by Yves Fey
There was a soft noise off to the side. Theo turned. Averill emerged from the dark corner of the study, his shirt white as the paper.
But something…someone…lay in the room between them.
A woman. Naked. Hideously murdered—her body cut open from throat to sex, the exposed organs glistening horribly like entrails on a butcher’s block.
Theo lurched back toward the door, fear and disbelief choking the scream rising in her throat. Only a gasp escaped.
Averill gave a sharp bark of laughter. Hard as a slap. “She’s wax.”
“Wax,” Theo rasped, her mouth so dry she could barely hear herself. She saw now there was no blood. None on what she had imagined was a woman. None on Averill. The edges of the open body were smooth.
He turned on the newly installed electric lamp. Artificial brightness illuminated the thing lying between them. It rested in a display case with sides that lowered, leaving the figure reclining in full view. The cavity showed larynx and lungs, heart and intestines. Inside the womb, a tiny child. The wax skin gleamed softly.
“She looks real,” Theo whispered.
“A month ago…a week ago…you would not have thought she was human.” His eyes glittered with accusation. “You would not have thought I could murder someone.”
“I had no time to think. I was shocked.” Anger burned over her shame. “After what we have both seen, do you truly blame me?”
Averill looked ashamed now. He lowered his gaze, shook his head mutely.
She gestured at the figure. “What is it?”
“She is my father’s most prized possession—an anatomical Venus from Italy.”
“She looks like a Botticelli,” Theo said. The red gold hair evoked the Renaissance painter. Even the shape of the body resembled the work she had seen in the Louvre.
“A slaughtered Botticelli—very neatly slaughtered.” He gestured to where the front of her torso sat propped on a chair, small perfect breasts, curving rib cage and rounded belly. A lid of molded wax.
Theo stepped closer, horrified and fascinated by the perfect creation, so incredibly detailed. The face showed tiny russet hairs inset for her eyebrows and eyelashes. A rope of pearls was woven through her long hair and another circled her neck demurely. She reclined on a long cushion of pink velvet that matched the pink flush of cheeks and lips…and the soft pink of the lips revealed beneath the auburn curls between her legs. Her face was turned toward Theo, her green glass eyes half-open, her lips parted slightly.
“She would win a prize at the Salon, wouldn’t she?” Averill asked. “She’s just the sort of erotic image they dote upon. So perfect they can pretend she’s the ideal of beauty—even if they go home and…” He stopped himself.
“She’s obscene.”
“Isn’t she, though.” He picked up the missing section. “She wears a breastplate, like Jeanne d’Arc, but a breastplate of her own waxen flesh. Lift it off and see the hidden treasure trove. Replace it—” He lowered the section back onto her, “—and you have a wax sculpture beautiful as a Renaissance Venus.”
“Thank you,” Theo said, relaxing a little once the gaping cavity was covered. Yet once you knew her secret, it was difficult not to think of the butchered version.
“You’re welcome.” It was almost a sneer. Theo winced at the harshness. This close she could smell the absinthe on his breath. “Tell me, Theo, is this Venus a victim…or a seductress?”
“Averill…” She faltered.
“Father used to keep her in his office.” Averill lifted an edge of the figure’s ribcage to release a curl trapped in the seam of the body. “He showed her to me to lure me into medicine. He knew a young boy would be fascinated by such a replica. It’s a favorite theme in painting too, you know—the dissection room. Doctors gathered around the corpse of a beautiful whore, eager for the pillaging.”
Theo fought a surge of queasiness. Averill was angry at her, trying to upset her. “You didn’t mention her before.”
“Why should I have?” He was sneering again, bitter and impenetrable. She hated when the absinthe dragged him into its shadows. He raised the sides of the case and enclosed the anatomical Venus back inside her glass coffin.
“You told me so much,” she whispered, her heart twisting at his coldness.
“Father brought her here after you left.” Averill’s eyes flashed with sudden anger. “Maybe he knew how much I missed you.”
“I did not want to leave you,” she said.
“I didn’t want you to leave—but I helped you.” His hand was hard on her wrist, pulling her closer. She forgot how strong he was sometimes. His gaze was still accusing. “From the first, I could talk to you.”
“You can talk to me now. I’m here.”
“I’ve been talking with Venus. But she’s not as amusing as you. She has no opinions of her own.” He smiled grimly. “Probably why Father dotes on her.”
Abruptly he released her wrist and walked to the desk. “I began a pantoum for this Venus—I did tell you, didn’t I?”
She ignored the sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Yesterday at the café.” Was it only yesterday?
Lifting one of the pages, Averill read,
Elle t’invite à sonder la mort,
Pour découvrir de tendres secrets.
Son corps s’ouvre comme une porte,
Où se dénouent des rêves vermeils.
He stopped abruptly, despondent.
The poem uncoiled in Theo’s mind. She invites you to explore death. To discover tender secrets. Her body opens like a door—where unravel crimson dreams. Then she remembered. “Two poems.”
“Yes—unhappy twins. La grande et la petite Venus.”
“Twins?” He’d told her the child in the cemetery had been nude. She had been displayed. Tortured. Alicia had been tortured. Cut open like this?
