PUBLIC SAFETY, by Matthew Johnson

Officier de la Paix Louverture folded Quartidi’s Père Duchesne into thirds, fanning himself against the Thermidor heat. The news inside was all bad, anyway: another theater had closed, leaving the Comedie Francaise the only one open in Nouvelle-Orleans. At least the Duchesne could be counted on to report only what the Corps told them to, that the Figaro had closed for repairs, and not the truth—which was that audiences, frightened by the increasing number of fires and other mishaps at the theaters, had stopped coming. The Minerve was harder to control, but the theater-owners had been persuaded not to talk to their reporters, to avoid a public panic. No matter that these were all clearly accidents: even now, in the year 122, reason was often just a thin layer of ice concealing a pre-Revolutionary sea of irrationality.

On the table in front of him sat his plate of beignets, untouched. He had wanted them when he had sat down, but the arrival of the group of gardiens stagieres to the cafe made him lose his appetite. He told himself it was just his cynicism that caused him to react this way, his desire to mock their pride in their spotless uniforms and caps, and not the way they looked insolently in his direction as they ordered their cafes au lait. Not for the first time Louverture wondered if he should have stayed in Saint-Domingue.

The gardiens stagieres gave a cry as another of their number entered the café, but instead of heading for their table he approached Louverture. As he neared, Louverture recognized him: Pelletier, a runner, who despite being younger than the just-graduated bunch across the room had already seen a great deal more than they.

“Excuse me, sir,” Pelletier said. Though it was early, sweat had already drawn a thick line across the band of his cap: he must have run all the way from the Cabildo. “Commandant Trudeau needs to see you right away.”

Louverture nodded, glanced at his watch: it was three eighty-five, almost time to start work anyway. “Thank you, Pelletier,” he said; the young man’s face brightened at the use of his name. “My coffee and beignets just arrived, and it seems I won’t have time to enjoy them; why don’t you take a moment to rest?” He reached into his pocket, dropped four deci-francs in a careful pile on the table.

“Thank you, sir,” Pelletier said; he took off his cap, revealing a thick bristle of sweat-soaked blond hair.

Louverture tapped his own cap in reply, headed for the west exit of the Café du Monde; he lingered there for a moment, just out of sight, watched as Pelletier struggled to decide whether to sit at the table he had just vacated or join the group of young gardiens who were, assuming that out of sight meant out of hearing, now making sniggering comments about café au lait and creole rice. When Pelletier chose the empty table Louverture smiled to himself, stepped out onto Danton Street.

It had grown hotter, appreciably, in the time since he had arrived at the café; such people as were about clung to the shade like lizards, loitering under the awnings of the building where the Pasteur Brewery made its tasteless beer. Louverture crossed the street at a run, dodging the constant flow of velocipedes, and braced himself for the sun-bleached walk across Descartes Square. He walked past the statue of the Goddess of Reason, with her torch of inquiry and book of truth; the shadow of her torch reached out to the edge of the square, where stenciled numbers marked the ten hours of the day. He doffed his cap to her as always, then gratefully reached the shadows of the colonnade that fronted the Cabildo, under the inscription that read RATIO SUPER FERVEO.

“Commandant Trudeau wishes to see you, sir,” the gardien at the desk said. The stern portrait of Jacques Hébert on the wall behind glowered down at them.

Louverture nodded, went up the stairs to Trudeau’s office. Inside he saw Trudeau at his desk, looking over a piece of paper; Officier de la Paix Principal Clouthier was standing nearby.

“Louverture, good to see you,” Trudeau said. His sharp features and high forehead reminded those who met him of Julius Caesar; modestly, Trudeau underlined the resemblance by placing a bust of the Roman emperor on his desk. “I’m sorry to call you in early, but an important case has come up, something I wanted you to handle personally.”

“Of course, sir. What is it?”

Trudeau passed the paper to him. “What do you make of this?” It was a sheet of A4 paper, on which were written the words Elle meurt la treizième.

“‘She dies on the thirteenth,’” Louverture read. “This is a photo-stat. There is very little else I can say about it.”

“Physical Sciences has the original,” Clouthier put in. His round face was redder than usual, with the heat; where Trudeau let his hair grow in long waves, Clouthier kept his cut short to the skull, like a man afraid of lice. “They barely consented to making two copies, one for us and one for the Graphologist.”

“And Physical Sciences will tell you it is a sheet of paper such as can be bought at any stationer’s,” Louverture said, “and the ink is everyday ink, and the envelope—if they remember to examine the envelope—was sealed with ordinary glue. They will not tell you what the letter smells like, or the force with which the envelope was sealed, because these things cannot be measured.”

“Which is why we need you,” Trudeau said. “Concentrate on the text for the moment: the other parts will fall into place in time.”

