Spectacle(32)

“You said something that only could have come from the killer: ‘My pretty, pretty Mirabelle.’”

Nathalie wrapped her arms around herself and gazed at the body on the slab. Mirabelle. Saying the name out loud … Was that why Odette’s name had felt familiar when she learned of it? It must have been.

A man appeared beside them like an apparition, his spicy cologne filling the humid air around them. “Pardonnez-moi! Might I ask, what just happened?” His voice was honey dripping off a spoon into hot tea. Rotund and elegantly dressed, he tapped his white-gloved fingertips together with a grin.

When Nathalie turned to look at him, she had to stifle a scream.

White gloves.

Her heart became a rock inside her chest. Inanimate. She gasped for air and the rock became a heart again, beating faster than ever.

She’d seen him before. In line at the morgue. He was a detail, a face in the background. The day she had her first vision. The day the killer was in the same room.

And now, for no obvious reason, she’d had a vision that was stronger than ever. Closer than ever to the Dark Artist.

A shiver glided down her back.

No.

It couldn’t possibly be.





14


Nathalie straightened up. “Who—who are you?”

The man, whose white mustache matched his gloves, cocked his head. Simone seized her elbow and yanked her toward the exit.

“Are you him?” Nathalie didn’t care who heard. “Did you do this?”

The guard stepped between the gloved man and the girls. “Mademoiselle—”

“Let’s go,” said Simone, tugging some more. “You need some air.”

“No, I don’t. That’s him, Simone. I know it is.”

“He might not—”

“What are the odds?” Nathalie hissed. She glared at the man, who was now talking to the guard. “I’ve seen him here before and now I have this vision and then he comes up to us and—”

“It probably is a coincidence, Nathalie.” Simone pulled her out the door. “You’re being irrational. He’s just a man wearing gloves.”

“I remember him,” Nathalie said. They walked toward a bridge, Simone still holding her arm. “He was there the day of my first vision, just like the murderer. I’ll show you!”

They stopped at the edge of the bridge. Nathalie took out her journal and flipped to the page that described her first vision. “Look. Right there. I describe the crowd while I was waiting to get inside. Then I had the memory gap.”

Simone stood beside her and read. “… ‘A man wearing white gloves.’ Yes, he was in the room, right, but—”

“You’re the one who said to trust my visions. Today I was nearer than ever to the killer. And that man was standing right behind us. The gloves again, on a hot summer day? We should tell Gagnon,” Nathalie said, pointing to the morgue.

Simone stepped back. “And what would we tell him, that the man was eavesdropping? Or about your visions?”

“No, I’d say—” Nathalie left the sentence in mid-air. Simone was right. “Well, we can’t just walk away.”

Now it was Simone who couldn’t argue the point.

Nathalie tapped the side of her nose. “J’ai du nez,” she said. Her idea was both thrilling and ridiculous. “We’ll follow him.”

Simone looked over her shoulder. A couple with a puppy stood on the bridge, too absorbed in each other to notice anything. She lowered her voice anyway. “First, we can’t be chasing every man in Paris wearing white gloves. Second, we’re going to follow someone who, if your instinct is correct, is a killer? Only if we can go recline on the railroad tracks later, too, right when a train comes in.”

“It won’t be dangerous. What could possibly happen during the day with crowds everywhere?” Nathalie gestured to the streets, the shops, the cafés. People, people, and more people. With hurried steps she crossed the bridge and the street, Simone close behind, and pressed her back against a cobbler shop window. “And not every man in the city. Just him. We’ll keep our distance. I just want to see if there’s anything … unusual about him.”

But there was something else. She knew all too well what it was like to be followed. Or feel like you were being followed. Something inside her hungered at the chance to reverse that feeling. To embolden herself against the memory of it.

Simone picked a thread off her blue polka dot dress and twisted it in her fingers. “I suppose it could be interesting to see where he goes from here.”

“You know you’re curious.”

“I know you’re curious,” said Simone, placing the thread on Nathalie’s cap as if it belonged there. “I also think you’re mistaken. I’ll go along with this so you can get whatever proof you need that he isn’t our man. How’s that?”

Nathalie sulked. “You’re quick to assume I’m wrong. Just wait.”

A minute or so later the gloved man exited the morgue. They fell silent as he meandered across the bridge to the curb across from them, waited for a two-horse carriage to pass, and crossed the street.

Nathalie was about to retreat into the cobbler shop when the man, whistling away, took a right down the sidewalk. They peered around the corner. He passed a tobacco shop, a watch repair shop, and a butcher shop. Then he paused, inspected his pocket watch, and entered a confectioner’s shop.