Terra Mechanica: A Steampunk Anthology (32 page)

There had been a handful of defining moments in Marcel Roux’s life: his graduation from the academy, his marriage to the elegant Zelie Guerin, and the birth of their baby boy, Maximilien, just over three years ago.

The accident had taken everything from him.

Now this bumbling junior inspector was standing there pretending he might be of some use again.

“No,” he said with firm resolve, and turned his face away.

Noël ignored his answer. “Let me read to you this letter from our patron before you decide.” Marcel closed his eyes, but he could not shut out the words:

“
Monsieur Roux, I am most desperate to bring my family together again. We have lived in such love as has not been known but for a lucky few. To lose my family is a burden I cannot bear much longer. Do please choose to help me if you can. I will reward you handsomely in the end. Thank you for your attention. Monsieur M
.” Junior Inspector Noël folded the letter and put it away in his coat. “This is truly a desperate situation, Inspector Roux, and they have only asked you for the smallest aid.”

“Smallest indeed,” Roux scoffed, but he was already starting to wonder about Monsieur M. The letter had offered no specific clues but to the happiness of the couple with their young child. Who did he know in a position of such prestige that they did not dare be named and who also had a wife and babe? M Montrose? M Mercier? M Michaud . . . ?

Noël interrupted his thoughts. “Will you take the case, Inspector?”

“Clearly I must.” He gave in only for the money, to have something to leave his once beloved Zelie and little Max.

Dearest Zelie. He barely remembered sending her away. There had been angry words—all his. He’d promised her divorce, a chance at a full life instead of this nothing he now lived.

He owed her still. After ten years of putting up with him and having a daughter lost at birth, but now a healthy son to raise, she had given him so much. She deserved so much more than the mere money he might be able to send.

“I will need . . . a servant,” he admitted with chagrin. “To attend to my needs.”

“Is that not what junior inspectors are for?” Noël had come prepared, and set a parcel on the bed. He opened it to reveal a new inspector’s uniform, down to the shoes.

“But—?”

“Compliments of the Commissaire Divisionnaire,” Noël replied. “Who has also hoped you might be willing to accept this particular case.”

“Very well,” Roux sighed. The hospital nurse had earlier insisted on giving Marcel a bath, so he was comfortable putting on the new uniform with the extensive help of the eager-to-please junior inspector. “I see now you were never intending to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“On the contrary, Monsieur.” Noël buttoned Marcel’s coat, then set the inspector’s hat on his head. “I was never expecting the legendary Inspector Roux to turn down a case involving a child. It is your own reputation you must thank for all this.”

 There was something disconcerting about being lifted by another man as easily as he might have lifted his own child, but Noël lifted him out of bed and carried him into the hallway.

Nurses and other hospital patients lined the hall. It was a parade he’d neither asked for nor felt he deserved. One old fellow even clapped as he passed by.

“It’s Monsieur Roux, the greatest inspector of our time!” The old man’s slurred speech and crippled body—all making such an effort in his behalf—touched Marcel deeply.

“I used to be,” he conceded, though only after they had passed.

“That’s a good enough place to start.” Clement Noël carried him through the double-doored exit and Roux had to put up a hand to shield himself until his one good eye could adjust to the sunlight.

Parc Montsouris was going to be a difficult place for him to focus on a case, the inspector realized. It had been a favorite spot for he and Zelie to bring little Max. Not only did that make the case feel a little too close to home, but to see other happy couples and their happy children darkened his mood as Junior Inspector Noël guided him across the grass.

Marcel already despised the steam-driven chair that Noël had stopped to purchase along the way. True, it was an extraordinary feat of science, but it was also a monstrosity. There was nothing of demure about it as it hissed and rattled its way forward.

“You could guide the chair by yourself, you know. That’s what that little box by your left hand is for,” Noël offered. “It would take no time at all to show you how.”

“No time at all is still time wasted,” Marcel muttered as he set his eyes on the very spot near the lake where he had proposed to Zelie on one knee.

He couldn’t even bend that knee now.

The crime scene was a simple one. The pousette—a fancy steam-driven stroller only to be afforded by the wealthiest citizens of Paris—sat alone and empty in the dry grass beside the cobblestone trail.

Two sets of patrolmen flanked the scene, still interviewing the two witnesses. Roux wanted to see the scene first without their input. He requested Junior Inspector Noël park his chair on the edge of the graveled walk to have a long look.

“Hold on a moment, Monsieur.” He put up a hand to keep Noël from eagerly plowing forward, but then sighed. “No, never mind. The police have unfortunately already trampled the grass around the pousette.”

Noël took that as permission to approach the scene. Roux watched the young man look around and inside the pousette without nearly enough care.

“Look at that, the villains. They left the child’s blanket behind,” Noël lamented. Roux wanted a closer look. He tried to turn the wheels of his chair with his hands before remembering the little chair guiding-box. He pressed the button and the mechanisms of the chair hissed and jolted as the entire contraption moved forward with a lurch.

Too late, he realized that he didn’t know how to stop it.

Fortunately, Noël was quick on his feet and stopped the chair just before it struck the pousette and ruined the crime scene.

“Go button on top, stop button in front.” Noël smiled. “Reverse over here on the outside . . . and barely any time wasted.”

“Merci, Inspector Noël.” Roux was shaking, trying to pay attention. The fear of embarrassing himself in front of strangers and officers who knew of him enough to recommend him was one he had not expected to be feeling today.

Marcel pulled himself together and looked into the pousette. He picked up the soft yellow blanket and forced away the depth of concern he immediately felt for his own little boy. He needed to focus on the case in front of him, not be constantly distracted by the past. Beneath the yellow blanket, a silver cup had been left behind.

