A Lady in Shadows Read online

  He did not answer at once. Instead he asked, “Do you know that she is dead?”

  “Yes. That is why I am here.”

  “She was unusually photogenic,” he continued, with a touch of sadness. “She liked to perform, had a talent for it . . . many of them need direction, and even then it is often no good. But her . . . It is odd, because she always felt guilty afterward. I have seen her several times standing with her rosary and offering one prayer after another while she waited for the omnibus. Still she came back and seemed happy and comfortable while the game was on. But then she had to go and get herself in the family way, and . . . well, that is not really something the gentlemen want to look at, is it?”

  “Except for him.” I pointed to the masked man. “He did, it seems?”

  “Yes.” He looked up at me quickly. “You see, the others . . . That was just a bit of fun. Frivolous, yes, but not . . . I am not forcing the girls to do anything, you understand, for them it is easy money compared to other modeling work or . . . well, you know. Or—I am sorry. Of course I do not know what you know.”

  “But these two are different.”

  “Yes. She did not really want to. She did not like that he was there, and when he wanted her to . . . She really did not want to.”

  “Why did she do it, then?”

  “I think she needed the money. Like I said, with that belly getting bigger every day—it was not easy for her.”

  “You took the pictures,” I said. “Even though you knew that she did not want to do it.” It sounded more accusatory than I had meant it to, but I could not quite hold back my contempt.

  “Listen, mademoiselle. We all need to make a living. She, I—perhaps even you.”

  “She is no longer living,” I could not help pointing out.

  “No, and that is a great shame, because she was . . . lovely. So you can take your well-bred disapproval and go on home where you belong.”

  “Not before you tell me who he is.”

  “Why do you think he is wearing a mask? He doesn’t want anyone knowing who he is—and that includes you, I have no doubt.”

  “But you know?”

  “No. Not really.”

  There was a glint of something . . . off, a hint of falsity that told me that his surprising candor had run out.

  “You do know something,” I pressed him. “How did he find you? Where did he come from?”

  “He came with her. She brought him. He paid me to take some pictures, I took them. That was all. So no, there is nothing I can tell you.”

  “You must have seen him without the mask?”

  “Not very clearly. He was wearing a scarf around the lower part of his face when they came in.”

  “What did he sound like? How tall was he? Can you describe his hair and beard, his posture, his gait?”

  “Mademoiselle, have I not made myself clear? I have nothing further to say.”

  “Perhaps you prefer to speak to Inspector Marot about it?”

  He cast another calculating gaze at me, this time deliberately unpleasant. “Do you know, you would be quite good yourself. Very suitable. All that straitlaced respectability, and yet . . . one can sense the vixen under the frock. You are not so prissy as you like to pretend, are you now?”

  He wanted me to leave. This was just a strategy to intimidate me, I told myself. He wanted me to be so embarrassed that I simply fled. It was not because he knew . . . he could not know. What August and I . . . no. It was not visible. That was not why.

  “You have a choice,” I said coolly. “You can tell me what you know, or you can have that conversation with the police. I have heard that the préfecture could do with a showcase or two, to demonstrate how serious they are about upholding the public decency laws.”

  For a moment, he seemed to be considering a counterattack, but then he resigned himself.

  “He was a gentleman,” he said. “Cultured, well spoken. Dark hair, I think, though I did not see much of his face or his beard. There was nothing unusual about the way he carried himself. I have told you everything I know. Except . . . there was something I heard them say. He and Rosalba.”

  “Yes? What?”

  “I think . . . I think she believed he had a responsibility—that perhaps he was the child’s father.”

  “Can you prove that?” I said, like an unwilling echo of Dr. Althauser.

  “Why else would she think he would help her?”

  “With . . .”

  “Yes. With the child.”

  “But he rebuffed her?”

  “No, he agreed. On the condition that she let herself be photographed as . . . well, as you saw.”

  “So it was not for money that she did it?”

