‘No. All our suspects live very secretly, so the facts are incomplete.’
The facts are like the people: you just have time to glimpse them in silhouette before they disappear again into the shadows. Tell me about Charles de Varencourt.’
‘Again, almost nothing is known about his past. He was born in 1773, near Rouen. His family belonged to the Norman nobility. Nothing else is known about them. In 1792, he emigrated to England. And after that we have very little. He claims to have lived in London. In January 1814, he contacted the police and offered to sell them information. As he distrusted the civilian police, he approached Joseph’s personal police force. He knew the names of some of them because the royalists kept tabs on the people hunting them. Joseph’s agents accepted his offer. He had to provide them with a variety of his own documents. He showed them his passport, which stated that he had returned to France in 1802.'
‘Ah, the great amnesty of 6 Floreal, year 10. Just like me.’
‘Exactly. And, as you know, it is widely acknowledged, given the level of corruption at the time, that many of those passports were handed out to royalists who did not actually return to France until much later. As Varencourt did not tell them anything concrete about what he did in France between 1802 and 1814 - he said he travelled around the country earning his living by playing cards -it’s quite possible that the documents are fake. That’s what the police suspect. In any case, thanks to that “valid” passport, which “proves” that he was pardoned for his crime of emigration, he lives comfortably at home, whilst Louis de Leaume, Honoré de Nolant and Jean-Baptiste de Chatel are on the run and spend their time moving from house to house.’
‘Right. And what have you found out about the Charles de Varencourt of today?’
‘I arranged for two men to take turns keeping an eye on him day and night, as agreed. I went back to see Natai - I wish you’d seen his face when I asked him for a hundred francs to pay the men.’
‘A hundred francs? That’s going it a bit. You’re taking a cut, I assume?’
‘You misunderstood when I said “I wish you’d seen his face”. He recognised that this was an extraordinary situation and found my bill quite normal — I just had to sign a receipt in the name of Gage, the pseudonym I use when I go and see him. For months now soldiers have not been paid, yet any old spy employed for less than ten days can walk away with a hundred francs! That’s nearly five months’ sergeant’s pay!’
‘Fernand, for heaven’s sake! The Swords of the King might come across you. If you have all that money on you, they’ll know immediately who you’re working for!’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve already spent it all. I may be greedy, but I’m not stupid. I paid the men - four in all, because there were also two men watching Catherine de Saltonges - and I bought a present for a lady friend.’
He smiled disarmingly. Margont, who was always in a ferment of projects and ideals, sometimes envied his friend his nonchalant approach to life.
‘Let’s go back to Charles de Varencourt,’ continued Lefine. ‘No one ever visits him. But he often goes out, so he’s almost never at home. Unfortunately, he is practically impossible to follow. For example, he will suddenly begin running and, obviously, the person who’s following him can’t do the same ... He sometimes manages to lose my men. Sometimes I go myself to keep watch outside his house. I’ve tried to follow him three times but lost him. But yesterday I got Natai to tell me that Varencourt was coming to see him that day, to collect his traitor’s salary. Natai refused to say exactly how much it was, from which I gathered that Varencourt is even greedier than I am. I hid opposite Natai’s office. Varencourt came to get his money and immediately went off to gamble. He was so impatient that he wasn’t as cunning and careful. He was trying quite hard, like the other times, but he must already have been thinking about the hands he was going to play, and this time he didn’t manage to lose me.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t spot you?’
