Beyond Rue Morgue Anthology (17 page)

“It was she who alerted the police?” asked Dupin.

“Yes,” agreed G. “She heard bloodcurdling screams of fear and agony coming from this floor and, knowing that M. Thibodaux was the sole occupant working this late, she hurried to see if he had done himself an injury. However, she found his door locked. But here is the cause of her greatest consternation— she saw a line of bloody footprints leading away from M. Thibodaux’s office, but they vanished mid-stride and were not seen again. The thought that a phantom had come to do cruel harm to M. Thibodaux sent her screaming into the street as if the hounds of hell were on her heels. There she sits now, shaken and frightened half to death. Do you want to interview her?”

Dupin stood for a moment in front of the woman. His dark eyes took in her posture, her mean clothing, the nervous knot of her fingers in her lap, and the florid and puffy countenance of her face.

“No,” said Dupin, “she knows nothing.”

The Prefect opened his mouth to demand how my friend could be so certain, but then thought better of it and shut his jaws. We both know that Dupin would rather say nothing at all than make a declaration which could in any way be impeached. He had observed this woman and summed up everything there was to know about her—at least from the point of calculating observation—and had reached a conclusion that he could defend.

He turned away from her and glanced down the hall to where the office of M. Thibodaux awaited us.

“The door was locked, you say?” he mused.

The Prefect nodded. “The superintendent had gone home for the evening, which necessitated that the guards break the door down.”

“Interesting,” said Dupin. He walked over to where the medical examiner sat. “Have you inspected the body?”

“I have,” said the doctor, who was as old as Methuselah and as thin as a stick. “He is the victim of—”

But Dupin raised a finger to stop the flow of words. “Thank you, doctor, but I prefer to make my own assessments. I was merely inquiring as to whether it is safe for us to examine the victim.”

The doctor looked both skeptical and annoyed. “Yes, there is nothing more of official merit to be learned.”

Dupin smiled thinly. “Please remain on the premises, doctor. I may have a question or two for you after I have examined the scene.”

“Very well,” said the doctor in as cold a tone of voice as I am ever likely to hear.

Dupin moved down the hallway to where a beefy gendarme stood guard before glass-fronted double-doors. When the officer stepped aside I could read the name of the firm written in gold script.

Oriental Artifacts and Treasures

Antoine Thibodaux, Proprietor

However, we all stopped ten paces from the door and cast our eyes upon the floor. As Mrs. Dubois had sworn, there was indeed a line of bloody footprints that trailed from the doors of the murder room and along the runner carpet. Twelve steps in all, the intensity of blood diminishing with each successive footfall.

“A child!” I cried, pointing to the diminutive size of the prints.

Dupin did not immediately comment.

“Surely,” I said, “the blood merely wore off by this point and that is why there are no further marks.”

Dupin got down on his hands and knees and peered at the last stains. “No,” he said. “The blood on these prints was fading, surely, but there was more than enough to leave a trace for several more paces. No, consider this print.” He gestured to the last one. “It is somewhat denser in color than the one before it, with an emphasis on the ball of the foot. Then there is an overlay of the edge of the foot as if it was lifted slightly and placed down again with most of the weight on the blade.”

He stood up, shaking his head.

“My dear Prefect, may all ghosts be laid as easily as this one and the world will be free of spirits forever more.”

“I don’t follow,” said G.

“The person who left that room stopped here to remove the bloody shoes. When first bending to remove the left shoe, the killer placed weight on the ball of the right foot. The overlay of the edge was likely an attempt to catch their balance while untying the laces. Once the left was off, a bare or stockinged foot was placed here—see the slight indentation in the nap of the carpet? Standing on that foot, the killer removed the other shoe.”

G. grunted, seeing it now.

“Come look at the scene of the crime,” he suggested, “and perhaps you can dispel the rest of the mystery as easily as this.”

Dupin did not answer. Instead he shoved his hands into his pockets as he followed G. inside. I too followed, but stopped nearly at once.

“Good God!” I cried.

“Indeed,” drawled Dupin.

The room was a charnel house.

