* * * * *
"I have an interesting theory," Aristide said, when he returned at five o'clock to Brasseur's office. "Or rather, I had a theory, but it seems to have reached a dead end. Would you like to hear it?"
"I'd like to hear something useful," Brasseur grumbled, as he settled with a grateful sigh on the chair at his desk, "but 'interesting' will do for the moment. What's your bright idea?"
"Beaupr?au happens to have a dissected and mummified monkey in his personal collection of curiosities," said Aristide. "According to Moreau-Beaupr?au's valet, if you recall-a certain eccentric anatomist named Fragonard preserved it for him a few years ago. Moreau and I went looking for him, and we learned at the Veterinary School in Alfort that Fragonard, as I suspected, didn't confine his dissections and experiments to animal cadavers. He knows perfectly well how to work on human corpses."
Brasseur, with a faintly nauseated expression, stared at him in dawning comprehension.
"You think?"
"Beaupr?au already knew who Fragonard was, and what he did, and where to find him. If you had an inconvenient corpse to dispose of, and you happened to know of a slightly mad anatomist who prepared sculptures to order that are created from flayed and dissected bodies, and who of course was eager for human cadavers to work with, wouldn't you seize your opportunity?"
"Now wait a minute," said Brasseur. "You're saying Beaupr?au could have had Saint-Landry's body delivered to this Fragonard to make mincemeat of it, so it couldn't be recognized. But that body had a cut throat, a missing tongue, and a few nasty slashes on its chest. Not even a mad anatomist, if he was a reasonably law-abiding fellow, could overlook the rather obvious fact that his nice fresh subject had been murdered."
"That's where my wonderful theory falls apart with a resounding crash," Aristide said. He flung himself on a chair and rubbed his eyes. "I found Fragonard. He had a human cadaver he was about to work on-I didn't ask him for details. But I got a look at it, and it wasn't Saint-Landry."
"Wasn't?"
"Not a bit like him. Older, taller, much less respectable-looking. No cut throat, no wounds. Moreover, Fragonard said he'd been hanged."
"Hanged!" Brasseur echoed him. "Are you sure?"
"That's what Fragonard told me," Aristide said. "Why would he lie?"
"Oh, I can think of plenty of reasons why he'd lie?body-snatching is illegal, after all."
"Well, the man certainly didn't die of a slit throat. Anyway, what it comes down to is that I've been following a false trail. Now what on earth do I do?"
"D'you think Beaupr?au is still at the heart of it?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything any more."
"But there's one thing I know," said Brasseur, "and that's the fact that we haven't had a hanging in town for at least a month."
Aristide digested this fresh intelligence in baffled silence. "But I saw him," he said at last.
"Of course, it's possible your corpse came from the nearest town to Paris with a public gallows," Brasseur suggested.
"But that makes no sense. Executed criminals are fair game, aren't they? Wouldn't lecturers and surgeons fight over the chance to get their hands on a fresh, legal corpse? So why," Aristide continued, as Brasseur nodded, "would a small-town executioner cart his corpse all the way to Paris when he'd have at least one local doctor ready to pay him for it, probably right at the foot of the scaffold?"
"Maybe your mad anatomist pays better?"
"I doubt he'd pay enough to cover the extra cost of cartage. And imagine bringing in a corpse past the toll barriers! You'd never get away with it-unless you bribed the customs inspectors. I don't know, Brasseur?it scarcely seems worth it."
"So where did this corpse come from, then?" Brasseur shook his head, with a grimace. "That's altogether too many bodies-"
Aristide stared at him. "But that's it," he said, starting to his feet. "Dear Lord, that's it!"
"What's 'it'?"
"Too many bodies! A corpse we can't find, and a corpse that shouldn't be where it is-I think I know how it was done?and I think?oh, Lord."
"Eh?"
"Moreau?he looked a bit green and backed away at Fragonard's when we took a look at the cadaver. He seemed over-squeamish at the sight of what was, after all, a fresh, intact corpse; I'd expect a grown man, especially one who's used to hunting, to have a stronger stomach than that-"
"What of it? Ravel, what are you getting at?"
"I wonder-what if he wasn't revolted by what he saw there, but simply startled by something he never expected to see?"
"What?"
Aristide threw on his overcoat again. "Come on-we have to go back to the H?tel de Beaupr?au, right away."
He sat silently thinking it out during the brief ride to Rue St. Dominique, Brasseur fuming beside him. Night had fallen by the time they arrived at the gates of the mansion. Leaving Brasseur to pay the driver, he leaped out of the fiacre and hurried once again in to the courtyard. A lackey answered the bell at the servants' entrance but, recognizing him, told him that Monsieur Moreau was busy and could not be disturbed.
"I expect you can help me instead," Aristide said as the lackey began to shut the door. "I only need the answer to one question."
"Monsieur?"
"What did Monsieur de Castagnac die of?"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Cavalier of the Apocalypse Page 36
