She felt a pang of sorrow for the fourth victim. Had she been a lover? A woman who once rejected him? She might have been a stranger who reminded him of a lost love. Or she might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time with nothing at all connecting her to the Dark Artist except chance.
What story does her death tell?
Nathalie folded the newspaper and shoved it in her bag. It’s not mine to know. I’ve already spent too much time in the Dark Artist’s head.
Leaning back, she noticed a mime performing for a crowd a short distance away. He was dressed in black with a painted white face and white gloves, standing on a small platform.
The mime was contained in an imaginary box and made a great show of trying to break through the top lid. Once he did, he indicated a ladder above the open lid and climbed it, triumphant as he reached the top. However, in his victorious joy, he lost his balance. He took a pretend tumble onto the ground, only to land gently, dust himself off, and stand up again with a bow.
Her attention snagged on his gloves. What if the killer was a mime? What if that was the Dark Artist, right there, performing for people, while his latest victim was on display on the other side of the cathedral?
She thought about going over to him to see … to see what? If the mime looked like a murderer? As if she could tell. As if she had anything to go on but gloves. Yet again. At least with M. Gloves, she could place him in the morgue the day of the first vision, just like the killer.
What do I know? What do I know about any of this? I’m just a girl with a gift like the Insightfuls, without being one of them.
Turning her back on the mime, she wrote her article. Inspiration. Was that what the Dark Artist meant? Was that blood jar a way to underscore his letter, his demand that she be more gruesome?
She didn’t want to play his game. She also didn’t want any more blood jars in her satchel. Or worse.
Nathalie added to the article, despising the space on the page dedicated to flattering him with exaggerated statements (“cavernous slashes from a vicious blade,” and “bruised flesh like fruit under the skin, waiting to burst”).
When she was done, she made her way to the newspaper headquarters, planning what to say to M. Patenaude as she rode the omnibus. She decided to act like a journalist about it: ask questions about Henard’s experiments without saying anything about her own visions. For now she wanted to do research, and she could attribute it to inquisitiveness.
She hurried upstairs, nearly colliding with one of the newspaper boys on the stairwell. After whispering an apology, she trotted down the hall to M. Patenaude’s office. Her stomach clenched as she raised her hand to knock on the closed door.
“He left early today,” said Arianne, picking her head up from the ledger. “I think something he had for lunch was spoiled. I told him not to get bouillabaisse from the Brasserie Candide because she keeps her food out too long. He doesn’t listen.”
Of all days.
Her gut twitched. She hadn’t counted on this.
Arianne extended her hand.
Nathalie stepped back. “Oui?”
“Your column,” said Arianne, raising a brow. “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”
She’d been so focused on talking to M. Patenaude about Insightfuls that she almost forgot. She reached into her bag, tore the article out of her journal, and handed it to Arianne.
“I don’t know about you,” said Arianne, tapping the desk with her fingernail, “but I refuse to walk alone in the city right now. My father accompanies me to work, and my brother meets me at the end of the day. Some of my friends have similar arrangements. Do you have someone to escort you?”
Nathalie shook her head.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Arianne said. She wrapped her arms around herself. “And reporting on the morgue besides? You have a lot of courage, my dear.”
“Or maybe just the foolishness of youth,” said Nathalie with an awkward titter. Papa was at sea and she didn’t have a brother, but she wouldn’t have taken their protection anyway. Would she? She’d like to think she wouldn’t mill about in fear, but who could say? The fourth victim might have felt the same and walked right into the path of the Dark Artist.
“You are anything but foolish,” said Arianne, smiling. She held up the article. “Kirouac is in the archive room, but I’ll give it to him to review.”
Archives.
An idea slinked into Nathalie’s mind.
“Speaking of the archive room, could I have the key and go in there for a bit? I have some research to do.”
M. Patenaude wasn’t available, but countless newspapers were. Some of them must have had stories on Henard’s experiments.
“I’m afraid not,” said Arianne. “Kirouac has had a whole crew in there for the past two days. They’re moving cabinets around and cleaning up some things. They don’t want anyone in there until they’re finished, which should be this evening.”
“Tomorrow?”
“As long as they’re done, you’re more than welcome to go.”
Tomorrow couldn’t get here soon enough.
* * *
A delectable fruity scent greeted her in the hall as she approached the apartment. Nathalie inhaled deeply, savoring the smell before walking through the door.
She entered to see Maman making raspberry jam.
“Good news!” Maman said, beaming. “I went to buy raspberries to make a pie at Marchand’s market, and Simone’s mother asked if I was going to make some jam. The jar I gave them last Christmas was the best she’d ever had, she said. We talked for a while and she offered to sell my jams at the market.” Maman bounced on her toes. “She said whatever I make, she’ll put on the shelf. She’s going to talk to some of the other shopowners in other parts of the city, too, to see if they’ll sell it as well. We agreed on a price, and now all I need to do is supply her. Isn’t that wonderful?”
Given their argument yesterday, this was among the last moods she expected her mother to be in this afternoon. Nathalie had anticipated coolness or a round of inquiry or even some worry in the aftermath of the daylong headache. It took her a moment to shift her thinking to reflect this version of Maman, who was happier than she’d been in months.