  “No. It was the other thing.”

  I inspected the black-and-white photographs once more. If he had agreed to help her, why was she still in such anguish? The more I looked, the more convinced I was that these were pictures of a human being who was poised on the edge of complete perdition—and knew it.

  “When did all this take place?” I asked.

  “I don’t recall,” he said evasively.

  “Surely you write down your appointments,” I said. “A diary, ledgers, accounts . . . even you surely cannot run your business without a certain amount of clerking.”

  “My wife does all that.”

  “Then we will ask her.”

  That obviously did not appeal. I had to threaten him a third time with Marot and the decency laws before he relented.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  But I would not. I insisted on following him upstairs.

  “My wife . . . ,” he objected. “She is not used to . . . She expects me to . . .”

  “Your wife expects you to be currently busy photographing a young woman en déshabillé. She is unlikely to come to any major harm from seeing me fully dressed instead.”

  She did not even look up when we came in.

  “You know that I prefer that it only happens by appointment,” she said sharply. “How else am I supposed to impose any sort of order on your muddled affairs?”

  She sat at a small escritoire, hunched over a ledger. There was only a single lamp in the room, the one on the desk, and its wick was turned almost all the way down, which was perhaps the reason she had to hunch as much as she did.

  The salon was quite possibly of a respectable size, but it was so cluttered that I hardly dared breathe for fear of knocking into something. There were dolls everywhere—on shelves along the walls, in two large vitrines, on the divan, and on chairs and dressers; no matter where I looked, I was met by unmoving porcelain faces and glass eyes, by crinolines and corkscrew curl wigs, bonnets, skirts, and ruffled pantalets. The way she dressed herself found a bizarre resonance here, so that for a dizzying moment I perceived her not as a human being but as a bizarrely lifelike, speaking, and moving crinoline doll.

  “Daphne,” said LaCour apologetically, “the young lady would like to see the appointments for June.”

  Her head came up with a jerk. “What is she doing here?”

  “As I said—”

  “Get her out! I will not have them upstairs!”

  “Daphne, Mademoiselle Karno is not—”

  “Out, I said!”

  “Madame,” I attempted, “I shall leave at once if you will only permit me to—”

  But she would not allow herself to be calmed. In a hiss of petticoats, she was on her feet. She held the pen like one would a knife or a spear and thrust it toward me so that I instinctively took a step backward.

  “Be gone!”

  “Please leave,” begged LaCour. “You can see . . . Wait outside and I will bring you what you wish to see. Daphne, dearest, sit down, Mademoiselle Karno is leaving now.”

  I am ashamed to admit it, but I allowed myself to be chased from the scene by a disturbed woman armed only with a pen and an insane temper. Outside on the lavender-edged path, as I attempted to collect my scattered wits, I felt a moment’s pity, not for
her but for her besieged husband.

  Fortunately, he kept his word. I had been standing there for only a few minutes, surrounded again by the warm scent of grapes, when he emerged with a small notebook.

  “Here,” he said. “R.L. and companion. Twenty-second of June 1894, at six o’clock in the evening.”

  The date of Rosalba’s death was etched in my memory, possibly because it was the same as that of the president’s murder: They had both left this world on the night between the 24th and 25th of June. In other words, the photographs had been taken just two days before she died.

  By the time I reached Carmelite Street, eight o’clock had come and gone. Elise had turned on the lights, I could see, so Papa must be home from the hospital.

  This time there was no Paul Tessier to warn me. Out of the corner of my eye, I simply saw a tall figure step out of the shadows by the gable.

  “I hear that you do not like the sight of blood, Fräulein,” he said, and it was only then that I recognized Erich Falchenberg. He brandished an object that I did not have time to identify before it hit me.

  Something soft, heavy, and wet exploded in my face. The stench was overwhelming. When I gulped for air, a thick fluid filled my nose and mouth, and I was left snorting, coughing, trying to wipe off the sticky mess. His words should have warned me, but I was still shocked when I saw the clotted smears on my gloves and realized it was blood. A half-choked yelp escaped me.

