Floats the Dark Shadow Page 8

  It was only a block to the Palais de Justice. Skirting the entrance, he went round to the far end of the building where the feral cats had their domain. There was an allotment in the budget for the feeding of stray cats. In turn, the cats helped control the rat population. It was said to be cheaper than paying for an exterminator. Even with their steady diet of rats and their official allotment, Michel considered them too thin. He brought them his leftovers almost every day. They came when he called. The tamer ones placed their paws on his knee to demand their shred of ham. The wilder ones watched avidly. Michel tossed a bit toward the white queen with soft grey ears. He had his favorites but did his best to make sure they all got a taste.

  When the food was gone, Michel returned to the detective offices of the Palais de Justice. Inside, he went to the washroom and cleaned the grease from his hands. When he emerged, another detective was conferring with the desk officer. His prisoner, a fragile little blonde, sat on a bench, awaiting processing at the Dépôt. She looked like a trampled flower. He had seen her sometimes, this past year, walking the streets by the river.

  “Is he alive?” She stared about her, obviously in shock.

  Michel saw that her hand was badly burned. Acid, he thought, not fire. “Another vitrioleuse?” he asked quietly.

  “She splashed her pimp. The press will be pissing themselves with joy.”

  Michel nodded, frowning. There seemed to be a fashion for certain methods of murder, intensified by lurid stories in the press. Like the man he’d recently captured, many men favored hacking their victims to death with an axe. Journalists especially loved to glorify the vengeful woman with her beaker of prussic acid.

  “Is he alive?” the girl asked again. She began to cry.

  “Dead, you stupid pouffiasse!” the man snapped. She flinched at the insult. To Michel he added, “Acid ate up his eyes—he went head first down the stairs and—.” He jerked his head sideways and gave a guttural cracking sound.

  The girl curled up in a ball, weeping silently now. Michel felt a swell of pity. The pimp had most likely corrupted her. Juries were sometimes sympathetic to a vitrioleuse, if her tale was pathetic enough. Lately they’d been convicting. When women were sentenced to death, it was usually commuted to life at hard labor. This girl was frail and Michel doubted she would survive travaux forcés for very long. But there was nothing to be done about it. Michel was about to ask after his own prisoner, but another officer gestured him down the hall toward the chief’s door. Michel made his way to Armand Cochefert’s office and knocked.

  “Enter.”

  As expected, Michel found the chief of the Sûreté seated behind his desk. Cochefert had been head of criminal investigations for three years now. He didn’t leave his office—or his chair—if at all possible. He was a heavy man, almost lethargic. At first, Michel had thought his mind lazy, too. But occasionally the case was important enough, or frustrating enough, that Cochefert would venture into the investigation personally. Once the chief took a case, he was fervent in searching for the culprit. Slowly, Michel had revised his judgment. Cochefert leavened practical intelligence with a sly sense of humor. He knew his men’s strengths and weaknesses. If he enjoyed the comfortable world of his office too much, he also knew how to delegate wisely. Michel also approved the chief’s liberal leanings, though sometimes he found them too naïve.

  “Devaux,” Cochefert said, by way of greeting. He looked glum but began with praise. “Good work last night. The juge d’instruction has a confession from your anarchist.”

  “Already?”

  “The villain bragged about it.” Cochefert’s face tightened with anger. He expelled a sharp breath. “I regret the deaths, but killing our men will get him the guillotine.”

  Michel nodded. “I had good information.”

  “Who tipped you?” The chief took a hard-boiled egg from his pocket and peeled it. As usual, his pockets bulged with them.

  “Blaise Dancier.”

  “Odd.” Cochefert pursed his lips, pausing between bites of his egg. “Usually he’d take care of someone like that himself.”

  “Usually,” Michel agreed. “He had a favor.”

  “Ahh….” Cochefert paused. “Just what does he want in return?”

  “He is concerned about some missing children. Two of his flock are missing.”

  “Children?” Cochefert’s fleshy face sank into a morose expression. He had a very soft heart where the young were concerned.

  “Two boys. But when he asked around, he found several other children who had vanished, both boys and girls.”

  “If he went to so much bother, we must take him seriously.”

