The Black Tower

by Louis Bayard

  “Dr. Carpentier?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re wanted.”

  He’s under no charge to say who wants me. There’s no need. I climb in, and the gendarme calls up to the driver.

  “Number Six, Rue Sainte-Anne.”

  My initiation into the Sûreté (Number Six, as it’s known to intimates) comes via the rear courtyard. My escort leads me into a marble-floored entry and presses casually against a leather wall panel, which swings in to reveal a spiral staircase. On the first floor, another panel swings open on a long corridor, illuminated almost entirely by skylights.

  Down this hallway the gendarme leads me, and as I peer into the open offices, a clammy fear takes hold of me. Who are these men, with their red hands and their coarse blue trousers and the patches sewed on with twine? Where are the police?

  A good half minute passes before I realize…and you will have to imagine the sudden lift in my stomach…these are the police.

  Unbidden, the words of Nankeen circle back. Impossible anymore to tell the law enforcers from the lawbreakers.

  Well, it is hard for Parisians, in these early days of the Restoration, to twine themselves round the idea—Vidocq’s idea—that catching criminals might require men who look like them, think and act like them. The officers of the Brigade de Sûreté may lack for uniforms but not for pasts.

  Take Aubé. The fellow in the yellow cap. Renowned forger in his day, specializing in royal writs and church encyclicals. Never met a signature he couldn’t make his own. And that bull in the woman’s blouse? Fouché. Went to prison at age sixteen for armed robbery. The only one who looks he’s on the right side of the law is Ronquetti—still lounging in last night’s evening clothes—a confidence artist who set himself up for a time as the Duke of Modena, with an Italian mistress and a blackamoor servant.

  And behind the unmarked pair of doors at the end of the hall: Coco-Lacour. Grew up in a brothel. Did most of his schooling in prison. Likes to ply whores with trinkets he’s fished out of the Seine. He’s now Vidocq’s personal secretary.

  “Dr. Carpentier, is it?” A good third of Coco-Lacour’s teeth are missing, but he smiles as if he had garnets in his gums. “The chief will be with you soon. May I fetch you some coffee, perhaps?”

  “Send him in already!”

  The voice comes roaring from the adjoining room. Coco-Lacour leans into it without blanching.

  “Won’t you please follow me, Doctor?”

  The elegance of the office takes me aback. Bookshelves, framed etchings, a black marble fireplace with an ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, white cotton gloves on a mahogany table. And, seated in a black leather armchair behind a massive fruitwood desk: Vidocq, every bit as massive, every bit as elegant, in a black suit with yellow tulips tucked in the lapel. Today’s issue of the Indépendent lies before him, turned open to the theater page.

  “Sit down, Hector.”

  And if some small part of me has been toying with the notion of withholding my news, that part gives way utterly in this moment. For in the act of planting me so squarely in his official circumference, Vidocq has enrolled me in the same freemasonry that binds Ronquetti, Aubé, Fouché, and Coco-Lacour. I’m one of his now.

  It’s the most natural thing in the world, then, to tell him everything I’ve learned from Father Time—and for him to take it in like a confessor, threading his hands under his chin, grunting occasionally over some detail. When I’m finished, he tips his head back, as if he were pouring the whole tale straight into his skull.

  “Well, that’s very interesting, Hector. I bet you never dreamed you had such an illustrious papa. Mine was a baker. Bastard, that was his real trade. Used to thrash me every chance he got. In all fairness,” he adds, “I stole from his till every chance I got. On the scales of justice, we’ll have to call it a draw.”

  A wizard’s cackle flies from his chest. His gray eyes brighten into a noonday blue.

  “Shall I tell you what I’ve been up to, Hector?”

  “If you like,” I answer, faintly.

  “Ah, you’re too kind.” Cocking his shoulders, he turns toward the window, where Sainte-Chapelle lies framed: sun-sanded and immaculate. “You recall, I hope, the dying words of Monsieur Leblanc.”

  “He’s here.”

