But it was the walls that made him stand with his glass untasted, jaw dropped.
The walls on either side of the door were covered with tapestries: floor to ceiling, snugly fitted together, thick enough to soften the din of conversation. The colors were slightly faded, but the images clear: groups of life-sized figures in Renaissance clothes moved through streets, gardens, and grand rooms, dancing. Here was a panel of peasants kicking up their heels under some trees at the side of a wheat field; there was a gilded room with lords and ladies in a stately pavane; next came what looked like a dance class of children. Leaps and slow glides, embracing or separated, they danced—and with them, in every panel, danced a skeleton holding either a musical instrument or a scythe.
Halfway around the room, the tapestries changed, giving way to startlingly modern panels of the same size and theme: dancers with Death. As Stuyvesant approached, he realized that they were all by different artists, a few of whom he recognized. The first panel, for example, could only be Matisse, and he thought he could pick out a Magritte and one by the Italian de Chirico, but many of them were strangers to him, and few of the panels were signed.
He worked his way around the room, oblivious to the crowd behind him. The farther he went from the entrance, the less complete the walls were, with several panels little more than sketches. But all showed people dancing with Death, and most of them were linked in some fashion—an arm from one painter’s dancer held a drink in the next painter’s panel; a skeleton’s trombone turned into the lines of a feather boa when it crossed the border.
At the far end of the cavern, Stuyvesant looked at his glass, which somehow had become empty. This room was going to be incredible when it was finished.
Four panels from the room’s entrance, the tapestry’s biggest skeleton stretched from floor to ceiling, raising a scythe nearly his height. That was where the fog-emitting pot stood, and beside it Dominic Charmentier, Le Comte watched with a little smile as a group of women eddied forward, exclaiming at the cold steam, trying to scoop it up in their diamond-ringed hands. Above his shoulder, Stuyvesant noticed for the first time, the reddened clouds of the tapestry had been disturbed to insert the face of a clock, its hands decorative like those far, far upstairs.
A voice came from near Stuyvesant’s shoulder.
“That’s called dry ice—isn’t it extraordinary?”
He turned: Sarah Grey, wearing a dark red gown with a high neck and elbow-length black gloves, a red-and-black bandeau with a diamond pin in it encircling her pale hair. Unfortunately, at her side was Émile Doucet. Stuyvesant nodded at the cop and told Sarah, “You look drop-dead gorgeous.” At her reaction, he added, “And you look even prettier when you blush.”
That made her go pinker yet, and she laughed, that gorgeous, incongruously deep sound that caused Doucet to drop her arm abruptly and head for a nearby platter of iced sea-creatures. “Oh, Harris, that suave American sweet-talk. You look very handsome yourself.”
“That’s what my tailor tells me.”
“In a completely unbiased opinion, I’m sure. Have you decided not to risk the punch?”
Was she looking at his fist, or his glass? “Which punch is that?”
“The source of the fog.”
“Ah—a drink. Is that where it’s coming from? I thought I was seeing things.”
“Terribly Hound of the Baskervilles, isn’t it? Dominic heard of this American company that manufactures the stuff, and had me send for one of their contraptions. I’m told it’s only carbon dioxide, but it burns like the dickens if you touch it, and it reacts violently to water—or, as you see, fruity punch. Great fun—it bubbles like a witch’s cauldron and belches out that smoke.”
“You sure it’s not poisonous?”
“Wouldn’t that be a coup for the Grand-Guignol—killing off half the arts patrons of France? No, I’m assured that so long as no one eats it, and there’s decent ventilation, there’s no risk. Although the company sent along a helpful list of symptoms to watch out for.”
“What are those?”
“Increased pulse, reduced sight and hearing, shortness of breath, drowsiness.”
He cocked his eye at the crowd around them. “In other words, the same symptoms as we’re all going to be feeling, anyway.”
“Yes, it’s probably a good thing we have a limited supply. Harris,” she said, “have you met Cole Porter? Cole, this is an old friend of mine, Harris Stuyvesant. He’s from New York.”
