Here.
Outside here, actually. The young man beside her on the bench under the linden tree, reading the Revolution of 1789 book. The one who’d turned his pages loudly, then stood in the morgue queue. She’d included him in her journal entry that day, inclined as she was to capture minutiae sometimes.
How interesting that he should end up at the morgue in a different capacity.
The Princess was Ida Blackwell, she found out a few minutes later. She and her husband were American tourists, here for the summer. She was an aspiring actress and he, a painter. In addition to the Exposition, they’d frequented salons and the theater. They’d gone to a show and then a restaurant but, having gotten into a quarrel after no small amount of wine consumption, left separately.
Nathalie followed Christophe into his office, noticing the Switzerland print had been taken down. “As you know,” he began, “the body hasn’t turned up yet. Based on what we found on the victim’s tongue, we think that might be intentional.”
She sat in the chair—there were only two now—and gripped the arms in anticipation.
Christophe took an envelope from the cabinet and presented it to her. Its contents consisted of two pieces of paper with crease marks from having been folded.
A chill rippled across her skin, lingering on the back of her neck. She slapped her hand there to stop it.
The first item was a “death map,” as Gabrielle had called it. The one handed out by the woman who smelled of incense, but with a cross on the Venezuela Pavilion penned by another hand.
“These … these are everywhere. I saw the woman handing them out at the fair and so did Gabrielle. She’s been distributing them outside the morgue, too,” said Nathalie, gesturing in the direction of where she’d seen the woman.
“He’s enjoying the attention.”
She pushed the map away slowly and reached for the second item, the one she’d expected. Parchment paper.
YOUNG PRINCE, seated and wrapped in a French flag, is surrounded by the beheaded bodies of SUITOR and PRINCESS on the palace steps. An empty birdcage is beside him.
He unfolds a map.
I tried running but all the gates are locked. I tried screaming but no one can hear me. Can I not just disappear, go somewhere else, become someone else?
YOUNG PRINCE sobs as he traces a route along the map with his finger.
A man comes out from behind a curtain wielding a sword.
“Cruel and dastardly and disgustingly vain. Le Rasoir cast people as parts in his play,” Nathalie said, sliding the script even farther away than the map. “He made Timothy St. Martin read from the script, but that might be because he was French. And an actor. I didn’t see any other victims reading. Maybe he placed it in front of Ida Blackwell, or maybe he forced her to read it, whether she knew French or not.”
“I don’t think it mattered to him,” said Christophe.
Nathalie agreed. “It was all for his own sick pleasure—no one else would ever know they were forced to read lines or had a script before them. But still, he makes the murders theatrical for the public. Why? What does that achieve?”
“Is there any bigger stage in the world right now than Paris?” Christophe returned the papers to the envelope. “No bigger pool of empty leads, of that I can assure you. Not one thread we’ve pursued remains promising or realistic to pursue. One theory is that perhaps he follows his victims from the theater to a restaurant or tavern and goes after those who were especially intoxicated. Under the guise of helping them or otherwise gaining their trust. Unfortunately it’s not the same theater or establishment each time, and it’s impossible to watch every theatergoer and every inebriated patron in the city.”
The Dark Artist case had seemed impossible, something never to be solved. Ultimately it was. Not so for Jack the Ripper, which reminded her, and no doubt Christophe as well, that sometimes the killer wins.
It was a thought too heavy to bear, too leaden to utter out loud.
“We’re looking for patterns,” she said. “Maybe there isn’t one.”
“Or maybe he’s breaking them on purpose,” Christophe replied. “Which, again, leads us nowhere.”
She left Christophe to his work and exited the morgue a few minutes later. The pack of observers near the door was almost double what it usually was.
Waiting for the body to be found and delivered.
She’d just swept her eyes from them when she thought she saw Jules coming around Notre-Dame. She moved to the other side of some pedestrians twenty or so meters away, hoping he wouldn’t see her. Then he called out to her.
Nathalie pretended she didn’t hear him.
When she was confident the distance between them was such that he’d kept walking, she turned around.
