Beyond Revanche, page 32
As was his way, Roux took command, dividing the ruined interior into sections and allocating police, ambulance men, firemen, and assorted volunteers as they materialized from the surrounding streets. The clergy were everywhere. Had none of them been hit? They appeared to concentrate on the dead and the dying, stoles over vestments, holy water sprinkled liberally over dust. Rarely, even in this horrendous war had the words “dust to dust” seemed so appropriate. Mathieu surveyed the sprawling corpses and bits of ragged bodies, searching for one whom he knew had been here, Agnès. He was not alone. Survivors wrestled with the horror in an attempt to find the loved one who had but seconds ago, been sitting or kneeling beside them. Dearth, injury, or survival was as random as any game of chance. Bernard Roux bowed his head towards the Countess Morand as she was carried on a stretcher to a taxi. She recognized him and smiled as if to say, don’t worry, I’m fine. She died that night.
An American Red Cross model T staggered into the street laden with nurses and a doctor and all the medical paraphernalia that the modern ambulance could carry.
“Help me free my mother,” a voice cried and Mathieu bent down to lift a heavy stone boulder from a crushed ribcage. As he looked back towards the door he saw three Red Cross nurses sitting immobile on the temporary chairs. Their uniforms were spotless. Their white skirts, perfectly starched. All dead. All three pierced by the explosion of wood-splinters when the vaulted ceiling crashed to the floor. He checked their lifeless faces again and again, but Agnès was not amongst them. Military stretcher-bearers in khaki loaded bodies into the first ambulances and bore them off to the Hotel Dieu.
Roux stiffened and half-whispered, “Fuck. Just when you least need them.” President Poincaré had entered through the main entrance, top hat in hand, suit immaculate, face strained. He was clearly unused to such carnage, ill-at-ease with citizens so close, struggling to appear confident amongst the public. Behind him stood the more compassionate Clemenceau, a prime minister who had visited the trenches on several occasions; had seen death, and stared it down. Roux wiped his soiled hands and saluted both men. Poincaré did not appear to see him but Clemenceau strode up and took his arm.
“Despicable, my friend, truly despicable. How could the Kaiser allow this on Good Friday? Do we know yet how many have died here?”
Roux shook his head. Words failed him.
“Ah, Captain Bertrand,” the prime minister swiveled towards Mathieu, “have we any idea of the numbers slain by the barbaric Boches?” He had clearly decided on the best headline before assessing the damage.
Mathieu saw her standing close to the door, instructing the stretcher bearers. Like all around who had survived the impact, Agnès was covered in the fine dust which settled like a smattering of late winter snow, not deep enough to last but washing color from the scene like a faded pastel. In that brief moment he realized that she was the female equivalent of Roux. In command. Orchestrating triage with the authority of a maestro.
“Agnès…you’re all right?” His voice wavered between question and disbelief. There was no time for the slightest show of intimacy. No passionate hug. This was no romance novel.
“I’ll direct every crush injury with a chance of survival to the Hotel-Dieu. If you can, help the ambulance drivers. Clear the routes to the hospital, and,” with a nod to the politicians, “get rid of the sightseers.”
Wonderful, Mathieu thought, his heart sinking. I’ll just order the president and prime minister to leave.
He approached Raymond Poincaré, who recognized his presence but said nothing. “Sir, forgive my intrusion, but it would be safer if you were outside the building. The structure may not be secure, and it would be a horrendous coup for the Germans if you, too, were injured.” President Poincaré took a step back. Clearly he had not considered that the church might be unsafe.
“Thank you, Captain. You are, of course, right,” he conceded and with the slightest of bows retreated to the Rue de Brosse where he dutifully waved at the shocked onlookers.
Clemenceau required a more subtle approach. He had ventured deep into the ruins, stepping carefully over bodies and rubble and bending down from time to time to offer comfort to the dazed and partly injured. Priests ministered to the dead, dispensing pardon for sins committed and anointing the unfortunates. Mathieu drew Roux aside and told him that Agnès wanted the politicians to leave because they were a distraction.
