Death at Hungerford Stairs (26 page)

A genial station guard called out, ‘Refreshments in the waiting room, ladies and gentlemen. No hurry, ladies and gentlemen, for Paris. No hurry whatever.'

The red-faced man's face turned puce again, a kind of mottled purple, as he struggled with the door handle. Perhaps he was deaf, thought Dickens. He did not dare grin – the man might have a seizure. The door opened and out went Puce with a deal of huffing and puffing.The waxworks followed with considerably more decorum, holding the silence they had kept for the last two hours or so. Dickens and Jones collected their bags and descended.

This was a chance to watch again – to make sure that she was not among the crowds that bore down on the refreshment room to eat their sausages, pork pies, jam tarts or cake. Dickens went into the buffet while Sam observed on the platform. Dickens chose a cup of tea and a jam tart, avoiding the cake which he knew always turned to sand in the mouth. The jam did taste like jam though it might have been raspberry-flavoured glue, and the pastry had that familiar cardboardish texture. Still, the tea was hot. He watched as he drank. The Frenchwomen seemed uncommonly elegant in their little hats and close-fitting travelling costumes or they were short and round, peering at the English refreshments suspiciously with little, shrewd black eyes. None resembled Mademoiselle Victorine, creeping like a snail. He recognised the cheerful young man who had almost lost his hat. He was part of a noisy group, off to taste the delights of Paris no doubt. He hoped they would enjoy themselves. Puce looked at them all disapprovingly while he chewed determinedly on a piece of cardboard. He had paid for it and he would damn well eat it. Dickens noticed the smear of jam on his cheek.

Dickens went out to swap places with Sam who went for his cup of tea. ‘Avoid the jam tarts,' he said, ‘and the cake, and the sandwiches – a sausage roll, perhaps, though I shouldn't think there's a sausage in it.' He pulled up his scarf, lowered his hat and put a pair of spectacles on his nose – the ones he had forgotten to give back to Zeb Scruggs. He watched the people coming and going but there was no sign of those they sought.

Sam came out and, seeing Dickens, wondered if he could see anything at all so muffled up was he. He caught the glint of spectacle lenses – he hoped Dickens could see through them. Dickens the actor, he thought. He could play any part you wanted. Comical, tragical, pastoral, historical.

Then it was down the pier and on to the waiting steamer for the two-hour crossing to Boulogne. The sea was calm and they stood on deck watching as England faded into the milky distance.

Another train took them to Paris through a landscape of fields, windmills, fortifications, canals, a river, a cathedral. They changed at Longeau then stopped at the little station of Creil for ten minutes. Dickens could not resist stepping out on to the deserted platform. No one got off the train. A priest in a long black robe got on. The station cat yawned. On they went.

It was barely eight o'clock, snowing in Paris and bitterly cold. They were in a hackney carriage rattling over the pavements of Paris. Sam's eyes were everywhere, looking at the crowds in the streets and the brightly lit shops and cafes, taking in the shimmering lamps, the trees, the theatres, the houses, all the brilliant life of the city aglow under the shining snow. He forgot for a moment why they were there, but soon they came to a halt outside the Prefecture where he must go in and state their business. Dickens stayed in the cab – no time for them to be distracted by recognition of the famous author. Sam glanced back to see him swathed in his scarf, peering through the spectacles into the snow.

After about twenty minutes Sam came out – his courteous opposite number of the Paris police force would find out if there were a milliner's or dressmaker's by the name of Jolicoeur – it was, he agreed, an unusual name. It should not be too difficult. If there were no shop, he would find out the families who bore that name, and if Monsieur Le Superintendent had not enough time then, he, Monsieur Le Prefect, would institute a search of all Paris if necessary. The murderer must be caught and his accomplice, even though she was a woman, must be brought to justice.

‘Most obliging our French detective, Monsieur Dupin. If we cannot – what?'

‘And this shall be a sign,' said Dickens.

‘What sign?' Sam was baffled.

‘Monsieur Dupin is or was, I should say, a detective – a private one, granted, but one who solved his cases. In Poe's book
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
… I met him –'

‘Who?' Sam lost track.

