“Jojo and his pal pass notes to each other. Jojo gets his messages at the Circus Fernando and the guy picks up his at a tobacconist on the Boulevard de Clichy near the corner of the Rue Lepic. You can bet they’re up to no good. As for the cop watching Jojo. . . ” She caught herself on the verge of saying something disparaging about the police.
“Please go on, Delphine.”
She stared at her hands, her fear returning like a sharp shaft of light cutting through the amiable fog of brandy, cigarettes, and Achille’s good manners. Finally, and without looking up she replied, “Well, Inspector, he just hangs around doing—nothing.”
“I see. Thank you for your honesty. Now, is there anything else you want to tell me about Jojo and this man he meets?”
She shook her head. “The Gunzberg boys are still on the lookout, that’s all.”
Achille took a moment to digest her information. If the fingerprints on the letter matched one of the sets of prints he’d obtained at the crime scene, he could assume the man Jojo met at the mill was his suspected partner in crime, Sir Henry. A matching set of Jojo’s prints could complete the connection. He would test the letter in Bertillon’s laboratory later that afternoon. He decided to change the subject to Virginie. “Delphine, I’d like to ask you a few questions about Mlle Ménard. According to your initial statement to the police, you said that as far as you knew she did not feel threatened by any particular individual. Do you know if she was being helped by someone?”
Her brow knitted and she eyed him curiously. “What do you mean by ‘helped’?”
“I’ve heard that Mlle Ménard was a troubled young woman and that she’d found someone who was assisting her with her troubles, a doctor perhaps. If that were indeed the case, I believe she would have said something to you. After all, you were quite close to her, weren’t you?”
She glared at Lautrec, as if he were the source of the information. He responded with a shrug. He was itching for charcoal and paper so he could record the expression on Delphine’s face, which he found most interesting. But to have done so would have been outré; instead he scratched his itch with another drink.
Delphine ignored the artist and replied to Achille. “We were very close, Inspector. Virginie was troubled, that’s true. We all are, I suppose. But perhaps her troubles were worse than most. You see, Virginie was full of hate, but all she ever wanted was love. She hated those who had hurt her, and she hated herself for hating. This is hard to explain, but I think when people hate themselves as she did, they feel that no one can love them. So when the wrong person comes along they’re—oh, I can’t find the right word—”
“Vulnerable?” offered Lautrec.
She glanced at him and then looked back at Achille. “Maybe that’s the word I was looking for. I don’t know, Inspector. I’m an uneducated woman.”
“I believe vulnerable is the right word, Delphine. The unscrupulous among us mark such people; they take advantage of their vulnerability. And sometimes the victims love their tormentors no matter how badly they are abused. Can you please tell me more? Who hurt her? What was the source of her troubles?”
Delphine looked down and silently nodded her head in agreement. She recalled how she had fallen for Jojo and the way he had mistreated her when she was barely fourteen. After a moment, Delphine related the story Virginie had told her about her childhood in Rouen.
“Virginie came to Paris at the age of eighteen. She was kept by a rich silk merchant who died last year. He left her a little money, but she supported herself by modeling and dancing at the Moulin. She took the merchant’s name, Ménard, as her stage name. She was an orphan, raised in Rouen by Monsieur Mercier, her father’s eldest brother, and his wife. The Merciers were butchers and charcutiers. They had no children of their own and agreed to care for Virginie with the understanding that she would help around the house and shop and learn the trade.
“Virginie was immediately put to work. At first she was grateful for the food, clothing, and shelter her aunt and uncle provided. But memories of that childhood in Rouen haunted her, especially a nightmare of the Merciers slaughtering and butchering her pet pig.
“When she was a girl she avoided the slaughterhouse, an outbuilding behind the shop that was connected to the pigpen by a gated chute. On certain days Uncle Mercier would select a pig, open the gate, and drive it toward the shed with slaps and prods to its backside.
“Feeding the pigs was one of Virginie’s chores, and she didn’t mind it. She liked the animals and named them; there was fat Alphonse, greedy Gaston, and her favorite, little Buttercup. ‘You’re such a pretty little piggy,’ she would say as she patted Buttercup’s snout. The bigger, stronger pigs were always pushing Buttercup away from the feeding trough but Virginie saw to it that her friend always got her share.
“One morning, Virginie had begun her daily work as usual by sweeping out the store. Her aunt came up and tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Put down your broom and come with me. This morning you’ll learn an important part of our trade.’
“She followed Madame Mercier to the shed. They entered through a creaking, rusty-hinged back door. Pale light streamed in through the open gated doorway leading to the chute and the pigpen. Virginie could hear her ‘friends’ grunting and squealing in the background.
“Madame Mercier left Virginie in the middle of the shed near the butcher’s block. ‘Stay here, watch but don’t move,’ Madame ordered. Then she grabbed a heavy mallet from the block and walked toward the gate. Virginie’s eyes scanned the scene: the heavy wooden block with its assortment of knives and saws laid out like surgical instruments prior to an operation; the large iron pulley, block and tackle suspended from a ceiling beam; the zinc basins, buckets, barrels, and a wooden rack. These were unfamiliar to her, but she imagined what they might be used for. Her stomach knotted and her throat dried; her hands sweated and trembled.
“The gate swung open; Monsieur Mercier prodded the grunting pig one last time. It lurched forward into the shed and Virginie’s eyes widened in recognition. ‘It’s Buttercup! Please, please don’t hurt her!’ she cried, just as her aunt brought the mallet crashing down on the animal’s head. Stunned, Buttercup collapsed in a heap onto the sawdust-spread planking. Virginie ran to the pig and tried to help it onto its feet.
“Madame Mercier was a big, tough woman of thirty-five, twenty years younger than her husband. She dropped her mallet, grabbed Virginie by the shoulder, pulled her away from the pig, and spun her round. Then, with her other hand, Madame slapped the child’s face so hard it made her ears ring and her eyes see stars. A trickle of blood ran down Virginie’s cut lip.
“‘If you dare do that again,’ growled Madame, ‘I’ll give you such a hiding you won’t sit down for a week. Now shut up, stop sniveling, and watch!’
“Still half-dizzy from the blow, Virginie backed away and watched her aunt and uncle slaughter the pig. Madame tied one of Buttercup’s back feet to the block and tackle and hoisted her off the floor while Monsieur ran to the butcher’s block, grabbed a long, sharp knife, and then hustled back to the dangling pig. Virginie watched in silence as her uncle made a deep thrust into the center of the neck in front of the breastbone. Buttercup squealed and wriggled as her blood spurted and streamed into the collection vat, some of the fluid slopping over onto the sawdust-covered floor. After a few moments the pig lost consciousness and died.
“They forced her to watch and help in the butchering: scalding in a boiling vat, scraping, singeing and more scraping, skinning, gutting, removal of bladder and sex organs, the sawing, splitting and dressing, the racking and drying of offal. The stink of blood, guts, burned hair, shit, and piss, stuck in her nostrils and her memory. And as she worked, a hatred of her aunt and uncle grew inside her like a cancer, and that hatred made her stubborn. She would not slaughter and butcher pigs; she would not eat sausage, ham, or the Mercier’s special delicacy, pork pâté.