Sensational

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

Nathalie laid out her clothes and returned to the living room. Papa sighed over his paperwork, rubbing his eyes.

  Maman’s eyes went to him. “What did you find out?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How can that be?” Maman tilted her head.

  “There’s no mention,” he said, scratching his chin, “of anything untoward or criminal. As far as Saint-Mathurin Asylum is concerned, Brigitte Baudin never harmed a soul and died in her sleep.”

  Nothing criminal. Her parents, the asylum … everyone was going to pretend this never happened?

  No further anguish for Véronique’s family.

  Or for Tante’s.

  Another realization descended on her, dew glistening on a grass blade. “They’re not classifying her as a suicide. Is that so she can have a proper funeral Mass and burial?”

  “Yes,” said Maman, returning to the lace she was sewing. “Perhaps her troubled soul will … be less troubled.”

  “Or even find some peace,” added Papa, dragging his thumb across his mustache. “After many years without.”

  Nathalie wanted to ask more questions. A hundred of them. About Aunt Brigitte. About what kind of sister she was to Papa. About her disappointment in love. About her stillborn child. About her dog, Choupinet. About those early days after the transfusion.

  Not now. Not today. Someday she would, because that was one way to keep Tante alive. Ask questions about her. Get to know her in death maybe more than in life. It didn’t have to all be on the day they learned of her death.

  Today she had other questions to ask. Of Jules, in several hours.

  * * *

  A light rain tickled Nathalie’s skin as soon as she left the apartment building, and she considered making that her reason not to go.

  The sun nestled behind buildings to the west. Clouds prowled overhead like a pack of restless wolves.

  Would this deter Jules?

  No, it wouldn’t. He was as stubborn as she, if not more. If he was determined to meet her, he’d be there no matter what.

  She quickly ran back to the apartment for her umbrella and resumed her trek.

  The wolves unleashed their attack just as she arrived at the base of the Tour Eiffel.

  He had better be here.

  Nathalie took a seat on the elevator for the slow, grinding ride up to the second landing. Although it had room for dozens of people, the elevator only had ten or so people in it. Some curious stragglers were ever-present. As with the morgue. One could always count on some people forging on in inclement weather to see whatever it was they wanted to see.

  The elevator thudded to a dull halt. A slew of tourists huddled in a group, eager to take the ride back down. The wind on the second landing was gustier than on the ground, so much so, she was afraid she’d lose her umbrella. Most of the souvenir carts and snack stalls were closed, and one lone woman selling cigarettes was packing up.

  The rain pounded with such intensity she couldn’t see the temporary Le Figaro office clearly. Was Jules there?

  Someone brushed against her shoulder, and she slipped, regaining her footing just before a tumble. She reprimanded the clumsy party and got a response in a language she couldn’t identify. She wished she knew how to reprimand in every language.

  Jules came into sight. He was standing under a crossbeam near Le Figaro’s office, closed with curtains drawn.

  Nathalie called to him, but he didn’t hear her. Of course, she realized; he’d done a thought reading yesterday. She waved, and when he finally caught sight of her, he waved in return. His face was in silhouette. Between that and the rain, she couldn’t make out his expression until she came up to him.

  Nervousness.

  Or discomfort.

  Was he that concerned about a conversation with her? She hadn’t wounded him that badly last time.

  Had she?

  The rain intensified even more as she drew closer. It was a mistake to come here under these conditions, but at least she’d found him. They could retreat to Café Brebant on the first platform and talk there, regardless of weather.

  “Where’s your umbrella?” she said, holding hers over both of them.

  “When I left, it was clear. I didn’t expect … this. I’m so glad you came,” he said, his voice suggesting otherwise.

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  She turned around. It took her a moment to realize who it was—somehow he looked unlike his usual self. Maybe it was the wide-brimmed hat?

  Ah, he wasn’t wearing his glasses, either.

  “Monsieur Cadoret, you’re out in this rain as well? If we aren’t all so very dedicated to the République, no one is. How are you?”

