The Blood of Lorraine (32 page)

“Hmmm,” Madeleine sighed, “perhaps you have never had to. But when you grow up, as I did in Bordeaux, where some of them are as rich as the Rothschilds, you notice, believe me, you notice. And when your father dies because of them.” How many times did she have to explain to Clarie about losing her dowry in the bank crash and then the way the Panama Canal scandal totally wiped out her family’s fortunes?

“I’ve spoken to Bernard about what you’ve said about the Union Générale failure, and he said it was the Catholics who were incompetent, and the Israelites had nothing to do with the bank’s failure.” Clarie delivered the judge’s verdict with gentleness, but this did not hide the fact that she was taking his side.

Madeleine clenched her jaw. “I believe differently. After all, it was my dowry that was lost. Which is why I was forced to go to Sèvres, hoping that somehow I would earn a living that would give me a position in life and some dignity. But,” Madeleine said with clipped words, “as you see, my dear, it has not happened.” She stopped. Clarie looked distraught and pale, despite the rosy chafed marks on her cheeks. Even though worried about Clarie’s pallor, Madeleine could not resist a final plea. “How could you take their side?”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side.” Clarie was so subdued that Madeleine hardly heard her.

“Then you should.” Madeleine made an effort to keep her voice low, so that no one else would overhear them. “You know that they brought down the Union Générale because it was a Catholic bank, and they just couldn’t stand that. They are against the Church. Our Church.”

Clarie frowned. Her eyes were blinking. As if, for once, she was trying to understand. “I just don’t know,” she murmured. “The soldier…. It didn’t seem right.”

“Our Blessed Mother. You know they will attack Her when they get more power.”

Clarie began rubbing her forehead. “My mind feels so fuzzy. There’s so much I don’t understand.” She put her hands on the table and pushed herself up. “I’m getting cold, my feet.”

Madeleine got up and looked down at the dark wet stain circling the bottom of Clarie’s wool dress. She had been dragging her skirts through the snow, unmindful of her fragile condition. Her boots must be soaking wet. “Of course you’re cold,” said Madeleine, alert to the fact that she needed to care for her friend’s body as well as her soul. “Come here, my dear, let’s button up your coat and get you home. We’ll put your feet up right by the fire.”

She placed Clarie’s gray coat around her shoulders and waited patiently as her companion fastened it, one thoughtful button at a time. Madeleine noticed that the man in the bowler was writing in a notebook. Coward! He had done nothing to help Clarie or the soldiers. Madeleine sighed and put the last of her coins on the table. At least she knew what she had to do.

Friday, December 14

“T
ODAY IT’S SUNNY AND CLEAR
,” said Martin bitterly. He was bouncing on his toes with impatience as he began the morning’s planning with Jacquette. What Martin managed not to say is that all the way to the Palais he had been cursing yesterday’s storm for bringing down two plagues upon his house. He was sick with worry about Clarie, who had gotten the grippe because she had ventured out into the snow, while it was obvious that the murderer had not. Thus Martin had no way to prove or disprove his suspicions about the tinker. Nor could anything come of Barzun’s observations of a certain Lieutenant Toussaint with Thursday leaves and an aggressive hatred of the Israelites. No trained officer would murder on an afternoon when he could so easily be tracked, and no judge in his right mind was going to haul in a soldier on the eve of the Dreyfus trial, unless he had concrete evidence. The snow had blocked the investigation as profoundly as it had clogged the roads.

“Sir,” Jacquette tapped his knuckles on the desk to get Martin’s attention. “No one got killed. That’s good news.”

“If you like waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Martin grumbled. He knew, he could feel it in his bones, that if they did not catch the killer soon, someone else would be murdered. Worse, the next victim might be someone they knew, like Singer or the rabbi or, God forbid, even a woman or child. According to Hémonet, all Jews, of any age or sex, should be expunged from society. They still hadn’t found any disciples of the ex-priest besides the bookseller Villiers, but who was to say there was not another madman, a third viable suspect, lurking in the streets?

“May I?” Jacquette pointed to the chair.

Martin nodded.

