The Missing Italian Girl

by Barbara Corrado Pope

“Acid?”

  “Burned, all up one side.”

  Elise shook her head, puzzled. “Are you talking about Michel?”

  A name! Not wanting to frighten off the charwoman, Séverine braced herself to remain calm. “Michel who?”

  The woman shrugged. “Michel Arnoux.”

  “And you know him how?” With two gloved fingers, Séverine edged the banknote toward Elise.

  Elise placed her hand over it. “I like the clerks. They’re cleaner than the stokers or the lamplighters. Smarter, too. More educated.”

  From the way that the charwoman refused to meet her eye, Séverine assumed there was more to her relationship with Michel Arnoux than a mere passing acquaintance. Séverine could not believe her luck. Or was it simply, once again, her unfailing instincts? “So the man with the burnt face and the closed eye,” she said carefully, “is Michel Arnoux.”

  “Yes, but no woman did that to him. It was the anarchist who did it. The one who threw the bomb in the fancy café.”

  “When?” It was Séverine’s turn to be puzzled. The only recent bombing was the explosion in Pyotr’s cart.

  “You know, the famous bomb, years ago.”

  “The Hotel Terminus?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  At last, a new clue. Despite the wig, the hat, the heavy dress, Séverine felt light, as if she could soar. Of course, she remembered the 1894 bombing. Everyone did. Thrown into a crowded café on a cold February night. The explosion that had terrorized Paris. Séverine dropped her hand to her skirt and clawed at it, reminding herself not to show her excitement. She was on the verge of uncovering a motive: revenge.

  “Was he bitter about what happened?” she asked, almost holding her breath. “Did he talk about that night?”

  “Well, not so much about the lamp that caught fire on their table. But about his fiancée, the one he lost. The one that was so perfect, so good. Except she couldn’t have been that good. She couldn’t bear to look at him any more, even after he saved her.” The tone was bitter. Whatever her relationship with Arnoux, she would never live up to the phantom of his imagination. Elise kept flattening out the banknotes against the rough wood of the table. “A pretty little blond thing,” she added. “At least according to him.”

  “Do you think he hated all anarchists for what one of them did to him?” Séverine pressed.

  “Oh, yes. He said, all the time, his life would have been so different. He should have been a manager. He should have had a real apartment. He should have married … that woman.” Her hand stopped. Her voice drifted into silence. Something must have happened. Some hope must have been dashed. Perhaps the hope that by marrying a bitter, mutilated man she would improve her life, enjoy a warm apartment in the winter.

  Séverine decided that a show of sympathy was probably the best way to pry more information out of the charwoman. “Oh, my poor dear, was he ever violent with you?” She reached for the woman’s hand.

  “No,” Elise said, pulling away. “He used to be nice to me.”

  “Used to be?”

  Elise began chewing on one of her broken fingernails.

  “What happened?” Séverine urged. What had brought Michel Arnoux to Pyotr’s café?

  Elise closed her eyes, as if deciding whether or not to answer.

  “Did he hurt you? We can—”

  “No! It’s not like he hit me. I don’t want you to think that.”

  “Well, then.”

  Elise nodded to herself before beginning slowly. “It’s the way he talked. It was bad enough that he kept telling me about his fiancée or how he could have become a big shot. But after that fire happened in May, when all those ladies got burned, he couldn’t stop talking about it. How their bodies were charred, how their jewels melted right into their flesh, what they smelled like.” She shook her head with distaste. “He went to see them every day they were laid out after the fire. He tried to get me to go. It was as if, as if … he liked it.” She wrinkled her nose as if she could smell the flesh burning and shot Séverine a glance of horrified perplexity.

  “Does he still talk about the Charity Bazaar fire?” Séverine asked, perfectly aware that he did.

  The charwoman shook her head. “We don’t talk anymore. I couldn’t stand it. It’s too gruesome.”

  Séverine stood up. She had gotten what she needed. The room was stifling, and she was perspiring heavily under her wig. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful. And it is very important that you tell no one what we’ve been talking about.” She glanced at the banknotes under the guard of Elise’s fingers. Her only guarantee.

