A Lady in Shadows Page 19

  “Of course,” I mumbled.

  A hansom was hired. During most of the drive, Marie sat completely still and upright and stared down at her hands and the pocket handkerchief they were gripping. Only once did she break the silence.

  “She liked you,” she said.

  I felt a lump in my throat.

  “It was mutual.”

  “She was . . . so alive.”

  “Yes.” I had experienced Fleur only in shock and sorrow, and now in death, yet I knew exactly what Marie meant.

  The sun had gradually burned off the fog, and there was a golden haze across the gardens and the trees along the road, summery rather than autumnal despite the date. Where Varbourg had been busy and loud in the midst of the day, La Valle still dozed deeply. A dog barked at us from one of the gardens, a maid in a doorway was shaking out a tablecloth and looked up as we passed. Other than that, we saw not a soul.

  “It is so peaceful here,” I said at last.

  “Yes,” said Marie with a fragile little smile. “It reminds me of the village where my grandmother lived. She often looked after me when I was a child.”

  Marie’s own newly hired maid, Adele, received us and served tea and brioches in the dining room. I discovered that I was actually hungry in spite of the emotional upheavals. Marie picked a little at her roll but did not seem to manage more than a few crumbs.

  “The Commissioner said that you did not think Fleur had any relatives?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “I think she was quite alone in the world, except for Rosalba. She didn’t say a word to me about a home, or relatives. In fact, she never talked about her background at all, but I had a feeling it was grim. Possibly an orphanage?”

  “And you don’t know whether Petit was her real last name?”

  “No. But I have never heard her use anything else.”

  “How long have you known her?”

  “It must be . . . six or seven years.” She stretched and got up restlessly. “You know what they call girls like her, don’t you?”

  “Filles isolées. She used the term herself.”

  “Yes. And it was true in more ways than one. She and Rosalba looked after each other. They created their own little island and only rarely allowed anyone else into their private world. I was one of the lucky few who were permitted to visit once in a while. She was tough as nails and ready to defend herself against all comers, but with Rosalba . . . when they were together, one could see a different Fleur, quick to laugh and vulnerably open, happy and loving and full of the best kind of silliness. Madeleine, you have no idea what she lost when Rosalba was killed. After that, there was only hard-as-nails Fleur left, and even she was mortally wounded.”

  “The Commissioner said you and she had an appointment. Where were you going?”

  “She had made me promise that I would go with her to the Commission for Public Health and Decency. I think she believed they would be more likely to listen to me than to her.”

  “What on earth did she want there?”

  “Rosalba was taken into what they call custodial quarantine this spring. For three months, according to the new rules.”

  “For buying a pint of milk in the wrong place,” I exclaimed.

  Marie nodded tightly. “Yes. By some self-important busybody who knew who she was. Do you know what they do?”

  “No.”

  “It is horrible. Humiliating and . . . horrible. You may think that women like us have no sense of modesty.”

  “No. I don’t believe that.”

  “We do. It matters how they treat us! To be forced onto a table with two men to hold you down while some coldhearted swine of a doctor spreads your legs and . . . they call it a health test, but it is . . . horrible.”

  I felt a nauseating unease in my chest. Elegant, refined Marie, who now was my friend the Commissioner’s wife and lived here in the villa in La Valle with a maid and a full set of Limoges china—she too had been subjected to the forced examinations the préfecture inflicted on what they called “public girls,” isolée or otherwise.

  “Rosalba was not sick,” said Marie. “They found nothing because there was nothing to find. But the doctor still wrote that she was in the early stages of syphilis and sent her into custody.”

  I myself knew that Rosalba did not have syphilis. We would have discovered that during the autopsy.

  “Fleur wanted to know who that doctor was,” said Marie.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. But she was very set on it.”

  “And did she find out?”

  “No. I waited for over an hour, but . . . she did not show up. Madeleine, was she already dead at that point?”

  “When had you arranged to meet?”

  “Thursday afternoon. At two o’clock, when they reopen after lunch.”

  “No,” I said. “She was still alive then.” I did not know what Papa was recording right now about the time of death, but it could hardly be Thursday, or the decomposition would have been more advanced.

  “But why didn’t she come, then?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I am going to find out.”

  The Commission for Public Health and Decency was housed in a large, ugly redbrick monstrosity that looked exactly like what it really was: a prison. Only at street level did the building have proper windows facing Place Tertiaire; for the sake of symmetry, the architect had insisted on recesses and what looked like window cornices, but where there should have been glass, there was just more wall. If windows are the eyes of a house, then this house had had its eyes poked out.

  I looked down at my only weapon against the massive defenses of the commission: a hastily written note from Inspector Marot asking its public servants to “aid Mademoiselle Karno in finding what she is seeking.” I would have preferred to have the company of a police officer as a more visible and concrete proof of my claim, but the inspector had not been willing to stretch that far. He had seemed grumpy and overworked and had listened with only half an ear while I explained how critical it was to investigate what had happened while Rosalba was in custody.

