Martin felt Jacquette’s gloved hand on his shoulder. “I can take it from here.”
“Yes,” Martin managed to mumble, “I need to do something.” Martin lurched away, down the sidewalk to the main entrance. He must have looked desperate. The beggars did nothing to hamper him.
When he found the mound marked with his baby’s name, he did what he could not do in front of Clarie, or Madeleine, or his mother, or Giuseppe. He wept, openly and shamelessly.
By the time he recovered, even the beggars were gone, and in the waning light, he staggered, drained and numb, into the Israelite cemetery. He had no idea what he expected to find as he walked among the gravestones and monuments. Perhaps respite in a place that was not his own, not his family’s, where sadness and tragedy belonged to people he did not really know.
Without being aware of what he was doing, Martin began to read, or tried to read, the gravestones, until he realized that some of them were written in Hebrew script. On closer scrutiny he found that on the back of these same stones, the dead, their relationships and their accomplishments were described in French. For some reason this troubled him. Like seeing Singer in the white silk shawl, like being almost pushed out of the morgue as if he were the intruder. Martin scrutinized the gravestone of a dead lawyer. What did it mean to show two faces to the world, even in death? For the first time in his life, Martin found himself asking: to whom or to what did these Israelites owe their first allegiance?
Monday, December 3
F
OR THE REST OF THE
night, and early into the next morning, whenever Martin was not worrying about Clarie, he thought about Singer. Who was he really, and why was Martin beginning to have doubts? Like a good judge, Martin tried to weigh the arguments. There was a “community” from which Martin was excluded. He hated feeling like an outsider in his own realm, his own country. On the other hand, hadn’t Singer complained about not being invited to the du Manoirs, about the fact that no one recognized
his
sabbath. As Martin attempted to analyze the two sides, he realized that when he thought about his recent encounters with the Israelites, he wasn’t dealing with rational arguments, but with
emotions
. How was it possible that he
felt
these resentments over observing a praying “community” in the morgue or reading gravestones? Why was he so uneasy about the ways in which Singer seemed to be different from him? Was everyone as susceptible as Martin to this insidious wariness? Or was it just him, because he was not as firmly wed to his principles as he had always believed. The more he ruminated, the more Martin realized that what he was beginning to feel was something like shame. He needed clarification, purgation. He needed to know that he had nothing in common with the bona fide anti-Israelites who distorted, taunted and hated, and perhaps even killed. When he got to his chambers Monday morning, he was eager to confront the hatred head on, to make sure that he did not mirror in any way the prejudices of the kind of men he had always considered enemies of a just society.
Jacquette arrived early with the list of possible suspects that Martin had requested on Friday. But the inspector had something else on his mind. Even before he sat down, he asked what they should do with Pierre Thomas.
My God, the tanner
. “I almost forgot,” Martin admitted. To cover his embarrassment, he got up from his chair, took the sheet of paper from Jacquette with mumbled thanks, and handed it over to Charpentier. Martin was glad to have his back to his inspector as he gave his clerk the order to make a copy. The truth was that since Erlanger’s death, since Henri-Joseph’s burial, since the papers were no longer screaming about a worker wrongly accused, Pierre Thomas had completely slipped from Martin’s mind. Keeping a poor man in jail because he had no one to stand up for him was unconscionable. Martin had to be more attentive.
By the time he sat down again, he was ready to deal with the tanner, and Jacquette had already lit up his first Blue Jockey of the morning. “Do you think Thomas is dangerous?” Martin asked.
“I could see him beating a man to death after too much drink, and not even remembering why the next day. Frankly I don’t think he’s smart enough to have stalked the mill owner, killed him and hidden the weapon. And besides, after Erlanger….” Jacquette shrugged and yawned. He looked every bit as tired as Martin felt. He had been working all weekend, trying to identify vocal anti-Israelites and, apparently, questioning a number of suspects.
“Did you get anything out of Thomas? Any names?”
A grin took over the right side of Jacquette’s grizzled face as he shook his head. “Doesn’t go to church, doesn’t go to many political rallies, and he’d never give up a comrade. He’s got guts. Stupid, but guts.”
“Do you have a man to keep a sharp eye on him every once in a while?”
Jacquette nodded.
“Then let’s release him and get on with it.” Thomas was not only presumably innocent of murder, he had also become a dead end in the investigation. They did not need dead ends. “And in what you gave me this morning, where do you think we should start?” Martin said, referring to the list Charpentier was copying.
