The Black Tower

by Louis Bayard

  “Now,” he says, all air and light. “If you’d be so good as to take your boot off.”

  In the end, Poulain is like the ruffians at Denoyes’. When commanded, he obeys. He can’t see any other road.

  “Ah, you see,” says Vidocq, placing the boot in the clay impress. “Fits like a corset. And look, see there? The crescent—the exact shape. Yes, my friend, I believe we have a match.”

  Not a trace of smugness in him, I will give him that. He has the air of a church artisan admiring someone else’s transept.

  “The boot never lies, my friend. But then it never needs to. Put it back on, there’s a good fellow. No, wait. Allow me to tie.”

  In a single swift motion, he laces Poulain’s boot to the chair leg.

  “No offense, my friend. It’s just a little precaution we take. But you’re still looking a bit pale. Hey, Mama Maltaise! Another carafe for my friend here!”

  How slowly he pours this time around. As if the wine were the accretion of a single thought.

  “Poulain,” he says, pushing the glass gently toward him, “you’re many things—believe me, I know all the things you are—but not a killer. Not yet.”

  Cupping his hand under Poulain’s chin, he leans into him, eyes blazing.

  “Tell us how it went,” he whispers. “And maybe old Vidocq can find something in his bag of mercy, eh?”

  From somewhere in the dark recesses, I hear the Widow Maltaise’s cat, luxuriously bathing its paws.

  “I was lucky,” says Poulain. “That’s all.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean I just happened to be there. Minding my own business, if you must know. Helping myself to a muffin cart.”

  “Your own, of course.”

  Poulain’s eyes squeeze even tighter. “I believe it was left behind by someone.”

  “Go on.”

  “And then I heard some noises, all right? In the alley off Rue des Maçons.”

  “What sort of noises?”

  “Oh, it was—I don’t know—shit-being-knocked-about noises. I thought I’d have a look, in case there was action.”

  “And that’s where you first saw Leblanc.”

  After careful consideration, he gives a nod.

  “What was he doing?” Vidocq asks.

  “Getting his stuffing taken out.”

  “He wasn’t yelling? Or calling out? Most men would have, I think.”

  “He’d have liked to, I’m sure. They had a gag in his mouth.”

  “They,” Vidocq says. “More than one.”

  “Two.”

  “Recognize them?”

  “I should say not,” says Poulain. “You won’t find me consorting with amateurs.”

  “What makes you think they were?”

  “Fuck’s sake, they went through his pockets, but they didn’t take any money! Just a blessed envelope. I mean, why cut down the tree if you’re not going to shake the branches?”

  “Tell us what happened next.”

  I’m not sure I can convey the thing Poulain’s lips do. A twisting, a deformation—we’ll call it a smile.

  “I yelled for the police,” he says.

  Eyes shining, Vidocq pats the smaller man’s hand.

  “Having already made sure there weren’t any police.”

  “’Course.”

  “And it worked? Your little ruse?”

  “Bastards tore off like hares. Blood still on their paws. Didn’t even stop to take the man’s shoes. That’s why I say they weren’t professionals.”

  Vidocq stares at the cue still lying on the billiard table. “So the two men are gone,” he says. “The coast is clear. Down comes Poulain.”

  “I was only going to stay a minute. See what I could find on him.”

  “And you took a watch. A wallet, maybe.”

  Poulain shrugs.

  “His clothes, too?” asks Vidocq.

  “Wasn’t time.”

  “Ha! Someone horning in, eh?”

  “No,” he says. “Nothing like that.”

  And for the first time, something seems to trouble the flat canvas of Poulain’s face. With the faintest shudder, he leans toward Vidocq and whispers:

  “Bastard went and grabbed me.”

  “Who grabbed you?”

  “Why, the dead one. Who else?”

  CHAPTER 7

  From Beyond the Grave

  CAREFULLY, VIDOCQ POURS himself another glass. And this time—I’m watching—he drinks the whole glass. With a voice as level as an altar, he says:

  “To me, that would imply your dead man was not so very dead.”

  “A couple yards short,” Poulain allows.

