The Saint-Florentin Murders Read online

  Nicolas had heard enough. To allay suspicion, he made another pointless speech about the epidemic, drank a few glasses of wine, ate some walnuts, then took leave of his host. Longères, delighted by his visit, made him promise firmly to return. He vowed that everyone – God bless the young King – would do their duty and strive to preserve the city from the anticipated calamity. If anyone grumbled, he himself would plunge his pitchfork into their backside. All the same, he had to point out, without wishing anyone any harm, that the butchers shouldn’t be forgotten, and that the police should check that they really had certificates and receipts from those who sold them their animals. Not to mention their obligation to slaughter within twenty-four hours after purchase.

  Nicolas promised everything that was asked for.

  Once in the street, he regretted having paid his fare and dismissed the cab. He found himself forced to go back to Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine to find transport. Paris awaited him, and a projected visit to the major-domo’s family. But before that, he planned to question Jean Missery’s sister-in-law. Once past the Bastille, he would take Rue Saint-Antoine, then Rue Saint-Honoré as far as the junction with Rue Saint-Jacques, then turn right into Rue Planche Mitray, a true source of pestilence where you had to hold your nose, cross Pont Notre-Dame and the Petit Pont, carry on as far as Rue de l’Estrapade until, behind the Sainte-Geneviève Abbey, and not far from Place de la Vieille Estrapade, he reached Rue des Postes, where the house of the Daughters of Saint Michel was located.

  He hailed a spruce-looking, freshly polished two-wheel carriage. He called out his destination to the coachman, then lost himself in his reflections, his eyes half closed. His little trip to Popincourt had proved highly instructive. Not only had he fulfilled to the letter his mission regarding the preservation of the cattle of Paris – or had that been only a pretext to send him in search of information about Marguerite Pindron? – but he had also learnt a great deal. When you thought about it, it was obvious that, as far as the anthrax was concerned, anyone else could have done the job as well as he had. Did that mean that Lenoir knew more than he had revealed? Was there, in spite of appearances, some kind of collusion between the minister and the head of police? Was the Duc de La Vrillière trying to control the progress of the commissioner’s investigation? And yet, if Sartine was to be believed … But was he telling the truth or did he have some cards up his sleeve which changed the whole game? He shouldn’t get carried away, thought Nicolas, shouldn’t let his imagination run away with him. Take the bare facts as they came, sift through them, compare them, follow the new leads that were opened up. The Pindron girl had left her family home to escape an arranged marriage. Everything suggested that, having fallen into debauchery, she had wandered the streets of Paris before becoming, after who knew what encounters and what rebuffs, a chambermaid to the Duchesse de La Vrillière. The contradictions, heightened by the fog of hatred among this group of servants, a veritable battlefield of rivalries and jealousies, were endlessly intriguing. Nicolas vowed to take a closer look at the tangle of relationships among the occupants of the Saint-Florentin mansion. He even envisaged drawing up, in the form of a written document, a detailed picture of the testimonies they had so far gathered. He would also have to dispatch an officer to question the Vitry family, apparently market gardeners in Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The smallest piece of information would help to reconstruct the whole mosaic. He himself would go to Bicêtre, which he did not yet know, despite Monsieur de Sartine’s recommendations to him to visit it. He recalled the grave air he had adopted whenever he happened to mention this establishment, which, he said, was comparable in horror to the hell described by Dante.

  The coachman’s cries of encouragement to his horse drew Nicolas from his meditations. The slope leading up to Place de la Vieille Estrapade, the highest point in the city, was steep. The services of the Lieutenancy of Police had recently examined a project for a hydraulic system to bring river water from the Port à l’Anglais with a view to building a public drinking fountain. Owing to the problems of transportation, the price of water was constantly increasing, and was a burden on the poorest inhabitants. Admittedly, in the past few decades, especially under the late King, this type of construction had proliferated in the city. The carriage set off again with difficulty, just in front of the sparkling sign of the monumental mason Caignard, who, it was said, could supply all kinds of tombs and epitaphs. At the entrance to Rue des Postes, he spotted the office where those Parisians who ventured out at night could hire children to carry lanterns for them. These lanterns were duly numbered, and their carriers registered by the police, who issued them with a stamped licence. Naturally, these young people also served as spies, and their daily reports were part of the gigantic spider’s web whose threads all led back to the Lieutenant General of Police. Nicolas saw a group of austere buildings in the middle of which there rose a grim openwork steeple. His cab stopped, and the coachman pointed out the house of the Daughters of Saint Michel.