“We have met, haven’t we?” Porter said, offering his hand.
“Last year,” Stuyvesant agreed. “At Bricktop’s.”
“That’s right, the man with the Lindy Hop. He doesn’t look like it, but this friend of yours can really dance,” he told Sarah.
“I remember. Pardon me, I have to see what Dominic wants.”
As she moved across the room, her fiancé abandoned the oysters to drop in behind her. Stuyvesant’s eyes followed them—and with that shift in perspective, the room fell into place: for a moment, that shiny-headed fellow and the dyed-blonde who might have been his daughter (but probably wasn’t) merged into the tapestry behind them. Three regal ladies, one of them with a lorgnette to her eye, continued the line of dancers in the paintings on either side; one of the gyrating tapestry peasants danced face to face with a slim young man in a faultless evening suit.
Stuyvesant blinked and looked at his glass.
“Powerful stuff, isn’t it?” a voice asked. Cole Porter, eyeing Stuyvesant over the top of his own drink.
“You got that right,” Stuyvesant said. “Jeez. These walls are really something.”
“The first time you’ve seen them, too?”
“Yep.”
“Do you live here in Paris, Mr. Stuyvesant?”
“No, just passing through. Looking for a girl.”
“Of course you are. Anyone in particular?”
He took out Pip’s snapshot, and heard the familiar refrain: vaguely familiar, haven’t seen her in a while. “What’s she done, that you’re looking for her?” the composer asked.
“She’s gone missing. I’m an investigator—I was hired to find her.”
“Hope you’re not looking for me, too.” Porter’s flip tone was jarring, but Stuyvesant put away the photograph and returned the man’s light jest.
“Why, are you missing?”
“I’m in New York at the moment, working hard on a play.”
“I see.”
“Supposed to be,” Porter added, “only there’s nothing but interruptions over there, so I told everyone I was going upstate to work, then got on a ship for Paris. Before we docked, I’d finished most of what I needed to do. I’ll go back next week, with nobody the wiser.”
“I promise not to tell.”
“Besides, I didn’t want to miss the chance to see this place. I’ve seen Le Comte’s famous clock several times, but it’s rarer to be offered a view of his infamous tapestries. They’re something, aren’t they?”
“Why ‘infamous’?”
“Oh, the usual melodramatic tripe, putting out the eyes of a painter after he’s done your portrait, cutting off the fingers of weavers when they’ve finished a masterpiece. You know, stories that send a trickle up a person’s spine. Makes me almost wish I wrote songs like that.”
“You heard The Threepenny Opera? Now, there’s one for the dark songs.”
“Brecht and Weill, right? In Berlin?”
“Yeah. Everyone in it’s a criminal. Even the hero’s named Mackie the Knife, and he’s a murderer and rapist.”
“Not quite what I need for Fifty Million Frenchmen, but thanks for the tip.”
However, before Stuyvesant could deliver his other suggestion—a distant vice in the darkness—the composer was pounced upon by an American heiress wearing more pearls than clothing, who called everyone in earshot “darling.”
He slipped into a gap around the punch table, accepting a cup of the pink liquid foaming with fog, and stifled the urge to cough.
<
br /> The crowd grew, and dancing began in the center of the space—the quartet dove into a flurry of notes that it took Stuyvesant a minute to recognize as a jazz variation on the Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre. The figures on the walls shifted with the shadows, seeming to dance. It became difficult to move. Stuyvesant took up a position at the side of a stone pillar, to be out of the way but also to keep an eye on Dominic Charmentier. The man did not himself dance, but he circulated, dipping into one conversation after another, summoning drinks trays, moving on.
Twice, he saw one of the girls in black bring Charmentier a fresh drink, on a separate tray.
The third time, he looked around for Sarah, spotted Doucet, and looked down, finding her bent head-to-head with a bird of a woman. He migrated across the floor towards her, earning Doucet’s disapproval but Sarah’s smile.
