Spectacle

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  “I don’t think anyone is ever alone in Paris,” Nathalie said with a tense chuckle. “I—I went to the canal on my way home.”

  Maman’s brows creased. She put candles in the candelabra, one by one, each movement rougher than the last. “Why?”

  As Nathalie rummaged through her head for an answer, it occurred to her that there were, in fact, two possibilities. Her interpretation of events since getting off the tram may have been correct. Or she may have gotten all of it very wrong.

  Maybe the man wasn’t following her.

  Maybe it was a too-keen sense of alarm, a hasty conclusion.

  Maybe it was the killer.

  Maybe it wasn’t.

  After all, he’d never gotten close enough for her to get a good look. And when she’d gotten to the canal, she hadn’t seen him.

  Nathalie cleared her throat. “Have you ever had a little voice in your head that says ‘Do this, not that’?”

  “Many times,” said Maman as she struck a match.

  “My little voice said to take a carriage tonight, and that was the closest place to get one.”

  It wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t a lie. It was something in between.

  “Sometimes the little voice knows best,” said Maman, lighting the candles. “Even if it did mean spending money on a carriage. What was it that prompted the little voice?”

  “Just a … feeling.” Nathalie kissed her mother on the cheek. “I’m sorry for worrying you, Maman. I promise to be home long before nightfall from now on.”

  “Thank you, ma bichette.”

  Maman took one of her half-finished dresses, a red chiffon one with velvet trim, off the dress form. By candlelight she worked on it—slowly, awkwardly, painfully—a while before bidding Nathalie goodnight. After Maman left the room, Nathalie waited a few minutes before peeking out the windows and checking again to make sure the apartment door was locked. She did it all a second time, too.

  Then she settled down on the sofa, Stanley at her side, to write in her journal. In lieu of never seeing the wiry man’s face—hidden under a hat, in shadow, always just too far away to see—she recorded every other aspect of her encounter, even drawing a street map. After finishing, she flipped several pages back to reread the last few entries leading up to tonight.

  Then she reached one written just yesterday according to the date. That entry she read three times.

  It was her handwriting. It was her style of storytelling, her use of words. The descriptions, which dove into everything she’d experienced this summer in minute detail, were certainly hers.

  Yet she didn’t recall writing a single word of it.

  Nathalie wanted to hurl the journal across the room. No, throw it out the window. Or hold it over the candelabra and burn it. Or toss it into the Seine on her way to the morgue tomorrow. She could buy another journal. And maybe she should, because this one betrayed her, played a cruel game with her memory. After all the secrets she entrusted to it, the journal deceived her.

  For now, however, she buried it under a pillow behind Stanley.

  She walked her mind through the previous day, step by step, the way you’d guide a child across a rock-strewn creek. Then she encountered the gap.

  During the night she’d gone up to the roof to escape the thought cage her dark, quiet room had become. She remembered sitting down on the roof and then …

  Nothing again until this morning.

  Oh goodness. She’d posted a letter to Agnès this morning. A letter she couldn’t remember writing, just like the journal entry.

  What did I say?

  The bridge spanning the time on the roof and waking up had crumbled away.

  As to why she couldn’t remember … well, why couldn’t she remember the bouquet? That first episode in the morgue yesterday, whatever she’d seen or imagined or dreamed up, had shaken her up more than she knew.

  Then it’d happened again today in the morgue, and now she wondered if she could trust her own mind. Was she really followed tonight, or had her brain distorted that, too?

  She reclined on the sofa, closing her eyes. Somehow she needed to anchor herself in a truth, any truth. It all came back to the morgue. Either her visions reflected reality or they didn’t.

  Again and again she called up the memories of what she’d seen for each victim. After a while, Nathalie fell into that strange place between thought and dreams.

  Instead of hazy thoughts, she found clarity.

  She sat upright, startling both herself and Stanley.

  The silver ring. It was a minor detail from her second episode at the morgue, something that had eluded her focus. Until now.

