I remain there with Pauline for a long time, savouring these final hours together, until the stars begin to fade into the dawn, then I pick up my coat and drape it over her shoulders, and arm in arm we walk back together into the sleeping city.
* * *
1 Godefroy Cavaignac (1853–1905), fervent Catholic, appointed Minister of War 28 June 1898.
22
THE NEXT DAY, with the help of Labori, I draft an open letter to the government. At his suggestion I send it not to the devout and unbending Minister of War, our toy Brutus, but to the anti-clerical new prime minister, Henri Brisson:
Monsieur Prime Minister,
Until the present moment I have not been in a position to express myself freely on the subject of the secret documents which, it is alleged, establish the guilt of Dreyfus. Since the Minister of War has, from the tribune of the Chamber of Deputies, quoted three of those documents, I deem it a duty to inform you that I am in a position to establish before any competent tribunal that the two documents bearing the date 1894 cannot be made to apply to Dreyfus, and that the document dated 1896 shows every evidence of being a forgery. It would seem obvious therefore that the good faith of the Minister of War has been imposed upon, and that the same is true of all those who have believed in the relevance of the first two documents and in the authenticity of the last.
Kindly accept, Monsieur Prime Minister, my sincere regards,
G. Picquart
The letter reaches the Prime Minister on Monday. On Tuesday, the government files a criminal charge against me, based on the Pellieux investigation, accusing me of illegally revealing ‘writings and documents of importance for national defence and security’. An investigating judge is appointed. That same afternoon – although I am not there to witness it, but only read about it the next morning in the papers – my apartment is raided, watched by a crowd of several hundred onlookers jeering ‘Traitor!’ On Wednesday, I am summoned to meet the government-appointed judge, Albert Fabre, in his chambers on the third floor of the Palace of Justice. In his outer office two detectives are waiting and I am arrested, as is poor Louis Leblois.
‘I warned you to think carefully before getting involved,’ I say to him. ‘I have ruined too many lives.’
‘Dear Georges, think nothing of it! It will be interesting to observe the justice system from the other side for a change.’
Judge Fabre, who to his credit at least seems slightly embarrassed by the whole procedure, tells me I am to be held in La Santé prison during his investigation, whereas Louis will remain free on bail. Outside in the courtyard, as I am being put into the Black Maria in full view of several dozen reporters, I have the presence of mind to remember to give Louis my cane. Then I am taken away. On arrival at the prison I have to fill in a registration form. In the space for ‘religion’ I write ‘nothing’.
La Santé, it turns out, is no Mont-Valérien: there is no separate bedroom and WC here, no view to the Eiffel Tower. I am locked in a tiny cell, four metres by two and a half, with a small barred window that looks down on to an exercise yard. There is a bed and a chamber pot: that is all. It is the height of summer, thirty-five degrees Celsius, occasionally relieved by thunderstorms. The air is baking hot and stale with the smell of a thousand male bodies – our food, our bodily waste, our sweat – not unlike a barracks. I am fed in my cell, and locked up twenty-three hours a day to prevent me communicating with the other prisoners. I can hear them, though, especially at night, when the lights are turned off and there is nothing to do except lie and listen. Their shouts are like the cries of animals in the jungle, inhuman and mysterious and alarming. Often I hear such howls and screams, such inarticulate beggings for mercy, that I assume the next morning my warders will tell me of some horrendous crime that has been committed overnight. But daylight comes and the place goes on as before.
Thus does the army try to break me.
There is some variety in my routine. A couple of times a week I am taken out of La Santé, guarded by two detectives, and returned by Black Maria to the Palace of Justice, where Judge Fabre takes me very slowly through the evidence I have already recounted many times before.
When did Major Esterhazy first come to your attention?