The inspector sat, crossed one leg over the other, and lit a cigarette. “What about our mind doctors? Any report on Hémonet?”

Martin tapped on three folded sheets of paper lying in the middle of his desk. “From Bernheim,” he said. “Apparently he enjoyed yesterday’s weather as much as you did. It trapped Liébeault in town and allowed them to spend the night reminiscing about old cases in front of a roaring fire.” Casting his sarcasm aside, Martin added, “I haven’t had time to go over his report. I’ll send you a copy as soon as Charpentier transcribes it.”

Jacquette screwed up his mouth so acutely that his tawny mustache ended up, for one instant, entirely on the left side of his face. “I didn’t say I
liked
the weather. In fact, it has made my problems worse. The men. If we don’t get them off this watch duty, we’ll have a revolt on our hands. Standard-issue boots and coats aren’t holding up in all this wet and cold, and neither is their patience.”

Arms spread, palms down on his desk, Martin leaned toward Jacquette. “I thought that was their job,” he said, emphasizing each word.

“Yes, but so is interviewing everyone in Ullmann’s mill, his business associates, Erlanger’s clients, keeping an eye on the workers’ haunts
and
the entire regiment. To say nothing of the fact that there are other cases,” Jacquette added as he pulled a drag on his cigarette. He did not meet Martin’s heat with his own. Instead, he calmly laid out the reality of their limitations.

Martin crossed his arms and surveyed his desk. Piles of testimonies, slanders, and dead-ends. He opened the latest edition of
La Croix de Lorraine
and held it up for Jacquette to see. “Have we identified this Titus?” he asked, as he pointed to an article in the newspaper.

“Near Epinay, about forty kilometers away, some priest in a rural parish. I could get him for you if you really—”

“No.” Martin shook his head. “He’s far enough away, and you have plenty to do.” He sighed and slumped into his chair. “Let’s put a different man on a rotation every day,” he suggested. “Make his presence in front of the Temple and certain homes visible, as a preventive measure. Then next Thursday—”

“Again?” Jacquette asked skeptically.

“Again,” Martin confirmed, “unless we come up with a better idea. Or, if you like, someone is murdered on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday.” Martin should have bit his tongue. He needed to be alone. He was too frustrated to be fit for human company.

“We’ll find the killer. Sometimes it just takes time.”

“If we’ve got time,” Martin retorted.

Jacquette arched his eyebrows and gave a half-mocking, fully friendly salute as he got up to leave.

Martin could not repress a smile as he held up his own hand in response.
Thank God for Jacquette
, he thought as he watched his inspector leave the room. Then, settling in, he unfolded the report that Liébeault had made to Dr. Bernheim.

Martin refolded the pages and rubbed his aching forehead.
Nothing
, this is what the report amounted to,
nothing new
. Martin’s eyes fell on the latest column by the man who called himself Titus, the one he had waved before Jacquette. What would it be today, another report of a ritual murder committed by the Jews in some exotic corner of the world? Or a peasant being cheated, once again, by a “circumcised one”? And why Titus? Was the
nom de plume
an homage to the disciple of Saint Paul or to the Roman Emperor who had so triumphantly destroyed the great Temple in Jerusalem? If both, the two together—the apostle and the conqueror of the Jews—how clever of him, thought Martin, unable to shake off the cloud of apprehension and irritation that was enveloping him.

Little did Martin know that Madeleine Froment was having exactly the same thoughts as she glanced at Titus’s latest column. However, what she was experiencing was a kind of elation. How clever! How learned! And, of course, confirmation that she, too, had enough of a
Christian
education to understand the dual meaning of the pseudonym. She intended to read Titus to Clarie when she woke up. Madeleine had also brought, deeply hidden in her school bag, Grignion de Montfort’s
Traité de la vraie dévotion à la Sainte Vierge
on the True Devotion to Mary, the Mother of God, and Drumont’s
La France Juive
. Sitting patiently by Clarie’s bedside, Madeleine set aside the newspaper and took out her rosary to pray for her friend.