Her vision wavered. Theo thought she would faint. She walked to the desk and gripped the front of it, feeling the wood hard against her hands. She must not show weakness now. She must not swoon. She must not weep. Averill would take pity on her but he would stop talking and shut himself away.
He came to her swiftly. His hands took hold of her arms, tight enough to bruise. Yet his touch was meant for comfort, she was sure. He could not know he was hurting her. She stood up straight and instantly he released her. She faced him. He was so close, his gaze searching hers. Then he closed his eyes and some emotion rippled under his skin. Pain—or was it still anger?
“La petite Alicia.” Averill turned away and went to the far side of the desk. Bending down, he rifled through a wastebasket and drew up some scraps of torn paper, sprinkling them on the desk like confetti. “I’ve ripped up the poem about your little girl—but I can’t rip the words out of my brain, any more than I can rip out the images I have of her.”
“I know you have to write it.” The words were reluctant, almost a whisper. Averill could not help that he was haunted by Alicia, any more than she could help that Mélanie walked through fire in her dreams.
“You will hate me.” His gaze was unflinching now, and there was a grim satisfaction in his words.
She responded vehemently. “I will never hate you.”
“You hated me yesterday.”
“No!” Was that why he was so upset? It must be. Yesterday she had refused his help. Now he was refusing her. “I hated that Alicia was dead. I didn’t hate you any more than I hated the whole world.”
A smile twisted his lips. “The whole world hasn’t made a poem of her murder.”
“Perhaps, in a little while, I will want to read the poem.”
“Will you? You don’t want to read this one.” He gestured to the reclining Venus. Then, watching Theo closely, he quoted,
Pour découvrir de tendres secrets,
Tes doigts cherchent dans le doux abîme
Où se dénouent des rêves vermeils,
En éveillant un plaisir impie.
To discover tender secrets, your fingers search in the sweet aby
ss where unravel crimson dreams, awakening a blasphemous pleasure. The repeated lines made it more nightmarish, more perverse. Theo shuddered as the images pried at her mind, but she refused to look away.
It was Averill who dropped his gaze. “I don’t know how else to exorcise the horror. If I don’t write the poem, I will become the darkness. But even if I do—” he broke off, despairing.
“What?” she pleaded.
“It’s all tangled.” He shook his head, still refusing to face her. “All knotted. Impossible.”
“I will untangle it—or cut the knot.” Theo went to him, gripping him as he had taken hold of her, hard so he would feel the force of her promise.
He pulled away. “At first, I thought that you were like Jeanette, come back to me. A new sister.”
“At first?”
He lifted his eyes to hers, defiant now. “Now I don’t think of you as a sister, except as Baudelaire meant it—the sister of my soul.”
“I feel the same,” she whispered.
“I thought I could save you. If only from loneliness.” He laughed softly. “Then I thought perhaps you could save me.”
“Save you from what?” She knew he was dreadfully unhappy—who would not be miserable in this wretched house? But why did he hate himself so much?
“You are sunshine, so bright you hurt my eyes,” he whispered, cupping her face in his hands. “I want to look—then I want to snuff it out.”
“You can’t snuff out the sun.” Her heart was hammering wildly, but she smiled a little. This close, the scent of him filled her. Absinthe mingled with the fresh smell of his linen, washed in lavender water, and the teasing musk of his skin.
“I shouldn’t love you,” he said. “I destroy what I love.”
He loved her. She could see desire in his eyes, burning like blue flame. She could see the pain too, even if she barely understood it. He pulled her against him, his body lean and hard. She was stunned by his force, by the power of his hands. Joy and fear mingled in a crazy cacophony. One moment she was stiff in his arms, unsure, then she melted against him. He kissed her, his lips lush and warm against hers even in their fierceness. Her mouth opened beneath his, taking him deeper. The bittersweet taste of absinthe was suddenly delicious. Intoxicating. Behind her closed eyelids, the blackness flamed scarlet and gold and black. She wanted to plunge into it. She wanted to escape yesterday. Averill was the only one who truly understood that. They needed each other. Needed understanding. Needed oblivion. She pressed the length of her body against him, matching his ferocity.
With a moan, Averill broke away. He looked hungry, as if he could devour her. Then the flame died in his eyes. He was suddenly weary, despondent. She kissed him again, trying to call him back to her. “Averill….”
“It’s wrong,” he said, tense and trembling in her embrace. “It’s impossible.”
She thrust away all the arguments she had made herself. “Other cousins—”
“—No!” he broke in. “I’ll pull you into my darkness.”
“I’m not afraid of your darkness.”
“You’re lying,” he said.
Once it had been true. Now she wasn’t sure. She tightened her arms around him. “Why can’t you come into the light? Just a little?”
“Because I see myself too clearly.” He pushed her away hard.
Theo stumbled against the desk. Shocked, she watched him stalk across the room. “Averill!”
He stopped for one instant, pressing his fists to the door. Then he walked out and left her alone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Idealism enslaves thought as politics enslaves will.
