“… will never bring me peace. Is that what you wanted to say?”
Papa regarded her once again, smiling. “Yes. Something much like that.”
* * *
The sixth victim, Lisette Bellamy, was identified the next day. Her sister Liberté, with whom she lived, had been on holiday in Ireland. When Liberté came home to find her sister missing, she ultimately made her way to the morgue. Nathalie cringed when Christophe told her about it. She’d always felt something for those who made that soul-shattering discovery; now that “something” bore a tragic context her blackest nightmares couldn’t have portrayed.
The Dark Artist was pulled from display several hours after Lisette. No kin had come forward, but the morgue needed room. The Dark Artist, anonymous on the slab, was unceremoniously dumped into the mass grave because other corpses needed display. Nathalie relished the irony.
She was eager to discuss it with M. Patenaude—and to ask him how long it would be before Le Petit Journal released the story. If they didn’t find Damien Salvage’s killer, then when would Paris learn that the Dark Artist ceased to be?
Sooner than she thought.
M. Patenaude was in a meeting when she submitted her article, so she left it with Arianne. Nathalie wished she could tell her not to worry about the murderer anymore, not to worry about being escorted to and from work. She wondered if M. Patenaude had already told her, sworn her to secrecy perhaps. Or if he let her go on believing, like the rest of Paris, that a throat-slashing killer was among them in the crowds.
Nathalie had many reasons to hate the Dark Artist. One of them was this, the fear that made women panic and look over their shoulders and think twice about every unfamiliar man who shared their footsteps.
She thanked Arianne and was about to leave when Arianne lowered her voice. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but it will be published tomorrow anyway.” She surveyed the room and continued. “The Dark Artist is dead.”
Guilt draped itself on Nathalie’s shoulders. “I—I know,” she said, unable to meet Arianne’s eyes. Sometimes she’d rather proclaim to the world she was an Insightful than keep secrets that were uncomfortable to keep. “I’ve been involved with the case. As … part of my column.”
Again Arianne eyed the room to make sure no one was watching. “We—the newspaper—received a note. Even Monsieur Patenaude doesn’t know about it yet.” She pushed an envelope across the desk to Nathalie, who promptly took out the slip of paper.
The Dark Artist is dead.
I am not.
As Ovid wrote: “He has lived well, he who has lived in obscurity.”
Nathalie grimaced. “What is this?” She reread the handwritten note several times, running her fingers over the ink, like rubbing your eyes after a dream. “I know Ovid was a Roman poet, and the quote is a boast about hiding in plain sight, I assume. Quoting a Roman poet about hiding in plain sight … why? What’s the boast?”
“I don’t understand it at all. Look—look at what else is in there,” Arianne whispered, pointing to the envelope.
Nathalie examined the envelope and saw something wedged in the corner. She tipped the envelope into her hand. Out came a piece of maroon cloth.
Maroon. Did the color have significance? A symbol of blood, perhaps?
“I opened that envelope almost an hour ago and can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t get any work done.” Arianne chewed a fingernail. “What do you think it means?”
Nathalie read the note one more time, as if it might say something different now, and put it back in the envelope. She pressed the cloth between her fingers. Silk.
Silk, just like—
“Oh! I know what it is!” said Nathalie, rapping a knuckle on Arianne’s desk. “From his cravat. It had a piece missing, like someone cut it off.”
The only probable “someone” was the person who’d killed him. Who else?
She dropped the silk on the floor, stooped down to get it, and fumbled getting it into the envelope. Was the cloth a souvenir? A symbol of power? Or maybe it was just to taunt Paris, like the Dark Artist had done. Why follow in the footsteps of the man you murdered?
Arianne sat back primly and arranged a stack of articles. “Perhaps it’s just a hoax,” she said, her tone unconvincing.
Nathalie was about to protest, to tell Arianne it seemed very real indeed, but then she noticed the young woman’s hands trembling as they hovered over the pages.
