The Baker's Blood Read online

  Outside, he was struck by the massive deployment of troops. The closer he got to Place de Grève, the greater the numbers. Bayonets glittered and mounted dragoons patrolled the streets. In front of the old town hall stood two unusually high gallows – deliberately built that way, the clerk explained solemnly, because the Lieutenant General of Police wanted the execution to be seen from as far away as possible, in order to discourage any attempt to repeat such unacceptable unrest. Mounted troops and foot soldiers were spread out along the route of the procession. Two rows of soldiers surrounded Place de Grève, some turned towards the perimeter, the others towards the gallows.

  Nicolas got out of his carriage, lifting the tails of his robe to join the group of magistrates present. Sanson, in his great red executioner’s uniform, greeted him from a distance with a grim, almost imperceptible smile. Nicolas realised that this would be the first time he would see him perform his official duties. He felt a profound sadness at this, as if faced with a mystery he would have preferred to know nothing about. The condemned men arrived, accompanied by a muted clamour which could have been an expression of pity or a cry for vengeance. The two men yelled that this was a denial of justice and called on the people to riot: it was for the people, they claimed, that they were dying. Right up to the steps of the scaffold, they proclaimed their innocence, after which everything went very quickly.

  Nicolas closed his eyes, and felt in his own flesh the dull thud of two bodies falling and the brief convulsions that followed. A great silence fell over the gathering. Little by little, without a cry, grim and silent, the crowd dispersed. On the way back, he heard many words exchanged. In general, the people felt sorry for the executed men, who had been sacrificed to public order and so that the true culprits, ‘who of course would get away with it’, could sleep easily in their beds. It seemed to him that these accusations, although well founded, nevertheless omitted other responsible parties whose secret intrigues had steered the rioters’ actions. Late that evening, in Versailles, he gave an account of the day to the Duc de La Vrillière, who this time poured out his feelings openly. Before retiring, the King, the minister told Nicolas, had condemned the executions and ordered Monsieur Turgot to ‘spare those persons who had merely been led on and to discover the leaders of this whole movement’.

  Friday 12 May 1775

  Exhausted, covered in mud and his horse’s lather, Rabouine appeared in Rue Montmartre early in the morning. He immediately took a crumpled piece of paper from his shirt front and handed it over. Nicolas read it, sent for a carriage, and set off with Rabouine for the Grand Châtelet. Louis was given the task of feeding and watering the horse before taking it back to the stables of the Messageries. Bourdeau was immediately summoned to the duty office at the Châtelet. After a brief exchange, he set out on a number of specific errands, while the commissioner took a carriage for Versailles, where he arrived late in the morning.

  Ignoring orders, he interrupted an audience by Vergennes, intercepting Sartine who was about to go back to Paris and almost forcing him to accompany him to see La Vrillière. He informed them that he had some serious revelations to make and that a council should be called as soon as possible to examine them. The timely arrival of a message from Vergennes backed up his request.

  Back in Paris by early evening, he met Lenoir, who invited him to dinner at his home. He in turn invited Lenoir to attend the council planned for the following day at the Saint-Florentin mansion in the presence of Sartine. The Chevalier de Lastire was also summoned, given the crucial role he had played in the investigation by tracking down Caminet in Rue des Moineaux. Flattered to be included, Lenoir asked what role his successor would play in the proceedings. On the orders of the Duc de La Vrillière, the new Lieutenant General of Police would be left out of a case most of which had not taken place under his mandate. Lenoir smiled at this elegant excuse for preventing that muddle-headed fellow, thought of as Turgot’s creature, from interfering in such an unusual affair, in which the security of the State and the throne combined with private considerations.

  Saturday 13 May 1775

  Bourdeau appeared in Rue Montmartre very early. He went up to Nicolas’s apartment to give a detailed account of his mission. In return, he received instructions. He immediately set off again, laden with recommendations, especially to organise the transportation of certain suspects to the Saint-Florentin mansion as and when they were required.

