An Officer and a Spy

10

For several minutes I sit motionless, holding the photograph. I might be made of marble, a sculpture by Rodin: The Reader. What really freezes me, even more than the matching handwriting, is the content—the obsession with artillery, the offer to have a manual copied out verbatim, the obsequious salesman’s tone—it is Esterhazy to the life. Briefly, just as I did when the petit bleu came in, I consider marching over to the minister’s office and laying the evidence in front of him. But again I know that would be folly. My four golden principles are more important now than ever: take it one step at a time; approach the matter dispassionately; avoid a rush to judgement; confide in nobody until there is hard evidence.

I pick up the two letters, straighten my tunic and walk along the corridor to Lauth’s office. For a moment I hesitate outside his door, then I knock and go straight in.

The captain of dragoons is leaning back in his chair, long legs outstretched, eyes closed. There is something quite angelic about that blond head in repose. No doubt he is a success with women, although he has a young wife, I believe; I wonder if he has affairs. I am on the point of leaving when suddenly he opens his blue eyes and sees me. And in that unguarded instant something flickers in them that is beyond surprise: it is alarm.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’ll come back when you’re ready.”

“No, no.” Embarrassed, Lauth scrambles to his feet. “Pardon me, Colonel, it’s just so infernally hot, and I’ve been indoors all day …”

“Don’t worry, my dear Lauth, I know precisely how you feel. This really is no life for a soldier, to be trapped in an office day after day. Sit, please. I insist. Do you mind if I join you?” And without waiting for a reply I pull up a chair on the other side of his desk. “I wonder: could you do something for me?” I push the two letters towards him. “I’d like to have these both photographed, but with the signature and the name of the addressee blocked out.”

Lauth examines the letters then glances at me in shock. “Esterhazy!”

“Yes, it seems our minor spy has ambitions to become a major one. But thank goodness,” I can’t resist adding, “we had our eye on him, otherwise who knows what damage he might have done.”

“Indeed.” Lauth gives a reluctant nod and shifts in his seat uncomfortably. “Might I ask, Colonel, why you need photographs of the letters?”

“Just photograph them, if you don’t mind, Captain.” I stand and smile at him. “Shall we say four prints of each by first thing tomorrow? And just for once let’s try to keep this strictly between ourselves.”

Upstairs, Gribelin has only recently returned from his annual leave—not that you would think it to look at him. His face is pallid; his eyes, beneath a green celluloid eyeshade, carry dark pouches of exhaustion. His only concession to the summer heat is shirtsleeves rolled back to his bony elbows, exposing arms as thin and white as tubers. He is bent over a file as I enter, and quickly closes it. He takes off his eyeshade.

“I didn’t hear you coming up the stairs, Colonel.”

I hand him the photograph of the bordereau. “I think you should be in charge of this.”

He blinks at it in surprise. “Where did you find it?”

“Colonel Sandherr had it in his safe.”

“Ah yes, well, he was very proud of it.” Gribelin holds the photograph at arm’s length to admire it. His tongue moistens his top lip as if he’s studying a pornographic print. “He told me he would have had it framed, and hung it on his wall, if regulations had allowed.”

“A hunting trophy?”

“Exactly.”

Gribelin unlocks the bottom left-hand drawer of his desk and fishes out his immense bunch of keys. He carries the bordereau across to a heavy old fireproof filing cabinet, which he opens. I look around. I hardly ever venture up here. Two large tables are pushed together in the centre of the room. Laid out across the scuffed brown leather surfaces are half a dozen stacks of files, a blotting pad, a strong electric lamp, a rack of rubber stamps, a brass inkstand, a hole-puncher and a row of pens—all precisely aligned. Around the walls are the locked cabinets and safes that contain the section’s secrets. There is a map of France, showing the départements. The three windows are narrow, barred and dusty, their sills encrusted with the excrement of the pigeons I can hear cooing on the roof.

“I wonder,” I say casually, “do you keep the original bordereau up here?”

Gribelin does not turn round. “I do.”

“I’d like to see it.”

He glances over his shoulder at me. “Why?”

I shrug. “I’m interested.”

