Текст книги "The Devil in Montmartre. A Mystery in Fin de Siecle Paris"

Автор книги: Gary Inbinder

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4

MONTMARTRE

EVENING, OCTOBER 14;

EARLY MORNING, OCTOBER 15

Le Chat Noir occupied a three-story half-timbered building on the Boulevard de Clichy, not far from the Moulin Rouge. Originally located on the Boulevard de Rochechouart, the popular cabaret had opened to promotional hoopla; a torch-bearing parade of Hydropathes costumed like Swiss Guards, led by a flamboyant mountebank, Rodolphe Salis.

Prior to opening his cabaret, Salis, an artist of modest talent, and three of his painter friends, had eked out a living by painting cheap religious paintings. Each friend contributed to the product, the Stations of the Cross, according to his specialty, drawing and painting faces, bodies, draperies, or background. But in a marketplace glutted with shoddy artwork the scheme could never prove lucrative. On the other hand, Salis’s idea for a new cabaret was, like Oller and Zidler’s Moulin Rouge, a stroke of entrepreneurial genius, meeting a demand for bawdy, avant-garde entertainment in exactly the right place at the right time.

Salis based his interior design for the cabaret on a fanciful seventeenth-century tavern that might have been frequented by Cyrano de Bergerac or Dumas père’s Musketeers. Customers sat at long wooden tables in a hall lit by cast iron chandeliers. Paintings and posters decorated the walls, and Salis added iron, glass, and stone objets d’art, the genesis of Art Nouveau.

In addition to serving cheap wine and absinthe to his thirsty crowd, Salis provided an innovative form of amusement—the stage was open to anyone who had the daring to take it and the fortitude to hold it. On a given night a genius like Verlaine might recite one of his poems, but for the most part the performers were amateurs. And Salis encouraged these naïve hopefuls with free absinthe.

Fortified with cheap liquor, the trembling tyro would brave his audience like the condemned at the guillotine, showing his grit to the bloodthirsty mob. He would begin his quavering declamation in relative silence, which he might mistake for rapt interest. But the performer would soon be disabused by the rowdy audience, consisting of all classes, almost all of whom were pissing drunk.

The merry crowd would pelt the poor performer with sarcastic invective the way their forbears showered a pilloried criminal with rotten vegetables, dung, piss, and offal. This was jolly good fun, especially when the scorned and rejected artist fled the premises and wandered off into the darkness crying tears of despair and harboring suicidal thoughts. This theater of the cruel and absurd appealed to Toulouse-Lautrec.

Salis guarded the entrance, where he greeted his customers sarcastically, saving his most singular insults for celebrities and regulars. “Hey Lautrec, what have you done with our sweet, little Virginie? I hear the cops are dragging the Seine for her body.”

Lautrec laughed while noting, with some concern, that this was the second time someone had alluded to Virginie Ménard’s disappearance. Inured to the impresario’s caustic wit, Lautrec hobbled over to his favorite spot at the foot of a table, where he ordered absinthe and began recording the scene in pastels on brown paper. He was soon joined by Émile Bernard. The young man seemed agitated.

“Where have you been hiding, Émile? I haven’t seen you,” Lautrec checked his watch, “for at least six whole hours. Pull up a chair, old man, and have a drink.”

Bernard sat and stared wildly at Lautrec. “I’ve been running round looking for Mademoiselle Ménard. I talked to her concierge, to Cormon, to Zidler, and to her best friend, Delphine; nobody’s seen her for days.”

Lautrec took a deep breath and smiled. “You worry too much. They all turn up, sooner or later.”

“This isn’t funny, Henri. People are worried, and you’re taking it awfully cool. After all, she was your model and your—”

Lautrec put up his hand and shook his head. “If you were about to say ‘lover’ that was true once, but no longer. Mademoiselle has since moved on to greener pastures. That is to say, she has abandoned me for those who can better afford her charms and talents. But if you and others are concerned as to her whereabouts, why not go to the police?”

