They paused for a moment at one of the gilt-edged wrought-iron gates that opened upon the central jewel of Nancy. She took his arm again, as they looked across the sparkling fountains and statues toward the broad Hôtel de Ville. This was the side of the last century that Clarie liked best: its wit and its charm, even though the uniformed soldiers who frequented the nightlife were a reminder of their own time and the fact that the German border was only twenty-five kilometers away.
“Is there something wrong?” Clarie peered into his face. “You don’t usually wax poetic about our armed guards.”
“No,” he shook his head as he led her homeward, across the darkened square. “Just trying to—” he shrugged without ending his sentence. Trying to what? With a sudden pang he realized that he needed cheering every bit as much as Clarie. As his eyes followed the silhouette of his wife and their unborn child preceding them on the gas-lit cobblestones, Martin knew more than ever that he could not tell her about the troubling and gruesome details of his new case.
Saturday, November 17
“W
HAT A WONDERFUL CHANGE FROM
last night,” Clarie sighed as she leaned back toward the mirrored wall to survey the half-empty Café Stanislas. Martin had proposed they stop for an early supper after a long afternoon stroll. They had spent the day as he intended, remembering—and forgetting.
Clarie had never looked more beautiful, her great brown eyes shining and cheeks still red from the cold. Although she had declared that she would never be hungry again after being “force-fed” by the du Manoirs, she had voraciously consumed her grilled trout. On her plate lay a perfect fish skeleton, exposed and picked into a translucent shadow of its former self. As she took another sip of Riesling, she wrinkled her nose in distaste at the wreckage of Martin’s choucroute. “I told you that was too much after last night. No dessert for you,” she added brightly.
Martin grunted as he forked through the clumps of pungent sauerkraut and potatoes and overturned a sausage. His distractions had sapped his appetite. When he reached for his beer stein, Clarie placed her hand on his.
“So now, you must tell me what this is all about.”
“What do you mean?” Martin feigned innocence.
“All this. Spending the afternoon going past all our favorite haunts, reminiscing about how we met, bringing me to this café. What is bothering you?”
“You mean I can’t take my pregnant wife on a romantic walk and buy her a dinner? Soon we won’t have such freedom.”
Clarie slumped back and stared at Martin. “Are you nervous for me?”
Of course he was, a little. Martin could not bear the thought of his beloved Clarie in pain or in danger. But she was young and strong. And brave, of course. “No,” he lied, aware that it was a husband’s duty to reassure a pregnant wife. “Everything is going to be fine, I’m sure of it.”
“Then, what?”
“Today was beautiful and clear, and as I told you—”
“Were you trying to make up for last night’s torture?”
She was exaggerating again, and teasing him. She had always seen through him. From the first moment at her aunt and uncle’s restaurant in Aix, she had understood his shyness. When he had to hide his best friend from the police, she had, without asking why, given him food, and worried. Days later, when he did tell her about Merckx, and what he had gotten her involved in, all she had cared about was him. Certainly he would tell her about the mutilated baby, and Rocher and Didier. But later, as with Merckx, when it was over and she was safe.
“Well?”
“Yes, the horrible, terrible dinner,” he said with a wave of the hand. “I wanted to wash that out of your mind with some fine wine and fond memories.”
“Humph.” Clarie put down her glass, unconvinced. “Well, at least now I know what you are dealing with at the courthouse. Du Manoir was nice, if a bit pompous. Didier,” she widened her eyes, “was rather scary, despite that nice young wife. And Rocher,” she shook her head, “where did he come from?”
“He’s been around a long time,” Martin mumbled as he gave his plate a definitive shove toward the side of the table.
“And why wasn’t Singer there? I was looking forward to meeting him. You’ve talked so much about him and what a fine man he is.”
Martin shrugged and hoped that Clarie would not notice the blush he could feel rising up toward his forehead. Without knowing it, she had hit upon the very source of his distraction. Why hadn’t Singer been invited? And what had he gotten Martin into?
Fortunately, at that moment, the waiter came to clear their dishes and ask if they wanted more. The café was beginning to fill up. Behind him Martin could hear the murmur of recently arrived diners and the great coffee urn behind the bar begin to hiss. Clarie, of course, ordered the
tarte
, Martin asked for coffee.
“You could have one too,” she remarked as soon as the white-shirted waiter left them.
“So you could eat mine?” he teased back.
It was her turn to shrug and blush a little. She had a passion for the local Mirabelle plums. “Anyway, perhaps even before the baby comes, we should have the Singers over. After all, he is the one who put us in contact with the Steins. You know all the teachers. I should know your friend.”
