The Mad Scientist Megapack

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “I take it there was no ransom demand?” Louverture said; Trudeau nodded. That was why they had called him, of course: his greatest successes had been in finding the logic behind crimes that seemed, to others, to be irrational. Crimes they thought a little black blood made him better able to solve.

  “No daughters of prominent families missing, either, so far as we know,” Clouthier said. “We have gardiens stagieres canvassing them now.”

  Louverture smiled, privately, at the thought of the group at the café being called away on long, hot velocipede rides around the city. “Of course, the families of kidnap victims often choose not to inform the police—though rationally, they have much better chances with us involved. Still, I do not think that is the case here: if a kidnapper told the family not to involve the police, why the letter to us? Tell me, Commandant, to whom was the letter addressed? Did it come by mail or was it delivered by hand?”

  “By hand,” Clouthier said before Trudeau could answer. “Pinned on one of the flames of Reason’s torch—a direct challenge to us.”

  “Strange, though, that they should give us so much time to respond,” Trudeau mused. “The thirteenth of Fructidor is just under two décades away. Why so much warning? It seems irrational.”

  “Crimes by sane men are always for gain, real or imagined,” Louverture said. “If not money, then perhaps power, as a man murders his wife’s lover to regain his lost power over her. The whole point may be to see how much power such a threat can give this man over us. Perhaps the best thing would be to ignore this, at least for now.”

  “And let him think he’s cowed us?” Clouthier said.

  “The Corps de Commande is not cowed,” Trudeau said gently. “We judge, sanely and rationally, if something is an accident or a crime; should it be a crime, we take the most logical course of action appropriate. But in this case, Officier Louverture, I think we must respond. If you are correct, ignoring this person would only lead him to do more in hopes of getting a response from us. If you are incorrect, then we certainly must take action, do you agree?”

  “Of course, Commandant,” Louverture said.

  “Very good. I have the Lombrosologist working on a composite sketch; once you have findings from him, Graphology, and Physical Sciences, the investigation is yours. I expect daily reports.”

  Louverture nodded, saluted the two men, and stepped out into the hall. Clouthier closed the heavy live-oak door after he left, and Louverture could hear out his name being spoken three times in the minute he stood there. He hurried down the steps to the cool basement where the scientific services were and went into the Lombrosology department, knocking on the door as he opened it.

  “Allard, what do you have for me?” he called.

  “Your patience center is sorely underdeveloped,” a voice said from across the room. “Along with your minuscule amatory faculty, it makes for a singularly misshapen skull.”

  The laboratory was a mess, as always; labeled busts on every shelf and table, and skulls in such profusion that without Allard’s cheerful disposition the place would have seemed like a charnel house. Instead it felt more like a child’s playroom, the effect magnified by the scientist’s system of color-coding the skulls: a dab of red paint for executed criminals, green for natural deaths, and a cheery bright blue for suicides. In the corner of the room Allard sat at the only desk with open space on it, carefully measuring a Lombroso bust with a pair of calipers and recording the results.

  Louverture picked up a skull from the table nearest him; it had a spot of red paint and the words Meurtrier—Nègre written on it. “It is not my skull I am concerned with today,” he said.

  “But it is such a fascinating specimen,” Allard said in full sincerity. He had asked Louverture repeatedly to let him make a detailed study of his skull: on their first meeting he had, without introduction, run his hands over Louverture’s head and pronounced that he was fortunate to have the rational faculty of the Frank and the creativity of the Negro.

  “Could we stick to the matter at hand?” Louverture said.

  “Of course, of course.” Allard put down his calipers, turned his full attention to Louverture. “My sketch won’t be ready for an hour or so, though.”

  “Never mind that. What can you tell me about the man who wrote the letter?”