  “What do you do when it pours out of your crotch every month?” he said in an almost clinical tone. “One would think that you would be used to such filth. Stick to your own kind, Fräulein, and leave August in peace!”

  “It is unlikely to be human in origin,” said my father. “Pig’s blood, I suspect. The bladder is definitely a pig’s bladder.”

  At that point, I did not care where the putrid blood came from, I just wanted it off.

  “I am going to report him,” I said furiously. “Send for Marot. I refuse to tolerate this!”

  “So you know who the attacker is?” said my father, astonished.

  That made me hesitate. Did I really want the whole world—or at least Marot and the rest of Varbourg officialdom—to know that my fiancé’s previous lover had attacked me with an inflated pig’s bladder full of blood?

  “No,” I lied. “It was dark. I didn’t see him clearly.”

  “Do you have any sense of the motive for this . . . peculiar attack?”

  “Perhaps there is someone who does not like female students,” I said, which was not too far from the truth.

  “Maddie! Do you really believe that?”

  “I don’t know. Elise—is that bath not ready yet?”

  The house was so old that it did not contain an actual bathroom, but not long ago we had knocked a door through from the laboratory to the laundry shed, had a tub set up, and arranged it so that the former laundry copper could be heated with the aid of a gas burner. We had not yet established the pipe system for the water, so for the moment one still had to fill it by hand. It was nevertheless considerably faster than before, when the bathwater had to be carried all the way up to the second floor.

  “It’s still only lukewarm,” said Elise. “Why don’t I take the dress? If we soak it in cold water, we might be able to save it.”

  “Try,” I said grimly. If I could not report Herr Falchenberg, then what could I do about him? Tattle to August, of course, but would that be wise? Perhaps that was actually what the towheaded idiot wanted. If August were to do anything, then they would have to meet, and then . . . I tried to stop myself, but my imagination ran away with me. Two naked bodies in close embrace, slick with sweat and other bodily fluids . . . No. The less August thought about Falchenberg, the better. It pained me that they would occasionally be in the same town, never mind the same room. How on earth could August ever have fallen for that . . . that oversize infantile oaf?

  “Lukewarm or not, I’m getting into the tub now,” I decided. “We can heat more water as we go along.”

  It took almost an hour and a half before I felt sufficiently clean. Elise, bless her, ladled and ladled without complaint even though it was now completely dark outside and her mother would be waiting for her to come home. At last, I thanked her and sent her off but remained sitting in the tub for a while, pondering what I should do about Erich Falchenberg.

  The petroleum lamp began to flicker and smoke. I repressed an unladylike utterance and reached for the towel, but before I had time to get up, the flame went out.

  The unconscious mind is odd. The eye does not always see what is there but sometimes what is not. In the sudden darkness, he stood at the foot of the tub. Clad in black, at one with the shadows, so that only the white hood with its grotesque black grin shone toward me and made my heart pound so hard in my chest that I felt faint. And though I knew two things—that I was entirely alone in the laundry shed, and that Erich Falchenberg was, in any case, both too tall and too broad to be the man in the mask—there was nonetheless a moment when my entire body seized up because it thought he was there.

  September 25, 1894

  “But . . . what about God, then?”

  The question shot out with an explosive power, an outburst it was clear that Janvier had been holding back as long as he was able. Now it was no longer possible.

  The lecture hall fell completely silent. Docent Althauser let the words hang in the air for a long time. I was beginning to suspect that he possessed a certain flair for the theatrical, and the length of the pause supported that hypothesis.

  “What about God? Is that your question?”

  Janvier already looked as if he regretted having opened his mouth, but he held his ground nonetheless. Janvier was a country boy, the son of a wine grower with ambitions. He was here to learn biology and chemistry, he had told us, so that he and his scientific training could help his father develop improved methods for the vinery. The introductory course in physiology was for him a necessary evil, and he was definitely not among Althauser’s favorites.

