by Paul Kane
Perhaps he killed Peter? Perhaps Peter offended him in some way, and Mr. Bruce knocked him down and stabbed him with the sharp tip of the walking cane he carries with him. Stabbed him clean through to the street.
I sit back down and pick up the skirt. My heart squeezes. Dear Peter. Is he in Heaven? I would think any just god would put him there, for any sin such a beautiful man might have committed on this Earth would surely be minor and forgivable.
I put the skirt down and pace the floor, back and forth in my bare feet. Mother will be home at seven and then we shall dine. After supper, she will read her Bible to me then retire to her room. When she is sound asleep, I shall tear apart the skirt then snip and stitch it into a shawl. Done soon after midnight, I shall venture out. I shall be my great-grandfather’s rightful descendant. Bright and sharp and determined.
And outside alone.
Alone for the first time in my life.
I dump rice out on the table and guess the number. I’m off by thirty-seven this time. Where is my focus? My nerves have me careless. I can’t be careless. My great-grandfather warned me against emotion.
Back in my chair, I pick up my knitting, rub the soft cream-colored yarn then put it down again. I draw up Mother’s skirt to my chin and close my eyes. Behind my lids I see Peter and me, standing in a church overlooking the sea. The preacher declares us husband and wife. I run my hands up and down the fabric.
Then stop.
There is a key deep in the skirt pocket. I take it out and frown. What, now, has Mother locked up? Something I don’t know about, clearly. She won’t be home for another hour or more, so I return to her room.
Nothing is hidden under her mattress or pillow. There are no loose panels in the walls. I search the drawers of her small bedside dresser, and in the bottom I find her wooden jewelry box. I’ve seen this box many times, have seen Mother take out the cheap earrings and necklace and hold them to herself in memory of the old days in France. But that is all there is in the box. I know she locks it, but have thought it only habit. She knows I would never take those things from her.
I put the box on Mother’s bed and sit beside it. The key does indeed open the box, and inside are the necklace and earrings. Nothing else, save the old newspapers that line the sides and bottom to hold down the splinters. I put the necklace to my own throat and wonder if I will ever have a chance to dress up in something such as this.
Something printed on the newspaper catches my eye, and I carefully pull it up out of the box, unfolding the yellowed, brittle page.
It is a Parisian newspaper, dated June 14th, 1890. I am fluent in French, and so read the story with initial curiosity then a growing, gnawing ill-ease. It is a report of a brutal murder. A man who left a brothel in the late night-hours was bludgeoned and stabbed to death. His shoulders were smashed and his skull crushed, then his heart stabbed clear through. The weapon, which was found in a thatch of weeds, was the leg of a chair, sharpened into a spike at the end and tempered by fire to brutal strength. It was the fourth such murder, and the authorities believed they were close to capturing the killer.
The killer, they were quite certain, was a woman.
I unfold the other papers. The three other, earlier murders are described, all with similar results, with beatings and fatal stabbings. They suspect the weapon is a sharpened, tempered stake. They suspect a small man or a woman in a fit of uncontrollable rage.
All took place in the neighborhood of Route de Pierre Froide. My mother’s neighborhood.
My hands shake as I fold the paper back and tuck it down in the box. I replace the jewelry, lock the box, and put it in my mother’s bedside table. I hurry out to my chair, fold my hands, and try to think.
But I don’t like the dark thoughts that well up.
What I think is impossible.
I hear my great-grandfather whisper, “Consider the facts.”
She is on the stairs, coming up a full twenty minutes early, huffing and thumping and muttering to herself as she often does. Quickly I ball up the skirt and shove it beneath my chair behind my sewing box. Mrs. Anderson’s door scrapes open and Mother says, “Good evening.” Mrs. Anderson returns the greeting, then I hear our neighbor take the stairs down. A key rattles our lock. Our door swings open.
“Molly,” says Mother with her slightly lopsided smile. “Have you had a fine day?” She is tall and thin, and limps a bit. Her hands are chewed from laboring in the factory.
I open my mouth. Then snap it shut. Then open it again to say, “Peter Garrett is dead.”
