The passage across the Mediterranean in November is much rougher than in June. One moment the porthole shows grey sky, the next grey waves. My Russian books slide off my little table and splay out on the floor. As before, I keep mostly to my cabin. Occasionally I am visited by my escort, Monsieur Périer of the Colonial Ministry, but he is very green and prefers to keep to his own quarters. On my rare excursions above decks I follow Leclerc’s advice and keep well away from the edge. I enjoy the lash of the sea across my face, the smell of the coal smoke mingled with the salt spray. Occasionally I am aware of some of the other passengers staring at me, but I am not sure whether they are police agents, or have merely heard that a person whose name is in the news is aboard.
We leave Africa on the Tuesday. On the Thursday afternoon the coast of France comes into view—a watery line in the mist. I have just finished packing when someone knocks on my door. I pick up my revolver and call out, “Who’s there?”
A voice replies, “It’s the captain, Colonel Picquart.”
“Just a moment.” I slip the gun into my pocket and open the door.
He’s a morose-looking fellow in his early fifties; a drinker to judge by the filigree of blood vessels in his eyes: I should guess that plying back and forth between Tunis and Marseille three times a week must become tedious after a while. We exchange salutes. He says, “Arrangements have been made to take you and Monsieur Périer off the ship before we dock.”
“Is that really necessary?”
“Apparently there’s a crowd of reporters on the quayside, and some protesters. The Ministry of War feels it would be safer to transfer you to a tug while we’re still at sea and then land you ahead of us in a different part of the harbour.”
“What an absurd idea.”
“Maybe so,” replies the captain with a shrug, “but those are my orders.”
A half-hour later the throb of the engines ceases and we heave to. I climb up to the deck carrying my suitcase. We have come to a stop about a kilometre outside the harbour entrance. A tugboat lies alongside us. The weather is cold and squally but that doesn’t deter several dozen passengers from lining the rails in sullen silence to watch me depart. It is my first experience of my new celebrity, and a singularly uncomfortable one. There is a strong swell on the sea and the two vessels pitch against each other, their decks rising and falling in opposite directions. My suitcase is taken from me, flung down into the tug and caught, and then I am lowered after it. Strong arms stretch up to lift me aboard. Behind me I hear someone shout an insult; the word “Jew” is whipped away in the wind. Monsieur Périer is handed down along with his luggage. He staggers to the other side of the tug and throws up. The ropes are cast off and we pull clear.
We pass behind the harbour wall and swing to port, moving between the towering hulls of a pair of anchored ironclads, towards the western end of the harbour. Over the tug’s stern, gathered in the place where the ferries berth, I can see a crowd of people, at least a hundred or two. And this is the instance when I realise the hold that the Dreyfus affair is beginning to exert on the imagination of my fellow countrymen. The tug manoeuvres alongside a military dock, where a cab is waiting. Next to it stands a young officer. As the crew jump off to tie up the boat, he steps forward and takes my suitcase. He passes it up to the taxi driver, then offers his hand to help me ashore.
He salutes. His manner is cold but impeccable. In the back of the cab, facing me and Périer, he says, “If I might make a suggestion, Colonel, it would perhaps be advisable to crouch down as low as possible, at least until we are some distance clear of the port.”
I do as he asks. And so, like a hunted criminal, I return to France.
——
At the railway station, a first-class compartment at the rear of the train has been reserved for our exclusive use. Périer pulls down the blinds on the doors and the windows and refuses to allow me out to buy a newspaper. If I so much as visit the lavatory he insists on accompanying me and standing outside the door until I have finished. Occasionally I wonder what he would do if I disobeyed his orders, which invariably are delivered in a nervous, embarrassed, almost pleading tone. But in truth I am afflicted by a curious fatalism. I surrender myself to events, and to the rocking cocoon of our journey, which begins in the darkness of Marseille at five in the afternoon and ends in the darkness of Paris at five in the morning.
I am asleep when we arrive at the gare de Lyon. The jolting of the compartment awakens me and I open my eyes to see Périer peering around the edge of the window blind. He says, “We shall wait here, Colonel, if you don’t mind, until the other passengers have disembarked.” Ten minutes later we step down onto the deserted platform. A porter wheels our cases ahead of us and we walk the length of the train to the ticket barrier, where a dozen men are waiting, holding notebooks. Périer warns me, “Don’t say anything,” and we hold on to our hats and hunch forward slightly, as if stepping into a headwind. Their shouted questions all come at once so that it is impossible to distinguish more than a few words: “Esterhazy …? Dreyfus …? Veiled lady …? Search …?” There is a brilliant lightning flash and the whumph of a magnesium tray igniting, but we are hurrying too fast, I am sure, for any photograph to be usable. Ahead of us a couple of railway officials have their arms outstretched and they steer us into an empty waiting room and close the door. Inside, my old friend Armand Mercier-Milon, now a colonel, salutes me very formally.
