Paris Requiem (22 page)

‘Harvard? In America?’

James nodded and the student grinned. ‘How did you like what Vaillant said?’

‘I can’t say I was wholly convinced.’

The grin spread. ‘Professeur Vaillant was once married to an American woman. She left him. She wandered. It explains a little, non?’

James wanted to ask if he had also been married to a Jewess, but found himself asking instead, ‘Are you by any chance going down to the laboratories?’

‘No. It’s my time for the wards. But, wait a minute … There’s our star pathologist.’ He hailed a lanky man with a dour face and eyebrows so thick they all but formed a line across his brow. ‘Are you going down to the lab, Steinlen?’

Steinlen gave a curt nod.

‘Could you take Monsieur …’

‘Norton,’ James supplied.

‘Monsieur Norton from Harvard down with you?’

Steinlen appraised him with decided suspicion. ‘It’s not open to visitors. Vaillant wouldn’t be pleased.’

‘I just want to have a quick look, but no matter. I’ll get Dr Vaillant’s permission. We have friends in common.’

‘Oh go on, take him,’ the first student protested. ‘None of the profs will be there now. And he’s had to sit through
Vaillant’s
asides on the American illness.’

‘Vaillant’s right,’ the tall man said. ‘The American doctors are in agreement. It’s the hectic pace of American life.’

‘Then we must have a great deal in common, Monsieur. I must say that I find Paris rather more hectic than Boston.’

‘Ah but you see, you have chosen to come here. Many of your compatriots come here. We stay at home.’

‘Go on, take him, Steinlen. You can show off your newest cadaver to Mr Norton.’

‘Is it a Jew?’ James heard himself ask.

The dour face turned on him with a slight smirk. ‘An old one. From Odessa. An excellent specimen. Come along then. He has wonderfully splayed feet, with high arches and hammer toes. A tabetic.’ The man went on, suddenly garrulous, drowning James in science.

James nodded without listening. The thoughts that crowded his mind were having an effect on his pulse. What if Judith were right? What if Vaillant was discreetly picking off patients in order to give a laboratory base to his theories? Whatever Raf contended, Olympe and her sister were
remarkably
alike. Might Vaillant have in some deranged way wanted to investigate a familial disease pattern? There might be case notes somewhere in the hospital about a wandering Rachel.

No, he was raving. It was the influence of this place with its bleak corridors, its howling, confined lunatics. Even the courtyards, like the one they now crossed, were bleak, infested with scurrying shadows. And his speculations made no sense. Olympe’s body had been found in the river. She hadn’t disappeared into a laboratory.

Something else occurred to him. What if Judith had held forth her delirious speculations to Olympe? And the brave girl – he knew she was brave, everything in her life testified to it – had decided to investigate. As he was doing now. Had enmeshed herself in the whole venomous business and
Vaillant
had somehow got wind of a determination she might
have formed to expose him. Expose his killing of patients. Jewish patients. What simpler solution to that threat than to plunge her into the waters of the Seine. No one would
suspect
him. No one from Olympe’s world apart from
Marguerite
would even know of Judith’s existence. And she couldn’t tell Raf or her kinship with Judith would have to come out.

Did Marguerite know Vaillant? He would have to ask.

The only problem with his racing conjectures was that Vaillant didn’t look like a killer. On the other hand the man beside him, the devoted student, had distinct possibilities in that direction. Or the bullying and fleshy Dr Comte. Yes, decidedly Dr Comte.

‘Tell me,’ James interrupted Steinlen’s monologue. ‘Do you ever have opportunity in the lab to investigate several members of one family.’

‘Ah, there you have us, Monsieur. We have records, of course, of hereditary transmission – for Friedreich’s disease and
Thompson’s
disease; many instances of depressed and demented parents producing ataxic children and so on. But to my knowledge, certainly during my time in the Salpêtrière we have only had one possibility of investigating the brain and internal
deformations
of a single family. That was a father and daughter.’

‘Were they Jews?’

‘Fortunately.’ The man nodded, seemed about to give James his own cadaverous smile, when his face suddenly darkened. ‘Have you heard that the government fell today?’

‘No. I hadn’t.’

