The 13 Culprits: Shorts Vol I Page 2

  He read through them seemingly for the first time. Then he would look at the accused with that stare that was all his own, that concentrated stare that was as heavy as lead. It could not be compared to what can be called a piercing look, nor was it prophetic. It wasn’t ferocious either. It was a calm gaze, that would slowly zero-in on a target and remain locked on it for hours and hours from that moment on.

  Ziliouk’s first words were, as he lit a fancy cigarette with a calculated flippancy: “Smoke slightly bothers me…” And, perhaps for the first time in his career, the adventurer felt ill at ease. Out of a need for bravado, he felt he had to declare: “I would prefer to warn you that your efforts will be in vain! I have been accused of selling false documents to France. I defy you to put me away on that charge. I have also been accused of providing Germany with equally counterfeit diplomatic documents in respect to French foreign policy… Nobody has seen these documents! The only accuser is an underling working for the Deuxième Bureau and I’ll do my best to prove that he’s playing both sides, just as I’ll do my best to prove that I was extremely useful to the Deuxième Bureau …”

  There was no reply. Monsieur Froget lowered his eyes onto a new report which he read in its entirety.

  This went on for an hour! And Ziliouk searched in vain for any sign of curiosity, of fever, of passion, in short: any trace of human emotion. He spoke once again. “Even if I am found guilty, I’ll get three years maximum, just as X… and Z… (he named spies who had recently been convicted by the French

  courts). After that, France will have to pay dearly!”

  The papers crackled before Monsieur Froget. The judge continued to read. He had Ziliouk’s identity papers in front of him, each one more counterfeit than the next. In truth, one would have a hard time establishing for certain that he was born in one country rather than another. In turn, he had called himself Carlyle, Sunbeam, Smit, Keller, Lipton, Rochet. There had undoubtedly been other names as well…

  He had been carrying fifty thousand dollars in his pocket at the time of his arrest!

  Monsieur Froget had not yet asked a single question after an hour and a half of this tête-à-tête. The report he had just read was a military one. Ten years earlier, Ziliouk had been arrested in Germany under somewhat mysterious circumstances. He had been released a month later, even more

  mysteriously, and had, in the meantime, been visited in his cell by one of the chiefs of the Wilhelmstrasse.3

  That this man was dangerous… that was obvious! That he was riffraff, he bragged about it! But as he said himself, he left no loophole for action in the courts.

  And Monsieur Froget remained motionless, his left shoulder still higher than his right one, his indifferent gaze landing at times on his papers, or at other times on the accused. “Do you recognize this photograph of your last mistress?” he asked in a cheerless manner.

  Ziliouk burst out laughing. “Barely, monsieur le juge! Barely! She was a charming girl from Picratt’s, the bar on the rue Daunou… I rarely saw her…”

  And his laughter became ambiguous, smutty almost. He dared to add: “Is she a friend of yours?”

  “What language did you use to speak with her?”

  Once again, Ziliouk felt like being vulgar. He answered with a sentence that is impossible to print but which did not make the magistrate flinch in the least.

  “Well then, at certain times, she spoke to you in a patois from Lille, and you answered her in this same dialect, which bothered her, because she did not think that she was understood by a foreigner; she had said certain things which were rather derogatory.”

  Ziliouk remained silent. The judge remained silent for almost a quarter of an hour. The file was examined, slowly, followed by a file which bore in big letters on its yellow envelope: The Stephen Affair.

  Ziliouk was able to read the thick letters, just as Monsieur Froget could. And the former allocated enough time to prepare his answers, his every attitude.

  It was an eight-year old file that had been classified for as many years. It pertained to a certain woman named Stephen, who had been married to Pierre Stephen, and who had been murdered under rather troubling circumstances by her lover, a Polish worker who had disappeared without a trace. Pierre Stephen was a foreman in a chemical factory to which an artillery officer had been detached, presumably for research of considerable interest to national security.

  Around that same time, documents — most notably a description of a new gas mask — had

  disappeared.

  At that time, the Stephens were also leading a lifestyle that they were not used to and had made certain expenditures which did not match their actual incomes. And then there was the dramatic event itself: Stephen’s wife was found dead at the foot of a coal dump near the factory.

  No one knew much of her lover. He had been spotted prowling around the region. He lived in the barracks of a veritable tribe of Polish workers, but his mates did not know what factory he worked for.

  They did not even know his name. He had disappeared on the very day of the murder.

  He was sensitive to the fact that the battle was shifting to another level, and from then on Ziliouk’s flippancy increased along with his chances of checking into the morgue.

  “I do not know what you are trying to insinuate here!” he said with aggressive irony. “If you’d like, I could answer you just as well in a Javanese coolie patois or the argot of the workers in a Ford plant…”

  This was quite true. He was such a polyglot that one of his files mentions his presence three years earlier in China where he acted as a close advisor to a southern general. At the time of his arrest by an inspector who had been a member of the colonial police, he had noticed a pin on his tie which had been woven by the Moïs of Indo-China and struck up a conversation in the dialect of that tribe.