“Armand,” I say, “I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see you,” and I hold out my hand, but instead of offering me his, he merely gestures me towards the door.
“There’s a motorcar waiting,” he says. “We need to leave before they run round to the front of the station.”
Drawn up outside is a big modern vehicle in the livery of the Compagnie Paris–Lyon Méditerranée. I am squeezed onto the back seat between Périer and Mercier-Milon. The luggage is stowed and the car pulls away just as the reporters come pouring out of the station towards us. Mercier-Milon says, “I have a letter here for you from the Chief of Staff.”
It is awkward to open the envelope in the cramped space. Colonel Picquart, I order you very strictly not to communicate with anyone until you have given your evidence to General de Pellieux’s inquiry. Boisdeffre.
We pass quickly and in silence through the darkened, rainy streets. There is no traffic at this hour; hardly anyone is about. We head west along the boulevard Saint-Martin and I wonder if they might be taking me back to my apartment, but then suddenly we turn off north and pull up on the rue Saint-Lazare outside the giant hôtel Terminus. A porter opens the door. Périer gets out first. He says, “I’ll go in and register us.”
“Am I staying here?”
“For now.”
He disappears inside. I haul myself out of the car and contemplate the vast facade. It occupies an entire city block—five hundred bedrooms: a temple of modernity. Its electric lights glisten in the rain. Mercier-Milon joins me. Out of earshot of anyone else for the first time he says, “You are a bloody fool, Georges. What can you have been thinking of?” He speaks quietly but with force and I can tell he’s been bursting to say this since we left the railway station. “I mean, I feel sorry for Dreyfus myself—I was one of the few prepared to defend him at that charade of a court-martial. But you? Passing secret information to an outsider, so that he can use it against your own commanders? That’s a crime in my book. I doubt you’ll find a soldier in the whole of France who’ll defend what you’ve done.”
His vehemence both shakes and angers me. I say coldly, “What happens next?”
“You go to your room and change into your uniform. You speak to no one. You write to no one. You open no letters. I’ll wait in the lobby. At nine I’ll come and fetch you and escort you to the place Vendôme.”
Périer appears in the doorway. “Colonel Picquart? Our room is ready.”
“Our room? You mean we are to share one?”
“I am afraid so.”
I try to make light of this humiliating arrangement—“Your devotion to your duties really is exemplary, Monsieur Périer”—but that is when I realise that of course he is not an official of the Colonial Ministry at all; he is a secret policeman of the Sûreté.
The only time he lets me out of his sight is when I take a bath. Lying in the tub I listen to him moving around in the bedroom. Someone knocks on the outer door and he lets them in. I hear low male voices and I think how vulnerable I would be if two men were to enter quickly and grab my ankles. A simple case of drowning in the bath: it would be over in minutes with barely a mark to show.
Périer—if that is his name—calls through the door, “Your breakfast is here, Colonel.”
I step out of the bath, dry myself and put on the sky-blue tunic and the red trousers with grey stripe that make up the uniform of the 4th Tunisian Rifles. In the mirror it seems to me that I cut an incongruous figure—the colours of North Africa in the winter of northern Europe. They have even dressed me up to look a motley fool. I doubt you’ll find a soldier in the whole of France who’ll defend what you’ve done. Well then. So be it.
I drink black coffee. I eat tartine. I translate another page of Dostoyevsky. What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? At nine, Mercier-Milon comes to collect me and we ride down in the lift to the lobby without exchanging a word. Outside on the pavement the pack of journalists surges towards us. “Damn it,” says Mercier-Milon, “they must have followed us from the station.”
“If only our soldiers were as resourceful.”
“This isn’t funny, Georges.”
The same chorus of questions: “Dreyfus …? Esterhazy …? Search …? Veiled lady …?”
Mercier-Milon pushes them out of the way and opens the door to our carriage. “Jackals!” he mutters.