  Séverine bid the charwoman good-bye and dashed down the stairs as fast as her heavy skirts allowed. She needed to go home. Get out of the awful clothes. Think. Write notes. Then go to Clarie Martin with what she had learned. She had struck gold.

  19

  HOURS LATER, A BEEF STEW simmering on the stove, Rose and Clarie carried Jean-Luc downstairs to play with his horsey in the courtyard. They had devised a plan that would allow Clarie to talk to Bernard alone and, at the same time, keep Jean-Luc from any possible harm. Clarie asked Mme Peyroud if they could borrow her stool for Rose to sit on in the courtyard as she watched their Luca. This was an unusual request. But it was an unusual day. Fortunately the concierge didn’t ask any questions before she retired to her lodge to prepare her own meal. After Clarie showed Jean-Luc how much fun the horsey would have riding over the cobblestones, she went upstairs to wait for her husband.

  Within minutes, the doorbell rang. Puzzled, Clarie put her book down. Had Bernard forgotten his key? Or did he have Jean-Luc and the wooden horse in his arms? Clarie swung the door open to discover, much to her dismay, the audacious Séverine.

  “I must come in.”

  “No, you can’t. Bernard will soon be home and….”

  Ignoring Clarie, Séverine stepped inside the foyer and pushed past her into the parlor. She swirled around. “We may both be in danger,” she said, with a certain imperiousness. “I know who the scarred man is, and I think I know what he has done.”

  Even though Clarie was afraid of what Séverine had come to say, she had to listen. Fear thudding in her chest, she walked to one of the chairs by the reading lamp and gestured to Séverine to take the other. “How did you find out?” she asked, holding on to the arms of the chair as she slowly settled into the seat.

  “I’m an investigative reporter. I investigate,” Séverine said briskly, as she yanked her gloves off, one finger at a time.

  “And?”

  “As I surmised, my dear, he is a clerk at the Paris Gas Company,” Séverine said with an impatience that Clarie assumed had to do with her guest’s less-than-gracious reception. “I waited on the corner of the rue Condorcet this morning until I saw him go in. Then I went to the Company housing on the rue Rochechouart and talked to a charwoman who knows him, shall we say, quite well.”

  Séverine paused, eyebrows arched, waiting for praise or encouragement.

  “Please go on,” Clarie urged. She had no time for Séverine’s dramatics. She was hardly breathing. The fireplace, the floral rug, the familiar walls seemed to be vibrating with the possibility that the worst was true: the man who approached her worked at the Paris Gas Company, a few blocks from her school. He lived nearby.

  “His name is Michel Arnoux. And his friend told me that his face was burned in an anarchist bombing, the famous one at the Café Terminus. You know about that, of course?”

  Clarie shook her head, still stunned.

  “February 1894.”

  “I was in Nancy, teaching,” Clarie whispered. “I remember something—”

  “Well, it was quite notorious. This slightly crazed Emile Henry threw a bomb in a new posh restaurant as everyone was sitting around having a good time, drinking, eating, listening to the music. The place was packed, about 350 people. The explosion was so powerful, it went through the roof.”

  “How awful,” Clarie said. “How many died?”

  “
Fortunately, only one. Many injured. What was really terrible is that all the anarchists were blamed for the act of one fool.”

  Clarie stared at Séverine. “What was terrible is what happened to the person who died and people like this Michel Arnoux.”

  “Oh, yes,” Séverine waved her hand dismissively, “that’s why everyone was so up in arms. Because Henry wasn’t aiming at the army, the police or the government. He targeted ordinary people. And what could be more ordinary than a clerk?”

  Shocked by Séverine’s callousness, Clarie repeated: “What happened to this man, this ordinary clerk, was terrible.”

  “And it gets worse,” Séverine went on, undeterred by Clarie’s disapproval. “Apparently he was there with his fiancée, got her away from the fire and, then, she rejected him because of his disfiguring wounds. I can see exactly the way it was. He must have been near the orchestra—that’s where the bomb went off—a special table for a special night. Something he could ill afford. Maybe he wore a top hat for the first time. Perhaps that’s when he asked her to marry him. Or, didn’t get the chance to ask before the explosion. Her rejection, that’s why he’s so bitter. Bitter enough to hate women, bitter enough to kill,” she concluded triumphantly.