  “I’m very well, Nathalie,” he said, smiling. In a way that didn’t at all seem familiar. And this was a man she saw nearly every day.

  Nathalie glanced at Jules, and only then did she truly understand what his face had shown, what his tone had conveyed.

  Profound, soul-clenching fear.

  43

  Nathalie tried to garner more from Jules’s face, but his eyes wouldn’t meet hers.

  They were riveted on M. Cadoret.

  She followed his glare. The man’s bland, nondescript face betrayed nothing.

  “This all worked out splendidly, despite the weather. Thank you for joining us,” said M. Cadoret, his voice deeper, with a different timbre than usual. He presented her a folded sheet of paper with two hands, as if it were a gift. “I didn’t want to have to reconceive the ending again today.”

  The ending to what?

  Jules tucked a wind-blown tress behind her ear, his fingertips brushing her head and pressing lightly. “To the play,” he said, voice low and strained.

  Notes of comprehension played in Nathalie’s head. A broken melody in the wrong key, familiar and foreign all at once.

  “You’re Le R—” The word caught in her throat, able neither to stay there nor to emerge. She swallowed hard. “Le Rasoir.”

  She unfolded the paper. A biblical quote on one side.

  A death map of the Exposition on the other, with the cross over the Venezuela Pavilion as found with the Princess.

  And a giant cross in red ink over the Tour Eiffel.

  He smirked as he adjusted his coat, deftly moving a pistol into his outside pocket. She thought she saw the glint of a knife as well. “I recognize the look on your face. Him?” M. Cadoret’s lips twisted in mockery. His voice was different. Had he been altering his voice all this time? “‘I walked by him daily, hardly took notice beyond mere courtesy.’ Yes, you and everyone else.”

  Nathalie was too stunned to reply. She shoved the map inside her skirt pocket.

  “I was thrilled to get that gruesome map from that religious lunatic outside the morgue. What a keepsake.” He put his hand over his heart. “It was so unintentionally appropriate, I couldn’t help but use it the last time. And now.”

  Nathalie swung her umbrella at him. The wind slowed the momentum and he deflected it with ease.

  “You won’t need that, just like Jules didn’t need his knife.” M. Cadoret swiped it out of her hand. He held it out to a woman who was rushing by, shielding herself from the rain. The woman took the umbrella, thanked him in what sounded like Dutch, and hurried off to take cover.

  M. Cadoret turned back to them just as Jules threw a punch, glancing the killer’s jaw and knocking off his hat. Jules tried again but M. Cadoret, taller and stronger, caught his fist, shoved him away, and aimed the pocketed pistol at him.

  “Help!” Nathalie’s cry died in the wind and came right back to her. No one heard her. No one saw her. Everyone was either looking out at the city or taking cover. All were too far away.

  “Don’t try that again, Young Prince.”

  “You wouldn’t.” Tiny icicles moved through Nathalie’s veins, rendering her cold and still, and slowing down her thoughts. The only thing she could do was extend her hand to help Jules as he regained his footing.

  “You don’t know me at al
l, Mademoiselle Baudin. You don’t even know my name. Samuel Pelerine, as it were.” He stooped to retrieve his hat, eyes on both of them. The wind flapped open his coat, just long enough for Nathalie to get a glimpse of something in his inside pocket, bulky with candle-like strings.

  “Now, every show needs an audience, particularly for the last act. That’s what this is all about, after all. The finale. The denouement.” He made a dramatic, sweeping gesture. “My initial ending was going to be uncharacteristically subtle. A knife to the back for Jules and disappear, like Jack from across the Channel. Now that he has an understudy—it’s not the first time you’ve played the part of a boy, Nathalie, from what I hear—I have to improvise.”

  “You’re bluffing,” sneered Jules. “I don’t suppose you smuggled a guillotine up here?”

  “Obviously not. But did you know one of the designs proposed for the tower at the Exposition Universelle was a titanic guillotine?”

  Nathalie had heard that.

