Read Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris for Free Online

mean,” he often said, “I know just what your trouble is,” before launching into a description of his patients’ suffering, often with astonishing accuracy.One recurring rumor was that Petiot had hidden a small microphone under a table in the waiting room. Petiot comforted many patients with his uncanny diagnostic abilities and convinced many Villeneuve-sur-Yonne residents that he was the best doctor in town.
    Madame Husson later told how he, with the help of a homemade ointment, managed to remove a growth on a child’s forehead that had long defied medical treatment. Monsieur Fritsch recalled how Petiotoffered to treat one of his neighbors who had been diagnosed with an unidentified terminal illness. Petiot said that he knew of a new, risky experimental drug that could either kill or cure, and asked if the patient wished to try it. He did. The patient would live another quarter of a century.
    What’s more, Petiot opened his office on Sunday, for workers who could not visit him during the week, and made house calls, riding his bicycle long distances to treat the sick, particularly children. He gave discounts to older and poorer patients, and sometimes waived the fees entirely. Veterans of the First World War also paid much less, if anything. Petiot became known as the “worker’s doctor” or “people’s doctor.” He soon traded his bicycle for a yellow sports car, a Renault 40CV. Over the next few years, Petiot would own a series of them, including an Amilcar, Salmson, and a Butterosi.
    Petiot was enjoying his newfound success. He dined regularly at the Hôtel du Dauphin on rue Carnot and delved into the history of his adopted town, reading books by its famous residents, such as the
philosophe
Joseph Joubert and the romantic poet François-René de Chateaubriand. Petiot sang, sculpted, painted, played chess, and one year he won the town’s checkers tournament. He took pride in his cravats, the one item of fashion he permitted himself, and often indulged in late-night walks, usually wrapped up in a black coat with his hat pulled down over his eyes.
    Yet there were already concerns about the brash young doctor. Advertising his services was frowned upon by colleagues as undignified, and the way he presented himself at the expense of his rivals was deemed even more so. Petiot’s tendency to prescribe strong, unorthodox medications worried Villeneuve-sur-Yonne’s pharmacists. “Horse cures!” Dr. Paul Mayaud called them. Unfazed, Petiot replied that pharmacists and drug companies had long diluted their medications to increase profits, and this forced him to strengthen the dosage to obtain its intended effect. Pharmacists, besides, had no right to criticize medical treatment ordered by a licensed physician.
    A pharmacist later told how he once refused to fill one of Petiot’sunorthodox prescriptions—a dose for a child, he said, “that could kill an adult.” Petiot’s alleged response was chilling, if he was serious, as his enemies claimed that he had been: Isn’t it better to do away with this kid who does nothing but annoy his mother?
    It was curious that Marcel Petiot, known to be frugal to excess, would offer so many discounts and waive so many fees in his practice. Actually, Petiot had found a way to beat the system, which was something that appealed to him immensely. So while he enjoyed the reputation of offering free or discounted medical service, Petiot was signing up his patients for public assistance without their knowledge, and being reimbursed by the state. Even a few people who paid him in goods, trinkets, or produce, including cheese, eggs, and poultry, were added to the social register. In those cases, the “people’s doctor” was receiving double payment for his services.
    But there was another implication to this fraud.
    R ENÉ-GUSTAVE Nézondet, a clerk at the town hall of Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, was Petiot’s oldest known friend. They had met in 1924, when Petiot came to an auction