Jacquette leaned back in his chair, inhaled deeply, and let out a stream of smoke. “That’s a good question. Where
do
we begin?”
“Any local demagogue who blames the Israelites for society’s woes. Look for those connected in any way to them or to the victims.” Martin paused. “You know all that.”
Yet Jacquette was shaking his head. “It’s just that, after I started trying to outline the case, I realized that this approach is too vague, too much, despite what I said on Friday about going after the anti-Semites. For example,” the inspector said, gesturing toward Charpentier’s desk with his cigarette, “if we start at the top, we’ve got Barrès and Adam, both writers, both ran for the Chamber of Deputies on an anti-Israelite platform. Adam lost, Barrès won. He’s the local prodigy, famous at twenty-five, big name. They’re both in Paris. If they were campaigning, maybe we could go watch a rally. They only come back to get elected, so we have no way of knowing who their most rambunctious followers are. I skipped over the obvious, of course, our own Rocher in the courthouse.” Jacquette gave Martin a meaningful look.
If the inspector thought his sarcasm would lighten the mood, he was wrong. Martin pressed two fingers against his temple, hoping to relieve the building tension. He was not accustomed to so much resistance from his inspector.
Jacquette continued: “I listed a few big army men, but my guess is that if we scratched the surface we could include half the officers in the garrison. And God knows how many priests, although not the bishop.” The inspector spread out his arms in mock despair.
“The Thomases, their associates,” Martin insisted.
“I put a few names at the bottom. I’ve already talked to them. Again, if you go down to one of the cafés off the rue des Tanneurs and press hard enough, you’ll always find a couple of louts who will bleat out some nonsense about the Jew boss and the Jew banker. They might have known about the mill owner, but I can’t imagine that any of them knew the notary. There’s a lot of poison just under the skin, ready to ooze out. But no one’s said anything about killing.”
Scratch the surface. Poison under the skin.
At least the good Jacquette seemed to know what they were dealing with: a disease. Martin was beginning to realize how easily one could be infected with it.
“Sir?”
“And the bookstores?” Martin recovered quickly. He did not want to give off even a hint of what had been lurking under
his
skin.
“One of my men took a little stroll. He picked out three that most prominently display Drumont’s books and newspapers.”
Jacquette let his cigarette dangle beneath his tawny bristle mustache for a moment. Then he took it out of his mouth and held it, clasping his hands in front of him.
Martin prepared himself, knowing his inspector was stalling. “Go on.”
“Sir, the more I think about it, the more I worry that we’re going about this in the wrong way. Or at least looking in only one direction. Why look only for those who hate men of the Mosaic faith? Why not someone who was close to the victims?”
“Do you mean a family member—”
“Or someone in their community.”
Even Jacquette used that word, as if he were quite aware of what it meant. “Are you saying that we should interview all of the Israelites?”
“No, sir.” Jacquette screwed up his lips as he often did when preparing to deliver a drollery. “Although I’ll warrant there are fewer of them in Nancy than there are anti-Israelites.”
Martin did not find this amusing. “Then what are you saying? What do you mean by their ‘community’?” If the tone was sharper than he intended, it was because he wanted to make it absolutely clear that he was not about to disturb the Singer household during its mourning period. Or worse, force the best friend he had in the courthouse to feel compelled to stop the police at his door. It was bad enough that he had betrayed Singer in his thoughts; he was not about to do so in his actions.
“Sorry, sir, I was talking in the old way. In the village where my grandfather lived, there were only two communities, theirs and ours, the Israelites and us. Now I suppose it’s different. We’re all in the city. We’re all divided in so many ways. So what I’m thinking is that there are two avenues to pursue. Either those close to Ullmann and Erlanger, professional men and the rich, who form a kind of clan around the synagogue, or those who might feel left out of it.”
“Left out?”
“You know, the poorer types. Bumpkins just arrived from the old villages, foreigners. Like the stragglers yesterday.”
Pursuing the poor, the enthusiasts who had been bobbing up and down at the gravesite. Or the tinker that Singer had so disdained. No, that wasn’t the way that Martin was going to expend his energies.
“You want to investigate the Israelites, for a crime committed against them? A crime that followed the false report of a ritual murder?” A crime against a people, a
community
. After all, that’s what Singer believed it was; so did Didier.
“Well, as we would do with any other—”
“The Singers cannot be disturbed.”