M. Patenaude will use his gift and know. He’ll convey it to Christophe. An actual errand boy would deliver the materials, and M. Patenaude’s interpretation, to the morgue. The irony.
“A fraud, well … that’s for others to decide.” Nathalie placed the envelope on the desk as Arianne shuffled through the pages, lips pressed together. “We needn’t worry. Tout va s’arranger.”
Nathalie didn’t know if everything would be fine, and in fact, she didn’t think that to be the case at all. She knew she’d be turning this over and over in her mind the rest of the day and probably well into the night. But if it gave Arianne even the slightest degree of reassurance, it was worth saying.
As she walked away from Arianne’s desk, she paused. Maman was healed and would be returning to work soon, but Nathalie would be staying on at the newspaper anyway. It was time to act like it.
She removed her cap and let down her hair. Standing up to her full height, she turned back to Arianne. “Please tell Monsieur Patenaude that from now on, I’ll be showing up in my normal clothes. We’ll figure out how to explain it to the gentlemen.”
“I will tell him,” said Arianne with a compliant nod. She seemed grateful for the subject change. “And good for you.”
Nathalie had seen and heard things no one else had, and she’d had experiences this summer few could conceive of, never mind live through. If she was good enough to help solve a case, then she was good enough to walk into Le Petit Journal as herself.
Whoever wrote the letter and quoted Ovid wanted to go unnoticed. Nathalie, from now on, aimed to be utterly indifferent to anyone’s inquisitive gaze.
40
PARIS NIGHTMARE OVER
Dark Artist Dead, Killer at Large
Le Petit Journal’s headline the following day told Paris about the current state of affairs, with an article covering the Dark Artist’s murder and identity, complete with morgue photographs, as well as the search for his unknown assailant. The newspaper also published the letter with the Ovid quote and described the silk fragment as a “thread-for-thread match—though even this doesn’t make the cravat whole.”
Nathalie wished it were a prank. She wanted to think the Dark Artist’s killer was acting out of bravery or principle, someone who caught him in the act and imparted his own sense of justice. The witness from across the shore had overheard a struggle; Nathalie had imagined a man walking alone in the fog, horrified by what he stumbled upon and disposing of the killer in a fit of fury. Or something happened when her vision of the scene cut out. Or the man was connected to one of the victims, stalked the Dark Artist, and confronted him.
But not this. Not a killer who sent letters and cravat pieces. Who was playing games now, and to what end?
By the evening, a special Dark Artist issue of the newspaper was out. She spread it on the sofa to read and provided an abridged version to Papa, who’d misplaced his reading glasses. Maman was changing out the drapes in the bedroom. “The police picked up a man seen near what’s believed to be the vicinity of the murder.”
“Based on what?”
“The estimated time the body was in the Seine compared with how long it took to … drift to where it was found.” Nathalie leaned forward as her fingers ran along the column. “Also, they have quotes from a woman, identity withheld, who spoke to a reporter outside the morgue. She said she’d known Damien Salvage from an opium den they both frequented. She’d first encountered him in February, shortly after the triple murders by Pranzini, and said Damien ‘possessed something akin to respect for the murderer.’”
“And here he is,” said Papa, “dead before the guillotine drops on Pranzini. With even more blood staining his soul.”
“Both fair and unfair,” Nathalie said. She, Simone, and Papa planned to go to the Pranzini execution, less than two weeks away. Too bad it wasn’t the Dark Artist’s death sentence. “The paper also says the woman didn’t think anything of it at the time: ‘Who with an iota of reason, even in a cloud of opium, would?’ That’s a direct quote.”
“Augustin,” Maman called from the bedroom, “could you help me reach the top of this drape?”
Papa reluctantly got up from his chair, which Stanley occupied in haste (the two of them had an ongoing disagreement as to whom the chair belonged). Nathalie moved on to another article that recounted the Dark Artist’s crimes throughout the summer—in spirited, exhaustive detail—and provided an account of each of his victims. The article spilled over to the next page, and when Nathalie turned it, she gasped.
