The Unspeakable Crimes of Dr. Petiot (27 page)

PERLÈS
His hat and shirt ended up in your house.

PETIOT
We'll see about that when the time comes.

PERLÈS
You are mentioned in one of the letters he wrote to his wife after his disappearance.

Floriot jumped up, but Petiot motioned for him to resume his place. “Let it go.”

PERLÈS
The gentlemen of the jury will please note that the accused refuses to answer.

This time it was Petiot who jumped up, and Floriot turned to soothe him: “Don't answer. It's too ridiculous.”

Perlès droned on. Petiot scribbled or rested his head on his arms.

LESER
Listen when you're being questioned.

PETIOT
I am listening, but it doesn't really interest me very much.

PERLÈS
My questions interest the jurors.

PETIOT
That's all you ask of life, isn't it?

PERLÈS
You're anti-Semitic.

PETIOT
No, I wasn't before the war. I wasn't during the Occupation. But after everything I went through in Fresnes at the hands of the Gestapo … [his voice breaking] After all that I endured and did for Jews … and now, when I see so many Jews against me, I am beginning to become anti-Semitic.

The proceeding turned to the nine criminals and prostitutes.

PETIOT
Réocreux wanted to go to Argentina with his mistress and a friend. He paid Fourrier twenty-five thousand francs per person. François le Corse came first with a woman. Ten of my men accosted him behind the Madeleine and played the police trick. François said he was from the rue Lauriston [French Gestapo headquarters] and that Lafont would vouch for him. That was the end of François.

LESER
Describe the execution.

Petiot pretended to be scandalized. “Goodness, you have sadistic tastes! I was not there myself, so all I can tell you is that he was hit over the head with a rubber tube filled with sand, lead, and bicycle spokes for flexibility.”

LESER
Were you present at any of the executions?

PETIOT
Yes, about a third of them.

LESER
Details?

PETIOT
Oh! There was Jo le Boxeur. He told us he was a poor bastard gone astray because of an unhappy childhood. His real name was Grosjean or Granjean [this was false]. He offered to betray Lafont. He wanted to be part of our group, and offered us four hundred thousand francs. But we knew that he just wanted to discover the escape route like the others. We were a bit scared of him because he was huge and mean, but when his time came, he fell on his knees and begged. The woman with him pulled out a revolver. She was one hell of a woman.

Adrien le Basque was easy to spot. You only needed to look at his face to see what he was. Monsieur le Président, if you wouldn't mind passing around his photograph, the people can see for themselves. He was tough, and he caught on right away. We had to shove a gun in his ribs to get him into the truck. He was taken to the rue Le Sueur, and he pulled out a knife. One of my men was wounded near the liver before we killed him. It was a real butchery.

DUPIN
It's true that the men worked for the Gestapo, but why did you kill the women?

Petiot shrugged. “What did you want me to do with them?”

DUPIN
That sort of reasoning could take you far.

PETIOT
They whored for the Germans. They would have denounced us.

DUPIN
Have you no respect for human life?

PETIOT
For the lives of Gestapo members? No. Have you?

DUPIN
What gave you the right to judge and execute people?

PETIOT
If there had been a procureur de la République at the time, we would gladly have let him take the job. It was not a very pleasant one.

DUPIN
How much money did you get?

PETIOT
We didn't work for money. We didn't get a penny.

DUPIN
What about the four million Estébétéguy sewed into the shoulder pads of his suit?

PETIOT
Why ask me? You've got his suitcase right there. Why don't you have a look?

The clerk tried to extricate an ivory-colored suitcase with black leather corners. The pile teetered and threatened to fall, and Leser hurriedly called a recess until things were safe.

PETIOT
You'd better post guards in the room; we don't want anybody stealing anything! [Turning to Floriot] Say, if they do find some money, do I get ten percent?

After the recess, the clerk pulled out several suits. Petiot snatched them, waved them in the air, and threw them back at the clerk.

PETIOT
You see? The shoulders are intact. Why should they have hidden money anyway, since they had no intention of leaving?

FLORIOT
Look, Petiot, why don't you give me a chance to do my job? Maître Dupin, why should they have wanted to escape, anyway?

DUPIN
They were criminals. The police were after them.

FLORIOT
You're not serious. You don't honestly believe members of the Gestapo were afraid of French policemen?

Petiot was asked about the groups of Jews sent to him by Eryane Kahan.

PETIOT
Yes, I killed the Basches and the Wolffs. I didn't know they were Jews, but I knew they were German spies sent by Eryane Kahan.

DUPIN
What about the Schonkers—the parents of the Basch couple?

PETIOT
I don't know anything about them, but if it makes you happy, you can put them on my account. They came from the same bunch, and if I had met them I would have killed them.

DUPIN
Why didn't you kill Eryane Kahan if you knew she was collaborating with the Germans?

PETIOT
I hoped she would send me more traitors. If she had sent me a hundred I would have killed a hundred. And she would have been the hundred-and-first.

DUPIN
I don't see how you can call the Wolffs traitors. They were Jews fleeing the Nazis. They were one hundred percent Resistants.

PETIOT
They were Germans.

BERNAYS
They fled Holland on July 12, 1942, and were in constant fear of arrest.

PETIOT
They came from Berlin.

FLORIOT
I have here a report written by Inspector Batut. It says that the Wolffs entered France with a passport issued in Berlin and which is perfectly in order.
*
Frightened refugees do not apply to their government for a passport. When they arrived in Paris they “hid” in a hotel requisitioned by the Germans.

PETIOT
They hid the way I did on my honeymoon. I pulled the sheets over my head and said to my wife, “Try to find me.”

As the court settled into place on the fourth day, Petiot was heard addressing the audience.

