Paris Requiem (43 page)

Harriet opened the door to him. Her face was drawn, her hair a little dishevelled. She tidied it with a nervous gesture as he mouthed a ‘How is she?’ He realised as he said it, that it would have been polite to ask after Harriet’s own welfare first.

‘Fine, just fine. Rather gay.’ The words ran counter to her expression. It made him uneasy. Harriet, he had assumed, was incapable of duplicity.

‘She’ll be delighted to see you.’

‘But you’re not?’ James heard himself enquire.

‘No, no.’ She flushed with embarrassment. ‘It’s just that I seem to have been running all day. And it’s been so
impossibly
hot. Please, please. Do go in to her. I’ll join you soon.’ She hurried off.

Ellie was not in her usual place. Her chair had been wheeled to the round table at the opposite end of the room from the divan. She sat there, her head bowed over a notebook, her pen scratching the page at a furious pace. She didn’t look up until James had murmured a ‘Hello, Ellie dear,’ and when she did, it was as if she didn’t recognise him. His heart sank.

‘Harriet tells me you’re much improved.’

‘Harriet was ever one of the world’s great optimists. She doesn’t see the mud at her feet, even when she’s fallen into it. Hello, Jim. How’ve you been?’ She acknowledged him at last.

‘Not too badly. Though Raf probably explained. I had a little run-in with a gorilla. Which is why I haven’t been in to see you.’

She took this in good stead, as if she were the old Ellie once more. ‘A gorilla, Jim. Why, you could manage two. Even if you
were strapped by lianas in the deepest jungle. You never had a chocolate eclair for a spine.’

He noticed as he sat down opposite her that she was heavily made up. Her cheeks were rouged, her eyes outlined in kohl, her lips painted scarlet. The effect was unnerving. Beneath it, he could see the pallor. Her hands trembled slightly, whether in excitement or weakness, he couldn’t be sure.

‘So Dr Ponsard has proved as good as his recommendation?’

She blinked, as if she hadn’t understood him.

‘Dr Ponsard has helped?’

‘Oh yes, yes.’ She closed the notebook, placed it on the chair beside her. ‘A veritable healer. A magnificent man. He just has to touch me and all the aches and pains leap out of the window to find another subject. So much pain in the world. One wouldn’t want to hoard it for an elite. One welcomes the great bringers of democracy.’

‘Your wit has found you again.’

‘My wit, Jim? You flatter me. Still, flattery is all. I thank you.’ She touched her forehead with a dramatic oriental flourish. ‘By the way, do you find Harriet altered? She’s become so humble. It makes me want to kick her. But then I can’t kick, can I, Jim?’ Her titter rose into shrillness, brought a hastily covered hiccup to her lips.

James masked his concern. ‘Has Dr Ponsard given you some medication, Ellie?’

‘Shelves full of medication. Little jolts of electricity. Not unpleasurable, I assure you. But …’ She lowered her voice and brought her head nearer to his. ‘I daresay his best
prescription
has been for three large goblets of rouge a day. If I didn’t know better, Jim, I’d think you men had hatched a full-blown conspiracy. Raf prescribed that aeons ago. How is my younger brother, by the way. Has he found Olympe’s murderer yet?’

There was no change in her face with the question, as if the whole matter of Olympe’s death had become a subject for
trivial gossip. His sister’s forced loquacity, James determined, was due to tipsiness. And tipsiness was far better than the delirium he had witnessed.

‘Has he?’

James shook his head. ‘Though I think we’re getting close.’

‘Close to discovering what I’ve known all along.’ Ellie
honoured
him with a regal smile. ‘Close to discovering that she chose her end herself. And if you don’t, you’ll be here forever. Oh Harriet, dear, there you are. Why don’t you ask Violette to open a bottle for us? Jim is thirsty. I can see it in his face. And hungry perhaps. We’ve eaten, Jim, but the house can rise to a little nibble. Oh, I almost forgot … Go on, Harriet. Go.’ She snapped at her friend and turned back to James.

‘We’re planning a
fête
for Saturday night. You and Raf and the Elliotts and Marguerite and all our friends. No, there’s no getting out of it. You must be here. Both of you. It’s my farewell party. Farewell to Paris. Hasn’t Harriet mentioned it? I’m going back. Mother wants it. You want it. Everyone wants it and I’m going back. Sailing next week. Charlotte and Mrs E have had enough, too, and are coming along. They’ve got their wardrobes, they’ve been to Worth’s, they’ve done the museums and they want to spend the rest of the summer in Provincetown. Toodle-oo to Paree.’

