The Green Muse (30 page)

 

I
HAD ALWAYS
known what my fate was to be. Ever since V had given me her life, in that dimly lit room that had seemed strewn with red roses, I had known. She had given me her life to do with as I pleased. I could have had what, since boyhood, had been my deepest dream: I could have had my love displayed naked, covered only by a sheet, in front of all Paris. To everyone—­
to anyone—­
any vagrant who walked in off the street could have had his fill of her nakedness.

I let her live. And in turn I knew the price I was to pay for that. If our activities were discovered, I was to go to the bank of the Seine, to the same quay where I had met V in the rain not so long ago. I was to undress myself completely, having previously taken care to destroy any identifying papers and discarding my wallet and watch in the flowing water, and use my knife to die by my own hand. As V had once used the knife with which she had just pared an apple.

But there are ­people, now, who know my name, know my face. V never told me what she would do after the event of my death. If I were not to appear in the Morgue. And of course I had not asked. She would follow me, I knew. And I cannot have that.

There is weeping in my heart. I listen to the soft old voice reciting familiar words as I write. I pause to thank the waiter, who has just brought over glass and clinking ice, the familiar glint of silver spoons on a crystal tray; the poet pulls himself out of his verse to say, “Thank you kindly, Charles,” and reaches for his poison. We are silent as each prepares the green in his own way.

“Like the rain falling on the city.” Paul finishes reciting his work, drinks. “V, you have hardly said a word.”

I can still feel the soft rain against my forehead, feel it turn to the silk of V's petticoats against my cheek. The world is good; the world is as it should be.

She does not answer him. She turns to me as I stir my clouded drink. “Charles, you know how it is to be.”

 

Epilogue

T
HIS MORNING
I
was called upon to perform a familiar ser­vice. I had just finished my cup of coffee, thinking with pleasure of how Augustine has assured me that she makes the finest cup of coffee in Paris. Though, in fact, my darling girl has never actually made a cup of coffee in Paris.

I took care to give Martin several sous that were neither Argentine nor Spanish, pleased that he has gotten beyond the habit of biting them to assure their authenticity. I had my camera ready, my slides, and my enthusiasm, if not a satisfactory bellyful of coffee. For I seem to float, these days, on a quiet joy that grows with every letter I receive, with each visit I make to a small provincial village where the clocks do not yet run on Paris time.

I like to imagine Augustine moving through her day. I could almost blush at the photographs I have taken of her, because the poses indicative of hysteria are so indelicate, and even though I know that the Augustine I saw was not the Augustine I am going to take to wife, that she had taken on a role as an actress recites her lines and moves about the stage, still the pictures disturb me. That they were the finest pictures of hysteria that I had ever seen or taken I do not doubt, and that irony is not lost on me. I prefer to think of Augustine in her garden, or baking, which she tells me she loves, or going through the fine linens and silks of her hope chest with her mother.

Dr. Charcot had decided to harbor no ill will toward me. Augustine no longer hates him, although she tells me she considered confessing that all her posing was a sham, but she was afraid he might think her mad! “I played the good girl,” she said, and for a moment I was confused.

“You are a good girl, ” I protested, and oh how she laughed! And how I loved all that I do not yet know about this girl it seems I know everything of. She is, after all, an actress!

We plan, after our marriage, on visiting Adelaide often, for she shows no signs of recovering from her own ordeal. And of course we will see Lucille as well: Augustine feels toward her something like love, and Lucille returns her warmth with the occasional word or glance into our eyes.

I was thinking of Augustine as I rode the omnibus to the location I had been given, down by the Seine, which sparkled intimately in the newly sown spring sun.

But almost instantly it was as though the sky had gone cold and dark. Death is always sobering, but it was more than that.

For as soon as I saw the body I thought about the Artists of Death. The way they had posed their murder victims: the calm of the clasped hands, the elegance of a false surrender. And myself on my knees, my hand running lightly down the pebbled leather, sighting the body in the camera's lens, gauging the light. Was there so much difference between us? No, I did not murder; I was not like them. But when I photographed their work, was I not doing their final bidding? Was I not complicit in completing the artistic process?

How Henri would laugh at that! Henri values me, and I value him—­if not his insights, then his trust, his ability to listen to an artist. He still laughs at what he calls my “poetic soul,” but he is inordinately pleased about my engagement to Augustine, and he has given me a raise in pay. And although I know that I will continue in my work at La Salpêtrière, I now know where my heart truly lies. Not with the dead, although it is the dead from which I create my own art. No, it is and always has been the causes of death that truly interest me, that absorb my mind and heart both inside my darkroom and out. So I will continue to let the dead speak to me, to tell me their stories and, sometimes, to solve the mysteries of their deaths.

It is all I can do.

On the edge of the Seine all was quiet and still; even the water seemed to have gone silent. Henri had never seen him, but I knew him immediately: He lay naked and soldier-­straight, his hands crossed on his chest and his feet pointing toward heaven. And a great gash across his neck, which he could not possibly have made himself.

And I knelt, and ran my hand down the pebble-­grain leather of my camera, and breathed in the damp, the decay, the dawn, and began my work.