Over my shoulder I glimpse some of the reporters jumping in taxis to follow us. Our journey is short, barely half a kilometre. We arrive to find a dozen more already lying in wait in the corner of the place Vendôme. They block the huge, worm-eaten old door that leads to the headquarters of the military governor of Paris. Only when Mercier-Milon draws his sword and they hear the scrape of steel do they fall back and let us pass. We enter a chilly vaulted chamber, like the nave of an abandoned church, and climb a staircase lined with plaster statues. In this quasi-religious house I perceive that I have become something beyond a mere dangerous nuisance to my masters: I am a heretic to the faith. We sit in silence in a waiting room for a quarter of an hour until Pellieux’s aide comes to fetch me. As I stand to go, Mercier-Milon’s expression is one of pity mixed with a kind of dread. He says, very quietly, “Good luck, Georges.”
I know Pellieux by reputation only as a monarchist and a strict Catholic. I suspect that he despises me on sight. In response to my salute he simply points to a chair where I may sit. He is in his middle fifties, handsome, vain: his dark hair, which matches the blackness of his tunic, is brushed back carefully into a severe widow’s peak; his moustaches are full and splendid. He presides at a table flanked by a major and a captain whom he does not introduce; a uniformed secretary sits at a separate desk to take notes.
Pellieux says, “The purpose of this inquiry, Colonel, is to establish the facts regarding your investigation of Major Esterhazy. To that end I have already interviewed Major Esterhazy himself, Monsieur Mathieu Dreyfus, and Senator Auguste Scheurer-Kestner and Maître Louis Leblois. At the end of my inquiry I will recommend to the minister what, if any, disciplinary action needs to be taken. Do you understand?”
“Yes, General.” Now I know why they have taken such pains to prevent me speaking to anyone: they have already interviewed Louis and they don’t want me to know how much he has told them.
“Very well, let us begin at the beginning.” Pellieux’s voice is cold and precise. “When did Major Esterhazy first come to your attention?”
“When the Statistical Section intercepted a petit bleu addressed to him from the German Embassy.”
“And this was when?”
“In the spring of last year.”
“Be more precise.”
“I’m not sure of the precise date.”
“You told General Gonse that it was in ‘late April.’ ”
“Then that is when it must have been.”
“No, in fact it was in early March.”
I hesitate. “Was it?”
“Come, Colonel. You know perfectly well it was in March. Major Henry was on compassionate leave at the bedside of his dying mother. He remembers the date. He returned to Paris on a flying visit, met Agent Auguste and received a consignment of documents, which he then handed over to you. So why did you falsify the date in your report?”
The aggression of his manner and the detail of his research catch me off guard. All I can remember is that by the time I came to submit my report I had been investigating Esterhazy for nearly six months without Gonse’s knowledge: an act of insubordination which I thought I might make slightly more palatable by pretending it was only four. At the time the lie didn’t seem important—it isn’t important—but suddenly now in this room, under the hostile eye of this Grand Inquisitor, it looks inexplicably suspicious.
Pellieux says sarcastically, “Take all the time you need, Colonel.”
After a long pause I reply, “I must have been confused about the dates.”
“ ‘Confused about the dates’?” Pellieux turns mockingly to his aides. “But I thought you were supposed to be a soldier of scientific precision, Colonel—part of the modern-thinking generation that would replace such reactionary old fossils as me!”
“I’m afraid even scientists occasionally make mistakes, General. But in the end the date is of no significance.”
“On the contrary, dates are always significant. Treason itself is mostly a question of dates, as the saying has it. First you claim Major Esterhazy only came to your attention in April. Now we have established it was at least March. But there is evidence in your file on Esterhazy indicating it was even earlier.”
He passes the captain a newspaper cutting. The captain dutifully comes round from behind the table and hands it to me. It is an announcement of the death of the marquis de Nettancourt, Esterhazy’s father-in-law, dated 6 January 1896.
“I’ve never seen this before.”
Pellieux affects astonishment. “Well then, where did it come from?”
“I presume it must have been added to the file after I left.”
“But you would agree at first glance that this suggests you were taking an interest in Esterhazy two months before the arrival of the petit bleu?”
“At first glance, yes. I think that may be the reason why someone put it there.”
Pellieux makes a note. “Go back to the petit bleu. Describe its arrival.”
“Major Henry brought it in as part of a delivery late one afternoon.”
“In what form was this delivery?”
“The material always arrived in small, cone-shaped brown paper sacks. This particular cone was bulkier than usual, because Henry had missed a meeting with our agent due to his mother’s illness.”
“Did you examine the contents with him?”
“No, as I mentioned earlier, he had a train to catch. I put it straight in my safe and gave it to Captain Lauth the following morning.”
“Is it possible that someone could have interfered with the cone between your being handed it by Henry and you giving it to Lauth?”
“No, it was locked up.”
“But you could have interfered with it. In fact you could have added to it the fragments of the petit bleu.”
I feel my face turning red. “That is an outrageous accusation.”
