The Rhetoric of Death Read online

  When Jouvancy had looked into the latrine hole and been sick behind the rosebushes, he and Charles took off their cassocks, rolled up their shirtsleeves, and went back into the shadowy stench. Charles pulled at the seat’s front edge. With a protesting shriek of old hinges, a two-holed section lifted, opening a rectangle about four feet by two. When they finally had the body lying on the dirt floor, they were splashed with shit and urine, and swallowing hard. They knelt beside the body. Jouvancy wept as Charles gently wiped Philippe’s face with his handkerchief. The young curve of the boy’s cheek, where a beard had been just beginning to grow, emerged from the filth.

  “Blessed Jesu,” Jouvancy groaned, rocking back and forth on his knees as Charles scrubbed at Philippe’s chest. “Oh, Philippe, dear child. How could this have happened? Only a very small child could have fallen in—I know that sometimes happens, but—”

  “This was no accident,” Charles said flatly. He was wiping at the boy’s neck, staring at the swatch of discolored skin revealing itself. “Someone put him there.”

  Against a background of little boys’ piping voices from a nearby classroom, they said the prayers for a violently dispatched and unshriven soul. Jouvancy reached out to caress Philippe’s face and caught back a sob.

  “He looked so much like my sister. He had Adeline’s beautiful eyes. And her grace. Always her grace.” He used Charles’s shoulder to push himself shakily to his feet. “I must go for the rector.”

  “I will stay with him, mon père, and see that no one comes in.”

  When Jouvancy was gone, Charles stepped briefly outside and found a stick. He used it to stir the latrine’s contents where he’d discovered Philippe, but found nothing more. He stood in the doorway, gulping clean air and feeling his grief and anger at what had been done to the boy sharpen into thought. Philippe’s body was shirtless. Which made Charles grimly certain that the body had been here all the time, had already been here when someone shoved Charles to the ground and provoked the chase away from the latrine and out of the college.

  A small boy hurtled around the rose hedge and stopped, staring wide-eyed at Charles.

  “Yes, mon brave,” Charles said wearily, “I am covered in shit. And no, you cannot come in. Piss somewhere else, please.”

  “But, maître—”

  “Somewhere else. Please. Go.”

  The boy backed hurriedly away, his blue eyes growing even larger as Jouvancy, Le Picart, and two lay brothers carrying blankets came around the hedge. The rector watched the little boy stumble hastily toward a corner of the courtyard, still staring over his shoulder. Shaking his head, Le Picart motioned to the brothers to wait and went into the latrine with Charles and Jouvancy. Le Picart’s eyes were wintry pools of sorrow as he signed a cross over Philippe’s body. He turned to Jouvancy.

  “I am so sorry, mon père. So very sorry.” Ignoring the filth, he put an arm around Jouvancy’s bowed shoulders. “We will take him to the washing room. Below the infirmary,” he explained to Charles, “where we occasionally have to prepare bodies for burial—though we have no cemetery here, of course.” He gave Charles a long, unreadable look. “Maître du Luc, when the body is clean, I want you to examine it. You were a soldier, you have seen violent death more often than most of us.”

  He led Charles and Jouvancy outside, where they waited for the lay brothers to wrap Philippe in the blankets they carried and bear him away.

  “Will you search, please, Maître du Luc,” the rector said, when the body was gone, “for anything in the latrine that seems out of place? It has been too many days, but we must try.”

  Trying to breathe as little as need be, Charles made his way slowly along the line of seats, scrutinizing the bench and the dirt floor, finding only leaves and grass tracked in from outside and bits of straw from the braided bundles for cleaning oneself that were kept in a wooden bucket beside the door. Eyes still on the ground, he retraced his steps to the corner where he’d found Philippe. As he stood there, staring at the floor and thinking about the yellow shirt and the hands that had shoved him to the ground, his eyes suddenly focused on what they were seeing. With the toe of his shoe he edged a clump of loose broken straw out of the corner and bent to look more closely at it. Its pieces were longer than the pieces that broke off the braided bundles. He picked up his find with his fingertips, sniffed cautiously at it, and carried it outside.

