Spectacle(88)

Trapped.

Nathalie scrutinized his face, his demeanor. Those regal, if exaggerated, manners, his lively nature, his congenial expressions … did they cover up a sinister side?

He’s bookish and fashionable. Ovid and the silk cravat.

She banished the thought. No, not him. Not Simone’s beau. That wasn’t why he had brought them here. Maman and Papa knew they were with him.

Yet when he shifted his weight, she flinched. Her eyes found the candelabra on the bookshelf. Just in case.

“Why is the apartment empty? Why are we here?” Nathalie pointed to the bottles. “You asked me about the jar of blood in my satchel on the way here. That’s some coincidence.”

“She’s right. I don’t like tricks, Louis.” Simone folded her arms. “Why are we here?”

Louis gazed at them, a satisfied cat indulging his audience. “Because,” he began, eyes darting around the room, “we have some investigating to do. I suspect we’re standing in the room of the Dark Artist’s lover.”

“His lover?” The next words hung in Nathalie’s throat a moment before she could sputter them out. “Are—are you daft?”

“Mademoiselle Baudin, do you think you’re the first person to ask me that?” Louis said as he straightened his tie, smirking. As Nathalie and Simone stared at him with folded arms, he held up his hands. “I’m not deranged or lying or trying to scare you. Trust me.”

“We’ll trust you when you stop talking in riddles,” Simone said through gritted teeth. She took him by the elbow and pulled him close. “Explain this right now.”

“You can begin,” Nathalie said, “by telling us why you have a key to this apartment.”

“We share a landlord, Madame Klampert and I. The man is a drunkard. He’s not entirely faithful to his wife, either. I happened to come upon him at Le Chat Noir once with another woman.” Louis cleared his throat. “I reminded him of this and we … reached an agreement.”

Nathalie’s jaw slackened. “You blackmailed him for a key.”

“I did. And—my apologies, Simone, but please understand—I told him Madame Klampert was my lover.”

Simone let go of him and scowled. “Sweet.”

“Just a ruse, mon chou. I said I wanted to surprise her.” Louis kissed Simone on the cheek.

“Less kissing, more explaining,” said Simone.

His gaze searched the room as he spoke. “The woman who lives here, Zoe Klampert, comes to The Quill from time to time. She asked for a book on tarot once, three months ago.”

Tarot. The Lovers, the tarot card that was sent to the paper from the Dark Artist.

“Given my interest in fortune-telling,” Louis continued, “I remembered her. Whenever she came in, even to browse, we talked for a moment or two. At some point we discovered we were nearly neighbors, and once I even delivered a few science books to her—that’s where I got a glimpse of the jars.”

Nathalie approached the nearest shelf. She peered at a jar with brown liquid and read the label out loud. “Rat placenta plus iron.”

Simone came up beside her for a closer look. “Mine plus ink,” she said, picking up a nearby jar with blackish liquid.

“Blood mixtures? Experiments?” Nathalie shook her head in disbelief. “And yet no equipment for measuring, no droppers, no chemicals. Only glass bottles.”

Simone dropped the jar and swiped to catch it but missed. It hit the floor and shattered. The surrounding pool of blackness spread as if escaping the pile of shattered glass.

“Oh mon Dieu!” Simone’s pallor turned to milk. “Now what?”

“We clean it up,” said Louis, producing a linen handkerchief embroidered with his initials. “And search for evidence. There’s got to be something here.”

“I still don’t understand the leap,” said Nathalie. “You couldn’t have known what was in the jars at the time.”

Louis finished wiping up the mess, making a little bloodstained and shard-filled bundle. “No, but it was a memorable detail, to say the least.” He stood up. “She said they were tinctures and that she used to work in an apothecary. I wasn’t here very long and, taking her word for it, didn’t think anything of it. Until I saw the Dark Artist in the morgue.”

Simone, who was now inspecting jars on another shelf, turned to him. “You recognized him?”

“At the time, no, not exactly.” He took measured steps around the room, inspecting every horizontal surface and everything except the jars. “However, he was very familiar. For days I couldn’t figure out why. I thought I’d run into him at the club or the book shop. Then I read the account in the newspaper the other day and remembered. I’d seen his picture recently.”

“When you came here,” Nathalie ventured.

Louis nodded. “Indeed. Madame Klampert asked me to put the books on this table,” he said, pointing to a well-crafted wooden table. “Except last time, there was a framed photograph of the two of them. Right here. They were standing before the Medici Fountain in Luxembourg Garden—we even exchanged a few sentences about it.”

The marble and bronze statue of Acis and Galatea, lovers surprised by Polyphemus the giant. Again, lovers. A favorite theme of theirs, it seemed.