Floats the Dark Shadow (35 page)

Michel didn’t know or care unless it led him to his killer. “He slaughtered children. So does this man.”

“I visited Tiffauges.” Huysmans’ voice lowered to a confessional whisper. “I saw the crypt where the children were sacrificed, the chamber where the remains were incinerated. The castle was imbued with a kind of stale horror, an invisible smoke that tainted the nostrils and throat.”

The castle was far afield from Michel’s concerns, and Huysmans’ morbid memories farther still. “What can you tell me about Gilles de Rais?”

“You have not read
Là Bas
?” Huysmans regarded him suspiciously.

“I read it when it was first published,” Michel quickly assured him. “But I remember only bits and pieces of it. As a Parisian, the contemporary section had the most impact.”

Mollified, Huysmans gave him a brief history. “Gilles’ parents died when he was about ten. After that, he was raised by his grandfather, Jean de Craon, an old man even then, and thoroughly corrupt. As a boy, Gilles was allowed to run wild. He was married off young, a marriage that was essentially meaningless. Soon he sought out the court, where his youth and riches let him cut a dashing figure. He had his own army which the dauphin was most pleased to use. Gilles was judged a courageous, even a reckless warrior.”

“And he served under Jeanne d’Arc.” Michel’s heart clenched tight inside his chest.

“He was there when Jeanne first knelt before the dauphin, recognizing him even though he was in disguise. It was her first miracle, but not as great to Gilles as her triumph in battle. He rode to victory after victory by her side. He reached a glorious pinnacle of faith and fame.” Huysmans paused. “Her capture and death were devastating blows from which he never recovered. After her death in the flames, he began his quest for a magical solution.”

“Solution to what?”

“Despair, I would say. Gilles de Rais would probably have said he wanted immortality, infinite wealth, and ultimate knowledge.” Huysmans paused again. “In his quest, he descended into a bottomless pit of depravity and madness. His few remaining acts of good, all his acts of evil—everything was done in extraordinary excess, at extraordinary expense. The richest man in France was wholly bankrupt when he was arrested for heresy.”

“Not murder?” Michel frowned.

“They would not arrest an aristocrat for the murder of meaningless peasant children. In that era, they were little better than livestock.” Huysmans made a moue of distaste. “But heresy threatened the power of the Church. Once there was proof of that, the evidence of the murders could be included.”

“What else?”

“I see no need to recount information I spent months—years—gathering. Read my book. Read a biography.” He continued in a less aggrieved tone, “If you want to show me other evidence, perhaps I will know something directly relevant.”

Michel pushed aside his own possessiveness about the case and evaluated the remaining documents and photographs he had brought with him. There was no need to show Huysmans the hideous photos of Alicia’s wounds. Michel did remember that Gilles de Rais sometimes eviscerated his victims though that was not his only mode of murder. He indulged in other atrocities, slow strangulation, dismemberment, bludgeoning. Michel picked out the list of missing children. “Do you see any correlation to Gilles’ victims? Their work? Their names?”

“Usually the children were anonymous, known to us only as the son or daughter of the grieving parent. Sometimes the age was given,” Huysmans said as he took the pages. But when he actually looked through them, he paled. “This is extraordinary. We know a half dozen or so names of the hundreds he may have murdered. But the first known victim is the son of a man named Jean Jeudon. The first victim on your list is also the son of a man named Jeudon. And here too, Jamet—a boy chosen by Gilles de Rais for demonic sacrifice.”

Michel wished the
bouquiniste
had a more common name than Jeudon. And Jamet had been the boy Dancier said he was training as a pickpocket.

Huysmans looked over the names again and shook his head. “Nothing else emerges. The other names mean nothing to me.”

Jeudon was the first on Michel’s list. Was he truly the first victim? Perhaps that name was all the killer needed to begin this orgy of slaughter. Once the modern Gilles had murdered an innocent child, he could follow no other path but madness. “A medieval monster comes to life,” he said, more to himself than Huysmans.

“I now understand something about Gilles de Rais which I did not even when I devoted myself to studying him.”

“And that is?” Michel asked.

“His faith. No, for I always understood that sin and redemption were interlocked in his soul.” Huysmans’ eyes shone with his own fervor. “The unsullied soul of Catholicism endures in the unsurpassed beauty of its art, its music, which can transform both sin and suffering. The creation of such beauty and the besmirching of it were both Gilles’ light and his darkness.”

