by C H Chelser
“Oh, but please do tell, madame. There is always a grain of truth in rumours. Inspecteur Dupont says they’re very helpful.”
Her lips tightened. “Be that as it may, I hope this one will prove to be false. I’m sure you have heard the whispers in the crowd? It would seem some people are concerned the poor man died of this new disease the newspapers are reporting.”
The young inspector grimaced. “Yes, we caught that. I mean, we caught the rumour! Not the disease, of course.”
She smiled in honest amusement, but faltered immediately. The boy in her stairwell hadn’t just died. He had vanished, along with every trace of his soul ever existing. Before, she had not considered linking that fact to mere gossip, but now a connection dawned on her: if a soul was rent from its living body, said body would fall down dead. Without discernible cause.
“Oh, good grief.”
“Madame?”
“Oh, nothing. It is nothing. Only, the possibility of a lethal disease has my personnel scared, and I’m not too comfortable with the thought myself.”
“Understandable,” the inspector said, “but I’m sure you don’t need to concern yourself, madame. Seeing as the family of those victims hasn’t caught the disease, I don’t think being in the same building is dangerous. If that is what caused his death, of course, which remains to be seen. At the moment the scenario of the fallen drunk seems more likely, as you say.”
Not to her, though. Another horrible thought rose in the wake of the previous.
“Monsieur l’inspecteur, a question in return, if I may?”
The young inspector beamed. “Certainly, madame. Anything.”
“Do you know if the victims of that disease happen to have bruises on them? Were they were beaten before they died?”
Clearly he had hoped for another, possibly more personal question, but he hid his disappointment with a thoughtful sigh.
“I can’t say that I know of any that did, madame. Not that I saw many victims, mind. More often as not the undertaker gets called in rather than the police. Why do you ask?”
“No particular reason,” she said quickly. “I just find it hard to believe that healthy people could perish out of the blue. I thought maybe the marks of what caused their death did not show until later, but that the newspapers are not aware of this.”
The inspector scratched the back of his neck. “Well, I suppose a body with marks of violence is a crime victim in their eyes. And ours, too.” His hand travelled to his chin. “Actually, you may have made a good point, madame. Not sure if it relates to this case, but I think it’s worth finding out. If you’re right, it may even tie in with some other grain-of-truth rumours to have reached the Préfecture.”
“Really?” She doubted it.
“Well, to be honest I don’t have a name or—Ow!”
The office door whipped open and hit him in the back as Eric barged in.
“What is this?” he demanded, face bright red.
“Uhm, Baudoin, monsieur. Serge Baudoin of the pol—”
“Yes, I am well aware of who you are! Your colleague is looking for you. He is getting quite impatient, too.”
“Oh. Then I should go now. Thank you for your help, madame.” He bowed to Mercedes and gave Eric a quick, nervous nod. “Eh, au revoir, monsieur.”
“Not if I have a say in it,” Eric growled and slammed the door shut. He rounded on Mercedes. “What did the imbecile want?”
“Imbecile? That’s not nice, mon cher. The poor man was only doing his duty.”
“What did his duty entail that you brought him in here?”
“He wanted to ask questions about that unfortunate student. Not that I could tell him much.”
The lie stung. Her fingers fretted with the ruffles of her cuffs. The memory of the void she had felt would never leave her, much like the memory of the black apparition in the alley. She shuddered. If that dreadful presence had followed her home once, there was no reason why it couldn’t do so again. What if it had come back last night? What if it had come for her, but had happened on a more convenient victim by accident?
Eric pushed past her, jarring her body and mind.
“You had to lock yourself up in my office to tell him that?” he spat.
“What?”
“‘No’ is a very small word, Mercedes. You could have told him you had no answers for him without seeking seclusion.”
Confused, Mercedes pieced together the thread of their conversation before she realised what he was implying.
“Where else would you have had me answer him?” she bit back. “I could not let him hang around in the shop. Having a dead body on our doorstep deterred enough customers as it was! Besides, I hardly locked the door.”
She hadn’t meant to be disrespectful, but the tense atmosphere in the shops and on the work floor began to take its toll on her. Eric’s mood was no better. He swallowed a retort as he sat down in his chair. His elbows found support on the desk and he pressed his fingertips to his temples. His face contorted.
“I do not want to bring up this subject again, but surely you understand?”
Mercedes sighed in dismay. “No, I do not. How can I, when your issue is with a situation that never occurred?”
The corner of his mouth twitched when he gazed at her. “Will you swear on that?” His thin voice sounded even more fragile than usual.
“I should not have to. I swore loyalty to you when we married, and that vow means as much to me as it does to you.”
He lowered his eyes to stare at his inkwell while his fingers traced the leather inlay of his desk. At last he conceded with a faint nod. “It has been an arduous morning for me,” he offered by way of excuse.
“For all of us, don’t you think? The incident has the whole staff spooked.”
“Justly so, I’m afraid.” He began playing with his reading glasses. “The police assume a fatal accident, but they cannot rule out that he dropped dead, like the others.” Slender fingers abandoned the glasses and gripped each other until they turned white. “I can’t stop thinking that your words may have been prophetic when you said that what is outside will come in.”
