He held on to Pip’s photo as the wave broke over him. When it passed, he was still on the bench, still holding the snapshot, with tears in his eyes and conviction in his mind.
I failed you, honey.
He wasn’t looking for Pip Crosby.
He was looking for her body.
THIRTY-SIX
SUNDAY MORNING DAWNED clear, the autumn-tinted leaves still full against the blue. Church bells clanged, here and there across the town, pulling the scrubbed and penitent from their rest.
Also the scrubbed and unrepentant, such as Harris Stuyvesant, who was tucked into the recessed and overgrown entranceway of an empty house across from Didi Moreau’s misleading bourgeois façade, grimly waiting.
Moreau did not emerge in time for the 8:00 mass, nor the 9:00. At 10:05 the door opened and the bird-man stepped out, tie crooked and a smudge of something pale on one knee, but clearly intent on church. Stuyvesant waited for the maid to follow.
Five minutes passed, then ten, with no sign of her. He had just decided to take his chances with the house when the door came open again. She bent over to check that the door was locked, then scurried off in the opposite direction from her employer.
Maid and master attended different churches.
Stuyvesant crossed the narrow street and ducked inside Moreau’s gate, calling down a pious blessing upon all negligent gardeners. And a minute later, upon all unconcerned builders, who installed door locks that permitted an investigator easy entrance.
Inside the foyer he drew on a pair of silk gloves and listened to the silent house. The spotless entranceway was an old-fashioned setting for an artist claimed by the avant-garde, cluttered with floral art and mirrors over faded Morris wallpaper, the floor green-and-white tile. There was even a small decorative table beside the door with a polished tray, as if someone might leave a calling card.
Did Parisians leave calling cards? Other than dead rats at the gate?
The door to the rest of the house stood open, although he imagined it would be shut in the winter. Standing there, he heard no conversation, no shift of floorboards, no running water from within. The house was empty.
Friday’s visit had shown him nothing of the house, since the door immediately to his right had taken him to Moreau’s basement lair. The door had a twin on the other side of the foyer. When he opened it, he found a coat-cupboard with a pair of rubber shoes and seven antique umbrellas.
Three strides took him across the tiles to where the hallway carpet began. It was old and showed wear down the center, but the colors were still bright.
To his astonishment, the rooms opening off the hallway were every bit as out-of-date as the entranceway. Heavy furniture, a massive fireplace in every room, velvet curtains, cart-loads of polished knickknacks. The only indication this wasn’t 1870 was that the lights were electric.
Could it be a joke, he wondered as he studied the porcelain lavatory pull painted with forget-me-nots? One of the modern artists—Duchamp?—had signed a urinal and entered it in a show. Still, creating a house-sized joke seemed elaborate even for a Surrealist. More likely the place was what it appeared: the artist’s childhood home as he had inherited it, intact and undisturbed down to the final aspidistra.
No wonder the maid had hurried off to church. A life spent caring for a Victorian mausoleum and its basement-dwelling master would make even a strong woman—even one without a sense of smell—crave spiritual reassurance.
He retraced his steps to the foyer, and studied the door’s mechanism, which seemed to be the only twentieth century element in the place. To his surprise, it was not locked. The hinges made no sound, although the wooden stairs did creak a little. He flicked on his penlight, moving slowly downward, making only the noises of a house settling into the day.
At the bottom of the stairs, he turned off the light to listen. Not that he expected Didi Moreau to have a friend here, but search habits were hard to break.
He was about to turn the light on again when he stopped, then stopped breathing: some tiny noise, a skin-crawling texture of sound, little more than a faint whisper of breeze over a wheat field. When he took a few steps towards Moreau’s workshop, the sound disappeared. Back at the stairs, it returned.
Aware of a stir of hair up his spine, Stuyvesant flicked on the light again, and searched out its source.
The stairs were open-backed and made of wood. In the space underneath, side by side, were two sturdy wooden crates with hinged tops. The smell alone told him what these were: Didi Moreau’s corruption boxes.