  “Père Le Picart, this isn’t from a straw bundle for cleaning. It seems to be a clump of stable straw, with traces of horse dung. Do students keep horses in our stable? Would they track this kind of straw into the latrine?”

  The rector’s eyebrows rose and Jouvancy wiped his eyes and looked at what Charles held.

  “No,” Le Picart said, “our stable is very small. We keep only our own few horses there.”

  “Does anyone from the college keep horses nearby?”

  “Some of the older students do, mostly at the houses of family. Why would this clump of straw matter?”

  “It was in the corner beside the hole where I found Philippe. I wonder how it got there.”

  Le Picart shrugged dismissively. “The stables are in the next courtyard and this is the nearest latrine. You found nothing else?” When Charles shook his head, Le Picart said, “Go and clean yourselves quickly, both of you, then come to me in the washing room.” He looked at them ruefully. “You may have to bathe. But at least the day is warm.” Although Jesuit colleges had a reputation for cleanliness, and students were expected to change their shirts every week or so since wearing clean linen was known to keep the body clean, bathing was infrequent and usually regarded with suspicion. Le Picart went the way the brothers had gone with their burden and Jouvancy turned to Charles.

  “To the laundry,” he said, steadied by having something mundane to do. “They won’t be happy about it, but they’ll give us a tub of hot water. The only other tubs are the one they’ll use for Philippe—” His voice faltered. He cleared his throat and rushed on, “And the one in the infirmary. But if we go into Frère Brunet’s domain like this, he will slay us.” He looked distastefully at his filthy hands. “Some people say filth makes you ill. I hope not, because if we should be ill from this, Frère Brunet will make us bathe again.”

  “My mother forced us all into a tub every month or so, winter and summer,” Charles said, glad to ease the moment with trivial talk.

  “Really! Even though water can soak through the skin and harm the organs? You are not jesting? Well, I must say, bathing does not seem to have harmed you. But there, things are changing, after all. These new lenses—microscopes, I mean—do raise interesting questions. Some years ago, in Germany, our brilliant Father Athanasius Kircher—you know his work, of course—said he saw a little worm in the blood of plague victims that was not there in the blood of healthy people. Some people think the worm generates in dirt and causes plague. I am not so sure, but I did look through a lens once.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Little wriggling things like Père Kircher’s worm. I was astonished! And do you know what it made me wonder? Whether we might someday make a lens that allows us to see God! I don’t mean any blasphemy, but—if a lens lets us see these things too small for the eye alone, then perhaps, on the other end of the scale, so to speak ...”

  Jouvancy talked on, pouring the balm of words over his raw shock and grief, and Charles found himself thinking of a young marquis who’d kept him from bleeding to death when he’d been wounded in the Spanish Netherlands, in the battle of St. Omer. The boy had stripped off his own shirt, rolled it into a ball, and held it against Charles’s mangled shoulder, talking knowledge-ably and desperately about wine while Charles’s blood soaked into the linen and the cart picking up the wounded inched toward them.

  The lay brothers in the laundry were as little pleased as Jouvancy had said they would be, but they parted with a tub of just-heated water, provided towels, and fetched them clean clothes. Half an hour later, feeling unpleasantly boiled and with water stil
l dripping from their hair, Jouvancy and Charles joined the rector in the room behind the infirmarian’s workshop. Philippe’s body, stripped and washed, lay on a long table. Now that the body was clean, its youth was even more heartbreaking. Steeling himself, Charles picked up one of Philippe’s hands to look for signs of a fight. He found no marks at all on the hands, but the one sign he did find on the body was definitive. The deeply incised mark around Philippe’s neck told them beyond doubt that the boy had been strangled. But the mark was oddly varied—several-stranded at the sides and patterned—braided, perhaps—at the throat. With aching tenderness, Jouvancy folded the boy’s slender, unlined hands over his chest and pulled the shroud up over him.

  His voice shook as he said, “Do you think he was in the latrine all this time?”

