Spectacle

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  Maman kissed Aunt Brigitte on the forehead and said good-bye; Nathalie and Papa followed suit.

  As they walked out, the nurse came back in, carrying restraints and a syringe.

  * * *

  During her trek to the morgue an hour later with Papa, who was unusually quiet, Nathalie thought through all the visions. Again and again, quicker every time, like a chant to assuage her nerves.

  Due to her copious notes, she had everything memorized, even the experiences wiped from her memory. Two things had never made sense to her, but Aunt Brigitte’s dream helped her piece it together.

  Twice the Dark Artist had spoken words that seemed out of context. One was “Yes, of course!” after Agnès pled “No.” Yet the visions hadn’t allowed Nathalie to hear anyone except the Dark Artist. Why add the “of course”? And just before he met his own demise, he said, “Enough already!”

  To whom?

  To Mme. la Tuerie. The final time, if not the time with Agnès, too.

  “I’ll wait here,” said Papa wearily, stopping at a restaurant near the morgue. He’d insisted on coming. After Nathalie recounted Aunt Brigitte’s dream, her parents said she wasn’t to go anywhere, not even the morgue or the newspaper, alone. (“It’s the drop of water that made the vase overflow,” Papa had said, invoking a favorite saying.)

  Nathalie didn’t object. She was relieved. Part of her felt like a little girl again, following Papa along like she did in the Catacombs—although this time it was she who led with speedy, resolute steps. The rest of her knew this was the only option, the only way to stay out of danger short of locking herself in the apartment.

  She hurried toward the side entrance of the morgue and saw Christophe outside having an animated conversation with two police officers. He gesticulated with excitement—something she’d never seen before—and nodded attentively as they spoke. He looked the way she felt.

  The three men finished talking as she drew closer. When Christophe saw her, he trotted over to her with a grin.

  “I have news!” he said.

  “So do I!” Her heart threatened to pound straight out of her chest.

  “You first.”

  Her breathing escalated so quickly she couldn’t get the words out on the first try. Drawing a steady breath, she tried again. She stumbled over words, eyes looking everywhere but at Christophe, and barely kept tears from interrupting. Eventually she managed to convey Aunt Brigitte’s attempted suicide and the early trek to the asylum. As she pointed out where Papa was sitting, her voice caught. How could this be her day so far, her life right now?

  Nathalie smoothed out the waist of her dress several times before continuing. “Tante had a dream, a disturbing nightmare, about Zoe Klampert trying to kill me.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” said Christophe, shaking his head vigorously.

  “Yes, I do!” She repeated the dream and the vivid comprehension she gleaned from it, waving him off when he tried to interrupt. “Christophe, she wasn’t merely a partner who collected blood. She’s a murderer in her own right. I’m sure the man she stabbed in the dream was the Dark Artist. It had to be. Who else?”

  “Nathalie, the news I wanted to share—”

  “The only thing that doesn’t make sense is the handshake,” she said, scratching her temple. “Why would I shake her hand? Unless it represented the day I fainted in the morgue and she extended her hand to help me up—”

  “We think we have the man who killed the Dark Artist. And Zoe Klampert might be dead.”

  Blood. All of it. Every drop in Nathalie’s body felt as though it drained away and onto the sidewalk and into the streets of Paris. “What—what of Tante’s dream? I know she’s in the asylum because of those very dreams, but she’s right; I feel it in my soul. She didn’t know anything about the Dark Artist or Zoe Klampert. She’s closed off from the world.”

  “I don’t know.” Christophe sat down on a bench and beckoned her to join him. “The man who claims responsibility, Raymond Blanchard, turned himself in today. He admitted to the letter, the silk tie fragment, all of it. He didn’t kill the Dark Artist over any sense of justice but rather unrequited love for Zoe Klampert.”

  “He loved her?”

  “Apparently,” said Christophe. He began talking with his hands. “Blanchard saw his cart and followed him to the Seine that night; by the time he caught up to him on foot, the body was dumped. Or so he claims. The confrontation was over Zoe; they struggled and … you know the rest.”