  In the vision, the girl had been wearing a simple silver band on her right little finger.

  When the first victim was found, there had been two accounts in the newspaper. One was Nathalie’s column about the morgue. The other was a report about the girl’s death—where she’d been found and when, what she was wearing, whether anything had been in her pockets, how long she appeared to be deceased. Tomorrow’s edition would have the same account for the second victim. That was the standard procedure for all the bodies on display.

  If the ring was mentioned, then what she was seeing was real. Not because Simone said so, and not because Nathalie would prefer a supernatural explanation to madness. Not because, if she allowed herself to think about it, maybe even indulge in it, there was something powerful about it. Purposeful. Special.

  It would mean she’d arrived at a truth. A mysterious one, but a truth all the same.

  10

  Nathalie woke up later than usual the next morning and rushed to get dressed. She was hurrying to the kitchen to get something for breakfast when the headline stopped her like a stone pillar.

  First Murder Victim Identified

  Maman sat in Papa’s well-worn burgundy chair reading the newspaper. Nathalie came up behind her, resting her hands on the leather. It smelled of Papa’s pipe and the spicy balm he bought in Morocco and wine and everything else that was Papa. She couldn’t wait for him to come back.

  “The girl was a nanny from Giverny,” Maman said, adjusting her green robe. “Visiting Paris on holiday. Alone.”

  “A nanny. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “What?”

  Nathalie bit her lip. She probably shouldn’t admit to Maman that she tried imagining what the victims had been like, who they were, what their stories had been. It would only add to Maman’s concerns about the morgue assignment. “Some people at the café said maybe she was a streetwalker. What was her name?”

  “Odette,” Maman said, putting her finger on the name. “Odette Roux.”

  Nathalie crossed over to the kitchen and sliced some bread. Something was unusual about that name. It sounded—familiar, somehow. Yet the only Odette she knew was a little girl who lived down the street.

  Or maybe it was that a certain comfort existed in hearing the name. A name, any name, besides “the girl” or “the first” or “Victim #1.” She was Odette with the freckles and the pink dress who tucked in little ones and sang them nursery rhymes. Odette who played hide-and-seek, standing in closets and ducking behind wardrobes as children searched for her. Odette who dried the tears of a little boy who skinned his knee. That’s who she would be to Nathalie.

  Maman folded the newspaper and put it under her arm as she stood up. She walked over to the kitchen window, her eyes following a bird that tottered along the sill to avoid the rain. “I’m going to the morgue with you. Then I’d like us to visit Aunt Brigitte.”

  Nathalie’s heart sank before bobbing like a cork. “Why?”

  Maman threw her a perplexed look. “If we don’t visit Tante, who will? I’m ashamed to say it’s been a while.”

  They’d been once to the asylum since the accident, but Aunt Brigitte had been upset by Maman’s injured hands covered with bandages. She’d cried and cried because she didn’t want Maman to be in pain, so Maman decided not to go again until her burns had healed
some.

  “I meant why are you coming to the morgue?” Nathalie put some blueberry jam on her bread. “You don’t especially enjoy it.”

  She wanted to protect Maman like that little bird on the window might have protected her young. Her mother didn’t need to see the murder victims, didn’t need to stand in the morgue where the killer had lingered, watching the crowd stare at his victim.

  But there was more to it than that. She also didn’t want Maman in on her secret. Going to the morgue together somehow felt like … an intrusion.

  An intrusion? Nathalie was instantly ashamed of the thought.

  Maman handed her the newspaper. “I want to see what everyone else sees. What you see.”

  If you only knew, Maman.

  Nathalie spread the paper on the table after Maman left. She searched the sidebar and found the sentence, mundane to the rest of Paris, that altered her view of everything.

  Deceased wore a blue-and-yellow frock with a floral print, undergarments, one shoe, and a silver ring on her right little finger.