  “Most likely,” Charles said. “The death stiffness has come and gone, and decay looks well advanced. Because of the heat in—in the latrine.”

  “At least we know now how he was killed. But I would have had the killer use some other means,” Le Picart said.

  Charles and Jouvancy looked at him in surprise. Then Charles began to nod, but Jouvancy blinked in confusion. “Why?”

  “If he had been killed with an obvious weapon,” Le Picart said gently, “finding the killer would be easier. Since we forbid all weapons here, a dagger or sword or pistol might be traced to its owner that much more easily. But strangled—every one of us wears something in his clothing that could be woven with other pieces to leave a mark like this.”

  “Pieces of breech lacing braided together,” Charles said, “or even long shoe ribbons might do it.”

  “Or the cords we string our crosses on,” the rector offered.

  “The ties that gather shirtsleeves to the wrist,” Jouvancy said, “yes, I see. But—”

  “And the older among us string our spectacles around our necks,” Le Picart went on. He reached into his cassock and brought out his reading spectacles, hanging on a stout length of cord.

  “Not to mention all the other kinds of cord and string there must be around the college,” Charles said.

  “Around the college? But, surely—” Jouvancy’s voice trailed off.

  “So the question is,” Charles went on, “what kind of thing would exactly fit this mark. You can see that the braided pieces are thin, but not too thin. And they would have to be strong. Stronger than ordinary string, certainly.”

  Jouvancy frowned. “Would there be marks left on whatever was used?”

  “There would be blood, the skin on his neck is broken. Though some—maybe even all—of that could be cleaned off, and would have been by now. I don’t see any material left in the wound that could tell us what was used.”

  The rector was shaking his head impatiently. “If you had just strangled someone in a latrine, what would you do next?”

  “Weight whatever I had used and drop it in,” Charles said promptly.

  “Exactly. You seem to be the only one of us without a talent for murder, mon père,” Le Picart said to Jouvancy, who was looking at them in alarm. Then the rector frowned. “I rarely visit that latrine, but I saw today that it is over-full of waste. I will have to check with Père Montville, but I am nearly certain that it was supposed to have been cleaned several days ago.”

  “We could have it cleaned now and look for this cord, or whatever it is,” said Jouvancy.

  “But, mon père,” Charles said, “imagine how many broken lengths of breeches lacing and other odds and ends of cord must surely be in there. And with all that they will have soaked up by now—” he grimaced and shrugged.

  “I agree,” Le Picart said. “Time will be better spent searching for the killer in other ways. Maître du Luc, the man you chased when Philippe disappeared—are you still certain that he was wearing Philippe’s shirt?”

  “Unless it really was Philippe, and he came back later and was killed then. Which is possible, but unlikely, I think. The yellow shirt and the dark hair and the build were enough like Philippe’s that I never doubted it was him I was chasing. But, as you saw, when I found Philippe’s body, the shirt was gone. I fished for it in the latrine and did not find it. Also, when I went looking for him that day, someone pushed me to the ground from behind. I thought then it was Philippe. Now I think it was the killer, making sure I would give chase and leading me away from the latrine and the college. Probably so we would not institute a thorough search here before the body sank in the latrine.”

  “That seems a logical conclusion,” the rector said grimly. He looked from Jouvancy to Charles. “You understand, I trust, how essential it is, as we search for this killer, to avoid scandal to the college and the Society.”

  “We? Are you not calling in the police?” Charles said, trying to keep the note of challenge out of his voice and wondering just how far Le Picart would go to avoid scandal. “The college of Louis le Grand is still a liberty, then? The king’s law does not run here?”

  “Of course it does.” Le Picart’s chin lifted and he drew himself up. “And of course I will ask the help of Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. I had already asked him to search for Philippe. As you know. My point is that we must do everything morally possible to avoid scandal to the college and the Society of Jesus. The decisions that must be made to find the killer will be made by those in authority, Maître du Luc. With regard to your own involvement, I advise you to remember our very recent conversation in my office.”

  Into the ensuing silence, Jouvancy said, “This is going to kill his father.”