‘When I follow someone, they only see me if I want them to! First he went to Quai des Miramiones, opposite Tie Saint-Louis, to a
cabaret, La Gueuse du quai. He seems to be very well known there. Everyone greeted him by the name Monsieur Pigrin. And his nickname seems to be King Midas because he’s so lucky at cards that everything he touches turns to gold! I wish I was like that. He joined a table of whist players and began betting, betting, betting ... I was having a drink with a bunch of drunkards who were all telling me their misfortunes, either real or imagined, and I was able to watch him discreetly. You should have seen his face as he looked at his cards. Such nervous excitement, such impatience, such rage ... Oh, yes, the card-demon has him in its grip. And it’s a hell of a demon, I can tell you! He won more often than he lost, and left with his winnings. He didn’t seem worried about being set upon for the money - he must be armed. He didn’t go far, only to a second bar, very small, Le Louveteau. I didn’t go in there; it would have been too risky. So instead I asked a passer-by where I could find a game of cards. He gave me a few addresses of the best-known ones, La Commere, Le Sultan du feu ... I went to the closest, which was Le Sultan du feu. What a strange name!’ ‘That’s what the Mamelukes called Bonaparte during the Egyptian campaign, because our infantry fired on all the devils opposing them.’
‘Who do you think came in half an hour later? He joined the other players like a starving man feeding his hunger. The more he plays, the more the card-demon reinforces his hold over him.’
‘Like eau-de-vie only makes a drunkard thirstier and thirstier...’
‘But this time he didn’t play whist. He played vingt-et-un and he took huge risks. At first he accumulated winnings. But as he was pushing his luck, he began to lose. I did notice one thing. There was something that gave him more pleasure than winning. It was when he began to win after having lost a lot. It was very striking. When that happened, he was exultant.’
‘Interesting. As if he prefers climbing back up a slope to climbing it in the first place.’
‘That’s a complicated way of saying what I’ve just explained clearly. That’s you all over, that...’
Margont could easily imagine Charles de Varencourt busily
studying his cards. When he spoke, he always seemed to be bargaining, to be engaged in a game.
‘What did he do next?’
‘At about six o'clock, he went to Faubourg Saint-Germain, Rue de Lille. Having played with the poor, he then went to play with the rich. He knocked on the door of a baroque-looking abode with moulded columns and statues of naked beauties supporting a large balcony — exactly the kind of house I dream of! A valet opened the door to him and greeted him with a bow, but not a deep bow. I had the impression that the owner of the house considered himself superior to Varencourt but that he nevertheless enjoyed his company. The servant said: “Monsieur le Comte would be delighted to play cards with you today but he would like to make clear that this time he will shuffle the cards himself” Varencourt agreed and went inside.’
‘Perhaps he cheats sometimes and that’s why his host wanted to deal the cards himself...’
‘Other players arrived. There was an old aristocrat in a powdered wig, his face whitened with make-up, with one of those horrible tufts of hair on his chin. You could have sworn that he had inadvertently fallen asleep at Versailles and woken up twenty years later thinking, where the devil is Louis XVI? What’s happened to the court and the Swiss Guard? Next to arrive was a captain of the National Guard, jingling his money in his hand. Finally a couple of bourgeois arrived at the same time, boasting of their success in the games they had just played.’
They must have thought that swaggering would bring them luck. As if they were saying to Luck, “You remember us, don’t you? We spent such good times together the last time ...” What superstition!’
‘I think they were all addicted to gambling. I did some research on the owner. He’s the Comte de Barrelle. Imperial nobility. Sixty-three years old and never leaves the house. Varencourt came out th ree hours later looking depressed. Not bitter or angry, more despairing. I’m sure he had lost everything. He went home and sat up late. When every other house in the street was in darkness,
there was still a candle burning in his bedroom window.’
‘What’s his house like?’
‘He rents an attic. As small as a pigeon house/
‘I’m living like a pigeon too. How can he bear to live like that when he doesn’t have to? The police are giving him vast sums of money!’
‘He prefers gaming. And all this time soldiers aren’t receiving any pay!’
‘Everything froze during the retreat from Moscow ... Going back to Charles de Varencourt. Why is he addicted to gambling?’
‘Is there always a reason?’
‘Not always. But sometimes. If he’s the murderer, why the fire? There are too many blanks, too many gaps in what we know about the suspects. Time is not on our side, and yet we mustn’t fail! The situation is already bad enough.’
