The Phantom of Rue Royale (4 page)

He got back to the staircase leading to the attic. As he climbed it, he heard Semacgus’s solemn tones alternating with the sharper voice of Monsieur de La Briche. They were both coming downstairs so quickly that they almost fell into Nicolas’s arms. With the disaster on the square increasing in scale, Monsieur de La Briche had tried to send for Nicolas, only to find the lock of the door that led to the roof obstructed by a mysterious object in gilded metal, a kind of spindle, which he now gave to the commissioner. The key itself was lying on the ground. Clearly, someone had been playing a practical joke on the spectators on the roof. He would see to it that the culprit was found – probably an insolent footman, or else one of those pages in blue who, in spite of their youth, considered themselves entitled to do anything because they were close to the throne.

‘Commissioner,’ said Monsieur de La Briche, ‘you must help me to restore a little order. The crush is terrible, and we have so many injured we don’t know what to do with them. They’re being brought in all the time. The City Guards are nowhere to be
found. When things started to go wrong, their leader, Major Langlumé, went off to give orders to his men, and that’s the last anyone saw of him. On top of that, I keep hearing that there are bandits among the crowd attacking honest citizens.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Many of our guests have been drawing their swords to force their way through the crowd. A lot of people have been killed that way, not to mention those run down by carriages. The envoy from Parma, the Conte di Argental, has had his shoulder dislocated, and the Abbé de Raze, minister to the prince-bishop of Basle, was knocked down and is in a terrible state.’

‘Has Monsieur de Sartine been informed of what is happening?’ Nicolas asked.

‘I dispatched a messenger to him. By now he should be acquainted with the gravity of the situation.’

Two men entered, carrying an unconscious woman in a frilly dress, one of whose legs was hanging at an odd angle. Her bloodstained face had been so flattened that it no longer looked human. Semacgus rushed to her, but after a brief examination he rose and shook his head. Other bodies were arriving, equally devoid of breath. For a while, they helped to receive the injured with the meagre means at their disposal. Nicolas was waiting for the return of the emissary who had been sent to Sartine. When he did not reappear, Nicolas retrieved his coat and went outside in order to get a clearer picture of the disaster. He took Semacgus with him.

After making their way through the crowds of people coming in and out of the building – some of them, they were annoyed to observe, mere idle onlookers – they emerged on Place Louis XV. The great noise of the festivities had died down, but cries and
moans rose on all sides. Nicolas ran straight into Inspector Bourdeau, his deputy, who was giving orders to some men of the watch.

‘Ah, Nicolas!’ he exclaimed. ‘We don’t know if we’re coming or going! The fire has been contained, the water pumps from La Madeleine and Saint-Honoré market have seen to that. Most of the criminals have scattered, although some are still trying to strip the dead of their belongings. The victims are being removed, and those bodies that have been identified have been taken to the boulevard.’

Bourdeau seemed overwhelmed. The vast esplanade looked like a battlefield at night. An acrid black smoke rose into the air, whirled about, then, blown back down by the wind, fell again, shrouding the lights beneath a lugubrious veil. In the middle of the square, the remains of the triumphal structure stood like a sinister scaffold. Wreathed in smoke, the bronze monarch looked down at the scene, unruffled and indifferent. Semacgus, who had noticed Nicolas looking at the statue, murmured, ‘The Horseman of the Apocalypse!’ To their right, in Rue Royale, people had started to lay out the dead against the wall of the Garde-Meuble and were searching them in order to determine their identities and putting labels on them so that they could be recognised more easily by their families. Bourdeau and his men had restored a semblance of order. The area had been cordoned off with some difficulty and groups of volunteers were going down into the trenches on Rue Royale. A chain was starting to form. As soon as the victims had been brought out, an attempt was made to determine which of them were still alive so that they could be taken to the improvised emergency posts. There, doctors and apothecaries who had come
running did whatever they could to treat them. Nicolas noted with horror that it was no easy task to bring up the bodies; those who lay at the bottom were crushed beneath the weight of those on top, and it was difficult to disentangle the various layers. He noted, too, that most of the dead belonged to the humblest classes. Some of them had wounds which could only have been caused by deliberate blows from canes or swords.

‘The street was claimed by the strongest and richest,’ Bourdeau muttered.

‘The criminals will get the blame,’ Nicolas replied. ‘But the cabs and carriages played their part in the slaughter, and those who forced their bloody way through even more so!’

