The Green Muse (29 page)

 

W
H
EN
I
GOT
to the apartment she would ask me if I had gotten rid of the old woman. I did not want to talk. I just wanted my green, my flask being empty. And I wanted my ritual as well: the spoon, four sugar cubes, and a generous portion of water poured slowly, drip by drip, until the liquid reached a perfect louche.

Walking quickly, with fury and chagrin, I remembered that I had not told her all I had felt about Tabby. But she had not needed to ask. She had not needed spoken words, so keen had been all the ties that bound us, skin and muscle and nerve and bone, heart to heart and soul to soul.

I had never before been angry with V, but I was angry with her now. There was never any need to strip the old woman: That had merely been punishment. Would one glance tell her what I was unwilling to tell? She delighted in hearing me recite the details of our kills as we sat out on the boulevards at public cafés, or in the privacy of our elegant bedchamber and the dirty garret bed. At first this had been highly stimulating to me as well, knowing how it excited my lover.

But there had come a subtle change. V needed larger and larger quantities. Even Monique's had satisfied her for barely a day before she insisted we bring Augustine home. Perhaps after we had killed this girl I would recommend a change of scene. Anything can become a drug, and any drug weakens the system to the point where more and still more is required to achieve the requisite effect. If simply killing would satisfy V, I would kill every woman in Europe. But although we committed our kills together, we both knew they really belonged to her. I was more than V's accomplice: I was her willing puppet. Long before I got home I was too tired to think. V met me at the door, but she had not readied the objects she knew I would surely need for my green ritual. And then, as I walked by her to the wheeled glass table where my implements were kept, she said, “Make me a glass, Charles.”

I was taken aback. The only time V had ever tasted of my poison was when I had given her an absinthe-­dipped sugar cube the night she offered me her life. I glanced at her, but she was not looking at me, and for a moment I felt as invisible as a servant, and my temper flared.

And then she looked into my eyes and laughed her golden laugh.

“It has been a long day, Charles. Look how muddy you are! Come, I will mix your poison, and I will share it with you.”

And for a time we spoke no more. She knelt and removed my boots as she always did, and she performed my ritual with her usual sensual grace and efficiency, and when she set our glasses out she did not drink of hers but watched me drink, with an eagerness in her cat's eyes.

“You are certain,” she said as I finished my first drink, “that there is no identification on the body.”

“Of course,” I said. There were flowers under the table—­V's hand was petals on my thigh.

“Certain,” she repeated.

“I unclothed the old hag,” I said cheerfully. I had not thought I would lie. I thought that perhaps my punishment had merely been to be given the distasteful task; perhaps I was right.

“Oh, Charles, that must have been ghastly!” For the first time she took a sip of her drink; her cat's tongue flicked to taste bittersweet green. “Tell me.”

And I realized she knew.

“Oh, V,” I said; the petals had become a silken rope that played and tugged and pulled me taut. “I do not want to speak of it now. Erase my memories of ancient flesh. You have erased them already, surely you can feel that.”

“I thought perhaps that was for the old lady!” She laughed. She was a kitten now, only and always my V. Something had been troubling me on the way home . . . something . . . She finished her drink and said, “Charles! I think perhaps we are floating!” And as she stood she was floating indeed, diaphanous white billows of silk a cloud around her silken hair, her silken white body.

I had a moment's terror that she would bid me to go to Augustine. Instead, she said, “The girl is passed out again; she is most unattractive now.” She indicated the bed that I had not dared look at. “Take me here on the flagstones in front of the fireplace, Charles. Show me why it is that you so love your Green Muse.”

And I, her servant, her puppy, her lord, and her lover, was more than happy to oblige.

 

H
ENRI
'
S C
ARRIAGE TRUNDLED
through the streets at a reckless speed; mud flew everywhere, and ­people ran. On the way, something about the address vexed and troubled me and as we pulled up I realized that we had stopped at the very place where I had photographed the murdered body of Lenore DuPrey.

Night was falling fast, and a fitful moon lit the same unsteady towers I had seen before. Still they seemed about to tumble down upon us, almost swaying in the night and the wind.

We flew from the carriage, to the front doorway. But there was a commotion I had at first been too distracted to notice, a gaggle of workmen and a very large, covered object they were attempting to carry up the interior staircase.

“Step aside,” Henri said with authority. “Police business.” At that moment one of the workmen flung aside what covered the large object: It was a piano. The moon abandoned a cloud to shine her full brightness through the doorway upon the ludicrous scene.

“We have to get in here!” I cried, and the foreman said matter-­of-­factly, “And we have to get this damn piano up four flights of stairs.”

“This is urgent police business,” Henri said in his most imperious voice, and as he spoke he tried to move around the piano to mount the staircase.

“We'll be out of your way in no time. We just have to deliver this piano to—­” He checked his work order. “Odette Alexandrovna.”

“Madame Alexandrovna?” and “Odette?” Henri and I cried at once.

“You know her? 'Cause nobody answered the door up there. But I'll be damned if I'm going to cart this damn thing all the way back to the docks at this damn time of night. So up it goes. Come on, you, what are you standing around for?” He gestured to one of his men. “Officer, go round back and guard the back stair.”

The workmen were clearly not impressed with us, police or no. For a moment Henri and I simply stood, frozen by the dreamlike scene of piano and moon and impervious workmen in dirty overalls. Then love and fear galvanized me. And I was off to find it before a word could be said. I could hear Henri's raised, frustrated voice behind me, could almost feel his impotence.
A piano! A slum, a murder, an abduction, a three-­word ribbon of hope, a beautiful waif with a violin, and a piano, along with a romantic moon!

