Bones of Paris (9780345531773) (46 page)

Stuyvesant closed his eyes. Took a breath.
You have all the time in the world. It’s a simple mechanism. Your hands are fine
.

The butler’s shoes were
tap, tapping
back across the tiles when the lock gave. The door opened and shut without a sound, leaving one beat-up American in the dark, sweating against the ancient stone walls.

“H
OW CAN YOU
claim your victims are ‘gifts’?” Grey asked. “You choose them. You knew several of them. One was even your lover.”

“Philippa? Dear, shy, blossoming little Philippa? She was as much chance as any of them. You must understand, Monsieur, I merely receive what the machine brings me. I begin looking five days before the time of sacrifice. Some are given immediately, others at the last minute. Most, like you, are given a day or two before they are needed.”

“Objets trouvés.”

“
Objets donnés
. Gifts from the universe.”

“So the morning you needed a blonde woman, you woke up next to Miss Crosby and put a gun to her head?”

“No no, I had sent her away before that. I happened across her—that is, she was given—as I walked along the river. And what a special gift! Although I fear her bones are too distinctive for public eyes. You know, Monsieur, the world thinks of Didi Moreau as a bone artist, but his art is derivative of mine. I shall give him one or two of her bones, but the essential parts of Philippa Crosby—her life’s story told in calcium—will be mine alone.

“Oh, Monsieur. It is not given to many men to free a young woman, first of her inhibitions, then of her flesh.”

S
TUYVESANT THUMBED THE
Ronson to life.

Up the circular stairs lay the clock, and a ballroom smelling of death. Le Comte’s story of using grave-soil to disconcert his guests felt like so much hooey: if there was a smell, it was more likely because the ballroom was near a decomposing body. That meant a door.

A door, and a man with a gun against a man with a jackknife and a cigarette lighter.

The house was sure to have an arsenal somewhere, given the touchy history of Parisians towards their aristocracy. But he had less than an hour before … God only knew. Leaving the stairway risked a fatal delay.

As he stood on the landing, torn between up and down, the stairwell came alive with sound: a bell, from the magnificent clock in the black-and-white room. Noon.

In fifty-two minutes, some bits of gear would reach a mark and the equinox would ring out, with the death of a blond-haired man to feed an obsession.

He glared up the stairway.
If I had a wrench, I’d jam it into your damned guts
.

He started down.

12:01.

“Tell me about the bones,” Bennett Grey asked. “You give them to Didi Moreau, he puts them in his boxes, and you hang the boxes on your wall. How does that serve the machine?”

“The bones are mere beauty—the gift’s inner beauty, as the photographs record the outer beauty. At first, I simply took photographs and abandoned the gifts to the fate of all flesh. But some eighteen months ago, I happened to see one after the rats had finished with it, and found it beautiful. Shortly after that, I met Didi Moreau—your sister’s doing, that introduction—and he taught me a better way to clean bones.

“My first attempt was with Philippa, and what a reward I had! Her bones—they are magnificent. It’s a pity I can’t let Didi have her photographs—it would be too great a risk—but most of her bones are anonymous enough. I shall treasure her, in my commemoration of gifts. As I will treasure you.”

Grey blinked. Was he supposed to thank the man?

“You, Monsieur, like Philippa, are unique. Will the bones of a man twice dead reflect his difference? Oh, Monsieur, I fear I shall never have another such as you.”

“Then maybe you should stop while you’re ahead.”

“There is no ‘ahead,’ Monsieur, there is merely maintenance.”

“What about the other body parts I’m told Moreau had? The eyeballs, the skin.”

A look of distaste passed over the patrician features. “Yes, he showed me his collection. Ghoulish. I’ve ordered him to get rid of them—to get rid of everything, in fact.”

Grey gave a cough of disbelief. “Skin is ghoulish but bones are not?”