  “He grabbed you where? Round the ankle?”

  “Both ankles, I think. Wouldn’t have guessed he had the strength in him.”

  “Mm.”

  “Damned inconveniencing.”

  “Yes.”

  “And him babbling the whole time.”

  Vidocq pours himself another glass. And this one he doesn’t drink. Just sets it on the table.

  “Babbling? I thought he was gagged.”

  “I took the gag off, didn’t I? See if he had any gold in his mouth.”

  “And what exactly was he babbling?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. Something about…” Poulain’s eyes spring open. “He’s here. He said somebody or other was here. Said it over and over, like a fucking parrot.”

  The silence, the essential silence of the wineshop pours round us once more. This, I realize, is when you’ve given Vidocq the most. When you shut him up completely.

  “He didn’t tell you who was here, did he?”

  “No. And I wasn’t about to stick around and get a name, thank you very much.”

  Vidocq nods. He nods again, at half the speed.

  “Very well, Poulain, you have this body hanging off you. What next?”

  “Well, what else? Pry him loose and take off.”

  “Ah.”

  “You think I want him getting a read on me? Saint Peter chucks ’em back sometimes, doesn’t he? He turns this one back, it’s La Force for me.”

  Vidocq looks up at the ceiling, as though any minute a body might come crashing through the timbers.

  “The money,” he says. “From the wallet and the watch. What’d you spend it on?”

  “Ran through it at Mère Bariole’s. Me and Agnès had ourselves some sport.”

  And then an unexpected thought draws his voice into a new, a wondering register: “I should’ve bought me some new boots.”

  “Nothing for the baby?” asks Vidocq.

  “Why?”

  Vidocq opens his mouth to answer, but the Widow Maltaise is glaring down at him now, lambent with rage.

  “Finish your business, Vidocq. Or I call the police.”

  There it is: the strange mystique that surrounds him. He is considered apart from everything—even the Prefecture that nominally employs him. The law is one thing, Vidocq another.

  He pats her arm. He clucks in her ear.

  “Just a few more minutes, my sweet. Oh, and the veal was an astonishment to the senses, did I mention?”

  By now, Poulain has had time to work out a new tone. He’s the beggar at the gates of Saint-Sulpice.

  “See here, Monsieur,” he says. “I’ve been straight with you, haven’t I? Answered everything you asked? Seems to me I shouldn’t get any time for this.”

  And Vidocq, he is now the designated representative of Saint-Sulpice, sad in his duty.

  “Oh, I see your point, Poulain, I do. But there is the little matter of you stealing. From a nearly dead man. And confound it, you’ve had such a busy career, I’m not sure Monsieur Henry can look the other way this time.” He pours the thief one last glass. “I’ll certainly speak to him, if you like. Tell him what a help you were.”

  Poulain stares into his glass, unskeining the path of his future. And having followed it as far as he can, he scratches his chin and rubs his scalp and looks up
, dark-eyed, hard-mouthed.

  “Can I keep my pipe?”

  “Of course, my friend, of course. And I’ll tell you what, on Sundays, I’ll send over Agnès. Or else Lise. She’s good for cheering a fellow up, isn’t she? And you know what else? I’ll look in on Jeanne-Victoire when I can. And the baby.”

  “You can have ’em,” growls Poulain. “That slut’s more than a man can bear.”

  Something stirs now behind Vidocq’s eyes as he stares the thief down.

  “She always spoke highly of you, Arnaud.”

  WHO CAN SAY why, at this moment, I should feel obliged to speak—for the first time since coming here?

  “The baby,” I say. “Tell me the baby’s name.”

  Scowling, Poulain spits it out like a seed.

  “Arnaudine.”

  The sight of our faces carves the scowl deeper.

  “It was her idea. She couldn’t give me a boy, so she figured ‘Arnaudine’ was next best. She’s soft that way, if you must know. I always say it’ll be the death of her.”

  “Very wise,” says Vidocq.

  He pushes back his glass and staggers out of his chair—and, before anyone can draw another breath, tips Poulain’s chair over.