She introduced him to the small woman, a clothing designer called Coco, and asked him if he was having a good time.
“Just great, thanks. Say, what’s your boss drinking?”
“Dominic? It’s probably apple juice. Why?”
“Doesn’t he drink?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Your boss is an odd duck,” he said mildly.
She fixed him with a look. “Harris, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your questions to yourself when it comes to Dominic. It doesn’t make my job any easier.”
His eyes met Doucet’s, as disapproving as hers. When Sarah turned to shout a bit more at the bird-like woman, Doucet moved to speak in Stuyvesant’s ear.
“She’s right, you know. Your obsession with M. Charmentier wears at his patience.”
“My obsession with M. Charmentier may solve a murder.”
“M. Stuyvesant, do not make Sarah’s life any more difficult for her.”
“Me? You’re the one ignoring—”
Even in the tumult, their voices attracted Sarah’s disapproval. “Boys, if you can’t play nicely together you’ll have to leave the party!” Her scolding was only mock on the surface. She waited, and when neither of her self-appointed escorts would retreat, she pointed a commanding finger, first past Stuyvesant’s left shoulder, then past Doucet’s right: the two men exchanged a glance, then turned on their heels and plunged into opposite parts of the crowd.
She was not the only person to find Stuyvesant’s questions irritating. This was the cream of Paris society, from both Right and Left Banks: any gathering that combined Josephine Baker (in a surprisingly demure gown) and Natalie Barney (in a man’s evening wear), an ex-President of the Banque de France, and three of the fourteen painting members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts was a party to be reckoned with. And although he managed to slip questions about Pip into conversations with a couple dozen people—“Hey, come to think of it, I don’t suppose you’ve seen this girl?”—soon Sarah appeared in front of him and told him that she could see it was a mistake to invite him, and if he didn’t stop, she would have him escorted out.
Which wouldn’t have been so bad if Doucet hadn’t been at her shoulder at the time.
In any event, people were getting too tipsy to focus, so he left the picture in his pocket and went out onto the marginally clearer space in the center of the cavern that had become the dance floor, where he could keep an eye on Dominic Charmentier.
Midnight approached. The tumult grew. Charmentier kept drinking his apple juice, his smile growing ever more condescending. Doucet shadowed Sarah, but after she snapped at him like a mother dog with a half-grown puppy, he did so from a distance.
The band played on. The dance got wilder. Dust sifted down from time to time, but the pillars held and the artificial moon stayed attached to its ceiling.
Around half past eleven, he stood quenching his thirst in the perimeter of the room when Sarah appeared at his elbow. Looking around, he found Doucet a dozen or so feet away, watching with a sour expression.
Stuyvesant bent over Sarah to bellow, “You’ve put together a great party!”
“I’m glad you’re having fun,” she replied. Her short hair had gone curly in the rising humidity, her face glowed with warmth.
“I was trying to decide how much of your boss’s weird interests came from growing up in a house with bones in the cellar.”
Her face tightened, but she answered. “I’ve heard him wonder the same thing, himself.”
“Amazing how beautiful they are, those bones in his hallway.”
She glanced sideways, and decided that he was merely making conversation, not conducting an interrogation. “I know. Have you taken the public catacombs tour?”
“A long time ago. It made me a fan of cremation.”
She laughed, that low-pitched chortle that did such compelling things to the base of his spine, but before the conversation could develop, one of the black-gowned girls came up to Sarah and spoke in her ear.
“Sorry, I’m needed,” she told him, and dove into the crush.
With a hard look in Stuyvesant’s direction, the cop followed.
He wasn’t sure how it happened. It was shortly after midnight, following plenty of both alcohol and irritation, when he looked over the crowd and saw Doucet, leaning forward and giving Sarah orders.
That’s how it looked, anyway. And the man’s big hand on Sarah’s arm looked like the hand of a bully.
Without thinking, Stuyvesant slammed his glass onto the nearest flat surface and pushed across the room towards them.