‘That, too, can be laid at the Jews’ feet. Their financiers have influenced everyone. Loubet is in their pocket. There are several rallies tonight. You must come and swell our numbers. If we don’t make our dissatisfaction heard, we are certain to have a government that wants nothing more than to re-instate Dreyfus and further weaken the Republic. The medical faculty, I can tell you, is staunchly patriotic.’

‘Indeed,’ James murmured.

They had reached a far corner of a second courtyard and Steinlen unlocked a door, only to lock it quickly behind them.

An acrid chemical reek assaulted James’s nostrils, invaded his eyes, produced tears which blurred his vision. He looked through their mist to see a rectangular room, a series of pallets at its centre. On one of them lay a corpse, obscenely naked, the skin tinged greyish green. It was a man, an old man, his belly protruding slightly, his legs thin, misshapen, his hands clenched at his side as if he were struggling against some insurmountable pain. The bristle on his jutting chin seemed strangely alive, each hair a manifest spike clutching onto life.

James gripped the table and averted his eyes. They fell on walls lined with jars. Brains of varying sizes floated inside them, like so many shrunken footballs. There were other parts, too, tangled tufts of fibres that he couldn’t or wouldn’t recognise. On the side tables lay a variety of instruments, scalpels and mallets and callipers and saws and heavy scissors, alongside scales, an assortment of bone parts, as well as what looked like vertebrae.

Suddenly the room started to swirl in an ever more frenzied motion, the body, the jars, the instruments trapped in an unending circle of movement, gathering up everything in its wake, Maisie and Olympe and Judith and the women in the ward, round and round. A growing whirlpool of recurrence. And it was cold, so very cold, an arctic chill which ate away at skin and bone, preventing escape.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, frozen in time, the whirlpool all around him, but gradually Steinlen’s voice penetrated his daze. The voice waxed enthusiastic and as James at last focused on his face, he had the odd sense that this chamber of death and dismemberment was the man’s preferred home.

He forced himself to listen to his words. Steinlen was describing what he was about to do to the cadaver, what lesions and irregular growths he expected to find, along with a calcification of the joints. But it was the brain that most interested him. The brain was undiscovered country, a
mysterious
region calling out to the adventurous scientist. He was certain that in this man he would find a shrunken left hemisphere. The left hemisphere was the material home of the higher, the rational qualities. It was always deficient in women and in the
débile
, the mentally defective.

Steinlen pointed and jabbed as he went and James had the dawning realisation that he saw these sad remains of a man as a rich terrain waiting to be charted by his mapping skills. He took a deep, painful breath and reminding himself why he was here, asked with a telltale tremor, ‘How many bodies do you get to work on?’

‘Quite a few. The Salpêtrière houses the population of a small town.’

‘Any young ones?’

‘You mean children?’

‘No, no, young people.’

‘Of course. In a hospital like this death is democratic.’ Steinlen grinned, exhibiting a row of strong yellow teeth.

‘And Dr Vaillant leads you in your researches. He comes here himself?’

‘Oh yes. Often enough. He’s a skilful dissector.’

James nodded respectfully. ‘And Dr Comte as well.

‘He’s better on the clinical side – but he provides us with a good number of our bodies.’

James’s skin prickled, as if a scalpel had demarcated the circle of his heart. ‘Do you get an even number of men and women?’ he asked with a hesitant stammer.

‘More women of late.’

‘You keep records and charts, I suppose?’

Steinlen’s lip curled in marked contempt. ‘We are
scientists
, Monsieur. Of course we keep records.’ He waved his arm towards a far corner of the room where James saw a closed door. ‘But I have no authority …’

‘Of course not, of course not.’ James cut him off with a smile. ‘I was only asking for future reference, in case any of our students wished to spend a few months at your great hospital.’

Steinlen seemed about to question him further, but James forestalled him with a hasty look at his watch. ‘I must leave you now, Monsieur. It’s later than I thought. My sincerest thanks.’

Relief bounded through him as he closed the door of that chamber of death behind him. He didn’t enjoy it for long. He had taken only a few steps into the courtyard, when Dr Comte’s oily figure bounded into his view. A wish for
invisibility
did no good. The doctor was already addressing him.

‘I see you are developing a great affection for our hospital, Monsieur Norton. Still here after so many hours?’

‘I took the opportunity of attending Dr Vaillant’s lecture.’