  “Dancier wants us to be on guard.” He paused. “I’ve begun investigating but with no success.”

  Cochefert pondered for a moment. “Nothing relevant comes to mind, but assign someone to check the files. I will also contact the Police Municipale to keep a closer eye on the streets. You can take a week—see if you can find evidence to link even two cases.”

  “And if not?”

  “If not, I know damned well you’ll go on working it on the side.” Cochefert twisted one corner of his luxurious walrus mustache. “But I’ll have a special assignment for you soon.”

  “Of course.” Officially, Michel investigated homicides rather than gathering intelligence. Unofficially, as a member of Cochefert’s batallion sacré, he did what was necessary.

  Cochefert tapped a finger against his lips. “Leo Taxil has scheduled a lecture at the Geographical Society.”

  “There may be rioting,” Michel acknowledged. Taxil had been writing an exposé of the Masonic Order, claiming that they were all Satanists. He had promised to produce a repentant high priestess of the order, who claimed to have conducted diabolical rites, participated in orgies, and watched a child sacrifice.

  Cochefert nodded. “Taxil has requested police protection. I’ve ordered a few men stationed in the auditorium to forestall trouble. He’s chosen Easter Monday to make his revelations. The bigger the splash the better. We could all end up in the Seine.” The chief adjusted his spectacles and poked about his desk, finally pulling a ticket from beneath a file and pushing it across the desk to Michel. “From you, I simply want intelligence.”

  Michel regarded it dubiously, then picked it up and put it in his coat pocket. “Taxil may have an agent provocateur.”

  “Quite possibly. The hall will be filled with dupes, tricksters, and troublemakers. I want your eyes, Devaux. I want your assessment.” Cochefert gestured vaguely, stewing in malaise. “Anything that reeks of devil worship, I want to know who comes sniffing. Sooner or later, they will be trouble.”

  “Sooner, most likely.”

  “The other night there was a concert in the catacombs, and we heard nothing of it till it was over,” Cochefert complained. “I don’t intend to be caught unawares again. Scrutinize the audience at Taxil’s speech. See who is there that we know. Discover any suspicious newcomers, especially these dabblers in the occult.”

  “Taxil accused the leaders of the Rose-Cross of practicing Satanism. I doubt they will give him any credence by appearing. Not Papus, not even Sar Péladan, though he loves a show. Perhaps Vipèrine will come—he has nothing to lose. Claiming to be a student of the Abbé Boullan was enough to get him thrown out of the Rose-Cross.”

  Cochefert nodded. “Stanislaus de Gauita’s sinking ever deeper into opium dreams. There may be a power struggle to claim leadership of his occult movement. Vipèrine may try an insinuate-and-seize maneuver.”

  “De Gauita has dangerous enemies—and dangerous friends.”

  “We must be vigilant. I don’t want another ‘Magical War.’”

  “One was enough,” Michel agreed. The magical war between rival Rosicrucians had occurred four years ago. The novelist Huysmans, who worked in the Ministry of the Interior, had been involved. “The station was a wasps’ nest of gossip.”

  The memory seemed to captivate Cochefert. “You must admit, it was a m
ost curious war.”

  “If you can believe the accounts,” Michel countered. Huysmans had denounced the Rose-Cross movement, accusing the leaders of murdering the Abbé Boullan with black magic. Challenged to a duel, he recanted, but the journalist who had published the article did not. There the story became bizarre. Three times the journalist’s arrival at the dueling ground was delayed because the horses froze in terror. Each time they stood sweating and trembling for minutes on end, before stumbling on their way. Or so the story went. “Tales of the journeys were more dramatic than the actual confrontation,” Michel said. “Both duels passed without serious injury.”

  “It was claimed that the bullet remained in the chamber of the journalist’s gun,” Cochefert reminded him. “Such stories, true or not, create their own spells. During the ‘Magical War’, the city went crazy with rumors. Parisians saw demons lurking everywhere. You could feel shivers of hysteria rippling through the streets.”