  Pelerine pointed to the elevator. “Worry none; you won’t be donning a white scarf, and you get to keep your hair and your head. In a manner of speaking.” He stared at each of them, not caring about the rain, the wind, anything. His eyes were filled with manic purpose, drowning out the humanity she’d thought she’d seen in him, day in and day out. “No need to read from the script, either. Most of my victims couldn’t read French anyway. It was enough to see them weep over it; gave some flair to the humiliation, you know? Come now, let’s promenade up to the third platform.”

  Nathalie didn’t budge. “Absolutely not.”

  “Absolutely yes. Did you not see the bomb I’m carrying? A pistol, a knife, a bomb. I’m prepared! I’ve been wearing this bomb here and there for ages. Finally I get to do something with it,” he said, patting his coat. “Potentially, that is. I’ll throw it into a few gawkers trying to get a scenic view, if you resist. Same is true if you alert anyone.”

  “A bomb won’t work in the rain,” snapped Jules.

  Pelerine leaned in between them. “Are you so sure?”

  No. Nathalie wasn’t so sure. Jules’s grimace suggested he wasn’t, either.

  “Not another sound,” said Pelerine, his voice slithering around them. “I do the talking now. I do everything now.”

  The rain and wind let up as they crossed the platform and up a few stairs to the elevator. A couple walked by, huddling under an umbrella. Oblivious to the fact that they were brushing coats with a killer and two hostages.

  Disbelief emitted from her like sweat. M. Cadoret is Le Rasoir. How?

  The thought played in her head again and again. Her stomach roiled as she thought about how he’d observed her having visions, watched her touch the pane from the other side of the glass. How he’d taken her statement down for the Suitor, William Fitzgerald. Saw her distress about the murders. Spoke of Dr. Nicot being upset at the delivery of a human head.

  She shivered, and she couldn’t stop shivering. It could be noon in July and she’d still be shivering.

  They reached the elevator in silence, squeezing in with a handful of people speaking various languages. As the doors narrowed, Nathalie saw a familiar gait across the platform. The head was down in the wind, but she’d know that walk anywhere.

  Had he seen? Did he know?

  It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  How?

  The elevator doors closed. Nathalie held her breath, debating whether or not to scream.

  No. Think. Be deliberate.

  Shoulder-to-shoulder with Jules, she briefly squeezed his quivering hand.

  Or was it hers that was trembling?

  She knew he was thinking of an escape, too. What to do, when to do it. She’d been robbed of the memory of this top platform, but he wasn’t. He’d take action.

  Wouldn’t he?

  The chug, chug, chug to the top viewing platform was a chime on a clock, dooming them.

  A man next to her hummed, and a boy on the other side sucked on a lollipop. A pair of French girls behind them talked about the landmarks they hoped to see, wondering just how far the view would extend.

  When the doors opened, Pelerine held them by the shoulders and let everyone else exit. “Time for the conclusion,” he said with a wink, nudging them forward onto the platform. The rain intensified again. “Where the Young Prince, distraught by everything, jumps off the castle. As does his understudy. Then, after pretending I was only a bystander to this Romeo and Juliet tragedy and feigning shock, I’ll move on to the next of my plays.”

  Nathalie’s muscles tensed.

  “If we’re lucky,” Pelerine snickered, “Monsieur Gustave Eiffel is in his apartment and will see the whole thing.”

  Fury raged through Nathalie like a greedy fire. “Jules, go!”

  He glanced at her and ran. She thrust her elbow into Pelerine’s side, almost knocking him into a group rushing onto the elevator. Nathalie dashed after Jules, passed him, and rounded a corner.

  The bomb.

  “Wait, Jules! His bomb!”

  A guard straight ahead put up his hand. “Arrêtez!”

  “That man has a bomb!” Nathalie yelled, pointing. She came to a halt, Jules right behind her.

  “I’ll get him.” Jules took off in the direction they came from before her outstretched hand could stop him.

  Nathalie raced after Jules; the guard followed. She crashed into Jules as she turned the corner. Pelerine marched toward them, pistol aimed at Jules. Nathalie and Jules backed up.

  “Arrêtez!” shouted the guard from behind her, weaker this time. She could tell he was scared.

