The Nicolas Le Floch affair Page 18

  He opened a drawer in the desk and, after rapidly sifting through the contents, pulled out a small printed poster.

  ‘Let’s see, now … This notice was authorised by Monsieur de Sartine on 13 October 1761 and was intended to inform the public about the workings of the postal service. The office … Ah, here it is. The office corresponding to the residence of Madame de Lastérieux covers the whole of the Faubourg Saint-Germain area, and the box is situated in Rue du Bac, between Rue de l’Université and Rue de Verneuil. On every item of mail three stamps have to appear. The first is a letter distinguishing the different offices and the boxes dependent on them.’

  He pointed to a letter above the address.

  ‘Here it is, the letter F, which does in fact correspond to that area. The following figure indicates the postman who received the letter and is mainly used to check the history of that delivery when necessary. As you know, the post office is often blamed for things that aren’t even its fault. The number of people who take invitations to the post office only after the hour when the particular ceremony was supposed to take place! Or who, in order to avoid trouble, say they’ve sent letters when they haven’t even written them! Or, for one reason or another, deny they ever received them!’

  Nicolas leant over Bourdeau’s shoulder. ‘And the other stamps?’

  ‘On letters which are going out of the area, we find the day of the month. If it’s inside the area, it would have the same letter in a circle, and would be delivered within two hours at the latest – sometimes within half an hour. The others go to be sorted, but the time for delivery is never more than four hours. Now what do we see here? F, that’s the Rue de Verneuil area, 7, the date, and 1, meaning the first of the nine daily collections, which takes place at six in the morning. Therefore, Madame de Lastérieux’s letter should have got to Rue Montmartre by midday at the latest. Why did it never reach Monsieur de Noblecourt’s house? I note that your friend, no doubt automatically, underlined the part of the address which mentioned that you were a commissioner at the Châtelet. The mail must have been sorted too quickly, and the letter ended up here. And there you have it. I think you’re in a hurry to report to Monsieur de Sartine, so I’ll leave you now. We’ll meet at five. Sanson will be with us by then and we can go to Vaugirard together. A carriage is waiting for you downstairs.’

  Nicolas made a gesture to stop Bourdeau.

  ‘No,’ the inspector said. ‘You go alone. Secrets should remain secret.’

  On the way out, Nicolas said goodbye to Old Marie. He found a carriage at the entrance. The snow was beginning to fall vertically, gradually transforming the mud in the streets into a dark river in which the pedestrians splashed about. He rode past the black-clad hosts of the law heading for the Châtelet and the Palais de Justice. Their comical procession, a jumble of bands, robes and case files, skidded on the slippery ground, followed by a crowd of litigants, their noisy chatter rising to the upper floors of the houses. Here and there, hired men carried terrified ladies on their backs across the flooded streets. A worker carrying a huge oval mirror on his back stumbled and almost fell and, as he did so, Nicolas saw the swaying reflection of his own carriage on the polished surface.

  It had not taken long for the case to obsess him again. It had become so complicated that it was impossible now to deal with each of its elements by itself. They were all linked in a web of crime and dissimulation. What would they discover in the Seine, if they discovered anything at all? What was the meaning of that letter with its bizarre, affected style? Did its tortuous sentences truly express his mistress’s last feelings towards him, or … He did not dare formulate the absurd theories jostling in his mind. And what of that nameless person who had given Casimir advice? Why was the slave, so eloquent on other matters, obstinately refusing to reveal his identity, even if it meant drawing further suspicion on himself, and perhaps sending him to the scaffold?

  When he reached Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, he was, as usual, admitted without delay to the office of the Lieutenant General of Police. Monsieur de Sartine was writing. A blazing fire crackled in the hearth: an indication that the magistrate was feeling the cold. Absorbed in his correspondence, he did not look up for several minutes. Nicolas realised that it was already well into the morning, past the hour for the presentation of wigs. He regretted the fact that he had not had time to bring back some new model for his chief, perhaps one of those he had glimpsed in that splendid shop to which he had paid a lightning visit during his stay in London.

