Sensational

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  While leaving the hospital with her parents, flowers from Jules in hand, Nathalie asked the question she’d been formulating all morning. She wanted to have this conversation before they boarded a steam tram. “How is Aunt Brigitte?”

  Maybe now someone would answer.

  Maman threw her a sideways glance. “She was very upset that you’d collapsed; she cried a lot, more than I’ve seen her cry in some time. We assured her that you’d be well, even—even when we didn’t know if that was true.”

  Nathalie squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. Aunt Brigitte knew of Nathalie’s memory gaps, but she didn’t know they intensified if Nathalie touched the victim’s body. “Does she know why I collapsed?”

  “We told her you were under a lot of strain lately,” Papa said. “Without details.”

  If Aunt Brigitte had been under suspicion for murder, they’d tell her. Wouldn’t they? Or would they keep details from her like they did from Tante? They’d kept plenty of secrets from Nathalie in the past. “How is she, uh, coping with the death of her roommate?”

  “She wavers between indifference and being overwrought,” Maman said. “Which I suppose is often true of her responses anyway, so it’s hard to determine. We don’t talk about it unless she does, and even then, well … you know how it is. Best to steer away from such things.”

  Nathalie’s stomach clenched as they boarded the steam tram. She was convinced: Her parents didn’t know it was a murder. What now?

  * * *

  Maman and Papa made a fuss over her at home, and Stanley wouldn’t leave her side. Papa had made bread, and Maman had made pistou soup and a chocolate soufflé, some of her favorites. Jules had left a note saying he was looking forward to seeing her. Simone was visiting her parents and Céleste and stopped by for a while. Among other things, they made plans to go to the Buffalo Bill–Annie Oakley show in a few days.

  Her heart was filled with gratitude; it was good to be home.

  Over piquet that evening, during which she took turns playing against Maman and Papa, Nathalie told them about her mysterious visit. She presented the button as well, and asked Papa if it was his. It wasn’t.

  She hadn’t wanted to tell them until she knew, and they knew, that she truly had her faculties about her once again.

  “He said his name was Dr. Delacroix,” she said. Neither of them reacted as if the name meant anything to them.

  “It was probably a doctor from another floor,” offered Maman, “or another section of the hospital.”

  Papa put down a card. “Could it be that you’re mistaken about his name?”

  Nathalie hadn’t considered the latter. She wasn’t in a reliable state at that time. But no. Even if she’d gotten the name wrong, it couldn’t be so far off that it didn’t even sound like someone else.

  “It could be,” said Nathalie, laying down a card. “It could also be that he gave me a pseudonym.”

  Maman rearranged her cards. “Why should he do that?”

  “Because he might have a reason for anonymity,” she said. Stanley jumped onto her lap. “I’ve heard that there … might be an Insightful out there who helps other Insightfuls. Jules told me once. Someone with mind-reading power or someone who helped Dr. Henard or maybe even stole from him.”

  Her parents fell silent, and for a moment the only sound was Stanley purring. Papa put some tobacco in his pipe and lit it.

  Maman knotted her fingers. “There was supposedly a young assistant who disappeared—left or sent away, who knows—when things started to go badly with the experiments. His last name was … oh, something with an S.”

  “Suchet,” said Papa without missing a beat. “I remember because I knew a sailor with that name.”

  “Yes, that’s it,” Maman said. “I never saw him.”

  Papa took a puff of his pipe. “Neither did I.”

  “He’s real,” Nathalie said. Her eyes went to the flowers from Jules, now starting to wilt. They had another day, maybe two. “That in itself is reassuring.”

  Maman shrugged. “Is he? Even if he is … real is one thing. That this is the same individual who showed up in your hospital room is another.”

  “I forgot about his existence until you asked about it.” Papa collected a trick and tossed it to the side. “It’s all rumor. Some say he moved to another part of France, to America, to Morocco. I’ve heard he assumed a new identity, that he died, that he didn’t, that he was a city official in Paris under a different guise, that he was a priest. He’s no one and everyone.”