“Your outrage is irrelevant. Answer the question.”
“Very well, the answer is yes. Yes, I could, theoretically, have added the petit bleu to the consignment. But I did not.”
“Is this the petit bleu?” Pellieux holds it up. “Do you recognise it?”
The light in the chamber is dim. I have to lean forward and half rise from my seat to make it out. It looks more worn than I remember it: I assume it must have been handled many times over the past year. “Yes. That looks like it.”
“Do you realise that under a microscope it is possible to see that the original address has been scratched out and that of Major Esterhazy written over it? And also that chemical analysis has revealed that the ink on the back of the telegram card is different to that on the front? One is iron gall ink while the other contains an ingredient found in the trees of Campeche.”
I jerk my head back slightly in surprise. “Then it’s been tampered with.”
“Indeed it has. It is a forgery.”
“No, General—it has been tampered with since I left Paris. When I was still in the section I swear that was a genuine document—I must have held it in my hands a hundred times. May I examine it more closely? Perhaps it is slightly different …”
“No, you have already identified it. I don’t want it damaged any further. The petit bleu is a fake. And I suggest that the individual most likely to have perpetrated the forgery is you.”
“With respect, General, that is a preposterous allegation.”
“Is it? Then why did you ask Captain Lauth for his assistance in making the petit bleu look more genuine?”
“I did not.”
“You did. You ordered him to have it franked by the postal authorities, so that it would look as if it had actually been delivered—deny it if you dare!”
The lies and accusations are flying at me so fast I am finding it difficult to keep track. I grip the armrests of my chair and reply as calmly as I can, “I asked Lauth if he could photograph the petit bleu in such a way that it would appear to be a whole document rather than one that had been torn up—exactly the technique he used earlier with the bordereau. And my motive was the same: to have a version that could be circulated within the ministry without compromising our source. Lauth pointed out, correctly, that the address side had not been franked, therefore anyone looking at it would deduce that it must have been intercepted before it was posted. That was when I mused on the possibility of getting it franked. But it was no more than that and the idea was dropped.”
“Captain Lauth gives a different version.”
“Perhaps he does. But why would I go to such lengths to falsely implicate a man I had never even met?”
“That is for you to tell us.”
“The notion is absurd. I had no need to forge any evidence. The bordereau alone is proof of Esterhazy’s guilt—and no one can suggest I altered that!”
“Ah yes, the bordereau,” says Pellieux, sorting through his papers. “Thank you for bringing that up. Did you, either directly or indirectly, pass a facsimile of the bordereau to Le Matin in November last year?”
“No, General.”
“Did you, directly or indirectly, pass details of the so-called secret dossier to L’Éclair that same September?”
“I did not.”
“Have you passed information, directly or indirectly, to Senator Scheurer-Kestner?”
The question is inevitable; so is my answer. “Yes, I have, indirectly.”
“And the intermediary was your lawyer, Maître Leblois?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew when you gave this information to Leblois that it would be passed to the senator?”
“I wanted the facts placed in the hands of a responsible person who could raise the matter confidentially with the government. I never intended the details to reach the press.”
“Never mind what you intended, Colonel. The fact is, you went behind the backs of your superior officers.”
“Only when it became clear that I had no alternative—that my superiors would not fully investigate this whole affair.”
“You showed Maître Leblois various letters sent to you by General Gonse?”
“Yes.”
“Just as last year you showed Maître Leblois the secret dossier, the existence of which he then leaked to L’Éclair?”
“No.”
“But there is a witness who saw you showing the secret file to Leblois.”
“I showed him one file only—it was not secret. It related to carrier pigeons, of all things. Major Henry witnessed that.”
“Colonel Henry,” Pellieux corrects me. “He has just been promoted. And I am not interested in pigeons but in the secret dossier about Dreyfus. You showed it to your lawyer last September, who then revealed it either to the Dreyfus family or to L’Éclair in order to embarrass the army. That is your modus operandi.”
“I deny that absolutely.”
“Who is Blanche?”
Once again the sudden switch in his angle of attack catches me off balance. I say slowly, “The only Blanche I know is Mademoiselle Blanche de Comminges, the sister of the comte de Comminges.”
“She is a friend of yours?”
“Yes.”
“An intimate friend?”
“I have known her a long time, if that is what you mean. She has a musical salon attended by a number of officers.”
“She sent you this telegram in Tunisia: We have proof that the bleu was forged by Georges. Blanche. What are we to make of that?”
“I received a telegram with that wording. But I am sure it was not from her.”
“Why?”
