Floats the Dark Shadow (26 page)

Estarlian paused, frowning. “Another case?”

“The disappearance of Denis Armand. The son of a laundress who lived near Mlle. Faraday in Montmartre.”

“Ah…yes. She mentioned it. So, I am her alibi?” He lifted a mocking eyebrow. “And, of course, she is mine. I don’t remember the exact day, but I did take her to tea around that time.”

“Do you often do so?” Michel asked.

Estarlian lifted an eyebrow. “Does that have some relevance to the disappearance of the little boy?”

None, except that she had said that the baron was not her lover. “Sometimes I discover what is relevant by asking questions which do not seem to be. I imagine that writing poetry may proceed in the same fashion.”

Estarlian actually smiled at that. “Very well, Inspecteur. I do not see Mlle. Faraday often. I try to make her welcome to Paris because she is Averill Charron’s friend. Perhaps every other month I escort her to her favorite tea shop, to the opera, to the ballet. We have ridden in the Bois de Boulogne. She is always an interesting companion—unique.”

“Do you remember anything about that afternoon?”

“It was the last time we went to Ladurée. It was chilly and threatening to rain. She had a new dress, lavender and grey—not muted but stormy, like the sky.”

“What time did you escort her home?”

“Perhaps five. It was dusk.”

“And afterwards?”

The baron hesitated, obviously reluctant. But he could not know what the others might have said already. He offered a disarming smile. “I have a small apartment in Montmartre. It is mine but Averill shares some of the rent. We both find it…convenient. For amours, of course, but Montmartre inspires us both. We sometimes go there to work. I went to see if he was there.”

“And was he?”

“Yes, but I did not speak to him. We have an agreed signal. I knew he did not wish to be disturbed. I returned home.”

“Did you see him that weekend?

“I had business out of town, I believe. Yes. I was gone that weekend.”

Michel nodded. He would question Charron again to confirm what he had just learned.

“Is that all? I am sorry not to be of more help. This is truly a despicable case.” Estarlian’s lips thinned with anger. “A poor young girl murdered and put on display for the masses to gawk at. The very idea is repellent.”

“Yet we have discovered her identity.”

Estarlian looked perplexed. “Ah…yes. Not this display at the morgue—I understand the necessity, however unpleasant. I was thinking of how my friend found her. Appalling.”

Michel reached for the folder of photographs taken at the crime scene. He had no intention of revealing that Denis’ murder was linked to Alicia’s, but he would show the baron the new mark. The Revenants would, of course, discuss what had happened today. He hoped Theo would not remember the cross in her alley. It was just one scribble among more eye-catching offenses, but she was observant.

Estarlian lifted his hands in protest. “Please. I do not want to see your photos. The corpse in the window was pathetic enough.”

“Yet you came to the morgue and visited the grave.”

“For my friend’s sake.”

Friend.
Did he mean it in the intimate sense? Could the baron be Charron’s partner in this? Michel opened the folder. “I will not show you anything repellant.”

The baron inclined his head. “Thank you.”

“When you went to the cemetery, did you notice this?” Michel laid out the photo of the back of the gravestone. Estarlian went very still, staring down at the photo. Michel felt electric excitement crackle along his nerves. He kept his voice calm. “You recognize it.”

“I did not see this at the cemetery.”

“But you have seen it.” Michel had no doubt. “Where?”

Estarlian responded with another question, “This has something to do with the murdered girl?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Michel said. “So you must tell me where you saw it.”

“It is some meaningless scribble,” Estarlian said, his jaw tensing. “Graffiti is everywhere in Paris—even graveyards.”

“This mark is not everywhere. Tell me where you saw it.”

Estarlian was reluctant, smoothing his gloves over his fingers. Michel did not push, for now the baron was implicated by his own silence. Still studying his gloves Estarlian said, “I have seen something similar by the Seine—but it was months ago.”

Months? Frustration warred with eagerness. “Where exactly?”

“Near the Pont Neuf. There was a dog groomer…” Estarlian glanced up briefly, almost defiantly, then looked down again. “She was supposed to pick up the wretched poodle that belonged to Averill’s grandmother and take it for a bath. She did not come. Averill and I were going to the
bouquinistes
that morning, so we were given the errand of finding the woman.”

Michel forced himself to silence, waited.

“We found her where she usually washed the dogs—but she was quite mad with grief, poor woman. Her little boy had vanished.”

“Why did you notice the mark?”

“She was kneeling in front of it, praying—it was, after all, a cross of sorts.” Estarlian shrugged. “Probably it is meaningless. Everyone said the child must have fallen in the Seine.”

“When was this?” Michel asked.

“It was barely warm enough to be washing dogs outside. Last October?”

“Can you show me where you found the mark?”

“It will have been rained away by now.” The baron frowned. “But of course I can show you where it was.”

~

Estarlian was right. All that remained was a blurred stroke and a faint line that might have been the upper sweep of a wing. Michel would never have noticed it. Asking others on the bank, he learned that the grieving mother was no longer here. She believed her child had drowned and left Paris not long after he disappeared. She had not been on his list.

