a torrential downpour. For some reason, he asked to see my father’s instruments. As he passed his finger over the double-edged blade, he observed that the condemned man’s head must be cut off at a single blow, and then uttered these striking words: “If ever fate were to place me in your hands, promise me you’ll remember.”’
‘And what happened?’ asked Nicolas.
‘When he was condemned after the surrender of Pondicherry, supposedly for betraying us to the English, my father remembered the promise he’d made the young officer. He left his home in the country and returned to Paris. He was in despair when he realised that he no longer had the strength to lift the heavy sword of justice. He gave me that honourable but terrible task, but …’ – Sanson bowed his head, his chest heaving with emotion – ‘… the condemned man was sixty-four years old and his long white hair came loose. When the blade came down, it slipped and cut through his jaw. The crowd on Place de la Grève jeered. Monsieur de Lally was writhing in pain on the ground. I no longer knew what to do. My father, with a nimbleness and a power that were quite unexpected in a man of his age, snatched the weapon from my hands, raised it, brought it down, and cut off the condemned man’s head at a single stroke. Then, overwhelmed with emotion as well as failed by his strength, he fell to the ground in a faint.’
‘I don’t imagine you’ve had to perform that kind of execution again, have you?’ said Nicolas.
‘Alas, yes! The Chevalier de La Barre, accused of sacrilege for not taking his hat off when a procession passed, and for mutilating a wooden crucifix on the great bridge at Abbeville, had the misfortune to be placed in my hands. Even though the evidence was far from conclusive, he had been condemned to have his hand cut off and his tongue torn out before being burnt alive. He appealed to the Parlement of Paris, which commuted his sentence. He was to be decapitated before being burnt. The poor young man was nineteen …’
‘Wasn’t he the one whose rehabilitation Monsieur de Voltaire has been clamouring for?’ asked Bourdeau.
‘That’s right. So far without success.’
‘But surely Abbeville is not in your jurisdiction?’
‘True. However, the local executioner of that town had fallen ill and, although there were colleagues in Amiens and Rouen, Chancellor Maupeou ordered me to officiate. He was no doubt hoping to lend more prestige to this execution and please the Church. It went off without mishap, but ever since I’ve been praying to heaven for the salvation of the unfortunate victim. People always imagine we exercise our profession because we like seeing lives destroyed … It’s an absurd fabrication, and we should do all we can to combat it.’
‘We all know that,’ said Bourdeau. ‘But it’s getting late, and I think we must part. How did you come?’
‘I have my carriage, driven by one of my servants,’ said Sanson.
‘Can we trust him?’
‘As you trust me.’
As Bourdeau and Sanson were already moving away, Nicolas walked to the stone slab. With two fingers, he touched his lips then placed them on the shapeless sack, where the head was. He stood like that for a moment, his face expressionless, then joined his friends, who were slowly climbing the stairs. They passed Old Marie, who cast a curious glance at the false clerk.
‘My dear Sanson,’ Bourdeau hastened to say, ‘perhaps you’d be so kind as to drop our clerk, Monsieur Deshalleux, in Rue Saint-Denis. It’s on your way.’
‘I’d be pleased to,’ said Sanson, drawing Nicolas towards the entrance.
In the carriage, Nicolas was unable to find words to keep a conversation going. Respecting his silence, Sanson closed his eyes and appeared to doze off. The carriage turned into Rue Trop-Va-Qui-Dure, opposite the exit from Pont au Change, and went around the Châtelet by way of Rue de la Sonnerie before rejoining Rue Saint-Denis. Paris seemed deserted this winter evening: even the market and the cemetery of the Saints-Innocents, usually so animated, only made their presence felt through the mephitic odour that rose from the area in spite of the cold weather. Gradually, the windows of the carriage misted over with their breaths. Nicolas, too, closed his eyes, appalled by the horrible vision of a ravaged body superimposed over that of his mistress in all her ravishing beauty. He suddenly remembered one of the observations made during the autopsy. Julie had been with a man that night … Not only been with him, but made love with him, if the experts were to be believed. She had been deceiving him. He felt a retrospective pang of jealousy, which he hoped might dispel the grief of his loss. In vain: the two feelings – the bitterness of grief and the raging anger of betrayal – rather than cancelling one another out, simply combined. A pointless question crossed his mind: what would he have done if he had surprised Julie in his rival’s arms? In truth, he did not know, but the uncertainty tortured him. He took a deep breath, making an effort to regain the calm and serenity appropriate to a police officer.
In his disguise, Nicolas had not been in a position to contribute to the discussion during the autopsy. But now his thoughts fell into place with the greatest clarity. If Madame de Lastérieux’s stomach was empty, that was explained by her habits. In order not to further inflame a generous temperament, she never ate meat. What was more, she hated chicken, and in particular chicken cooked in the West Indian manner, with all its spicy seasoning. Eggs and dairy products, fruit and vegetables constituted the basis of her diet. The plate found at her bedside could not possibly have been intended for her. Everything pointed to the fact that she had not been alone. Logically, then, the dish in question would seem to have been intended to appease the hunger of her new lover. But Nicolas knew that this dish was usually prepared for him, and that its presence in the room could mean only one thing: that someone had wanted to make it seem as though he had spent part of the night with his mistress. That supposed a good knowledge of the customs of the house, and the aim of it all had evidently been to make him the prime suspect if the cause of death was indeed established as premeditated poisoning. Personally, he did not believe it had been an accident. There were too many curious details, too many things that had been done to create a web in which to catch him, the powerless victim of a mysterious, invisible predator.
The circumstances were highly unfavourable to him. For a long time now, the law of the land had considered poisoning to be the most serious of crimes, and had punished it with particular rigour, with the aim of putting an end to a form of murder of which the previous century had offered a number of examples still present in many people’s memories. King Louis XIV had reacted with great firmness to this violation of the fundamental laws of nature, especially as the culprits had been so close to the throne. Nicolas knew how harsh the procedure was, as was the punishment: repeated torture, death at the stake, and posthumous infamy. He remembered that in his home province, Brittany, the suspect was made to wear sulphur shoes during questioning: a particularly horrible torture.
After Porte Saint-Denis, the carriage took the left-hand side of the boulevard as far as Rue Poissonnière. Nicolas noted in passing the dark mass of the Hôtel des Menus Plaisirs, where he had an appointment next day with Bourdeau. As they were heading for the corner of Rue d’Enfer, where Sanson lived, it struck Nicolas, as an old Paris hand, that there were actually two streets of this name in Paris, one within the walls, in the Montparnasse district, and the other in this suburban district known as New France, where the nouveaux riches built their houses around the vast holdings of the Saint-Lazare monastery. Monsieur de Sartine’s attention had often been drawn to the frequent accidents along this perimeter.
‘You see,’ said Sanson, who had been thinking along the same lines, ‘this is a highly dangerous place. It is where all the market gardeners come, mostly women carrying baskets full of produce for the city. Every week, several of them break their arms and legs on this
