Beyond Revanche, page 3
His new colleagues, though the word had to be taken at its broadest classification, raced around the capital in their new-fangled Panhard and Levassor motorcars, the self-declared elite, claiming to be the cutting edge of crime detection. The Tigers. They loved that name. Some claimed they were the best of the best. Whether it was true or not, their reports read well, though anyone can write a report with fancy, self-promoting prose.
The phone rang four times in the adjoining office. Let it. So what if it was a diamond robbery in the Place Vendôme or a bank job on Rue St. Denis? He had filing to complete. Important they had said, laughing as they grabbed their hats and headed out. Perhaps he should polish the floor while he was at it? Bâtards.
The dingy office smelled of tobacco and stale policemen with evidence aplenty of half-eaten sandwiches and cigarette stubs. Captain Girard’s desk sat furthest from the door with assorted files and notes strewn carelessly across the top, left no doubt for someone else to put in order. His wastebasket was filled to the wicker-brim and the overspill lay on the wooden flooring as if it knew it would have to wait there patiently for some time. Directly in front, two smaller desks displayed very different personalities. Lieutenant Dubois’s reflected a precision to detail. Not a pencil out of line nor a loose paperclip disturbed the immaculate order of a well-trained operator. His desk looked as if it had been polished daily, and his established sense of order was at odds with the rest of the room. To his left, second lieutenant Guy Simon’s desk was festooned with notebooks, newspaper cuttings, and record sheets. He had covered the wall beside him with pictures of the Tigers posing for the photographers beside their motor vehicles; with the chief of police, with the minister of the Interior, with the mayor of the city. Mathieu’s first impressions were clear; these guys loved themselves. And as for the chief, Commander Roux? He hadn’t even found time to introduce himself.
The telephone restarted on the desk behind with an impertinent urgency that demanded attention. Mathieu should not have touched it.
“What?”
Nothing made sense. A voice screamed alarm and a list of barely intelligible words.
“Say that again.” The same words were repeated at a higher decibel.
“Look, I’m in the office on my own. What do you expect me to do? Commander Roux and the team have left…”
A torrent of abuse followed, but the gist of the threat as he understood it was, “Get Roux. Find him and tell him personally.”
“But I don’t know where he is.” Was that so difficult to understand?
“Roux. Now. Immediately. Find him and give him my message. Get him to the Figaro…”
“Boulevard Haussmann? And who do I say this message is from?”
“Crétin. Get Roux. Right now.”
The officer at the front door knew where they’d be. He looked Mathieu up and down as if he was the village idiot. Didn’t everyone at the prefecture know that the Tigers drank in the Café Clichy every Friday evening?
Struggling with his jacket, Mathieu powered down the street, a man on a mission, almost colliding into the high-rooted elm that overstretched itself above the paving.
“Haussmann, Figaro, Gaston Calmette, black car.” He knew there were other equally important phrases. “Scandal, political nightmare, outrage.” Mathieu dodged past the kiosks, the fresh budding trees, the strolling bourgeoisie, and the glitterati out to see and be seen.
“Haussmann, Figaro, Gaston Calmette, black car, gun,” he muttered to himself.
From a distance of one hundred meters, it was obvious that a major hurdle lay ahead. On such a pleasant March evening Café Clichy patrons adorned the pavements like early spring flowers. Cherry blossom hovered over daffodils; peony, iris, lily, nasturtium mixed with the occasional rose, but failed to smell as sweet. Men in bowlers and straw hats hovered at the entrance, flattering the ladies, conveniently forgetful of matrimonial vows. The main door was a melee; a rugby scrum comprised of beer, wine, spirits, and assorted bodies. There was no option. It was barge right through. No time for nicety.
“M’excuse.”
