An Officer and a Spy

‘Dear Georges, think nothing of it! It will be interesting to observe the justice system from the other side for a change.’

Judge Fabre, who to his credit at least seems slightly embarrassed by the whole procedure, tells me I am to be held in La Santé prison during his investigation, whereas Louis will remain free on bail. Outside in the courtyard, as I am being put into the Black Maria in full view of several dozen reporters, I have the presence of mind to remember to give Louis my cane. Then I am taken away. On arrival at the prison I have to fill in a registration form. In the space for ‘religion’ I write ‘nothing’.

La Santé, it turns out, is no Mont-Valérien: there is no separate bedroom and WC here, no view to the Eiffel Tower. I am locked in a tiny cell, four metres by two and a half, with a small barred window that looks down on to an exercise yard. There is a bed and a chamber pot: that is all. It is the height of summer, thirty-five degrees Celsius, occasionally relieved by thunderstorms. The air is baking hot and stale with the smell of a thousand male bodies — our food, our bodily waste, our sweat — not unlike a barracks. I am fed in my cell, and locked up twenty-three hours a day to prevent me communicating with the other prisoners. I can hear them, though, especially at night, when the lights are turned off and there is nothing to do except lie and listen. Their shouts are like the cries of animals in the jungle, inhuman and mysterious and alarming. Often I hear such howls and screams, such inarticulate beggings for mercy, that I assume the next morning my warders will tell me of some horrendous crime that has been committed overnight. But daylight comes and the place goes on as before.

Thus does the army try to break me.

There is some variety in my routine. A couple of times a week I am taken out of La Santé, guarded by two detectives, and returned by Black Maria to the Palace of Justice, where Judge Fabre takes me very slowly through the evidence I have already recounted many times before.

When did Major Esterhazy first come to your attention?

When Fabre has finished for the day, I am often allowed to meet Labori in a nearby office. The great Viking of the Paris bar is officially my attorney now, and through him I am able to keep in touch with the progress of our various battles. The news is mixed. Zola, having lost his appeal, has fled into exile in London. But the magistrate Bertulus has arrested Esterhazy and Four-Fingered Marguerite on charges of forgery. We lodge a formal request with the Public Prosecutor that he should also arrest du Paty for the same offence. But the Prosecutor rules that this is ‘beyond the scope of M. Bertulus’s investigation’.

Tell me again the circumstances in which you came into possession of the petit bleu. .

About a month after my arrest, Fabre, as investigating judge, enters that stage of proceedings, so beloved by the frustrated dramatists of the French legal system, of staging confrontations between witnesses. The ritual is always the same. First I am asked, for the twentieth time, about a particular incident — the reconstruction of the petit bleu, the showing of the pigeon file to Louis, the leaks to the newspapers. Then the judge presses an electric bell and one of my enemies is admitted to recount his version of the same event. Finally I am invited to respond. Throughout these performances the judge scrutinises us carefully, as if he can send out X-rays into our souls and see who is lying. In this way I am brought face to face again with Gonse, Lauth, Gribelin, Valdant, Junck, and even the concierge Capiaux. I must say that for men who are at liberty and supposedly triumphant, they look pale and even haggard, especially Gonse, who seems to have developed a nervous tic below his left eye.

The greatest shock, however, is Henry. He enters without looking at me and retells in a monotone his story about seeing Louis and me with the secret file. His voice has lost its old strength and I notice he has shed so much weight that when he starts to sweat he can insert his entire hand between his neck and the collar of his tunic. He has just finished his account when there is a knock at the door and Fabre’s clerk enters to say that there is a telephone call for the judge in the outer office. ‘It is urgent: the Minister of Justice.’

Fabre says, ‘If you will excuse me for a moment, gentlemen.’

Henry looks at him anxiously as he leaves. The door closes and we are alone together. Immediately I am suspicious that this is a trap, and glance around to see where a listener might be concealed. But I can see no obvious hiding place, and after a minute or two, curiosity gets the better of me.

I say, ‘So, Colonel, how is your hand?’