Mister Memory by Marcus Sedgwick
Drouot looks at Petit carefully.
‘Laurent, you’re not doing something you shouldn’t be doing, are you?’
Petit has the honesty to look guilty, even if he denies it.
‘No, no. No, I was just wondering. About that case we had, yes, that’s true, but I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t be.’
Not yet, he thinks to himself later, but . . .
He only had one more question for Drouot anyway, sensing it was time to let the subject drop, which was about who at the Préfecture would have made that decision, but that, Drouot didn’t know.
Something is not right. He cannot put his mind on exactly what is wrong, but there is definitely something wrong about the whole matter. For one thing, he can’t work out how someone at the Préfecture made a decision about Després after only two days when he himself was assigned to the case in the same space of time. Two days was a fast response for the examining magistrate, such speed as the crime of murder demands. For anything lesser it would have been a week, most likely. And yet in that short space of time the decision was made that Després was criminally insane and to move him to Salpêtrière.
For another two days he tries to forget all about the case, with a little success, but then the matter is taken out of his hands.
As he leaves work one day, he finds a shadow at his shoulder, and looking down to his left sees someone he has met before.
He hunts for his name.
‘Monsieur Buguet? Yes? We met at the hospital.’
‘I’ve been looking for you for days. Took me over a week to find out where you work. You’re some kind of librarian, are you? For the police?’
Petit opens his mouth to refute that, then ignores the matter.
‘Can I help you, Monsieur Buguet?’
Buguet still has an unwashed air about him; the whiff of photographic chemicals seems to have pervaded his clothes, if not his actual body. He puts a hand on Petit’s forearm, bringing him to a standstill.
‘I read about your case,’ he says.
‘I have no case at present,’ Petit assures Buguet, but the photographer isn’t really listening.
‘I think I know who the girl is. The wife. I saw her picture in the paper, days ago, but then you know how the engravings are – they must get apes to make them.’
‘Monsieur Buguet, we know who the victim is. Her name was Ondine Després, née Badiou, and she was the wife of Marcel Després until her untimely death.’
‘Perhaps I should have said, I know who she was. Before.’
Petit sees that there is an earnest look on Buguet’s face.
‘Go on.’
‘I’m not sure. Like I said, those engravings in the papers leave much to the imagination. But you could get me a picture of her, I mean an actual photograph, couldn’t you? Then I’d know for sure.’
Yes, thinks Petit, I might be able to do that.
‘Why?’ he asks.
‘Like I say, Inspector, I’m not sure. But get me that photograph and then we’ll see. Can you do it?’
Petit does do it.
It transpires that the concierge had the studio cleaned up, ready for new tenants, and then, the following afternoon, it was broken into, and robbed, though there was nothing left in it to rob.
‘So what were they doing?’ Petit asks her.
‘Who?’
‘The burglars. What did they want?’
‘I would say that’s your job, Inspector. I told the police and they said since nothing was taken there was no point investigating. But the hall door was broken and who’s going to fix that?’
‘And what of the Després’ possessions?’
The concierge explains that all the effects of Marcel and Ondine have been boxed up and are locked away in the cellars underneath the cour, though she takes great pains to wonder aloud to Petit about who will pay for the cleaning and the storage and how long she should store the items for and really, she doesn’t think she can be bothered to let Petit into the cellar until he produces five francs, which appear to change her mind.
Grumbling, she unlocks the door to the cellar and shoves a lantern into his hands.
‘They’re at the back, last alcove,’ she says, and wanders off, slipping the money into some unseen place in her dress.
It takes Petit half an hour to go through the crates. It hasn’t escaped him that it’s more than a little strange that the Després’ studio was broken into while none of the other apartments in the block, which did contain items of value, was.
Finally, he finds the photograph of Ondine. The glass has been cracked by someone as clumsy as he is, so he flicks the catches on the back, and slides the photograph itself out of the battered old frame, which he puts back in the crate.
That evening, he meets Buguet again, as arranged, at the Lion Blanc in the Rue Saint-André-des-Arts.
‘This is her,’ says Petit, sliding the photograph across the desk.
Buguet is barely managing to suppress his satisfaction, and without saying anything Petit knows that he knows something about her. He also knows that it’s going to cost him. Buguet already has his palm loosely placed upward on the table top, casually inviting the receipt of funds.
Petit puts ten francs in his hand, at which Buguet frowns, but the inspector isn’t as much of a fool as the photographer clearly hopes he is.
‘Come on, I don’t know what you’re going to tell me yet. And this is a dead case. So I think that’s enough for now.’
Buguet scowls but without real feeling; as much as anything he wants to show off what he knows.
‘Yes, that’s her. I met her once.’
‘You did?’
Buguet nods, enjoying dropping his facts like stones into a still pool.
‘Up in Montmartre.’
‘Go on.’
Buguet hesitates. ‘You must understand,’ he says, ‘that I am a respectable photographer. I work for the hospital now, and for a few select clients. Nothing untoward at all, you see?’
‘Go on.’
‘Yes, well, it does happen that we photographers run into one another from time to time, and my work used to take me to some of the less salubrious quarters of the city.’