  “If the scientist, as you say, is supposed to not simply observe nature but to raise himself above it and . . . and . . . You said that man can now create new life-forms.”

  “That is correct. Two years ago, for example, my honored colleague Jacques Loeb succeeded in creating Tubularia with two heads, one at each end.”

  “But isn’t that against God’s will?”

  “Young man, if it is theology you wish to study, you are in the wrong place.”

  There was a malevolent snicker, led by Malleau. The back of Janvier’s broad neck flamed bright red from ear to ear, a phenomenon I was well placed to observe as I was seated almost directly behind him.

  “Perhaps you also believe that Pasteur’s vaccines are an offense to the laws of God? If Our Lord has sent us pox, rabies, and cholera, who are we to attempt to eradicate these diseases? Is that not also to place ourselves above nature? Should we perhaps reject M’sieur Darwin’s theories because the Bible informs us that the world was created in six days?”

  “No, I just think—”

  “Sir, as far as I am concerned, you can believe in everything from Virgin Birth to the miracle of the Ascension, and why not include the Easter bunny and Saint Nicholas while you are at it—provided you do so on Sundays. When you step into this room, you are first and foremost a scientist. Or at least I hope to transform you into one. And for the scientist, there is no belief—only facts. We register and observe, but we also act. As far back as 1780, Spallanzani was able to copy the Holy Spirit and impregnated a dog with no sexual contact other than that created by a pipette—and he was a priest, sir. Only ten years later, John Hunter reported the first known case of artificial insemination in humans. And three years ago, Walter Heape in Edinburgh succeeded in transplanting a fertilized egg from an Angora rabbit doe to a Belgian rabbit doe, and the Belgian gave birth to the loveliest little Angora bunnies. These are the times we are living in, gentlemen, a time that is not satisfied with dull reproduction of the dog
mas of the past, a time that demands courage, vision, and creative genius from those of you who are privileged enough to possess the ability and the will to act. And if you do not understand that, m’sieur, then you are better served by going back home to your cows and your chickens and your precious vines.”

  The contempt in the last words was sulfuric, and Janvier shrank in his seat.

  Perhaps Althauser realized he had gone too far. Janvier was no longer the only one who looked uncomfortable, and as a former seminary—theology remained one of the largest departments—it was not general policy of the university to encourage firebrand attacks against religion. He concluded the lecture with a few more conventional platitudes about due diligence and meticulous attention to detail, and sent us home to read Heape’s description of the rabbit experiment for Monday’s lecture. Or rather, he sent the others home.

  “Mademoiselle Karno, do you have a moment?”

  I stopped in the middle of my final hurried notes and looked at him with surprise.

  “Of course, Monsieur le Professeur. What is this regarding?”

  “If you would come with me—it will only take a few minutes.”

  He led me across the hall to the small room at the back of the laboratory that he used as his private office. When I saw who was waiting, I instinctively took a step backward, but Althauser did not seem to notice.

  “So, you are here,” he said. “Good.”

  Erich Falchenberg and I stared at each other behind Althauser’s back while he unlocked the door. It would have been hard to determine which of us detested the other more.

  “Sit down please, mademoiselle,” instructed Althauser. “Monsieur Falchenberg, if you would please begin?”

  Monsieur Falchenberg looked as if he would prefer to bite off a finger at the root. Still, he cleared his throat and declared, “Mademoiselle Karno, I have come to give you my unreserved apology.”

  That was the last thing I had expected.

  “Eh . . . thank you,” I said.

  “My behavior toward you has been entirely unacceptable, not to say criminal. I deeply regret it. I have no expectation that you will pardon me, because I do not deserve it, but I wish to assure you that you have nothing further to fear from me. You and I are fellow students at this university, and in the future I will make every effort to treat you with the respect you have the right to expect.”