Casanova and the Faceless Woman Read online

  His logical, deductive mind had run ahead, to the inevitable conclusion: doubtless, one day, he would be forced to return the letter to its rightful owner. He was even more careful not to break the seal now, despite his burning curiosity. He swore under his breath.

  ‘To think that that arch-rogue Casanova saw the whole thing!’ he declared out loud in exasperation. ‘Casanova!’

  ‘Casa! Casa!’

  Volnay jumped half out his skin, then turned to look at the great birdcage and its splendid occupant.

  He smiled.

  ‘Yes, that cretin Casanova!’

  ‘Cretin Casa! Cretin Casa!’ repeated the magpie obediently.

  Volnay laughed aloud.

  Casanova had played a superb hand, drinking little but frequently refilling his opponent’s glass, losing at first to raise the stakes, then delivering his fatal blow with immediate, sobering effect.

  ‘I played on my word, Chevalier…’

  The Venetian straightened himself in his armchair, a slight smile playing at his lips.

  ‘A gambling man keeps his money about his person, Joinville,’ he said quietly.

  His opponent rolled his shoulders uncomfortably and ordered more drink. He peered anxiously into Casanova’s face, from which all trace of affability had now disappeared. The pair sat in a smoke-filled den where a player’s rank in society counted for less than the cash he could lay on the table. A place for cavagnole and manille, faro, biribi and piquet. Ladies pressed their generous bosoms against the shoulders of the luckier players. The Chevalier de Seingalt’s eye alighted on a girl in pink silk stockings, then turned coldly back to his debtor. He never mixed money with pleasure, unless the money belonged to someone else.

  ‘You had a run of luck tonight, Giacomo,’ said Joinville, gruffly.

  The Venetian gave a quick smile and sat back in his armchair, eyes half-closed as if remembering things past.

  ‘There have been times in my life,’ he confided lazily, ‘when I gambled daily and, losing against my word, found that the prospect of having to pay up the next day caused me greater and greater anguish. I would fall sick at the very thought, and then I would get over it. As soon as I regained my health and powers, I would forget all my past ills and return to my usual pursuits.’

  ‘So you played on your word, too!’

  Casanova opened his eyes wide.

  ‘Could that be because my word was valued more highly than yours?’ he retorted, wickedly.

  A peculiar, bitter smell wafted from the candles on the table, stinging the nostrils. With forced gaiety, Joinville snatched his tankard from the serving girl’s hands and tried, clumsily, to pinch her backside. She trotted off, giggling. Joinville shrugged, and boomed out a song that had been a great source of merriment the length and breadth of France under the previous reign, when the Italian-born Mazarin was first minister, governing the country with Anne of Austria, his supposed mistress, the erstwhile infanta, and mother of the child king Louis XIV:

  ‘Mazarin’s balls don’t bounce in vain,

  They bump and bump and rattle the Crown.

  That wily old Sicilian hound

  Gets up your arse, princess of Spain!’

  Casanova wasn’t singing. He sipped his Cyprus wine and kept his opponent firmly in his sights.

  ‘I’ll take your credit,’ he said suddenly, ‘if you can tell me a good story. I know you’re privy to all the secrets at Court.’

  ‘Well now! Where to start?’

  ‘With whatever is of greatest interest.’

  Joinville took a deep breath. He was a wine merchant, serving the finest households in Paris. His honourable dedication to sampling all of his merchandise had given him a fine paunch; and his dutiful drinking bouts with each eminent client made him an inexhaustible fount of gossip, ingested more or less accurately, depending on his state of drunkenness at the time.

  ‘Do you know how La Pompadour first seduced the king? She attended a costume ball dressed as Diana the Huntress, with threads of silver plaited in her hair, and her breasts very much on display, carrying a quiver of arrows and a bow on her back. The king had her there and then.’

  Joinville heaved himself to his feet and declaimed:

  ‘What care I, who seem so bold?

  What if my husband be cuckold?

  What care I for anything,

  When I’m the mistress of the king?!’

  Casanova stifled a yawn. Joinville watched in alarm as he got to his feet.