When Fabre has finished for the day, I am often allowed to meet Labori in a nearby office. The great Viking of the Paris bar is officially my attorney now, and through him I am able to keep in touch with the progress of our various battles. The news is mixed. Zola, having lost his appeal, has fled into exile in London. But the magistrate Bertulus has arrested Esterhazy and Four-Fingered Marguerite on charges of forgery. We lodge a formal request with the Public Prosecutor that he should also arrest du Paty for the same offence. But the Prosecutor rules that this is ‘beyond the scope of M. Bertulus’s investigation’.
Tell me again the circumstances in which you came into possession of the petit bleu . . .
About a month after my arrest, Fabre, as investigating judge, enters that stage of proceedings, so beloved by the frustrated dramatists of the French legal system, of staging confrontations between witnesses. The ritual is always the same. First I am asked, for the twentieth time, about a particular incident – the reconstruction of the petit bleu, the showing of the pigeon file to Louis, the leaks to the newspapers. Then the judge presses an electric bell and one of my enemies is admitted to recount his version of the same event. Finally I am invited to respond. Throughout these performances the judge scrutinises us carefully, as if he can send out X-rays into our souls and see who is lying. In this way I am brought face to face again with Gonse, Lauth, Gribelin, Valdant, Junck, and even the concierge Capiaux. I must say that for men who are at liberty and supposedly triumphant, they look pale and even haggard, especially Gonse, who seems to have developed a nervous tic below his left eye.
The greatest shock, however, is Henry. He enters without looking at me and retells in a monotone his story about seeing Louis and me with the secret file. His voice has lost its old strength and I notice he has shed so much weight that when he starts to sweat he can insert his entire hand between his neck and the collar of his tunic. He has just finished his account when there is a knock at the door and Fabre’s clerk enters to say that there is a telephone call for the judge in the outer office. ‘It is urgent: the Minister of Justice.’
Fabre says, ‘If you will excuse me for a moment, gentlemen.’
Henry looks at him anxiously as he leaves. The door closes and we are alone together. Immediately I am suspicious that this is a trap, and glance around to see where a listener might be concealed. But I can see no obvious hiding place, and after a minute or two, curiosity gets the better of me.
I say, ‘So, Colonel, how is your hand?’
‘What, this?’ He looks at it and flexes it, as if checking it works. ‘This is fine.’ He turns and stares at me. The weight that has fallen from his cheeks and jowls seems to have stripped away the padding of his defences and left him lined with age; his dark hair is flecked with grey. ‘And you?’
‘I am well enough.’
‘Do you sleep?’
The question surprises me. ‘Yes. Do you?’
He coughs to clear his throat. ‘Not so well, Colonel – monsieur, I should say. I’m not sleeping much. I’m sick and tired of this whole damned business, I don’t mind telling you.’
‘We can agree on that much at least!’
‘Is prison bad?’
‘Let’s say it smells even worse than our old offices.’
‘Ha!’ He leans in closer to me, and confides, ‘To be honest, I’ve asked to be relieved of my duties in intelligence. I’d like to get back to a healthier life with my regiment.’
‘Yes, I can see that. And your wife, and your little boy – how are they?’
He opens his mouth to reply, but then stops and gulps, and to my amazement his eyes suddenly fill with tears and he has to look away, just as Fabre comes back into the room.
‘So, gentlemen,’ he says, ‘the secret file .
. .’
It is after lights-out, about two weeks later. I am lying on my thin prison mattress, no longer able to read, waiting for the cacophony of the night to begin, when there is a sound of bolts being drawn back and keys turned. A strong light is shone in my face.
‘Prisoner, follow me.’
La Santé is built according to the latest scientific principles on a hub-and-spoke design – the prisoners’ cells form the spokes, the governor and his staff occupy the hub. I follow the warder all the way down the long corridor towards the administrative block at the centre. He unlocks a door then conducts me around a curving passage to a small windowless visitors’ room with a steel grille set in the wall. He stays outside but leaves the door open.
From behind the grille a voice says, ‘Picquart?’
The light is dim. It’s hard for me to make him out at first. ‘Labori? What’s going on?’
‘Henry has been arrested.’
‘My God. For what?’