“Bones are eternal, Monsieur. Bones are what we give back to the world, when we are finished with them. These very walls are made of bones: millions upon millions of dead creatures, drifting to the bottom of a prehistoric sea.” His eyes wandered across the rough-hewn stone, the smooth shearing and the tool-marks of the
carrièrs
, ending up on the instrument on the wall above.

12:07.

He sighed, and placed his hands on his knees. “I am grateful for this conversation, Monsieur, but my camera takes some time to set—”

D
OWN, AND DOWN
, Stuyvesant’s exhausted legs followed an endless descent. Fifty steps down, the lighter guttered. It came back up immediately, but it was clear warning.

Grimly, he flipped the cover over it, and instantly went blind.
The steps are even
, he told himself.
Even enough. You didn’t fall before
.

His toes might have been at the edge of a bottomless cliff, so far as his grip on the iron railing was concerned. He forced his fingers a couple of inches down; his sock-clad foot gingerly felt its way.
One step—good. Now another. The step will be there
.

Why the hell hadn’t he counted them the first time? Sherlock bloody Holmes would have. Fantômas would skip down them, Auguste Dupin would have figured everything out sitting before his fire—and any of those guys would’ve brought along a light better than a nearly-dry Ronson.
You want heroes? You got Harris Stuyvesant, blundering his way through the dark. In more ways than one
.

If this was a dead end and he got back to Sarah’s house to find Bennett sitting in the garden, he would absolutely kill the little bastard.

Down, down. And down.

A faint flattening-out of the iron railing warned him of the stairway’s end. Flame revealed two heavy doors—minus their pretty, black-gowned attendants.

He put the Ronson back in his pocket and felt his way to the crack, picturing what lay beyond: a dark corridor of bones—he’d be seeing if there were light—with long walls of tightly arranged skulls and tibias, running for some distance off to the left, and to the right for a lesser distance before turning a corner. Across and slightly to the left was the single heavy door that opened onto the cavern with the Danse Macabré.

Laying both hands on the latch, he turned, praying it was not locked.

It was not. With infinite care, he nursed his toe against the wood. It gave: an inch, two. A muffled voice came. Three inches; four—then a noise, the small stone scraping under the wood. He stopped, then continued even more slowly. The stone
clicked
when the door let it go, but by then the gap was wide enough to step through.

The door opposite was shut, a line of yellow light defining its lower edge: the church candle—he could smell it. As he could hear the voices, a murmur of speech: two men.

All the way down the stairs, Stuyvesant had picked up and discarded ideas: lights on? Draw Le Comte out somehow, and use the knife. Lights off? Thank God for the Ronson. But if he did bring the mad Comte out of his cavern, what was to keep the man from putting a bullet into Bennett Grey first?

His only hope was surprise. If he dove in and knocked over the candle, he’d have a chance. The idea of bullets in a stone room made his body want to pull up into itself, but at least he’d have a chance.

Unless the door was bolted. He’d be in deep shit then.

And what if there was a second candle? If he could find a rock—
Harris, you idiot, you’re standing in a quarry
. He reached for the Ronson, to collect a handful of small stones—

Then the shouting began.

“… M
Y CAMERA TAKES
some time to set—”

Le Comte’s words nearly obscured the faint noise from outside the door—would have, even for Bennett Grey, had he not been waiting since the candle flame had danced, nine interminable minutes before.

He sucked air deep into his lungs, rallying his energies down to the dregs, and he shouted. The blare of his voice smashed the stillness, bouncing off the stones and startling Le Comte nearly backwards off his chair.

“HARRIS, HE’S ARMED! RUN! SMASH HIS CLOCK! RUN, UP THE STAIRS, YOU’VE GOT TO SMASH THE BLOODY CLOCK TO PIECES!”

Le Comte was on his feet, staring first at Grey, then at the door. Drawing a revolver from his pocket, he reached for the bolt.

