A Man in Uniform (40 page)

He found Geneviève sitting on the sofa crying, while the older of her two brothers, the usually affable major, paced the room with a grim expression of paternal authority on his face. He had started to look like his father, Dubon thought fleetingly—his father on some occasion when one of the children had done something especially naughty.

“Where have you been?” he asked in an accusatory tone, as Dubon entered. “We sent a message to your office to come home immediately and your clerk said you had left hours ago.”

“I was having a drink with a colleague,” he said as he hurried over to Geneviève. “What is wrong, my dear, whatever is wrong?” He got down on his knees in front of her and took her hands in his.

“It’s Jean-Jean,” she sobbed, but couldn’t say more.

“We got a telegram this afternoon. There has been an accident,” his brother-in-law explained.

“An accident? What kind of accident? Is he all right?”

“No, Dubon. He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Dubon felt a fog of fearful incomprehension descending on him.

“Yes. He got to Marseille. He got the boat, boarded it Sunday because they were sailing at dawn. There was some kind of accident during the night. They think he may have got up in his sleep and been disoriented.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know exactly. He fell overboard somehow and drowned in the harbor. His body … his body washed up yesterday. It’s being sent back to us tomorrow for burial.”

Dubon was too shocked to accept what he was being told. “He can’t have just fallen off a boat. How is that possible?”

“I don’t know, Dubon. I don’t know how it happened. They performed an”—here he turned away from his sister and lowered his voice—“an autopsy. The doctor said it was death by drowning.”

“An autopsy?”

“His superiors are really being very good about this. They know we won’t want to wait for a funeral. The body comes home tomorrow.”

“The body … I see.”

Geneviève, who had been sitting with her eyes shut and her hand across her pursed mouth throughout this exchange, began to cry again.

“Saturday. He was just here on Saturday. I helped him pack on Friday. All those clothes, his uniforms …”

Dubon leapt up. “I’ll be right back.”

He sprinted to his study, opened the desk drawer, and pulled out the envelope Jean-Jean had given him the day before he left. Inside, he found the will he himself had drafted a few years before, and a second envelope, addressed, to his surprise, to him. There was a letter inside.

“Dear brother,” it read. Dubon was touched by the salutation; perhaps Geneviève was right and he had never done Jean-Jean justice.

“I believe you have taken some interest in the case of Captain Dreyfus. I have heard you on one or two occasions questioning those who assume his guilt. Perhaps, like some of us junior officers, you have been increasingly suspicious of the evidence against him and want to see revision. Hoping this is so, I want to share with you some information.

“I hope I will not try your patience if I begin by explaining some of my thoughts on French artillery technology.” There followed several dense paragraphs of technical explanation that Dubon plodded
through, stifling his annoyance and reminding himself this was his brother-in-law’s last word on any subject.

His point addressed the problem of recoil. In the case of even the new, lighter models of field guns, the force of the bullet created an opposing reaction so strong that the jolt of the machine frightened the horses, ground the surrounding earth to mud and forced gunners to waste precious minutes in battle repositioning the gun before they could take aim again.

“In theory, the solution is obvious,” Jean-Jean wrote. “Our guns need better brakes. In practice, this will require some technical advances in the use of hydraulics. I have personally been working on this problem for some time as a hobbyist, and I had developed some ideas I felt it was worth sharing with my superiors. I did not find them particularly receptive and perhaps I was indiscreet in discussing the topic when I felt I was among friends.

“In April I was called into headquarters for a meeting with a general, who I will not name, and two officers who, I gathered from their highly technical questions, were themselves working on developing new hydraulic brakes. They were very interested in my concept for a floating piston. They did not inform me of how far they had come in their work, but after they left, the general promised me a reassignment to the team that was developing a new 75 mm gun. I was warned that the work was top secret and that I was never to mention the nature of my assignment, even to brother officers, nor to discuss the operation of artillery with anyone.

“I waited a month, but my new assignment never materialized. I never saw the general in question again. I now believe the point of our meeting was to ascertain how much information I had about hydraulics and to warn me to keep my mouth shut. Perhaps the team was advanced enough in their development of the 75 mm gun that my services were considered redundant.

“I was disappointed, but I had no choice but to continue in my post at Compiègne and wait for some future reassignment. I stopped thinking about the issue until last week, when I was in town visiting headquarters and read in the papers the text of the bordereau that the artillery officer Captain Dreyfus was believed to have written to the
Germans. I was shocked: that document could not have been written by a gunner. The writer offers a note on the functioning of the hydraulic buffer on the new 120, but in fact the new 120 has a
pneumatic
buffer.

“I also note that the writer offers a copy of the artillery manual, suggesting it is very hard to get. The manual is as common as mud—extra copies can be purchased for two centimes each in my unit—and the writer also has the title of the manual wrong. Whoever wrote the bordereau is clearly not an artillery officer and also not a very effective spy. All the information he is offering is wrong, out of date, or widely available.

“After I read the bordereau, I struggled mightily with my conscience for I found it hard to believe that the generals could have been so slapdash in their investigation of the case and sent Dreyfus to Devil’s Island on such scant evidence. Torn between my duty toward my superiors and my conviction that they must reopen the case because they have the wrong man, I felt compelled to speak out. I asked for a second meeting with the general. I was not able to obtain an audience with him but was taken in to see another. I presented all my evidence, as a result of which I was accused of insubordination and sent on my way again. The next day, I received my new assignment: I was to be posted immediately to a detachment in Algeria.