“If she doesn’t turn up soon, I believe that’s what I’ll do.”

Lautrec shrugged. “Do as you please,” he muttered, and then returned to his sketch.

Shortly thereafter, they were interrupted: “Hello Lautrec, Bernard. Do you mind if I join you?”

“Not at all, Sir Henry,” Lautrec replied. Lautrec and Bernard had become acquainted with Sir Henry Collingwood at Cormon’s Atelier. Lautrec and Sir Henry had formed a special bond, a consequence of the doctor’s interest in art and the artist’s interest in surgery.

Sir Henry settled in and ordered a drink. He glanced round the room to see if he could recognize anyone, and then lit a cigar. Relaxed, he leaned back, tucked a thumb in his waistcoat pocket and blew a few smoke rings. After a moment he remarked, “I say, Lautrec, I saw you at Péan’s clinic today. A neat little hysterectomy, eh what?”

Lautrec raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I don’t recall seeing you there?”

Sir Henry smiled. “Oh, I can be a furtive fellow, at times. Besides, you were concentrating on the operation and your sketch. I doubt you would have noticed if Gabriel had blown the last trumpet.” Sir Henry and Lautrec laughed. Then the doctor turned his attention to Émile, who seemed pensive and detached. “Why so gloomy, Bernard?”

Émile remained silent. Lautrec answered for him. “He’s worried about a girl gone missing.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Sir Henry said. He placed a hand on Bernard’s shoulder sympathetically and asked, “Do I know her, Émile?”

Bernard turned his sad eyes toward the doctor. “I believe you do, Sir Henry. She’s the pretty little blonde we sketched at the Atelier.”

The doctor stared blankly for a moment and then his eyes brightened. “Yes, of course, that was Mademoiselle uh—Mademoiselle Ménard. I saw Lautrec’s portrait of her at Joyant’s gallery. Well, let’s hope she turns up soon. By the way, here’s an odd coincidence. I’m treating another admirer of Mademoiselle Ménard and the portrait, an American artist, Marcia Brownlow. Do either of you know her?”

“I do,” said Lautrec. “She and her rich companion were at the Moulin Rouge a few evenings ago. I thought they were going to make an offer for my painting, but I’ve heard nothing since.”

“Oh, I see. I’m afraid Miss Brownlow is quite ill. Her friend, Miss Endicott, is making arrangements to return to America as soon as Miss Brownlow can travel, and I will accompany them to a sanatorium.”

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, I don’t see what this has to do with Virginie. If you’ll excuse me.” With that curt declaration, Bernard got up and left the cabaret.

Sir Henry watched Émile go out the door, then turned to Lautrec. “Poor fellow. I diagnose a case of Virginie on the brain. I suppose he’s sweet on her.”

Lautrec muttered, “Perhaps.” He turned his attention to a slender man walking toward the piano. “You see the man who’s about to play?”

Sir Henry screwed a monocle into his eye and gazed across the smoke-filled hall. “Yes; who is he?”

“His name’s Satie; not bad, really. The crowd listens when he plays.”

Lautrec abandoned Le Chat Noir in the early morning hours. He ventured into the rabbit’s warren of dark, narrow streets snaking up the hill. His button-hook tapping the cobblestones, the artist limped painfully up a murky, echoing brick cavern roofed over by a cloudy, moonless sky. Cats crouching in cubbyholes hissed and yowled as he passed. Gaslamps glowed, their feeble yellow flames lighting his way toward his favorite whorehouse. There the artist would drink, sketch, and joke with the girls, afterward engaging in a game of rumpy-pumpy until the sun rose, shining its light on the alabaster dome of Sacré-Cœur.

Puffing with fatigue from the steep walk, Lautrec rested under a lamp and reached into his coat pocket for his cigarette case. Unable to locate the case, he muttered, “Damn,” then patted and rummaged round in his other pockets until he found a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches.

