The Phantom of Rue Royale (14 page)

‘More than that, my dear Noblecourt, much more than that. A real plague, and your reminder makes me realise that I don’t invite you often enough for supper. I was covered in scurf. It was the veal that saved me. They put veal on me every day. On my own initiative, I decided to bathe in almond milk and to drink distilled wine in an infusion. In Bordeaux, they said I was taking milk baths and getting my arse cut to restore my face! But it purged me for the rest of my life, like a universal cauterant supplied by Mother Nature. Since, I’ve had nothing but slight upsets.’

‘The years roll off you like water off a slate roof.’ Noblecourt
let out a sigh. ‘The same cannot always be said of men your age. I am only four years your junior, and alas …’

‘My dear fellow, it may be a foible of mine, but I give credence to a prediction based on an examination of the stars, which puts my death in the month of March.
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Like Caesar, I become gloomy at its approach, but once it’s over I can be sure that I have a whole year ahead of me. So at the moment I’m at the high point of my annual cycle!’

Nicolas decided it was time to make his entry. He recognised the lively old man as the Duc de Richelieu, Marshal of France. He had often seen him at Versailles where, as First Gentleman of the King’s Bedchamber, he was part of the monarch’s intimate circle. The former procurator made the introductions, and Nicolas bowed. Richelieu was a short man. He wore a blue coat, his face was covered in ceruse and rouge, and his wig was so heavily powdered that every time he moved he was enveloped in a small cloud. The study was hot, and the smell of scent that pervaded it, mixed with the aromas of the food and wine, was almost nauseating.

‘Ah! Young Ranreuil, with whom the King is so besotted, and who spends his time helping Sartine. Delighted to see you, Monsieur, delighted.’

Noblecourt, doubtless worried about Nicolas’s reaction, hastened to say, ‘Yes, he provides security for us, a living proof of the excellence of the finest police force in Europe.’

He turned to the other guest, a man dressed in black whom Nicolas had barely noticed.

‘Monsieur Bonamy, city historiographer and librarian and my companion in the administration of the parish of Saint-Eustache.’

Richelieu laughed. ‘And a friend of Provost Bignon, my companion in the French Academy.’

‘Monseigneur, Monsieur, I am overwhelmed by the honour you do me,’ said Nicolas, bowing again.

‘Honour be hanged!’ the marshal exclaimed. ‘Sit down, young man. We’re on the meat course.’

‘Monseigneur,’ said Noblecourt, ‘has sent me his cook, who uses a particular technique to treat meat, which makes it easily digested.’

The duke laughed, ‘But not very tasty – you might as well say it.’

‘Monseigneur,’ Noblecourt went on, addressing Nicolas, ‘has had a carriage made which he calls his “sleeper”. He can rest inside it as if he’s in his bed, and as he doesn’t like eating in inns – or at his friends’ houses – his carriage has a stove tied to the bottom, filled with heated bricks, for cooking meat.’ He turned to Richelieu. ‘In truth, I don’t think there’s ever been a man who’s gone to such lengths to enjoy life’s comforts, or who has been obeyed more punctiliously than you.’

‘That’s as may be,’ the marshal grumbled. ‘I succeed in everything, everything obeys me and everyone yields to me. I have the favour of His Majesty’s small apartments, but I, who was once page to his ancestor Louis the Great, have never been admitted to the Council!’

‘Surely a hero like you should be above such vanity!’

‘Vanity! Vanity! I’d like to see your reaction if you were in my position! You don’t know anything about it – you’re only a lawyer!’

Nicolas felt sorry that Noblecourt, the most courteous and
generous man in the world, should have to swallow such an affront. He knew the marshal’s pride was boundless and that he was never able to resist a witticism, however cruel and unpleasant it might be to his friends. Everyone knew that his ambition was ‘to be more of a Richelieu than the great Cardinal’ and to add the prestige of a statesman to his own military glory by becoming First Minister. He had an implacable hatred of Choiseul, and made no bones about saying so. He had encouraged the King’s new favourite – although he denied it – and counted on the fact that Choiseul’s hatred of the English would lead the King to dismiss him in order to avoid a resumption of hostilities. The ageing monarch was tired and had not yet recovered from the impact of the disastrous war of 1756. All these elements came into the marshal’s calculations.