  Allard picked up the notes he had been consulting, peered through his pince-nez as he flipped through them. “He is most likely not a habitual criminal, so he will lack the prominent jaw we associate with that type. He also likely possesses a need for self-aggrandizement—a man of whom more was expected, perhaps, with very likely a prominent forehead. The need for attention suggests a second child or later, so look for a round skull overall—”

  “I wasn’t aware you could tell birth order,” Louverture said, putting the skull in his hand back on the table.

  “You haven’t been keeping up with the literature. It was in last Pluviôse’s Journal—the mother’s parts, not yet stretched with birth, pinch the first child’s head, rendering it more pointed than later children. All else being equal, of course.”

  Louverture nodded. “Yes, of course. And—the race—?” He was accustomed to tip-toeing around the subject; most of his colleagues seemed to feel they were doing him a favor by treating him as white to his face and black behind his back.

  “A tricky question,” Allard said, apparently feeling no discomfort at the topic. In fact he was likely the least prejudiced man in the Corps, genuinely seeing black and white as scientific categories. “What we know shows significant forethought, which suggests a Frank or perhaps an Anglo-Saxon; the apparent motive, however, is irrational, which of course suggests a Negro. On the whole, I would tend to favor one of the European types. Why? Do you suspect…”

  “It’s nothing,” Louverture said, letting the unspoken question hang in the air. It was the reason he had been given the case, of course: the fear that this was the work of irrationalists, believers in religion and black magic. The vodoun murders of three years previous had brought him here from Saint-Domingue, and though they had earned him his office and reputation, he had often heard whispers that like follows like.

  “I can give you a sketch for each race, if you like,” Allard said. “It will take a bit longer, of course.”

  “Take your time. The sketch will be of little use until we have a suspect to compare it to.”

  Allard nodded abstractly, his attention returned to the model head in front of him. “As you say.”

  Louverture tipped his cap in farewell, stepped out into the hallway and headed up the stairs towards his office, wondering how he might conduct an investigation in which he did not have a single lead. A cryptic threat to an unidentified woman, an unmailed letter delivered by an unseen hand… Clouthier’s canvass would turn up nothing, of course; if the culprit did not want a ransom, he might just as easily take a poor woman, or even a prostitute.

  By the time he reached his office Louverture had decided that Allard’s delay, as well as the no-doubt slow progress of the graphologist and of Physical Sciences, gave him the excuse to do just what he had first proposed: ignore the whole matter and hope the letter-writer went away, or at least provided him with another clue. He was disappointed, therefore, to open his office door and find the graphologist’s report sitting on his desk. Louverture settled into his chair, lit the halogen lamp, and began to read. Open curves, large space between letters: male. Confident pen-strokes: written cool-headed, without excitement or fear of discovery. He frowned. That did not square with the notion that the letter-writer was seeking to arouse a reaction from the police, but what other motive made sense? Correctly-formed letters: well-educated in a good school. This seemed even more illogical. Anyone who received an education knew that all criminals were eventually caught, save those whose confederates turned on them first. Neat, precise capitals: a man of some authority.

  Louverture close
d his eyes, rubbed at them with thumb and forefinger. A confident man who nevertheless had a pathological need for attention, and felt neither fear nor excitement in taunting the police—as though the message had been composed and written by two different men. The writer, though, had not been coerced, since the letters showed no fear, so what sort of partnership was he looking at? An intelligent criminal with tremendous sang-froid, paired with an insecure, weak-willed…but no, it made no sense. The former would restrain the latter from any attention-getting activities, not assist in them; unless a bargain of some sort was involved, the cool-headed man having to gratify the other’s needs in order to gain something he required. Access to something he possessed, perhaps—or someone—

