The Coral Thief

by Rebecca Stott

  Now the decadent, aristocratic atmosphere made it almost impossible to imagine the ferocity of the mobs that had so recently surged through here. A military band played music at the door of one hotel where, the porter told me, the Emperor of Austria had his quarters. Valets carried out chairs from the hotel and placed them under the shade of the trees.

  My spirits began to lift.

  In the rooms I had taken in the hotel in Saint-Germain, as close as I could afford to the Académie des sciences on the rue de l’École de Médecine, I washed, changed my clothes, and sat down to think. I had no idea how I was going to explain to the police what had happened. A woman thief, traveling with a child, had stolen a letter and notebooks that were useless to her and specimens whose value I could not believe she fully understood. She had not taken my money. It made no sense. A few hours ago I had a letter from Professor Jameson to Professor Cuvier commending me to elite circles of medical and scientific savants in Paris and precious gifts to present. Now everything was gone. Without Cuvier’s references and support there would be no conversations in the leafy courtyards and colonnades of great universities; there would be no illustrious future among Europe’s savants.

  I paced the small bedroom between the window and the sink for twenty minutes or so, talking to myself, veering light-headedly between self-accusation and outrage. It was only when I bruised my right hand badly by punching the wall several times that I decided to find the Bureau de la Sûreté.

  I poured water from the jug beside the sink into a basin and found my razor and the small pot of shaving cream. Since I had left Edinburgh these daily rituals had come to be important. They provided a kind of tethering, a connection to home. Rising at seven o’clock, a morning walk, breakfast, a shave. I studied my face in the cracked mirror as my skin became visible with each sweep of the razor. It was a face that seemed to look different every morning and, despite the familiar features—black curls, blue eyes, a full mouth, the tiny scar on my chin where the hair wouldn’t grow—I did not recognize myself.

  I was trying to remember the features of the woman’s face so I could report the theft to the men at the Bureau when there was a knock on the door. A heavily built, bearded young man with bright eyes stood on the threshold of the hotel landing, clutching a bottle of champagne and two glasses. Before I had time to speak, he had stepped into my room, set the bottle and glasses down, and clasped my hand warmly.

  “A fellow countryman,” he said in a lilting Scottish accent. “The concierge has been talking about you for days, ever since you wrote to reserve the rooms. It’s been M. Connor this and M. Connor that. She calls you the young English gentleman. Well, well. My name’s William, William Robertson, from the Western isles. I was at the medical school at Edinburgh too—been in Paris a year. I moved into the hotel a couple of weeks ago. It’s expensive but closer to work. I thought a celebration might be in order. I’ve been saving this.” He held up the bottle. “It’s not as cold as it should be, I’m afraid, but who’s complaining?” He placed the glasses on the table and uncorked the bottle with his teeth. “Glad to meet you, M. Connor.”

  “Daniel,” I said. “Daniel Connor. Mr. Robertson, can you tell me where the Bureau de la Sûreté is?”

  “Actually, everyone calls me Fin,” he said, “because I’m supposed to look like a fish. It’s the mouth, I think.” He passed me a glass of champagne and began to look over my books and equipment, which lay scattered on the bed.

  “I don’t think you look like a fish,” I said, though I realized that he did, now that I thought about it. A big fish of course, with a large mouth.

  “You might not think that a man with a beard could actually resemble a fish,” he said, peering at himself in the looking glass over the fireplace, moving his jaw around roughly, opening and closing his mouth, grimacing. “But it appears that I do. To others, of course, not to myself. It was just a joke at first—Salomon’s little joke—but it stuck. I don’t mind. Anyway, Daniel Connor, I’d be glad to show you the ropes. If it’s ropes you want.”

  “I’d be grateful if—”

  “You know, Paris is completely infested with medical students from Edinburgh. There’s practically a colony of us over at the École de médecine, and at the lectures in the Jardin des Plantes. But there are students from everywhere else too—Romania, Hungary, Spain, Russia. You’ve come at a good time. Where are you headed?”