They worked all night, helping to sort the dead and injured. As the sun was rising, Semacgus drew the commissioner and Bourdeau to a corner of La Madeleine cemetery where a number of bodies had been gathered. He had a puzzled look on his face. He pointed to a young girl lying between two old men. He knelt and uncovered the upper part of her neck. On each side were bluish marks that appeared to have been left by fingers. He moved the dead girl’s head. Her mouth was twisted and half open, and let out a sound like sand.

Nicolas looked at Semacgus. ‘That’s quite a strange injury for someone who’s supposed to have been crushed.’

‘That’s my impression, too,’ the surgeon agreed. ‘She wasn’t crushed; she was strangled.’

‘Have the body put to one side and taken to the Basse-Geôle, Bourdeau, we’ll have to tell our friend Sanson.’ Nicolas turned to Semacgus. ‘You know, he’s the only person I’d trust with an operation like that – apart from you, of course.’

He made a preliminary search of the body. The victim had nothing on her except her clothes – of high quality, he noted. No bag or reticule, no jewellery. One of her hands was clenched: he prised it open to reveal a small pierced pearl, of jade or obsidian. He wrapped it in his handkerchief. Bourdeau returned with two porters and a stretcher.

As they stared at the young victim’s distorted face, they were overcome with exhaustion. It was out of the question that they would go to La Paulet’s and eat now. The sun rising on this grim, bloodstained morning could not dissipate the damp mist which presaged a storm. Paris was shapeless and colourless, apparently finding it hard to awaken from a tragedy that would gradually spread to city and court, districts and
faubourgs
, and, when it reached Versailles, would cast a shadow over the waking moments of an old King and a young couple.

Nicolas moved through a suspended city, a city surprised by its own suffering. Everyone had his own version of the events to peddle. Little groups conversed in low voices. Some noisier ones seemed to be pursuing a long-standing quarrel. The shops, usually open at this hour, were still closed, as if observing a state of mourning. Death had struck everywhere, and the spectacle of the wounded and dying being brought back to their homes had spread the news of the disaster throughout Paris, made all the worse by the false rumours inevitably aroused by such a tragedy. People seemed struck by the fact that this catastrophe had happened during the celebrations for a royal wedding. It was a bad omen, and it made the future uncertain and vaguely menacing. Nicolas passed priests carrying the Holy Sacrament. Passers-by crossed themselves, took off their hats or knelt before them.

Rue Montmartre lacked its usual animation. Even the familiar, reassuring smell of freshly baked bread coming from the baker’s shop on the ground floor of Noblecourt’s house had lost its enchantment. Breathing it in, he immediately remembered the terrible, musty odour of wet fire and blood hovering over Place Louis XV. An officer of the watch had lent him a mare, a cantankerous animal which snorted and pulled back its ears. Bourdeau had remained on the scene to help the commissioners from the various districts who had come running as reinforcements.

Nicolas’s first impulse had been to gallop to police
headquarters
in Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin. But he knew all too well that, despite the gravity of the moment, Monsieur de Sartine would not have tolerated anyone appearing before him with a soot-blackened face and dishevelled clothes. He had often experienced the apparent insensitivity of a chief who did not accept any weakness in himself, and hated having to deal with that of his subordinates. The King’s service was all that mattered, and there was no particular advantage in being injured, bruised and dirty. On the contrary, such a lapse in the proprieties would have brought disfavour on anyone who dared to appear in that way. To Monsieur de Sartine, it would have demonstrated neither courage nor devotion, but rather a contempt for all that his office represented, a licentiousness that went against everything he believed in.

The bells of Saint Eustache were chiming seven o’clock as Nicolas handed the reins of his nag to a young baker’s boy who stood gaping in the doorway. He went straight through to the servants’ pantry where he found his maid, Catherine, slumped
beside her stove, fast asleep. He surmised that she had not gone to bed but, having heard of the tragedy, had decided to wait up for him. Old Marion, Monsieur de Noblecourt’s cook, whose age excused her from heavy work, slept later and later these days, as did Poitevin the footman. Noiselessly, he went out to the courtyard and washed himself at the pump, as was his custom in summer. Then he tiptoed upstairs to his room to change his clothes and brush his hair. For a moment he considered telling the former procurator that he was back, but when he thought of the detailed account he would have to give, and the thousand questions that would follow, he changed his mind. He missed being greeted by Cyrus, the little, grey, curly-haired water spaniel. The days were long gone when the dog would jump up and yap excitedly when he arrived. The animal was now quite old and stiff, and only the slow movements of his tail still showed how pleased he was to see Nicolas. He spent all his time on the tapestried rug, from where he observed events surrounding his master with eyes that were still alert.