The truth was, and they both knew it, that the Martins were much more comfortable with the teachers and their husbands, and even with their landlords, who owned the drygoods store in their building, than with the coterie at the Palais de Justice. Two of Clarie’s colleagues were married to teachers who taught at the boys’ lycée, the third to a carpenter. Their clothes, their language, their concerns, their lack of wealth and connections echoed the social strata from which Clarie and Martin had come, even though Martin, being a judge, had presumably risen above it.
But maybe David Singer, the only colleague with whom Martin discussed troubling cases, the courthouse and politics, was different. Maybe he would not find anything amiss in the Martins’ more humble way of life.
“You’re right. Of course, you must meet him,” Martin said as the waiter placed a glistening triangle in front of Clarie. He smiled as she became quite engrossed in the decorative criss-crossing of the rosy-gold plums before, once again, digging in.
Monday, November 19
T
HERE WERE TIMES IT SEEMED
that Monday morning would never arrive. The Martins spent the gray, cold Sunday confined to their apartment. Mercifully, Clarie had stopped asking questions about Singer and the courthouse. Instead, she spent most of her time in front of the fire, stitching tiny clothes or staring into space, long periods of quiet broken only by inexplicable spurts of dusting or fluffing up pillows or fussing over the crib that sat beside their bed. Clarie seemed to be in another place, a waiting place. Martin longed to be there with her, but every time he tried to think or talk about the arrival of their child, he was assaulted by the memory of the baby in the morgue. He had to rid himself of that grotesque image. The only way to do that was to get the case behind him by finding out exactly what had happened in the wet nurse’s cottage. That’s why, early on Monday, he left for the courthouse as soon as he could without rousing Clarie’s suspicions.
By the time he entered his chambers, he was ready to interrogate, to threaten, to wait out the suspects, to do whatever it took. He was in no mood for unforeseen obstacles.
“
Monsieur le procurer
wants to see you right away.” Guy Charpentier, always excessively formal, stood up to greet him. Martin noted that his fastidious clerk had already ejected the errant pencil from his desk, and his notebooks were open and dated in anticipation of the day’s work. Charpentier had also donned a new outfit, a deep blue frock coat with a matching silk cravat. His thick auburn hair was parted in the middle, forming two drooping wings around his forehead. His dark brown eyes shone with the obscene curiosity he always showed when there was a possibility of conflict in the Palais. It was all very irritating.
“You’ve heard, then,” Martin murmured as he unwound the woolen scarf from around his neck. “We’re to carry out a minor investigation this morning. Did you get the dossier from Singer?”
Charpentier shook his head. “Monsieur le juge Singer just left. He told me to tell you that Monsieur le procurer Didier asked to see it again and wanted to hand it to you himself.”
“I see.” Martin took his time hanging up his coat, methodically fastening each button. As long as his back was to Charpentier, his clerk could not see how much the Proc’s interference troubled him. Usually Didier assigned cases without comment. What was different this time?
He turned to Charpentier. “Do you know if the witnesses have arrived?” Martin asked, in part to indicate to his clerk that he felt neither cowed nor rushed by the Proc’s request to see him.
“The inspector said that they are waiting for you downstairs in a cell.”
“All three?”
“Yes. Monsieur le juge Singer said that since they’ve already got their lies in order, it would do no harm to keep them together.” Charpentier could not repress a smile. He loved to watch witnesses flail and stew in their own juices.
“Well, then,” Martin said, in as light a tone as he could muster, “I’ll go see what Didier has to say.”
The Palais de Justice occupied one of the most elegant old mansions on the Carrière. Although the building was a complicated interlocking of former private chambers, servants’ quarters, and large salons, Martin had a direct route to the Proc via the polished wooden staircase directly across from his chambers. Annoyed and apprehensive, Martin took his time trudging up to the second floor. Didier’s office was well situated near the head of the stairs, close to the great hall, a former ballroom, where the most important trials took place. Before knocking on his door, Martin took a moment to pull himself together. If he were to suffer a reprise of Friday night’s idiotic encounter, he’d have to find a way of staying calm. He rapped hard and went in.
Didier was at his desk in shirtsleeves and a gray vest. When he saw Martin, he lifted the pince-nez from his nose and set it down on top of the document he had been reading. He stood up to hold out his hand. With his long reach, from behind his mammoth desk, the prosecutor seemed to tower over Martin, an illusion fostered by Didier’s Cassius-like thinness.
