The Secret Knowledge

1913

Ten days after Pierre’s funeral, Yvette and her mother receive a visit from his cousin Gilberte; small, dark-eyed, dressed in black yet radiant with loss, her pale sharp features are determined to resist grief with dignity. Yvette follows little of the conversation while the three of them sit sorrowfully together, then Madame Courvelles excuses herself, leaving Yvette and Gilberte alone.

“I bring remembrances of Pierre.” From her purse Gilberte extracts a small silver locket and a dried flower, the latter instantly comprehensible despite the wearying confusion of Yvette’s mind. Pierre was wearing it when he was shot.

“I can’t.”

“Please.”

Withered yet otherwise uncorrupted, the cattleya is like the remains of a saint; already, twirling it slowly in her fingers, Yvette envisages the jewelled reliquary that would be fit to house it. Before delivering the locket into Yvette’s other hand, Gilberte opens it to reveal an encased curl of coal-black hair, and it is as if Yvette is reading everything in a book, viewing it in a carefully staged photograph, or from a vast distance through a telescope. She is not really here and none of this is happening. It is a fantasy — almost.

“I never saw him.”

“I know that, Yvette.”

“They wouldn’t let me. Why wouldn’t they let me see him?”

“Better to remember him in life.”

“Not even in his coffin… Did you?”

“Let’s not speak of it.” Gilberte presses the locket into Yvette’s palm. “Keep this and treasure it.”

Yvette stares at the two lifeless souvenirs she holds, places them on the table beside her cooled teacup and asks again. “Did you see Pierre’s body?”

“Yvette, you’re only upsetting both of us.”

“But did you?”

“No.” Gilberte’s porcelain face is impassive, her voice like the funeral oration Yvette hazily recalls that extolled with stoic finality Pierre’s genius as musician and beauty as a man. “It was his parents’ wish, you know that.”

“A cruel wish.”

She bristles. “Were it not for your mental condition I would find that remark inexcusable. Is your grief greater than theirs?”

“I only want to know why they hid him.”

Gilberte, her errand already discharged, is like an actress impatient to reach the end of the scene when her role will be terminated and she can depart the theatre. “It’s obvious why, Yvette, stop hurting yourself and others.”

“They should have let me see him!”

So much weeping recently; Gilberte has become immune to it. “Control yourself and think what it must be like for them. You were spared and now you blame them for it.”

“If I could have seen his face.”

“He had no face!” Gilberte’s outburst is like the gunshot itself. “Forgive me,” she says softly.

Impervious to further hurt, her world having ended two weeks ago, Yvette remains numb. “I know how terrible he must have looked. But I should have been with him as he died, holding him in my arms. The crowd, the confusion, everyone saying different things…”

“You did nothing wrong.”

“Or if they made a mistake. How can they be so sure it was Pierre?”

“You make it harder for yourself, Yvette.”

“No,” she says with sudden firmness, as if startled out of a daydream. “I’ve had enough of everyone trying to spare my feelings, treating me like a child. We were going to be married, he chose me as his wife.”

“So you say…”

“It’s true, Gilberte, and in my mind I’m his widow.”

“In mind but not in fact.” Gilberte’s voice hardens with determination, the solidarity of a family that has resolved to close itself against disaster, intrusion, scandal. “His parents’ wishes are final. I came in kindness to bring you these gifts from them, but what you say makes me doubt your gratitude. They have no obligation to you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They would prefer no further communication.”

“I’m to be shut out?”

“You were never let in. You claim there was an engagement but there is no evidence of it, and Pierre’s father would in any case not have given permission.”

Yvette can barely feel the blow but she is aware of it, like witnessing an assault by one stranger on another. She feels pity of an abstract kind.

“I must leave,” Gilberte says.

“I agree.”

“I have other visits to make. Pierre had so many friends.”

“Not all of them good. That’s why he was murdered.”

Gilberte rises brusquely. “Enough of this.”

“But are the police still investigating? Why have they not come back to interview me again as they said?”

“The inquiry is no longer your concern.”

“How can you possibly say that? You don’t care, do you? None of you care. You simply want this terrible thing to go away — so you tell me to go. I won’t be silent!”

“You know nothing, Yvette, and anything you say will only cause further anguish. If you try to spread rumours there will be consequences.”

“Get out of here, damn you!”