  “Exactly. He’s…here. The he part, well, we’ve at least got our mitts on that one, but what about that here business, eh? Such a simple word, and look how it wriggles when you try to grasp it. Does it mean here on the very street where Leblanc died? Not very likely. Does it mean Paris itself? I confess I thought it did. If you’re some kind of idiot impostor king and you want to keep yourself hidden, you could do much worse than Paris. Here, you can make yourself scarce for years on end, and don’t I know it?

  “Ah, but then I started looking at it from the perspective of the—the deeply loyal Monsieur Leblanc. And the damned word started shifting on me again! Because to someone like Leblanc—someone who’s been waiting his whole life for Louis the Seventeenth to come back—that word here could mean simply”—he extends his arms—“France. The native land. Crying out for its savior. Are you with me so far?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, now, if here extends as far as the nation’s boundaries, we’re in for quite a search, I’m afraid. But it must be because we’re such good Christians, Hector, because God throws us a bone. Whoever was communicating with the lamented Monsieur Leblanc”—a lewd wink—“doesn’t know he’s dead.”

  “The newspapers reported it, surely.”

  “Ah, well, I called in some favors. A few free-market exchanges, and voilà! Nothing in the ‘Local Notices’ column. No memorial services, either. The body’s still where you and I left it. Other than the Baroness, the only people who know he’s dead are his creditors, and they’re not likely to squawk. Bad for their reputations.” Smiling, he folds his hock-arms against his belly. “Maybe you can guess why I’ve denied Monsieur Leblanc’s corpse the customary Christian rites.”

  “To see if the parties in question attempted to contact him again?”

  “Score one for you!” he bellows. “Oh, but Hector! You are not looking well, my friend.”

  “I don’t—I don’t feel—”

  “No, don’t argue with me. There’s only one possible treatment for what you have. A change of air.”

  “Change of—”

  “Climate, too, you’re absolutely right. A day or two, you’ll be back in the oats.”

  “Please, I don’t—I haven’t a clue what you’re saying.”

  Grinning, he flings up his hands like a symphony conductor.

  “We’re going on a trip, Hector!”

  CHAPTER 17

  The Case of the Headless Woman

  I’D RESOLVED NEVER to ask Vidocq where we’re going. And because I’m a man of my word, more or less, all I can ask him on this occasion is:

  “How do you know where to go?”

  HE WALKS ME back then to a point early in his investigation. Chrétien Leblanc has been dead only three days. The dead man’s apartment has been searched, crevice by crevice, for correspondence with unknown parties. The only items that have turned up are a saucer, a shuttlecock, a single yellow glove, and a program from the Jardin des Plantes, all encased in years of dust. Day after day, officers of the Sûreté sift through Leblanc’s incoming post for telltale envelopes—nothing but tradesmen’s bills, still waiting to be paid.

  Did Leblanc choose some other means of corresponding? The old man was a cautious fish, after all. He might have had a trusted confederate, who could keep the messages close at hand and yield them up when needed. But who?

  Not, if her testimony is to be credited, the Baroness. Conversations with the dead man’s neighbors turn up little in the way of close friends or even regular acquaintances. Leblanc was, by habit and nature, a solitary man: light with drink, frugal with talk. Somehow, through all of his years of living, he contrived to leave the smallest possible indentation in Paris’s
envelope.

  Undaunted, Vidocq makes the rounds of the dead man’s neighborhood—cafés, wineshops, barbershops, tailors’ shops—asking if anyone is keeping mail for a certain gentleman answering to this description. Again and again, he comes away empty.

  Then, one afternoon, he is refreshing himself with wine and cutlets at an outdoor table of the Trois Frères when his eye is arrested by something on the far side of the street.

  A mannequin, nothing more. Headless and voluptuous, holding court from the damask vacancy of a shop window.

  In this instant, the mind of Chrétien Leblanc opens before Vidocq, like a book of spells. Here is the one place that no one would ever connect to an elderly and unattached man.

  MADAME SOPHIE’S

  Gowns and Frocks à la Mode for Paris’s Most Beautiful Ladies

  Boldly he sallies through the half-open door. Madame Sophie is away on errands, but a milliner named Émilie rises from behind the counter. A brunette, of round and comely figure, with long eyelashes that suggest a heart easily inflamed. When Vidocq announces he has come to pick up a package for his uncle Chrétien, these same eyelashes jerk up like awnings.

