Floats the Dark Shadow (47 page)

“No. No! I thought you had men following me for…other things….” His gaze darted about the room, searching for somewhere to hide.

“Perhaps an abortive poisoning attempt?”

“I don’t know what you mean!” Terror flared in the black eyes, then transformed into defiance. “I thought it was only your animosity after I was released from jail.”

Michel was anything but convinced. “You left a cross by the bakery.”

“Jules told me the police were asking about a cross with big wings,” he said. Words began to tumble, an obvious rush of relief. “I thought it would be clever to put it nearby and deflect suspicion from my Black Mass onto this madman. Why not have the police chasing after him while I had the girl safe in my church?”

“Why not indeed?” Michel asked coldly.

“I am not this baby killer!” the snake screeched at him.

“Ninette is scarcely older than Alicia.”

Vipèrine clenched his jaw. “Jules said Alicia was a child.”

Michel tried another approach. “What did you tell Charron about the Black Mass?”

“Nothing once I decided Ninette would be the centerpiece. Averill is that weasel Noret’s pet. I could not afford to tell him or the baron. They would have betrayed the secret.”

Michel would rather not have believed him, but he did. Instead, he followed this new thread. “Estarlian wanted to attend?”

“He is an aristocrat. His presence would add elegance.” Vipèrine shrugged. “Years ago, I saw him at a Black Mass that the Abbé Boullan conducted. But he was no longer interested.”

Or perhaps the baron only scorned Vipèrine’s offering? Either way, this was interesting. “How many years ago?”

“A year before the Abbé’s death.”

So
Là Bas
had been published and Gilles awakened. When Ninette was abducted, the baron was supposed to be in Dieppe consorting with the scandalous English writer just released from prison. Michel had dismissed him. But if the girl was taken only for the Black Mass and not for darker, deadlier games, then Estarlian remained a suspect.

Michel paused. He had put the baron aside too soon, just as he had failed to suspect the cab driver. What other mistake could he be making? His men had located Jules Loisel. He had been hiding out in Noret’s apartment, supposedly waiting to beg forgiveness. When they searched Loisel’s own pathetic room, they discovered it filled with religious and sacrilegious objects and scribblings. But its centerpiece was an inverted pentagram, not a winged cross. Rambert had questioned him and believed his fear and regret to be genuine.

But Loisel had told Vipèrine about the winged cross. He had told Vipèrine that Ninette was Noret’s daughter. Loisel and Corbeau might have constructed the whole drama and lingered to see it play out—their own Grand Guignol.

There was a knock. It was after midnight, but his light was on. Was Rambert also finding sleep impossible? But when Michel opened the door, he found Blaise Dancier instead. Michel had gone hunting for him this morning. He’d been coldly furious then. Now he was too tired, too miserable, to lacerate him. He stood aside, gestured to a chair. Going to his cupboard, he took out his brandy. Michel bought the best he could reasonably afford but it didn’t approach the quality Dancier possessed. He poured two glasses. Sat. Waited. Neither of them drank.

After a moment, Dancier said, “I’m here to apologize.”

“Not to bribe me to let you murder my prisoner?” Michel was still angry but he felt hypocritical too. He held up a hand. “You betrayed my trust.”

He could feel Dancier gather breath to argue. He was not used to being challenged. Nor was he used to apologizing. Michel did not care. “He invaded my territory,” Dancier snapped. “He tried to kill someone under my protection.”

“I know why you attempted it.” Michel drank a swallow of the brandy, letting it burn. “You invaded my territory to try.”

“I apologized.”

“So you did.” Michel waited another breath. “I accept your apology, provided—”

“It won’t happen again,” Dancier finished for him.

Michel nodded. It was, after all, a rather extraordinary gesture, but he did not feel appeased. “Charron may not have killed the children.”

Dancier looked aside, so his hirelings must have visited him. Better to have failed if Charron was innocent. Facing him, Dancier asked, “Then who did?”

“I will hardly tell you that.”

“You know I’ll find out.”

“I’m sure you can, so the question returns. What will you do about it?”

Dancier sulked. Finally, he said, “Nothing—unless he wiggles free.”

“He must be insane, but perhaps not insane in a fashion that will allow him to escape the guillotine.”

“You hope.”

“I hope,” Michel acknowledged. He took a sip of the brandy.

“If this poet isn’t the killer, I’ll make it up to him,” Dancier announced.

Michel stared at him in disbelief.

“One way or another.” Dancier shrugged. “I can always publish his poems.”

Michel gave a bark of laughter. “I find that truly perverse.”

“I can be perverse.” Dancier winked.

The man was incorrigible, but the confrontation, the banter had pulled Michel from the worst of his bleakness. He was grateful. He smiled and drank another swallow of brandy.

