The Alchemy of Murder (11 page)

The officers gather around me, several talking at the same time. Who am I? What am I doing here? What’s this about a killer?

On their heels comes a plain-clothes policeman. He rudely flashes a lantern in my face. “What are you doing here, Mademoiselle?”

Shading my eyes with my hand, I tell him, “My name is Nellie Bly, I’m an American newspaper reporter. A woman has been murdered.”

“Murdered? Where?”

“Here, in the graveyard.”

“How do you know?”

“I was following the killer. He’s in black clothes with a red scarf.”

“Spread out,” he tells the men, “make a search. Stop anyone you find.”

“Who are you?” I ask him.

“I’m Detective Lussac from La Sûreté.”

“Over here!” a gendarme cries. “A woman. She’s not moving.”

My heart sinks when I see her. She’s sitting on a grave with her back against a gravestone, eyes wide open as if she sees the unspeakable. Blood has dripped down to her chest from the corner of her mouth. Her white dress is stained with large dark blotches of blood.

Detective Lussac pulls out his pocket watch and kneels beside the body. He opens the cover and the inside crystal covering the watch face. He checks her wrist for a pulse and then places the watch next to the woman’s gaping mouth as an officer holds a lantern next to him. I pray her warm breath will fog the glass.

“No breath, no pulse, she’s dead,” Lussac says.

I turn away and sit wearily down on the footstone of a grave. Fighting back tears, I stare down at the ground. I can’t help but feel that if I’d been quicker, braver, smarter, or stronger, I might have saved her.

Lussac is suddenly beside me, examining me with the probing eyes policemen the world over possess. He forces a smile, exposing a left incisor that’s black. I avoid his eyes and brush dirt from my dress to gather my thoughts. Experience has taught me never to trust a policeman’s smile. It only means they are trying to get what they want with sugar before they use vinegar.

“You’re a newspaper reporter?
A woman?
”

I’m sure women reporters are an even less substantial species in France than buffalos, if they exist at all. In the best French I can muster, I start to relate my tale of following the slasher to Paris. He curtly interrupts me and takes me out of listening range of the uniformed officers.

“Now tell me your story.”

I get started and he interrupts me again and writes a note. He gives it to an officer who hurries away on horseback.

“Continue,” he says.

Through tight jaws, I give the most sketchy details possible because my gut tells me not to trust him. As I’m finishing with my tale, the caretaker of the graveyard arrives.

“The grave is an authorized one,” he tells Lussac, “for a funeral tomorrow.”

While they’re talking, another man is directed to Lussac, a conservatively dressed young man wearing a charcoal-colored long coat, high stiff collar, and top hat. He appears to be about thirty years old, of average height, light hair, and a mustache that falls short of handlebars. He carries the prematurely grave air of a young professional. I hope he’s not a reporter—the man in black is
my
story.

I strain to hear the conversation between him and the detective and am only able to pick up the fact that he’s a doctor.

The woman’s body has been placed on the back of a police wagon and the young doctor examines it under lantern light while the detective stands by. I edge closer and ask, “Detective, have there been slasher slayings in Paris? Besides this one?”

His features turn stern and officious. “These are difficult times. People are out of work and hungry. There are more plots to overthrow the government than radicals to carry them out. The one good thing is the Exposition. Millions of francs are being spent for French products and the whole country shines in the glory of it. A mad killer loose in the city will frighten away people.”

The young doctor interrupts. “Monsieur Detective, I’ve finished examining—”

“Yes, we can talk over here.” He takes the man out of earshot.

Kicking myself for not heeding Jones’s warning about talking to the police, I perch next to a snarling gargoyle on a gravestone and wait, cold and weary. My nervous system has been galloping like a team of fire wagon horses and I need to be taken into the barn and rubbed down.

The huddled conversation breaks up and the detective starts toward me with a purposeful stride that reads trouble for me. Before he reaches me, the mounted officer he had sent with a message rides up. The messenger jumps from his horse and hands Detective Lussac a piece of paper. I use the officer’s momentary distraction to approach the doctor, who’s putting back on his coat.

“
Bonsoir
, Monsieur.”

He gives a small bow. “
Bonsoir
.”

“Are you from the coroner’s office?”

“No, Mademoiselle, I’m from Pigalle Hospital.”

“The wounds … are they horrible?”

“Wounds?”

“The knife wounds.”

“There are no wounds, Mademoiselle. No bleeding.”

“No bleeding? I saw the stains—”

“Dirt.”

“Dirt?”

“Stains from the wet ground. There are no wounds to the body.”

“No wounds.” My mind is getting as difficult to maneuver as my tight jaws. “Then how did he kill her?”

“He?”

“The—the maniac who killed her.”

“Mademoiselle, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The woman has no signs of violence. An autopsy will reveal more, but I suspect she’s the victim of the fever that’s struck down so many people.”

It’s a cover-up! Lussac has told him to keep mum about the horrible wounds. My feet spur into action faster than my mind can keep up with them. In a flash I’m at the body and jerk off the sheet. Close up, under the lantern light, there’s no doubt—the dark stains are dirt. There’s no blood except the dark liquid she expelled from her mouth.

“She wasn’t slashed.” I speak aloud to myself and a response comes from Lussac.

“Exactly, Mademoiselle.”

Detective Lussac has two officers flanking him. He nods to the doctor. “Dr. Dubois, Chief Inspector Morant will contact you tomorrow. Merci.”

The doctor raises his eyebrows. “The Chief Inspector of the Sûreté? For such a lowly death?”

