An Officer and a Spy (24 page)

I start to turn the pages of the file. To my astonishment, every sheet is a copy of the
bordereau
. I open it at the midpoint. I flick to the end. “My God,” I murmur, “how many times did you make him write it out?”

“Oh, a hundred or more. But that was over the course of several weeks. You’ll see they’re labelled: ‘Left hand,’ ‘right hand,’ ‘standing up,’ ‘sitting down,’ ‘lying down …’ ”

“You made him do this in his cell, presumably?”

“Yes. Monsieur Bertillon, the handwriting expert from the Préfecture of Police, wanted as large a sample as possible so that he could demonstrate how he managed to disguise his writing. Colonel
du Paty and I would visit Dreyfus at Cherche-Midi, usually around midnight, and interrogate him throughout the night. The colonel had the idea of surprising him while he was asleep—springing in and shining a powerful lantern in his face.”

“And what was his mental state during all this?”

Gribelin looks shifty. “It was rather fragile, to be frank with you, Colonel. He was held in solitary confinement. He was not allowed any letters or visitors. He was often quite tearful, asking after his family and so forth. I remember he had some abrasions on his face.” Gribelin touches his temple lightly. “Around here. The warders told us he used to hit his head against the wall.”

“And he denied any involvement in espionage?”

“Absolutely. It was quite a performance, Colonel. Whoever trained him taught him very well.”

I continue to leaf through the file.
I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information … I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information … I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information …
The writing deteriorates as the days pass. It is like a record from a madhouse. I start to feel my own head reeling. I close the file and push it back across the table.

“That’s fascinating, Gribelin. Thank you for your time.”

“Is there anything else I can assist you with, Colonel?”

“I don’t think so, no. Not just at the moment.”

He cradles the file tenderly in his arms and takes it over to the filing cabinet. I pause at the door and look back at him. “Do you have any children, Monsieur Gribelin?”

“No, Colonel.”

“Are you married, even?”

“No, Colonel. It never fitted with my work.”

“I understand. I’m the same. Good night, then.”

“Good night, Colonel.”

I trot down the stairs to the first floor, picking up speed as I go, past the corridor to my office, down the stairs to the ground floor, across the lobby and out into the sunshine, where I fill my lungs with reviving draughts of clean fresh air.

I sleep very little that night. I sweat and turn and twist on my narrow bed, corrugating the sheets until it feels as if I am lying on stones. The windows are open to try to circulate some air, but all they admit is the noise of the city. In my insomnia I end up counting the distant chimes of the church clocks every hour from midnight until six. Finally I drop off to sleep, only to be woken thirty minutes later by the hoarse horn blasts of the early morning tramway cars. I dress and go downstairs and walk up the street to the bar on the corner of the rue Copernic. I have no appetite for anything more substantial than black coffee and a cigarette. I look at
Le Figaro
. An area of high pressure off the southwest coast of Ireland is moving across the British Isles, the Netherlands and Germany. The details of the Tsar’s forthcoming visit to Paris have yet to be announced. General Billot, the Minister of War, is attending the cavalry manoeuvres in Gâtinais. In other words, in these dog days of August, there is no news.

By the time I reach the Statistical Section, Lauth is already in his office. He wears a leather apron. He has produced four prints of each of the two Esterhazy letters: damp and glistening, they still reek of chemical fixer. He has done his usual excellent job. The addresses and signatures have been blocked out but the lines of handwriting are sharp and easily legible.

“Good work,” I say. “I’ll take them with me—and the original letters, too, if you don’t mind.”

He puts them all in an envelope and hands it to me. “Here you are, Colonel. I hope they lead you somewhere interesting.” There is an imploring spaniel’s look in his pale blue eyes. But he has already
asked me once what I want with them, and I have refused to answer. He dare not ask again.

