The Blood of Lorraine Read online

  “Who, then?” It was obvious that Martin had no choice but to play along. He would have his chance to tell Didier what he thought later. “Who lives on the Carrière?”

  “The commander, of course. The commander of the garrison. The commander of the garrison that is protecting us all from the Huns, who are a mere twenty-five kilometers away, waiting, guns fully loaded at the border. The commander of the garrison who is here to see that Germany takes nothing else away from us.”

  “And?” Martin crossed his arms and waited, for it was obvious the man accustomed to leading juries by the nose was just hitting his stride. Martin could barely stand still as he waited for the coup de grâce.

  “The Nanciens love their army. Many of them are old enough to remember the Prussian occupation. Others came here as refugees. And now that army is under threat. People are uneasy. All because of a traitor. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, the first Israelite admitted to the inner sanctum of our most precious military secrets.”

  That was it! Just as Martin had feared, another broadside against the Jews. His arms fell by his side, taut, his hands locked into fists. “Dreyfus is one man,” he insisted heatedly, “not an entire people. And furthermore he has not even been brought to trial.” How can everyone be so sure that it was Dreyfus who had sold secrets to the Germans? For God’s sake, Martin thought angrily, everyone in this building is supposed to be devoted to the efficacy of the court system.

  “True. Not yet. But the military court is very likely to convict him, and we wouldn’t want anyone to think that we are being soft on the Israelites. Nor, on the other hand,” a long, bony finger went up to stave off interruption, “would we want to have politicians at the courthouse finding a way to use this case for their own ends, for some campaign against the Jewish inhabitants of our fair city. When I say ‘we,’” Didier’s voice gathered in volume and speed any time Martin deigned to open his mouth, “it is because I know that du Manoir fully agrees with me. We discussed the problem just yesterday. I interrupted his Sunday to do so.”

  The two most powerful men in the courthouse putting their heads together. And Singer had said it would be so simple: a wet nurse and two workers, all poor, all lying, all trying to cover up the death of one miserable little child. “I can see no possible connection between what is happening in Paris with an army officer and a trumped-up charge in Nancy.”

  “Neither do I!” Didier pounded his desk in the best prosecutorial manner. “Neither do I! But others might see the connection or try to make the connection.” His sandy red eyebrows went up as if he were urging Martin to get the point. “Do you think our friend Rocher is exceptional?” he asked, with no intention of giving Martin a chance to answer. “There are a lot like him out there. Influential men. Even men, like our esteemed senior colleague, who dare to call themselves republicans. Men willing to arouse the rabble. And,” he added darkly, “of course, there is the rabble itself.”

  “Then why did you—?”

  “Assign the case to Rocher?” Didier had anticipated this obvious question and threw up his hands in mock surrender. “I made a mistake. I’ll admit it. I like to give the easy cases to him and thought this would be one of them.”

  “Surely you must have known how he felt about the Israelites.” Heart pounding with impatience, Martin had to bite his tongue to keep from adding, and what a moron we all know Rocher to be.

  “No, I didn’t know. I don’t talk to him any more than necessary,” Didier said, his lips pinched together as if he had just bitten into a sour lemon.

  “So how did the case get to Singer?” At least Didier was not hiding his contempt for Rocher. Martin relaxed a little.

  “Our senior examining magistrate had the nerve to confide that he had picked up a few recent issues of Monsieur Drumont’s La Libre Parole and doesn’t find it half bad.” Didier snorted before continuing. “I realized then that Rocher might well make a mess of things, perhaps even enjoy getting his name in the papers by reporting the possibility of a ‘ritual murder’ to the local press. So when Rocher suggested giving the case to Singer, as a joke, I took him up on it. With alacrity, I might add, because I thought Singer, above all men here at the Palais, would be motivated to get rid of it as soon as possible.” Didier paused. “Instead, I find, he pawned it off on you.”

  “You are saying, then, that you do not hold to Rocher’s views?” Martin wanted to be absolutely certain about what he was getting into.

