Dupin breathed in sharply through his teeth, cursing under his breath.
“The fugitive set the avalanche off, sir,” the constable went on, in a valiant attempt at damage limitation.
“And you finished the job in your eagerness to apprehend the suspect.” Dupin cast a needling stare about the room. “And where is the fugitive now?”
For a moment nobody said anything.
In the end, it was Constable Bâcler who broke the awkward silence. “Still at large, sir.”
“Still. At. Large.” Dupin pointedly emphasised each damning word in turn. “And what has been done to rectify that most regrettable situation?”
“Sergeant Lecoq did send out patrols to continue the pursuit at street level but...” The constable trailed off.
“Let me guess, you lost him.”
Bâcler looked down at his feet, unable to meet the inspector’s gaze any longer.
“And where is Sergeant Lecoq now?”
“He’s gone back to the station, I believe,” the lanky constable said. “Way I heard it, he twisted his ankle at the bottom of the stairs, whilst giving chase himself.”
The look on Bâcler’s face made it clear that he didn’t believe the excuse for the Sergeant’s absence any more than Dupin did.
“Well, I’m going to give you the chance to redeem yourselves,” the detective said.
The constables looked at each other warily, fearing that they already knew what was coming next.
“I want you to conduct a house-to-house search of this entire area, starting with this very street.”
The detective’s pronouncement was met by a chorus of groans and muttered complaints.
“Come on, Sergeant,” he said, turning to the eager youth, “get it sorted. We’ve given the rogue enough time to get away as it is. Let’s not give him any more.”
“Reports are that he was injured,” the detective sergeant added.
“Before our boys gave chase, you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well there you go,” he announced to the room. “Chances are he won’t have got far, so get moving!”
As the two constables headed for the stairs, Dupin turned his attention to the murder victims once more.
“Right then,” he said, unenthusiastically. “Let’s take a closer look at this poor sod, shall we?” He gestured to Doctor Cadavre and his forensics team with a wave of his hand. “Are you happy if we get the body turned over now?”
“If you insist,” Cadavre said grumpily.
“I insist,” Dupin countered.
The pathologist nodded at his subordinates, who proceeded to do as the inspector had requested.
“Any sign of a murder weapon?” Dupin asked.
“Already bagged and tagged,” Cadavre said, as another member of his team passed a sealed evidence bag to the inspector.
The handle was covered with crimson gore, but from the shape and size of it, it looked like the kind of knife an artist or scribe might use to sharpen a blunt pencil or to cut a quill. It did not look like the kind of weapon a killer would select to make an assassination. So the possibility of it being an impulse crime remained... Dupin crouched down, taking a moment to study the body more closely, without actually touching it. It looked like the knife had gone in under the man’s ribs, probably puncturing his heart, or at least slicing open a major vein or artery. The detective took in the sodden cloth of his shirt, his trousers, the way the blood had congealed across one side of his face.
Dupin’s eyes widened as he caught sight of the livid purple bruising around the man’s neck. The collar of his shirt and the way he had been lying on the floor had obscured the tell-tale marks up until that moment.
The detective rocked back on his heels and stood up again.
“What do you make of that?” he asked the detective sergeant, a sparkle entering his eyes as he gestured at the corpse and the blue-black bruises.
“He was strangled,” the other murmured in horror.
“Certainly looks like it to me.”
Doctor Cadavre was there now, bustling between them to get a closer look at the body.
“But what killed him? Being throttled or being knifed?”
“I’ll need to study the body more closely before I can determine the precise cause of death,” Cadavre said dourly, peering at Dupin over the top of his half-moon spectacles.
“You can’t hazard a guess for me now, doctor?” Dupin pressed, a wry smile forming on his lips.
“Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that he was strangled before he was stabbed, but that he was probably still alive – although not necessarily conscious – when the knife went in.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Dupin laughed, slapping the disgruntled Cadavre on the back. “That’s good enough for me for now.”
Dupin saw the expression of confusion in the detective sergeant’s face.
“Your thoughts on the suspect, sergeant?”
The young man looked at him, his mouth open like a goldfish, and with about as many ideas to offer. All he finally managed was a “But...”
“The question you should be asking yourself is, why strangle somebody if you’re already carrying a knife?”
“That’s just what I was thinking,” the sergeant confessed, his look of bewilderment deepening.
“Don’t worry, sergeant, I’m not reading your mind,” Dupin said. “It’s not a parlour trick. But that aside, the answer’s simple. You wouldn’t.”
“Sorry?”
“You wouldn’t throttle someone if you were armed with a knife.”
“So who had –”
“The knife?” Dupin interrupted. “Isn’t it obvious? There was only one other person in the room – if you discount our bony friend over there.”
“The victim?”
“Precisely.”
From the sergeant’s expression it looked like it might take him a while piece together the jigsaw for himself.
“Our friend here,” he said of the body at their feet, and then broke off, before changing tack. “By the way, do we have a name for the deceased?”
The detective sergeant looked at him blankly.