The handshake was perfunctory, but Martin could not tell if the greeting was cooler than usual. At the courthouse the Proc was all business. He did not even invite Martin to sit; instead, without taking his steely blue eyes off his visitor’s face, Didier asked Roland, his greffier, to leave the room.
Roland, who had been sitting at a desk every bit as cluttered as Didier’s, wiped off his ink pen and departed, closing the door without a sound. The stooped, white-haired, ever-discreet Roland was the clerk that any of the examining magistrates would have liked to have in their employ. But he was Didier’s, and it seemed quite fitting that the formidable prosecutor should have acquired the most diligent and subservient greffier in the courthouse.
It was equally fitting that Didier inhabited the largest office at the Palais de Justice and that it was painted a grim olive green. The long rectangle led from Didier’s desk on one end to a gray marble fireplace on the other. Roland occupied the desk near the fire, perhaps to warm his aging bones. Didier’s half of the room always seemed chilly, which never seemed to bother the prosecutor, a man of unbounded energy, accustomed to generating his own heat.
After staring at Martin for another moment, Didier went to a window which gave onto a small cobbled courtyard below. The tall, lanky prosecutor crossed his arms and positioned himself at an angle to observe the comings and goings on the Place de la Carrière. Martin found himself tapping his foot in time with the ticking of the black lacquered clock above the fireplace.
“Martin,” Didier began, “do you know who lives on the Carrière? That is, besides President du Manoir?”
“Many—”
“Ah, yes, many,” Didier nodded and gazed out the window as if he were considering the answer that he had not even allowed Martin to articulate. “Many, but who is particularly relevant to our conversation of Friday night? Which,” he hastily added before Martin could respond, “you left in a rather precipitous fashion.”
“What do you mean?” Martin’s pulse began to race. Was he about to be toyed with as if he were some common criminal?
Didier walked over to his desk and grasped it with both hands as he leaned toward Martin. “I just want us to be very clear about why it will be important to handle this case with discretion and dispatch.”
“Who, then?” It was obvious that Martin had no choice but to play along. He would have his chance to tell Didier what he thought later. “Who lives on the Carrière?”
“The commander, of course. The commander of the garrison. The commander of the garrison that is protecting us all from the Huns, who are a mere twenty-five kilometers away, waiting, guns fully loaded at the border. The commander of the garrison who is here to see that Germany takes nothing else away from us.”
“And?” Martin crossed his arms and waited, for it was obvious the man accustomed to leading juries by the nose was just hitting his stride. Martin could barely stand still as he waited for the coup de grâce.
“The Nanciens love their army. Many of them are old enough to remember the Prussian occupation. Others came here as refugees. And now that army is under threat. People are uneasy. All because of a traitor. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the first Israelite admitted to the inner sanctum of our most precious military secrets.”
That was it! Just as Martin had feared, another broadside against the Jews. His arms fell by his side, taut, his hands locked into fists. “Dreyfus is one man,” he insisted heatedly, “not an entire people. And furthermore he has not even been brought to trial.” How can everyone be so sure that it was Dreyfus who had sold secrets to the Germans? For God’s sake, Martin thought angrily, everyone in this building is supposed to be devoted to the efficacy of the court system.
“True. Not yet. But the military court is very likely to convict him, and we wouldn’t want anyone to think that we are being soft on the Israelites. Nor, on the other hand,” a long, bony finger went up to stave off interruption, “would we want to have politicians at the courthouse finding a way to use this case for their own ends, for some campaign against the Jewish inhabitants of our fair city. When I say ‘we,’” Didier’s voice gathered in volume and speed any time Martin deigned to open his mouth, “it is because I know that du Manoir fully agrees with me. We discussed the problem just yesterday. I interrupted his Sunday to do so.”
The two most powerful men in the courthouse putting their heads together. And Singer had said it would be so simple: a wet nurse and two workers, all poor, all lying, all trying to cover up the death of one miserable little child. “I can see no possible connection between what is happening in Paris with an army officer and a trumped-up charge in Nancy.”
“Neither do I!” Didier pounded his desk in the best prosecutorial manner. “Neither do I! But others might see the connection or try to
make
the connection.” His sandy red eyebrows went up as if he were urging Martin to get the point. “Do you think our friend Rocher is exceptional?” he asked, with no intention of giving Martin a chance to answer. “There are a lot like him out there. Influential men. Even men, like our esteemed senior colleague, who dare to call themselves republicans. Men willing to arouse the rabble. And,” he added darkly, “of course, there is the rabble itself.”
“Then why did you—?”
“Assign the case to Rocher?” Didier had anticipated this obvious question and threw up his hands in mock surrender. “I made a mistake. I’ll admit it. I like to give the easy cases to him and thought this would be one of them.”