“Yet I may still be wrong. We heard that particular piece of gossip in the shop, too, but until the police say they cannot find a cause of death, I refuse to believe it.”
“If they do, we will never find out. They will never tell us,” Eric said, wringing his hands. “And we can never clear our good name...”
Mercedes leaned on the table. “That, mon cher, is why it is fortunate that I accommodated the young inspector. I’m sure he will recall my kind cooperation should I ever ask him on the outcome of the investigation.”
That had not been an intended effect on her part, but by the way Eric gave her a careful smile, the fabrication sufficed as a suitable explanation nonetheless.
“We should get back to the shops,” she added. “The staff need to see us, and they need to see us convinced that all goes on as usual.”
“What they need is to do their work,” Eric spat, but bit down on whatever he intended to say next. He drew himself up, flexing his fingers. “Indeed, a boss cannot afford to show weakness, so we shall not. I trust you will act accordingly, madame.”
“I shall follow your example, monsieur.”
Eric was a proud man, but not stupid. He recognised a big stick when it stared at him. The last hint of nervousness disappeared from his face. “Then we should set out and salvage what we can of this business day.”
Chapter VIII
He was not at peace, never at peace, but this came close. Here, in the cradling cold of his haven, the visceral hunger was bearable. Here, the world made sense. As rare as they were treasured, inevitably such moments came to an end. But for as long as they lasted, their quiet was his to relish.
This particular moment of quiet ended with the unexpected touch of another. He turned to it, snarling viciously. It pleased him to feel the foreign presence retreat in response. Retreat, not depart.
> ‘Go!’ he barked.
‘Why?’ the other retorted with an undercurrent of urgency.
An accusation rather than a counter-question. Astonished that someone would dare to challenge him so, he searched the dark to find this other. It revealed itself at once: the boy who was not quite a boy sat close-by, poised to prod him again.
‘You have some nerve coming here.’
The boy stayed as it was. ‘They die,’ it said.
In this place, words only acted as vehicles. He listened to the larger thought that these two words implied, and in the same instant understood what the other meant.
‘There are always those who leave,’ he replied.
‘Not leave. Die. They are dead. Not elsewhere, but gone. You know that!’
He did. He had been well aware of it since it began. How could he not? ‘You would disturb me for this?’
‘Who else?’
The darkness around him deepened in tune to his anger. ‘Be gone with you, menace.’
‘Not until you stop it.’
His fury thickened until it all but blocked the other from his sight.
‘Stop it,’ the boy repeated. This time the demand mellowed. ‘Stop it.’
He withheld his acknowledgement of the boy’s plea. Human mouths lied; thoughts did not. Nor was there any point in trying. The boy had already sensed what his reply would be.
They made no further exchange. After a moment’s hesitation the boy disappeared, leaving traces of disappointment and resentment. He had expected no less. Nothing ever changed; nothing ever could. Least of all the nature of a thing.
He turned his back on the world and sank back into his haven’s embrace.
***
Mercedes drummed her fingers on the shop counter. She kept her assistants occupied with cleaning the shelves, which involved taking down every roll of fabric one by one. A tedious job, but the only one left after the number of customers served today came to a grand total of three. The last one had left two hours ago and it would be another hour before closing time. The boredom was dreadful. It gave her far too much time to think.
She began pacing up and down behind the counter, tightly clasping her hands around their opposite wrist to avoid betraying her worry. She had done her best to feign indifference and appear a reliable mistress, but by now her own musings scared her senseless. Literally. She wanted to summon the young soldier again and ask him if her suspicions were correct, but if she succeeded in getting his attention, she would be too afraid of his answer to hear it.
Behind her composed façade, her mind had been working overtime since realising the possible connection between that ghost in the alley and whatever had devoured the poor student’s soul. Could a ghostly truncheon leave marks? Not likely, but the leech wielding it had been enormous. Ghosts that strong might well be capable of killing a human. She suspected it already had, and not just those thugs in the alley.
Her nails dug into her skin. Now what to do? If her suspicions proved correct, the people in her direct vicinity were at risk. The other students, her personnel, Eric. Perhaps even Danielle…
Mercedes ran her tongue over her dry lips. Yesterday, she had asked the angels to protect her little girl, but Danielle had still been with her this morning. No one, neither corporeal nor ethereal, could guarantee that her daughter would be safe from this monster if it came again.
Panic rose and crashed like a tidal wave. She swallowed the sour taste at the back of her throat and forced herself to remain reasonable. Even if the mysterious murderer and the demon in the alley were one and the same, it had made its victims all over the city. Mere dozens in a population of more than a million. Given those odds, neither Danielle and Eric nor she were in any real danger. Common criminals posed a larger threat than this black figure.
She dared to relax a fraction. Although, if her assumption of a single entity was indeed correct, the ghost had crossed her path no less than three times in as many days.
A fresh surge of panic hit her in the pit of her stomach. With three encounters in three days, the odds were that tonight would see the fourth. If so, she would have to be prepared. She was under no illusions of successfully fighting off this maniacal ghost, but damned if she wouldn’t try.
