the evening, he shut himself up in his darkroom again. Around midnight his mother heard a terrible commotion, went downstairs, stood in the hallway, and knocked on the back door of the darkroom. Through the plywood partition she listened to him ranting and raving, breaking things, turning the place upside down… Panic-stricken, she ran to get her neighbor, an engraver whose workshop was just down the street. The neighbor, an easygoing old widower, used a chisel to pry open the bolt on the partition door.
“It was dark inside, hardly any noise. They found Proque lying on the floor; scattered all around him were the partially developed and still sticky negatives of pornographic photos. They were everywhere, many of them tom and others still glued together. The linoleum floor was covered with chemicals, all the reagent bottles had been smashed to smithereens, the enlarger lay damaged on the floor, there were acid bums on Proque’s hands and holes in his clothes, the faucet was running full blast, and he was soaked from head to foot—apparently after trying to revive himself by sticking his head under the faucet. From the looks of it, he’d tried to poison himself, by mistake grabbed some bromide instead of cyanide, and went into a narcotic stupor. He put up no resistance when his neighbor practically carried him back to his apartment. His mother testified that after the neighbor left, Proque tried to go on another rampage but was too worn out physically. The scene that followed was again straight out of some second-rate comedy: he flopped around in his bed, tried to rip up his top sheet to hang himself, stuffed his pillowcase into his mouth, and all the time kept shrieking, crying, swearing. As soon as he tried to get to his feet he collapsed and fell asleep on the floor, as he had the time before.
“He woke up the next day feeling miserable as hell. The sight of all the damage he’d caused only made him feel guiltier and more despondent, so he spent the whole morning picking up the pieces, rinsing things off, trying to salvage what was left of the negatives, and mopping up the mess. When he was finished cleaning up the darkroom, he took his cane—he was having another one of his dizzy spells—and went out to stock up on a new supply of chemicals. That evening he complained about having some sort of mental illness, asked his mother if she knew of any cases of insanity in the family, and refused to believe her when she said she didn’t. The very fact that he could accuse her of lying convinced her that he wasn’t fully recovered yet, since in the past he wouldn’t have dared even to raise his voice to her. Never before had he acted so aggressively, but then she could understand how a person might lose his self-control after two consecutive attacks of hysteria, which would’ve been enough to make anybody think he was going insane. He promised his mother that if it ever happened again he’d go straight to a psychiatrist. It wasn’t like him to make such rash decisions; it had taken him weeks to go see a dermatologist, and then not until his boils were really killing him. Not because he was tightfisted—he had no need to be, since he was medically insured—but because he couldn’t put up with the slightest change in his routine.
“Not long after that he had a falling out with his client because several of the pictures turned up missing. We still don’t know what transpired between them; it’s the only major dark spot in the whole affair.
“The following week passed quietly. Proque became more subdued and never brought up the subject of his mental illness again. That Sunday he and his mother went to see a movie. Then on Monday he went completely berserk. It happened like this. Around eleven in the morning he walked out of the shop without bothering to close the door behind him. Nor did he bother to return his friend’s greeting—an Italian who ran a little candy store on the corner—when the man called out to him from in front of the shop. The Italian later testified that Proque looked ‘somehow funny.’ Proque went straight inside the shop, bought some candy, said he’d pay for it on his way back— which wasn’t like him at all—because by then he’d be ‘rolling in dough,’ climbed into a taxi even though it was a good ten years since he’d last taken one, and told the driver to take him to Avenue de l’Opera. There he made the driver wait and came back fifteen minutes later yelling and waving an envelope full of cash, gave holy hell to some street tramp who tried to make off with the money, climbed back into the taxi, and told the driver this time to take him to Notre Dame. When he reached the island, he paid the fare with a hundred-franc note—the cabby said he saw only hundred-franc notes inside the envelope—and before the cab had even pulled away from the curb, started to climb over the bridge railing. A passer-by grabbed hold of his leg, there was a scuffle, the cabby jumped out of the car, but not even the two of them could handle him. A gendarme showed up, and together they managed to shove him into the taxi, leaving the hundred-franc notes lying on the sidewalk. When Proque wouldn’t stop being hysterical, the gendarme handcuffed him, and they headed straight for the hospital. On the way there, Proque pulled a fast one. After the car drove off he collapsed on the seat, went completely limp, then suddenly lunged forward, and before the gendarme could stop him—they were driving in heavy traffic now—grabbed hold of the steering wheel. The cab rammed straight into a Citroen’s front door, pinning the driver’s arm between the steering wheel and the door. The gendarme managed to get Proque to the hospital in another taxi. At first the hospital didn’t treat his case too seriously, since all he did was stand there in a daze, whimper a little, and refuse to answer any questions. Finally he was admitted for observation, but later, when the chief physician was making his rounds, Proque turned up missing. He was found under the bed, wrapped in a blanket pulled out from under his sheet, and huddled up so close to the wall that it was a while before he was even noticed. He was unconscious from loss of blood, having slashed both wrists with a razor blade smuggled from his clothes into his hospital gown. It took three blood transfusions, but they pulled him through, though he later developed complications due to his poor heart condition.