  Weren’t they all?

  Pelerine fired the gun.

  She flinched at the sound, her heart thumping ever louder.

  The guard howled in pain. Where was he shot? She was afraid to look but ventured a peek. He gripped his shoulder.

  Not fatal.

  He’ll live.

  Jules lunged at Pelerine. He swiped at the gun and missed. The two grappled until Pelerine grabbed Jules’s arm, twisting it behind his back.

  Then he pressed the barrel of the gun against Jules’s temple.

  Nathalie froze, just for an instant. Unable to swallow, to breathe, to do anything other than see what was in front of her.

  “Let’s try this again.” Pelerine gritted his teeth and dragged Jules over to the railing. “Get up there.”

  Jules ceased to struggle, making himself dead weight, purposely clumsy to push. Nathalie lurched toward them, but Pelerine trained the gun on her.

  “I said, I need an audience,” Pelerine hissed. “But I’ll shoot you if I have to.”

  Nathalie’s eyes picked up movement near the elevator as a lone figure emerged.

  It was him she’d seen.

  “Christophe!”

  He ran toward them.

  Pelerine spun around, dropping Jules.

  “A deus ex machina? Don’t you get yourself killed, too, Gagnon,” taunted Pelerine. He pointed the gun at Christophe. “He isn’t worth it. He lied to you for me, remember? For money.”

  Christophe angled himself low and charged him. Pelerine fired a shot. The clang of a bullet striking iron reverberated across the platform as Christophe threw himself at Pelerine’s knees. The killer sidestepped the move and ran. A powerful gust of wind burst through the tower as he turned the corner.

  Pelerine slipped on the wet surface and slammed into the railing.

  Right over the edge of the platform.

  The lower two-thirds of his body hung off the railing in between the steel girders. Nathalie hurried over to him and looked him in the eyes. Eyes that she’d seen almost daily for the last few months on a cordial, smiling face, that had greeted her with convincing friendliness.

  Eyes she had looked through while he was killing his victims.

  Eyes that now looked hollow to her, filled with nothing but what was before them. A reflection. No better than a mirror. Just another disguise in this man’s show.

  What do I do? />
  Time stopped.

  The rain stopped.

  The wind continued.

  Pelerine stared back at her. He swung his legs and tried to hoist himself up, unable to find any purchase.

  “Take my hand,” she said, offering it to him. Not because she wanted to see him live, but because she wanted him to withstand the humiliation of a trial. To pay for what he’d done and tried to do. To get the guillotine he’d given others.

  He laughed.

  Laughed?

  “It wasn’t even a real bomb,” he whispered. “Made for an entertaining threat, didn’t it?”

  Nathalie fought the urge to strike his hands. She was better than that.

  Yet she couldn’t look him in the eye anymore.

  “Come on,” she said, peeking over her shoulder. Christophe and Jules were coming her way. “We’ll help you up.”

  Pelerine shook his head. “Last bow.”

  He let go.

  44

  Pelerine’s body hitting the surface below made a sound Nathalie hoped she’d be able to forget someday.

  Thank goodness she’d looked away.

  Christophe and Jules came up behind her, as did the rest of the crowd that had taken to hiding.

  People pressed forward in a counterpoint to that day at Palais des Beaux-Arts, which saw everyone scatter.

  “Are you all unharmed?”

  “Who was that?”

  “Why didn’t you help him up?”

  “How’s the guard?’

  And so on and so on. Even people speaking other languages approached them, voices trailing up in the manner of queries. It wasn’t the first time Nathalie heard a swarm of questions that both did and didn’t need to be answered. Nor was it likely to be the last. Not in Paris, not among the crowd that wanted to be a part of everything.

  The guard was gone. A trail of blood dotted the platform like bread crumbs in a fairy tale, leading to the elevator.

  The poor man. Is someone helping him?

  Three other guards stormed across the platform, and Christophe hastened through an explanation of what happened. With a combination of words and gestures, Nathalie and Jules politely assured the small gathering of concerned visitors that they were not hurt.