The Death of Daisi

by Annette Moncheri

  “You are among them, you terrible creature,” I said teasingly.

  “Oh, I know,” she said, laughing. She lit up a Gauloise.

  “So Blayne has to be a suspect,” I said. “Otherwise, his emotional reactions don’t make sense for someone who was committed to marrying the victim.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I get Blayne alone and ask him a few pointed questions,” I said.

  “Oooo…. Can’t I go too?” she asked eagerly.

  “My dear, I need you to talk to Satine directly. See what you can learn.”

  She saluted and spun on her heel obediently, which made me laugh again.

  Meanwhile, I’d already spotted Blayne up near the bar, and a moment later I was at his side, caressing his arm.

  “Bonsoir, my friend. It’s such a pleasure to see you again.” I smiled broadly, trying not to show my fangs. I suddenly felt hungry. I had used too much of my energy on Amitée, and my blood was running cold.

  His eyes widened in surprise at how I spoke to him—very differently than when I’d interceded between him and Anaelle—but he broke into a smile. “Madame. Comment allez-vous?”

  “Better and better.” I took a step closer, so that I could feel his body heat. I brushed an imaginary bit of lint off his shirt and left my hand on his chest as I gazed into his eyes. My mouth began to water. “Shall we go for that walk you promised me?”

  “Absolutely.” He knocked back the last of his cocktail and set down the glass.

  We both turned… and Inspector Baudet stood right there, gazing at both of us with calm, cool eyes.

  My heart stopped. I froze, suddenly very aware of my hand still on Blayne’s chest.

  “Madame,” he said politely. “Monsieur Vachon. I am Inspector Thibauld Baudet. I hope you don’t mind my interrupting you, but there is a conversation that we must have.” He turned to me. “Regrettably, it is a private conversation.”

  His face told me nothing of his feelings. But his previous warmth was absent. I blushed and murmured acceptance, and the two of them walked away.

  10

  I looked across the room to see Hélène shrugging at me apologetically before she was drawn into another conversation. Inspector Baudet must have approached her first, and she must have told him what she had learned. Well, the more people helping with the case, the better…. I supposed. Except now I had been deprived of my dinner… but far worse, the inspector might think I was genuinely interested in Blayne. I resolved to set him straight as soon as I possibly could.

  He drew both Satine and Blayne away. They sat in a cluster of armchairs at the far corner of the lobby, too far for anyone to listen in… who didn’t possess supernatural senses. I got myself a glass of champagne at the corner of the bar and tuned in to their conversation. I looked forward to every instant of it—I loved the inspector’s cool yet devastating manner of interrogation.

  “It’s come to our attention, Monsieur Vachon, that you had a relationship with the murder victim, in addition to your relationship with Mademoiselle Taché.” The inspector gestured casually toward Satine, who ducked her head, a blush arising prettily around her cheeks and décolletage.

  Blayne’s face also reddened but coarsely, with anger, and he clenched his fists. “Oh, is that so?”

  “We have been informed that you were planning to marry Mademoiselle Deprés, but that she rejected you when she learned of your affair with Mademoiselle Taché.”

  “I suppose you think this is relevant,” Blayne said, his posture rigid.

  “Wouldn’t you think so?” the inspector said smoothly, his eyebrows slightly raised as if in surprise. “Some men would be infuriated at being caught cheating and then rejected by someone they had planned to wed.”

  Blayne reddened again. “I don’t care about that whore. It was a marriage of convenience only. Her family had money and status.”

  His tone of voice wavered, though just barely, and I was certain he lied.

  “Ah, then perhaps your motive was greed,” Inspector Baudet observed casually.

  Blayne clenched his jaw, but leaned back and rested his hand on his knee in an overly casual manner. “My family has money. It was the status that was important, and only to my father, not me. But I can tell you this…” His eyes suddenly gleamed. “If you want to accuse someone of killing Daisi out of greed, then you ought to look for the engagement ring I gave her.”

