Bones of Paris (9780345531773) (47 page)

Stuyvesant leaned against the door, shutting out the smell of death. 12:15.

“D’you think he’s waiting for us?”

Grey nodded at the candle. “If we put that out, can you get it going again?”

“God, I hope so.” With a pinch of Stuyvesant’s fingers, the cavern went black.

“Don’t move,” Grey whispered. The rustle of his trousers; the faint creak of the door. Neither man breathed until Grey drew back.

“He’s not there.”

“Say a prayer.” Stuyvesant flicked the Ronson.

Once. Twice. The third time, the small flame persisted long enough to light the wick. Stuyvesant ran a hand over his face, and half-lifted Grey through the door.

On the other side was more catacomb, crumbling bones thick with dust. Only the
Inspection des Carrières
plaques suggested it was known to the daylight world. A narrow tunnel went for perhaps forty feet, then widened into another, smaller cavern.

This space was dominated by a new, stoutly built wooden box the size of a giant’s coffin. The stench was almost overwhelming, with a mingling odor of sewage that seemed almost healthy in comparison. Even so, the smell of putrefaction was not fresh.

“I’d expect it to smell worse,” Stuyvesant murmured.

“It must vent into the sewers,” Grey replied. “It’s how he hides the smell.”

“Is that crate what I think it is?”

“Don’t open it!”

Stuyvesant didn’t have to. It could only be one thing: big brother to the corruption boxes of Didi Moreau. “What do you reckon we’d see in there?”

“At this point, not much but bones and beetles.”

“She’s been in there for three months. The bastard has it down to a science.”

“It wouldn’t be your Miss Crosby, would it?”

“Nicole Karon. A twenty-four-year-old brown-haired shop girl who vanished in June.”

Stuyvesant moved, spilling candle-light across a stack of bones, neatly tucked in beside the corruption box.

The disjointed skeleton was fresh, soft-looking. Obscenely clean, although a few of the bones were still connected, their ligaments too tough for tiny jaws. The sternum and two ribs were smashed, probably from the bullet that had killed her. Most of the other bones were intact.

Next to the delicate skull lay the bones of a forearm. Its ulna showed the scar of a childhood break, where a ten-year-old had leapt from a fire.

“Oh, Pip,” Stuyvesant moaned. “Oh, honey. God damn it all to hell.”

Grey rested a hand on the other man’s shoulder.
That would have been me
.

A
T
12:21,
A FAINT
noise echoed down the subterranean labyrinth; Stuyvesant blew out the light. They waited, but the noise did not repeat. The valiant Ronson produced a flicker on its sixth snap, and they went on.

He tried not to think of just how much catacomb there was down here. Three hundred kilometers, right? “Do you have any idea where we’re going?” he asked Grey.

“I’m following the fresh air.”

12:28, and the fresh air lay before them: on the other side of a massive, permanent iron grate. Reluctantly, they turned—and the candle blew out. This time, the Ronson would not light it. One of the greatest cities in the world over their heads, and they might have been in a skiff in mid-Atlantic.

Grey groped around for Stuyvesant’s hand. He set it on his shoulder, and led the way into darkness.

Hours seemed to pass, a lifetime of staggering blindness before Stuyvesant’s weary brain told him that the darkness had a shape: Grey’s head. With a cry, he let his arm drop.

“Yes,” Grey replied. “Should be just up here.”

Another heavy grate. But this one had hinges, and a well-oiled padlock.

They stumbled into daylight, raising filthy faces to the sweet city air.
The cloudless sky was an azure bowl, the sound of children’s voices like a caress from God. Taking two steps to the side, Stuyvesant recognized the Lion of Belfort.

“The Place Denfert-Rochereau!”

An accordion played nearby; Stuyvesant felt like grabbing his companion and dancing, but he merely grabbed Grey’s hand and pumped it. “Thank God. Thank
you
. Christ, what time is …”

Both men goggled at Stuyvesant’s watch: 12:45. He put it to his ear: was astonished to hear a steady
ticktickticktick
.

“Jesus! I’d have sworn we were
hours
down there!”

Grey raised his eyes. “Harris, does Charmentier have a servant with light hair?”

The blond demon with the trident
. “A footman. But, you don’t think …”

“I do.”