Margont looked up the hill of Montmartre. From up there, the whole of the capital could be seen. It was the key to Paris. If the enemy captured it, they would mount large-calibre cannons on the top of it and they would be able to bombard the city. There should have been swarms of crack soldiers on the hill, building redoubts. When an ant hill is threatened, it covers itself in ants. The same should have gone for the heights at Saint-Germain, at la Villette, at Buttes-Chaumont and at Nogent-sur-Marne. From 1809 to 1810, when Wellington, the commander-in-chief of the British troops, had been operating in the Iberian Peninsula, he had erected fortifications at Torres Vedras to protect Lisbon. Margont had seen them with his own eyes. Ditches, pre-ditches, traps, bastions overlapping each other, entrenchments flanking the assailants, little fortresses ... More than a hundred redoubts and four hundred and fifty cannons, all in three stacked lines! A triple line of defence, three raised fists, warning the French to stop! When Marshal Massena came face to face with them, leading his sixty thousand men, he had indeed stopped short. He and his general staff had spent entire days trying to find ways through the blockade, had reached the conclusion that ... it was impossible, and had ordered his troops to retreat. Wellington had triumphed without even
having to fight. He had prepared for battle so comprehensively that he had won before it had even started! That’s what should have been happening here! Paris should have been encircled by a triple line of defence like at Torres Vedras, and Montmartre should have been made into a great redoubt, more fearsome than the famous redoubt at the Battle of Borodino! But instead, the only activity came from the first butterflies fluttering around the five windmills on the hill.
‘I’ve discovered some surprising things about Mademoiselle de Saltonges,’ said Lefine, continuing with his report. ‘I can’t really believe that a woman would have the guts to burn off the face of a corpse, but—’
Margont burst out laughing. But it was a disturbing, desperate laugh; he was laughing instead of crying. His friend looked at him uncomprehendingly as he tried to shake off a childhood memory. He was thirteen, walking in the streets of Nimes, gradually rediscovering the world after four years being shut away in the Abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. But the ‘real’ world was nothing like the paradise of his imagination. Without explaining why, his mother was taking a series of back routes. She was trying to hide the guillotine from him. The Terror was raging at that time and people were being executed in their thousands - for not being revolutionaries, or for not being revolutionary enough, or for being revolutionary but not in the correct way. Alas, she did not know that the residents of the Esplanade, where the ‘National Razor’ was normally set up, had complained about the smell of blood, so it had been moved. And that was how his mother came to lead him to the very spectacle she had tried to spare him. The sight he had briefly glimpsed would haunt him for ever. He saw women going up to the heads. Heads without bodies, bathing in bright-red blood. And these women, who calmly knitted as the executions were carried out, were aiming the points of their needles at the eyes of the freshly decapitated heads. A black screen suddenly cut off his vision. His mother covered his eyes with her hand to prevent him seeing any more. She fled, pulling her son by the hand, running as if the guillotine itself were chasing them. It was
the only time in Margont’s life when he had briefly wondered whether he should not return to the Abbey Saint-Guilhem-le-Desertle-Desert of his own accord ... He thought again about Louis de Leaume extricating himself from his shroud of corpses. Had he also seen those decapitated and mutilated heads? Yes, certainly! But no hand had descended to protect him. He had looked at them, his gaze searing into their unseeing eyes.
‘My dear Fernand, it’s usually me who’s the naive one. But this time, it’s the other way round. Your misogyny is misleading you. Catherine de Saltonges is as much a suspect as the others, believe me. When I met her, she seemed to want to avoid being present at my ... at any violence towards me.’
He still could not articulate exactly what he had been through, as if the ordeal of his admission to the Swords of the King had become an absess that was going to go on getting worse.
‘But it was obvious that she was just pretending. Had any violence occurred, she would happily have produced her knitting needles.’ Lefine grasped the reference. He had heard about ‘the tricoteuses’.
Although the nickname was used generally to mean the women who had come, during the Revolution, to listen to the debates at the National Convention, to keep an eye on the elected representatives and to participate in the debates with cheers or booing, it also evoked a much more sinister group, tiny but bloody ...