‘The government has just put out a statement. Listen: “Today in the office of the Minister of War, Colonel Henry admitted that he was the author of the document of 1896 in which Dreyfus was named. The Minister of War immediately ordered his arrest and he was taken to the fortress of Mont-Valérien.”’ He pauses for my reaction. ‘Picquart? Did you hear that?’
It takes me a moment to absorb it. ‘What made him confess?’
‘Nobody knows yet. This only happened a few hours ago. All we have is the statement.’
‘And what about the others? Boisdeffre, Gonse – do we know anything about them?’
‘No, but all of them are finished. They staked everything on that letter.’ Labori leans in very close to the grille. Through the thick mesh I can see his blue eyes bright with excitement. ‘Henry would never have forged it purely on his own initiative, would he?’
‘It’s unimaginable. If they didn’t directly order it, then at the very least they must have known what he was up to.’
‘Exactly! You do realise now we’ll be able to call him as a witness? Just let me get him on the stand! What a prospect! I’ll make him sing about that and everything else he knows – all the way back to the original court martial.’
‘I would love to know what made him admit it after all this time.’
‘No doubt we’ll discover in the morning. Anyway, there it is – wonderful news for you to sleep on. I’ll come back again tomorrow. Good night, Picquart.’
‘Thank you. Good night.’
I am taken back to my cell.
The animal noises are particularly loud that night, but it isn’t those that keep me awake – it is the thought of Henry in Mont-Valérien.
The next day is the worst I have ever spent in prison. For once I cannot even concentrate to read. I prowl up and down my tiny cell in frustration, my mind constructing and discarding scenarios of what might have happened, what is happening and what could happen next.
The hours crawl past. The evening meal is served. The daylight begins to retreat. At around nine o’clock the warder unlocks my door again and tells me to follow him. How long that walk is! And the curious thing is, right at the very end of it, when I am in the visiting room, and Labori turns his face to the grille, I know exactly what he is going to say, even before I have registered his expression.
He says, ‘Henry’s dead.’
I stare at him, allowing the fact to settle. ‘How did it happen?’
‘They found him this afternoon in his cell at Mont-Valérien with his throat cut. Naturally they’re saying he killed himself. Strange how that seems to keep happening.’ He says anxiously, ‘Are you all right, Picquart?’
I have to turn away from him. I am not sure why I am weeping – out of tiredness, perhaps, or strain; or perhaps it is for Henry, whom I never could bring myself to hate entirely, despite everything, understanding him too well for that.
I think of Henry often. I have little else to do.
I sit in my cell and ponder the details of his death as they emerge over the weeks that follow. If I can solve this mystery, I reason, then perhaps I can solve everything. But I can only rely on what is reported in the papers and the scraps of gossip that Labori picks up on the legal circuit, and in the end I have to admit that probably I will never know the full truth.
I do know that Henry was forced to admit that the ‘absolute proof’ document was a forgery during a terrible meeting in the Minister of War’s office on 30 August. He could not do otherwise: the evidence was irrefutable. It seems that in response to my accusation of forgery, Cavaignac, the new Minister of War, supremely confident of his own correctness in all matters, ordered that the entire Dreyfus file be checked for authenticity by one of his officers. It took a long while – the file had by now swollen to three hundred and sixty items – and it was while this process was going on that I met Henry for the last time in Fabre’s chambers. I understand now why he seemed so broken: he must have guessed what was coming. Cavaignac’s aide did something that apparently no one else in the General Staff had thought to do in almost two years: he held the ‘absolute proof’ under a strong electric lamp. Immediately he noticed that the heading of the letter, My dear friend, and the signature, Alexandrine, were written on squared paper, the lines of which were bluish-grey, whereas the body of the letter – I have read that a deputy is going to ask questions about Dreyfus . . . – was on paper whose lines were mauve. It was obvious that a genuine letter that had been pieced together earlier – in fact in June 1894 – had been disassembled and then put back together with a forged central section.