  It was agreed that the inspector would come to the meeting place at exactly eleven o’clock. Nicolas exchanged some pleasantries with his son, who was waiting for Naganda and Semacgus in order to visit the Jardin du Roi and see the famous cobra, then walked to Place Louis XV by way of Rue Saint-Honoré. Anyone observing him would have noted that his lips were moving as if he was reciting to himself a lesson learnt or the text of a role in a play. In fact, stimulated by the rhythm of his walk, he was putting together arguments that he would have to develop in front of a cautious audience. There were still a few pieces missing: he hoped that they would appear in the course of the debate to which his words would be sure to give rise.

  Provence, surprised by an event that disturbed the calm of the mansion, greeted the commissioner with the deference due to a man who had cleared his master of a terrible accusation.2 As Nicolas climbed the grand staircase, it seemed to him that the figures in the great painting Prudence and Strength were looking at him ironically. Was fate cocking a snook at him? Today, he would need those two qualities more than ever. He entered the minister’s study.

  As so often, the room was plunged in semi-darkness and there was a raging fire in the great marble hearth. The Duc de La Vrillière, Sartine and Lenoir were conversing in low voices. He bowed to them ceremoniously, then approached the master of the house and whispered in his ear, while Sartine looked on inquisitively, not at all pleased. The minister nodded.

  Nicolas rang for Provence and gave him his instructions. A few seconds before eleven, the Chevalier de Lastire appeared, in his lieutenant-colonel’s uniform, bewigged and without a bandage. Sartine greeted him in a friendly manner and introduced him to the duc and Lenoir.

  ‘Here is one of the best elements of the bureau I created, whose objective you know.’

  ‘All right,’ said La Vrillière, ‘we can start. Marquis, you may proceed.’

  Could there have been a more elegant indication that this session was secret, almost private, and that the minister held the commissioner in great esteem? That at least was how Nicolas took this introduction.

  ‘Gentlemen, you entrusted me with a mission to Vienna, the pretext for which was to deliver the bust of the Queen to her august mother, and the hidden purpose to try and elucidate the circumstances in which Austria had been able to penetrate the King’s secret networks. I could not have imagined that it would lead to Paris, thanks to a domestic crime which I can now prove is linked to the events we have just lived through.’

  ‘The link being flour, I assume?’ asked Sartine, with that irony he rarely managed to abandon.

  ‘Come now!’ grunted La Vrillière. ‘If we interrupt the beginning, we’ll never get to the end! Please go on.’

  ‘The unrest in the kingdom, the apparent nature of the riots and the contradictions that can be detected in them all lead one to suspect, if not a conspiracy, at least a secret mastermind who used the disorder for his own ends. Any other hypothesis, apart from the fact that it would open some alarming prospects, would imply a perverse desire to attack the throne, which reason as well as sentiment refuses to allow.’

  ‘This takes us a long way from Vienna,’ observed La Vrillière, breaking his own instructions.

  ‘On the contrary, Monseigneur, it takes us back there. Several things have become clear to me. On the one hand, out of either arrogance or naivety, Abbé Georgel …’

  ‘Abbé Georgel, naive?’ said Sartine. ‘Are you expecting us to believe that?’

  ‘… secretary to Prince Louis, the King’s ambassador, served as an instrument of the Austria
ns, both as a way of letting us know that they knew our secrets, and in order to pass us documents which were either false or innocuous. The abbé went along with this, because it suited his own interests and those of his friends in Paris, even though it gravely compromised the position of the kingdom. Then there was an attempt on my life, which I was only able to escape thanks to the intervention of the Chevalier de Lastire …’

  Lastire bowed.

  ‘… and the discovery of the remains of Georgel’s political correspondence, containing some quite disturbing predictions of the near future. I believe I can state categorically that there was collusion, whether voluntary or involuntary, between the Austrians and a group of plotters who were doing everything possible, with the help of Georgel, to kill me, or at the least, to keep me as long as possible in Vienna. What had I discovered? Only, doubtless, the truth! Now I must talk about my return to Paris and an incredible sequence of events which I claim were all connected, for one convincing reason.’

  He stood up and began pacing slowly up and down the room, without taking his eyes off his three interlocutors.