  “I do. And I don’t. I don’t know what to believe.” Nathalie squeezed her eyes shut then opened them again. “What did he say about killing Madame la Tuerie?”

  “Shot her and buried her in a shallow grave. He told us where we could find the body—in a cemetery. Police are on their way there now.” Christophe held his finger up. “I almost forgot: He said Zoe Klampert wasn’t her real name but that he didn’t know more than that.”

  Nathalie pressed her back against the bench, defeated. She should have been happy, should have absorbed Christophe’s initial enthusiasm. Why wasn’t she?

  Because in spite of everything Christophe said, she wanted to believe Aunt Brigitte’s dream. And she wanted him to as well. “You don’t think there’s truth to my aunt’s dream?”

  Christophe gazed at her for a long while before responding. “Some of the details are astoundingly accurate, but we have a suspect right under our noses. The police know of your ability and trust it. I—I don’t think they’d grant that same confidence to Aunt Brigitte. Even though she’s an Insightful—”

  “She’s also not well,” said Nathalie. She thought of Aunt Brigitte’s written words, how coherence became drivel. “That’s why she’s there. We don’t know what’s madness and what isn’t.”

  “Instead of being disappointed, I wish you were able to feel happy. Relieved. Delighted that it looks like this will all be over soon.” Christophe bit his lip. “I don’t think you’ve been genuinely relaxed or content since I’ve known you, and my wish for you is … peace.”

  Nathalie cracked a smile. Peace? She’d forgotten what it was like to have a life of relative tranquility and ordinary worry. “In the meantime I suppose it’s time to be a reporter,” she said, rising from the bench.

  Christophe walked with her to the morgue entrance and, assuring her that this was nearly over, bid her adieu.

  * * *

  Afterward, Nathalie joined Papa at the restaurant and wrote her morgue report over lunch. From there they went to Le Petit Journal. Papa had been to the newsroom before but was nevertheless amazed by the noise and intensity and movement throughout.

  “M. Patenaude?” she said, knocking on his half-open door. He was shuffling through a stack of newspapers and told her to come in.

  Papa led the way. “I have a lead for you on a good restaurant, but it’s in Morocco.”

  M. Patenaude was so surprised to see Papa that even through the thick glasses his eyes noticeably widened. “I could certainly use a long lunch,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a laugh.

  Nathalie put her article on M. Patenaude’s desk and settled into a chair. She and Papa told M. Patenaude the events of the last day or so, and he sat with creased brows, pensive. He knew about the suspect—he’d be meeting with the police later to interview Blanchard—but was much more intrigued by Aunt Brigitte’s dream than Christophe had been.

  Christophe’s lack of faith in Tante still bothered her. She understood it, and in the same position, she’d probably think the same. That still didn’t take away the disappointment of his skepticism.

  “Brigitte hasn’t had a predictive dream in quite some time, correct?”

  “Not that we know of,” said Papa. “Certainly not anything this specific.”

  “That alone makes me think it’s valid. And this has nothing to do with my own gift. Madness has tainted her ability, yes, but—”

  The door burst open and slammed into a wall. They turned to see a man holding a sketch p
ad, cheeks flushed.

  “M. Patenaude, I’m sorry to interrupt. This is urgent.”

  The man, presumably a sketch artist, raised a brow at M. Patenaude. Papa thanked M. Patenaude, and he and Nathalie left the room. The door closed behind them, but Nathalie lingered.

  Just long enough to hear.

  “A murder,” said the sketch artist. “Throat cut. Our man on the scene mentioned a bizarre detail—something about a small bottle of blood next to the body.”

  47

  Nathalie implored M. Patenaude to let her go to the crime scene with the sketch artist, but he firmly said no. As did Papa.

  “You can wait here, though,” M. Patenaude said, opening his cigarette case. “Be one of the first to know what happened. We’ll run an edition tonight.”

  She graciously accepted his offer, then paced around his office in and out of smoke clouds as he and Papa talked. Despite being in the same room, Nathalie heard very little of what they said. They tried bringing her into the discussion at times, to distract her from worry. And themselves. They spoke of everything but the murder and what it might mean and the Dark Artist and everything else important.