PETIOT
A certain General V—Victor, I believe—had been parachuted into the countryside near Lyon. To capture him, the Germans mobilized four hundred prostitutes! Another—

LESER
We are not here to listen to war stories, Petiot, but to discuss the case of Yvan Dreyfus.

PETIOT
Very well. Dreyfus was sent to me through Guélin and Chantin—sad individuals, those two. Guélin got in touch with Fourrier, the barber. It was in Fourrier's apartment that I met Dreyfus. Fourrier had told me that Dreyfus had just been released from the camp at Compi
è
gne and had to get out of the country as quickly as possible. At the time I didn't have very many men; most of them had gone to Lyon for a bit of mopping up. It was obvious that Dreyfus was a Jew. He told me he worked in the radio business, and by questioning him, I could see that he knew what he was talking about. Guélin was a lawyer. I was completely taken in. I said to myself, “This is something different from Jo le Boxeur and his kind. We're going to get this man out of the country.”

LESER
Did you ask him for money?

PETIOT
I never asked for money. It was Fourrier who did. I took Dreyfus toward the Concorde, and on the way Robert Martinetti met us and led Dreyfus in the direction of the Naval Ministry and the Champs-Elysées. I went home.

LESER
What happened to Dreyfus?

PETIOT
I don't know. Maybe he went to South America, maybe my group killed him—I never had the chance to ask. It was because of that traitor that I was arrested the next day. The Germans tried to pretend that Guélin and a certain Beretta had been arrested as well, but they gave themselves away and I knew it was a trap. They asked me what had happened to Dreyfus. I told them, “If he's a Jew, what difference does it make to you that he's disappeared? And if he's an informer, don't worry, you'll find another.” I was risking my neck, Monsieur le Président, but it was fun.

LESER
We're not asking whether you had fun.

FLORIOT
I would like to point out that there is a Gestapo file, dated 1943, furnishing incontrovertible proof that Dreyfus agreed to act as an informer. There is no cause to be sentimental over the fate of Yvan Dreyfus.

VÉRON
What reason do we have to believe a file of which there is only one copy, and no original?

DUPIN
If Dreyfus were still alive, no one would dream of prosecuting him.

PETIOT
Dreyfus was a traitor four times over: a traitor to his race, a traitor to his religion, a traitor to his country, and a traitor—

LESER
Don't moralize, Petiot, it doesn't become you.

The cases had been presented in the chronological order of their discovery. The Knellers came last, and everyone anticipated a dramatic turnabout. How could Petiot accuse a German Jew of collaborating when the victim was only seven years old?

PETIOT
Kneller was one of my patients. I can't tell you what I was treating him for. It was an embarrassing affliction and professional secrecy prevents me from revealing it.

Petiot had said this before. He seemed to think that by hinting that Guschinov, Cumulo, and Kneller had socially shameful diseases he would halt questions about them or possibly discredit them.

PETIOT
Kneller told me he wanted to escape to the free zone. He didn't have very much money. He already owed me two thousand francs for his treatment. I paid for his false papers out of my own pocket and asked him to leave me his furniture as collateral.

DUPIN
And you took it to the rue Le Sueur.

PETIOT
Look, I'm not really very proud of this. They were Germans.

LESER
Germans who fled their country when the Nazis came to power.

PETIOT
They've probably already returned and are getting ready for the next war.

LESER
Oh, leave us alone with your “next war.”

PETIOT
At the rate things are going, we won't have long to wait. Anyway, the Knellers spent the night at the rue Le Sueur. I told them to take two bottles of cognac as a present for the man who would lead them across the border.

DUPIN
There was a child.

PETIOT
Yes, he was a delightful boy.

DUPIN
“Was” is the operative word. His pajamas were found in your house. So was a shirt with Kurt Kneller's initials.

PETIOT
Those must be the pajamas in which he slept that last night. Why would they want to take dirty laundry with them—particularly with their initials on them? And what earthly reason would I have to keep such things?

DUPIN
This is where your system of defense falls apart. During the
instruction
you didn't even dare answer the questions you were asked about the Knellers.

PETIOT
That's not true. I answered plenty of questions. I stopped answering them when I was told to sign a list of three hundred sixty-two questions no one ever asked me.

DUPIN
Judge Goletty showed you the clothing inventory and you refused to comment.

Floriot woke from apparent slumber. “You just say anything that comes into your head,” he said to Dupin. “Petiot never saw that inventory. Show me the interrogation in the dossier that proves he did. You've never even read the dossier. Show me the proof and I'll stop practicing law right now.”

Elissalde tried to whisper to Dupin, but the latter charged ahead in righteous indignation.

DUPIN
Judge Goletty repeated it to me just this morning.

FLORIOT
Then call him to the stand and we'll see.

PETIOT
No one showed me the list or the suitcase. Who knows what has been put in those suitcases?

Leser adjourned the court for fifteen minutes. When they reconvened, there was no further mention of the inventory. Dupin had seen Goletty in the hall and learned that Floriot was right. Dupin would never listen to Elissalde, did not know the details himself, and grew tired of looking foolish. Finally he stopped challenging Floriot on questions of fact altogether, and thus weakened the prosecution even further. The defense walked all over him.

The presentation was over, and the first witness was called. Commissaire Lucien Pinault took the stand. He had worked on the case from the beginning and it was he who had taken over from Massu and led the investigation following Petiot's arrest. He stepped up with confidence, but even before he could begin, Petiot caught him off guard and elicited a testimonial.

PETIOT
Was I known to frequent unsavory places or to associate with criminals or loose women?

PINAULT
No.

PETIOT
Did people think of me as a greedy man who valued money above all else?

PINAULT
No, you seem to have left rather the opposite impression.