by Louis Bayard
The faintest twitching then in Charles’ hand, as if he were going to protest the turn of our conversation.
“I don’t know what he is,” I say.
And once again, I’m filled with a surprising longing for my father. I want him to be, yes, in this very carriage, telling us everything that happened behind the Temple’s thick stone walls….
Vidocq pries apart another pistachio shell, pops it into his mouth.
“Something you haven’t yet considered,” he says. “What if our boy here is making up his symptoms?”
“I think that would require more sophistication than he has.”
“Ha! If you’d ever been conned, you’d know how complicated simple people can be. This Monsieur fellow, for instance. Is he a genius or an idiot?” He folds out his hands in an agnostic attitude. “A public assassination. That’s an awfully good way of calling attention to yourself, isn’t it?”
“Well…” I stifle a yawn. “Maybe you forced his hand.”
“Oh, yes? And how’d he know old Vidocq was making for Saint-Cloud? Did you tell?”
“I didn’t know I was coming myself.”
The air is fragrant with pistachio and mud and spores—and Vidocq’s own scent, unmistakable, hastening the decay of everything round it.
“Well,” he says, “we’ve got one advantage on our side. Monsieur killed the wrong man. What’s more, he doesn’t know he killed the wrong man. And that gives us time.”
“To do what?”
“Find our other assassin, Herbaux. That’s my job. Your job is to figure out what that father of yours knew. Damn him for being dead,” he adds, in an undertone.
“What about…”
I nudge my head toward that sleeping figure.
“Monsieur Charles? You’re right, he will need somewhere to stay. And I’ve just the place for him.”
“An apartment, you mean?”
He nods. “In a very fine establishment in the Latin Quarter. The Maison Carpentier.”
CHAPTER 24
A Vicomte Expires Unexpectedly
TEN MINUTES BEFORE the cariole reaches the Barrière du Maine, Charles crawls from the chrysalis of his coat. Stretches his arms, rubs his eyes.
“Are we there?”
“Nearly.”
On either side of us, there’s nothing but fallow wheat fields and abandoned tracts. Through the long scraggly stretches of close-clipped grass, some wild poppies are stirring, and in the distance, you can make out a gypsum quarry and a mill, turning in violent hitches.
“I don’t see any,” he says.
“What?”
“Buildings. Paris has such tall ones.”
“Oh, but we’re still outside the city walls. Once we’re in, you’ll have all the buildings you could desire. Why, look, even from here, you can make out the Hôtel des Invalides.”
“I don’t like churches so much,” he says. “They make me sneeze and fart all at once.”
He blows an oval of vapor onto the glass. Rubs it away with his finger.
“Oh!” he cries. “That must be Paris!”
Up ahead, a brownstone wall, three meters high and twenty-four kilometers round, cinching Paris like a chastity belt. Any other city, I think, would have built such a wall to keep the barbarians out. Paris built its wall to keep the money in.
“What do they want?” asks Charles. “Those men.”
“They’re customs officers. They have to inspect us.”
“Why?”
“To make sure we’re paying our duties.”
“What’s a duty?”
“That’s the—that’s the money you pay the city. Whenever you bring something in.”
“How funny,” says Charles, hooking his thumb westward. “You pay for something back there—and then you pay all over again here.”
“And keep paying,” grumbles Vidocq, just as the flat-crowned, broad-brimmed black hat glides into the window frame.
“Goods to declare?”
“Nothing,” Vidocq assures him. “Not so much as a scrap of hay.”
“Well, then,” he says, scratching his earlobe. “Maybe you’d be so kind as to show me your passports.”
Through the mirror of his eyes, I’m recalled to the spectacle we present: Vidocq and I, bare-armed, in our old waistcoats, patched trousers.
“Monsieur,” says the douanier, bearing down on Charles. “I believe I asked for your passport.”
Charles keeps staring out the window.
“Monsieur,” says the douanier, more pointedly.
“I’m afraid he doesn’t have one,” says Vidocq. “This gentleman has been apprehended on police business.”
“That so?”
