Spectacle(23)

Maman nudged her, murmuring that she was ready to go. They emerged outside to find that the rain had subsided.

“I saw and I still don’t believe,” her mother said. “That’s why I don’t come—”

“Mademoiselle Baudin, how are you?” It was M. Gagnon, calling out from the steps behind them. Nathalie’s belly turned to stone, as if that Medusa on the morgue door had petrified her stomach.

“Well enough, and you?” Please don’t say anything about the interrogation.

“Bodies and more bodies,” he said with an uneasy laugh.

Maman raised a delicate brow. M. Gagnon introduced himself as police liaison for the morgue.

Nathalie couldn’t help but notice what an appealing grin he had. And how his imperfect tooth stuck out, just the tiniest bit.

He seemed much … nicer than he had been the other day. Something about his attention, the fact that he’d noticed her, baffled Nathalie. Yet it also pleased her.

M. Gagnon certainly had her attention, too.

“Enjoy your stroll before the rain starts up again,” he said, tipping his hat as he walked in the opposite direction.

“How do you know him?” asked Maman. She moved a pin in her chignon and waited for an answer.

“He … said hello one day,” said Nathalie. She shifted her weight. “He’s often in the display room when I come.”

Maman smoothed out her brows. “Why should he wish to make your acquaintance if he stands on the other side of the glass? Do the guards greet you?”

“No. Only him,” Nathalie said. “Monsieur Gagnon is, uh, a gentleman. He urged me to be careful, nothing more.”

Maman didn’t reply, but it appeared to satisfy her, though you could never tell. Sometimes she’d wait a week before floating a follow-up question.

Nathalie glanced over her shoulder as they walked away. M. Gagnon was leaning against a lamppost, hands in his pocket. His eyes were on the ground and then, as if he could see her watching from thirty yards away, on her. She looked away, embarrassed.

And also intrigued.

All the way to the asylum, she thought about him. She didn’t know what to make of his friendliness today, but she liked it. Very much.



* * *



Saint-Mathurin Asylum had been and always would be a place of nightmares.

Nathalie’s cousin Luc once said there were rumors of haunted floors, hidden corridors that led to suicide chambers, and secret rooms where the violently insane were left to regulate themselves, with the hospital providing only food and water and services to remove corpses if the inmates killed one another.

Nathalie didn’t believe any of that, not now, but as a child she’d lost many a night’s sleep to such tales.

Where Aunt Brigitte dwelled was frightening in a different way. All the women in the hospital were confined to this floor; the severity of their cases varied such that the silent and forlorn wandered alongside the shrieking, quivering women in the halls. The woman Nathalie had seen during that forbidden foray years ago was, she discovered in time, far from the only one prone to outbursts of hysteria.

The walls and floors were cold stone; the air was putrid with sweat and filth. And the sound was a terrifying clamor of wailing and mad, incessant chatter. Nathalie couldn’t imagine calling this home. Not even for a night. Mme. Plouffe’s home, where Tante had a room before the asylum, was peaceful and homey. Saint-Mathurin was a cauldron of madness and dread.

And yet Nathalie didn’t mind coming here, not now that she’d grown accustomed to it. The patients fascinated her, given that she pitied rather than feared them, and Aunt Brigitte, beneath her madness, had a childlike kindness.

Nathalie and Maman made their way down the corridor, passing a plaster statue of Saint-Mathurin behind glass. A pair of bloodied handprints—made, legend had it, by a patient whose escape was suicide—trailed from the middle of the wall to the floor. Maman always turned away when they passed that spot; Nathalie always studied it, trying to see in her mind’s eye what happened that day.

They walked by a room of patients. A frail elderly woman stepped out of it and followed them down the hall. “Where is the key? Can you let me out? Father said I could go if you gave me the key.” Over and over again she asked, softly and almost lyrically, as she tapped Nathalie’s arm. They ignored her; the nurses told them never to engage the patients.

Suddenly she gripped Nathalie’s elbow with a startling amount of strength. “WHERE IS THE KEY?” the woman screamed. Her voice was poison; her eyes teemed with contempt. Nathalie tried to pull away and the woman squeezed harder. Maman pushed the woman off just as a nurse hurried over.

“Estelle, do not touch anyone!” The nurse uttered an apology as she peeled the woman off Nathalie. The woman screamed even louder for the key; the nurse started to escort her back to her room and the woman dropped, as if her lower half had ceased to work, and twisted. A second nurse ran over to help as the woman flailed and yelled.

Nathalie didn’t mind coming here. Most of the time.

“Look at this,” Maman said, pointing to Nathalie’s elbow. The red imprint of the woman’s grip remained. “You’ll have a bruise from that.”

“I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt,” Nathalie said. Maman shook her head, and they entered the room Tante shared with three other women.