Continuing up a flight of steps, the always perceptive artist failed to notice someone tailing him, a silent observer lurking in the shadows. As Lautrec approached the brothel, a powerful stench assaulted his nostrils. Staring ahead he noticed a familiar form, the oval iron tank of a sewage wagon parked beside a cesspit. The night soil collectors were pumping human waste, some of which had slopped over onto the pavement where it commingled with piles of horse dung and unswept rubbish. Lautrec cautiously skirted the work area and proceeded to the maison, where he rang for the madam.

The proprietress, a feather-bedecked trull with flaming red hair, recognized the little gentleman and greeted him with a grin. But her smile soon turned to a comical grimace as she got a whiff of the street. Lifting a perfumed handkerchief to her nose, she urged, “Quickly, Monsieur, come in before my house fills with miasma.” Lautrec crossed the threshold, chuckling at the madam’s unscientific objection to the stench.

The stalker watched from an unlit passageway between two houses across the street. As Lautrec entered the brothel, the stealthy observer made a mental note of the time and address.

Nine years earlier, during the hot months of August and September, Paris experienced the Great Stink, a foul, putrid odor that pervaded the entire city. Many Parisians feared the “miasma,” which they believed was the source of typhoid and cholera. The bacteriologists, led by Pasteur, pointed to the microscopic source of the stench as the cause of epidemic diseases. There was a fuss in the press and the harried government formed a commission to study the matter, raising a debate about the sewer system and the methods of waste disposal. In the end, with cooler weather the stink disappeared, the feared epidemic never materialized, and the city’s methods of dealing with human excreta remained, for the most part, unchanged. In the early morning hours, hundreds of foul-smelling sewer wagons rumbled through the streets of Paris, cleaning out cesspools and cesspits and emptying waste receptacles in thousands of cellars.

This night, the two night soil collectors finished pumping, closed the pipe, mounted their wagon and moved on. Dressed in their typical workers’ blouse and cap, incessantly puffing on clay pipes to mask the stench of their trade, the collectors bantered and cracked jokes to break the monotony. The older man managed the reins and the brake; their powerful gray horse strained against its leather traces, pulling the heavy load uphill. The young man connected the hose and worked the pneumatic pump at each stop.

They were nearing the end of their run on the Rue Tourlaque. Soon, they would journey through the city to a central collection point on the Seine embankment, where the waste would be emptied into tanker barges for transport to a suburban sewage farm. The senior man, Papa Lebæuf, a burly fellow of fifty with a grizzled beard flowing halfway down his chest, halted the wagon. “All right Jacques, last call for this morning.”

“Thank God,” the younger man said as he sprang from his perch onto the pavement. A wiry fellow with thick, brawny arms and powerful hands, Jacques un-reeled the rubber hose, connected the nozzle to a pipe, and returned to the wagon to work the pump. After a moment he growled, “Damn! It’s stuck; something must be clogging the pipe.”

“Bloody hell!” cried Lebæuf. “That’s just our luck; trouble on the last damned job on our route. Well, I guess you better pull up the manhole cover and we’ll take a look.” He grabbed a long pole with a hook and held a lantern while Jacques tied a handkerchief over his face and opened the cesspool.

As Lebæuf approached the open hole with his lantern, Jacques warned:

“Hey, Papa, stand back with that lantern. There might be a gas leak.”

“I know, dammit. I’ve been cleaning out shit-holes since before you were born.” He handed the pole to Jacques and stood back, shining the light into the cesspool.

Jacques grabbed the implement and poked round the masonry-lined receptacle. “God, what a stink,” he muttered. Then: “Hey, Papa, I’ve got something. It looks like some bastard dumped a hunk of meat wrapped in a cloth.”

Lebæuf snorted in disgust. “I’d like to make the damned fool clean out every shit-hole on this hill. Well, no use bitching about it. Go ahead and fish it out.”

Jacques hauled up the smelly object and flung it onto the pavement where it landed with a thud. Papa turned the light on it. When they saw what it was their eyes widened. The younger man looked away, gagged, and retched.