“I take it there was no ransom demand?” Louverture said; Trudeau nodded. That was why they had called him, of course: his greatest successes had been in finding the logic behind crimes that seemed, to others, to be irrational. Crimes they thought a little black blood made him better able to solve.

“No daughters of prominent families missing, either, so far as we know,” Clouthier said. “We have gardiens stagieres canvassing them now.”

Louverture smiled, privately, at the thought of the group at the café being called away on long, hot velocipede rides around the city. “Of course, the families of kidnap victims often choose not to inform the police—though rationally, they have much better chances with us involved. Still, I do not think that is the case here: if a kidnapper told the family not to involve the police, why the letter to us? Tell me, Commandant, to whom was the letter addressed? Did it come by mail or was it delivered by hand?”

“By hand,” Clouthier said before Trudeau could answer. “Pinned on one of the flames of Reason’s torch—a direct challenge to us.”

“Strange, though, that they should give us so much time to respond,” Trudeau mused. “The thirteenth of Fructidor is just under two décades away. Why so much warning? It seems irrational.”

“Crimes by sane men are always for gain, real or imagined,” Louverture said. “If not money, then perhaps power, as a man murders his wife’s lover to regain his lost power over her. The whole point may be to see how much power such a threat can give this man over us. Perhaps the best thing would be to ignore this, at least for now.”

“And let him think he’s cowed us?” Clouthier said.

“The Corps de Commande is not cowed,” Trudeau said gently. “We judge, sanely and rationally, if something is an accident or a crime; should it be a crime, we take the most logical course of action appropriate. But in this case, Officier Louverture, I think we must respond. If you are correct, ignoring this person would only lead him to do more in hopes of getting a response from us. If you are incorrect, then we certainly must take action, do you agree?”

“Of course, Commandant,” Louverture said.

“Very good. I have the Lombrosologist working on a composite sketch; once you have findings from him, Graphology, and Physical Sciences, the investigation is yours. I expect daily reports.”

Louverture nodded, saluted the two men, and stepped out into the hall. Clouthier closed the heavy live-oak door after he left, and Louverture could hear out his name being spoken three times in the minute he stood there. He hurried down the steps to the cool basement where the scientific services were and went into the Lombrosology department, knocking on the door as he opened it.

“Allard, what do you have for me?” he called.

“Your patience center is sorely underdeveloped,” a voice said from across the room. “Along with your minuscule amatory faculty, it makes for a singularly misshapen skull.”

The laboratory was a mess, as always; labeled busts on every shelf and table, and skulls in such profusion that without Allard’s cheerful disposition the place would have seemed like a charnel house. Instead it felt more like a child’s playroom, the effect magnified by the scientist’s system of color-coding the skulls: a dab of red paint for executed criminals, green for natural deaths, and a cheery bright blue for suicides. In the corner of the room Allard sat at the only desk with open space on it, carefully measuring a Lombroso bust with a pair of calipers and recording the results.

Louverture picked up a skull from the table nearest him; it had a spot of red paint and the words Meurtrier—Nègre written on it. “It is not my skull I am concerned with today,” he said.

“But it is such a fascinating specimen,” Allard said in full sincerity. He had asked Louverture repeatedly to let him make a detailed study of his skull: on their first meeting he had, without introduction, run his hands over Louverture’s head and pronounced that he was fortunate to have the rational faculty of the Frank and the creativity of the Negro.

“Could we stick to the matter at hand?” Louverture said.

“Of course, of course.” Allard put down his calipers, turned his full attention to Louverture. “My sketch won’t be ready for an hour or so, though.”

“Never mind that. What can you tell me about the man who wrote the letter?”

Allard picked up the notes he had been consulting, peered through his pince-nez as he flipped through them. “He is most likely not a habitual criminal, so he will lack the prominent jaw we associate with that type. He also likely possesses a need for self-aggrandizement—a man of whom more was expected, perhaps, with very likely a prominent forehead. The need for attention suggests a second child or later, so look for a round skull overall—”

“I wasn’t aware you could tell birth order,” Louverture said, putting the skull in his hand back on the table.

“You haven’t been keeping up with the literature. It was in last Pluviôse’s Journal—the mother’s parts, not yet stretched with birth, pinch the first child’s head, rendering it more pointed than later children. All else being equal, of course.”

Louverture nodded. “Yes, of course. And—the race—?” He was accustomed to tip-toeing around the subject; most of his colleagues seemed to feel they were doing him a favor by treating him as white to his face and black behind his back.