  The trouble began when Huysmans was researching his book on the medieval murderer, Gilles de Rais. It was then that Huysmans made friends with the Abbé Boullan, a defrocked priest. Boullan’s Society for the Reparation of Souls specialized in freeing those possessed by succubi and incubi. From all reports save Huysmans’, the Abbé was doing his best to have sexual congress with succubi and incubi himself. He was an adherent of Satanism who was known to have debauched nuns and officiated at Black Masses. “Let’s hope Dancier’s missing children aren’t victims of some cult.”

  “Probably they were beaten to death by their parents and stuffed in a sewage pipe,” Cochefert said glumly. Then he brightened. “Have you read Taxil’s saga—The Devil in the Nineteenth Century?”

  “Bits and pieces.” Anyone so incendiary was worth checking on. But the stories Taxil spun were beyond belief.

  “I read them for amusement,” Cochefert confided. “I loved Moloch, the crocodile demon.”

  Michel tilted his head, admitting curiosity.

  “Some mad Parisian tries to summon the devil into his parlor. He sits at a table—candles burning, incense wafting—all the usual paraphernalia. Suddenly the table rattles, bounces and flies up to the ceiling. The whole house shakes. Terror and awe abound. The table crashes back to the floor and a malevolent figure plummets from the ceiling, landing all in a heap. It rises. Behold, it is the demon Moloch, in the shape of a gigantic winged crocodile.” Cochefert gestured broadly, miming a display of vast wings. “This Moloch is a demon of talent, a demon of vanity, and a demon of lascivious temperament. He dusts himself off, then proceeds to the piano. He sits down and plays a ditty with the host’s wife, ogling her all the while. He sets himself to seduce her.”

  “Does he succeed?”

  “Unfortunately, that was never clear. Perhaps the husband intervened.” Cochefert patted his heavy belly, as if he’d dined well on absurdity.

  Michel allowed a small smile. “The crocodile is…impressive.”

  Cochefert smiled more broadly. “It’s difficult to completely despise Taxil, not when he can so amuse.”

  Michel found it easy to completely despise him. The absurdity had an acrid tinge. Michel’s father—the man he had learned to call father—had been a brigadier of the Sûreté and a Mason. Michel had little patience with the Church’s view that Masons were devil’s spawn. He had less still with men like Leo Taxil who exploited such views to gain money and notoriety.

  “Why not crocodile demons?” Cochefert supposed, savoring his own amusement. “Electrical current…ectoplasm…. If one exists, why not the other? Miracles happen daily.”

  “Men are demonic enough,” Michel said.

  Chapter Nine

  Keep the gem delirious. Laughing ruby.

  The flower’s most secret heart.

  ~ Paul Verlaine

  WITH practiced quietness, Michel entered the gate and crossed the dimly lit courtyard. Two glossy-leafed camellia trees obscured the recessed doorway. He tapped the brass knocker and waited for Lilias to open the door to the exquisite jewel box of a house she kept for her private encounters. The maid would be there but summoned only if needed. A courtesan’s maid needed as much discretion as the courtesan herself. Taking a detective for a lover required even more caution than capturing a politician’s favor. Lilias was as daring as she was discreet.

  She opened the door and he stepped inside. He was struck again by her delicacy. Lilias was small, with the fragile, brittle beauty of fine porcelain. She had the bearing and self-possession of an aristocrat. He could picture her at the court of the Ancien Régime, softly powdered, bewigged, clothed in continents of silk and glittering with jewels. But something raw and ferocious lay hidden below the surface. He could just as easily imagine her carrying the flag through the streets in the Revolution, her feet bathed in blood. Either way, she would be plotting intrigues.

  It was said that the most successful Parisian courtesans came from the provinces—it took longer to tarnish their innocence. The ones born in the city had an ironic edge that cut into a man’s lust. Perversely, Lilias had triumphed and endured because of that sharpness. Her precision was strangely erotic. Her bitter intelligence and cynicism contrasted with her abandon in the heat of passion. Michel supposed some of her patrons wanted to subjugate that. None had. Though perhaps Lilias offered them the illusion. He would not know. She stirred his desire just as she was.