  Oh, she doesn’t think she can help, she says, folding down her lip. She wasn’t to mention them to anyone.

  “Ah, but don’t you see, Mademoiselle? He sent me here, didn’t he? How else should I have known to come?”

  Mm…well, if he puts it like that. Oh, but she hasn’t received any packages in—dear me, it’s been two weeks.

  “Well, no matter. Uncle’s off taking the waters at Bad Em, and he asked me if I might look in. You—you’re a good friend of my uncle’s?”

  Oh, no, Monsieur! Why, she never laid eyes on him until three months ago. He simply came in one morning and asked if he could engage her to keep packages for him, as he was on the road so often. He told her she need only hide them behind the counter, where they won’t get in anyone’s way and where Madame Sophie won’t notice. He said he’d pay her two hundred sous on each package.

  “Ah yes. That sounds like Uncle Chrétien, all right. Such a strange, secretive old turtle. Ha! My sister and I think he must be receiving billets-doux from a young mistress. His step is so light these days….”

  But how silly! interrupts Émilie. These aren’t letters!

  Instantly conscious of her transgression, she hastens with burning cheeks to assure Monsieur that she would never betray his uncle’s confidences by opening the packages. It happened once, no more, and only because a burlap corner came loose and she was in the act of resealing it when the thing actually fell out! What could she do? She had to look at it.

  “Of course, my pet. Was this by any chance the most recent package?”

  Yes.

  “Oho! I know exactly what it was, then. A gold ring, eh? So wide?”

  Indeed it was, Monsieur! (The final battlement of her resistance falls.) And the strangest sort of ring, too, with all manner of scratches and marks. Why, you’d be lucky to get three francs for it at Les Halles. And if it belongs to your uncle’s love, she must have fingers as big as knockwurst!

  “Is it this?”

  As luck would have it, the article in question is sitting in his watch pocket.

  That’s it! cries Émilie. Oh, it’s frightful, isn’t it?

  “Yes, indeed,” he agrees. “Why, even Uncle Chrétien wants no more of it. Do you know, just as he was leaving town, he asked if I might return it to its original owner? Which I’m only too happy to do, but damn me, I’ve lost the address. What a wretch I am!”

  Well, ventures Émilie, if it’s the same person who’s been sending him those packages, then it must be from…

  And out comes the name of a place. A city no more than an hour’s coach ride from Paris.

  “Why, of course!” he answers, rapping himself on the temple. “I knew it had something holy in it. Now then, if I can just recall the good lady’s last name, I won’t even need the street number.”

  And from the eternally charming Émilie, a name flies forth.

  HOURS AND HOURS of searching, Vidocq will think afterward. And all the while, the answers were waiting on this young woman’s fruited lips.

  In a fit of ardor—or through the coolest possible calculation—he applies to these lips the unguent of his own. She omits the customary ritual of slapping him, which raises her even further in his estimation. He asks if Madame is due back within the next hour. She says no. He asks if he might turn the CLOSED sign on the window. She says yes. He asks if he might lower the blinds.

  No, she says, taking him aback with her self-possession. I’ll do that.

  THAT VERY AFTERNOON, one of Vidocq’s men travels to the jurisdiction identified by Émilie and returns with an address to attach to the name. The game has begun. Aubé, after studying a few samples of Leblanc’s penmanship, scratches out the following note:

  Awaiting further instructions

  The note is dispatched by courier to the party in question. Two days later, as Émilie is only too happy to report, another of Uncle Chrétien’s packages arrives. A simple note, reading only:

  Your bundle is ready

  “Arrived yesterday by special post,” Vidocq tells me now, striding round his office. “We’re closing in now, Hector.”

  “But when are we to go there?” I ask.

  “When? Why, this very minute.”

  “I’ll need to pack…”

  “Screw that. I’ve got clothes ready for you.”

  “I’ll need to—”

  Tell Mother.