  No words could do justice to Monsieur Froget’s disinterest which had not changed since the start of the session. Most Examining Magistrates accumulate series of questions, endeavor to confuse the accused from whom they often extract the sort of sentence which can pass for a confession. Monsieur Froget, on the other hand, gave his opponent time to think and even time to think too much. His silences would last several minutes, the questions a few seconds at best. Up till now, he had asked but two. The specialist interested in such matters should count the number of words that issued from Monsieur Froget’s lips during the course of this crucial examination.

  In a low voice, the judge now read a telegram that he had directed to the public prosecutors’ office at Lille.

  Question: Where do the Stephens come from? How long had they lived in Lille before the occurrence of that dramatic event?

  Answer: From the Loire country. The Stephens arrived in Lille, having come from Saint Etienne, one month before the crime. The Lille Factory requested a few good specialists from the Saint-Etienne branch in order to start production on a new product. Stephen came in with the group that had arrived in the North in June.

  Monsieur Froget raised his voice for the third time. “Can you tell me precisely where you were, eight years ago, in the month of June?”

  The crime had been committed around mid-July.

  “In Berlin!” Ziliouk replied without hesitation. “And if you really want to know, I was in daily contact with the Wihelmstrasse. I have no idea where you are going with this, but I would warn you that you are on the wrong track. I do not know the Stephens.”

  Monsieur Froget turned the page, read through the last document that the Deuxième Bureau had provided him with and said: “Pierre Stephen, foreman at the Saint-Etienne Arms Factory, suspected by his friends of fraternizing with enemy agents, despite any actual proof to that effect, had been sent to Lille (on the recommendation of counter-intelligence) where workers with his expertise were needed around the end of June.

  “The purpose was to see whether documents would disappear in this case as well.

  “Before it was possible to establish Stephen’s guilt, and especially to uncover his accomplices, his wife’s murder at the hands of a stranger had changed things and from then onward Stephen’s behavior was no longer suspect. Very shaken and prematurely aged by the tragedy, he had left the factory shortly after the dramatic events and became a night watchman for a business in Pantin.”

  Monsieur Froget had still not even uttered four sentences. He stood up without exhibiting the slightest emotion. He revealed himself to be taller and larger than one would have imagined by just seeing him seated.

  He looked at Ziliouk as though at the most everyday object. And he pronounced wearily as though he were a man finishing a chore, as he brushed off his black hat with the inside of his sleeve: “I accuse you of voluntary homicide on the person of the woman Stephen.”

  “Why?” Ziliouk asked, lighting another cigarette.

  Monsieur Froget appeared not to have heard him. His attention seemed to be focused on a spot on his hat.

  “You have no proof at all!” Ziliouk insisted.

  The word “proof” brought Monsieur Froget back to reality. He said slowly: “ ‘Proof of your guilt? Here it is: From my file, you could only read the words The Stephen Affair. And yet you told me: ‘I do not know the Stephens.’ Your use of the plural is your confession.”

  Ziliouk absorbed the shock without flinching. He was worthy of his opponent. But he no longer spoke a single word.

  Nonetheless, Monsieur Froget did not give much importance to his victory. How could such an easy triumph matter much to him? After glancing once more at his hat, he added, stingily: “A child would have been able to figure this out clearly. Three clues and bits of evidence have convicted you, in addition to your confession, which constitutes the formal evidence against you…”

  Monsieur Froget counted with his fingers: “First of all, your knowledge of the Lille patois… Secondly, the excessive speed and precision with which you answered me when I asked you where you were eight years ago, during the month of June… Thirdly, the fact that you were a member of German intelligence.”

  And then he concluded: “An everyday affair. The Stephens provide Ziliouk, a German secret-agent, with documents of interest to national security. When Ziliouk learns that the Stephens are under suspicion and sent to Lille, he fears being turned in by his mistress and being convicted as an accomplice. He decides to eliminate her. After the murder of his wife, who was Zihouk’s tool, the foreman Pierre Stephen’s behavior no longer seems suspicious… Case closed!”

  Then Monsieur Froget rang for the guards.

  The Second Culprit:

  MONSIEUR RODRIGUES

  THERE WAS only one thing that was bothersome about Monsieur Froget’s presence in that apartment perched on the sixth floor of a building on the rue Bonaparte. One could hardly decide what was more shocking, what was even becoming indecent — the apartment or the judge in black, as he focused on the sight of the drinking glasses, which were clear and round like targets. The two undercover policemen who had brought Monsieur Rodrigues into the apartment remained standing outside the door on the landing. The sheriff had gotten so used to the judge after ten years that his presence fit him like a glove to the point where he even forgot that he was there.

  As for Rodrigues himself, he added the final touch to the enigmatic atmosphere; he made it comprehensible, even though a few days of incarceration took the edge off his asperity.

  There were five rooms with arched ceilings, as the apartment was directly beneath the line of roofs.

  There was no sign of any dining room, kitchen, bedroom, and yet the same ambiance permeated the space: a profusion of rugs dominated by purple-tinted reds; trinkets chosen for their strangeness, products emerging from the imaginations of all races, of all eras; couches in all the angles; low tables; pillows strewn about the floor.