  Nathalie wondered if Madame la Tuerie had known of him or the rumors. Had she ever tried to contact him—or worse, attempt to have him killed, like she did Henard? Between that and angry, frustrated Insightfuls, it’s no wonder he vanished. “Why so much mystery? Dr. Henard had an apprentice. So what?”

  “There are stories about what happened to him as well as about who he is, what he does or can do. Some said he was purely an academic who could answer obscure questions about Insightful power,” Papa said. “Others said he was a paternal figure of sorts. Still others said he was working on something to reverse Insightful power.”

  “A … cure?” Nathalie frowned. “We aren’t diseased.”

  Maman placed a gentle, scarred hand on the table. “You have to understand, ma bichette, this is from a time when many people regretted having gotten the transfusions. When Insightfuls were mocked and those who suffered like Tante weren’t pitied but rather ‘got what they deserved.’ So this man was whatever people needed him to be—as you can tell by the stories of what might have become of him. He was only a university student at the time. Who can say what was real and what was delusion?”

  Nathalie added that to the list of other claims she’d heard. Helping Insightfuls get new identities, making something to change the effects of using a power. “Past tense. Was, were. You don’t believe it?”

  “I haven’t heard the same story twice.” Papa rested his pipe on its leather holder. “What’s more, I haven’t heard any in years and years. I don’t know.”

  Maman agreed. After a pause, she spoke. “If this mysterious doctor is one and the same, how would he have known who you were?”

  Nathalie had been trying to work that out for days. “Maybe someone at the hospital told him. That’s all I can conclude.”

  Papa put his hand on hers. “I don’t know if there’s any way to know for sure who this man was. I don’t think there’s anything to indicate that he’s this ‘secret’ apprentice who has become an Insightful legend of sorts. Does it matter? You had a conversation with him that left you feeling better. That’s what’s important.”

  Nathalie focused on her cards. “It is.”

  Yet, it did matter. Maybe she, too, wanted a man, or myth, to help her make sense of life as an Insightful. After all, she’d conjured Agnès in the midst of this mess in the hospital.

  Strange, how time and grief worked together, and yet they didn’t. At the time of Agnès’s death, Nathalie had told herself time would heal her. She’d heard people say it to Agnès’s parents during the wake, too. But the passage of days then weeks then months and finally years didn’t heal the wound. Parts of it thickened up with scar tissue, maybe. Other parts festered. Her grief didn’t go away over time. It simply changed forms.

  She couldn’t bring herself to think of Agnès for some time after the murder. Then she realized she was actively putting Agnès out of her head, which was an abysmal and inauthentic feeling. Perhaps this specter of Agnès during Nathalie’s convalescence was punishment for that.

  Or maybe she just missed her friend, and being in the hospital surfaced those emotions, maybe rooted in her fear that she’d lose her memories of Agnès and everyone else who meant something to her.

  “That reminds me,” Papa said as he shuffled the cards. “I spoke to Monsieur Patenaude yesterday. He invited you to return to work whenever you’re ready.”

  “He did?” This brightened her thoughts. She stroked Stanley’s back. “G
ood. I’m ready now. Well—not tomorrow. The day after. I have some affairs to tend to tomorrow.”

  “Such as?” Maman asked.

  Nathalie swallowed. “A visit to Aunt Brigitte, for one.”

  25

  A visit to her aunt, yes.

  But first, a trip to the morgue.

  She didn’t know whether she’d touch the glass when she got there. She didn’t tell her parents she was going. Couldn’t tell them. They were already worried about her health, and Maman was reluctant to even let her visit Aunt Brigitte alone. Adding the morgue and the idea of pursuing another vision to their concerns wouldn’t do any of them any good.

  The queue was so long, it stretched almost to the front of Notre-Dame. She made her way to the entrance with more than a few grumpy complaints trailing her.

  M. Arnaud smiled when he saw her. “I’m so very happy to see you’re back. How are you, my dear?”

  “Better, much better.” She didn’t want to say much more, especially in front of strangers. She wanted to ask M. Arnaud about the bruise on his cheek but didn’t for the same reason. “Ready for my routines and to go back to normal.”

