Sensational

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  Aunt Brigitte was alone in her room, and the bed opposite was unmade.

  A new roommate? Or had the one from the infirmary returned?

  “It’s been some time since I’ve seen you,” Aunt Brigitte said, apprehension walking along the perimeter of her voice. “Your parents said you’d taken ill for a few days. Are you better now?”

  Was she? Would she ever be?

  “I—I suppose everything passes eventually.”

  “Does it?”

  Aunt Brigitte’s eyes were on her, vacant yet penetrating.

  “Most things. Some things never leave us.”

  “The forbidden Greek vase did.” Aunt Brigitte pointed to the hall. “The martinet has it. I forgot to tell your mother.”

  Nathalie peeked up and down the corridor before shutting the door. “I’ll get it before I go.”

  “Why did you close the door?”

  “So that we can talk without being overheard.” She balled up her fists.

  Aunt Brigitte stared at her a moment. She tossed her blankets to the side and swung her legs over, putting one petite foot at a time onto the floor.

  Nathalie instinctively stepped back, then was embarrassed by her reaction. As if she’s going to attack me.

  Aunt Brigitte went over to the sliver of a window that overlooked the courtyard. “Why should we need to talk without being overheard?”

  Nathalie balled her fists up again. “I saw something, Tante. Something you should know about.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?”

  Aunt Brigitte continued looking out the window. “I saw your trance. Heard your trance, then saw it. My eyes were closed, thinking of Choupinet. You mumbled. I opened my eyes and…” Her voice wavered. “I know what I saw.”

  One of Aunt Brigitte’s preferred phrases and one she often used to defend her dreams. A phrase that had landed her in the asylum in the first place. She knew the priest and nun were going to kill their illegitimate child, knew the man was going to throw the baby in the river. Because she knew what she saw. And that’s what she’d told the police when she tried drowning the man in the Seine.

  Aunt Brigitte turned to Nathalie. “I know what you saw.”

  It was distressing to hear that. Yet also comforting.

  Nathalie’s throat went dry. “Then you know why we have to have a conversation about it.”

  “I feel guilty about it sometimes, and my nightmares are dark, dark, dark. Worse than ever.” Aunt Brigitte crinkled her brow. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “No, Tante. It isn’t.”

  Had her aunt truly lost her sense of right and wrong? And if she had, when?

  “She was going to kill me,” Aunt Brigitte said in a tone of rigid certainty. “She was going to suffocate me with a pillow. I saw it in a dream. She said she poisoned her neighbor.”

  “You said you didn’t believe her, remember?” Nathalie shifted her weight. She couldn’t tell Aunt Brigitte that she knew the truth about Véronique. What would that accomplish? “If you thought you were in danger…”

  “I did it in my sleep.” Aunt Brigitte stepped toward her. “Sleep but also not sleep. I was confused.”

  Nathalie studied her aunt, this fierce-yet-fragile woman, wispy as a bird. “And so now what?”

  “I have a new one,” Aunt Brigitte said, gesturing to the opposite bed. “I forgot her name, but she does not snore. I haven’t had any dreams about her.”

  “Tante, you—”

  “Don’t tell on me.”

  Nathalie didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer.

  Aunt Brigitte got back into bed and tucked the sheets under her chin. She resembled a little girl, all bundled up and waiting for her bedtime story. “I feel guilty more than sometimes. Most times.”

  And just like that, Nathalie’s frustration dissolved into a dull ache for an aunt whose Insightful power had forsaken her. Ruined her years ago, then failed her. “It’s very sad, Tante. For her and her loved ones. And also for you.”

  Aunt Brigitte’s fingers moved along the edge of the sheet like spiders. “I should be punished. I know that.” She dropped her voice. “Arsenic would do it. Slowly toward forever.”

  “Don’t be foolish.”

  “Not foolish.” Aunt Brigitte sat up and leaned forward. “Bring me some. I’d rather die than be locked in a room. A broken doll stuffed into a box.”