I take great pleasure in ignoring the implied question and wishing him a jaunty “Good day, Lauth,” before strolling back to my office. I remove one print of each of the letters and slip them into my briefcase; all the rest go into my safe. I lock my office door behind me. In the lobby I tell the new concierge, Capiaux, that I’m not sure when I’ll be back. He’s an ex-trooper in his late forties. Henry dredged him up from somewhere and I’m not entirely sure I trust him: to me he has the glassy-eyed, broken-veined look of one of Henry’s drinking companions.

It takes me twenty minutes to walk to the Île de la Cité, to the headquarters of the Préfecture of Police, a gloomy fortress rising over the embankment beside the pont Saint-Michel. The building is the old municipal barracks, as dark and ugly inside as out. I give my visiting card to the porter—
Lt. Col. Georges Picquart, Ministry of War—
and tell him I wish to see Monsieur Alphonse Bertillon. The man is immediately respectful. He asks me to come with him. He unlocks a door and ushers me through it, then locks it behind us. We climb a narrow, winding stone staircase, floor after floor of steps so steep I am bent half double. At one point we have to stop and press ourselves against the wall to let past a dozen prisoners descending in single file. They trail a stench of sweat and despair in their wake. “Monsieur Bertillon has been measuring them,” explains my guide, as if they have been to visit their tailor. We resume our ascent. Finally he unlocks yet another door and we emerge onto a hot and sunny corridor with a bare wooden floor. “If you wait in here, Colonel,” he says, “I’ll find him.”

We are at the very top of the building, looking west. It swelters like a greenhouse with the trapped heat. Beyond the windows of Bertillon’s laboratory, past the chimneypots of the Préfecture, the massive roofs of the Palace of Justice rise and plunge, a blue slate sea, pierced by the dainty gold and black spire of the Sainte-Chapelle. The lab’s walls are papered with hundreds of photographs of criminals, full-face and profile. Anthropometry—or “Bertillonage,” as our leading practitioner modestly calls it—holds that all human beings
can be infallibly identified by a combination of ten different measurements. In one corner is a bench with a metal ruler set into it and an adjustable gauge for measuring the length of forearms and fingers; in another, a wooden frame like a large easel, for recording height, both seated (torso length) and standing; in a third, a device with bronze calipers for taking cranial statistics. There is a huge camera, and a bench with a microscope and a magnifying glass mounted on a bracket, and a set of filing cabinets.

I wander around examining the photographs. It reminds me of a vast natural science collection—of butterflies, perhaps, or beetles, pinned and mounted. The expressions on the prisoners’ faces are variously frightened, shamed, defiant, disinterested; some look badly beaten up, half starved or crazy; no one smiles. Amid this dismal array of desperate humanity I suddenly come across Alfred Dreyfus. His bland accountant’s face stares out at me from above his torn uniform. Without his habitual spectacles or pince-nez his face looks naked. His eyes bore into mine. There is a caption:
Dreyfus 5.1.95
.

A voice says, “Colonel Picquart?” and I turn to find Bertillon holding my card. He is a squat, pale figure in his early forties with a thick pelt of black hair. His stiff beard is cut square, like the blade of an axe: I feel that if I ran my finger along the edge, it would draw blood.

“Good day, Monsieur Bertillon. I was just noticing that you have Captain Dreyfus here among your specimens.”

“Ah yes, I recorded him myself,” replies Bertillon. He comes over to stand beside me. “I photographed him when he arrived at La Santé prison, straight from his degradation.”

“He looks different to how I remember him.”

“The man was in a trance—a somnambulist.”

“How else could one endure such an experience?” I open my briefcase. “Dreyfus in fact is the reason for my visit. I’ve replaced Colonel Sandherr as chief of the Statistical Section.”

“Yes, Colonel, I remember you from the court-martial. What new is there to say about Dreyfus?”

“Would you be so good as to examine these?” I hand him the
photographs of the two Esterhazy letters. “And tell me what you think.”

“You know that I never give instant judgements?”

