The Phantom of Rue Royale (11 page)

‘And the dessert!’ sighed La Satin.

‘Glacé pineapple straight from the greenhouses of the Duc de Bouillon. And after that … well, just don’t make too much noise!’

‘Another duke! Our Paulet really has changed!’

Nicolas was letting himself go, aware that he had fallen into a trap but unwilling to stop himself. The atmosphere had changed. La Paulet was talking to him more familiarly, certain of her own
impunity. He was agreeing to an evening that promised to be full of delights, thanks to this unexpected reunion. For a long time, he had had no means of escape. The constant tension of his work, exacerbated by the daily obligations of the Dauphin’s wedding, had left him no respite. This evening, he would let himself go like a horseman who drops exhausted by the side of the road. But then, in a flash, he remembered something which made him sit up: Tirepot had told him to expect some revelations from La Paulet. The woman never did anything in a direct way. You always had to worm information out of her, as not only was she always keen to gain advantages and privileges from selling her services, but she also took pleasure in holding out on the police.

‘That’s all well and good,’ said Nicolas, ‘but before letting you rest I’d like to ask you a few questions. According to our friend Tirepot, you had some interesting things to tell me.’

She pulled a face and collapsed heavily onto her chaise longue. ‘This one certainly never forgets which way it is to the Châtelet!’

‘Never! Especially as I’m as eager to sample your news as your cooking. The sooner we get it over with, the better. So tell me all about the evening of the disaster. So much has happened – it seems like days ago, but it was only last night.’

‘Alas,’ sighed La Paulet, ‘if I have to, I have to. I was making preparations for the dinner we had planned in your honour and that of Dr Semacgus when the bell started ringing as if a thousand devils were pulling it. When I eventually opened up, there were about thirty City Guards, threatening to break everything. Those beanpoles were all spruced up, and wanted to have a party to christen their new uniforms. They were shouting and screaming, demanding wine and girls. I don’t like to be put under
pressure …’ She threw a glance at Nicolas. ‘La Paulet’s a good girl, but you mustn’t provoke her. I gave them a piece of my mind, but since I had no choice but to serve them drinks, I took out a vinegary burgundy, which certainly can’t have done them much good, and –’

‘What time was this?’

‘Eight o’clock exactly, before the firework display. It even occurred to me that, what with the celebrations and the crowds and all that crush on the boulevards, they ought to have had better things to do than get drunk in an honest house.’

‘And how long did all this go on for?’

‘Until two or three in the morning. My legs had doubled in size. The rascals cleaned me out of my last stocks of ratafia. They had some officers with them. Someone even came looking for the major because of the disaster. He laughed and said he’d just come from there and was sick and tired of it, and that Monsieur de Sartine would sort it all out.’

‘What did this major look like?’

‘Tall, fat, red-faced, with wicked little eyes like boot buttons. A shrill, nasty voice. But he doesn’t frighten me. I’ll find him again for you!’

‘My dear friend, I thank you. Don’t let us keep you; go and look after your legs. We have to preserve you – you’re too valuable to us.’

‘Oh, he’s a crafty one, a smooth one! Now he’s suddenly in a hurry to get rid of La Paulet! All right, I understand, you can’t wait for your juicy chicken, ha ha!’

And with an eloquent smile, La Paulet rose and left the room, sighing in pain with each step she took. La Satin and Nicolas
looked at each other. Just like the first time, he thought, in that cubby hole where he had found her when she was working as a maid for the wife of a President of the Parlement. A rape and a subsequent pregnancy – he had briefly thought that he was the father – had led La Satin into the business of trading her charms for money. But she had been lucky to end up at La Paulet’s, and thus escape the riff-raff and the General Hospital. Their relations had become less frequent, and it had been a long time since their paths had crossed.

‘I’ve never forgotten you, Nicolas,’ she said. ‘Oh, be quiet, I know how you felt … The times I waited under the archway of the Châtelet, just for the joy of catching a brief glimpse of you. You were always in a hurry, and passed like a shadow …’

He did not know what to reply.

‘And your child?’

She smiled. ‘He’s beautiful. He’s at school now, a boarder.’