“Parfait!” Nathalie said. Jam-making wouldn’t replace sewing, neither in terms of fondness nor of income. Yet it was clear Maman was overjoyed to do something with her hands. “I’m so happy for you!”
She walked over to hug Maman and kissed her on both cheeks. Part peace offering, part congratulations.
“Nathalie … that reminds me. How is Simone? You haven’t mentioned her in a while.”
Simone. Just hearing the name made Nathalie’s heart cry and tighten all at once, like one of those flowers that folded into itself if you touched it. “Our schedules are very different. So are our interests these days, it seems.”
Nathalie didn’t mention the argument they’d had. She didn’t need to; both of those “reasons” were accurate and, most likely, what contributed to the tension between them.
At least on Nathalie’s side.
Right?
“I understand that,” said Maman, her voice empathetic. “My friends from the tailor shop … it’s different now that I’m not there. I saw Simone this morning when I was heading to the market. She didn’t see me, but I saw her getting off the omnibus at our stop. Probably to visit Céleste. The poor girl is getting worse, and they still don’t know what kind of illness she has.”
Céleste, innocent and at that perfect age where she should enjoy being a child, with none of the responsibilities of the adult world. No little one should be robbed of that through sickness, Nathalie thought. Yet it happened again and again. Last year one of her classmates had died from tuberculosis over the summer, and even now it didn’t seem real.
“That’s horrible,” she said, sitting at the kitchen table. Stanley hopped onto her lap. “Céleste is a sweet girl.”
Maman shook her head the way people do
when a child is sick and you wish you could do something about it. It was the universal gesture of feeling powerless. Nathalie had observed it many times at the morgue—in the sag of a shoulder, the whisper of a prayer, the piteous shake of a head.
Her thoughts shifted to Simone. Was she downstairs right now?
Nathalie sat with Maman a while longer, waiting to see if her mother would bring up yesterday’s quarrel. Maman did nothing of the sort and talked only about jam and fruit and any number of things that weren’t Aunt Brigitte, Dr. Henard, or the Insightfuls.
How could Maman act as if yesterday hadn’t happened? There was so much left to discuss. Nathalie seethed for a good long while before giving up; she was too tired to push her mother into conversation at the moment.
Her theory had fallen apart, and she had no explanation for the visions. For now, it was nice to feel normal.
Even if it was only a pretend version of normal.
24
When Nathalie stood in line at the morgue the next day, Christophe came out to meet her. He stood several meters away from the queue and motioned for her to come near. Her face flushed with warmth as he stepped close to her.
“I told one of the guards to let me know when you arrived,” he whispered. “I’ve met with the Prefect of Police. He’s arranged for a police officer to follow you while you’re out in the city. He’s in the morgue now and will follow you when you leave. I’ve sent another to watch your apartment building. Both will be in ordinary clothes, as will anyone who relieves them. We’ll be doing this around the clock.”
Her skin tingled. She wanted to resist, to say she didn’t need an escort, but only because she didn’t want to admit that she might be in danger, even if only in theory. Christophe would never put this in place otherwise.
She’d read about this sort of thing in serial novels. And now it was happening to her. This wasn’t in her head anymore. It was real.
“You’re not to acknowledge them,” Christophe added. “But you’ll be able to identify them. They’ll have a white walking stick with a black handle.”
Nathalie nodded. “Thank you, Monsieur Gagn—Christophe. That’s very kind of you.”
“We can’t protect everyone in the city, but we can do our best to protect you. I prefer to err on the side of caution,” he said with a grin, his imperfect tooth poking out.
She thanked him again and returned to her place in line as he went back inside. Several minutes later, the line moved and she entered the morgue. The same corpses were on display as the day before. As much as she pitied the fourth victim, she again refrained from touching the glass. Nathalie apologized, silently, to the girl on the slab.
I’m sorry. I can’t. I need to take care of my own self, my own sanity. I hope you understand.
After a subtle acknowledgment to Christophe, she left. The temptation to turn around was strong, and despite intending to wait until she crossed the bridge, her curiosity got the better of her. She paused on the bridge to look into the Seine and peeked toward the morgue. A burly man, carrying a white cane with a black handle just as Christophe had said, strolled toward the bridge as casually as any other urban wanderer.
A feeling of power coursed through her blood. It was thrilling to be protected and to push back the Dark Artist’s influence on her.
She finished crossing the bridge and settled on a bench to write her article. Afterward she took a steam tram, and the man with the walking stick boarded as well. She relaxed into a seat toward the back. At the next stop, several people got on.
Including a man with a white mustache and white gloves.
M. Gloves took a seat in the front row with a prim expression on his face. He hadn’t noticed her. She was grateful (for once) for a crowded omnibus.
Could he be the Dark Artist? Time had diminished her suspicion; he seemed too old and lacking in agility. She’d wanted to have a suspect, someone to consider, because it was better than having a faceless face and a nameless man haunting her. Right now, with M. Gloves on the same omnibus, she questioned herself yet again. Was it the desire for a suspect, or was there something else about him—and not just the concept of him—that nagged away at her?