Putain. He ducked under the outer edge of the first phalanx and squeezed into the well- patronized hostelry. Inside was even more impenetrable. Groups huddled together around the bar blocking those still desperate to place their first order. Table service had been suspended. Packed satin booths hugged the mirrored walls, which added to Mathieu’s confusion. He was lost in a sea of unrecognizable faces duplicated in the resplendent mirrors, and for a moment, despair replaced his anxiety. From his left he heard a booming voice. It was the commander.
“…and then the minister’s face went beetroot.”
Laughter.
He was at a corner booth, standing tall, entertaining his troops, cigarette in one hand, brandy glass in the other. Rumor whispered he came from aristocratic stock, and he held himself upright, straight-backed and unbending. Commander Bernard Roux was an imposing presence. Save for a trimmed moustache, his face was close-shaven with arched eyebrows and elongated nose. His teeth were perfectly white yet the fingers on his right hand were nicotine stained, discolored by a life-long addiction to his weed of choice. His bespoke three-piece suit had been fitted with care and his waistcoat sported a fashionable fob watch. He had been gifted with the ability to treat people as he himself wished to be treated. The corner booth hung on his every word.
“May I speak with you, Sir?”
Conversation paused mid-sentence. Men of consequence winced. In that moment Commander Roux had no idea who had spoken to him.
“I have to speak with you, Sir. Urgently.”
Vague recognition dawned. The commander nodded towards his audience and laughed. “Did anyone tell the new boy we can’t be disturbed after half-past six?”
A chorus of reassurance dutifully claimed that they had.
“Back to the office, young man. We’ll discuss this later.” He turned away, keen to finish his story before he forgot how it ended. The commander was fast approaching that dangerous and embarrassing age.
“Sir, you have to know…”
Useless. Mathieu was appealing not to Roux’s ear but to his back. He struck so quickly that no one around the booth had time to react. Spinning the commander around, he shouted into the prevailing noise.
“Outside, now. This…is…serious.”
An eagle eye stared back in warning. “It had better be.”
The commander handed his drink to the nearest officer and literally propelled Mathieu backwards through the crowded café into the street. An onlooker would have presumed that the doorman was ejecting an unsavory client.
“This had better be good. Spit it out.”
“Henriette Caillaux, Figaro, Gaston Calmette, black car, gun.”
“Say that again.”
“Caillaux, Gaston Calmette, Figaro, black car, gun.” This time he added, “Scandal, political nightmare.”
“Where?” The pointed question put Roux back on his front foot. He understood what it meant and took control. Immediately.
“Boulevard Haussmann, Figaro offices.”
“Right. Go.”
Commander Bernard Roux, head of the Flying Squad, friend and intimate of politicians and government officials alike, moved to brush past Mathieu Bertrand but the newcomer took one step from the pavement and stopped a taxi in its tracks, opened the door, and pushed Roux inside, bellowing to the driver, “Haussmann, Figaro offices. Double-time.”
It took Commander Roux a second to realize what had happened. Too late. He turned and pointed back towards the café. “What I meant was, go get the car.”
“Which car?”
“Our Panhard, the one back there at the corner. Never mind, the boys will follow.”
His boys had already spilled onto the street, uncertain why their commander was disappearing down the boulevard in a taxi. For one moment, Mathieu thought that he was going to be thrown out but Roux did a double take. Between Rue Clichy and Boulevard Haussmann, he learned more.
“The minister of finance’s wife has entered the Figaro newspaper offices with a gun in her possession. Apparently, she’s still there and whoever placed the emergency call needs you to know, Sir. It’s you he asked for. Repeatedly. I don’t think he wanted the local police involved.”
“You don’t think?” was the commander’s curt reply, eyebrows arched in condescending amazement but there was a change in his tone which bordered on approval.
“You do appreciate there will be hell to pay if she threatens him…or worse?”
The new junior officer nodded, but had no idea what the commander was talking about.
“You’re Bertrand, are you not? The new boy I was instructed to accommodate?”
“Mathieu Bertrand, Sir. From Marseilles.”