“Never mind; it’s not important at the moment. So, our friend here, finding himself under attack, picked up the nearest thing to him approximating a weapon with which to defend himself.”
“Then how did it end up in him?” the sergeant asked.
“Judging by the entry wound, I reckon it would be a fair assumption to say that he fell on it during the struggle, most likely after his attacker had finished strangling him, when he was already unconscious, if not actually dead.”
Realising the implications of what he was saying Dupin looked to the window again, his expression darkening.
“You say the gendarmes chased a man from here?”
“Yes, sir. Um...” the detective sergeant stalled, checking his notes again. “Six feet tall, brown hair, Caucasian, unshaven. Had an eye-patch over his... right eye, I believe.”
“An eye-patch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So you couldn’t miss him if you ran into him in the street.”
“No, sir.”
Dupin looked at the body once more.
“Any other distinguishing features?” Doctor Cadavre asked. “Anything about the size of his hands, for example?”
The sergeant checked his notebook again.
“No. Why?”
Cadavre lent down and traced the shapes formed by the bruising on the dead man’s neck. Four fingers as fat as prime butcher’s sausages and one thick thumb. The man’s attacker had throttled him using only one hand. “Only I’ve never met anyone with hands that big before, have you?”The sergeant stared in shock at the body, his goldfish expression returning.
“So either our prime suspect has enormous hands or he didn’t kill our friend here,” Dupin said, “which leaves us with three questions. Who was it the gendarmes were chasing? And who killed this poor sod? And who the hell was that?�
�� He pointed at the bones.
That was surely the biggest mystery of them all.
“Doctor Cadavre,” he went on, “I want to know everything there is no know about our second murder victim here. Anything your forensics techniques can tell us about the owner of that skeleton – anything at all. Age, height, cause of death... I don’t know, but anything there is to know. Do you understand?”
Cadavre nodded. “It’ll take some time,” he began.
“I thought it might,” Dupin interrupted him. “And while you’re at it, analyse these burn marks on the floor. What caused them, how they come to be here... You get the idea.”
The detective felt a thrill of adrenalin pulse through him. The job hadn’t given him a buzz like this for a long time, but Auguste Dupin felt more alive now than he had done in years.
The chase was on.
CHAPTER FIVE
Wanted
DOCTOR COSSARD WAS called and duly came, at Madame Marguerite’s behest. Josephine, aided by Oscar, had done her best to remove the shards of broken glass and splinters of wood from under him, but Cossard was still unable to hide the surprise on his face when he saw the rough-looking man lying on the courtesan’s bed.
The small, rotund surgeon huffed and puffed as, with Josephine’s assistance, and Madame Marguerite and her son looking on, he removed the man’s ruined jacket and shirt, uncovering the gunshot wound in his shoulder.
As he worked, he started sweating; he even went so far as to take off his jacket, his jowls and chins wobbling.
The patient didn’t awaken once during the procedure, thankfully for him, although he did moan faintly as the doctor probed the wound with forceps and fingers.
Finally, over an hour later, the surgeon was done. The bullet had been extracted, the wound had been cleaned, stitched, dressed and his shoulder bound to keep everything covered up. Doctor Cossard packed his bag, put on his jacket, demanded his fee there and then, and then went on his way, leaving the long-term residents of Madame Marguerite’s Boarding House just as curious as they had been before arrival, and wondering if Josephine’s handsome stranger would even make it through the night.
MASKED SURGEONS...
Glinting razor-edged scalpels...
The glare of arc-lamps...
Fingers probing where fingers were never supposed to go...
THE NIGHTMARISH IMPRESSIONS faded and Ulysses Quicksilver opened his eyes. It took him a moment to work out where he was as his memory sluggishly woke too.
He was lying in bed and there was someone sitting at its foot, their face turned towards him.
Her face.
She was young, possessed of a simple beauty, although she wore too much make-up and her dyed red hair had been carefully positioned around her head in fussy ringlets. He was sure he had seen her before.
She appeared to be dressed in little more than her lacy petticoats and a whalebone corset. It seemed as though he had interrupted her part way through the business of getting ready to go out for the night. Either that, or she was preparing to entertain a gentleman caller in her boudoir. There were ribbons and scrags of a lacy material tied into her hair as well. She looked tired.
Ulysses regarded her closely. He still wasn’t used to the fact that his right eye was gone. It felt like it should still be there, that the lid was gummed merely shut and that it might yet open of its own accord, if only he tried hard enough.
He looked from the girl to the boudoir and its tired décor, then back to the girl again. He doubted she was even out of her teens yet.
The effort of looking around made his body shake. He relaxed, allowing his head to sink back into the pillows.
He stared at the ceiling high above him. Crisp daylight spilled in between and around the boards nailed across the roof light...
And he suddenly remembered falling...
“Where am I?” he asked the girl.
“Pardon, monsieur?”
He blushed, despite himself. Drawing saliva into his mouth, he swallowed, trying to relieve the dryness of his throat. He asked the question again, this time in French.
“You are in Paris,” the girl said, her voice soft, her tone one of gentle patience.
