The Secret Book of Paradys

by Tanith Lee

  Julie began to be a social success superior to her parents. She did not fawn as they did, yet was plainly genuinely impressed and grateful as they were not. She was not without animation. She could exercise tact, unusual in a child: She was not one of those to pass raw comments on a hostess’s hat or wallpaper. “Poor mite. I expect she gets little enough chance to shine at home, with those two.” “The mother keeps her like a little slave. She heaps the child with chores. Her schooling is being carried on by the father. Not right, I am sure.”

  “Mama,” said Sandrine, the daughter of the house, “Mama, please will you not ask Julie d’Is to my party.”

  “Not? Why ever is that? Don’t you want poor Julie to see your dear new doll?”

  Sandrine began to cry. She was not generally a tearful girl.

  After some coaxing, it was got from her.

  “I don’t want Scamper to die!”

  Leaves of silence, oddly flavored by mystery and darkness, fell in the room. The ladies looked at each other.

  “Well, you know,” said one at last, “it’s a very curious thing.”

  “Yes,” said Sandrine’s aunt, “I remarked on it myself to Madame Claude only the other day.”

  “Of course, a coincidence –”

  “Or do you think the d’Is child –?”

  They stared at one another now.

  During the past year, Julie had attended seven parties. Thereafter two cats sickened in a week, the Claude dog had succumbed to a malady and been put down. A parrot was found dead in its cage before the guests had even left.

  “Scamper,” said Sandrine, the name of the kitten. “She’ll put a spell on him like the others.”

  “Good heavens, is that what the child says she does?”

  Sandrine looked blank. Julie had said nothing. Her peers did not question her, for fear.

  It was borne in on the ladies of that circle, and all those other circles with which it connected, that while the mothers had not been badly disposed to Julie, their children did not like her. Overnight, as it were, Julie ceased to be a social success.

  “But,” said Chorgeh’s “uncle,” “regardless of that, soon enough the child was obliged to go to school.”

  “My God,” said Chorgeh, encouragingly.

  “It was thought to be an epidemic,” said the “uncle.” “A fever, in some instances accompanied by vomiting and a rash. There was only one death. But somehow, again generally unspoken, the unthinkable was mooted. The child was removed from the school. It was because, they said, she herself was too unsturdy to be exposed to childish ailments. She was then tutored at home, and only ventured out on errands with her mother –”

  “Whereat the drawing rooms and byways were littered with sickening small animals and babies.”

  “Exactly,” said the “uncle,” unperturbed.

  Julie d’Is emerged from the pastry shop before them.

  “She’s been in that shop a long while,” said Chorgeh. “Do you think she’s assaulted anyone?”

  “Very likely,” said the “uncle.” “But if so, the assault will have gone unseen. In all the instances of those who fell ill, nothing was reported, nothing was witnessed. Rarely did Julie make contact – she was not a tactile child. She did not fondly clasp her playmates and class-fellows to her, did not strike them, pinch, or tap their hands. They had soon got in the habit of making very sure she never came near their food or drink.”

  “Now where is she going?” said Chorgeh. Their object had turned into a long sliding street, a funnel for the wind.

  “Toward the Church, I believe, homeward.”

  “She looks more interesting now,” said Chorgeh. “Quite attractive in fact, as should every female poisoner. Her hair, let down, would make her seem fascinating with those slanted eyes. A veritable Medea.”

  Years retracted. Madame d’Is had come into an unexpected fortune, sole beneficiary of an obscure relative. With the malice of the microbes they had been, monsieur and madame began to intrude themselves everywhere, riding to horse races and galas, attending balls, financing things, overbearing all before them. Julie too appeared again out of her cupboard. Her childhood aura was dismissed or suppressed. She was found to dance well, to speak little and with some wit, to listen attentively. If not a jewel, still she shone slightly, and her hair was washed in soft soap and padded becomingly, her gowns were not parcel wrapping save in the most acceptable sense.