  A flush crawled up to Nathalie’s face. This wasn’t how she’d envisioned the conversation. “Absolutely not, Tante. I—I won’t be complicit in your death.”

  “Or my life.” Aunt Brigitte closed her eyes and murmured something indecipherable to herself, going to whatever place it was she went from time to time.

  Several minutes passed. The conversation was over, it seemed.

  While Aunt Brigitte was quietly talking to herself, Nathalie opened the door. She went to the nurse’s station and asked someone to fetch the vase. When she returned to the room with it, Aunt Brigitte had her eyes open and hands folded as if in prayer.

  “I had a dream about you the other night. When you were in the hospital, I think.” She put her hands to her heart. “You were strolling along a path through the woods. You didn’t see me because I watched from behind a tree. After you passed me, two shadows joined you, one on either side.”

  Nathalie wanted to tell Tante to stop, that she didn’t want to hear it, that she wasn’t in the mood to hear about foreboding dreams.

  She did want to hear it, though. At least part of her did.

  “The three of you walked into the darkness together,” Aunt Brigitte continued, “and then all three of you became shadows. Then one of the shadows evaporated, just ceased to be.”

  Acid crept up Nathalie’s throat and she swallowed it back. What did the dream mean?

  Death. Someone was going to die. Again.

  What else could it be?

  One of them was in danger. Maybe even herself.

  “I fear my dreams don’t mean anything anymore.” Aunt Brigitte put her head on her pillow and stared up at the ceiling. A tear trickled down the side of her cheek. “Maybe they never really did.”

  27

  The nightmare was rich in color and sensation, hardly distinguishable from reality, in the strange way dreams could be. While experiencing them everything seemed so authentic; only upon waking did a dream’s logic give way to nonsense.

  Aunt Brigitte stood in a room. Le Rasoir’s room, that dimly lit place with a high ceiling and nothing distinct save for its penetrating darkness, a firmament absent of light and hope. Nathalie stood there, too, an immobile observer with muscles made of marble.

  Two guillotines were in place.

  Simone was bound and gagged, on her knees with her head placed on one of the guillotine blocks. Louis was in the other. Both wept.

  Aunt Brigitte released the blade, first severing Simone’s head, then Louis’s.

  Nathalie couldn’t move her head so she closed her eyes. She heard the shuffle of the sawdust buckets. When she opened her eyes again, Aunt Brigitte stood before her, holding a pair of heads.

  Not those of Simone and Louis.

  Jules and Gabrielle.

  “Which one, Nathalie?”

  Somehow, somehow Nathalie found her voice. “Which one what?”

  Aunt Brigitte smiled without answering.

  And then Nathalie woke up.

  * * *

  When she went to the morgue for her report, she noticed the crowd of sandwich-eaters and coffee-drinkers lingering under the tree, watching the door. How vulgar.

  Inside, the black velvet curtain was drawn. Impatient visitors speculated in breathless wonder which corpse might be pulled. Perhaps it was the so-called “Suitor” (parlance available to all, now that the newspapers had released details about the script pages). Or maybe the old woman with the paisley dress? Or the scrawny young man with the beard? It could be that none were being removed but rather added.

  Oh, and what if that was another murder victi
m?

  The collective curiosity was satisfied soon enough. M. Cadoret drew the curtain back and the horde groaned. (She could swear she’d heard M. Soucy wheezily chuckle at them.) The Suitor was gone.

  Amid the whispers and hushed conjecture, Nathalie made her way to the Medusa door. Christophe opened it before she got there.

  In his office moments later, he told her that twenty-six-year-old William Fitzgerald of Dublin had been the Suitor. He was a university student who’d aspired to teach music; he’d gone to the theater in the 7th arrondissement with a young woman he’d met earlier that week. The young woman said when she’d parted ways with him that night, he’d been in good, if heavily intoxicated, spirits.

