I wanted to be him for a few days.
The next day, Wednesday 17 October, after a disturbed night of fraught and chaotic dreams which I was unable to remember upon waking, and a quick morning stroll on the banks of the Seine, I spent much of the day in my room, reading Nerval’s biography. It was long past midday when I eventually decided to go out for lunch at the Café des Innocents. A hundred and fifty years earlier it had been the site of a cemetery of the same name. At the end of the fourteenth century, on a panel there Nicolas Flamel (him again) had had a ‘man in black’ drawn on one of its pillars, directly facing the alchemic figures supposedly taken from the book of Abraham the Jew.
In Paris, more than anywhere else, history had left its mark on the present. For those who were able to see, reality consisted of more than just the fieeting con tours of beings and things. Wherever the eyes of those who could see fell, on the corner of every street, on nearly every wall, between every join in the cobblestones, they could perceive another layer beneath the superficial layer of reality. It looked similar but was very different and slightly out of step, a little like the anaglyphs whose technique Louis Lumière was refining in his workshops in order to screen three-dimensional films. Perhaps one day, simply wearing a pair of stereoscopic glasses in the street would make a new view of life possible – richer, more profound, more real, carved out of the depths of time, where past and present would be visible simultaneously.
After lunch I pushed the remains of my meal away and opened Aristide Marie’s book, which I always had with me. On one of the last pages, an extract from the register of the morgue (then located north-east of Pont Saint-Michel on Rue du Marché-Neuf ) was reproduced with the observations made by the state pathologist, Dr Devergie, on 26 January. Also reproduced was the complete text of the death certificate drawn up on 29 January at the town hall in the ninth arrondissement. These were about the only facts available. Thirty pages earlier, in a very obscure sentence, Aristide Marie intimated that documents from the investigation had been destroyed. What had happened? Was there any hope of ever finding them again?
For now, I intended to visit the archives of the new Forensic Institute at Place Mazas near Quai de la Rapée.
As the weather remained fine, I decided to walk along the Seine. Emerging on to Rue de Rivoli, I had just reached Tour Saint-Jacques, in front of Cavelier’s statue of Pascal, when I heard someone behind me calling my name.
‘Singleton! Singleton! Is that you?’
‘Inspector Fourier!’ I exclaimed, delighted to see the familiar face of the detective from the Sûreté, who was striding towards me.
‘Ah, my friend!’ he cried breathlessly, warmly shaking my outstretched hand. ‘But it’s Superintendent now, you know. I’ve been promoted!’
‘Of course, how could I have forgotten! This summer the Daily Mail reported at length on the exploits of Superintendent Fourier. That great figure of the Paris police force who managed to put behind bars the famous Bosco, big-time thief and the kind of colourful, elusive character only to be found in France!’
‘Well, well!’ he exclaimed, smoothing the long, solitary lock of hair which ran from one side of his head to the other. ‘I’m delighted to see that the reputation of our men is starting to cross the Channel. Give it a little time and Scotland Yard will be visiting our offices in Rue des Saussaies to study our methods. In any case, my dear friend, without you and your faithful partner I don’t think we would ever have got the better of the infamous Billancourt studios killer.’
I won’t dwell on the case of the Cut-throat with the Broken Watch which I referred to earlier. One of these days I intend to gather together all the documents and notes made at the time and write the whole story down. In the meantime, all the reader needs to know is that in the winter of 1933 James and I made the acquaintance of the kind and scrupulous Edmond Fourier from the Sûreté Générale. Although the investigation had been particularly sensitive (the idea of working with two amateur detectives was nothing less than sacrilege for some members of his organisation), Fourier, who had initiated the collaboration, always demonstrated full confidence in us. In the end, it served him well.
With his customary tweed suit, tweed overcoat, thin moustache, bowler hat and swordstick, Superintendent Fourier was the archetypal French policeman. He was a mixture of Juve, Tirauclair and Chantecoq!5 When I was with him I felt as though the shadow of Fantômas was about to appear on a rooftop or that the agile dandy overtaking us on the pavement was none other than Arsène Lupin returning from another burglary at a prince’s residence or the Crédit Lyonnais on Boulevard des Italiens.
Edmond Fourier was about fifty-four or fifty-five and the son of ironmongers from the Franche-Comté region but he had lived in Paris, in Rue Cadet, for a long time. His humble origins had taught him common sense and realism, which often paid off. He had joined the Sûreté Générale at the age of twenty-seven, a few years after Prime Minister Clemenceau had set up his brigades mobiles, the famous Tiger Brigades, to counterbalance the all-powerful Préfecture de Police. Fourier was one of the stars of the Sûreté which, since its creation in 1820, had always suffered from comparisons with its rival. The large-scale reorganisation of the State’s police force the previous April had also seen the resources and remit of the Sûreté increase considerably so that it now had national powers. The staff of the Sûreté and the Préfecture were not quite ready to bury the hatchet but the new set-up did at least give each institution precise boundaries.6
‘But I see no sign of that wag Trelawney,’ remarked Fourier, pretending to look left and right over his shoulder in case my six-foot-three friend was hiding in the policeman’s short shadow.
‘James stayed in London but he’ll be joining me soon. At the moment, I imagine he’s finding it very difficult to resist the siren call of your city.’
‘Do I take it then that you are … uh … what one might call “on holiday”?’
All of a sudden his deceptively disinterested tone made me realise that meeting Superintendent Fourier like this wasn’t simply a coincidence. Although he undoubtedly had all the qualities required of a detective, his acting skills left much to be desired. I remembered that the evening before, as I had left a brasserie on Rue Saint-Martin near my hotel, and then again that morning during a short stroll among the booksellers on Quai de Montebello, I had noticed a thickset individual with a broken nose like a boxer and short black crew cut hair whom I vaguely recognised but couldn’t place at the time. Now, the detective’s mischievous expression instantly provided me with the fellow’s name: Raymond Dupuytren who worked for Superintendent Fourier at the Sûreté Nationale and whom I’d met on several occasions in January 1933.
The French police had certainly not improved in the field of domestic espionage. When the press wanted to mock it, didn’t they refer to it as the national secret?
‘Come, Superintendent,’ I said. ‘Don’t keep me in suspense any longer. Tell me why you wanted to see me – I know you’ve been following me. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to ask me to come to Rue des Saussaies?’
‘Ha ha! I see I still can’t get anything past you! As for making you come to the Sûreté, there was no point. I got wind that you’d left the Hôtel Saint-Merri and since I happened to be near Île de la Cité this afternoon, it seemed natural to pay you a little courtesy visit.’
‘Only this time you almost missed me. I was about to go to Bercy.’
‘You’re right, my dear friend! Anyway, enough of this banter! I imagine you’re still fond of cases which baffle even the most intelligent of men?’
‘Well …’
‘I’m investigating a rather strange case that would appeal to you! The death of the Marquis de Brindillac. Have you heard about it?’
‘No.’