At a flick of her hand, the register sprung open. She took out twenty francs and made a note on the list of receipts.
“Nicole, I have an errand to run,” she announced. “Close the shop when it is time, but no sooner. You know the routine. I do not need you to count the till, but when you bring Monsieur Fabron today’s proceeds, do tell him that I took money for a cab. The amount is on the list.”
“Oh? I mean, yes, madame.”
“Should he ask where I have gone, tell him I went on an urgent personal errand and will be back before nightfall.”
Nicole gave her an apprehensive look, but Mercedes left without acknowledging it. She strode through the workshop, grabbed a pair of scissors from the spares cabinet and headed up the back stairs. From the hat stand behind the flat door, she snatched her manteau and a hat before Amélie saw her. Then she hurried out, as quickly as she had come, down the stairwell to the front entrance. The last few steps appeared no different than yesterday, except for the abundant scents of soap and wood polish saturating the air.
Outside she turned left, walking up the street rather than down, so she wouldn’t pass Eric’s shop window and risk him or his assistants catching sight of her. At the first intersection she came upon, she spotted a small cab going too slow to be carrying passengers and hailed it.
“Rue de la Cité, s’il vous plaît. Near the Pont Notre Dame.”
The driver shrugged and reined his one horse to a full stop so she could climb in. Getting comfortable on the narrow bench was difficult, especially with the small carriage bouncing over the cobblestones and upsetting her already nervous stomach.
Mercedes clutched the scissors through the woven beads of her reticule and took a slow breath. Between the scissors and the broad daylight, she was not defenceless against whatever trailed her. As long as she was back home before sunset, all would be well.
Or relatively well, because Eric would be beside himself when he learned she had gone out without his permission.
At her instructions, the fiacre halted at the corner of rue Gervais Laurent. Mercedes stepped out and paid the driver. She considered asking him to wait for her, but decided otherwise. This could take a while, maybe several hours if Madame Esmeralda was already engaged with customers when she arrived.
The tall houses lining the alley were no less gloomy in full light than they had been at the onset of evening, albeit quieter at this hour. It was too early for factory workers to be returning home, and too early for the whores to be out on display. Only a group of children running after a pig’s bladder passed her by, as well as a sultry policeman who returned her polite greeting with a glare.
The sign on Madame Esmeralda’s basement door read ‘fermé’, but Mercedes rapped on the peeling wood regardless. The door didn’t pop open as expected. She knocked again, this time with her fist.
“Anne? Anne, are you in? Please open.”
“Who’s there?” a distant voice called back.
“Mercedes. Please, I need your help!”
A click. Released from its lock, the door inched open. Mercedes pushed it wider so she could squeeze her crinoline through and shut it behind her as soon as all the folds of her dress were accounted for.
The basement shop was empty, the candles unlit, and the air musky. Only the curtain in the back swayed gently.
“Anne?”
“Back here! Take a seat while I slip into some clothes.”
Mercedes’ cheeks flushed. “You are alone, are you not?”
“As of two minutes ago,” came the cheerful reply. “One of the local police officers wanted to investigate my wares, but he just left.” Then the curtain swung aside and Anne came out holding a candle, wearing nothing but a long underdress and a big woollen scarf a
round her shoulders. For anyone else it would have been indecent, but Anne had ample experience in putting people at ease while wearing nothing at all. Mercedes wasn’t scandalised by the informality. They had known each other too long and too well for that.
“Now, what is all the fuss about?” Anne asked, only to freeze where she stood. “Oh my dear, look at you. You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”
Mercedes sighed. “I have.”
“Well, no surprise there. What I mean is, you look a fright.”
“I am.” Mercedes flashed a weary smile and took off her hat before slumping on the nearest stool, arms on the table. “God, Anne, it is such a mess.”
“Oh, love.” Without premeditation or pretence, Anne’s soft, slender arms wrapped around Mercedes’ hunched shoulders. “It’s all right, my dear girl. We all get a bit lost sometimes.”
Her voice was soft as honey, soft as her arms. The bravado that Mercedes had sustained all day drained away and for a brief moment, she allowed herself to be as scared as she felt inside. Anne pressed a kiss to her hair, and she leaned into it.
“Care to tell me what happened?”
“I need you to do a reading for me,” Mercedes said. “Too many things have happened lately and I cannot tell fact from fear anymore.”
Without dwelling on details, she recounted the events of the last few days. With every word, Anne’s hug tightened.
“Devoured, you say?” the older woman gasped when Mercedes fell silent.
“That is what the dead soldier called it. He did not say by whom or what, but I’m almost certain that ghost in the alley is to blame. He killed those two men who attacked me, too.”
Anne slowly let her go. “I doubt that. Two dead bodies would’ve made a good rumour in the neighbourhood, and I’ve heard none. The only one who recently died in this street is Madame Cachon’s boy, but for him it was his lungs that did him in.”
Mercedes’ stomach turned twice. “You... do not believe me?”
“Oh, I do, love, I do. If you say you saw something, I know better than to argue. However, I’m not sure what it was you saw. Not a leech, from what you describe. Those will suck you dry of your will to live, but they can’t kill and they can’t beat people up.”