“If they’d told me reading was involved, I’d have turned down this job and applied for a foreign posting.”
Dubois smiled at Jules Limodin. His chief inspector spoke his mind whatever the consequences, and had been demoted twice under the Directorate for his candor.
“My friend, you’d have been singularly inept outside this country. You can barely speak French.”
“You realize the Minister of Police dumped all this shit on us just to keep us busy.”
They were seated facing each other across the Prefect’s desk, with a canal cleared through the piles of paper so they could communicate.
“Not entirely. A fellow in his august position can’t be bothered. He lives on summaries. Delegating the details frees him to meddle in the affairs of his peers. That’s the secret to his survival.”
“Why do we put up with it?”
“Because every now and then he puts aside his personal interests and does his job. We can do no less.”
“He scans the world for foxes while we chase mice.”
“Mice are more destructive.”
“I agree. Here, for instance, is an incident of vandalism against the state. A goatherd’s son was arrested last month in Blangy for scratching an inflammatory statement on a fence surrounding the house of a magistrate.”
“Was it political?”
“You tell me. Is writing ‘Eat my shit’ constructive criticism or treason?”
“How was he punished?”
“He paid a fine of twenty francs and was made to repaint the fence. They should have added a mandatory session with the local schoolmaster. He spelled ‘merde’ with three e’s.”
“I think there’s a place for him on the State Council.” Dubois smiled beneath his moustache. “You see? We’re having fun, you and I.”
“What makes you so cheerful?”
“Who’s to say? Maybe it’s my new hat.”
“I’d be happy too, if I knew what it is we’re looking for.”
“I would be as well, if only to see what you look like when you’re happy.” He rubbed his eyes. Hours of uninterrupted reading and the stench of Limodin’s pipe tobacco had filled them with ground glass. “You should try my method. I begin by sorting the reports into piles on the floor: one containing details that invite further study, and a second to be returned to the Police Ministry as useless.”
“There are three piles on the floor. What’s the third?”
“Those are the ones I can’t make up my mind what to do with.”
“There’s always the incinerator.”
“That is treason. What would France be without its mountains of paper?”
“America.”
The Prefect picked up a file. “A fisherman was jailed in Calais for failing to rise when someone proposed a toast to the Revolution.”
“Where does he do his fishing?”
“The Channel islands.”
“Maybe his French was faulty.”
“It happened in a tavern. More likely he was too far gone in drink.” He tossed the sheaf aside and picked up another. “This fellow paid full duty at a checkpoint rather than submit to have his barrow searched. The inspector searched it anyway, and found only sacks of grain. There’s no tariff on that.”
“No mystery there. In all probability he had a jug of rum hidden under the grain. The inspector confiscated it, and forgot to report it.”
“Rum will do that to a fellow. And this.” Dubois lifted another off the stack. “An innkeeper’s daughter in Doudeville thought it odd that an English gentleman should arrive with pistol equipment, but no pistol.”
“He had it on him, not in his luggage.”
“Also no ammunition. Carrying around balls and powder is cumbersome. But I see no reason why the Minister’s informants thought any of this worth bringing to his notice.”
“It gets lonely on the coast. They were starved for attention.”
Dubois was about to lay the last file on the discard heap when he glanced again at the first page. The report had, no doubt, been phrased more colorfully before a bored recorder had rendered it into bureaucratic prose:
Subject Englishman told innkeeper he was in France
to visit friends. Innkeeper replied that it was a
poor time to make such a crossing for that purpose.
The Prefect agreed. But such an excuse for traveling put a handy end to the conversation. “Traveling on business” invited polite inquiries as to the nature of that business, while a stranger’s social affairs interested no one but himself and his friends.
Perhaps that was the intention.
“Limodin, do you happen to recall what the weather was like on the Channel on the third Germinal?”
“I don’t know what the weather was like this morning; but then I’ve been cooped up in here since yesterday. If you must know, go round to the papers and ask for that number.”
“I think I shall.”
He laid the file on the pile reserved for further study.
Right on top of the fellow with the petty rum-smuggler and the goatherd’s boy who’d gotten a snootful of nerve and scratched a childish obscenity on the fence of a magistrate; who, for all Dubois knew, deserved to eat shit.
Camping out the night after he visited the apothecary, the Viper cut a slit in the heel of one hand, inserted two and a half grams of arsenic sealed in a capsule he’d fashioned from a sausage casing, then closed the slit with a stitch of thread.
It healed within days and he pulled out the stitch. He could tear it free with his teeth and swallow it. Painful as such a death was, it would spare him the protracted agony of aggressive interrogation by Joseph Fouché’s officers.
Near Beaumont, some twenty miles off his course, he decided to put in with a contact whom Cadoudal had suggested, if shelter was needed that he couldn’t provide for himself.
The man was a former viscount who’d renounced his title in 1788; an act which had spared him execution at the beginning of the Terror, although his motives had been entirely personal, not political. He’d fallen out with his father, the count, over the old man’s second marriage, to a widow ten years younger than his son, and had renounced his claim to the family estate. It was a bootless gesture, as he was no longer next of kin, but it served to register his pique.
The ignorant Jacobins had looked only at the timing and granted him clemency as an early supporter among the nobility. After the father and young wife were executed, the Directorate awarded the son what remained of the family estate on the basis of a bribe. He lived there on the credit of his name and a monthly stipend from Royalists in return for putting up their colleagues in anxious times.
The Viper found him a bore, who kept asking meddling questions about his guest’s purpose. He seemed unaware of the precariousness of his own position.
The guest stayed a week. During the day he strolled the grounds, unfolding his field glass to check the countryside for troops on the move. Twice he spotted columns of cavalry, and once an artillery crew freeing a cannon from mire with their backs and shoulders (and colorful blasphemies, without question), but they kept to the main road, no doubt scorning the ex-nobleman’s modest stone house as unsuitable for quartering officers.
When the soldiers had made their way to billets on the frontiers, the Viper resumed his journey, carrying in the dog cart a case of wine his former host had pressed upon him from his own vineyard. This he parceled out at checkpoints along the road in return for being allowed to pass without inspection. The government functionaries were poorly paid, and now that the army had gone, they could relax their vigilance. The Viper went back to his original route along the Seine. In a few days he would be in Paris, capital of the civilized world.