Bones of Paris (9780345531773) (40 page)

“Would you please phone him at home, and find out when he’s coming in?”

“No.”

“Sergeant Fortier, you and I met the other day. I have been helping Inspector Doucet with a case. You know me.”

“I do not know you. I remember meeting you.”

“And do you know Sarah Grey?”

“Je sais le nom.” I know the name.

“Last night your boss went to see Sarah’s employer, Dominic Charmentier,
because Sarah has not been seen since a party Le Comte held Wednesday night. Doucet took Sarah’s brother, Bennett Grey, with him. I expected to hear from one or the other of them before this. I have not.” The silence went on. “Sergeant?”

“Come in and see me.”

And the line went dead.

Doucet’s loyal Sergeant was the sort of unimaginative and inexorable cop who could be a nightmare if he was set against you, and more valuable than a herd of informants if he was on your side. Things hadn’t started out all that well between them, but Stuyvesant was willing to pant like a lap-dog to convince Sergeant Fortier that he could be helpful.

He started by leaving his revolver under the floorboards.

Fortier was at his desk next to Doucet’s office, neat stacks of file folders on three corners. The man glowered over his half-glasses like a dyspeptic old woman.

“Any news?” Stuyvesant asked.

Deliberately, Fortier took off the glasses, placing them in the center of the page before him. “Inspector Doucet did not return home last night.”

Stuyvesant sat down. “Well, he wasn’t with Miss Grey. You see, her brother came over from England yesterday, and he and Doucet came to see me. I’d been out the night before, but when I got back …”

As Stuyvesant talked, he did not think the
flic
was hearing a word of it. When Fortier reached for his glasses, Stuyvesant stopped.

“Your presence,” the sergeant pronounced, “coupled with l’Inspecteur’s absence, make for an awkward decision. I am, in fact, required to hand an ongoing investigation over to another officer of his rank. And yet, the prospect of the inevitable delay … concerns me.”

Stuyvesant made a sympathetic noise.

“L’Inspecteur was willing to bring you into his investigation, to an extent I personally would not have considered. He appeared to find your assistance worth the … unorthodoxy.”

“How can I help?”

Fortier fiddled with papers. About two seconds before Stuyvesant stormed the desk, the cop placed two pages before him on the blotter: the two brunettes from the Moreau photographs. One was the young woman Doucet had tentatively identified as the missing Sorbonne student, Jacqueline-Celeste Delaurier; the other was the English woman with stained teeth.

“Yesterday afternoon, the Inspector gave me one set of pieced-together photographs and another set of reproductions, telling me to have the originals examined for fingerprints. We found many prints, although it is possible they belong to one individual.” Now that the Sergeant’s verbal pump had been primed, the words seemed to flow more freely.

“Didi Moreau?”

“So I understand.”

“Is that the Delaurier girl?”

“I believe so. Because of the missing portion of the photograph, I cannot be certain, but the resemblance is striking. When it came to the other woman, l’Inspecteur had me take the photograph to the British Consulate-General. An hour ago, I received a telephone call. The woman’s name is Joanna Williams. She was not on
our
books because she was not a missing person, but a murder victim. Her body was found on the twenty-second of June, 1927, near the Place de Montrouge, wearing little more than a torn chemise. Her hands were filthy and bleeding, looking, to quote the report, ‘as if she had dug herself out of a grave.’ Her left hand and wrist were broken and contused. She died without regaining consciousness. Cause of death was exhaustion and severe dehydration.”

Stuyvesant looked at the Delaurier girl’s photograph. “The list Doucet gave me only went back to the beginning of 1928.”

Fortier picked up a sheet of paper. “My current task is a survey of missing persons dating back to the spring of 1927. This is the beginning.”

Stuyvesant, astonished but grateful, ran his eyes over a dozen names and brief descriptions. “What’s this question mark, on June 23?”

“An Italian woman left a bar late that night to use the facilities, and did not return. From the sounds of it, she was a femme de nuit who drank a lot of her client’s champagne then stepped out, and he only reported her because he felt he’d been robbed.”

“No name?”

