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Authors: Kate Taylor

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General, #Biographical

A Man in Uniform (6 page)

BOOK: A Man in Uniform
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“Well, let’s see what you’ve got,” he said, attempting a cheery tone, before he walked around to his desk, opened the envelope, and removed the pages that were inside.

They were a thick pile of newspaper clippings surrounding the arrest, conviction, and deportation of her friend’s husband, a certain Captain Dreyfus. Dubon remembered the case. There had been a furor about it two years previously, but he had completely forgotten the man’s name. The convicted spy had come to be known simply as “the Jewish traitor” and the story eventually had dropped from the papers.

“These are newspaper clippings, Madame.”

“Yes. A great deal was written about the case at the time, and I kept them all. I thought they might be of use to you.”

“Yes, Madame. I expect they will. Very useful. But I was looking for the
legal
file.”

“The legal file?”

“Yes. The documents relating to the court martial.”

“Well, Maître, I don’t …” The widow lowered her eyes. She appeared almost bashful for a moment as though she had been caught in some deception. “That is to say, my friend doesn’t really have access to such material. It is in the safekeeping of her brother-in-law’s lawyers.”

“Not a problem, Madame. Just give me the name of the firm, and I’ll liaise with them.”

“No, Maître. You don’t understand. When I told you my friend does not know of my efforts … that is to say, you must work independently of the family.”

Dubon drummed his fingers lightly on the desk. Really, he did have to find someone else who could help this woman. He supposed the great Déon, the legal giant in the office upstairs, would only send her about her business.

“At least you can tell me the nature of the case against your friend’s husband,” he said, trying to suppress any tone of annoyance. “You did say the army had evidence of a spy.”

The widow paused as though considering her answer and now raised her head.

“Yes, there was a document of some kind, I believe. A document the French intercepted on its way to the German embassy, a letter from someone within the ranks offering to sell secrets to the Germans.” She paused again before continuing more forcefully. “But it was unsigned, Maître. I know that for certain, there was no signature. Why do they think the captain wrote it? They just picked him because they needed someone, they had to pick someone …”

“A scapegoat, you mean?”

“Yes, that’s right, exactly. A scapegoat. Oh, I knew you would understand the case, Maître.”

Dubon tried to nod wisely but sensed they were getting nowhere. The widow seemed to have only the vaguest notions of the evidence against her friend’s husband.

“Did the army perhaps analyze the handwriting of the letter?” he asked, trying to remember what he had read in the press at the time.

“Yes, that’s right. An expert testified, a Monsieur … Ber … Berceau … Bertille …”

“Bertillon?” She nodded at the name. “Bertillon testified! What did he say?”

“You know him, Maître? Is he very respected?”

“Yes, he’s well known in legal circles. He has a system for identifying criminals—well, for identifying anybody, I guess. He goes around the jails measuring their earlobes and the like, noting any moles, that kind of thing.”

“To what purpose?” The widow seemed genuinely intrigued.

“To identify them in relation to any other crimes, I guess. Suppose you had a very thorough description but no name of a culprit in one case, and then you arrested someone for another crime. If you had some kind of cross-referencing system, you might discover both crimes were committed by the same person.”

“It sounds sensible.”

“Yes. I always thought it seemed a bit far-fetched, the earlobes and all that, but my colleagues in criminal justice say it’s revolutionizing the police courts.”

“You doubt the idea that no two sets of human earlobes are alike?” she asked wryly.

“Or more to the point in this case, I doubt that everyone’s handwriting is unique. I had never heard Bertillon was a handwriting expert.”

“The letter does not match the captain’s handwriting. No reason that it should, since he didn’t write it. So, Bertillon testified that the letter did not look like the captain’s handwriting because he was purposely trying to disguise his hand by mimicking that of his brother and …” She paused here, and swallowed as though the theory pained her. “And that of his, uh, that of his wife, too.”

“And your friend and her brother-in-law find that far-fetched?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?” Dubon asked.

“What do I think?” She seemed surprised by the question and let out a small laugh. “I suppose I hadn’t given it much thought because I know it’s not his handwriting.”

“But what of Bertillon’s theory?” Dubon persisted.

