Memory of Flames (22 page)

MARGONT went into the office belonging to the medical director of the Salpetriere. He had been planning to explain everything to Pinel but found himself face to face with a crowd of young doctors and guardians. Exhausted — that was the first word that came to mind on seeing Pinel. Too many people making too many demands of him. And he was nearly seventy. Margont’s entrance annoyed him.

‘Go back outside and wait your turn, Monsieur! I don’t doubt that your problem is genuine, I imagine you have come to seek help for one of your relatives, but those in front of you are also in need.’ Already two men had risen. One had his hands on his hips, the other his arms crossed, encouraging Margont to leave of his own accord. Margont undid his belt and fiddled with the buckle until it opened, revealing a small compartment. He took a piece of paper from this strange hiding place, and unfolded it again and again, finally handing Pinel a letter. The latter glanced at it and his eye fell 
on Joseph Bonaparte’s signature. He looked up, hesitating, unsure whether he was dealing with a madman or with a genuine imperial agent.

‘I would request everyone to leave us,’ ordered Margont.

To everyone’s astonishment, Pinel agreed and they all obeyed without asking any questions. Margont explained the reason for his visit, emphasising how important it was to keep what he said secret. The doctor was immediately interested; his eyes blazed like two little suns above the dark clouds of the circles beneath.

‘You want to use my knowledge of insanity to help unmask a criminal? What a novel but tempting idea! Please sit down. So you think the criminal you’re hunting might have a mental illness?’

‘It’s just a thought. But the burns inflicted after death ...’

‘An insane criminal hiding in the ranks of mentally healthy criminals - if such a concept makes sense. In the eyes of his accomplices he would appear quite normal ...’

‘Have you ever come across such a case?’

‘I must admit I haven’t.’ Pinel looked thoughtful. ‘Do you know why I was appointed to Bicetre in 1793? It was because they wanted me to categorise patients. People were being guillotined left, right and centre, France had gone mad - that doesn’t just happen to individuals, it can happen to societies, to countries as well. The Committee of Public Safety was convinced that royalists and foreign agents were concealing themselves amongst the lunatics. When I treated a nobleman or a cleric I had to certify that he was genuinely ill. If I were to say that he was of sound mind, he would be sent to the guillotine! Happily I always came to the conclusion that they were insane. Today I can admit that sometimes I lied. All that is just to say how much your question troubles me. In 1793 they wanted me to unmask the sane hiding amongst the insane, so that they could execute them; twenty years on, you would like me to help you find a madman in the midst of healthy people so that he can be sent to prison. Your request is like a mirror image of what I was asked to do in 1793. I don’t really understand why everyone is determined to find a line so that the insane can be put on one side of it and the sane on the other side. Such a line does

not exist. They are us, we are them. You appear to me to be perfectly reasonable today, but you might just as easily appear to have lost your mind in a year’s time. Whilst the insane might well have recovered their reason. And that’s without taking into account those whom today we consider insane, but whom we will later come to understand just had a different way of looking at the world, a way that we didn’t understand at the time. I’m thinking for example of the Marquis de Sade, whom you must have seen in the corridor...’

Anxious to bring the conversation back to his inquiry, Margont voiced one of his thoughts. ‘I thought of all the things that fire symbolises in the Bible. The suspects are all aristocratic, so religion for them—’

‘Fire? But it’s not fire that is the most striking thing in what you have told me. It’s the
 
repetition
 
of fire. He burnt someone, then he burnt someone
else.'

‘I think I follow, more or less ... So might it be someone who was himself burnt?’ ‘More than that! He’s still burning today.’

‘You think this man is in some way haunted by fire? He has been the victim of fire in one way or another. He thinks about it constantly ...’

Margont vaguely understood that. He had participated in several battles and they regularly came back to him as nightmares. The same went for his childhood memories of being shut up in the Abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert, although these days, those memories were not as strong.

‘Unlike some of my colleagues,’ emphasised Pinel, ‘I think that mental illnesses have a cause, that they result from shocks to the mind, which themselves stem from violent emotions that the subject was unable to control. The man you’re looking for has probably suffered a traumatic experience to do with fire, which has disturbed the working of his mind.’

‘So if we find the original inferno, we will be able to identify the man ...’ said Margont thoughtfully.

Pinel was delighted. ‘Bravo! You should become a doctor and treat 
the insane, like I do!’

‘Pardon?’

'I'm serious! Everyone is interested in the mind but no one wants to work with the insane! Do you know what most of my colleagues do when confronted with madness? They bleed the patient! What an aberration! They’re so worried by anything abstract that they want to do something practical, although it has be said that bleeding is the opposite of practical! The profession would appeal to you and I think you would have a gift for it. If you were interested, and you started your medical studies, I would willingly accept you as a pupil.’