“Oh, does she, indeed? I thought I was in charge,” he mocked, glancing in her direction. “But I take her point. Come on then.” The prime minister had stopped to talk to one of the priests, in fact the only one who remained seated in the third sanctuary choir stall, a hero of France, the Abbe Eugene Bernardin from Nancy. He had been taken hostage by the Germans at the start of the war but was later exchanged for German prisoners and sent back to France.
Clemenceau turned as they approached.
“He’s stone dead.”
Observed from afar, the Abbe looked as if caught in contemplation, his hood lowered over his receding hairline, untouched by the crush which surrounded him. When the shell burst through the wall a dozen arch-ribbed pieces of shrapnel flew harmlessly above the heads of the congregation and slammed into the ancient pillars. Save one. A solitary missile cannoned back across the nave and imbedded itself in the Abbe’s skull. A ruby-red droplet of blood slid from his punctured brow and stained his well-thumbed breviary. Its wafer-thin pages would never be opened again.
Clemenceau drew himself from his crouched stance and saluted the corpse. “My friends, the Abbe, too, died for France.”
The three men stood together in admiration of the noble priest, but a sharp-voiced reprimand carried across the ill-strewn rubble.
“Will you get out of here and clear the streets so that the ambulances can get through?”
Agnès saw Clemenceau’s surprise blossom into a wide grin. Few would have dared address him with such frankness, but this nurse clearly had style and confidence. It was clear that she knew what needed to be done.
He bowed towards her. “You’ve worked at the front, Mademoiselle, I can tell. What do you need us to do?”
“Please clear a passage for the ambulances,” she repeated. “And if one of you could help with this poor lady.” She went down on one knee and caressed an injured matron. “That would be most appreciated.” Clemenceau was first to her side and lifted the old woman onto an upright pew. Her clothes must have weighed more than the emaciated body that lay underneath, for she was as light as a paper doll in a toy store. But she was alive. Roux ran down the front steps to instruct the gendarmes to clear a wider passage for three American Red Cross ambulances which had parked further down Rue de Brosse. Mathieu helped more stretcher-bearers step down onto the pavement and retraced his steps to Agnès. Clemenceau presumed that Mathieu was on protection duty and indicated that he would make his own way back to the War Ministry.
“I’ll leave you here, Captain. Just do as the nurse bids.” He smiled, gave a half salute, gloves in hand, and went to speak to a small group of journalists. Mathieu watched the professional politician work his message of shock and disbelief at the wicked German intrusion into Paris at prayer, knowing full well that he was witnessing the supreme headline-maker churn out stinging quotes for tomorrow’s newspapers.
There was still much to do. He knew that stretcher-bearer. The one whom he helped out of the American Red Cross wagon.
“Mathieu, please, quickly.” Agnès had found a body pinned to the floor. It was a child, curled underneath a smashed wooden pew. He or she was sobbing through a mucus-filled nose which had stopped bleeding, but which lay flattened against the small jaw, punched sideways by the flying debris. Agnès put her arms around the shivering body, not knowing whether the tremor was caused by cold or fear. Or both. While she tried to soothe the tiny victim by asking for a name and reassuring her—or was it a him?—that the nice man would lift the stones away, Mathieu pulled the great weight to one side, and was horrified to see that the left leg had been torn away by the awesome crush of the fallen vault.
Agnès called to the Americans, “Over here, now!” but help arrived from another quarter. A doctor and her assistant, both in their mid-twenties, ran over to help Agnès with the child. They were from the Scottish hospital and she struggled to understand their rich Edinburgh accents. But they were obviously used to dealing with trauma injuries and needed no instruction.
“Hotel-Dieu. Immediately.” Agnès moved on. No time for pleasantries.
Something in the ruined church irritated Mathieu. What was wrong? Though the main aisle had taken the full force of the collapsed roof vault, the side chapels with their decorated altars remained untouched. There was not even a scratch on the wooden-canopied pulpit which protruded into the aisle. Had you stood in front of it, you might have chided the church cleaner for letting so much dust gather. A red sanctuary lamp swung gently in the light breeze, surprised to find that the wind was blowing through the smashed stained glass windows. The American Red Cross stretcher-bearers passed to his right carrying a crumpled body covered by a regulation blanket. The dead were beginning to smell already.