Unless a person is a professional soldier, a slaughterhouse jack, or a member of the police department, it is unlikely that he will chance to encounter a scene of such carnage. I admit that I froze, unable to set foot into that place of slaughter. My heart instantly began to hammer inside my chest and I felt as though my whole body was bathed in frigid dew. I put a hand to my mouth, as much to stay my rising bile as to staunch a flow of unguarded curses.

Even Dupin, with all of his practiced detachment from ordinary emotions, seemed to hesitate before crossing the threshold. Only the Prefect, jaded and hardened by so many years and so many crime scenes, seemed predominantly unmoved. However, his wooden features might well be a tactic to keep his more human emotions to himself.

Despite my misgivings, I shifted around so that I could look over Dupin’s shoulder into the room. Except for a solitary figure, the room was entirely unoccupied and thoroughly cluttered. Paintings crowded the walls and filled every inch of space so that not even a sliver of the wallpaper was visible; and each of these works were in a distinctive Asian style. I am no Orientalist, but I could pick out the differences between Chinese and Japanese artwork, and both were represented here, with—perhaps—a bias toward the Japanese. Grim-faced Samurai, demure courtesans, absurd fish, and fierce demons looked down from the walls and regarded the scene with serene dispassion. The furniture was of the kind called “japanned,” in which the body of each piece is lacquered in a glossy black, then either over-painted or inlaid with designs of unsurpassed intricacy. There were racks of scrolls, urns filled with hand-painted fans, chests made of polished teak from which spilled tendrils of the rarest silk. Every table, every cabinet, every shelf and surface was crammed with carved combs, silk kimonos with elaborate patterns, knives and swords, ink boxes, trinkets, statues, and many other items whose nature or category was beyond my knowledge.

And all of it was splattered with blood.

Streaks and dots of it were splashed upon the walls, scattered across the tops of tables, and ran in lines down the sides of desks.

And there, slumped in a posture that contained no trace of vitality, was a corpse.

“Dear God,” I gasped.

It was the body of a man, but that was all I could tell for sure about him. I turned away, ostensibly to study the walls, but everywhere I looked I saw evidence of the carnage that had been wrought upon this unfortunate individual.

Without turning away from the corpse, Dupin asked, “What has been touched?”

G. cleared his throat. “The gendarmes who responded to the alert broke into this room. They hurried to the man you perceive there in the chair and felt for heartbeat and listened for breath and found neither.”

“I daresay,” murmured Dupin.

“The officers then made a cursory search of the room, touching as little as possible, but enough to determine that the windows were closed and locked.”

Dupin turned to him. “And—? I believe you are omitting some facts, my friend. Out with it. In the absence of information I can be of no value at all.”

“It’s a queer thing,” admitted G. “When the officers entered the building, they held the door for a person who was leaving.”

“God in heaven,” I cried. “Are you saying that they held the door so the murderer could exit? Did they tip their hats as well and wish our killer their best wishes? Really, G., this is outrageous.”

But the Prefect was shaking his head. “No, it was not like that at all. Though in the absence of all other leads I...”

His voice trailed off and he looked uneasy and uncertain.

Dupin said, “Come on, dear friend, out with it. If the bird has flown, then at least tell me your officers had the good sense to record a basic physical description.”

G. snapped his fingers to summon a pair of gendarmes. One was as green a recruit as ever I have seen wear the uniform of a Paris police officer. The other, however, was well known to both Dupin and myself. It was none other than Jacques Legrand, a hulking brute of a sergeant whose physique was at odds with the shrewd intelligence sparkling in his blue eyes. On more than one occasion Dupin remarked that Legrand had a real chance in his profession and we should not be surprised if one day this monster of a man wore the Prefect’s badge.

The sight of Legrand looking so embarrassed and wretched caused Dupin to throw up his hands and click his tongue in the most disapproving manner.

“Come now, Legrand,” said my friend, “surely you will not break my heart by confessing that you let a red-handed criminal walk past you while you held the door.”

Legrand drew in a big breath that made his muscular shoulders rise half a foot into the gloom, then exhaled a sigh that would have deflated an observation balloon.