Papa Lebæuf was proud of his strong stomach, but the bloody thing they fished out of a Montmartre cesspool that morning would haunt his dreams for the remainder of his life.

5

OCTOBER 15

THE INVESTIGATION

Dawn crept over Paris. The Île de la Cité emerged from the shadows; the sun, an orange disc in a slate sky, shone its pale rays through a cloud bar onto the grimy gothic towers of Notre Dame. Nearby, on the south bank of the Seine, in an office building on the Quai des Orfèvres, Paul Féraud, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté, began his day with coffee, bread, and a mysterious police report.

Mote-sprinkled light streamed through half-opened blinds; an oil lamp burned feebly on Féraud’s cluttered mahogany desk. The streets below were quiet; a good time for the chief to work and to think through a problem. He took advantage of this early hour to review new reports of unusual suspected homicides, his specialty. A thirty-year veteran, Féraud had risen through the ranks, learning his profession in the hard school of experience.

The office was a study in organized confusion: files, dossiers, reference books, photographs, strewn about in an order known only to the chief. Among the papers littering his desktop stood a gleaming brass telephone, the aforementioned green-shaded lamp, a photograph of Féraud’s late wife in a black-crepe-decorated silver frame, and photographs of the Chief’s four adult children: three married daughters and a son in the military. In addition, there was a cigar box, a copper ashtray with an engraving of the Eiffel Tower, and a curiosity, a guillotine cigar cutter, a gift from the “old boys” on the force in recognition of their chief’s thirty years of public service.

The drab gray-green painted walls were lined with dusty bookshelves and cabinets overflowing with paperwork, curios, and memorabilia. On the wall opposite the chief’s desk hung the Rogue’s Gallery, a grouping of photographic portraits of criminals brought to justice by Féraud, many mounted side by side with photographs of their guillotined heads posed on slabs in the Morgue.

One particular file had just arrived and it occupied the chief that morning. It had, pursuant to his instructions, been marked “Urgent” and rushed to him by special courier. The file contained a police report concerning a female torso discovered in a Montmartre cesspit by a pair of night soil collectors. The sergeant on duty had immediately notified Féraud; that was at five A.M. (the time the chief arrived at his office each morning) and this too was according to instructions. Moreover, the police had erected a rope-line barricade and assigned a gendarme to guard the area, preventing the curious from contaminating the scene with their footprints, cigar and cigarette butts, and so forth.

Paris was full of tourists, the closing ceremony of the Universal Exposition was only two weeks away, and the Whitechapel Murders of 1888 were fresh on everyone’s mind. Scotland Yard’s widely publicized failure in that case had placed all detectives and their methods under a dark cloud of popular mistrust. Any hint in the press that Jack the Ripper had crossed the channel could cause panic, not to mention embarrassment to the police and the government. Therefore, as a precautionary measure, a preliminary report of any suspected homicide resembling the Ripper’s modus operandi went directly to the Chief Inspector as a matter of the highest priority.

The detailed description of the body disgusted Féraud and, as always, filled him with a sense of outrage. Though he had seen many horrific things in his years on the force, he always wondered what drove people to commit such crimes. Gruesome photographs would be taken at the scene and at the Morgue later that morning, before and after the autopsy. He scratched his short, graying beard. It could be a prank. He hoped that was the case, that some medical students or drunken riffraff had gotten hold of a cadaver and dumped it into the cesspit as a hoax. Paris was a world-renowned medical center, after all, and cadavers quite easy to come by. Stupid bastards, he muttered. But then, what if it wasn’t a hoax? He could not afford to take chances, to make a mistake that might cost other women their lives. A knock on the door interrupted the chief’s train of thought. It must be Achille. “Enter,” he growled.