“Surely you must have known how he felt about the Israelites.” Heart pounding with impatience, Martin had to bite his tongue to keep from adding,
and what a moron we all know Rocher to be.
“No, I didn’t know. I don’t talk to him any more than necessary,” Didier said, his lips pinched together as if he had just bitten into a sour lemon.
“So how did the case get to Singer?” At least Didier was not hiding his contempt for Rocher. Martin relaxed a little.
“Our senior examining magistrate had the nerve to confide that he had picked up a few recent issues of Monsieur Drumont’s
La Libre Parole
and doesn’t find it half bad.” Didier snorted before continuing. “I realized then that Rocher might well make a mess of things, perhaps even enjoy getting his name in the papers by reporting the possibility of a ‘ritual murder’ to the local press. So when Rocher suggested giving the case to Singer, as a joke, I took him up on it. With alacrity, I might add, because I thought Singer, above all men here at the Palais, would be motivated to get rid of it as soon as possible.” Didier paused. “Instead, I find, he pawned it off on you.”
“You are saying, then, that you do not hold to Rocher’s views?” Martin wanted to be absolutely certain about what he was getting into.
“I assure you I do not. I, like you, understand that our revolutionary tradition calls us to uphold the equality of all men. However, if you are wondering about why I let him go on and on Friday evening, I thought you might find it instructive.”
“Instructive? What am I, a schoolboy?” There was no way to avoid the red blush of anger that was heating up his face.
“Please, Martin, don’t take this as an insult. Take it as a warning. Get rid of this case as soon as possible.”
Martin was tempted to slap away the bony finger which was once more pointing at him. Instead, he said, through clenched teeth, “I can best do that if there is no interference.” After all, he had his own reasons for wanting to complete the investigation quickly, reasons that had nothing to do with politics or Jews or the machinations of the courthouse. He wanted to get on with his own life and forget what he had seen in the morgue.
But that was exactly why the prosecutor and the President were looking over his shoulder, as Didier made clear.
“This case, as you must well know, is not really about the death of one unfortunate child. It’s about mutilation, about the accusation of ritual murder. An accusation that could send this town into a frenzy, particularly in light of what we are all reading about Dreyfus. We need to avoid that. So you need to find out exactly where our accuser got his ideas. What political rallies he attended, for example.” Didier nudged a thin folder toward Martin. “When you catch a whiff of the father’s breath, you will see how easily he could come under the influence of a stirring Jew-baiting campaign speech.”
“Or an old wives’ tale.” Why assume that politics had anything to do with it?
“Or a priest.”
“Or a priest,” Martin echoed in resignation. Politics, the Church, the Army. It was enough to make his head spin.
Having made his point, Didier sat down and set his pince-nez back on the bridge of his nose.
“And if none of this has to do with politics or the Church?” Martin asked as he picked up the thin paper folder, making sure his hand held firm.
“Then, we can assume, the case will go the way of other sordid lower-class dramas. A flurry in the scandal sheets, then a nice evaporating fizzle.” Didier retrieved the document he had been reading when Martin walked in, signaling that their interview was over. Disgusted, Martin started for the door.
“Good day, Martin,” Didier shouted after him. “Remember, the integrity of the courthouse is in your hands.”
Or the integrity of someone’s political ambitions, Martin thought as he fought the impulse to slam the door. Everyone knew that, if he played his cards right, the brilliant, ambitious Didier might one day get the call to Paris or even to a Prefecture.
The sight of Roland, sitting meekly on the bench outside Didier’s office, almost made Martin jump. “Pardon,” the clerk whispered as he got up to return to his master. As soon as Martin was alone, he sank down on the same hard wooden bench. Stinging from the hail of condescension that Didier had rained upon him, Martin needed to calm down before facing the ever-curious Charpentier.
He leaned back, still clutching the file. If Didier was right, the case could blow up in Martin’s face. At least they were on the same side. Against the likes of Rocher, who—Martin’s fist tightened so hard, he almost bent the file in two thinking of it—who had hoped to play a joke on Singer. Martin sighed. He was just as irritated that somehow he had gotten caught in the middle of courthouse politics: Didier intent on proving he can keep the peace in his own district; Rocher being stupid; David Singer being oversensitive. After a moment, he straightened up and stared at the blank cardboard in his hands. At least it was not Aix all over again, not a life-and-death situation for his friend, as it had been for Merckx. Not life and death, except—Martin flipped open the file and fingered its two pages—except for one tiny little boy. That’s what they all should care about. He took a deep breath and began to read.