His unwilling fingers reached out to work the latch and raise the lid. Below was a layer of fine screen. He pointed the beam down.
A million tiny creatures fled, pouring off the lump of gore towards the corners of the box. The red mass had no hair, just muscle, sinew, bone, and a long, naked tail. The noise had been the susurration of tiny jaws, ceaselessly gnawing flesh from the neighbor’s gift.
He lowered and latched the top, checked the other box—the same setup, only the bone here appeared to be the skull of a small goat—and then stepped back.
His quiet cough of laughter didn’t quite cover a shudder.
He began with a circuit through the labyrinth, following his path of two days before, to make sure the cellar was empty. He noticed small changes: a box that had been on the wall then was now on a table with several of its compartments emptied. Two others that were hanging had been given their glass coverings, with the name DIDI now carved into the frames. The small crate of Dominic Charmentier’s whatnot that Stuyvesant had pawed through—Le Comte’s gifts from the universe—had been emptied. Some of its contents were arranged on the nearby shelves, although the bird’s nest was missing, and the infant’s shoe was already incorporated into a Display, given pride of place in the center. And in a room of animal parts, a rat’s skin was stretched on a frame: it had one black ear.
When he was satisfied that the cellar was uninhabited, Stuyvesant returned to the room with the hands.
When asked about prized photographs, the artist had betrayed himself with a glance at this room’s dimmest corner. The shelves, Stuyvesant now found, stood not against the wall as they had appeared, but a short distance away, creating a narrow passageway, pitch-black and smelling of damp. The penlight showed a featureless passage ending in a turn. There was probably a door at the far end.
He looked all over for a key, but found nothing. With a sigh at the relative sizes of his body and the secret passage, he threaded his broad shoulders inside, shuffling his feet sideways a few inches at a time.
He didn’t quite get stuck, although the turn gave him a few bad seconds, and made him glad he hadn’t worn his new suit. Once around the corner, his light showed him a very old door set with—yes—a very new lock. He swore under his breath.
He managed to retrieve the picks from his trousers pocket without dropping them, but after wasting several minutes attempting to manipulate them one-handed, he decided that wasn’t going to work. He tried working the mechanism blind, his hands jammed down in front of him as if using a ridiculously snug pissoir, but in the end, the only way he could get at the thing was to balance on his right foot and tilt his entire body into an angle, like a gymnast glued into the beginning of a cartwheel.
He balanced on his right foot, torn between the terror of a disastrous tumble and the knowledge that he looked absolutely ridiculous. He was shaking from strain by the time the lock gave, sweating freely despite the cool stones. When at last he staggered through the hidden door, he stood bent, hands on knees. God, he needed a cigarette. Did Moreau smoke? He didn’t think so. Would the man be able to notice a little tobacco over the stink? Yes, probably.
He rubbed his hands together to shake off the desire, and the tension, then cast his light around him. He was in a little stone cupboard an arm’s width across. A bulb hung from the ceiling, its wire tacked down the wall to a switch. He thumbed it on, dropping the penlight into his pocket.
Some men filled their st
rongboxes with money; others hid pornography. Didi Moreau’s most guarded treasure appeared to be the latter—although Stuyvesant was soon to suspect it was both.
The artist’s store-room contained what could only be called “death pornography.” Half a dozen stilettos, their grips lovingly polished, brown stains covering their blades. Three shrunken heads, eyelids stitched shut. A gold-and-ruby poison-ring, its lethal needle sticking out from the lower edge. A dozen pretty little bottles with sealed glass stoppers, in each of which floated a naked eyeball. A decorative inlaid box containing swatches of soft leather, in hues from eggshell to ebony: all the colors of the human race.
Then he opened one of two file-boxes on a shelf, and found the photographs.
