The Saint-Florentin Murders: Nicolas Le Floch Investigation #5. Jean-Francois Parot

DUCHAMPLAN: the late Madame Missery’s elder sister, a nun with the Daughters of Saint Michel

      EUDES DUCHAMPLAN: the late Madame Missery’s younger brother

      RESTIF DE LA BRETONNE: a writer and pamphleteer

      OLD LONGÈRES: a cattle farmer

      LORD ASHBURY: an English spy

      RICHARD: a gardener at Trianon

       I

PROLOGUE

      The dark night drained things of all their colour.

      MAURICE SCÈVE

       Sunday 2 October 1774

      What was the meaning of this unusual rendezvous? She should have been able to wean him off such whims by now. The idea of it! The servants’ floor offered sufficient opportunities, so there was no real need for him to force her into these pointless nocturnal escapades. It was a good thing her chores in Madame’s apartments kept her away from her fine suitor for much of the day. He often took advantage of her slightest foray into the common parts of the La Vrillière mansion to … He was insatiable. But how could she refuse him? She owed him her position, and a kind of security. Still she waited, and the piece of candle, which cast a parsimonious light on the roasting room, would not last much longer. It was a large, dark room, with chimneys of blackened stone looming over the spits, trammels and dripping-pans.

      She laughed at her own cleverness: every day she filched pieces of candle from the apartments on the upper floors to replenish her stock. Several times, she had come close to being caught. She had to beware, not only of her mistress’s constant vigilance, but also that of the other servants, her competitors in this pilfering: they, too, were always on the lookout for anything to feed this lucrative trade in candle wax.

      A metallic clinking broke the silence. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. She held her breath, waiting for what was to follow, but nothing came. Another of those rats, she thought – impossible to get rid of them. One of those fat grey moth-eaten rats that fed on scraps from the kitchen, and from what had been left in the big adjacent larder. The best pieces from the larder were also regularly resold to a few taverns, and as for the scraps, they ended up in a soup which, sold for a few coins from a steaming carriage in the streets, provided momentary sustenance to the poorest of the poor. She had tried it herself, not so long ago, after fleeing her father’s house, and still had the bitter rotten taste of it, which no seasoning could ever mask, in her mouth. Just the thought of it made her retch.

      She was still listening hard, hoping to hear her lover’s heavy steps. But all she heard was a distant miaow. She laughed: cats were no use here – they were too well fed on the leftovers from a rich table. Only their eyes, gleaming in the darkness whenever a ray of light struck them, scared off the most faint-hearted. Sometimes, you would see a big rat, in the peak of condition, rise up and bare its yellow teeth, defying a cat, which would slink off without a fight. As for her, she was not afraid of cats. She had seen some really formidable cats in the cowsheds belonging to her father, who raised cattle for milk in Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where they were attracted by the mice hiding in the straw and grain.

      She preferred not to think about that. Better to wipe out the past. But she couldn’t help remembering those last days spent with her family. Her father had been adamant that she marry a neighbour’s son, a gardener in the faubourg. The boy was well enough built, but he had bulging eyes and did not appeal to her. His method of courtship involved listing the different kinds of lettuce, as well as the rules for cultivating plants under cold frames, the whole lecture embellished with observations on the best way to line paths with quickset hedges, trellises or picket fences. The preliminary visit she had made to the Vitry household had confirmed her in her rejection.

      Their house had one room on the ground floor, looking out on the marsh. It was here that the family lived and ate. The floor was of beaten earth, a long way from the waxed tiles of her own house. Straw chairs, a large, worn wooden table, a porcelain stove, a copper fountain and an ugly dresser were the only decoration. On the first floor, two bedrooms, with straw mattresses and bunks, one of which was the son’s and would be the young couple’s when they married. Old Madame Vitry, a tall, thin, dark woman with soiled, worn-down nails, listed for her, in a severe tone, the duties of a gardener’s wife. She would have to get up at five in the morning, in all weathers and all seasons, and work until eight in the evening, pausing only briefly for a little soup or a crust of bread. She would have to obey her in-laws as if they were her own family.

      Her revulsion increased when they started discussing the marriage contract and the contributions of the bride and groom. Hers consisted, apart from a silver dowry large enough to bring a gleam to the old woman’s eyes, of a supply of fresh manure for the Vitry family’s gardens, to be provided in instalments spread out over several months. When the day came for the engagement to be certified before a notary, appalled by the prospect of a life with this oaf, she had yielded to a sudden impulse and decamped, leaving behind calves, cows, oxen, manure and lettuces, a stunned fiancé and two disappointed families. Fearing that they would search for her, she plunged into the great city, hoping to lose herself in an ocean of people. Appalled at his daughter’s actions, old Pindron made no attempt to search for her. She had dishonoured the family, she was no longer of any account, and he immediately disowned her. He took to his bed and died four days later, leaving a widow who retired to her native Burgundy after selling off the farm for a good price to an important family who raised cattle in the faubourg, and who committed themselves before a notary to pay her an annuity until she died.

      For months, Marguerite Pindron roamed the streets of Paris, sleeping on the quais, finding hiding places in the pyramids of the Port au Bois on Quai Saint-Paul or amid the casks on Quai de la Rapée. It was here that the wood carried on the river accumulated in piles as high as houses. Some were well organised into pyramids, but most were heaped up haphazardly, creating a kind of mysterious city made of detours and alleys, underground passages and inner rooms from which, early in the morning, there emerged, wild-eyed, a strange and varied collection of human beings. The few louis she had stolen from her father did not last long, but, being able to read and write, she used this skill among the poorest of the poor, and managed to hold out until winter. It was then, one desperate evening when she could no longer bear the hunger and cold, that she met a well-dressed young man who took her to his dwelling, washed her, and made her an object of his pleasure. He dressed her and fed her, then introduced her to his brother-in-law, who was the major-domo in the mansion of the Duc de La Vrillière. Her joy at finding a position was short-lived. She was only the latest in an army of servant girls who emptied the pots and buckets, doomed to the most repulsive chores and the harshest reprimands.

      It did not take her long to realise that the brother-in-law also expected to have his way with her. The man had been a widower for two years, could not bear the solitude, and chased anything wearing skirts in the Saint-Florentin mansion. At first, she resisted his advances, but she was desperately afraid of finding herself back on the streets. She opened her heart to her original benefactor, who laughed in her face and urged her to yield: he had started making her small loans, to be repaid when she was able. Her new lover immediately conceived a genuine passion for her beauty and youth. She found it increasingly difficult to escape a bond that was proving burdensome and the constant attentions of a greybeard to whom she had been forced to yield out of necessity alone. She tried every stratagem she could think of, including brief dalliances with other, younger servants, in the hope of putting him off. The only result was to strengthen his desire for her. He was obsessively jealous, and some terrible scenes ensued.

      Tears welled in her eyes. All that was nothing compared with what had happened three days earlier, which she could not get out of her mind. Her young benefactor had come looking for her in the evening after she came off duty, and had made her leave the building through a concealed door and join him in a cab. After a long