  “Fine, if you have nothing better to do,” he said. “Though I do not entirely understand why you are so determined to chase that particular wild goose . . .”

  So here I was, in front of the lion’s den, hoping that this unimpressive piece of paper was enough. I strongly doubted that the commission would have allowed Fleur and Marie access to the archives out of politeness and the goodness of their hearts. Why had she asked Marie and not me? Perhaps she had lost confidence in my abilities as unofficial investigator. Perhaps she was right . . .

  I stood still a moment longer to check if the anger was still there. It was. And if it could not be used for anything else, at least it made me march up the steps to the pompous entrance and across the outer foyer with decisive, authoritative steps.

  I slammed Marot’s note down in front of the young clerk who was posted behind the barred counter that was clearly meant to keep the general public at bay.

  “As you can see, I require access to the archives of the commission. It regards the period from the first of January to the first of May this year.”

  He looked up at me in obvious consternation. “The archives?” he said.

  “Yes. Everything regarding forced examinations and custodial quarantine during the time in question.”

  “And . . . um . . . who may I say you are?”

  “In this errand, I am Police Inspector Marot’s special assistant. As it says.” I pointed down at the note.

  “I’ll see if that is possible,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “You may announce that it must be possible and at once. The police inspector needs this information in an important case.” At least I was convinced that he did even though he himself was not yet quite aware of it.

  “Please understand, Monsieur Barbier does not permit . . .” he stammered. “I cannot myself . . . such a decision requires . .
.”

  “Of course,” I said. “It is probably easiest if I accompany you and explain the case.”

  He looked at me with something like panic but then apparently decided that in fact it was simplest to pass the problem—me—on to the next level in the food chain.

  “This way, mademoiselle,” he said, and opened the counter’s only gate.

  We interrupted Monsieur Barbier at what was either a late breakfast or an early lunch. He sat behind his enormous mahogany desk, applying butter and orange marmalade to a second croissant—judging by the crumbs from the first—and looked up with irritation when we came in.

  “What is it now, Pikeur? And who is this lady?”

  “This is Mademoiselle Karno, she . . . she has been sent by Police Inspector Marot. She has . . . That is, she says . . .”

  I decided to take over the explanations myself. “The inspector has asked me to collect certain information from the commission’s archives. It is an urgent matter.”

  Barbier gave me a decidedly impolite once-over. There were crisp croissant crumbs in his beard, I noted.

  “I see. Well, don’t just stand there, Pikeur. Show the young lady what the inspector needs to see.”

  “Yes, m’sieur.”

  “And, Pikeur?”

  “Yes, m’sieur?”

  “I really cannot be expected to deal with every little thing myself. Show a little initiative!”

  “Yes, m’sieur. Of course, m’sieur.”

  “And tell Madame Charles that the coffee is cold!”

  The archives were situated in a library-like hall a bit farther down the corridor, with windows facing Place Tertiaire. Mahogany bookshelves ran from floor to ceiling, shelf after shelf of identical gray files and document boxes. Pikeur climbed up a ladder and fetched me QUARANTINE RECORDS JANUARY 1894 and its cousins FEBRUARY, MARCH, and APRIL.

  “If you would permit . . . Here at the table perhaps?”

  “Thank you, that will be fine.”

  “I must . . . you understand, the front desk is unmanned, and . . .”

  “I shall manage. Thank you for your help, Monsieur Pikeur.”

  “You are welcome. Or . . . I am the one who . . . Tell me if there is more that I . . .”

  He retreated, still without having completed a sentence, it seemed to me. I wondered fleetingly whether he always spoke like this or if I just brought out the worst—or in any case the least complete—in him.

  The records were all arranged in the same way. In the column on the far left was the name of the woman, last name first. Then came “Date of Examination,” “Case No.,” a column without a heading that was meant for the examiner’s signature, then a wider field for the description of the results, and finally one dedicated to the decision of the commission. There were apparently only three possibilities—“release,” “1 month,” or “3 months.”

  I found Lombardi, Rosalba on January 13. But next to her name, there was nothing except the date, case number, and two letters: PP. There was no signature and no description of the result. It did not even say “3 months,” though I knew that was what she had been sentenced to, if “sentence” is the right word when no judge or court of law has been involved.

  Frustrated, I leaned back in the chair. PP—that told me nothing. And why were the other areas blank?

  I was just about to close the file when I discovered that Rosalba’s name appeared more than once. She was also there on January 15, in exactly the same way: Lombardi, Rosalba. PP. Likewise the 17th. And the 19th. And the 21st.

  She had been “examined” fifteen times—every other day for a month.

  From a medical point of view it made no sense whatsoever. Syphilis lesions in the vagina did not sprout forth from one day to the next. To subject a woman to the invasion that Marie had simply called “horrible,” so frequently, so systematically . . . It approached torture. I completely understood Fleur’s anger, but I did not understand the purpose of this at all. Surely this careful, meticulously recorded sequence of events had to be more than random cruelty?

