“It’s illustrative of why the British would never have poisoned him.”
MALONE THREADED HIS WAY THROUGH THE DESERTED GALLERY. No lights burned, and the illumination provided by sunlight was diffused by plastic sheets that protected the windows. The air was warm and laced with the pall of fresh paint. Many of the display cases and exhibits were draped in crusty drop cloths. Ladders dotted the walls. More scaffolding rose at the far end. A section of the hardwood flooring had been removed, and messy repairs were being made to the stone subsurface.
He noticed no cameras, no sensors. He passed uniforms, armor, swords, daggers, harnesses, pistols, and rifles, all displayed in silk-lined cases. A steady and intentional procession of technology, each generation learning how to kill the next faster. Nothing at all suggested the horror of war. Instead, only its glory seemed emphasized.
He stepped around another gash in the floor and kept walking down the long gallery, his rubber soles not making a sound.
Behind him he heard the metal doors being tested.
ASHBY STOOD ON THE SECOND-FLOOR LANDING AND WATCHED as Mr. Guildhall pressed on the doors that led into the Napoleon galleries.
Something blocked them.
“I thought they were open,” Caroline whispered.
That was exactly what Larocque had reported. Anything of value had been removed weeks ago. All that remained were minor historical artifacts, left inside since outside storage was limited. The contractor performing the remodeling had agreed to work around the exhibits, required to purchase liability insurance to guarantee their safety.
Yet something blocked the doors.
He did not want to attract the attention of the woman below, or employees one floor above in the relief map museum. “Force them,” he said. “But quietly.”
THE FRENCH FRIGATE LA BELLE POULE ARRIVED AT ST. HELENA IN October 1840 with a contingent led by Prince de Joinville, the third son of King Louis Philippe. The British governor, Middlemore, sent his son to greet the ship and Royal Naval shore batteries fired a twenty-one-gun salute in their honor. On October 15, twenty five years to the day since Napoleon first arrived on St. Helena, the task of exhuming the emperor’s body began. The French wanted the process managed by their sailors, but the British insisted that the job be done by their people. Local workmen and British soldiers toiled through the night in a pouring rain. Nineteen years had passed since Napoleon’s coffin had been lowered into the earth, sealed with bricks and cement, and reversing that process proved challenging. Freeing the stones one by one, puncturing layers of masonry reinforced with metal bands, forcing off the four lids to finally confront the sight of the dead emperor had taken effort.
A number of people who’d lived with Napoleon on St. Helena had returned to witness the exhumation. General Gourgaud. General Bertrand. Pierron, the pastry cook. Archambault, the groom. Noverraz, the third valet. Marchand, and Saint-Denis, who’d never left the emperor’s side.
The body of Napoleon was wrapped in fragments of white satin that had fallen from the coffin’s lid. His black riding boots had split open to reveal pasty white toes. The legs remained covered in white britches, the hat still resting beside him where it had been placed years before. The silver dish containing his heart lay between the thighs. His hands—white, hard, and perfect—showed long nails. Three teeth were visible where the lip had drawn back, the face gray from the stubble of a beard, the eyelids firmly closed. The body was in remarkable condition, as if he were sleeping rather than decomposing.
All of the objects that had been included to keep him company were still there, crowded around his satin bed. A collection of French and Italian coins minted with his impassive face, a silver sauceboat, a plate, knives, forks, and spoons engraved with the imperial arms, a silver flask containing water from the Vale of Geranium, a cloak, a sword, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of water.
Everyone removed their hats and a French priest sprinkled holy water, reciting the words from Psalm 130. “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.”
The British doctor wanted to examine the body in the name of science, but General Gourgaud, heavyset, red faced with a gray beard, objected. “You shall not. Our emperor has suffered enough indignities.”
Everyone there knew that London and Paris had agreed to this exhumation as a way to reconcile differences between the two nations. After all, as the French ambassador to England had made clear, “I do not know any honorable motive for refusal, as England cannot tell the world that she wishes to keep a corpse prisoner.”
The British governor, Middlemore, stepped forward. “We have the right to examine the body.”
“For what reason?” Marchand asked. “What purpose? The British were there when the coffin was sealed, the body subjected to autopsy by your doctors, though the emperor specifically left instructions for that not to occur.”
Marchand himself had been there that day, and it was clear from his bitterness that he hadn’t forgotten the violation.
Middlemore lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Very well. Would you object to an outer inspection? After all, the body is, would you not say, in remarkable condition for being entombed for so long. That demands some investigation.”
Gourgaud relented, and the others agreed.
So the doctor felt the legs, the belly, the hands, an eyelid, then the chest.
“Napoleon was then sealed in his four coffins of wood and metal, the key to the sarcophagus turned, and everything made ready to return him to Paris,” Eliza said.
“What was the doctor really after?” Thorvaldsen asked.
“Something the British had tried, in vain, to learn while Napoleon was their prisoner. The location of the lost cache.”