Sensational

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  A tourist from Sweden considered it intriguing: “So much mystery! Each day, I look forward to the newspapers to see if anything else has happened.”

  Not everyone expresses such optimism or fascination with the dark events of the city.

  “I’ve never been so ashamed of my country or my city. I myself am not unfamiliar with debauchery, but debauchery is not criminal,” said a Parisian who wished to remain anonymous, save to note that he holds the title of duke. “That we can’t solve this crime is an embarrassment.”

  Police are pursuing several leads, including the possibility that this murderer may be the descendant of an executioner.

  * * *

  A week passed without any more murders—and without much more information.

  Mme. Valois had an abundance of flowers one day at the morgue, presumably to accommodate the tremendous crowds; her arms were so full of blooms, she could hardly carry them all. Nathalie bought two bouquets. One for Maman and one for Aunt Brigitte.

  She stopped at home, then brought Aunt Brigitte some pink and orange flowers. The delight on Aunt Brigitte’s face warmed Nathalie’s heart. Her aunt was afforded so few pleasures in the dreary asylum that Nathalie was happy to bring some of the outside world to her.

  “They smell like life. Like spring,” Aunt Brigitte said. She peeked over Nathalie’s shoulder at her slumbering roommate, and Nathalie’s eyes followed. Véronique looked like a sad schoolteacher or someone’s grandmother, not a woman who’d killed her neighbor.

  “That one,” Aunt Brigitte said, pointing to the woman for emphasis, “got in trouble for picking flowers in the courtyard.”

  The Saint-Mathurin Asylum courtyard, the only time outside patients had. A few hours a week of seeing the sun, clouds, and sky without barred windows to intersect the view. Véronique had been a gardener, as Nathalie recalled from the newspapers. She wanted to tell Aunt Brigitte that but refrained.

  “My friend Simone and I once picked flowers from the window box of a neighbor across the street,” whispered Nathalie. “We got in trouble, too.”

  Aunt Brigitte inspected the wooden vase. “Is this your mother’s vase? I like the markings on it.”

  “Maman bought it at the Greece Pavilion at the Exposition. It’s olive wood. She said you can have it; she’ll buy another.”

  “Eh, the martinet denies us everything.” Aunt Brigitte pointed to the corridor with disgust. “She’s always confiscating something.”

  The “martinet” was Nurse Clement, the newly appointed head of the ward who maintained order with efficient pleasantness. Nathalie didn’t bring glass or ceramic, because anything that could be used as a weapon or could cause injury was forbidden. A wooden one might not pass muster, either, but it was the only other thing she had at home.

  “I’ll ask her when I leave,” said Nathalie, sitting in the uncomfortable chair near the bed. “If she doesn’t approve, I’ll ask if she can find something else for your flowers.”

  Satisfied, Aunt Brigitte set the vase on her nightstand and began to pet the flowers. “I had a dog once, a brown and white spotted boy. Not too big, not too small. He had long ears, soft as velvet. Did you ever meet him?”

  “No, Tante. I didn’t even know you had a dog.” She learned about her aunt in pieces, here and there. Memories Papa shared, slivers of the past Aunt Brigitte revealed when she was lucid and in the mood. “Tell me about him.”

  But she didn’t. She continued petting the flowers for some time, as though she’d forgotten Nathalie was there. And then, “I dream about him sometimes.”

  “Do you? Good dreams, I hope.”

  Aunt Brigitte turned to Nathalie with a grimace. “No. I haven’t had a good dream since before you were born.”

  Nathalie smiled, the sort of smile you gave someone when you had no words yet wanted to convey empathy. No wonder madness had overtaken her aunt. Wouldn’t nightmares every night for twenty years do that to anyone?

  Taking a page from Maman’s book of etiquette, she diverted the conversation back to where it had been. “What was your dog’s name?”

  “Choupinet.” Aunt Brigitte sat up straight, crossing her legs in front of her like a little girl. Her shirt lifted up, showing her belly scarred with miniature crosses, so many of them it looked like one of Maman’s patterns. It was something she’d done years ago, branding herself in a fit of religious fury just prior to going to the asylum, when she was living at Madame Plouffe’s home. Nathalie remembered the day she had first seen those crosses as a child, how frightened she’d been.

