The Hanged Man (21 page)

The plan had been to rent a skiff at Chatou, row downriver past the bridge, and then return upstream in time for lunch at their favorite
guinguette
, the Maison Fournaise. However, the sky had remained gray and cloudy since sunrise, with intermittent drizzle from the railway station to the dock. Few boaters were out in this weather, but Achille insisted they go, even in the face of the boatman's warnings and Adele's protests.

“I've promised you a row, and that's what you shall have,” he said stubbornly. His wife answered with a look at once wounded and wounding.

Adele sat gloomy and silent in the stern as she handled the tiller with one hand and supported her parasol with the other. The weather was not bad as they glided downstream past muddy banks lined with willows and white-walled rustic houses.

But not far beyond the bridge, the sky turned a peculiar tint of green and a flight of noisy sparrows darted from the trees and circled the river ominously. A sulfurous burst of light, like a photographer's powder flash, preceded a low, distant rumbling. Adele's lips silently formed the words “I told you so.” The sky answered by spouting like an un-bunged beer barrel.

Achille glanced upward and muttered
“Merde!”
Then he turned to Adele, who glared back at him. “We must be near La Grenouillère. Can you see it?”

“Yes, it's just around the bend.”

“Very well. I'm picking up the stroke. Guide me in to the dock.”

“Not that horrible place!”

“My dear, we're taking on water. It's La Grenouillère or we go under. Now please help me in, and sing out a warning so we don't crash into the dock.”

“All right, M. Lefebvre. But I warned you, the boatman warned you … but, oh no, you always know better—”

“You were right, my dear,” Achille broke in breathlessly. His chest heaved; his muscular arms and legs worked liked the pistons and driving rods on a locomotive. “I concede defeat. Will you please handle the tiller and keep an eye out for—”

Achille did not finish the sentence. They slammed into a mossy piling with a bone-jarring thud. After quickly assuring himself that the damage was minimal and they were not about to sink, he shipped oars and got up cautiously to balance the boat. Then he grabbed the mooring line, pulled himself up onto the rickety landing, and secured the skiff. Achille reached down for Adele, took her around the waist, and lifted her onto the dock.

You might have helped
, he thought while sensibly keeping such criticism to himself. Instead, he grasped her hand and cried, “Come on. Let's run for it.”

They dashed to the pavilion that had replaced the notorious floating dance hall, which had burned down the previous year. Inside, they shook themselves off and then sat on a pair of empty seats at the end of a long table. Adele scanned the place critically and made a quick assessment: “It's not as bad as I thought.”

Achille smiled wistfully. A decade earlier, in his bachelor days, he had made acquaintance with the Romper, a hall on pontoons named for the rowdiness of the dancing, and the tiny round bathing dock with its lone shade tree, known as
le camembert
because of its resemblance to a cheese. Memories of intoxication, coarse companionship, powdered and perfumed sirens, conquests, brawls, and a quarrel ending in a duel flashed through his mind in an instant. He would share none of these embarrassing reminiscences with his wife.

“It's changed,” he said.

Adele leaned toward him with a curious gleam in her eye. “Is it true what they say about the drunken can-can dancing and mixed bathing in the altogether?”

Achille laughed softly. “Bathing costume was the rule, but it was loosely enforced. At any rate, no one would make an effort to stop a few fools from stripping down and jumping in the river. That was part of the attraction, and made for some good jokes about the anatomical attributes—” He cut himself off judiciously. “Well, you understand.”

“Indeed I do.” She glanced up and around, listening for a moment to the pattering of raindrops against the eaves and windowpanes. “Not much danger of that today, I'm afraid. And not many customers around, either, which demonstrates the common sense of most Parisians on a day like this.”

Achille flushed and looked down at his hands. “I'm sorry, my dear,” he mumbled. He tried to change the subject. “I met Maupassant here. He was a great rower, back in those days.”

She reached over and stroked his hand gently. “Yes, my dear Professor, you've told me about your acquaintance with Maupassant many times. And Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, and others came here to paint when they were still unknown. But that was long ago, before the war.”

He placed his hand on hers. “Long ago, when we were very young, before the war,” he echoed. “Back then, they all came here, from the highest to the lowest. Even the Emperor and Empress got on a train and came out to have a look. People compared it to Trouville—” He caught himself again.

“
Are
we going to Trouville this summer? You may be frank with me, Achille.”

He shook his head and sighed. “I don't know. This case is difficult—very difficult.”

Suddenly, Adele let go of his hands, frowned, and hissed, “There's a vulgar little man staring at us. He's with a floozy. She's smoking a cigarette and drinking beer—in public.”

Achille glanced over his shoulder. The man smiled and waved. Achille acknowledged the greeting with a nod and turned back swiftly to Adele. “Rats!” he muttered. “It's Fournier.”

“Who is Fournier?”

“A blasted reporter.”

“Well, the blasted reporter is coming over with his woman.”

“Very well. Be polite, but give them no encouragement.”

Adele huffed. “You have nothing to worry about on that account.”

Fournier approached, a short fellow with a protruding paunch, embellished with a red silk vest and dangling gold watch chains. “Well, Inspector Lefebvre, fancy meeting you here. And in such
charming
company!”

Achille took offense at the implication of infidelity. He rose from his chair and towered over Fournier menacingly.

The reporter calmly ignored Achille's threatening demeanor. “Will you honor us with an introduction, Monsieur?”

Achille glared at the man. “M. Fournier, I have the honor of presenting my
wife
, Mme Lefebvre.”