  The record did not tell me enough. But I thought the archives here might be arranged similar to those of the morgue—the public records were only for quick reference, while the full report was stored elsewhere. I noted Rosalba’s case number—94026—and went looking.

  I guessed that the endless gray boxes would be the place to start, and after some searching found “94001–94100.” But though there was a “94025” and a “94027,” there was no file marked “94026.” A quick perusal revealed that there were other gaps in the row of numbers. In theory, this might be because there simply were no documents or reports, but that seemed strange, not least because the record itself had seemed so lacking. Why register every single one of those awful examinations without noting their results? That would be even more meaningless.

  After some consideration, I began to make note of the other gaps; I found seven. When I checked back in the records, I noted that they all, like Rosalba, had that enigmatic PP.

  I looked at the endless shelves towering above me. Somewhere, I thought. Somewhere there is a gray box where those seven PP reports are collected. But where?

  One’s leg muscles can become very sore from climbing up and down a library ladder for an hour and a half. That is how long it took before I, highest up in one of the farthest bookcases, found the gray box that looked exactly like the other gray boxes, except for the fact that the spine was marked “PP 1894.” Finally!

  I climbed awkwardly down the ladder with the box tightly grasped under one arm. I was sweaty, dusty, sore . . . and triumphant.

  Just as suspected, the box contained the seven missing reports, plus several more I hadn’t found because they were from later months. All together there must have been about forty. I yanked Rosalba’s from the pile and opened it greedily.

  The first document was a general description of her, depressingly like the one I myself had noted in the autopsy report. Height, weight, hair color, body type, et cetera. Some more cryptic notations followed: “Cranial shape: A. Facial features: A2. Form and function of the limbs: 9. Deformities: None. Intelligence: Normal or above. Conclusion: Suited.”

  Suited for what?

  This was not clarified in the next document, a slightly expanded report of the recorded fifteen “examinations.” Next to most of them it just said “Completed. Nothing of note.” But it did not stop there. Over the next two months, Rosalba had apparently been “seen” by the attending physician regularly once a week: “Seen. Nothing of note.” But then, after one more week, there was finally a change: “Seen. Nausea.” “Seen. Menses nil.” And finally on March 19, about a week before Rosalba’s release, one word, underlined with a thick black pen: “Gravida.”

  At this point I was not quite as shocked as I perhaps ought to have been to discover who had signed the certificate of her release: A. Althauser, Docent.

  I left the building on Place Tertiaire with Rosalba’s case file lodged between my shoulder blades and my corset. In my little notebook, I had carefully penned the names of all the other women in the PP box—thirty-six, it turned out, when I counted them carefully. Only eight of them had the final note “Gravida.” I had written down the addresses these eight women had provided. I assumed some of these would be false—they would not have wanted to leave the police a record of their whereabouts if they could help it—but I hoped to find at least one or two.

  After four discouraging attempts—two “never heard of her,” one “she doesn’t live here anymore,” and a house number that did not exist on the street in question—I now stood in a backyard behind Rue Carcassonne, knocking on a black-painted door to a tiny dwelling that had probably started life as a small laundry shed, or possibly even a byre. The yard was reasonably neat—the dustbins were lined up along the fence, the cobblestones had been carefully swept, and in front of the house’s only window hung a wooden box in which various herbs were growing—in passing, I identified thyme and rosemary.

  T
he door was opened by a girl of twelve or thirteen. Her black hair was braided so tightly that the parting shone white in the midst of the black, and her dark guarded gaze reminded me painfully of Fleur’s. She stared at me as if I were a fairy or a witch or something equally foreign and unexpected.

  “What do you want?” she asked, not with hostility or intentional discourtesy but as if she really wanted to know.

  “I am looking for . . .” I had to consult my list, “Estelle Audran. She gave this address?”

  “Mamaaa!” yelled the girl. “There’s a lady here wants to see you!”

  Greatly encouraged, I followed her into the tiny hallway. I had been prepared to come up with yet another blank in the address lottery, but here there was apparently a prize.

  It was probably the smallest living room I had ever been in, not much more than a meter and a half one way and two the other. At a table by the window sat a woman putting together matchboxes. Her stubby fingers flew, folding and gluing and pasting the paper on both sides. She barely looked up.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “I would . . . like to speak with you,” I answered hesitantly. I realized that I had no desire whatsoever to mention the Commission for Public Health and Decency to this woman while her daughter was listening.

  “About what? As you can see, we are busy.” The daughter had already sat down on the other side of the table, and she too glued boxes at a pace that seemed to make her fingers blur in front of my eyes—she was even faster than her mother. “If it is the salvation of my soul that you are concerned about, then you may rest assured. I go to mass every Sunday just like other people do.”

  That was a natural assumption, I guess—religion and charity were about the only pursuits that regularly brought women like me into a working woman’s home.