I left the hotel early, the bright Parisian morning warm, and headed toward the Seine. My hotel sat only three blocks away from my appointment with Jac L’Etoile.
Rue des Saints-Pères was a narrow street lined with residences and antique shops. Nestled between two of them I found my destination and rang its doorbell. A returning buzz sounded which released an electronic lock. I turned the knob and entered L’Etoile Parfums, one of Paris’ most iconic perfume shops, dating back to before the French Revolution.
A bouquet of scents greeted my nose, as did the period decor. Mottled antique mirrors covered the walls and ceiling, scattered atop murals of pastel flowers and angels. My attention was drawn to the rosewood cabinets against two walls, each filled with antique perfume paraphernalia. I recognized several of the house fragrances. Vert. Blanc. Rouge. Noir. All, I knew, created between 1919 and 1922, still considered among the top ten scents of the industry, alongside such classics as Chanel No. 5, Shalimar, and Mitsouko. A woman sat perched behind a glass table. She wore a black shift, high heels, and a black scarf.
“I have an appointment with Jac L’Etoile. I’m Cassiopeia Vitt.”
She rose from the table and, pushing on one of the mirrored panels, opened a doorway. I followed her into a long hallway that ended at a carved wooden door which she opened.
Jac L’Etoile waited to greet me.
She was lovely, with almond-shaped, pale green eyes, and an oval face framed by wavy mahogany-colored hair. Perhaps a bit older than me, maybe mid-forties, she sported a stylish white smock over black slacks and suede ballet slippers. She seemed entirely comfortable with herself and I kept telling myself that this woman was a direct descendent of a long line of perfumers stretching back to the late 1700s.
“Bonjour,” the perfumer said, as she extended her hand. “Would you like some coffee or tea?”
I asked for coffee and the receptionist left for the refreshments.
“Welcome to my shop,” Jac said, waving her arms.
Cabinets filled with hundreds of bottles of sparkling liquids in shades of yellow, amber, green, and brown lined one wall. A set of French doors opened into a lush courtyard filled with blooming flowers and verdant trees.
“Nicodème called and said to treat you like family.”
“He’s a dear old friend.”
“Who seems to have a problem.”
I nodded. “That he does.”
“He also mentioned your love of perfume. Would you like a quick tour?”
I nodded. Absolutely.
“This,” she said walking over to a wooden apparatus that filled a quarter of the room, “is the heart of what I do. The perfumer’s organ.”
Which I knew about. About eight feet long and six feet tall, made of poplar. Three-tierd, and instead of keys to play music, rows of glass vials lined up like soldiers, each of a different essence. Best guess? It looked like there were more than three hundred vials.
“We don’t know who the cabinetmaker was,” Jac said. “But according to my grandfather, it’s as old as the shop. For centuries, perfumers have been practicing their craft in laboratories, like this one. Even though modern labs have stopped using perfume organs, for me there’s no better way. As my brother used to say, ‘perfume is about the past, about memories, dreams.’”
I couldn’t disagree with that, and I admired her obvious love of her craft.
Jac spread her arms. “Every generation of perfumers in my family has used these same bottles.” There was something both proud and forlorn about her statement. She caressed the organ’s wood. “My brother created perfumes here. My father before him and his father before him, going all the way back to the first L’Etoile, who opened this store in 1770. Like all the early perfumers, he’d been a glove maker who used scent in order to imbue the kidskins with a more pleasant aroma. When he saw how well it pleased his clients, he added other scented products. Candles, pomades, soaps, sachets, powders, skin oils, creams.”
The door opened and the receptionist returned with a tray of china cups, a silver coffee pot, creamer, sugar bowl, and spoons.
“Shall we?” Jac asked and we returned to her desk.
Sitting opposite her, I declined sugar and milk and accepted the cup she offered and sipped the black coffee. Not surprisingly, it was not only delicious but exceptionally fragrant.
“What is in this to give it a scent?” I asked.
“Just a couple of cocoa beans. Do you like it?”
“Quite a lot.”
“It’s one of the first lessons a perfumer learns. How sometimes the smallest addition makes all the difference.”
“That’s true in life too.”
She smiled. “And in business. I suppose you want to know about the Sabbat Box, and what I discovered from the samples.”
I nodded.
“That was quite an investigation,” she said. “I did the work about a year ago. Amazingly, it appeared one of the oils Nicodème sent me had many similarities with a fragrance I worked with six years ago. It’s the same formula, with only a few variations. I still believe that can’t be a coincidence. How familiar are you with chemical analyses and botanical properties?”
I shook my head. “Not much at all, beyond a fascination with the whole concept of perfume.”
“When Nicodème sent me the samples I ran them through gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. In most cases it’s used for drug detection, environmental analysis, and explosives investigations. But fragrance companies often employ them to study the competition’s scents. In a matter of hours those machines can break down a rival’s formula that took months to create.”
“What did you learn?”
“We were able to identify several ingredients. A few from over a decade ago, then two more from a recent scientific breakthrough. Quite a surprise, actually, to find one particular substance there. Three years ago a botanist in Israel managed to grow two ancient plants that have been extinct for years. Because of that, their chemical fingerprints are now in a database.” Jac found three sheets of paper. “Here is the analysis.”