There is nothing he can do. He unlocks another drawer in the cabinet and retrieves one of his ubiquitous manila files. He opens it, and with some reverence retrieves from it the bordereau. It is not at all what I expected. It weighs almost nothing. The paper is flimsy onionskin, semitransparent, written on both sides, so that the ink from one bleeds through and shows on the other. The most substantial thing about it is the adhesive tape holding together the six torn pieces.

I say, “You’d never guess it looked like this from the photograph.”

“No, it was quite a process.” Gribelin’s normally astringent tone is softened by a touch of professional pride. “We had to photograph both sides and then retouch them, and then stick them together and finally rephotograph the whole image. So it came out looking like a continuous sheet of writing.”

“How many prints did you make?”

“Twelve. It was necessary to disguise its original state so that we could circulate it around the ministry.”

“Yes, of course. I remember.” I turn the bordereau back and forth, marvelling once again at Lauth’s skill. “I remember it very well.”

It was the first week of October 1894 when word began to spread that there might be a traitor in the Ministry. All four chiefs of department were required to check the handwriting of every officer in their section, to see if anyone’s matched the photograph. They were sworn to secrecy, allowed only to tell their deputies. Colonel Boucher devolved the job to me.

Despite the restricted circle, it was inevitable that news would leak, and soon a miasma of unease infiltrated the rue Saint-Dominique. The problem lay in that five-point list of the documents betrayed, which set us all chasing our own tails. A “note on the hydraulic brake of the 120” and the “draft Field Artillery Firing Manual” suggested the spy must be in the artillery. But the “new plan” mentioned in point two was the very phrase we used in the Third Department for the revised mobilisation schedule. Of course, the “new plan” was also being studied by the railway timetable experts in the Fourth, so the spy could work there perhaps. But then the “note on the change to artillery formations” was most likely to have come from the First. Whereas the plan to occupy Madagascar had been worked on by the intelligence officers in the Second …

Everyone suspected everyone else. Old incidents were dredged up and picked over, ancient rumours and feuds revived. The ministry was paralysed by suspicion. I went through the handwriting of every officer on our list, even Boucher’s; even mine. I found no match.

And then someone—it was Colonel d’Aboville, deputy chief of the Fourth—had a flash of inspiration. If the traitor could draw on current knowledge of all four departments, wasn’t it reasonable to assume that he had recently worked in all four? And unlikely as it seemed, there was a group of officers on the General Staff of whom that was true: the stagiaires from the École Supérieure de Guerre—men who were relative strangers to their long-serving comrades. Suddenly it was obvious: the traitor was a stagiaire with a background in artillery.

Eight captains of artillery on the stagiaire programme fitted that particular bill, but only one of them was a Jew: a Jew moreover who spoke French with a German accent, whose family lived in the Kaiser’s Reich and who always had money to throw around.

Gribelin, watching me, says, “I’m sure you remember the bordereau, Colonel.” He gives one of his rare smiles. “Just as I remember that you were the one who provided us with the sample of Dreyfus’s handwriting that matched it.”

It was Colonel Boucher who brought me the request from the Statistical Section. Normally he was loud and cheerfully red-faced, but on this occasion he was sombre, even grey. It was a Saturday morning, two days after we had started hunting for the traitor. He closed the door behind him and said, “It looks like we might be getting close to the bastard.”

“Really? That’s quick.”

“General Gonse wants to see some handwriting belonging to Captain Dreyfus.”

“Dreyfus?” I repeated, surprised.

Boucher explained d’Aboville’s theory. “And so,” he concluded, “they’ve decided the traitor must be one of your stagiaires.”

“One of my stagiaires?” I did not like the sound of that!

I had skimmed through Dreyfus’s file the previous day and eliminated him as a suspect. Now I pulled it out again and compared the handwriting of a couple of his letters to the bordereau. And on second glance, looking at them more closely, perhaps there were similarities: the same small lettering; the same slope to the right; similar spacing between both words and lines … A terrible feeling of certainty began to seize hold of me. “I don’t know, Colonel,” I said. “What do you think?” I showed the letters to Boucher.

“Well, I’m no expert either, but they look pretty much alike to me. You’d better bring them along.”