  Sartine’s gaze came to rest on him. ‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘we are pleased with you, and even more pleased to see you safe. Perhaps you now have some idea of how difficult these secret affairs are. You seem pensive.’

  That ‘Monsieur’ had been neither aggressive nor sarcastic, but full of restrained affection.

  ‘To tell the truth, Monsieur,’ replied Nicolas, ‘I was thinking what a pity it is that I saw a wig-maker’s shop in London but that the King’s business did not leave me the opportunity to choose one for your collection.’

  The Lieutenant General’s eyes creased with irony. ‘Your servant, Monsieur! The very idea of such thoughtfulness fills me with gratitude. Give me the address and Monsieur de Guines, the ambassador, will see to it.’

  ‘Alas, the affairs you mentioned—’

  ‘Didn’t give you time to make a note of it. The Chevalier d’Éon will find it for me. In the meantime, tell me all about your adventures.’

  Monsieur de Sartine was in such a good mood that Nicolas was encouraged to launch into a lively and colourful account. He was good at finding the appropriate words to describe things: it was a gift on which he had staked his career, one day in 1761, in the small apartments at Versailles, before the King and Madame de Pompadour. The memory of that first day had been the basis of the monarch’s appreciation of ‘young Ranreuil’. Did he owe this talent to those evenings in his childhood in Brittany, spent gorging on pancakes and cider, listening enthralled to an old fortune teller? Now it was Sartine who listened patiently and attentively, his chin on his fist.

  ‘My one regret,’ concluded Nicolas, ‘is that I failed with Morande.’

  ‘Don’t complain, my dear fellow, you narrowly escaped death. It’s easier to accumulate dangers in our profession than resounding successes. You don’t yet know the best of it: Morande finally yielded.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, a letter sent from London at about the same time you left arrived yesterday, informing me that the little crook, impressed by your firmness and your reluctance to bargain – I don’t think you made any actual proposal, did you? – said he was ready to compromise. If you’d tried to deceive him, you would have spoilt everything! Instead, you mounted a direct assault, without prevarication, just like your father.’

  Nicolas nodded, touched by the comparison.

  ‘It made the fellow so anxious, so racked with dark thoughts, so convinced, in a word, that your determination meant terrible reprisals were on their way, that he immediately made contact with our agent to say that he was prepared to admit that he was at fault. He agreed to receive a new emissary, provided the latter had some monetary propositions to make, in particular the paying-off of his debts and, possibly, a pension. In return, he would undertake to burn all copies of his pamphlet, with all the guarantees which have to be made when one has a fish like that at the end of one’s line!’

  ‘I’m very pleased.’

  ‘His Majesty, with whom I spoke last night, is singing your praises, as is a lady who, alas, saw fit to meet you in the woods at Chantilly. Anyway, thank God, here you are! But don’t expect me to tell you who was behind those attempts on your life. That’s all shrouded in a fog of mystery, and I know quite a few people who’d like the fog to be even thicker. The King wasn’t at all happy to hear that you, his representative, had been attacked. He ’s going to look into the matter.’

  ‘Let’s hope he finds out something,’ sighed Nicolas. ‘The Chevalier d’Éon gave me a messag
e for His Majesty about Mr Flint and his affairs in China.’

  Sartine nervously adjusted his wig – a movement that suggested to Nicolas that his chief did not like being confronted with a matter about which he knew nothing.

  ‘You’ll see the King yourself,’ he said. ‘He needs distracting, and I’m sure you can do that. That said, what of the sad affair of Rue de Verneuil?’

  It seemed to Nicolas that his chief had passed rather quickly over the attempts on his life, but he knew that Sartine also had to safeguard his own position, subject as he was to the vicissitudes of favour and the threats posed by secret cabals. He commented on the latest developments without going into detail, since the Lieutenant General was not especially interested in the nitty-gritty of an investigation. Only results mattered. The last thing he mentioned was Madame de Lastérieux’s letter. He held it out to him, but Sartine waved it away.

