“Pneumonyssus caninum. This one is larger and has a more yellowish color. It may be an aberration.”
“What is Pneumonyssus caninum?” I asked, hoping it was not too unintelligent a question.
“A mite that normally thrives in the nasal cavity of dogs.”
“Dogs?”
“Yes, it is relatively common. It is easily transferred from dog to dog, possibly because its presence causes an irritation that results in violent bouts of sneezing and at times a bit of bleeding. It affects the sense of smell, so gundogs and bloodhounds can be rendered completely useless from it, but it is seldom deadly on its own.”
“Do you ever see it in people?” my father asked, and leaned forward with an expression that was not entirely unlike a bloodhound’s when it has caught a scent.
“I do not know of any examples, but with your permission I would like to describe the specimen in The Journal of Parasitology. I should be able to get it into the April issue.”
“As long as you don’t give Cecile Montaine’s name, I see no problem,” said my father.
“Of course. Will you do me the great honor of coauthoring it? The discovery is, after all, yours.”
The pride this request elicited might not have been evident to the professor, but when one knew my father as well as I did, it was obvious.
“Thank you,” said my father. “How are you planning to introduce the article?”
It was midnight before the professor left us to drive to the guest house where he staying. The petits fours were followed by onion soup brought from Chez Louis; Madame Vogler was up in arms at having to serve a simple soup to a professor—“from Heidelberg!”—but I think the two men barely noticed what they ate.
I sat in the armchair that was usually occupied by the Commissioner and listened while they spoke. But it was not long before the professor suddenly shot me a question.
“Mademoiselle Karno, do you recall the measurements of the mite’s claws?”
“The shortest are around one-hundredth of a millimeter, the longest approximately two-hundredths.”
“Splendid. That is yet another trait that distinguishes it from both Pneumonyssus caninum and Ornithonyssus sylvarum,” the professor said, and continued the discussion as if nothing had happened.
But something had happened. Because in all the time that I had assisted my father, in all the time that I had registered, noted, sketched, and calculated for him, no one had ever before asked me instead of him. Not even if the details were ones I had immediately at my fingertips, so that he sometimes had to pass a question on to me with: “What was that again, Madeleine?”
Before the night was over, the “honored doctor” and “honored professor” had become Albert and August, and the professor had even accidentally called me Madeleine in the midst of a lively discussion, even though he quickly corrected himself.
“If this really is a different species, a human nose parasite, and not just an aberration,” said the professor excitedly, “then we can call it Pneumonyssus karnodreyfussia!”
They toasted the idea with eyes shining with port and brotherhood. “Pneumonyssus karnodreyfussia!”
“You too, Madeleine,” said the professor. “Where is your glass . . . mademoiselle.”
It was in every way a successful and celebratory evening. At that moment we didn’t know, of course, that the mites we were so happily toasting would be the cause of much more human suffering, fear, and death.
“There is a Madame Mercier here who would like to speak with the Commissioner,” said Elise.
It was Sunday, and there was a heavy but comfortable mood in the salon on Carmelite Street. Outside it was raining, and we had lit the fire more to keep the damp at bay than because of the temperature. On the tea table was a tray of chocolate éclairs that the Commissioner had brought because they had been my favorite treat as a child. I did not have the heart to tell him that I now found them too sweet.
“Show her in,” I said to Elise. “I hope that you asked her into the hallway so she isn’t standing in the rain?”
A few moments later our guest stepped into the room. The Commissioner shot out of his chair with unwonted haste, and if my father was a bit slower, it was solely the fault of his cane.
“Madame,” said the Commissioner. “How may I help you?”
I myself had trouble wrenching my gaze from her and felt a jab of unfamiliar feminine envy. The first impression was of overwhelming beauty. Shiny chestnut brown curls framed fine regular features, melting nut brown eyes, and a mouth that made even a prosaic and female soul like mine think of dewy rose petals and the dulcet tones of angels. Add to that a figure that actually looked like the illustrations in the fashion magazines.
Only at second glance did I notice how much of that impression of beauty was created with the aid of careful makeup, attention to her clothing, and an unusually effective corset.
“Are you the Commissioner?” she asked.
“At your service, madame,” said the Commissioner, only a tad out of breath.
“They say that you see all the dead in Varbourg,” she said with a voice that vibrated with restrained emotion. “Is it true?”
“At least all the dead that the authorities know about,” he said.
She nodded. “My name is Marie Mercier. If I describe my son Louis to you, would you tell me if you have seen him?”
“Do you fear that he is dead, then?” asked the Commissioner.
“He has been gone for a week,” she said, and although she still held precisely the posture that flattered her figure best, one could suddenly sense how fragile she was and how easily she could collapse. Nor was she as young as I had first thought. At least thirty, and showing the little telltale signs of it if one looked more closely.
“A week?” said the Commissioner. “So since last Sunday?”
“Yes. I did not realize it until today. He lives with my mother, you see, and I am seldom able to visit him more than once a week. Today he didn’t come to meet me at the streetcar as he usually does, and when I got home, his grandmother told me that he was gone and had not been home for seven days. She thinks he has run away, but he is only nine years old, m’sieur, at that age one does not run away . . . And he always comes to pick me up, always.”
