Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer (20 page)

Grenouille set to work with professional circumspection. He opened his knapsack, took out the linen, pomade and spatula, spread the cloth over the blanket on which he had lain, and began to brush on the fatty paste. This job took time, for it was important that the oil be applied in thinner or thicker layers depending on what part of the body would end up lying on a particular patch of the cloth. The mouth and armpits, breasts, genitals and feet gave off greater amounts of scent than, for instance, shins, back and elbows; the palms more than the backs of the hands; eyebrows more than eyelids, etc.—and therefore needed to be provided with a heavier dose of oil. Grenouille was creating a model, as it were, transferring on to the linen a scent diagram of the body to be treated, and this part of the job was actually the one that satisfied him most, for it was a matter of an artistic technique that incorporated equally one’s knowledge, imagination and manual dexterity, while at the same time it anticipated on an ideal plane the enjoyment awaiting one from the final results.

Once he had applied the whole potful of pomade, he dabbed about here and there, removing a bit of oil from the cloth here, adding another there, retouching, checking the greasy landscape he had modelled one last time—with his nose, by the way, not with his eyes, for the whole business was carried on in total darkness, which was perhaps yet another reason for Grenouille’s equably cheerful mood. There was nothing to distract him on this night of new moon. The world was nothing but odour and the soft sound of surf from the sea. He was in his element. Then he folded the cloth together like a tapestry, so that the oiled surfaces lay against one another. This was a painful procedure for him, because he knew well that despite the utmost caution certain parts of the sculpted contours would be flattened or shifted. But there was no other way to transport the cloth. After he had folded it up small enough to be carried under his arm without all too much difficulty, he tucked spatula, scissors and the little olive-wood club in his pockets and crept out into the night.

The sky was clouded over. There were no lights burning in the inn. The only glimmer on this pitch-dark night was the winking of the lighthouse at the fort on the Île Sainte-Marguerite, over a mile away to the east, a tiny bright needlepoint in a raven-black cloth. A light, fishy wind was blowing from the bay. The dogs were asleep.

Grenouille walked to the back dormer of the threshing shed where a ladder stood propped. He picked the ladder up and, balancing it vertically, three rungs clamped under his free right arm, the rest of it pressed against his right shoulder, he moved across the courtyard until he was under her window. The window stood ajar. As he climbed the ladder, as easily as a set of stairs, he congratulated himself on the circumstances that made it possible for him to harvest the girl’s scent here in La Napoule. In Grasse, where the house had barred windows and was tightly guarded, all this would have been much more difficult. She was even sleeping by herself here. He would not have to bother with eliminating the maid.

He pushed up the casement, slipped into the room and laid down his cloth. Then he turned to the bed. The dominant scent came from her hair, for she was lying on her stomach with her head pressed into the pillow and framed by the crook of her arm—presenting the back of her head in an almost ideal position for the blow by the club.

The sound of the blow was a dull, grinding thud. He hated it. He hated it solely because it was a sound, a sound in the midst of his otherwise soundless procedure. He could bear that gruesome sound only by clenching his teeth, and, after it was all over, standing off to one side stiff and implacable, as if he feared the sound would return from somewhere as a resounding echo. But it did not return, instead stillness returned to the room, an increased stillness in fact, for now even the shuffle of the girl’s breathing had ceased. And at once Grenouille’s tenseness dissolved (one might have interpreted it more as a posture of reverence or some sort of crabbed moment of silence) and his body fell back to a pliable ease.

He tucked the club away and from here on was all bustle and business. First he unfolded the impregnating cloth, spread it loosely on its back over the table and chairs, taking care that the greased side not be touched. Then he pulled back the bedclothes. The glorious scent of the girl, welling up so suddenly warm and massive, did not stir him. He knew that scent, of course, and would savour it, savour it to intoxication, later on, once he truly possessed it. But now the main thing was to capture as much of it as possible, let as little of it as possible evaporate; for now the watch-words were concentration and haste.

With a few quick snips of his scissors, he cut open her nightgown, pulled it off, grabbed the oiled linen, and tossed it over her naked body. Then he lifted her up, tugged the overhanging cloth under her, rolled her up in it as a baker rolls strudel, tucking in the corners, enveloping her from toes up to brow. Only her hair still stuck out from the mummy cloths. He cut it off close to her scalp and packed it inside her nightgown, which he then tied up into a bundle. Finally he took a piece of cloth still dangling free and flapped it over the shaved skull, smoothed down the overlapping ends, gently pressed it tight with a finger. He examined the whole package. Not a slit, not a hole, not one bulging pleat was left through which the girl’s scent could have escaped. She was perfectly packed. There was nothing to do but wait, for six hours, until the grey of dawn.