“What did the children know of this unsurpassed beauty?”

“Let us hope that their very innocence transformed their suffering before God.”

“Forgive me, Monsieur Huysmans, but perhaps your own search for faith makes you too generous.”

“Not at all. Gilles never stopped worshipping, never stopped abasing himself before the glory of God, even as he questioned it, even as he defied it and defiled it. He was center stage in his own fabulous drama.”

“That I can believe,” Michel said. Gilles de Rais probably only believed in God and the Devil to give more importance to his own gore-sodden soul.

“Once he lost his saintly Jeanne, he turned to Satanism. It was his revenge on God, yet it was also his path to salvation.”

“You believe he was saved?” Michel’s tone was flat.

“The forgiveness of God is infinite.”

“I hope not.” Michel did not believe a killer like Gilles should be saved. It made him hope that the soul existed, so it could be damned.

~

Leaving, Michel thanked Huysmans and affirmed that he would reread
Là Bas.
He decided to take the long walk back to the Seine and search the stalls of the
bouquinistes
for the biography Huysmans’ recommended. There had been nothing about the heraldic symbol in
Là Bas,
or he would have remembered it. The killer must have had other sources to be able to find the symbol and to know the children’s names. Any of the Revenants might be able to beg or bribe their way into the archives.

Gilles de Rais had been an aristocrat. Estarlian was of noble birth and a baron. Would that make him more likely to identify with the historic figure? Perhaps, but others might crave that distinction for the creature who lived inside. Paul Noret might have a hidden Hyde who was everything that his Jekyll personality despised. Jules Loisel might desire the elegance, distinction, and power implied in a title. Charron—any of them—might think Gilles de Rais the ultimate decadent artist, carving the flesh of his angelic choirboys after listening to them sing Hallelujah.

And Vipèrine… Lilias had said that Vipèrine was to conduct a Black Mass. He was the only suspect known to be dabbling in the slimy malevolence of Satanism. An icicle streaked Michel’s spine, for he remembered that Lilias also said that Vipèrine was from Rouen.

Jeanne d’Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen.

Tonight, Michel would read about his killer’s secret mentor, whispering in his ear from beyond the grave.

Chapter Thirty-One

Every hideous vice has a lair—

~ Paul Verlaine

“MERDE!”
Michel’s curse was loud enough that the other detectives in the bureau looked up from their work. He stared them down, then bent over his notes again.

He would, however, have to inform Rambert of his mistake.

Michel had done what he told himself he must not. He’d looked for evidence to implicate his chief suspect, fitted fact to theory. In doing that, he had overlooked a lead—the cocky young fiacre driver who had seen Averill Charron in Montmartre cemetery early in the morning. Zacharie Corbeau had been so obliging. So pleased to become part of the drama.

Was this Corbeau instead tweaking the tails of the police? Had he seized upon the chance to push an innocent man further into the spotlight? Could the driver possibly be working with Charron? If so, why not provide a better alibi?

“Débile.”
Stupid. This time his mutter was low enough that no one else heard.

Why had he been so neglectful? He had solved cases in the past following just such oblique leads as this driver. But he had spent most of his time brooding over the Revenants. Why? The image of Theodora Faraday came to mind. Michel pushed it away. He did not like that a spirited young woman was endangering herself, but it was her choice, not the urging of her decadent poet friends. Then he realized it was exactly because his suspects were poets that he found them more intriguing as killers. Ridiculous. There was nothing poetic in the slaughter of Alicia.

Late in the afternoon, Hugh Rambert entered the dim, wood-paneled office. Michel beckoned him over. “
Zut
!” was Rambert’s mild expletive after hearing the explanation. “It’s like the warning Monsieur Bertillon has written on the wall upstairs, that the eye sees only what it is looking for.”

“And looks for the idea already in the mind.”

“Yes.” He gave his pleasant, diffident smile. “I’ve been investigating the stables all day, working outward from Montmartre. It’s good you have found a specific lead.”

Michel could give only a bland description. “He looked a little less than thirty. Undistinguished—brown eyes, dark brown hair, light olive skin. Face and features a bit on the narrow side. Very animated. I think he wore a black coat but that means almost nothing.”

