Floats the Dark Shadow (36 page)

Swinging around, Corbeau flung Michel against the cabinet, thrusting his head against the wood. The panel cracked. Corbeau slammed him into it again and it splintered. Jagged wood cut his scalp. Tasting blood, Michel pivoted, braced a foot against the wall and shoved. They stumbled back together, but the pressure on the cord gave a little. Michel tightened his fist around the cord and pulled it forward. Taking a breath, he exhaled and jammed his elbow up into Corbeau’s face.

Michel felt the grip on the cord slacken and seized the chance. He twisted free and spun around, cracking Corbeau’s forehead with his own. Corbeau staggered. Michel grabbed him and landed a hard punch to the jaw. Corbeau reeled back, breaking his hold and lashing out with a nasty kick to the groin that Michel dodged. Regaining his balance, he sprang forward, but Corbeau twisted sideways, rolling across the flat top of the bales to land on his feet. A rope hung from the ceiling in the center of the hayloft. Corbeau leapt, catching hold of the rope and swinging to the far side. Michel raced toward him.

The floor cracked and dropped away. Michel fell straight down, catching the ragged edge of the floorboards. Splintered wood cut into his raw palm, layering new pain over the sliced line of the cord. Swaying, he looked down. The drop wasn’t far at all, with inviting bales of hay piled up. More loose hay was scattered across the top. That seemed wrong. Then the dim lamplight picked up the glint of metal. Looking back up, he saw that some of the floorboards were splintered, others cut through. Corbeau had led him here, hoping he’d drop to his death. What was below?

There was a creak and a rush of sound above him. Corbeau swung back, landing on the still solid edge of the flooring. A booted foot lifted, threatening to crush his hands. Michel moved along the shattered edge. Corbeau grinned maliciously as it started to crack. Quickly, Michel reached for the far end of the break. Above him, Corbeau shifted, trying to drive him back toward the center. Was it only another ploy to fool him with deadly traps laid under all the bales? He could grab Corbeau and topple him, but then they would both be impaled on what lay below. Again, Corbeau lifted a booted foot, his body tensing to drive it down. Before his hands were smashed, Michel took the chance and swung forward, twisting in the air to try and land on his feet. One heel caught between the bales and he tripped and landed flat on his back. His breath was knocked out of him—but no metal pierced him.

He dragged in air. Exhaled in relief.

Overhead Corbeau cursed and ran across the loft. Michel guessed he was leaving through his secret entrance. He rose to his feet and looked up at the gaping hole eight feet above him, cursing in turn. Could he make the jump and haul himself up without falling back on the bales? It was quicker and less dangerous to take the stairs. But neither would be quick enough to catch his killer.

Heavy footsteps thundered across the cobbles. Michel rolled off the bales to see Rambert enter the stable. He must have heard the commotion and clambered over the wall. “You’re bleeding. Are you hurt?”

“Just scraped.” His voice sounded gritty. “Corbeau doubled back.”

Rambert looked up at the cut floorboards. “He set a trap?”

Michel nodded. Together they circled behind the hay bales. Rambert reached out and pulled some down. Five pitchforks had been wedged into an improvised wooden stand between the bales. Michel had barely missed skewering his head on the last one.

“Nasty,” Rambert said.

It had taken Corbeau a while to assemble this. Had the trap been set for them, or was he at odds with some partner in crime? Michel remembered the vacant space for the second fiacre and suspected Corbeau had it stored elsewhere.

Going upstairs, they found the cracked panel opened onto a landing with narrow stairs descending down to a door. Corbeau had jammed it, but they managed to shove it open. Outside was an overgrown backyard with a large but sickly apple tree and a multitude of weeds. There looked to be another door leading into the house, but Michel could not find the trigger to open it. Turning to Rambert, he said, “We have reason to search now that we’ve been attacked.”

They entered the front door, moving carefully from room to room. Every one was filthy, thick with dust and debris, stinking of rotted food and waste. They found the grandfather alone in a room on the ground floor in the back. He was frail, crippled with arthritis, and almost deaf. When they asked about his grandson, he quivered with fear. He crossed his arms over his chest and pulled the bottom of his sleeves to cover his hands. Drawing the sleeves back Michel saw his hands and arms were covered with small round sores…cigarette burns.

Old Corbeau jerked his arms away and waved his hands at them. “Go away! Go away! He will kill me. Worse.”

“He won’t kill you,” Michel promised.

“What? What?”

Michel spoke loudly and slowly. “We have men to guard you. One during the day, one at night.”

The old man stared at him uncertainly. “You will protect me?”

“But you must tell us what you know.”

“I don’t know anything!” he cried.

“What you suspect,” Michel challenged.

The old man looked away, looked back furtively. At last, he whispered, “The hideaway.”

“What is that?”

“Under the stables.” He began to recount what must be an old family story. “When the Catholic kings were helping kill off the Protestants, our family smuggled them from Paris to Dieppe. We had another stable there and were allied with a shipping company. The Protestants paid us well to escape Paris and sail to a friendlier place. It made us rich, yes, but it was dangerous. It was heroic.”

“What is under the stables?” Michel asked again.

“A priest hole.” The old man giggled. “A priest hole, but for Protestants.”

“Where?”

“In the corner of the back stall, hidden under the feeding trough.”

Rambert was eager to go search, but first Michel asked the old man, “Did your grandson come here with any friends?”