  Satine looked up abruptly.

  “It has a very large diamond,” Blayne went on, “and I’ve heard that it wasn’t found among Daisi’s things. I believe that if you find the ring, you’ll find your killer.”

  Satine made an incoherent sound, something between a gasp and a choke, and then coughed heartily.

  “I’m sorry,” she gasped as she stood. “I just need a bit of air. I’ll be right outside.”

  Inspector Baudet stood and placed one hand on her arm, his face deadly serious in a way I was glad wasn’t directed at me. “I’m afraid I must insist that you speak about the ring before you go. What do you know about it?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all. I never saw it.” She shook her head vigorously. “I’m sorry, I can’t help at all.” She pulled away and hurried toward the door.

  The inspector watched her go with an appraising look, and I felt the same expression on my own face. Her reaction to Blayne’s words certainly meant something, and her final words had been lies.

  I stood up and quietly followed her. I caught the inspector’s gaze as I went past, and I signaled him that I was on her tail. He gave me a look that definitely struck me as scolding, but he didn’t try to stop me. So I winked at him and carried on.

  Satine went out of the hotel to the narrow cobblestone street, glanced surreptitiously around—I shrank back into the shadows by the door—and set out down the street. I followed at a distance of half a block. We went past the stone walls, the many doors of the shops and cafes, the gates and windows that had been there almost unchanged for centuries.

  Almost at the end of the block, she glanced around again. She wrapped her scarf around her head, pulled it forward, and ducked her head. Then she passed through an open gate marked only with a “2.” Just outside it stood two young men in Hotel Edouard bellboy uniforms smoking a cigarette and talking animatedly. This was the employee entrance.

  My best route was anonymity. I pressed back into the shadows, ensured no one was watching, and changed into bat form, then flitted quickly after the young woman—who was proving to be considerably less vacuous than everyone seemed to think.

  She threaded her way through the back alleyway and kitchen, keeping her head down, and then up the back staircase into the hotel. Up on the fourth floor, she took out her key and unlocked her door.

  The door opened… and I had to make a decision on a moment’s notice.

  I decided, and I flew in through the open door just over her head, knowing I would draw her attention and unable to do anything about it.

  She shrieked and batted at me with her purse, which I easily avoided. I flew to a chandelier on the other side of the room and clung to a crystal. She glared at me for a moment, her purse at the ready, then softened. “You scared me!” she complained.

  I flapped my wings in confusion. Did she expect an answer? I tried to communicate apologies with the tilt of my head and a few quick blinks.

  She eyed me warily while I wondered what she would do next, then she said, “Well, you’ve got to go out! You can’t be in my room.” She skirted around me carefully to the window, which she shoved open. She stepped back and waved at the window. “Go out! Go on!”

  When I merely cocked my head at her, she unwrapped the shawl from her head and flapped it at me in the direction of the window. I folded up and ignored the puffs of air.

  She sighed, exasperated. “Fine, stay for the moment. I don’t have time for this. The window is there when you want it.”

  I wanted to laugh. She acted as if I could understand her, and little did she kno
w I could.

  She went to her dresser, searched about for a moment, then pulled out a ring case. She opened it to check that the ring was there, and over her shoulder I saw a diamond as fully as large as Blayne had said.

  “I’m sure some pawnbroker can take you off my hands,” she muttered to it.

  It was Satine, then! As I had suspected.

  I was just about to swoop down and take my human form to force her to confess—when her door swung open. Blayne appeared there with his heavy-lidded eyes half-closed and his face slack and dark.

  At his menacing expression, Satine squeaked and pressed her back against the dresser, clutching the ring nervously. “Blayne, why did you tell them that?” Her voice quavered. “About the ring? You know you gave it to me.”

  He held up a long, slender wooden tube not unlike a cigarette holder. “The murder weapon you used on Daisi,” he said flatly. In the other hand, he presented a leather packet. “And the darts.”