She handed them to me.
I glanced down at the information. Ten separate copy blocks, a large number of the words in Latin of whose meaning I had no idea. “I’m afraid I don’t know what most of these are.”
She held out her hand and I returned the sheets. “Both of those ancient, formerly-extinct plants were in the Sabbat Box. Some of the ingredients are harmless, or simple hallucinogenics. But there are a few that can cause some potent reactions. Combinations and dosage is the key. With many of the vials, a small amount would cause adverse reactions—slight problems like headaches. A little more leads to severe neurological disorders. A little more and it can be fatal. The combinations of the plants and extracts in the box were surely once used for things like medicines, aphrodisiacs, even poisons. It’s like a mobile pharmacy.”
“Do some of them include the side effect of wild hallucinations?” I asked.
“Quite a few, in fact. Ancient priests were adept at mixing formulas to enable the user to enter into deep meditative states, supposedly so they could commune with the spirit world or dream prophecies. I’ve personally had contact with a formula like that. It caused what could have been mere hallucinations or,” she glanced at me, “I’m not sure what your belief system is so you might be skeptical of this. Past life memories. All brought on by inhaling an ancient fragrance.”
A day ago I would have dismissed what she just said as nonsense. But now I had a more open mind. “I don’t not believe.”
“Nicodème told me you’d had some unusual visions. Was it your first time?”
I nodded. “Initially I thought I’d had a simple hallucination. I’d been knocked unconscious during a robbery. But then I came in contact with some of the oil from one of the bottles and experienced a second and third incident.”
“As someone who’s been studying past life memories for the last six years, I’d be happy to help any way I can. There’s an expert in New York City, Dr. Malachi Samuels, whom I’ve consulted several times. If there’s something I can’t help with, I can put you in touch with him.”
I thanked her and we then focused on what I’d come to find out.
“The bottles in the box contained pure extracts of plants still used today in medicines,” Jac said. “Belladonna, Datura, and mandrake are good for heart, lung, and nervous system issues, including heart failure resuscitation. In some cases they can even be utilized as antidotes to poisons. Because of a compound called tropane, which they contain, none of them should be taken internally. Even one dosage can cause permanent heart damage or death. Some people even drink wine infused with mandrake or henbane, but the dangers far outweigh the benefits.
“Atropa belladonna has a long history with the occult. Atropos was one of the three Fates whose name means inevitable, as she was the one who cut the thread of life causing death for humans. The drug was, and still is, used by shamans to open doorways between worlds. Nightshade, which was also in the Sabbat Box, is a vine with bright purple flowers and red berries. Every aspect of the plant is toxic. Medically it’s used to heal bruises, swelling, sprains, and sores, but should never be burned as an incense or ingested.”
Like I would. My work with the box was confined to a brief interaction, but even that was beginning to make me a little uneasy. I kept listening as she explained about Datura stramonium, the Devil’s Trumpet, which was dangerous even to touch. It possessed many healing properties, but it also caused severe, unpredictable hallucinations that could last hours or days.
“Sometimes the taker had to be tied up to prevent him or her from hurting themselves or others,” Jac said. “It was used by shamans and spiritualists to travel out of their bodies to the spirit world, for soul retrieval or to reverse curses set by ancestors. It’s some potent stuff.”
“It was in the box?”
She nodded. “And then there was henbane, which ancient Greeks used as a sedative. It was also popular as an aphrodisiac, added to love potions, beers, wines, and massage oils. It’s toxic, hallucinogenic, and highly dangerous.”
Which filled the glass vial resting in my pocket.
I removed the bottle, set it on the desk, and explained about the visions. Jac listened, then retrieved one of the plastic pipettes and drew a sample from the bottle, quickly opening, then replacing the cork stopper as we both held our breaths.
“It takes more than a quick whiff,” I said. “But no point taking chances.”
She deposited the sample into a vial and sealed the top.
“I’ll take a look and see what’s here. It could be a mixture. Of the samples I tested, seven bottles contain pure ingredients. Three held compounds with multiple elements, including some from the other bottles. One formula caused a deep meditative hallucinogenic state. A second was a powerful aphrodisiac. The third induced a semiconscious meditative state, possibly some sort of truth serum like ethanol, scopolamine, or amobarbital. The contents of that box are, without question, dangerous. If abused, the ingredients could be fatal.” She pointed at the glass bottle. “I’d be careful with that stuff.”
I re-pocketed the bottle, my mind processing all of the information. At present, the whereabouts of the Sabbat Box were unknown. It had been stolen, then re-stolen, and whoever stole it the second time was no friend of Nicodème or Antoine. Best guess? The thief had a use for the contents that didn’t include murder, since there were surely easier ways to kill someone.
“I’ll run some more tests and let you know what I find,” Jac said. “In the meantime, I’m not a detective, but I have a friend who once was. He’s helped me in the past. Nicodème suggested you might need some local knowledge.”
She reached for a pad of paper, wrote down a name and phone number, then handed it to me.
Pierre Marcher.
I tucked the information into my pocket.
“You have quite a puzzle on your hands,” Jac said.
That was an understatement.