Ten minutes earlier, Dreyfus had been no more of a suspect to me than anyone else. But the power of suggestion is insidious. As the colonel and I walked together along the corridors of the ministry, my imagination began to fill with thoughts of Dreyfus—of his family still living in Germany, of his solitariness and cleverness and arrogance, of his ambition to enter the General Staff and his careful cultivation of senior officers—so much so that by the time we reached General Gonse’s office I had all but convinced myself: Of course he would betray us, because he hates us; he has hated us all along because he isn’t like us, and knows he never will be, for all his money; he is just …

A regular Jew!

Waiting for us, along with Gonse himself, were Colonel d’Aboville, Colonel Fabre, the chief of the Fourth Department, Colonel Lefort, head of the First, and Colonel Sandherr. I laid Dreyfus’s letters out on Gonse’s desk and stepped back while my superiors crowded around to look. And from that huddle of uniformed backs arose a growing exclamation of shock and conviction: “Look how he forms the capital ‘s’ there, and the ‘j’ … And the small ‘m’ and the ‘r,’ do you see? And the gap between the words is exactly the same … I’m no expert, but … No, I’m no expert either, but … I’d say they’re identical …”

Sandherr straightened and slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “I should have known! How many times have I seen him loitering round, asking questions?”

Fabre said, “I predicted exactly this in my report on him, do you remember, Major Picquart?” He pointed at me. “ ‘An incomplete officer, lacking the qualities of character necessary for employment on the General Staff …’ Were those not my very words?”

“They were, Colonel,” I agreed.

Gonse said to me, “Where is Dreyfus exactly?”

“He’s at infantry camp outside Paris until the end of next week.”

“Good.” Sandherr nodded. “Excellent. That gives us some time. We need to get all this to a handwriting expert.”

Gonse said: “So you really think it’s him?”

“Well, if not him—who?”

No one responded. That was the nub of it. If the traitor wasn’t Dreyfus, then who was it? You? Me? Your comrade? Mine? Whereas if it was Dreyfus, this debilitating hunt for an enemy within would come to an end. Without saying it, or even thinking it, collectively we willed it to be so.

Gonse sighed and said, “I’d better go and tell General Mercier. He may have to speak to the Prime Minister.” He glanced at me, as if I were the one responsible for introducing this contagion into the ministry, and said to Boucher, “I don’t think we need detain Major Picquart any longer, do you, Colonel?”

Boucher said, “No, I don’t believe so. Thank you, Picquart.”

“Thank you, General.”

I saluted and left.

I have been silent for a while. Suddenly I am aware of Gribelin, still staring at me.

“Strange,” I say, flourishing the bordereau. “Curious how it brings it all back.”

“Yes, I can imagine.”

And that might well have been the end of it, as far as my own involvement was concerned. But then to my surprise, a week later I received a telegram at my apartment summoning me to a meeting in the office of the Minister of War at six o’clock on the evening of Sunday, 14 October.

I presented myself at the hôtel de Brienne at the appointed time. I could hear voices as I climbed the stairs, and when I reached the first floor I discovered a small group waiting in the corridor to go in: General Boisdeffre, General Gonse, Colonel Sandherr and a couple of men I didn’t recognise—a corpulent, claret-faced major who, like me, wore the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, and a superintendent from the Sûreté. There was one other officer. He was standing further along the passage next to the window, rather self-importantly wearing a monocle and flicking through a file, and I realised it was Colonel du Paty de Clam, Blanche’s former lover. He saw me looking at him, closed his file, removed his monocle, and strutted towards me.

“Picquart,” he said, returning my salute. “What an appalling business this is.”

“I didn’t know you were involved in it, Colonel.”

“Involved!” Du Paty laughed and shook his head. “My dear Major, I’ve been put in charge of the entire investigation! I’m the reason you’re here!”

I always found something disconcerting about du Paty. It was as if he were acting the central part in a play for which no one else had been shown the script. He might laugh abruptly, or tap his nose and adopt an air of great mystery, or disappear from a room in the middle of a conversation without explanation. He fancied himself a detective in the modern scientific manner and had made a study of graphology, anthropometry, cryptography and secret inks. I wondered what role in his drama he had chosen for me to play.

I said, “May I ask how the investigation is going?”

“You are about to hear.” He patted the file and nodded to the minister’s door, which at that moment was being opened by one of his staff officers.

Inside, Mercier was seated at his desk, signing a pile of correspondence. “Please, gentlemen,” he said in that quiet voice of his without looking up, “take a seat. I shan’t be a moment.”