“Because she knows nothing of the secret details of the Dreyfus case nor of my involvement in it.”
“Even though she has gone around Paris quite openly, I understand, for several years now, telling people of her conviction that Dreyfus is innocent?”
“She has her opinion. That has nothing to do with me.”
“This salon of hers—does it include many Jews?”
“A few perhaps—among the musicians.”
Pellieux makes another note, as if I have just conceded something highly significant. He searches through his file. “Here is another coded telegram sent to you in Tunisia: Stop the Demigod. Everything is discovered. Extremely serious matter. Speranza. Who is Speranza?”
“And yet this person wrote to you a year ago, shortly after you left the Statistical Section.”
“No.”
“Yes, they did. I have the letter here.” Pellieux gives it to the captain, who once again walks round to hand it to me:
I am leaving the house. Our friends are dismayed. Your unfortunate departure has upset everything. Hasten your return, hurry! As the holiday time is very favourable for the cause, we are counting on you for the 20th. She is ready but cannot and will not act until she has talked to you. Once the Demigod has spoken, we will act.
Speranza
Pellieux stares at me. “What do you say to that?”
“I don’t know what to say. I’ve never seen it before.”
“No, you wouldn’t have done. It was intercepted by the Statistical Section last December and a decision was taken not to forward it to you, due to the highly suspicious nature of the language. But still your position remains that none of it means anything to you?”
“Yes.”
“Then what do you make of this, which was allowed to be delivered to you after you left Paris but before you went to Tunisia?”
Most honourable sir,
I would never have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes. As of today, the masterpiece is finished: we are to call it Cagliostro Robert Houdin. The comtesse speaks of you all the time and tells me every day that the Demigod asks when it will be possible to see the Good God.
Her devoted servant who kisses your hand.
J
The copy has been written out by Lauth and is stamped “Secret,” with a serial number appended by Gribelin. I remember reading the original when I was stuck in some godforsaken garrison town last winter: in my drab quarters it was like opening a bouquet from the boulevard Saint-Germain. I say, “It’s from an agent of mine, Germain Ducasse. He’s reporting on the closing-down of an operation I was running against the German Embassy. When he writes ‘the masterpiece is finished’ he means that the apartment we were renting has been cleared out successfully. ‘Robert Houdin’ is the cover name of a police agent, Jean-Alfred Desvernine, who was working for me on the investigation of Esterhazy.”
“Ah,” says Pellieux, as if he has caught me out. “So ‘J’ is a man?”
“Yes.”
“And yet he ‘kisses your hand’?”
I think how amused Ducasse would be if he could see the general’s expression of disgusted disbelief.
Pellieux says, “Don’t smirk, Colonel!”
“I’m sorry, General. He is an affected young fellow, I admit, and quite silly in some respects. But he did his work well, and is perfectly trustworthy. It’s merely a joke.”
“And ‘Cagliostro’?”
“Another joke.”
“Pardon me: I’m a simple family man, Colonel. I don’t understand these ‘jokes.’ ”
“Cagliostro was an Italian occultist—Strauss wrote an operetta about him, Cagliostro in Vienna—and a man less likely to be susceptible to the occult than Desvernine you could not hope to find. Therein lies the irony. It’s all very harmless, General, I assure you. But obviously suspicious minds in the Statistical Section have used it to build a case against me. I do hope that at some point your inquiry will investigate these other forgeries which are obviously designed to blacken my name.”
“On the contrary, I think you have blackened your own name, Colonel, by associating in the first place with this circle of neurotic homosexuals and table-turners! So I take it the ‘comtesse’ referred to must be Mademoiselle Blanche de Comminges?”
“Yes. She is not actually a comtesse but she can sometimes behave like one.”
“And the ‘Demigod’ and the ‘Good God’?”
“They are nicknames invented by Mademoiselle de Comminges. A mutual friend of ours, Captain Lallemand, is the Demigod; I’m afraid to say that I am the Good God.”
Pellieux regards me contemptuously: to my other sins can now be added blasphemy. “And why is Captain Lallemand the Demigod?”
“Because of his fondness for Wagner.”
“And is he also part of a Jewish circle?”
“Wagner? I very much doubt it.”
It is a mistake, of course. One should never attempt wit in these circumstances. I know it the moment the words leave my lips. The major and the captain and even the secretary smile. But Pellieux’s face sets rigid. “There is nothing in the least amusing about the situation you are in, Colonel. These letters and telegrams are highly incriminating.” He flicks back to the beginning of his file. “Now, let us go over the discrepancies in your testimony once again. Why did you falsely claim to have taken possession of the petit bleu at the end of April last year when in fact it was pieced together at the beginning of March …?”