“I’d be happy to show you my identification. I’m—”
“You’ll kindly keep your hands in plain view.”
Grimacing, the customs officer bends his head over our papers. Then he steps back a pace. From nowhere, a stupefied grin snaps his face open.
“It is you! I knew it!”
Snatching the black hat off his own head, he presses it to his heart.
“Monsieur Vidocq…what an honor!”
“You’re too kind, my friend.”
“Oh, my! Oh, this is—see here, Monsieur, I’ve got this brother. Been having a spot of wife trouble.”
“Gone missing, has she?”
“Catting, more like. Was thinking one of your boys could follow her round, catch her mid-thrust, know what I’m saying….”
“Mm.” Vidocq gives the matter a juridical pause. “I’ll tell you what. Have him come round next week. Mind he asks for me in person, eh?”
“Oh, Monsieur, my whole family is in your debt. Eternally.” Grinning, he claps his hands to his cheeks. “I can’t wait to tell my wife! The great Vidocq!”
The glow of his regard follows us all the way through the city gates, and it leaves Vidocq looking not so much flushed as chaffed, like a bull swiping its tail at a fly. For a full minute, he refuses to meet our eyes.
“Well,” he says at last. “I saved myself thirty sous in bribes.”
Then, rapping absently on the ceiling, he calls up to Goury.
“Headquarters!” Followed by this scarcely audible afterthought: “Please.”
THE BLOOD DOES come off my hand, thanks to a toothbrush (supplied by Coco-Lacour) and a liberal application of Windsor soap. Monsieur Tepac won’t scrub off so easily. The memory, I mean, of his skin, flapping like a mouth—the pulse of his blood through the crevices of my fingers. Another man’s life, yes, passing through mine….
“Listen, Hector.”
With a quiet cuff to the jaw, Vidocq jars me back.
“We’re going to send you back home in a cab, all right? But before you go, I need to give you Charles’ new identity. I’m going to give it to you once, and I need you to plaster it right in that noggin of yours, can you do that?”
In an instant, the old narrative—Tepac, Agatha, Saint-Cloud—gives way to the new. Charles Rapskeller is now the natural son of the Vicomte de Saint-Amand de Faral (by way of a chambermaid whose skirt caught fire one afternoon within the Vicomte’s reach). The old hedgehog has at last succumbed to a heart inflammation, and in the absence of legitimate heirs, his estate (if not his title) passes to Charles, who curtails his religious instruction in Strasbourg to hasten toward Paris. On the westward-bound stage, he encounters—me—returning in glory from my…
“Scrofula symposium,” says Vidocq. “In Reims.”
Charles confesses he has nowhere to stay, and I urge him to take a room at my mother’s, where the rent is low but the tone high.
“But if he’s coming into money,” I say, “shouldn’t he be staying somewhere…”
“Nicer? Yes, but the money hasn’t quite landed, has it? Last-minute wrinkles, a long-lost nephew in the Massif Central, nothing serious. Lawyers will have it smoothed out in a matter of weeks.”
Clicking his tongue, he counts five twenty-franc pieces into my palm.
&nbs
p; “Living expenses, Hector. Courtesy of the Prefecture. Use ’em well and keep a good ledger, will you? I don’t want those damned bookkeepers up my ass.”
“But what about Charles?”
“What about him?”
“Somebody’s bound to ask him questions….”
“Well,” says Vidocq, with a thin smile, “that would only be a problem if he had a fucking brain. As it is, the only thing I’ve ever heard him confess to is his own name. He’ll be fine. And if folks get curious, tell ’em he was dropped by the midwife.”
IN MY MOTHER’S case, the only thing I have to mention is the entirely fictional name of the Vicomte de Saint-Amand de Faral. This produces at first a flinching and then a ripening. By the time Charles has tendered her a bow and dropped three gold pieces in her hand—gaily, as if they were marbles—she is extending her hand in her best chatelaine fashion.