  “Who died?” asked Chorgeh, as they strolled along the sliding street, the crowd lessened, and above them the façade of the cathedral suddenly loomed masklike in the sky. They had begun to climb hills, aware unconsciously of the backbones of Paradys beneath the streets. It was appropriate that the story should shadow, even if there was less breath for it. The brightness too had clouded over; there was a flutter of rain.

  “Several died, of course. At first it wasn’t associated with Julie d’Is. She was a young girl with her hair dressed low, and sometimes loose as you have recommended. Not a Medea, an Ariadne. A piquance, an intelligence, a softness suggesting pliancy.”

  There was a particular supper. Twelve people were there, and Julie d’Is – the magical number of thirteen. The next day two of the younger girls fell ill, quite seriously.

  “Like the two cats,” said Chorgeh. He noticed that despite himself, his “uncle” was elaborating quite naturally now.

  “The table being stocked with an uneven number, three girls had sat adjacently. One opposite Julie, and beside her the daughter of Madame Claude.”

  “Must the veterinarian put her away?”

  “She died by herself on the fourth night, raging with fever and calling aloud.”

  “Perfect,” said Chorgeh.

  “I never cease to enjoy,” said his “uncle,” “the beastliness of youth.”

  Julie d’Is, with her small bag of cake, was now far ahead of them. She went lightly up the hill, and vanished at a turning.

  “She’s getting away.”

  “We must allow that. It is her own street.”

  Chorgeh said, “You’re very disappointing. Is this the end?”

  “To some extent,” said the “uncle.” “There’s only this to add. The occurrences of severe illness and occasional deaths, mysterious and unsolved, attendant on Julie at various functions, led the old suspicions of her out again. She was called the Peste Virgin, the Angel of Plague, and so on. At best, she was a harbinger of extreme unluck. Of course, no one could pin a crime to her. She came to be watched very closely, and those placed next to her at table, female or male, would find all manner of amusing excuses to absent themselves. Not every episode resulted in a fatality, or even a sickness, however. At one memorable dinner twenty-one people sat down with Julie d’Is, and afterward her neighbors exchanged bets on who would expire and when. But all stayed healthy. Eventually both her parents, neither of whom had ever been seriously ill, died in the mundane way. Julie inherited their dwindling wealth, and lived on it. She was left scrupulously alone.”

  The “uncle” extracted another cigarette. The two men stood beneath a plane tree, as the sky tried to attract their attention.

  “I must be getting on, I have to meet Vincent at my club,” said the “uncle.”

  “But you can’t leave me like this – finish the story, you devil!”

  “How can I? Only life can do that. And life has just gone around a corner with her pastry.”

  “But – how is it done? How does she poison them?”

  “Who knows? Plenty have tried to learn. Some have even resorted to inquiry of the lady, holding her the while at bay the length of a cane or umbrella. She looks amazed, it seems, insulted, normal. They can obtain nothing.”

  “The police –”

  “The police have generally not been involved, though it’s true they observed Julie d’Is for a year, after an especially tiresome death, that of a minor minister who shared a carriage with her. No evidence was found. No motive, as there had never been apparent motive. She has shown in
her career neither passions nor attachments, nor jealousies, in love, or otherwise. How unusual. We all give ourselves away. You yourself, my little foreigner, have your wild and untamable streak, by which we know you.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And you are young, which gives besides a great deal away at once. Julie d’Is was also young for three decades. And gave away nothing. Since she seems to pollute and kill, that must be her only vice, and her only hobby.” A raven-wing cloud scuffed through the plane. Rain dashed down. “The club,” said Chorgeh’s “uncle” with decision.

  “No, I’m not coming with you,” said Chorgeh.

  “For God’s sake, don’t go knocking on the door of Julie d’Is.”

  “I shan’t,” said Chorgeh. “That much I do credit, that she’s unfriendly. Inimical.”

  “Do please believe it.”

  Chorgeh stood and watched his “uncle” hurry off downhill through the rain. The road was a tide of blackness. Something hung heavy, not thunder, but the bottomless story. It must be concluded, somehow.