Closer, he could tell that she was both tired and annoyed. Doucet was not so much grabbing her arm as he was holding it to keep from being jostled apart, but Stuyvesant saw her mood and the hand, and common sense gave way to his overactive sense of chivalry.
“You two look like you’re having an argument,” he said in loud joviality. Well, he had to speak loudly, over the noise and the crowd, but his voice was stronger than he’d intended.
They both frowned at him. And all three then spoke at once.
“She proposes to make her way home alone,” was from Doucet.
“Maybe you should take your hand off her,” was Stuyvesant.
“I do not require a man to take care of me,” Sarah announced. Which would in fact do for either of the men looming over her.
She looked from one to the other. “If either of you imagine that this show of possessiveness is—Oh, for God’s sake, would you both just leave me alone!” And with that, she burrowed into invisibility among the shoulders.
The two men faced each other, hackles bristling, then as one, turned away.
For the next quarter of an hour, Stuyvesant pursued the red-and-black bandeau on the yellow head, but she seemed to have an instinct for pursuit, and disappeared behind one back or another. He finally saw her standing beside Cole Porter, checking the watch strapped over her black glove. As Stuyvesant moved forward, a sound came. A chime.
A swell of reaction moved across the floor, people cutting off their conversation and turning to orient themselves to the moon overhead. By some trick of lighting, its earlier glow had increased ten-fold, with the flecks of stars sparkling like diamonds. The clock sounded twelve times—no, thirteen—and into the silence that followed, the voice of Dominic Charmentier penetrated the chamber, in elegant rolling French.
“Mesdames and messieurs, thirteen chimes mark the true moment of the full moon, a gift to us from the heavens. Ladies, will you all please turn to the man who happens to be on your right, and greet him most warmly.”
Stuyvesant had no female to his immediate left, but watching Sarah, he saw her turn to the man on her right and give his cheek a quick peck. It was Cole Porter.
She’d known the stroke of the clock was coming. She knew, and had deliberately positioned herself not beside her fiancé, nor her former lover, but next to one of the few men in the place whose affections she was in no danger of stirring.
When Stuyvesant left, a while later, Doucet was still lingering in the background. From the cold set of Sarah’s face, Stuyvesant did not think her fiancé was going to be seeing
her home.
FORTY-SIX
A CONVERSATION:
“Yes?”
“Sorry to wake you, sir, but you wanted to know if Captain Grey—”
“Tell me.”
“It’s nothing, sir, just that he left his house and walked to that lookout rock he sits on. I wouldn’t have rung if—”
“I take it he hasn’t stepped off the cliff yet?”
“I, er, that is, sir, do you want me to inquire?”
“Of course not. Let me know if he does.”
“But sir, why would he?”
“That bloody photographer is why! You keep playing clever buggers with Grey, you’re going to push him off that cliff.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. Would you like—”
“I’d like to finish my night’s sleep, if it’s all the same with you.”
“Yes, sir. I won’t disturb you—”
“Yes you will. If Grey does anything but walk back to his house, I want to know, no matter what time it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m surrounded by idiots.”
“Yes, sir.”
FORTY-SEVEN
ON THURSDAY MORNING, the autumn sun rose.
Paris woke, flung open her shutters, downed her chicory-laced coffee, and set about the eternal business of business.
Harris Stuyvesant snored on.
So did Man Ray and Lee Miller.
Inspector Émile Doucet swore at his Sergeant, Fortier, who told those who worked nearby to watch out, l’Inspecteur had a sore head.
Didi Moreau went into his overgrown garden to find his donation box stuffed with old shoes, which he examined, then carried down the stairs to his workshop.
Dominic Charmentier stirred his coffee and considered the nature of gifts from the universe.
Sarah Grey’s housekeeper, come to begin the day’s tidying, frowned when she found that her employer’s bed had not been slept in the night before. Mlle. Grey usually let her know, if she would not be coming home.
And across the Channel, Bennett Grey’s emerald eyes winced away from the sight of four pieced-together faces, out of an envelope mailed in Paris.
The Bones of Paris Page 26