A tall, slender man of thirty entered the office and stood at attention before his chief. Inspector Achille Lefebvre was a new breed of detective, a graduate of the prestigious École Polytechnique, a fervent advocate for scientific methods of detection. Achille’s pale, clean-shaven face, near-sighted blue eyes aided by a gold-rimmed pince-nez, and stiff, soft-spoken manner made him seem an “odd fish” to the veterans. The old boys had nicknamed him the professor, but after five years on the force Achille had gained their grudging respect, not to mention what mattered most—the confidence of their chief.

The chief smiled at the young man’s soldierly stiffness. “Relax, Achille; take a load off your feet. You’ve got plenty of legwork ahead of you, my boy.” Achille sat in a small armchair on the other side of the desk; Féraud handed over the file. After giving him a minute to scan the report, the chief continued: “You’re going up to Montmartre on the Morgue meat wagon. Take Rousseau and a good photographer. Do you know the neighborhood?”

“Yes, sir, it’s a quiet area near the summit of the hill.”

Féraud nodded. “Yes, it was quiet and I want to keep it that way. I’ve already given a release to the newspapers: Body of unknown female discovered in Montmartre. And that’s all they’ll get until we make a positive identification. Give them any more and the reporters and morbid curiosity-seekers will be swarming Montmartre hill like flies on a turd. Anyway, let’s hope this is all a stupid prank, but for now we’ll proceed as though it’s a homicide. To begin, we know from the report that the night soil collectors had last pumped the cesspool the morning of the 13th. So the body must have been dumped between then and this morning’s collection.

“Start gathering evidence and question the residents at that address. We’re a long way from going to the juge d’instruction for a warrant. There’s a gendarme guarding the scene and they’ve set up a barricade. You’ve worked with Rousseau before; he’s a good man and you both know the drill. When you’ve got what you want, you and the photographer can take the body to the Morgue on the meat wagon. Rousseau will stay in Montmartre to interview the neighbors.

“I’ll contact Bertillon. He owes me a favor or two, and I’m going to ask him to supervise the autopsy and work directly with you. Telephone the Morgue from the Montmartre station to confirm the appointment. When you’ve finished at the Morgue you may go home, but I want you and Rousseau in my office with a written report first thing tomorrow morning. Any questions?”

Achille had no questions; as his chief had said, he knew the drill. And he was well aware of the urgency of the situation with the Universal Exposition ongoing and the fear whipped up by lurid newspaper accounts of Jack the Ripper. His wife and mother-in-law would ask, “Will Féraud permit you to eat and sleep?” But of course, the question was rhetorical. As the old boys said, your hours at the Sûreté were from midnight to midnight.

When he arrived at the police barricade Achille was relieved to find things quiet and orderly. He was greeted by Sergeant Rodin, a beefy man with a long, drooping red moustache, a gruff voice, and a gimlet eye. “There it is, Inspector.” Rodin pointed to a large lump on the pavement, covered by a white cloth splotched with ochre-colored stains, next to the cesspit. According to the report, the torso was found wrapped in the cloth. “No fuss, so far, but the landlady is upset.”

Achille made a quick mental note of the stains on the cloth: Could be paint—or blood. Then: “Does she know the cause of the stoppage?”

Rodin grinned and shook his head. “No, she doesn’t. The only ones who know about the stiff are me, my men, the night soil collectors, and the person, or persons, who dumped it.”

“That gives us a little time, I suppose, but sooner or later the press will get nosy, especially after we start questioning people. And there’s a damned dirty job ahead. Where are the sewer cleaners? We need them to pump and rake out the sludge. Then the muck must be searched for evidence.”

Rodin grimaced and checked his watch. “They should be here soon, Inspector.”

Achille glanced up. The gray clouds looked threatening; he and his crew would need to work fast. Rain could wash away clues. It had rained intermittently the past few days. God only knew what had already been lost. He continued with urgency. “Who lives here besides the landlady?”

“She’s the only one on the premises. The upper story is rented by a painter, Monsieur de Toulouse-Lautrec. He uses it as his studio.”

Achille raised his eyebrows. “Toulouse-Lautrec. Is he related to the Count?”