 

Acknowledgments

I
WO
ULD LIKE
to thank my agent, Jeff Gerecke, for his diligence and tenacity; my editor, Marguerite Weisman, for her vision; Leah and Joshua Bayer, just for being; and David Bayer, for every little thing.

 

About the Author

JESSIE PRICHARD HUNTER is the author of the psychological thriller
Blood Music
, forthcoming from Witness Impulse. She currently resides in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband and two children.

 

www.witnessimpulse.com

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

 

Also by Jessie Prichard Hunter

Blood Music

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

 

If you loved THE GREEN MUSE, check out these other Witness titles. Read on for excerpts from

Prince

by Rory Clements

and

Cambridge Blue

by Alison Bruce

 

Prince
Chapter 1

FOUR MEN STARED
down at the body of Christopher Marlowe. A last trickle of bright gore oozed from the deep wound over his right eye. His face and hair and upper torso were all thick with blood. One of the four men, Ingram Frizer, held the dripping dagger in his hand.

Frizer looked across at Robert Poley and grinned foolishly. ‘He came at me.'

‘Boar's balls, Mr Frizer, give me the dagger,' Poley said angrily.

Frizer held out the dagger. All the living eyes in the room followed the tentative movement of the blood-red blade. A sliver of brain hung like a grey-pink rat's tail from its tip. Poley took the weapon and wiped it on the dead poet's white hose. Suddenly, he struck out with the hilt and caught Frizer a hard blow on the side of his head. Frizer lurched backwards. Poley pushed him to the floor and jumped on him, knees on chest, hitting his head again, harder, pounding him until Nick Skeres tried to pull him away.

Poley stood back, shook off Skeres's hands and brushed down his doublet with sharp irritation. He was not a tall man, but he was strongly built and the veins in his muscled forearms and temples bulged out and pulsed. He kicked Frizer in the ribs. ‘You were only supposed to gag him and apply the fingerscrew, you dung-witted dawcock. Not kill him.'

The afternoon sunlight of late May slanted in through the single, west-facing window. The presence of the men and the body made the room feel smaller than it really was. It was cleanly furnished; a well-turned settle made of fine-grained elm, a day bed where the body now lay, a table of polished walnut with benches either side and half-drunk jugs of ale atop it. The dusty floorboards were scuffed by the men's shoes; there was, too, a lot of blood and a few splashes of ale on the wood between the table and the day bed.

‘And you …' Poley turned to Skeres. ‘You were supposed to hold him. He was out of his mind with drink and you couldn't keep a grip.'

Ingram Frizer pulled himself painfully to his feet. He was doubled over, clutching his side where Poley's boot had connected.

Poley handed him the dagger. ‘Here, take it. And listen well: it was
his
dagger – Marlowe's dagger. He came at you, pummelled your head with it. You fought back. In the struggle, the blade pierced his eye. You were defending yourself – it was an accident.'

Frizer took the dagger. He was slender with a lopsided face, the left eye half an inch higher than the right. The skin had been cut from the side of his head by Poley's beating. There was a livid gash, almost to the bone. His head and ribs throbbed, but he understood Poley's plan well enough. ‘I liked this dagger,' he said, turning the weapon over in his hands and examining the ornate hilt and narrow, sharp-pointed blade. ‘Cost me half a mark.' He tried to laugh.

‘Well, it'll be Crown property now. Marlowe was always fighting. He was going to kill you. It's a simple story; remember it.' Poley turned to the third man, Skeres. ‘And you, Mr Skeres.'

Skeres nodded. His bulbous face was sweating heavily. He mopped a kerchief across his brow. His gaze kept flicking towards the body, and then across to the fourth man, who stood close by the door. So far he had said nothing.

‘No, let's change that,' Poley said, shaking his head slowly. ‘Someone might recall that dagger. Say it was yours, Mr Frizer, but Marlowe snatched it off you, then you wrenched it away from him as he battered you. You struck backwards wildly, didn't know what you had done. Got that? And the knife didn't cost you half a mark, it cost you a shilling. The rest of the story holds.' Poley suddenly slammed his fist down on the table. ‘Where's the screw?'

Ingram Frizer pointed to the floor beneath the window, to where a five-inch by four-inch vice of iron lay. It was designed to crush the fingers of a hand, slowly and painfully.

‘Do I have to think for both of you? Pick it up!'

Frizer scurried across the room and brought the device back to Poley, who thrust it inside his doublet.

At last the fourth man spoke. He was heavy-set with a wispy beard. ‘I'm going now. Wait two hours, drink some ale, then call the constable and the coroner. None of this comes back to me or my master. I was never here.'

‘No,' Poley agreed. He understood well enough. There must only ever have been four men in this room, not five.

The man took one last look around the room and met the eyes of Poley, Skeres and Frizer. ‘Not one word.' He lifted the latch and silently left the room.

The other three watched him go. A seagull landed on the sill of the open window, defecated, then flew off. ‘There's a problem,' Skeres said, shaking the sweat out of his eyes.

‘The only problem,' Poley said, ‘is
you
. You're a flaccid prick of a man, Skeres.'

