The Phantom of Rue Royale (6 page)

‘Go gently, my lambs, let the sauce do its work. It has to imbue the meat with its aroma and make it tender. The thing to remember is that I call it calf’s breast pie, but to make it particularly mellow and plump I add a little cartilage. And the sauce! It’ll make your mouth water! It’s not like that miserable stuff that tastes like plaster, put together in a hurry by kitchen boys. It takes hours, gentlemen, for the flour to rise. I may be an insignificant little innkeeper, but I put my heart into my work, just like my great-grandfather, who was sauce chef to Gaston d’Orléans under the great Cardinal.’

Inspired no doubt by this glorious memory, he served them ceremoniously. The dish and its flavours lived up to his introduction. The hot crust, crisp with caramelised meat juices at the edges, enclosed meat perfectly tender from the sauce melted over it. They spent a long time savouring this piece of work so simply and eloquently presented. The cooked cherries were refreshing, acid and sweet at the same time. The two men were overcome with a pleasant drowsiness, made all the stronger by brandy served in porcelain bowls as a precautionary measure. They blissfully let this infringement of the regulations pass without comment. Their host had no licence to serve spirits, the sale of which was reserved for another guild. His modest business allowed him only to supply wines from the cask, not from sealed bottles. Bourdeau, always alert to detail, suddenly realised that they did not have any snuff. It was an old joke between them. They always resorted to snuff when attending autopsies, in order to blot out the musty smell of decomposition
pervading the Basse-Geôle. The host obligingly lent them two earthen pipes reserved for his customers, and a pro portionate amount of snuff.

Back at the Grand Châtelet, they went straight to the torture chamber adjoining the office of the clerk of the criminal court. It was in this sombre Gothic room, on one of its oak tables, that bodies were opened up. The operation was still fairly uncommon: the regular doctors attached to the court refused to perform it unless specifically ordered to do so and, even when that was the case, they did not follow the rules, thus rendering the examination imperfect and completely useless from the point of view of an investigation.

A man of Nicolas’s age, dressed in a puce-coloured coat, breeches and black stockings, was laying surgical instruments out on a bench. They glittered in the torchlight. Daylight never entered this room: the casement windows were fitted with metal hoods to prevent screams being heard beyond the walls of the fortress. Charles Henri Sanson was an old acquaintance of Nicolas from his earliest days in Paris. They had begun their careers at about the same time, and both served the King’s justice. An unexpected sympathy – one quite unhoped-for by Sanson – had drawn the young commissioner to this shy, temperate, highly cultured man. Nicolas always found it hard to imagine him as an executioner. He thought of him more as a doctor of crime. He knew that Sanson had been given no choice, but had been forced to take over the family profession. Nevertheless, he accomplished his terrible task with all the care of a compassionate man. Sanson
turned, and his grave face lit up when he recognised Nicolas and Bourdeau.

‘Greetings, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I am at your disposal. My one regret is that the pleasure of seeing you again has only been afforded me by last night’s tragedy.’

They shook hands, a custom on which Sanson always insisted, as if this simple gesture admitted him back into the community of the living. He smiled when they lit their pipes and started puffing on them. Semacgus suddenly made his entrance, and his ribald laughter introduced a touch of joviality into the heavy
atmosphere
of the crypt. The two professionals carefully lined up their instruments and examined them one by one, checking the cutting edges of the scalpels, scissors, stylets, straight knives and saws. They also put out curved needles, string, sponges, tenacula, a trepan, a wedge and a hammer. Nicolas and Bourdeau observed how precise their gestures were. At last they all gathered around the large table on which the unknown girl lay. Sanson nodded towards the commissioner and gestured towards the corpse.

‘Whenever you wish, Monsieur.’

Nicolas began: ‘We are in the presence of a body brought to La Madeleine cemetery on Thursday thirty-first May 1770,
presumed
to have perished in the disaster of Rue Royale.’

Bourdeau was taking the minutes.