Rodin chuckled. “He’s the son and heir, Inspector. An odd fellow; if you saw him once you’d never forget him. He’s a sawed-off cripple, no more than 150 centimeters in his shoes, and he hobbles along with the aid of a tiny cane. Monsieur’s legs are stunted, but he has the body, arms, and hands of a normal man with better than average strength. He looks like a circus ape dressed in swell’s clothing. Black hair, thick black beard, dark brown eyes, and he peers through a pince-nez sort of like yours, Monsieur. Speaks like a toff, which is to say like the son of a count. Oh, and he’s got big ears, a bulbous nose, and thick, purplish lips. No mistaking him in a crowd.”

Achille commended the Sergeant for his portrait parlé. Then: “Does the gentleman live hereabouts?”

The Sergeant rubbed his chin. “Not too far, Monsieur. He rents an apartment on the Rue Pierre-Fontaine in the 9th arrondissement, near one of his hangouts, the Moulin Rouge. He goes there to drink and draw pictures, and you can find him doing the same in the cabarets, bal musettes, maisons close, and boîtes. He’s a well-known figure in Montmartre and Pigalle. And there’s more. Like most of these fellows, he likes to have a little sport with his models. No doubt, he pays well. And there’re rumors about shouting matches and violence between Monsieur and his lorettes.”

“Thank you, sergeant.” Achille asked Rodin to give Lautrec’s name and address to Rousseau for his list; he was definitely a person of interest.

“I hope we don’t have the Ripper on our hands. It would be awful if the butchering bastard turned out to be a stunted French aristocrat,” Rodin quipped with a sly wink.

Achille winced in response to his friend’s gallows humor. Then he left the sergeant and walked toward the cesspit and the corpse, where Gilles, the photographer, had set up his camera. Gilles was a dapper young man, blue-eyed and fair-haired with a neat little waxed moustache. Dressed unseasonably in a white suit with a straw boater set at a jaunty angle on his handsome head, he looked more like a flâneur at Le Touquet than a crime scene photographer, but that appearance was deceiving. Gilles was one of the best in his profession.

“Hey Inspector, I’ve already got several photographs of the scene. Is there anything else you want before I pack up my equipment?”

“Yes, there is.” Achille pulled a magnifying glass out of his jacket pocket and crouched beside the stained cloth covering the torso. He focused on the ochre stains; as he suspected, they were handprints. What’s more, the fingerprints were distinguishable, especially the thumb and forefinger of a right hand.

The prints intrigued Achille. Bertillon had not incorporated fingerprints in his identification method and neither Scotland Yard nor any other eminent criminal investigation division had a system for using them. Moreover, he was unaware of fingerprints having ever been admitted into evidence in a criminal case. But he had read a recently published paper by the English anthropologist Sir Francis Galton which made a persuasive argument for the unique individuality of prints and set forth a method for categorizing them that could prove useful in criminal cases. Achille lowered his glass, turned and looked up at Gilles. “Can you get a sharp image of the fingerprints?”

Gilles shook his head. “That’d be awfully tricky out here. I might do better back at headquarters with a change of lenses, faster plates, filters, and flash powder.”

“Very well, please do that.” Achille got up and circled the manhole cover. Something half-hidden by the cover caught his eye. Crouching, he spotted a cigarette butt smoked almost out of existence. “Gilles,” he cried, “Have you been smoking?”

“Of course not, Inspector; I know better than that.”

Achille lifted the butt with tweezers. He sniffed and eyed it carefully. “No, this was smoked some time ago. If it was the gendarme there’ll be hell to pay. Where’s Rodin?”

“Over there, by the meat wagon, talking to Rousseau and the Morgue attendant.”

Achille whistled to get the sergeant’s attention and then gestured for him to come over. “Hey Rodin, look at this cigarette butt. Have any of your men smoked around the barricade?”

“No Inspector, they’re under strict orders not to.”

“Do you think one of the night soil collectors could have dropped it?”