“A tricky question,” Allard said, apparently feeling no discomfort at the topic. In fact he was likely the least prejudiced man in the Corps, genuinely seeing black and white as scientific categories. “What we know shows significant forethought, which suggests a Frank or perhaps an Anglo-Saxon; the apparent motive, however, is irrational, which of course suggests a Negro. On the whole, I would tend to favor one of the European types. Why? Do you suspect…”

“It’s nothing,” Louverture said, letting the unspoken question hang in the air. It was the reason he had been given the case, of course: the fear that this was the work of irrationalists, believers in religion and black magic. The vodoun murders of three years previous had brought him here from Saint-Domingue, and though they had earned him his office and reputation, he had often heard whispers that like follows like.

“I can give you a sketch for each race, if you like,” Allard said. “It will take a bit longer, of course.”

“Take your time. The sketch will be of little use until we have a suspect to compare it to.”

Allard nodded abstractly, his attention returned to the model head in front of him. “As you say.”

Louverture tipped his cap in farewell, stepped out into the hallway and headed up the stairs towards his office, wondering how he might conduct an investigation in which he did not have a single lead. A cryptic threat to an unidentified woman, an unmailed letter delivered by an unseen hand… Clouthier’s canvass would turn up nothing, of course; if the culprit did not want a ransom, he might just as easily take a poor woman, or even a prostitute.

By the time he reached his office Louverture had decided that Allard’s delay, as well as the no-doubt slow progress of the graphologist and of Physical Sciences, gave him the excuse to do just what he had first proposed: ignore the whole matter and hope the letter-writer went away, or at least provided him with another clue. He was disappointed, therefore, to open his office door and find the graphologist’s report sitting on his desk. Louverture settled into his chair, lit the halogen lamp, and began to read. Open curves, large space between letters: male. Confident pen-strokes: written cool-headed, without excitement or fear of discovery. He frowned. That did not square with the notion that the letter-writer was seeking to arouse a reaction from the police, but what other motive made sense? Correctly-formed letters: well-educated in a good school. This seemed even more illogical. Anyone who received an education knew that all criminals were eventually caught, save those whose confederates turned on them first. Neat, precise capitals: a man of some authority.

Louverture closed his eyes, rubbed at them with thumb and forefinger. A confident man who nevertheless had a pathological need for attention, and felt neither fear nor excitement in taunting the police—as though the message had been composed and written by two different men. The writer, though, had not been coerced, since the letters showed no fear, so what sort of partnership was he looking at? An intelligent criminal with tremendous sang-froid, paired with an insecure, weak-willed…but no, it made no sense. The former would restrain the latter from any attention-getting activities, not assist in them; unless a bargain of some sort was involved, the cool-headed man having to gratify the other’s needs in order to gain something he required. Access to something he possessed, perhaps—or someone—

Well, it was a pretty play he had written: all he needed was a pair of actors to play the parts. Louverture tore a piece of paper from the pad on his desk, uncapped his fountain pen, and wrote Imagine two criminals—group like faculties on it. The first criminal, the cool-headed one, would have had little contact with the police, but the second, he very likely could not help it. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, rummaged inside for a tube labeled LOMBROSOLOGIE; rolled the paper up, tucked it in the tube, and pushed the whole thing into the pneumatic. Standing, he turned the neck of his lamp to point its beam at his bookshelf, then scanned the leather-bound volumes of the Rogues’ Gallery there. What would the excitable man’s earlier crimes have been? Nothing spectacular, but at the same time something directed at gaining attention. Public nudity, perhaps? Harassment? A man with a wife, a daughter, a sister, perhaps a domestic living in. A man with little self-control, and yet not truly poor, or else how would he have met the educated man he was partnered with? If not poor, though, his neighbors would have complained about the noise that almost certainly came from his house; Louverture took Volume 23, Noise Infractions, off the shelf and added it to the pile on the desk.

He was not sure how much time had passed when he heard the door open. He looked up from the book in front of him, expecting to see Allard with his sketches; instead it was Clouthier. Louverture stood, gave a small salute.

“Officier Principal, what can I do for you?”

Clouthier cleared his throat, brushed at his dark blue jacket with his fingertips. “It’s past six. Are we going to see your progress report today?”

“I haven’t received anything from Lombrosology or Physical Sciences yet.”

“I’m told you haven’t given orders to any of the gardiens to search or arrest anyone. Have you spent the whole day reading books?” Clouthier asked, looking around at Louverture’s desk and shelves with distaste.

“I’ve been rounding up known criminals,” Louverture said. “Doing it this way saves your men time and energy. Incidentally, are my reports not to go to Commandant Trudeau?”

“To him through me. Public safety is my responsibility, and I must respond quickly to any threat.”

“We have almost twenty days,” Louverture said mildly.

“If whoever wrote that letter is being truthful. Have you often known criminals to be truthful, Louverture?”

“Why bother to give us the letter and then lie in it? If he wanted to avoid detection, wouldn’t it have been better not to alert us at all?”

Clouthier coughed loudly. “It’s nonsense to expect him to be logical—if he were a rational man, he’d know better than to be a criminal.”

