Fourier.

‘Apart from local people, not that I know of. Only that so-called professor who absolutely insisted on seeing him.’

‘Do you know his name?’

‘No. At least, I can’t remember it. He was a foreigner with a German … or Austrian … or maybe Swiss accent.’

‘Was he a doctor or a physiologist too?’

‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you there either.’

‘Hmm! I imagine the Marquis didn’t tell you the purpose of his visit.’

‘His visits, plural. He came twice, three days apart. First, on Tuesday 9 October and then last Friday, the day before his death. I don’t know what they discussed but my father didn’t seem to enjoy his visits.’

‘What did he look like?’ asked Fourier more forcefully.

‘Sixty, average height, seventy-odd kilos. His nose was hooked, like a beak. He had enormous sideburns and tufts of unkempt sparse white hair that stuck out. He was like an actor in the theatre. But the most striking thing about him was his eyes. They were black, very piercing, and hidden behind ridiculous Chinese glasses with square frames. He was not very nice and that’s putting it mildly.’

‘Ah! You didn’t mention his visits before!’

‘I most certainly did! I told one of Second Lieutenant Rouzé’s men! He didn’t seem very interested.’

Poor Monsieur Rouzé looked as if he would have liked the earth to swallow him up but Monsieur Breteuil unexpectedly came to his rescue.

‘We seem to have wandered off the subject, gentlemen. Clearly the German professor didn’t go into the Marquis’s room and cause his mortal fear.’

‘The Sûreté Nationale leaves no stone unturned, sir,’ replied Fourier authoritatively. ‘All possibilities must be considered, nothing left to chance. You say that he visited twice, Mademoiselle. How did he get here? By car?’

‘Yes. Well, the owner of the garage in the village also provides a taxi service when he feels like it. He dropped the professor here and waited in the car.’

‘So he was staying nearby. Is the village far?’

‘About a mile away.’

‘Is there a hotel there?’

‘An inn.’

‘Raymond, go and have a look round the village. Find out about a foreigner who might have stayed there for several days, just over a week ago.’

Dupuytren hadn’t moved a muscle since the start of the interview. It was impossible to tell whether he was miles away or whether, in fact, he had been following every word of what was being said. Hearing his name, he immediately stood to attention.

‘At the same time,’ added the superintendent, ‘try to get hold of the garage owner. And don’t dawdle, it’s important!’

‘Ask my chauffeur to drive you,’ interjected Monsieur Breteuil. ‘It’ll be quicker!’

The constable hurried to the door.

‘Didn’t Jacques meet this visitor one afternoon as well?’ asked the Marquise, looking at her daughter.

‘Jacques?’ enquired the superintendent.

‘Mother, I don’t think that really concerns these gentlemen.’

‘Who is he?’ Fourier insisted

‘A young writer interested in my father’s work. He’s writing a book on dreams in our civilisation, from Antiquity to the present day. That’s why he came to the château.’

‘Often?’

‘Every Friday afternoon for two months!’ replied the Marquise. ‘He was a considerate boy, charming. And my husband seemed to get on very well with him. When he found out about my husband’s death, he immediately came to offer his condolences. He was very upset himself.’

‘I don’t remember such a visit being mentioned in your report,’ the examining magistrate remarked to Second Lieutenant Rouzé, who was sitting opposite him on the other side of the table.

‘Well … it didn’t seem particularly relevant,’ replied the gendarme, sinking further into his armchair.

‘Not particularly relevant?’ repeated Monsieur Breteuil, twisting his white beard.

Amélie’s cheeks had become slightly pink at the mention of Jacques’s name.

Not wishing to prolong the young woman’s discomfort (but intending to come back to it at a more appropriate moment), I abruptly changed the subject and took the book bound in brown leather that I had found under the Marquis’s bed out of my pocket.

‘Ladies, does this book mean anything to you?’

The Marquise’s brow furrowed.

‘It belongs to my husband. He bought it a few years ago. It’s been part of his bedtime reading since he began his psychic work.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I can’t tell you any more. I have never read it and have no intention of doing so.’

‘Would you allow me, Madame, to hold on to it for two or three days?’

‘Oh! You can keep it if it interests you!’

Thanking her, I put the book back inside my jacket.

‘What do you intend to do with the Marquis’s papers? He must have written up his research in notebooks. Can they be consulted?’

‘I don’t see how reading them would help your investigation,’ retorted the Marquise.

‘In any case, I fear that it will not be possible,’ put in Amélie. ‘My father wrote on loose sheets of paper which he covered in his small, cramped and almost illegible hand. He himself found it hard to make sense of the muddle. I challenge anyone who is not familiar with his handwriting to decipher anything.’

‘So all is lost?’ I exclaimed.

‘When Dr Osty telephoned on Sunday to offer his condolences, he did indicate that the Institut Métapsychique would like to collect and publish my father’s latest work. I offered to put it together. It is true that I am the best person for the job. It will take time, perhaps several months, but I think it should be done.’

The sitting-room door was opened abruptly by Dupuytren, who was supposed to have left a good ten minutes earlier for the village. He had lost his usual composure and seemed out of breath.

Behind him could be glimpsed a tall, slender figure.

‘Super—Superintendent! I must speak to you …’

While Raymond stood in the doorway, trying to get his words out in a hollow voice, the stranger stepped past the Sûreté constable into the room.

‘What a coincidence!’ exclaimed the Marquise, putting an end to
Dupuytren’s laboured report. ‘We were just talking about you a few minutes ago. But do come in, Jacques, please.’

The newcomer, a dashing, slightly haughty young man of about thirty, wore his brown hair slightly longer than was fashionable.

He looked intently at Amélie, whose face had flushed very prettily, and then came over respectfully to greet the Marquise.

Finally, he turned unexpectedly to Fourier and said without preamble: ‘Are you Superintendent Edmond Fourier, from the Sûreté Nationale?’

‘I am indeed.’

‘Superintendent, it’s you I’ve come to see. My name is Jacques Lacroix. I am a journalist with
Paris-Soir
.’