‘So,’ he went on, too shrewd to dwell on his disagreeable remark and anxious to change targets, ‘Sartine’s wings have been clipped, have they? Quite a success for a Lieutenant of Police, to let one half of Paris crush the other half to death! Such incompetence! His Majesty is angry, and Madame du Barry likes Provost Bignon. Excellent conditions for seeing the mighty fall.’

‘May I be allowed to remark, Monsieur,’ said Nicolas, ‘that the Lieutenant General was in no way responsible for security at the festivities?’

Monsieur de Noblecourt glanced uneasily at his companions and, without calling for his servant Poitevin, filled their glasses with a cherry-blue burgundy.

‘That’s good,’ said the marshal approvingly. ‘The young rooster defends his chief. I like that in such a charming young man.’

He was looking intently at Nicolas. His love of women did not exclude other tastes, which the fair sex is fully entitled to frown upon, and it was rumoured that one of his first mistresses, the Duchesse de Charolais, reproached him for paying too much attention to one of his vergers, a handsome young man.

‘Monseigneur,’ Monsieur Bonamy intervened, in a cracked little voice, ‘I feel I may contradict you, having known you for more than forty years. The responsibility for maintaining order during the festivities in Place Louis XV lay entirely with the provost. I have worn out my poor eyes looking for genuine precedents, but those I found pre-date the creation of the post of Lieutenant General of Police by the great King to whom you had the honour of being page. No need to go as far back as Charles V to know that!’

‘Now Bonamy butts in to refute me! Forty years ago, I would have ignored the edicts on duelling – if, that is, you’d been in a position to hold a sword.’

‘It would have been presumptuous of me to cross swords with the finest warrior in Europe,’ the city historiographer replied calmly.

‘Not at all, Bonamy. I wasn’t that yet, and you’re forgetting the Maréchal de Saxe.’

‘Only true glory can recognise its fellow,’ declared Noblecourt.

‘Oh,’ said Richelieu, ‘on the day of the battle of Fontenoy, the marshal was bloated with a remedy intended to purge him of a stubborn pox – he was the only army general to ever be deflated by glory. The whole of the King’s household witnessed it!’

They laughed and drank as the dessert was served. The
marshal dipped a parsimonious spoon into the redoubt of a blancmange, which he then bombarded with a drop of jelly.

‘I’m glad to see, my dear Noblecourt, that you still cling to the old traditions and don’t spoil the end of your meals with those cream salads or sultanas with spun sugar that stick to the teeth! Not like those lunatics besotted with novelties which seem to me quite absurd, where everything is so overloaded with decoration that you really have no idea what you’re eating.’

The noise of a horse and carriage could be heard from the street.

‘But it’s getting late, and even the best company must break up.’ He rubbed his hands with a ribald air. ‘The night is still young for a Richelieu! A thousand pardons, Noblecourt. Your humble servant, Monsieur Le Floch. Bonamy, if you’d like to take advantage of my coach, I can drop you anywhere you like.’

Bonamy bowed. Noblecourt seized a five-branched torch, which Nicolas immediately took from his hands for fear that the weight might make him stumble. The group walked the marshal to the coach entrance, where a carriage was waiting, with a coachman and two footmen, for the victor of Port-Mahon.

Back in his apartments, Noblecourt collapsed into a
bergère
. He seemed overcome with fatigue. He groaned several times, sunk in gloomy reflection. Nicolas opened the door to the cabinet of curiosities and immediately a pitiful shape panting with gratitude rubbed against his feet.

‘What is Cyrus locked up for?’ said Nicolas, taking the dog in his arms.

‘The marshal doesn’t like dogs, or, rather, he can’t stand other people’s dogs. And when I say he can’t stand them …’
Noblecourt looked at Nicolas. ‘I’m sorry for the exhibition I made of myself; you must have thought me very sycophantic. But I am of a generation for which friendship, not even friendship, just so much as a glance from a duke and peer of the realm was part of a family’s precious inheritance. He’s not as bad as he likes to appear, but he thinks only of himself. This evening, being something of a freethinker, he insisted on meat even though it’s Friday. He spurned the Normandy sole so divinely cooked by Marion and Catherine. You can imagine how upset they were!’

‘I find him quite insolent.’

‘What can we do? He used to make even Madame de Maintenon laugh! You judge him harshly because he attacked Sartine. But his quarrel is not with the Lieutenant of Police, it’s with the friend, or supposed friend, of Choiseul. He judges others only through the prism of his own interests and his own glory. Even in his private life, scandalous as it is, ostentation prevails over sentiment. His love of sensuality is part of his pride, and as women have always been boundlessly generous to him, they have confirmed him in his attitudes.’