Louverture nodded. “As you say. I’ll make sure my report is on your desk before you go—how much longer were you planning on staying tonight?”

“Never mind,” Clouthier said. “Just have it there before I get here in the morning.”

“Of course. Is there anything else?”

Clouthier seemed to think for a moment, then shook his head, turned to leave. “Just keep me informed.”

Louverture waited until Clouthier was out the door, then called to him. “Oh, Officer Principal, I forgot to ask—did your canvass turn anything up?”

With a barely perceptible shake of his head, Clouthier stepped out into the hall. Though he could not help smiling, Louverture wondered whether that had been a miscalculation. It was no secret that Clouthier did not like him, a situation caused as much by his coming from outside the local Corps hierarchy as by his mixed blood. It would be best, he thought, to leave off further teasing of the lion for now. Resolving to restrain himself better, Louverture returned to his desk and began writing his report.

* * * *

The next morning Louverture was reading over his notes, trying to get them to make sense. He had taken the omnibus instead of his velocipede so that he could read on his way to work, laying the pages on the briefcase on his lap, but the heat and vibration kept him from concentrating. His cap was damp with sweat, but he refused to take it off; he knew from experience how people reacted when they saw his dark, kinked hair emerge from under an officier’s hat. Not that there were many people to react this morning, the omnibus being only half-full.

He forced his mind to return to its task. If his theory was right, the second man was undoubtedly the key, but he had not found anyone in the Rogues’ Gallery that fit the profile. Could a man with such a need for attention possibly have hidden it all these years? Perhaps he had had another outlet until recently—an actor, for instance, put out of work by the theater closings…

A sudden jolt interrupted Louverture’s train of thought. He looked up from his notes, saw that the omnibus had stopped in the middle of the street; the driver had already disembarked, and the other passengers were filing off, grumbling.

“Excuse me,” he said to the man in front of him, “what has happened?”

“It broke down again,” the man said. “Third time this month. I’d do better on foot.”

Louverture followed the queue onto the sidewalk. A few of the passengers had gathered to wait for the next omnibus, the rest hailing pedicabs or walking off down the street. The driver had the bonnet open and was looking inside; Louverture tapped him on the shoulder. “What is the matter with it?”

The driver turned his head and opened his mouth to speak, closed it when he saw Louverture’s uniform. “It’s corroded, sir,” he said. “Do you smell that?”

Louverture took a sniff; a sharp smell, like lemon but much more harsh, was emanating from the omnibus’ hood. “That is the engine?”

“The battery, sir,” the driver said. “That’s sulfuric acid inside; eventually it eats away at the whole thing.”
“This happens often?”

The driver shook his head. “They break down sometimes, but not usually like this. The scientists think it may be the heat.”

“And they’re sure it’s a natural phenomenon? It hasn’t been reported to the Corps.”

“I suppose,” the driver said, shrugged. “Why in Reason’s name would anyone sabotage an omnibus? What’s to gain from it?”

“Well, I hope they solve the problem soon.”

The driver laughed. “Me too. Much longer and I’ll need another job—there’ll be no-one riding them at all.”

Louverture tapped the brim of his cap to the man, stepped over to the curb to hail a pedicab. He could hear the other passengers grumbling a bit when one stopped at the sight of his badge, saw the obvious annoyance of the man inside whose cab he had commandeered. He disliked being so high-handed, but he could not afford to be late: after his little dig at Clouthier the night before the man would be looking for reasons to undermine him.

His fears were realized when he arrived at the Cabildo at three-ninety five and the gardien at the desk waved him over. “Officier Principal Clouthier is waiting for you in the interrogation room, sir,” he said.

Louverture tapped his cap in acknowledgement and went through the big double doors that led to the interrogation and holding areas, hoping Clouthier had not done anything that would make his job more difficult. When he arrived at the interrogation room he saw the man himself, talking to the gardien at the door to the cell.

“Louverture, nice of you to come in,” Clouthier said, bursting with scarcely restrained smugness.

“What’s this?” Louverture asked, looked through one of the recessed portholes in the wall; he saw, inside, a dark-skinned Negro sitting at the table. “You have a suspect? How did you find him?”

“He was in possession of another copy of the note, along with paper, pen and ink that precisely matched those used to write the letter, according to Physical Sciences,” Clouthier said. “So we brought him in.”

Louverture took a long breath in and out. “And just how did you find this particular pen-and-paper owner?”

“I had my men search some of the worse areas of Tremé at dawn this morning. I am not afraid to expend a little time and energy, if it gets results.”

“And I suppose he vigorously resisted arrest? I ask only because black skin shows bruises so poorly, I might not know otherwise.”

“A little rough handling only. Commandant Trudeau directed that I leave the interrogation to you.”