The reporter grinned, lifted his bowler, and bowed. “Your wife? I am indeed honored. Enchanted, Madame Lefebvre. And may I present
my
companion, a young actress of great promise, Mlle Celestine.”

Achille made a stiff bow, while Adele eyed the woman with icy contempt. She nodded curtly and said “Mademoiselle.”

Celestine was a painted trollop of forty. Despite her apparent maturity, she acted the part of an eighteen-year-old ingénue. Her rouged lips parted in a broad smile, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “I'm indeed honored, Madame.” Turning to Achille, she added, “My dear Inspector Lefebvre, all Paris is buzzing with talk of your latest case. ‘The Hanged Man' is on the tip of every tongue.”

Achille did not reply to Celestine. He turned from the actress to her companion. Fournier had a bad reputation for bribing police officers to obtain confidential information, and if he did not get what he wanted from the police, he was quite capable of making things up. Associating with such an individual was compromising, but if he and Adele left immediately, the reporter might take it as a slight. His revenge for such a snub could be a fabricated article. Achille had a fine sense of honor—and a temper—and if the story was slanderous, he could be provoked into a duel. An illegal fight between a journalist and an inspector would at the least be scandalous; worse, it could detract from the investigation, even end Achille's career.

Achille addressed Fournier directly in words the reporter would understand. “I'm involved in an investigation, Monsieur, and therefore not at liberty to discuss the case.”

The reporter smirked and stroked his waxed moustache. “Ah, yes, your investigation. So many rumors, so few facts. You must be very busy, Monsieur. But at least you have time to spend a pleasant Sunday on the river with your charming wife.”

Achille clenched his fists, but Adele sensed trouble and intervened. She rose and made a slight bow. “Monsieur, Mademoiselle, it's been a great pleasure meeting you both, but we were just about to leave. If you will excuse us.”

“But, Madame,” Fournier protested, “you and your esteemed husband have just arrived. Besides, it's still raining. You might have difficulty obtaining a cab to take you to the railway station.”

She smiled sweetly. “Thank you for your solicitude, Monsieur, but I'm sure we'll manage. Come along, my dear.” She grabbed Achille's arm and half-dragged him away from the table before the reporter or his companion could get in another word.

All at once, the clouds parted and the rain stopped. On the pathway outside the pavilion, Achille turned to Adele, leaned over, and kissed her cheek. “That was brilliant, my dear,” he whispered.

She gazed up at him and laughed. “Did you see the looks on their faces?”

“It was very amusing. But we can't take him too lightly. Remember, the pen's mightier than the sword. And I'm afraid he was right about the cab. We may have a bit of a walk.”

She looked up at the brightening sky. “Not necessarily, my love. If the boat still floats, we can row. You were right—it's a beautiful day after all.”

At home, Achille played with Olivier in the nursery. All was going delightfully, until the baby vomited on his father's clean white shirt. After a bath and a change of clothes, the inspector acted the role of horse to his daughter's Napoleon. The child's five-year-old mind transformed the long front hall runner into a snow-laden Alpine pass, or the sands of Egypt (her grandmamma, a colonel's wife, filled the little girl's head with stories about the great Emperor) and her father became Bijou, one of young General Bonaparte's favorite mounts.

“The army will advance! Forward Bijou!” she cried as she kicked her equine papa's aching sides with little bare feet and smacked his sore crupper with the flat of her wooden sword.

Achille began to view his day off as a form of penance for neglecting his family, like performing the Stations of the Cross on bleeding knees. However, the ultimate mortification was yet to come—supper with Mme Berthier.

They dined early in consideration of Achille's early meeting the following morning. Madame opened the conversation with a stern rebuke.

“Achille, it was reckless to go boating in such foul weather. You are fortunate things turned out as well as they did. One expects such foolishness from a college boy, not a man who aspires to become the next Chief of the Sûreté.” Then she turned on her daughter. “Adele, you ought to have had the good sense to refuse to enter the boat.” Adele blushed, looked down, and remained silent.

“Yes, Madame,” Achille replied, with sufficient contrition for both husband and wife. Wishing to avoid any discussion of their encounter with the reporter and his mistress, he immediately changed the subject by commenting on the excellence of Cook's veal chops with sorrel and the accompanying Haut-Brion. Adele followed his lead enthusiastically. These compliments, luckily, elicited a smile from the old woman, who was in charge of going to market and supervised Cook with a sharp eye and a firm hand. Thus, she took credit for the fine meal.

Nevertheless, Achille could not dodge his mother-in-law's rumormongering and conspiracy theories, which pervaded the dining-room conversation like a miasma. In response to her speculations concerning the Hanged Man, German spies, and their subversive allies, he replied as he had to Fournier: “The investigation is ongoing, Madame, and I'm not at liberty to discuss it.”

Mme Berthier smiled slyly. “Of course, my boy. I understand perfectly.”

She understood nothing and, as Achille could foresee but was powerless to prevent, she would continue propagating nonsense among her friends in the marketplace the following morning.

After dinner, Achille read Jeanne one of her favorite stories,
Beauty and the Beast
. As many times as he read the fairy tale, she wanted to hear it again. Afterwards, she looked up at him with a smile so sweet and loving that it almost brought him to tears.

“Papa,” she said, “we had so much fun today. Why can't you be with me always?”

Achille's throat tightened. He stroked her long, light brown hair gently and tried to smile. “I would love to be with you always, my darling, but I must go to work. Not just for the good of our family—above all, I have a duty to France.”

The little face grew serious. “Are you like the Emperor Napoleon?”

He laughed softly. “No, my dear. More like one of his lieutenants. Although I am a commandant in the reserve.”

“Is that like a general?”