What followed was a happy interlude for Nicolas. Constantly at the mercy of events as he was, only rarely granting himself a moment of respite between the end of one activity and the beginning of another, he now abandoned himself to the carefree pleasures of the here and now. The maid brought the food, took the cork from the wine, merrily filled the flutes and withdrew, singing a languorous chant which she accompanied with a slow swaying of her hips. Nicolas relaxed. La Satin delicately boned the chicken and handed him the best pieces. The air in the alcove was filled with the aromas of the meal and heating bodies. Well before the glacé pineapple, Nicolas had drawn his friend onto the bed. There, buried in the sheets, he was back among the gentle slopes and deep ravines, the roads a thousand times travelled. The
ardour of their renewed desire sealed that night’s reunion before they sank, exhausted, into sleep.

Languidly, Nicolas pressed himself into the hot sand. He must have dozed off in the sun on the shore at Batz. Someone was muttering above him, unconcerned that he was trying to sleep. Much to the displeasure of his guardian, the canon, who always worried about the risk of naked bodies coming into contact with water, which was reputed to contain all ills and inspire all perversions, he loved to run in the summer with other rascals his age and throw himself into the waves, surrounded by fishing boats. He groaned: a hand was shaking him. He opened his eyes, saw a brown nipple, a tangle of rumpled sheets and, at a slight distance, the mocking face of Inspector Bourdeau. He
disentangled
his legs from La Satin, who was sleeping peacefully, wrapped himself in a sheet and looked sternly at the intruder.

‘Pierre, what are you doing here so early?’

‘A thousand pardons, Nicolas, but duty calls! They’ve found the Indian.’

‘Good Lord. What time is it?’

‘The stroke of nine.’

‘Nine? I can’t believe it – I could have sworn it was midnight! I was sleeping like a child.’

‘Like a child, really?’ said Bourdeau, stealing a glance at La Satin’s body.

‘Bourdeau, Bourdeau! Come on, you have to help me. I remember there was a fountain in the backyard of this house of
perdition.’

‘Come now, don’t speak ill of good things!’

Muttering, Nicolas pushed the inspector aside, and went and splashed himself with cold water from the pump. He caught the black maid ogling him shamelessly from the pantry window. He wagged a threatening index finger at her, and she disappeared. Once he was dressed, he joined Bourdeau in the cab. He left a moment’s silence, as if closing a door on the past night, then began questioning his deputy.

‘I was sure we’d find the man soon enough.’

‘We had a bit of luck. Just imagine, he was trying to get back to New France – or rather, what we called New France until 1763.
3
What could be more obvious for an innocent native than to get to the river and find a ship? After he escaped from Rue
Saint-Honoré
, he followed the streams, wandered for a while in the warren of the Louvre, and finally found himself on the Quai de la Mégisserie. You know the reputation of the place.’

‘Of course. The Lieutenant General is constantly battling with the Ministry of War about it. But, as you know, it is the Duc de Choiseul himself who holds that portfolio. Order, in this case, feeds disorder, and necessity is law. How many times have I heard our chief deplore the misdeeds of those crimps who use every trick in the book to enlist inexperienced young people, and frequently resort to violence.’

‘Every inexperienced peasant who ends up on the river bank is ensnared by them. And it’s always the same refrain …’

‘“My master needs a servant, and you’re the right build. I’m sure he’ll take you, as long as you obey his orders.” They give the poor wretch a little brandy and then take him to see a soldier in
disguise who, instead of hiring him as a domestic, gets him to sign up.’

‘We could almost be there,’ said Bourdeau, amused by the pitiful tone Nicolas had adopted.

‘Go ahead and laugh, my dear fellow, but it happened to me when I first arrived in Paris. My Breton accent would have proved my undoing if I hadn’t shown them a letter from Monsieur de Sartine. But we’re getting off the point.’