“Gracious thanks,” Louverture said. “If you’ll excuse me.” He nodded to the gardien to open the door and went inside. The suspect was sitting on a light cane chair, his hands chained behind his back; his face, at least, was unmarked. “I am Officier de la Paix Louverture,” he said in a calm voice. “What is your name?”

“Duhaime,” the man stuttered. “Lucien Duhaime.” His eyes darted to the door.

“We are alone,” Louverture said. “You may speak freely. Do you know why you have been arrested, Monsieur Duhaime?”

“I didn’t—I don’t know how that paper got there.”

“Someone planted paper, pen and ink in your house, without you knowing?” Duhaime opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. Louverture shook his head. “Well then, how did it get there?”

“I don’t. I don’t know.”

“I see.” Louverture sighed. Now there was one man to compose the note, another to write it, a third to deliver it: too large a cast for the play to be believable. Sitting down opposite Duhaime, he realized he still had his briefcase with him; in a sudden inspiration he set it on the table, opened it with the top towards the prisoner, so Duhaime could not see the contents. “I keep the tools of my trade in this case, Lucien. Do you know what they are?”

Duhaime shook his head.

“The most important one is my razor.”

Duhaime’s eyes widened. Louverture took out his badge, tapped on the image of a razor and metron, crossed. “This razor was given to me by a Monsieur Abelard, but it is not an ordinary razor. Instead of shaving hair, it lets me shave away what is improbable and leaves only the truth.” He peered over the open case at Duhaime. “It tells me that you wrote a note with that pen and paper, and placed it on the statue of Reason in Descartes Square, and that we must therefore charge you with suspicion of kidnapping.” Duhaime took an involuntary breath, confirming Louverture’s suspicion. He took the day’s paper from the case, showed the headline to Duhaime. It read Feu dans le marché: deuxieme du mois. “Have you seen this? ‘Manhunt for kidnapper.’ You’ve cost a lot of time and trouble, Lucien.”

“I didn’t know anything about a kidnapping. I didn’t know!” Duhaime tried to rise to his feet, was restrained by the chain fastening him to the table. “The man, he gave me three pieces of paper, said he’d pay if I delivered them for him. I thought it was a prank.”

Louverture leaned back, rubbed his chin. “You’ve intrigued me, Lucien. Tell me about this man.”

Duhaime shrugged, winced as he did so; Louverture saw his right shoulder was probably dislocated. “He was a rich man, well-dressed. A man like you.”

“A policier?”
“No, a white.”

“A convincing story requires more detail, Lucien,” Louverture said, shaking his head sadly.

“He spoke well, though he was trying not to. Clean shaven, with a narrow face. He wore those little smoke-tinted glasses, so I didn’t see his eyes.”

“And just where did someone like you meet this wealthy, well-spoken man?”

“I have a pedicab. It’s good money since the omnibuses started breaking down.” Duhaime looked at Louverture’s unbelieving eyes, then down at the table. “I stole it.”

“Very well. Where did you pick him up?”

“On Baronne street, just west of the Canal. He was going to the ferry dock.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again? Or a picture?”

“I’ll try,” Duhaime said, nodding eagerly.

Louverture closed his briefcase, rose to his feet. “Very well, Lucien, we shall test your theory,” he said. “You’ll remain our guest for the time being, and I’ll see your shoulder gets looked at.”

“Thank you, officier.”

“It’s nothing.” Louverture turned to go, paused. “Oh, one thing more. You said you were given three copies: we found the one you planted on the statue, and one more you had. Where is the other?”

“I was to deliver one every night,” Duhaime said.

“Where?”

“The statue, first; second the newspaper; and then Reason Cathedral.”

“So you delivered the second last night? To the Père Duchesne?”

Duhaime shook his head. “No, sir. The other paper.”

Louverture swore under his breath, turned to the door and knocked on it harshly. The gardien on the other side opened it and he stepped through; Clouthier was still standing there, by one of the portholes in the wall. “We have a problem,” Louverture said. “The Minerve has a copy of the letter.”

“I’ll send a man—”

“It’s probably too late. It would have been waiting for them this morning.”

Clouthier rolled his eyes. “Assuming your man in there isn’t just telling stories.”

“He can’t read,” Louverture said, forcing his voice to stay level. “How do you suppose he wrote the letters? No, he’s telling the truth—and by this afternoon everyone will know that ‘she dies on the thirteenth.’”

“Perhaps it’s a good thing,” Clouthier said, shrugged. “It will make people alert; when he strikes, someone will see him and report it to us.”

“It will make people panic. With an unfocused threat like this, we’ll be sure to get mobs beating anyone they think is suspicious.”

“In the poorer neighbourhoods, maybe; we’ll set extra patrols in them. But this is not Saint-Domingue, my friend: most of the people here are entirely too rational for that.”

“I hope so,” Louverture said. Something was nagging at him, some overlooked detail; it slipped away as he probed for it, like a loose tooth.