  Exhilaration fluttered through her body. Could it be that she didn’t have to fear this “power” after all? That she could explore it like a new novel, every insight a fresh page? She didn’t understand this gift but she was prepared to embrace it. Learn from it. Make it part of who she was and use it for good.

  At least and at last, she was beginning to trust its authenticity.

  * * *

  When Nathalie entered the morgue, her gaze went right to where Odette used to be.

  Not seeing Odette’s lifeless body anymore affected Nathalie in a way she didn’t expect. Although she’d never admit it to anyone and could barely acknowledge it to herself, Nathalie missed seeing her. The vision’s intensity and all it released had made Odette more than a corpse on a slab, more than just the victim of a murderer. She’d become a soul amidst the soulless. Nathalie felt connected to her, to both of them, through the unexpected intimacy of witnessing their deaths. Like the first time she saw her grandmother take off her glasses, or the time she sat in the front row of a concert and watched the pianist lose himself in the music.

  Like that. Only dark and terrible and full of rage and blood.

  The rain kept the crowds away, so it was only Maman, Nathalie, and three others in the viewing room—two women and a man who waddled like a duck. Surely none of them was the murderer. Still she wondered: Had he come here to watch the crowd view his second victim yet? If so, had he come more than once?

  After a glance at the curtain to note that M. Gagnon wasn’t there, Nathalie watched her mother. Maman was still, her eyes focused on the body, unblinking. “I wonder how she ended up there,” she whispered. “In that situation. Whatever it was that led her to her killer.”

  I watched her run from him, Maman. I saw it all. Backward at that.

  Nathalie leaned in to her mother. “That’s what makes it so scary. It could have been anyone.” Including me. Or Simone. Nathalie stepped closer to the viewing pane, her mind drifting to the victim’s silver ring. It might have been from a beau or might have been a family heirloom. Or she could have bought it with her own wages or found it on a bridge over the Seine. The ring had a story, like a thousand other things in this poor girl’s short life.

  Something shifted in the viewing room: the light, a faint sound. Nathalie turned to see a figure in the shadows behind her, just over the threshold and to the left. She couldn’t make out anything other than great height and an umbrella, yet the presence was sinister. Intimidating.

  She whipped around to face front and took Maman by the elbow. “We should go.”

  “What’s the matter?” Maman turned to look, but her expression reflected neither curiosity nor alarm. “Roland, how nice to see you.”

  Nathalie let go of her mother and was never more relieved to be in darkness. It obscured her blush.

  Not the killer. Overly imaginative, Nathalie. Just Roland. One of the tailors at the shop where Maman used to work. Nathalie greeted him with a smile, which bounced off his glasses back to her in the darkness. As Maman spoke to him, Nathalie faced the corpses again. Don’t be foolish.

  “Why were you in such a hurry?” Maman asked when Roland stepped away.

  “I felt light-headed,” Nathalie lied. “I thought I needed some air, but it passed.”

  They fell into silence. Nathalie focused on the second victim and thought about the vision from yesterday. After a moment she closed her eyes, trying to remember details. How the victim ran, what the space looked like, how the cuts were made. The only element she could think of that resembled a clue, something the police didn’t already know, was that navy-and-gold hallway runner.

  Probably hundreds, if not thousands, of hallways in Paris had a rug like that. She could examine five runners with those colors and not be sure which one she’d seen in the vision—it happened quickly, and she didn’t study it.

  How could that be helpful? It would show that the murder took place indoors, anyway, in a home of some sort. She wished she had something more substantial to share, but maybe it was still worth submitting. The public didn’t know which puzzle pieces were in place and which were missing; even seemingly unimportant details might be worthwhile.

  Maman nudged her, murmuring that she was ready to go. They emerged outside to find that the rain had subsided.

  “I saw and I still don’t believe,” her mother said. “That’s why I don’t come—”

  “Mademoiselle Baudin, how are you?” It was M. Gagnon, calling out from the steps behind them. Nathalie’s belly turned to stone, as if that Medusa on the morgue door had petrified her stomach.

