Bones of Paris (9780345531773)

by King, Laurie R.

  “Secondly, I’m going to figure Pip is one of a series of murders. Why and who I don’t know—like I said, this is how I’m looking at them, and I’m just trying to include you in my thoughts.

  “There are three names that have come up time and again in relation to Pip Crosby. Those are Man Ray, Didi Moreau, and Dominic Charmen—”

  “Oh, Monsieur, you cannot be serious about—”

  “You said you wouldn’t interrupt.”

  Doucet raised his hands and sat back again, all but saying aloud how little interest he had in Le Comte.

  “I’ll start with the American, Man Ray. He knew Pip Crosby. He took photographs of her. He has pictures with models looking like the victims in brutal murders, and he makes the kind of motion pictures you wouldn’t let your mother go to, although I’m hardly an impartial judge of that kind of shock-art. But both those things mean that he knows actors, and he hires models. He’s friends with Moreau, who uses human bones in his Displays. Ray brings Moreau objects. He likes damaged women. His current one looks like she could be Pip Crosby’s sister.”

  What he couldn’t say: Man Ray knows well how to use the kind of flash used in those horror-photographs.

  “Then there’s Didi Moreau. An extremely odd egg, lives in a kind of mausoleum—hasn’t changed so much as an antimacassar since his mother died. He has an equally ghoulish imagination and a basement workshop full of bones and body parts. He’s trained in taxidermy, and has boxes filled with carrion beetles that he drops rats and you-name-it into. They’re too small for a person, but he has both the skills and the tools for taking apart a larger subject. And beyond that, he’s—he’s cold, I guess is how I’d describe it. As if his Displays are the most important thing in the world, and everything else—everyone else—is only there to provide him with raw material.

  “But using his personality as a reason to suspect him runs up against the problem that it works the other way, too. He’s clever enough to do away with a number of people, but doing it without getting caught? That might be more or less accidental.” Personally, he could see Moreau absent-mindedly letting bodies pile up in his sitting room. Perhaps if the maid was in charge of disposal—but that was too far-fetched. He went on, since he could mention none of Moreau’s hidden possessions.

  “Then there’s Dominic Char—yes, I’m sorry—Charmentier. Le Comte. He’s worked with both Moreau and Ray, he brings Moreau boxes of whatnot. If Moreau sees the rest of the world as being there to bring him raw material, Charmentier sees the world as being there to serve him. And sure, that’s something that goes along with having fifteen generations of money, but it’s also a thing that I’ve seen in the kind of killers who find morality an inconvenience. You’re a cop, Doucet. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Doucet gave a noncommittal bob to his head.

  “Look at the man’s house,” Stuyvesant argued. “Have you seen it? The room with the plaster faces?”

  “Sarah told me about it.”

  “What kind of a person would collect those things? I know the man has paid a heavy price for his country, and he talks about the Grand-Guignol as some kind of psychotherapy for the world, but it seems to me his collection takes things a little far. Those faces, they make you wonder.”

  “Plaster masks are a long way from murder.”

  “But still, if your face had been destroyed, would you want your image decorating someone’s wall?”

  “There’s nothing new about the aristocracy’s lack of sensitivity,” Doucet pointed out. “Both our countries had revolutions because of it.”

  “It’s not just lack of sensitivity. He … sometimes he’s like a walking version of that theater, doing things that are just hair-raising.”

  “May I respond now?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Le Comte is a war hero, from a prominent Parisian family. He single-handedly supports a number of organizations for the indigent, the wounded—and the families of policemen killed in the line of duty. He lectures at the Sorbonne, he is personal friends with half the politicians in France, and if nothing else, he would be recognized wherever he went. I am no particular friend of his class, but this man has earned the right to a quirky hobby like the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol.”

  “Don’t you think those could be a clever devil hiding his tracks?”