  “I assure you I do not. I, like you, understand that our revolutionary tradition calls us to uphold the equality of all men. However, if you are wondering about why I let him go on and on Friday evening, I thought you might find it instructive.”

  “Instructive? What am I, a schoolboy?” There was no way to avoid the red blush of anger that was heating up his face.

  “Please, Martin, don’t take this as an insult. Take it as a warning. Get rid of this case as soon as possible.”

  Martin was tempted to slap away the bony finger which was once more pointing at him. Instead, he said, through clenched teeth, “I can best do that if there is no interference.” After all, he had his own reasons for wanting to complete the investigation quickly, reasons that had nothing to do with politics or Jews or the machinations of the courthouse. He wanted to get on with his own life and forget what he had seen in the morgue.

  But that was exactly why the prosecutor and the President were looking over his shoulder, as Didier made clear.

  “This case, as you must well know, is not really about the death of one unfortunate child. It’s about mutilation, about the accusation of ritual murder. An accusation that could send this town into a frenzy, particularly in light of what we are all reading about Dreyfus. We need to avoid that. So you need to find out exactly where our accuser got his ideas. What political rallies he attended, for example.” Didier nudged a thin folder toward Martin. “When you catch a whiff of the father’s breath, you will see how easily he could come under the influence of a stirring Jew-baiting campaign speech.”

  “Or an old wives’ tale.” Why assume that politics had anything to do with it?

  “Or a priest.”

  “Or a priest,” Martin echoed in resignation. Politics, the Church, the Army. It was enough to make his head spin.

  Having made his point, Didier sat down and set his pince-nez back on the bridge of his nose.

  “And if none of this has to do with politics or the Church?” Martin asked as he picked up the thin paper folder, making sure his hand held firm.

  “Then, we can assume, the case will go the way of other sordid lower-class dramas. A flurry in the scandal sheets, then a nice evaporating fizzle.” Didier retrieved the document he had been reading when Martin walked in, signaling that their interview was over. Disgusted, Martin started for the door.

  “Good day, Martin,” Didier shouted after him. “Remember, the integrity of the courthouse is in your hands.”

  Or the integrity of someone’s political ambitions, Martin thought as he fought the impulse to slam the door. Everyone knew that, if he played his cards right, the brilliant, ambitious Didier might one day get the call to Paris or even to a Prefecture.

  The sight of Roland, sitting meekly on the bench outside Didier’s office, almost made Martin jump. “Pardon,” the clerk whispered as he got up to return to his master. As soon as Martin was alone, he sank down on the same hard wooden bench. Stinging from the hail of condescension that Didier had rained upon him, Martin needed to calm down before facing the ever-curious Charpentier.

  He leaned back, still clutching the file. If Didier was right, the case could blow up in Martin’s face. At least they were on the same side. Against the likes of Rocher, who—Martin’s fist tightened so hard, he almost bent the file in two thinking of it—who had hoped to play a joke on Singer. Martin sighed. He was just as irritated that somehow he had gotten caught in the middle of courthouse politics: Didier intent on proving he can keep the peace in his own district; Rocher being stupid; David Singer
being oversensitive. After a moment, he straightened up and stared at the blank cardboard in his hands. At least it was not Aix all over again, not a life-and-death situation for his friend, as it had been for Merckx. Not life and death, except—Martin flipped open the file and fingered its two pages—except for one tiny little boy. That’s what they all should care about. He took a deep breath and began to read.

  Today, Thursday 15 November 1894 at 17:45, Pierre Thomas, twenty-six years of age, a tanner residing at rue Drouin 6bis, came to the Palais de Justice at Nancy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, with an accusation that his child, seven-month-old Marc-Antoine, had been murdered and mutilated by a stranger passing through the village of Tomblaine. M. Thomas, who was in a state of obvious inebriation, carried the body of said child in a dirty, torn blanket. He was accompanied by his wife, Antoinette Thomas, twenty-eight years of age, a weaver at the Ullmann factory, and by the widow Geneviève Philipon, thirty years of age, of the village of Tomblaine, whom they employed as a wet nurse.