  Nathalie considered telling Christophe how her vision had felt different, with a pause in the middle and in reverse like her visions had been years ago. And how contrary to what she feared, the resulting memory loss wasn’t worse (maybe even better—she lost about a quarter of an hour after she’d gotten home from visiting Aunt Brigitte, nothing significant). Yet she refrained from saying anything. For now, this secret would stay with her, lest anyone deem her weak or her visions unreliable.

  “Well done on your Guillotin supposition,” he said with a nod of approval. “Are you certain you’d rather write for the newspaper than become a detective?”

  “If only a woman were admitted to the profession. Or do all the men consult their wives this way?” Heat reached her cheeks instantly. “Oh goodness. I didn’t mean—that’s not—”

  Christophe pinched the edge of the desk, gaze focused on his inkwell. His lips curled upward, a grin just barely suppressed. “I know what you meant. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some conversations along those lines, to say the least.” He looked up at her again. “Also, this reminds me. Would you be able to come by tomorrow morning at eight?”

  “Yes,” she said, relieved by the subject change. “I’m going to the theater tonight—of all places—but we shouldn’t be out too late.”

  “As you know, I’m leaving for Switzerland in two days. Tomorrow is my last day here for almost three weeks, so I wanted to make sure … everything is in order.”

  Her face was placid, but she beamed on the inside. He wants to say a proper goodbye.

  That thought carried her for the rest of the morning. She didn’t want to dwell on the fact that he’d be gone and that it was to be with his fiancée. Instead, she held on to the idea that he cared enough to bid her a temporary farewell.

  * * *

  After dropping off her article with Arianne, Nathalie made her way to Parc de Neuilly to meet Simone.

  They’d been looking forward to the Wild West show ever since the Je viens posters with Buffalo Bill’s face had appeared all over the city. (Nathalie thought it should have said “We’re coming,” given that Annie Oakley and others were in the show.) They didn’t know much about it but had heard of a young woman who could shoot anything with incredible precision.

  They were not disappointed. The first part of the show had a lot of men in various kinds of dress, some with paint on their faces, running and galloping and play-acting fights. There were horses, the reenactment of a horse thief being hanged, and real buffalo, the latter of which Nathalie never thought she’d see. Buffalo Bill himself was handsome, if rather showy for Nathalie’s liking. But it was steady Annie Oakley, with her unusual dress (“Is that leather?” asked Simone) and hat (someone called it a “cowboy” hat), who seized their attention completely. She was short—shorter than Maman, even—and took guns of various sizes to shoot glasses and flat clay objects, one after another, without missing. While riding a galloping horse besides, which was the most astonishing feat either of them had ever seen.

  Nathalie and Simone were speechless. They enjoyed her so much, they promised each other before so much as rising from their seats that they’d come again.

  “I have to say,” Simone said as they exited the performance, “I’ve never held a gun and I have no desire to live in the United States, but I think I want to be Annie Oakley when I grow up.”

  “No more cabaret?”

  “Eh, maybe on Fridays and Saturdays.” Simone winked. “Have to do something after dark.”

  “Hmmm … so would that make Louis Wild Bill?”

  Simone pretended to think about it. “Non. Jamais!”

  “It must be nice to be that good at something,” said Nathalie. They followed the vast crowd out to a street full of carriages-for-hire. “Among the best in the world.”

  “You mean like being an eighteen-year-old girl with Insightful powers who helps the Paris police solve crimes?” Simone elbowed her in the ribs.

  “Actually, yes,” Nathalie said, concealing her mirth. “I wouldn’t mind that pursuit.”

  A man handing out pamphlets walked between them, followed by a vendor selling Buffalo Bill posters. After waving them off, Simone turned to Nathalie. “I know this isn’t a pleasant topic. I’d be a shoddy friend if I didn’t ask. Have you … heard anything more about your aunt?”

  Nathalie had been waiting for the right moment to bring up Aunt Brigitte. Before the show, Simone had practically tackled her with inquiries about the Le Rasoir case. Since the conclusion of the show, their shared mood had been so buoyant, she didn’t want to say anything to alter it.

  She was nevertheless relieved Simone had asked.