“I was assigned to the case the day after the incident on the Ile St-Louis. Though there was nothing to warrant an investigation by the Surete, the lawyer representing the owner of the Citroen, figuring this was a good chance to milk the police, came up with a version charging the police official on duty with criminal negligence. Having in his custody a deranged criminal, the lawyer claimed, the policeman was responsible for allowing the taxicab to collide with his client’s car, causing bodily and property damage as well as severe psychological shock to his client. Since the police were criminally liable, any compensation for damages would have to come out of government funds.
“Hoping to gain an advantage, the lawyer leaked his version to the press, which had the effect of escalating the whole affair, since now it was the prestige of the Police Judiciaire that was at stake. It was at this point that I was called in to make an investigation.
“The preliminary medical report indicated Proque had suffered an acute psychosis caused by a delayed attack of schizophrenia, but the longer he was kept under observation after his suicide attempt, the less this diagnosis seemed to hold up. In the space of just six days he had become a thoroughly broken and wasted old man, but he was completely sane in all other respects. On the seventh day of his stay in the hospital he made a deposition. He testified that instead of paying him the sixteen hundred francs they had agreed upon, his client had paid him less than one hundred fifty, for failing to deliver all the prints. That Monday, while he was grinding some lenses for a new fitting, he suddenly became so furious he dropped everything and left the shop, ‘to get what he had coming to him.’ He had no recollection of going into the candy store or of anything that happened on the bridge, only that his client had come up with the balance of the money after Proque went to his apartment and made a stink. Later that night, after making his deposition, Proque suddenly took a turn for the worse. He died early the next morning of heart failure. The doctors were unanimous in ascribing it to a reactive psychosis.
“Though Proque’s death was only indirectly related to Monday’s attack, the case was becoming more serious. Nothing like having a corpse for a trump card. The day before he died, I had gone to pay Proque’s mother a visit. For a woman her age she turned out to be very cooperative and obliging. On my way out to Rue Amelie I picked up a man from Narcotics to examine the darkroom and the photo-lab chemicals. I was tied up for quite a while with Madame Proque, because once she got started on something there was nothing I could do but sit and listen patiently. Near the end of my visit, I thought I heard the shop’s doorbell ring through a crack in the window. I found my helper behind the counter going through the work ledger.
“‘Find anything?’ I asked.
“‘Nothing to speak of.’
“His voice betrayed uncertainty.
“‘Did someone come in?’
“‘Yes. How did you know?’
“He then told me what had happened. When the bell rang, he had been standing on a chair searching an electrical cable box, so it was a few seconds before he was able to enter the shop. The customer heard him tinkering around in the back and, thinking it was Proque, called out in a loud voice, ‘How are you feeling today, Dieudonne?’
“Just then my assistant came into the shop and spotted a bareheaded, middle-aged man who, the moment he saw him, instinctively made a move for the door. The reason was purely accidental. Normally the Narcotics Squad wore civilian clothes on the job, but that afternoon they were obliged to appear in full uniform for a small