If they’d been openly pinned to the walls in Moreau’s workshop, or stuck on a shelf outside, Stuyvesant would have paid them no mind. But twenty-three envelopes containing pieces of photographs, hidden away with twelve eyeballs and a box of dubious leather squares? Sure, that leather could have been very cleverly treated deerskin, and everyone knew that shrunken heads more often than not came from monkeys. But no artisan had ever made a glass eye that realistic.
So he hitched up the knees of his trousers and squatted down, laying the pieces from one of the envelopes onto the floor. There were twelve, roughly torn squares that fit together like a puzzle: a line of three made hair and the top crescent of forehead. With the next row’s continuation of the hair-line came a left eye and an ear. The eye was stretched wide, staring at something below the camera lens. He sorted through the remaining pieces for the other eye, but found only a shadow and the stone wall behind her: the right side of her face was turned away from the camera.
He laid the other two corners down, and the strained neck that joined them. More slowly, he used the three that remained to fill in the woman’s face: the left margin with stone, hair, and the side of her mouth; stone, neck, jaw, and throat on the right. Oddly reluctant, he stretched out his arm to lay down the final piece.
Torn into twelve pieces was the photograph of a woman in her thirties with brown hair and gray-looking teeth.
It was hard to tell if she was pretty. Her hair was collar-length and hadn’t seen a comb in days. Her lipstick was smeared like a clown’s—but there was nothing in the least comical about her expression.
Yeah, he could see why Moreau had kept this envelope hidden.
The picture looked overdone, staged: an actress feigning either madness, or an insane degree of terror. Her expression would go with the sounds he’d heard at the Grand-Guignol, that high-pitched, hair-raising cry of terror from the depths of the actresses’ lungs. Mock fright that scraped the nerves with its realism.
But why would Moreau lock away a staged act of terror?
The fractured woman on the floor stared upwards as Stuyvesant made a quick survey of the other envelopes.
They appeared to be various poses of four different women—none of them, thank God, Pip Crosby.
Seven envelopes contained versions of the first woman: older than the others, her gray hair a matted tangle; in one of the pictures, her mouth was so wide-stretched a person could count her missing teeth. Five of the envelopes contained pieces of a blonde with the beginnings of dark roots; she had good teeth, plucked eyebrows, and dark eyes. There were also five of another brunette, a girl with faint freckles, strong white teeth, and small gold loops in her ears.
One of the envelopes had a segment missing; another had two gaps.
The blonde was the only one wearing full makeup, although the girl with the earrings had also begun her ordeal with lipstick. On all three, the makeup was smeared across their face by sweat and tears.
None of them looked much like an actress. And in any event, what actress would agree to such unflattering poses?
All the photographs were either close-ups or had been cropped to the immediate area around the head. One of them, the gray-haired woman, revealed a slice of collar under her chin. All were taken either indoors or at night outside, using flash powder that turned the faces into masks. All showed stone in the background, and when he compared them, he found it was the same wall.
The twenty-three shots were all different, but as far as he could see, only the young brunette had a version fully facing the camera. In most, the women had their heads turned to their right, as if they were pulling away from something to their left.
In none was there any hint of what that might be.
Twenty-three photographs: mesmerizing, extreme, impossible to believe. Equally impossible to dismiss.
He jerked, at five brisk taps coming from over his head. Then silence. He waited a moment, and when nothing else came, he returned the photographs to their box and reached for the other one.
No more photos, thank God, only letters, six of them. The first one said:
Cette photo être utilisé dans une Affichage. Comme avant, ne pas utiliser plus de deux morceaux.
This photograph is to be used in a Display. As before, do not use more than two pieces. The other five were similar, each having to do with a Display. All were typed. All seemed to be orders for custom pieces incorporating the photographs and, in two cases, other items: an earring and a tube of lipstick. Whether Didi’s client had sent him the photographs and souvenirs, or had chosen from those provided by the artist, was not clear.
He was startled from his reading by water gushing through pipes nearby. He glanced at his watch, and cursed. That series of taps—it was the clack of the maid’s Sunday shoes across the foyer tile. Moreau would not be far behind.
