A Lady in Shadows Page 25

  “I might be able to convince one or more of the women to talk to you,” I said.

  “Prostitutes? Mademoiselle, this is a respectable newspaper.”

  “So in other words, the newspaper will write about them when they are murdered in a sufficiently spectacular way, but not let them speak while they are still alive?”

  “Mademoiselle Karno, please pardon my language, but that a whore gives birth to a bastard is not really news.”

  “The way it is happening is news.”

  “Yes, you’re certainly right about that. But I can’t imagine that my editor will give me permission to describe that. We are Varonne’s second-largest newspaper, mademoiselle. We really cannot use words like . . . uh, semen.”

  “Then don’t. Just write that the women were subjected to ‘medical experiments’ or something like that. Without their knowledge. And that Althauser and Pro Patria are behind it. Imply that these experiments cause the women to become pregnant and let the reader’s imagination do the rest.”

  “What you want us to insinuate is decidedly indecent!”

  Not more so than what actually happened, I thought, but kept that thought to myself.

  “It may perhaps be perceived that way by some, but for the pure of heart everything is pure,” I said piously.

  He looked thoughtful.

  “It could perhaps . . . hmmm. I have to speak with the editor. But . . . perhaps . . . not uninteresting. But also not enough, mademoiselle. What else do you have?”

  “I imagine that you might like to see Aristide Gilbert’s suicide note,” I said, knowing full well that I had probably just given him the headline for tomorrow’s newspaper.

  His somewhat languid expression came sharply alive.

  “Yes, that . . . I would,” he said. “Very well. Let us exchange letters and favors, for the common good.”

  Thus, the two letters ended up side by side on a conference table in the empty premises of the editor of the Sunday special.

  “If I may?”

  “Just don’t crumble it,” he said. “We will most likely have to turn it over to the police as soon as they have read today’s paper.”

  This caused me a pang of guilty conscience because I still had the notes on the autopsy in my bag, but it was only a momentary twinge. The autopsy notes were the reason why I had the letter with me in the first place—it was to be included in the file. Both would reach the Commissioner’s desk soon enough so that they could be stamped and certified and added to the files of a case that everyone but I clearly considered closed.

  Here, in the electric light, it was obvious that the handwriting in the two letters was the same.

  “How did you get your hands on this?” I asked Christophe.

  “It was sent to us,” he mumbled while his eyes flew over the desperate lines in the good-bye note. “Anonymously.”

  “How did you know it was real, then?”

  “We called Hyères on the telephone and had a number of details confirmed that an outsider could hardly have known about. That bit about the erased footprints, for example. There was a note in the police report that said that because of the blowing sand one could not exclude the possibility that there had been more than one person on the beach. This was not made public because Celeste Aguillard’s testimony made the case fall apart.”

  “Who do you think sent it?”

  “Himself, probably. He was looking for penance and forgiveness, wasn’t he? But this ends a bit abruptly, doesn’t it?” Christophe pointed at the letter’s last sentence: I am a monster, a coward, a sinner so great that not even God can forgive

  A sudden anger rose up in me. All that babbling about forgiveness. It might be that Alice’s death was an accident of sorts, but Fleur’s was not. She had fought. With open eyes and all her strength, while the water forced its way into her throat and lungs. If he had wanted to die with a clean conscience, he should not have done that. I refused to feel sorry for him now.

  “What should he have added?” I said. “ ‘I’m really, really sorry, I’ll never do it again’?”

  “You’re a hard woman.”

  “She was half his size. It must have been like drowning a child.”

  “What I am wondering is . . . There is not even a full stop at the end. Nor has he signed the letter. Suicides usually do. And take a look at the edge of the paper.”

  I could see what he meant. Compared to the other three sides, the bottom of the sheet was neither as crisply cut nor quite as straight.

  “You mean . . . something is missing?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how . . .” I hesitated. “Who would . . .”

  “He asks you to ‘do what is in your power to see justice fully done.’ If he and he alone committed this crime and is now punished by his own hand—what justice is left to pursue?”

  It was obvious now that he had pointed it out.

  “He was not acting alone,” I said slowly. “That is what he means. What he wants me to do. He wants his accomplice stopped and punished.” I sat up straight and tried to line up my thoughts in a logical fashion.

  “This letter,” I continued. “No, not the note, the one addressed to ‘Aunt Celeste’ . . . What if it was not Gilbert who sent it . . . When did you receive it?”

  “In the morning mail.”

  “And when does that arrive?”

  “Around ten. We only just missed getting it into the afternoon edition.”

  “Do you still have the envelope?”

  “Yes.” He took it out of the same folder in which he had kept the letter.

  It was an entirely ordinary envelope, except for the lack of a return address. But what interested me was the postmark. It indicated that the letter had passed through Varbourg Ouest, the post office in charge of delivery to and from the city’s western parts. In other words, a local letter, posted yesterday.