  “M. Stuyvesant, listen to yourself. Do you have any proof for these accusations? Any evidence? Anything other than your dislike for the aristocracy?” The sharp edge to Doucet’s voice was not simply the impatience of a policeman, it was personal. And Stuyvesant knew where it came from: a yellow-haired, one-handed Englishwoman demanded that Doucet act; his job as a cop made action impossible.

  “Not a bit. Yet.”

  Doucet shook his head. “M. Stuyvesant, if you wish to remain in France, I strongly suggest that you do not pursue your baseless suspicions.”

  “Okay, how about Moreau?”

  “Why him, and not M. Ray?”

  “You should be looking at both of them. But Moreau gives me the creeps. He … I didn’t like the way he tried to get Sarah to take off her hand.”

  Doucet grimaced. “He did make the thing. She’d have to take it off for him to look at it, wouldn’t she?”

  “I know. It’s just … He seemed more interested in the stump than in the hand itself. And then there’s this.”

  He took from his pocket the object that he’d removed from Pip’s bedroom late last night, wrapped in a clean-enough handkerchief. He laid it on Doucet’s desk, folding back the linen. “I got this from one of those Didi Moreau boxes that Pip Crosby had on her bedroom wall. I’m no expert, but that looks to me like a human finger.”

  Doucet picked it up between thumb and forefinger, holding it to the light like a speculating gemcutter. “You could be right. But what of it? It’s no crime to possess human bones.”

  “No, but how you get them can be another matter. You know those carrion beetles? Well, this bone seems really … fresh.”

  Doucet placed the object back on the handkerchief with the same distaste Stuyvesant had felt at the fossilized feces. However: “His neighbors might not like it, but I would doubt that it’s against the law to feed your beetles pieces of human being. If, for example, you got them from a hospital.”

  “And if you cut them from the person against their will?”

  “It’s just a bone,” the cop said. “No indications of violence.”

  “Inspector Doucet, I don’t have the keenest imagination in Paris, but I have no trouble seeing Moreau as a guy who would happily amputate a hand to get at the bones.”

  The two men looked at each other, then looked away.

  Stuyvesant was tempted to ask how Sarah had reacted at being told to steer clear of her boss. However, he didn’t think a direct question would be a great idea.

  “How’s Sarah?”

  “Fine,” Doucet said automatically. “Busy. Le Comte is having a party Wednesday—the night of the full moon.”

  “I know, he invited me.”

  “He did?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s just that, I understand the venue is small and the invitation list … equally so.”

  “Too exclusive for the likes of me, you mean?”

  “No, I’m sure you are …”

  “Sarah was there. I think he asked me because he knew I was a friend of hers.”

  The flic slapped shut the file on his desk. “Anyway. She’s very busy planning it. I’m thinking of taking her off for a few days, after she’s finished.”

  Stuyvesant’s internal smile faded at this deft reversal of claims. “Good plan,” he said politely. “She does have a tendency to work too hard.” Then he caught himself: one-upmanship was a stupid game to play with this man. He slumped back against the chair. “Sorry, I’m being petty. I like Sarah a lot. I’m glad she’s happy.”

  Doucet eyed him with mistrust, but after a minute, he took out his cigarettes. “I will look into the
lives of Moreau and this American photographer. If I take the police pathologist along with me to Moreau’s house, it could save some time. As for M. Ray, it might be simpler to have his visa revoked.”

  “Sending him back to New York, free to carry on?”

  “If he is, in fact, guilty of anything.”

  “As you say.”

  Doucet tapped at his cigarette a few times. “My responsibility is to Paris, not New York. Still, I would not wish that on my conscience. He may stay, for the present.”

  “And you suggest we don’t even look at Charmentier?”

  “If I did see any evidence that he should be investigated,” Doucet said reluctantly, “I would do so. Even though my superiors would not make it easy for me.”

  “On the other hand,” Stuyvesant supplied, “who’d be surprised if a blunt American were to stumble into Charmentier, here and there?”

  Doucet fixed him with a long, hard gaze, which Stuyvesant moved to deflect.

  “I take it you haven’t talked Sarah into quitting?”

  “She refuses to consider it until after the party.”

