“It is a difficult condition,” I said. “I am sorry.”
“Are you? It seems more as if you are curious.”
Inspector Marot got up quickly. “I think that is all for now,” he said. “We will not disturb you any longer.”
“When may I bury my father?”
“Presumably in a few days, mademoiselle. The inquest will take place either tomorrow or the next day. You will, of course, be duly informed. But forgive me—is there no one to support you in this difficult time? A relative or a friend of the family?”
“My uncle is on his way from Bordeaux. I do not have any siblings, so he will inherit Les Merises.”
It was probably insensitive of me, but it was actually only now that I felt a stab of compassion. I had had trouble seeing Leblanc’s death as anything but a blessing, even to her. A liberation. But I had not considered that his death also made her homeless and entirely dependent on the whim and mercy of her male relatives.
“Madeleine? We are in a bit of a hurry. I have to be at the préfecture at one, and I would like to be there to present your father’s report regarding Emile Oblonski.”
I realized that I would need to follow him despite all my unanswered questions. If she was the Imo Cecile was referring to in her diary, then she had visited them. She had spoken with Cecile. They had lain down together, whatever that entailed. I wanted to know why, wanted to know what she thought and felt about Cecile, and about Emile. But I could not ask without revealing that I had the diary pages, and I was not yet prepared to do that. The urge to protect Cecile and her secret confidences was oddly strong.
As I got up, I let my portemonnaie slide down between the backrest and the upholstered seat of my chair so that later, as we were preparing to mount the inspector’s carriage, I was able to pretend I had suddenly noticed it was gone.
“I am sorry,” I said, and tried to look confused. “I must have dropped my purse. If you would excuse me, I will be right back . . .”
And before he could offer to do it for me, I ran up the stairs and opened the front door without knocking.
Imogene was still standing in the hallway.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“My portemonnaie. I must have dropped it . . .”
She reluctantly escorted me back to the parlor. She walked like someone in pain, I noticed. Lupus was a merciless and often agonizing illness. I should feel more sympathy for her. I really should.
“Oh, there it is.”
“I see. Goodbye, Mademoiselle Karno. Again.”
But she would not be rid of me that easily.
“Mademoiselle Leblanc, I meant to ask you . . . How well did you know Cecile Montaine?”
“I taught her physics, biology, and chemistry.”
“And that was all?”
“What do you mean?”
“I just wonder at the fact that you helped her and Emile Oblonski during their flight. Without saying so to anyone, and without revealing it even after Cecile’s death.”
Her face once again changed color in a few seconds, from white to red.
“Who gave you that peculiar idea?”
“Cecile did,” I said. “She called you Imo, did she not? That is presumably not the way students normally address their teachers at the Bernardine school.”
She stood still for so long that the dog began to poke her with its nose.
“I think you should go now,” she said. “Have you no respect at all for the dead?”
And that was all I got out of her. The inspector called impatiently from the courtyard, and I barely had time to step out onto the stairs before Imogene shut the door with a sudden and demonstrative shove.
Emile Oblonski lay on a table that was normally used to strap down especially violent criminals. There was of course no need for the sturdy leather restraints, but the jail did not possess proper autopsy facilities, and the préfecture had decreed that he could not be moved, since his soul-less body had become the subject of an unusual legal dispute.
When Inspector Marot and I came in, my father was standing with his back against the wall to relieve his healing leg. His scowl was intense and unmistakable, and it did not take me long to discover why.
He was not the one performing an autopsy on Emile Oblonski; the autopsist was an elderly gentleman who, it turned out, was a professor of anthropology by the name of Vespard.
“What is going on?” I asked quietly.
“This is madness,” said my father. “Complete madness.”
About the cause of death there was no doubt. Adrian Montaine had shot Emile Oblonski straight through the chest, and the shot had ripped a hole in one of the pulmonary arteries. Oblonski had bled to death in a few minutes. It was therefore not the death certificate itself that was the problem, my father eventually explained, but something completely different and considerably more bizarre.
“They want us to test his humanity,” said Papa. “They want an attestation of the degree to which Emile Oblonski’s physiognomy, heart, and internal organs are different from that of a ‘human being.’ They have even set a threshold. They will permit deviations of up to ten percent.”
“What?” I said. “What kind of nonsense is that?”
“Adrian Montaine’s defense lawyer has demanded it. His argument is that murder is the killing of a human being. Ergo this cannot be considered a murder if Emile Oblonski was not . . . sufficiently human.”
“Of course he is a human being!”
I had said it a little too loudly. Professor Vespard looked up from the measurements he was in the process of making on Emile’s skull. He had cut open the scalp and exposed the cranium and now stood dictating numbers to his assistant, a ginger-haired young man with glasses, all the while letting his caliper touch down on various points that looked as if they had been selected with care.
“Is this your wife, Doctor Karno?” asked the professor.
“No. This is my daughter, Madeleine.”
“I see. Would you mind pointing out to the young lady that loud comments are disturbing for a scientist in the process of performing an examination that requires precision?”
I think we all three stared at him with more or less the same expression.