‘Anyway, our man was approached. His strange appearance – naked except for a loincloth – and the fact that he looked lost attracted one of these soldiers of fortune, who tried to entice him, offering him a passage to the New World for a deferred payment. In fact, he was enlisting him, and the bird was caught in the trap. When the patrol came and tried to take him to the barracks, he realised what had happened. That made him furious and, as he’s built like Hercules, he knocked five men to the ground before they got him under control. The watch were called to the rescue, and they led him in chains to the Châtelet. I tried to find you in Rue de Montmartre. Everyone was asleep, except Catherine …’

Nicolas thought with a smile of the time long gone when, as a young man and the cherished child of the house, his least delay had caused anxiety. Since then, everyone had grown accustomed to his erratic comings and goings. Only Catherine, whose unyielding loyalty was equalled only by the affection she had for her saviour, always feared for Nicolas’s safety.

‘And your sagacity led you to the Dauphin Couronné?’

‘I assumed you were in retreat here. With the mother superior.’

Nicolas laughed. ‘Oh, that’s good, I’ll leave you the last word.
The doctor is always right.’

Back at the Châtelet, they went straight to the prison. A clerk of the court admitted them to a dungeon so dark that Nicolas demanded a lantern. It was just possible to make out a human form, bound hand and foot, squatting on a squalid bed of rotten straw. The man’s long black hair covered his face. He was wrapped in a jute blanket which must have been used for generations of prisoners. His feet were black with a thick layer of dried mud. His bare legs seemed to be affected by spasms, the muscles and tendons standing out as if the skin had been flayed. Nicolas reached out his hand to touch his shoulder. The man raised his head suddenly, throwing his hair back to reveal intense, expressionless black eyes. The commissioner was astonished to see a number of scars close to his temples. The face was long, with a hooked nose and the regular features of a pagan idol carved in stone.

‘Monsieur, I am a police commissioner. I want to help you. Do you understand?’

‘Monsieur, I was educated by the Jesuits. “He believed the advice of a power so blind, and is punished enough by his rigorous fate.”’

‘“For only the innocent suffer this state.” Nicolas smiled. ‘I didn’t know the verses of Monsieur de La Fontaine were so popular in New France.’

The face, which had lit up, now clouded over. ‘Why do you call it New France? We were abandoned by our King. As for me, I’ve been shamefully deceived and mistreated here in Paris by a
family I would have liked to be able to respect, in memory of a dead man. Monsieur, I appeal to you for protection. I would like to be untied and to wash myself. Alas, I had to leave a hostile house without my clothes, which had been stolen anyway …’

‘You have our protection,’ Nicolas assured him. ‘You are blameless in that deplorable incident of which you were the victim. But I need to question you about another matter. Clerk of the Court, unchain this man, and bring him a pail of water for his ablutions. Bourdeau, have a look in the clothes cupboard and see if you can find something for him to wear for the moment.’

They left the prisoner and went to the duty office.

‘Now that’s what I call a very urbane native!’ said Bourdeau.

‘And a first class witness. I can’t wait to interrogate him. He seems intelligent. We still have to determine how best to tackle the subject that most interests us.’

Nicolas reflected on this while Bourdeau searched through the clothes the two of them had patiently accumulated, to be used as disguises whenever they needed to blend into the Parisian crowd for the purposes of an investigation. The inspector finally found what he was looking for, and went out. The Micmac seemed determined, Nicolas was thinking, and undoubtedly had a good command of French. He was probably skilful at con cealing his thoughts and, through them, any awkward truths – that at least was what was often said about the natives of New France. Tackling him head-on would only put him on the defensive and lead him to keep silent about the most important things. Therefore it would be better not to conduct the interro gation too rigidly. It was often through being vague and approximate that a word, a phrase, an inflection emerged, which allowed the
investigator to gain a foothold, verify his assumptions and take the interview where he wanted it to go, just as the men of a frigate getting ready to board another had to approach cautiously, and find the right place to throw their grapnel. Nicolas did not like witnesses who were too smooth, so that the strict rhetoric of his questions slid off them – ‘like water off a duck’s back’ as Bourdeau put it.

The Micmac made his entrance. The pitiful old clothes supplied by Bourdeau could not conceal the strangeness of the man. He refused the straw-bottomed stool indicated by the inspector and remained standing with his arms folded and his hands under his armpits – much to Nicolas’s displeasure, as he was always alert to the language of hands. A heavy silence fell.

‘I’m sure you have many things to tell us, Monsieur,’ the commissioner said at last.

He was talking for talking’s sake. He thought he glimpsed a gleam of irony in Naganda’s eyes.