Madame Courvelles re-enters just as Yvette is getting to her feet, the cousin stepping back in anticipation of being struck. The scene is undignified, ghastly. “Calm yourself!” Madame Courvelles cries as she rushes to embrace her daughter, both sobbing while Gilberte excuses herself and leaves.

The funeral, in Yvette’s mind, was the wedding she and Pierre had planned, their union. Either she, too, is dead, or else the man is alive. Both possibilities exist for her with equal force and reality because around the incident in the park so much doubt adheres, obscuring truth, demanding faith. In the following days there is no further word from Pierre’s family, from the police, or from anyone, as if all would prefer the couple never to have existed.

Leaving the house alone, intending to take some air, Yvette is met by the eyes of a brown-suited man coming along the pavement from the other direction who neatly raises his hat with a nod, as if he knows her and has the right to acknowledge it. She finds the gesture rude and unwelcome, fixes her line of sight ahead, but the man addresses her as she passes.

“Mademoiselle Courvelles.”

She stops, turns and looks at him, silently demanding an explanation.

“You have my sincere condolences. Pierre was a fine man.” The stranger must be only a few years older than she, but has a look of maturity and worldliness.

“You knew Pierre?”

His eyes roll in sad affirmation. “We were intimately acquainted. My name is Louis Carreau.”

It means nothing to her. “Are you a musician?”

“A music lover but no expert. Pierre’s circle was wide, it is not surprising if he never mentioned me. Though he spoke often of you.”

She feels herself blush, and for the first time in weeks is aware of a smile on her lips.

“He loved you very much, mademoiselle. He told me… I shouldn’t mention this.”

“Tell me, please.”

“He spoke of wanting to be with you forever.”

Tears are in her eyes. “He is.”

Carreau nods sorrowfully. “I suppose so.”

Yvette can see he has the air of knowing more than he says. “What else did Pierre speak about?”

Monsieur Carreau suggests they walk together. “Pierre’s interests were so varied, a conversation with him could be about art, philosophy, history.”

“Or life,” she recalls. “That most of all. The sheer joy of being in the world.”

“Yes, mademoiselle, he had such hopes and ambitions, which is why I find the recent circumstances so mystifying and distressing.”

They have reached the small gated garden that was her intended destination, but she continues past the entrance, still unsure of the man accompanying her. “I, too, am mystified, why anyone would do such a terrible thing to him.” Carreau halts beside her; she sees pain on his face, its suddenness inexplicable. “You do know what happened, don’t you?”

“I know what is asserted, mademoiselle, and that is what I find so incredible.”

“That he was murdered?”

Carreau’s expression alters once more. “You mean they didn’t tell you?”

“What are you talking about?” She feels almost the same foreboding she experienced on the day it happened.

“I spoke carelessly, forgive me, it is of no consequence…”

“What should they have told me? I knew they were hiding something!”

Carreau looks skywards as though wishing reassurance of the earth’s solidity. He speaks reluctantly, regretful both of the subject matter and of being forced to share it. His eyes when he levels them are so replete with earnest sympathy that he has the look of a professional mourner. “I have a friend in the justice ministry, I asked him to examine the papers relating to the case. There were witnesses to what happened. Mademoiselle, Pierre was not murdered…”

“My God, he’s alive?”

Carreau shakes his head. “It was by his own hand.”

She feels herself stagger; Carreau reaches to support her but quickly withdraws his arm when she shakes free. “Get away from me, you madman, or I shall call for help.”

“I simply tell you what I know.”

“This is all lies.”

“You knew the family were concealing a fact more painful than the death itself, now you understand what it is. I am sorry to have brought you news of which you would have been better to have remained ignorant. I should bid you goodbye.” He raises his hat again with the same polite self-assurance of his earlier introduction and is about to step away when Yvette, her thoughts restoring themselves to order, restrains him.

“How can they believe Pierre shot himself?”

“It is what the investigators have concluded, though they naturally wish to preserve the dignity of a high-ranking family.”

“But it was only minutes after he proposed marriage to me.”

Carreau’s brow furrows in shared puzzlement. “He asked you that very day? Then the improbable becomes surely impossible.”

Yvette’s mind is racing. “We have to tell the police.”

“It would not be a good idea.”

“Or your friend in the ministry. Don’t you see, Monsieur Carreau, there has been a terrible error, the police have got it wrong, he couldn’t have done what they say.”