“Oh, yes. I know. Poor Peter. I heard the talk. Sad. So sad.” She takes off her summer cap and puts it on the ear of her chair. She unfastens the top button of her dress, fans her chest, and pours a cup of water from the pitcher on the kitchen table. She drinks it noisily. “Have you not made us a supper, Molly? I’m so tired.”
“It’s too hot to cook, Mother,” I say. “It’s summer, remember. Let’s have some cheese and bread.”
Mother nods.
“Much too hot to heat the stove,” I continue. “I wonder why anyone would do that when the air is so stifling?”
Mother shrugs vaguely, sits down in her chair, which has all four legs, and rubs her arms. “So much work today,” she says. Her voice is so light, so childish. So innocent. “Delia got mad at me for looking at her for too long. She said I stared. I didn’t think I stared, but maybe so. Sometimes I just forget that I’m looking. My mind wanders. I don’t want to cause trouble. I don’t like trouble, Molly.”
“I know that.” I think I know that.
We sit at the table and have our meal of cheese and bread. As much as I try to remain composed, Mother senses something. “Molly, are you ill?”
I don’t know how to answer. I just eat and clear the dishes and wash them in the bin and put them away. Mother sits in her chair and opens her Bible then waits for me to sit to hear her read. She doesn’t read well, or fast, but this is our nightly ritual.
“What should I read, Molly?” Mother looks at me with her simple eyes, her simple smile.
I hesitate then whisper, “What does the Bible say of murder?”
Mother looks startled. “Why it is a sin, Molly. Whoever kills sins against God Himself.”
“I thought so.”
Mother struggles with my question and the cool attitude I’ve pulled on. I look for something in her eyes that I’ve not looked for before. A keenness? A dangerous spark? If it is there, she hides it well. I have never feared my mother... until now.
I get up, look out of the window. Peter will never again drive Sue up and down the road, never again deliver milk.
Then I speak before I can stop myself. “I found a key in your skirt pocket.” Turning, I see her still in her chair, holding her Bible, head tilted in confusion.
“Skirt?”
“The key that opens your jewelry box.”
“My necklace and earrings,” she says. “Did you want to wear them?”
“Now where would I wear them?”
“Consider the facts,” whispers Auguste in the depths of my ear.
“I don’t know, Molly, but I wouldn’t mind if you did.”
Mother, did you find some piece of wood yesterday, bring it home in your skirt, and then... I press my hand to my forehead against a pain that is building up like a foul blister. “Mother, why did we come to America?”
“I don’t know. Let me think.” She squints at the wall then says, “Oh, yes. It was better to come here. Better than Paris.”
“Why? What was wrong with Paris?”
Mother looks at the floor, her face scrunched up as if she is really trying to remember. It looks so sincere. “It’s a bad place. Bad things happened.”
Oh, God. “What bad things?”
“I...” She rubs her eyes with her fists then stares at me. I see little more than a child there, yet there must be more.
“Tell me what you remember.”
“I was in trouble.” Mother begins to cry. Silen
tly, though, as if watching one of Edison’s films. “I didn’t want any more bad, Molly.”
“What bad?”
“You’ll hate me.”
“What bad?”
“You’ll hate me!” Mother screams. I’d never heard her scream before.
I take a breath and wipe my forehead, which is clammy and wet. I try to speak kindly, as knotted as my stomach and throat are in this very moment. “Mother, what bad?”
Mother gets up, wringing her hands, goes into her bedroom, comes back out, paces to the window then sits in her chair. Her brow is furrowed and her mouth screwed up. “I don’t want you to hate me, Molly!”
“I don’t hate you. Did you... did you kill anyone?”
Mother’s head drops and she nods. Merciful Christ!
“Did you kill four people?”
She nods. “I believe I did, Molly.”
For several full minutes I can’t speak. My cool and calculating brain is suddenly sluggish and fogged. Mother cries. I sit and stare at her.
Then: “Why did you kill them?”
“I got mad. They made me mad!”
“Did you kill Peter?”
“What?” She looks up.