  M. Thomas claimed that the murderer of his child was a “wandering Jew” who had visited the cottage of Philipon.

  Mme Philipon testified that late in the afternoon of Wednesday 14 November a tinker, whom she had never seen in the village, came to her door. She asked him to fix a pot. The stranger had a large hooked nose, thick lips, black hair and a beard. He wore tattered clothes. He smelled “funny” and spoke with a strange accent. He did not remove his black hat even after entering the cottage. At that time, two of her daughters, ages ten and seven, were playing in the garden. Her youngest, a daughter, eighteen months old, and the Thomas boy were in the cottage. She observed that the tinker displayed a suspicious interest in Marc-Antoine, even asking if he was a baptized Christian. As soon as the stranger left, she called her older children inside the cottage and locked all the doors.

  The next morning when she awoke she found the door wide open and Marc-Antoine gone. She was sure the tinker had used his tools to break the lock and steal the child. She called to her neighbors for help and they hunted frantically for the boy, only to find him near a stream in the woods, cut open and drained of all his blood. She then walked into town to find Pierre and Antoinette Thomas. They returned with her to the village and retrieved the body of their son.

  Pierre Thomas interjected at this point by shouting that we should find the ritual murderer who was probably an Israelite butcher disguised as a tinker.

  Two police officers calmed Thomas down and accompanied him to the morgue at the Faculté de Médicine, where the child will be examined.

  Michel Jacquette, Inspector of Police

  That was it. A grieving father voluble with drink and grief. A fairy-tale version of the lone bloodthirsty Jewish male stalking the home of a widow and her children. Singer was right. They were all lying. But who created this particular lie? Martin scanned the report again. And where was the grieving mother in all this? Jacquette was a good man. If she had anything to say, he would have reported it. Yet she was silent. Dumbstruck by the loss of her child? Or by the clumsy scheming of those around her?

  Calmed by the absurdity of the fabrication, Martin closed the file and started down the stairs, holding on to the banister, taking one slow step at a time. All he needed was to get one of them to tell the truth, and it could all be over today or, at most, tomorrow. An ignorant, talkative woman was likely to be the weakest link in the chain of lies. It should be easy. He would interrogate Geneviève Philipon first.

  5

  MARTIN’S CHAMBERS WERE NOT AS commanding as Didier’s. Yet if you were accused of a crime or had lied to the police or simply happened to be numbered among the unschooled poor, crossing the threshold from the little vestibule into the spacious office with its hard wooden chairs, document-laden desks, and austere white walls had to be nerve-racking, for you were about to encounter an examining magistrate who had the right to question you endlessly, jail you indefinitely, search your home and belongings at will, interrogate everyone near and dear to you, use the words of your enemies against you, and, finally, by a legal logic well beyond your ken, decide what crime to charge you with and what court to send you to. If he chose the big one, the cour d’assises, well, then, you could be facing years of hard labor, or even the guillotine.

  No wonder the wet nurse could barely move her feet. Although he never undermined his authority by showing it, Martin usually sympathized with the more humble suspects that were hauled into his chambers. Not today. Didier had made it abundantly clear that any of the crimes Geneviève Philipon had allegedly committed—neglect, murder, the brutal disgorging of an innocent child—had repercussions that reached far beyond her little village because of the story that she had invented to cover up her deeds. Repercussions for the courthouse, for the city, for Martin. He needed to find out the truth about what had happened to little Marc-Antoine Thomas before Philipon had a chance to spread her dangerous lies.

  While the police officer led Geneviève Philipon into the room, Martin made a show of studying the papers on his desk in order to reinforce the frightening impression that he was in the midst of making important, mysterious, even fatal decisions. Martin fully recognized in her slow, shuffling steps the sound of one resisting her fate. When he looked up, he was not surprised that she was trying to shield herself by hiding her sallow face with the threadbare brown woolen shawl she wore over her head. Gripping it at her neck, she glanced furtively at both Martin and Charpentier as the police officer placed a hand on each of her shoulders and pressed her into the chair.