  “He was such a good dog. He loved to sit on my feet.” Aunt Brigitte heaved a sigh. She clasped her fingers together and closed her eyes.

  Nathalie let her be. Sometimes her aunt ceased to engage, like a door closing out the clamor of a room. After a few minutes, Aunt Brigitte would come back from whatever reverie she was taking.

  The room was still, save for the tranquil breeze rippling the curtain. Nathalie shifted her position in the chair, causing a floorboard to creak. It echoed back in the otherwise silent room.

  Even Véronique was quiet. No talking in her sleep, no snoring. Nathalie’s eyes drifted to her bed. She was tucked under the sheet, sleeping on her side, face shrouded in a mass of blankets. It was a wonder she wasn’t hot; Nathalie herself had broken a sweat despite the open window.

  She kept her eyes on the woman. She stared for a few counts but didn’t see the familiar rise and fall of a sleeping body in repose.

  Nathalie stood, creaking the floorboard again. Véronique didn’t stir. With gentle footfall, Nathalie stepped closer. She still couldn’t see the woman’s face.

  Aunt Brigitte yawned. Nathalie glanced over; Tante’s eyes remained closed.

  Angling herself closer to the woman’s bed, Nathalie leaned over until the sleeping face came into view. It was purple.

  She lurched toward Véronique’s neck to loosen the blankets, and in an instant the room fell away.

  And yet it didn’t. She was still in the room, crossing over to the bed, but the door was closed.

  Véronique was snoring.

  Nathalie approached the bed and, with hands that weren’t her own, slipped the pillow out from under the woman’s head without waking her.

  In one swift motion, she put the pillow over Véronique’s face.

  After a few beats the woman startled awake and flailed. She clawed at the hands that pressed the pillow down, harder and harder, until her body went limp.

  The murderer walked across the room, opening the door on her way past it, and got into her own bed.

  * * *

  When she returned to the present, her hands were still on Véronique’s neck, loosening sheets that didn’t matter anymore. One of the woman’s eyes had opened. Flushed, Nathalie backed away from the bed and wiped perspiration off her forehead.

  “He didn’t bark much. Very even-tempered.” Aunt Brigitte’s brittle voice floated across the room, landing on Nathalie like a butterfly.

  Nathalie peeled her sweat-dampened blouse away from her shoulder and faced her aunt, whose eyes were still closed.

  Every question that passed through Nathalie’s mind dissolved on her tongue.

  Tante, how could you?

  Tante, what were you thinking?

  Tante, why?

  A chill came into the room and wrapped itself around Nathalie. She closed the door, both to stave off the unusual draft and to have some privacy.

  “Tante,” she said, finally coaxing a word to emerge. “What ha—”

  No. She didn’t know how Aunt Brigitte would respond.

  Nathalie cleared her throat and tried again. “It’s good that he, uh, didn’t bark much.”

  She sat in the uncomfortable chair again. The coldness followed, hugging her in an embrace she tried to reject. She took her journal out of her satchel and scribbled notes before it was too late.

  “What are you writing?” Aunt Brigitte’s eyes were open now. Focused on her.

  “Just s
ome … something I just remembered.”

  Nathalie’s hand was so frigid, she couldn’t write anymore; fortunately she’d gotten it all down. She tossed the journal back into her bag and stood. “I have to go talk to a nurse. I’ll be right back.”

  Aunt Brigitte nodded and rolled away from her to face the wall.

  Nathalie started walking toward the door. Before she got there, she forgot why.

  She looked around the room. This was Aunt Brigitte’s room.

  When did I get here? What’s going on?

  Nathalie noticed the door was closed. Why? She reached to open it and noticed Aunt Brigitte’s roommate, Véronique.

  One eye open, staring at her.

  The woman wasn’t breathing.

  Nathalie dashed into the hall to tell a nurse, but she didn’t make it there.

