at being excluded from his exploration of the scene of the crime. This reaction seemed to him surprising. In his experience, witnesses connected with a violent crime usually preferred to avoid as far as possible the place where it had occurred. Once again he made a mental note of the fact. Perhaps, he thought, the man had been given the task by the minister of reporting back to him on Nicolas’s first observations.
The floor of the roasting room was like that of a butcher’s shop after an animal has been slaughtered. It was impossible to draw any conclusions from the prints still visible in the mire of blood on the black and white tiles. What did seem clear, though, was that a body had been dragged across the floor, presumably that of the major-domo, Jean Missery. On the floor, a kitchen knife with a wooden handle and a single rivet drew his attention: it was one of those common objects known as an eustache. It was of medium size and its blade measured a little more than a hand in length. The mustiness in the room reminded him of other situations dominated by the sickly-sweet, metallic smell of blood. Nicolas climbed on a stool to get an overall view.
The picture Provence had painted of the scene proved exact. First of all, the body of a young woman, slumped, as if kneeling, at the foot of a draining board. Her head was at a curious angle in relation to the rest of the body, and she had lost a lot of blood, which had spread, brown and glutinous, all around her. He noted an incongruous detail: her two feet, as white as ivory, as if spared by the outpouring of blood. A few steps away, another pool of blood, this one redder. You did not have to be very knowledgeable to realise that the two pools were of different origins: one from each of the two victims. Time, perhaps a long time – he would have to determine how long – had passed between the two effusions. He tried again to seek answers in the complex pattern of footprints, but was unable to discern anything other than a wild trampling. He went back to an examination of the body.
The young woman was wearing a skirt, a loose blouse, and an apron knotted at the waist and above all – the distinguishing mark of a chambermaid – at the bib. The hair was held up in a bun, revealing a narrow neck, almost a child’s. The lace cap had slipped to the floor and lay in the blood. Nicolas was struck by the sight of two slippers lying a few paces from the body. These were not objects commonly associated with a young servant girl, but luxurious, even expensive items quite out of place here. He got off the stool and walked up to the body, making an effort to control his mixed feelings: apprehension at contact with a corpse and pity for a murdered human being. It was up to him to observe the state of the body and estimate the time of death. He realised that he had left his watch in Rue Montmartre. He had always been a stickler for accurate timekeeping, but, having had little to hurry him these past few months, he had become absent-minded. In his head, he tried to calculate how much time had gone by. He had left Noblecourt’s house at nine, his shopping expedition had taken two hours, after which he had strolled idly among the second-hand bookstalls and had even indulged in a little reading. It must have been about midday that the officers had intercepted him. The carriage having been delayed by traffic on the way to Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, he must have entered Monsieur Lenoir’s office at about half past twelve. Interview, cab, a conversation with the Duc de La Vrillière, another with Provence. It must now be about two o’clock in the afternoon.
He knew that rigor mortis only set in gradually. The longer it took to appear, the longer it lasted. You had to take the conditions and temperature of the place into account. Kitchens were usually cold at night, when all the lights were out and there was adequate ventilation. It was October now, and starting to feel distinctly cold. The duration of rigor mortis was supposedly shorter in damp, warm air than in dry, cold air. In addition, it was a constant feature that rigor mortis took a long time to appear when death was sudden, as seemed to be the case here. Touching the body, he noticed that there was still some residual stiffness. He estimated that the murder must have taken place between ten and midnight.
He leaned over to examine the terrible wound at the base of the neck. If a piece of wood had been driven in just below the right ear, the flesh could not have been any more bruised and shattered than it was. It was still possible to see, deep inside the wound, a piece of lace from the blouse. Life had fled from the poor girl’s body in an endless haemorrhage. Her eyes stared unseeing, the corneas already obscured by a slimy membrane. He shuddered at the sight of that face, contorted in death: the forehead was lined, the nose was pinched, the lips hung over an open jaw, and the skin, dry and livid, gave the whole face a twisted appearance, as if frozen in a cruel, dazed stupor. He searched in the pockets of the apron and the skirt, and found nothing except a handkerchief and a cross on a small, broken metal chain, which had slipped into a fold in the fabric.
There was nothing else to do while waiting for the arrival of the stretcher which would take away these remains to the operating table in the Basse-Geôle. Whatever observations were made there could well open up new paths for the investigation. He still had to undertake a delicate experiment. As there was nothing to be learnt from the bloody mire on the floor, he would have to examine the surroundings. There, doubtless, there would be fewer traces and he would be able to read them more precisely. The kitchen and the roasting room were full of footprints: that was quite normal, given the servants who had come to take the wounded major-domo to his room on the mezzanine. In the kitchen, he found a whole series of knives identical to the one he had found on the floor. Was this latter a utensil that belonged to the mansion, or had it been brought in from outside? This was a good house, and the gleaming state of the whole area showed that it was well maintained. Perhaps an inventory … With one thought leading to another, he realised a startling fact: the broad, deep, prodigious wound to the young woman’s neck could not have been caused by the eustache. He would have to examine Jean Missery’s wound to see if the same knife had been used on him as on the maid. The result of this examination might point in a different direction.
He came back to the problem of prints. He was still obsessed by those found on the staircase between the mezzanine and the ground floor. He walked on tiptoe, trying to avoid the soiled areas, but still managed to add a few of his own prints to those already existing. A brownish trail took him to the passage leading to the courtyard. He took off his shoes to cross a section that was apparently untouched. He saw nothing in the wash house, in the small adjoining courtyard, or on the steps down to the cellars. He decided to go back along the route he had taken with Provence as far as the staircase. Nicolas carefully cleaned the soles of his shoes with water from a watering can he found in the small conservatory, then hesitated a moment. Should he continue to the first floor, where the minister’s apartments were located? But where was the risk? Nobody would blame him, and besides the lead might turn out to be pointless. Provence, who had discovered the bodies, might have taken that staircase and, noticing that his shoes were dirty, immediately changed them. While he was thinking this through, a small inner voice whispered in his ear that he was right to persevere and to listen to his intuition, which, in all these years as a police officer, had stood him in good stead, on an equal level with his reason.
The trail continued, becoming increasingly indistinct. But Nicolas knew that blood, being thick and viscous, took a long time to vanish completely. He reached an empty room furnished with two old red velvet benches, with a stock of logs piled up against the panelling. He immediately realised that this was not the way to the Duc de La Vrillière’s apartments, but rather a kind of halfway stage before you got to the upper parts of the mansion, given over, in this kind of dwelling, to the servants’ rooms or to storerooms. He immediately began examining the state of the staircase, this time with a piece of candle he found lying in a corner. He lit it, and the flame illumined the steps. He looked as hard as he could, bent down, even lay down, his nose almost against the oak, but could not find any traces of blood. On the other hand, he did find some on the floor of the room, a trail leading to the French window at the corner of the building. As he approached, a cold draught made him shiver.
Why was it open? He saw that the catch was up. He opened the window, and immediately a keen wind lashed his face. The window led out onto a balcony with a balustrade, facing Rue Saint-Florentin. His heart beat faster: there were clear traces of blood on the stone. Bloody footprints led to the corner of the building, in the direction of the gate in the