‘Why that’s wonderful, Ellie. I’m sure you’ll feel ever so much better once you set foot in Boston. And Mother will be so pleased. She’s missed you. She been lonely.’

‘Do you think so, Jim?’ Her voice was suddenly hard. ‘I suspect she’s missed Raf just a teensy weensy bit more. But never mind.’

‘Is Harriet going with you?’

‘Would that make you join us, Jim? No, no. Don’t splutter. I know you’re just a little sweet on her.’

‘I may join you in any case. If everything is in order here.’

‘In order.’ She laughed. ‘No, no, Jim. Don’t join me. That
would be foolish. You’re far better off here. For a little while longer, in any case. It’s made you … Oh thank you, Harriet. Just put it here and let Jim pour. Will you join us? No?’ She leaned forward conspiratorially and announced in a stage whisper, ‘Harriet doesn’t approve of my medication. She thinks it robs me of my wit. Nay, my seriousness. She wants to discuss President McKinley. I’ve told her there’s no one there to discuss. The man is living proof of the adage that anyone can become president of the great United States of America. Anyone white and male, that is.’

Harriet’s face had grown as stiff as a poker. Her eyes were shuttered.

‘Do join us, Harriet. Ellie has just told me the good news. I’m sure you’ve considered travelling with her … If there’s anything I can do to help you make up your mind.’

‘No. No. My mind is made up. Thank you, Mr Norton. I’ll … I’ll join you in a few moments.’

The woman had barely left the room when Ellie laughed. ‘There, you see. I’ve offended her again. She offends more easily than a king’s faded mistress. It’s quite extraordinary.’

James cut her off. ‘There’s something I’d like to ask you about.’ He poured them each a glass.

‘Ask away. No hesitation necessary. You’re rather good at hesitation, Jim. No, no, that’s not quite right. You barge right in and then you hesitate as if perhaps you oughtn’t to have done the barging. It’s grand really. Like some dance. Two steps forward, one step back. With delicacy.’

‘That’s enough, Ellie.’ It came out as a bark and she slumped back into her chair.

‘Yes, you’re right. Enough.’

‘I only meant …’ He handed her the glass.

‘What did you want to ask me?’

He raised his glass to her. ‘Come on, Ellie. Let’s drink a toast. To Ellie who’s come back to herself.’

She drank like a greedy child, then raised her eyes at him above the top of her glass. ‘Where do you think I was, Jim?’

He laughed nervously. ‘Wandering. Dreaming.’

‘Yes, I like that. If one’s feet can’t wander, then one’s dreams do. Do you think there’s a rule in there, Jim? One for general application. ‘

‘Perhaps.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You’re not wearing your pretty bracelet, Ellie. The one Raf gave you.’

‘Am I not?’ She examined her arm. ‘No. I guess I’m not. I hope it hasn’t been mislaid again.’

‘Where could you have put it? I’ll find it for you.’

‘Don’t bother. Just ask Harriet. Harriet knows everything, finds everything. In fact, it’s getting rather irritating.’

‘You exaggerate, Ellie.’

‘Do I? Yes, you’re right. It’s what I do best. I exaggerate.’ She laughed, storm tears gathering in her eyes. She contained them.

‘You know what, my darling brother. I do believe it’s my bedtime. I have to build up my strength for our party. You’ll be there, won’t you, Jim. And you’ll bring Raf. That’s an order. Now get Violette for me and see if you can put a smile in Harriet’s eyes or I dare say I shall ask her not to join us on the night.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘Can’t I?’ For a moment she rose to the challenge, her face like a figurehead on a Viking prow. Then she shrank back into herself. ‘No, you’re probably right. I can’t. Need is a terrible thing, Jim. Leave me now.’

He found Harriet in the dining room. There was a book in front of her, but her eyes weren’t on it. Behind her spectacles, they were clouded in misery.

‘She’s a little drunk, Harriet. It makes one voluble.’

She nodded once, briefly. He sat down opposite her. ‘Would you like to go home and get a good night’s sleep. I can stay with her.’

‘Hasn’t Ellie told you? No, of course not. She told me she wanted me to stay here. She begged me, ordered me to sublet my rooms. Well I did that. Just a few days ago.’

‘I see.’

She took off her glasses and met his eyes.

‘Well, if you don’t sail with her, you can stay on here. Until … well, until it suits you. Don’t worry, Harriet. We’ll work it out. I know she’s grateful to you.’

‘Do you?’

The force of her utterance made him a little unsure. He got up again, looked out into the darkened courtyard. It gave back only his own reflection.

‘Tell me,’ he began softly. ‘Have you seen a bracelet of Ellie’s? An emerald one that Raf gave her.’