Monday, December 17

D
URING THE LONG WEEKEND OF
Clarie’s illness, Martin tried desperately to get her to enjoy the things that used to give her so much pleasure. He read stories by de Maupassant to Clarie and brought her expensive greenhouse roses from the market. He even transported hot chicken broth to her bedside on a tray with the mock flourish of a snobbish Parisian waiter. She was polite, grateful, but remote. Through it all, she seemed to find more comfort in Madeleine’s company. Sitting alone in the living room, listening to the murmurs coming through the bedroom wall, Martin imagined them talking about miracles and angels, sin and repentance. He wanted to shout,
Our son is dead! We did nothing wrong!
But he held back. At some point the pious Mme Froment was bound to leave to visit her relatives for the holidays. When that finally happened, Martin would win Clarie back and make her whole. They’d go to mass together, if that is what she needed. Nancy was a big city. They’d find a parish led by a priest who shared their republican ideals. They could even clasp their hands together and pray to the God in whom each of them believed.

“Twisted.” “Distorted.” Martin had dismissed Liébeault’s report because it gave him no proof, because it had told him nothing he did not already know. Yet certain words kept coming back to him. Was the faith that Madeleine preached to Clarie “twisted and distorted”? Was his dear wife absorbing beliefs and ideas she never would have accepted if it were not for her “despair,” for her terrible loss? Martin could not stop his mind from roving between his private sorrows and public duties. Somewhere, somehow they seemed connected. At what point did despair become madness, did distorted faith become murderous fanaticism? When did the
suggestion
that Bernheim so firmly believed in become the
irresistible impulse
to mad action? And why? Alone, by his own hearth, filled with uneasiness about his future, Martin also kept coming back to Jacquette’s refrain, that murders are usually instigated “closer to home.”

He had to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. And so on Monday, he did not head straight to the courthouse. Instead he took off in the opposite direction toward the hospital by the Faculté, speeding through dreary sidewalks lined with mounds of black-speckled, graying snow. By the time he got to Bernheim’s famous clinic, about a dozen men and women were already in the waiting room. Some of them sat straight up, staring into space; others exhibited their anxieties by holding themselves in with crossed arms or shuddering with involuntary tics. Martin knew at once that this was not a place he wanted to be. Fortunately, he spotted the white-winged wimple of a hospital nun bobbing above one of the patients. She seemed to be offering comfort and counseling patience, both of which Martin had in very short supply. He strode over to her and told her who he was and who he wanted to see. With only a slight bow of her head, the gentle-faced, middle-aged sister said she would find the doctor. Standing against the wall by the entrance, Martin fixed his eyes on the floor, refusing to take in more misery.

He barely heard the nun’s return before he caught sight of her long black skirts. “The doctor will see you now,” the sister said, and she led him through a door to an office lined with books and file cabinets. As soon as Martin entered the room, Bernheim placed his pince-nez on a pile of papers and rose from his desk. “Monsieur Martin, so good to see you again!” he exclaimed as he held out his hand. He wore a white cotton coat and had a stethoscope hanging from his neck. The nun floated away as both men sat down, soundlessly shutting the door behind her.

“I don’t mean to keep you from your patients.”

“No worry, the good sisters will see that none of them becomes desperate.”

Martin fingered the rim of his bowler. He hated laying out half-baked theories. “Something you said last week caught me,” he began, “your statement that ‘loss can drive one mad.’ I’ve wondered since how it could fit into the case.”

“Go on.” The jovial doctor folded his hands over his slight paunch.

“If a man has suffered terrible tragedies throughout his life, why should he suddenly turn to violence?”

“You’re thinking of someone specific, then?” Bernheim sat up straight, eager to hear more.

“I’m not sure.”

“Tell me. Tell me what you are thinking.”

Martin slumped back. “What if Ullmann and Erlanger were not killed by an anti-Semite? Even though we managed to keep the false accusation of ritual murder out of the press, we believed, at first, that the slander precipitated the murders. After all, people do talk no matter how you threaten them. It would take only one man with a special hatred for the Israelites to carry out the murders.”

“And you don’t believe this tanner, the father, did it?”