Petit is on the verge of losing his patience when Buguet suddenly cannot stop himself any more.
‘Well, you see, as soon as I read about that murder and saw her engraving, I said to myself, I know who that is. Well, I didn’t know her name, though I do now of course, but I met her in Montmartre, and she was working for some of the photographers up there, who, well, you know. Some of them sell a different kind of service, don’t they? I’m sure you know what I mean.’
You mean pornographers, Petit thinks. But he merely nods briefly to show that he understands. Once again he’s taken with the notion that Buguet is somewhat seedy; into his mind comes a vision of the photographer thirstily swigging at his chemicals, though, for all Petit knows, that not only might not get you intoxicated, it’s probably lethal. He stirs himself.
‘Who was she working for? You have a name?’
Buguet closes his hand around the ten francs.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t, but I can tell you this. I thought she’d posed for one of them, maybe more than one. Someone pointed her out to me and said that was her line, you see, but—’
‘Who pointed her out?’
‘Some guy in a bar. I don’t know who he was. We just got chatting and he knew I was a photographer. He thought I—’
‘Oh, yes, but that’s not what you do. Or ever did. Correct?’
‘Correct,’ says Buguet rapidly. ‘Anyway, when I saw her engraving I thought, That’s her: a pornographer’s girl. And then I see this, and I know for sure.’
‘You do? How? You mean you recognise her?’
‘Yes, but not only that. Look . . .’
Buguet takes the photo off the table very carefully as if he’s handling treasure, and tilts it towards Petit.
‘See it?’
Petit sta
‘See what?’
‘Hard to see to the untrained eye. Look, top left. You see?’
Petit takes the photograph from Buguet and scours it, trying to see anything out of the ordinary.
There stands Ondine, in a long, formal dress, some dark material, in two alternating vertical stripes. Her head is slightly tilted to one side, her lips are made up, and her eyes too, and there is that unmistakable sultriness about her. Her hair is piled and pinned on her head, a single coiling strand hanging down, brushing her cheek.
‘Not her,’ says Buguet, so Petit looks elsewhere. The ground cannot be seen; the portrait finishes around knee-height. There is a typical studio background – a backdrop that pretends to show a view through to a balcony, with tropical scenes of a beach beyond. The tropical theme is incongruously picked up by a potted palm behind Ondine’s right shoulder; the walls are papered with a narrow stripe, again some dark colours.
‘Look!’ urges Buguet, and with his fingertip points out a faint white mark on the photograph, a tiny smudge of lighter paper, narrow, as long as a nail clipping.
‘So? An imperfection of the print, perhaps.’
Buguet sits back, pleased with himself.
‘An imperfection, yes, but not of the print. You would find that mark on any copy of this photograph. You would find that mark on any print of any photograph made by the camera that made this one. It is an imperfection of the camera lens. To the layman, to the untrained eye, it’s as good as invisible. But to a professional, it is obvious. It is a glaring thing, quite awful. And it just so happens that, in the course of the professional photographer’s work, he comes to know his enemies, so to speak. This photograph was taken by a highly active pornographer of Montmartre, a man too cheap to buy a new lens for this camera, or even have the defect polished out. He knew that most people wouldn’t even spot the imperfection, but those of us in this business came to know the mark.’
‘And you have seen it often?’
‘Often enough,’ says Buguet, holding out his empty palm again.
Petit’s smile fades.
‘On works of a pornographic nature? An industry you claim to have nothing to do with . . .’
Buguet senses he is on thin ice. He withdraws his empty palm.
‘We photographers come across most aspects of the business. Eventually.’
‘Pornography is not a business, Buguet. It is an illegal activity, as is the trafficking of obscene materials.’
There is a silence.
‘So,’ asks Petit, ‘who is this pornographer with the damaged lens?’
Buguet sits on his hands, miserably, and Petit knows he’s not stalling for further bribes.
‘I don’t know.’
Petit pockets the photograph.
He maintains a blank face towards Buguet, but finds that he is conflicted again. So what? he thinks. So Ondine Després might once have posed nude, perhaps undertaken modelling of an even more explicit nature than that. That alters nothing at all. Marcel shot her and then, within forty-eight hours, someone made the decision to have him removed from police custody and put beyond reach in the asylum of Salpêtrière.
Still, this is no proof of anything, it is merely something that rubs away in his brain, demanding further thought.
Buguet stirs in front of him.
‘If the inspector is pleased with . . .’
Against his better judgement, Petit puts five more francs in his outstretched hand, for this is how crimes get solved, he knows that as well as any detective who’s been working the city for twenty years. But then, he reminds himself, there is no crime to solve. Nothing to be done. So why is it that when Buguet mutters, ‘No, I don’t know who he was, but of course you could find out,’ Petit is unable to stop himself asking how.
‘You should know that as well as anyone. You’re the police librarian, aren’t you? Pay a visit to the Library of Hell.’
Buguet leaves, and Petit stares through the window at the busy street. He’s heard of it, but never been there. Still, there’s a first time for everything, he thinks, and there and then determines to pay a visit to the notorious collection of banned writings, obscene images and immoral publications: the Library of Hell.