Agnès’s photograph.
A thorn of sorrow pierced her heart.
Even in a newspaper account referencing her brutal death, even in a picture hazy in its reproduction, Agnès looked irrepressibly vivacious.
If Paris was going to have one final, visual reminder of Agnès, before everyone moved on with their lives and forgot the names and faces of the victims, Nathalie was glad it was that one.
She reached for Maman’s sewing box on the end table and found the scissors. Carefully, as though slipping would hurt Agnès herself, Nathalie cut out the photograph. Then she brought it to her bedroom, propped it up against the jar of beach sand and shells, and said a prayer for her friend.
* * *
The next evening, Maman, Papa, and Nathalie visited Simone’s family. Maman brought dinner, and as Simone and Nathalie put everything in the kitchen, Papa kneeled next to the sofa where Céleste lay. M. Marchand told him about her condition while Simone’s mother changed the girl’s blankets.
Only Simone knew what Papa was going to do.
The Marchands didn’t know Papa was an Insightful, and Nathalie’s parents wanted to keep it that way.
Nathalie and Simone set the table.
“Did you read the newspaper today?” asked Nathalie.
Simone nodded. “It didn’t take them long to dismiss the man they brought in for questioning, did it? The search continues.”
Maman cleared her throat from the parlor. The girls stopped talking and looked over to Maman signaling with her eyes to watch Papa.
Céleste smiled feebly at him as he told her a story about a stowaway monkey on his ship. Nathalie moved closer to them. Papa winced, just barely, as he clenched his fist (to show how upset the captain was at the monkey).
Nathalie then gazed at Maman watching Papa, proud and content.
Papa gently put Céleste’s tiny hands into his own for a few seconds. He flinched, so quickly and so slightly that no one who didn’t know of his power would have noticed. He kissed Céleste on the forehead and stood up, glancing at Nathalie as he did so.
And that’s when she felt it more deeply, more profoundly than ever. Being an Insightful wasn’t a source of shame, embarrassment, or worry. To witness strong and sturdy Papa using his gift with such tenderness illuminated her. Having this magic was an honor.
The families enjoyed dinner together a short while later. At one point, Simone started speculating about the Dark Artist’s killer and the letter to the paper; a stern look from her mother brought that to an immediate, mid-sentence halt. (“Not in front of Céleste,” M. Marchand mouthed when the little girl wasn’t looking.) After dinner, Nathalie and Simone excused themselves to meander around the block. They were scarcely down the front steps of the building when Simone hugged Nathalie at the waist.
“I’ve been bursting to tell you this for hours!” she said, her voice giddy. “Louis asked me to extend an invitation to you for tomorrow evening.”
“Oh?” Nathalie’s tone was cautiously polite. If it was to attend a poetry reading or some such, she’d have to find an excuse to graciously decline. “For what occasion?”
“To attend a séance!”
Ever so much better than a poetry reading. “Truly?”
“Truly. You’ll go?”
“Of course!” Nathalie used to think séances were nonsense, but several months ago she would have said murder scene visions were nonsense, too. And hypnosis. And the magic of Insightfuls. “You’ve been, so how does it work? Do we … choose someone to contact or wait to see what happens?”
“Well, Louis did have someone in mind.”
Nathalie’s heart quivered. “Agnès?”
“If she’s—willing, yes.” Simone bit her lip. “But I think for your sake and theirs, not any of the other victims.”
Nathalie was overjoyed by the idea of talking to Agnès. To plead for her forgiveness, to tell her she loved her and missed her. “Not any others, like you said. May they rest in peace.”
They began walking down the sidewalk. “Although we do want to disturb another,” said Simone. She threw Nathalie an impish smirk. “The Dark Artist.”
Nathalie gripped Simone’s forearm. “We could ask who killed him!”
“Precisely. Who knows what other secrets he’d give up?”