The old man shook his head but looked uncertain. At last he looked up and said, “Sometimes the floor shook, as if there were two people upstairs. Two people walking back and forth in his room.”

Michel turned to Rambert. “First we look in his room, then the stables.”

Rambert glanced at him uncertainly. “The grandson may try to return, either for something he has left or to silence any witnesses.”

“I did just promise,” Michel said wryly. “See if the other men have come back from their search and set them to watch here. And we need to find a relative, however distant.”

Michel talked to old Corbeau while Rambert went on his errand. He managed to gather a few tales of wretched torment before Rambert reappeared with the first watcher. He’d left a note at the
café
for the other. The watcher scowled, unhappy with this new assignment that would last all night. It was the man that Michel was certain had clumsily alerted Corbeau earlier. He had no sympathy. “You had best stay awake, or you’ll find yourself skewered by a pitchfork. There may be other escape routes hidden in these buildings.”

With the grandfather guarded, Michel took Rambert up the stairs and down the corridor to the room that would be over the old man’s. It overlooked the apple tree in the back yard. There was a stuffed raven on the table—Corbeau’s namesake. Its glass eye caught the lamplight and winked at him. There were drawings and torn pictures of ravens on the walls. There were no books in the room, but there were clippings from the newspapers about the fire at the bazaar and others about Alicia being displayed at the morgue. There were also articles about some of the other missing children, the girls in particular, he noted. All that had been reported, Michel imagined. There were some older clippings, grisly murders that must have intrigued him. Michel had a sinking feeling. He had said to Averill Charron that in Paris even chimneysweeps read Baudelaire. Carriage drivers could read Huysmans. Corbeau was not illiterate, but there were only the clippings, no books. Whoever had created the Gilles persona was well read, to have ferreted out oddments from research. This man showed no sign of that sort of effort. He might have taken the story as it was and dressed himself in its trappings. Could someone else have given him the flourishes? Michel could not discount the possibility.

Seeing his frown, Rambert asked what was wrong. Michel went over his theory.

“Perhaps the books were elsewhere. Perhaps he has not kept them,” Rambert argued.

“They would be his Bible.”

“He might know the important bits by heart?”

Michel shook his head. “He’s claimed the raven as his symbol, not the swan.”

Rambert drew breath to argue, then paused, sighed. “I’m afraid you are right.”

Michel nodded glumly. “Let us find this hidden room.”

They went back to the stables, to the stall in the far corner that the old man had told them about. No horse was kept there, but there were extra bales piled up in the corner. Corbeau was not overly imaginative. When they pulled away the bales, they saw nothing. Probing the floorboards, Michel felt the slightly deeper seams of a door. In its time, it had been well designed to escape detection. The door slid back under the wall, perhaps into one of the storage sheds outside. Opened, it revealed a staircase leading underneath the stables.

Already, Michel caught the rotten scent of old blood rising from below. He and Rambert exchanged glances. “Stay here,” Michel said.

“I must see it.” Rambert’s voice was bleak but determined.

“I understand, but we don’t want to risk being trapped.”

“Ah. He might come back.”

Michel went and took one of the lanterns that lit the stable. “I haven’t seen anything so precious he might return for it—unless he wants his stuffed raven—but neither do I want to risk being interred below.”

Rambert smiled grimly. “If he killed off the others, there’d be no one to say where we were.”

“Exactly.” With Rambert keeping watch, Michel descended the ancient steps. The old man called it a hidey-hole, but he arrived in a large storage room. The reek of blood was overpowering. He leaned against the wall, nauseated. He had a strong stomach, but a voice in his mind whispered,
Alicia’s blood
. The lantern showed a wooden table in the center of the room. Approaching it, he saw its surface was totally stained, though the edges were darker, silhouetting the shape of a small body. There were dark patterns on the stone floor and piles of soiled straw. He saw blood spatters on the wall. How many children had died here?

Corbeau had felt invulnerable. Little cleaning had been done. It could not be laziness alone, the killer must revel in the smell, adding the bright metallic scent of new blood to contrast with this foul decay. Piled in one corner were burlap bags and lengths of oilcloth along with coiled rope and balls of twine. He saw a sock, a shoe, a pink ribbon carelessly left behind from his disposal of the bodies. His whole body suddenly clenched when he saw a striped pinafore lying to one side. His memories of the fire were sometimes chaotic, sometimes searing in their clarity. He remembered now a little girl in a striped pinafore whom he’d held for a moment in his arms.

Overwhelmed, Michel left it all in place to be photographed tomorrow and went back up the stairs. To Rambert, he only said, “It is difficult.”

The other man took the lantern and descended. He did not stay as long as Michel, though more than long enough. When he heard Rambert’s heavy tread on the stairs, Michel found himself hoping he’d not seen the small clothes on the far side of the room. Rambert emerged whey-faced, walked a few steps into the straw, and vomited. Michel left the stable, fearing the sick aroma might trigger the nausea he’d fought off. After a moment, Rambert came out. “Sorry.”

Michel shook his head. “I felt the same.” He looked out into the night. Clouds were gathering, blocking out the stars. The moon was still visible, like the thick rind of some moldy half-devoured cheese. He felt his anger growing, the cold fury he feared most. “He escaped.”

“He tried to kill us and failed,” Rambert answered. “We know who he is.”