Carreau sighs. “I’ve seen the papers, mademoiselle. I will not describe to you the detail with which one witness related what he saw, but I can tell you there is no doubt.”

“He saw Pierre die?”

“He saw him point the gun between his eyes and pull the trigger.”

Yvette covers her face.

“The witness saw the weapon go off, the wound it made. Death was instantaneous.”

She is not too distraught to recognise the flaw in the story. “Where is this witness? Why should we believe him?”

“Others viewed less clearly but no less certainly. We know beyond question the manner of Pierre’s death. It’s the motive that I can’t fathom. But for the police the case is closed, likewise for Pierre’s family. It seems, mademoiselle, that you and I are the only persons interested in discovering the truth.”

Finally she understands the reason why he has made himself known to her. “What should we do?”

“We can try to make enquiries of our own; but unless there is some further evidence, perhaps an unknown aspect of Pierre’s life, a shadow that marred his happiness…” He stares penetratingly at her. “Can you think of anything at all?”

She says she can. The new friends, Pierre’s disappearance, even the symphony; she tells Carreau everything, and finishes by bringing from inside the collar of her dress the fine gold chain that has been hanging round her neck, at the end of it a small key.

“This is what he gave you?” Carreau is transfixed as though by a priceless treasure; he peers closely at what she holds, longing to touch it. She removes the chain from her neck.

“Pierre was so insistent that I have it; at the time I thought… I don’t know what I thought. Afterwards it seemed so inadvertently prophetic. Yet now…”

“Did you ever see the writing desk? Do you know where exactly it is situated in the house?”

“No… in his room I suppose. I can never go there, I wouldn’t be admitted.”

“But I can go.” Carreau extends his palm. “I shall pay the parents my respects.”

“And get Pierre’s music? How?”

“I shall find a way, trust me.”

She gives him the key, still on its fine chain, feeling as if she is giving up her own child, and in the moment when his fingers curl around the prize to take it from her, she is gripped again by doubt, and by the thought that in trying to save Pierre and his work she is really betraying him. “Give me something in return,” she exclaims.

“You want payment? Some kind of pledge?”

“Only your word. Promise that you will bring it back to me, and the music. I’ve lost Pierre once already, I can’t lose him again. Do this for me, Monsieur Carreau. Do it for our friend.”

Carreau smiles thinly. “We shall both have what we want, Mademoiselle Courvelles. Trust me.”

She feels she has made a terrible mistake; for some days afterwards there is no word from Carreau, she wonders if he is simply an unscrupulous music dealer willing to prey on a grieving woman in order to obtain a manuscript. A letter arrives, which she at first assumes must be from Carreau, though as soon as she begins to read, she realises it is from another.

My dear Mlle Courvelles,

I extend profound condolences and share your grief. Allow me to offer some recollections of our late friend, and believe me when I tell you, they are not without importance.

Pierre would frequently join me, along with several companions, at one or other of our favourite cafés, the popularity of each establishment being proportional to the leniency of its owner in allowing us credit. On one such occasion the topic for discussion was the nature of genius, there were six or seven of us round the table, our half-filled glasses politely and indefinitely preserved from being emptied, our impoverishment dignified by the richness of a conversation that brought Mozart, Michelangelo and Dante to a place favoured by thirsty dockers, as well as less honest members of the working class, male and female, of a kind you probably cannot imagine. I tell you this, mademoiselle, not so as to cast doubt on the honour and integrity of our friend, but merely to remind you that any young man of spirit and intelligence moves naturally, like a colourful fish in an aquarium, between the light of the surface, and the darker regions beneath.

A voice interrupted us. “Ha, genius!” We turned and saw at a neighbouring table a man alone, unshaven, dressed like an office clerk but so dishevelled as not to have been previously conspicuous. He was, in short, a drunk of the kind every watering hole knows, and before him on the table stood a glass of cognac. “You want to know about genius? I’ll tell you about genius!”

We were all of us in good humour and ready for some sport. “Do tell, then,” said one of us, an actor I shall call Duchêne. “But not for the price of another glass, since we don’t have a sou between us!”

The drunk nodded with a bibulous smile, his eye gleaming. He rummaged inside his dirty jacket that I saw to be torn at the elbow, drew out a gold coin as bright as the filling in his tooth, and flicked it on his thumb, catching it in his hand. We waited for him to speak. He kept smiling, flicking.