Just in time to see him lift the knocker at the side door of the morgue.
* * *
Nathalie’s memory loss was minor—later that night, while getting ready for bed, she lost the several minutes leading up to that. All of a sudden, she had on her nightclothes and her hair was brushed, and she didn’t recall doing either. Considering all that had happened lately, she was relieved it was something insignificant, especially given Dr. Delacroix’s letter. Her power still wasn’t back to normal but at least the penalty hadn’t been too harsh.
Her dreams, however, were tauntingly realistic that night. Among the worst she’d ever had.
She was in the morgue. Every corpse on the concrete slab was someone she loved or who’d touched her life. Her parents. Agnès. Simone and Louis. Christophe. Aunt Brigitte. Jules. Gabrielle. M. Patenaude. The head of Ida Blackwell.
Mme. Jalbert was next to her, weeping. Nathalie touched the viewing pane and heard a crack, then another and another. Hundreds of cracks streaked across the glass. As she pulled her hand away, the glass shattered. The entire viewing pane fell at once like a sheet of ice.
Agnès’s mother cried even louder, and that’s when Nathalie woke up. But the sobbing followed her.
Maman.
Her mother was crying in the parlor.
Nathalie moved around Stanley and got out of bed. Her door was closed, so she placed her hand on the doorknob and turned it cautiously. She opened it several centimeters. Maman and Papa were on the sofa together, she weeping into her handkerchief, he rubbing her back.
“What’s happened?” she asked, opening the door wider.
“Ma bichette,” Papa said. “Come.”
Nathalie took a seat in Papa’s burgundy leather chair and gripped the arms. Her parents shared a look, and Maman nodded.
Papa placed his hand over one of hers. “Aunt Brigitte has died. She—she took her own life.”
39
Nathalie’s hand lost its flesh and was stripped of all but bone. The rest of her peeled away until the only thing that remained was her bony hand, like Aunt Brigitte’s hand, under Papa’s.
Or so it felt, there on the sofa, as her body felt the words that Papa uttered.
She cried after that. Tears of sadness and guilt and anger and regret, all draining into a pool of intense and unexpected grief.
Tante, did you do this because of me? Because you were afraid I’d tell?
Finally the question that had been trapped, a bird in a flue, made its way out of her mouth. “How?”
She didn’t ask why. She knew.
Papa patted her hand and stood. “She sliced her throat with a shard from a ceramic pitcher.”
Her throat, where Nathalie had applied the musk-and-amber oil from the Algeria Pavilion. How Aunt Brigitte had indulged in that simple pleasure.
Elsewhere.
“It’s from a pitcher that broke several days ago,” Papa continued. “One of the nurses was removing it from a patient’s room and bumped into Tante.”
“Brigitte bumped into her,” said Maman, her voice faint.
“Yes,” Papa continued. “And in the confusion, she picked up a piece. The nurse didn’t see her do it, so they think she may have kicked it away and gathered
it later.”
“A vase. I brought her the wooden vase.”
“You brought it back, Nathalie. And it was wood, not anything that could shatter,” said Maman. “This was a—a ceramic pitcher.”
“What if I gave her the idea, though? She knew the vase would be confiscated, but she also said it happens often. Vase, pitcher. Wood, ceramic. Not breakable, breakable. It’s not such a leap…”
“Stop blaming yourself, Nathalie. You didn’t give her the idea,” Papa said with a firm furrow of his brow. “I’m sure of that. You’re trying hard to make a connection that isn’t there. You know, Maman knows, I know: Brigitte’s soul was an anxious one, especially after the incident with her roommate.”
Nathalie crossed her legs and leaned forward. After a pause, she spoke. “There is one connection I don’t have to try hard to make. Because there is something to it. My dream. I—I had a dream that was…” Her voice trailed off. Too many thoughts, too many conclusions rushed toward her at once.
Shattered glass, shattered pitcher.
Mme. Jalbert’s tears, Maman’s tears.
Aunt Brigitte dead on a slab.
She covered her head with her hands.
