An Officer and a Spy

We take a taxi across the river and I pay off the driver just south of the École Militaire. The remainder of the journey we complete on foot. The section of the rue de Sèvres in which the hotel stands is narrow and poorly lit; the Manche is easy to miss. It occupies a narrow, tumbledown house, hemmed in between a butcher’s shop and a bar: the sort of place where commercial travellers might lay their heads for a night and assignations can no doubt be paid for by the hour. Desvernine goes in first; I follow. The concierge is not at his desk. Through a curtain of beads I can see people eating supper in the little dining room. There is no elevator. The narrow stairs creak with every tread. We come out on to the third floor and Desvernine knocks at a bedroom door. No answer. He tries the handle: locked. He puts his finger to his lips and we stand listening. A muffled conversation comes from the room next door.

Desvernine fishes in his pocket and produces a set of lock-picking tools, identical to the one he lent me. He kneels and goes to work. I unbutton my coat and jacket and feel the reassuring pressure of the Webley against my breast. After a minute the lock clicks. Desvernine stands, calmly folds away his tools and returns them to his pocket. He looks at me as he quietly opens the door. The room is dark. He feels for the light switch and turns it on.

My first instinct is that it is a large ebony doll — a tailor’s mannequin perhaps, made of black plaster, folded into a sitting position and propped up just beneath the window. Without turning round or saying anything, Desvernine holds up his left hand, warning me not to move; in the other he has a gun. He crosses the floor to the window in three or four strides, looks down at the object and whispers, ‘Close the door.’

Once I am in the room, I can just about tell it is Lemercier-Picard, or whatever his name was. His face is purplish-black and has fallen forward on to his chest. His eyes are open, his tongue protrudes, there is dried mucus all down the front of his shirt. Buried deep in the folds of his neck is a thin cord which runs up behind him, tight as a harp string, and is tied to the window casement. Now that I am closer I can see that his feet and the lower part of his legs, which are bare and bruised, are in contact with the floor but his hips are suspended just above it. His arms hang at his sides, fists tightly balled.

Desvernine reaches out his hand to the swollen neck and feels for a pulse, then squats on his haunches and quickly frisks the corpse.

I say, ‘When did you last speak to him?’

‘This morning. He was standing at this very window, as alive as you are now.’

‘Was he depressed? Suicidal?’

‘No, just frightened.’

‘How long has he been dead?’

‘He’s cold, but no stiffness yet — two hours; perhaps three.’

He straightens and goes over to the bed. A suitcase lies open. He turns it upside down and shakes out the contents, then sifts through the pathetic little heap of belongings, extracting pens, nibs, pencils, bottles of ink. A tweed jacket hangs on the back of a chair. He tugs a note case from the inside pocket and flips through it, then checks the side pockets: coins in one, the room key in the other.

I watch him. ‘No note?’

‘No paper of any sort. Curious for a forger, wouldn’t you say?’ He puts everything back in the suitcase. Then he lifts the mattress and pats underneath it, opens the drawer of the nightstand, looks in the shabby cupboard, rolls back the square of matting. Finally he stands defeated with his hands on his hips. ‘It’s all been gone through thoroughly. They haven’t left a scrap. You should go now, Colonel. The last thing you need is to be caught in a room with a corpse — especially this one.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll lock the door and leave everything as we found it. Maybe wait around outside for an hour or two, see who shows up.’ He gazes at the corpse. ‘This’ll be booked straight through as a suicide — just you wait — and you won’t find a policeman or a crook in Paris who’ll say anything different, the poor bastard.’ He passes his hand tenderly across the contorted face and closes the staring eyes.

The next day two colonels turn up at my apartment: Parès and Boissonnet, both noted sportsmen and old drinking companions of Henry’s. They inform me grandly that Colonel Henry refuses to fight me on the grounds that I, as a cashiered officer, am a ‘disreputable person’, with no honour to lose: therefore there can have been no insult.

Parès gives me a look of cold contempt. ‘He suggests, Monsieur Picquart, that you seek satisfaction from Major Esterhazy instead. He understands that Major Esterhazy is anxious to challenge you to a duel.’