  Clarie could see Séverine exactly, too. Imagining the story in her head. But she wasn’t interested in hypotheses: Clarie wanted to know everything Séverine had found out. She had to know. “So you believe he killed Pyotr and Angela?”

  “Yes, I’m almost sure of it.” Séverine began counting on her fingers. “He is educated. He works for the Gas Company. It wouldn’t be hard for him to build a bomb. Undoubtedly he saw Angela and your Maura with the Russian. And here’s where you were right,” she said, leaning toward Clarie: “the Charity Bazaar fire. Something about that set him off. Apparently he was obsessed with going there and looking at the victims. He kept trying to describe them to his little friend.”

  “He saw the bodies,” Clarie murmured. He had tried to describe them to her, too.

  “And smelled them.”

  Clarie touched her cheek, remembering how his hand had hovered over his wounded face. “He couldn’t help himself,” she said suddenly.

  “Yes, I suppose. He may be mad.”

  “Yes, mad,” Clarie said, her mind racing over a path she had been avoiding, “but in a certain way. In Nancy, Bernard worked with the famous Dr. Bernheim, who used hypnosis and suggestion with his patients. He believed that suggestions, images in our minds, if introduced correctly by a psychotherapist, can be so strong, they can cure neuroses. Or, left unattended, they can lead a person to commit horrible crimes. Those poor women laid out for everyone to see must have brought it all back to him: the smell, the pain, the hurt, the anger. He had to strike out. Find a way to strike out.” Clarie realized that she was talking as if in a trance. What she was saying was frightening. “If that’s what happened. If seeing those women made him envious and revengeful, he is a dangerous man. Pitiful, but dangerous. What would stop him?”

  Séverine slumped back with a sigh. “If only I could prove all of this. What a great story that would be.”

  “What!?” Clarie got up and crossed her arms, clutching her elbows. Despite the way the summer baked the parlor in the afternoon, she was cold, chilled and clammy. “A story? These are people’s lives.” Her life, Luca’s life, Angela’s life, Maura’s life. Maybe the lives of other anarchists making speeches in that café.

  “I know this is about real lives, my dear,” Séverine retorted. “But certainly you, of all people, having been married to an investigating magistrate, know how important solving crimes is to building one’s career.”

  “Bernard never felt that way.” In fact, he had given up that career.

  “Well, then your Bernard must be the exception you believe him to be.”

  Séverine’s retort felt like a slap. “Yes,” Clarie said curtly, “he is.”

  Sighing, Séverine got up and put her arm around Clarie’s shoulders. “Look, my dear, we shouldn’t be arguing. We should be talking about how to keep ourselves safe. What if the charwoman tells this Monsieur Arnoux that I talked to her? He may go wild! You need to figure out how to take care of you and your child. You can leave the solution of the crime to me.”

  “Or to the police,” said Clarie.

  Séverine shrugged. “Do you think they’d listen to me, after all my run-ins with them? I doubt it.”

  “Then Bernard will go to them.” She moved away. She and Luca and Maura were not a story. If anyone could persuade the police to investigate this man, it was a former judge.

  “If you insist,” Séverine said, plopping back into a chair, “I’ll wait to tell him what I know as long as he keeps me informed about what the police are doing. I want to be the one to break the news.”

  “You can’t wait here,” Clarie objected.

  “Why not?” Séverine stuck her chin up and Clarie suddenly understood the kind of impudent charm the famous investigative journalist must display when she wanted something. She hadn’t noted the elegance of Séverine’s outfit when she forced her way into the apartment. A white cotton dress with a scattering pattern of periwinkles that perfectly matched her eyes, the tightly corseted waist, the fetching bow at the neck, and, adding a certain piquancy to the whole, a lavender toque small enough to accentuate the stunningly white-blond curls. None of this mattered to Clarie. It was the simple question “Why not?” that changed her mind. Of course Séverine had to tell Bernard everything. He knew how to ask the right questions, and he would have to listen.

  “You’re right. You should stay. But let’s not pounce on him. Give me a chance to tell him that you are here.”