“What is it, ma bichette?” Maman’s voice, delicate as lace.
Nathalie sank back into the chair and described the nightmare to her parents.
“It’s as if your gifts … crossed,” Papa said, moving his hands past one another.
Again.
They lapsed into silence, broken after a few moments by Maman’s sigh. “I suppose we should go. The asylum would like to meet with us, and the courier didn’t elaborate.”
Nathalie’s stomach lurched. What did they know?
A short while later, Nathalie and her parents found out.
Nurse Clement sat with them in a spare, unadorned room. Her demeanor was even graver than usual. After issuing condolences, she presented a folder. Nathalie’s pulse quickened.
“This is unusual to say the least, but Brigitte … left something behind, I suppose you’d put it.”
Something? It couldn’t be a note. Patients didn’t have writing instruments or paper.
The nurse put her hand on the folder. “You’re familiar with Estelle? She came to us about two years ago, and she’s often in the hall talking to herself or repeating something she’s heard. Often docile, occasionally … less so.”
“Yes,” Maman said. “Her room is near Brigitte’s.”
“Yes, that’s correct. Estelle was especially restive and distressed, both last night and this morning,” Nurse Clement said, as if she were dispensing a secret. “We think Brigitte spoke to Estelle. Possibly on purpose, to convey a message. Or that Estelle overheard her talking to the chaplain.”
Papa gripped his knees. “What did Brigitte say to the chaplain?”
“I don’t know; I was too far away to hear. She accosted him on his way out. And I do mean accosted—she took him by the hand and wouldn’t let him go, hanging on his hand as she spoke. She was … desperate, it seemed.” She gave them a sympathetic look. “He was kind to her and gave her a blessing.”
Nathalie’s throat swelled. A confession. She confessed like she said she would. Only to a priest, not the doctors and nurses at Saint-Mathurin, as Nathalie had assumed.
“Estelle was in her own room at the time. I saw Brigitte look in there,” Nurse Clement added. “Estelle must have heard the exchange.”
Aunt Brigitte hoped Estelle would relay this, took a chance that she might.
“Do you write down everything Estelle says?” asked Maman, skeptical.
“When Estelle is particularly upset, we record her words in case she’s trying to tell us something or needs help. Something she said was very specific.” She pursed her lips. “You’ll forgive me, Monsieur and Madame Baudin, if this is upsetting? Perhaps your daughter shouldn’t hear this?”
“Au contraire,” Papa said, “she can.”
Nurse Clement opened the folder and read. “‘Brigitte sorry for death.’” She gauged their reactions. “I think she was apologizing for her death in advance.”
No, that’s not what it meant. Not at all. But it was good that Nurse Clement made that observation.
“Did Estelle say anything else?” Maman asked, her tone particularly sweet. “I’d be curious. Even if it seems irrelevant. If you’re able to disclose that.”
Comprehension registered on Nurse Clement’s face. “Normally we wouldn’t, but given the circumstances, I don’t see the harm.” She pointed to something on the page. “Other phrases include ‘Who knows?’, ‘Guilty guilty,’ ‘Time for breakfast’—for that one, Estelle was repeating ‘me’—and ‘Divine punishment.’ And counting. She did a lot of counting.”
Nathalie tried to make eye contact with her parents to no avail.
Of those, “Guilty guilty” and “Divine punishment” had to be messages from Aunt Brigitte. Intentional? Yes, Nathalie decided. Brigitte would want them to know why she took her life. Whether she said these things directly to Estelle or knowing—or hoping—she’d repeat them didn’t matter.
Aunt Brigitte had known it during Nathalie’s last visit, didn’t she? Consequences. She meant afterlife consequences. Facing God. She knew she was going to take her life.
Is this my fault?
Did I drive her to a choice she didn’t want to make?
Nathalie told herself no, even though she knew those questions would always live inside her.
She thought about her last conversation with Aunt Brigitte. It had been about love, a topic about which they’d spoken so little.
Here and gone. Gone and here.