But then all thought left me but for one word: Augustine. I ran as I had never run, an old image suddenly flashing into my mind: chasing our best milk cow with my sister Natalie one morning while even the delicious smell of morning sausages could not dissuade us from our unkind, enjoyable pursuit of the poor animal. And then it was gone, and I was racing around the back corner of the building where no one had seen anything of Lenore DuPrey, where fully half the residents could not even be confirmed to be whom they claimed to be.

There was a dirty door, and it was open. Not simply unlocked, but open. The officer lay in muck and blood. Jean-­Beauclaire stood over him looking shattered and very young
. In the time it took him to be surprised,
I thought, and I ran up the stairs as fast as I could, hearing faint sounds in the background of angry voices and the creak of the front stairs under their heavy burden. I was too late; I could not be too late. If Augustine were dead I would be dead already myself, and that irrational thought was my hope and my impetus.

There was only one apartment on the fourth floor. I threw myself against the door and almost fell headlong into a filthy gray room. The door was unlocked, and so old that it had hardly taken a shove to split its hinges, to in fact bust the wood to wild, flying pulp.

“Augustine!” I cried. “Augustine!” with my soul in my mouth.

And there she was. She lay on sheets so old as to have almost no color, and she was barely conscious, with an open laudanum bottle spilling its contents out onto the floor next to the bed. But her eyes, when their blue beam met my own, unremarkable eyes, were clear.

“Edouard,” she said softly. “I knew you would come. They lied to me. They said . . . they said you were one of them.” And I saw that her blue belied her condition—­she was obviously drugged.

“Augustine,” I said. “Are you all right?” As preposterous a question as the piano I could hear coming up the stairs.

“No,” she said. “They made me drink absinthe. They made me drink laudanum. I feel awful.”

“Where are they?”

“You didn't catch them?”

“No,” I said regretfully, acutely aware of how badly I had failed her.

“You won't,” she said. “They are . . . hardly human, Edouard. Oh, will you ever forgive me?” And she was crying, partly, I knew, from the drugs, and partly from her good heart.

“Yes. They tricked you, didn't they?”

“She seemed so . . . oh, Edouard, she was so lovely! So loving. He was . . . like a wolf. He always frightened me. But I thought . . . I thought that because he loved her, he must be kind, that only his exterior was hard. Edouard, I kept their visits from you, their plans! They said that they would send for you after they had me released from the hospital, but then they said . . . they said—­” And her eyes began to close, her voice to fade.

I had been kneeling at the floor next to the bed; I rose and sat next to her and cradled her in my arms, and she felt like every good dream I had ever had.

“Augustine, Augustine, there is nothing to forgive,” I said to her now-­sleeping form. “When I look at you, I see the world.”

Suddenly the racket outside intensified, and Henri burst into the room as if shot from a cannon.

“How's the piano?” I asked equably; at this moment nothing could distress me.

“Where are they?”

“They have gone.”

Augustine's eyes opened again, and we realized that the perpetrators had gotten away. But still I had the presence of mind to ask Augustine, “Do you brew a good pot of coffee, my love?”

 

“
C
HARLES, WE MUST
go. I hear a noise downstairs.”

“They could not have found us, V.”

“You did not strip the body, did you? It is likely the girl gave Rose Bertin something by which to find us.” She spoke without rancor, moving about the room, gathering. My hat, my coat, her cape, her red scarf.

“Go.”

“V.”

“They already know it's us,” she said reasonably. “Let us see what fools the police are, shall we?”

There were sounds at the street floor, a strange, deep knocking and voices.

“Come along now,” V said lightly, slipping my coat onto my shoulders and standing on tiptoe to set my hat on my head. “We are not done with each other.”

“But—­”

“The secret stair. We will not be caught. Here, take your knife,” as she handed it to me.

“But she—­”

“Oh, go, Charles,” she hissed, and shoved me toward the stair with the clucking noise a wife saves for a foolish husband.

 

I
REMEMBER VERY
little of what transpired in Charles and V's apartment, and I am grateful for that. I do remember waking to Edouard's concerned eyes; I will never forget it. And there was a Capt. Bezier there, who fluttered about like a wingless bird in his concern. It was very endearing. And other policemen, and questions for which I was not ready.

I do not know if I will ever be ready.

But Edouard assures me there is time for questions, and that the priority right now is that I rest and get well. And he does not mean well in the sense of recovering from green disease! Dr. Charcot has apparently agreed that my fortitude and resourcefulness (his own words) prove that I am not in fact suffering from green disease and that, indeed, I never was. That would make me angry if it did not make me so happy!

Maman and Papa have been told of what happened, and told also, by Edouard, that he wishes to make me his wife. Dr. Charcot has given his hearty approval, and a nice recommendation of Edouard as well, and that seems to be good enough for my parents. They are to arrive within days, and I fear my heart will burst. Although I have had to reassure him, I know that they will love and respect Edouard as I do.

I am to stay at the hospital until I am strong, but without water therapies and dreadful menus that include only salad. Then, after we are married (married!), Edouard and I will be living in his bachelor apartment. He says it is not good enough, but that the bedroom will hold a bigger bed . . . well, he could not really say that, not in so many words, and his cheeks went crimson for the longest time! I find that my own blushing is now entirely a thing of the past. At least I was cured of something at the Hôpital Salpêtrière.

This makes me think of Adelaide. I have not yet seen her, but Edouard assures me that we will see her as soon as I am stronger. I am no longer lodged with the hysterics but in an apparently ever-­so-­secret wing reserved for well-­to-­do society women who need a rest from the rigors of everyday life. But I want to see her desperately, and I will visit her regularly for as long as it takes her to get well. I believe in Adelaide, and I always will.

But now I will lay down my pen, because for once I really am tired when I am supposed to be, and because Edouard is due to arrive soon, and I will not have his future wife looking haggard, or tired, or anything at all like a mental patient!