“Did you kill Peter Garrett?”
Mother blinks as if someone has shone a bright light in her face. She frowns and bites her lip, before looking toward the window. “Dr. Burckholdt was a nice man. He made me better, Molly. He fixed my brain.”
“What? No, no. You said he tried to make you smarter, but it wasn’t successful.”
“I didn’t tell you the truth, Molly. It was the only time I lied to you. I wanted him to make me... to make me simple. And he did.”
I stomp my foot. “You make no sense! Now answer me, Mother. Did you kill Peter Garrett?”
Mother links her fingers. It’s as if she hasn’t heard my question. “I was like my mother. She was like my grandmother. We were oh, so fancy, don’t you see? Fancy women. Perfume. Necklaces. Wine and music. The men liked us.”
“What do you mean?”
“I... we let men have us. Have their way with us. For money. Please don’t hate me, Molly!”
My teeth are on edge now, but I push ahead. “You were a prostitute?”
“A what? Oh, yes. A whore. I never told you. Don’t hate me, Molly.”
“Go on.”
“My mother got mad easy. She hit me when she got mad. She hit other people, too. She didn’t care if she hurt someone then. Or if she killed someone. She killed a man once, and a woman who made her mad. She never got caught. But she was a sinner. God hated her, I know!”
“Yes.”
“Her mother was the same way. Marie Dupin. That was my grandmother’s name. She was a whore, like all of us. She had a temper. She could be nice. Then in a second would hurt someone. Or kill them. I saw her kill a man once with a knife. The other whores threw him in the river so nobody found out. She didn’t remember killing him, but she did. I saw it. Oh! I had nightmares after that, Molly. I might not remember a lot of things. But I remember that.”
I clench my fists, one inside the other. I don’t want to hear this. But I have to. I am smart. I am not like my mother. I like to put information together, to figure things out. It makes me special.
“Mother...”
“Marie got a baby in her... got my mother in her... from Auguste Dupin. He didn’t visit us often at the brothel. But when he did, he liked my grandmother best.”
I feel anger stirring in my gut. It is hot like the worst of a summer’s day. “You told me my great-grandmother and Dupin were married. But now you say Dupin was only my great-grandmother’s customer?”
Mother hangs her head again. She starts to pick at a loose thread on a bodice buttonhole. “I wish they had been lovers, or married. She took his last name, anyway. Who would care what a whore called herself?”
“Mother.” I speak slowly through clenched jaws. “Did you kill Peter Garrett?”
Mother shakes her head violently. “No! No! I got my brain fixed, I told you! I was smart like my grandfather one time. Smart like you! But I was also like my mother and grandmother. I got mad like them. And when I did I didn’t always know what I was doing. I killed men who made me angry.”
Consider the facts...
“With a chair leg that had been sharpened and tempered in fire.”
Mother grimaces. “When you were born I loved you. You were the only person I ever loved. Molly, don’t hate me, please!” She picks more furiously at her buttonhole, and I know it will need mending along with the torn stockings. I don’t know that I’ll do the mending, though. I think I hate my mother now.
“Mother, did Peter make you angry? Were you upset that I loved him? Did you think I’d leave you?”
Mother looks at me. “I didn’t know you loved him.”
My breathing grows rapid. So do my heartbeats.
Mother shakes her head. “I didn’t want to kill any more, Molly. If the Paris coppers caught me they would kill me. Chop my head clean off! What would happen to you, you were such a little thing? I found out about Dr. Burckholdt. A man who operated on brains of people to make them better. To get rid of the bad. The sin. Some of them died, but I wasn’t scared. I didn’t care if I died. Better die than kill! Dr. Burckholdt visited Paris. I went to see him. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I let him have me. A trade. He said all right. He liked me. Thought I was pretty. When it was over my memory wasn’t so good. I wasn’t so good with numbers anymore. I got lost a lot. The women at the brothel didn’t like me anymore. They made sport of me. But I never killed anybody again. I promise I didn’t.”
I get up and lean on the window.
“I never ever killed again,” Mother repeats.