“I know that.” Jacquette took a long pull from his cigarette. This was the first real disagreement in their two-year relationship, and it was the first time that Martin had gotten Jacquette on the defensive. “Look, sir, my family’s from around here. In the old villages, everyone lived cheek by jowl. They knew each other’s customs. As a little boy, visiting my grandfather, I knew not to enter their homes at certain times, during their holy days or when they were in mourning. But at other times, I played with them and the grownups helped each other out. My grandfather said we wouldn’t let them starve, they wouldn’t let us starve. He even said he was saved by a Jew, the one who sold him two cows after his died, and loaned him the money, and then didn’t collect until he knew my grandfather could pay. That saved his farm. Now that’s all changed. The banks loan the money. And they don’t wait. Believe me, me and my family have nothing against the Israelites.”
“Yes, but with the Dreyfus treason case, don’t you think those who do—?”
“That’s exactly the problem,” Jacquette broke in. “How do you investigate all of them?”
“You start.” But how? That was the question. And what if Jacquette was right: what if there was something more personal in the motive of the killer? Martin rubbed his hand hard against the side of his beard. Two murders. There could be more. Should they leave any avenue unexplored? “Charpentier, are you done with those lists?” Martin barked, directing all his frustrations toward his clerk.
Charpentier jumped up, handed Martin two copies of Jacquette’s report, and immediately retreated to his desk.
Martin glanced at Jacquette’s report. The names swam in front of him, as if they had been written in foreign language, like the gravestones. He could not absorb them all now, in front of Jacquette. But he could move forward.
“All right. Keep a man on Thomas and the cafés he and his wife frequent. Talk to some of the people in the Ullmann factory. And here,” Martin picked up one of the newspapers lying on his desk, “find out who this Titus is. He’s filling the local
La Croix
with one story after another about evil Israelites.”
Jacquette took the paper.
“And,” Martin continued, “I’ll go to the bookstores.” Martin had made a decision. He had to be part of the action. He needed to confront a living, breathing anti-Israelite as soon as possible.
Jacquette’s bushy eyebrows went up in surprise.
“I don’t think they’ll take me for a cop,” Martin explained. “Perhaps they’ll take me for one of them.”
Jacquette pressed his lips together as he stubbed out his cigarette. Martin suspected he was holding back his glee at the notion of his superior becoming an undercover agent. That didn’t bother Martin, as long as Jacquette did not argue against him.
When Jacquette had restored a serious and respectful mien, he asked, “And I assume it would be all right with you if I talked to Mme Ullmann?”
Tit for tat. “Yes,” Martin conceded. “But be gentle.”
“Of course.”
Of course. Jacquette knew how to deal with every class of suspect or witness, but he had not yet met the flinty fierceness of the little widow. She would be his match. The thought made Martin smile for the first time that day.
An hour later, when Martin strode into the bustling, bright Librairie de la Gare, the big bookstore in the railroad station, he still believed that he could ferret out the political sentiments of the proprietor better than Jacquette or his men. After all, Martin did not look like a detective. With his trim beard, long gray coat and bowler, he would be taken for an ordinary, moderately well-off customer, distinct only for his interest in the works of anti-Semitic authors. He was even a little sorry that he had not borrowed a walking stick to complete the image.
In the end, even this appendage would not have helped. The middle-aged proprietor, sitting atop a tall chair near the cash register, declared he did not know who regularly bought
La Libre Parole
and had no interest in discussing its contents. When Martin asked him if he carried Drumont’s books, the man gestured toward a pimply-faced young clerk, who then proceeded to dog Martin’s path, staring at him, mouth half-open, every time he picked up a book. Martin had no idea whether he was simply hoping for a sale, or curious about a customer who had so effectively irritated his boss. In any case, he was breathing down Martin’s neck, which had become increasingly hot and prickly under his scarf. Unable to carry on the charade, Martin made a quick exit, determined to do better at the next stop.
The unfortunate Royale, on a crooked medieval side street in the oldest section of the city, was one of those dark, dank stores higher than it was wide or long, with books, new and old, piled everywhere. The shelves, with their jumbled contents, reached up to the ceiling. Even the newspapers, sitting on rusty tin frames at the front of the store, seemed old and musty. Among them were several unsold back issues of
La Libre Parole
. As soon as Martin asked about them, the bent-over almost toothless owner clammed up, making Martin wonder whether the old man had ordered them for his own pleasure, of which, it would seem, he had very little. Had the man been younger or stronger, had he been able to employ even one assistant, Martin might have questioned him further. Instead he left him alone to tend to his failing shop. He could not imagine anything as vigorous as a killer emanating from it.