“Is this all?”
The veterinarian shrugged; a Gallic specialty that made Dubois feel shame for the French.
“One cannot say for certain, Monsieur le Prefect. Under these conditions, parts of people and parts of animals are a challenge to sort out. Fortunately, people don’t have hooves.”
Louis Nicolas Pierre Joseph Dubois—he had been christened in 1758 for the King, but had judiciously dropped the first name after the Bastille fell—pursed his lips at the man, whose leather apron was stained with blood and gore. Between them, arranged in no particular pattern on a large sheet of butcher’s wrap, lay the torn and reeking parts of what had arguably been a horse, if the one hoof that Dubois’ officers had scooped up along with the remains of humans sundered by the blast was any indication. Dubois himself reserved judgment. He had not been Prefect nine months, and assistant to the lieutenant-general of police for two years before that, to form conclusions based on evidence so flimsy.
Paris’ first Prefect of Police—the post had been established the previous March (19 Ventose by current authority), and its occupant appointed personally by Bonaparte—was not a tall man; he was exactly the height of the First Consul (not that that made him small; his superior was of average height, despite the runt cartoonists made of him in the British press), and wore the simple uniform of an ordinary patrolman without insignia of rank, decorated only with a single row of brass buttons and a broad leather belt, convenient for tucking one’s gloves under or one’s thumbs, as he was doing now. He’d been offered a white monstrosity with frogs and ropes of gold braid, but had declined it as too grand for a humble public servant, and the devil’s trouble to keep clean. Privately he thought it better suited to an organ grinder’s monkey.
A plain oilcloth cloaked his shoulders against the rain that had regressed from a drizzle to an icy weep. The hat, a bicorne worn fore and aft like an admiral’s in a comic opera, marred the egalitarian effect; but as he was a stickler for regulations he never appeared in public without it. Once behind closed doors it vanished.
When he was bareheaded, he admitted to himself, he lost a great deal of his authority. So, in deference to both duty and presence, he wore it now.
At forty-two his face retained much of its baby fat, and his moustache resembled a caterpillar. Comb and oil was no remedy for his lank brown hair, which hung like crepe on either side of his forehead. Soon after his appointment, his caricature, a swollen infantile head on a puny body, had become a fixture on the wall of every sporting club he had cited previously for its criminal clientele. He would shut them all down and have the offensive illustrations burned, but it would be like kicking apart an ant heap. By the end of the ten-day Republican week, a dozen more would rise in its place. He had no time for it with murderers about.
He sniffled. The city’s premier peace officer had caught cold; a bright red nose lent no dignity to his aspect.
“They say you are the best in your field in France,” he told the veterinarian.
The man shrugged again. Some men were immune to flattery, which was one of Dubois’ most effective methods of persuasion.
“Had I not been as good, you would not have asked for me. Had I been better, I should not have come.”
“It’s my opinion there’s enough material here for someone who remembered the horse to place it. It’s only a matter of arranging the pieces in the proper order.”
“If it is so easy, put your men to it. My business is with preserving life.”
“My men are more familiar with human offal than the animal kind. In any case, they are all busy pounding on doors looking for witnesses.”
“Monsieur, I am not trained in assembling puzzles.”
Dubois regarded the others at work in the courtyard of the Prefecture near the Quai Desaix. One, a cartwright, was attempting to match two pieces of a wheel belonging to the vehicle that had been blown apart by the charge in its bed; near it lay both the shafts, which had survived nearly intact while the animal that had stood between them had been reduced to the bloody mess at the Prefect’s feet. Another, a seamstress, sorted heaps of charred clothing into piles, pausing only to place a pinch of snuff in one nostril or the other, blackening her nose with her fingers. Near the rear entrance to the building a cobbler stared with arms akimbo at a mountain of shoes, seeking a starting place to look for his work or the work of a competitor. Those who had belonged to all these articles of apparel were either being treated for shattered bones and severe burns or would never have need for them again.
Dubois thought it unlikely any of those responsible for the carnage were among the casualties; but victims must have names, survivors must be informed.
Puzzles, yes.
“Neither are these others so trained, Doctor,” he said. “Yet you see they are doing what they can, as experts in their own fields. I needn’t add that the government will be grateful. I answer directly to the First Consul and the Minister of Police.”
Double inducement, this choice of titles: first the lump of sugar, then the cudgel.
If the fellow only knew that Fouché was hoping for Dubois’ unconventional plan to fall on its face in full view of the chief of state! The Minister had recommended him for this post, but the Prefect had proven disconcertingly efficient in a political climate that turned topsy-turvy whenever the wind changed, forcing superiors and subordinates to switch places without warning.
Dubois could not so much as feign incompetence, however wise it was to conceal one’s light beneath a bushel in parlous times. His fortunes hung upon his favor with the First Consul: Night after night found him at the palace, entertaining his host with salacious gossip uncovered during investigations, seasoned heavily with salty asides best reserved for career soldiers and fellow policemen. The master of France’s fate remained outwardly an infantryman at heart. Whether this was by inclination or design could not be determined. The man was a Chinese box.
A jester’s role, Dubois’, degrading in the extreme; but the colorless Fouché could not compete with it. In any event the Prefect’s position was precarious. The slightest indication that he thirsted for advancement would spell disaster. And so he must continue to play the fool, but without precisely committing a foolish act.
Politics, phui! He wanted nothing other than to be let alone to do his job.
Put a name to the horse, connect it and the cart to their original owner or owners, and the men who brought it here were as good as in the hands of justice. That was police work.
Fouché, on the other hand, went about his like a hyena, searching for weakness in his rivals and pouncing upon it, securing his own position through fear. A man like that would never understand the basic principles of investigation, the endless sweeping and accumulating, the simultaneous picking through and piecing together of scraps—most of them meaningless, but at the start there was no telling which—all by a drab army that labored day and night, without hope of honors or simple recognition, moving backward and backward until they arrived at the place where the thing had begun.
No one feared Nicolas Dubois. At worst he was a minor annoyance.
Which was where his enemies went wrong. He was as ruthless as any Septembrist once he caught the scent.
In this minor engagement with the veterinarian, he’d succeeded in cowing the opposition. The fellow ran a hand through his rumpled gray hair, streaking it with blood, and knelt to his task.
Dubois left him for his own, a desk heaped with anonymous letters directing the attention of the police to the culprits who were certainly responsible for the massacre. They had been streaming in ever since the first broadside had gone out announcing the cowardly attempt on Citizen Bonaparte and his immediate family.
Merde.
It was the Terror all over again, neighbors denouncing neighbors to settle old grudges, brothers and sisters hoping to snatch away the family inheritance with the help of the authorities, to whom fell the chore of separating the wheat from the chaff, the shit from the silver.
Not, perhaps, as filthy a task as handling burned shoes and blasted vital organs, but every bit as disillusioning.
It was a good job Christmas was outlawed. He should hate to have to spend it this way. Inside the narrow corridor leading to his office he thrust his cloak and the ridiculous hat into the arms of a secretary and marched to his door.