Then my father said, quite calmly, considering the circumstances, “Let me know when you are done. But I must prepare you for the fact that I will personally retest your results.”
Vespard raised his caliper in a kind of salute, much like a cavalry officer would have raised his sword.
“Feel free, Doctor. My measurements will stand up to whatever form of test you choose to subject them to.”
“It is not your measurements that I doubt,” said my father. “It is your conclusions.”
I thought of the newspaper that Mother Filippa had saved for so many years. “The Wild Boy from Bois Boulet, Half Beast, Half Human.” There was perhaps a certain mercy in the fact that she would not see this.
We ate lunch at a small café close to the préfecture—Marot, the Commissioner, my father, and I.
“Do you really think that the defense will succeed with this tactic, Papa?” I asked.
“It is not impossible. There is already a great deal of compassion for young Montaine and his family, and a jury will be grateful to have a legal excuse to let him go free.”
“But . . . How can anyone claim that Emile Oblonski is not human? He had an intellect, could speak, read, and write. What animal can do that?”
“Now he can do none of those things. And it will not be difficult to find witnesses who will declare that he was backward, mute, and uncivilized. His priapism was well known, and that will not help the case, either.”
I could see my father’s anger at this attack and his frustration at not being able to defend what he considered one of “his” dead. As for me, I sat picking at my coq au vin without much of an appetite.
“Did you get a handwriting sample?” asked the Commissioner.
The inspector nodded and placed th
e shopping list and the letter draft on the table.
“The daughter identified the handwriting in the Bible as her father’s, and even when you take into consideration that this is not printed with capital letters, I believe one can conclude that we are talking about the same hand.”
The Commissioner held the letter up to the light and nodded.
“It looks that way.”
That gave me an idea.
“Do you remember that particular death?” I asked. “Lisette Arnaud from Les Merises, about sixty years old?”
“The cook. Yes. But her name was not Arnaud; her name was . . . No, I cannot recall.”
No, of course. The letter was addressed to Madame Arnaud, the two sisters no longer had the same last name.
“Do you remember the cause of death?”
“Pneumonia. The family’s own physician had cared for her, and there was no reason for an autopsy, and no wish for it, either.”
So why had Imogene Leblanc not just said as much?
Of the three men, it was only Inspector Marot who had actually met her. And none of them had seen the pages from Cecile’s diary.
“Inspector, what is your impression of Imogene Leblanc?”
He was in the process of wiping a bit of sauce from his mustache with his napkin and now hesitated in midgesture.
“Why do you ask?” he asked.
“I just thought . . . I have the sense that she had a closer relationship to Cecile than you might think.”
“That is possible, but what bearing does that have on the case?”
“I don’t know. I just thought I should say so.”
He finished wiping.
“Until now there is nothing to suggest that Cecile’s tragic but natural death has any connection to the two murders Antoine Leblanc committed,” he said. “The only oddity is the peculiar abduction of Father Abigore’s body, which may or may not have anything to do with your unappetizing mites. Right now I am leaning toward the theory that Leblanc simply had a bizarre way of handling bodies, and that there was in his disturbed mind just as good a reason for putting the good father on ice as there was for placing the wolf . . . well, you know. Perhaps we just have not found the correct Bible quotation yet.”
I refrained from pointing out that the Bible had been created out of a Middle Eastern experience of the world, and that the word “ice” was not likely to be mentioned very often.
“Would it not be an odd coincidence,” I insisted, “that Leblanc’s madness was constituted precisely so that it made him do exactly what was necessary to prevent the spread of disease?”
“Would it not be even stranger if he knew of the mites’ existence? He had barely met the man, and as far as we know, he never met Cecile Montaine, either.”
He was right. And still I was left with a frustrated feeling that we were missing something.
“I understand from your father that congratulations are in order,” said the Commissioner, possibly to change the subject. I must have looked fairly uncomprehending, because he added, “On your engagement, dear Madeleine.”
I had in fact managed to forget all about Professor Dreyfuss for a while. No, about August, I corrected myself. Probably not normal behavior for a newly affianced young woman, but both the engagement itself and days that had passed since then had, of course, been somewhat peculiar.
“Thank you,” I mumbled and gazed at Papa. “But . . . nothing is final yet.”
Antoine Leblanc’s inquest took place in the préfecture’s courtroom the following afternoon at two o’clock. Imogene Leblanc showed up dressed in black from head to toe and accompanied by her uncle. He was somewhat older than his brother, a balding, well-dressed man who tipped his hat politely when he and Imogene greeted us on the way up the front steps of the building. He looked oddly untouched by it all, as if he had not yet realized what a cruel story he had become a part of.
The courtroom was from an earlier era when this part of the préfecture had been the town hall of a minor medieval market town. It was no more than twelve meters long by eight meters wide, with tall dark wooden panels and a vaulted ceiling, whose once colorful ornamentation was now faded and cracked so that trellised roses, mythical animals, suns and moons could barely be made out. At one end of the room the judge was seated beneath a carved canopy worthy of a pulpit, while witnesses and lawyers had to make do with the humble wooden chairs that had been set out in front of the empty dock. The usher showed my father, the Commissioner, and myself to seats next to Imogene Leblanc and her uncle. Inspector Marot sat on the other side of the aisle together with Marie Mercier and Louis.