“Eh?”
It wasn’t possible. That smell again. That smell? Mathieu swiveled ‘round, drew his pistol, and pointed directly at the Americans.
“Stop where you are.”
The two men ignored his instruction and broke into a run, but the floor was choked with debris. It was more like a disused quarry than a church aisle.
“I will shoot you first, Moutie.”
Priests, police, nurses, and volunteers from every branch of the allied forces in Paris looked aghast as Mathieu steadied himself and took aim, his pistol grasped steady in both hands, his face twisted in fury. “Then I will shoot your friend. Put the stretcher down and your hands up. Now.”
They stopped. There was no alternative.
“Now lay that stretcher down and turn round.”
“This is a church. God is present,” an exasperated clergyman protested. “Put that gun away, Monsieur.”
The stretcher-bearers had the good sense to ignore the priest and do as Mathieu ordered. “Now step into that side chapel to your left. Be assured. I will shoot you dead if you try anything untoward.”
Moutie started to shake.” It’s all a big mistake, Captain,” he began.
“Yes, it is. On that matter, we are in agreement.”
Several gendarmes, their capes flowing in anger, swarmed round the two men whose American Red Cross armbands reached upwards in surrender.
Toussaint sensed that Mathieu had cracked under the strain of such devastating mayhem, but could not fathom his anger at the stretchers-bearers. “What is it, Captain? What have they done?”
The parish priest sat on a large conical stone which once supported the ancient roof and tried to find a prayer. None would show itself.
Without moving his eyes from the target, Mathieu approached the two men with slow unfaltering steps. “Let’s see what they have done.”
With exaggerated caution, he raised the blanket from the bulging stretcher and unveiled his catch. Fine jackets, ornate handbags, expensive missals and prayer books, ladies hats with jeweled hatpins, umbrellas from La Gallerie Lafayette, a silver pocket watch, and initialed black leather wallets lay heavy on the stretcher, all purloined from the dead. The priest broke down, too tired to reach anger.
“Take them to the nearest barracks and shoot them.” Toussaint spat on the floor in sheer disgust, then remembered to his embarrassment that he was still inside a church.
“Sorry, Father,” he said to no one in particular.
“No. Take that one to the nearest precinct, lock him up, and if you like, throw the key in the Seine.” Only then did Mathieu turn to face Moutie. “This one, I will deal with personally.” He shoved the sorry thief into a latticed confessional, pushed him to his knees, put his pistol to his temple, and whispered, “Say your prayers.”
Toussaint’s face appeared on the other side of the structure begging Mathieu to think again.
“As one who knows the consequences, Sir, please don’t shoot him inside the church. It’ll be very difficult to cover-up.” Such a practical mind.
Moutie’s eyes darted from one policeman to the other unable to settle on his best chance of redemption. He felt the pistol hard against his temple and screwed his eyes shut.
“You will listen closely, do you hear. What I am about to say will happen, you fucking cretin.”
Christ on the cross had heard worse, but Mathieu covered the thorn-crowned head with his left hand just in case.
“We are going back to 36 Quai des Orfevres and you will be locked up in the lowest dungeon. I am going to write up your charge sheet and have it confirmed and formally signed at every legal level. When this goes to court, you will disappear overseas for the rest of your life. Do you hear me? Overseas. Forever.”
Moutie bowed his head and sniveled in rank self-pity. “I know. I am the worst person in the world. I know. But…” He got no further.
“No. You are the worst thief in the world. Probably the most despicable thief in France, but you are far from the worst person, even in Paris. From now on, I will be giving you instructions which you will follow to the letter. If you don’t, you will disappear. Forever. Do you understand, Moutie? Do you understand…forever?”
Mathieu accepted the whimper as consent. He dragged the thief out of the confessional by his collar, through the side altars in the transept, down the ragged front steps of the church, threw him into a police wagon and drove him to no. 36.