“He could be the man I saw or one of a thousand others,” Rambert agreed.

Michel handed him the interview. “The first step will be to find out if he was who he claimed to be. He gave his name as Zacharie Corbeau.”

“Corbeau?” Rambert repeated, then began flipping through his notebook.

Michel leaned forward. “What?”

“He’s here,” Rambert announced with satisfaction. His smile took on a grim edge. “I felt that anyone who’d tortured Alicia so cruelly must enjoy inflicting pain, so at each stable I asked if they’d fired anyone because he was a bully or cruel to the animals.”

“That was good thinking,” Michel told him. “It did not occur to me.”

Rambert stood straighter at the praise, then added apologetically, “I have a dog…sir.”

Touched and amused, Michel confessed, “I feed the cats behind the Palais, but it still did not occur to me.”

Rambert smiled broadly now. Michel pointed to the notebook. Rambert cleared his throat and resumed a serious expression. “Two or three drivers were mentioned. One had been fired from two places. I spent the morning chasing him down, only to find out he’d been trampled to death a week ago.”

“Justice?”

“I think so. There was no time to continue before meeting you, but this other man was next because he was closest in age.”

“Zacharie Corbeau?”

“I didn’t learn his Christian name. One owner told me that Old Corbeau’s grandson was an evil brute with the beasts.” Anger sparked in Rambert’s eyes.

“Go first thing tomorrow.”

“I’ll go now. The stables are near the Quai d’Orsay. That gives him river travel and train travel as well as the carriages.”

Michel stayed him. “Aside from Blaise Dancier, you and I are the only ones who can recognize him. But he knows our faces as well. Work up some sort of disguise.”

He eyed the other’s thick mustache, but Rambert raised a protective hand. “More men have mustaches than not. Perhaps a fake beard?”

“Not too fake. At the very least wear worker’s clothing and something different each day so you will be more difficult to spot.”

“I can do it in an hour.” Then he ran out of the building.

Michel waited till after nightfall. Just as he was about to leave, Rambert reappeared. His clothes were scruffy, his face bright with triumph. Michel stood to greet him. “Success?”

“It’s him!”

Michel felt an answering surge of anticipation.

“I put on these workman’s clothes and found a
café
on the corner across from the stables. I teased along a beer through the evening, had some bread and olives. There were checkered half-curtains to hide my face, but I could see over them. Just after sunset, Corbeau appeared and went into the stables. He’s not so ordinary that I couldn’t recognize him. The street lights were bright enough.”

“You are sure he didn’t notice you?”

“He didn’t even glance at the
café
, but the owner’s wife could tell I was watching the place. To win her over, I bought a nice dinner. Then I said this Zacharie owed me money, but I wondered if it might be more trouble than it was worth to try and collect it.”

“Good. Did she offer information?”

“Oh yes. They don’t like him there though he’s done nothing in particular. The wife said he was arrogant and rude to her. Even worse, cheap. He’s the grandson of the aging, ailing owner. The father’s long dead. Our suspect lives in the house beside the stables and works when he pleases, sometimes day, sometimes night—sometimes both. For years there were other drivers, but the last few months there has been only the grandson.”

Michel met Rambert’s gaze. “That is suspicious.”

“She even gave a little shiver when she talked about him,” Rambert went on eagerly. “He hasn’t murdered anyone on their doorstep, but something about him doesn’t settle well. Maybe the other drivers quit because he was a brute to them as well as the animals.”

“Or maybe he threw them out because he has something to hide.”

Rambert nodded his accord. “Do you think this fiacre driver works alone?”

“A driver could, but we cannot discount a cohort. The driver captures the child and gives the other man an alibi. Perhaps they can even arrange the reverse.”

“Does your instinct say Charron is this cohort? Or one of the others of his clique?”

“Nothing insists that any of the Revenants is guilty. They are simply the most probable suspects.”

“We must hope we have the killer in our sights.”

Michel agreed. “So far, our only other choice is Vipèrine.”

“Once you mentioned Charron’s vivisectionist father.”

“He is still possible, but I thought the father dominated and perverted the son. With Corbeau that would make three. Also, the father is older, why wait so long to commit these crimes?”

“Who knows what might have set him off? What he does is cruel, but perhaps it was Corbeau who took him even further into the darkness.”