  The thief, bound at the ankle, meets the floor with every last bone in his body. A stifled cry, a tremor of doubt. Vidocq stands over him, serene.

  “Skulls are soft, too, aren’t they, Poulain? You’d be amazed.”

  And then, stepping over the thief’s supine figure, he graces me with a smile.

  “That’s enough for today, Doctor.”

  CHAPTER 8

  A Spy Unmasked

  IT’S NEARLY SIX in the evening when Vidocq brings me home. He has borrowed from Allard an overcoat with a triple cape. From a secondhand clothes dealer, he has acquired (without in any obvious way paying for it) a hat, broken near the band. He has run some spit through his hair.

  What better signal that we are returning to civilization? To my own, my native clime, though I no longer recognize it so well. I turn the corner of the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, I pass the old condemned well where Bardou used to sit, I hear the rhythmic grunts of Monsieur Tripot’s pigs, running loose in the gutters. I stand on the front step of my very own home, and still I can’t help thinking I’ve taken a wrong turn.

  But then the door is swung open by Charlotte, parched and freckled, and there can no longer be any doubt.

  “He’s home!” she calls back down the hall. “Madame Carpentier, he’s home!”

  Mother is hanging back by the drawing room doors: a shivery black spectacle in her tulle cap and woolen petticoat. The skirt has been refashioned from an old dress. The slippers have long pulled away from her feet, they seem bound to her now only by habit. Her hands form a funnel round her mouth. She says:

  “Oh.”

  “Monsieur Hector.” Charlotte is charging toward me. “Are you—”

  “He is quite unharmed, ladies,” answers Vidocq, stepping out from behind. “As you can see.”

  I will never be certain which part of him Mother fastens onto first. The shabby hat? The tufts of spit-slicked hair or the bullying breast? I tend to think it’s the confounding bulk of him—the hole he makes in his surroundings.

  “I was about to send for the police,” she says in a thin voice.

  “But there was no need, Madame! The police have already sent for your Hector.” Vidocq takes the back of my neck in a loose, proprietary grip. “This very afternoon, your son has demonstrated exceptional mettle in an inquiry of unspeakable urgency.”

  “Inquiry?”

  “He would be only too glad to tell you, I’m sure, but he has been sworn to secrecy. By the Prefect himself.”

  “By the—”

  “Oh, he’s got a brilliant mind, your son. All of Paris seems to chant his praise! Just the other evening, you know, I was passing an hour or two in the library of the Duchesse de Duras, and she said to me—perhaps you know the Duchess, Madame?—she pulled me by the sleeve, and in that charmingly raspy voice of hers, she said, ‘You must introduce me to the marvelous Dr. Carpentier!’”

  It is those last two words that change the tenor of the conversation. For Mother is even less accustomed to hearing me called Doctor than I am. Her mouth shrinks into a black line.

  Vidocq pauses to puzzle out his offense. “A thousand pardons, Madame. I neglected to introduce myself. I am Vidocq.”

  It’s quite something, the bow he tenders her. Not the gently toppling head of your average Parisian gentleman but something explosive and battle-bred. (I will later learn he was a sergeant-major.) It all but finishes off poor Charlotte, who is rubbing her ears in wonder.

  “This is your daughter, Madame?” asks Vidocq.

  “Our maid,” says Mother, in a voice stiff as whalebone.

  “Ah, I see loveliness is a prerequisite of living chez Carpentier.” His lips graze the knuckles of the young woman’s hand. “What pretty fingers. Like precious corals strewn across a beach.”

  Charlotte’s face, I should say, is always a kind of mottled coral, from bending over fires and clambering up stairs. At this moment, though, something violet bleeds up through the strata of skin. Mother, no fool herself, steps forward and, in the tone used by elderly marquises with dustmen, thanks Vidocq for bringing her son home to her.

  “Why, think nothing of it!” he cackles. “It was my dearest—”

  “Good day, Monsieur.”

  He’s still there when the door closes on him—scratching his ribs, twisting his mouth.

  “So nice to make your acquaintance,” I hear him say from the other side.