“So clearly not a robbery gone wrong.” He frowned and continued to investigate. A tiny decorative purse hung from the handle of the pousette. He collected it carefully and then struggled to open it with the stumps of his lost fingers and his weak left hand, until Noël reached down wordlessly and opened it for him.

Left handed, he drew out the contents of the purse onto his own handkerchief. There was a key tied to a long ribbon, a torn opera ticket, and some small change, so again, definitely not a robbery gone wrong.

He took a closer look at the key. There were no markings that he could use to determine its origin as he had sometimes seen in past cases. The ticket no longer bore the name of the opera as that portion had been torn off, but it was dated from the previous season, so perhaps merely a keepsake.

“Should we keep the key?” Noël asked. His inexperience was showing.

“It belonged to the victim, not the kidnapper. It’s more than likely irrelevant.”

“More than likely irrelevant or completely irrelevant?” Noël frowned.

Marcel sighed. The boy was making him doubt himself.

“Fine.” He offered the key-on-a-string to the junior inspector, who turned around and put it over Marcel’s head as a necklace, rather than his own.

“For safe keeping.” Noël shrugged at the glare Marcel gave him. The boy seemed to forget, perhaps purposefully, that Marcel wasn’t going to be involved in this case for much longer. “I beg your pardon, sir, but I tend to lose small things.”

“Of course you do. Let me meet the witnesses,” Inspector Roux replied impatiently. Rather than attempting to move the chair again, he waited for them to be brought to him one at a time.

The first was a young man dressed in ragged, filthy clothes.

“Two men came from the direction of the lake, riding a tandem bicycle.” The fellow’s voice trembled. “When suddenly they stopped, grabbed the woman and her baby, and rode away with her fighting and kicking.”

“You just stood there and watched?” Roux frowned.

“Well, sir . . . the bicycle sprouted wings and flew off up into the clouds. There wasn’t nothing I could do.”

Marcel blinked. The story had gone from believable to outlandish, though not impossible in that day and age. He had only to touch his chair to remind himself of advances in steam technology. The young man seemed sincere and worried. The way he fingered the rim of his hat in his hands spoke plainly of humility or perhaps nervousness.

“Merci beaucoup.” Marcel nodded and Noël escorted the young fellow away.

The second witness was a woman in wealthy attire who rather reeked of a potentially pleasant, but overpoweringperfume.

“Three men were sitting in a boat on the lake. When that poor girl got near enough, they grabbed her and her child and pulled them both into their boat.”

“And you, Mademoiselle? You did not follow them or alert a gentleman to assist in the moment? You did nothing at all?

“No, sir, I could not. The boat . . . it sprouted fins and dove beneath the water. For all I know, it is still down there.”

Marcel bit his tongue and looked toward the lake. The edge was undisturbed. It had no outlet. Submarines existed, but in such a shallow lake?

“Merci.” He grimaced and dismissed the woman.

Noël looked confused. “So, do we search the lake or the skies?”

“Neither.” Marcel felt certain. “There are no footprints in the sand along the edge of the lake—no evidence of a boat being drawn to shore and out again. The witness dresses elegantly but wears inexpensive perfume.”

He didn’t want to say how he knew it, but it was his wife’s favored scent, just not in that quantity, and now that the woman was gone, the scent lingered gently in the air and caused him sorrow, which only fueled his further annoyance with the witness.

“She is a charlatan out for money, as is the boy, though probably for more noble reasons. Still, both have clearly been paid to throw us off. We need to know by whom. I recommend they both be arrested for conspiracy and see which of them will squawk first. Then, renew the search for legitimate witnesses.”

“Yes, Monsieur.” Noël became giddy, as if making his first arrest was the highlight of his lifetime. Roux still remembered when he’d felt that way.

But time had taught him that it was rare to meet a man or woman who had started into a life of crime simply for the love of being a criminal. Most often, it was desperate circumstances that led people to make desperate decisions.

So he looked away instead of watching the arrest.

There was something . . . he could see the corner of a piece of paper sticking out near the bottom of the pousette’s rear tire. He reached for it—

And the next thing he knew he was face down in the dry grass.

“Monsieur!” Noël gasped, and helped him turn onto his side. “Are you all right?”

He spat out grass a moment before cursing the day he was born.

“Humiliated, thank you, but unhurt.”

“Allow me to—”

“No, wait.” Inspector Roux was not going to abandon the reason for his fall. He pulled the paper out of the pousette’s wheel. “How did no one see this before?”

“Perhaps we were all looking at it from the wrong perspective.” Noël shrugged and Roux conceded that indeed he was seeing things from a lesser height and he’d had the advantage this time because of it.

He unfolded the paper, still with great effort.

“Do we have a linguist available?” he smirked.

“What language?” Noël asked before he’d clearly thought too hard about it. “Oh right—you don’t know. Let me have a look.” Noël read it over and then frowned. “That appears to be Moroccan. I have a great-aunt who settled down there; we used to visit, so I picked up a few words here and there.” He knelt in the grass to show Roux, pointing to the text. “This means money. Bring money; ten thousand francs. This must be the address: something, something, Casablanca, Morocco. I’ll get someone else to look at it.”

“That’s about as good a lead as they’re going to get.” Marcel sighed. “Now please, take me back to the invalid home. I’m done embarrassing myself.”

“What?” Noël protested. “But we’re just getting started.”

“I can’t even pick up a piece of paper without falling on my face!” Roux gasped. No one seemed to be staring, but somewhere someone was going to be talking about this humiliation behind his back. He didn’t need that.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Noël laughed. Before Inspector Roux could remind the boy that his sense of adventure had also been left on the cobblestones streets of Aÿ-Champagne, the junior inspector had hauled him up out of the grass with ease and set him back into his chair, this time taking care to strap him in. “Besides,” Noël took out the note again, “I might not read Moroccan well, but I know what that name is.”