  I did some mental calculations. In Varbourg, the mail was delivered twice a day, in the morning and late in the afternoon between five and six. To make the late delivery, a local letter needed to be handed in for sorting by three at the latest. So we had to assume that the letter had arrived at the post office sometime after three, or it would have been delivered the same day.

  “He cannot have sent it himself,” I said.

  “How do you reach that conclusion?”

  I explained. “At three in the afternoon, Aristide Gilbert was lying in his bathtub. He may not have been quite dead yet, but he was definitely so inebriated that it would not have been humanly possible for him to go and post a letter.”

  “If you say so. All right, so he was not the one who sent it. Why are you looking as if someone just handed you the keys to a confectionary?”

  “Let us agree on two things,” I said. “First: Anyone who had this letter in his possession while Gilbert lived had a terrible power over him.”

  Christophe considered this, but only briefly.

  “Of course,” he said. “This person could send him more or less directly to the guillotine simply by showing the letter to the police.”

  “Second: I assume we agree that it was not a coincidence that this letter was sent on the same day Gilbert died?”

  “That is obvious. The two things are connected. The letter was sent because he died.”

  “Thus the sender must have known about the death before the morning papers were on the street.”

  “You mean . . . No. I don’t know what you mean. Explain.”

  “I think that both of these letters are . . . what should I call it? Props in a staged event. A guilt-ridden murderer writes a suicide note and takes his own life. The suspicions against him are quickly confirmed by another incriminating letter, revealing that he has previously been guilty of killing. Together they create a prettily embroidered silhouette with all the loose ends neatly tied up. Only . . . the details do not fit. The apparent suicide note has been cropped and a part of it is missing. The letter addressed to Celeste Aguillard is sent by someone wh
o knows a little too much a little too soon. Someone who might even have staged the suicide itself . . .”

  “Is that possible?”

  “I would think so,” I said. “He—I am fairly convinced it is a man—he seeks out Gilbert yesterday. Gilbert is possibly already inebriated, possibly already suicidal . . . He was an absinthe addict, and I am willing to believe that the killing of Fleur Petit really did torment him intensely. He must have already written the letter that becomes his suicide note in the abbreviated version. Manhandling his incapacitated body into the bathtub would no doubt have been odious, but far from impossible. After that, it is only a matter of time before he drowns. If you want certainty, pushing his head underwater for a little while will do the trick. Or even better . . .” I suddenly remembered how Gilbert’s legs had stuck out of the tub. “Even better: Simply grasp his legs and pull so that his entire upper body is submerged. Even someone fully alert would find it difficult to save himself from that position. For a man already paralyzed by alcohol, death would have been inevitable.”

  Christophe observed me for a while.

  “You have a frightening imagination, mademoiselle.”

  “No,” I said grimly. “I have frightening knowledge.”

  “And this man . . . this accomplice . . . do you also know who he is?”

  First the facts. Then the conclusion. Not the other way around. There was quite a lot I still did not know, and even more that I would have a hard time proving.

  “Perhaps,” I said carefully.

  Madame Arnaud was once again standing in the door to the study, though he thought he had sent her home several hours ago. She was wearing her coat, he noticed, and stood clutching her soft black velvet hat in white-knuckled hands.

  “She has been to Rue Colbert,” she said.

  “Who?” He sighed.

  “Her. The one you teach.”

  “Mademoiselle Karno? She is no longer my student.”

  “That may be,” said his housekeeper, “but she is still poking around. She spoke to Henri, and later I saw her standing outside the shop.”

  He stiffened in his chair but controlled any other outward reaction.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean are you sure that she didn’t just coincidentally stop there?”

  “Yes,” she said, agitated. “It was not a coincidence. I saw how she looked when Henri started prattling on about the shop. M’sieur, what if they find her? They will not know . . . They will not understand. M’sieur, you have to do something.”

  “Madame, control yourself. You know that I do not care for these emotional outbursts.”

  “Yes, I am sorry, m’sieur, but . . .”

  “I will take care of it.”

  “Thank you, m’sieur.”

  He really would need to find a replacement for her—however difficult that might be. She had become much too emotionally affected, it was not bearable. He thought for a moment. Then he wrote a brief note on a piece of his own stationery and another on a blank piece of paper that carried neither his nor the university’s address.

  “This,” he said, and gave her the first, “you may send to the lodgings of the German. Find some reliable errand boy. You, yourself, must go to Carmelite Street. If you find Dr. Karno at home, make sure he receives this message. And then go home to your husband, where you belong.”

  “But you will make sure that no one discovers her?”

  “Yes, I said so. Now go, madame!”

  When she was finally gone, he slid the point of his letter opener down behind the desk’s bottom molding until he found the right place. A quick turn, a click, and the molding could be pulled out to reveal the secret compartment. The photographs were stored here, along with a few other things that he did not wish Madame Arnaud or anyone else to come across.

  Had it been wrong of him to have them taken? Back then it had seemed the ideal solution. But he could not have known, of course, that the silly woman would die in the middle of the operation.