“No names, of either the woman or the client. I imagine he had second thoughts, as he started to sober up. It was a bar up near Pigalle, I’m not sure it even has a—Yes, Massey?”

The uniformed man at the door gestured at the telephone. “Je pense que c’est important.”

Fortier said to Stuyvesant, “Un moment,” and spoke his name into the telephone.

Stuyvesant continued reading—until the weighty silence across the desk made him look up.

Fortier had the instrument pressed against his ear as if his very life depended on it. His eyes were staring straight across the desk.

Stuyvesant found it suddenly hard to breathe.

Nine days—nine very difficult and complicated days—after some gendarme had searched his room, Stuyvesant had by no means forgotten the episode, but it had been pushed to the back, fading from urgently bewildering to one more puzzling question. He no longer shot upright with every creak of the stairs.

Now, with Fortier’s gaze fixed on him, Stuyvesant’s gut went cold. If there weren’t a hundred cops between him and the street, he’d have bolted for the door.

But since it was hopeless, he had to stay in his chair and bluff his way out—and since he stayed put, he quickly saw that the Sergeant was not staring at him, but through him.

“Où?” Fortier asked, then, “Quand?” A minute later he said, “Oui. Dix minutes.” He hung up.

Where? When? Yes. Ten minutes.

“Je dois partir.” Fortier sounded as if he was talking to himself.

“Where do you need to go?” Stuyvesant asked, but Fortier just stared
at the telephone. When he raised his head to the man at the door, his face was as shocked as a soldier who looked down to discover that a blast had taken his leg. “L’Inspecteur,” he said in wonder. “Il a été abattu.”

The Inspector. He’s been shot.

I
T WAS NOT
what Bennett Grey expected of an underground prison. For one thing, the light. The photographs’ flash had suggested darkness, but one tall ecclesiastical candle burned on a stone podium near the door.

For another, there was little stench of death. The floor had been scrubbed, the walls and shackle sluiced down—his nostrils could taste putrefaction in the air, but it was little more than a memory beneath the honey-smell of the candle and the mingling of wine and tobacco, perfume and sweat.

And there was sound. Beneath the minuscule hiss of wax being turned to smoke lay the bone-deep vibrations of life above—wheels and feet, machines and tools. The rhythm of two hammers occasionally coming together. A sewer main, with a half-second delay between the rush of water leaving the pipes and that water hitting the stones.

He even, bizarrely enough, knew what time it was. A clock-face protruded from the stone, the
tick, tick
of its moving hands almost comforting, a reminder of home.

However, the most unexpected feature of his prison was the people.

All around the wide room, figures danced. On this side, tapestry women in elaborately sleeved gowns lined up with tapestry men in velvet and lace, their merriment come from the looms three centuries ago. At the edges of the candle’s light, slim girls in beads and sleek young
men in black and white flung up their heels, brought to life so recently, he could smell turpentine. Some dancers were mere ghosts: two tapestry panels had been hung near a window, washing out their figures to pale outlines, while across the cavern, the ghosts of dancers-yet-to-be showed as charcoal lines on gessoed wood.

Two of the newer panels were by artists who could never have seen an actual human skeleton.

Here in the oldest section of the Danse where Grey was shackled, the tapestries had been pulled back from the stone like curtains from a stage. His left wrist was bound in steel, yet he sat with the shiny anchoring bolt to his right. The chain stretched across his chest like a sash of chivalry, heavy, cold, and uncomfortable, but he refused to stretch away from it in terror.

Eleven years since his first death in the trenches: plenty of time to consider the role of dignity when time came for the second.

T
HE COP IN
the doorway and Harris Stuyvesant spoke simultaneously.

“Where is he?” asked the
flic
.

“Was there anyone with him?”

Fortier cocked an eye at the big American, but answered his colleague first.

“They took him to la Charité. Who would be with him?”

“Small Englishman, pale blond hair and green eyes.”

“They didn’t say, but—”

The other cop interrupted. “Is l’Inspecteur alive?”

“He was when they got to the hospital.”

“Who shot him?”

“They don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“He’s unconscious.”