I look down at the street. Light is fading fast and heavy clouds are gathering. I hear Mother, still whimpering, go into her bedroom. This time she closes the door.
Mr. Denny stands outside his shop, smoking a cigar. Mr. Bruce is beside him, talking about something I can’t quite make out. Probably about Peter Garrett’s murder and the man they arrested for the crime. A cat laps at a muddy puddle in the middle of the road. It looks like it might rain again tonight.
I hear Mrs. Anderson in her flat across the hall, fussing at Katherine for staying out so late. Katherine, the prettiest woman in our neighborhood, who flounces and tosses her head oh, so haughtily. I saw her kissing Peter a couple of days ago. He laughed and kissed her back before he drove on in his milk wagon.
A dreadful heat that has nothing to do with summer stings the back of my mind.
I go to the pie safe and look down at my shoes. They are coated in mud.
I sit in my chair, pick up my knitting, and make a row with the large wooden needles. The first few stitches of the cream colored yarn are spotted with a gray, ashy residue and dried flecks; something crusty, reddish.
Consider the facts, great-granddaughter.
How terrible for the immigrant to be imprisoned wrongly and facing certain execution.
Yes. Yes.
But how much better for me.
AFTER THE END
A NEW STORY ABOUT C. AUGUSTE DUPIN
(with apologies to E.A. Poe)
By
LISA TUTTLE
I have written before about my quondam friend, the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, with whom I long ago resided in an ancient house in a retired and desolate street in Paris, yet never have I described the details of his final case. That it would be of great interest to a very wide readership I was never in doubt, for it involved a series of horrific murders that terrified the public and baffled the police, and without the intervention of Dupin and his superior powers of analytical thought, the killer would never have been found and brought to justice.
The victims were all young women, but there was no discernible connection between them; one was married, one affianced; one a grisette, and another the daughter of a lawyer. They were of different classes and lived in different quarters of the city. At first, therefo
re, the police quite naturally assumed each had been murdered by a different man. There were no suspects, and no one came forward to inform or confess, but when another woman died, the public became convinced one single, bloodthirsty monster was responsible.
Dupin had already recognized the evidence, what he called the killer’s signature, even while the police resisted the idea.
The problem was how to find the murderer? No matter how he searched for a connection between these disparate women (or their families), Dupin could find nothing. They had lived and died in different arrondissements, did not attend the same church or buy their bread from the same baker. The only thing they had in common was their sex and relative youth (the eldest was twenty-four; the youngest, seventeen), and perhaps most importantly, the fact that they did not know their killer. Dupin concluded that the man the popular press had dubbed “The Beast of Paris” was deliberately choosing his victims from a large pool of total strangers, women previously unknown to him, with whom he had no traceable connection.
But who sets out to kill strangers, outside of wartime, for no reason or benefit?
Only a madman. Indeed, the senseless cruelty of the crimes could be the very definition of insanity. Yet, apart from that, the killer did not act like one in the grip of madness. He was cool and calculating. He planned his murders in advance, and possessed sufficient self-control to resist drawing attention to himself. If he was mad, it was only now and then, at times of his own choosing—which surely is not madness at all, but an expression of pure evil. A better name for this monster than “beast” would be “devil,” I thought.
By now, some of my readers will have guessed the identity of this devil, and recall the scandal that erupted when the police, acting on the results of Monsieur Dupin’s investigations, arrested one Paul Gabriel Reclus. Monsieur Reclus was known as a respectable, wealthy, unmarried gentleman of Paris. Not himself a member of either the government or the press, he had influential friends in both, and as a result, the police found themselves obliged to release him almost immediately, with groveling apologies, for they had no evidence against him. Although convinced by Dupin’s argument, constructed from his subtle observations, it amounted to nothing more than a delicate chain of logic. There were no witnesses to any of the murders, and nothing, not a single, solid object or piece of blood-stained clothing, in the possession of Monsieur Reclus to tie him to any one of the crimes. As he showed no signs of guilt or any inclination to confess, the police had nothing with which to convict him, not even an obvious reason for arresting him.