Once Moutie had been manhandled inside, Mathieu instructed two gendarmes to take him to a bathroom. “Wash him as many times as it pleases you in carbolic soap, from head to foot and back again. I want to see his skin raw with cleanliness.” Toussaint pulled rank and took personal charge.
“I’ll get some old clothes.” Mathieu found a pair of trousers and an oversized shirt in the basement storeroom and left them at the desk by the front office with a succinct note attached.
Forever.
Raoul’s Story
Victory
Ecstasy. Now I could get on with the rest of my life.
I danced around my cell, joy unbounded. I did this. I, Raoul Villain, the man who paved the way to Victory by murdering the traitor Jean Jaurès, have lived to see the glorious day when the Boches were forced to fall on their swords, or bayonets or whatever. France has won. At last. They’re calling it an Armistice.
I was attending one of those interminable sessions with the head-doctor, not the senior doctor as such, but a new-fangled doctor called a psychiatrist. He talked and talked and sought my opinion on many different topics. But I was careful. No matter the years or the fresh faces they shoved in front of me, I refused to answer. Again and again.
It had been foggy outside since the early morning, as if the mist had been unable to rouse itself against the weakening sun. Suddenly bells started ringing out across the city, and in that instant I knew. France had won. I could not help myself bursting into La Marseilles and everyone joined in, even the creepy new orderly who smelled of carbolic. He’s very odd. Everybody agrees. Well, everybody I speak to. Been here since just after Easter. He is seriously weird. Like a character out of a book by that English novelist, Charles Dickens. I can’t for the life of me remember his name. Wardens and Orderlies are basically low-level bullies who abuse their position every day. They push and shove, shout at everyone, show what big men they are, hit prisoners for no reason at all, but this one doesn’t. He creeps about, fawning, as if he is the victim. I saw a couple of the others talking about him, but they don’t speak to me. Huh.
Carbolic later disappeared and was gone for most of the day. He frequently came and went without purpose, but when he returned he had so much to tell. The center of the city suddenly housed the whole world. November skies were no longer foreboding. If nothing else the sheer force of exuberance lifted the mist which clung grimly to the church spires in defiance of the public mood. A huge banner was strung across a gigantic map, erected to show the allied progress day by day since the war turned in our favor in July. Now it proclaimed: “Victory. The War is won. Long Live France. Long live the Allies.” Carbolic had never seen such vast crowds, he said, running, jumping for joy. Parisians hugging total strangers. And thousands of uniforms. Everyone appeared to have a uniform. American flags materialized out of the ether, or possibly the American Embassy, and men, women and boys vied with each other to carry them head high. Soldiers, former soldiers, would be soldiers, many who claimed to have been soldiers, wounded soldiers, some supported by their nurses, had flowers pressed upon them. Hotel bellboys, ladies with sashes, flat capped English officers, black American troopers, one sporting a delicate bone pipe, were surrounded by admirers. Sailors floated around the boulevards strangely separated from their mighty fleets, joining in the cacophony of celebrations. They took to organizing enormous conga-lines which zigzagged in front of news cameras, each clamped onto the dancer in front. Everyone was drunk with pent-up relief mixed with disbelief. It was all over. Never had a beer on the Rue de La Fayette tasted better, he said. Never had a bottle of Vin Rouge been more welcome. Victory at last. Sweet victory. How I wished I was free to join in.
Anthems were sung repeatedly. Colleges closed and students rushed to join the celebrations around the Place de la Concorde where a display of captured trench mortars and small cannon became symbols of surrender. Someone laid hands on an enemy flag and dragged it through the gutter. People blew tuneless horns; lorries and trucks responded with blaring klaxons. All was noise. It was at best organized mayhem, he said. A formal march-past with regimental bands swung down the Champs-Élysée to the Arc de Triomphe, barely able to hold ranks against the enthusiasm of celebrating onlookers. There were no boundaries, he told me. On the balcony of the grand hotels, residents and chambermaids, managers and kitchen staff waved gigantic flags which were usually kept for presidential processions. British, French, American, French, Italian, French. Along the first floor of the Drecoll fashion house on the exclusive Place de L’Opera, images of its Robes Lingerie range merged with a bevy of excited young ladies who abandoned their legendary disdain for public displays of emotion and waved and blew kisses to the rejoicing populace. Indeed hugs and kisses seemed to have been the order of the day. It was all so easy. Even Carbolic got a kiss.
