Floats the Dark Shadow (33 page)

“The baron? He is always gracious,” she said. From the warmth in her voice, he gathered she had no complaints about Estarlian. Lalou went on, “We were closer when I played a handmaiden in
Salomé
last year. He wrote a little song for me, but I didn’t have the training to play it on the lute. We did use one piece he wrote. He came by perhaps a month ago with lovely roses. It was most kind of him, as I had not seen him or his friend in quite a while.”

“His friend?”

“Another poet. He has strange blue eyes and an unusual name.”

“Averill Charron?” he asked, and she nodded. Two Revenants
then. “Only the one friend?”

She shrugged a little at that, gave a nervous little sideways glance at Dancier. Only one other that she’d slept with, Michel surmised. He asked her about the Revenants, and she shrugged again. “Last year they were working on publishing a literary magazine.
Salomé
inspired them. I had absinthe with them once or twice, but I do not remember all their names. One was quite rude and ill-tempered.”

“Paul Noret?”

“Perhaps. Yes.” Michel could sense Dancier’s attention growing ever more intent. He picked three more names at random and asked some questions. None of them seemed truly suspicious.

“I can’t think of anyone else, and my daughter needs me,” she said to Michel. “She needs my comfort.”

“Of course. Monsieur Dancier and I can talk outside so as not to distress you further.”

As expected, she looked upset at being deprived of her protector, but Dancier was ready to burst out of the tiny room and jerked his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

“Lead the way.” Michel followed as Dancier sped through the theatre and back outside.

In the courtyard, he whirled and confronted Michel.
“Is this the same case I tipped you about?” he asked, watching Michel closely.

Michel would not lie, but it would be dangerous to give Dancier much information.
He was careful not even to look in the direction of the winged cross.
“I believe it is the same case.”

“Is someone targeting me? Taking kids I know?”

“I do not think you are the target.” Before Dancier could start asking questions Michel said, “Tell me your version of what happened.”

Dancier fumed a minute, then replied, “I was watching the rehearsal. There was a muffled yell, then Darline burst through the door screaming. She fell about halfway down the aisle, so I went to help her first.” He scowled at Michel.

“Of course you did. That was most important.”

“I asked what frightened her, and she said a man grabbed her. So I ran out into the lobby. Empty. And the courtyard. Empty. The alley. Empty.” He glowered at Michel again. “I got to the street and there was nothing suspicious—no one running, or trying to look like they weren’t. I started grabbing people and asking them who’d just come from the rue Chaptal, but he’d the sense to blend in as soon as he hit the street. Or he was already out of sight.”

“Nothing struck you as odd?”

“There was a fiacre standing by the curb. That made me suspicious, that maybe he was going to throw her inside and drive off. Then the driver stumbled out of a bistro and tried to climb up. I grabbed him, but he stank of beer.” Dancier shrugged, shook his head. “I went up and down the street for a few more minutes….”

“…but nobody saw anything suspicious,” Michel finished for him.

“Anyone ever tell you your job is
merde
?” Dancier inquired.

“Frequently.”

There was a pause, then Dancier said, “I like Lalou.”

“She is very pretty.”

“Those eyes.” Dancier rolled his own dramatically. “
She’s got great legs. The Jeanne d’Arc role really shows them off.”

“Jeanne d’Arc?” Michel felt a shadow fall across his memory but could not see its form.

“Yes, she plays the Maid. And damned well too,” Dancier said with pride. “It’s one of the new plays. Lots of drama. Makes everyone feel patriotic, religious, and gives them thrills to polish it off. The fire is very convincing. Lalou gives one really stupendous scream.”

“New, you say. How long have they been performing it?”

“They just started last week.”

Michel had not paid any attention to the billboard. “Is there a poster?”

“Yes, of course. It’s important?” Dancier asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

“I don’t know.” Michel’s shrug was honest. The shadow took on form, of sorts. Theo had said Denis’ mother told her son tales about her namesake, Jeanne d’Arc. The baron had seen the dog washer worshiping in front of a scribbled cross—a cross that may have been drawn by her child’s murderer. Religious mania had always been a possible motive. What about Alicia, who had almost burned to death in a fire? Had that evoked the death of the Maid of Orléans? “I do know that at least some of the disappearances are linked.”

Dancier leaned forward intently. “And what links them?”

Michel shook his head. “There is always a danger in trying to force pieces to fit.”

“You have any suspects yet?” Dancier asked. His voice was light but his body vibrated with new tension.

“I have some suspects,” Michel admitted, but held up a hand as Dancier moved in on him. “There are more than I questioned Mlle. Joliette about. I have no real evidence against any of them—only curious coincidences.”