We arranged ourselves around the conference table in order of rank, leaving the place at the head free for Mercier, with Boisdeffre to the right and Gonse to the left, then Sandherr and du Paty facing each other, and finally we three junior officers at the far end.

“Henry,” said the burly officer, leaning across the table to extend his hand to me.

“Picquart,” I replied.

The commissioner from the Sûreté also introduced himself: “Armand Cochefort.”

For a minute we sat in awkward silence while the minister finished signing his papers, then gave them to his aide, who saluted and left.

“So,” said Mercier, taking his seat at the table, and placing a sheet of paper in front of him, “I have informed the President and the Prime Minister of where things stand, and this is the warrant for Dreyfus’s arrest; all it needs is my signature. Have we received the results of the handwriting expert? I gather the first man, from the Banque de France, concluded that the writing wasn’t Dreyfus’s after all.”

Du Paty opened his file. “We have, Minister. I have consulted Alphonse Bertillon, head of the identification branch of the Préfecture of Police. He says the bordereau contains strong elements of Dreyfus’s handwriting, and where it differs, the discrepancies are deliberate. If I might spare you the technical detail and just read you his conclusion: ‘It appears clear to us that it was the same person who wrote the various items submitted and the incriminating document.’ ”

“So one says yes and one says no? That’s experts for you!” Mercier turned to Sandherr. “Is Dreyfus back in Paris yet?”

Sandherr said, “He’s having dinner with his wife’s parents, the Hadamards: his father-in-law is a diamond merchant—you know how they specialise in portable property. We have the building under watch.”

Boisdeffre interrupted: “Isn’t it quite tempting, Colonel, if we know where he is, simply to have him arrested tonight?”

“No, General,” replied Sandherr, shaking his head emphatically, “with the greatest respect, absolutely not. You don’t know these people as well as I do. You don’t know the way they operate. The moment they discover we have Dreyfus in custody, the whole force of upper Jewdom will swing into action to agitate for his release. It’s essential that he simply disappears with the minimum of fuss and we have him to ourselves for at least a week. I think Colonel du Paty’s plan is a good one.”

Mercier turned his impassive, masklike face to du Paty. “Go on.”

“I have concluded that the most secure location in which to arrest Dreyfus is inside the ministry itself. General Gonse has already sent him a telegram ordering him to attend a duty inspection in General Boisdeffre’s office at nine o’clock tomorrow morning …”

“In civilian dress,” put in Gonse, “so that if anyone sees him afterwards, when he arrives at the prison, they won’t realise he’s an army officer.”

“… so we’ll arrest him here in the rue Saint-Dominique, in the Chief of the General Staff’s office.”

Mercier said, “What if he suspects a trap?”

“Ah well, this is where Major Picquart comes in,” said du Paty.

I felt all eyes turn in my direction. I tried to stare ahead as if I knew what was coming.

“Major Picquart,” explained Gonse to Mercier, “was one of Dreyfus’s tutors at the École Supérieure. He runs the stagiaire programme.”

“I know that.” Mercier regarded me through his eye slits; it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

Du Paty continued: “I propose that Major Picquart waits for Dreyfus in the main entrance at nine o’clock and personally conducts him to General Boisdeffre’s office. Dreyfus knows him and trusts him. That should allay any suspicions.”

There was a silence while the minister considered this.

Mercier said, “And what do you think of this plan, Major Picquart?”

“I am not sure Captain Dreyfus regards me as a particularly reassuring figure,” I replied carefully, “but if Colonel du Paty believes my presence will be useful, then of course I shall play my part.”

Mercier trained his eye slits back on du Paty. “So we have him in General Boisdeffre’s office. And then what do we do with him?”

“General Boisdeffre will not be there …”

“I should hope not!” cut in Boisdeffre.

“… instead, I’ll greet Dreyfus, explain that the Chief of the General Staff has been delayed, and ask him to take a seat. My right hand will be bandaged—I’ll say it’s injured—and I’ll ask Dreyfus to take down a letter for me, which I’ll dictate. By catching him unawares, I’ll make it hard for him to disguise his writing. Once I have sufficient evidence, I’ll give the signal and we’ll confront him.”

“Who is ‘we’?” asked Mercier.