Dancier finished his in one jolt. He got up and went to the door, turned. “If you ever think we’re even, let me know.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The desolate marshes of these pages,

full of black poison, will soak into his soul.

~ Comte de Lautréamont

ZIGZAGGING through the streets of Paris, Theo pedaled furiously, swerving at last onto the Quai de l’Horloge and into the Dépôt. Dismounting, she leaned the bicycle against the wall then rushed through the door of the police station, only to be stopped by a glaring detective.

“Let me by!” Theo said, but he stood in her way, pointing at her legs in outrage. She was still wearing her riding breeches, not the wisest choice. Most police overlooked the pointless law, but this one disliked such rebellion flouted in his face. She felt like screaming at him, but that was more likely to get her arrested.

“Out!” He pointed at the door now, wrinkling his nose with disdain. Theo knew she smelled of sweat and horses. “Out!”

“I must find Inspecteur Devaux,” Theo insisted, her eyes searching the station. Michel had heard the argument, for he stood up. The officer glared but turned to look at Michel, who gestured to admit her. The man stepped aside and Theo strode to Michel’s desk.

His gaze was guarded. “Mademoiselle, if you are here about Monsieur Charron—”

“No.” She shook her head, then blurted, “Matthieu has disappeared.”

“Another child?” His expression did not change but his eyes were bleak.

“My landlady’s son,” she said. “There is a new winged cross in the alleyway.”

“When did he disappear?”

“Four hours ago. I was out riding when he went missing.”

“How much does she know?”

“After Denis disappeared, she was always wary. But she didn’t think Matthieu would be taken in broad daylight…” Theo fought down panic. “She doesn’t know that Denis and Alicia were taken by the same man.”

“It is better she does not. Her fear will be terrible enough.” He looked down at the folders on his desk.

Theo knew they held photos he had never shown her. “Averill could not have done this.”

He looked at her directly. “But his accomplice could have.”

Theo clenched her fists but kept her voice even. “You have Vipèrine in prison, too.”

“I no longer think Vipèrine is the killer.”

A wave of fear swept through Theo. She swayed under its force. Michel reached out and steadied her, but she took a breath and pulled away. “Then who took Matthieu?”

“There is another man involved, a fiacre driver.”

“What?” How long had he known about this other man?

He paused. “There is a chance it is not him. Some friend might….”

Shock gave way to anger. Her voice dripped disdain. “Kidnap a child? Commit murder?”

“Stage a ruse,” he countered. “If the friend believes him innocent, perhaps the child is only being held till the real killer is found. Noret might feel guilty enough.”

“Not guilty enough to kidnap someone else’s child.”

He frowned. “I know it is unlikely. Would the baron be so ruthless?”

Theo froze. What might Casimir risk for Averill? “If it’s true, so much the better. Matthieu would be safe. But neither of us believes that.”

Michel got to his feet and reached for the jacket hung over the back of his chair, then hesitated.

“Whoever it is will torture Matthieu, murder him. We must search!”

“And where are we to search? Every attempt to find the other children failed.”

Fear and terror battered her. “I don’t know!”

He met her gaze, acknowledging her turmoil, then sat and gestured to the chair across from him. “I want you to go over some of the evidence with me. If we uncover the killer, we may know where to look for him.”

Muscle and nerve screamed for action, but Theo sat down. It didn’t matter how repellent the evidence was if it would help find Matthieu. “Who is this fiacre driver?”

“His name is Corbeau.” He waited.

The name meant nothing to her. “Why not this Corbeau and Vipèrine?”

“Ninette was taken for the Black Mass to be ravished, not murdered. Afterwards, Vipèrine meant to sell her to a madam who lives in Rouen.”

“Sell her?”

“Yes. He is vile, he is mercenary. He is even capable of murder, but I do not believe he is the killer we have been seeking.”

“But Ninette’s kidnapper left a winged cross.”

“Jules Loisel told Vipèrine about the emblem.”

“So now you know Vipèrine kidnapped Ninette. Averill is telling the truth!”

“It is entirely possible Averill thought to snatch her for himself. It is even possible he thought to play the hero and deflect suspicion for his other crimes.”

“That would be a crazy risk.”

“Our killer is crazy, Mlle. Faraday. But he is crazily clever too.” Michel took two books from the side of his desk. She recognized one and knew why he had it with him.
“Là Bas.”

“We both discovered the killer thinks of himself as Gilles de Rais. I have looked for similarities in their history to create this strange union.”

Theo forced a calm question. “What have you found?”

“Loisel is devious, but apart from his fascination with sacrilege, I see nothing to connect him to the medieval baron. He fears and perhaps hates women, but would not see an innocent young girl ravished. If my theory is correct, it must be either Averill Charron or Casimir Estarlian.”