  “So she is vulnerable.”

  “In any number of ways.”

  “You know my history, Doucet. You know I’m good at what I do.”

  “When you are not stumbling drunk in a night-club.”

  Ouch. “That was before I knew what was involved,” he pointed out. “Who was involved.”

  “There can be no more such mistakes.”

  “No.”

  “And you will inform me immediately, if you turn up any pertinent information.”

  “Yes.”

  Both men stood. Stuyvesant waited, to see if Doucet would put out a hand, but the cop had one more thing on his mind. “Monsieur, you are aware that the police disapprove of civilians carrying hand-guns?”

  “Yeah, I’m aware of that.”

  Doucet listened and looked for the hidden meaning, and found it. The two men exchanged a firm clasp, and Stuyvesant left.

  He dodged across the Pont Neuf to the pointed end of the Île de la Cité, where he leaned on the rail, watching a fisherman put together his long pole.

  He was glad for a declaration of truce, between him and the cop. But Doucet was right, there could be no more slips. Any careless word or gesture could put Sarah in danger. Any failure of attention could let a key fact slip away—and put Sarah in danger.

  Exactly as he and Bennett between them had done, three years ago.

  FORTY

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Harris Stuyvesant was standing in an art gallery.

  At least, it was supposed to be an art gallery. Sarah had given him the address, saying there were several Didi Displays on the walls, but the place looked more like a junk dealer’s.

  A nicked and dust-impregnated elephant’s foot umbrella stand with a spray of peacock’s feathers in it, one of which was splattered with something he hoped was only brown paint. Three stuffed finches with jeweled eyes, threaded onto the sort of metal skewer used by Turkish restaurants. A boot—just a plain old boot with mended laces, but displayed inside an ornate gilt frame more suited to a Renaissance painting. On a long display shelf stood a skeleton, but of what? After a closer look, he decided the object included the remains of three or four different animals, pieced together to create an impossible creature: the skull of a small crocodile and front feet of some paddling creature, its back feet had the blunt nails of a dog, and it all came to an end in a long prehensile tail of some kind of monkey.

  As he wandered through the exhibits, the room’s original odor—surprisingly fresh and citrusy, as if someone was making lemonade in a back room—gave way to the smell of damp earth, although there was no sign of a garden, or even an open window. He gave a mental shrug, walked on—then jerked to attention as the next breath plunged him into the icy panic of the trenches.

  The bespectacled organism who had greeted his entrance sniggered. “Monsieur, do not be concerned, it is not a gas attack, merely the Odorama.”

  Stuyvesant stared, first at him, then at the direction of his pointing finger. Indeed, the terrifying smell was already fading, and it did seem to emanate from a peculiar contraption in the corner.

  A bicycle wheel, ticking gently clockwise, its spokes mounted with fifteen perfume atomizers. As he watched, one of the bulbs edged into the noon position, where a miniature set of paddles waited, and a ridged trigger wire. The bulb pressed the trigger, and the paddles snapped down, releasing a puff of scent.

  Banana.

  “Un opéra d’odeur,” the man explained, then translated in heavily accented English: “A symphony of scent.”

  “Un polyphonie de puanteur,” Stuyvesant commented. The man giggled.

  “Yes, Monsieur, the odors of life are not always pleasant.”

  The current one was cloyingly sweet, as if he’d stuck his head into a vat of candy floss. He moved away, before it could change to rotting corpses or dog shit.

  “I’m interested in Didi Moreau,” he told the man.

  “Are we not all? This piece is by Le Didi.” The gallery owner made a proud gesture at the skewered songbirds. “And this here.” His hand displayed the glories of the unnatural skeleton. “And in the next room, we have more.”

  The adjoining room contained several Moreau boxes, and as he studied them, Stuyvesant had to admit that they did contain that artistic je ne sais quoi, a sensation that insinuated itself into the viewer’s mind and touched off a note of response. One of the boxes, for example, focused on a childhood day at the beach: sand, a square of faded postcard, a doll-sized beach umbrella. One of the squares was empty, although its sides and back were painted; after a while, he decided that its pink was the exact color of sunburn. The pain of nostalgia, he guessed.