  The bell of the pastry shop gave a brittle sugary tinkle as he went in. On all sides were terraces of sweetness, layers and marblings, bubbles, cords, plaits, and flutes, that made the eyes if not the stomach hungry. In the middle of it all, unmoved through long acquaintance, a plump, pretty, curly girl lifted her head like a deer at a water hole.

  “Can I help you, monsieur?”

  “Yes. Give me some of those, please, and a couple of those,” and Chorgeh, thinking of his mother, who disliked sweet things of any type, food or human, and pictured her astoundment, when he should get home. Into the masculine study, which once Chorgeh’s father had occupied, kept now as a cross between a shrine and a lumber room, Chorgeh might take himself and eat each refused cake, remembering the cake shop girl, for she was very charming.

  Yet, as she reached for the second batch of cakes, she looked puzzled, this charming girl. She stepped away, and turned to Chorgeh as if to ask him something, and as she stood there, seemingly at a loss, Chorgeh instead asked something of her. “Do you recall a woman who came in here, about half an hour ago?”

  “I – don’t know, monsieur,” said the girl, looking more puzzled than before, frowning and gazing at the ground, as if she had glimpsed a mouse, perhaps.

  “A drab, nasty woman. Obviously scheming. With holes in her gloves.”

  “I – don’t know, monsieur,” repeated the girl. And then she looked at, and straight through him, as if to some other place that had suddenly grown visible in the doorway. Next moment she dropped on the floor. She lay there in a compact little puddle of skirts and curls, her eyes shut, her face icing white.

  Chorgeh banged on the counter and shouted, and by magic the shop was full of women.

  A minute later, the girl had been lifted up and was murmuring that she was quite well, quite well, but so cold.

  “There, Olizette,” said the women. And one ran out to the pharmacist’s along the street.

  “That gentleman,” said Olizette, “is waiting for his cakes. I was serving him when I was taken queer.”

  “Good Lord, don’t worry about that,” said Chorgeh, flustered for an instant. It seemed likely the women would reckon him in some way responsible for the girl’s faint. Metaphysically, was he not?

  Then the pharmacist came, and after a cursory examination of the girl, declared she was feverish and must go home at once.

  Chorgeh stood there with his heart beating violently, in the presence of the insanely wicked and bizarre. Evil was a palpable entity in the shop, bending to the women, its tattered wings and skull face glaring intently and specifically above Olizette. It was as if Chorgeh had invoked it, by his arrival, his quest, his query concerning Julie d’Is, Angel of Pestilence.

  “Oh, how am I to get to my room?” said Olizette, made childish by her weakness. “Oh dear, oh dear, what shall I do?”

  And Chorgeh rushed out to fetch a cab, into which he and a woman of the shop next bore Olizette, who was now touchingly crying from embarrassment and feebleness.

  Every bump of the wheels and hoofs on the journey caused the poor girl to gasp and moan.

  “There, there, Olizette,” reiterated the useless woman. “She’s never ill,” she added to Chorgeh over the dark, drooping, flowerlike head. “A country girl. Two years, and never a sniffle, never once a migraine or a fainting fit. And I myself, well I’m a martyr to them, monsieur.”

  They reached Olizette’s room (set predictably in a conglomeration of chimney and flowerpots, rambling steps, skylights, and lopsided balconies, near the old corn market). Chorgeh paid off the cab. He then went to summon a doctor, taking all responsibility on himself. It was his fault.

  “I don’t like the look of this,” the doctor said to Chorgeh, on the landing. “You are the young woman’s protector?”

  “If you like,” said Chorgeh, disdaining the explanatory truth.

  “Then someone must be got in to look after her, a nurse. She must have fresh fruit, broth; cream and eggs as she improves.”

  Thus it was not cakes that Chorgeh presented to his mother. It was a plea for an increment upon his allowance.

  “If you must know, I have a girl. I must give her a present, mustn’t I, now and then?”

  “I’m not interested in the silly details. Is she clean? Does she love you? I trust that you do not love her? Very well.”