An American Red Cross model T staggered into the street laden with nurses and a doctor and all the medical paraphernalia that the modern ambulance could carry.
“Help me free my mother,” a voice cried and Mathieu bent down to lift a heavy stone boulder from a crushed ribcage. As he looked back towards the door he saw three Red Cross nurses sitting immobile on the temporary chairs. Their uniforms were spotless. Their white skirts, perfectly starched. All dead. All three pierced by the explosion of wood-splinters when the vaulted ceiling crashed to the floor. He checked their lifeless faces again and again, but Agnès was not amongst them. Military stretcher-bearers in khaki loaded bodies into the first ambulances and bore them off to the Hotel Dieu.
Roux stiffened and half-whispered, “Fuck. Just when you least need them.” President Poincaré had entered through the main entrance, top hat in hand, suit immaculate, face strained. He was clearly unused to such carnage, ill-at-ease with citizens so close, struggling to appear confident amongst the public. Behind him stood the more compassionate Clemenceau, a prime minister who had visited the trenches on several occasions; had seen death, and stared it down. Roux wiped his soiled hands and saluted both men. Poincaré did not appear to see him but Clemenceau strode up and took his arm.
“Despicable, my friend, truly despicable. How could the Kaiser allow this on Good Friday? Do we know yet how many have died here?”
Roux shook his head. Words failed him.
“Ah, Captain Bertrand,” the prime minister swiveled towards Mathieu, “have we any idea of the numbers slain by the barbaric Boches?” He had clearly decided on the best headline before assessing the damage.
Mathieu saw her standing close to the door, instructing the stretcher bearers. Like all around who had survived the impact, Agnès was covered in the fine dust which settled like a smattering of late winter snow, not deep enough to last but washing color from the scene like a faded pastel. In that brief moment he realized that she was the female equivalent of Roux. In command. Orchestrating triage with the authority of a maestro.
“Agnès…you’re all right?” His voice wavered between question and disbelief. There was no time for the slightest show of intimacy. No passionate hug. This was no romance novel.
“I’ll direct every crush injury with a chance of survival to the Hotel-Dieu. If you can, help the ambulance drivers. Clear the routes to the hospital, and,” with a nod to the politicians, “get rid of the sightseers.”
Wonderful, Mathieu thought, his heart sinking. I’ll just order the president and prime minister to leave.
He approached Raymond Poincaré, who recognized his presence but said nothing. “Sir, forgive my intrusion, but it would be safer if you were outside the building. The structure may not be secure, and it would be a horrendous coup for the Germans if you, too, were injured.” President Poincaré took a step back. Clearly he had not considered that the church might be unsafe.
“Thank you, Captain. You are, of course, right,” he conceded and with the slightest of bows retreated to the Rue de Brosse where he dutifully waved at the shocked onlookers.
Clemenceau required a more subtle approach. He had ventured deep into the ruins, stepping carefully over bodies and rubble and bending down from time to time to offer comfort to the dazed and partly injured. Priests ministered to the dead, dispensing pardon for sins committed and anointing the unfortunates. Mathieu drew Roux aside and told him that Agnès wanted the politicians to leave because they were a distraction.
“Oh, does she, indeed? I thought I was in charge,” he mocked, glancing in her direction. “But I take her point. Come on then.” The prime minister had stopped to talk to one of the priests, in fact the only one who remained seated in the third sanctuary choir stall, a hero of France, the Abbe Eugene Bernardin from Nancy. He had been taken hostage by the Germans at the start of the war but was later exchanged for German prisoners and sent back to France.
Clemenceau turned as they approached.