  “I’ve already sent word to her,” says Vidocq, smiling dryly.

  “What did you say?”

  “Oh.” He gives a bored wave of his hand. “Ask Coco, that’s his specialty. Symposium on ergot fever, probably. Outbreak of leprosy in the Loire valley. Something no one would dream of asking you about.” Laughing, he grabs me by the collar. “Listen to me, my friend. If all goes well, you’ll be back at Mama Carpentier’s tomorrow night. With the air—the mystique, yes!—of a man who’s seen something. How they’ll envy you, my friend, how their little piggy eyes will start from their—say now, you don’t have a pistol, do you? Never mind. Oh, but the thing is, you really are looking pale, Hector. You want a nip of arrack before we go?”

  8 BRUMAIRE YEAR III

  Leblanc has proven true godsend. Extr kind, conscientious, willing. Surprisingly gd conversationalist. Ive now passed several happy hrs in his company.

  Like me, he is v. concerned about Charles, esp. as nature of child’s mental/emotional afflictions becomes increasingly clear. Before being incarcerated in cell, Charles experienced egregious abuse at hands of one Simon—shoemaker—hired, for unknown reasons, to be boy’s “tutor.” Fm Leblanc, I have learnt full details. Simon was charged by superiors w/effacing “stigma of royalty” fm child. He forced boy to wear red cap, drink large amts of liquor, sing obscene & anti-royalist songs in full hearing of royal family. Boy became Simon’s slave, serving him at table, shining Mme Simon’s shoes. Regularly terrorized, beaten for smallest infractions. (Often, in middle of night, Simon wd shake child awake, only to kick him down again.) Strong suggestions of abuse of highly intimate nature.

  Boy ultimately coerced into manufacturing appalling lies re family—most esp. re former queen. Thruout, he was utterly cut off fm comfort. Small wonder he remains in mortal terror of adults, esp. men.

  Leblanc told me that if he ever met Citizen Simon, he wd happily repay him for his “tutelage.” France has seen to that, I answered, for Simon perished w/his master Robespierre on 10th Thermidor. Leblanc expressed opinion that Simon “got off easy.”

  10 BRUMAIRE

  This A.M., took Charles to tower platform. Vision has improved. Even in sunny conditions, boy able to keep eyes open for 1–2 minutes at time, see objects at distance of 100+ yds. Most promising.

  Curious event: artillery regiment happened to pass by. Sound of drums initially disturbing to boy—he gripped my arm v tightly, cast eyes down. Drums left off
near Ste. Élizabeth. Boy able to listen to remaining music w/some pleasure. Said he had not heard music in v long time. (At least 2 yrs, by my estimation.) Band, whether fm calculation or accident, began to play “Marseillaise.” How pretty, Charles was heard to say.

  1 other thing. W/permission of keepers, boy was suffered to collect some few blades of grass from tower platform + 1 dandelion, which had grown amid cracks in stones. These he attempted to fashion into primitive bouquet. Stalks too small and slight to oblige. Boy’s mood consequently depressed as we returned him to his cell.

  18 BRUMAIRE

  Leblanc has shown notable patience, persistence in drawing boy out. Also has been able to effect modest improvements in boy’s quarters. Lamp may now be lit at twilight, thus allaying fear of dark. Knowing of Charles’ aversion to loud noises, Leblanc has taken steps to muffle sounds of bolts on cell door. Addresses boy always w/marked respect & kindness.

  Boy’s condition continues to improve. Modest weight gain, most visible in face. Some color in cheeks. Expression in eyes & mouth remains languid, affectless. Speech still difficult.

  Rations have improved, too. Breakfast = plate of vegetables. Dinner = broth, boiled meat + 1 other dish. For supper, he receives at least 2 dishes. Food plain but relvly abundant.

  On more than 1 occasion, he has asked to see his sister, who resides on floor below. Commissioners will not permit. “Tyrant’s children” to be kept apart. I have argued that they shd not be punished for sins of fathers, etc. (Me, quoting Scripture.) Wolf cubs grow up to be wolves, they say.