They stared at each other, then as one, turned and shuffled into a run. Two Bedlam escapees, hatless and unshaven, one with neither coat nor shoes. They plunged across the boulevard to the blare of taxis and the shouts of drivers, pounding towards the side road—just as one of the gardeners burst out of the Charmentier gates.

Leaving them wide open.

Stuyvesant, panting, looked at his wrist: 12:47. “He’s going for the police. You’re
sure
the timing matters?”

“Yes.”

“And he really loves that clock?”

“It’s his life.”

“Okay, then.”

Grey caught Stuyvesant’s arm. “One other thing. He felt guilt over Doucet. Not about the others, but over Doucet, there was regret. Something we might be able to use.”

They ran, with the nightmare sensation of too-slow muscles and syrupy air. Through the gates, across the forecourt, and in the open and unattended front door.

Straight into a tableau: servants, maids, footmen, and gardeners, gazing in horror up the great stairway.

The butler had reacted to threat, but only to a point: he’d fetched a shotgun, then remained at the foot of the stairs, frozen by the impossibility of turning a firearm on Le Comte de Charmentier.

Stuyvesant had never been so glad to see a fancy duck-gun in his entire life. He snatched it from the man’s hand as he ran by, breaking it open on his way up the stairs to check: two shells.

The gorgeous stairs were a cliff-face, with two spent bodies pulling their weight up by the marble banisters. A young eternity later, they reached the upper floor. Stuyvesant hauled the small man to one side. “Stay here,” he ordered.

He edged his head around the entranceway. Le Comte stood facing the magnificent clock. 12:50. He held a revolver, its barrel pressed into the blond scalp of the terrified young man kneeling at his feet.

Stuyvesant raised the shotgun and stepped onto the black-and-white tiles. “Mister, if you don’t want me to put both barrels through that pretty timepiece of yours, I suggest you let that man go.”

Le Comte gave a quick glance over his shoulder. “M. Stuyvesant, what a surprise. Is your English friend with you?”

“Him, and a shotgun.”

“I will be with you in just a minute.”

To Stuyvesant’s dismay, Grey spoke, inches from his elbow. “You really should listen to him, Count.”

“Get back,” Stuyvesant ordered, but Grey ignored him.

“Monsieur Le Comte, we provide a wealth of choices here. Your man, Stuyvesant, me: three men with light hair. Which of us is to be the machine’s gift?”

“Why not all?” Le Comte replied.

“Because you regret having shot Inspector Doucet.”

Charmentier was silent.

“Jesus,” Stuyvesant swore. “You kill Pip Crosby, and then you feel guilty over a
cop
?” If it weren’t for the butler, he’d have pulled both triggers then and there. “Pip Crosby, Joanna Williams, Nicole Karon. Albert Gamache.”

“Fifteen of them,” Grey murmured.

“Those were gifts, Monsieur Stuy—”

“And Lulu? Don’t tell me Lulu was a goddamn ‘gift’?”

The clock ticked a minute into the silence: 12:51. When Charmentier spoke, his voice was low. “Her, I regret. No, she was not a gift, although it was necessary to—”

Grey interrupted. “A woman. A police inspector. The pleasure you take in killing.”

“I do
not—
”

“You do. Monsieur Le Comte, you cannot lie to me. You take pleasure in the killing. And because of that pleasure, you are here, open and in the light. This means that your ‘gifts’ are at an end. You know that. So, Monsieur, with three gifts at hand, which do you choose? Who shall be the very final sacrifice for your machine?”

For a long time, the only sound was the breathing of four men.

Then came the last
tick
of the great clock. 12:52. Somewhere in the depths of the machine, Olivier Lambert’s exquisite gears began to turn.

Charmentier raised his head to look at Bennett Grey. As he gazed across the tiles, suddenly the years on his face and shoulders fell away, his burden of melancholy lifted.

Le Comte smiled. It was an expression his wife might have known, or his beloved son: tender and gracious and at peace.

An instant later, the black-and-white room was ripped by noise and smoke, its high mirrors lit up with the brilliance of blood. As the echoes of shot and falling trailed away, another sound came. The figure of Death atop the great clock grated, turned, and gave a single strike: the bell of equinox.

The final sacrifice lay at the foot of the great Lambert clock. Light from the dome windows shone bright on pale hair, a spread of blood, and the revolver, fallen from the dead hand of Le Comte Dominic de Charmentier.