The spectator rows behind us were crowded. The investigating judge had pushed the inquest forward in an attempt to avoid the rumors spreading and attracting too many curious onlookers, but the strategy had been only partially successful. The newspapers had reveled in the murder of Father Abigore and the following hunt for his vanished corpse, and later in as many details about Mother Filippa’s death as they had succeeded in extracting from Marot. By shooting himself with a hunting rifle, Antoine Leblanc had cheated the public out of a fascinating and prolonged trial and a suitable climax under the guillotine. A public inquest was, however, unavoidable when it was also the conclusion to the entire murder case, and the public was obviously determined to get as much out of it as possible. Many in the audience were equipped with pen and notebook—clearly gentlemen of the press.
The judge seated under the canopy was the same Claude Renard who had been a dinner guest at Madame Ponti’s the night Father Abigore was found, or rather rediscovered, in her ice cellar. There was something wrong with the way his face had been put together, as if all the individual parts—nose, ears, chin, and eyebrows—were too big for his head. It made him look like a caricature by Honoré Daumier, I thought, but his voice was surprisingly beautiful and cut through the murmuring unease in the audience without difficulty.
“Commissioner. Would you please inform this court of the circumstances of Antoine Leblanc’s death?”
The Commissioner rose. His position did not come with an elegant black cape like the lawyers wore, but he was wearing what he called his “courtroom” jacket—a somehow official-looking garment in double-breasted black wool, with broad lapels and a double row of silver buttons. He claimed to have had it for thirty years, and while on another man it might have seemed just old-fashioned, it lent the Commissioner’s stout figure a heavy dignity.
“I arrived at the residence of the deceased Sunday evening at about seven o’clock,” he began. “But initially I did not find him at home. Instead, I and my companion—Mademoiselle Karno—found a young boy, unconscious and locked up inside the property’s private chapel . . .”
He continued his account of the chain of events while the journalists hungrily recorded every word. I noticed that Emanuel Leblanc, Imogene’s uncle, began to stir uneasily, clearing his throat and looking as if he was considering springing to his feet and interrupting.
“. . . and can you describe what you found on your return, Commissioner?”
“The door to the chapel had been hit by several shots from a hunting rifle, fired from the outside against the area around the lock. Inside the chapel, Antoine Leblanc lay dead on the floor, and Mademoiselle Karno was sitting on the floor by the unconscious Louis Mercier. The dog had been shot as well. It was recent, the smell of powder was pronounced, and the corpse was still warm.”
“What, in your opinion, had happened?”
“There is not much doubt. Antoine Leblanc forced his way into the chapel—it was sheer luck that no one inside was hit by any of these shots—and then shot first the dog and then himself.”
Now Emanuel Leblanc did indeed shoot up out of his chair.
“That is not true,” he said so loudly that it had to be called a shout. “My brother was a good Catholic. He would never . . . How do we know that Mademoiselle Karno did not shoot him? What witnesses, what proof beyond her words?”
It was probably naïve
, but until then it had not occurred to me that anyone would doubt my explanation. That someone might actually believe that I had killed Leblanc was so absurd that I just gaped at his agitated older brother. He was less than a meter away, and as long as the Commissioner was standing in the witness box I did not even have his solid figure between me and Emanuel Leblanc’s anger. Suddenly I wished that we had been seated somewhere else.
“Sit down,” barked Renard. “May I draw your attention to the fact that you have not been called as witness here and that you are present solely to support Mademoiselle Leblanc? If I wish to hear your opinion, you may be sure that I will ask you. For now it is the Commissioner’s testimony that interests us.”
Through all this Imogene Leblanc just sat and looked straight ahead, her expression unchangeable. But I noticed that a red, almost circular spot was beginning to appear on her cheek and upper lip, in spite of the thick layer of powder she had applied. I tried to remember if the skin symptoms of lupus worsened due to emotional excitement and stress.
The Commissioner began to list the points of evidence that suggested suicide—the dead man’s naked foot, the angle of the shot, the powder residue and burns that indicated that the shot had been fired at close range.
“How was the deceased positioned when the shot went off?”
“He was standing. If he, for example, had been lying down, one would have been able to tell that from the state of the floor.” He did not elaborate on the fact that there would have been blood, brain matter, and bone fragments immediately around the head instead of spread out over a much greater expanse around the fallen corpse.
“Where was the rifle when you entered?” asked Judge Renard. “In relation to the body?”
The Commissioner hesitated for only an almost undetectable moment.
“When I entered, Mademoiselle Karno was holding the weapon,” he said.
“You see!” exclaimed Emanuel Leblanc.
Judge Renard shot him a sharp look but did not say anything this time. He thanked the Commissioner and let him step down.
Then it was my father’s turn to give testimony. He laid out in his usual thorough way the findings of the autopsy, describing the wound and explaining precisely what damage the shot had done, giving the angle.