The Coral Thief (6 page)

“I need to get my papers and packages back quickly,” I said. “It’s very important.”

Jagot sat back in his chair and placed his hands together on the desk in front of him, interlocking his large fingers, scrutinizing me, taking his time. “Your stolen objects interest me, M. Connor. You say
in your report: three letters of introduction from a professor in Edinburgh to the professors here in Paris; one manuscript from a translation of a work by Professor Cuvier; two notebooks—they are yours—yes? And some natural-history specimens, gifts for Professor Cuvier. But no money.
Pas d’argent
”. He underlined some details on the report and began to make notes in the margins.

“No. There was money in my bag, but she didn’t take it.”

From under his heavy eyebrows, Jagot looked up and said:
“Pas d’argent
. A woman steals from the mail coach at night, but she takes no money. Yes, that is what interests me, monsieur. The specimens—what were these things? Your report says only specimens in boxes, nothing more.”

I concentrated hard to remember the words in French: “I think you would say
trois fossiles rares et l’os d’un mammoutk
.”

He wrote this down. “Three fossils and the bone of a mammoth, yes. You say rare. How rare?”

“The fossil corals and the mammoth bone were part of a valuable collection from Germany. Very rare. Worth a lot of money to the right collector. The manuscript was less valuable but more important. Cream pages with a blue cover. Dark blue. It was handwritten.”

I tried not to let the panic show in my voice.

“Yes, yes. I have all that. It is here in your report. It will be filed in our
bureau des objets trouvés
. If someone brings these
objets
to us, we will send you a letter. We have your address, yes? But there are no corals or bones there now, only the usual things—umbrellas, keys, eyeglasses, and the usual
unusual
things: a violin, a wooden leg, and an expensive set of pistols. A man brought in a monkey last week, you know. He found it on the roof of a brothel in the Notre-Dame de Lorette. I said to him, Monsieur, this is not an
objet trouvé
. It is an animal. It must go to the
Fourriére des Animaux
. Did you
see
your thief, M. Connor?”

“Yes. But it was dark. She was sitting next to me. I fell asleep.”

“Did anyone else see her? The other passengers?”

“No. We were the only two people in the outside seats of the mail coach. The other passengers were inside. Except for the child she carried.”

“Yes, the child. Tell me, monsieur, about the child. Slowly. This was the woman’s child, yes? Her daughter?”

“I assumed so,” I said. “They looked very much alike.” I told him as much as I could, in as much detail as I could. I left out the bit about how the child had woken up and said
“M. Napoleon, il est mort,”
with her black eyes wide and fearful. Nor did I tell him about the smell of the woman, whose name I never had asked, the slight scent of bergamot about her or the way her cheek flushed in the shape of a continent, scarlet against olive, or the dark bow of her eyebrows, or the way her lips moved as she spoke. And I didn’t tell him about the mammoths lumbering or the ancient seabed she had described. Because—well, we didn’t see them, not in this world anyway. It was like a dream. These things did not belong in a police record.

I tried to be as accurate as I could, but there was so little fact. I told him she appeared to be tall, but it was difficult to see her properly. I told him that the woman had mentioned a half-Portuguese, half-Indian magnetist called the abbé Faria who had taught her things. I didn’t even have a name for her. I told Jagot the child was called Delphine. That she was perhaps four or five years old. Jagot asked me a disproportionate number of questions about the child—the color of her skin, eyes, and hair, the language she spoke, her precise age. I did not tell him that the woman made me feel curious, hungry, and mute; that the thought of her, the smell of her, even the memory of her voice, filled me with intense desire.

He wrote down a few words on the report.
“Bon, c’est bien.”

“She talked about unusual things,” I said. “She seemed to know more than most women would.”

“Such as?”

“Geology. The Jardin des Plantes. Zoophytes. She had an extensive knowledge of natural philosophy.”

“A female savant, monsieur. Yes, that is also interesting. There are many such women in Paris.”

“I am sorry,” I said. “I am wasting your time.”

“I am an
enquêteur
, M. Connor,” he said with a sigh. “All the information you give me goes into my files. It might not be useful now, only a small detail, but it
will
be useful one day. When all the little things begin to join up.”

“Are they all full?” I asked, nodding toward the neat rows of drawers that lined the wall behind him.

“My cabinet?” He turned and ran his hand over the smooth oak surfaces. “Soon all these drawers will be full, yes. Information, descriptions of faces, and histories of crimes—a card for every criminal in this country. It will be Jagot’s gift to France: a
catalogue complète
of thieves. These people want to be invisible, M. Connor. They try to hide in the shadows. I make them visible. I turn the light on them. And I think you will help me.”