“At any rate, we still have plenty of time before the thirteenth of Fructidor. Let us hope all the attention doesn’t cause our man to move up his time-table.”

Louverture nodded, frowned. “Yes, that is strange. Nearly twenty days ’til then, but only three letters.” He turned to the gardien by the door. “Have him moved to a holding cell, and see that his shoulder gets looked at.”

The gardien looked from him to Clouthier, who gave a small nod.

“I’d best give the Commandant the news,” Clouthier said, then tapped his cap and headed for the stairs.

Watching him go, Louverture wondered how much of his theory could be salvaged. If Duhaime was telling the truth—and Louverture felt sure he was—he had been right about the culprit having a confederate, but he was still left with the impossibility of the letter having been written and composed by the same man. He followed his line of thought up the stairs to his office. When the inescapable conclusion of your assumptions seems impossible, he thought, question your assumptions. His theory depended on at least one of the culprits needing to gain attention for his actions, and the letter to the Minerve certainly supported that; the Père Duchesne would not print it without approval from the Corps. If that was not the motive, though—or one of the motives—everything that followed from it changed; but what other motive could account for everything?

He opened the door to his office, saw four of Allard’s sketches sitting on his desk. Two were the ones they had discussed, assuming a single culprit: one version was white, one black. The other two, both white, were a split version of the first, the one having the physiognomy of a cautious, intelligent man, the second one emotional and impulsive. None of them much resembled anyone he had seen in the Rogues’ Gallery volumes the night before. He looked them over, wondering if any of them might be the man Duhaime said had hired him. The first two faces were like nobody he had ever seen, impossible configurations of rationality and impulsiveness; the fourth could be almost anyone. The third, though…he narrowed his eyes, imagining that man wearing smoke-tinted glasses. He looked a bit like Allard himself, or perhaps one of the men from Physical Sciences. Someone intelligent, certainly. Louverture tried to imagine what his next move would be. Did he know his messenger had been captured? If so, would he find another one, or would his purpose have been achieved with just the first two letters delivered? Would he be lying low or enjoying the chaos that the story in the Minerve would surely spark? No way to know without understanding his motive, and the more Louverture stared at the sketch the more he doubted that this man was seeking a thrill.

Louverture rolled up the sketches, his head starting to feel like a velodrome from the thoughts whizzing around in it. He was missing something, he knew that—some detail, just out of his reach—and he knew that chasing it around and around would not make it appear. Time to do things Clouthier’s way: he would have photostats of the sketches made, give them to gardiens assigned to where Baronne crossed the canal and to the ferry dock. Perhaps he could even make some of those snickering stagieres pretend to be pedicab drivers, in hopes the culprit would come to them seeking another messenger. He imagined the man was too smart for that, but all it would cost was time and energy.

Cheered, Louverture headed off to the photostat room. Clouthier could hardly complain about this; just to be sure, he would take part in the stakeout himself—at the docks, he thought, where the breeze off the river would make the heat more tolerable. He would be sure to salute all the pedicab drivers dropping off their passengers.

* * * *

Early the next morning Louverture sat up suddenly in bed, seized by a sudden thought. Two pieces that had not fit: the thirteenth and just three letters to be delivered. If he was right, the two together made up a very important piece indeed, but he could not be sure without a great deal of work—and books that were in the office. He dressed quickly, went downstairs and mounted his velocipede, riding through the empty streets in the dark. Fortunately the rest of the city was still asleep; absorbed as he was by the new lines of thought opening up, he would not have noticed an omnibus bearing down on him. As it was he nearly startled the night guard to death, suddenly appearing in the pool of light cast by the sodium lamps in Descartes square and skidding to a stop mere metres from the door of the Cabildo. He flashed his badge and rushed up to his office. Hours of reading and calculation later he picked up the speaking tube to call Commandant Trudeau.

“Well, Louverture, here we are,” Clouthier said when the three of them assembled, some minutes later, in Trudeau’s office. “I take it you are going to tell us you’ve settled the case by doing figures all night?”

“Not the whole case, no, but I think you’ll want to hear it. Tell me, Officier principal, do you know the old calendar at all?”

“The royal calendar, you mean? No, I never studied history. Why?”

“What day of the month is it by that reckoning, do you suppose?” Louverture asked.

“What does it matter?”

Trudeau was smiling, nodding to himself. “May I venture a guess, Officier Louverture?” Louverture nodded magnanimously.

“Then if you are right, the timetable has been moved up—or rather, it was further along than we knew.”

“What do you mean?” Clouthier said, frowning deeply; then, eyes widening, “Oh—so it is the thirteenth today, by that calendar? Of Thermidor, or of Fructidor?”

“Augustus,” Trudeau said, with a glance at the bust on his desk. “Very good, Louverture, though I’m afraid this makes things a great deal more serious.”