Now he had three victims marked with a winged cross. Had the little boy been snatched here? Killed here? Standing in the shadow of the bridge, Michel stared across the Seine. This site was too close to the Palais de Justice. He felt as if the killer was laughing at him.

Whoever the killer might be.

Chapter Twenty-Three

My peers are fired even as I am…ardent and breathless

before life’s intensity,its bright fires of knowledge.

~ Emile Verhaeren

“DOWN with women! Down with women!”

The shouts of the male students clanged in Theo’s head, as she watched them march inside the huge iron gates of the École des Beaux Arts. She had woken groggy and wretched after crying late into the night, but determined to meet Carmine here, for Mélanie’s sake.

“They are yapping dogs.” Carmine didn’t yap, she snarled.

“Puppies with power,” Theo agreed unhappily. Her headache grew worse with each angry shout. She probably should have gone back with Averill yesterday, but she’d needed to be alone after seeing Alicia in the morgue.

“Out with the women! Out! Out! Out!”

“No!” “Stop!” “Cowards!” Cries rose from the crowd as a new pack of male students drove the two distraught women students across the vast courtyard, through the gate, and into the street. The protesters outside quickly drew them into the center of a protective circle. Theo had seen the same arrogance and brutality when she marched for the vote in San Francisco. Why had she expected Frenchmen to be any better, especially when they granted their women even less power than American men did? Her friends were the exception, and even they preferred the image of the perfect muse—a seductive, destructive Salomé who would rend their souls the better to inspire their poems.

“Go back to your embroidery!” a whey-faced student taunted.

“Go back to your diapers!” Another student surged to the front of the pack. He looked like a scruffy fox—a rabid fox
.
“You can use baby
caca
for your paints!”

“They are the ones full of
caca,
” Carmine fumed. “Only men can create
le grand art
! You remember Mélanie’s Cassandra.”

“It was beautiful!” Theo affirmed as insults pelted them like rocks. “It was everything they say art should be and it had soul. It had passion.”

“That’s why they didn’t give it an award. Too much life. Not posed pain—real pain. They need their art to be dead, like a rabbit strung up for a still life.”

The futility of Mélanie’s sacrifice tormented Theo, but Carmine brought back Mélanie’s hope for her art, her courage in fighting for what she believed. The demonstrating women shared that hope and that courage.

“Your brains are stuffed full of ruffles!” the whey-faced one sang out, winning hoots of laughter from his friends.

Theo thrust off the smothering misery of the morgue and stalked to the gates, looking into the paved quadrangle where the irate students marched and shouted. Men she presumed to be professors and administrators hovered anxiously in the background, but some of the male students and teachers squeezed through the gates to join the growing crowd supporting the women. Turning to look across the street, Theo saw a man who must be a journalist scribbling madly in a notebook. Behind him, half-hidden in the arch of a corner doorway, a young woman watched the protesters. Theo caught her eye and beckoned her to join them. She smiled a little but shook her head, looking anxiously from side to side.

“You’re ruining everything!” a petulant voice called out. “All sorts of stupid new rules and restrictions came trailing on your petticoats.”

“We don’t need new rules!” Theo shouted back, adding her voice to the other women. “We don’t want special treatment! We want the same treatment, the same classes, the same models!”

“And the same medals!” Carmine yelled. “That’s why you’re really afraid! You’ll have to compete with women for the prizes you’ve been keeping to yourselves.”

“Why should I be afraid of that!” another student taunted. “No woman is better than I am!”

Remembering Mélanie, Theo seethed with scorn. “These women got higher scores than you did.”

That brought a deluge of cries. “Liar!” “Bribery!” “You don’t belong here!” “You belong on your backs!”

The whey-faced student yelled out above the others. “Go find yourself a husband!”

The scruffy fox lifted his cane above his head, waving it furiously. “Yes! A husband will teach you to paint with your tongue!”

The men laughed and wagged their tongues at them. The crass insults gave Theo a surge of furious energy. “Did you swing the same cane at the Charity bazaar?” she yelled at the fox. “Did you beat your way through those women too?”

“I was never there!” he yelled back, though the whey-face one suddenly turned even paler and backed out of sight. The fox looked stunned, then shrugged off the defection.

Theo put a hand to her head, remembering the painful cut that some man had inflicted. Hot anger flowed through her. “You are just as much of a coward!” she accused the fox. “More of a coward. Your life’s not at risk—just your vanity!”

Suddenly, the woman she had seen half-hiding in the doorway darted from her haven and ran down the street. Perhaps because of their silent communication, she came straight to Theo and Carmine. She was quite petite, barely five feet. She had a gentle, shy countenance, lit by eyes full of steely determination. The young woman pointed back down the cross street. “The police are coming,” she warned. “I saw them at the end of the block.”

“Let’s hope they arrest these men!” Carmine said. “But with our luck, they’ll punish us for daring to protest.”

“Go now,” one of the women students said to the protesters. “But thank you for joining us.”

“We should leave,” Theo said to Carmine as the women began to disperse.

“I will walk with you to the corner and circle back around. I don’t want to be arrested!” the young woman said.