  Her dark brown eyes regarded him levelly. She did not kiss him but offered her hand to be kissed. Black lace gloves made an intricate pattern against her pale skin. He felt the texture against his lips, delicate yet abrasive. The last time he had visited her, she had stroked his naked body wearing the same gloves. The memory sent a jolt through him, hardening his cock. Heat radiated outward. Even his skin came alive, tingling underneath his clothes.

  Lilias smiled at him with certain knowledge of her effect. She arched a delicate eyebrow. “Talk first?”

  He had meant to—but now he shook his head. She kept hold of his hand, turning and leading him along the narrow foyer. In the dim light, the gesture felt sweetly conspiratorial. They had been lovers for months now, but she made each time feel like their first assignation. Her house was subtly rich, the furnishings refined Directoire. Smiling, Lilias led him up the curving stairs to her bedroom. Hothouse roses spilled from a vase, glowing crimson in the lamplight. They were the same roses she chose for her perfume, a fragrance heady with spices and amber—a wanton note of musk subverting the refined elegance.

  “I like for you to undress me. Your hands are deft and gentle.” Her eyes glittered. “I want them gentle—for now.”

  First, Michel took off the gloves. Lilias always wore something erotically provocative, as she would for a protector who expected such skillful provocation. He slowly undid the buttons of the gown next, a creation of twilight blue silk overlaid with copper lace that echoed the auburn of her hair. Michel laid the expensive dress on a chair and unlaced her corset, fingertips caressing as he did. He removed the slithering soft undergarments of peach silk and cream lace to reveal still creamier skin dusted with freckles. He reached around to cup her small, perfect breasts. The large nipples hardened, thrusting into his palms. He turned her round to face him. Courtesans were given nicknames, in mockery or in praise. She was sometimes called La Renarde. Revealed, her mons gleamed red as a fox’s fur.

  “Leave your clothes on…for now,” she murmured, unbuttoning his fly and taking the hard heat of him into her hand. “Just give me this.” She lay back on the bed and guided him into her. The jolt of desire coursed through him, still startling in its intensity. His mind appreciated her. His body craved her. He grew harder even as he began to melt in her fire.

  “Not gentle,” she whispered. “Not now.”

  ~

  After, she had the maid bring tiny cups of hot chocolate, madeleines, and cognac finer than Blaise Dancier’s. Their aromas blended with the spiced rose perfume of her skin, the musk of their sex, the smoke of apple wood burning in the fireplace.

  “
Talk now?” she asked.

  He told her first of his invitation to Dancier’s house and his impression of it, and she rewarded him with a wicked little laugh. Then he gave her the details of Dancier’s request and his own fruitless investigation of his missing boys and the others Cochefert had since added to his list. “I’ve interviewed families, friends and neighbors, shopkeepers, gendarmes, carriage drivers and beggars.” He shook his head. “The children all vanished without a trace. No one saw anything suspicious.”

  “Or will say so if they did.” Her voice was musical, precise and slightly husky. “You do not think the children ran away? You think the same person took them?”

  Michel frowned. “In one case I am having the parents investigated—they’ve killed the child by accident or design. One of Dancier’s orphans was working for a ragman, but I think he ran off with a passing circus troop. And one of the older girls had a crush on a sailor from Marseilles.”

  “With luck they are married, if not….”

  “She’s on the streets.” He kissed her shoulder softly. Lilias did not like reminders of her early days.

  She stroked a fingertip down his nose. “Those cases aside?”

  “Instinct says some other disappearances are linked, but instinct is not proof.” Michel lay back, staring at the ceiling, his sense of futility growing. “Often I don’t even know where they were seized. One boy went on an errand to collect some laundry work, and his mother knew his favorite route to Montmartre.”

  “You followed it,” Lilias said, detached but intent. Her presence was excellent for focusing his mind, as if she was always asking him to look deeper.

  “His favorite side street.” He summoned the memory—just the usual filthy alley, the usual refuse. Torn posters. Broken glass. Obscenities splashed in paint on the walls, crude images that had embarrassed Mlle. Faraday. He remembered a huge red phallus, giant breasts, and copulating dogs mingled with the usual religious images. A smudged cross scribbled in charcoal. All meaningless. “His mother was making some cake he loved. He never came home.”