  They took a carriage (Simone’s treat) and resumed their conversation. Nathalie described the visit she’d had with Aunt Brigitte, in all its circuitous dissonance, minus the dream. And without Nathalie’s own disturbing nightmare.

  Simone twirled an errant blond tress around her finger. “What are you going to do, then? Keep her secret?”

  “I’m going to visit her again,” said Nathalie. “Ask … ask her to confess, I suppose. I didn’t mention that yesterday.”

  “That’s the right thing to do. It is.”

  “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  “Then what would?”

  Nathalie didn’t have an answer for that. She didn’t have an answer for anything concerning Aunt Brigitte. “I recognize that it’s the best option. Not a comfortable one, that’s all.”

  Simone placed her hand on Nathalie’s. “If she takes responsibility for this, it saves you from feeling responsible. Because you aren’t.” Simone paused. “What if Aunt Brigitte was right and Véronique was going to kill her … what if that happens next time?”

  Nathalie gave her a pointed look. “The chances for that are minimal. It’s a lunatic asylum, not an institution for the criminally insane.”

  “Even so. You need to protect Aunt Brigitte.”

  Nathalie listened to the slow clop clop of the horse and continued. “And others from Aunt Brigitte.”

  “Yes,” Simone said, not unkindly. “You do.”

  She didn’t find fault in Simone’s argument, not at all. She just didn’t want to have to think about any of this.

  Simone tugged at a thread on her skirt. “I wish I’d met her. I regret never going with you—I suppose I was afraid I’d be too uncomfortable. Perhaps I’ll come with you some time, depending on … what happens.”

  Nathalie didn’t expect that. Even if it never came to pass, she appreciated the sentiment. “Thank you.”

  “I believe your once-monthly Sunday visits to her—I think that’s what you said?—would become the most important thing to her. Even more than now.” Simone nudged Nathalie’s shoulder with her own. “Maybe solitary quarters aren’t as bad as you think. It’s not like you know someone who’s gone through it.”

  “No, but Tante did.” Aunt Brigitte had once talked about a patient who’d been released from isolation because she’d taken ill; she died within several weeks. Nathalie had overhead Papa talk to the nurses about the nature of solitary punishments after that, and what she’d caught supported Aunt Brigitte’s claims. Despite being prone to exaggeration and fiction at times, her aunt had been right. (Why had Papa asked, anyway? Was he worried his sister might somed
ay do something deemed unacceptable within the walls of an asylum?)

  Simone made a soft “hmm” sound before continuing. “Well … your aunt might even like being alone. It doesn’t sound like she likes being around the other patients.”

  Perhaps. Nathalie had nothing to base that on, but it was a kinder truth to tell herself than that Aunt Brigitte would suffer.

  What did right and wrong mean at Saint-Mathurin? Did the same societal rules apply in an asylum? Many patients seemed governed by their own sense of ethics, and sometimes those clashed with the ones to which most people adhered.

  Don’t make excuses for her. Or yourself.

  Simone stopped the carriage a few minutes later, so they could each take an omnibus for their separate routes home.

  “Busy day for you, is it not?” Simone gave her a hug. “Your best friend during the day and your second-best friend this evening?”

  Nathalie smiled. “Yes, I bought Jules tickets to see Around the World in 80 Days for his birthday. I didn’t come home from the hospital a day too soon.”

  “We enjoyed it,” said Simone. She leaned in close. “That was before the murders, I should note.”

  Nathalie rolled her eyes. “So dramatic. Louis truly is affecting you.”

  And yet, she’d been concerned herself about going to the theater, of all places, tonight.

  28

  The lobby of Théâtre du Châtelet bustled with eager theatergoers pushing to get to their seats. Nathalie and Jules, who was uncharacteristically impatient with the crowd (that was usually Nathalie’s attitude—was she influencing him?), stood off to the side for a few minutes to let the crowd thin out.

  “Everyone wants to arrive in their row, their seat at once,” said Jules. “No matter how mathematically impossible it is.”