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June, 1832
He is not the only policeman to die as a result of the insurgency. Even before the last arrests have been made, it is confirmed that the Commissaire d'Arnouville was shot dead on the Rue Montmartre whilst trying to negotiate. The news about the Inspector percolates more slowly through the Préfecture de Police, at the discretion of Monsieur Gisquet.
The Inspector’s final missive was worrisome; there is a nod to expect the worst; when a cry goes up from the laundry-boats at the Pont-Neuf, no-one is entirely surprised.
The Commissaire is publicly mourned, as befits a fallen hero. The Inspector is privately but sincerely regretted, disproving one of his own conjectures: he is missed.
They take a collection for him. More than enough to have him buried decently — enough to buy a modest headstone.
The Commissaire of no. 14 Rue de Pontoise, the nearest person the Inspector had to a friend, takes upon himself the task of finding a plot. One limpid June evening, while a flock of starlings twists and billows over Père Lachaise, he trudges through the suburbs of that city of the dead, until monuments have given way to stones, and stones given way to iron grave-markers, of which there are only three or four designs, repeating themselves like a catechism. Eventually, he is in the poorest district, where there are neither crosses of iron, nor even of wood, where very few of the sleepers have a bed to themselves and graves are dug for thirty at a time. He finds himself looking at the newest pit somewhat enviously. Even these people will have more companionship in death than the Inspector.
C'est tout simple, prompts a familiar, sardonic voice from the depths of his memory, and the Commissaire stops in his tracks.
It would not be dishonourable, he thinks. It would not. It would be appropriate, for one who lived all his days under the motto Supervision and Vigilance, to remain perpetually on guard in the service of people he will never meet. Death should not prevent an Inspector of the First Class from doing his duty. All the same, the Commissaire looks out a suitable alternative site, in case anyone back at the Préfecture de Police considers the notion shameful or ridiculous. But somewhat to his surprise, no-one does.
By general agreement, the Inspector is buried in the potter’s field of Père Lachaise, and an honour guard of six turns out to fire over the pit where he is almost the last person to be interred; some distance away, a new hole is already being dug. A stone peg marks the plot, roughly incised with the number 128.
Afterwards, Monsieur Gisquet cannot escape the nagging sense that somewhere, in Heaven or Hell or some place reserved for intractable cases, his former employee is urging his fellow souls to form an orderly queue, placing himself last of all. The notion is absurd, of course. But he reads over the letter again — the letter that the entire Préfecture now knows he received, though no-one else knows all that it contained.
He breaks faith, just a little more, and lets it be known that some of the letter pertained to matters of prisoners’ welfare. Also (and this is for general release) to the Inspector’s profound dislike of gossip in the courtyard of the Préfecture — the motto of which is not Supervision, Vigilance, and General Chit-Chat. But as an explanation of motive, it falls a little short.
The leftover collection money that was to go towards a headstone is discreetly spent on straw mats, so that the prisoners of the Conciergerie and the Madelonettes might have something beneath their the soles of their bare feet as their belongings are searched. When the mats wear thin, they patched, again and again. But there is no direct order to replace them, and so they are never replaced.
October, 1832
Some months later, the Commissaire of the Rue de Pontoise has a strange encounter.
It’s a fair journey from his own posting in the 5th arrondissement to the Inspector’s posting in Père Lachaise, and the Commissaire arrives late, bearing not flowers, but news. He has found a man worthy to own the Inspector’s old cane, which he has kept safe ever since the seventh of June. The man’s name is Darras, he has risen through the ranks by sheer bloody-minded determination, and the Commissaire hopes that the cane’s former owner would approve of him. Nevertheless, it is always polite to ask.
But as he approaches the spot, he sees that the briefing must wait.
There is a man kneeling by plot 128, a broad-shouldered fellow in workman’s clothes. Despite the chill in the air, he has taken off his cap. There is no special reason to suppose that he is here for the Inspector, apart from the force with with he prays. Like a man pushing a capstan single-handed, attempting to raise an anchor all by himself.