She scraped her chair back from the table, shut her book forcibly. ‘Yes I have. Didn’t she tell you?’

‘You mean she offered it to you. Gave it to you?’

‘No, that’s not at all what I mean.’ She wrung her hands in agitation.

He sat down again. ‘What do you mean then?’

‘You won’t like it. I didn’t like it.’

‘Tell me in any case.’

‘She made me. She made me bring it to that woman’s grave. She said it was rightfully hers and she wanted to give it to her. I told her it was a mad idea and she said I was in no position to judge her ideas or anything else. We argued. It wasn’t pleasant.’ Her face blazed. ‘I wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I had behaved like the servant I’ve become and lied, lied blatantly and kept the bracelet. There. I’ve said it now.’

‘You did the right thing, Harriet. Don’t worry about it any more. She’s still ill, you know.’

‘That’s what I keep having to remind myself.’

‘We all do that, Harriet. We’ve all had to do that for a long time.’

C
hief Inspector Durand leaned on his stick. His face wore the sceptical discontent of a busy man urged to gamble once more on shares in the bankrupt Panama Canal. In front of him, two men with spades flung earth from Olympe Fabre’s grave. James stood by, his face averted.

It was four o’clock on another blistering afternoon and it was true that by the time they had arrived at the grave, the soil held few traces of the moisture James had witnessed the previous day. Nonetheless, he had implored the Chief
Inspector
to make good his hunch, even though he wasn’t certain to what it might lead. With an exaggerated Gallic shrug, Durand had agreed. His look implied that James would owe him several favours in return for this wild goose chase.

A thump of the spade indicated that the men had reached the casket. They cleared the remaining earth and passed two thick belts round the middle of the coffin. They edged it up slowly so that it rested on the surface of the ground. Insects scuttled around it. Fat brown worms wriggled, racing from the light. With a nod from Durand, who had a handkerchief to his nose, the men levered open the wood.

The smell came first, an odour of decay which made James, too, reach for his handkerchief. He wished he could cover his eyes with it, for Olympe lay there despite his dark intimations. She was shrouded in a white sheet discoloured and mottled here and there with blotches of what might be bodily fluid. The sheet heaved with the ghost of breath.

‘Maggots,’ Durand whispered. He seemed to be following the trajectory of James’s gaze. ‘She’s here. Let’s go.’ His words stopped abruptly. They both saw it at the same shrivelling instant. The shroud had come away at the top. Olympe’s face was partially visible, the eyelids closed, but where her eyebrows should have been, there was a jagged laceration, so deep that it severed the entirety of her forehead over which the hair lay askew.

James leaned back against the wall. He couldn’t look and he couldn’t not look. He watched a bird flap onto the branch of a tree. He watched Durand gesture to the men to raise Olympe’s head. One of them swore, ‘The top’s come away.’

Durand placed his handkerchief on the ground and kneeled. He muttered something under his breath. James was grateful that his squat body blocked his view of the poor, dead girl, for his eyes had strayed to her again now against his will. After a moment, the Chief Inspector stumbled upright and spat on his hand, wiping it with the top of the hankie.

‘Cover her up,’ he ordered the men. His voice was
unusually
shrill. ‘We can go, Monsieur Norton. Quickly, quickly.’ He wouldn’t meet James’s eyes, nor, despite his query, did he speak again until they had left the cemetery behind them. He walked with a kind of desperation. At the first café, he gestured James in and rushed for the WC.

James ordered two brandies at the bar and had downed his before the Chief Inspector reappeared.

‘Let’s sit for a moment. And coffees,
garçon
, bring us two.’ He carried his glass to a far table. ‘You were right,’ he said as
he sat down. ‘Someone’s been in there. Our pathologist didn’t do that to her. Wouldn’t.’ He shook his head darkly.

‘Who would?’

‘Did you see, then?’

‘See what?’

‘Her head …’ Durand gulped down his brandy.

James nodded. ‘But why? Why?’

‘That’s what we’re going to find out.’

‘Do you think it’s vandalism? Those same hooligans who sent the package of excrement to my brother?’

Durand didn’t answer.

‘Or some strange rite, a ritual desecration aimed only at Jews. Like some of the horrors perpetrated on the Negroes after our civil war?’

Durand stared at him, his eyes glazed. ‘There’s something I don’t think you saw, something I haven’t told you yet.’

‘Go on.’

‘The cut.’ He touched his forehead and winced. ‘Her brain … it’s been removed.’

James’s gasp drew a curious look from the barman. Like some automaton, he repeated Durand’s words in question form.