“He’s stone dead.”
Observed from afar, the Abbe looked as if caught in contemplation, his hood lowered over his receding hairline, untouched by the crush which surrounded him. When the shell burst through the wall a dozen arch-ribbed pieces of shrapnel flew harmlessly above the heads of the congregation and slammed into the ancient pillars. Save one. A solitary missile cannoned back across the nave and imbedded itself in the Abbe’s skull. A ruby-red droplet of blood slid from his punctured brow and stained his well-thumbed breviary. Its wafer-thin pages would never be opened again.
Clemenceau drew himself from his crouched stance and saluted the corpse. “My friends, the Abbe, too, died for France.”
The three men stood together in admiration of the noble priest, but a sharp-voiced reprimand carried across the ill-strewn rubble.
“Will you get out of here and clear the streets so that the ambulances can get through?”
Agnès saw Clemenceau’s surprise blossom into a wide grin. Few would have dared address him with such frankness, but this nurse clearly had style and confidence. It was clear that she knew what needed to be done.
He bowed towards her. “You’ve worked at the front, Mademoiselle, I can tell. What do you need us to do?”
“Please clear a passage for the ambulances,” she repeated. “And if one of you could help with this poor lady.” She went down on one knee and caressed an injured matron. “That would be most appreciated.” Clemenceau was first to her side and lifted the old woman onto an upright pew. Her clothes must have weighed more than the emaciated body that lay underneath, for she was as light as a paper doll in a toy store. But she was alive. Roux ran down the front steps to instruct the gendarmes to clear a wider passage for three American Red Cross ambulances which had parked further down Rue de Brosse. Mathieu helped more stretcher-bearers step down onto the pavement and retraced his steps to Agnès. Clemenceau presumed that Mathieu was on protection duty and indicated that he would make his own way back to the War Ministry.
“I’ll leave you here, Captain. Just do as the nurse bids.” He smiled, gave a half salute, gloves in hand, and went to speak to a small group of journalists. Mathieu watched the professional politician work his message of shock and disbelief at the wicked German intrusion into Paris at prayer, knowing full well that he was witnessing the supreme headline-maker churn out stinging quotes for tomorrow’s newspapers.
There was still much to do. He knew that stretcher-bearer. The one whom he helped out of the American Red Cross wagon.
“Mathieu, please, quickly.” Agnès had found a body pinned to the floor. It was a child, curled underneath a smashed wooden pew. He or she was sobbing through a mucus-filled nose which had stopped bleeding, but which lay flattened against the small jaw, punched sideways by the flying debris. Agnès put her arms around the shivering body, not knowing whether the tremor was caused by cold or fear. Or both. While she tried to soothe the tiny victim by asking for a name and reassuring her—or was it a him?—that the nice man would lift the stones away, Mathieu pulled the great weight to one side, and was horrified to see that the left leg had been torn away by the awesome crush of the fallen vault.
Agnès called to the Americans, “Over here, now!” but help arrived from another quarter. A doctor and her assistant, both in their mid-twenties, ran over to help Agnès with the child. They were from the Scottish hospital and she struggled to understand their rich Edinburgh accents. But they were obviously used to dealing with trauma injuries and needed no instruction.
“Hotel-Dieu. Immediately.” Agnès moved on. No time for pleasantries.
Something in the ruined church irritated Mathieu. What was wrong? Though the main aisle had taken the full force of the collapsed roof vault, the side chapels with their decorated altars remained untouched. There was not even a scratch on the wooden-canopied pulpit which protruded into the aisle. Had you stood in front of it, you might have chided the church cleaner for letting so much dust gather. A red sanctuary lamp swung gently in the light breeze, surprised to find that the wind was blowing through the smashed stained glass windows. The American Red Cross stretcher-bearers passed to his right carrying a crumpled body covered by a regulation blanket. The dead were beginning to smell already.
“Eh?”
It wasn’t possible. That smell again. That smell? Mathieu swiveled ‘round, drew his pistol, and pointed directly at the Americans.
“Stop where you are.”