The interrogation continues throughout the day—the same questions, again and again, designed to catch me in a lie. I am familiar with the technique; Pellieux is remorseless in deploying it. At the end of the afternoon session he consults an antique silver pocket watch and says, “We will resume tomorrow morning. In the meantime, Colonel, you are not to communicate with anyone, or to leave, for so much as a minute, the supervision of the officers appointed by this inquiry.”
I stand and salute.
Outside it is dusk. In the waiting room Mercier-Milon pulls back the edge of the curtain and peers down at the crowd of reporters in the place Vendôme. He says, “We should try to leave by a different route.” We go downstairs to the cellar and cross a deserted kitchen to a rear door that opens on to a yard. It has started raining. In the gloom the piles of rubbish seem to move and rustle like living things, and as we pick our way past them I see the wet brown backs of rats slithering among the rotted food. Mercier-Milon finds a gate in the wall that leads to the garden at the back of the Ministry of Justice. We pass across a muddy lawn and out on to the rue Cambon. A couple of journalists, posted as pickets, see us emerge through the wall next to a streetlamp and we have to sprint two hundred metres to the taxi rank in the rue Saint-Honoré, where we seize the only cab. We pull away just as our pursuers catch up with us.
The jolt of the horse throws us back in our seats, damp and breathless, and Mercier-Milon laughs. “My God, Georges, we’re certainly not young men anymore!” He pulls out a large white cotton handkerchief and mops his face and grins at me. For a moment he seems to forget that I am in his custody. He opens the window and shouts up to the driver, “Hôtel Terminus!” then slams it shut.
He spends most of the short journey with his arms folded, staring out at the street. It is only as we pull into the rue Saint-Lazare that he suddenly says, without turning round, “You know, it’s funny, General Pellieux asked me yesterday why I’d testified in Dreyfus’s defence.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said one could only speak as one found—that he was always a good soldier and loyal as far as I was concerned.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He said he’d tried to keep an open mind on the subject himself. But last week when he was asked to lead this inquiry he was shown evidence at the ministry by General Gonse that absolutely proved beyond question that Dreyfus was a traitor. And from that moment on he’s had no doubt that your allegations about Esterhazy are false—the only question now as far as he’s concerned is whether you’ve been duped by a syndicate of Jews or paid by them.” He turns to look at me at last. “I thought you ought to know.”
At that moment the taxi pulls up, and even before the door is opened we are surrounded by reporters. Mercier-Milon clambers out and descends into the melee, using his elbows to clear a path. I follow, and once I reach the lobby the concierge puts his arms across the entrance to prevent anyone following us in. On the marble floor, beneath the lurid diamanté chandeliers, Périer is already waiting to rush me straight upstairs. I turn to thank Mercier-Milon for his warning, but he has already gone.
I am not allowed to eat downstairs in public. I don’t protest: I have no appetite in any case. Dinner is brought up to our room and I push a piece of veal around my plate with my fork until I give up in disgust. Just after nine, a bellboy delivers a letter that has been left for me at reception. On the envelope I recognise Louis’s writing. I’d like to read what he has to say. I suspect he wants to warn me of something before tomorrow’s hearing. But I don’t want to give Pellieux any excuse to bring fresh disciplinary charges against me. So I burn it, unopened, in the grate in front of Périer.
That night I lie awake listening to Périer snoring in the other bed and try to calculate the weakness of my position. It seems to me precarious whichever way I look at it. I have been delivered to my enemies trussed hand and foot by the tiny threads of a hundred lies and innuendos carefully spun out over the past year. Most people will be only too happy to believe I work for a Jewish syndicate. And as long as the army is allowed to investigate its own misdeeds I see no hope of escape. Henry and Gonse can simply invent whatever “absolute proof” they require and then show it privately to the likes of Pellieux, safe in the knowledge that such loyal staff officers will always do what is expected of them.
Outside in the rue Saint-Lazare even at midnight there is a greater profusion of motorcars than I have ever heard before. The sound of pneumatic tyres on wet asphalt is new to me, like a continual tearing of paper, and eventually it lulls me to sleep.
The next morning when he comes to pick me up, Mercier-Milon has reverted to his former brusque silence. His only comment is to tell me to bring my suitcase: I will not be returning to the hotel.
In the place Vendôme, in the room set aside for the inquiry, Pellieux and the others are in exactly the same positions as when I left them, as if they have spent the night under dust sheets, and the general resumes where he left off as though there had been no interruption. “Tell us once again, if you would, the circumstances in which you came into possession of the petit bleu…”
This goes on for another hour or so, and then he says, without any change of tone, “Madame Monnier—how much of your work have you disclosed to her?”