  M. Arnaud shushed a few complainers and let her inside. The stuffiness of the viewing room struck her almost as much as the noise. People were chatting and pointing, strangers talking to one another in various tongues. The room was full of tourists, some of whom were asking M. Soucy questions. M. Cadoret stood in the display room rocking back and forth on his heels, watching them all as if he were at a menagerie.

  When at last she glimpsed the Suitor, a feeling of genuine uncertainty overtook her.

  He had a trim beard and wavy, light brown hair. The rest of his body, pale and freckled, was separated from it by a few centimeters. Why at all? Couldn’t they put it as close to the head as possible? His hanging bloodstained suit was fashionable and black with a subtle pattern. The top hat, white scarf, and bowties, all of them, lay on a small table nearby. He looked like a man who’d gone out for an evening stroll. Which he had.

  What should I do?

  No Christophe or Jules or Simone to help her make this decision.

  Prompt a vision and it could result in nothing out of the ordinary. Or it could lead to a significant memory loss and another setback. Or something she didn’t even anticipate yet.

  She regarded the corpse, and it reminded her of the last time she was indecisive about touching the glass. Except that it had been Agnès on the concrete slab.

  And so she made the same decision now as she did then.

  Nathalie moved as far to the right as she could, turning her back to the other visitors. She placed her hand on the glass.

  The touch carried her to a room, the same as in the previous visions, with the Suitor’s beheaded corpse. The blood dripped up from the floor and seeped back into the neck, crimson streaks crawling into the flesh like a vampire crawling back into a coffin. The disembodied head rose from a bucket of sawdust and attached itself to the neck as if by some invisible hand.

  Everything happened in reverse.

  The guillotine blade went up. Then—blackness so absolute it almost looked solid. The darkness flickered away. After a beat, she was walking backward in the killer’s room, this stark, windowless room she couldn’t identify as a parlor or bedroom or anything else other than space itself.

  She walked away from the man kneeling with his hands behind his back, past a table with a candelabra, a chessboard, and what looked like costume pieces.

  In a breath, she returned to the viewing room.

  Backward. Why?

  Her earliest visions had been in reverse. It was only with Agnès’s death that they proceeded along a normal means of chronology.

  Because of what happened with Aunt Brigitte and what it did to me?

  It had to be. She couldn’t think of any other explanation.

  Good. That meant it wasn’t a problem, even if it happened again. It was the opposite of a problem, because there was a reasonable correlation. As reasonable as Insightful powers could be.

  Nevertheless, she was worried about the effects. If the vision took on a new form, then perhaps the consequences could, too.

  Don’t think like that.

  She sensed a few people much closer to her than before; almost certainly she’d said something and they’d come to investigate. As if she were part of the Exposition, the morgue, the show.

  She excused her way past them all and knocked at the Medusa door.

  M. Cadoret answered. He asked her how she was feeling and warmly welcomed her back. When she started to walk down the corridor, M. Cadoret called after her.

  “I’m afraid Monsieur Gagnon isn’t here today. He’s had a headache and took the rest of the day off. I can take your statement, if you don’t mind.”

  Nathalie acquiesced with a courtesy that she hoped hid her disappointment. Of all days.

  They went into the office. Although she’d given her statement to M. Cadoret several times before when Christophe had been out or otherwise unavailable, it felt different this time. Different because she wanted to talk to Christophe. When he left for Switzerland in a few days, it would be like this for weeks.

  She didn’t need him, obviously. But it was … very nice to have him around. And to be around him. And to talk from time to time.

  Nathalie didn’t tell M. Cadoret the vision was in reverse; it had no bearing on the information conveyed. He wasn’t involved in the investigation anyway. He was a morgue worker who occasionally performed administrative duties on Christophe’s behalf (he even hummed as he did it, such that she wondered if he even really heard her as he transcribed), but he wasn’t privy to the details in connection with the police.