40
Nathalie went to the morgue that afternoon as if in a trance. Maybe she was in a trance. She felt as if she were trapped in that state between dreaming and wakefulness. As if she’d never leave it.
Even getting elbowed on the omnibus didn’t faze her. She was marching through the city like a marionette, going from place to place as if someone else were moving her body there.
There were three new bodies on display, all of them men. One of the concrete slabs was empty. Ida Blackwell was not there, as expected. Had they found the rest of the body yet?
She touched the glass. No vision, nothing new. Two of the men were exceedingly thin and dirty, likely men who lived on the streets. A third was a suicide, the purple-black rope marks prominent on his neck.
Nathalie covered her mouth with the back of her hand. A suicide.
Aunt Brigitte’s reflection appeared in the viewing pane; Nathalie blinked and it disappeared. A lump swelled in her throat, and despite trying very hard not to cry, a few tears trickled out. M. Soucy approached and asked after her. She considered telling him the reason for her reaction. The words didn’t surface.
“A difficult day, is all,” she said, feeling and sounding forlorn. As she started shuffling toward the Medusa door, M. Soucy spoke again.
“Monsieur Gagnon is running an errand, I believe.”
“Oh.” M. Cadoret wasn’t standing in the display room, but she didn’t want to talk to him, either. She had much to share and wanted to know why Jules had come here yesterday, and these were conversations to have with Christophe. Not M. Cadoret, not Dr. Nicot. And certainly not with Dr. Nicot’s new assistant.
Nathalie left through the viewing room with the rest of the crowd. She went to Maxime’s and wrote her article over coffee that she didn’t remember drinking. And wrote words she didn’t remember writing. Only this time, it wasn’t due to memory loss but rather the opaque haze of raw, unaddressed sadness.
When she went to Le Petit Journal, she was glad to see that M. Patenaude was available. She wanted to tell him about Aunt Brigitte. She wanted to tell someone. Tante didn’t have anyone to mourn her except Nathalie and her parents. She had nevertheless mattered. Locking her in an asylum didn’t erase her from the world.
Which was perhaps part of what drove Aunt Brigitte to suicide, Nathalie believed: her realization that Véronique,
too, had mattered. She was important to someone, loved by someone. Taking her life left a tear in the fabric of someone else’s.
Both women were troubled; both had committed murder. Each had been wrong to do so. Nathalie had never known or thought through such moral dissonance before and was ashamed she hadn’t. Her time at the morgue should have shown her that taking a life was more than killer and victim, guilty and innocent.
M. Patenaude understood her melancholy about Aunt Brigitte’s death—of course he didn’t know why she’d committed suicide—and the nightmare that preceded it. He offered condolences and thoughtful words. Nathalie found comfort in their conversation, even as she noticed a pensiveness in him that spoke of something else on his mind. A pile of discarded cigarette butts lay in his ashtray; his glasses were thinner than usual.
Heaving a deep exhale, he drummed his fingertips on his desk. “When’s the last time you spoke to Monsieur Gagnon?”
“Yesterday. He was away when I went earlier. I’d like to talk to him, so I’ll stop by on the way home.”
The cadence of M. Patenaude’s drumming slowed to thumps. “Jules went to the morgue yesterday.”
“I saw him go there,” she said, shifting her weight. She’d already told him the courtship had ended; it was Christophe she’d held off on telling for so long. “What did he want?”
“News of Le Rasoir’s victim spread quickly. He went there to provide assistance.”
“A thought reading?” Nathalie was exasperated. “He wasn’t permitted to, was he?”
M. Patenaude folded his arms, and his hesitation told her everything she needed to know.
“Why would Christophe permit that?”
“Because it does no harm to see if he’s being honest. And he could help.”
Nathalie flushed. “Then why disallow him in the first place?”
“I didn’t make the decision,” he said, putting his hand up. “I was called in to see if he was being truthful.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. “And?”
“We couldn’t coordinate it until this morning, so he had to come back. They didn’t put the head on display, but they left it in refrigeration so we could tend to this. Christophe, Jules, and I met at ten o’clock this morning.”
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