Ulysses tried swallowing again. “Water,” he managed.
Putting one hand behind his neck, helping him raise his head, the girl put a cup to his lips.
It was warm and had a curious aftertaste, but he could have been supping the cool waters of an Alpine meadow stream. Two grateful sips became several thirst-quenching gulps.
His nurse placed the empty cup back on the bedside table, and did her best to plump up his pillows with her spare hand. As she did so her face came close to his, and his nostrils were suddenly filled with the sweet rosewater scent of her. Her eyes were as captivating as a summer sunset.
“Paris?” he repeated.
“Montmartre.”
“Montmartre.”
“At Madame Marguerite’s Boarding House.”
Ulysses’ brows knotted. “Would that be a...” There was no need for him to finish the sentence.
Now it was the girl’s turn to blush.
“How is your arm?” she asked, quickly changing the subject.
“My arm?”
“Sorry, your shoulder. I meant your shoulder.” She sounded flustered.
Ulysses tried moving his right arm. He winced, gritting his teeth with a sharp intake of breath.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said, the skin at her throat and breast turning a prickly pink. “I should leave you to rest.”
She stood up.
Gently relaxing his arm and shoulder again, Ulysses turned his head to follow her.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked.
The girl stopped. “What do you mean?”
“Why are you helping me?” he repeated, and the girl blushed anew. “I mean, I don’t even know your name, and yet here you are... doing all this for me. How did I even come to be here?”
His memory was slowly returning but in such a jumbled fashion that the resulting mish-mash made little sense.
“What day is it?” Ulysses asked.
“What day? Why, Thursday.”
“I mean what’s the date?”
“The fourteenth of May.”
“May. You’re sure about that?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“May.” Slowly another memory emerged from the sludge of his unconscious.
“Yes. May. May the fourteenth.”
A sparkle entered Ulysses’ single uncovered eye.
“And we’re in Montmartre in Paris.”
“Yes.”
“So I am in time!” he said with a delighted sigh.
His first assumption had been correct. Emilia and Old Man Oddfellow wouldn’t even have left for the Heathrow spaceport yet, never mind boarded the doomed passenger liner Apollo XIII. If Ulysses acted quickly enough, he could see no reason why he couldn’t become Time’s arrow and step in at the pertinent moment to save Emilia from the fate he had witnessed befall her.
And then there was the other Ulysses Quicksilver gallivanting about the place on the other side of the Channel; a happier, less damaged individual. To save the woman who he now realised was the love of his life – and her father – would be one thing, but could he dare to believe that he could save himself into the bargain?
He blinked and a single tear ran from the corner of his eye.
“Are you alright?” the girl asked, taking a seat at the foot of the bed again, a comforting hand finding him through the sheets and blankets beneath which he lay. “Is it the pain? Doctor Cossard wasn’t even sure you’d last the night, but I had faith.”
“Doctor Cossard?”
“Yes. It was Doctor Cossard who removed the bullet and stitched you up again afterwards.”
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?”
Hearing a creak, he turned his head sharply to the left, catching his breath as the action
pulled at his shoulder.
The door to the bedchamber opened and a dumpy, overdressed woman entered, putting him in mind of a puffed-up peacock.
“Ah, so our patient is awake.”
“Who are you?” Ulysses asked through clenched teeth.
“Who am I?” the matriarchal figure said. “I could ask you the same thing.”She was followed into the room by a grim-faced youth with the build of a farm hand.
Ulysses tensed. Surely this couldn’t be part of some elaborate trap, could it? There was no way this could have been planned by Dashwood, or anyone else, was there?
Ulysses caught himself; that way madness lay.
He looked from the girl to the wrap of bandage binding his shoulder wound.
“Why are you helping me?”
“That’s gratitude for you,” the older woman grunted. “She’s nursed you all through the night and you can’t even manage a simple ‘thank you’?”
Ulysses tried to sit up. He clenched his teeth against the pain but managed to shuffle himself into a sitting position.
“As to why we’re bothering to help you? Right now I have no idea. If it hadn’t been for Josephine, I would have had Oscar here cast you out into the street with the rest of the crap.”
“Not now, Madame Marguerite,” the girl countered hastily.
Ulysses looked to the girl, seeing her blush again, but in his mind’s eye he saw the ape once more, its massive fists raised, thick steel vambraces enclosing its forearms, the crown of crackling electrodes protruding from its skull.
If this was some kind of a trap, it was beyond his comprehension.
“So, I think it’s about time you showed us some trust in return for our help, don’t you? It cost me a hundred francs to have Doctor Cossard stitch you up.”
Ulysses looked from the girl to her employer. Was the matron’s interest driven by a mother’s concern for the girl or was she just worried about protecting her investment?
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“Well I didn’t think you were the postman,” the madame said candidly. “You’re British, for a start, aren’t you? English?”
“Yes,” Ulysses admitted with a sigh, “although I’ve been told my French is very good.”
Red-Handed (Pax Britannia: Time's Arrow 01) Page 6