“With me in the room will be Superintendent Cochefort of the Sûreté—who is with us here—along with one of his men, and Monsieur Gribelin, archivist of the Statistical Section, who will make a verbatim record. Major Henry of the Statistical Section will be concealed behind a screen.”

“So it will be five against one?”

“Exactly, Minister. I believe with the benefit of numbers and surprise there is an excellent chance he will be break down and confess on the spot. In which case, I wish to make a further suggestion.”

“Go on.”

“That we offer him the honourable way out—I show him a service revolver with a single bullet, and he can finish it there and then.”

There was a silence while Mercier considered this, then he inclined his head slightly. “Yes.”

Boisdeffre said, “Good heavens! I would be grateful if he could do it away from my carpet—it’s an Aubusson.”

Grateful laughter relieved the tension. Only Mercier didn’t smile. “And if he doesn’t take the traditional course, what then?”

“Then Major Henry will escort him to Cherche-Midi prison,” said du Paty, “while Cochefort and I go to the Dreyfus apartment and search it for evidence. I’ll warn his wife to say nothing of what has happened to her husband, or she’ll make it far worse for him. At Cherche-Midi, the governor has agreed to keep Dreyfus in solitary confinement twenty-four hours a day—no letters, no visitors, no lawyers. Nobody will know where he is, not even the commander of the Paris garrison. As far as the world is concerned, Captain Alfred Dreyfus will have vanished from the face of the earth.”

Having delivered himself of this masterpiece, du Paty closed his file and sat back in his chair.

I glanced around the table. Mercier and Boisdeffre were impassive, Gonse lighting a cigarette, Sandherr gripping the arms of his chair and shaking slightly, Henry watching him with concern, Cochefort looking at the floor with his arms folded.

Mercier said, “Does anyone have any questions?”

I hesitated, and then tentatively I raised my hand. I never could resist the opportunity to goad du Paty whenever I had the chance.

“Yes, Major … Picquart, is it?”

“It is. Thank you, Minister. I wondered,” I said, turning towards du Paty, “what happens if Dreyfus doesn’t confess?”

Du Paty gave me a cold look. “He will confess. He has no choice.”

“But if he doesn’t …?”

“If he doesn’t,” interrupted Sandherr, staring down the table at me and apparently trembling with emotion, “we have plenty of other evidence, apart from his handwriting, that demonstrates his guilt.”

I decided not to press it further. I nodded. “Thank you.”

A long pause followed.

“Anyone else?” asked Mercier, the eye slits sweeping past each of us in turn. “No? Chief? No? In that case, gentlemen, you are authorised to proceed with the plan, as outlined by Colonel du Paty, at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

And with that he signed the arrest warrant and tossed it down the table towards du Paty.

The next day was the most perfect crystalline autumn morning one could ever wish for—cool, with a clear sky and a promise of warmth to come, the early sun already starting to part the layers of mist draped across the Seine.

When I arrived at the ministry soon after eight, I found du Paty in the main lobby, in a state of high nervous excitement, marshalling his troops. Three were in civilian dress—Cochefort and his deputy, and a cadaverous clerk whom I took to be Gribelin, even though we were not introduced. Henry and I were both in uniform. Henry looked bemused, and at one point, as du Paty outlined for the second or third time what he wanted us to do, he caught my eye and gave me the tremor of a wink.

“So, Picquart, make sure you arrive with Dreyfus at the Chief of Staff’s office on the stroke of nine” were du Paty’s parting words to me. “Not a minute either side, understood? I want this thing to go off like clockwork!”

Du Paty and the others disappeared upstairs and I settled down on one of the green leather benches to wait. I had a commanding view of the courtyard leading to the rue Saint-Dominique. I pretended to read a newspaper. The minutes dragged by. The whole of the army seemed to pass before me—doddery and white-whiskered old generals, gallant colonels of dragoons flushed by the cold after an early morning canter in the Bois de Boulogne, keen-faced young captains carrying stacks of files for their masters—and then suddenly, in the midst of this parade, came Dreyfus: incongruous, hesitant, frowning, already looking like an outcast, shorn of his uniform, wearing an immaculate black frock coat, striped trousers and a bowler hat. He might have been a stockbroker. I glanced at my watch and cursed. He was fifteen minutes early.

I folded my newspaper and rose as he came through the door. Obviously he was taken aback to meet me. He touched his bowler in salute.