The idea of wielding power over the Dark Artist from the side of the living appealed to her. Yet she also wondered whether resurrecting a ghost who’d haunted her while alive wouldn’t cause a problem, like give her nightmares or visions or somehow interfere with her gift. Or worse, the memory loss that accompanied it.
Nevertheless, Nathalie couldn’t resist one last triumph over him. “Whoever killed him is pleased with himself, if that Ovid quote is any indication. Who do you think is behind it?”
“My guess is someone connected to either a victim or a near-victim,” said Simone, tucking her blond curls behind her ears. “Think about it. Maybe someone escaped and her husband or father tracked him down.”
Nathalie hadn’t considered the latter. Did anyone elude the Dark Artist? Surely it would have been in the newspaper. Then again, her own encounter in the Catacombs was kept from the public. Were there others, perhaps even that Christophe or M. Patenaude didn’t know about or didn’t tell her about?
They turned the corner and side-stepped an eager squirrel. “I thought it might be out of revenge, too, but now I don’t know. The letter and the piece of silk? It’s almost like someone wants the notoriety he had. Someone who’s proud of himself for defeating the great Dark Artist.”
Simone hooked her arm around Nathalie’s elbow. “With any luck, we’ll get an answer tomorrow night.”
* * *
Simone and Louis arrived smartly dressed, she in a white lace blouse and poppy-red skirt, he in a dark gray suit with a lighter gray, check-patterned ascot tie. Maman, having never met Louis before, was not at all immune to his charms (he was particularly effervescent). She responded with a coquettish grin as he admired her fabric creations, unfinished though they were, that hung in the parlor. He gave Papa, who’d spent most of the day in bed with a fever and headache, a hearty handshake. The three of them made congenial conversation as Simone helped Nathalie finish pinning up her hair.
Nathalie didn’t say they were attending a séance but rather a social gathering. This was half the truth, because Simone said there would be food served and a party beforehand. Maman herself was setting out soon for vespers at Notre-Dame. To pray, she’d said, for Papa’s safe arrival home, his swift recovery from healing her and Céleste, and for the blessings his healing ability bestowed.
After bidding her parents good-bye, Nathalie stepped into the hall, sparkling with anticipation. “Where to?” she asked.
They walked down the stairwell. “We are going to the home of one Madame Zoe Klampert.” Louis announced it like he was presenting a stage act. “I have no doubt she will astonish and astound.”
“If she can bring us the ghosts of Agnès and Damien Salvage,” Nathalie said, “I’ll sing her praises t
o London and back. Where does she live?”
“In Louis’s neighborhood,” Simone said, pointing in that general direction. “Near the Université.”
Simone had, with Nathalie’s permission, told Louis about the visions after their reunion in the aftermath of Agnès’s death. He was sworn to secrecy but had been intrigued from afar. This was the first time he’d had a chance to talk to Nathalie since then.
“What’s it like?” asked Louis. “That very moment. Is it like a dream? Or like you closed your eyes and ended up in another room?”
“Both,” she said, impressed with how he seemed to understand. He peppered her with other questions; the more she spoke, the more comfortable she was sharing her experiences. A measure of pride flowed through her veins like her magic-infused familial blood.
“What about the day you found a jar of blood in your bag?”
She frowned. That was a grim day, right after the fight with Simone, and she regretted spilling out the blood. It was a day she wished she could live over again. “I—I never sorted that out. Even now I wonder, every time I reach inside my satchel, if another one will be there.”
Simone nudged Louis. “You’ve asked enough questions. Leave her alone.”
Soon they arrived at Mme. Klampert’s apartment building. Grayish white with flowerboxes on every balcony, it seemed too bright and modern for a séance. Somehow Nathalie had always pictured them taking place in dirty Gothic buildings recessed in the shadow of overgrown trees.
When they stepped inside, Louis led the way to the second floor. It was unusually quiet, and when they approached Mme. Klampert’s door, the only sounds were their own footsteps. Nathalie had expected half a dozen voices from within, the jubilant noises of a party. Perhaps they were the first to arrive.
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