  Night descended on her spirit, right in the middle of the day at the asylum.

  21

  The first few days in the hospital (or was it hours?), Nathalie was so cold, she felt like she was trapped outside in winter, unable to find refuge. More and more wool blankets were piled on her by nurses scurrying in and out, until at last she felt comfortable. Day and night fell into one another, owing to the lack of windows. Time was everywhere and nowhere.

  She had numerous visitors. Their presence faded in and out, sun playing hide-and-seek on a cloud. Streaky rays made it through.

  Mostly Nathalie slept while they were there. When she was awake, her thoughts were in such disarray that conversation was exhausting. So she didn’t speak much. Gestures, answers consisting of a word or two.

  “Choupinet.”

  That she could say. Aunt Brigitte’s dog’s name.

  She’d been doing something ordinary, sorting clothes, on some indistinct day. Then her next recollection was being in Aunt Brigitte’s room, talking about the dog.

  What followed was a patchwork of remembering and not remembering.

  Véronique on the bed.

  Touching her to wake her.

  Holding a pillow, but not.

  Talking to Aunt Brigitte and writing very quickly.

  Then everything went black, and now nothing made sense and her mind didn’t work right.

  She’d had a memory gap. Then something happened. Something else.

  Here and there someone held up a pencil and asked if she wanted to write anything down. No. Even a pencil was too heavy, not because of its weight but what it represented. Thinking and ideas and putting those together coherently.

  It was a medical hospital, not an asylum. Else they wouldn’t give her something sharp like a pencil. Whatever was going on, they didn’t think she was mad.

  No one told her why she was there or when she was going home. Either she couldn’t articulate her questions well or they didn’t answer. Or if they did, she couldn’t remember next time she thought to ask. Maybe that was why. Until she remembered things, she wouldn’t be able to go.

  Being uncharacteristically quiet felt strange. As if she were not Nathalie but a mime portraying Nathalie. She missed her voice, and she missed being able to properly participate in conversation with … who was it who had come, anyway?

  She had flowers and a card from someone (she’d read it several times—Jules, probably, but she kept forgetting) on her nightstand. The room was austere; the only ornamentation on the wall was a crucifix above her bed. She seemed to remember the other bed in the room being occupied by another patient, but it wasn’t anymore. (Or was she merely thinking of Véronique?)

  At one point, after awakening, she noticed a stack of two journals on a table beside her bed. The bottom one she recognized as her personal one. The one on top was not her newspaper one. (Where was that? Who was doing the morgue column in her absence? How long was her absence?) It was small, with a red cover, opened with a pencil down the center. She’d never seen it before.

  She reached over and picked up both journals, looking at the red one first. Penmanship in several hands.

  A guest register. Someone had thought to write down who came here and when.

  Her parents four times. Jules once alone (he seemed to have trouble hearing her) and once with Simone and Louis, who’d also come by a second time. Christophe, twice. M. Patenaude and Roger, once.

  Agnès visited her, too. It seemed impossible, and she hadn’t signed the register, but Nathalie remembered somehow. Agnès had been there talking to her about taking the elevator up to the summit of the Tour Eiffel.

  How long had she been here?

  She ran her finger along the page. Four days.

  Nathalie rolled onto her side, tossing off a blanket. She wasn’t feeling nearly as cold anymore, and there were too many blankets. She wasn’t hungry, either, so someone had been feeding her. She couldn’t remember a single meal. She had a general achiness and restlessness. Had she been out of this bed? She must have. To use the chamber pot if nothing else.

  She read through the register again. Pieces of those visits came back to her. Maman working her hands and tracing her scars, Papa telling her a story about Stanley. Simone and Louis doing some sort of play-acting from a performance Louis was in. Jules giving her flowers and talking about the play they had tickets for (which Nathalie insisted they go to, even if she was still in the hospital by then and didn’t know how, precisely, that would work). Christophe in a gloomy, pensive mood. M. Patenaude pacing the room in thought as Roger talked about a talking doll at the phonograph exhibit at the Exposition.