“No. And even if we suspected one of his friends or associates, or someone else, why Ullmann
and
Erlanger? Why choose them?” Martin paused, letting the question hang in the air before going on. “Usually we look for personal motives: passions, envy, thwarted ambitions. The only connection we have found between the two men was that they went to the Temple regularly, and they worked with the Consistory. Both seemed utterly devoted to their families and got most of their pleasures within their intimate circles, which, as far as we can see, did not overlap. As for their professional contacts, and any connection between them, it seems unlikely that someone who worked in Ullmann’s mill or the tanneries would have sought out Erlanger’s services.” Martin swallowed hard. “One possibility is that we are dealing with a crime within the Jewish community.” There, he used that word, in spite of his dim conception of what it meant to the people who lived in it.

“No.” This was less an objection than an expression of astonishment. “How can that be?” Bernheim asked.

Martin got up and lay his bowler on the chair. He began to mark the small space left by the encroaching books and files with measured steps. “Suppose, just suppose, it’s about fanaticism or irrational fanatical hatred of a group of people, just because of who they are.”

“Now, Monsieur Martin, you are describing anti-Semitism. But Jewish fanaticism?” This time Bernheim could not hide his skepticism. Yet the scientist in him remained willing to consider any hypothesis.

Hands behind his back, Martin continued his slow, circular march. “My inspector and I have made some forays among the Hebrew immigrants. All of them seemed to have suffered terrible
losses
, like being rooted out of their homes. Wouldn’t it be possible that one of them could become so unbalanced by his own tragedies that he would lash out at a man or men who threatened his deepest-held beliefs about Jewish traditions and faith?” Martin stopped and looked at Bernheim. “In a way, that is what the Consistory is doing, isn’t it? Changing the way people worship, making things French.”

By now, Bernheim was shaking his head. “I don’t see this as a motive.”

Martin picked up his hat and sat down again across from Bernheim. “But what if he felt insulted? What if he felt that the last connection to all he loved was being destroyed?”

Bernheim pressed his lips together. “From the way I understand it,” he said quietly, “the immigrants have a community intact, right here, in Nancy. Their own shul. Their own schools, albeit supported by the Consistory. No one is forcing them to change. The Consistory is only trying to help them adjust to modern society.”

Bernheim’s assessment made sense. There was an immigrant community separate from the Temple community. Martin had seen how much they shared, in the present and from the past. But Shlomo had averred in the last interview that the tinker didn’t really fit in anywhere. The tinker did not go to the shul. Martin spread his hands before him, as if pleading his case. “What about someone who is unusually isolated?”

“Do you have a right to think of him as a fanatic? Does he have any relationship to the victims?”

Good questions, the kind Martin had been asking himself on and off all weekend. Martin could almost count off on his fingers what he would need to make a case: a precipitating event, resistance to change, a deep and fanatical religious faith, opportunity to commit the crime, and
some
connection to
both
of the victims.

“Religious faith can be a wonderful thing, you know. It provides solace at times of the most dire need.” Bernheim smiled. “I work with the nuns. Their ethos of selfless charity is totally admirable. However,” he put up a plump, short finger, “fanaticism, that’s something else. You Christians have a great and bloody history of that. We don’t.”

From the impish look on Bernheim’s face, Martin knew the doctor was only being playful with someone he must have presumed was a committed secularist. But Martin could not enter into the humor. What the Israelite may not have understood was that men like Martin became secular, in part, because of the kind of fanaticism they had seen among some of the practitioners of their own natal faith. The kind of fanaticism Martin read in
La Croix
and that Madeleine Froment was bringing into his own home.

“I do know,” Martin said, “that the man I am interested in railed against Ullmann for running his factories on Saturday, that he even seems to have convinced some immigrants not to allow their women to work there.”

Bernheim nodded. His patience and tolerance, unlike Martin’s, seemed to have no limits.

“I also know that he has tried to influence the wife of a judge to follow the Mosaic traditions in a stricter way.”

“And Erlanger?” Bernheim inquired.

That, of course, was the essential, annoying question.

“Can you think of a reason why anyone, who might have antagonistic feelings toward certain people, would suddenly become violent?” Martin returned to his first question.