  Well, it was a pretty play he had written: all he needed was a pair of actors to play the parts. Louverture tore a piece of paper from the pad on his desk, uncapped his fountain pen, and wrote Imagine two criminals—group like faculties on it. The first criminal, the cool-headed one, would have had little contact with the police, but the second, he very likely could not help it. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, rummaged inside for a tube labeled LOMBROSOLOGIE; rolled the paper up, tucked it in the tube, and pushed the whole thing into the pneumatic. Standing, he turned the neck of his lamp to point its beam at his bookshelf, then scanned the leather-bound volumes of the Rogues’ Gallery there. What would the excitable man’s earlier crimes have been? Nothing spectacular, but at the same time something directed at gaining attention. Public nudity, perhaps? Harassment? A man with a wife, a daughter, a sister, perhaps a domestic living in. A man with little self-control, and yet not truly poor, or else how would he have met the educated man he was partnered with? If not poor, though, his neighbors would have complained about the noise that almost certainly came from his house; Louverture took Volume 23, Noise Infractions, off the shelf and added it to the pile on the desk.

  He was not sure how much time had passed when he heard the door open. He looked up from the book in front of him, expecting to see Allard with his sketches; instead it was Clouthier. Louverture stood, gave a small salute.

  “Officier Principal, what can I do for you?”

  Clouthier cleared his throat, brushed at his dark blue jacket with his fingertips. “It’s past six. Are we going to see your progress report today?”

  “I haven’t received anything from Lombrosology or Physical Sciences yet.”

  “I’m told you haven’t given orders to any of the gardiens to search or arrest anyone. Have you spent the whole day reading books?” Clouthier asked, looking around at Louverture’s desk and shelves with distaste.

  “I’ve been rounding up known criminals,” Louverture said. “Doing it this way saves your men time and energy. Incidentally, are my reports not to go to Commandant Trudeau?”

  “To him through me. Public safety is my responsibility, and I must respond quickly to any threat.”

  “We have almost twenty days,” Louverture said mildly.

  “If whoever wrote that letter is being truthful. Have you often known criminals to be truthful, Louverture?”

  “Why bother to give us the letter and then lie in it? If he wanted to avoid detection, wouldn’t it have been better not to alert us at all?”

  Clouthier coughed loudly. “It’s nonsense to expect him to be logical—if he were a rational man, he’d know better than to be a criminal.”

  Louverture nodded. “As you say. I’ll make sure my report is on your desk before you go—how much longer were you planning on staying tonight?”

  “Never mind,” Clouthier said. “Just have it there before I get here in the morning.”

  “Of course. Is there anything else?”

  Clouthier seemed to think for a moment, then shook his head, turned to leave. “Just keep me informed.”

  Louverture waited until Clouthier was out the door, then called to him. “Oh, Officer Principal, I forgot to ask—did your canvass turn anything up?”

  With a barely perceptible shake of his head, Clouthier stepped out into the hall. Though he could not help smiling, Louverture wondered whether that had been a miscalculation. It was no secret that Clouthier did not like him, a situation caused as much by his coming from outside the local Corps hierarchy as by his mixed blood. It would be best, he thought, to leave off further teasing of the lion for now. Resolving to restrain himself better, Louverture returned to his desk and began writing his report.

  * * * *

  The next morning Louverture was reading over his notes, trying to get them to make sense. He had taken the omnibus instead of his velocipede so that he could read on his way to work, laying the pages on the briefcase on his lap, but the heat and vibration kept him from concentrating. His cap was damp with sweat, but he refused to take it off; he knew from experience how people reacted when they saw his dark, kinked hair emerge from under an officier’s hat. Not that there were many people to react this morning, the omnibus being only half-full.

  He forced his mind to return to its task. If his theory was right, the second man was undoubtedly the key, but he had not found anyone in the Rogues’ Gallery that fit the profile. Could a man with such a need for attention possibly have hidden it all these years? Perhaps he had had another outlet until recently—an actor, for instance, put out of work by the theater closings…

  A sudden jolt interrupted Louverture’s train of thought. He looked up from his notes, saw that the omnibus had stopped in the middle of the street; the driver had already disembarked, and the other passengers were filing off, grumbling.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the man in front of him, “what has happened?”

  “It broke down again,” the man said. “Third time this month. I’d do better on foot.”