  Yet they were only fragments. A shattered plate rearranged, a fractured near-whole that barely resembled the original.

  What kind of medicine had they given her?

  She closed the register and opened her journal. As her eyes ran over the text—“Tante suffocated her; pillow” and “thought she was asleep and being choked by her sheet” and “Tante sorry”—she had the impression she’d read all this before, but she wasn’t sure.

  Of anything.

  Nathalie became drowsy as she read (truly, what were they giving her?) and she drifted off to sleep. She woke up minutes or hours later; she really did not know. Yet it was a refreshing sleep, somehow, and the viscosity of her thoughts was less thick. Thoughts were joining together the way they should, more or less.

  She read her journal notes one more time.

  Aunt Brigitte killed Véronique. Nathalie inadvertently touched her and the ensuing vision revealed everything. The effects of that were swift and intense, landing Nathalie here.

  She read the pages before that and calculated the days. How long she’d been here, when the vision happened, and when her last memory had been sorting clothes.

  No.

  Six days?

  Had she truly lost six days?

  She wasn’t clear as to why she was in a hospital and not at home. Papa could take care of her better than anyone, and Maman as well, if not with Insightful healing than with much love. Although Nathalie hadn’t known about Papa’s gift until a couple years ago, it explained a lot in hindsight. She’d been a relatively healthy child, with the occasional visit from Dr. Remy. Colds and fevers came and went, and hers were of shorter duration than those of her classmates, she’d often thought. At the time she’d believed, perhaps a bit too proudly, that it was because she was strong, of naturally excellent constitution, and diligent in following Dr. Remy’s directives.

  She remembered it differently now, the way you see the clues in a mystery when you read it the second time through. How Papa was often beside Dr. Remy when he made a visit, for either Nathalie or Maman. How Papa often got sick after one of them did, which she’d attributed to close quarters, never realizing Papa took the sickness into himself as a quid pro quo for the healing.

  One time she had more than a cold; she caught whooping cough. Horrible bouts of choking, so much so that her stomach hurt. Her parents stood over Dr. Remy’s shoulder, Maman twisting her fingers together and Papa observing intently, giving Nathalie comforting pats as Dr. Remy examined her. The doctor had given her a
tonic and some ointment, but Papa, who himself suffered from coughing fits days later, healed her. She was certain of it.

  Why can’t Papa heal me now?

  “Because Insightful healers cannot mend matters of the mind and heart.”

  A man’s voice. Friendly, neither very young nor very old, with a provincial French accent. Southern, perhaps. She opened her eyes and saw a gaunt figure silhouetted in the doorway. He stepped into the room wearing a black coat.

  “Did I say that out loud?” Her voice sounded like she’d swallowed pebbles.

  He came closer and offered her a mint, his fingers long and crooked. “This will soothe your throat.” She thanked him and he continued. “I’m Dr. Delacroix. I understand you’ve suffered memory loss from an—an encounter.”

  She hadn’t told anyone that she had a vision. Only that she didn’t feel well and passed out.

  Well. She didn’t remember telling anyone.

  Had she? Probably not. But maybe. Who knew what she did or didn’t say in the past several days?

  One thing was for certain. She wasn’t going to admit to anything now. Not until she sorted out who knew what.

  When she didn’t reply, he bit his lip and tried again. “Gaps in memory are a consequence of your gift, I understand.”

  “They are.” She paused. “You know that I’m an Insightful, then.”

  “I do.” He smiled. “So am I.”

  Papa once told her there were fewer than a thousand Insightfuls, not counting those like herself to whom it was passed on. Her path crossed with only a few of them.

  Still, she’d learned from M. Patenaude that impostors weren’t uncommon. He’d had many people over the years introduce themselves as “a fellow Insightful” without knowing that his gift enabled him to hear the dishonesty in their words.

  She arranged the pillows behind her so as to sit up better. “What ability do you have?”

  He didn’t respond. Instead, he pulled a notebook out of his pocket and took a seat. “Mademoiselle Baudin, can you tell me more about your memory loss? When it’s happened, how long it lasts, and whether there are any accompanying symptoms?”