  ‘No sooner had I passed the tollgates and entered Paris than I learnt that my son had vanished, led astray by an unknown Capuchin bearing a letter from me, which was in fact a complete forgery. Only a fortunate combination of circumstances stopped the boy from trying to get to London. That would have sent me off in pursuit of him … Then came the death of Master Mourut, a baker and a tenant in Rue Montmartre of Monsieur de Noblecourt, with whom I myself live. The causes of his death in his bakehouse are the source of so many troubling details that we can only conclude it was a murder. The murder weapon appears to be poison, but the method by which the poison was administered, through a wound in the hand, is unusually intriguing. I concentrated above all on this investigation, to the detriment of keeping an eye on the mounting unrest, although I had been vociferous in insisting how serious it was.’

  He looked Sartine in the eyes, but his former chief did not flinch. Lenoir had his head bowed. La Vrillière, who did not miss a thing, was looking at both of them.

  ‘I will spare you the ins and outs.’

  ‘Oh, please do,’ said Sartine, ‘or we might think ourselves in some kind of Arabian Nights tale.’

  ‘It is, however, necessary to look in some detail at the personality of the victim. A baker, yes, but above all a speculator in grain. Suspected of being part of a secret circle of merchants …’

  Lenoir coughed.

  ‘The person in charge of this circle, Matisset, is rumoured to have organised the famine pact. You all know the man, so I shan’t say more about him.’

  ‘A cruel and atrocious slander,’ muttered La Vrillière.

  ‘The aforementioned Mourut once denounced one of his colleagues whose interests clashed with his. This person, whose name was Hénéfiance, was sent to the penal colony at Brest, from where he escaped. It was believed that in doing so he died at sea, although there was no proof. Either because he was acting in accordance with the intentions of his brotherhood, or for some other reason, Mourut did not suffer in any way from this affair. The fact remains that recently he was able to stand in the way of the brotherhood’s plans by hesitating to raise the price of bread. He may have been responding to threats he had received, or he may have been more inclined to wait until there was a real shortage which would have justified an increase. To complete the picture, he had a hidden son whose apprenticeship he pretended to pay, whose spendthrift ways he overlooked, and whom he named in his will. In Rue Montmartre, there is no lack of suspects who might have wished for the baker’s death!’

  ‘Does the association to which he belonged gain from his demise?’ asked Lenoir.

  ‘Certainly, in so far as he was defying them by refusing to contribute to the common chest and acting on his own account. His death might have served as an example to anyone thinking of doing the same.’

  ‘Are you really suggesting,’ cried Sartine, ‘that this powerful secret society couldn’t find other means than murder to force a poor baker to submit to its rules? I observe that we are talking at great length about something which hasn’t even been established!’

  ‘I’ve never suggested, Monseigneur, that this society is responsible for a death which everything leads us to believe is of a criminal nature. I was merely answering Monsieur Lenoir, and I will finish what I have to say: yes, this death does serve the interests of the society.’

  ‘We really are getting off the point. Please continue.’

  ‘Let us consider Mourut’s wife,’ resumed Nicolas. ‘The thing that most drives her is bitterness, and the feeling that she married beneath her. Did she want to start a new life with a younger man? The idea of getting rid of her husband must have occurred to her. Was she an accessory? Are we to believe in her innocence, when on the night of Mourut’s death she was in the arms of Caminet, the apprentice and Mourut’s hidden son?’

  ‘You haven’t told us about him yet!’ cried Lenoir.

  ‘He’s a young rogue. Did he know his parentage? Did he know that there was a will making him the sole heir? Others knew it or suspected it, and they might have informed him. A denizen of brothels, a gambler, a card cheat, spending money like water. Everything about him arouses suspicion. Was he the culprit? Or an accessory? Who knows? Let us come to the two baker’s boys, Parnaux and Friope. The latter is in disguise and turns out to be a girl, and what’s more, pregnant by the former. Caminet discovers their secret and blackmails them. Their position is precarious. If Caminet denounces them, Mourut will throw them out and they will be on the streets without resources. Which may have led them to wish secretly for the death of their master. As for the maid, La Babine, her hatred of her mistress is so great that she would do anything to destroy her, even accuse her of a capital crime.’