The Chief Inspector nodded. He fiddled with the brim of his hat which lay beside him on the table. He removed a speck of lint. ‘There’s something else I only learned this morning. It didn’t seem relevant then.’ He met James’s eyes, his own incandescent. ‘Our pathologist’s report on Judith Arnhem. There was a quantity of chloroform in her blood, but we had reason to deduce that in any case. What surprised me in his report was the fact that when he arrived, they had already removed her brain. I asked him about it. He said it wasn’t an unusual procedure in research hospitals.’

‘Let’s go.’ James was already on his feet.

‘Where?’

‘We’re going to make a visit to Dr Vaillant. It’s just as I suspected. There is something fishy going on at the Salpêtrière. And if Dr Comte is out of the picture, that leaves us with Vaillant, whatever his pre-eminence.’

Dr Vaillant was on the point of leaving his office for the day when James and Durand caught up with him. With the commanding air of a general, he told them he had no time for an interview. His frock coat and top hat, his impeccably trimmed beard, backed up his excuse of an impending and urgent meeting.

The Chief Inspector seemed to be on the point of deferring to rank. James bristled. ‘We only need five minutes of your time, Doctor. Those five minutes may mark the difference between life and death.’

Vaillant shrugged. ‘Really, Monsieur, you astonish me. But let it not be said that Dr Vaillant is indifferent to life.’ He ushered them into his office and gestured towards two chairs. The room itself was as prepossessing as its inhabitant. Shelves towered with heavy tomes. The desk was huge and intricately carved. Oils on medical themes ranked the walls. One of them depicted a beautiful woman whose torso was an anatomy of bones and ribs. A bronze life-size nude of a well-muscled man stood by the window like some protective antique deity.

‘What can I do for you?’ Vaillant asked. He stood opposite them, dwarfing his seated visitors.

‘When I last came to one of your lectures, you talked of the good fortune of the Salpêtrière in providing a hereditary pool for neurological study, specifically a Jewish pool.’ James began.

‘Indeed.’ Vaillant was utterly unruffled. ‘That is the case. But five minutes is not sufficient time for scientific
deliberations
, Monsieur. You must come back another day.’

James overrode him. ‘What we need to know, Doctor, is whether your theoretical speculations are based on the firm foundation of studies of the brain. More specifically, do you anatomise the brains of all your patients?’

Vaillant waved an impeccably manicured hand. ‘Many. I really cannot see of what interest this is to the police.’ He scowled at Durand.

‘Do you also extend your researches to the brains of their relatives?’

‘I don’t understand you, Monsieur.’

Durand spoke at last. ‘What my friend here is trying to say is that the grave of a recent murder victim, the sister of a patient of yours, one Judith Arnhem, has been tampered with, the brain taken.’

‘Really, Chief Inspector. I am hardly in the habit of robbing graves.’ Vaillant pulled on a glove, eased it over his fingers. ‘Now if that is all, Messieurs, I must ask you to go.’

‘But in the interest of your research, you would not discourage such practices?’ James persisted.

‘Goodbye, Messieurs. I would remind you that we do not live in the dark ages. Dissection is a scientific tool. The
Salpêtrière
is at the forefront of medical progress.’

‘Which, of course, means that you keep impeccable records.’ James nudged the Chief Inspector.

‘Yes. We shall need to call on those, Dr Vaillant.’

‘Well, if your men can read and understand them, Chief Inspector, you are welcome to them.’ Vaillant gave him an arrogant smile. ‘This truly marks a new era for French science, Chief Inspector. I will tell the Minister tonight that our guardians of public safety are making great strides.’

With this parting shot, Vaillant hurried along the corridor.

‘He knows nothing about it,’ Durand muttered.

‘I’m not so sure,’ James countered. ‘Not sure at all.’

Had James had the name of Marguerite’s intern he would have gone in search of him straight away. He didn’t. An interview with Dr Comte was similarly out of the question, particularly since James suspected bullying tactics were in order. The man was still on the danger list.

But the matter of Olympe’s rifled grave not only troubled him. It perplexed him greatly. Both Dr Comte and Marcel Caro, his two prime murder suspects, were out of the picture. Yet he was certain that there had to be a link between whoever had desecrated Olympe’s grave and body, and the person who had killed her. Chief Inspector Durand had raced off. Having received the whole-hearted backing of his politician and Touquet’s promise of an imminent press campaign which could only do his career good, the Chief Inspector was now under greater pressure to gather evidence about Caro’s white slavery ring than to solve the mystery of Olympe and her sister’s deaths.