He took the little armchair on which her clothes lay, dragged it to the bed, and sat down. The gentle breath of her scent still clung to the ample black cloak, blending with the odour of aniseed biscuits she had put in her pocket as a snack for the journey. He put his feet up on the end of the bed, near her feet, covered himself with her dress, and ate aniseed biscuits. He was tired. But he did not want to fall asleep, because it was improper to sleep on the job, even if your job was merely to wait. He recalled the nights he had spent distilling in Baldini’s workshop: the soot-blackened alembic, the flickering fire, the soft spitting sound the distillate made as it dripped from the cooling tube into the Florentine flask. From time to time you had to tend the fire, pour in more distilling water, change Florentine flasks, replace the exhausted stuff you were distilling. And yet it had always seemed to him that you stayed awake not so that you could take care of these occasional tasks, but because being awake had its own unique purpose. Even here in this bedchamber, where the process of enfleurage was proceeding all on its own, where in fact premature checking, turning or poking the fragrant package could only cause trouble—even here, it seemed to Grenouille, his waking presence was important. Sleep would have endangered the spirit of success.

It was not especially difficult for him to stay awake and wait, despite his weariness. He loved
this
waiting. He had also loved it with the twenty-four other girls, for it was not a dull waiting-till-it’s-over, not even a yearning, expectant waiting, but an attendant, purposeful, in a certain sense active waiting. Something was happening while you waited. The most essential thing was happening. And even if he himself was doing nothing, it was happening through him nevertheless. He had done his best. He had employed all his artistic skill. He had made not one single mistake. His performance had been unique. It would be crowned with success… He need only wait a few more hours. It filled him with profound satisfaction, this waiting. He had never felt so fine in all his life, so peaceful, so steady, so whole and at one with himself—not even back inside his mountain—as during these hours when a craftsman took his rest sitting in the dark of night beside his victim, waiting and watching. They were the only moments when something like cheerful thoughts formed inside his gloomy brain.

Strangely enough, these thoughts did not look towards the future. He did not think of the scent that he would glean in a few hours, nor of the perfume made of the auras of twenty-five maidens, nor of future plans, happiness and success. No, he thought of his past. He remembered the stations of his life, from Madame Gaillard’s house and the moist, warm woodpile in front of it to his journey today to the little village of La Napoule, which smelled like fish. He thought of Grimal the tanner, of Giuseppe Baldini, of the Marquis de la Taillade-Espinasse. He thought of the city of Paris, of its great effluvium, that evil smell of a thousand iridescences; he thought of the red-headed girl in the rue des Marais, of open country, of the spare wind, of forests. He thought, too, of the mountain in the Auvergne—he did not avoid such memories in the least—of his cave, of the air void of human beings. He thought of his dreams. And he thought of all these things with great satisfaction. Yes, it seemed to him as he looked back over it that he was a man to whom fortune had been especially kind, and that fate had led him down some tortuous paths, but that ultimately they had proved to be the right ones—how else would it have been possible for him to have found his way here, into this dark chamber, at the goal of his desires? He was, now that he really considered it, a truly blessed individual!

Feelings of humility and gratitude welled up within him. ‘I thank you,’ he said softly, ‘I thank you, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, for being what you are!’ So touched was he by himself.

Then his eyelids closed—not for sleep, but so that he could surrender himself completely to the peace of this holy night. The peace filled his heart. But it seemed also as if it reigned all about him. He smelled the peaceful sleep of the maid in the adjoining room, the deep contentment of Antoine Richis’s sleep on the other side of the corridor; he smelled the peaceful slumber of the innkeeper and his servants, of the dogs, of the animals in their stalls, of the whole village, and of the sea. The wind had died away. Everything was still. Nothing disturbed the peace.

Once he turned his foot to one side and ever so softly touched Laure’s foot. Not actually her foot, but simply the cloth that enveloped it and beneath that the thin layer of oil drinking up her scent, her glorious scent, his scent.

As the birds began to squawk—that is, a good while before the break of dawn—he got up and finished his task. He threw open the cloth and pulled it from the dead woman like a bandage. The fat peeled off nicely from her skin. Little scraps of it were left hanging only in the smallest crannies, and these he had to scrape off with his spatula. The remaining streaks of pomade he wiped off with her undershirt, using it to rub down her body from head to foot one last time, so thoroughly that even the oil in her own pores pearled from her skin, and with it the last flake and filament of her scent. Only now was she really dead for him, withered away, pale and limp as a fallen petal.