  ‘There’s no point, I already know the gist.’

  ‘Inspector Bourdeau is always very quick off the mark!’ said Nicolas, a touch sourly.

  Sartine smiled. ‘How unjust you are! I don’t have my information from him. Even if I had, what of it? It’s his duty to tell me everything. But the fact is, as you should know, I’m in a position – a unique position – to be able to look at private correspondence for the good of the State and the security of His Majesty. It’s a privilege and a burden.’

  He had risen and was striding up and down his office, suddenly irritable.

  ‘It so happens that it was my own office – what a shallow populace calls the cabinet noir – that brought me this intriguing letter. Intriguing on two counts – firstly, because it was from an agent in the pay of the police – Madame de Lastérieux – and secondly, because it constituted an important piece of evidence in a secret procedure currently in progress in which a man who enjoys my trust finds himself, whether he likes it or not, heavily implicated. You have nothing to prove to me. I’m not like the Criminal Lieutenant, who as usual, as you have seen, is being … let’s say, cautious. Had you omitted to mention this letter, either inadvertently or out of a deliberate desire to conceal the truth, neither the King nor myself would have been able to continue protecting you. But we were right to do so, as your attitude confirms. Even Monsieur Testard du Lys, who, in view of your position, has been making this into an affair of State, will give his nihil obstat to your participation in the ongoing investigation. Unless,’ he said with a laugh, ‘this is only the Machiavellian ploy of a guilty man calculating that it’s to his advantage to feign honesty. Don’t make that face, I’m only joking.’

  ‘I spoke without thinking,’ sighed Nicolas.

  ‘That’s what’s so delightful about you! I can well understand how the past two weeks might have tested the most steadfast of men. In my opinion, you’ve conducted yourself extremely well and I’m overjoyed to have reduced the Criminal Lieutenant to silence. Continue your investigations and keep me informed.’

  *

  Leaving Monsieur de Sartine’s office, Nicolas passed a man climbing the stairs four at a time, whistling an opera aria. He recognised him as Monsieur Caron de Beaumarchais, factotum to the King’s daughters and a man very much in fashion. They had already met at Madame Adélaïde’s. He made him promise to have dinner with him one evening at his convenience. He felt spontaneously drawn to this frank and amusing figure. He got back to his carriage. He had decided not to eat anything, in anticipation of the evening at Semacgus’s house. Instead, he would go and see Master Vachon, his tailor, in Rue Vieille-du-Temple. His eventful journey to England had taken its toll of his clothes, which would otherwise have had a long future ahead of them. He was fond of his clothes and always found it heartbreaking to part with them. To make up for this inconvenience, he would now order two of each garment.

  Master Vachon was the same as ever: increasingly stooped and diaphanous, but still talkative and still manifesting that authority which allowed him to reign, half cantankerously, half paternally, over a troop of apprentices who mocked him but were ready to pull their needles in the right direction at the slightest stern look from the master. While taking Nicolas’s measurements – and remarking ironically that he was getting bigger – the tailor related various pieces of Parisian gossip. Nicolas chose his fabrics, a lustrous russet satin for the coat and a darker wool for the cloak. The two colours went well together. After a while, Master Vachon drew him for a moment into a corner of his shop where no one could hear them.

  ‘Commissioner,’ he began, ‘in these difficult times of ours I get to hear many things. There is increasing discontent with His Majesty, and terrible rumours being spread about him. Oh, I can guess what you’re thinking. It isn’t that: the people are accustomed to the King’s private conduct, and are no longer shocked by it. No, what they’re saying is that he has his own private treasury and that, in order to give his mistress all she asks for, he’s increasing it by speculating on stocks like a merchant, but with fewer risks because, having inside knowledge about the state of the finances, he knows when the rises and falls will occur. They say these speculations revolve around the market in wheat and that His Majesty has established a secret monopoly, which is why there are shortages and price rises. I think you should tell Monsieur de Sartine. I felt obliged to bring this to your attention, as a good citizen and a loyal subject.’