AB INITIUM
Dr Morel forgets all about the visit from the young inspector. His memory is, like most people’s, good in matters in which he is interested, very poor in areas where he is not. Right now, there is only one subject that interests him, and that is Marcel. In truth, that is not quite the case: Morel is not interested in Marcel, not all of him, anyway. He is interested in Marcel’s mind, his memory, in where it resides and what it can do and how it works.
He is delighted that as the days pass, Marcel has a few more lucid periods, though none of them lasts long, and sooner or later he retires into whatever the furthest corner of his mind is, where he lurks while his body rocks out its angst like a metronome of pain.
Almost four weeks have passed since Marcel’s arrival at Salpêtrière when one day, as Morel enters his cell, he finds his patient standing, facing the door calmly, as if waiting for him.
‘Good morning, Doctor,’ Marcel says, and Morel is very briefly surprised by this sudden change. He recovers quickly however; he’s seen enough wild changes of behaviour in his time not to be thrown by it, or to think that it might be permanent. They all relapse in the end, he thinks, they all relapse. Nevertheless, this provides him with his best chance yet of probing more deeply into the landscape of Marcel’s memory.
‘Good morning, Marcel,’ he says. ‘How are you feeling today?’
‘Where am I, Doctor?’ Marcel asks.
‘You don’t know?’
Morel is suddenly concerned that his patient has slipped from the exalted pedestal of hypermnesia to that of the common amnesiac.
‘In some sort of hospital. But which one?’
‘This is Salpêtrière, Marcel. You have heard of it?’
Marcel nods.
‘And you know why you are here?’
Marcel nods again, and Morel’s expert eye sees the panic that lurks just behind the façade. He must tread very carefully this morning if he is to get what he wants, something he both craves and fears.
Morel wants to prove that Marcel’s memory is limitless, and yet this is something that cannot be proved categorically. It would be easy enough to disprove the theory: if he were to find one instance of Marcel failing to recall something accurately, then in an instant the concept of perfection would be blown away. Yes, he would still have a phenomenal ability, but Morel wants to believe, and to prove, that Marcel’s memory is absolutely without limit. And that, of course, cannot be done; that is the irritation that dogs Morel. He can only disprove the case with one hundred per cent accuracy, to prove it lies beyond his reach. Nevertheless, he hopes that with enough time and enough testing, he will have as good a case as can be made, and then, he has no doubt, he will write the paper that will assure his place in the canon of the great alienists. It must be done.
Morel decides to move Marcel away from thoughts of hospitals and of murder. He has, more in hope than belief, brought with him his chalkboard and chalk.
He motions to Marcel, gets him to sit on the bed once more, and places himself on the low wooden stool. He begins to record a sequence of numbers.
‘A little exercise, eh?’ he says. ‘Something to warm up with, as the athlete warms his muscles before the race . . .’
He finished writing a series of numbers, and displays it to Marcel, who stares at it with a mixture of boredom and contempt. As Morel whips the board around and waits, Marcel begins to rattle off the numbers.
‘Nine, four, three, three, six, two, nine . . .’
Morel almost shrieks.
‘No!’ he says. ‘Wait! Stop, stop! You’re wrong . . .’
Morel cannot believe it. Marcel is wrong. He is getting the numbers all wrong. Just as the doctor feared, everything is disproved, everything comes tumbling down.
??
Marcel interrupts the interruption. ‘Doctor. I am not telling you the numbers on your board today. I am telling you the numbers that were on your board the first time you tried this game.’
Morel is dumbstruck. ‘You’re . . . ?’
‘Aren’t you tired of this?’ asks Marcel. ‘I am. What are you trying to establish? That I can recall these numbers? You know I can do that by now. Are you waiting for me to fail?’
Yes, admits Morel to himself, that is what I am waiting for, and yet, I do not want it to happen.
‘To settle the matter, I thought I would recount the numbers from the first test.’
‘But that was almost four weeks ago!’ declares Morel.
‘It would not matter if it were four months ago.’
‘Or four years . . . ?’ asks Morel tremulously.
Marcel nods. ‘Or four years.’
Morel squints at his patient. ‘How do I know these are the numbers from that first day?’
‘Perhaps you should have made a record of them on paper. That might have been a useful addition to the experiment.’
So, Morel thinks, I have learned that the patient can be impudent.
‘Or,’ adds Marcel, ‘you might take my word for it.’
‘How do I know you’re not lying?’
‘I don’t lie,’ says Marcel, so simply that Morel cannot find a way past this remark for a moment. When he does, it’s an idiotic question.
‘You don’t lie?’
‘That is correct.’
Well, you must be the first one on the planet who doesn’t, Morel thinks, but only for a moment. Then he remembers the work that Bleuler, once a pupil of Charcot in this very hospital, is now doing in Switzerland on certain personalities who do not display normal social function. Does he recall that one of the indicators is the inability to lie?
‘Doctor . . . ?’ prompts Marcel.
Morel shakes himself. He is wasting his best chance yet to explore and he decides to move right into the matter directly.
‘Have you always had this ability?’ he asks. ‘To remember?’
‘Yes, I have,’ says Marcel.
‘And no one ever spoke to you about it before?’