“Why would anyone go to the trouble of disguising his handwriting? It’s not as though the Germans would recognize the handwriting of a French officer, nor as though the culprit would expect to get caught. If he was going to sell secrets to the Germans, wouldn’t they want to know his identity anyway, to verify he had the goods? Maybe Bertillon was influenced by the nature of the assignment. If you are shown two handwriting samples and asked if they could possibly have been written by the same hand, you might be more likely to reach a positive conclusion than a negative one.”

“Yes, that’s called leading the witness,” Dubon agreed. “Phrase the question the right way, you’ll get the answer you want.”

“At any rate, I know the captain did not write this document, whatever it is. Anyone who knows him knows he couldn’t betray his country. To prove his innocence you just need to find whoever really wrote the letter.”

She smiled brightly at him now and Dubon felt his stomach flutter. He wasn’t sure if it was the effect of her smile or the tenor of their conversation. Behind her girlish nervousness, she was, it turned out, highly intelligent. She just didn’t know much about legal procedure or have much information about the case. It was a bad combination: if he took on this impossible assignment, she would understand precisely how he had failed her when he inevitably flubbed it. He should find her another lawyer, now.

“Let me read this file, Madame, and see what I come up with.”

“Perhaps I can come and see you next week? Monday?” she asked eagerly.

“Let’s say Wednesday or Thursday. Give me until Thursday,” said Dubon, stalling. “I will try and have a … well, some ideas for you by Thursday.”

FOUR

“There is no one who works in our offices by that name, Monsieur.” The newspaper clerk was polite but firm. Sitting at a discreet desk with an even more discreet sign reading simply
La Presse
, he was stationed beside a small door in one corner of the large marble lobby of an apartment building not far from Dubon’s own offices. Many buildings in the neighborhood gave over the ground floor to commerce, but this one seemed slightly embarrassed that it had to share space with anything as grubby as the press, and the effect was to make Dubon feel even more unsure of his mission.

“But there must be,” he persisted. “His name appears in the paper all the time. Look, I found it just last week.” He pulled out a folded paper. “Here it is, Azimut Martin.”

“Yes, so I see, Monsieur,” said the clerk, not even bothering to turn his head to look at the byline on the page Dubon proffered. “But there is no one here by that name.”

It was Monday and, after a visit to Madeleine on Saturday morning since he had not seen her in three days, Dubon had spent the rest of a rather subdued weekend going through the widow’s fat clipping file.
Perhaps he would be better equipped to recommend a different lawyer if he understood the case a bit more. There were various names writing in various publications as well as many unsigned articles, most of them vigorously denouncing the traitor and congratulating the army on ferreting him out, but it was this Azimut Martin writing in
La Presse
who had a more dispassionate view. The man seemed to know a lot about the case—or knew someone in the military who did. He could tell Dubon if the captain’s case was as hopeless as it looked from the outside and whether anyone had ever successfully appealed a court martial.

“If there is no one here who goes by that name, then who is he?” Dubon demanded of the clerk. “Someone here must know who writes the articles that are published in your paper.”

“Really, Monsieur.” The clerk was now taking umbrage. “I’m sure the editor knows. I mean, Azimut, what kind of name is that?” He snickered a little, for the astronomical term
azimuth
, meaning a path or direction, hardly seemed a likely first name. It dawned on Dubon that he had been naive; these newspaper fellows used pseudonyms, of course.

“Well,” he said loudly, his embarrassment making him belligerent, “if your writers haven’t the courage to use real names, why should your readers believe what you print?”

A lady entering from the street glared as she passed him on her way to a small elevator in the opposite corner of the lobby. “Journalists,” she sniffed.

The clerk, who clearly did not want a scene, was now looking worried, but Dubon was not to be put off. “One way or another, I want to see the fellow, whoever he is,” he said. “I insist I will see your Azimut Martin.”

“And so you shall, Monsieur. Or at least, you shall see me, and I will take responsibility for whatever it is he has written that has so offended you.”

Dubon turned to see a gentleman in a well-tailored gray suit who had entered from the street door and was now extending a hand.

“Who are you?” Dubon asked, shaking his hand.

The man smiled pleasantly. “My name is Chalon. I’m the editor.”
He nodded at the visibly relieved clerk. “Thank you, Roger. I’ll take this gentleman into my office.”