“Major Picquart, good morning.” And then, glancing around the crowded lobby, he added, “I fear some of the fellows may be playing a joke on me. I had a telegram on Saturday, supposedly from General Boisdeffre’s office, telling me to report for a staff review wearing civilian clothes, but nobody else seems to have received it.”

“That sounds odd,” I said. “May I see?”

Dreyfus pulled the telegram out of his pocket book and handed it over: Summons. The Division General, Chief of the Army General Staff, will conduct an inspection of the officers on duty with the Staff during the day of Monday, 15 October. M. Captain Dreyfus, currently with the 39th Regiment of the Infantry in Paris, is invited to be present on that date at 9 a.m., in the office of the Chief of the Army General. Civilian dress …

I pretended to read it through carefully. I was playing for time. “I don’t understand,” I said. “Come to my office. Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

“No, Major, please don’t concern yourself with it …”

“Nonsense, I insist.”

“I don’t want to put you to any inconvenience …”

“Really, I have plenty of time.”

It seemed an endless walk to the Third Department, during which I could think of nothing to utter except banalities about the weather and his family. “And how is your wife?”

“She’s very well, thank you, Major.”

“And do you have children? I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”

“Yes, Major—two.”

“What sort?”

“A boy and a girl.”

“And how old are they?”

“Pierre is three and Jeanne is one and a half …”

And so on and so forth. It was a relief when we reached my door. “Why don’t you wait in here,” I said, “while I check what’s going on.”

“Thank you, Major.”

He went inside and I closed the door. I checked my watch again. Ten to nine. For several minutes I paced up and down the corridor like a sentry, repeatedly glancing at my closed door, willing the time to pass, wondering if perhaps he had climbed out of the window and shinned down the drainpipe, or was at that moment rifling through my desk for secrets. At last, at two minutes to the hour, I went in to fetch him. He was sitting on the edge of a chair with his bowler hat on his knees. The papers on my desk were undisturbed. It didn’t look as if he’d moved a centimetre.

“Your telegram is quite correct,” I said brightly. “There is an inspection.”

“What a relief!” exclaimed Dreyfus, getting to his feet. “I really thought some of the fellows were playing a joke on me—they sometimes do, you know.”

“I need to see the general myself. I’ll walk over with you.”

Off we set again.

Dreyfus said, “I hope I get the opportunity to have a word with General Boisdeffre. We had a really good talk about artillery formations in the summer. There are one or two additional points that have occurred to me since.” I made no reply. Then he said, “You don’t happen to know how long this inspection is likely to take, do you, Major?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“The thing is, I told my wife I’d be home for lunch. Well, it doesn’t matter.”

We had reached the wide, high-ceilinged passage leading to the office of the Chief of the General Staff.

Dreyfus said, “I say, it’s awfully quiet, isn’t it? Where is everyone?”

The double doors were up ahead. His pace was slowing. I willed him to complete the distance.

I said, “I think they must all be inside waiting for you.” I placed my hand in the small of his back and gently pressed him forward.

We reached the door. I opened it. He turned to me, puzzled. “Aren’t you coming in as well, Major?”

“I’m sorry. I just remembered something I have to do. Goodbye.”

I turned on my heel and walked away. Behind me I heard the click of a lock, and when I looked back the door was closed and Dreyfus was gone.

“Tell me,” I say to Gribelin, “what exactly happened that morning after I delivered Dreyfus to you and Colonel du Paty?”

“I don’t understand what you mean, Colonel.”

“You were there to act as a witness?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what was it you witnessed?” The archivist stares at me as I pull out a chair. “Forgive all these questions, Monsieur Gribelin. I’m simply trying to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. It is a continuing case, after all.” I indicate the chair opposite. “Sit down with me for a moment.”

“If that is what you want, Colonel.” Without taking his eyes off me, as if he suspects I might make a sudden lunge at him, Gribelin lowers his bony frame into the seat. “What do you want to know?”

I light a cigarette, and make a great show of pulling the ashtray towards me. “We wouldn’t want a stray spark up here!” I say with a smile, shaking out the match and placing it carefully in the ashtray. “So Dreyfus comes through the door, and then what?”