  She presented it matter-of-factly, like someone who’d done this so very many times before. Which was true, of course. Except that maybe she was a bit more broken now, imbued with knowledge that served more to antagonize her than help her.

  Who am I fooling?

  She wasn’t the same. Or feared she wasn’t the same, and that was almost the same thing.

  Wasn’t it?

  She watched M. Cadoret, with his small, precise penmanship, write down every word crisply, as if he didn’t want to make a mistake. He read what he penned, appearing pleased with himself for capturing it so well.

  “Do you have access to the statements from Jules or Gabrielle?” she asked, snapping him out of his self-congratulatory reverie.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I took down Jules’s statement from the other day. He happened to come in when Monsieur Gagnon was gone for several hours.” M. Cadoret creased his browless forehead in thought. “Actually, I believe it was while he was visiting you.”

  Nathalie remained passive but sensed the blush betraying her. “How’s Dr. Nicot?”

  “He’s well, I presume. Why?”

  She touched the edge of the desk. “After the delivery of … of the Suitor’s head.”

  M. Cadoret seemed to go a shade paler. “Oh, that.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Horrible, horrible fright. You know how stern his demeanor is, how steady? He was trembling for an hour after that.”

  Nathalie shuddered. She was glad she wasn’t here when it happened. And that it hadn’t happened to Christophe.

  M. Cadoret leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Did you happen to notice the gathering outside the exit? Not the one from the viewing room. The one we use.”

  “No, I came from the other direction. What gathering?”

  “Ever since news of the Suitor’s, uh, ‘delivery’ was reported, people stand under the tree across from the door. They have coffee or lunch or smoke … and watch. Monsieur Soucy noticed it and asked them why.” M. Cadoret leaned even farther forward. “To see if anything else resembling a head gets delivered.”

  Nathalie winced.

  “Paris craves spectacle, it seems.” He pursed his lips in apparent displeasure.

  Nathalie’s eyes went to the volumes of photographs dedicated to docu
menting the dead. “The city of lights, the city of sensationalism.”

  M. Cadoret shuffled the papers and inspected them. “Here we are,” he said, presenting them.

  She read through Gabrielle’s, despite knowing from Christophe what it would say. The path ended after the theater, at a restaurant or tavern.

  Jules’s vision focused on something else entirely.

  The victim’s thoughts were murky, as with the others. His mind was on his fear, visceral and to the bone, and on his family. His mother and father, his sister, his betrothed, his favorite cousin.

  Other thoughts involved confusion as to his killer, who boasted of familial lines as an executioner, and chess. He didn’t know how to play chess, but the killer made him anyway.

  A victim who’d been to the theater, a killer who was the descendant of an executioner and enjoyed chess, a table of costume pieces. Pages of a script nailed to the victims.

  Again with the thoughts being unclear. Sleepy? Drugged? Drunk?

  The police would continue their pursuit of the theater route, but the executioner detail remained elusive.

  She slapped her hand on the table. “I have it!”

  M. Cadoret started. “What?”

  She blushed. “Sorry. I—I think I have an idea for Monsieur Gagnon. May I write it down and leave it for him?”

  M. Cadoret paused, scratching where his eyebrow would be. He searched her face, as if he were about to say something, then shook his head. He dipped the pen in ink and handed it to her along with a sheet of paper.

  What if Le Rasoir is an actor playing a part, as his “play” suggests? And what if he isn’t the descendant of an executioner, but of Guillotin himself?

  26

  Angst seized Nathalie and imprisoned her, dangling the key with a taunt. Only when this was over might the key enter the lock.

  Often when she’d come to Saint-Mathurin, she’d felt uneasy, fascinated, and replete with pity. At times she’d been apprehensive, because the patients—Aunt Brigitte included—often displayed behavior that was sad or uncomfortable to witness. Barking instead of talking. Weeping in a corner. Squatting in a corridor as if over a chamber pot, urinating with nothing underneath. On this visit, she was laden with fear and dread, not because of what she might see but because of what she had to do.