Detective Lussac glares at me as he answers. “The matter has taken on national importance because of wild accusations by a foreigner.”

Dr. Dubois raises his eyebrows. “Strange, but of course I will be honored by the Chief Inspector’s visit.
Au revoir
.”

Detective Lussac turns to me as soon as Dubois leaves. Whatever instructions he received are ill tidings for me. But I don’t waver before his officious glare. “The man in black killed her. He’s simply outsmarted you by his clever method.”

“And what is that method, Mademoiselle?” He looks to the officers at his side. “Perhaps this imaginary killer called down a bolt of lightening from God!”

“I know what I saw.”

“And what exactly did you see?” The detective throws up his hands in frustration. “A man who had similar clothes and beard to someone you saw over a year ago in New York? How many men in Paris wear the same type of clothes and groom their beards in a like fashion?” He steps closer and jabs a finger in my face. “Tell me, what act of violence did you observe? Tell me one single act that you witnessed tonight.”

“I … I’m an experienced reporter. My instinct—”

“Police operate from facts, Mademoiselle, not the intuition of a woman who should be home caring for babies and her husband’s needs instead of causing problems for the police. We know what you want. The truth doesn’t matter to your scandal-hungry newspaper that writes its headlines in blood.”

That did it. “Detective Lussac, you’ve been rude. I’ll be speaking to your superior.” I turn on my heel to leave.

“One moment. Where do you think you are going?”

“Back to my hotel.”

“No, you’re going to be a guest of the government. You’re under arrest.”

“For what?”

“The charge? Officer Vernet, come over here.”

A gendarme breaks away from the group of officers.

“Officer, you’ve been patrolling this district for over ten years?”

“Yes, Monsieur l’inspecteur.”

“Take a look at this young woman and tell me what you see.”

The man gives me a quick once-over. “A Montmartre prostitute, Detective.”

“Do you have your flat fish, Mademoiselle?”

“My what?”

“Your
fille en carte
from the Bureau des Moeurs, the document a prostitute must carry that certifies she’s registered with the police and is current with her medical examinations.”

“You know I have no such thing!”

“Ha! A
clandé
, a casual girl who spends her days as a seamstress and her nights picking up pocket money on the streets. Officer, arrest her for unlicensed prostitution.”

14

I’m made to board a police wagon with seven other women inside.

“Another pea in the pod,” Detective Lussac says.

With my chin up and my back straight, I lock eyes with the detective. “Your superior will get a detailed report of the treatment accorded me.”

This provokes a giggle among the girls and a smirk from him.

“My
superior
ordered you arrested.”

“Well, my editor will speak to your president.”

“A madman tried to kill President Carnot recently. Anarchist plots to kill him are revealed every day. Let me assure you that the president desires to maintain a very good relationship with the police.”

As I take a seat closest to the doors, the women stare at me with wide-eyed curiosity. With a smile, I tell them in French that I am a newspaper reporter from America, doing a story on Parisian night life. “Perhaps some of you have a story that you wish to share with the world?”

They all began to chatter at once, seven prostitutes, seven stories to tell the world, and each is the most important one. I try to listen but my mind keeps returning to the dead woman.
Nothing makes sense.

I can’t accept that she died from the fever. When I watched her earlier tonight she appeared healthy. What kind of fever can act that fast? And who was the man I was following?

A burst of laughter shatters my thoughts. One of the girls is demonstrating what a customer demanded. I can’t help but laugh with them. I’m amazed at what they endure and still laugh with such ease. I must stop this mad killer. If I don’t, any one of these women could be next. A prostitute makes a remark that grabs my interest.

“Why were you arrested?” I ask.

“A prostitute wearing a black dress threw acid on a foreigner, a mi’lord. The police are arresting every girl they can find with a black dress.”

“Really…” I realize we’re all wearing black dresses.

“They’ll hold us until the mi’lord arrives to identify the girl. They took him to the hospital because she burned his Eiffel Tower.”

“I hear she did it because he got his treat and refused to pay,” another pipes in.

Oh, Lord. Getting arrested on a trumped-up charge of prostitution will get my editor in action and the American ambassador banging on my jail cell, but for maiming a man’s private parts, Pulitzer would let me rot in jail. I’ve no doubt that the “mi’lord” and his friends will be able to identify me.

The girls talk about setting bail bond. One explains to me, “Those with enough francs can set bond and go free. The rest of us will have to stay in jail. It is too late to pick up any more money on the street, so most of us will save our money and spend the night in a cell.”

I lean my head back and close my eyes. No possibility Lussac will let me set bond—that’s a certainty. Once we get to the police station, he’ll make sure I’m locked up.

As the carriage rumbles along cobblestone streets to the jail cell, I realize my quest has taken an aberrant twist.

A dark game is being played.

And I’ve lost the first hand.

15

Dr. Dubois

Dr. Dubois curses as he hurries away from the cemetery. He left his umbrella at the hospital and might not reach Place de Clichy and a fiacre before the light rain turns into a downpour. He quickens his step. He must get to Perun and inform him about Nellie Bly before someone else does. The thought of facing Perun makes what’s left of his right pinkie burn. Perun had cut half the finger off.

Reaching the square, he flags down a fiacre.

“Left bank by the Pont Saint-Michel bridge,” he tells the driver as he climbs in. Dubois knows his request will not faze his driver, even though he’s conservatively dressed and obviously a doctor since he still has his medical bag with him. It’s not unusual for even a professional man to be at the Seine past midnight purchasing the services of a prostitute working the river quay.