Margont was struck dumb and the doctor went joyously on, ‘Have you never thought what you will do when the war is over?’

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.’
 

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.
 

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/

‘How do you know that I like playing with these odds?’

‘You’re avoiding my question.’

‘The committee is meeting tonight. I don’t know where. They will probably come and get you. Don’t go. Disappear - that’s the best advice I can give you.’

‘Well, the best advice I can give you is not to disappear. Because if you do, the police will soon make you reappear. Did you know that the Swords of the King were in contact with Count Kevlokine?’ ‘With who?’ Varencourt frowned. Margont would have liked to grab him by the collar and shake him vigorously.

‘Stop treating me like an imbecile! You know very well who I’m referring to.’

‘You still don’t get it, do you? We bet on the losing side!’

Margont was not even talking the same language as Varencourt. What was worse, their minds did not work in the same way at all: his was abstract, intangible, made up of ideas, whereas Charles de Varencourt’s, all cogs and wheels, was more like Pascal’s calculating machine.

‘Let me rephrase the question,’ Margont said. ‘Why did you not tell me about Kevlokine?’

‘Because some subjects are off limits!’

Varencourt’s face had changed. He now looked less fearful and more resolute.

‘That was a very important subject with the group. They were always talking about the necessity of getting in touch with the Tsar’s agent. They talked about it so much because they did not know how to go about it. Then suddenly, a few weeks before you were admitted, they stopped talking about it at all!’

He clapped his hands like a fairground clown. ‘But at the same time Vicomte de Leaume also acquired what I can only describe as an air of invincibility. Our group were “spearheading the fight against the tyrant”, we were going to “take the enemy in a pincer movement” ... I thought that he had probably succeeded in contacting Kevlokine. It felt as if an important milestone had been reached and I realised bitterly that they were concealing the good news from me. I might be a traitor but I still have feelings. So one evening - about ten days before we met - I said, casually, “I know that we’re being of great service to the Restoration. What a pity our efforts will never come to the attention of His Majesty!”’

He clenched his teeth. ‘You should have seen the looks they gave each other! They still told me nothing, though. They’ll pay for that! There are days when being a traitor and stabbing people in the back brings you more than just financial satisfaction. I think everyone knew except me! It was Baron de Nolant who was caught out by me. He hadn’t noticed the looks the others were giving and launched in gaily with, “The Tsar will tell His Majesty.” Jean-Baptiste de Chatel cut him off: “Where are we with finding more people to help us?” and afterwards the conversation turned to that

subject. A bit too speedily and in a rather haphazard manner.’

‘Why did you not tell me any of this?’

‘Because it was too dangerous a subject! They must have been planning something with Kevlokine!’

Margont forced himself to stay calm. Listening to Varencourt was like reading
 
Le Moniteur
 
or
 
Le Journal de Paris:
 
truth and lies were intertwined. It was quite hard to work out what to dismiss and what might be partly true. But by listening carefully, Margont managed to pick out the contradictions and ignore what was palpably untrue. He was able to gather little snippets, and start to put them together.

‘So,’ he told Varencourt, ‘you told us about everything except the most important things.’

Varencourt raised a finger, advocate for his own lost cause. ‘Not exactly. I would say that everything is linked. The posters, Count Kevlokine, the rebellion, the assassination of Colonel Berle ... I have no idea who killed the Tsar’s agent. What I can tell you is that since his murder, they’ve changed—’

Varencourt broke off abruptly, aware that he had said too much.

‘So you did know! How did the group find out that Kevlokine had been murdered?’ Margont pressed him.

‘Honoré de Nolant knows people. He has informers ... I don’t know who ... But Leaume told me this morning that the count had been murdered. He didn’t tell me any more than that.’

‘Did he come to your house?’

‘No. I was playing cards at an inn I’m fond of. Vicomte de Leaume arrived out of the blue and invited me for a “walk”. He was asking me all about you. He asked me again where we met, and when, who we met through, and why. Luckily I was well prepared for his questions. And he does seem to have begun to accept you recently. Then he announced that Kevlokine was dead. That’s what’s changed my hand. That and the arrival of the Allies.’