“Any friend of Hector’s, Monsieur Rapskeller, is doubly welcome in this home. And how fortunate! You’ve arrived just in time for supper. Charlotte, my dear! A setting for our new guest, please. And perhaps some ices for dessert….”
No one gives a rap where I’ve been. Even Charlotte, who normally peppers me with questions if I’m gone so much as an hour, has something else on her mind when she beckons me toward her just before dinner.
“Oh, Monsieur Hector! What a love he is!”
“Who?”
“Your friend! He came in just now, the dear, and asked if he could help set table. When he doesn’t even know where a fork goes! Or a spoon. Oh, he was quite hopeless, but still he tried, didn’t he?” She gives me a nod of boundless sagacity. “You can always tell a gentleman, Monsieur Hector. Blood will out.”
CHAPTER 25
Mama Carpentier Stands Firm
BLOOD, IN FACT, is very much on my mind when I watch the three law students align themselves round the dinner table. Father Time is not here to deflect them, and there’s something quite chilling in how they inspect the new guest for weaknesses. Any other man could be warned. Charles can only be watched, helplessly, from the other side of the table. As great a distance as the moon to the sun, or so it seems to me when Lapin, blotting the claret from his lips, sallies forth.
“Monsieur Charles, I believe our hostess has been too modest in her claims on your behalf. She speaks only of your coming into a fortune, when you appear already to have carved out a formidable military career.”
And when Lapin receives (as he expected) a look of puzzlement from his prey, he says, as dryly as he dares:
“Those are spurs I see on your boots?”
Lifting his leg, Charles surveys his feet with unfeigned surprise (for these are not his boots).
“Spurs! You’re right!”
“I expect you are likely a cuirassier,” says Lapin. “Perhaps you will regale us some day with stories of battles won.”
Smiling as though in perfect concord, Charles answers:
“I had a pony once.”
A slight pause. Then Rosbif comes gliding forward.
“Are you sure it was a pony, Monsieur? Your vest looks to be made entirely of goatskin.”
“So it is,” says Charles, newly astonished.
“I wonder, Monsieur, did you dress yourself in the dark?”
Far from resenting the question, he absorbs it, like an oyster wrapping itself round a piece of grit.
“Dress in the dark,” he says, wonderingly. “What fun! Tomorrow, we shall all dress in the dark!”
And as I watch a scowl flit across Rosbif’s face, I realize a wonder has come to light. The same qualities that leave Charles unprotected leave him unprovokable. The students succumb to a vexed silence, which is broken only after several minutes—by Nankeen, their chief.
“Do you know, Monsieur, I find your jaw of great interest.”
The sharp intake of air—that’s mine. But as fate would have it, I’ve overestimated Nankeen’s powers of discernment. For in the next breath, he says:
“I saw a jaw just like it in the Bicêtre asylum. Lovely lady. No longer able to wash or dress herself, but the jaw was quite useful for catching her drool.”
Charles’ brow creases for a second. Then, tilting his mouth down, he says:
“I had a dog that was shot in the jaw once. His name was Troilus.”
Nankeen sets down his fork—the surest sign he is girding for another charge—and just as I’m moving to interpose my own body, someone beats me to it.
My mother.
Setting down her napkin, she announces:
“All guests in my home will kindly be respected.”
The shock of her own pronouncement causes her cheeks to puff out, like a goddess of wind. Her head sinks over her plate, and amid the questions that weave silently across the table, mine is the one that registers most strongly in my inner ear:
Why has she never done that for me?
THE PREVIOUS TENANT of Charles’ room was a general’s widow who, in her haste to abscond, left behind a bed with a rather fine canopy of antique damask, as well as a silver vanity case and droppings of talcum. These last lie scattered about the room like plaster dust and emit a scent so sharply feminine that I fight the urge to bow whenever I enter the room.
“The room’s a bit—sorry—Charlotte will get to it—tomorrow at the latest….”
I set his carpetbag on the bed, and because he makes no move toward it, I unpack for him. Blouses, trousers, striped linen underdrawers, and a large morocco cap, the kind a six-year-old boy might wear to go sledding. No more than three days’ worth of clothing, all in all, and not a single keepsake. Not even the hint of an estate.