  During the month of Olizette’s illness, Chorgeh visited her once a day, in the afternoon. He brought flowers, fruit, and later boxes of confectionery – she did not like cakes. Her plumpness had melted from her, and the paleness and slightness of her debility made her ethereal. Although he did not in the smallest degree “love” her, Chorgeh was very taken with her, had become fond of her, as one may with a docile and pleasing invalid one has chosen. Their words were affectionate, and soon familiar, but quite decorous, and the nurse was always in the room with her tatting, or just along the way making soup.

  Chorgeh’s mornings were spent on quite another woman. It was not that he made any contact with Julie d’Is, of course, only that he had begun to spy on her movements, and to question, in a carefully blatant style, her neighbors, of whom she had several, all at a distance.

  Both activities, the caring visits to the pastry seller, the observation of a poisoness, were united, being two halves of a whole.

  He learned a great deal more of Julie than of Olizette. Olizette told him everything he wanted to know, and her entire simple life was soon before him, lacking all complexity. But Julie’s life was if anything more simple, there was no information to be had solely because nothing happened to her. From the comments of those in her vicinity, who seldom any way saw or noted her, and from his own scrupulous view of her doings in the quiet and normally deserted street, Chorgeh was quickly privy to her existence. She ventured out, this viper, about twice a week, to purchase groceries and feminine articles (he followed her where he could). Sometimes after these excursions she also took a turn in a park nearby. Her face was always blank as a stone. She must surely be frustrated, maddened by this solitary limbo, her lack of volition, yet quite inarticulately and hopelessly, for she seemed to want to do nothing more than she did. She did not, when indoors, ever appear at her window. (He had soon located her address, her room – which had no flowerpot, no lamp, and which on the few evenings he had overseen it at dusk, turned to dusk also, and lit no light – did not alter. Even once at midnight he had passed, and there it was, a black oblong, empty. It was as though, on entering her domain, Julie d’Is ceased to be alive or actual. And perhaps this was so.)

  As the “uncle” had said, to poison must represent her only passion. All she lived for, dreamed of. And yet, visiting those same places where she made her purchases quite regularly, Chorgeh found no such startling evidence of her malignity as he had in Olizette’s pastry shop. Evidently Olizette had been unlucky, perhaps because she had been alone with Julie for several minutes. Possibly too the murderess did not strike on her own territo
ry, but always outside it.

  Meanwhile long leading conversations with the latest victim gave no clue as to how Julie had managed her work: Olizette herself was ignorant of having been practiced on, and Chorgeh naturally did not enlighten her. He was legitimately afraid of how such knowledge might affect Olizette, for even while she improved, on some afternoons there were lapses; he would find her very white, trembling, saying that she ached from head to toe, or that the mild winter light troubled her eyes. The doctor had already ceased calling, he was sanguine, but Chorgeh treated the girl with caution. For the doctor had not understood the case at all. In answer to Chorgeh’s probing, the doctor had remarked on the foolishness of young country girls in the City, infected by its fumes, living on cakes, neglecting their well-being in favor of unsuitable romances.

  Chorgeh had one image. He nurtured it. It involved the stone-faced serpent Julie d’Is leaning slightly forward to take her pastry, and scratching the fingers of Olizette with the underside of a thin silver ring. By now Chorgeh had glimpsed such a ring on Julie’s finger. (Had not the Borgias used a similar device to cart off whole table-loads of enemies?) By the time he had noticed the ring, however, he could find no cut or scrape on the smooth hands of Olizette, though he examined them meticulously, telling her he would read her fortune. Obviously, so slight a wound would have healed by now. He had been lax, too late. Another black mark.

  “Good gracious, Chorgeh! It isn’t suitable. After all these years! Mother will think you’ve come to court me.”

  “Your mother is far too sensible, Sandrine, ever to think that.”

  Like a butterfly, Sandrine hovered over the ornate and overdressed drawing room, in a tense powdery light. He had not seen her, it was true, save at a remote distance – across salons, at the end of fashionable avenues – for five years. She had improved visually, but not necessarily in any other way.

  “Well, sit down. You shouldn’t be here. Mother will be out for hours.”

  “During which time we can get up to the most scandalous activities.” Sandrine giggled. Encouraged, Chorgeh said, “Tell me everything you know about Julie d’Is.”