“Well?” Duchêne said at last. “Is that all?”

We were about to turn from him when he stopped, reached out, and passed the coin to my friend. “Look carefully,” he said.

Duchêne inspected the object, finding its brightness belied an unexpected antiquity. “It’s from the eighteenth century.” He looked up at the stranger. “Is it real?”

The man gave a shrug of indifference. “Depends what you mean. Study it closely.”

We examined the coin, passing it among ourselves. It was Pierre who spotted the pretence.

“This is fake,” he declared. “It feels too light.”

The man nodded. “It’s made of glass. Belonged to my great-great grandfather who had it made in Switzerland — that and a thousand others.”

“He was a counterfeiter?” one of us asked.

“We could use his talents!” another laughed.

Our companion allowed us our moment of frivolity. “He needed money in order to carry out a certain mission of what you might call a philosophical kind. This was the only way.”

“Did he go to the gallows for it?” asked Pierre.

“No, he escaped, taking his precious papers with him.”

Here, we recognised, was an artist of that all-too familiar kind, the bar-room raconteur. We had nothing to offer, we told him plainly, except our ears. Yet this seemed enough for him.

“My great-great-grandfather had acquired secret papers from a society formed by Jean-Bernard Rosier.”

“Never heard of him,” said Duchêne.

“No,” said the man, “I wouldn’t expect you to. He’s not a name you’d ever have come across in respectable literature.”

“Then what about disrespectable?”

“Perhaps,” said the man, retrieving the coin that was handed back to him, its lustre less enticing now than the gleam of mystery. “I’m no Rosierist, I’m a humble engineer with too much of a taste for the ladies and the race track and the bottle. Yes, sirs, I’m a bum, I’ve not lived long and already I’ve wasted my life. But you gentlemen, you’re interested in genius, and that’s why I wanted to tell you my little story. Now I’d better leave.”

“No, wait.” It was Pierre who spoke. “Tell us more about Rosier’s society. Was it political? A sort of freemasonry?”

“Best left alone,” replied our companion, who, having emptied his glass and seen that there was no prospect of replenishment, rose with only a little unsteadiness to his feet.

“Your name, monsieur?” It was I who asked.

“Minard.”

All were ready to see the strange fellow leave, except Pierre. “I want to know more about Rosier,” he said abruptly.

Minard eyed him with a sparkle of mischief and a shadow of enigma. “In that case you shall have to search hard, my friend, because I have told you all I can. Though if ever you go to the Blue Cat, especially on a Friday night, you might see me there.”

Pierre warmed at the information. “Of course I know it — I’ve even played piano there to earn a few drinks.”

Minard nodded with quiet satisfaction. “Then we shall meet again, my good pianist.” And with that he left, the conversation quickly turned to matters of a kind I need not report to a lady such as yourself, and the toper with his fake coin was soon forgotten by all of us.

All, that is, except Pierre. It was many weeks later when he reminded me of the incident, and told me something else. He had been to the Blue Cat and had seen Minard not once but several times, plying him with cognac paid for by his sweet, nimble fingers; oh yes, mademoiselle, our beloved artist was playing music-hall songs or Schubert melodies in order that he could nourish the mercenary tongue of a fantasist. Let me assure you, moreover, that no other item attracted his attention in the insalubrious haunt he had come to patronise, save the smooth-tongued, fast-drinking engineer in his tattered coat, with his false gold piece flicking on his thumb.

Minard’s ancestor, Pierre told me, had been entrusted with papers cursed by their own inflammatory outrageousness; the manifesto of a world transformed, the ground plan of a society turned upside down by revolution, disdainful of logic as much as morality; the atlas of an alternative universe God rightly chose not to create. The Rosierists, if any still existed, were dedicated to its creation here on Earth.

My fear, when Pierre told me this, was not that he might fall into the hands of underground fanatics, since I felt sure those masked fiends lived only in Minard’s fairy-tales. No, my fear was that Pierre was being seduced by lies, and that by dipping his toe into the mire his wily chum inhabited, he risked finding his foot stuck, then his leg and waist, until eventually his head would disappear into the filth. Forgive me for being so blunt, mademoiselle, but I have seen good men go bad before, and Pierre of all people must, I felt sure, be saved from such a fate.