Left to his own devices, James wandered towards the ward which had until so recently been home to Judith Arnhem. He opened the door a fraction, caught the first moans and paused to gird himself in sensory armour. Once inside, he forced himself to look at the women one by one. Were there any here who, like Judith, might be alert to the deaths or disappearances of their fellows and be able to give him some clues? Poised, like some primitive statue on the fourth bed to his right, he noticed a mountain of a woman, her face impassive, her eyes turned inwards. She was utterly still, unlike her shrill or rocking fellows. Just as he reached her, the white-wimpled nurse he had encountered on a previous visit came hurrying towards him.

‘You remember me,’ he smiled. ‘I’m with the police. I’m investigating the death of Judith Arnhem.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘I wasn’t here that day. What do you want to know? We’re run off our feet here. What with dear Dr Comte ill, we’re in turmoil.’

‘Yes, I do understand. I just wanted to know if any of your patients were close to Mlle Arnhem. Any who might have talked to her that day or just prior to it.’

‘Talked, yes, but made sense, probably not. This is an asylum, Monsieur.’

‘Yes, yes. I’m aware of that. Still …’

‘Ask me. I knew Judith. We all thought she was getting on so well. Well, for here, if you see what I mean. Then, suddenly, about two months ago it was, the delusions took hold of her.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘I’m not surprised she did it, you know. All she could talk about was death. Dr Comte didn’t agree with me, but I thought it was the fire that set her off.’

‘What fire?’

‘Oh just a small one. It was put out quickly enough. Out there.’ She pointed to the windows at the far end of the ward. ‘I suspect one of the inmates threw a match onto a heap of old mattresses that were being chucked. Anyhow, they caught fire. And the straw … well, you can imagine. And Judith was in a bed at that end. She … we had to pacify her.’

‘I see. Tell me, Mademoiselle, who performs your post-mortems?’

She looked at him strangely.

‘After they die, patients are examined, I take it.’

She nodded. She was fingering a small gold crucifix which hung from her chest. ‘I don’t like it. I’ve never liked it. They cut them up something fierce. For research. But it’s not right.’

‘Who does it?’

‘Not Dr Comte. Dr Froissart, I guess. And the professor. Others too. That skinny intern who’s always sticking his nose into everything. Very serious, he is.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘I don’t remember. Labiche or Spitzer or something. There are so many of them.’ A particularly piercing howl caught her attention. ‘I must go, Monsieur.’

‘Thank you, thank you, Mademoiselle. You’ve been very helpful indeed.’

James walked and mused. All his thoughts abutted at dead ends. They had discovered so much, yet the mystery of Olympe’s death was like an ever-receding horizon. As soon as he felt close to a solution, it melted away again into the distance. If her murder, like her sister’s, really had something to do with a malign form of research, why hadn’t her murderer simply taken the desired organ before shunting her into the Seine? It didn’t make sense.

He had a sudden desire to talk things over with the
ever-lucid
Marguerite. He wasn’t too far away now, but he grew impatient and hailed a fiacre. He arrived just as two young bloods in top hats emerged from her door. There was something vaguely familiar about them. Perhaps he had seen them at Marguerite’s gathering. It all seemed so long ago.

Pierre showed him into the small salon on the first floor. Marguerite was reclining in a chaise longue, a cigarette in an ornate holder between her fingers. She seemed deep in thought, but she rose as he came in and greeted him warmly.

‘James. Perfect. I was contemplating a long evening alone. The Arnhems left me a few hours ago and the house feels far too quiet. I shall miss the little ones. But Arnhem felt it best to take them home. He feared that they would get a little too used to the splendours of my life and find the return to their lodgings unbearable. As it is, he thinks they will always and ever only associate Judith’s death with a holiday in a grand house.’ Her laugh was rueful. ‘Maybe he’s right. But it wasn’t wrong of me to have them here, was it?’

She seemed genuinely to want a response.

‘Not at all. Not at all. I’m certain it kept Arnhem from sinking into the abyss as well.’

‘You know,’ she gestured him towards a chair. ‘Sometimes
I think Arnhem feels I’m to blame for half of his misfortunes. That I’m somehow responsible for Olympe’s death. He thinks that if she hadn’t met me, she’d still be alive. Maybe he’s right about that, too.’ She threw him a sombre look.

‘That’s hardly a rational thought. Her fortunes might have been worse elsewhere.’

‘They could hardly be worse.’

James reached for his pipe. ‘Your thoughts are very gloomy this evening.’

‘You’re right. I need cheering. Why don’t we treat ourselves to an evening out, James? My favourite restaurant will certainly find a table for us. If you don’t mind the rumours flying about the delicious and mysterious twosome we make.’ Her laugh had an edge of shrillness.