Chapter 35
Tuesday, 7 March
The early-morning light streaming in through the soaring stained glass windows bathed the ravaged interior of Notre Dame in a soft, colorful glow. Sebastian had lost his faith long ago on the bloody battlefields of Europe, but he still found the destruction of the venerable old cathedral wrought during the Revolution’s first years painful to see.
He had come here this morning in search of peace and a place to think—a place to think about Sophie and Napoléon and a strange, twisted series of events he couldn’t begin to understand. He still had no idea exactly how or why Sophie had come into possession of the amulet—or at least its jeweled case. But he was convinced that Hortense had lied to him, that she knew far more than she was trying to pretend. What he couldn’t decide was exactly what that meant.
Had Hortense gone to the rue du Champs du Repos that evening to give Sophie the amulet? Why would she do that? And why would Sophie then take the amulet—or at least its case—with her on what was supposed to be a painful personal trip to the Place Dauphine to come to terms with her long-estranged son? In a desperate attempt to safeguard it? Was that it?
Safeguard it from whom? Whoever had killed her?
It was easy to make the assumption that Sophie had been killed by someone who’d then taken the famous talisman. But if so, how then to explain what happened to her abigail, Francine?
He let his head fall back, his gaze traveling over the vaulted stone ceiling soaring so high above. What if . . . what if the killer—or killers—had attacked Sophie only to find the talisman’s case already empty? What if they’d yanked open Sophie’s reticule looking for the amulet, found the case, and tossed the reticule off the bridge only to discover that the talisman wasn’t there? He could see them throwing the case itself aside in anger, leaving it to be found by the passing lemonade seller who’d then pawned it.
It was a theory that would explain why Sophie’s abigail, Francine, had been tortured: because the killer—or killers—thought the girl might know where the talisman was. But had she known? Sebastian found himself doubting it.
So where was the talisman now? If he was right—and that was a significant if—why would Sophie have been carrying the empty case with her that night in the first place? Unless . . .
Unless the case hadn’t been empty when Sophie left her house. Unless she’d spent that lost hour or two between the time she left the Vert-Galant and the attack on the bridge taking the amulet to—whom? Hortense? That made no sense.
Émile Landrieu?
Perhaps.
Bloody hell, he thought, swiping his hands down over his face. He hadn’t slept well in days, and it was beginning to catch up with him. Think, he told himself. Who would be desperate enough to kill to get their hands on the Carolingian amulet?
The obvious answer was Marie-Thérèse, but who else? What about the Duke of Orléans—or one of his supporters? Would someone like Antoine de Longchamps-Montendre kill to possess an amulet with such legendary powers? Possibly.
Who else?
Hortense? Hortense, who according to Angélique had been furious when the amulet disappeared after her mother’s death. Hortense, who would be eager to pass the talisman on to her stepfather as he began his dangerous campaign to retake his throne. Hortense, who had come to see Sophie hours before her death for reasons she’d never adequately explained.
And what about the Republicans, those opposed to the Bourbons, the Orléanists, and the Bonapartists alike; those who still believed in the Revolutionary creed of liberté, égalité, fraternité, who still yearned to see France once again a republic? One need not believe in the amulet’s power to understand the allure of superstition and the danger of allowing the piece to fall into the wrong hands.
So the Bonapartists, the Bourbons, the Orléanists, and the Republicans. Bloody hell, he thought again; France had far, far too many rival factions. How could anyone ever put this broken country back together again?
He bowed his head, one hand coming up to unconsciously massage the tight muscles at the base of his neck. Then he heard brusque footsteps and a brush of cloth, smelled the reek of charcoal, tobacco smoke, and cooking fat, and looked over to find a stocky coal seller sliding into the pew beside him.
“Mind if I join you?” said Eugène-François Vidocq, his face so blackened by coal dust that the whites of his eyes seemed to glow out of the gloom.
“Why are you dressed like that?” said Sebastian.
The chief of the Sûreté nationale lifted one corner of his rough, grimy coat and grinned. “It’s a good disguise, yes? I’m trying to catch a gang of thieves who’ve been helping themselves to coal from the quay. But that’s not why I’m here.”
Sebastian leaned back in the pew. “You’ve found the fiacre driver from that night?”
A quiver of frustration passed across the Frenchman’s features. “Not yet. And I must confess I don’t understand why not. Normally it would be a simple matter. It makes no sense.”
“What about the prostitute I saw by the statue that night?”
Vidocq sighed. “Do you have any idea how many filles publiques we have here in Paris? I swear, there are as many women on the streets as there are French soldiers in their graves.”
“I suspect the one has much to do with the other.”
The gallerian pursed his lips as if the possibility had never before occurred to him. “You may have a point.”
“So why are you here?”
Vidocq leaned forward. “There’s a body in the morgue I want you to see. I’m thinking he could be one of the men who attacked you in Montmartre the other day.”
“What makes you think that?”
A slow grin spread across the man’s dirty face. “I’d like to say ‘exemplary police work.’ But the truth is, they found your name and address in his pocket. Care to come and have a look at him?”
Sebastian had heard that, at one time, the unidentified dead fished from the River Seine or picked up in the streets of Paris were put on display in the prison of the Châtelet. That practice had been far from satisfactory, for the air of the prison was noxious and unhealthy for visitors, and the dead were often tossed into piles on the ground and left to putrefy.