“That is possible. And it is possible they are setting a frame on the son.” Michel had Rambert pick four men to follow Corbeau while he was driving his carriage. Since Corbeau worked odd hours, two were to be in place at dawn and another two would come at noon. Michel and Rambert at sunset. Michel told them to follow very discreetly. “Stay on foot if he’s meandering. Take a carriage if need be. It’s better to lose him than have him spot you. If you can keep up with him, take note if he contacts anyone or goes anywhere suspicious.”

~

After sunset, Michel and Rambert walked past the stables, noting one of their men loitering at the corner. They went into the
café
and joined the other watcher at the table by the window. Seeing Rambert again, the proprietor’s wife grinned broadly and placed tankards of beer in front of them all. She was gleefully hoping that Corbeau was in deep trouble, swishing her skirts in anticipation. After a minute, the loiterer came in. He said Corbeau had gone out once in the afternoon for a few hours, then returned.

“You followed?”

“For a while he stopped often enough that I could keep up, but then he took a turn through the Bois de Boulogne. I couldn’t match him, so I came back here.”

“He turned up about an hour later,” the second watcher said, then glanced at the first man uneasily.

“Did he spot you?” Michel asked.

The first man shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Which meant he thought so but hoped he was wrong. It made Michel uneasy. Just then, looking out over the checkered curtains, he saw Corbeau emerge on foot from the gates and lock them behind him. Rather than replace the afternoon watchers as planned, Michel sent the two men to follow Corbeau. When they were out of sight, he left the
café
with Rambert and crossed to the stables. The street was sleepy. No one appeared to be watching except the
café
owner’s wife peeping over the curtains. She counted herself part of the drama. Michel had Rambert hoist him to the top of the stone wall. He wanted an unofficial look around inside while Rambert waited to confront Corbeau if he returned unexpectedly.

Michel lowered himself on the other side of the wall and dropped down to a cobblestone courtyard thickly littered with straw and dung. Everything looked filthy. First he went to the front door of the house next to the stables. It was locked. Michel had his lockpicks but decided not to bend the rules that far. Instead he went to the stables, which were open. Inside were one carriage and an empty space for another. Three horses waited in the stalls. Both the carriage and the animals were better tended than the courtyard though the rest of the interior was shoddy. Corbeau was still keeping up appearances on the streets. Two of the horses were shy of him, perhaps because their owner was cruel, but one greeted him with a nicker and allowed its ears to be scratched. Looking around as he stroked the horse, Michel saw a wooden staircase rising on one side, leading up to a high hayloft. More bales of hay were piled up in a wall directly below it.

Michel thought he heard a rustle in the loft above. A rat in the straw? Most likely. But his uneasiness lingered. Drawing his gun, he moved quietly up the stairs. At the top he paused and quickly surveyed the loft. Nothing seemed awry, but there were hay bales everywhere, easy to hide behind, and storage cabinets were spaced out along the half-timbered walls. Michel moved as noiselessly as he could, but the hay crinkled and the floorboards creaked. He opened the three storage closets on the side wall, all filled with stable paraphernalia, extra tack and grooming tools, medicines for the animals. He turned and began to search along the back wall.

There was a sudden sharp creak and a surge of movement behind him. Michel had time to half turn before the cord looped over his head. He caught it with a hand in front of his throat and took a swift breath as Corbeau yanked it tight. Michel twisted against the pull. Reaching back, he managed to get his free hand around the base of Corbeau’s skull, then lunged, trying to drag Corbeau over his back and onto the floor. Corbeau slid sideways, toppling onto a pile of bales and taking Michel with him. Michel scrabbled against him, unable to get any leverage. Rolling over, Corbeau landed on his feet, still holding tight. He yanked on the cord and rammed his knee into Michel’s kidney.

Ignoring the clout of pain, Michel dropped to one knee, pulling Corbeau on top again, driving an elbow up into his solar plexus. Corbeau grunted but didn’t let go of the cord. Michel twisted his hand, trying to get a better grip and only cutting his palm. He felt his own knuckles choking his windpipe. Corbeau pulled the cord tighter, lifting Michel to his feet and tightening his grip as they lurched back. Michel caught a glimpse of a trick door open between the timbers in the wall.