The two men ignored his instruction and broke into a run, but the floor was choked with debris. It was more like a disused quarry than a church aisle.
“I will shoot you first, Moutie.”
Priests, police, nurses, and volunteers from every branch of the allied forces in Paris looked aghast as Mathieu steadied himself and took aim, his pistol grasped steady in both hands, his face twisted in fury. “Then I will shoot your friend. Put the stretcher down and your hands up. Now.”
They stopped. There was no alternative.
“Now lay that stretcher down and turn round.”
“This is a church. God is present,” an exasperated clergyman protested. “Put that gun away, Monsieur.”
The stretcher-bearers had the good sense to ignore the priest and do as Mathieu ordered. “Now step into that side chapel to your left. Be assured. I will shoot you dead if you try anything untoward.”
Moutie started to shake.” It’s all a big mistake, Captain,” he began.
“Yes, it is. On that matter, we are in agreement.”
Several gendarmes, their capes flowing in anger, swarmed round the two men whose American Red Cross armbands reached upwards in surrender.
Toussaint sensed that Mathieu had cracked under the strain of such devastating mayhem, but could not fathom his anger at the stretchers-bearers. “What is it, Captain? What have they done?”
The parish priest sat on a large conical stone which once supported the ancient roof and tried to find a prayer. None would show itself.
Without moving his eyes from the target, Mathieu approached the two men with slow unfaltering steps. “Let’s see what they have done.”
With exaggerated caution, he raised the blanket from the bulging stretcher and unveiled his catch. Fine jackets, ornate handbags, expensive missals and prayer books, ladies hats with jeweled hatpins, umbrellas from La Gallerie Lafayette, a silver pocket watch, and initialed black leather wallets lay heavy on the stretcher, all purloined from the dead. The priest broke down, too tired to reach anger.
“Take them to the nearest barracks and shoot them.” Toussaint spat on the floor in sheer disgust, then remembered to his embarrassment that he was still inside a church.
“Sorry, Father,” he said to no one in particular.
“No. Take that one to the nearest precinct, lock him up, and if you like, throw the key in the Seine.” Only then did Mathieu turn to face Moutie. “This one, I will deal with personally.” He shoved the sorry thief into a latticed confessional, pushed him to his knees, put his pistol to his temple, and whispered, “Say your prayers.”
Toussaint’s face appeared on the other side of the structure begging Mathieu to think again.
“As one who knows the consequences, Sir, please don’t shoot him inside the church. It’ll be very difficult to cover-up.” Such a practical mind.
Moutie’s eyes darted from one policeman to the other unable to settle on his best chance of redemption. He felt the pistol hard against his temple and screwed his eyes shut.
“You will listen closely, do you hear. What I am about to say will happen, you fucking cretin.”
Christ on the cross had heard worse, but Mathieu covered the thorn-crowned head with his left hand just in case.
“We are going back to 36 Quai des Orfevres and you will be locked up in the lowest dungeon. I am going to write up your charge sheet and have it confirmed and formally signed at every legal level. When this goes to court, you will disappear overseas for the rest of your life. Do you hear me? Overseas. Forever.”
Moutie bowed his head and sniveled in rank self-pity. “I know. I am the worst person in the world. I know. But…” He got no further.
“No. You are the worst thief in the world. Probably the most despicable thief in France, but you are far from the worst person, even in Paris. From now on, I will be giving you instructions which you will follow to the letter. If you don’t, you will disappear. Forever. Do you understand, Moutie? Do you understand…forever?”
Mathieu accepted the whimper as consent. He dragged the thief out of the confessional by his collar, through the side altars in the transept, down the ragged front steps of the church, threw him into a police wagon and drove him to no. 36.
Once Moutie had been manhandled inside, Mathieu instructed two gendarmes to take him to a bathroom. “Wash him as many times as it pleases you in carbolic soap, from head to foot and back again. I want to see his skin raw with cleanliness.” Toussaint pulled rank and took personal charge.
“I’ll get some old clothes.” Mathieu found a pair of trousers and an oversized shirt in the basement storeroom and left them at the desk by the front office with a succinct note attached.
