Spectacle(22)
Maman threw her a perplexed look. “If we don’t visit Tante, who will? I’m ashamed to say it’s been a while.”
They’d been once to the asylum since the accident, but Aunt Brigitte had been upset by Maman’s injured hands covered with bandages. She’d cried and cried because she didn’t want Maman to be in pain, so Maman decided not to go again until her burns had healed some.
“I meant why are you coming to the morgue?” Nathalie put some blueberry jam on her bread. “You don’t especially enjoy it.”
She wanted to protect Maman like that little bird on the window might have protected her young. Her mother didn’t need to see the murder victims, didn’t need to stand in the morgue where the killer had lingered, watching the crowd stare at his victim.
But there was more to it than that. She also didn’t want Maman in on her secret. Going to the morgue together somehow felt like … an intrusion.
An intrusion? Nathalie was instantly ashamed of the thought.
Maman handed her the newspaper. “I want to see what everyone else sees. What you see.”
If you only knew, Maman.
Nathalie spread the paper on the table after Maman left. She searched the sidebar and found the sentence, mundane to the rest of Paris, that altered her view of everything.
Deceased wore a blue-and-yellow frock with a floral print, undergarments, one shoe, and a silver ring on her right little finger.
Exhilaration fluttered through her body. Could it be that she didn’t have to fear this “power” after all? That she could explore it like a new novel, every insight a fresh page? She didn’t understand this gift but she was prepared to embrace it. Learn from it. Make it part of who she was and use it for good.
At least and at last, she was beginning to trust its authenticity.
* * *
When Nathalie entered the morgue, her gaze went right to where Odette used to be.
Not seeing Odette’s lifeless body anymore affected Nathalie in a way she didn’t expect. Although she’d never admit it to anyone and could barely acknowledge it to herself, Nathalie missed seeing her. The vision’s intensity and all it released had made Odette more than a corpse on a slab, more than just the victim of a murderer. She’d become a soul amidst the soulless. Nathalie felt connected to her, to both of them, through the unexpected intimacy of witnessing their deaths. Like the first time she saw her grandmother take off her glasses, or the time she sat in the front row of a concert and watched the pianist lose himself in the music.
Like that. Only dark and terrible and full of rage and blood.
The rain kept the crowds away, so it was only Maman, Nathalie, and three others in the viewing room—two women and a man who waddled like a duck. Surely none of them was the murderer. Still she wondered: Had he come here to watch the crowd view his second victim yet? If so, had he come more than once?
After a glance at the curtain to note that M. Gagnon wasn’t there, Nathalie watched her mother. Maman was still, her eyes focused on the body, unblinking. “I wonder how she ended up there,” she whispered. “In that situation. Whatever it was that led her to her killer.”
I watched her run from him, Maman. I saw it all. Backward at that.
Nathalie leaned in to her mother. “That’s what makes it so scary. It could have been anyone.” Including me. Or Simone. Nathalie stepped closer to the viewing pane, her mind drifting to the victim’s silver ring. It might have been from a beau or might have been a family heirloom. Or she could have bought it with her own wages or found it on a bridge over the Seine. The ring had a story, like a thousand other things in this poor girl’s short life.
Something shifted in the viewing room: the light, a faint sound. Nathalie turned to see a figure in the shadows behind her, just over the threshold and to the left. She couldn’t make out anything other than great height and an umbrella, yet the presence was sinister. Intimidating.
She whipped around to face front and took Maman by the elbow. “We should go.”
“What’s the matter?” Maman turned to look, but her expression reflected neither curiosity nor alarm. “Roland, how nice to see you.”
Nathalie let go of her mother and was never more relieved to be in darkness. It obscured her blush.
Not the killer. Overly imaginative, Nathalie. Just Roland. One of the tailors at the shop where Maman used to work. Nathalie greeted him with a smile, which bounced off his glasses back to her in the darkness. As Maman spoke to him, Nathalie faced the corpses again. Don’t be foolish.
“Why were you in such a hurry?” Maman asked when Roland stepped away.
“I felt light-headed,” Nathalie lied. “I thought I needed some air, but it passed.”
They fell into silence. Nathalie focused on the second victim and thought about the vision from yesterday. After a moment she closed her eyes, trying to remember details. How the victim ran, what the space looked like, how the cuts were made. The only element she could think of that resembled a clue, something the police didn’t already know, was that navy-and-gold hallway runner.
Probably hundreds, if not thousands, of hallways in Paris had a rug like that. She could examine five runners with those colors and not be sure which one she’d seen in the vision—it happened quickly, and she didn’t study it.
How could that be helpful? It would show that the murder took place indoors, anyway, in a home of some sort. She wished she had something more substantial to share, but maybe it was still worth submitting. The public didn’t know which puzzle pieces were in place and which were missing; even seemingly unimportant details might be worthwhile.