“Sergeant, do you—” But Fortier was moving, fast. He shouldered the other man out of the way and was gone. Stuyvesant reached for his hat, then stopped. Nobody would let him see Doucet. Bennett Grey didn’t seem to be with him. And in no time at all, someone would come to throw Stuyvesant out.

He dropped his hat. He’d rather be tearing apart Man Ray’s studio or Le Comte’s house—or Didi Moreau’s face—but he scribbled as
fast as his pen would move: names, dates, and descriptions. He included the English murder victim and the alleged Italian prostitute from 1927. His notes were sketchy, but he was nearly at an end when a clerk came through the door. The fresh-faced young man stopped in surprise.

“Sorry, I was looking for Sergeant Fortier,” he said in rapid-fire French.

“He’s gone to the hospital to see Doucet. Something I can do for you?”

“Who are you?”

“I’m helping them with a missing persons case.”

“Does he know you’re looking at his files?”

“Mais oui.” Sure.

The clerk was young, and gullible. “Oh, well, in that case.” He dropped another file on the desk.

“You haven’t heard anything, have you?” Stuyvesant asked, putting an inclusive emphasis on the
vous
.

The man shook his head, trying for gloom but betrayed by the thrill. “Just what everyone knows. That he’s unconscious, and they’re operating to remove the bullet.”

“Anything further on where they found him?”

“Not yet—everyone’s gone down to help with the search. Strange to have the place so empty, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.” Stuyvesant wondered how to ask
where
Doucet had been found without giving away the game. “Any idea what Doucet was doing there?” he tried. “Last I heard he was up in Montmartre.”

“Maybe he was going to check in to St. Anne’s,” the clerk said, chuckling at his great wit—the mental hospital of St. Anne’s was a stone’s throw from Place Denfert-Rochereau. Then he realized that humor might be inappropriate, what with a shot policeman, and added, “Maybe he was looking at that shooting of the girl, last week? Someone told me it was the same place.”

Stuyvesant felt that too-familiar cold rush: Lulu!
Quick, say something before the cop notices that your jaw’s on your chest
. “So why’d they take him to la Charité?”

“They knew he was a police inspector, of course. They wanted him close to the Préfecture, so everyone could say … Well.”

Could say good-bye
. “Does he have family?”

“You haven’t met his sister?”

“Oh, that’s right, his sister. What about his fiancée?”

The man looked surprised. “L’Inspecteur is engaged?”

“Look,” Stuyvesant said, “I should finish this. If you hear anything, let me know.”

“D’accord.”

Stuyvesant bent over his pages with increased vigor. With a gossip like that around, someone would hear of the stray American at Fortier’s desk. And while he didn’t care if they threw him out, he didn’t want to lose his notes.

He trotted down the stairs four minutes later, notebook intact. Before he left, he scribbled a message with Bennett’s suggestion:

Out on the Pont Neuf, his hand raised for a taxi, he was hit by a sudden thought:
Nancy
.

He hadn’t phoned her—hadn’t even
thought
about phoning her. Like the kind of guy he’d told her he wasn’t. He should have the cab take him there first. At least have it stop near a public telephone.

But what could he say?
Hi, sorry I can’t come see you, I’m busy looking for an old girlfriend?

And anyway, Nancy was a sport. She’d understand.

He hoped.

The Place Denfert-Rochereau was its usual bustling daytime self, with half a dozen musicians competing with twice that number of sheet-music sellers. None of the news-boys were shouting about a shot policeman,
but when he neared St. Anne’s, uniforms appeared. Pasting on an eager expression, he drifted over to a group of avid young men.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

They told him. Several different stories, in fact, but all had to do with a cop who’d been found in that alleyway over there. In none of them did a blond foreigner play a part.

It was hard to feel that Grey’s absence was a relief.

Experienced with the drawbacks of Sarah’s rustic home, he had the taxi driver wait for him at her steps.

No one answered his knock, but the third flower-pot in the row hid a key. Inside, he felt the stillness.

“Bennett? Sarah? Either of you home?”

Silence replied. His note commanding Sarah to call him was untouched. There was no evidence that anyone had been there since last night.