CHAPTER 26
PARIS
The fashionable streets and boulevards were smothered in a thick brown twilight. The quartiers perdus, the down-at-heel neighbourhoods, the alleyways and labyrinthine network of apartments and slums, also gasped for breath in the polluted dusk.
The mercury plummeted. The air was grown cold.
Buildings and people, trams and landaus, seemed to loom out of the shadows, appearing and then disappearing again like phantoms. The awnings of the cafés on the rue d’Amsterdam were flapping in the blustering wind, plunging like tethered horses trying to break free. On the Grands Boulevards, the branches of the trees shook.
Leaves skimmed and danced along the pavements of the 9th arrondissement and the green paths of the Parc Monceau. No hopscotch, no game of grandmother’s footsteps; the children were all snug inside the embassy buildings. The new telegraph wires of the Post Office began to vibrate and sing, and the tram rails to whistle.
At seven thirty, the fog gave way to rain. It fell, as cold and grey as iron filings, slowly at first, then heavier and faster. Servants closed the shutters of apartments and houses with a clatter. In the 8th arrondissement, those still outside sought refuge from the impending tempest, ordered beer and absinthe and quarrelled over the few remaining tables inside at the Café Wéber on the rue Royale. The beggars and chiffonniers with no homes to go to sought shelter beneath the bridges and railway arches.
In the rue de Berlin, Marguerite Vernier lay on the chaise longue in her apartment. One white arm was folded beneath her head, the other was draped over the side of the divan, her fingers trailing the carpet like a dreamy girl in a summertime boat. The lightest of touches. Only the tinge of blue on her lips, the purple bruising like a collar around her jaw, the ugly bracelet of congealed blood on her abused wrist all betrayed the fact that she was not sleeping.
Like Tosca, like Emma Bovary, like Prosper Mérimée’s doomed heroine, Carmen, Marguerite was beautiful in death. The knife, the blade stained red by its task, lay beside her hand as if it had dropped from her dying fingers.
Victor Constant was insensible to her presence. She had ceased to exist for him the instant he had realised he had obtained as much as he would from her.
Save the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece, all was silent.
Save the pool of light cast by the single candle, all was darkness.
Constant buttoned his trousers and lit a Turkish cigarette, then took a seat at the dining table to examine the journal his manservant had found in Vernier’s nightstand.
‘Get me a brandy.’
With his own knife, a Nontron blade with a yellow handle, Constant cut the string, then unfolded the waxed brown paper and lifted out a royal-blue pocket notebook. The journal was a record of Vernier’s day-to-day personal activities for the year: the salons he had frequented; a list of debts, recorded neatly in two columns and scored through when the obligation had been met; mention of a brief flirtation with the occultists in the cold early months of the year, as a buyer of books rather than an acolyte; purchases made, such as an umbrella, and a limited edition of Cinq Poèmes from Edmond Bailly’s bookshop in the rue de la Chaussée d’Antin.
Constant was not interested in the tedious domestic details and he flicked quickly through, scanning the pages looking for dates or references that might give him the information he wished for.
He was looking for details of the affair between Vernier and the only woman he had loved. He still could not bring himself even to think her name, let alone speak it. On the 31st of October of last year she had told him their relationship must end. Before, indeed, their liaison was worthy of the word. He had taken her reluctance for modesty and had not pressed her. His shock had yielded instantly to uncontrolled rage and he had all but killed her. Indeed, he might have done so had not her cries been overheard by neighbours in the adjoining building.
He had let her go. He had, after all, not intended to hurt her. He loved her, worshipped her, adored her. But her betrayal was too much to bear. She had driven him to it.
After that night, she disappeared from Paris. Throughout November and December, Constant thought of her endlessly. It was simple. He loved her, and in return, she had wronged him. His body and his mind would throw out relentless and spiteful reminders of their time together – her scent, her willowy grace, how still she would sit beside him, how grateful she had been for his love. How modest she had been, how obedient, how perfect. Then, the humiliation of how she had abandoned him would come flooding back, together with an anger fiercer and more savage than before.
To obliterate the memory of her, Constant took refuge in the usual pastimes open to a gentleman of urbane habits and deep pockets. Gambling dens, nightclubs, laudanum to counteract the increasingly heavy doses of mercury he was obliged to take to alleviate the symptoms of his worsening condition. There was a succession of midinettes, whores who looked passing like her, their soft flesh paying the price for her disloyalty. He was strikingly good-looking. He could be generous. He knew how to charm and coax, and the girls were willing enough, until the moment they realised how depraved were his appetites.
Nothing gave him respite. Nothing eased his anguish at her treachery.
For three months, Constant survived without her. At the end of January, however, everything changed. As the ice on the Seine began to melt, a rumour reached his ears that not only was she back in Paris, and a widow now, but that there was a lover. That she had given to another man what she had witheld from him.
Constant’s torment was overwhelming, his rage appalling. The need to be revenged upon her – upon them – possessed him utterly. He imagined her bloody and bleeding in his hands, suffering as she had caused him to suffer. To punish the whore for her perfidy became his sole purpose in life.
It was a simple matter to discover his rival’s name. The fact that Vernier and she were lovers was the first thought that came to him each dawn as the sun rose. It was the last thought that was left to him as the moon arrived to greet the night.