He rang, and Poitevin appeared.

‘Bring the sole for Nicolas. At least I can be certain that he’ll appreciate it.’

Monsieur de Noblecourt was recovering his taste for the here and now.

‘In the middle of an investigation, I presume? While you eat, tell me whatever you can, provided it’s not a secret. It’ll distract me.’

Nicolas set about the fish, which he washed down with red wine: white wine was banned in Noblecourt’s house because of his gout – and his lack of will power. He gave a detailed account
of the two investigations in which he was engaged. For a while, Noblecourt remained pensive.

‘Once again,’ he said at last, ‘you are involved in a very delicate case. What you have to understand is that you are trapped between conflicting forces. Of course no one suspects the provost of having engineered the disaster on Place Louis XV himself. But nor is anyone stupid enough not to realise that he’ll do everything in his power to shift the blame on to someone else.’

‘Does he really have the power to do that?’

‘Make no mistake, the new concubine, who’s all the more dangerous in that she has permanent access to the King and feels threatened by the arrival of the Dauphine, will do her utmost to bring down those thought to be supporters of Choiseul. And, unfortunately, Sartine is seen, rightly or wrongly, as his friend.’

‘You know how highly I prize your judgement. It’s always been of benefit to me. What is your feeling about the crime in Rue Royale?’

‘That Indian of yours interests me. I’m pleased that a native from the untamed depths of the New World knows our language. He sounds like an honest man to me, although he may well be hiding something vital from you. As for the rest of them, there are often domestic wars within families and, when they are discovered, new light is suddenly thrown on what appear from the outside to be tranquil households. It also seems to me that, beneath their eccentricity, the Galaine sisters are quite crafty. Those are my first impressions. With that, Nicolas, I really must go to bed. The evening has been quite taxing. I shall leave you alone with the fruits of Neptune and bid you good night.’

Cyrus slipped from Nicolas’s arms and languidly followed his
master. Nicolas was too exhausted to linger and, after dispatching the two sole and emptying the bottle of wine – much to the satisfaction of Poitevin, who ran to tell the two cooks – he went upstairs to bed. For a long time he tossed and turned, mixing the elements of the two cases, trying to seize certain details that escaped him. As sleep overcame him, everything became
confused
in his mind, and his last image was that of three dice rolling, hitting each other but never stopping.

After washing and donning a sober but elegant dark-grey coat, Nicolas put on his wig. He hated wearing a wig, especially now that the weather was getting warmer. He breakfasted on soft rolls and a
bavaroise
,
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and enquired after the health of Monsieur de Noblecourt, whose weariness the previous evening had struck him. According to Catherine, the old man had got up early and after a light breakfast had decided to follow his doctor’s advice. The famous Tronchin of Geneva, whose best-known patient was Voltaire, had been consulted through the intermediary of the great man about the former procurator’s condition. He had recom mended a personal visit, but in the meantime had
prescribed
a diet and a daily walk. Monsieur de Noblecourt had therefore decided to begin the day by taking Cyrus for a stroll along Rue Montorgeuil, where he could stand and gape like a true Parisian at the stalls and the passing parade of the city. Marion was afraid only of one thing, that he might be tempted by the ali babas – delicate saffron-flavoured pastries – sold by Stohrer, the Queen’s pastry cook.

Nicolas enjoyed these morning conversations. He was sitting in the servants’ pantry when there was a knock at the door. After a few moments, one of Monsieur de Sartine’s footmen was admitted by Poitevin. The Lieutenant General’s coach was waiting for him at the door. They had to leave for Versailles immediately. Nicolas had the presence of mind to go back upstairs and get his tricorn. Then he ran down to join his chief.

‘You nearly kept me waiting, Commissioner,’ said Sartine by way of greeting. ‘We need to get to Versailles as quickly as possible. The King has brought forward to Saturday morning the audience he usually grants me on Sunday evening. He’s a creature of habit, so that’s an ominous sign. Apart from that, His Majesty having learnt, I don’t know from whom’ – his expression grew sterner – ‘that a young commissioner witnessed the scene, he wants to hear you describe the evening of which you spent, God damn me, a good part down a chimney! What I’m saying is that my patience is being tried, especially when I read all these pamphlets and songs full of untruths, which try to fool the people with manufactured news! And, to make matters worse, I then have to wait for you in Rue Montmartre!’