Lefine sniggered. ‘Will it ever be over?’
‘I think about it all the time,’ replied Margont. ‘I’d like to launch a newspaper—’ He caught himself. He had said too much!
‘Do both!’ suggested Pinel. The study of madness would give you plenty of material for your articles, believe you me! There would be enough to fill ten newspapers on the subject of the ill treatment of the insane. When I decreed they should be freed from their chains,
I was almost locked up with them!’
‘I’ll think about your proposition. But going back to our investigation ... The fire ...’
‘You’re hiding behind the fire so that you don’t have to answer my offer. That’s understandable. But it still stands. Take all the time you need to think about it.’
‘Do you think the murderer is unstable?’
‘No. It’s not someone who was operating in a blind fury otherwise they would have destroyed everything in the room, making an unbelievable uproar, which would have had the police come running. I don’t think either that they hear voices, because the poor souls who suffer from that plague are so deranged by it that when they go to commit a crime, they are easily found out. Because their thoughts are so disturbed, they’re incapable of scheming and carrying through a coherent plan. Besides, their illness is evident in their behaviour and their speech ...’
‘I haven’t noticed anything like that in any of my suspects.’
This man is in full possession of his intellectual faculties. But he has been profoundly affected by fire and is trying to free himself from the grip of its memory. There are many kinds of debilitating or oppressive feelings: grief, hate, regret, fear, remorse, envy, jealousy ... But they don’t degenerate into madness unless they reach great intensity, often after a shock.’
Margont clasped his hands together. It was an instinctive gesture, as if his ideas were floating in front of him like a cloud of midges, and he was trying to gather them together. It was also like the strange prayer of a believer, who was so exasperated by religion that he thought himself an atheist.
‘He’s hiding in a group of monarchists. Might he be dividing his thoughts between his obsessive fear and his political ideals? No, everything is linked to the fire. In one way or another, even his royalist loyalty must relate to fire.’
Pinel nodded. ‘I think so too. He seems to have a real monomania about fire. It’s an obsession, his only one. Even if there is something else that interests him, which initially has nothing to do with fire, fire will spread in his mind and burn it up.’
‘Something else or someone else that interests him. And he will be obsessed until he succeeds in extinguishing the blaze - assuming that’s his aim. How will he be able to do that?’
Pinel gave an apologetic smile. ‘I think you know how ...’
In a sense, Margont did. He had been haunted by his own ‘fire’: being sent away to the Abbey Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert. Unfortunately by the time that fire had in effect been reduced to embers, a new fire had been ignited in him by the war. ‘He has to settle the score with his past ...’
‘Isn’t that what we all do, all through our lives?’
‘Why are the burns in different places on the two victims? The face, then the arms. Is that significant?’
‘Yes, it will be significant, but I’m not sure how. You mustn’t ignore that question. Because fire is at the heart of this criminal’s monomania. All his thoughts converge sooner or later on fire. So nothing he does with fire is without meaning.’
Pinel could offer no help on the question of curare. Margont shook the doctor’s hand warmly. He was physically exhausted - as if the conversation had been a race several hours long - but his spirit had been completely revived. ‘I can never thank you enough!’
‘Good luck. And think about my proposition.’
CHAPTER 30
ON 28 March, now that the Allies’ real plan had been discovered, Napoleon held a new council of war at Saint-Dizier. The day before, they had learnt of the destruction of General Pacthod’s division and the retreat of Marshals Marmont and Mortier to Paris. Only Marshal Macdonald was in favour of abandoning the capital and battering the rear of the enemy lines with all their fire power. All the other officers wanted to try to save Paris. The Emperor came to a decision. The French army would hurry towards the capital to rescue it - if they could get there in time. A race against the Allies began.
CHAPTER 31
MARGONT was waiting under the arcades of Rue de Rivoli. In 1801, Napoleon Bonaparte had decided to run a long, large avenue east to west along the Seine. This one went past, amongst other things, the Louvre and the Tuileries Palace. It was part of a grand scheme of urbanisation: fine residences were to be built with steeply pitched roofs, a sewer system, paving of the streets. And so Rue de Rivoli was born. But no one wanted a home in the new buildings, which were all identical and lined up like stone soldiers awaiting imperial review. It was very humiliating for Napoleon to realise that Parisians wanted nothing to do with his magnificent Rue de Rivoli. To encourage people, now the Imperial Government was offering a thirty-year exemption from taxes to each buyer. But it was not working. Rue de Rivoli remained resolutely empty ... Lefine had tried to convince Margont that they should pool their meagre resources to buy lodgings because he was sure that one day they would be very valuable. Margont had, of course, refused.
Frankly, who would want to leave their children a measly apartment on Rue de Rivoli?
He spotted Charles de Varencourt, whom he had asked a woman begging in the street to go and find, and waved to him. He looked distraught, resembling a ship in distress. He was almost unrecognisable. He kept wiping his face, which was continually filmed again with sweat.
He glared at Margont. ‘Are you trying to get us killed? Why have you summoned me? I should never have come. You have five minutes.’
‘That’s for me to decide, not you. If you hadn’t come I would have gone myself to knock on your door until you opened up!’ Varencourt was breathing heavily like a hunted deer that hears the baying and the blowing of horns coming nearer. ‘Oh, so that’s why they chose you for this! It’s because you have no awareness of danger! You don’t know it, but you’re the walking dead.’
He led Margont off to the side, all the while talking in low tones, although there were few people about. ‘The Allies are marching on
Paris! So there’s no knowing to what lengths the royalists will go. They’re all going to be outdoing each other in daring. They’re like caged animals about to burst out of their prisons/
Margont looked at him. He spoke sarcastically: The situation has been critical for a while now. So there must be another reason for your panic.’
Varencourt paled further. He looked like a snowman melting in the sun.
‘It’s a good thing after all that you’re not a card player. Because you don’t know when you’re beaten. When I have a bad hand I withdraw from the game. At the moment I’m drawing worse and worse cards and you’re forcing me to up the betting. When I approached the police with information, I thought the Emperor would crush the Allies as he’d always done before. I never for a moment thought they would reach here. I bet on spades but what turned up was an avalanche of diamonds and hearts. If the Allies win, they will go through the millions of documents the Empire has accumulated: dossiers, reports, accounts ... There has never in the whole of our history been such a monstrous, meddling bureaucracy. They will study everything and we will be unmasked. Instead of talking to you, I should be trying to get myself onto the first ship.’
‘A great player like you would never let yourself become flustered like this. You’re hiding something from me/