Summoned to explain himself, in the presence of Boisdeffre and Gonse, Henry at first tried to bluster, according to the transcript of his interrogation by Cavaignac released by the government:
HENRY: I put the pieces together as I received them.
CAVAIGNAC: I remind you that nothing is graver for you than the absence of an explanation. Tell me what you did.
HENRY: What do you want me to say?
CAVAIGNAC: To give me an explanation why one of the documents is lined in pale violet, the other in blue-grey.
HENRY: I cannot.
CAVAIGNAC: The fact is certain. Reflect on the consequences of my question.
HENRY: What do you wish me to say?
CAVAIGNAC: What you have done.
HENRY: I have not forged papers.
CAVAIGNAC: Come, come! You have put the fragments of one into the other.
HENRY: [After a moment of hesitation] Well, yes, because the two things fitted admirably, I was led to this.
Is the transcript accurate? Labori thinks not, but I have little doubt. Just because the government lies about some things, it doesn’t mean they lie about everything. I can hear Henry’s voice rising off the page better than any playwright could imitate it – bombastic, sulky, wheedling, cunning, stupid.
CAVAIGNAC: What gave you the idea?
HENRY: My chiefs were very uneasy. I wished to pacify them. I wished to restore tranquillity to men’s minds. I said to myself, ‘Let us add a phrase. Suppose we had a war in our present situation.’
CAVAIGNAC: You were the only one to do this?
HENRY: Yes, Gribelin knew nothing about it.
CAVAIGNAC: No one knew it? No one in the world?
HENRY: I did it in the interest of my country. I was wrong.
CAVAIGNAC: And the envelopes?
HENRY: I swear I did not make the envelopes. How could I have done so?
CAVAIGNAC: So this is what happened? You received in 1896 an envelope with a letter inside, an insignificant letter. You suppressed the letter and fabricated another.
HENRY: Yes.
In the darkness of my cell I play out this scene again and again. I see Cavaignac behind his desk – the overambitious young minister: the fanatic with the temerity to believe he could end the affair once and for all and who now finds himself tripped up by his own hubris. I see Gonse’s hand trembling as he smokes and watches the interrogation. I see Boisdeffre by the window
staring into the middle distance, as immutably aloof as one of the stone lions that no doubt guarding the gate of his family chateau. And I see Henry occasionally looking round at his chiefs in mute appeal as the questions rain down on him: help me! But of course they say nothing.
And then I picture Henry’s expression when Cavaignac – not a soldier but a civilian Minister of War – orders him to be arrested on the spot and taken to Mont-Valérien, where he is locked up in the same rooms that I occupied in the winter. The next day, after a sleepless night, he writes to Gonse (I have the honour of requesting you to agree to come and see me here: I absolutely must speak to you) and to his wife (My adored Berthe, I see that except for you everyone is going to abandon me and yet you know in whose interest I acted).
I visualise him stretched out on his bed at noon, drinking a bottle of rum – which was the last time he was seen alive – and again six hours later, when a lieutenant and an orderly enter the room and find him still lying on the same bed saturated in blood, his body already cold and stiff, his throat slit twice with a razor, which (an odd detail, this) is clenched in his left hand even though he is right-handed.
But between these two scenes, between noon and six – between Henry alive and Henry dead – my imagination fails me. Labori believes he was murdered, like Lemercier-Picard, to keep him quiet, and that his killing was staged to look like a suicide. He cites medical friends of his who state that it is physically impossible for a person to sever their carotid artery on both sides. But I am not convinced that murder would have been necessary, not with Henry. He would have known what was expected of him after Boisdeffre and Gonse both failed to raise their voices in his defence.
You order me to shoot a man and I’ll shoot him.
That afternoon, at the same time as Henry’s lifeblood is flowing out of him, Boisdeffre is writing to the Minister of War:
Minister,
I have just received proof that my trust in Colonel Henry, head of the intelligence service, was not justified. That trust, which was total, led me to be deceived and to declare authentic a document that was not, and to present it to you as such.