  A blowgun. I gasped as I realized all at once how it had happened. Amitée could have been one step behind her friend while crossing the courtyard of Le Chat Rose and never seen a thing.

  He closed on Satine, pressed the weapons into her hands, and closed her fingers around them. “Your fingerprints on the murder weapon,” he said roughly. Then he threw them carelessly onto her bed, as she shivered in fear.

  She wept. “Mon Dieu. You killed Daisi. How could you do that?”

  “If I couldn’t have her, the world couldn’t have her either.” His eyes reddened, but I felt no pity, only horror. “And you’ll pay the price for me, Satine. You poor stupid girl.”

  From his belt, he pulled a knife—a narrow but wicked-looking thing.

  She whimpered. “Blayne… Please don’t. Please, please…”

  I tensed, ready to strike.

  He wiped the handle on her dress, then forced the handle into her hands. “And your fingerprints on this one too. Because you tried to kill me.” He stated it flatly, staring into her eyes, then he forced her hand to cut his own chest. He grimaced as blood surged from the wound. He let it turn his shirt from white to crimson as he pressed forward against her, still holding her hands in his.

  “I caught you with the ring. And you confessed everything,” he said roughly. “You bragged about how you’d killed her—and then you tried to kill me. I had no choice, Satine.” His eyes reddened again, and he blinked back tears. “You made me do it.”

  “No… you can’t,” she begged in a whisper. “Please. You can’t hurt me, Blayne.”

  I dropped into my human form just behind Blayne. “Oh, I agree with you. You can’t hurt her, Blayne.”

  He pulled the knife from Satine and spun toward me to slash at me.

  With my superhuman speed and strength, I stepped toward him, caught his wrist, and pulled him in the same direction his momentum already carried him, forcing his legs to tangle with mine until he toppled. The back of his head shattered an occasional table on the way down, and he crumpled, unconscious.

  I could hear his heartbeat, fast but strong. He would be fine.

  I turned to Satine, who pressed her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. “You’ll be all right now.”

  11

  Not long after, the hotel room was filled with people—Satine and Blayne still, but also a doctor, who had made Blayne a compress for his head, Inspector l’Agent Carré, and Inspector Baudet, plus the hotel’s manager. Blayne wore a scowl. He sat with one wrist manacled to an armchair, and with the other hand, he pressed the compress to the back of his head. The rest of us gathered around him. Satine wept quietly in the corner.

  “And how did you even know the plan between Daisi and Amitée, so that you could intervene in it to kill Daisi?” the inspector was asking.

  “Daisi told me,” Blayne said with a sulky shrug. “We still talked, even if she’d broken things off. She thought it was dramatic. She tried to use the story to make me feel guilty. Asking how I’d feel if she really did kill herself.”

  “Turns out you wouldn’t have felt poorly about it,” the inspector said drily.

  Blayne laughed, a short, bitter sound. “I only killed her because she crushed my heart.” The words felt true to all my supernatural senses. He felt heartbroken. But to him, the wrong she’d done him by breaking his heart was only barely repaid by his killing her.

  I shook my head.

  When the agents took Blayne out through the hotel’s lobby, Anaelle was there at the bar, and Amitée as well, at some distance from her sister, and in fact a handful of people from Le Chat Rose stood around, looking tired at the lateness of the hour but no doubt having heard about the commotion here and too curious to leave. I stopped to reassure them that all the excitement was over.

  Amitée caught my eye to offer me a coy and malicious smile. “Oh, have you finally come to understand it was Blayne who killed Daisi?”

  I raised my eyebrow, and she said, “Oh, I knew he was going to kill her. Anyone with any sense would have seen it coming.” She lit up a cigarette, plainly enjoying the moment.

  “And yet you said nothing?” I asked.

  “Why should I?” Her face showed self-righteous indignation. “No one ever listens to anything I say.”

  “Mon Dieu!” Anaelle said, coming closer, her face pale with horror. “You could have saved her life.”

