Irregular Verbs (6 page)

Watching him go, Louverture wondered how much of his theory could be salvaged. If Duhaime was telling the truth—and Louverture felt sure he was—he had been right about the culprit having a confederate, but he was still left with the impossibility of the letter having been written and composed by the same man. He followed his line of thought up the stairs to his office. When the inescapable conclusion of your assumptions seems impossible, he thought, question your assumptions. His theory depended on at least one of the culprits needing to gain attention for his actions, and the letter to the Minerve certainly supported that; the Père Duchesne would not print it without approval from the Corps. If that was not the motive, though—or one of the motives—everything that followed from it changed; but what other motive could account for everything?

He opened the door to his office, saw four of Allard’s sketches sitting on his desk. Two were the ones they had discussed, assuming a single culprit: one version was white, one black. The other two, both white, were a split version of the first, the one having the physiognomy of a cautious, intelligent man, the second one emotional and impulsive. None of them much resembled anyone he had seen in the Rogues’ Gallery volumes the night before. He looked them over, wondering if any of them might be the man Duhaime said had hired him. The first two faces were like nobody he had ever seen, impossible configurations of rationality and impulsiveness; the fourth could be almost anyone. The third, though . . . he narrowed his eyes, imagining that man wearing smoke-tinted glasses. He looked a bit like Allard himself, or perhaps one of the men from Physical Sciences. Someone intelligent, certainly. Louverture tried to imagine what his next move would be. Did he know his messenger had been captured? If so, would he find another one, or would his purpose have been achieved with just the first two letters delivered? Would he be lying low or enjoying the chaos that the story in the Minerve would surely spark? No way to know without understanding his motive, and the more Louverture stared at the sketch the more he doubted that this man was seeking a thrill.

Louverture rolled up the sketches, his head starting to feel like a velodrome from the thoughts whizzing around in it. He was missing something, he knew that—some detail, just out of his reach—and he knew that chasing it around and around would not make it appear. Time to do things Clouthier’s way: he would have photostats of the sketches made, give them to gardiens assigned to where Baronne crossed the canal and to the ferry dock. Perhaps he could even make some of those snickering stagières pretend to be pedicab drivers, in hopes the culprit would come to them seeking another messenger. He imagined the man was too smart for that, but all it would cost was time and energy.

Cheered, Louverture headed off to the photostat room. Clouthier could hardly complain about this; just to be sure, he would take part in the stakeout himself—at the docks, he thought, where the breeze off the river would make the heat more tolerable. He would be sure to salute all the pedicab drivers dropping off their passengers.

Early the next morning Louverture sat up suddenly in bed, seized by a sudden thought. Two pieces that had not fit: the thirteenth and just three letters to be delivered. If he was right, the two together made up a very important piece indeed, but he could not be sure without a great deal of work—and books that were in the office. He dressed quickly, went downstairs and mounted his velocipede, riding through the empty streets in the dark. Fortunately the rest of the city was still asleep; absorbed as he was by the new lines of thought opening up, he would not have noticed an omnibus bearing down on him. As it was he nearly startled the night guard to death, suddenly appearing in the pool of light cast by the sodium lamps in Descartes Square and skidding to a stop mere metres from the door of the Cabildo. He flashed his badge and rushed up to his office. Hours of reading and calculation later he picked up the speaking tube to call Commandant Trudeau.

“Well, Louverture, here we are,” Clouthier said when the three of them assembled, some minutes later, in Trudeau’s office. “I take it you are going to tell us you’ve settled the case by doing figures all night?”

“Not the whole case, no, but I think you’ll want to hear it. Tell me, Officier principal, do you know the old calendar at all?”

“The royal calendar, you mean? No, I never studied history. Why?”

“What day of the month is it by that reckoning, do you suppose?” Louverture asked.

“What does it matter?”

Trudeau was smiling, nodding to himself. “May I venture a guess, Officier Louverture?”

Louverture nodded magnanimously.

“Then if you are right, the timetable has been moved up—or rather, it was further along than we knew.”

“What do you mean?” Clouthier said, frowning deeply; then, eyes widening, “Oh—so it is the thirteenth today, by that calendar? Of Thermidor, or of Fructidor?”