‘Poe – in America. Odd man. Died last month. Strangely, he was wearing someone else's clothes – a mystery. It sounded like something from one of his own tales. Still, I cannot help thinking that if we have your Monsieur Dupin on our side then we will not fail. So, let us screw our courage to the sticking point. A drum, a drum.'

The Hotel Bonjour was small and a little shabby. No matter, the food was good. Sam had his steak and potatoes as did Dickens, along with a bottle of good French wine and some creamy brie cheese. They talked of tomorrow, hoping that Monsieur Dupin would find the Jolicoeur shop; and of what they would do if Victorine were there. With Monsieur Dupin's support they would question her at the Prefecture and take her back to London. She was the key. She had to be. And if her brother were there then he must come too. The superintendent would arrest him on suspicion of murder.

The word sobered them again. Paris was lovely under the snow. The fire was warm and the food comforting and filling, yet always there was that dark thread of memory like a trail of blood. They thought of the dead boys.

‘I hope he is here,' said Sam. ‘Then I can stop thinking that he will do it again while I am not there.'

‘I have thought about that; I do not honestly believe that she or he will go back to that house. We felt it, did we not? – its emptiness, the sense that it was abandoned. It almost seemed as if it had been deserted long before we got there. And there is the hat pin – surely that is the weapon.'

‘It may well be,' said the practical Sam, ‘but she will have had more than one hat pin. We cannot guarantee it.'

‘And there is the third boy. No mask as far as you could tell – perhaps there was not one, perhaps that murder was different. It must have been a shock to see that poor, maimed face – suppose that murder was committed in a different spirit altogether, a moment of revulsion and horror.'

‘You are trying to say that it may have stopped him in his tracks, that in a way it was a mistake, whereas the other murders were deliberate, the desire to end those lives – hatred, as you said before – hatred of their beauty.'

‘That is it entirely. I do not believe he will do it again. They have gone.'

‘To Paris?' Sam smiled. He knew how determined Dickens could be.

‘I hope that they are here or that we find out something significant. And so to bed?'

Dickens felt suddenly exhausted after the bustle and rattle of the train, the heave and swell of the sea and the dashing about in the cab. Sam looked weary too. They should sleep now. Sam would go to the Prefecture early and come back for Dickens.

Dickens fell asleep almost at once. He felt the motion of the train lulling him into a dream. Theo Outfin was in the carriage with him, dressed as a woman – he looked like his sister, but Dickens could not understand why he should be wearing an obviously false moustache. Theo – for it was he – was holding up a large hatpin. It might have been meant for a giant. He leant forward as if to confide in Dickens who saw then that his face was horribly disfigured. In the dream, Theo pointed the hatpin at him. It came dangerously close, and Theo was laughing with a mouth that was a hole. The train entered a tunnel. There was no escape. Dickens tried the door of the carriage but it was locked. The darkness was suffocating; the train travelled faster and faster. Dickens rattled the door. He was frantic to escape. He was falling into the dark hole. Then they were out of the tunnel. Theo turned into the veiled woman from the train. Her face loomed over his, and when she lifted the veil it was made of cobwebs, and the face was Victorine's whose lenses were opaque so that he could not see her eyes, but the lenses grew larger and larger until there was nothing of her but great white eyes. The train shrieked like something demented.

He woke sweating and conscious of a pain in his chest. Indigestion, he thought. Damn that cheese or was it the jam tart? The prosaic thought steadied him. God, he had felt terror then. Horrible. All the clocks in Paris seemed to be striking. Three o'clock. He lit the candle by his bed and walked over to the window sheathed in thick heavy lace that smelt of dust and cigar smoke.

He looked out on to a white world silent under the glittering moon with its corona of ghostly green. ‘
Queen of shadows, risen to blanch the world in its white sheen.
' He whispered the words of Lamartine, the French poet whom he had met and liked.
Solitude
, the poem was called – how apt. The snow muffled every sound. It was as though he were alone in the city. He looked down and saw in the street a set of footprints, a woman's. He thought of Victorine's closed face. Solitude. Was she alone now in this soundless city, a shadow in the shadows?