Dancier’s eyes glittered dangerously. “I trust your instincts.”

“My instincts told me to examine the coincidences, nothing more.”

Dancier moved closer still, chest pressed to Michel’s warding hand. It felt scorched by his anger. “You forget I gave this to you.”

“No. I don’t forget. It’s the only reason I’ve given you any information at all,” Michel said coldly. “Neither do I forget that you may be overzealous in your ferreting out of enemies.”

“You want me to give you anything more, you’ll give me this,” Dancier snarled.

“Then I will go without.” Michel thought for a minute Dancier would hit him, but he only turned and stalked off.

Michel spent an hour helping Rambert question the various stagehands and players. By the time he was done, Dancier had come back and was listening on the sidelines. He still held himself tensely but had apparently decided to forget the refusal. When Michel approached, he said, “I’ve got them to change the playbill so Lalou won’t have to perform tonight.”

A safe topic. “Good. Her daughter needs the security of her presence.”

Dancier nodded. “I sent Jacques le Rouge off to wait in the hotel. You be sure and escort Lalou and Darline to their suite.”

“Of course.”

Mercurial as ever, Dancier relaxed, adjusted his cravat, and gave Michel a wink
. “Guess what—
Méténier
’s going to give me a part in one of the shows.”

“Playing yourself?” Michel asked.

“Lacenaire,” Dancier replied, naming the infamous dandy criminal Baudelaire had called a modern hero. “Bit of a come down—he was never very successful. But he knew how to play to the crowd.”

“You can give me a ticket for that performance,” Michel allowed.

He laughed. “I’ll perform sublime atrocities and you’ll have no reason to arrest me.”

“It will be a vast relief.” Michel smiled, but Dancier’s boast brought the killer to mind.

After they parted ways, Michel summoned Rambert. Together they escorted Lalou and her daughter to her apartment, which was closer to l’Opéra than the Grand Guignol but still not in the most fashionable neighborhood. The avenue was busy with pedestrians and street traffic. Michel glimpsed a fiacre at the head of the next block. It looked to be waiting at the curb with no driver. Hardly unusual, but Michel didn’t like it. It was the only memorable thing Dancier had mentioned. Michel sent Rambert to check on the driver while he took Lalou and her daughter inside. They waited in the hallway while he searched their apartment, which was expensively furnished if overelaborate—and free of any threat. While the actress packed, he spoke to the neighbors on either side. They were both horrified to have the police asking questions, as was the concierge. By that time, Lalou was finished and anxious to leave. Michel had her wait in the foyer of the building while he checked outside.

The fiacre had left and Rambert was waiting. He said that the carriage had been empty, but the driver had tapped him on the shoulder as he looked inside and asked if he wanted a ride, all the while balancing a cheese crêpe from a street vendor, and a bottle of beer. Dancier’s version of the fiacre driver echoed again.

“What color was his coat?” Michel asked.

Rambert frowned. He closed his eyes to recapture the image of the driver. “Black.”

What did a black coat mean? There were hundreds of cab drivers with black coats. Nonetheless, alarm bells were clanging. “Description?”

“Youngish, dark brown hair, brown eyes, no obvious scars or marks.”

“Ugly? Attractive?”

Another frown. “The attractive side of ordinary. Average height. No one you’d notice.”

“I want you to stay and interview the other neighbors in Lalou’s building and the nearby shop keepers. Ask about anyone suspicious in the last few days—especially loitering fiacre drivers.” Then, gathering his charges, Michel chose a carriage driven by a portly, grey-haired man and escorted Lalou to her hotel via a circuitous route, making sure that no drivers in black coats followed. He supposed the kidnapper could eventually find the hotel if he was set on Darline, but not today. When he handed Lalou over to Le Rouge, he also warned them both not to open the door to anyone unexpected. Lalou looked newly terrified, le Rouge disgusted that Michel had bothered with such a blatant warning.

He returned briefly to the morgue to find out if anyone suspicious had viewed Alicia in his absence. He also spoke to Rambert, who had returned with a single sighting. A flower girl had seen a dark-haired cabdriver waiting near the apartment yesterday and again today. “I asked if he bought flowers, but no.”

“Too much to hope,” Michel agreed. He gestured Rambert into a chair and reviewed the case with him.

“Beer might mask any lingering smell of chloroform,” Rambert noted.

Michel nodded. “A beer in hand would also explain another beer spilled earlier on a black coat.”

“Not much.” Rambert sighed in frustration.

“You have one piece I don’t,” Michel said to him.

“The man’s face.”

“Yes. I think, Inspecteur Rambert, that you should spend some time hunting for our elusive driver.”