Bernheim shrugged. “You mean like an immediate tragedy that could push him over the edge?” The doctor shook his head, unconvinced. “You know,” he folded his hands in front of him on the desk as if he were about to prescribe a harsh remedy to a recalcitrant patient, “we Jews are accustomed to persecution and displacement. These woes are woven into our tragic history. Until now in France,” he added before hastening on. “The point is, we have learned to bear it. You have your occasional martyrs; we, as a people, have suffered. All because we insisted on keeping our traditions, our God.”

Bernheim seemed to have forgotten the dictum that his friend had written into the report on the ex-priest: that anyone is capable of doing anything if driven far enough. Instead, although Martin assumed that Bernheim was every bit as secular as he, the psychotherapist had fallen back into a sense of “we.” Did it come from perpetuating a tradition, or from being scorned and despised by others? We Israelites, We French. Who belonged? Who was left out? Questions Martin had to thrust aside, at least for the moment. Homing in on a viable suspect was a much more urgent matter.

“Another factor,” he explained, “is opportunity. Both murders were committed on Thursdays, the very day the suspect comes into town.”

“Then you seem convinced.”

“No. I’ll need further evidence. I thought you might—” Suddenly Martin realized that his suspicions about the tinker were only part of the reason he had come to consult with the brilliant and kindly Dr. Bernheim. What Martin really wanted was to understand more about how the human mind dealt with tragedy.

“If you bring him in, I’d certainly talk to him. I can see that is what you are intending to do, and I can’t see that it would do much harm if you did it quietly and discreetly.”

“Yes, that is the plan, the hope,” Martin mumbled, his thoughts turning to Clarie. “One more question. This grief, mourning, how long does it take? How do you know when it would drive a person to…if not madness, to radically change their beliefs about the world?” The last words came out in a stumbling whisper.

“You’ve lost a child.”

Martin looked up, stunned.

“News travels around the courthouse and the Faculté. I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.” Martin bowed his head.

“You are doing the right thing. Continuing your work. Accomplishing something. But I can imagine it’s much harder for your wife.”

Martin barely moved his head in agreement. He avoided Bernheim’s kind gaze.

“If she has any physical symptoms that you find disturbing, perhaps I could help.”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Martin said quickly.
Nothing like that
. A numbing, immobilizing heaviness spread from his mind through his heart into his limbs. He could not speak about what most troubled him: that he could not seem to reach her.

“Time,” the doctor said. “Time. The pain may never completely go away, but you will learn to bear it, to take it in as part of your lives. You are both young; there is much to come to fill your hearts, to make that void seem smaller.”

“Yes, thank you,” Martin mumbled. He was appalled at the effort it took to rise out of the chair, and that everyone, even this famous psychotherapist, gave him the same advice and offered the same assurances.

Bernheim came around the desk and patted him on his shoulder. “If I can help, please call on me.” Martin put on his bowler and thanked the doctor again. Then he left, through the waiting room, past the entrance, into the cold air. His restless longing to escape his troubles and to “accomplish something” carried him forward to the next stop, halfway between the Palais and the Faculté, to the comforting atmosphere of the Café Stanislas.

He took a small square marble table in the corner and ordered a café au lait, hoping its warmth would help his benumbed heart believe what Bernheim had told him. He watched the lumps of sugar dissolve as he stirred them into the steaming creamy liquid. He would find a way back to Clarie. If he was right, he’d be rid of the case before Christmas; then he’d concentrate on making the holidays bearable. Lifting the thick white cup to his lips, he imbibed the smooth, sweet drink of his childhood, of today, of a better tomorrow.

At eleven o’clock, when he was sure that Singer had left for the Palais, Martin went to ask the barman to use the telephone. The man kept wiping the tiny glasses he was setting up for his regulars, as he told Martin the price. After Martin placed the coins on the zinc bar, the man led him downstairs where a black wooden contraption, with two bulging eyes and the horn of a mouth, was fixed to the wall. The barman showed Martin how to crank up the little arm on the left side and unhooked the longer conical horn hanging on the right, handing it to Martin. Then he left.