  “Nonsense. Blayne was a born killer. He would have killed no matter what.”

  The little group of us all stared at her, silenced by her callousness. I let out a sigh. I feared that my attempts to alter her behavior had not had an impact. “Amitée, think again about what you’re saying. Think about who you might have hurt. And who you still might hurt.”

  She frowned and tapped the ash off her cigarette. She shifted awkwardly, her eyes down to avoid my gaze. “Oh, I suppose I could have said something. I just don’t know that it would have made any difference. People are who they are. They…”

  We all waited, still silent. Her beautiful face contorted slightly and tears sprang to her eyes. “All right, I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, all right?”

  She looked at all our faces, and then, suddenly, she burst into tears and ran toward her room.

  The rest of us gazed at one another in astonishment.

  “Wow,” Anaelle said. “That was… unexpected.”

  Just then, I heard my name spoken with gentleness and warmth, and I turned to see Inspector Baudet smiling at me.

  “Madame. May I have a word?”

  “Of course,” I murmured softly, and I allowed him to take my hand and lead me to a quieter part of the lobby. He sat on a barstool and I allowed myself the luxury of coming much closer to him, so near that I was nearly between his knees. His body heat welcomed me. His nearness was… delicious… and I fought the urge to take another step forward. Hadn’t I decided not to pursue him? Or had I decided I would? At the moment, all I wanted was to embrace him and press my lips to his…

  “I should have known that you would stop at little to search out a clue in a case,” he said, his eyes twinkling mischievously.

  I smiled. “You’re right, I had no desire for Blayne’s company,” I assured him. “Only a great deal of desire to understand his role in Daisi’s death.”

  “Why is it that every time a murder happens on the Île Saint-Louis, you are near at hand, and somehow integral to the solving of it?” His tone was light, and I did not feel accused.

  “I don’t have any idea,” I said, smiling. And then the cat got my tongue, and I found myself silently gazing into his eyes, wishing I knew what to say next but completely unmanned—or unwomaned, I suppose—by the nearness of his presence. Suddenly, I could hardly draw breath.

  “Everything is resolved,” he said. “But it is very late.”

  I saw in his gaze a question—did I want to join him for something after this, perhaps an early breakfast at a café… And I wanted to say yes. I wanted it so badly it hurt deep in my chest. But I also felt the pressure of the sun on the atmos
phere. The night was turning to morning. My nature required that I go now into my secret sleeping chamber beneath my room.

  I caressed his hand in both of mine. “Inspector—Thibauld—I have no choice but to let you go for now. But I will see you again, and soon.”

  Disappointment dashed across his face, but he nodded. “I will hold you to that promise, Madame.” He kissed my hand with such sensuality that I melted inside. I could not have spoken. With one final glance of his dark eyes, he turned and went out.

  I moaned in bitter disappointment. And then I hurried to Le Chat Rose and my sleeping place—alone.

  12

  The next night, after the initial rush of men stopping by after work, I went in search of Anaelle, and I found her on the front balcony, staring out over the Île and the 5th Arrondissement on the other side of the Seine. I joined her without comment and we stood holding the railing and contemplating the world in companionable silence.

  Always, over the years, I had known Anaelle to be harsh and bitter, cold, even angry. But the events of the past few days had softened her.

  “So what’s the moral of the story, Madame?” she asked. “Tell me something positive I can take away from all of this. From Daisi’s awful death, from my sister’s evil—and Blayne’s evil.”

  Indeed, what good was there to take away from this? Her question was sound. I didn’t know if I was equipped to answer it.

  Anaelle turned to face me. “Don’t get me wrong, I know you had an effect on Amitée and I’m glad for that. I guess that’s something. I can only hope it lasts. But to me…” She blinked back tears. “It doesn’t take away the years of cruelty that have already come and gone. Nothing can take that away. Do you understand? I don’t want to sound ungrateful, I really don’t.”