  “If you insist.” Séverine sighed and stretched out her legs, wiggling her feet, as if she had been hard at work the whole day.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Clarie didn’t really want to make a pot of tea. She wanted to run downstairs to prepare Bernard.

  “That would be lovely,” Séverine answered as she laid her head back on the chair.

  Clarie was pouring the boiling water into the pot when the key rattled in the lock. As she put the kettle back on the stove, she heard the exchange in the foyer.

  “You must be Maître Martin.” Clarie imagined Séverine thrusting her hand forward to be shaken.

  “And who are you?” Bernard was too polite to refuse the gesture. But, considering his opinion of Séverine and her flamboyant life, he was not about to give her the satisfaction of recognition.

  Clarie dashed around the corner into the foyer. “Bernard,” she said, “this is Séverine. I’ve told you about meeting her.” Their guest stood between them. In the relative darkness of the foyer, Clarie envisioned a cloud passing before Bernard’s eyes and a storm brewing behind them. “She’s come to give vital information about something that happened to me yesterday.”

  His expression changed from anger to concern. “You?”

  “I was waiting for the right time to tell you. That’s why Jean-Luc and Rose are in the courtyard.” The words tumbled out. She needed to say them as quickly as possible. “Why don’t you two sit, and I’ll pull up a chair from my desk.” Surely he had seen Rose and their son in the courtyard. If he didn’t believe her, there was nothing she could do about it now, not with Séverine between them. Clarie picked up her wooden desk chair and carried it across the room to set in front of the two armchairs. If she kept her eyes on both of them, she’d make sure they stuck to what was important: finding a killer, keeping safe, saving Maura, not their dislike or distrust for each other.

  Séverine retook her place in Bernard’s usual chair. He was slower in coming. Clarie leaned forward to watch him take off his bowler, hang it up, and loosen his cravat. He was a thoughtful man, a tactful man. He’d do the right thing.

  He strolled behind the two armchairs and settled into Clarie’s usual place. “So tell me what happened,” he said in a measured voice.

  “I was in the Square d’Anvers with Luca yesterda
y, when a man came up to me and said awful things, about the women in the Charity Bazaar fire. He said they had suffered despite doing the things that ladies should do.” She didn’t say he had touched Luca’s head or that he had implied she deserved punishment. What she told him was frightening enough.

  “What did he look like?”

  Bernard’s voice was surprisingly gentle, considering what must be going through his mind, that she had once again kept something important from him.

  “He had scars, burn marks, all up the side of his face, so bad that one of his eyes was closed.”

  Bernard froze for an instant. If she hadn’t known him so well, she wouldn’t have noticed. When he unclutched his hands from the side of the armchair, she saw that he had regained his composure. “Had you ever seen him before?” This time his voice carried less love and more authority.

  She hated saying it. “I’m not sure. Perhaps at the café in the Goutted’Or. It was dark,” she ended in a whisper.

  Bernard’s nod said “later,” as if he already knew, as if once more she was to blame for having gone on that foolish venture. He shifted his focus to Séverine. Always eager for center stage, Séverine repeated what she had found out. She also mentioned Clarie’s remarks about Dr. Bernheim.

  “Bernard,” Clarie asked, “do you really think the Charity Bazaar fire could have set him off? The timing seems right. That’s apparently when he first got to know the Russian boy, perhaps started to observe and follow him, and Angela, and Maura.” What a terrible idea. Being watched by someone waiting for the opportunity to kill. Was the same happening to her? The thought of it brought her to her feet. She began to pace.

  Bernard watched her with worried eyes. “I think both of you may be right,” he said.

  She paused to listen, wanting to hear how he, the former judge, analyzed the situation.

  “If, as Madame Séverine says,” he began, “the suspect was bitter about being left by his fiancée, he might have something against pretty young women and would have been very envious of an anarchist, someone he hated, being surrounded and admired by them. And, as we know, the smell, the sight, the imagined screams of the women who died in the Charity Bazaar fire powerfully affected everyone who went to see their bodies after they were laid out in the Palace of Industry. For someone who had gone through a similar trauma….” Bernard shook his head, thinking. “There’s a good chance you are right.”