‘It was noticed by Commissioner Le Floch and Inspector Bourdeau on the stroke of six. Their attention was drawn by what were clearly marks of strangulation on the victim’s neck. In these circumstances, the order was given to transport the body to the Basse-Geôle, where, at’ – he consulted his watch before putting it back carefully in the fob of his coat – ‘at half past twelve on the
same day, Charles Henri Sanson, executioner to the viscountcy and generality of Paris, and Guillaume Semacgus, naval surgeon, proceeded to open it in the presence of said commissioner and inspector. First, the clothing and objects belonging to the victim were examined. A loose dress of good quality, with a
straw-coloured
satin bodice …’

Sanson and Semacgus undressed the body as Nicolas spoke.

‘… A white silk corset, very tight over the hips, fitted with whalebones and laced at the back …’

The corset was in fact so tight that Semacgus had to use a penknife to cut the lace.

‘… two petticoats, one of thin cotton and the other of silk, with two pockets sewn inside the first …’

He searched them.

‘Empty. Stockings of grey yarn. No shoes. No other objects, no jewellery, no papers, no clues of any kind seen on the body. Apart from …’

Nicolas took a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully unfolded it.

‘… apart from a black pearl of a mineral resembling obsidian, which was found in the victim’s clenched hand when the corpse was discovered in La Madeleine cemetery. We seem to be in the presence of a young girl of about twenty, of slender constitution and with no distinguishing marks, except for those previously noted at the base of the neck. The mouth is twisted and the face contorted. The blonde hair is clean and very well groomed. The rest of the body is equally clean. Gentlemen, you may now proceed.’

Nicolas had turned to Sanson and Semacgus. The two
practitioners approached and meticulously examined the pitiful, recumbent body. They turned it over, observed the purplish tinges on its back, then laid it flat again. Nodding, Semacgus passed his hand over the stomach and looked at Sanson, who bent to do the same. He turned to pick up a probe for a more intimate examination.

‘You’re right, there’s no doubt about it.’

‘The clues speak for themselves, my dear colleague,’ Semacgus said, ‘though we’ll know more after we’ve opened her up.’

Nicolas looked at both of them questioningly.

‘This maiden of yours,’ Semacgus said, ‘was a maiden no longer. In fact, there’s every indication that she had already given birth. Further observations are sure to confirm that.’

Sanson now also nodded. ‘It’s beyond dispute. The
disappearance
of the hymen proves it, even though some authors say this is not infallible proof. In addition, the fourchette is torn, as is almost always the case in women who have had a child.’ He again bent over the body. ‘
Gravis odor puerperii
. There’s no doubt about it, labour only took place a few days ago, and perhaps even more recently than that. These stretch marks on the stomach show how distended it was.’

‘Not to mention this brownish line from the pubis to the umbilicus,’ said Semacgus, pointing at what he was describing. As for the swollen breasts, they also speak for themselves. We still have to do a detailed examination. Hold her head steady.’

‘Notice,’ said Sanson, ‘that the joint with the first cervical vertebra lacks normal mobility.’

Nicolas tensed as the scalpel entered the flesh. It was always
the same: at first, you found it hard to watch, and you would drag desperately at your pipe or frantically take snuff, but gradually your profession would gain the upper hand over the horror of the spectacle. Curiosity was a strong incentive to succeed, to shed light on the shadowy areas of a case. The body was no longer a human being who had lived, but the object of precise, painstaking labour, with its strange sounds and its colours uncovered by the stylet or the probe. It was an unknown world in which the body was a machine, and the inner drama of a life was offered up for view like meat on a stall before the corruption of the flesh obliterated everything.

Without exchanging a single word, understanding one another by look and gesture only, the hangman and the naval surgeon proceeded. Then, after what seemed like a long time, they put everything back in its place. The incisions were sewn up, the body was cleaned and wrapped in a large sheet which, once closed, was sealed with wax by Nicolas. When they had finished, they rubbed their hands with vinegar, and carefully dried them, still in silence: neither wanted to be the first to speak.

‘Monsieur,’ Semacgus said at last, ‘you are at home here. I won’t encroach on your jurisdiction.’

‘Unofficially, Monsieur, unofficially. I consent, but don’t
hesitate
to interrupt me. Please do me the honour of supplementing my words.’

Semacgus bowed. ‘I shall, with your permission.’

Sanson assumed that modest, calm air of his, which made Nicolas think of a Lenten preacher.