  “The Jardin des Plantes. I’m supposed to start working for Cuvier, and I thought I’d sign up for the winter lectures as well. Comparative anatomy’s my line, or at least it is for the moment, but—”

  “Aha. A job with Cuvier? Impressive. None of that philosophy’s for me. Brain just won’t do it. I spend my days walking the hospitals between the École de Médecine and the teaching clinic at the Hôtel Dieu, following the coattails of Sanson the surgeon—amputating. That’s my line.” He made a gesture as if he was sawing through logs.

  “Amputating?”

  “The soldiers are still coming in from Waterloo. Hundreds of them, laid out on mats in the hospital corridors, legs and arms black with gangrene. The smell is so vile you can hardly breathe in some rooms. Most of them are beyond saving, but we have a go anyway. All the foreign anatomy students are learning their trade with the hacksaw too. Long hours and good money. And sometimes Sanson lets you do dissection and autopsy work on the corpses.”

  “It’s almost impossible to get hold of bodies in Edinburgh now,” I said. “The anatomy professors have to make them last for weeks. They even fight over them.”

  “Christ. There are hundreds here every week. The hospitals send most of the corpses over to the anatomy clinics while they’re still warm. Can I buy you a drink?”

  The bottle was already half empty. I was thirsty and had drunk the two glasses of champagne as if it had been lemonade. I wasn’t used to drinking. In Edinburgh I’d never had enough money as my father had kept my allowance deliberately small in order to ensure that I kept away from what he called “fleshly temptations.” It had been as much as I could do to pay the bills for the oatmeal and potatoes, which most of the medical students lived on, and I was always hungry.

  “No. I mean, yes,” I said, grateful for the blurred feeling the champagne had made in my head. “Let me buy you a drink. I have some money here somewhere. I’ve never been to France before. You know, I think I might need breakfast.” I tipped my bag onto the bed, searching for the French money I had exchanged, money that was now mine to spend as I chose. “I haven’t worked out the coins yet.”

  “Your French—is it any good?”

  “It’s getting better. I can speak a little German too and read Greek and Latin.”

  “Got a good stomach?”

  “I think so. What for—alcohol or dissection?”

  “Both. I did three amputations last night, you know: a hand, two legs. The hand was the worst. More nerves. More blood. As soon as we’ve bandaged up the poor sods, they’re out on the streets in their uniforms, begging—there are lines of them in the arcades in the Palais Royal. They make decent money. And the wooden-leg makers in Paris have never had it so good. They’ll be out of business soon though, now that Napoleon has been taken. No more wars, no more wooden legs.”

  “Embryology was my specialism,” I said. “In Edinburgh at least. I don’t think I’d be very good at amputations.”

  A flock of pigeons flew past the window, casting shadows on the whitewashed wall.

  “I tell you,” Fin said. “I always need several drinks after the night shift to make sure those bloody limbs don’t come flying at me in my dreams.”

  He glanced over at the map unfolded on my bed. “You don’t want to use those guidebooks,” he said. “They’ll only take you to the places all the English tourists go—all the bloody sights. You’ll be on the same carousel as Lady Bloody Carmichael and little Georgiana and all their cronies. Just plunge in, I say. Find your bearings. I’ll show you around. Be glad to. I’ve got the day off, you know. You are a lucky
man. William Robertson will give you a personal tour of Paris. Where do you want to start?”

  “The Bureau de la Sûreté,” I said.

  “Why the bollocks would you want to go there?”

  “I’m in trouble,” I said.

  “There’s no trouble you can’t get out of,” Fin said, clapping me on the back. “What have you done to your hand?” My knuckles were grazed and swollen. “A fight? Already?”

  “Stupid,” I said. All the connecting words were beginning to disappear.

  I told Fin about the papers and the fossils. Well, I tried to explain, but of course, I couldn’t. There was no logic to it. I could see the consequences though. I could see the future rolling out—or rather not rolling out—clearly enough. No chance to prove to Cuvier that Jameson was right to choose me over the rest, no way to prove that I was exceptional. All that work, all that time—the late nights, the exams and books—come to nothing.