‘And visiting our laboratory?’ The man eyed him with unpleasant suspicion and blocked his path.

‘Most impressive,’ James said evenly, edging round him. Then he stopped. ‘Tell me, Doctor, it’s something that interests me. Have you come across many cases of ambulatory automatism?’

Comte lifted a single shaggy eyebrow. ‘Only one, directly. You’ll have to go to the men’s wards for that.’ His chuckle held a malign edge. ‘Women, unless they take to the streets like your cousin Mademoiselle Boussel, tend to do their
wandering
in their dreams.’

‘Is that so? Good evening, Doctor. Do take good care of Judith for us – and of dear Louise.’

‘We take good care of all our patients, Monsieur,’ the man called after him. ‘Every single one.’

James didn’t like his tone. He didn’t like his tone at all. In fact there was nothing he liked about this place. He had a sudden vision of smuggling Judith out of its insalubrious confines – a Judith with her hair neatly coiffed, her dress a rustling silk, her fine eyes outlined with kohl. A Judith in effect who was a reincarnation of a lost Olympe. The vision followed him all the way back to his hotel.

A few hours later, the grime of the Salpêtrière scrubbed from his pores, his frock coat smooth over the glisten of a fresh shirt, James made his way round the neo-classical harmony of the Place Vendôme and into the Ritz. The well-appointed bar wasn’t large, but it was crowded and dim and he doubted once more that he would recognise the man Marguerite had described in her letter. Olympe’s friend, Marcel Bonnefoi, she had said, would be wearing a white carnation in his lapel. She had added that James wasn’t to worry, Marcel would be certain to detect a tall, fresh-faced American amidst the bar’s regulars.

James peered round the room, penetrated clouds of smoke to focus on lapels, on glittering jewels, on bored or
laughing
faces. What kind of man would embody the subtle,
well-judged
prose of those letters he had once again studied before setting off? He moved slowly towards the counter, his eyes drawn towards the tableau above it with its racing horses and floral extravagance, when a lazy wave from a far table caught his attention.

He turned towards the waver who reclined with marked indolence in a discreet corner chair, his legs in dapper striped trousers stretched before him. He had dark brows and thick black hair of remarkable glossiness which fell over one eye. In the other sat a monocle, which gave his face a leftward tilt. That apart, it was a well-disposed face, if rather feminine in the smallness of its features. James found himself thinking of
the man Olympe’s actress friend had depicted to him – the swell who had dropped Olympe off on the last day her fellow players had seen her.

‘Marcel Bonnefoi?’

‘Monsieur Norton.’ The man’s voice was husky as he stood to give James an all but imperceptible bow. He fingered the carnation in his buttonhole. ‘Madame de Landois described you perfectly. I rue the tragedy which has brought us together. Please, do sit.’ He signalled to a waiter who appeared with remarkable swiftness to take James’s order of a Scotch.

James took in gloves the colour of fresh butter, a chest swollen under a white satin vest which had the word ‘dandy’ written all over it. He lost no time. ‘I believe, Monsieur
Bonnefoi
, you might have been one of the last known people to see Olympe Fabre. Was it you who dropped her at the theatre on Thursday the first of June?’

The man pursed his lips round his silver cigarette holder in studied reflection, then blew out a perfect circle of smoke. ‘It could very well be. Yes, yes. Thursday. Indeed. I dropped her at the theatre on Thursday. We had taken tea together.’

‘How was she?’

Bonnefoi frowned. ‘As far as I could see, she was no
different
from usual. Olympe was a special person, Monsieur. A true artiste. I wish you could have heard her analysing the great Bernhardt’s rendition of Hamlet. It was the last play we saw together and Olympe had studied every movement of hand and face, every inflection of voice.’

James cut him off. ‘What did you talk about on Thursday?’

The man raised a slightly querulous eyebrow, so that the monocle dropped from his face to hang from its black ribbon. He replaced it carefully. ‘If I remember correctly, we spoke, Monsieur, of
L’amour fou
, the play Olympe was starring in. The second, no the beginning of the third act of the play, to be precise, where Olympe says goodbye to her sleeping
child. The last time I had seen her in it, it had struck me that Olympe could put more emotion into this scene. Her movements had been a little rushed. They didn’t hold a sufficient poignancy …’