‘I know, Commissioner, that you would like to obtain as quickly as possible the information which will be of most use to
your investigation. I think you will benefit from what we have been able to ascertain. Let me therefore sum up the basic points.’

He took a deep breath and folded his hands.

‘We have here a member of the female sex, about twenty years of age …’

‘Quite pretty, by the way,’ Semacgus murmured.

‘Firstly, we ascertained that she had been strangled. The state of her trachea, the contusions and internal haematoma due to loss of blood – everything clearly pointed to that. Secondly, the victim recently gave birth to a child, although we are unable to fix a precise date.’

‘Undoubtedly no more than two or three days ago,’ said Semacgus. ‘That much is clear from the state of the organs, the breasts and other details of which I shall spare you the description.’

‘And, thirdly, it is difficult to ascertain the exact time of death. Nevertheless, the condition of the body encourages me to make a cautious estimate: between seven and eight o’clock yesterday evening.’

‘In addition,’ Semacgus said, ‘when we cleaned the body, we found … some traces of hay.’

He opened his hand. Nicolas took the strands of hay and put them in his handkerchief next to the mysterious black pearl.

‘Where did you find them?’ he asked.

‘More or less everywhere, but especially in the hair, which is why they were not noticed, given that the subject’s hair is long and fair.’

Nicolas was thinking. As always when he wanted to get to the bottom of things, he resolved to play the devil’s advocate.

‘Is it possible, even if the time of death were much earlier than the tragedy in Place Louis XV, that you could be mistaken – forgive me – and that the wound to the neck, the apparent cause of death, was due to the removal of the body?’

‘No,’ Sanson replied. ‘We’re positive that the wound was inflicted prior to death, and was indeed the cause of it. I shan’t bore you with details, but the evidence is irrefutable. And the clothes are intact, which would be unlikely if the opposite were the case.’

Semacgus expanded on this. ‘It would also be hard to explain the facial expression and the presence of black blood in the lungs.’

‘From what you can see, was the labour normal?’ Bourdeau asked. ‘In other words, is there any possibility that there was an attempt at abortion?’

‘Hard to say. The folds in the skin of the abdomen are undoubtedly similar to those found on a woman who has given birth. However, the marks resulting from a late abortion are generally the same as those following labour, especially when the pregnancy is advanced.’

‘So,’ Bourdeau concluded, ‘there’s nothing to prove that there wasn’t a late abortion?’

‘That’s right,’ Sanson said.

Nicolas began thinking aloud. ‘Were we right to move the corpse and perform this unofficial procedure? If we’d left her where we found her, a spy could have stayed there and informed us if anyone recognised her. We may have interfered with the normal order of things and made our task more complicated …’

Bourdeau reassured him: ‘We’d have arrived on her family’s doorsteps with our accusations, and can you imagine the fuss they
would have made? Forget about an autopsy! They’d simply have told us she was crushed in the disaster. And, what’s more, we wouldn’t even have known the poor girl had given birth! I prefer the truth I find for myself to the truth other people expect me to believe.’

This vigorous outburst dispelled Nicolas’s doubts.

‘And besides,’ Bourdeau concluded, ‘as my father, who looked after the dogs for the King’s boar hunts, would have said, at least now we can be sure we won’t mistake the front of the prey for the back. Still, the case doesn’t look as if it’s going to be easy.’

‘My friends,’ Nicolas said, ‘how can I thank you for all the useful information you’ve given me and for the light you’ve thrown on this case.’ Then, addressing Sanson, ‘I’m sure you know that Monsieur de Noblecourt has long wanted you to dine with him, and you’ve long refused.’

‘Monsieur Nicolas,’ said Sanson, ‘the mere fact that he has thought of me is a great honour, which fills me with joy and gratitude. Perhaps a time will come when I can accept.’

He left Semacgus and Sanson deep in an animated discussion on the comparative merits of Beckeri
4
and Bauzmann,
5
two precursors of the new science of forensic medicine. The
commissioner
and his deputy walked in pensive silence to the gateway of the Grand Châtelet. The storm had finally broken, and the roadway was inundated with streams of muddy water carrying rubbish along with them. Bourdeau sensed that something was troubling Nicolas.