  “I’m sure Cuvier’s a reasonable man,” Fin said, taking a chair in the corner where the morning sun fell in slanting lines. “You know what I would do? I’d write to Jameson and get him to send another set of letters. That should take a week or two at most. And then you can start over.”

  “It’s worse. I was carrying a manuscript for Jameson—a copy of his preface to an English translation of Cuvier’s book. I was to give it to Cuvier for his approval. That was stolen too. And there were the fossil specimens I was supposed to give to him. Worth a fortune. Cuvier’s expecting them.”

  “That’s not good. No, that’s not good at all … Merde. You are in trouble.”

  “I think I will have to go home. Explain everything to Jameson. I’ll be finished of course. I feel so stupid.”

  “First things first. You’re in Paris after all. That has to be worth something. Let’s get breakfast and some more champagne and have a feast. We’ll wipe out your bad night and mine with a few good bottles. And then I will take you to the Bureau if you still want to go. But it won’t do any good. The men there won’t be interested in finding your things because there’s nothing in it for them. Breakfast?”

  “Yes,” I said. I was too tired and hungry to argue.

  “You brought your own knives, I hope,” he said. “You can’t get a pair of scissors or a scalpel or even a decent knife for eating with in Paris at the moment, not for love or money—and believe me, I’ve tried both.”

  No, I thought, she hadn’t taken my dissecting instruments or knives—they were packed in the suitcases. That was something.

  As we walked together to the first tavern, Fin threw information at me at every turn, pointing this way and that: the best place for breakfast, the safest place to gamble, the cleanest swimming spot on the river, the cheapest boats for hire, the most beautiful waitresses, the reading rooms where you could pick up English newspapers, the best laundry service.

  I tried hard to remember at least some of these details but couldn’t move Cuvier from the center of my vision: Cuvier, arms folded across his ample chest, looming over me, saying: “You did what, M. Connor? You fell asleep on the mail coach?” And behind him there were others waiting: Jameson, my father, my brothers. Daniel Connor was an idiot, a dunderhead; he couldn’t be trusted with anything.

  And so it went on. The day stretched and tautened, glittered then darkened, each step a further numbing, a fading of Cuvier’s censorious gaze. Somewhere in the cloud of that first day, the dust from the road still on my skin, I saw into a city that even London could not match. They had said it would dazzle me. It did. Card tables, mirrors, glass, roulette, bar after bar, a music hall, a wax museum on the boulevard du Temple with effigies of the kings and queens of Europe; crayfish bisque at Beauvillier’s; women in feathers and lace in a bar paled into an oyster feast on the quai de la Rapée as Fin and I sat above the water watching the night boats carry freight up the Seine, listening to the watermen call out to one another.

  “On Sundays,” Fin said, “the watermen over at La Rapée have their own show on the river in front of the Hôtel de Ville. They dive from high platforms and do triple twists. Then they have fireworks. If you sit here, you can watch them for free. It’s spectacular—all the colors of the costumes reflect in the water. Céleste’s brother is one of the watermen.”

  “Céleste?”

  “My girl. Most students strike up with shopgirls here. They call them grisettes; I don’t know why—there’s nothing gray about them. With your looks you’ll be fighting them off. They’re not like English girls. They’re much more independent and—well, how to say it?—forward. And if they like you, well, they’ll show you they like you straight off. No messing about. You must meet her, Céleste. Sunday. She has some very pretty friends.”

  How would I behave with such women? I wondered, imagining myself trying to be entertaining in a language that was still awkward to me. I could hear those pretty friends laughing at me already.

  “I won’t be here on Sunday,” I said. “I’ll be heading home.”

  “Nonsense, my friend. You give up far too easily. I told you. What happened to you, it wasn’t your fault. It could have happened to anyone. You just have to go and speak to Cuvier. And send a letter of explanation to Jameson. Straighten it out.”

  “And then wait to be hung, drawn, and quartered? No thanks. I need sleep now,” I said, suddenly overwhelmed. “You’ve wiped me out. I’ve had far too much to drink.”

  The water of the Seine was heavy and slow-moving. Down under the bridge a fight had broken out among a group of watermen.

  “You’re going to need more stamina than that, my friend,” Fin said, “if we’re to share rooms.”