“I thought it was Vincent.” He seemed puzzled.
“It was,” Mathieu said to himself, but shook his head in sad denial.
“Well, Mathieu Bertrand from Marseilles, if we are too late, you may have landed us in the biggest bucket of pig shite this side of St. Petersburg. And I fear we might be.”
He shook his head in a manner which made Mathieu feel he had made an elementary mistake. Not just a rookie, a stupid rookie. “Henriette is, as you know, the wife of the minister of finance and darling of the coiffured classes. But she and her beloved Joseph have many enemies hell-bent on ruining his chances of ever becoming president of France. It’s an open secret that Gaston Calmette, editor of the royalist newspaper Figaro has a shovel-full of dirt on Joseph and intends to use it.”
Roux shifted his position to look again at the young man whom he had made no effort to acknowledge since he was ordered to find a place for him in the Flying Squad.
“What you have to understand is that Calmette is threatening her husband’s career, and by default, Madame Caillaux’s position in Parisian society. If she has thought this through, carefully…”
He paused, sat further back in the taxi, and lit a Gauloises.
“Putain.” Mathieu Bertrand sensed disaster.
“Precisely.”
2
March 1914 – The Fallen Angel
Henriette Caillaux stood erect, close to the door of the editor’s suite, as if frozen in defiance, instantly recognizable in her dark fur-collared long coat and wide-brimmed hat with large back-flowing feather fetchingly curving behind. She was La Belle Époque personified, at least in her own head. Everything that France had to offer the world in terms of impeccable style could be witnessed in this one-woman icon of beauty and class. Every item in her wardrobe had been made to measure by her chosen designer, and patronage was her ultimate gift to the up and coming artiste. Her hair had been styled this year by Cierplikowski in his salon at The Galeries Lafayette. Like most of the well-heeled upper class that frequented his outrageously expensive hairdressing salon, Henriette knew him as “The Little Russian,” though he was of Polish extraction. Antoine de Paris was his more vulgar trade name.
Her relationship with the socialist politician Joseph Caillaux had been the topic of much criticism even before they both divorced their original spouses. But no one needed to ask what she saw in the man. He was a living legend whose political decisions were more contentious than any other elected official in the Third Republic. Three years ago, he had been prime minister. A successful eighteen-month spell promised hope of even greater office ahead. He might yet be president of France.
Shameless enemies now threatened that dream. Joseph, as minister of finance, was under attack from the gutter press which constantly tried to undermine his ambitions, none more so that the gutter-master himself, Gaston Calmette, editor of the Figaro. He had taken possession of some intimate letters written years ago by Joseph to his whimpering first wife, and promised to destroy his career by publishing them. Such detail was common knowledge among the whispering classes. Aware of her well-pampered background, Mathieu knew that she had thought this through, carefully.
Had he considered his own upbringing, Mathieu might have realized that being raised in his grandparents’ exclusive villa served him well, not in terms of ingrained prejudice or overbearing selfishness, but rather in observing the kind of man he was determined not to be. The small boy left on his own to wander the great rooms of privilege became the invisible observer of the cruelty of his mother’s older sister egged on, as she was, by his grandmother. Servants were dressed down in public; tradesmen had their reputations trashed. What he never fully understood was that his grandfather knew of the cruelty, heard the screaming and the beatings, yet did nothing to stem the abuse.
Mathieu vowed that he would never treat fellow humans with such callous contempt, and as he looked across the editor’s office, he recognized that contempt standing before him. The Figaro sub-editor held Henriette Caillaux by the arm, but she made no effort to resist the citizen’s arrest. She stood staring at the man she had shot as if she was carved in marble. Certain. Her whole demeanor screamed, Let that be a lesson to you. I will not be scorned.