“I have been naive. The generals are not interested in knowing of Dreyfus’s innocence. They will go to any lengths to protect another man who, whatever his identity, was an exceedingly bad spy.

“I hope you can put this information to some use, brother, and will have the courage to express unpopular opinions. I have often noted your wisdom and discretion, and I know you will be able to counter our family’s inflexible views on this subject. My own insistence on Dreyfus’s innocence can no longer be a danger to me: if you are reading this letter, it is because I have died in Algeria. I hope I have not contracted the fever, but have fallen for France.”

Exhausted from crying, Geneviève finally fell asleep in her husband’s arms at three in the morning, but not before she had asked Dubon in a plaintive voice, “You won’t leave, will you?”

“I’ll stay here all night.”

“Not just tonight. I mean forever. You won’t ever leave me.”

“No, Geneviève, I would never leave you. Try to go to sleep now.”

“I know you have other interests …”

“I’ve been busy with this case, but I am almost through with it. I just have to write up a report and deliver it to the client, and then it will be over, and we won’t have to argue about it anymore.”

“I don’t just mean work. I know you have always had other interests, since André was a baby.”

Dubon wasn’t sure what to say. He had often suspected that she knew something of Madeleine’s existence, but they seemed to have a tacit agreement that these things were best left unspoken as long as he remained affectionate and polite, paid the bills on time, and showed up for dinner.

“That doesn’t matter as long …” She seemed now to want to spell
out the terms of their arrangement openly. Either his behavior or Jean-Jean’s death had made her more bold. “… as long as we respect our bond and don’t break it. You will stay?”

“Of course, Geneviève,” he said, appalled at her suggestion that he might simply leave. “I know I have not always been the best husband. I will try to do better.” He stroked her hair.

A few minutes later she spoke again. “You really believe Dreyfus is innocent, don’t you.”

“Yes. I really do.”

“Jean-Jean agreed with you.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me when we were packing his bags. I was complaining that you were taking an interest in the case and he just said, ‘He’s right.’ When I reminded him where our family loyalties must lie, he said … well, it surprised me, coming from him. He said, ‘It’s not about loyalty, it’s about justice. The second must trump the first.’ ”

Jean-Jean’s letter saved Dubon. As Geneviève mourned his death, and Dubon mourned his rupture with Madeleine while puzzling over the widow’s true identity, the letter gave him something tangible on which he could concentrate. He read it over and over, examining Jean-Jean’s conclusions and wondering about the conclusions his brother-in-law had not reached. By Thursday, he had not only written up his report for the widow, but also had prepared another statement about the case. He called Lebrun into his office that morning.

“How many copies can you do on the machine at once, Lebrun? Three, is it?”

“No, Maître. The original and one carbon. You are never satisfied with the quality of the second copy when I try using two sheets of carbon paper.”

“Right. Well, I need four of this. So you are going to have to type it up twice. And this letter too. Four copies of it as well.”

“Very good, Maître.”

Lebrun was a slow typist who had never really embraced this part of his job description, but by lunchtime he had produced the four copies
of Dubon’s statement and Jean-Jean’s letter. Dubon sealed a pair of each in four separate envelopes, addressing two of them to Le Goff and two to Clemenceau at
L’Aurore
. He took one of each of these to his bank, where he left them in his safety deposit box; he placed the other two in his own desk drawer and called Lebrun back into his office before he went home that evening.

“I have taken some precautions, Lebrun, of which I wanted to inform you. My brother-in-law’s death has reminded me that one must always be ready. I would never wish to leave Madame Dubon in an awkward position. You know I keep my will at the bank, in the safety deposit box. Madame has one key; the other is in my desk drawer, should you ever need it. If anything happens, simply look here.”

“I certainly hope that day is a very long way off, Maître.”

“Of course, Lebrun. A very long way off. It will be your successor who has to deal with it. You’ll have your own office by then.”

“I hope so, Maître.”

Dubon then took the original handwritten versions of his statement and of Jean-Jean’s letter and put them in an envelope, which he addressed to Geneviève. This he took home and placed in the drawer of the desk in his study.

On Friday, the day of the funeral, Esterhazy’s story began to appear in the papers.
La Presse
remained curiously silent on what the press had dubbed “The Dreyfus Affair,” but
Le Siècle
, to which Dubon subscribed, reported government sources who said it was well known the real spy was still at large and that he was a titled officer stationed at a garrison just outside the capital. Dubon supposed that the Dreyfus family had now gone to the government with Esterhazy’s identity and that it was someone with a sympathetic ear inside the government who had told the papers where to look.

The funeral service was at ten and the family was to gather at the apartment at nine to ready themselves to follow a military cortège to the church. After breakfast, before his wife’s family descended on his home en masse, Dubon went out for a brief walk to clear his head.
Passing a newsstand, he picked up a copy of
L’Aurore
. Le Goff was right; the editor Clemenceau was waging a campaign; his lead article went so far as to name Esterhazy. Clemenceau was willing to risk a libel action.