“Did you go to the police?”
“Yes, but it was as if they were not listening. They probably think he has run away, too. He is about this tall”—she held a hand out in front of her at the level of the tight corset waist—“and dark haired like me, but with blue eyes. He was wearing his brown serge jacket, short pants, and a leather cap that our milkman gave him. It is a little too big but he loves it. He . . . he has a scar on his right knee, but otherwise . . . otherwise he is just a little boy of nine. M’sieur, have you seen him?”
The Commissioner held out a hand, whether it was to calm her or to halt her outpouring was hard to determine.
“Madame, I don’t know of any dead boys of that age in Varbourg this week.”
“Oh . . .” She swayed once, from one side to the other, then her legs seemed to collapse beneath her, and she sank into a helpless and inelegant pile on the floor. It happened so abruptly that neither the Commissioner nor I had the chance to catch her.
“I am sorry,” she whispered. “I am sorry.”
We helped her to her feet, and my father relinquished the chaise longue so that she might lie there and recover.
“With your permission,” I said. “It would help if I loosened your corset a bit.”
“The dress would not fit,” she gasped. “It has an eighteen-inch waist. No, this is fine. I am feeling better now. At least Louis is not dead. At least not that.”
She was not vain, I suddenly understood. All the trouble she had taken with her appearance, including the inhuman discipline it required to have an eighteen-inch waist at her age, and after having given birth to child, too . . . all of that was not due to any excessive devotion to fashion but was rather an attempt to guard the only
capital she had. Her beauty was her profession.
He is just a little boy of nine. Desperation aged her face, and I couldn’t feel envy or outrage at her choice of survival strategy, only compassion for the loss she had endured.
I caught the Commissioner’s gaze and knew that he had seen the holes in her logic, as I had. Marie Mercier’s little Louis might not be among the dead that had been found and reported to the Commissioner’s office this week. But unfortunately that did not necessarily mean that he should still be counted among the living.
“I must get back to the police station,” she said, and moved to rise. “As he is not dead. They must find him for me.”
But the Commissioner stopped her. “Why not rest a little longer, madame, and let me arrange for the police to come to you this time?”
Police Inspector Clarence Baptiste Marot was not pleased to have his Sunday spoiled because of a runaway street urchin. He listened with ill-concealed impatience while Marie Mercier yet again described her nine-year-old son. Once that was accomplished, the Commissioner managed to convince Madame Mercier to go home to her mother’s to await news. He accompanied her downstairs and hailed a hansom cab, so she would not need to wait in the rain.
When he came back upstairs, Marot’s irritation had erupted. He directed a wave of indignant reproach at the Commissioner. Phrases such as “inexcusable interference” and “gross waste of police resources” flew through the air, accompanied by badly veiled insinuations as to the reason for the Commissioner’s personal involvement.
“That woman is no better than a simple street whore,” he hissed with such force that small pearls of spit lodged in the fringes of his bushy mustache, “and we will no doubt catch her delinquent offspring with his hand in some good citizen’s pocket one day, and that will be that. Case solved. I certainly hope she has rewarded you well for your efforts, because you will not be reaping any benefits for it elsewhere!”
I have never seen an aggressive walrus butt its head against a boulder, but I believe I have a fair idea of what it would look like. The two men were of a similar age, height, and weight, but in temperament they could not have been more different. The Commissioner simply stood there waiting with a gravitas all his own, and this more than anything else finally robbed the inspector of the last of his composure.
“Have you nothing to say, man?” he exclaimed.
“Only if you are done,” said the Commissioner.
“What?”
“I just want to draw your attention to the date of the young man’s disappearance.”
“He is not a young man, he’s a nine-year-old street urchin.”
“Who disappeared last Sunday and has not been seen since.”
“And?”
“I permitted myself an interview with Madame Brunot.”
“Madame who?”
“Father Abigore’s housekeeper. The poor woman is still shocked by her employer’s death and is desperately anxious about her future. Once the new priest is installed, she risks losing both her position and her place of residence. By no means easy for a woman past sixty.”
“What has that got to do with the case?”
“Nothing. I am merely presenting it as an excuse for the fact that her first testimony regarding the night the priest died was not as complete as one might have wished.”
It took Inspector Marot a few seconds to grasp that what the Commissioner was handing him was not really an excuse for Madame Brunot but rather for the inadequacy of that first interview. But he had not yet grasped the rest of the implications.
“I still fail to see . . .”
“Madame Brunot now describes the boy who came with the message as eight or nine years old, but she could barely see his face because his cap covered his eyes. Louis Mercier, who disappeared the same night as the priest was murdered, was most likely wearing a milkman’s cap that was much too big for him.”
Marot fell silent for a while. “We had better find him,” he finally said.
“Yes,” said the Commissioner. “I think so, too.”
