“Shirking again, Collingwood? We shall have to brisk you up.” The prefect emerged suddenly from his lair, gleefully grinning at the prospect of administering yet another beating to his chosen victim. “What have we here?” The bully snatched the portrait from Henry’s open hand and examined it with an odious leer. “Oh my, she’s a pretty one, ain’t she? Is she your sweetheart, boy?”
Henry fought back tears. “No sir,” he replied in a voice choked with emotion, “she’s my mother. Please give it back to me.”
The prefect laughed. “Your mother, indeed? So now I’ve discovered your secret. ‘Idle hands are the Devil’s playground.’ You’ve been avoiding useful work to indulge in incestuous fantasies. I shall flog you twice as hard for that, you filthy little beast.”
Henry exploded with pent up rage. The prefect was almost a foot taller and outweighed the younger boy by more than three stone, yet he was completely unprepared for what happened next. Henry leapt from the bench and, in a blur of violent motion, uncoiled like an overly taut spring. Releasing all the force of his small body, he slammed a fist into his tormentor’s groin. The prefect screamed, grabbed his crotch, and crumpled to his knees. But Henry did not stop there. He launched a second hard right aimed at the senior boy’s face that broke his nose with an audible crack.
The prefect writhed in agony on the floorboards, choking and gagging on his own blood. Henry sprang on top of him and continued his furious pummeling until several boys came and pulled him off. Had they not arrived promptly he might have killed the older boy, or at least have done him irreparable harm. As it was, the prefect spent a week in hospital, and Henry was permanently expelled from school. According to the headmaster, the boy was mentally and emotionally unstable. But Henry’s father was determined to get his only son into Oxford. He hired a tutor and, away from the society of other boys, young Henry proved himself an apt pupil. By the time he was ready for university, he was also better prepared to socialize with his peers.
“Henry, are you all right? You’ve been staring at me for the longest time.” Betsy had watched his blank face with amazement, as he appeared to have gone into a trance.
He shook his head and flushed with embarrassment, realizing that he had drifted off. He gazed into the eyes of the woman to whom he felt inextricably bound by fate, passion, and a secret that could destroy him, and perhaps her as well. “I’m sorry, my dear. I fear my mother’s a subject I—I never discuss with anyone. The memory’s too painful.” He paused a moment before adding: “But then, with you it’s different. Here, let me show you something.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and withdrew a gold watch. Opening the case to a miniature portrait, he handed the watch to Betsy. “That was she at the time of her eighteenth birthday.”
Betsy studied the young woman’s portrait for a minute before returning the watch. “She was very beautiful. I’m sorry, darling. You must miss her awfully.”
He nodded sadly as he tucked the watch back into his pocket. Then, with a faint smile: “Yes, but now I’ve found someone to fill that void in my heart.” His words were spontaneous, and their sincerity surprised him even as he spoke. He continued without waiting for her reply. “She suffered, most particularly in her final year; my father and his colleagues could do little or nothing for her. Since it was my fate to become a doctor, I decided that I would devote my practice to women, to use the latest methods of medical science to preserve their health and alleviate their suffering.”
She smiled in response. The story of his mother had touched her deeply. But she was skeptical by nature, and did not altogether trust him. Without comment, she turned to gaze at the river, listening to its rippling as it flowed beneath the arches and round ancient piers.
Henry moved closer to her. He put his arm round her waist and stared silently into the distance. We’re adrift in a sea of lies, he thought. But at that moment he was certain of one thing; he would propose marriage to Betsy Endicott; the only question was where and when.
The loudly ticking wall clock produced the only audible sound in Magistrate Leblanc’s office. Light streamed through tall windows opening onto the courtyard of the Palais de Justice. The Magistrate, a stout, gray, grandfatherly man in his sixties, with antennae-like brows and mutton-chop side-whiskers spreading beneath his temples down to the jaw line, sat hunched over a great mahogany desk stacked high with documents, photographs, and files. Above and behind him on gray painted walls hung the symbols of the Republic, the Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité motto beneath a profile of Marianne surrounded by the tricolor. The wall also displayed a portrait of President Carnot on its otherwise bare surface.
The Magistrate’s brow furrowed and his thin lips pursed as he examined Gilles’s photographs of Virginie Ménard’s head, taken that morning at the crime scene and the Morgue. Tugging his whiskers nervously, he concentrated on the odd insignia tattooed on the decomposing forehead, a Masonic compass and square superimposed over a Star of David. “What sort of monster could have done this?” he muttered under his breath, though loudly enough to be heard clearly by the officers assembled before him. As his slightly trembling left hand held the photographs up for closer scrutiny, his right descended from his whiskers to the large Masonic symbol dangling from his gold watch chain.
The Magistrate set down the pictures. His sharp blue eyes darted behind his spectacles, looking from one stiff, silent officer to the next: Chiefs Féraud and Bertillon, Inspectors Lefebvre, Rousseau, and Duroc, the hapless detective detailed to shadow Jojo the Clown. The questioning eyes finally came to rest on Achille. “I commend you, Inspector Lefebvre, for your skill in marshalling evidence in this case. You are also to be commended for bringing in the Gunzberg brothers as witnesses. Their testimony backed by your forensic evidence will prove invaluable at trial.” He paused a moment before admonishing: “But in future I trust you’ll inform your chief and me before permitting untrained boys to traipse around Paris playing detective.”
“Yes, Monsieur Magistrate,” Achille replied respectfully.
Leblanc then turned to Rousseau’s man, Duroc. “As for you, M. Duroc, I hope you improve your powers of observation prior to undertaking another such assignment.”
Duroc glanced at Rousseau and was met with a scowl. He did not dare look at Chief Féraud. Hanging his head like a whipped schoolboy, he answered, “Yes, Monsieur Magistrate.”
The juge d’instruction grunted an acknowledgement and then shuffled through his papers, focusing on Sir Henry Collingwood’s letter and a document recently obtained by warrant from the editor of L’Antisémite. “M. Bertillon, in your opinion as one of our leading graphologists, were these two documents written by the same person?”
“I’ve made a careful analysis of the handwriting on both documents, M. Leblanc, and I’m convinced the authors are one in the same.”
“That’s good enough for me, M. Bertillon.” Then to Achille: “I find your fingerprint evidence compelling, Inspector. However, it remains a novel concept, untested at trial, and by itself would be insufficient to send the case to the prosecutor. Fortunately, I believe you’ve uncovered sufficient evidence aside from the fingerprints to support your theory of the case.
“Moreover, I agree with your conclusions concerning the tattoo on the victim’s forehead and The Devil in Montmartre. They are fabrications intended to confuse the public, confound the police, and frame an innocent boy. The perpetrator committed an atrocious crime. First he tried to fix blame on M. de Toulouse-Lautrec. Thanks to your excellent detective work, the initial ruse failed. The perpetrator then resorted to another deception. In doing so, he relied upon a common human weakness, a tendency to ignore facts when they conflict with our deeply rooted prejudices or preconceived notions.