  ‘Wait! Wait! There’s fresher meat than that! The Devout Party—the religionists—detest La Pompadour, as you well know. They’ll do anything to destroy her…’

  ‘Nothing new there,’ remarked Casanova, adjusting his waistcoat and looking around for the girl in the pink silk stockings.

  ‘Wait, I tell you! They say the Devout Party have found a way, and soon La Pompadour will be a mere memory.’

  ‘A plot?’ Casanova was interested now.

  ‘So it seems. But I know nothing more for the moment. Father Ofag, a Jesuit, is the leader.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘His devoted accomplice goes by the name of Wallace. A soldier. Visionary type. Skin as white as milk, and eyes to make your hair stand up straight on your head. He’s very dangerous.’

  Joinville underscored his message by dragging his thumb across the skin of his throat. Casanova looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, cold and calculating.

  ‘I’m not sure I believe you,’ he said at length. ‘But get me some first-hand information and I’ll cancel our debt. I may even throw in a few coins, but only if it’s truly worth my while.’

  He glanced at a woman in a low-cut corset standing at a table nearby, then reluctantly turned his attention back to Joinville.

  ‘Do you know a police officer by the name of Volnay?’

  Joinville laughed heartily.

  ‘Of course! Volnay saved the king’s life a couple of years back, when Damiens tried to assassinate him. The king knighted him, made him a chevalier.’

  ‘Indeed!’

  ‘He is known as an upright man of great integrity. The king asked if he might grant Volnay a favour for having saved his life, and Volnay answered that he should like to be put in charge of investigating every strange and unexplained death in Paris. The king laughed at the idea, but he was in Volnay’s debt. And so, for the past two years, Volnay has been just that: His Majesty’s Inspector of Strange and Unexplained Deaths, with no particular mandate other than to investigate especially nasty or complicated cases of murder in the capital. It was he who solved the Pécoil affair. You’ve heard about that?’

  The Venetian shook his head. Joinville lit a cigar and leant forward with a slight, condescending smile.

  ‘Pécoil had accumulated vast riches from the gabelle, the salt tax. He kept it all under his house, in a vault sealed by three doors of solid iron. Like any self-respecting skinflint, he would go down each evening and revel in the sight of his gold. One evening, he failed to come back up. His wife and son were concerned, of course, but it was two days before they sent for the police and forced the three doors. They found Pécoil with his throat cut, lying on the floor beside his treasure, from which not a single crown was missing. His arms were outstretched, reaching into his blackened, burnt-out lantern, the flesh partly consumed by fire.’

  Joinville blew a thick cloud of smoke.

  ‘Volnay solved the case in less than a week. They say he’s highly competent.’

  Casanova raised one eyebrow.

  ‘I hope he is,’ he said coldly. ‘For his own sake.’

  II

  What is beauty? We cannot say, and yet we know it in our hearts.

  CASANOVA

  In the darkness, the wood cracked and the furniture creaked. Were they truly inanimate, and devoid of a soul? The sounds, and the memory of the faceless woman, woke Volnay with a start in the depths of the night, just as a pair of blood-drenched lips placed themselves upon his own. He fell back into a de
ep sleep, but the woman with her bloodied mask returned again, holding out a letter which he stubbornly refused to take. He tore himself from his nightmare when she threw off her clothes and sat astride him, like a she-devil come to ride him as he slept.

  Whoever sleeps on his back is sometimes suffocated by spirits of the air, who torment him with attacks and tyrannies of every sort, and deplete the quality of his blood with such sudden effect that the man lies in a state of exhaustion and cannot recover himself.

  His learned collaborator, the monk, would doubtless have explained it thus. But he would be busily occupied now, with a meticulous examination of the body of the faceless woman.

  Volnay thought of the letter he had removed from the body. He fought the temptation to read it. He rose from his bed and lit a candle. The silence of the night fed his thoughts, and he tried to get his ideas in order. He examined the sketches he had made at the scene of the crime, elaborating theory after theory, but still he could not sleep. And so, early that morning, it was with a haggard face that he answered the beating of a fist on his front door.