“I fear I have done exactly that,” he confessed, “and I’m more the fool for even now being unaware of how my actions might have played out in a different manner.”

“Tell me everything,” declared Dupin. “Unburden your soul with every fact you can recall and we shall see how low you have sunk.”

Legrand drew in another breath and then took the plunge. “It was like this, gentlemen,” he said to us, “my partner, Roux, and I were on foot patrol and on such a foggy, cold night many a mugger and footpad is abroad, content that the dense fog and their own mufflers will conceal their identities. Roux and I had made two circuits of this district and we were considering stopping at a café to take our evening break.”

“What time was this?” interrupted Dupin.

“A quarter to eight,” said Legrand, who checked his notebook, then his watch. “Forty-one minutes ago.”

“Forty-two,” corrected Dupin absently. “Your watch is off by nearly thirty seconds.”

Legrand colored, but he cleared his throat and plowed ahead. “We were within half a block of the café when we heard a bloodcurdling scream. Naturally we came running and intercepted the charwoman, Mrs. Dubois, who was screaming as if she was being chased by half the devils in hell.”

“What did she say?”

“It took quite a bit to get her to make sense, but her story was a simple one. She had finished the top floor and was bringing her mops and buckets down to this floor, the third, when she heard a cry of pain coming from the office of Monsieur Thibodaux. She dropped her mops and came hustling down the stairs, only to find the door locked and a trail of bloody footprints. She tried to open the door, but it was solidly locked and it is a stout door, as you’ve no doubt observed. However, Mrs. Dubois heard Monsieur Thibodaux continue to moan and cry out in great agony. Then... she heard him die, you might say.”

“Heard?” I asked.

“Monsieur Thibodaux called out a name, then she heard a solid thump. She pressed her ear to the crack and swears that she heard his last breath and death rattle. It was this grisly sound that broke her and she ran screaming into the streets.”

Dupin’s eyes glittered. “Monsieur Thibodaux called out a name, eh?”

“Yes, sir. Anna Gata. Or something very like it. A woman’s name, I believe, though it is not a name I have ever heard before, and it is not included on the register of occupants of this building, nor in the ledger of visitors.”

“You checked?” asked Dupin.

“I did, sir. All occupants’ names are engraved on a plaque in the foyer along with accompanying office numbers and floors. The visitors’ ledger is on the desk downstairs. I checked it very carefully while waiting for reinforcements to arrive.”

“That, at least, was good police work.” Dupin pursed his lips. “Gata is an unusual surname. If it is a real name, then we should have little trouble locating the possessor of it, for it cannot be common even in Paris. If it is a nickname, then we have some leads. It is the Catalan word for ‘cat’ and Fijian name for ‘snake’. Perhaps there are clues there, for each is suggestive. However, such speculations are far in advance of the information we yet need to collect.” He shook his head to clear his thoughts of such distractions.

“Wait,” I said, “we seem to have skipped over a vital clue. The person who exited the building.”

“Not skipped over,” said Dupin, “but left it to its place of importance.” To Legrand he said, “Now tell me of the person who exited the building as you entered, and explain why you thought it was beyond sense or prudence to detain this individual. Every detail now, spare nothing.”

“There is little
to
spare,” said Legrand. “As Roux and I approached the building we saw the door open and a lady stepped out.”

“A lady,” I said. “Anna Gata, perhaps?”

Dupin ignored me.

“I do not think so,” replied Legrand. “This was no sweetheart for a man the age of poor Monsieur Thibodaux, for this was a crone, a withered old woman, and a foreigner to boot.”

“Was she wearing a gray cloth coat with a green and purple muffler?” asked Dupin.

“Why... yes!” gasped Legrand. “However did you guess that?”

“It’s not a guess,” said Dupin. He cut a withering look at me. “My companion here helped her into a cab.”

Legrand did not look at me.

“You said she was a foreigner,” said Dupin. “From where?”

“Well, she was all bundled up, as you apparently saw, but I spotted her eyes. I reckon that she was a Chinese or somesuch. Small, slender, and so wrinkled that I believe she must have been a hundred years old. Frail, she was, and she needed to lean heavily on a carved walking stick.”