Doctor Death (36 page)

“Thank you,” said Renard at last. “I see what you mean, and I acknowledge the connection. But do we have any evidence that connects Antoine Leblanc directly to the misdeed in time or place?”

“No, Your Honor,” admitted Marot. He bent forward and explained something to the judge in so quiet a tone that it could not be heard from the witness bench. I guessed that he was saying that the damage to Leblanc’s lower jaw made it impossible to show sufficient correspondence between his teeth and the bite marks on the abbess’s body. The judge nodded.

“So we have only circumstantial evidence,” he said. “And it is no longer possible to question the man and attempt to obtain a confession.”

“That is correct, Your Honor.”

“Very well, Inspector. While I tend to share your views, I have to set aside the matter of Monsieur Leblanc’s role in this disturbing murder as
not proven.
But I do not believe that there is reason to continue the investigation.”

Inspector Marot nodded. That was presumably what he had expected, though he had probably hoped for a more definitive result.

Judge Renard continued: “On the other hand, I find the following proved: that Antoine Leblanc murdered Father Joseph Abigore, and that he later took his own life.”

“No!” The exclamation came from Emanuel Leblanc, who had again jumped to his feet. “My brother is not a murderer! And he would
never
take his own life!”

You could only feel sorry for the man. But having seen with my own eyes Leblanc shoot off half his head, his error was indisputable.

“I am sorry,” I said, without really having considered what effect it might have.

“You!” he said. “You pity me? When it was you . . . When it was your hand . . .”

His one hand flew up and I think he was millimeters away from hitting me. But he did not. The Commissioner took half a step in front of me, but his defense was unnecessary. Emanuel Leblanc had already turned away and taken his niece’s arm.

“Come, Imogene. Let us go. I will immediately write to my lawyer and seek redress for this violation of your father’s memory!”

“One moment, m’sieur,” said the court constable. “The witnesses must sign the protocol.”

“That as well!”

“That is the law, m’sieur.”

I walked with resolute steps over to the clerk, who was in the process of readying the documents for signature. My intention was to sign and thereafter immediately leave the courtroom so my presence would not upset Imogene and her uncle further. His accusations stung only a little, now that the court had accepted my explanation and found the suicide proved; I could see his behavior for what it was—a last desperate attempt to clear his beloved brother of an unforgivable sin and defend his memory. It had nothing to do with me personally.

But my good intentions could not be carried out. The clerk had his own ideas about the proper order of the ritual, and it was Imogene he waved over first. She had to sign both the inquest verdict as next of kin and the statement that would accompany the summary of her testimony.

The court constable escorted her to the counter. Her uncle had been told to stay where he was, presumably to avoid any further confrontation. Imogene did not look at me when she took the pen the clerk handed her, but I could not help looking over her shoulder. Her face was about as full of expression as one of the death masks my father was occasionally asked to make. Her
hands shook a bit, and the writing was awkward, but that might just as plausibly be due to the arthritis that made her thin fingers crooked. Then I noticed it.

The handwriting.

The handwriting . . .

Varbourg, March 30, 1894. Imogene Leblanc.

I suddenly recalled the draft of the letter that was to deliver the upsetting news about Lisette the cook’s death:

It is with deep
regret
sorrow that I must inform you that Lisette
is not among gave up the ghost
passed away in her sleep Sunday evening after some week’s

Antoine Leblanc had not written that letter. Imogene had. It must also have been she who underlined that terrible passage in Leviticus and had written DEATH DEATH in the margin.

I grabbed hold of my father’s arm and gave it a discreet tug. But he was tired and probably also a bit distracted, so he just turned toward me and said, “What is it, Maddie?”

Then Imogene lifted her head and met my gaze. And she understood at once. She stumbled, or pretended to stumble, and the court constable grabbed hold of her one arm with both hands to support her. She half turned, leaning against him so that I could not see what happened between them. Then there was the sound of a shot, and the constable tumbled to the floor with both hands pressed against his stomach.

No one truly understood what was happening. My father
took a step toward the wounded man, whose hands were already scarlet with blood.

And I stood like Lot’s wife, salt pillared and immovable, until Imogene shoved the barrel of the revolver into my side and cried, “Step back or I will shoot her.”

Imogene did not attempt to get to the courthouse exit through the mass of spectators. Instead she hauled me with her out the other door, which led to a hallway with a court office and the judge’s dressing rooms. A policeman appeared at one end of the hall, presumably responding to the shot, but he stopped when he saw the revolver next to my ear. She quickly let off a shot in his direction, and he ducked through a doorway and took cover. Imogene backed up, still holding me in front of her, kicked open yet another door with her heel, and began to pull me up a staircase. Up, up, up. At first there were still polished panels and woodblock floors, then the stairwell became more raw and primitive, until it ended in a final narrow stairwell and something that was barely more than a ladder. At the end of the ladder there was a door, and it, too, opened when Imogene shoved it with her heel. She gave a last hard jerk so that I stumbled across the threshold before slamming the door shut after us.

We were met by a turmoil of flapping wings that almost made Imogene fire yet another shot, but it was just a couple of common wood pigeons that flew up, spattering us with gray-white bird droppings before they continued out through a broken window. Imogene looked around and realized that we had reached a dead end. We could hear shouting and running footsteps in the building below us, and it was too late to search for another escape
route. She opened the door, grabbed the key that was in the lock on the outside, and locked us in.