Rodin shook his head. “No, that’s a gentleman’s smoke. The ladies like them too.”

Achille smiled at the sergeant. “That’s very perceptive, Rodin. Have you ever thought of coming to work for us?”

The sergeant smiled broadly. “That’s kind of you Monsieur, but I’m quite happy where I am.”

“Well, that’s our loss, I guess.” Achille had learned that it paid to be friendly with the gendarmerie. They did their duty, but they would go the extra mile for an Inspector they liked. “Could you please ask Inspector Rousseau to come over here?” Rodin went to fetch Achille’s partner.

Achille dropped the cigarette butt in an evidence bag. He made a final inspection of the area. As he walked the perimeter of the barricade, he noticed a small pile of dung near the curb. It was not fresh and he had noticed it before, but now he suddenly realized he had missed something. One of the droppings had been flattened, or squashed. He knelt down, and almost stuck his nose in it.

“What’s the matter, professor, aren’t they feeding you enough at home?”

Achille turned and looked up at Rousseau’s grinning moon face. “Don’t you see it, Rousseau?”

“Yes, professor, I see it. It’s a pile of horseshit. Lots of them just like it on the streets of Paris.”

Achille sighed in exasperation. “It’s a shoeprint! My God, how could we have missed it?”

Rousseau lowered his bulk to a squat. “Damn it, you’re right.” Then he sprang up and pointed to a few prints on the pavement. “Look here and here, and then they stop; but all in the direction of the cesspit.”

“We have something, Rousseau. Our man left the sidewalk here, carrying the body. He stepped in the dung, stopped to scrape off the sole, and then continued on to the cesspit. Look, I can draw a line from here to where I picked up the cigarette butt.”

Thoughts whirled round Achille’s brain: Did he carry the body from one of these houses or did he use a vehicle of some sort? He couldn’t have carried it far; someone would have noticed. But there are no more footprints, and if he used a cart or wagon there are no marks, nothing discernible on the pavement.

Achille pulled out a ruler and measured the shoeprint and the length of the stride. They belonged to a very small individual. But the handprints were large, and he would have been strong enough to carry the torso, lift the manhole cover, and stuff the remains into the cesspit. Achille remembered the sergeant’s description of Toulouse-Lautrec: Monsieur’s legs are stunted, but he has the body, arms, and hands of a normal man with better than average strength.

“Gilles,” he cried, “I want you to photograph something up here.” Then to Rousseau: “I’m going to try to make a plaster cast of the shoeprint.”

“You’re the boss, professor, but have you ever made a cast of a turd?”

“There’s a first time for everything, Rousseau.”

The Morgue was a modern building erected on the Île de la Cité following the demolition of the medieval slums vividly described in Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris. Upon entering, a visitor could look up and read the noble sentiments of The Republic: “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!” Some might ponder a grim truth implicit in the revolutionary motto, for in this place the dead barons, bourgeoisie, and beggars were liberated from class distinctions and thus equal in fact rather than theory.

The Morgue was open to the public from morning to closing at six P.M. The morbidly curious with time on their hands came to gawk. They milled round the gas-lit corridors, gathering before immense plate glass windows, shivering in the cold air and inhaling the sharp odor of chlorine disinfectant, rubbernecking at the frozen macchabées—Parisian slang for corpses—whose naked bodies were propped up for display on steel slabs. Refrigeration was a recent improvement over the older preservation method: cold running water that gave the corpses a bloated, discolored appearance and chemicals that exuded an eerie, grayish-green mist round the bodies.

Many of the corpses on display were suicides fished out of the nearby river; some were murder victims whose bodies had been dumped by their killers. Regardless, all remained unidentified; the authorities hoped that viewers might recognize a loved one, friend, acquaintance, or co-worker. Indeed, some came to the Morgue searching for a lost relative, viewing the cadavers in the hope that identification might provide certainty and some closure to their personal tragedy. But, as with public executions, most just came for the show.