~ Mikhail Bakunin
WHEN Michel went to Urbain Charron’s luxurious office off the Champs Élysées, he was told that the doctor was lecturing at Salpêtrière Hospital. He thanked the secretary, regretting that he had no excuse to explore further. Though the rich neighborhood was well patrolled by gendarmes, the office would be quiet at night and well equipped for slaughter. He hired a carriage to the Left Bank. Salpêtrière had first been a gunpowder arsenal, then a notorious insane asylum—a fetid dumping ground for diseased prostitutes and beggars, and an equally insalubrious hospice for aged and feeble women. But in the last fifty years the asylum had been reformed and expanded to become one of Europe’s most advanced institutions, specializing in neurological disorders.
When Michel asked the guardian at the desk where he could find Urbain Charron, the man mistook him for a doctor and told him the lecture was in progress, he’d best hurry. Michel did not disabuse him but followed his directions along the hallways to an infirmary door. Beyond, he heard a low voice but no clear words. There were also what sounded like small whimpers of pain and an odd mechanical whirring. Michel prayed it was not to be an experiment in vivisection.
When he entered he was shocked to see a naked woman spread-eagled on a table directly in front of him, her knees lifted and held back with leather cuffs and chains. Some sort of rubber gag was wedged between her teeth. She was the centerpiece to a group of a dozen men standing on either side, observing her. Something was suspended from the ceiling on a pulley, and held in the possession of a solid man in a highly expensive suit who stood with his back to Michel. The noise ceased abruptly as the man turned, holding the suspended object—some sort of motor with a gun-shaped implement at the end of a snaking tube.
“You’re late, doctor.”
“I apologize,” Michel said, not wanting to be dismissed from the lecture. This must be Urbain Charron.
The doctor frowned and gestured for him to join the others. “With all due respect to Hippocrates, the modern vibrator is far superior to the classic method of manual vulvular massage. Truly a tedious procedure. While water therapy remains a useful alternate approach in the case of incarcerated hysterics, this new technique is without parallel. Restraints such as we have employed today will keep violent, frenzied, or vituperative patients under control until they achieve hysterical paroxysm.” He nodded to the left. “You will be able to test the efficacy of the device yourselves in a few moments.”
Glancing to the side, Michel saw two other patients pinioned and gagged while they awaited treatment. He was convinced that Charron had chosen their position to provide shock value to his lecture—and to humiliate the women.
“Such extreme methods are usually unnecessary in private practice, though some women gain a sense of security with the confinement.” Charron turned on the vibrator again. The woman on the table jerked at the sound. She stared at Charron with hatred and then at the mechanism with abhorrence mixed with longing. He smiled slightly and turned it off. “This current portable instrument is far superior to previous models. It delivers five thousand pulses per minute and will quickly induce paroxysm. Women suffering from less severe cases of chronic hysteria can have their symptoms quickly alleviated by this suitably professional approach. While some need only come monthly to your office, others will feel compelled to have treatment weekly or even more often.”
An eager murmur swept through the men as they considered how many lucrative patients they would be able to alleviate with the vibrator.
Charron turned on the vibrator, pressing it between the woman’s labia until she moaned through the gag. He turned off the instrument and parted the woman’s labia further. “You can see that her sexual organs are engorged and lubricated. The clitoris is erect. She is close to paroxysm. Like most hysterics she cannot achieve a natural release through union with the male but must have this perverse stimulation.”
The woman flushed and her breathing grew more rapid. She looked desperately from one face to the next. Most of the men showed nothing more than scientific curiosity. Others showed disgust. A few were aroused and hiding it as best they could. Urbain Charron’s expression was somber, but his eyes gleamed. He turned on the device again, then waited, deliberately, Michel thought. Shame, fear, and lust flashed across the woman’s face. With the gag she could not form words, but she began to whimper. C
harron pressed the buzzing head of the device against her exposed clitoris. Helpless, the woman thrust up, trying to attain more stimulation. Her eyes widened and a choked scream began building in her throat.
Michel turned and left the room, feeling tainted.
A few minutes later, Urbain Charron emerged. “That was most unprofessional.”
“It depends on your profession. I am with the Sûreté.”
The doctor stared, eyes filled with wariness. He swallowed hard. “My daughter?”
That was a curious first response. But he had lost one daughter. Did he fear to lose the other? “No.”
Charron frowned angrily. “Has my wife been injured?”
“No. I apologize.” Michel already detested the man, but there was no point in making him fear for his family’s lives. “I’ve come to ask about your son.”
The wariness returned full force. Charron assumed an air of disdain. “What has the Sûreté to do with drunks?”
“Very little, except when they place themselves in the center of a murder investigation.”
“What?” Urbain Charron looked stunned, then outraged. This time his response did not appear fake, which disappointed Michel immensely. But he expected his killer to be good at deception.
“Your son didn’t tell you he found the corpse of a child in the Montmartre cemetery?”
“No!” Charron snapped. “What was he doing there?”
“Seeking inspiration for his poetry. Or so he says.”
“How typical. How degenerate.” At first Urbain Charron had been angry, now he became calculating. Modulating his voice to a soft, patient, and subtly threatening tone, he said, “You cannot trust him, Inspecteur. My son is…not well. His perception is distorted.”