We both stood still for a moment, equally out of breath. We were in one of the préfecture’s towers, I guessed, a dusty octagonal attic with a multitude of square black archive boxes stacked against the walls, narrow bow windows, and an excellent view of Varbourg and the square in front of the préfecture. Not that the scenery occupied either of us at that particular moment.

There was the sound of steps in the stairwell, and someone turned the door handle.

Imogene stuck the revolver up under my chin.

“Shhh,” she hissed.

But if she had hoped to hide, she was quickly disillusioned. You could hear the sound of running and then a hollow thump as someone attempted to break the door down.

The frame began to give, and Imogene reacted instantly. She raised the gun and fired one shot that went straight through the door at chest height.

“Stop,” she shouted. “Or the next shot will go through Mademoiselle Karno’s head.”

I did not know if anyone out there had been hit, but it was quiet, and the attempt to force the door was not repeated.

“Push those in front of the door,” Imogene ordered, and pointed at the pile of archive boxes.

I obeyed. There was a glasslike determination about her—she could shatter and be ground into a thousand pieces, but she would never bend. And I thought of the poor court constable and did not doubt for a moment that she would shoot me without hesitation if it came to that.

The boxes were heavy and presumably full of old case files. It took awhile to move them all so they formed a wall in front of
the door, and when I was done, the sweat was running down my breastbone, and my corset felt like a steam box.

“Sit down,” she said, and tipped the gun in the direction of the floor.

I let myself sink onto the roughly hewn floorboards and leaned my shoulders against the wall. The smell of dust and pigeon droppings was intense, and a strong breeze flowed through the shattered window facing the préfecture square. The octagonal room had windows in seven of its eight walls, the last one being given to the door now hidden behind the boxes.

“How long are you planning to stay here?” I asked, because I could not really see how it benefited her to sit in the préfecture’s tower instead of in a cell in the cellar. Except, of course, for the fact that her current position gave her the option of shooting me.

“Be quiet,” she said, examining the drum of the revolver. I followed her movements and wished I had enough knowledge of firearms to guess how many shots she had left. All I knew was that the constable’s handgun would be of Belgian manufacture, and that was only because I recalled a heated debate about whether that was unpatriotic when there were “excellent weapons of French manufacture” available. The number of cartridge chambers in the cylinder had not come up.

She sat down across from me, with only a slight stiffness to her movements, and pulled her legs up against her chest. If the arthritis had slowed her on the flight up the stairs, I had not noticed. When there was something she wanted, Imogene was apparently more robust than she looked. She let the revolver rest on one knee. It did not point precisely in my direction, but that was not necessary. The room was small; there were barely three meters between us. She would hardly need to aim.

We sat in silence for a while. The warmth I had achieved by
working with the boxes slowly seeped from my body, and the cold came creeping in instead.

“Do you love your father?” she suddenly asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“I loved my father above all else,” she said. Her thin shoulders drooped a bit, and I suddenly sensed the overwhelming exhaustion that bore down on her. “My mother was a hard and critical woman who thought more of my cousin Ferrand than she did of me. He lived with us, you see. She called him her ‘son of the heart’ and always took his side. But Papa . . . I was his little girl. He defended me. And when I became ill the first time, he dragged me around to scores of doctors and wise men to find out what was wrong.”

“What were the symptoms?”

“I had some attacks . . . fever, headache. And sometimes . . . I just disappeared. As if my body was still there but I was gone.”

“Absences.”

“Yes. That is what they called it. But they could not say why it happened. Nor why I sometimes had cramps. Some said epilepsy, others brain fever. None of them were right. It was the wolf that came to me, and I could not keep it out no matter how carefully I locked the door in the night.”

“Was there no one who guessed it was lupus?” I asked.

She did not answer.

“Why are some people taken ill and others not?” she said instead. “What do you think, mademoiselle? Is it God’s will or is it bacteria?”

“I believe more in bacteria than I do in God,” I said. “Why would He wish to make us ill?”
God took your mother,
chérie
.
My relationship with Him had never quite recovered.

“Perhaps God works
through
the bacteria,” she said. “Have you ever thought of that? Some bacteria are in the shape of tiny crosses, others like rosaries. Do you think that is an accident?”

“You say that—you who have been examined by the great Louis Pasteur!”

“Precisely because of that. Monsieur Pasteur guessed that it was lupus, but not even he could say where it came from. There are no lupus bacteria with which one can become infected, mademoiselle. Why, then, does God do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“He does it to teach us something. That is the only thing that makes sense. When I had to struggle against the wolf for seven years, it was so that I might get to know my enemy, so that I might learn how to detect the presence of the beast—in myself and in others. God had a purpose with me. He used seven years to create a perfect tool, and you, mademoiselle, have ruined everything in a few days.” The gun jumped in her hand, and I unconsciously pulled my hands up toward my heart, as if I could protect myself against the bullet in that way. But there was no shot.

“I did not know God’s plan for you,” I said. “Perhaps if you explained . . .”

“Do you think I am a book you may read when you are bored? No, not so, mademoiselle.”

She got up abruptly. At the same moment, there was a singing explosion, and the glass in one of the other windows was shattered. Tiny sparkling shards were blown in all directions and fell to the floor with a silvery tinkling.

Imogene Leblanc lay on the floor, but she had not been hit, and she still had the revolver in her right hand. She inched her way across the floor on her stomach until she could shove the barrel into my side.