  The only trace of practicality came from a cracked teapot, empty glasses, uncorked bottles, a Primus brand hot-plate that was left on one of the rugs and a toothbrush that was firmly planted in a champagne glass.

  There was something both refined and dishonorable about the apartment. It smelled of incense, rare aromas and seediness.

  It was in keeping with the master of the house who was tall, thin and who at times resembled a fallen aristocrat and, at other times, a worn-out clown. He was fifty-five years old. He dressed like an adolescent. Moreover, he powdered his face and dyed his hair. If one looked closely, one could make out a thin scar on the tip of his nose. As he would be the first to explain, it resulted from an operation he had undergone in order to change the shape of his nose and to make his face appear more harmonious.

  “A man’s first duty is to be handsome, just as animals are beautiful, just as flowers are beautiful!” he once told Monsieur Froget.

  He was repulsive. An old male coquette. A mixture of senility and a false sense of youth.

  The police reports, however, were categorical: His only unusual habit was that his visitors were mostly young people, almost all of them Spanish like him.

  Books were scattered everywhere: they were all written by the most opaque of poets.

  He was quite at ease, despite the accusation that hung over him. He managed to refrain from showing any fear. As was his custom, his skin was caked with make-up.

  He was the first to speak while the judge walked back and forth, as calmly as if he were taking his morning constitutional. “You must admit that you are unable to unearth any evidence whatsoever against me and that had you been handed a thousand clues, you would still have a hard time trying to come up with any plausible explanation for such a crime.”

  Three psychiatrists confirmed that he was responsible for his actions even though he was quite mad.

  And yet, he had committed murder! It was a moral and physical certainty, one of those obvious truths which, in some ways, pass for evidence.

  Monsieur Rodrigues received many guests. He gave the impression that he was a wealthy man. He enjoyed opium, and young people often came to smoke entire nights at his house, amidst the pillows, the rugs, the drapes, all that silly and somber rubbish that exhaled a pungent aroma made up of drugs, sleeze and human sweat.

  At eight o’clock at night, on the previous Tuesday, the concierge had seen a young man that she hadn’t noticed before go up the stairs. Towards the middle of the night, she heard a strange sound emanating from the staircase. She thought that Monsieur Rodrigues and his guest were drunk, because in the sixth arrondissement,1 people are as addicted to champagne as they are to opium and heroin. She pulled on the door-pull, went to bed, opened the door a little later for a tenant who neglected to mention his name.

  “Monsieur Rodrigues would always yell out his name very loudly!” she would remark afterwards to the police.

  That morning, a body of a young man was found in the Seine, in front of the rue Bonaparte. He had been thrown from the top of the quay and the body had attached itself quite by chance on a barge’s mooring. He had been stabbed three times with a knife. There were no documents found in his pockets.

  The police were carrying out their investigation. That very day, she identifies the drowned victim: he is the son of the Duke and Duchess of S… who hold one of the most visible positions in the Spanish royal court.

  A detective introduces himself to Monsieur Rodrigues. He has already established that the victim, who was just passing through Paris, had let himself be dragged along by his rather dubious cohorts on an evening jaunt through Montmartre, Montparnasse and certain bars on the Champs-Elysées. Since S…

  wished to become initiated in the ways of opium, they introduced him to Monsieur Rodrigues who had invited him over.

  On one of the red carpets, the detective notices a few dark spots which experts consider to be (but without affirming it) human blood stains.

  “My goodness! Why not look instead at my finger which I cut on Monday…” replied Monsieur

  Rodrigues.

  “Did you cut yourself attacking your guest?”

  “And why on earth would I have attacked him? I maintain that he left this apartment on his own volition. I had walked him back to the corner of the rue Bonaparte and to the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

  He was inebriated. He refused to take a taxi as I had suggested. He no doubt retraced his steps, made a wrong move along the quays where some thugs murdered him…”

  “Was this the first time that you had him over?”

  “The first. But I had seen him before at the Pickwick’s Bar.”

  “Do you know his name, his family situation?”

  “Titles don’t impress me!”

  And the police report ends with a deposition from a Spaniard who had been at the Pickwick’s Bar with S…and Rodrigues. “S… while remaining casual, was nonetheless quite an aristocrat and kept his distances, especially in regards to Rodrigues, whom he considered a bit of a curiosity. He burst out laughing when someone spoke to him about our friend’s prestigious but murky roots. I think I remember his crying out at that moment: ‘Magnificent! What a unique fellow!…’”

  As for Monsieur Froget, he had entered a smaller room which was slightly more decorated than the other ones, and where the window panes distilled a sanctuary-like aura.

  A painting appears to dominated the room, grabs one’s attention, absorbs all light. The portrait of a woman, in a grand pose, from head to toe. She is young and beautiful, with admirable red hair.

  The painter had chosen to portray her completely in the nude.

  The canvas is pierced, in the middle, and it had obviously been torn recently.

  Monsieur Rodrigues follows the judge’s stare as he begins his questioning, the very first question, in fact: “Who is this?”

  The accused manages a telling smile, a smile that is at once crooked and reserved, a reflection of his entire persona. The portrait is at least twenty years old.