  Opening it, Volnay had expected anything but the apparition that met his eyes: a young woman, her waist most admirably clasped in a brocade gown in three different shades of blue, trimmed with silver lace. The cut and fabric flattered her well-rounded breasts, pushed up tight in her stays. She was enveloped in a delicious fragrance of roses, by turns sweet, peppery and fruity, with base notes of amber and musk. She looked not yet twenty; her features were pure and clear, yet already an application of crimson gloss and a touch of silver glaze emphasized the dark brilliance of her almond-shaped eyes. Her hair was blacker than the blackest night, held in place by a multitude of pins, so that it seemed speckled with stars. There was a luminous quality to the skin of her throat, and her waist was slender but healthy and firm. Volnay lowered his eyes, and discovered a delicate foot, light as air, that quickened his pulse.

  ‘Madame…’

  ‘Mademoiselle Chiara D’Ancilla, Chevalier,’ she said in a charming, cajoling voice.

  Volnay blinked briefly. He was rarely addressed by his title, and never used it himself. Who was this beautiful young Italian woman, and what did she want? He employed a woman to keep house, and see to his provisions and laundry, but no other female presence ever brightened his simple dwelling. It was a place dedicated to rest, reading and reflection.

  ‘May I come in?’

  He realized that he had been standing there in the doorway without the least show of manners. Hastily, he stepped aside to let her pass, noting how the tiny pleats in the back of her dress showed off the sheen of its silk and the softness of the satin. Once inside, the young woman stood motionless, gazing at the gold-tooled bindings that lit the room with their refulgent glow. She admired their elegant, abstract patterns, their azure motifs, the foliage and palm fronds entwined in their decorative frames.

  ‘Oh, I see you’re a lover of books!’ she breathed appreciatively. ‘So am I—they hold all human knowledge!’

  She turned to him and added, in a charming voice:

  ‘All human hopes and desires, too.’

  She ran her delicate hand along the spines, and Volnay trembled, in spite of himself, as if she had caressed some part of his body. She took out a book bound in a pretty pattern of five fleurons around a central lozenge, framed by four triangular corner pieces.

  ‘Treatise on the Condition of the Human Body after Hanging,’ she read in horror-struck tones. ‘Dear God, why ever do you read such things?’

  Gently, Volnay removed the book from her grasp.

  ‘It is thanks to this book that I understood how to determine whether a person has been strangled or hanged. The marks upon the neck are different in each case, and the angle of the break at the nape is also…’

  He broke off, seeing her shudder.

  ‘Forgive me such unpleasant details. It was merely by way of explaining to you that my trade obliges me to take an interest in how people meet their deaths. It is possible to discover a great deal by examining the scene of a crime, and the victim’s body. The corpse alone holds a wealth of clues, as do the clothes, and everything must be examined with the utmost care. My collaborator, a monk and a learned man of science, devotes himself to the task. The deciphering of footprints, or how blows have been delivered and received, is truly an art.’

  He paused, and sighed.

  ‘Yet it interests no more than two people in the entire kingdom!’

  The young woman stared thoughtfully at Volnay, who was scarcely much older than she was herself. Her gaze lingered on the fine scar running from one eye to his temple. And on the half-moons of shadow beneath his lower lids. So this was what an Inspector of Strange and Unexplained Deaths looked like? Suddenly, Chiara D’Ancilla froze, and shivered, as if a new thought had just struck her.

  ‘Have you ever burnt books, Inspector?’

  Her passionate feelings on the subject were quick to find expression in her beautiful, dark eyes.

  ‘Indeed not, Mademoiselle, never!’ said Volnay, hurriedly, because it was the truth and because he had no desire to incur this woman’s displeasure.

  He might have added that he had even saved books on occasion, stealing back volumes that had been confiscated by the censors, without a second thought. His answer brought a smile back to the young woman’s face. She spoke animatedly.

  ‘I knew it—one cannot be both a reader and a destroyer of books! Ah, you’ve read all our philosophers: Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot and Baron d’Holbach! How very bold of the king’s personal policeman. What does Monsieur de Sartine, our city’s chief of police, have to say about that?’