The room was chill and he felt the twinge of indigestion. Lamartine was a vegetarian – he thought ruefully of that steak. Perhaps there was something in it – vegetarianism. Though Lamartine had looked a bit bloodless. Oh, well, too late now. He looked at the footprints again, and thought of some lonely woman with a pockmarked face and a torn dress, haunting the street like a gaunt cat. He shivered, watching the snowflakes hover and whirl in the still air. They came faster and soon the footprints were covered over. Whoever she was, she had gone now. He went back to bed.

They breakfasted early on the hot rolls and coffee which Dickens had promised, then Sam went out into the white street to find a cab. Dickens poured himself another cup. He was thinking of Poe's Dupin and his detecting methods. To observe attentively was the key. The analyst, as Poe called him, makes a host of observations and inferences from which he draws his conclusions. Poe had used the analogy of the whist player who observes every external thing from his opponents' glances at each other, at the cards in their hands, even to their method of holding their cards. By the end, he knows every throw of every card and can play his own with as much confidence as if he had seen his opponents' cards face up. Now, thought Dickens, I have read and observed. Theo Outfin's face for example was not the face of a murderer. Victorine's face, he had thought first – and the first impression was important – was closed, cold, secret. He had been right, she had a secret. He and Sam had observed that silent house, and he felt that this was where Dupin's method failed them. The bed – it did not look as if anyone had ever slept in it. And yet, the brother. If it were a story then they would have found a convenient tuft of hair just as Dupin had in Poe's
Murders in the Rue Morgue
– behold the orang-u-tan! He laughed – what a mad tale. Too improbable.

And he was puzzled by something else – something that did not fit, something he was trying to remember that he had noticed at the beginning, but whatever it was seemed irretrievable. He did not know into which pigeon-hole of his mind he had put it. He had an idea that it was connected with his dream of the night before, but all he had now was a confused impression of the train, Theo Outfin and Victorine merging into one and a terror of her huge, opaque lenses. The memory was like a shadow glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, but gone when one turned one's gaze. Damn.

Sam came back with a paper in his hand. An address?

‘Success?'

‘Yes, indeed. Monsieur Dupin consulted the department which keeps records of businesses, markets, shops etcetera and there is a shop – a few streets way from here, in fact – a milliner's which was owned by a Madame Jolicoeur, now taken over by Madame Manette. We will try there – someone might know about the Jolicoeur family. Monsieur Dupin has kindly provided a map, and he has provided a Sergeant de Ville to smooth our way.'

They collected their travelling bags from the room and paid the bill. They did not want to return to the hotel. If they could not find Victorine or her brother then they must return to London on the earliest possible train.

They went out to where the Sergeant de Ville waited. The snow had stopped falling but the streets were still white. There was a sense of unreality about the glittering scene; a hush everywhere as if the city were in a trance. A few passers-by walked carefully in the snow. Dickens noticed a beautiful woman with fur framing her face. She had a little dog on a lead; it was wearing a pretty little coat and looked at him as if to say, ‘I know I'm a victim of fashion.' He grinned at it. Sheepish, he thought recalling a snippet from
Punch
lampooning canine fashions from Paris, especially the sight of dogs with sleeves
en gigot
– he always enjoyed puns however lame.

In a narrow, elegant street they found the tiny shop, very smart, the window bearing the legend in italic golden letters:
Les Plumes de Ma Tante
. In the window was one well-cut black and white striped dress and on a stand a neat black velvet hat bearing one emerald green feather. But what drew their attention was the black and green embroidered shawl draped over the shoulders of the papier-maché mannequin. Victorine's work? On the snowy step outside sat a thin black cat waiting to go in. It was early but the sign on the door said ‘Ouverte'. A tinny little bell rang as they entered preceded by the cat.

A young woman turned at their entrance, though for a moment she focused her attention on the cat.

‘
Frou
,' she said. ‘
Tu viens – tu es restée hors toute la nuite – la creature sotte
.' The cat shook itself. She opened a little door in the counter through which Frou passed, just glancing back at them disdainfully. Not French. The young woman looked at them.