This man keeps one hand touching the earth, as if renewing a vow. He stays there for at least half an hour. The Commissaire, lodged discreetly behind a tree, is not a devout man but he cannot escape the notion that even by witnessing this act, he is trespassing on something sacred. Afterwards, he is careful never to go to that particular corner of Père Lachaise late in the day.
But the Commissaire is also a canny investigator. He makes a trial attempt to buy the nearest single burial plot to no. 128. He is informed that alas, that solitary plot, tucked into an awkward corner, has already been purchased. But there are many others more pleasantly situated, available to anyone who does not require a prestigious location, and an additional sum will secure the right to multiple interments. A prudent investment, Monsieur.
He feels disinclined to dig further, sensing that the man he saw would be unsettled by a policeman’s curiosity.
A little over a year later, passing by to pay his respects again, he notices that the single plot next to 128 is occupied, and has been so long enough for a stone to be laid above it. The stone has been left blank.
The Inspector has company, it seems. Company that prefers to remain discreet. The Commissaire doffs his hat.
June, 1848
A time to check one's loyalties, and cross one's fingers: the gouty regime of Le Roi Citoyen collapsed several months ago. Whatever comes next will not be gentle.
But Père Lachaise endures. Around plot 128 and the single grave tucked in beside it, the grass grows high — though as with certain roads through the woods, there is a mysterious path trodden through it, no wider than a lady’s boot. But travellers along it must be rare.
The redoubtable Inspector Darras has long since become a Commissaire in his own right, passing the cane on to a man called Leboul. Leboul’s misfortune in life is to look more like a curate than a lawman; the cane becomes his talisman, a proof to himself that he really belongs in the police. Still, he endures a three-year gauntlet of shit from his colleagues until the summer of 1848, when the barricades go up again, many of the National Guard join the rebels, and every sort of Hell breaks loose at once.
Leboul finds himself with a split lip and no backup, hiding in an alley behind the barricade of the Porte Saint-Denis.
It is a good moment not to be a policeman. With misgivings, Leboul appropriates a dead man’s jacket, and with other misgivings he smashes the head of the cane with a paving-stone, until the silver crest comes away and it is unrecognisable as the property of the Préfecture. It forms one half of the poles of an impromptu stretcher, of which the other necessary ingredients are an old broom-handle, and a tablecloth from a looted restaurant; with the help of a renegade National Guardsman and a bellicose glove-maker, he forms a stretcher party and ferries the wounded away from the front line, regardless of what side they are on.
When the barricade falls, Leboul — to his own considerable surprise — is still standing. After which, the consensus at the Préfecture is that perhaps they have been a little hasty about him.
But the cane is gone for good.
May, 1855
Different reasons compel us to return to an overgrown corner of Père Lachaise in 1855. It is late spring, that time congenial to lovers, and two figures are picking their way through the grass towards a forgotten spot beside a wall. Their voices are bright with the irreverence of youth, and one of them is carrying a knapsack. You could easily suppose that at this moment, there is nothing in the world for them but their own two selves, but you would be wrong.
“…it is decidedly too damp for us mortals, but — yes, of course I like it,” says the first voice. “It’s beautiful, neglected, and we shouldn’t really be here.”
“Well, I’ve got a right to be here,” protests the second voice, “or at least, half of me has. My mother said that wherever there’s a potter’s field in France, there is our family plot. But this one is more real than the others, I think. My grandfather asked to be buried somewhere around here. He had a stone next to a yew-tree.”
“Well, that’s a start. What’s the inscription?”
“He didn’t want one. Just a plain slab.”
“A plain slab, next to a yew-tree, somewhere in a graveyard. A perfectly simple quest. I’m afraid I can’t promise you anything.”
There is half a minute’s silence, or at least, an absence of speech.
“All right, maybe I can promise you some things,” continues the first voice, slightly breathless. “We should quarter the ground, perhaps.”