As Napoléon had done with so much else in Paris, from the water supply and the sewers to the market facilities and wharves, the Emperor had set about improving that situation. On his orders, a long, low building was constructed specifically to serve as the city’s morgue. Conveniently located at the quai du Marché on the Île de la Cité between the city’s police station and the river, the morgue featured a large Salle d’exposition where the bodies of the unidentified dead were put on display on slanted marble slabs. Men and women alike were stripped completely naked except for a small cloth draped across their genitals, with their clothes hung from iron hooks over the bodies in the hopes they might help with identification.
But the truth was that few of the hordes of people who visited the morgue were actually there in the hopes of identifying someone. Most came for the spectacle and the titillation. The morgue was even listed in the city’s guidebooks. Personally, Sebastian could never understand it. He’d seen more than enough dead bodies to last him a thousand lifetimes.
Making their way along the quay from the cathedral, he and Vidocq found the morgue’s simple, plain building surrounded by a boisterous, disorganized queue of noisy, shoving men, women, and children of all classes.
“Please tell me they’re not all waiting to get into the morgue,” said Sebastian.
“Mais oui. The newspapers must have reported on a particularly gruesome discovery,” said Vidocq, raising his voice to be heard over the din as they threaded their way through the crowd toward the door. “The lines are always worse when there’s something gory to see.”
“Alors!” protested a butcher in a bloody apron. “Get in line and wait your turn like everyone else.”
“Shut up or I’ll have you arrested,” growled Vidocq.
He might be dressed as a coal seller, but his voice carried authority tinged with a hint of brutality. The complainer shut up.
“Unfortunately, whoever designed the building didn’t think things through,” said Vidocq as they broke through the throng into the exhibition room itself, which Sebastian was surprised to find was considerably less crowded. “There’s only the one entrance, which means the gawkers and the bodies all have to come in through the same door. Imagine trying to get a corpse through that crush. Fortunately they’ve learned not to allow too many spectators into the salle at once—cuts down on the tussles and fights and the women and little ones getting trampled to death.”
“Lovely,” said Sebastian, trying not to breathe.
The stench in the place was eye watering, both from the decaying corpses on the other side of a series of long, tall windows and from the unwashed men, women, and children pressing up against the glass to stare.
“It’s a clever idea. London could use a central morgue like this—although I can’t see the British government allowing it to be turned into this kind of a spectacle.”
“Ha,” snorted Vidocq. “A goodly percentage of the people waiting in line out there are probably British tourists.” He tapped one finger against the glass window that allowed a clear view of the dead on display. “There, the second from the left in the first row. Recognize him?”
There were two rows of inclined stone slabs supported on an iron framework. Seven of the slabs were currently occupied. Sebastian tried to ignore the other bodies at various stages of decomposition and focus on the cadaver Vidocq had indicated.
It was the fair-haired ex-soldier from the quarry. Like the other corpses, he’d been stripped naked, with his tattered uniform hanging above his body. The knife wound Sebastian had given him in his side was clearly visible and had festered horribly.
The gaping slit across his throat was new.
“So,” said Vidocq, “did you kill him?”
Sebastian took an involuntary step back as a giant gray rat ran across the toes of his boots. “My knife caused that wound in his side, but I’m not the one who slit his throat.”
Vidocq nodded. “Word on the street is that he was hurting so bad, he wanted to go to the Hôtel-Dieu, and he was delirious enough that his mates were afraid he’d let slip something he shouldn’t. So they killed him.”
Sebastian looked over at him. “I thought you didn’t know who he is.”
“We don’t. Sometimes people can tell you why a man died even when they don’t know exactly who he is.”
“Where was he found?”
“Faubourg Saint-Antoine.” Vidocq stared at him expectantly. “So do you know his name?”
“One of the men called him Baptiste, but that’s all I heard. Just Baptiste.”
Vidocq sighed. “I suspect they’re going to end up having to take a wax cast before sending him off to the medical school.”
“They do that? Take impressions of their faces, I mean.”
“Oh, yes—in case someone comes along hoping to identify them after the bodies have been disposed of.” The Frenchman nodded to the headless cadaver of a man at the far end of the row. “That’s what the crowds have come to see. The more gruesome the bodies we pick up, the bigger the crowds we get. They particularly like anyone who’s mutilated, although wee babes and pretty young girls who find themselves in the family way and throw themselves into the river are also popular, for obvious reasons.”
Sebastian was beginning to feel vaguely ill, although he couldn’t have said if it was from the sight of the cavalierly displayed naked corpses, the rowdy, malodorous crowd, the thick, oppressive stench of death, or the way a little boy of perhaps five, held up by his mother for a better view of a comely young dead woman, clapped his hands and chortled, “I can see her boobies!”
“It’s like free theater, yes?” said Vidocq.
“Frankly, I find it rather appalling.”
Vidocq laughed out loud and poked Sebastian with one stubby, grimy finger. “At least it’s not you on that slab over there, eh?”
Sebastian watched the little boy’s father light a clay pipe, then blow smoke against the glass partition. “You do have a point.”
They emerged from the fetid, lantern-lit gloom of the morgue to find the crowd outside unexpectedly dispersing, with people shouting and milling about in confusion. Some were grim faced and stunned; others were laughing. Near the water’s edge, a man threw his hat in the air and whooped.
“What the hell?” said Sebastian.
Vidocq called to one of the policemen stationed nearby, “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Haven’t you heard? Napoléon has escaped from Elba. They say he landed near Antibes a week ago.” The policeman’s eyes sparkled with what looked very much like hope. “Père Violette is back!”