  Questions flitted around her mind like skittish birds.

  The man who turned himself in, Blanchard? Did he kill someone else and then go to the police?

  No, Blanchard was wrapped up in jealousy, not swimming in bottles of blood. That didn’t fit.

  Only Mme. la Tuerie made sense.

  Did Blanchard kill her? Lie about killing her? Kill her after she killed someone?

  Or was she working with someone else? What if she had another Dark Artist, another partner?

  The questions spun faster and faster.

  I thought I was going to be the next target.

  And then the query that came back again and again, like a pesky gnat.

  Why?

  After M. Patenaude had gone through several cigarettes (two at least, possibly three), a harried reporter came in and dropped a draft on his desk. “This is all we know right now. Still a lot of details to work out.”

  Finally.

  The reporter rushed out with a wave of acknowledgment as M. Patenaude thanked him.

  Nathalie watched her boss read. It took hours. Wasn’t he in a hurry? She’d never seen anyone read so slowly, much less M. Patenaude, who—

  “Victim was a man, lived alone. An invalid who couldn’t get out of bed.”

  A man wrapped in a blanket.

  Nathalie sat down on the edge of a chair. “The man in the dream wasn’t the Dark Artist after all.”

  Papa murmured in agreement.

  M. Patenaude continued. “A jar full of blood was next to the body, as we know. No note in it but one on the body: ‘I killed him, too.’ And … a piece of burgundy cloth.”

  “It’s not a hoax and it’s not some mystery man. Madame la Tuerie—I mean, Klampert,” said Nathalie. “All of it.”

  M. Patenaude put the article to the side and folded his arms. “I agree. For many reasons, but most of all these two.” He sighed. “First, a witness saw a tall, dark-haired woman exiting the back of the building last night, right around the time they think the murder occurred. Second, the victim was an Insightful.”

  * * *

  Nathalie sat on her bed perusing the article and making notes. The ink was barely dry on the special edition, which featured a longer version of the article and included a colored sketch of the crime scene: The bloodied body of the victim, Hugo Pichon, was under a gray-and-white striped blanket.

  Not that Nathalie needed another reason to trust Aunt Brigitte’s dream.

  The Prefect of Police wanted “to gather more evidence before naming the suspect, but we will release the identity soon.” Zoe Klampert, presumably. And what of Blanchard?

  “I’ll get it,” Maman called out. Someone must have knocked on the door; Nathalie hadn’t even heard it. Stanley hopped off the bed to investigate.

  “Nathalie?” Maman’s voice again. “You have a visitor.”

  Not Simone, or she’d have said so. Louis, perhaps, or someone from the newspaper?

  Nathalie stepped out of her room and blushed. Christophe, holding a small cloth bundle, greeted her. He offered the bundle as she came closer. “Something to supplement my apology.”

  She took the bundle and unwrapped it.

  Pain au chocolat.

  Nathalie smiled. “Very kind. Thank you. But … why?”

  Maman excused herself, saying she was going to organize her fabrics in the bedroom. She was starting work again at the tailor shop soon and wanted to be well-prepared. Nathalie sat on the sofa and invited Christophe to join her.

  “Blanchard was a fraud,” said Christophe as he sat down. “His story unraveled under scrutiny, thanks in part to M. Patenaude. It turns out that Blanchard didn’t kill Zoe Klampert, but he was indeed in love with her.”

  Nathalie cringed. “Does he know who she is? What she’s done?”

  “What she’s done—no. He does know who she is.” He lowered his voice. “The place he told us he buried her? It was her father’s grave.”

  “What?” Nathalie scowled. “That’s cruel.”

  “It is,” Christophe began slowly, “but it proved useful in another way. Her father was Dr. Pascal Faucher—and her given name is Faucher, too. We don’t know why she goes by Klampert; we can’t find any marriage record for her—or anything at all in her adult life. It’s as if she ceased to exist years and years ago.”