  ‘He hardly ever comes here,’ said Volnay, unsmilingly.

  She took a few steps around the room, and again he admired her graceful but unaffected carriage. Morning light bathed the walls with a honeyed glow. A delicate shaft of sunshine caught her figure, so that she stood in a radiant halo of gold. She had stopped to admire a red morocco binding stamped with a mesh of fine dots. Just at that moment, the bird shifted in its cage. She had not noticed it until now.

  ‘Oh! A magpie!’

  ‘Mag-pie! Mag-pie!’ The bird echoed the familiar exclamation.

  The young woman clapped her hands in delight.

  ‘What is this miracle of nature?’

  Volnay joined her beside the cage, pleased to have found a pretext to step inside her fragrant cloud.

  ‘There is nothing miraculous in it, Mademoiselle. Magpies are even more accomplished than parrots when it comes to reproducing human speech. Few people know this, but a little teaching is all they require.’

  They stood in silence for a moment, contemplating the bird’s magnificent plumage as it perched motionless now, its beak pointed in their direction. Slowly, almost regretfully, the young woman turned to Volnay.

  ‘Monsieur, the reason for my coming here will doubtless surprise you,’ she said in tones of the utmost seriousness. ‘And so first I must tell you who I am. I am Italian, as my name suggests. My father is a widower: the Marquis D’Ancilla. He has significant interests in your country, and we live here all year, apart from the summer, which we spend in Tuscany. Like you, I read a great deal, but while you devour philosophy, I am drawn to the natural sciences, astronomy, mathematics—’

  ‘Indeed, you are a scientist at heart.’

  She frowned very slightly with one eyebrow, displeased at having been interrupted.

  ‘A scientist in practice too. I like to test theories through practical experiments, and—’

  ‘Doubtless you have a laboratory?’ he ventured, knowing full well that every person of means with an enquiring mind had their own private workroom.

  This time she took a step closer, eyes flashing.

  ‘You must find me feeble-minded indeed to keep finishing my sentences for me. Or is it because I’m a woman?’

  Volnay excused himself hurriedly. The young aristocrat was placated, and continued:

  ‘I should like
to visit the place where the police take all the corpses!’

  The stupefaction on Volnay’s face must have been comical indeed, because Chiara burst out laughing. But the Inspector of Strange and Unexplained Deaths took no offence at her gentle mockery.

  ‘You see, sir, I am interested in the natural sciences. I have devoted much time to the study of the human anatomy, and I am… very inquisitive.’

  Volnay sighed. He thought of the hideous place she was asking to visit, where the corpses were salted, then stacked like loaves in an oven.

  ‘It is no spectacle for a person of your quality.’

  ‘Inspector…’

  She moved closer and placed her hand lightly on his arm.

  ‘Mademoiselle, believe me, it can be done, but you would regret the sight of it your whole life.’

  Volnay thought she seemed vexed, but he was wrong. She continued briskly:

  ‘Well then. Enough of that.’

  Then she seemed to hesitate for a moment.

  ‘They say you’ll be leading the investigation into the murder of a woman whose face was torn off.’

  ‘News travels fast in Paris!’

  Chiara smiled sweetly, with her hands clasped behind her back, like a good little girl.

  ‘Paris is such a small city.’

  She paused for the briefest of moments, before asking innocently:

  ‘Have you been able to identify her?’

  ‘Mademoiselle, all the skin on her face has been removed. Who could recognize her in such a state?’

  She turned pale. Volnay was alarmed and led her to a chair.

  ‘We shouldn’t speak of such things! Shall I fetch you a glass of port?’

  ‘A glass of water, please.’ She took a deep, slow breath. ‘And you say you haven’t been able to identify her? Did she have anything about her person? A name embroidered into an item of clothing? Any papers?’

  She noticed Volnay’s cold stare.

  ‘Some jewellery, perhaps?’ she ventured.

  She gave a forced laugh and added:

  ‘Some women can be recognized by their jewellery alone!’