After the fashion of young creatures, they tramp about heedlessly over buried bones. They attempt to be methodical, but old cemeteries are no friends of method. Moths and lacewings rise in their wake, the marzipan scent of bindweed fills the air, and once they pass within three paces of the right spot without knowing it. Both of them get soaked from the knees down, and they begin to get slightly disheartened.
“Confound it! I’ve barked my shin!” exclaims the second voice abruptly.
“Could be progress. What have you barked it on?” inquires the first.
“The pain is excruciating, thank-you for asking. But yes, I’ve found a stone — or it’s found me. Not the right one, though. Just a marker with a number cut in it. One…two…and maybe a six… no, it’s one-two-eight. Mother was right about this being a potter’s field. There must be hundreds of people here, under our feet. Brrr.”
The marker is rough-hewn, only a hand’s breadth of stone projecting above the the soil. Their companion returns to inspect it, and the thrifty metal heel of their shoe — for not everyone can be born to a Baron — rings upon something hard.
“Good Lord.” Further exclamations, and the sound of grass being removed by the handful. “Now, this is more like it! I can make out the corners. It's about two feet by six, I think. Would that be right?”
“I suppose it would. Anything written on it?”
There is more ripping of turf. A pause. “No.”
The owner of the injured shin comes limping over, Marker 128 forgotten. The slab is just long and wide enough to cover a man. They kneel in the damp grass, open the knapsack, and set to work with trowel, palette-knife, and a roll of hessian. Within ten minutes their hands are filthy, but the stone is uncovered, scrubbed, and shaved of moss until there is a patch clean and dry enough to write upon.
A pencil-stub is produced. They are both suddenly solemn. The hand holding the pencil trembles.
“The moment of truth,” says the first voice, and continues in exasperation, “well, are you going to write something, or not?”
“I never knew him,” says the second voice. “I don’t know what to put.”
“We went to all this trouble, and you don’t know what to put! You’re the poet.”
“A horrible poet. Unpublishably bad.”
“I deny it. But even if it were true — I don’t think your grandfather would care.”
March, 1868
In three years’ time, the Préfecture de Police will go up in flames, along with all its records.
During the Bloody Week of 1871, when Paris becomes an open wound and bodies are stacked in the streets, the names of thieves and constables, murderers and victims, will spiral into the dark like fireflies. They will be the last pilgrims to ever depart from the Rue de Jérusalem, some of them not undeserving of a passing glance. Few citizens will have the time to look.
Afterwards, the ruin will be razed, and the Rue de Jérusalem itself overbuilt. A mighty building will take its place, thousands of tonnes of authoritative sandstone that will forever be known by the name of its street: Le Quai des Orfèvres, or simply by its number: Le 36.
But for now, on this cold Spring day, it is still possible to visit the courtyard where the gendarmes once commanded by Monsieur Gisquet used to lounge, knock out their pipes, and talk shop — much to the chagrin of a certain Inspector. In fact, there are still gendarmes waiting there, stamping their feet to keep warm, and one of them is at this very moment knocking out his pipe.
And like many policemen, since policemen are human beings, they are liable to the vice of chit-chat.
“…and they say she only confessed for the sake of her son…”
“…does it for kicks, I reckon, and never a conviction. What a family name can do…”
“…his niece, he told us. Old hypocrite! Of course, M’sieur Nitouche, of course…”
A man emerges briskly from the Préfecture, his breath condensing on the air in determined puffs. He is an Inspector of a durable build, perhaps five-and-forty, with a moustache that would not disgrace a walrus. He is half a head shorter than any of the idling gendarmes, but they snap to attention nonetheless. This is the sort of man who is obeyed not due to gravitas, but because he has seen a many things, and flinched at none of them.
He is clearly displeased.
This calls for strong measures.
The expression he deploys is by now an ancient idiom. He would not be able to explain where it comes from, only that he knows it, and it still works like a charm.
“What’s this here, lads? No gossiping! Or you’ll raise Inspector Javert.”