Gaston Calmette sat slumped on a chair by his desk, and someone, a doctor perhaps, was administrating superficial aid. His breathing was shallow, his pallor grey, but at least he wasn’t dead. Mathieu looked carefully at the weapon lying at Madam Caillaux’s feet. Mère de Dieu, it was a .32 Browning; the assassin’s gun, spring-loaded and deadly. Fear rose from the pit of his soul. The Browning was a semi-automatic death sentence. How had she acquired such a weapon? In a moment of petrifying clarity, Mathieu realized that they had been sucked into a scandal. Was that why the telephone caller had been so insistent that Bernard Roux be warned in advance?
He looked back and heard the commander ask, “Was it a clean shot?” The doctor gently lifted back the chair cover he was using to compress Gaston Calmette’s injuries. Three clear bullet wounds punctured the shaken body, as if it had been stabbed three times by the Fallen Angel herself.
“She shot him three times?” There was an edge of disbelief in Roux’s voice.
“She fired five shots from point blank range, Sir. Five.”
Mathieu struggled to make sense of the scene. Madame Caillaux had clearly shot Calmette as he turned to greet her. She must have hidden the weapon inside her hand muff, then thrown both to the floor. It was clear that her act of retribution would resolve itself into an uncomplicated full-blown murder within a few hours. Yet she had not tried to flee. She had fired the gun, thrown it to the ground, and waited to be caught in an act of supreme arrogance. Both his aunt and his grandmother had bathed in that conceit of self-righteousness which besets the privileged. These people actually believed that they had every right to ignore the law of the land. They frightened him then, and Henriette’s immediate future frightened him now.
Angry voices could be heard outside. Word had spread along the boulevard like rabid contagion. The gathering mob smelled blood, but it wasn’t the editor’s. Mathieu moved to the commander’s side and whispered, “We need to get her out before anyone realizes how few we are.” Roux agreed with a curt nod and, as if occasioned by a prearranged signal, the off-duty Tigers pushed their way into the room and made straight for the commander.
“Dubois, call the prefecture and alert the minister of justice. Tell him we are going to move her to the station at Faubourg.” The local police station had not been built to defy a mob, and Dubois’ reaction betrayed his surprise.
“Temporarily?”
“Obviously.” He turned to the captain. “Girard, do make sure that the minister of finance is informed immediately, and tell him where she’ll be. Simon, get hold of a friendly face and find out how we can get her out of the building without being ripped apart.”
“Not much chance of anonymity with her dressed to kill,” Girard quipped. No one smiled.
Though she remained stationary, caught in her own moment, Henriette Caillaux was no alabaster Madonna. As she began to re-engage with a hostile world, Henriette gained confidence. Perhaps the ringing in her ears was beginning to soften. She looked directly at the wounded man and smiled. Shock gave way to euphoria. She looked over towards the stricken editor with a conceit of triumph which she could not hide, as if she had shown that rat the consequences of impugning a lady’s honor.
Mathieu spoke slowly and calmly. It would have been counterproductive to intimidate this woman. She held her posture like the heroine she imagined herself to be; Danielle in the Den of Lions, no doubt. Surrounded as she was by a hostile press with an army of photographers desperate to shoot her least flattering side, Henriette betrayed no outward fear. It was as if she were a higher being caught by a minor distraction which would disappear of its own accord, leaving behind no consequence of worth. Realizing that some common person held her arm, she pulled away, bristling at such impertinence. Henriette Caillaux had no notion that she was now, and would forevermore be, a criminal. Mathieu read her changing body language carefully and stood directly in front of her in a manner which was neither threatening nor submissive.
“We have to get you into a police car and out of this place immediately for your own safety.” His upbringing in Marseilles had included an appreciation of political and social propriety.
“Certainly not.” She shuddered as if she had been offered a glass of cheap table wine.
Of all possible responses, this was the last Mathieu expected.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I am going nowhere in a police car. I have a limousine standing ready on the street. Patrick will drive me to the police station.”
“Patrick?”
She threw a look in the direction of the question as if it had come from a certified imbecile.