Clouthier ran his head over his shaved scalp. “But I don’t understand. Even the English gave up that calendar years ago. Who would still use such an irrational system?”

“Irrationalists,” Louverture said with a faint smile. “And the day is no coincidence, either. Thirteen was a very powerful number to pre-rational minds, associated with disaster. Whatever they have in mind may be bigger than even murder.”

“You think it is the vodoun again, then? Is this all part of some irrational magic ritual?” Trudeau asked.

Louverture spread his hands. “I don’t know. The number thirteen, the royal calendar—yes, that is common to all of those that hew to the old religions. But the letters, no. The vodoun, the Catholics, the Jews, they all rely on secrecy to go undetected.”

“Perhaps the letter-writer is not a threat, but a warning? Someone inside this group who wishes to prevent whatever they are planning to do?”

“Then why not tell us more? And why the letters to the Minerve, and the cathedral?” Louverture chewed his lower lip. “If you’ll pardon me, that is, Commandant.”

Trudeau waved his objection away. “Of course, Officier. Speak freely.”

“Moreover, we still have the reports from Graphology and Lombrosology. These tell us the letter-writer is an educated, rational man.”

“How can he be a rational irrationalist?” Clouthier put in.

“How indeed?” Trudeau said. “It seems that we resolve one paradox only to create another.”

“Commandant, I’m sure I can—”

“I’m sorry, Louverture,” Trudeau said, putting up a hand. “Please do not take this as a lack of faith in you, but I am handing this matter over to Officier principal Clouthier. What you have discovered tells me that we must take immediate action.”

“But we have no motive! No suspects!”

“We know where our suspects are,” Clouthier said. “All the irrationalists—we know where they live, where they have their secret churches. We found your friend Lucien easily enough, didn’t we?”

“But—”

“Officier Louverture, I’m told you’ve been here since one seventy-five. You’ve rendered great service to the Corps today, and you deserve a rest.”

Louverture clamped his mouth shut, nodded. “Thank you, Commandant,” he managed to say. With a nod to each of his superiors he rose and left the room.

The sun was beating down outside, causing Louverture to realize he had forgotten his cap at home; as well, his abandoned velocipede was gone. Shading his eyes with his hands he quick-stepped across the square, then ducked into the Café to pick up a Minerve and found a shady spot to wait for the omnibus. The headline, predictably, read Elle meurt la treizième; further down the page, another story trumpeted Une autre sabotage aux théatres: la Comedie Francaise ferme ses portes.He folded the paper under his arm, unable to cope with any more irrationality. To whose benefit would it be to sabotage all the theaters, without asking for protection money?

“She’s not coming,” someone said. He turned to see an older black man in a white cotton shirt and pants, sweating profusely; he had obviously been walking a long way in the sun.

“I’m sorry?” Louverture said.

“The omnibus. She’s not coming; broke down at Champs Elysées.” The man shook his head. “Sorry, son,” he said, continued walking.

Louverture mouthed a curse, scanned the empty street for pedicabs. He supposed that driver had been right in thinking he would be out of a job soon. It was almost like a sort of experiment to see how often buses could break down before people stopped taking them, the way people had stopped going to the theaters…

A terrible, inescapable thought hit him. Desperate to disprove it Louverture set out at a run. His face was red by the time he arrived at the theater, a very hot half-kilometre away; he banged on the stage door with a closed fist, catching his breath.

“We’re closed,” a voice came from inside.

“Corps de commande,” Louverture said. He imagined he could hear the man inside sighing as he opened up.

“What can I do for you?” the man said. He was tall, about a hundred eighty centimeters, with a long face and a deeply receding hairline, wearing black pants and turtleneck. He was quite incidentally blocking the doorway he had just opened.

“May I come in?”

The man’s eyes narrowed as he stepped aside. “You say you’re with the corps?”

Louverture realized that he was wearing neither his cap nor his uniform, and that his hair was showing. He took out his badge, showed it to the man. “Officier de la paix Louverture. And you are?”

“Gaetan. Gaetan Tremblay. I’m the stage manager. At least…”

Stepping inside, Louverture nodded, held up his copy of the Minerve. “What can you tell me about last night?”

“The cyclorama dropped,” Tremblay said. “That’s the backdrop that—”

“I know. Was anyone hurt?”

“No—but with all that’s happened at the other theaters, people just panicked.”

“May I see?”

Tremblay led him down the black, carpeted hallway to the backstage entrance, lit the halogens that hung above. In the pool of light that appeared Louverture could see the fallen cloth, as wide as the stage, gathered around a thick metal pole that sat on the ground. A slackened rope still extended from the far end of the pole to the fly gallery above; the rope from the near end was severed, lying in a loose coil on the floor. “We lowered the intact side so it wouldn’t fall unexpectedly,” Tremblay said.