Rambert gave him a pleasant smile. “There are only a few hundred stables to look through.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Have you felt the fog of terror encroaching

—the awful clutch of night

squeezing your heart

into a crumpled paper ball?

~ Charles Baudelaire

FEELING as if she was wandering in an endless nightmare, Theo approached the morgue. She had gone first to the detective offices at the Palais de Justice, only to be told that Inspecteur Devaux was here. Alicia was on display for a few more days, and he was conferring with his men. The same crowd of gawkers and vendors still milled around the front of the building. To avoid them, she went around to the back door that she had walked through five days ago—five days filled with constant upheaval and relentless searching.

Saturday, she found Paul playing billiards with the student Hyphen in Montmartre. Paul gave her the address of Jules’ pitiful garret in Montparnasse, which proved a grim expedition. He wasn’t there Saturday, and the landlord growled that he never was but he paid the rent. She’d gone back Sunday, and Jules opened the peeling door a crack when she knocked. He was flabbergasted to see her standing there. When she asked if she could come in, he’d refused outright. She supposed the police would find that suspicious, but even in Montparnasse he couldn’t be carving up children in such a ramshackle building without discovery. He was just ashamed. So she’d taken him out for lunch and learned what she could. The last two Hyphens had been easier. Monday she found one at his father’s law offices. The last appeared in his university classroom today. Her quest was important, and bicycling through Paris had kept other miseries on the fringes of her mind—until she tried to sleep. She lay in bed, mind and body filled with shards of shattered glass. In each one Averill was kissing Casimir.

Theo shivered and pushed the memory away again.

Gathering her resolve, she rapped on the door and waited. Some would feel going to the
flics
was a betrayal. Paul especially would be angry. But what was his fuming in the face of these murders? And she was certain the other children had been murdered. Alicia was proof. Theo would save the detective a little time and perhaps learn something in return. She knocked louder. Finally an attendant opened the door and led the way back to Inspecteur Devaux’s makeshift office. He was sitting behind the same desk and greeted her politely, gesturing to the chair across from him. A flicker of curiosity gleamed in his eyes, but otherwise there was only his usual well-schooled calm.

Last time, she’d been angry at his ruthless probing and insinuations. Today his control steadied her. He had dealt fairly with her emotional outburst. She trusted him to think through her discoveries, to investigate rather than presume. “I have some information for you.”

“And what is your information?”

“You know there was a strange symbol on the grave where Alicia was found and another on a wall beside the Seine where a little boy vanished. A cross with wings.”

He said nothing, but Theo saw him glance at a folder beside him. His fingers moved slightly then stilled. Photographs of the crime scene? She felt a tremor of resistance, of dismay, but held out her hand. “I didn’t go to the cemetery, but there is a similar design in the alley by my home. I remembered seeing it the day we first met. I returned to make sure.”

“Yes, it is the same mark,” he acknowledged reluctantly, but then he did open a folder and hand her one photo. “Here is the one drawn on the gravestone.”

Theo looked at the scrawled cross intently. She frowned.

“What?” he asked instantly.

“It is the same design, but much cruder.”

“Cruder?” For once the Inspecteur looked perplexed. “Less light to draw by? Less time to make his mark?”

“Perhaps just a heavier stick of charcoal,” she replied. “But the drawing in my alley has more graceful movement to the wings than this.”

He retrieved the photograph, staring down at it for a minute. Then he put it away and looked up at her again. “Did you tell your friends you’d seen the symbol in your alley?”

“No.”

“Good. Please do not tell them.”

“I will not promise that,” she said flatly. “I have to use my own judgment.”

He had the sense not to argue and nodded briefly.

Theo went on, “So, there are three cases—three at least—where children we had met vanished and a mark was left.”

“Yes.” He waited, watchful. When she waited in turn, he offered more. “The cases are dissimilar, but I must believe they are connected. The cross drawn on the back of the gravestone was too deliberate to be chance. I do not think the others are random scribbles.”

“I believe you are right,” Theo said unhappily. “After I heard about the second cross, I talked to all the Revenants. Each of us knew at least one child who has vanished in the last nine months.”

He leaned forward, his gaze intent. “Tell me who the children were.”

“Everyone at the fire could at least have heard Alicia’s name, from me or from Paul. I knew Denis and so did Averill, Casimir, Jules and Paul. Averill often told silly stories about his grandmother’s poodle, so we’d all heard of the lady who washed him even if we didn’t meet her.” She hesitated then. “I didn’t ask questions as a policeman would but as a troubled friend. I didn’t try to discover how many Revenants knew each child, only if they knew one at all.”

“You presume your friends are innocent. I understand.” He nodded for her to continue.