  This time, Nicolas made sure he asked the driver to wait. Knowing what these men were like, he promised him a princely tip if he found him waiting faithfully at his post. In the corner of a massive door, he saw a handle which he supposed set off a distant bell, and was surprised, when he pulled the mechanism, to hear a metallic clanging from somewhere nearby. Some time passed before the wicket was opened. He introduced himself and stated that he wished to see Sister Louise of the Annunciation. The wicket closed again with a snap and his wait began. The door opened at last. The figure of a tall nun appeared, silhouetted against the light. She admitted him, then carefully closed the door behind him with a suspicious glance at the outside world. She glided rather than walked along the waxed tile floor of a long dark corridor, lit only at its end by a high stained-glass window depicting Saint Michel slaying the dragon. He was introduced into a kind of parlour on the left, where the only furniture consisted of two armchairs with old-fashioned upholstery.

  ‘I am listening, Commissioner. I am Sister Louise of the Annunciation.’

  The high-pitched voice took him by surprise. Behind him, a little slip of a woman had entered without a sound, so short that he had to lower his eyes to see her. She was as tall as she was wide, almost a dwarf, like one he had seen dancing with a macaque in aristocratic dress at the Saint-Germain fair. She had a puffy, blotchy oval face, and her half-closed eyes were deep-set, as if sunk into the skin. She had full lips, and was smiling vaguely. In her hands, she was twisting a rosary with black beads. With a movement of her head, she motioned him to sit down.

  ‘Sister,’ said Nicolas, ‘I think that you know of the events which justify my presence and oblige me to disturb your holy work?’

  ‘The world, Monsieur, is beyond these walls. Nothing can disturb the peace of this place. Are we to suppose that your arrival has some connection with one of our boarders? These sinners sometimes feel the tug of the devil long after they have come here.’

  ‘Don’t worry, that’s not what this is about. Have you had any news of your brother-in-law, Jean Missery, major-domo to the Duc de La Vrillière?’

  The nun’s slit-like eyes narrowed even more, like those of a cat pretending to sleep. ‘I have hardly seen him since the death of my sister, except at masses marking the anniversary. And even before that …’

  She left the sentence unfinished. Nicolas said nothing: he was good at waiting.

  ‘I always deplored that marriage,’ she resumed. ‘My sister wouldn’t listen to me. Alas, it killed her.’

  He could not let such a statement pass unchallenged. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘That the Lord did not bless it and that its still-born fruit killed my sister.’

  She opened her hands and the rosary fell, but she did not take any notice. Nicolas picked it up and handed it to her. She resumed speaking.

  ‘But do you think he was stricken with remorse and contrition? Of course not. I doubt that he deserved such grace. At first, he feigned grief, and those who did not kn
ow him may have believed he was sincere. However, in the heat of charity, apparent zeal is only a passing mood, and not a movement of that same grace. It is only too true that the Lord knows our powerlessness … Perdition to him through whom scandal arrives! And as for us, we complain in secret that we are not permitted to condemn out loud, for one does not work for one’s own salvation by neglecting that of one’s brothers …’

  What on earth, thought Nicolas, did this obscure speech mean? What was the point of such a pompous declaration? What dark resentment led her to these words full of bitterness and innuendo? He would have to bring her down to earth.

  ‘Sister, Jean Missery was stabbed last night.’

  ‘He’s dead, then,’ she said immediately.

