Chapter 1

To get a sense of the story, here is the opening scene

There were still in Ypres at that date (1917) poets who kept something of the idealism of 1914 in their outlook and their poems. But that was the Passchendaele year, and to me it seems that the Passchendaele ‘drive’ was murder – not only to the troops but to their singing faiths and hopes. From then on the voice of those who found strength and interval enough merely for penning their visions was generally a cry.

--Edmund Blunden, WWI poet

1

Inspector Arnaud Lepine felt an uncomfortable weight in his stomach as he descended the stone steps leading from the mid-point of the pont de Passy down to L’Île des Cygnes. A queasiness. Unusual these days, but not unfamiliar; bitter nausea rising up from deep within. He shuddered in the November drizzle and paused, hesitating on the last step before the muddy path. That old familiar sensation. It had been a long time.

Phillipe, the uniformed constable escorting him, paused, extended a hand and gave his pale companion a puzzled glance. Arnaud sniffed, wondering whether he really could smell death. Yes. Unmistakable. During the war the worst part of heading back to the trenches after leave in the countryside was the haunting smell of death.

“Sir?” Phillipe asked.

“The smell of death,” Arnaud said, trying to compose himself before his young colleague. Finally he plunged forward onto the muddy path. The drizzle increased to a steady rain.

Phillipe, trailing behind, tilted his chin slightly, sniffed and shrugged. “I guess so, sir. We don’t know how long she’s been dead. Hard to smell much of anything in this weather.”

Arnaud glanced at his likable companion. They’d worked together a fair bit in the precinct, but Arnaud had to remind himself Phillipe was too young to have experienced the war, so he said nothing as they picked their way along the path that ran down the middle of the long, narrow islet, midstream in the Seine with shallow banks down to the river on either side. The path was lined with leafless trees and thick underbrush. Further ahead a small group of policemen milled about while several others combed though the nearby brush, rain slickers glistening. As Arnaud and Phillipe approached, a police photographer was re-positioning his tripod, the air redolent with the sharp smell of magnesium from the flash.

Arnaud knew the protocol well, even though this was his first crime scene as an Inspector. His arrival meant he was in charge, taking over from the Sergeant of the local préfecture without a word needing to be exchanged. Arnaud wondered if he should have felt excited. A newly promoted Inspector from the Quai des Orfèvres on duty at the scene of the death of a young woman. But the smell — which didn’t seem to bother the others — kept hauling him back to the Belgian trenches.

The body had been pulled partway up the bank, far enough to secure it from the current of the river, but effort had been made to disturb the scene as little as possible. A young woman, splattered in mud, limbs twisted awkwardly, a dress once a pretty pale yellow with some kind of burgundy flowers and now torn and dirty, half draped around her. Tangled reddish-blonde hair against a pale face. Even in death it was clear she had been attractive. Arnaud had a memory flash of a poem of young lovers etched on a Grecian urn that a British soldier once shared with him – something about not grieving because their beauty could never fade. But he found it impossible to see it that way. There was no beauty in this pale, lifeless corpse.

“Two days, maybe three,” the medical examiner told him. “I don’t know if she drowned or was dead before she hit the water. We’ll know more back at the morgue when I can open her lungs.” When there was no response from the Inspector, the ME hesitated for a moment, and then continued, “There’s bruising on the face and the back of the head.”

Arnaud silently returned his gaze to the girl sprawled on the bank of the Isle of Swans, her flesh as white as a swan’s. But there was nothing graceful nor beautiful about this limp, pale body smeared with mud, with tendrils of some kind of foliage wrapped loosely around her hip like part of a Bacchanalian costume. He stepped down to the riverbank and knelt beside her on the wet ground. As he turned her head to examine the bruising, he shuddered at the sight of her pale face. He tenderly wiped a smear of dirt from her cheek. Other than the gentle murmur of the slow-moving river, there was dead silence. He shifted slightly and his boot slid into a muddy depression. The sucking sound it made as he pulled it out smacked into him like a gunshot.

He struggled to breathe, desperate to purge the demons in his head. It had been years since he was this close to death. The bitter taste of nausea rose up again. Just another death, but this one was different. Of the countless corpses and bits and pieces of bodies in the trenches and scattered across no-man’s-land, all were men. The girl at his feet was like one of their innocent sweethearts waiting back home. The ones the boys in the trenches pined for and wrote long, falsely cheery letters to, while staring longingly at their photographs, day after endless day. Why couldn’t she just be sleeping? She was so young, about the same age as the boy who died so badly in the shell hole with him that last day at Passchendaele. Arnaud shivered and stuffed that thought back down as he had done so many times.

Earlier, riding in the police van down to the pont de Passy, he hadn’t even thought about the corpse he was about to investigate. He’d seen so much death in the war, he assumed he’d be immune to one dead body. He was more concerned about how he, a new Inspector, would approach the regular police who would already be at the scene. It was reminiscent of a replacement officer approaching a battle-hardened unit at the front. Men who had grown comfortable with one another as death reigned over them were both suspicious and superstitious of any new officer, wondering what ill fortune he would bring.

The policemen stood by restlessly, waiting for orders while Arnaud was struggling to compose himself. But soon activity began again without any prompting. Two policemen prepared a stretcher as the photographer collapsed his tripod and began gathering equipment. The girl hadn’t been dead long, and his colleague Phillipe was right in that with the cold river and the chilly November weather, decay couldn’t possibly have set in. But still the smell. Death. Arnaud now fully understood the truism that of all the senses, smell is the most powerful memory trigger. Images of mangled bodies in the trenches floated into his mind, leaving a heaviness in his body but at the same time so light-headed he could hardly think.

He took a deep breath. “When the medical officer is done, get her out of here,” he finally said to the Sergeant of the préfecture. He started back toward the bridge, but turned to the Sergeant once more. “If you find anything, let me know. I’ll expect a full report on my desk by morning.” As he continued down the path, he wondered what he sounded like. Did he leave the impression he was a man in charge, or did he simply irritate an experienced officer with gratuitous instructions? He was beginning to wonder whether the Superintendent’s doubts in making him an Inspector would be borne out.

Phillipe came hurrying behind, catching him near the foot of the flight of steps leading back up to the bridge. “What do you think, sir?”

Arnaud paused. Despite the rain, a crowd had gathered along the balustrade above. “You never get used to death,” he said simply, and started climbing the stone steps.

“Sir?”

“Did I ever tell you about the time I got a medal for dragging a wounded soldier back to our trenches?”

“Well, that’s commendable, sir.”

“He died anyway.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I’m not sure. . . ”

“The point is, what’s the point?” Arnaud stopped as they approached the waiting police van parked on the apron of the bridge. “Look, Phillipe I’m sorry for being so abrupt. It’s just that the young woman back there — that girl — she’s probably not yet 20.”

“Sir, I understand it’s never a pleasant job to deal with these bodies, but you and I both know it has to be done. What makes it worthwhile is finding out who did it. To bring justice. . . ”

“No, Phillipe. I mean yes, I understand what you’re saying, but to me it’s something deeper. In the war I held a badly wounded soldier in my arms. He was crying in pain and fear. He wanted me to write to his family and tell them he died bravely. But they took him away and I never even knew his name. I never got the chance to write that letter. He was just another dead soldier. But he had a mother and father and maybe brothers and sisters and possibly a sweetheart, and they don’t even know what happened to him. And that girl lying in the muck back there. . . ” Arnaud reached up and spread his hand across his forehead and dragged his fingers over his eyes trying to soothe a budding headache. Stepping into the police van, he said, “Your colleagues in blue can find out the ‘who’. It’s the ‘why’ I want to know.”