  “Share rooms?”

  “Well, there’s lodgings up for rent on the top floor of the hotel next door. Twenty francs a month. A bargain. Much cheaper than the hotel rates. View of the street. A small stove. I spoke to the concierge about it yesterday, told her I’d find someone to share with. And then you turn up this morning right on cue. It’s perfect. There’s not much furniture, but we can pick up some chairs and things from the flea market. What do you think? You and me, eh? We can move in a week. Once you’ve sorted things out with Cuvier.”

  “Let me think about it,” I said. “But first I must go to the Bureau. First thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh yes, the Bureau. The Bureau. Always the Bureau. Well, if you’re lucky you might meet the infamous Jagot—he runs the Bureau—and that really would be worth something. He’s at the center of everything in Paris. He has spies all over the city. If anyone is going to tell you how to find your thief, he will. If he likes you, that is.”

  “Jagot?”

  “Henri Jagot. Poacher turned gamekeeper. He’s famous across Europe. He was one of the most successful thieves in France until ten years ago; one of only three or four people to have escaped the prison at Toulon. Now he runs the Bureau. They say he’s modeled his surveillance methods on Napoleon’s secret police. He’s good.”

  “A thief runs the Bureau? How can that be?”

  “Ex-thief. The chief of police offered him a deal. He gave them information, they gave him his freedom and police protection. So he worked undercover in the prisons of Bicêtre and La Force for years—really dangerous work—he’d have been killed if the prisoners had found out he was working for the police. He’s brutal, they say, unstoppable and ambitious. But he’s good. He won’t be interested in you, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he works on commission, of course. The price on your thief’s head won’t be big enough. But you must go anyway. File that report. You won’t rest until you do.”

  3

  NCE INSIDE THE OFFICES of the Palais de Justice on the Île de la Cité the next morning, I found a long line of people sitting on chairs in a windowless corridor with scuffed blue walls and highly polished floors. Most people sat staring at nothing, clutching documents; others read newspapers or talked in hushed voices. A child started to spin a hoop down the long corridor until a clerk admonishe
d her.

  Another clerk standing behind a hatch took down details from the queue of new arrivals—name, address, nature of complaint. He asked questions and crossed boxes on his form. In his questions I heard words and phrases that I had not heard spoken before: cambriolage, un vol avec armes, un vol sans armes. With weapon. Without weapon. Known to victim. Not known. I watched him flush with irritation when a woman said she didn’t know whether her necklace had been taken from her bedroom or her sitting room. Such distinctions seemed to be important as a way of defining the type of crime more exactly.

  When my turn arrived and I had answered all his questions, the clerk gave me a numbered ticket and gestured toward a chair. There was no clock here. Sensible idea, I thought, not to have a clock when people might have to wait hours, perhaps whole days. Time slips by more quickly without a clock. Instead you had to wait for the sound of the hourly bells from Notre Dame. They were especially loud in the blue corridor as we were virtually sitting in the shadow of the great cathedral.

  I could hear my brother Samuel’s voice as if he was sitting next to me. Samuel, the brother who was closest to me in age and who was studying for the ministry, would certainly have said that this theft was God’s way of telling me I had taken the wrong path, reminding me that the pursuit of natural knowledge was always a chimera, a vanity. My mother would always nod wisely when Samuel talked like that. Come home, Daniel. Come home, they whispered.

  Once Samuel and I had collected butterflies, fossils, and newts, dissected frogs, read the reports of the scientific societies in the local paper, shared a tutor, kept up with the latest geological theories. Now that Samuel was entering the church, he had put away his collections and his instruments, and we argued about God. When I asked him a string of rational but vaguely heretical questions about transubstantiation or the precise nature of the relationship between God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost, Samuel’s answer was always the same: that if I prayed for long enough and with sufficient humility, God would show me the way. That pious refusal to answer my questions infuriated me. Samuel had given me an expensive copy of Paley’s Evidences of Christianity for my journey to Paris in the hope that it would strengthen my faith. I had not opened it. I tried to pray there in that corridor at the Bureau but failed.