I told Duchêne; we followed Pierre to the Blue Cat and saw him in conversation with three men — Minard was not among them. We had to be circumspect in our observation, but the briefest of glimpses was enough to satisfy me that these companions of his were no philosophers, no architects of Utopia. If there was anything I would have expected that group to plan, mademoiselle, it wouldn’t be an ideal society — more like a terrorist atrocity. I tell you it as plainly as I can: they looked like assassins.

Soon afterwards Pierre disappeared. I knew at once that he must be in danger, though no one at the Blue Cat could tell me where he was, nor see reason for concern. One regular put a name to my description of the most memorable of the conspirators, a man whose long grey hair and blackened teeth identified him as LaForge, an old Blanquist, though it was said he had long ago given up revolution in favour of science, and was often heard expounding paradoxes about the laws of thermodynamics and the statistics of chance. A harmless crank, in other words, just like Minard — or so I thought, until I heard of the ghastly incident at the park, when all my worst fears were confirmed.

This LaForge, I have learned, says each person’s life is really a path through a branching labyrinth of possibilities; an idea that would surely have appealed to a sweet romantic such as Pierre, though we can only guess what other dark inferences the plotters must have reached from such outlandish premises. They are anarchists not just politically but also, even worse, intellectually, disdaining all logic and reason, and this, I maintain, is the explanation of Pierre’s senseless death. They took an innocent man, seduced him with lies, put him up to some kind of spectacular outrage, a manifestation of their perverted philosophy. Now they laugh while we must weep.

The letter is unsigned; with its tales of hoaxes and delusions it has itself the stagnant air of fraudulence. Yvette has heard of troubled people who take sinister delight in taunting the bereaved; she worries that Louis Carreau might be another of those parasites. But then at last he calls on her, bringing both the precious key and the manuscript it has protected.

Madame Courvelles is with her when she receives him; Yvette explains to her the mission Monsieur Carreau has undertaken, and the sheets of music are passed between them for inspection.

“Are you a dealer?” Madame Courvelles asks the polite, smartly dressed young man who strikes her as looking more like a bank agent with good prospects.

“Neither a man of commerce nor at all musical,” he tells her. “I’m a philologist.”

That sounds good enough for Madame Courvelles; here is a decent fellow of the right age and class to lift Yvette out of her depression. Once she is satisfied of Carreau’s honest principles, she allows them some time alone together.

“How ever did you get hold of it?” Yvette asks him at once.

“I bribed a servant. No one else knows of this work’s existence.”

The pages of music are in her hands, densely inscribed, impossible to imagine. Completely appropriate to the hieroglyphic enigma is the title: The Secret Knowledge.

“Pierre had many friends,” she says. “Tell me what you know of them.”

Despite this and all further oblique enquiries, applied with the subtle and well-aimed pressure one might employ against a stubborn limpet, Yvette is unable to lift from beneath Carreau’s suave carapace the smallest evidence that he knows of Minard, Duchêne, LaForge, or anyone else mentioned in the letter. Pierre, she realises, lived in many worlds; he was like the comet that visits Earth briefly, gloriously, then flies to another sphere. Wait long enough, she thinks, and the comet may return.

“I owe you great thanks for the service you have done me, Monsieur Carreau. At the very least, I should repay your expenses.”

With a wave of his hand, a whiff of cologne, he dismisses such concerns. “I did it for Pierre, and for yourself. I know how much he loved you — and I can easily see why.” A new gravity attaches itself to him. “You must be very careful.”

“What do you mean?”

“The forces that surrounded our friend were powerful and dark. Conceal the music score and keep it safe, a precious relic, show it only to trusted eyes and say he gave it to you before he died.”

“Of course, I shall never allow myself any indiscretion that would compromise you…”

“Allow me the honour of being your protector.”

Though said sincerely it sounds improper. “I’m not aware I require any protection of a kind my family cannot provide.”

“I’m sure Pierre would have said the same thing, but consider what happened to him.”

“You think I’m in danger? The police should be told.”

“That would not be wise. I have taken a personal risk on your behalf, as you kindly acknowledge, and all I ask in return is that you do not shun my offer of assistance, for this is a matter of common concern and mutual interest. Through involvement in those sinister powers that killed Pierre, we may both find ourselves placed in danger.”

Had she not previously read the letter about which she remains silent, she might have dismissed Carreau’s words entirely. Instead she understands their significance, coded like the score she holds, and thus it is in a mood of foreboding that she concludes this interview with the man who will become her husband.