He started to close up the box, and then stopped. His first impulse was to leave everything untouched; his next, to take it all. So he compromised. He removed one letter and one photograph of each woman. He stirred the envelopes around, hoping that Moreau would not discover his loss, and returned the boxes to their positions.
Penlight in hand, overhead light off, he fitted himself back into the nightmare passageway. Getting the door locked was a tiny bit easier than opening it had been, and he sidled down the stonework, hoping he wasn’t leaving too many betraying threads behind.
Back in the room with the display of hands, he could hear clearly the sounds from overhead. The kitchen, he thought: she was preparing lunch—water running, a clatter of pans.
He headed for the stairs—then froze. Voices came from ahead. He hadn’t heard the door, or footsteps, but one of them was Moreau. He and a woman exchanged words, although he couldn’t make them out. Go eat your lunch, Didi, he urged.
But the doorknob at the top of the stairs rattled and Stuyvesant moved fast. Before the door was fully open, he was under the stairs with the corruption boxes, flashlight in his pocket. From his other pocket he drew a long black mask: if he had to hit Moreau and run for it, at least he could keep his face from being seen.
Lights went on above the stairway; feet descended the creaking wooden steps; the tiny legs and jaws of hungry beetles stirred ceaselessly in the corruption boxes against his knees, making his gorge rise. He watched: polished shoes; Sunday trousers; jacket; then the man’s head, moving off into the labyrinth. Silence fell. And stayed. Stuyvesant’s pulse, which had begun to quiet, rose again. Should he head for the door now, while the man was out of sight? Would Moreau visit his safe-room? Would he see …?
“Monsieur!” came the woman’s voice, so immediately above him that Stuyvesant cracked his head on the wall. “Do you wish that I put the roast back into the oven?”
“No, no. I’ll be there in a moment.” The woman’s shoes clacked away again—and Stuyvesant realized that they had not retreated earlier, but lingered at the top of the stairs. Perhaps a reminder to lunch was a regular part of their Sunday routine.
If he’d made a break for it, he’d have come face to face with her.
He wondered if she would need to make a second call, but in a minute, footsteps crunched along the gritty floor and—thank God—up the stairs. Stuyvesant narrowed his eyes against a betraying gleam, but the artist was st
udying something in his hands and passed upwards, oblivious. The light went off, the door closed—did not lock—and after four steps on the tile surface, the carpet absorbed the artist’s heels.
Stuyvesant blew out a breath and lunged out from under the stairs, away from those damned, whispering boxes. Once the motions overhead had localized to the dining room, he crept up the steps to ease the door open a crack. When a distant clatter came from the kitchen, he slid through the door, across the tiles, and outside.
No hue and cry was raised in his wake.
He did not stop at the first café he came to, but he did stop soon. He threw the first drink down and was halfway through the second before the heebie-jeebies began to leave his skin. He took the stolen envelopes from his pocket, lining them up on the table.
Real distress, or expert pretense? If he’d seen these in another place and time, he would be convinced that the faces grimaced in genuine agony, the sweat was from true pain and terror. But in 1929 Paris, clever people with twisted ideas about artistic expression were thick on the ground, and he was willing to admit that some of them had the skill to pull one over on Harris Stuyvesant.
He did know one man who could say for sure. But, had he any right to place that burden on an already fragile spirit?
THIRTY-SEVEN
STUYVESANT HESITATED OUTSIDE Nancy’s door to straighten his tie, as if that might settle his thoughts as well. You hid the photographs under the floor, he told himself. Now hide them from your face.
There was no way he would go on a date with those things in his pocket. What if she—
The door opened.
“Just one minute late,” he greeted her.
“Three, by my clock,” she replied. She stepped back so he could enter.
“Then your clock’s wrong,” he declared stoutly. He turned to close the door, saying, “And on a Sunday, you never know whether the trams are running or not, so I ought to get credit for—”
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