by Jess Faraday
As Dr. Kalderash turned in to the front room, Corbeau paused to shut the front door and to pick up Javert’s umbrella and lean it against the wall. When she entered the room, Kalderash was on the other side, tending the fire. Glancing up, Kalderash replaced the poker in its rack and shut a lacquered box on the mantel.
“Sit. Please, Inspector.” The inventor nodded toward a pair of chairs flanking the fireplace.
The front room had once been outfitted for receiving. A wooden privacy screen stood along the wall opposite the window. Next to it sat a table with implements that could have been either medical or mechanical. Near the doorway was another table with a silver tea urn; Corbeau could hear the soft burbling of the water as it reached a boil. But a long time had passed since either patients or customers had come with any frequency. A guest chair sat abandoned in one corner. An untidy writing desk dominated the front window. The bookcases that lined two of the walls were crammed with books and monographs. Even the surface around the tea urn was losing its fight against stacks of journals, sketches, notes, and metalworking tools.
Corbeau took the proffered chair. It had been expensive once, but the fabric was worn shiny, and the wood had recently met with violence. She watched as Kalderash crossed to the urn and filled two cups with steaming water. She decanted concentrated tea from the pitcher on top of the urn, then set the cups on saucers. Bringing one of the cups to the table at Corbeau’s elbow, she pulled another chair near the fire to face her.
“The French are a coffee-drinking people, I know.” The doctor had regained some of her composure, but Corbeau could tell she still wasn’t happy entertaining her. “But I have so few indulgences anymore. Tea reminds me of home. So you’ll allow me this one comfort before you arrest me.”
*
“Arrest you?” the constable asked. Not a constable, Maria reminded herself. A detective inspector. That kind of mistake could cost her a beating, or worse.
“You’re here because you believe I had something to do with Hermine’s disappearance.”
Whether the inspector believed it or not was immaterial. Javert had noticed the missing plans and was marshaling his considerable resources to recover his property, and probably to punish her for good measure. The inspector was wearing the insignia of the Department of the Unexplained, and that meant trouble.
It was a nice touch sending a handsome woman to do the deed, Maria thought. Inspector Corbeau had taken her lumps recently, but beneath the dirt and bruises lay a regal bone structure, strong muscles, and a hint of rather nice curves around the chest and hips. The dress was dreadful, but probably police issue. With a little attention, she would probably be striking. Not pretty, exactly, but attractive, and just Maria’s type.
Maria had never discussed her personal life with her colleagues, but considering she was an unmarried female who supported herself with her hands and her brain, assumptions had been made nonetheless. She supposed it was unfair of her to make the same assumptions about the inspector, but it was human nature, was it not?
“Doctor, I fear we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. Let’s begin again. I’m investigating Madame Boucher’s disappearance, but at this point, I’m merely gathering information. You were at the party the other evening, and you had a close connection to the victim. Is there anything you can tell me about that night?”
“I had nothing to do with it. What else do you need to know?”
Slightly mollified, Maria smoothed her robe over her knees and set her china cup on the table beside her. She didn’t believe for a moment that the inspector intended to leave without her in shackles. But she could afford to sit in her front room for a bit, sipping tea with a handsome woman until either the inspector left of her own accord or the little spell Maria had worked began to take effect.
The inspector shifted in her seat, unconsciously mirroring Maria’s posture, the suggestion of a frown between her eyebrows. For a terrifying instant she thought the inspector must have sensed her defensive charm. But then Corbeau picked up her own tea and sipped, a thoughtful expression on her face, as if she was seriously considering the question.
Corbeau didn’t have the smug air of Chief Inspector Vautrin. Maria hadn’t seen him for a little over a year after their extended introduction in a back office of the Conciergerie. And then just when she’d thought her days of dealing with French government officials were well behind her, she’d found herself thrust into his company socially. He hadn’t seemed to remember her—had he really “interrogated” that many women in that back room that their faces would have blended all together? But him, she would never forget. No, the inspector didn’t ooze malice like Vautrin did, but Inspector Corbeau was, like him, a representative of the government and therefore not to be trusted.
Maria fingered the sachet in her pocket. The edges of her eyes began to burn. The herbs she had thrown on the fire were mingling with the smoke. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Doctor, let’s not play games. A woman to whom you were close has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. At some level, I’m sure you care what happened to her. And you must remember something from that evening.”
Maria’s hand went unconsciously to the scar that crossed her right cheek. Despite the inspector’s reasonable words, the police were rarely better than the criminals they arrested. And yet, as she continued to examine the inspector’s face, the calm way she spoke, and the comforting strength in the way she held herself, Maria thought that if she were ever foolish enough to trust an agent of the government, she could do worse than Inspector Corbeau. “It’s natural, I suppose, that I would be a suspect after the way we parted.”
“Badly?” Corbeau asked.
“In the worst, most public way possible.” What a stupid admission. Shaking her head, Maria wondered if the charm she had worked was turning back on her. “But I didn’t harm her. I wouldn’t. I’m a healer, not a killer, Inspector.”
“What did you argue about?”