Quickly they walked down the rue Bonaparte toward the quai. “You’re American, aren’t you?” Theo asked their companion.

She nodded. “Yes, and you?”

“From Mill Valley, California. That’s near San Francisco. My name is Theodora Faraday.”

“And I am Julia Morgan. We were neighbors. I am from Oakland. I came to Paris last year because the École promised women would soon be admitted.”

“You see they will use any excuse to refuse you,” Carmine muttered, squaring her shoulders. She set her hat at a jauntier angle and plucked at her sleeves to puff them out.

“I want to study architecture,” Julia said firmly. “This is the most prestigious school in the world. There is no equivalent.”

“What are you doing meanwhile?” Carmine asked.

“I am working in the architecture atelier of Marcel de Monclos and submitting my designs to international competitions.”

“Have you won any?” Carmine asked.

“Indeed I have. I am gaining a reputation. Surely the École will admit me.”

“Surely they will,” Theo affirmed.

“Perhaps,” Carmine said gloomily.

Julia stopped when they turned the corner that brought the Seine into view. “I must go back to work.”

“
Bonne chance
,” Theo wished her good luck. Tiny and soft-spoken as she was, Julia obviously had the tenacity to triumph over the forces allied against her sex. “I can cross the bridge and walk to the Charrons’ from here,” Theo told Carmine. She could not think of it as Averill’s home. He felt as much a prisoner there as she had.

“I will walk with you—I need to burn off some of this energy, or I will go home and pick a fight with my father!” Carmine laughed at herself, then eyed Theo more seriously. “Let’s stop for a cup of chocolate and you can tell me what has been bothering you.”

With so much happening, Theo had hoped Carmine did not notice how glum she was. “I did not sleep well,” she equivocated, then was furious with herself.

“You did not sleep well because?” Carmine asked pointedly.

“Let’s sit.” Theo pointed to a small
café
near the next corner. They went inside and Theo chose a little booth in the back, far from the other customers. The croissant she ordered was stale but the food calmed the wooziness she felt. The quiet interior and the warming hot chocolate subdued her headache as well.

“Tell me,” Carmine insisted.

“It is as terrible as Mélanie’s death,” Theo warned. “Worse.”

“Worse?” Carmine laid a hand over hers. She wore coquettish little black lace gloves. Theo stared at them in fascination, her mind trying to find some escape. But there was none. “The little girl that I helped Mélanie rescue from the fire is dead. She has been murdered.”

For once, Carmine was speechless. Theo told her of Averill’s discovery of the body and of yesterday morning at the
café
—how her cousin had begun a poem about the murdered girl that he could not finish and needed to see her at the morgue.

“Artists are ruthless. If they are not, then they are not artists,” Carmine said. “Seers must not lie about what they see.”

Theo smiled faintly. “Paul says the same.”

“You don’t believe it?”

“It was something I thought I believed. Perhaps I still do, but with my head, not my heart. My heart just wants to mourn.”

“I think perhaps your head is judging the impulse of your heart. You want to find a way to exorcise the horror, but your head says it is selfish or unseemly. Your heart is more honest.”

“Perhaps you are right, but it is hard not to feel guilty.”

“No emotion is more useless than guilt. Your art is as worthy a tribute as any tears.”

Theo continued about the visit to the morgue. “It’s a horrible place—a ghoulish picnic.”

“Death makes people feel alive. Especially the death of strangers.” Carmine gave a philosophical shrug.

When Theo at last described seeing Alicia’s pale corpse, what detachment she had faltered. She had to fight off crying yet again. Carmine gripped her hands more tightly. Theo managed to finish the rest of the events, ending with her silent trip back to Montmartre with Averill. “I promised to visit him this afternoon. He’s worried.” Theo felt wretched for her fury at the morgue. Anger and grief had flung her about like the waves of a tempest.

“So you are all suspects, I suppose?” Carmine broke into her thoughts.

“Yes.” Theo bristled. “I told the detective to investigate that blue-bearded creature I saw at the catacombs and then at the morgue. He looks like he would enjoy murder.”

“This is truly bizarre, Theo.” Carmine paused. “But it is less bizarre if it is deliberate.”

“Deliberate?” Theo stared at her blankly. Of course murder was deliberate.

“I believe Alicia was not taken at random. She was taken because you rescued her.”

Theo stared at her. “No one hates me like that. No one would devise such a convoluted way to torment me—by torturing an innocent child!”

“Hate. Love. How could anyone do such a thing? The Tarot said you are in the middle of a battle between good and evil. What you describe is the epitome of evil.”

It was too terrifying to believe. Theo envisioned the images of The Devil and the gleaming Moon spread out before her. She saw Death. The memory was a sinister undertow pulling her toward darkness. “I still don’t trust the cards. Mélanie was certain the Tower was about her entry into the École des Beaux-Arts. It made perfect sense to all of us.”

“The cards did not mislead us, we misled ourselves,” Carmine said earnestly.

Theo still felt deceived and knew Carmine could see it in her face.

“The cards did not cause the fire. The cards could not have caused Alicia’s terrible murder.”