He tossed the undershirt into the large scent-impregnated cloth—the only place where she had life now—placed her nightgown and her hair in it as well, and rolled it all up into a small, firm package that he clamped under his arm. He did not even take the trouble to cover the body on the bed. And although the black of night had already become the blue grey of dawn and objects in the room had begun to regain their contours, he did not cast a single glance at the bed to rest his eyes on her at least once in his life. Her form did not interest him. She no longer existed for him as a body, but only as a disembodied scent. And he was carrying that under his arm taking it with him.

Softly he swung out over the window-sill and climbed down the ladder. The wind had come up again outside, and the sky was clearing, pouring a cold, dark-blue light over the land.

A half-hour later, the scullery maid started the fire in the kitchen. As she came out of the house to fetch wood she saw the ladder leaning there, but was still too sleepy to make any rhyme or reason of it. Shortly after six the sun rose. Gigantic and golden red, it lifted up out of the sea between the Îles de Lérins. Not a cloud was in the sky. A radiant spring day had begun.

With his room facing west, Richis did not awaken until seven. He had slept truly splendidly for the first time in months, and contrary to his custom lay there yet another quarter of an hour, stretching and sighing with enjoyment as he listened to the pleasant hubbub rising up from the kitchen below. When he finally did get up and open the window wide, taking in the beautiful weather outside and breathing in the fresh morning air and listening to the sound of the surf, his good mood knew no bounds, and he puckered his lips and whistled a bright melody.

While he dressed, he went on whistling, and was whistling still as he left his room and on winged feet approached the door to his daughter’s room across the hall. He rapped. And rapped again very softly, so as not to frighten her. There was no answer. He smiled. He could well understand that she was still sleeping.

Carefully he inserted the key in the lock and turned the bolt, softly, very softly, considerately, not wanting to wake her, eager almost to find her still sleeping, wanting to kiss her awake once again—one last time, before he must give her to another man.

The door sprang open, he entered, and the sunlight fell full into his eyes. Everything in the room sparkled, as if it were filled with glittering silver, and for a moment he had to shut his eyes against the pain of it.

When he opened them again, he saw Laure lying on her bed, naked and dead and shorn clean and sparkling white. It was like his nightmare, the one he had dreamt in Grasse the night before last and had forgotten again. Every detail came back to him now as if in a blazing flash. In that instant everything was exactly as it had been in the dream, only very much brighter.

The news of Laure Richis’s murder spread through the region of Grasse as fast as if the message had been ‘The King is dead!’ or ‘War has been declared!’ or ‘Pirates have landed on the coast!’—and the awful sense of terror it triggered was similar as well. All at once the fear that they had so carefully forgotten was back again, as virulent as it had been last autumn and with all the accompanying phenomena: panic, outrage, anger, hysterical suspicions, desperation. People stayed in their houses at night, locked up their daughters, barricaded themselves in, mistrusted one another, and slept no more. Everyone assumed it would continue this time as it had before, a murder a week. The calendar seemed to have been set back six months.

The dread was more paralysing, however, than six months earlier, for people felt helpless at the sudden return of a danger that they had thought well behind them. If even the bishop’s anathema had proved useless! If even Antoine Richis, the great Richis, the richest man in town, the second consul, a powerful, prudent man who had every kind of assistance available, if even he could not protect his child! If the murderer’s hand was not to be deterred even by the hallowed beauty of Laure—for indeed she seemed a saint to everyone who had known her, especially now, afterwards, now that she was dead—what hope was there of escaping this murderer? He was more cruel than the plague, for you could flee before the plague, but not before this murderer, as the case of Richis had proved. Apparently he possessed supernatural powers. He was most certainly in league with the devil, if he was not the devil himself. And so many people, especially the simpler souls, knew no better course than to go to church and pray, every tradesman to his patron: the locksmiths to St Aloysius, the weavers to St Crispin, the gardeners to St Anthony, the perfumers to St Joseph. And they took their wives and daughters with them, praying together, eating and sleeping in the church; they did not leave during the day themselves now, convinced that the only possible refuge from the monster—if any refuge was to be had—was under the protection of the despairing parish and the gaze of the Madonna.