Louverture picked up the snapped rope, ran it through his fingers until the end reached him. The strands were all the same length, except for one, and only that one had stretched and frayed. “Has anyone examined this?”

Tremblay shook his head. “I told them it was an accident, but you know how superstitious actors are.”

“That will be all I need, then,” Louverture said, waited for Tremblay to lead him back out the maze of corridor.

“Officier,” Tremblay said when they reached the door, “do you think if we close for a while—the people, will they—”

“Forget?” Louverture pushed the door open, blinked at the light outside. “Of course. With enough time, people can forget anything.”

His mind raced as he ran back to the Cabildo. A paradox was not a dead end, he had forgotten that: it was an intersection of two streets you hadn’t known existed. He smelled sulphur as he reached the square, saw smoke rising from near the courthouse. The gardien at the door leveled a pistol at him as he neared.

“Keep back, please,” the gardien said.

Louverture raised his hands. He could not recall if he had ever seen a gardien draw his gun before. “I’m Officier Louverture,” he said, slowly dropping his right hand. “I’m reaching for my badge.” He fished it out carefully, extended it at arm’s-length.

“Go in, then,” the gardien said, “and you might want to get a spare uniform if you’re staying.”

“What’s going on?”

“A bomb. In the courthouse.”

“Sweet Reason. Was anyone killed?”

The gardien shook his head. “It missed fire, or else it was just a smoke bomb—but they found two more just like it at the Cathedral and the Academie Scientifique.”

“Excuse me,” Louverture said, waving his badge at the desk man as he went inside.

“Louverture!” Commandant Trudeau said, looking up from the charts on his desk. “I told Clouthier you wouldn’t be able to stay away.” Clouthier, his back to Louverture, nodded absently. “Quite a mess, isn’t it?”

“Commandant—Officier principal—I think I understand it now,” he said. “I think I know who is doing this.”

“Which group of irrationalists?”

“Not irrationalists; scientists. It’s an experiment.”

Trudeau looked confused, the first time Louverture had seen it on his face. “Explain.”

“A series of larger and larger experiments. The theater accidents, the omnibus failures—they were done on purpose, to test how much it takes to change people’s behavior. The notes, and the bomb probably too—they were to test us. “

“Test us for what?”

“To see how much it would take to make us react irrationally, see every accident as sabotage, every abandoned briefcase as a bomb. Perhaps we too are just a test for a larger experiment.”

“But the notes,” Clouthier said, turning to face him. “Who were they threatening?”

Louverture glanced out the window, at the statue in the middle of the square. “Reason,” he said. “She dies tonight.”

“I’m sorry, Officier, but this makes no sense,” Trudeau said. “What would be the motive?”

“I’m not sure. Jealousy, a wish to possess reason for themselves alone? Or perhaps the motive is reason itself. Perhaps they simply want to know.”

“This is ridiculous,” Clouthier barked. “He wants us chasing phantoms. We know who the irrationalist leaders are; arrest them, and the others will follow soon enough.”

“And how will people react when they see the Corps out in force, with pistols? Will they remain rational, do you think?”

“I’ve ordered a couvre-feu for eight o’clock,” Clouthier said. “People will stay inside when they see the lights are out.”

Louverture closed his eyes. “As you say.”

“Will you join us, Louverture?” Trudeau said, his attention back on the maps on the desk. “We can use another man, especially tonight.”

“Is that an order, Commandant?”

There was a long pause; then Trudeau very carefully said, “No, Officier, it isn’t. Go home and get your rest—go quickly, and show your badge if anyone questions you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Louverture went down the stairs, pushed through the gardiens assembling in the lobby; noticed Pelletier, saluted him. Pelletier did not answer his salute; perhaps the boy did not recognize him without his cap and uniform, and at any rate he was talking to the gardiens stagieres around him. Not wanting to interrupt, Louverture stepped outside.

The sun was nearly down, but the air was still hot; Reason’s torch cast a weak shadow on the number eight. Heading for Danton Street, Louverture saw a man approaching across the square. He was wearing a dark wool suit, despite the weather; a top hat and smoke-tinted glasses.

Louverture looked the man in the eyes as he neared, trying to read him; the man cocked his head curiously and gazed back at him. The two of them circled each other slowly, eyes locked. When they had exchanged positions the man doffed his hat to Louverture, his perfectly calm face creased with just a hint of a smile, and then turned and did the same to the statue of Reason. Louverture knew that look: it was the one Allard wore while measuring a skull. The man found an empty bench, sat down and waited, as though he expected a show to unfold in front of him at any moment.

The bells in the Cathedral of Reason rang out eight o’clock, and the sodium lamps in the square faded to darkness. The lights were going out all over town; Louverture did not suppose he would see them lit again.