Today she intended to find out once and for all.
The policeman was observing the passengers, unaware that the portly man two rows in front of him, the one telling the ticket collector that his rat gave him “someone to talk to,” might be the Dark Artist.
Nathalie planned to get off when he did and, once she was sure her protector was behind her, follow M. Gloves.
Several stops later, he exited and walked through the gate.
Père Lachaise Cemetery.
She hesitated in the aisle; if it weren’t for an impatient passenger jostling behind her, she might have missed her chance to disembark.
Of all the places to go in Paris, she wouldn’t expect a murderer to stop here.
Then again, why not? Maybe he did his work in the cemetery. Or found new victims among the graves.
Nathalie got off the bus. Out of habit she reached for her vial of catacomb soil before remembering its fate on the floor of the morgue. One of these days she’d have to take a trip to the Catacombs to fill another tube. She didn’t like being without a good luck charm.
After a glance to make sure the policeman was close enough behind, Nathalie entered under the arch.
She and Simone had been to Père Lachaise several times in the past few years, with every visit inadvertently turning into a game of hide-and-seek. It was a densely populated city of the dead, a netherworld version of Paris, with its regal mausoleums and snaking pathways and elegant memorials. Most recently they’d gone in May, thrilled at the notion of seeing the composer Rossini’s remains exhumed for reburial in Italy. They couldn’t get close enough to see the coffin, but it was nonetheless exciting.
She followed M. Gloves. When he stepped off the path to a cluster of tombs, she halted. Being inconspicuous was easy enough along the main pathways. Among the gravestones and mausoleums themselves, she couldn’t possibly follow without being noticed.
She jumped as a couple stepped out from behind a mausoleum. The thin, clean-shaven man wore a light gray waistcoat and the woman, a white lace tea dress and a hat with a red flower on it. Her pretty eyes peeped over an ornamental red-and-gold fan. They were so well-groomed they could have emerged from an illustrated fashion periodical. Nathalie felt like she’d seen them before. Were they the couple from the morgue who witnessed her vision and told Christophe she said “Mirabelle”? Or maybe it was only one of them she recognized. Or maybe neither, because here she was, skulking through a cemetery after someone who probably wasn’t the killer but could be.
“Mademoiselle, are you lost?” asked the man.
Nathalie glanced past them to M. Gloves. The tombs of Abelard and Heloise, famously tragic lovers from the Middle Ages, were in that direction. “I was heading to, uh, Abelard and Heloise. I think I see the monument from here.”
“Don’t forget to leave them a love letter,” the man said. “We once did.” He nudged the woman, who giggled.
The couple bid her good day and moved on. As soon as they were a few steps away, Nathalie peeked over her shoulder. Seeing the policeman with his walking stick, she swelled with confidence and trailed M. Gloves.
He wound his way through tomb after tomb, taking so long Nathalie wondered for a moment if he was luring her somewhere.
No, that couldn’t be. He hadn’t seen her.
Had he?
At last he stopped and paused before a grave. She moved over to the left a few rows in order to approach and observe from the side.
He took off his gloves and reached into his pocket, opposite the one with the rat. Carefully he pulled out a white rose and placed it on the grave.
Pretending to gaze at the markings on the tombs, Nathalie drew closer, stealing glimpses every few steps. When she was several gravestones away, he knelt on the grass and blessed himself.
She narrowed
the gap between them until she could see the gravestone better. The white marble, with scrollwork all along the border, had a faded inscription. She sidled nearer to see.
JANINE THÉRÈSE DUBRAY
BORN 7TH MAY 1862
DIED 20TH OCTOBER 1875
IN HIS WILL IS OUR PEACE.
M. Gloves buried his head in his hands and began sobbing.
She was suddenly ashamed of being here, intruding on him this way. She’d been mistaken. Entirely, utterly mistaken. She should never have considered him, not for one moment.
Those weren’t the bare hands of a killer who wore gloves. Only the shaking, desperate hands of a man still grieving. Not the hands that wielded a knife in rage, not the hand that held down screaming girls until they were sliced to death.
Flushed with shame, she turned to go. She kicked a rock into a gravestone, startling M. Gloves.
“Hello?” He peered behind him, tears streaking his round face. If he recognized her, he didn’t show it.
“Hello, I—I thought you were someone else,” she said, hoping the humiliation wasn’t as obvious as it felt. “I’m sorry. And … my condolences.”
“Thank you.” He gestured toward the grave. “My daughter. Lost her to cholera. Tomorrow her best friend from childhood is getting married, and…” His shoulders slumped.
Nathalie gave him a somber nod and left him, this man who plainly was neither the Dark Artist nor even M. Gloves. He was M. Dubray, a father still very much in mourning twelve years after his child’s death. He deserved to grieve in private.
25
Within a half hour Nathalie was immersed in the archives at Le Petit Journal, having spent the entire trip from the cemetery to the newspaper issuing mental apologies to M. Dubray. She chastised herself for being foolish, for having fixated on him at all. It was time to adjust her thinking and take a different approach.
More than ever she needed facts.
Spectacle Page 17