Theo closed her eyes, then made herself open them. Blindness was cowardice. She could not bear for the killer to be Averill. But Casimir had never been anything but charming and kind to her. Except in helping to break her heart. Even then, it was Averill who had shown her they were lovers. Casimir had never hinted at such a thing. But whoever the killer was, he was skilled at pretense. Of all of them, Casimir presented the most polished façade to the world, too bright to see behind.

“Tell me your theory.” Her voice sounded hollow to her own ears.

“You know that Averill was deeply affected by all that happened to his sister, both the false events and the true.”

“Yes. Jeanette.”

“Little Jeanne.”

Theo felt a chill crawl along her spine, cold talons digging into her nerves. “Isn’t that a gigantic leap of the imagination?”

“Our killer made some such leap, to enter into his vision of Gilles de Rais.”

“But Jeanne is one of the most common French names.”

“Do you believe it signifies nothing?”

She was arguing only because of Averill. “No. The killer believes he is Gilles de Rais, so Jeanne d’Arc will have immense importance to him. But perhaps only the historical Jeanne.”

“Jeanne d’Arc gave the medieval baron de Rais a moment of glory. She gave faith and simple goodness to a life that was at its best utterly selfish, at its worst vile almost beyond comprehension.”

“That is not Averill.”

“Not the face that he shows you. He may have another.”

Theo balled her hands into fists and kept silent. With Matthieu’s life at stake, she must help Michel, not fight him.

Michel went on, “The killer may have felt that like the baron de Rais, he had betrayed his own Jeanne by not saving her.”

“Yet she also betrayed him, by not being saved.” Theo knew he was talking of Jeanette’s madness, of Averill’s quest, but some other memory was tugging at her mind. She groped for the words. “Greater even than betrayal by a lover.”

Who had said that? Was it Casimir or Averill? Did it matter? They were both fascinated by Gilles de Rais.

Michel watched her attentively. “Yes, I can see it would seem so. He wanted a miracle. Yet it is also the fate of saints to be martyred.”

“But why would that make our killer kidnap children?”

“We need only know that our Gilles found some reason to clothe himself in the other’s history. Perhaps he only looked for the excuse to kill.”

“So, Averill has a sister named for the saint, about whom he feels overwhelming guilt.” When Michel nodded, she asked. “And what of Casimir?”

“Gilles de Rais
had a grandfather who mistreated him. So did Estarlian. He was an orphan taken in by an old and perhaps cruel man. His grandfather died a little over a year ago, and the killings seem to have begun not long afterwards.”

“A man most ancient and utterly corrupt…” Theo remembered.

“Yes, there is something like that in
Là Bas
.”

“Not only the book. Casimir said that to me the first time I met him. We both wore mourning, but he did not pretend to love his grandfather.”

“It sounds as if he hated him.”

“But is that enough to create a killer—a Gilles de Rais who destroys children?”

“Fire invaded both their lives. Casimir lost his childhood home. Averill’s country estate burned to the ground not long ago.”

“And Jules?” she asked again.

“We’ve found no such parallel in his life, beyond the fascination with Satanism, which Charron and the baron both share.”

“Casimir?”

“Vipèrine said the baron had been to a Black Mass conducted by the infamous Abbé Boullan.”

Theo thought that strange. Casimir had chastised Averill for his interest in the mass but had been to one himself. But if Casimir had told him that, Averill would have been all the more determined to go.

“We have a room for questioning here as well as in the cells,” Michel told her. “Inspecteur Rambert will bring Monsieur Charron there.”

Michel escorted her inside the interrogation room. The claustrophobic walls were stained yellow and reeked from tobacco smoke but this could not be as terrible as the cells. There was a small rectangular table with two chairs on either side. Theo stood waiting until Averill was led into the room, once more in manacles. Michel directed Averill to sit on the far side of the table. Theo sat and Michel took the chair beside her. Inspecteur Rambert remained to guard the door.

Unexpectedly, Michel gave her the lead. “Tell him what has happened.”

Theo swallowed hard. “Matthieu was kidnapped today, Averill.”

Shock, horror, relief played across his face in quick succession. “Then…” he began.

“No.” Theo broke in. “The killer has an accomplice.”

“And so you would still be guilty,” Michel finished.

Averill turned to look at him. “Because madness runs in my blood? Because I write poems about death?”

“Perhaps,” Michel answered, then coldly, “Tell me about Corbeau.”

Averill paled. Theo’s heart seemed to drain of blood with that paleness.

“You know him,” Michel said coldly. “When I questioned you the other night, you remembered the name.”

Averill spoke very carefully. “A few times we had a driver named Zacharie. Once I remember Casimir calling him
le corbeau
—he wore a large black coat that night, loose and flapping. It might have been this Zacharie’s last name or simply a poetic jest.”