Nicolas thought about the passage of time. Soon, it struck him, he would have to bid farewell to this witness to his first steps in Paris. The idea occurred to him that the compassion he felt for Cyrus was a way of avoiding having to think of other imminent farewells which were just as inevitable. He gently placed a short note of explanation in Catherine’s lap and left the house without a sound. He went back to his restive mount, and the baker’s boy smiled and handed him a brioche, still hot from the oven. Remembering that he had not had dinner, he wolfed it down. The buttery taste was a delight to the palate. ‘Come on,’ he said to himself, ‘life isn’t so bad.
Carpe diem
!’ It was a phrase constantly
repeated by his sybaritic friend Monsieur de La Borde, who loved female dancers, fine food and works of art, and was currently writing an opera and a book about China.

In Rue Neuve-Sainte Augustin, an unusual amount of activity indicated that the night’s events had left their mark. Nicolas climbed the steps four at a time. The elderly manservant greeted him with a flustered look on his face. He was an old acquaintance, for whom Nicolas was almost part of the furniture.

‘Here you are at last, Monsieur Nicolas. I think Monsieur de Sartine is waiting for you. I’m very worried: it’s the first time in years he hasn’t asked to see his wigs. Is the case so serious?’

Nicolas smiled at this reminder of his chief’s innocent obsession. Contrary to the custom of the house, the servant led him to the library. He had only once before had the opportunity to enter the beautifully proportioned room, with its shelves of white oak and its ceiling painted by Jouvenet. He remembered admiring the work of this artist when his guardian, Canon Le Floch, had taken him one day to the parlement of Rennes, and every time duty called him to Versailles he would gaze in awe at the splendid tribune of the royal chapel, which was decorated by the same painter. He tapped softly at the door and opened it. He thought at first that he was alone, until he heard a curt voice he knew well. Monsieur de Sartine, in a black coat and powdered wig, was perched at the top of a stepladder consulting a red Morocco-bound book embossed with his coat of arms: three sardines.

‘Greetings, Commissioner.’

That gave Nicolas pause. The Lieutenant General only addressed him by his rank when he was trying to master his anger – an anger directed less at his men than at the general inertia or obstinacy of things.

He was looking up at the figures on the ceiling, apparently deep in thought. Nicolas respected his chief’s silence for a few moments, then decided to begin his report. He gave the number of dead which, by early that morning, had been approaching a hundred. Nevertheless, in his opinion, this figure could well be much greater, even by as much as ten times, since many of the injured were unlikely to recover.

‘I know what you did, you and Bourdeau. Believe me when I say that it is a comfort to me to know that you were there to bear witness for our force.’

It occurred to Nicolas that Monsieur de Sartine was ill, and that his illness went deeper than anything he might have imagined. His manifestations of satisfaction were so rare that they were seen as events, and, besides, he never came out with them when a case was in progress. Nicolas saw him opening and closing his book mechanically, as if unsure what to say or do next.

In a low voice, as if speaking to himself, Sartine resumed, ‘“This man has marr’d my fortune, and manhood is call’d foolery when it stands against a falling fabric …”’

Nicolas smiled inwardly and recited aloud, ‘“… The tag whose rage doth rend like interrupted waters, and o’erbear what they are used to bear.”’

Monsieur de Sartine slammed the book shut, slowly descended the stepladder, then turned and looked at Nicolas with ironic severity. ‘You allow yourself to improvise on my words, I think!’

‘I step aside in favour of
Coriolanus
and continue his.’

‘So, my Shakespearian friend, what is your opinion of last night? “Paint me Nicolas distraught amid these horrors …”’

‘Lack of preparation, improvisation, coincidence and disorder.’

He gave a brief account of the night’s events, without going into details which Sartine surely knew, since Sartine always seemed to be well informed, in some mysterious but effective way, about anything, whether happy or tragic, that happened in the capital with whose care he was entrusted. He mentioned the incident with the major from the City Guards, and described the layout of the area, the absence of any organisation, the initial episode with the fireworks and the disaster that had been its inevitable consequence. He did not fail to mention how certain privileged individuals had distinguished themselves on this battlefield by laying about them with their canes or even their swords and sending their carriages rushing through the crowd, nor how circumstances had left the field clear for crooks and thugs from the
faubourgs
.