  He did not reply. The sentence was ambiguous. Was it a question, a statement, a kind of challenge, or was she trying to confirm something she already knew, something she had long wished for?

  ‘I shall accuse myself in public confession of the joy that I feel,’ she resumed. ‘May God have mercy on him: “He puts no trust in His holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in His sight.”’

  He still could not determine whether or not she knew anything about what had happened. He would not have sworn to it.

  ‘Don’t you find your resentment quite surprising, Sister, you who wear that robe of pity and compassion?’

  Her little eyes glittered with a cold light, and her voice turned very shrill. ‘Pity? Compassion? Did he ever have any towards my sister? Did he ever show the least respect for her memory? He preferred to wallow in the mud, and let the beast immediately awaken in him …’ She was wringing her hands. ‘I say this quite bluntly: even if he had asked God to free him from the evil passions that possessed him, do you think that deep down he wished that prayer to be granted? What he wanted, he only half wanted. And to only half want something, means, as far as the result is concerned, not to want it at all.’

  ‘I understand your emotion, Sister, but what exactly are you referring to?’

  ‘I’m referring to the various criminal attachments in which my brother-in-law indulged after my sister’s death. His heart was constantly occupied by the perverse concerns of his base being. He put all his senses at the service of his animal desires, adding the scandal of his dissolute conduct in public. Even the walls of this house were shaken by it.’

  ‘And for these very human sins, did he deserve to lose his life? Could he not have made amends?’

  She was looking at him suspiciously. ‘There are a great many minds, my brother, with which there is no other stand to take but that of silence and disapproval. Whatever you say or do, you will never change them: “If your eye offends you, pluck it out, if your hand offends you, cut it off.”’

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Nicolas, ‘is this hatred for a man who no longer had any connection with you.’

  ‘My sister’s marriage verged on misalliance. Consider that. To marry a man who was nothing but a servant!’ The little woman rose to her full height.

  ‘Would it not have shown humility to consent to a union sanctified by a sincere mutual affection?’ asked Nicolas.

  ‘You speak of it very lightly. Not content with getting his hands on a large dowry, he inherited from my sister a substantial fortune which would return to its legitimate source if he died.’

  ‘Its legitimate source?’

  ‘Us, the Duchamplans.’

  Nicolas paused, then said, ‘Sister, at this juncture I must ask you to clarify a certain number of points.’

  She sat down, put her rosary back inside her sleeve, and her face reflected a kind of benign placidity.

  ‘The words of the Gospel,’ Nicolas went on, ‘edifying as they may be, are not enough to illuminate more material facts. How were you kept informed of the dissolute life your brother-in-law had been leading since he became a widower?’

  She shook her head in disgust, as if to say that these debauches had started even before her sister’s death, perhaps when they were first married. ‘My family kept me informed, as was only right: I am the eldest …’

  ‘I must insist. You appear very familiar with everyday life at the Saint-Florentin mansion.’

  She looked at him in silence, with a contemptuous expression on her face, as if he were talking nonsense.

  ‘Madame,’ Nicolas went on, ‘I remind you that you must answer the questions of a magistrate engaged in a criminal investigation. I have the power to arrest you if I consider that you are not being as honest as I would have hoped. Do you understand that?’

  ‘Do not threaten me, Monsieur. Do I, a poor Daughter of Saint Michel, need to remind you that your authority ceases where that of the Church begins?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘That, as a nun of this house, I am dependent on the abbot of Sainte-Geneviève, who has rights of lower, medium and high justice in the jurisdiction of his bailiwick. And please don’t tell me that these rights were suppressed by Louis the Great in 1674. Later edicts have restored them to their legitimate holder.’

  ‘I see, Sister, that you are very clever, argumentative, and a stickler for the rules, with a degree of knowledge hardly in keeping with the habit that you wear!’