‘We've got to say what they were fighting about, haven't we?'

‘It was the bill, of course. The reckoning. Frizer said Marlowe had drunk more so should pay more. Mr Marlowe wanted to quarter the bill evenly.'

‘The coroner will never believe it.'

Poley laughed. ‘Pour the ale, Mr Skeres, then light me a pipe. How has a coney like you ever lived this long? Hear that, Mr Frizer? Mr Skeres says the coroner will never believe it.' Poley laughed again, louder this time, and Frizer and Skeres laughed nervously with him.

 

Cambridge Blue
Chapter 1

ROLFE STREET WAS
only a short walk from the heart of Cambridge, but it was a perpetual backwater, seeing no accidental visitors and few daytime inhabitants.

A lone man stood on the pavement waiting to speak to Lorna Spence: the same woman who was spying on him from her first-floor window. So far he'd knocked twice, but she had no intention of letting him know she was at home.

She stood behind a carefully placed ruck in the curtains. She knew he couldn't see her but, even so, she kept perfectly still in case he glanced up and caught the flicker of her shadow.

Lorna Spence had gone to bed wearing nothing but yesterday's knickers, and that was all she wore now as she studied the top of his head.

He took a few short steps towards the door, and then a few towards the street. Again he ran his hand in an impatient foray through his hair, completing the gesture by clasping it across the back of his neck. He drew closer to the door, leaning in towards it and listening. His hand, still on his neck, massaged the rigid muscles which locked the top of his spine.

He was obviously stressed.

She imagined him swearing under his breath. He took a step back and his gaze shot up to her window, boring into the gap between the curtains. He seemed to stare straight into her face, but she didn't blink.

A tingling feeling sprang across her bare skin, racing in waves across her shoulders and trickling across her small, freckled breasts. Only her chest moved, rising and falling ever quicker; trying to keep pace with her heartbeat.

Lorna waited for him to knock again, but instead he stepped away and out of sight of her little spyhole. She moved closer to the gap and crept around until she had a view of the closed end of the cul-de-sac. She soon located him again. He stood on the edge of the kerb with his hands on his hips.

‘Go away. Go on, get in your car and drive away,' she whispered down to him.

His attention had settled on the rows of parked vehicles flanking each side of the road. She knew he wouldn't recognize any of them.

Then he left, walking briskly towards his own car at the end of the street. He'd accepted what she already knew: that he had no reason to believe she was at home.

She waited. He started the engine and let the postman pass without cross-examination. Then he pulled away and drove out of sight. But she still waited, watching the road until she'd counted to one hundred and was sure he wouldn't return.

And then she exhaled with a long puff. Her heartbeat gradually slowed and her pulse steadied.

The letterbox creaked as it opened and there was an echoing snap as it shut. The junk mail made a heavy thud as it hit the hallway's tiled floor. She leant over the handrail and checked, in case an unexpected letter looked tempting enough for a dash downstairs.

A large holiday brochure lay face down, obscuring any other post that may have been underneath. A photo of a caravan park and the words ‘Family Entertainment' jumped out at her through the clear plastic envelope.

‘Why me?' she groaned. Last week the mail had been sit-in baths and stair-lifts. What a waste of time.

Her dressing table was a wide antique pine chest of drawers with a reproduction pine mirror on top. She only owned the mirror and the battery clock next to it. It was 8.35 a.m. and she was going to be late for work.

In the circumstances, late would be a good thing. But not too late, she couldn't afford trouble at the office as well. She padded into the bathroom, pulled off her knickers and threw them into the corner with the rest of the week's laundry. She ran the hot tap until the water flowed warm, and meanwhile damped down her short, ash-blonde hair, working her fingers through the feathered strands at the back so they lay close to the nape of the neck.

She dressed quickly and chose Warm Mocha lipstick. She ran it back and forth across her lips, then dabbed it on to her cheekbones, rubbing it in to give the approximation of blusher. That would do.

She checked her reflection, aware that the skim of freckles across each cheek and a lucky gap between her two front teeth gave her face more character than any layer of make-up.

She grabbed her bag and hurried downstairs. As she reached the bottom stair, she could see other letters buried under the brochure.

Five pairs of her shoes were lined up beside the door; in two-inch heels she made five foot five. Just.

She reached for the post, slipping her feet into her highest shoes as she turned the envelopes over. There were four. She flicked through them. Mobile phone bill, bank statement, credit card bill. Then the fourth. White, A5, and emblazoned with an advert for a bank loan. But it was the addressee's name which caught her eye. Miss H. Sellars.

Lorna frowned. A chill tickled her scalp, then vanished. How strange, she thought. She shook her head and smiled. What an amazing coincidence. She suddenly wondered whether the holiday brochure was similarly addressed. She slid it from under the other post.

The black print on the white label jumped out at her. Instant fear washed the smile from her lips. She recoiled and the post scattered, tumbling from her fingers on to the floor. The corner of the clear envelope hit the mat, bounced and landed, slapping down flat on its face.

She opened the front door and hurried away down the street. Behind her, the hall tiles stayed cold, rebuffing the unanswered ring of the telephone upstairs.