  “Would Monsieur care to see some of Didi’s … older work?”

  The man might have been offering dirty postcards. Stuyvesant summoned the appropriate enthusiasm, and waited while the man unlocked a door.

  He looked around the room in surprise. “This is taxidermy.”

  “Yes, Monsieur, much as I enjoy the Displays, I find it a pity that Didi has moved on from his Tableaux. We are fortunate to have a few.”

  Stuyvesant could see why the door was kept locked, even in Paris.

  The Victorians had been big on taxidermy tableaux, dressing up thirty stuffed mice, for example, like a classroom of schoolchildren, or arranging elaborately dressed kittens into a formal wedding. They also had a peculiar fondness for freaks: two-headed sheep, puppies with an extra pair of legs coming from their shoulder blades.

  Moreau’s work might have given even Victorians pause.

  A bloody murder scene in an old-fashioned kitchen, enacted by red squirrels; a battlefield littered by dozens of tiny uniformed white mice, sprawled in death or advancing with bayonets fixed; a Mediaeval torture conducted by two lizards on a ginger kitten stretched on a miniature rack.

  Any impulse to black laughter died at the sight of the room’s other pieces.

  Somehow, rape, sodomy, and mass orgies lost any amusement value when the contorted figures were all six inches high and covered by baby-soft fur.

  Stuyvesant cleared his throat. “As you say, these are certainly … unique. Surrealists must find them, er, viscerally exciting.”

  The man clapped his hands in the thrill of finding a kindred spirit. “Precisely! Oh, Monsieur, I will admit that I have great hopes for these. Monsieur Didi was here just the other day, in conversation with another artist, discussing how the Tableaux might be used in a film.”

  Stuyvesant turned, seeing his own face in the man’s thick glasses. “Oh yes? And who might that be?”

  “Monsieur Man Ray. Do you know him? A genius, his film on …”

  Stuyvesant let the man run on. But as he studied the frozen twist of the features on the tortured kitten, he could not help seeing the agony in the pieced-together photographs.

  With a group of artists whose highest ambition was the outrageous and
the offensive, who was to say where they drew the line? When the most basic tenet of a man’s philosophy was that society’s mores and values were there to be smashed and pissed upon, why not extend that to human life?

  So what if a girl’s mother and uncle were in an agony of uncertainty? So what if a little boy went to bed without his mother’s brassy blonde head bending down to kiss him good-night? What did that matter—so long as the great God Art prevailed over the City of Light?

  Forty minutes after walking away from the de Sade orgy of hamsters, Stuyvesant stepped inside the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol.

  The audience was different from the previous week. A lot more women, for one thing, their nervous laughter dominating the room even before the curtain rose.

  No, not nervous: anticipatory. They knew what was coming, he decided, and were looking forward to it. And, he saw, many of those in the confessional-like boxes had men at their sides, with a great deal of physical contact going on, even with the lights still up.

  The lights dimmed, and he braced himself, calling to mind what both Nancy and Sarah had told him: the shock was deliberate, the emotional equivalent of a Scandinavian sauna and icy bath.

  It was a different play from the one he’d seen with Nancy the week before, although it had much the same effect: relentlessly horrific, startlingly realistic, utterly disturbing. This one had an unexpectedly Amazonian edge to it, with two women trapping a handsome young—

  Stuyvesant jumped when something touched his leg. He stared at his neighbor, but her eyes were fixed on the stage. He looked down, and indeed, it was her slim hand, resting above his knee. Could she possibly be unaware …?

  Then the hand moved, and he was in no doubt. The fingers slid gently down the inner side of his leg, then traced a circle up again, then down. Each time, they traveled a fraction of an inch closer to his fly. Another minute, two at the most, and things would have got out of hand.

  He peeled up her fingers and returned her arm to her lap, sitting back amused, if physically uncomfortable.