  The problem with insemination was that it required semen. For the sake of the project, it could not be semen from, for example, the gendarmes working for the Commission for Public Health and Decency. While no doubt willing, they were of less than ideal stock.

  The young Italian girl had not been like the majority of the prostitutes he had been forced to associate himself with. She had regular, unblemished features, her body was healthy and shapely without being overly ample, and most important, she had an instinctive grasp of cleanliness and hygiene. She did not seem to find it odd that he had no wish to touch her. Before the successful insemination, he had used her several times as an effective stimulus, but he knew that she would not want to oblige him again after the operation. The two photographs preserved, in the simplest manner, the scenario he needed for release, and once in possession of them, he would no longer be dependent on the presence of a living woman. It seemed to him an altogether elegant and hygienic solution. He did not trust the photographer, but that problem too he had solved to his satisfaction. Were one or several copies of the photographs to fall into the hands of strangers, no one would be able to tell who the gentleman observer was. He even found that it had excited him that he could see the entire naked woman while she was unable to see any part of him.

  The latest development, however, made it advisable for him to get rid of them. They might not constitute definite proof, but there was no reason to hand the good inspector even this circumstantial piece of evidence. He could always have some similar pictures taken later—it made no real difference who the woman in the bath was.

  He threw both photographs into the fireplace. Then he sat down to wait for the German.

  “Madeleine. You’re soaked!”

  I met August in the stairwell. He was on his way out and far more sensibly dressed than I, in a long oilskin coat and a heavy tweed cap.

  I sneezed. He took hold of both my elbows and pulled me close.

  “Have Elise prepare a bath,” he said. “Your father was called out to an accident, but there is food for you in the salon, and there is hot tea. By the time you are warm and dry and full, I’ll be back. And then you can tell me what you have been up to.”

  He wanted to kiss me, but I resisted.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “I have to meet someone.”

  “The truth!” I demanded, invoking the pact we had made with each other.

  He sighed. “What I am doing is for us,” he said. “So we can live in peace and perhaps not in the deepest penury.”

  “You’re meeting with him!”

  “With Erich. Yes. He asked if I would come, and I said yes.”

  My hands closed spasmodically around his upper arms.

  “Why? How is that going to help?”

  “I hope I can get him to withdraw his testimony. I don’t understand why he did it—it hurts him as well.”

  “I don’t want you to do it. I don’t want you to go!”

  He kissed my wet hair.

  “Sweetheart. We must, as Grandmama usually puts it, be practical. You have nothing to fear, I promise you. It is, after all, you I want to marry, not him . . .” He smiled crookedly, clearly trying to inject a little humor into the last remark, but I could not quite see the funny side, and the reference to his grandmother in no way helped the hilarity.

  “August . . .”

  “Go on in and have your bath. You’re shaking.”

  He was right. It was as if his concern for me had released a wave of weakness. My knees trembled. My hands trembled. He loosened my grip on the oilskin coat and kissed me again, this time on the mouth. Then he left, and I just stood there and let him.

  The kerosene lamp in the laundry shed was not lit, and I could not see Elise anywhere.

  “Elise?” I called.

  There was no answer. I could hear a faint hiss from our improvised water heater, and the gas flames threw a faint blue glow over contours of the room, but the tub was empty. With a frustrated groan, I
put down the pile of dry clothes I was planning to change into after my bath and made my way to the copper, edging past some crates full of broken specimen jars and chipped flasks—Papa never threw anything away, not even if it had long since lost all usefulness. The bucket with which we normally filled the tub was gone.

  I was wet, cold, and tired. I had left my sodden jacket in the hallway, but the blouse underneath it had not fared much better, and my corset had chafed me under my arms, as it often did when it became damp. It would have been wonderful if a steaming tub had been ready and waiting, but apparently it wasn’t going to be that easy. Where was that bucket? Where was Elise?

  The laundry’s old back door was open, I discovered. It led only to a long, narrow passage that could barely be described as a yard; we kept the garbage pails there, but apart from that its only function was to provide a shortcut into Rue Langoustine—a winding, gloomy little alley whose delicate nomenclature was shrouded in mystery; it was definitely not so named because its denizens ate lobster every day.

  I could not think what Elise and the bath bucket might be doing out there but, on the other hand, I could come up with no other explanation as to where they might have disappeared to.

  “Elise?” I called again, louder this time.

  There was a clattering from outside, as if someone had bumped into one of the garbage pails, and then a thin, reedy sound that might almost have come from a rat. Almost—but not quite.

  “Elise!”

  It took me only a few paces to reach her. She was lying in a huddle against the closest garbage pail, only barely conscious. Next to her lay the missing bucket.

  I was reaching to feel her forehead—

  Before me rose a figure from its hiding place behind the pails. In the dark, I saw nothing but a shadow that was darker still, topped by a grotesque face, painted black on white, just gaping black eye sockets and a crudely drawn black smile. No phantom vision this time, but reality.