What hadn’t they argued about? In the end, the arguments had always come back to the question of Hermine’s spiritual gifts—gifts she had spent most of her life trying to suppress. Maria had begged Hermine to allow her to train those gifts. With the immense power she possessed, Hermine could have changed the world. But Hermine had spent most of her life believing herself cursed. And in the end, it had crushed the fragile happiness that bloomed for such a short time between them. “You might say we had philosophical differences.”
Corbeau cocked an eyebrow. “I’ve only once heard of someone coming to harm over philosophical differences. That was at the university. After talking to the victim’s colleagues, I remember being surprised it didn’t happen more often.”
Kalderash shrugged. “You’re wearing the insignia of the Department of the Unexplained. Surely you know quite a bit about philosophical differences.”
“Department of the Unexplained?” Corbeau ran a thumb over her pin.
“Or whatever it’s called. There must have been times when you knew something out of the ordinary was happening, but a colleague insisted there was a natural explanation.”
“There’s always a natural explanation.”
“Or perhaps you disagreed about the meaning of ‘natural.’ No doubt the arguments became heated at times, even though an outsider might consider the question to be one of mere semantics.”
The inspector pulled at her collar. The whites of her eyes were reddening. The faint sweetness of the herbs was noticeable now amid the aromatic smoke. Maria felt a twinge of guilt. The spell had seemed necessary at the time, when she had wanted to disarm the inspector and get her out as quickly as possible. But now that the conversation had turned from her probable guilt, she was interested to see which direction it would take. Inspector Corbeau coughed.
“I’ve found that events that people attribute to spirits, when they have no ordinary explanation, often turn out to be manifestations of a force within the individual. Especially in the case of adolescent girls,” Corbeau said
.
“Girls who are beginning to feel the chains of society’s expectations, perhaps?”
“Often, yes. Cases of objects moving by themselves, lamps spontaneously bursting, fires from nowhere—these things inevitably occur, and only occur in the presence of certain individuals. Individuals with repressed anger, frustration, or fear. Which leads me to believe that it’s not an outside force perpetrating these events, but some power unconsciously wielded by the individual.”
“A natural explanation. That’s what I always told Hermine. But she was convinced it was demons and that it was her work here on earth to expel them.”
“Was this the real mission of the Church of the Divine Spark?” The inspector set down her cup and turned toward Maria. The chains of magic should have been pulling at her consciousness, dulling her instincts while stirring up a desire to leave. But it seemed to be having as little effect on the inspector as it was on Maria, who had, through regular exposure, become immune. “Were you, Doctor, involved in suppressing supernatural powers—demons, as some call them—as well as providing medical care to the poor?”
Maria’s heart pounded. She wasn’t prepared for this line of questioning. She didn’t know if it would make her a better suspect or a less plausible one. “I have nothing more to say on this subject.”
A light in the inspector’s eye showed that she knew that Maria had, actually, plenty more to say. Inspector Corbeau sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers beneath her chin. Maria’s Eye tingled as the gears and lenses adjusted to her panic. It felt as if the inspector were looking straight through her.
“Then perhaps you could tell me how long you and Madame Boucher were involved.”
“A little over two years.”
“You don’t seem very upset about her disappearance.”
“It was a relief, actually.” Maria cursed the words that jumped out of her mouth. Each one was another loop on the noose. She scrambled to make her statement sound less damning than it was. “Hermine was an unbalanced woman with a violent temper. She did that,” Maria said as the inspector ran an evaluative finger over the deep scratch in the arm of her chair.
“I see. And yet you stayed with her?”
Maria frowned. “I loved her, or at least I did once. And her connections were…useful.” Maria declined to continue that it was Hermine’s connections that protected her from Javert’s wrath once she had left his employ. “I placated her until it was more danger than it was worth. And after I left, her followers turned on me like a pack of rabid dogs.”
“Did you go to confront her at the party the other day?” the inspector asked.
“I went to deliver a device the host had ordered. Had I known Hermine would be there, I never would have gone.”
“But you did, and you had words with her.”
“Yes. We had words. Then I left.”
“Before Madame Boucher?”
“Well before her. I assure you, Inspector, I had nothing to do with what happened later.”
“If she was violent toward you, no one would blame you for defending yourself.”
“I didn’t do it!”
“Why did you run earlier when you recognized my insignia?”
Maria’s heart raced. She was breathing hard. The inspector, by contrast, looked unperturbed. She fumed when she realized the aggressive turn in the inspector’s questioning had probably been an interrogation technique, and it had worked. She smoothed her robe down again and clenched her shaking hands tightly together in her lap. There was no sound but for the clicking of the lenses of her mechanical Eye and the pounding of her pulse in her ears. One of the outer lenses was fogging over. Maria stifled the urge to take the entire apparatus off and polish it with the edge of her robe. “I suppose it does look suspicious,” she admitted frostily. “I suppose everyone says I was the last to see her alive.”
“No. The last one to see her alive was the footman.”
“Lambert?” Maria asked.