“Of course, Monsieur Chalon,” the clerk said in a studiously neutral tone.

Chalon led Dubon through the door into a hallway where another clerk sat at a desk. The editor greeted this second clerk and pushed through a pair of glass-paneled doors into a single large room where a dozen men sat hunched over desks surrounded by paper. Not only were their desktops covered in reams of the stuff—full sheets, half sheets, and torn scraps—but their in-baskets also overflowed, and more sheets lay at their ankles. In a corner, two figures pounded away on typewriters that produced a loud clatter, while no fewer than three telephones were ringing as they entered. Dubon was just wondering how anyone could get any work done in such mayhem when one of the seated men yelled out something unintelligible and held aloft a sheet of paper while continuing to mark up the page that lay before him on his desk. A clerk repeated the shout and came running, grabbed the sheet from his hand, and ran out the door with it, pushing past Dubon and the editor with the briefest of nods.

“You catch us at a busy time, Monsieur,” Dubon’s guide explained. “We go to press at two, and they still have to set the type. The typesetters and the printers are just round the corner on the rue du Croissant. I imagine that is where Perrin was galloping off to with the first pages. We share the presses at the
Figaro:
they get the early hours of the morning; we take over in the afternoon. Our deadline is eleven.” It was now ten thirty.

“I’m surprised you are at leisure to see me, Monsieur,” Dubon remarked.

“We can’t have irate readers causing disturbances in the lobby,” Chalon said cheerfully. “Normally, I would be chained to my desk at this hour, but I had to step out on a bit of business, a little political question that needed my attention.”

He had, by this point, walked Dubon across the newsroom and into his office. He settled his visitor in a chair before crossing to his own desk and sitting down.

“So, how has our military correspondent angered you, Monsieur?”

He paused, and Dubon took the opportunity to introduce himself.

“My name is Dubon, Maître Dubon. I’m a lawyer on the rue Saint-Honoré. I bear Monsieur Martin, or whoever he is, no ill will. I am simply investigating a small military matter for a client of mine, and your man seems particularly well informed. I would like to meet him, that’s all.”

“I don’t think that will be possible, Maître. Perhaps if you were to write down your questions I could relay them to our correspondent and send you any answers he could provide.”

Dubon was loath to reveal the nature of his business to this newspaper editor without feeling on firmer footing in his inquiries. He had only thought to get a bit of advice from the secretive Martin that he could pass on to the widow before finding her another advocate, and he did not have a line of questioning he could summarize in a note.

“I need to know how I can contact the man so that I might meet him in person,” he repeated, now more concerned with appearing in control than actually pursuing Martin.

“Maître, you must understand that in a journalist’s line of work it is sometimes necessary to keep one’s true identity from readers,” Chalon continued pleasantly. “The correspondent writing under the name Azimut Martin has excellent connections in military circles, connections that might not wish to speak with him if they knew he was writing for
La Presse
. To some sources he may reveal his identity, to others he may prefer to remain anonymous, all the better to serve our readers by offering the most accurate accounts of military news. The man we call Monsieur Martin is not, you will have gathered, permanently in my employ; he works elsewhere and offers my editors articles as he can. We have come to rely on him over the years; he is seldom wrong. May I say, in my turn, that it is not that I do not trust you, but I would not wish to compromise his fine work. If you will leave your card with me, I will pass it on to him and suggest that he contact you.”

Dubon bit his lip. It seemed he would get no further. “Might I have an envelope?” he asked.

“Certainly,” Chalon replied, and after some searching through his
desk drawers, he offered one inscribed with the newspaper’s name and address.

Dubon, meanwhile, pulled out a business card and risked writing on it:
Wishing to speak to you about Captain Dreyfus. Please write or visit at your earliest convenience
. He wrote the name Azimut Martin on the envelope and, as an afterthought, surrounded it with large quotation marks. He slipped his card inside the envelope, sealed it, and passed it across the desk. This was the best he could do. Damn these newspaper types with their self-important games, he thought as he thanked Chalon cordially and left. The pace in the room outside the editor’s office seemed if anything more frantic now, and he crossed it hurriedly, glad to leave the journalists to their cacophony.

BOOK: A Man in Uniform
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