When the door came open, Grey yelled all the louder, urging Stuyvesant to run faster, to smash, to hurry—and although the aristocrat had the sense to check first, snaking out an arm to flip a switch that beamed brightness through the doorway, Grey’s racket covered any sound of an invader’s feet rushing up the long circular stairs. Charmentier withdrew his head from the doorway, looking from prisoner to clock.

Grey could read the agony of indecision on Le Comte’s face, then
the choice: if Grey was creating a ruse, the chains rendered it pointless. But if that busybody American
was
out there …

His manifestation of order in the universe was at risk.

Le Comte ran for the stairway; Grey’s exhortations followed him, until his dry throat strangled into coughs and ragged breathing.

Long seconds later, the faint sound of approaching feet. Grey watched the bright rectangle, panting …

Harris Stuyvesant filled the doorway, the grin on his face testimony to the size of his relief.

S
TUYVESANT SLAMMED THE
door and ran the bolt at the top, retrieving the chair to wedge under the handle as insurance.

“Jesus, when you started shouting, I thought he’d shoot you for sure. I nearly came for the door—didn’t know it was bolted. I just squeaked around the corner before the lights went on. Why didn’t he? Shoot you, I mean. Not that—”

“Timing,” Grey croaked. “The point of equinox. Not sure when that is.”

“Twelve fifty-two.” Stuyvesant spotted the enamel jug and splashed the last of its water into the cup before easing down on his knees, lock picks in hand.

“Sarah?” Grey asked.

“She’s fine. Went off to the country with Cole Porter, if you can believe that. And not only did she not apologize, she got royally pissed at me because I sort of questioned her for a while before telling her about Doucet. Can you shift so your wrist is in the light? Thanks.”

“Doucet?”

“He’s in the hospital, awake and talking.”

“Good. He told me they were—Le Comte did—but I wasn’t sure.”

The picks explored the guts of the padlock. “Sorry,” Stuyvesant mumbled. “This is a better lock than I’d expect.”

“Someone managed to get free. The wall bolt is new, too.”

“Joanna Williams,” Stuyvesant said. “English. June, 1927. Aha!”

He stuck out his hand to Grey, and the two kneeling men exchanged that heartfelt expression of male camaraderie, the handshake.

Stuyvesant used the wall to get to his feet. “He’ll be back any second. I don’t suppose he said anything about another door?”

Grey stared at his rescuer’s laden pockets. “Aren’t you armed?”

“Not really. I could set his sleeve on fire.” He wrestled his shoes from his pockets and put them on.

“You came here without a gun?” Grey’s voice rose in astonishment. “Then locked yourself in without knowing if you could get out?”

“I’d have brought a weapon if I had one—but yeah, that’s about the picture.”

“Any backup?”

“Not really. Fortier and Doucet know where I was going. Or, they will. Maybe not for a day or two. And we might be able to keep Le Comte out, but I’m not really keen on a diet of rats grilled over an altar candle. Oh—here.”

He dug back through his pockets, handing Grey a smashed and filthy bread roll.

“Can you stand?” he asked.

Grey drank the last of the water and stuck the roll in his shirt pocket, freeing his hands to be pulled upright. Stuyvesant draped the blanket around his shoulders. “What do you think? Is there another door?”

“Sure to be.”

“We need to either get it open, or figure how to shut it against Le Comte.”

“I’m ready,” Grey said.

But first, Stuyvesant went back to work the short puddle of soft wax free of the stone with his knife. With the stub flickering in his left hand and his right arm around Grey, they began to circle the room, two unlikely figures stepped down from the Danse.

“Here.” Grey came to a halt before a dozen tapestry skeletons walking into graves. Stuyvesant stuck the burning wax stub on a lip of stone, and ripped the priceless weaving from the wall.

Behind it was a rectangular wooden door, black with age, its lower edge a foot above the floor. Stuyvesant got out his picks. “How’d you know it was here?”

“The smell.”

“What smell is that?”

But when the hatch came open a crack, he knew: no veteran of the trenches would mistake that stench.