The word was like a bolt of lightning from the ceiling. The inspector’s eyes went wide and her thin lips gaped open for a split second before she righted herself. Armand Lambert had been one of Maria’s only allies among Hermine’s people. His information had allowed her to stay one step ahead of Hermine’s attacks—attacks Maria had thought would end when Hermine disappeared.
What had happened to him?
“Doctor,” the inspector said, “Do the names Claudine Fournier or Michel Bertrand mean anything to you?”
Of course they did. Claudine and Michel had been the only other two of Hermine’s entourage who had given her the time of day. Despite the calming herbs now thick in the air, Maria began to panic.
“Inspector, I think you should go.”
*
“No,” Corbeau said. She blinked furiously, wiping burning moisture from the corner of one eye, and coughed. The aromatic wood in the fireplace was hiding something else—something sweet and familiar. Something Corbeau was kicking herself for not recognizing immediately. The inventor was working some sort of herb-magic—Corbeau would have bet her left hand on it. But that could wait. She’d stumbled across an important piece of the puzzle, and she wouldn’t leave until she’d found where it fit in. She sat back in the chair, crossed her legs, and poised pencil over paper. “Who were they?”
Claudine Fournier was a fire-starter—that was all that Corbeau knew. Not an arsonist—Fournier’s fires were never intentional. Rather, they sprang up around her in times of fear, anger, or distress. Corbeau had attended Fournier several days earlier in the Montagne Ste. Geneviève. Like Armand Lambert, Fournier had been causing a disturbance in the rooming house in which she was staying. Corbeau had sedated her with the same pills she had given Lambert, cleaned up the ashes, and left, hoping that whatever upset had been behind the young woman’s outburst would be gone by the next morning. When she’d heard nothing, she’d assumed her efforts had been successful.
She’d attended Michel Bertrand a day later, also in the Montagne Ste. Geneviève. Bertrand had heard voices. He also generated them. Not the delusions of a madman, but conversations taking place in other times and venues that were occurring at present or would later occur. That had been one of the more sought-after powers for which people had approached Corbeau when she had been immersed in the criminal life. But like Fournier, Bertrand had desired most deeply to rid himself of what he considered a curse.
“One incident is an anomaly, Doctor. Two could be a coincidence. But three outbursts of supernatural energy in the same area in the same week have to be related. You say Lambert was Madame Boucher’s footman. Let me tell you…” She coughed again. A tight, throbbing headache was creeping forward from her temples. “Lambert was one of the last to see her before she disappeared.” She remembered Lambert’s disheveled state, his meager possessions—so much like Fournier and Bertrand.
And now Vautrin had at least one of them.
The air was stifling. Corbeau glanced toward the hallway. She imagined the cool, moist air that would rush in if she threw the front door open. She breathed it in, feeling the rain on her cheeks, the moisture in her nostrils. As she rose from the chair, she caught herself.
Lambert had been Madame Boucher’s footman. Had Fournier and Bertrand worked for her as well? All three of them seemed out of place in the tenements where she’d found them. Respectable people who had experienced a sudden change in circumstance—a change for the worse. They had all been running from something. Perhaps, like Lambert, Bertrand and Fournier had attended Madame Boucher at the time of her disappearance. Why, then, had their names not appeared on Vautrin’s report?
Corbeau massaged her temples. The headache had formed a tight band around her skull and was squeezing sharply with each throb. The air felt thick and noxious. It was all she could do to not run from the room. “Tell me what you think of my theory, Doctor.”
Kalderash frowned—one thick, dark eyebrow pulling toward the Eye. She raised her head, looking squarely at Corbeau, her li
ps tight with—could it have been irritation? The device emitted a slow series of clicks. A blue pinpoint of light began to glow behind the nested lenses, and Corbeau’s skin crawled. A fireplace log split with a loud crack. That same familiar fragrance rose from the wood—something more than sap, more than the distinct aroma of the tree.
“I think Claudine Fournier and Michel Bertrand also worked for Madame Boucher,” Corbeau said. “A paid companion, perhaps, and the driver.”
Kalderash shifted in her chair. Corbeau coughed again, but her pulse raced. There was definitely something to the idea. She could feel it. She caught the inventor’s natural eye and held it, unblinking. “It…it is as you say,” Kalderash finally admitted.
“The three of them were likely the last to see Madame Boucher before she disappeared. You mentioned the victim had a violent temper. How did she treat her employees?” Corbeau ran a fingernail over a jagged gash that ran along the arm of her chair. The gash was fresh, the exposed wood still clean and light.
“Like that chair, we all felt her wrath on occasion.”
“Did she give you those scars?”
“No. Those came courtesy of the police.”
Corbeau felt a brief pang of shame, but it was eclipsed by anger as she recognized the familiar scent hiding in the smoke. Outrage cut through the clouds beginning to fog the edges of her vision and allowed her to gather up the tendrils of thought that had begun to wander. She laughed mirthlessly under her breath. Clever, clever doctor. But not quite clever enough. She straightened, tucking her pen and paper into her coat pocket. “I see.”
“I don’t suppose you’re about to offer an apology.”
“An apology?” Corbeau really did laugh this time. “Tell me, Doctor, did you really think a Bureau agent wouldn’t recognize widow’s root?”