Sartine had sat down in a
bergère
covered in crimson satin and was listening with his eyes half closed, his chin on his hand. Nicolas noted his pallor, his drawn features, the dark patches on his cheekbones. When he had met Sartine for the first time, it had struck him that he looked older than his age – a fact the Lieutenant General played on to assert his authority when confronted with older interlocutors who might consider him a young upstart. He did not deign to look at Nicolas until the latter’s account of his adventures as a chimney sweep. At that point he looked sharply at his deputy’s clothes, confirming to Nicolas that he had done the right thing in changing them. The
satisfied smile that lit up his chief’s face for a fraction of a second was highly gratifying.

‘Yes,’ Sartine said, ‘it’s as I feared …’

He seemed to feel a kind of bitter joy in observing that, once again, events had justified his anxieties. He brought his fist down on the beautiful inlaid backgammon table before him.

‘I did, however, indicate to His Majesty that the city authorities were not in a position to control an event of that size.’ He thought for a moment, then went on, ‘Eleven years with no disasters, no mistakes, and now this Bignon, this cheap, stupid, powerless provost, usurps my authority, poaches on my territory and cuts the ground from beneath my feet!’

‘We’ll soon be able to apportion blame,’ Nicolas ventured.

‘Do you really believe that? Have you ever had to deal with these snakes? At court, the war of tongues can be deadlier than a battlefield. Calumny …’

Nicolas’s body still ached in places, bearing witness to the risks he had taken and the dangers he had confronted, which were just as real as those with which the Lieutenant General was now faced. ‘Monsieur,’ he said, ‘your past, the confidence that the monarch—’

‘Balderdash, Monsieur! Favour is by essence volatile, as our drawing room apothecaries and chemists say! People always remember the bad things we are supposed to have done. Do they ever take into account our efforts and our successes? Well, that’s as it should be. We are the King’s servants, for better or worse, and whatever it may cost us. But that this ridiculous provost, who has used his alliances and relationships to advance himself and who has obtained everything without having to make any effort,
and certainly without deserving it, that such a man should be the cause of my disgrace, that’s something I can’t get over. He’s the kind of person who’s puffed up with pride when he mounts a good horse, or sports a plume in his hat, or wears fine clothes. What nonsense! If there’s any glory in those things, it should go to the horse, the bird or the tailor!’

Again he struck the gaming table. Nicolas, astonished by this uncharacteristic outburst, suspected a touch of play-acting in his chief – and suspected, too, that his last words had been a quotation, although he could not immediately identify it.

‘But we’re straying from the point,’ Sartine went on. ‘Listen carefully. You’ve been with me for a long time now and you are the only person I can tell these things. The reason I feel so strongly about this affair is that beneath such struggles for influence, major interests are always at play. You know that I am friendly with the First Minister, the Duc de Choiseul. Even though they had their disagreements and didn’t always trust each other, by and large he was close to Madame de Pompadour …’ He broke off. ‘You had dealings with her, didn’t you?’

‘I often had the privilege of speaking with her and serving her, when I first started working for you.’

‘And even, if I remember correctly, performing some signal services for her.
2
The last time our poor friend received me, she was no more than a shadow of her former self … She was burning hot and complained of being frozen, her face looked drawn, and her complexion was pale and mottled …’

The Lieutenant General broke off, as if the memory was too painful to evoke.

‘I’m straying from the point again. My relations with the new
favourite are quite different. She has neither the contacts, nor the political grasp, nor the subtle influence of the lady of Choisy,
3
who was distinguished by her education, her studied elegance, her sure taste in arts and letters, and her native charm – well, she was born under the sign of Pisces. This one’s a decent enough girl, but she’s been thrown into the subtle ins and outs of the Court without preparation, apart from the wrong kind, perhaps.’

He lowered his voice, and looked around at the shelves of his library.

‘The worst of it is, whatever’s been achieved during the day she undoes at night. By arousing the old King’s senses she ensures her influence. Choiseul is obsessed with getting his revenge on the English. As he’s unsure how long he’ll keep his position, he’s in such a hurry to achieve this end that he has a tendency to rush in and make stupid blunders. He’s antagonized the new mistress or, more precisely, he resents her for having succeeded where his own sister, Madame de Choiseul-Stainville, failed – God knows she put her heart and soul into it! What’s all this to do with me, you will ask. I’ve been dragged into this quarrel against my will. Keep this to yourself: on the King’s orders, I had to go to Madame du Barry and protest my loyalty. I had to promise her, almost on my knees, that I would do everything I could to prevent the publication of scandalous writings, which, unfortunately for me, have multiplied and spread – the work of journalists and printers paid for by Monsieur de Choiseul himself.’