My throat tightens immediately. “Madame Monnier?”
“Yes, the wife of Monsieur Philippe Monnier of the Foreign Ministry. What have you told her?”
I say in a strained voice, “General—please—I insist—she has nothing to do with this.”
“That is not for you to determine.” He turns to the secretary. “Colonel Picquart’s documents, please.” And while the secretary opens his dispatch box, Pellieux switches his attention back to me. “You will probably not be aware of the fact, Colonel, because you were at sea, but an official search was carried out of your apartment on Tuesday, following an allegation by Major Esterhazy that you were keeping official papers there.”
For a moment I can only gape at him. “No, I most certainly was not aware of it, General. And if I had been I would have protested strongly. Who authorised this raid?”
“I did, at the request of Colonel Henry. Major Esterhazy claims to have received information from a woman whose name he does not know but who swears that she is an acquaintance of yours. This woman, whom he has only seen heavily veiled, says that you have been keeping secret documents relating to his case at your private address.”
It is such an absurd idea, Pauline and Esterhazy together, that I find myself emitting a gasp of laughter. But then the secretary places several bundles of letters in front of Pellieux and I recognise them as my private correspondence: old letters from my mother and my dead brother; correspondence from my family and friends; business letters and love letters; invitations and telegrams kept for their sentimental value. “This is an outrage!”
“Come now, Colonel—why such sensitivity? I don’t believe we have taken any action against you that you haven’t taken against Major Esterhazy. Now,” he says, picking up a collection of Pauline’s letters tied with a blue silk ribbon, “it’s apparent from the nature of her letters to you that you have an intimate relationship with Madame Monnier—one that I assume her husband is not aware of?”
My face is burning now. “I absolutely refuse to answer that question.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that my relationship with Madame Monnier has no conceivable relevance to this inquiry.”
“Surely it does if you disclosed secret information to her, or if she is the so-called veiled lady in contact with Major Esterhazy? And most certainly it does if you have left yourself open to blackmail as a result of it.”
“But none of those things is true!” Now I know what Louis was trying to warn me about in his letter the previous evening. “Tell me, General, am I at any point going to be asked about the central facts of this business?”
“There is no need to be impertinent, Colonel.”
“For example, about the fact that Esterhazy plainly wrote the bordereau—that even the government’s main expert concedes his handwriting is a perfect match?”
“That is outside the scope of this inquiry.”
“Or the use of falsified material in the dossier used to convict Dreyfus?”
“The Dreyfus case is res judicata.”
“Or the conspiracy within the General Staff to keep me in North Africa—or even to send me to my death—to prevent my exposing what had happened?”
“That is outside the scope of this inquiry.”
“Then if you will forgive me, General, I believe your inquiry to be a sham and that your conclusions were written before I even started to give my evidence, and I hereby withdraw my cooperation from this process.”
And with that I stand, salute, turn on my heel and stride out of the room. I expect to hear Pellieux bellowing at me to stay where I am. But he says nothing, whether because he is too surprised to react or because he feels he has made his point and is happy to see the back of me I do not know and nor, at that moment, do I care. I retrieve my suitcase from the empty waiting room and descend the stairs. I pass a few officers, who give me sidelong looks. None tries to stop me. I go out through the cathedral-like door and into the place Vendôme. My exit is so unexpected that most of the journalists don’t notice me hurrying past them and I am almost at the corner before I hear them shouting—“There he goes!”—and then the sound of their feet running over the cobbles after me. I put my head down and increase my pace, ignoring their questions. A couple scramble to get ahead of me and try to block my path, but I push them aside. On the rue de Rivoli I spot a taxi and flag it down. The reporters fan out along the street searching for cabs to follow me; one athletic fellow even tries to keep up with me on foot. But the driver cracks his whip, and when I look back he has given up the chase.
The rue Yvon-Villarceau runs north to south between the rue Copernic and the rue Boissière. Directly opposite my apartment building, at the northern end, the foundations are being sunk for a new block. As we pass the entrance I scan the street for reporters and police, but all I can see are workmen. I tell the driver to pull up round the corner, then pay the fare and walk back.
The double doors are glazed and barred. I cup my hands and peer through the dusty glass into the empty vestibule. At my feet, mud and rubble have turned the cobblestones into a country lane; the smell of freshly dug earth seasons the cold rain. I feel like a visitor returning after a long interval to the scene of an earlier life. I open the door and am halfway to the stairs when I hear the familiar faint click of a latch. But whereas before the concierge would always scuttle from her lair to engage me in conversation, now she keeps her distance, watching me through a crack in her doorway. I pretend not to notice and mount the steps, carrying my suitcase up to the fourth floor. On the landing there is no sign of forced entry: she must have given the authorities her key.