“I found that Jules knew a seamstress’ child who went missing that no one else has mentioned. Two of the Hyphens….”

He gave her a quizzical look, and she explained about the Hyphens. “Two of them live near each other and knew a bootblack’s boy who vanished. The professor also knew the boy of a
bouquiniste
. That is five children.”

“Five,” Inspecteur Devaux repeated. He bent his head and made a note.

That was absurd. He would remember the number. Theo sensed the note was only to distract her. He was hiding something. “How many more children do you know about?”

He looked up but said nothing, his face a smooth, cold mask…

“Tell me—I can at least tell you if I knew any of the others.”

If possible, his expression grew even blanker. He did not want to give away any information.

“Surely you want to know? There is no roundabout way for you to ask me now.” She welcomed the simmer of anger rising to the surface, burning away the fear that cold mask evoked. “Tell me their names or what they did.”

His lips tightened, but he relented. “Some names may be relevant, others not.”

He named two children and Theo felt a surge of relief. “I didn’t know them.”

Then he said, “There was a boy named Dondre….”

“No!” At her gasp, he stopped speaking. Theo pressed her hand over her mouth, holding back another cry of protest. Tears blurred her vision and she blinked them back. He’d told her she would need courage, but Theo had not realized how much it would take.

The Inspecteur waited a moment, then said quietly, “He disappeared early in April.”

Theo had regained her control, but she felt a terrible dark weight settle over her. “We went to the catacombs for a midnight concert.”

Recognition ignited in his eyes. “All the Revenants attended?”

“All whom you questioned at the morgue. The Hyphens were not there though they were told about it.”

“Were they at the Charity Bazaar?”

“They say no, and none of us saw them there.”

“The kidnapping of Alicia was a crime of opportunity.”

Theo nodded, also doubting the Hyphens could be involved. “They did come with us to the morgue but fled after I caused a scene.”

“You were shocked. It was understandable.”

For a moment there was silence, then she whispered, “Six children, at least.”

He told her several other names. She did not recognize them. But that did not mean the poets might not know them. When he was silent, she said, “So many?”

“Many children go missing, run away.”

“But you think these were kidnapped. Kidnapped and murdered by the same man?”

He hesitated, still obviously reluctant to discuss the case. But she had brought him valuable information and might do so again. “We’ve only managed to find three more crosses, but we do not know for certain where all the children were taken or where their bodies were discarded. Alicia is the only one whose body was found.”

“The only one?”

“Yes. I fear the killer is growing bored with his private amusements and wishes to share them with the world.”

“Do you think the cross is symbolic of some sort of religious obsession?”

“I have shown it to a priest, who says it's not the mark of any cult of which he is aware. I know of someone familiar with the world of satanic ritual. I have an appointment to see him this afternoon.”

He would want her to leave. “I know you must consider us suspects, but—”

“But you think someone is framing one of you, or some of you?”

“Yes, exactly.” She was relieved he’d had the same idea.

“It is far more likely that at least one of you is implicated.” His voice was flat and hard.

“I told you—” Theo heard her voice sharpen and subdued it. She’d give him no excuse to dismiss her. “The day I recognized Alicia in the morgue, I also saw Vipèrine. He has a blue beard in imitation of Gilles de Rais who practiced black magic and murdered children.”

“A colorful image,” he said. Her anger must have showed because he held up his hand and added, “I am investigating him, as well as others.”

“What…” she began, but stopped when he shook his head. Of course he would not tell her anything about that. At least she had the assurance that he was not looking only at the Revenants. “I knew some of the children. And I want to help my friends.”

His expression grew even sterner. “It would be better if you left the investigation to the police, mademoiselle.”

“I’ve brought you information you didn’t have before, haven’t I?”

“Yes, but I would have discovered it eventually. I would prefer not to worry about you as well as the children. Do not persist in this.”

He made her feel like a child when he put it that way. But she had no intention of stopping. Feeling defensive, she attacked. “Arresting the wrong person, however convenient, will not end the murders.”

He regarded her coldly. “Nor will protecting the killer.”

“Believe me, Inspecteur, I would not protect anyone at the expense of a child’s life.”

“I do believe you.” He held her gaze for a long moment. “But loyalty or affection may mislead you.”

“I am not so easily misled.” The image of The Moon rose up in her mind, mocking her.

“Do you know Darline Joliette?” he asked abruptly.

“No,” she answered, though the very question made her tense.

“Lalou Joliette?”

She floundered because the name was familiar. “I don’t know.”

“She is an actress.”

Theo remembered. “She had a small part in
Salomé
. The baron wrote some music for the play.”

“And for her particularly.”