Seeing that the church had failed once already, other, quicker wits banded together in occult groups. Hiring at great expense a certified witch from Gourdon, they crept into one of the many limestone grottoes of subterranean Grasse and celebrated black masses to curry the Old Gentleman’s favour. Still others, in particular members of the upper middle class and the educated nobility, put their money on the most modern scientific methods, magnetizing their houses, hypnotizing their daughters, gathering in their salons for secret fluidal meetings, and employing telepathy to drive off the murderer’s spirit with communal thought emissions. The guilds organized a penitential procession from Grasse to La Napoule and back. The monks from the town’s five monasteries established services of perpetual prayer and ceaseless chants, so that soon unbroken lamentation was heard day and night, now on one street corner, now on another. Hardly anyone worked.

Thus, with feverish passivity and something very like impatience, the people of Grasse awaited the murderer’s next blow. No one doubted that it would fall. And secretly everyone yearned to hear the horrible news, if only in the hope that it would not be about him, but someone else.

This time, however, the civil, regional and provincial authorities did not allow themselves to be infected by the hysterical mood of the citizenry. For the first time since the murderer of maidens had appeared on the scene, well-planned and effective cooperative efforts were instituted among the prefectures of Grasse, Draguignan and Toulon, among magistrates, police, commissaries, parliament and the navy.

This cooperation among the powerful arose partly from fear of a general civil uprising, partly from the fact that only since Laure Richis’s murder did they have clues that made systematic pursuit of the murderer possible for the first time. The murderer had been seen. Obviously they were dealing with the ominous journeyman tanner who had spent the night of the murder in the inn stables and disappeared the next morning without a trace. According to the joint testimony of the innkeeper, the groom and Richis, he was a nondescript, shortish fellow with a brownish coat and a coarse linen knapsack. Although in other respects the recollections of the three witnesses remained unusually vague—they had been unable to describe the man’s face, hair colour or manner of speech—the innkeeper did add that, if he was not mistaken, he had noticed something awkward or limping about the stranger’s posture and gait, as if he had a wounded leg or a crippled foot.

Armed with these clues, two mounted troops had taken up pursuit of the murderer by noon of the same day, following the Maréchaussée in the direction of Marseille—one along the coast, the other taking the inland road. The environs of La Napoule were combed by volunteers. Two commissioners from the provincial court at Grasse travelled to Nice to make inquiries about journeyman tanners. All ships departing from the ports of Fréjus, Cannes and Antibes were checked; the roads leading across the border into Savoy were blocked and travellers required to identify themselves. For those who could read, an arrest warrant and description of the culprit appeared on all the town gates of Grasse, Vence and Gourdon, and on village church doors. Town criers made three announcements daily. The report of a suspected clubfoot, of course, merely confirmed the view that the culprit was none other than the devil himself and tended more to arouse panic among the populace than to bring in useful information.

But only after the presiding judge of the court in Grasse had, on Richis’s behalf, offered a reward of no less than two hundred livres for information leading to the apprehension of the murderer, did denunciations bring about the arrest of several journeyman tanners in Grasse, Opio and Gourdon—one of whom indeed had the rotten luck of limping. They were already considering subjecting the man to torture despite a solid alibi supported by several witnesses, when, ten days after the murder, a man from the city watch appeared at the magistrate’s office and gave the following deposition: at noon on the day in question, he, Gabriel Tagliasco, captain of the guard, while engaged in his customary duties at the porte du Cours, had been approached by an individual, who, as he now realized, fitted the description in the warrant almost exactly, and had been questioned repeatedly and insistently concerning the road by which the second consul and his caravan had departed the city that same morning. He had ascribed no importance to the incident, neither then nor later, and would most certainly have been unable to recall the individual purely on the basis of his own memory—so thoroughly unremarkable was the man—had he not seen him by chance only yesterday, right here in Grasse, in the rue de la Louve, in front of the studio of Maître Druot and Madame Arnulfi, on which occasion he had noticed that as the man walked back into the workshop he had a definite limp.

Grenouille was arrested an hour later. The innkeeper and his groom from La Napoule, who were in Grasse to identify the other suspects, immediately recognized him as the journeyman tanner who had spent the night with them: it was he, and no other—this must be the wanted murderer.

They searched the workshop, they searched the cabin in the olive grove behind the Franciscan cloister. In one corner, hardly hidden, lay the shredded nightgown, the undershirt and the red hair of Laure Richis. And when they dug up the floor, piece by piece the clothes and hair of the other twenty-four girls came to light. The wooden club used to kill the victims was found, and the linen knapsack. The evidence was overwhelming. The order was given to toll the church bells. The presiding judge announced by proclamation and public notice that the infamous murderer of young girls, sought now for almost one year, had finally been captured and was in custody.