It is as difficult as pulling teeth, but gradually I extract the story from him: how Dreyfus walked in, looked around and asked where General Boisdeffre was; how du Paty replied that he had been delayed, invited Dreyfus to sit down, indicated his gloved hand, and inquired if he wouldn’t mind taking down a letter for him as he had sprained his wrist; how Dreyfus did as he was asked, watched by Cochefort and his assistant, and by Gribelin, who was sitting opposite him.

“He must have started to get nervous,” I suggest. “He must have wondered what was happening.”

“He did, most definitely. You can see it in his handwriting. I can show you, in fact.” Gribelin goes once again to his filing cabinet and returns with a bulging folder, several centimetres thick. He opens it. “The first item is the actual document Dreyfus wrote down at Colonel du Paty’s dictation.” He pushes the file over to me. “You can see how his writing changes halfway through, as he realises he’s been trapped and tries to disguise it.”

It starts like an ordinary letter: Paris, 15 October 1894. Having the most serious reasons, sir, for temporarily retaking possession of the documents I had passed on to you before taking off on manoeuvres …

I say, “I don’t see any change halfway through …”

“Yes, there is, it’s obvious. Here.” Gribelin leans across and taps the letter. He sounds exasperated. “Exactly here, where the colonel made him write the hydraulic brake of the 120 millimetre cannon—that was when he understood what was happening. You can see the way his writing suddenly gets larger and less regular.”

I look again. I still don’t see it. “Perhaps, if you say so …”

“Believe me, Colonel, we all noticed the change in his demeanour. His foot began to tremble. Colonel du Paty accused him of changing his style. Dreyfus denied it. When the dictation was finished, the colonel told him he was under arrest for treason.”

“And then what happened?”

“Superintendent Cochefort and his assistant seized him and searched him. Dreyfus continued to deny it. Colonel du Paty showed him the revolver and offered him the honourable course.”

“What did Dreyfus say to that?”

“He said, ‘Shoot me if you want to, but I am innocent!’ He was like a character in a play. At that moment Colonel du Paty called out for Major Henry, who was hidden behind the screen, and Major Henry took him away to prison.”

I start to turn the pages of the file. To my astonishment, every sheet is a copy of the bordereau. I open it at the midpoint. I flick to the end. “My God,” I murmur, “how many times did you make him write it out?”

“Oh, a hundred or more. But that was over the course of several weeks. You’ll see they’re labelled: ‘Left hand,’ ‘right hand,’ ‘standing up,’ ‘sitting down,’ ‘lying down …’ ”

“You made him do this in his cell, presumably?”

“Yes. Monsieur Bertillon, the handwriting expert from the Préfecture of Police, wanted as large a sample as possible so that he could demonstrate how he managed to disguise his writing. Colonel du Paty and I would visit Dreyfus at Cherche-Midi, usually around midnight, and interrogate him throughout the night. The colonel had the idea of surprising him while he was asleep—springing in and shining a powerful lantern in his face.”

“And what was his mental state during all this?”

Gribelin looks shifty. “It was rather fragile, to be frank with you, Colonel. He was held in solitary confinement. He was not allowed any letters or visitors. He was often quite tearful, asking after his family and so forth. I remember he had some abrasions on his face.” Gribelin touches his temple lightly. “Around here. The warders told us he used to hit his head against the wall.”

“And he denied any involvement in espionage?”

“Absolutely. It was quite a performance, Colonel. Whoever trained him taught him very well.”

I continue to leaf through the file. I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information … I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information … I am forwarding to you, sir, several interesting items of information … The writing deteriorates as the days pass. It is like a record from a madhouse. I start to feel my own head reeling. I close the file and push it back across the table.

“That’s fascinating, Gribelin. Thank you for your time.”

“Is there anything else I can assist you with, Colonel?”

“I don’t think so, no. Not just at the moment.”

He cradles the file tenderly in his arms and takes it over to the filing cabinet. I pause at the door and look back at him. “Do you have any children, Monsieur Gribelin?”

“No, Colonel.”

“Are you married, even?”

“No, Colonel. It never fitted with my work.”

“I understand. I’m the same. Good night, then.”

“Good night, Colonel.”

I trot down the stairs to the first floor, picking up speed as I go, past the corridor to my office, down the stairs to the ground floor, across the lobby and out into the sunshine, where I fill my lungs with reviving draughts of clean fresh air.