  “Well enough, and you?” Please don’t say anything about the interrogation.

  “Bodies and more bodies,” he said with an uneasy laugh.

  Maman raised a delicate brow. M. Gagnon introduced himself as police liaison for the morgue.

  Nathalie couldn’t help but notice what an appealing grin he had. And how his imperfect tooth stuck out, just the tiniest bit.

  He seemed much … nicer than he had been the other day. Something about his attention, the fact that he’d noticed her, baffled Nathalie. Yet it also pleased her.

  M. Gagnon certainly had her attention, too.

  “Enjoy your stroll before the rain starts up again,” he said, tipping his hat as he walked in the opposite direction.

  “How do you know him?” asked Maman. She moved a pin in her chignon and waited for an answer.

  “He … said hello one day,” said Nathalie. She shifted her weight. “He’s often in the display room when I come.”

  Maman smoothed out her brows. “Why should he wish to make your acquaintance if he stands on the other side of the glass? Do the guards greet you?”

  “No. Only him,” Nathalie said. “Monsieur Gagnon is, uh, a gentleman. He urged me to be careful, nothing more.”

  Maman didn’t reply, but it appeared to satisfy her, though you could never tell. Sometimes she’d wait a week before floating a follow-up question.

  Nathalie glanced over her shoulder as they walked away. M. Gagnon was leaning against a lamppost, hands in his pocket. His eyes were on the ground and then, as if he could see her watching from thirty yards away, on her. She looked away, embarrassed.

  And also intrigued.

  All the way to the asylum, she thought about him. She didn’t know what to make of his friendliness today, but she liked it. Very much.

  * * *

  Saint-Mathurin Asylum had been and always would be a place of nightmares.

  Nathalie’s cousin Luc once said there were rumors of haunted floors, hidden corridors that led to suicide chambers, and secret rooms where the violently insane were left to regulate themselves, with the hospital providing only food and water and services to remove corpses if the inmates killed one another.

  Nathalie didn’t believe any of that, not now, but as a child she’d lost many a night’s sleep to such tales.

  Where Aunt Brigitte dwelled was
frightening in a different way. All the women in the hospital were confined to this floor; the severity of their cases varied such that the silent and forlorn wandered alongside the shrieking, quivering women in the halls. The woman Nathalie had seen during that forbidden foray years ago was, she discovered in time, far from the only one prone to outbursts of hysteria.

  The walls and floors were cold stone; the air was putrid with sweat and filth. And the sound was a terrifying clamor of wailing and mad, incessant chatter. Nathalie couldn’t imagine calling this home. Not even for a night. Mme. Plouffe’s home, where Tante had a room before the asylum, was peaceful and homey. Saint-Mathurin was a cauldron of madness and dread.

  And yet Nathalie didn’t mind coming here, not now that she’d grown accustomed to it. The patients fascinated her, given that she pitied rather than feared them, and Aunt Brigitte, beneath her madness, had a childlike kindness.

  Nathalie and Maman made their way down the corridor, passing a plaster statue of Saint-Mathurin behind glass. A pair of bloodied handprints—made, legend had it, by a patient whose escape was suicide—trailed from the middle of the wall to the floor. Maman always turned away when they passed that spot; Nathalie always studied it, trying to see in her mind’s eye what happened that day.

  They walked by a room of patients. A frail elderly woman stepped out of it and followed them down the hall. “Where is the key? Can you let me out? Father said I could go if you gave me the key.” Over and over again she asked, softly and almost lyrically, as she tapped Nathalie’s arm. They ignored her; the nurses told them never to engage the patients.

  Suddenly she gripped Nathalie’s elbow with a startling amount of strength. “WHERE IS THE KEY?” the woman screamed. Her voice was poison; her eyes teemed with contempt. Nathalie tried to pull away and the woman squeezed harder. Maman pushed the woman off just as a nurse hurried over.