Forever.
Raoul’s Story
Victory
Ecstasy. Now I could get on with the rest of my life.
I danced around my cell, joy unbounded. I did this. I, Raoul Villain, the man who paved the way to Victory by murdering the traitor Jean Jaurès, have lived to see the glorious day when the Boches were forced to fall on their swords, or bayonets or whatever. France has won. At last. They’re calling it an Armistice.
I was attending one of those interminable sessions with the head-doctor, not the senior doctor as such, but a new-fangled doctor called a psychiatrist. He talked and talked and sought my opinion on many different topics. But I was careful. No matter the years or the fresh faces they shoved in front of me, I refused to answer. Again and again.
It had been foggy outside since the early morning, as if the mist had been unable to rouse itself against the weakening sun. Suddenly bells started ringing out across the city, and in that instant I knew. France had won. I could not help myself bursting into La Marseilles and everyone joined in, even the creepy new orderly who smelled of carbolic. He’s very odd. Everybody agrees. Well, everybody I speak to. Been here since just after Easter. He is seriously weird. Like a character out of a book by that English novelist, Charles Dickens. I can’t for the life of me remember his name. Wardens and Orderlies are basically low-level bullies who abuse their position every day. They push and shove, shout at everyone, show what big men they are, hit prisoners for no reason at all, but this one doesn’t. He creeps about, fawning, as if he is the victim. I saw a couple of the others talking about him, but they don’t speak to me. Huh.
Carbolic later disappeared and was gone for most of the day. He frequently came and went without purpose, but when he returned he had so much to tell. The center of the city suddenly housed the whole world. November skies were no longer foreboding. If nothing else the sheer force of exuberance lifted the mist which clung grimly to the church spires in defiance of the public mood. A huge banner was strung across a gigantic map, erected to show the allied progress day by day since the war turned in our favor in July. Now it proclaimed: “Victory. The War is won. Long Live France. Long live the Allies.” Carbolic had never seen such vast crowds, he said, running, jumping for joy. Parisians hugging total strangers. And thousands of uniforms. Everyone appeared to have a uniform. American flags materialized out of the ether, or possibly the American Embassy, and men, women and boys vied with each other to carry them head high. Soldiers, former soldiers, would be soldiers, many who claimed to have been soldiers, wounded soldiers, some supported by their nurses, had flowers pressed upon them. Hotel bellboys, ladies with sashes, flat capped English officers, black American troopers, one sporting a delicate bone pipe, were surrounded by admirers. Sailors floated around the boulevards strangely separated from their mighty fleets, joining in the cacophony of celebrations. They took to organizing enormous conga-lines which zigzagged in front of news cameras, each clamped onto the dancer in front. Everyone was drunk with pent-up relief mixed with disbelief. It was all over. Never had a beer on the Rue de La Fayette tasted better, he said. Never had a bottle of Vin Rouge been more welcome. Victory at last. Sweet victory. How I wished I was free to join in.
Anthems were sung repeatedly. Colleges closed and students rushed to join the celebrations around the Place de la Concorde where a display of captured trench mortars and small cannon became symbols of surrender. Someone laid hands on an enemy flag and dragged it through the gutter. People blew tuneless horns; lorries and trucks responded with blaring klaxons. All was noise. It was at best organized mayhem, he said. A formal march-past with regimental bands swung down the Champs-Élysée to the Arc de Triomphe, barely able to hold ranks against the enthusiasm of celebrating onlookers. There were no boundaries, he told me. On the balcony of the grand hotels, residents and chambermaids, managers and kitchen staff waved gigantic flags which were usually kept for presidential processions. British, French, American, French, Italian, French. Along the first floor of the Drecoll fashion house on the exclusive Place de L’Opera, images of its Robes Lingerie range merged with a bevy of excited young ladies who abandoned their legendary disdain for public displays of emotion and waved and blew kisses to the rejoicing populace. Indeed hugs and kisses seemed to have been the order of the day. It was all so easy. Even Carbolic got a kiss.
