An Officer and a Spy

The apartment smells of incense and cigar smoke. Dirty plates are piled beside a chaise longue. Manuscript pages are stacked on an escritoire and strewn across the rug. Above the fireplace hangs a painting of a naked slave girl in a harem; on the table is a photograph of du Paty and his aristocratic new wife, Marie de Champlouis. He married her just before the Dreyfus affair began. In the picture she holds a baby in its christening robes.

‘So you have become a father again? Congratulations.’

‘Thank you. Yes, the boy is one year old.¹ He’s with his mother on her family’s estate for the summer. I’ve stayed behind in Paris to write.’

‘What are you writing?’

‘It’s a mystery.’

Whether he is referring to the genre of his composition or its current state I am not sure. He seems to be in a hurry to get back to it: at any rate he doesn’t invite me to sit. I say, ‘Well, here is another mystery for you.’ I open my briefcase and give him one of the Esterhazy letters. ‘You’ll recognise the handwriting, perhaps.’

He does, immediately — I can tell by the way he flinches, and then by the effort he makes to conceal his confusion. ‘I don’t know,’ he mutters. ‘Perhaps it could be familiar. Who is the author?’

‘I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you it definitely wasn’t our friend on Devil’s Island, because it was written in the last month.’

He thrusts it back at me: it’s clear he doesn’t want any part of it. ‘You should show this to Bertillon. He’s the graphologist.’

‘I already have. He says it’s identical to the bordereau — “identical”, that was his word.’

There is an awkward silence, which du Paty tries to cover by breathing on both sides of his monocle, polishing it on the sleeve of his dressing gown, screwing it back into his eye and staring at me. ‘What exactly are you about here, Georges?’

‘I’m just about doing my duty, Armand. It’s my responsibility to investigate potential spies and I seem to have found another — a traitor who somehow escaped detection when you were leading the Dreyfus investigation two years ago.’

Du Paty folds his arms defensively inside the wide sleeves of his robe. He looks absurd, like a wizard in a cabaret at Le Chat Noir. ‘I’m not infallible,’ he says. ‘I’ve never pretended otherwise. It’s possible there were others involved. Sandherr always believed Dreyfus had at least one accomplice.’

‘Did you have any names?’

‘Personally I suspected that brother of his, Mathieu. So did Sandherr, as a matter of fact.’

‘But Mathieu wasn’t in the army at the time. He wasn’t even in Paris.’

‘No,’ replies du Paty with great significance, ‘but he was in Germany. And he’s a Jew.’

I have no desire to be drawn into any of du Paty’s crazy theories. It is like becoming lost in a maze with no exits. I say, ‘I must allow you to get back to your work.’ I rest my briefcase on the escritoire for a moment so that I can put away the photograph. As I do so, my eye falls unavoidably on a page of du Paty’s novel. ‘You shall not deceive me with your beauty for a second time, mademoiselle,’ cried the duc d’Argentin, with a flourish of his poisoned dagger. .

Du Paty watches me. He says, ‘The bordereau wasn’t the only evidence against Dreyfus, you know. It was the intelligence we had that actually convicted him. The secret file. As you remember.’ There is a definite threat in this last remark.

‘I do remember.’

‘Good.’

‘Are you trying to imply something?’

‘No. Or at least only that I hope you don’t forget, as you pursue your investigations, that you were part of the whole prosecution as well. Let me show you out.’

At the door I say, ‘Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, if you’ll allow me to correct you. You and Sandherr and Henry and Gribelin were the prosecuting authority. I was never anything more than an observer.’

Du Paty emits a whinny of laughter. His face is close enough to mine for me to smell his breath: there’s a whiff of decay about it that seems to come from deep within him and reminds me of the drains beneath the Statistical Section. ‘Oh, is that what you think? An observer! Come, my dear Georges, you sat through the entire court martial! You were Mercier’s errand boy throughout the whole thing! You advised him on his tactics! You can’t turn round now and say it was nothing to do with you! Why else do you think you’ve ended up chief of the Statistical Section?’ He opens the door. ‘Will you give my regards to Blanche, by the way?’ he calls after me. ‘She’s still not married, I believe? Tell her I would call upon her, but you know how it is: my wife wouldn’t approve.’

I am too angry to think of a reply, and so I leave him with the satisfaction of the last word, imagining himself a wit: smiling after me insufferably from his doorstep in his dressing gown and slippers and fez.

I walk back towards the office slowly, thinking over what I have just been told.