  Louverture followed the queue onto the sidewalk. A few of the passengers had gathered to wait for the next omnibus, the rest hailing pedicabs or walking off down the street. The driver had the bonnet open and was looking inside; Louverture tapped him on the shoulder. “What is the matter with it?”

  The driver turned his head and opened his mouth to speak, closed it when he saw Louverture’s uniform. “It’s corroded, sir,” he said. “Do you smell that?”

  Louverture took a sniff; a sharp smell, like lemon but much more harsh, was emanating from the omnibus’ hood. “That is the engine?”

  “The battery, sir,” the driver said. “That’s sulfuric acid inside; eventually it eats away at the whole thing.”

  “This happens often?”

  The driver shook his head. “They break down sometimes, but not usually like this. The scientists think it may be the heat.”

  “And they’re sure it’s a natural phenomenon? It hasn’t been reported to the Corps.”

  “I suppose,” the driver said, shrugged. “Why in Reason’s name would anyone sabotage an omnibus? What’s to gain from it?”

  “Well, I hope they solve the problem soon.”

  The driver laughed. “Me too. Much longer and I’ll need another job—there’ll be no-one riding them at all.”

  Louverture tapped the brim of his cap to the man, stepped over to the curb to hail a pedicab. He could hear the other passengers grumbling a bit when one stopped at the sight of his badge, saw the obvious annoyance of the man inside whose cab he had commandeered. He disliked being so high-handed, but he could not afford to be late: after his little dig at Clouthier the night before the man would be looking for reasons to undermine him.

  His fears were realized when he arrived at the Cabildo at three-ninety five and the gardien at the desk waved him over. “Officier Principal Clouthier is waiting for you in the interrogation room, sir,” he said.

  Louverture tapped his cap in acknowledgement and went through the big double doors that led to the interrogation and holding areas, hoping Clouthier had not done anything that would make his job more difficult. When he arrived at the interrogation room he saw the man himsel
f, talking to the gardien at the door to the cell.

  “Louverture, nice of you to come in,” Clouthier said, bursting with scarcely restrained smugness.

  “What’s this?” Louverture asked, looked through one of the recessed portholes in the wall; he saw, inside, a dark-skinned Negro sitting at the table. “You have a suspect? How did you find him?”

  “He was in possession of another copy of the note, along with paper, pen and ink that precisely matched those used to write the letter, according to Physical Sciences,” Clouthier said. “So we brought him in.”

  Louverture took a long breath in and out. “And just how did you find this particular pen-and-paper owner?”

  “I had my men search some of the worse areas of Tremé at dawn this morning. I am not afraid to expend a little time and energy, if it gets results.”

  “And I suppose he vigorously resisted arrest? I ask only because black skin shows bruises so poorly, I might not know otherwise.”

  “A little rough handling only. Commandant Trudeau directed that I leave the interrogation to you.”

  “Gracious thanks,” Louverture said. “If you’ll excuse me.” He nodded to the gardien to open the door and went inside. The suspect was sitting on a light cane chair, his hands chained behind his back; his face, at least, was unmarked. “I am Officier de la Paix Louverture,” he said in a calm voice. “What is your name?”

  “Duhaime,” the man stuttered. “Lucien Duhaime.” His eyes darted to the door.

  “We are alone,” Louverture said. “You may speak freely. Do you know why you have been arrested, Monsieur Duhaime?”

  “I didn’t—I don’t know how that paper got there.”

  “Someone planted paper, pen and ink in your house, without you knowing?” Duhaime opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. Louverture shook his head. “Well then, how did it get there?”

  “I don’t. I don’t know.”

  “I see.” Louverture sighed. Now there was one man to compose the note, another to write it, a third to deliver it: too large a cast for the play to be believable. Sitting down opposite Duhaime, he realized he still had his briefcase with him; in a sudden inspiration he set it on the table, opened it with the top towards the prisoner, so Duhaime could not see the contents. “I keep the tools of my trade in this case, Lucien. Do you know what they are?”