  “Mon père,” the rector said gently, “M. Douté is lodging at the Prince of Condé’s townhouse. Will you go to him? This terrible news will come better from family.”

  “Of course, I will go immediately.” Jouvancy hesitated. “Do you want me to take Père Guise with me? He is almost closer to them these days than I am, it seems.”

  “No. Just you, mon père.”

  Jouvancy bowed his head in acquiescence. And relief, Charles thought. But suddenly, the rhetoric master’s eyes widened and he clutched the rector’s sleeve. “What about Antoine, mon père? Could this mean that he, too, is in danger? Though that seems . . . why would anyone . . . after all, it was only an accident ...” He looked in mute appeal at Le Picart.

  “Antoine is safe in the infirmary,” the rector said. “And we will all be on our guard. This evening I will gather the faculty, and after them the lay brothers, and find out if anyone knows more about this. I have already told Philippe’s confessor and his tutor what has happened. They are coming to take the first watch beside the body. For now, we must do our best to keep this from the students. I do not want it to grow in the telling into some farfetched drama that will only confuse things. Did you recognize the little boy who was wanting to use the latrine when we arrived there, Père Jouvancy?”

  “Yes, mon père, that was Robert Boisvert. From Rheims. He is new and very shy. I doubt he has told anyone about his vision of a shit-covered professor.” Jouvancy gave Charles the ghost of a smile. “I will have a word with him before I leave.” The smile fled as Jouvancy laid a gentle hand on Philippe’s body. He started to speak, but his mouth quivered and he pressed his lips together until he had mastered himself. “How will we ever find his killer,” he said, “with all of Paris to search?”

  “Unfortunately, we cannot assume that the killer is beyond our walls,” Le Picart said.

  Jouvancy stared at him. “But—I can hardly imagine—” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Are you saying, mon père, that until this man is found, we must look askance at everyone here—at least at everyone who shares Philippe’s height and build and coloring?”

  “Yes,” the rector said flatly. “Everyone.”

  Chapter 11

  The summer dark finally came, but Charles lay awake, thinking about Philippe Douté, imagining the air growing thick with prayers around his coffin. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Philippe’s body as it was when he’d pulled it from the latrine. He flopped over onto his back a
nd distracted himself by reliving the tense gathering of the Louis le Grand faculty earlier that evening. Leaving a skeleton staff of proctors to see to the students, Père Le Picart had called the professors and tutors to the chapel and told them baldly that Philippe had been murdered. Everyone, of course, had been horrified and, equally of course, no one had admitted to knowing anything. Père Guise, magisterial and grim, had risen to ask who had been the last to see Philippe alive, looking all the while at Charles. Charles had patiently recounted being sent from the classroom to find the boy, which nearly everyone already knew. Guise had stood again to ask how long Charles had been gone on this errand. Twenty minutes, perhaps a little more, Charles had said. Too long, Guise had said with ominous quietness. Much too long. Long enough, perhaps, to strangle Philippe? I did not even know Philippe, Charles had replied furiously. As they glared at each other in the charged silence that followed, old Père Dainville had bounced up with surprising agility, called ringingly for charity in this most difficult and unprecedented time, and added a tart warning about letting feeling falsify the premises of one’s arguments.

  At the rector’s nod, his assistant, Père Montville, had stood, gestured politely but firmly for Charles and Guise to sit, and shocked the assembly into silence by asking them to rise one by one and briefly state where they’d been at half after two on Monday afternoon, when Philippe left the classroom. Guise was the first to respond, his reproachful baritone filling the chapel as he told them he’d been in the rue Paradis, summoned on family business to the Hôtel de Guise by his aunt. When all who could remember where they’d been had said so, Montville directed the others to come to him privately and then laid out what everyone was to watch for, charging them to bring anything they saw or heard or remembered to the rector or himself. And not to speak of the murder yet to students or anyone else. Then he’d poured political oil on the turbulent waters, telling them that as they thought back to that day, they would surely remember any strangers they’d seen, since the killer, of course, must have come from outside. With a final stern reminder of the danger of scandal to the Society and the college, Le Picart had closed the meeting with prayer.