“Augustus,” Trudeau said, with a glance at the bust on his desk. “Very good, Louverture, though I’m afraid this makes things a great deal more serious.”

Clouthier ran his head over his shaved scalp. “But I don’t understand. Even the English gave up that calendar years ago. Who would still use such an irrational system?”

“Irrationalists,” Louverture said with a faint smile. “And the day is no coincidence, either. Thirteen was a very powerful number to pre-rational minds, associated with disaster. Whatever they have in mind may be bigger than even murder.”

“You think it is the vodoun again, then? Is this all part of some irrational magic ritual?” Trudeau asked.

Louverture spread his hands. “I don’t know. The number thirteen, the royal calendar—yes, that is common to all of those that hew to the old religions. But the letters, no. The vodoun, the Catholics, the Jews, they all rely on secrecy to go undetected.”

“Perhaps the letter-writer is not a threat, but a warning? Someone inside this group who wishes to prevent whatever they are planning to do?”

“Then why not tell us more? And why the letters to the Minerve, and the cathedral?” Louverture chewed his lower lip. “If you’ll pardon me, that is, Commandant.”

Trudeau waved his objection away. “Of course, Officier. Speak freely.”

“Moreover, we still have the reports from Graphology and Lombrosology. These tell us the letter-writer is an educated, rational man.”

“How can he be a rational irrationalist?” Clouthier put in.

“How indeed?” Trudeau said. “It seems that we resolve one paradox only to create another.”

“Commandant, I’m sure I can—”

“I’m sorry, Louverture,” Trudeau said, putting up a hand. “Please do not take this as a lack of faith in you, but I am handing this matter over to Officier principal Clouthier. What you have discovered tells me that we must take immediate action.”

“But we have no motive! No suspects!”

“We know where our suspects are,” Clouthier said. “All the irrationalists—we know where they live, where they have their secret churches. We found your friend Lucien easily enough, didn’t we?”

“But—”

“Officier Louverture, I’m told you’ve been here since one seventy-five. You’ve rendered great service to the Corps today, and you deserve a rest.”

Louverture clamped his mouth shut, nodded. “Thank you, Commandant,” he managed to say. With a nod to each of his superiors he rose and left the room.

The sun was beating down outside, causing Louverture to realize he had forgotten his cap at home; as well, his abandoned velocipede was gone. Shading his eyes with his hands he quick-stepped across the square, then ducked into the Café to pick up a Minerve and found a shady spot to wait for the omnibus. The headline, predictably, read
Elle meurt la treize
; further down the page, another story trumpeted
Une autre sabotage aux théatres: la Comedie Francaise ferme ses portes
. He folded the paper under his arm, unable to cope with any more irrationality. To whose benefit would it be to sabotage all the theatres, without asking for protection money?

“She’s not coming,” someone said. He turned to see an older black man in a white cotton shirt and pants, sweating profusely; he had obviously been walking a long way in the sun.

“I’m sorry?” Louverture said.

“The omnibus. She’s not coming; broke down at Champs Elysées.” The man shook his head. “Sorry, son,” he said, continued walking.

Louverture mouthed a curse, scanned the empty street for pedicabs. He supposed that driver had been right in thinking he would be out of a job soon. It was almost like a sort of experiment to see how often buses could break down before people stopped taking them, the way people had stopped going to the theatres. . . .

A terrible, inescapable thought hit him. Desperate to disprove it Louverture set out at a run. His face was red by the time he arrived at the theatre, a very hot half-kilometre away; he banged on the stage door with a closed fist, catching his breath.

“We’re closed,” a voice came from inside.

“
Corps de commande
,” Louverture said. He imagined he could hear the man inside sighing as he opened up.

“What can I do for you?” the man said. He was tall, about a hundred eighty centimetres, with a long face and a deeply receding hairline, wearing black pants and turtleneck. He was quite incidentally blocking the doorway he had just opened.

“May I come in?”

The man’s eyes narrowed as he stepped aside. “You say you’re with the corps?”