  There is nothing shining in Mother’s face, but there seldom is. I can recall her laughing only four times in my life. (Four times more than my father.) Hers is a face for storing time in. Even her limestone-colored eyes, which must once have been beautiful, seem layered with years in some precise and biologically determinable way, like a shelf of sedimentary rock.

  “We had no idea where you were,” she says.

  “I know.”

  “You might have left a note.”

  “I am very sorry, Mother.”

  “As if I don’t have enough to do without wondering if you’re dead or dying or I don’t know what. As if I don’t…”

  She seizes a shawl from the nearest hook, and her voice, when it comes back, is low and snappish, like something prodded out of its corner.

  “Well, take your coat off, for goodness’ sake. Naturally, your boots are filthy. Never mind, there’s no time to brush them. Our guests are seated for dinner.”

  FROM THE MOMENT we first had to take in boarders, Mother persisted in calling them guests. Behind this affectation, I’ve always believed, lies a thin dry vein of hope. Guests leave, don’t they?

  Whereas the three young men crowded round our dining table give every evidence of staying. Forever, possibly. In the beginning, Mother had vowed never to take students because she had heard they eat too much bread. But in the Latin Quarter, you don’t get much choice in the matter. Students are as numerous as the stars, as ineradicable as rats.

  These three arrived in a pack of their own: stout comrades from the École de Droit. They immediately took the liberty of calling my mother Mama, a name she loathes but feels obliged to answer to. Their names are unimportant. (I’ll forget them, anyway, as soon as I’m gone.) Let us call them by their defining traits, beginning at the bottom of the power chain with Lapin. Rabbity face, rabbity soul. Next, Rosbif, named for his favorite meat (too expensive to be served here) and for the way he dines on the flesh of others. Finish with Nankeen, named for the elephant-leg nankeen trousers he sports in the summer, with stirrups of rust-colored braid. The son of a Rouen magistrate, Nankeen is the wealthiest of our boarders, which means that, for 1,500 francs a year, he gets to sleep in my father’s old bedroom (with whomever he has brought back with him that evening). Also, he gets to take his coffee in the courtyard, beneath the lindens.

  Tonight, the thr
ee students are engaged in the preprandial ritual of baiting Mother’s fourth tenant: a retired professor of botany, fully eight decades along. The students call him Father Time. This is not an honorific. Father Time wears a ragged necktie and polishes his shoes with egg yolk. For the last year, he has been selling off his orchid volumes, one by one, to pay the rent and even so is two months behind. Mother might have evicted him long ago, but he is an old friend of the family, although neither he nor my mother ever speaks of days past.

  “Father Time!” shouts Rosbif. “You’ve got something in your beard, old boy.”

  “What’d you—I didn’t quite—”

  In addition to his other infirmities, Father Time is nearly deaf. He used to bring an ear trumpet to the table, but the students took to tossing croutons into it.

  “There!” cries Rosbif. “I’ve got it! Why, I do believe it’s a grub. Imagine, gentlemen, a whole colony of fauna living in Father Time’s beard.”

  “Call the exterminator,” says Lapin.

  “No, too hasty, my friend! We must call in France’s greatest scientists. There are species here entirely unknown to man.”

  “Charlotte,” says Mother, gently unfolding her napkin. “The pears look delicious.”

  This is her way of changing a subject. It is also her way of cloaking her own economies, for she is most lavish in praising what has cost her the least. The pears, for instance, cost two liards apiece. The potatoes were bought (slightly rotten) for ten sous. The mutton she personally haggled down to a franc and fifty centimes. She will praise them in that order.

  “Thank you, Madame.”

  Charlotte’s voice is barely audible as she circuits the table. How distracted she is! She must still be feeling Vidocq’s lips on her hand. I watch her wandering out of the room, only to wander right back in. I watch her pour cream into Lapin’s wineglass. And when she tries to take my plate before I’ve even started eating, I finally have to tap her on the wrist.

  She gives me a private grin, and I give her one back. Because I don’t know what she’s about to do.

  “Monsieur Hector,” she announces, “has had quite the adventure today.”