  Nicolas thanked the tailor, who walked him wearily to the door. What he had heard did not surprise him. He noted sadly that they confirmed what the informers and spies of the Lieutenancy General had been reporting for months without being able to silence the rumour or determine its origin. Every evening, he knew, the items of gossip gathered in public places and drawing rooms were carefully sorted, put in order and written down in Monsieur de Sartine’s back office, to be conveyed later, in extract form, to those ministers who might be interested by such tittle-tattle.

  The narrow network of alleyways situated between the Marais and the central market, where even a single carriage had difficulty passing, slowed down his journey back to Rue Montmartre. Some alleys were so narrow that Nicolas would have been able to touch the houses and read, each time he stopped, the countless posters on the walls: decrees, advertisements by charlatans, decisions of the Parlement, verdicts of the Châtelet, auctions of property seized by the law, monitories, appeals to find lost dogs and cats, death notices, the poster for a special performance of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso by a Sicilian Teatro di Puppi, and, finally, ten copies of the address of a maker of elastic trusses. Monsieur de Sartine’s agents made sure that most of these were torn down by the following day, to make way for others and to avoid them ending up littering the roadway. In this way, the hands that put them up undid their own work a few hours later by tearing them down.

  As he rode, cataracts of snow and water fell on the cab, frightening the horses, which swerved, thus happily avoiding the fragments of tile, plaster and even lead which had fallen from the roofs during the storm. Despite the atrocious weather, Nicolas was amused by the Parisians’ habit of stopping and staring at any object that caught their interest as they walked. A man in the street only had to look up at some vague point above his head for several others to do the same, searching for whatever might have drawn his attention. The people of Paris might be touchy and quick to take offence, thought Nicolas, but deep down they were happy and easily amused.

  For a moment, he was tempted to order the coachman to turn on to Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré so that he could make an impromptu visit to the Dauphin Couronné. He saw himself, with all the dignity of a man wounded by a lie, asking the crucial question of a panic-stricken La Satin. So vivid was his imagination that he was able to experience scenes from his life before they had even taken place. He heard himself speaking and listening to his friend’s replies. These mental images sometimes became so complex that his tormented mind would choose variations, carefully sorting the elements like those in a police file, triggering changes of tone, unexpected turns, happy or calamitous conclusions. He would
imagine these fictions with such intensity that sometimes the scenes merged together depending on his mood or his unconscious desires. Worried about his growing excitement, he finally persuaded himself to cease a cruel game which was rubbing salt into a private wound he did not yet recognise as such, even though the pain of it was real enough. Once again, he suppressed deep inside himself this nagging desire to know that had been with him ever since his conversation with La Présidente in a street in London. He would have to do something eventually, but not now.

  In Rue Montmartre, he found Monsieur de Noblecourt in his library, sitting in a large tapestried armchair, leafing through a calfskin-bound folio he had set down on a gaming table. In his grey coat, his hair combed and powdered, he seemed rejuvenated. He smiled when he saw Nicolas.

  ‘How angry I am with myself for being born so late!’ he sighed.

  ‘That’s a strange statement,’ said Nicolas. ‘What’s the reason for it?’

  ‘If I’d been born fifty years earlier, I could have seen Molière act in Le Misanthrope! I find today’s plays so insipid, apart perhaps from those of Marivaux, so true to life in their delicate portrayal of human passions, but even they are already of another time, the time of my youth. And even with Marivaux, I have my reservations. I find him too inclined to fling ideas together in such a way that the effect is needlessly subtle. I agree with Monsieur Rousseau: we shouldn’t try to make life too subtle, for then all ends in tears.’