  Although she was a pitiful little creature, Martin glared at her in stony silence for a full minute before introducing himself. Her black shoes and patched green dress, each too thin to ward off the wintry cold, were as drab and worn as she was. Aware of his scrutiny, the wet-nurse lifted the shawl from her head and brought it down to her shoulders, clutching it with both hands across her bosom. Was she possibly hiding the fact that the breasts she was supposed to be using to feed the little victim had dried up? If so, her attempt at subterfuge encouraged Martin to draw out the silence. When she began to breathe through her mouth, almost gasping for air, he could see that her teeth, like the strands of hair on her head, were dingier and sparser than they should be. An unpleasant fetid odor, a potent mix of malnutrition and fear, emanated from her open mouth. Martin drew back in his chair. How had this unhealthy creature come to be a wet nurse? Wealthy families examined their live-in nannies from head to foot before employing them, even counting and pulling at their teeth, as if they were horses or cattle. Obviously, Martin thought, poorer families had fewer choices. Or had Marc-Antoine’s parents simply cared less? This is one of the things that Martin needed to find out. Had little Marc-Antoine died by intention, or neglect?

  By the time Martin took up his pen, Geneviève Philipon’s hands were visibly shaking. As if on cue, Charpentier, who had been mirroring the relentless severity of his superior, flipped open the notebook that would contain the official version of the interrogation.

  Judge and clerk always began with the preliminaries of identification and background—Where were you born? Where have you lived? How much schooling do you have? What is your work? How much property do you own? Whom did you marry, and when, and why? And, of course, have you ever been in trouble with the authorities? First-time suspects were often puzzled, even visibly annoyed by these drawn-out preliminaries. So many questions, and for what? An examining magistrate knew exactly what: he was building a portrait of the witness, in order to understand her motives and gauge what punishments to mete out. And if it drove a suspect a little mad, that was fine. The better to get her to blurt out an incriminating response. The wet nurse, being humble and puzzled, mumbled her responses to dozens of questions as her eyes darted back and forth between Martin, the inquisitor, and Charpentier, his recorder.

  It turned out that hers was an all-too-common tale of woe. Born into an impoverished family of eleven children in the town of Tomblaine, married to a dirt farmer at the age of seventeen, w
idowed by a freak accident when pregnant with her third child, Geneviève Philipon had always been in desperate straits and was sinking fast.

  Offering herself as a wet nurse had been her way of getting enough money to hire a man to help her with the planting and harvesting.

  “So this is the first time that you have cared for another’s child?” Martin asked. Up to this point, he had tried to lull her into talking freely by maintaining a calm and matter-of-fact demeanor.

  Geneviève Philipon nodded, as her lips stretched into a painful grimace. Tears and sobs followed as she let go of her shawl and hid her face in her trembling hands.

  Martin shifted in his chair, waiting for her to calm down. Now that they were getting to it, she could not hide her despair. But he had to remain hard. Get this damned case over with.

  “Then why did the Thomases hire you? Surely you were not the most qualified.” He didn’t like to think about how dispensable the children of the poor were, and felt blessed that Clarie was insisting that she would breastfeed their child herself.

  The wet nurse wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She lowered her eyes, focusing on the floor. Martin could almost read an “if only” in them, if only she hadn’t been the one caring for the child. Then she wouldn’t be here now. Everything would be different! His chambers reverberated with the hard-luck stories of those who swore that if it had not been for an unexpected twist of fate, they would have never done wrong.

  “I knew Antoinette.” This came out in a whisper.

  “How? How did you know her?”

  “She’s from my parts. We were in school together.”

  Martin glanced at his notes. Geneviève Philipon had only had six years of schooling, so the women had known each other since childhood.

  “She went to the city, hoping for a better life. But,” the wet nurse looked up at Martin, “she got started in that factory. I don’t think she wanted any kids until….”