The moment I open the door I am shocked by how thoroughly the place has been searched. The carpet has been rolled back. All my books have been removed from their shelves, shaken out and replaced in haphazard order; bookmarks litter the floor. The chest in which I keep my old letters has been forced and emptied; the drawers of the escritoire also forced; even my sheet music has been taken out of the piano stool and sifted for clues; the piano lid has been removed and propped against the wall. I switch on the desk lamp and pick up a photograph of my mother that has fallen to the floor; the glass is cracked. Suddenly I visualise Henry standing in this very spot—Colonel Henry, as I must now learn to call him—licking his clumsy butcher’s fingers as he turns the pages of my correspondence, reading aloud some intimate endearment for the amusement of the men from the Sûreté.
The image is intolerable.
A faint sound comes from the other room—a creak, a breath, a groan. Slowly I draw my revolver. I take a couple of steps across the bare boards and cautiously push open the door. Curled up on the bed, looking up at me through eyes bruised and swollen by crying, still wearing her coat, her hair dishevelled, her face white, as if she has fainted or suffered an accident, is Pauline.
“They told Philippe,” she says.
She has been here all night. She read in the papers that I’d been brought back to Paris so she came round at midnight assuming I’d be here. She stayed, waiting. She didn’t know where else to go.
I kneel beside the bed, holding her hand. “What exactly has happened?”
“Philippe has thrown me out. He won’t let me see the girls.”
I squeeze her fingers, momentarily speechless. “Have you slept?”
“No.”
“At least take off your coat, my darling.”
I stand and pick my way through the damage in the drawing room. In the kitchen I heat a saucepan on the gas ring and make her a drink of cognac, hot water and honey, all the while struggling to comprehend what is happening. Their methods stagger me—the ruthlessness, the speed. When I take the glass through to her, she has undressed to her shift and got into bed and is lying half raised on the pillows with the sheet drawn tight around her neck. She looks at me warily.
“Here. Drink this.”
“God, it’s disgusting. What is it?”
“Cognac. The army cure for everything. Drink it.”
I sit at the bottom of the bed and smoke a cigarette and wait until she is suffiently revived to start telling me what happened. On Friday afternoon she went out to tea with a friend: everything normal. When she returned home, Philippe was back from the office early. There was no sign of the girls. “He looked strange, mad … At that moment I guessed what had happened. I was almost sick with worry.” She asked him calmly where they were. He said he had sent them away. “He said that I was not morally fit to be the mother of his children—that he wouldn’t tell me where they were, not unless I told him the truth about my affair with you. I had no choice. I’m sorry.”
“Are they safe?”
She nods, cupping the glass between her hands for warmth. “They’re with his sister. But he won’t let me see them.” She starts to cry. “He says he won’t let me have custody of them after the divorce.”
“Well, that’s nonsense. Don’t worry. He can’t do that. He’ll calm down. He’s just shocked and angry to have found out you’ve been having an affair.”
“Oh, he knew about that,” she says bitterly. “He’s always suspected. He said he could tolerate it so long as no one else knew. It was being called in and told about it by his superiors—that’s what he can’t abide.”
“And who told the Foreign Ministry, did he say?”
“The army.”
“Unbelievable!”
“He said the army are convinced I’m this ‘veiled lady’ the papers keep talking about. He said it will destroy his career to be married to a woman mixed up in it all. He says the girls …” She starts to cry again.
“My God, what a mess!” I put my head in my hands. “I am so very sorry to have dragged you into this.”
For a while neither of us says anything, and then, as ever, when faced with emotional turmoil, I try to take refuge in practicalities. “The first thing we need to do is find you a decent lawyer. I’m sure Louis will take it on, or at least he’ll know someone good who can. You’ll need a lawyer to deal with the army on your behalf, and to try to keep your name out of the papers. And to handle the divorce—Philippe will divorce you, you’re sure of that?”
“Oh yes—if it’s a question of his career, I have no doubt.”
Even this I try to put in a good light. “Well then at least it will be in his interests to keep it quiet. And perhaps you can use that to negotiate custody of the children …” My voice trails off. I don’t know what else to say, except to repeat: “I am so very sorry …”
She reaches out her arms to me. And so we cling to each other on my narrow bed, like survivors of a shipwreck, and that is when I vow to myself that I will have revenge.