  ‘My late father, Commissioner, was a sealer of verdicts at the Châtelet.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but why argue in such an acerbic tone? You are not incriminated, as far as I know. I haven’t forgotten my lessons, and I know that the monarchy prevails over all other authorities, although there is little danger that we will reach that point. There remain, nevertheless, some flaws in your reasoning. You’re forgetting a vital detail, for example: the restoration of the rights of justice of which you speak is clearly defined in the texts as referring only to enclosures, courtyards and cloisters. Now, as far as I know, your house is located in Rue des Postes and not within the limits of the abbey. Therefore you are within my legitimate power.’

  She immediately bristled, purple with rage. ‘I shall appeal to the ecclesiastical authorities, I shall appeal to the Archbishop.’

  ‘I know Monseigneur de Beaumont very well. In his position, he can hardly be expected to listen to an insignificant nun who rejects the justice of her King.’

  She grew even more purple with outrage. ‘I shall not yield.’

  ‘Well, persist in this obstruction and I shall go to a magistrate and request a monitory, compelling you to reveal to your superiors everything you know about this case. After three monitories without response, you will be excommunicated.’

  ‘All right, what do you want to know?’

  ‘Who kept you informed of Jean Missery’s conduct in the Saint-Florentin mansion?’

  ‘It is painful for me to have to mention a highly placed lady, the Duchesse de La Vrillière, who, as you seem to be unaware …’ here, her voice became ingratiating, even mocking, ‘… is a benefactress of this house. Without her charitable support, how could we hope to care for our unfortunate boarders?’

  ‘So it was she who kept you informed?’

  ‘She told me that for months he had been completely besotted with a little hussy, a girl of the streets who had entered her service. The duchesse had rejected her at first, but her husband had insisted. It made her weep with humiliation, and in her pain she came to our altar to pray for the duc’s soul. I would pray with her.’

  ‘So the duc, too …’

  Sister Louise of the Annunciation closed her eyes with a sorrowful air.

  ‘Didn’t your brothers try to persuade the widower to behave in a more decent fashion?’ Nicolas asked.

  ‘The older one is spineless and the younger one lives a carefree life. As for my sister-in-law, she just keeps complaining instead of giving me nephews.’

  ‘One last thing,’ said the commissioner. ‘What were you doing on the night of Sunday to Monday, let’s say from seven o’clock in the evening to seven o’clock in the morning?’

  ‘I was sleeping in my cell, until prime. Everyone here will confirm that.
’

  ‘I shall leave you now, Sister, but I would ask you to think carefully and see if you can recall anything that might be of interest to me.’

  He took his leave of her. At the door, he turned and saw her standing a few paces behind him, on the alert. He could not resist a parting shot. ‘I almost forgot. Your brother-in-law is not dead. His wound was only superficial. His mistress, on the other hand, was indeed murdered.’

  She swivelled round like a top and disappeared through another exit, while the extern sister who had accompanied him came running to open the door.

  ‘Why should Sister Louise run away like that?’ he asked. ‘I thought she was more concerned with decorum.’ He thought he heard a little laugh in response. ‘Sister,’ he continued, ‘when was the last time the Duchesse de La Vrillière visited your establishment?’

  ‘Madame de Saint-Florentin? It’s strange you should mention her. She was here just this morning and had a long talk with Sister Louise …’ She burst out laughing. ‘She’s going to get up on her high horse again because of that, and … we’ll be the ones to pay.’

  ‘At what hour does the community retire?’

  ‘At eight o’clock.’

  ‘Sister Louise, too?’

  ‘Oh, no, she has privileges. Her family has given so much money to this house that she sometimes dines in town.’

  ‘On what days?’

  ‘On Sunday evenings. With her brother, they say.’

  ‘What about last Sunday?’

  ‘Yes, she was out that night.’

  He thanked her and left. In Rue des Postes, he found his coachman waiting impatiently. Night was already falling: he had to join Bourdeau. He was still reeling from what he had just learnt. So Louise of the Annunciation knew everything! She had tried to deceive him. What a dissembler! With that air of hers that would have made the most resolute slink away, she had hidden behind legal technicalities and taken him where she had wanted him to go. She had led him up the garden path, making him look a fool, much to her own amusement.