T
HE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON
, Harris Stuyvesant went to the hospital. He found Doucet swathed in bandages but shaved and sitting up amidst a florist’s shop of bouquets.

Sarah Grey was holding his hand.

“You look like you’re going to live,” Stuyvesant said.

“Do not be so disappointed, mon vieux,” Doucet replied.

“Is my brother with you?” Sarah asked.

“I left him in your garden with the blacksmith, talking about Saint Augustine.”

“Did I say thank you, Harris?”

“Only about twenty times.”

“Well, make it twenty-one.”

Stuyvesant crossed the room, hand outstretched. Doucet grasped it, then his eyes went sideways. “Sarah, go and get some fresh air.”

She reached over to the nearest floral arrangement, plucking out a small white rose, then hopped off the bed to tuck the bloom into Stuyvesant’s lapel. She rose on tip-toe to give his cheek a kiss—and to whisper, “If you send his blood pressure up, Harris Stuyvesant, I will hurt you.”

She patted his lapel and walked out.

“I was sorry to hear about your Pip,” Doucet said.

Stuyvesant pulled up a chair: his legs still felt like overcooked macaroni. “Her mother and uncle are coming over to claim her bones. The cable said they were grateful.” Whether he took the uncle’s money or bashed the man in the face would depend on what he saw there.
Just how “close” were you to your niece?

Doucet continued. “I understand that you and Fortier worked out the details of what Le Comte was doing.”

“Yeah, although your Sergeant seemed annoyed that he couldn’t arrest anyone. Especially me. He’d already interviewed Bennett when I saw him, so he knew what Charmentier had said about ‘the machine.’ A hell of a reason to kill, fitting the victims to the time of the year. And it sounds like the man honestly felt he was doing it for the good of France.”

“The War drove so many mad.”

“I will say, Le Comte seemed almost relieved, at the end. Bennett says that’s because he was ashamed, of Lulu and of you. I don’t know. I’d say the bastard got a charge out of it.”

“I suspect the urge was in his bones long before the War twisted him. There are generations of rumors about the Charmentier family.”

Stuyvesant shook his head, but the privilege of money and status wasn’t limited to France. “In any case, hiring Lulu to sneak Pip’s passport into my hotel room and then getting rid of her was no ‘gift,’ any more than shooting you in order to take Grey was. Those two things were eating at him.”

“Who can comprehend a mind like that?” Doucet mused.

“Speaking of nuts, what about Didi Moreau? What’ll you do with him?”

“Fortier let him go for the moment. However, the search of his house turned up evidence that he has been making overtures to a mortuary. He wished to buy a dead body.”

“What for?”

“To stuff it.”

“
Stuff
it?”

“Taxidermy.”

“Jesus. That’s just … He’s
got
to be tied up in this Charmentier business somehow.”

“I agree. But there is no evidence that he did anything except receive the bones. As for the photographs, well, with no evidence other than fingerprints …”

“Yeah, and on photographs given to you by an
American
investigator …”

“According to M. Grey, Le Comte ordered Moreau to clear his secret room.”

“Probably my fault. Charmentier might risk hiring a woman who turned out to be friends with a cop—might even have found it a thrill—but when another of her friends turns up with questions and a suspicious look, that may’ve been one threat too many. I wonder how long Moreau would have lasted before Charmentier decided he was too much of a risk.”

“Or Sarah,” Doucet said quietly, then changed the subject. “How is your Nancy?”

“Oh, fine. Although she seems to feel that all but accusing me of murdering her roommate might come between us. I’m trying to convince her it was just her way of playing hard to get.”

Doucet gave him a crooked grin. “Forcing your
chérie
to turn you in to the police is certainly a
nouveau
method of wooing.”

“Try it, if Sarah ever seems to be getting bored. Oh, before I go: Fortier wouldn’t tell me if he’d identified the other two photographs.”

“Aline David and Marie Michaud.”

“Michaud? Known as Mimi, right? A singer? But she was, what, a couple of years ago? Not on your list.”

“March, 1927. The David woman was a year before that. It would seem Le Comte only sent his early photographs to Moreau. Perhaps he thought the passage of time would render them less likely to be recognized.”

“That and tearing the pictures into pieces. And none of the four had obvious scars or moles. You’ll search Charmentier’s house, for signs of the others?”