“You might want to in this case.”

He looks as if he might refuse. But then curiosity overcomes him. He goes to the window and holds up the letters to the light, one in either hand, and inspects them. He frowns and gives me a puzzled look. He returns his attention to the photographs. “Well,” he says; and then again: “Well, well …!”

He crosses to a filing cabinet, slides open a drawer and takes out a thick green folder bound with black ribbon. He carries it over to his bench. He unties it, and pulls out a photograph of the
bordereau
and various sheets and charts. He lays the
bordereau
and the letters in a row. Then he takes three identical sheets of squared transparent paper and lays one over each of the three documents. He switches on a lamp and pulls the magnifying glass into position and starts to examine them. “A-ha,” he mutters to himself, “a-ha, yes, yes, a-ha …” He makes a series of rapid notes. “A-ha, a-ha, yes, yes, a-ha …”

I watch him for several minutes. Eventually I can’t stop myself. “Well? Are they the same?”

“Identical,” he says. He shakes his head in wonder. He turns to me. “Absolutely identical!”

I can scarcely believe he can be so certain so quickly. The main prop in the case against Dreyfus has just vanished: kicked away by the very expert who put it there in the first place. “Would you be willing to sign an affidavit to that effect?”

“Absolutely.”

Absolutely?
The photographs of the criminals on the walls seem to whirl around me. “What if I told you that those letters weren’t written by Dreyfus at all, but here in France this very summer?”

Bertillon shrugs, unconcerned. “Then I would say that obviously the Jews have managed to train someone else to write using the Dreyfus system.”

——

I head back from the Île de la Cité to the Left Bank. I try to track down Armand du Paty at the Ministry of War. I am told he is not expected in that day, but he may be found at home. A junior staff officer gives me his address: 17, avenue Bosquet.

I set off yet again on foot. At some point I seem to have ceased to be an army officer and become a detective. I pound pavements. I interview witnesses. I collect evidence. If and when this is all over, perhaps I should apply to join the Sûreté.

The avenue Bosquet is pleasant and prosperous, close to the Seine, sun-dappled beneath its trees. Du Paty’s apartment is on the second floor. I knock several times without receiving a reply, and I am on the point of leaving when I notice a shadow shifting slightly in the gap below the door. I knock again. “Colonel du Paty? It’s Georges Picquart.”

There is a silence, and then a muffled command: “A moment, if you please!” Bolts are drawn back, a lock turns, and the door opens a crack. A distorted eye blinks at me through a monocle. “Picquart? Are you alone?”

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“True.” The door opens fully to reveal du Paty dressed in a long red silk dressing gown covered in Chinese dragons; on his feet are pale blue Moroccan slippers; on his head a crimson Turkish fez. He is unshaven. “I was working on my novel,” he explains. “Come in.”

The apartment smells of incense and cigar smoke. Dirty plates are piled beside a chaise longue. Manuscript pages are stacked on an escritoire and strewn across the rug. Above the fireplace hangs a painting of a naked slave girl in a harem; on the table is a photograph of du Paty and his aristocratic new wife, Marie de Champlouis. He married her just before the Dreyfus affair began. In the picture she holds a baby in its christening robes.

“So you have become a father again? Congratulations.”

“Thank you. Yes, the boy is one year old.
^*
He’s with his mother
on her family’s estate for the summer. I’ve stayed behind in Paris to write.”

“What are you writing?”

“It’s a mystery.”

Whether he is referring to the genre of his composition or its current state I am not sure. He seems to be in a hurry to get back to it: at any rate he doesn’t invite me to sit. I say, “Well, here is another mystery for you.” I open my briefcase and give him one of the Esterhazy letters. “You’ll recognise the handwriting, perhaps.”

He does, immediately—I can tell by the way he flinches, and then by the effort he makes to conceal his confusion. “I don’t know,” he mutters. “Perhaps it could be familiar. Who is the author?”