‘But why murder the Tsar’s envoy?’ said Lefine.
They were walking past the Botanical Gardens. Napoleon had had it transformed into a zoological park.
‘I don’t know, Fernand. I’m not even sure that Colonel Berle and Count Kevlokine were murdered by the same person. Joseph and Talleyrand were counting on the latter to help them negotiate a separate peace with the Russians. Perhaps our assassin had found that out, or guessed, and that was the motive for the murder. The extremists kill the moderates, the moderates end up killing the extremists, even though that’s what they themselves have become. Isn’t that one of the bloody lessons the Revolution taught us?’
‘But why leave the emblem of the Swords of the King?’
Margont had developed a sort of tic, a grimace. Leading investigations made him adopt the expressions of a hunting dog scenting the odour of its prey.
That’s a very good question! Either, there’s one murderer who’s sending a signal to others in the group that he’s prepared to execute them if they don’t start to take action! That would be proof that he didn’t care about being rewarded for his acts since, if the monarchy is restored, Louis XVIII will immediately imprison the man who killed the Tsar’s friend, even if that same man has done him a great service by preventing a compromise from being reached between Napoleon and Alexander I. Or else, we are looking at two murderers, and the second one is trying to pass his crime off as being committed by the first, by using the symbol and by mutilating the body with burns.’
‘In the first case, it only makes sense if the Swords of the King find out that their symbol was pinned to Count Kevlokine’s body.’
‘You’re right. But the Swords of the King know all sorts of things they don’t tell me! I was completely unaware that some of them were in contact with Kevlokine; it’s possible that the police keep them informed. Honoré de Nolant must have kept in contact with his old colleagues who’re still serving the Empire. We can’t
assume they don’t know about the symbol - they’re very well connected. If they don’t know already, they’ll find out sooner or later.’ ‘Are we sure it’s the same symbol?’
‘Yes. Mathurin Jelent told me that Joseph’s agents compared the two emblems - Monsieur Palenier removed the second one from the body, right under the nose of Sausson ... They’re identical. But we still know nothing about the symbols.’
Margont slowed down. They were almost there. ‘Or there’s a third possibility. Maybe the assassin isn’t genuinely royalist. Perhaps he’s killing for personal motives and leaving the emblem to make them look like politically motivated crimes.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The burns. We need to probe the significance of fire for the murderer.’
‘How do you propose we do that?’
‘By coming here.’
Margont pointed out a majestic gateway with two pillars bearing a massive pediment surmounted by a rounded arch. The Salpetriere hospice welcomed - or more often imprisoned - the capital’s old women who could no longer fend for themselves, invalids, the handicapped, indigents, beggars, orphaned or abandoned girls, prisoners of conscience and lunatics.
CHAPTER 28
LEFING was scarlet with fear and anger. Of all things, madness frightened him the most. He had a long-standing and obscure dread - it must have its roots deep in his psyche — that if he ever set foot in an asylum, he would be locked up there indefinitely. He even wondered if this was what Margont had in mind. He was somewhat reassured by the fact the Salpetriere was only for women, but what if this was a ruse, and he was later carted off to Bicetre or Charenton? Margont, who was aware of his friend’s fears, tried to be as reassuring as possible.
‘Stop battling your demons! We’ve only come to interview Dr Pinel.’
Pinel, Pinel ... Lefine had heard of the famous doctor. It was pride that forced him on - he would not flee from his chimeras. But he felt as oppressed, as if all the buildings of the Salpetriere were closing in on him.
Margont gave the doorkeeper a few coins and he let them through.
The place was vast. There were rows of little houses, courtyards, gated yards, gardens filled with trees (walking in the shady fresh air was part of the treatment), streets, a chapel ... It was a city inside a city, a little Paris inside a big one. Margont felt uncomfortable in the closed environment cut off from the rest of the world.
‘It’s like a prison in here! Or a fortress, Castle Madness ...’
Women were strolling along the lime-tree-lined paths. Some of them were on their own; some were with keepers or nuns (the Empire had recalled the nuns sent away during the Revolution). As soon as any of them looked at Lefine, he felt his fears getting the better of him. Although the vast majority of the inmates were not lunatics, Lefine saw mad people everywhere, in their thousands; they were circling him and Margont, and were about to leap on them, and beat them and suffocate them and crush them under their weight. The more he told himself his fears were ridiculous the more his imagination inflated them.
‘Why are we here?’
Margont pointed out the Saint-Louis Chapel, the little masterpiece built by Liberal Bruant, who was better known as the designer of the Hotel des Invalides.
‘I disapprove of it. Ostensibly it allows the inmates to pray in a consecrated place. But I think it’s much more about preventing them from going out. Supposing an inmate wants to go for a walk in the Botanical Gardens nearby? Well, she can’t; she’ll be told to walk in the Salpetriere gardens. She wants to go to church? She can go to the Salpetriere chapel. Go for a swim? In the Salpetriere. Get married? In the Salpetriere. The Salpetriere! The Salpetriere! The Salpetriere! All this here has been built so that the inmates never have to go out! All of life takes place within these walls. Nothing exists outside these walls. It’s like being in a sort of secular abbey for lunatics and old women!’
He remembered the years he had spent in the Abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert and dizziness clouded his vision. One of the wings of the Salpetriere exploded in front of his eyes. Stones and mortar were scattered by twelve-pound cannonballs and
Austrian artillery shells. It was his fury that had set off the imaginary explosion. The walls were hurled into the air where they broke up like papers torn up in rage; they were pulverised; their debris rained down like the drops of a violent spring storm; clouds of dust blended together forming an ochre fog ... The battle moved past, receding into the distance. Calm descended. And the lunatics and paupers, much to their astonishment, found themselves free to come out from their shelter, climb through the gaping holes in the walls and wander off, at liberty, into Paris ...
The warden who was guiding Margont and Lefine indicated a building, telling them that they should go up to the first floor, and then went back to his post.
‘Why are we here?’ repeated Lefine.
‘We’re going to ask Dr Pinel about burns inflicted after death.’ Lefine thought that was ... was ... how should he put it? There were no words strong enough to express what he thought it was. Absurd, stupid, irrelevant, idiotic, ridiculous, laughable, capricious, grotesque, mad, dangerous, unreasonable! All that and much more besides!
‘A doctor of the mind will have a different perspective from ours. Perhaps he will already have encountered a deranged criminal who burns his victims after they’re dead,’ said Margont.
‘Why choose Pinel? I vaguely recognise his name.’
‘He was the one who freed the lunatics. In 1793, when he’d just taken up his post at the hospice of Bicetre, he decided to free the madmen from their chains. To the horror of the wardens. Their argument was that some of the patients were deranged, raving lunatics whom it was necessary to keep in chains day and night, but Pinel’s point was that it was the restraint that caused them to be violent. He decided to begin by freeing twelve of them.’