They had walked a little further along and stopped by the Tuileries Cardens, which were separated from Rue de Rivoli by elegant railings. Joyful chatter could be heard from the gardens, where soldiers and beautiful girls were strolling in couples, laughing and

swearing undying love to each other; luxurious little carriages were passing, drawn at the trot. The Spanish dragoons, newly arrived in Paris, were the heroes of the hour. These elite soldiers were feared even by the Spanish guerrillas who nicknamed them
 
‘cabezas de oro’ -
 
gold heads - because of their gold-coloured copper helmets. People who still believed Napoleon could win were milling about under the windows of the Tuileries Palace, or were besieging the imperial palace, sneering at the ‘cowards’ and flaunting their convictions. It was a strange spectacle, as if time had stopped. It was the end of March 1814 everywhere else but here in the Tuileries, where the sunny days of Austerlitz still shone. Margont said nothing. He did not know if Louis de Leaume was aware that they had found the emblem of the Swords of the King on Count Kevlokine’s body. And he did not want to give anything away by asking Varencourt.

‘Co on!’ he said instead.

‘There isn’t anything else! Really, I swear!’

‘Does he suspect one of the members of the group?’

‘What makes you say that? It would make no sense ... one doesn’t fire on one’s own side!’

‘Well, you do!’

Varencourt bristled at that. ‘I really think you should disappear,’ he advised Margont. ‘But not till after tonight’s meeting! If you flee now, by the end of the afternoon they’ll realise you’re gone. And all their suspicions will ricochet onto me, because I’m the one who introduced you. But if you go after the meeting - and I’ll go too -they’ll take longer to notice and we’ll be able to put some distance between them and us. Yes, now I think about it properly, that’s what we should do ...’

He almost took Margont by the arm, but thought better of it. ‘Do as you like, you obstinate blighter. I only ask one thing: that when you do decide to disappear, you’ll let me know! Or else you’ll have my death on your conscience. And I know you have a conscience, very much so. Just swear that you will let me know when you’re withdrawing from the game!’

‘If such a thing were to happen, I’d do my best to let you know.’

Varencourt did not look very reassured. Something had happened to make him nervous. He was an experienced and talented manipulator. The explanations he had given did not seem enough to justify the state he was in. And there was something slightly theatrical about his fear: the way he had almost taken Margont’s arm, and sometimes mumbled his answers, his entreaties. Was he really as afraid as he was making out? Or was he acting fearful to mask his real state of mind? The more Margont had opened up to him, the more Varencourt had seemed to respond with lies.

‘Where were you the night Chatel, Leaume and Nolant turned up unannounced at my lodgings to force me to use my printing press?’

‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘Someone searched my room the same day that I met the committee.’

‘That’s hardly surprising. Although it’s a pretty useless precaution to take. Who would be stupid enough to leave anything compromising at home? We’re all searched, followed, watched ... By

others and by other members of the group! You learn to live with it >

 

‘Who is Catherine de Saltonges’s lover?’

Varencourt reddened. He opened his mouth but found himself incapable of replying. He seemed to be suffocating, like a fish yanked out of the water by a hook and dropped on the riverbank. ‘I don’t... involve myself in such things ...’

He looked very uncomfortable indeed. Was he in love with the woman?

‘Let’s leave her out of this,’ he finally managed. ‘She’s already lived through enough crises, don’t you think?’

He pulled himself together and looked Margont straight in the eye. ‘As we’re taking the gloves off, let’s take them all the way off. You must already know that Jean-Baptiste de Chatel was summoned to appear before the tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition. Well, it wasn’t only because of his heresy and violations of Roman Catholic dogma. He was also accused of acts of sodomy. I learnt that from Louis de Leaume one day when Chatel had yet again

contradicted him and acted as if he were the leader of the group. Leaume exclaimed, “You’re supposed to love me. Although not too much, of course. Didn’t the Inquisition succeed in putting you off such things?” Later, when I asked him about it, Vicomte de Leaume told me that Chatel had had an affair with one of the monks at the Abbey d’Aljanfe. In December 1812, Chatel tried to join the Knights of the Faith. But one of their committee members had emigrated to Madrid in the past and had heard about Chatel. The man revealed what he knew and Chatel was turned down. When Chatel wanted to join the Swords of the King, the Knights of the Faith informed Vicomte de Leaume. But he accepted Chatel nevertheless. And in the beginning they got on extremely well, even though today you would find that hard to believe. Flowever, since the Vicomte’s allusion to Chatel’s habits, they’ve hated each other. Now you know all that, is your investigation any further advanced?’

Oh, yes! thought Margont. He had already suspected that there was something else between Leaume and Chatel besides a mere power struggle. The assured, arrogant stare Jean-Baptiste de Chatel gave Louis de Leaume ... Perhaps Leaume was right and Chatel was attracted to him. His fury with Leaume might be the result of unrequited love. Margont also noted how Charles de Varencourt had eluded his question about Catherine de Saltonges. Varencourt had brandished the new information just as Margont had him in a tight corner. Like the Mongols in the Middle Ages, Varencourt took care never to empty his quiver. So when he was threatened, he always had some arrows to fire off. Margont decided to move in still closer.