“Yes,” I said, “if I can.” The resolve of this man impressed and unnerved me. “But I don’t see how.”

He leaned forward.

“M. Connor, I’ll tell you something. The woman you describe, who steals from you—the woman who is tall and beautiful, with the scar across the back of her left hand, the skin that is dark, the hair and eyes black, the woman who is a savant and who steals your mammoth bone and your rare fossils, that woman, she goes by the name of Lucienne Bernard. She has other names too; she once was the lover of a clever Parisian lock breaker called Leon Dufour. This woman you describe and the man she works with now—the man they call Davide Silveira—are on a special list that I keep. With these people I have unfinished business. So, Lucienne Bernard is back in Paris. That is very interesting to me. You, M. Connor, have become interesting to me.”

“But what would such a woman want with my things?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

He closed his ledger. “We are finished for now, monsieur. There is
nothing more for us to do. But you must understand one thing: If you see Mme. Bernard again, you will come back here, immediately. You understand? And you will ask for me personally. Will you give me your word?”

I nodded, reassured. If Jagot was taking this case seriously, at least there was some hope that I might retrieve the manuscript and rescue my position. If Jagot could be discreet and quick in his investigation, the situation might yet be redeemed.

When I left the offices of the Bureau de la Sûreté, I was followed by a man in a long shabby coat who appeared to have only one arm. A fairly new recruit by the look of him; he seemed unskilled in surveillance techniques.

4

ATER THAT AFTERNOON
I walked to the Louvre in search of the Caravaggios, stopping first at a
traiteur
, where I ordered a bowl of thick beef soup with vermicelli for fifteen sols, noting down the price and the date in one of the new notebooks I had bought. I have them still, those small black leather notebooks, filled with tiny rows of numbers, totals and subtotals. It was a habit I had taken on at medical school when my meager allowance barely stretched to give me enough food for the day. Now in Paris I was rich it seemed, at least in comparison with my former life. But I had to make my inheritance last. Everything depended on that.

I had to regulate my expenditure. The day spent with Fin had been expensive. Since entry to the Louvre was free to foreign visitors, I could spend an afternoon there and then come to a decision about what to do next. I couldn’t see Jagot’s man anymore, but I knew he was probably still out there somewhere. I began to feel affronted by the suspicion that being followed by a police agent implied.
I am the victim of a crime, M. Jagot, not a suspect
, I muttered to myself.

Inside the Louvre, among the columns that held up the great vaulted ceiling of gilt and white plaster over the Long Gallery, artists had set up their easels as close as they could to the paintings. On the walls, paintings hung sometimes four or five deep, frames butting right up against frames. A vast Titian was juxtaposed on one side with a Veronese, on another with a Rubens; each overwhelming square of oiled flesh and theatrical gesture and drapery, each Saint Sebastian or Venus or Mars or Holy Family hanging up there, was being copied, imitated, studied, translated by one of scores of art students. Compared with the restrained and hushed galleries of Edinburgh, it was a riot of color and movement.

The effects of the previous night’s drinking still hadn’t worn off. I was a mere sleepwalker in this strange gallery, my head thumping. I followed the crowds through to the Classical Gallery, where I stopped in front of the marble sculpture of Laocoön, the Greek priest, and his sons being attacked by sea snakes. It filled an entire alcove. The naked priest’s head was thrown back in agony, his sinews stretched tight in pain. The coils of the giant snakes were tangled around them all. One
of the two sons, staring in mute horror at his brother and father, was trying to uncoil the snake from his right ankle.

I was trying to remember the names of the sinews in Laocoön’s raised arm when I sensed her, the rustle of her skirt, the smell of her bergamot-laced perfume. I felt her hand on my arm and turned my head a fraction.

My thief, in daylight, dressed in pale blue satin. She was standing next to me.

If I was angry almost beyond words in that moment of recognition—especially now that I knew I had been the innocent prey of a practiced thief—I determined not to show it. I kept my wits about me, focusing on only one thing—the return of the stolen objects.

“You have no idea how relieved I am to see you, madame,” I said, turning to face her, each phrase tumbling over the next. “Of course … your bag and my bag, they were next to each other amongst the luggage, and it was dark and you were in a hurry, perhaps. It was an easy mistake to make. It wasn’t your fault. Anyone might have—”