As January yielded to February, Constant started his campaign of persecution and retribution. He began with Vernier, intending to destroy his good name. His tactic was simple. Gossip dripped into the ear of the less reputable newspaper columnists, drop by drop. Forged letters passed palm to greasy palm. Rumours fed into the labyrinthine networks of clandestine groups of initiates and acolytes and mesmerists that swarmed beneath the respectable façade of Paris, each obligingly suspicious and in constant fear of betrayal. The rotting titbits of news, twilight whisperings, the anonymous publication of slanders.
Lies all, but plausible lies.
But even his crusade against Vernier, well executed as it was, gave Constant no respite. Nightmares still stalked his dreams and even his days were filled with images of the lovers entwined in one another’s arms. The relentless progress of his illness, too, stole sleep from him. When Constant shut his eyes he was assaulted by nightmarish images of himself, scourged and nailed to a cross. He suffered visions of his body lying extinguished on the ground, a modern-day Sisyphus crushed by his own rock, or pinned like Prometheus while she crouched upon his chest and ripped out his liver.
In March came a resolution of sorts. She died and with that death came, for him, a release of sorts. Constant watched from the sidelines as her casket was lowered into the wet ground of the Cimetière de Montmartre, feeling as if a burden had been taken from his shoulders. After that, with great satisfaction, he had watched Vernier’s life crumble under the weight of his grief.
Spring gave way to the heat of July and August. For a while, Constant had been at peace. September came in. Then a chance comment overheard, a glimpse of blond hair beneath a blue hat on the Boulevard Haussmann, whisperings in Montmartre of a coffin buried six months previously without a tenant. Constant sent two men to question Vernier, on the night of the riot at the Palais Garnier, but they were interrupted before they could learn anything of value.
He flicked through the pages of the journal once more until he again reached the date of 16th September last. The page was empty. Vernier had made no record of the riot at the Opéra, no reference to the attack upon him in the Passage des Panoramas. The last entry in the journal was dated two days previously. Constant turned the page and read it again. Large, confident letters – a solitary word.
‘FIN.’
He felt cold rage flood through him. The three letters seemed to dance on the page before his eyes, mocking him. After everything he had endured, to discover that he was the victim of a hoax pulled at the cords of his bitterness with an art all of its own. How lunatic it seemed with hindsight to ever have thought that dishonouring Vernier would be sufficient to grant him peace. Constant knew, now, what he had to do.
He would hunt them down. Then he would kill them.
The servant placed a tumbler of brandy at his elbow. ‘General Du Pont may soon be here . . .’ he murmured, then withdrew to the window.
Conscious, now, of the time passing, Constant picked up the sheet of greased brown paper in which the notebook had been wrapped. The presence in the apartment of the journal puzzled him. Why would Vernier have left the journal behind if he were not intending to return? Because he had left in such haste? Or perhaps because he did not propose to be absent from Paris for long.
Constant downed the brandy in one and hurled the glass into the grate. It shattered into a thousand glittering, sharp pieces. The servant flinched. For a moment the air seemed to vibrate with the violence of the act.
Constant stood and replaced the dining chair, precisely beneath the table. He walked to the mantelpiece and opened the glass face of the Sèvres clock. He pushed the hands forward until they showed half past eight. Then he struck the heavy back of the clock against the edge of the marble surround until the mechanism stopped working. Crouching down, he placed the clock face down among the glinting shards of the brandy tumbler.
‘Open the champagne and fetch two glasses.’
The man did as instructed. Constant went to the couch. He took a fistful of hair in his hand and lifted Marguerite Vernier’s head into his arms. The sweet metallic smell of the abattoir hung about her. The pale cushions around her were dyed crimson and a smudged pool of blood stained her chest, like the overblown bloom of a hothouse flower.
Constant tipped a little champagne into Marguerite’s mouth. He pressed the rim of a glass against her split lips until the faintest smear of lipstick was visible, then filled it halfway with champagne and placed it on the table beside her. He poured a little into the second glass too, and then laid the bottle on its side on the floor. Slowly the liquid began to empty, a ribbon of bubbles streaming on to the carpet.
‘Our reptilian comrades of the Fourth Estate are aware that there might be something for them tonight?’
‘Yes, Monsieur.’ For an instant, the servant’s mask slipped. ‘The lady . . .Is she dead?’
Constant did not answer.
The servant crossed himself. Constant walked to the sideboard and picked up a framed photograph. Marguerite was seated in the centre of the picture, with her children standing behind her. He read the name of the studio and the date. October 1890. The daughter’s hair was still worn loose. A child still.
The servant coughed. ‘Are we to travel to Rouen, Monsieur? ’
‘Rouen?’
He twisted his fingers nervously, recognising the look in his master’s eyes.
‘Forgive me, Monsieur, but did not Madame Vernier say her son and daughter had travelled to Rouen?’
‘Ah. Yes, she showed more courage . . . initiative . . . than I expected. But, Rouen? I doubt that was their destination. Perhaps she really did not know.’
He thrust the photograph at his man.
‘Get out and ask after the girl. Someone will talk. Somebody always does. People will remember her.’ He gave a cold smile. ‘She will lead us to Vernier and his whore.’