  Nathalie thought about the photograph in the apartment. “That’s probably who was in the photograph I saw.”

  “The one that was gone when the police arrived? Possibly,” said Christophe. “I didn’t know this until today, but Dr. Faucher was a scientist who experimented with blood and magic, like Henard. He didn’t have the same breakthrough, but he was on the same path.”

  Nathalie could barely get the words out. “Her father was another—another Henard?”

  Christophe nodded as Stanley hopped on the sofa between them.

  That fact changed everything and nothing. Unless they caught Mme. la Tuerie, all they had were unwoven threads strewn across the floor.

  “Also,” Christophe began, drawing out the word as he glanced away. “I should have given weight to Aunt Brigitte’s dream—and more important, your belief in it. I wanted so badly for this to be over that when we had a plausible suspect, I couldn’t see any other path. I apologize for any false hope and distress I caused.”

  Nathalie wanted to be upset with him, even just a little. Then she looked at that crooked eye tooth and those blue eyes, listened to that kind and reassuring voice, and let everything he said filter through her heart and mind. No, she couldn’t be angry with him.

  “I forgive you,” she said. “We’ve otherwise made a—a good team.”

  A careful smile spread across his lips. “And I brought you pain au chocolat.”

  “And you brought me pain au chocolat.”

  Nathalie broke off a piece and offered it to him with a grin. They spoke for a while longer, and after he left, his woodsy orange-blossom scent remained. She wished she could bottle it and put it on the shelf beside all the other things worth remembering.

  48

  The following day, Le Petit Journal identified Zoe Klampert as the primary suspect in the murders of Damien Salvage and Hugo Pichon.

  More details emerged about the victim: Pichon, age 40, had no next of kin and had lived with his mother until her death in 1884. Since then his only company were the caretakers who visited him once daily—one of whom discovered his body.

  “The door was unlocked when I got there,” said Pichon’s nurse [name will be withheld for privacy]. “I reached for the key above the doorframe. Gone. And M. Pichon always called out to greet me as soon as I walked in, unless he was sleeping. Then I would go straight up to him and he’d take me by the hand and thank me for coming. He didn’t call out and he wasn’t snoring. I—I was afraid to look.”

  At this poin
t in her recitation of events, the nurse became tearful and required several moments to recover. “I walked carefully into the bedroom and didn’t know what I was seeing. His neck, chest, arms were covered in blood, almost like someone bathed him in it. When I got closer, I saw one deep cut here”—here she pointed to the base of her throat—“and I shouted and ran downstairs to the landlord and pounded on his door.”

  The nurse identified M. Pichon as an Insightful, according to his own admission. He never revealed the nature of his ability to her, saying it “didn’t matter anymore.”

  But it did, thought Nathalie as she read, or Mme. la Tuerie wouldn’t have killed him. She wanted—needed—his blood for some reason. Did she choose him for his gift, his inability to put up a struggle, or something else?

  The article identified Zoe Klampert, also known as Zoe Faucher, as the sole suspect.

  Faucher. As she read the article, something else occurred to her. Those notebooks. The older one that had strange writing and looked to be penned by two people. Dr. Faucher’s work? Was she building upon it? Trying to create another generation of Insightfuls?

  Murder played into it, though. And Henard hadn’t been a killer.

  Classically featured and attractive, Zoe Klampert stared at hundreds of thousands of Parisians from the front page of Le Petit Journal, courtesy of a sketch artist. Nathalie and Louis had given a description, and no doubt the faux killer Blanchard and the witness who saw her leave Pichon’s building had as well. The portrait was masterfully rendered.

  Omit the headline and she could have been taken as a mother or a theater actress or a beloved schoolteacher. That wasn’t the face of a killer.

  And then four days passed.

  No one had reported seeing her. Not one resident, not one landlord, not one shopkeeper, not one train conductor. A few mistaken leads were explored and discarded; otherwise it was as if Mme. la Tuerie vanished like night at sunrise.

  People speculated that she fled Paris. Illustrated posters with Zoe’s name and face on them were nevertheless all over the city.