  ‘But you, Marquis,’ said La Vrillière, ‘what is your opinion of this case?’

  ‘I must reveal to you a crucial fact. The way in which the baker was murdered implies such preparation that none of those I have mentioned could have been the sole culprits. I’m not saying that they’re not guilty, but I assert that, in order to be so, they must have had help.’

  ‘Another of those strange instruments that appear in your investigations?’ said Sartine, in a decidedly acrimonious tone.

  It seemed to Nicolas that Lenoir’s disgrace and Turgot’s accusations had cut Sartine to the quick and that his mood reflected this. The Duc de La Vrillière was nervously stroking his silver hand, a vital piece of evidence in a previous tragedy.3

  ‘Not at all, Monseigneur. This time, we are dealing with a hamadryad, a king cobra, a snake much feared for its speed and fatal venom.’

  His interlocutors looked at each other in alarm.

  ‘So it was an accident, then?’ said Sartine, the first to recover his composure.

  ‘No, it was a murder, a diabolical murder! Let me explain. All one has to do is collect the venom of the animal and, through a deliberately produced wound, introduce it into the victim’s blood, thus reproducing nature. Thanks to the sagacity of Dr Semacgus, the autopsy revealed a wound in the hand. The rest is pure mechanics. Taking the necessary precautions, wearing thick leather boots and gloves, you seize the snake’s head and force it to bite the edge of a bowl with cloth stretched across it. The venom flows out and you collect it. The next part is child’s play, a handful is enough, a gloved hand of course. A small phial of glass filled with the fatal liquid which breaks, the flesh is gashed and the venom penetrates …’

  ‘Where is this glass? asked Sartine, in surprise.

  ‘It cracked under my feet on the floor of the bakehouse and I picked up the pieces. It took me a long time to understand its meaning. It’s only in the last few days that I made a connection with Semacgus’s hypothesis.’

  ‘And where is the snake?’ asked Sartine.

  ‘You can take a look at it at the Jardin du Roi, where our surgeon has had it put for study purposes.’

  ‘All right,’ said L
a Vrillière. ‘I assume that this discovery led you to the murderer?’

  ‘Of course,’ replied Nicolas, beaming, ‘after many difficulties. The rabbits helped a lot!’

  Sartine stood up and began pacing up and down the room, as was his habit. ‘Commissioner, are you trying to mock us?’

  ‘If only you would let him continue,’ said Lenoir softly. ‘Just let him explain, that’s what he’s here for.’

  ‘The use of such an unusual animal suggests a murderer of remarkable perversity, who premeditated his act for a long time. It implies that he acquired an example of this kind of snake where he lives. I will add other details: it is necessary to keep this dangerous specimen alive at a temperature which suits it and which matches the climate of its home region. Finally, gentlemen, the cobra has the characteristic of only feeding on live prey, hence the presence of rabbits.’

  ‘How horrible!’ cried the Chevalier de Lastire. ‘And how did you track him down?’

  ‘It’s a strange story which combines intuition and chance. I shall try to explain it to you as briefly and precisely as possible. We must go back in time, so that the events will appear to you with greater clarity. Hénéfiance, the man denounced by Mourut, is sent to the galleys, that is, to the penal colony at Brest. There is no public trial, no sentence. He disappears secretly, like so many others …’

  For the second time, Monsieur Lenoir coughed.

  ‘In fact, we have no idea of the true nature of Mourut’s accusations against him, although important interests must have been in play for the reaction to be so severe. At Brest, we know that he is considered something of a rebel and that he learns Breton. That is the necessary condition for organising his escape. I don’t believe in the hypothesis that he escaped by sea. The boat that was found was merely a deception to make it seem as if he had died. I assume that he went across country, got to Lorient or Port-Louis, and from there set sail for the East Indies. Where did he land? What became of him? For the moment, we have no idea. On the other hand, we are certain that he returned to France: the existence of the cobra proves it. On his return, either because he manages to justify himself, or because his denunciation no longer threatens the interests of the society, he resumes relations with it.’