Louverture realized that he was wearing neither his cap nor his uniform, and that his hair was showing. He took out his badge, showed it to the man. “Officier de la paix Louverture. And you are?”

“Gaetan. Gaetan Tremblay. I’m the stage manager. At least. . . .”

Stepping inside, Louverture nodded, held up his copy of the Minerve. “What can you tell me about last night?”

“The cyclorama dropped,” Tremblay said. “That’s the backdrop that—”

“I know. Was anyone hurt?”

“No—but with all that’s happened at the other theatres, people just panicked.”

“May I see?”

Tremblay led him down the black, carpeted hallway to the backstage entrance, lit the halogens that hung above. In the pool of light that appeared Louverture could see the fallen cloth, as wide as the stage, gathered around a thick metal pole that sat on the ground. A slackened rope still extended from the far end of the pole to the fly gallery above; the rope from the near end was severed, lying in a loose coil on the floor. “We lowered the intact side so it wouldn’t fall unexpectedly,” Tremblay said.

Louverture picked up the snapped rope, ran it through his fingers until the end reached him. The strands were all the same length, except for one, and only that one had stretched and frayed. “Has anyone examined this?”

Tremblay shook his head. “I told them it was an accident, but you know how superstitious actors are.”

“That will be all I need, then,” Louverture said, waited for Tremblay to lead him back out the maze of corridor.

“Officier,” Tremblay said when they reached the door, “do you think if we close for a while—the people, will they—”

“Forget?” Louverture pushed the door open, blinked at the light outside. “Of course. With enough time, people can forget anything.”

His mind raced as he ran back to the Cabildo. A paradox was not a dead end, he had forgotten that: it was an intersection of two streets you hadn’t known existed. He smelled sulphur as he reached the square, saw smoke rising from near the courthouse. The gardien at the door levelled a pistol at him as he neared.

“Keep back, please,” the gardien said.

Louverture raised his hands. He could not recall if he had ever seen a gardien draw his gun before. “I’m Officier Louverture,” he said, slowly dropping his right hand. “I’m reaching for my badge.” He fished it out carefully, extended it at arm’s length.

“Go in, then,” the gardien said, “and you might want to get a spare uniform if you’re staying.”

“What’s going on?”

“A bomb. In the courthouse.”

“Sweet Reason. Was anyone killed?”

The gardien shook his head. “It missed fire, or else it was just a smoke bomb—but they found two more just like it at the Cathedral and the Academie Scientifique.”

“Excuse me,” Louverture said, waving his badge at the desk man as he went inside.

“Louverture!” Commandant Trudeau said, looking up from the charts on his desk. “I told Clouthier you wouldn’t be able to stay away.” Clouthier, his back to Louverture, nodded absently. “Quite a mess, isn’t it?”

“Commandant—Officier principal—I think I understand it now,” he said. “I think I know who is doing this.”

“Which group of irrationalists?”

“Not irrationalists; scientists. It’s an experiment.”

Trudeau looked confused, the first time Louverture had seen it on his face. “Explain.”

“A series of larger and larger experiments. The theatre accidents, the omnibus failures—they were done on purpose, to test how much it takes to change people’s behaviour. The notes, and the bomb probably too—they were to test us.”

“Test us for what?”

“To see how much it would take to make us react irrationally, see every accident as sabotage, every abandoned briefcase as a bomb. Perhaps we too are just a test for a larger experiment.”

“But the notes,” Clouthier said, turning to face him. “Who were they threatening?”

Louverture glanced out the window, at the statue in the middle of the square. “Reason,” he said. “She dies tonight.”

“I’m sorry, Officier, but this makes no sense,” Trudeau said. “What would be the motive?”

“I’m not sure. Jealousy, a wish to possess reason for themselves alone? Or perhaps the motive is reason itself. Perhaps they simply want to know.”

“This is ridiculous,” Clouthier barked. “He wants us chasing phantoms. We know who the irrationalist leaders are; arrest them, and the others will follow soon enough.”

“And how will people react when they see the Corps out in force, with pistols? Will they remain rational, do you think?”

“I’ve ordered a
couvre-feu
for eight o’clock,” Clouthier said. “People will stay inside when they see the lights are out.”