Four days later, two events occurred in Varbourg that appeared to have no connection but nonetheless turned out to be of significance for the investigation of our two deaths. A sudden warm front swept over the town and made flowers and trees explode with growth, and Cecile Montaine’s father attempted suicide.
My father had just begun to move around a bit with the help of a crutch. Because of his broken arm he could use only one, which we constantly had to pad with fresh rags so that it would not rub his armpit raw. He grew sweaty and disgruntled from having to fight like this for minimal mobility, but at least he was now capable of descending to our modest bathroom and, of much greater importance to him, to his laboratory.
He was in the middle of taking as much of a bath as the plaster cast would allow when there was a knock on our door. Adrian Montaine Junior suddenly appeared in the hallway, unannounced and clearly shaken. He would not reveal the nature of his errand until “the Doctor himself” was present. At first he would have nothing to eat or drink, but in the end he accepted a glass of cognac, which he swallowed in one gulp without even tasting it. He began to cough and then had to drink a glass of water.
“I am sorry,” he said. “It has been an utterly horrible day.” He was in his early twenties, a slender and extravagantly clad young man with a smooth-shaven chin and a narrow little mustache that looked as if a child penciled it on his upper lip. The closest Varbourg came to a dandy, I presumed. I think that he typically had an open and happy nature, but the burden that weighed on him now made him restless and distracted, one foot tapping ceaselessly on our faded Boukhara carpet, and several of his sentences hung incomplete in the air between us.
The door to the rooftop garden was open, and the scent of pansies and daffodils wafted in from outside.
“Would you like me to show you the garden?” I asked to lighten the mood. “It is quite pleasant right now.”
“Yes, please,” he said, and got up at once, more likely because he found it hard to sit still than because of a true interest in horticulture. But he was nonetheless surprised when we stepped out into our little oasis.
“What an enchanting place,” he said. “Is this your work?”
“No,” I said. “My mother created this garden. I just take care of it.”
“Your mother was an artist in her medium,” he said.
We walked in silence among the flowerbeds, and he especially admired the corner display of ferns and climbing ivy, currently providing a dark, sylvan background for the last spring snowflakes. My mother had not attempted to cultivate exotic orchids or palm trees from more southern climes. Instead, she had grasped the essence of our own rich nature here in the province of Varonne and had re-created it en miniature in the few square meters she possessed. The surrounding walls now suggested a mountain backdrop, and the very modest goldfish pond was somehow transformed into a shaded woodland lake.
“I am so sorry about your sister,” I said at last.
He nodded, but I could see that he had received such condolences so many times that the words had lost their meaning.
“Thank you,” he said politely.
“Please tell me if you do not wish to discuss it,” I said carefully. “But have you learned more about what happened? Has the young man reappeared?”
“No,” he said.
“I am sorry if I am prying.”
He shook his head. “Do you know what? People are so careful not to impose, not to speak of her, not to ask. It is almost as if she is more than just dead, she has been . . . erased. Removed from the family portrait. No longer a part of us. And I find that hard to bear. Yes, it hurts to remember and to speak of her. But if we don’t . . . then we are killing her all over again. Do you understand?”
I spontaneously placed a hand on his arm. “Yes, I do.”
“Cecile was bursting with life—happy and warm and outgoing, and no paragon of virtue. No . . . no demimondaine, you understand? Jus
t in love with life.”
I nodded.
“In the summer she freckled because she refused to wear a hat. Mama could scold her as much as she pleased. It only worked until we could not be seen from the house, then the bonnet came off, and Cici would run and climb trees and catch frogs in the pond with me and François. She ran away from the first convent school she was sent to because she could not stand the discipline, especially being cooped up inside all day. We tried the Bernardine sisters because they are less strict and permit more outdoor activities, and that worked much better.” He looked at me imploringly, repeating his plea for understanding.
“Do you understand what I am saying? She was alive. She hated to be closed in, could not stand not being able to move. But now . . . her body lies in a box in the ground. And her spirit . . . her memory . . . Papa would prefer to make her into a pure and pale saint who must not be soiled by coarse suggestions that she might have been something other than the most innocent and untouched lily of the convent garden. She was always Papa’s little girl, but it is as if he has completely forgotten that what he loved most about her was her passion for life and her inability to be tamed. The gossip—and, yes, we hear that, too, in roundabout ways and in what people are not saying—the gossip paints her as a slut whose sins were justly punished. And they are all merely boxes, do you see what I mean? Whether the label on the box says slut or saint doesn’t really matter. Cici would hate either just as much as she would hate the awful black coffin they buried her in.”
“You loved her very much. That makes it hard now, but . . .”
“I miss her,” he said, and stood for a moment breathing through his open mouth, as if it was difficult for him. “Damn Emile Oblonski and everything he did to her. If I knew where he was, I would kill him.”
“So you are convinced that he is responsible for her death?”
“If he had not brought her along . . . If he had not convinced her . . .” He shook his head several times. “You are right, she might have fallen ill anyway. But at least the illness would have come upon her at the school, where the good sisters would have cared for her, and where a doctor might have been called in time. So, yes, Oblonski has good reason to hide. And I am not going to stop looking.”