“Well, now,” I say, after I put the clothes in the dresser. “That should do it.”
“Are there scorpions?” he asks.
“Are there…you mean here? Not that I’ve seen.”
“Then I’m sure I shall enjoy it.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he gives the mattress a pair of speculative bounces.
“Where do you sleep, Hector?”
It’s the first time he’s addressed me by name.
“Upstairs. In the garret.”
“Well, that’s fine, then. Am I to go to bed now?”
“You may do as you like. We don’t have any rules about sleeping.”
“Oh, I see,” he says, smiling shyly. “Well, then, Hector, you should know I never go to bed without someone sitting nearby. Now please believe me when I tell you it’s very easy. You needn’t say a word. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. And please don’t read to me because that tends to make me fidget. All you need do, really, is sit there, and I go right out.”
It never occurs to me to remonstrate with him. My hand, indeed, is already drawing the chair over.
“Monsieur Tepac,” I say. “Did he sit with you?”
“Why, yes. Agatha, too, sometimes, but her bones would creak, and one can’t ask a bone to be quiet, it can’t be done.”
“I don’t suppose it can.”
“But you’re still young,” he says, agreeably. “I don’t imagine you creak at all.”
“No,” I say, lowering myself with terrific care into the chair. “I’ll try not to.”
We sit for a few moments, regarding each other.
“Perhaps you’d care to get ready for bed,” I say.
“Oh!” He stares down at his dead man’s clothes. “You’re quite right. Let’s see now….”
He gives the boots a gentle tug. Tugs again and then relapses into confusion. And when I think back on this moment, what will most amaze me is the absence of hesitation on my part. I am already moving toward him, you see. With the express purpose of kneeling before him and prying his boots loose. The only thing that stops me is the cracked tremolo issuing from the doorway.
“There you are!” cries Father Time.
Not on his way to bed, no, but dressed for going out. And brimming with the prospect. Even his ragged necktie and old square coat look as if they were bracing for new possibilities
.
There are two additions to his customary wardrobe. A lantern, still unlit. And a spade.
“I wonder if you’d care to join me,” he says. “I’m off to the Bois de Boulogne.”
“Professor, it’s…nighttime….”
“Yes, I know. But I just remembered where the archive was.”
“The archive.”
“The one you were asking me about! Concerning your father, I mean. When he was taking care of You-Know-Who at the You-Know-Where. Oh, good evening!” he says, suddenly drawing Charles into his ken. “How rude of me. Would you like to tag along, Monsieur?”
CHAPTER 26
In Which a Corpus Is Exhumed
“BURYING SOMEONE, are we?”
We’re standing at the corner of the Rue d’Ulm and the Rue des Postes, and from the height of his box, a cabdriver scowls down at the spectacle of Father Time, who is caressing his spade like a bound lamb.
“Why, no,” answers the old man. “We’re all very much in the pink, I think. Although with me, one never knows. Now if you’d just take us to the Bois de Boulogne, we’d be your eternally devoted vassals.”
“Don’t need vassals,” the driver says. “Remuneration’d be nice.”
Stunned by this demand, Father Time turns slowly round to face me. “I say, my boy, do you—”
And before I can equivocate, Charles chimes in: “Oh, yes! That smelly man gave him a whole pile of gold coins.”
One of these coins is now prized from my purse and dropped in the cabman’s rein-calloused palm. He gives it his closest attention, then drops it down his trousers—straight into some waiting receptacle, from which the faintest clank emerges, like a far-off tocsin.
“Well, gentlemen,” he says. “At these rates, you can bury ten bodies.”
SPRING HAS SET up house in the Bois de Boulogne. Just a few strokes shy of midnight, and life thrums on all sides. Linnets, sparrows…a single butterfly, the color of young cheese…and lovers, discarding things in their haste—a pair of clogs, a canezou jacket, a lace stocking. Through the shrubbery, we can hear them, rustling and moaning, as we follow Father Time from the city wall to Lac Inférieur.
