He had expected monsters, but they must have been hiding or fled the scene. Here and there, small footprints and handprints appeared in the dust, but these he guessed were Egon’s. The long string hanging from the ceiling brushed against him like a spider’s silk, and when he tugged on it, the light came on and revealed no puppets, no giraffe with a broken neck, no toys at all.
“There’s nothing up here,” Theo hollered down. “Just a bunch of boxes and some old books.”
“Are you sure? There should be an army of satanic dolls. Heads that can talk. Dummies that can reach out and grab you.”
“You want to come up and check for yourself? All this way for nothing.”
“I swear they were there. Someone must have come got them. Or maybe they ran away. Check in the boxes at least.”
The first carton he opened held scraps of cloth, tiny dresses and miniature coats, a bag of funny small hats, and at the bottom an armory of wooden swords, popguns, and slapsticks. When he cracked the seal on the second box and folded back the lid, he gasped at what was inside—dozens of tiny hands with carved and articulated fingers and thumbs. Another box was filled with eyes, glass and marble and painted ping-pong balls, all staring back at him, the irises gleaming in the light of the bare bulb. A box of wigs, a box of tiny circus props, a wooden hoop, a lion tamer’s whip, a juggler’s balls and clubs and rings.
“Just bits and bobs packed away,” he said. “A bunch of body parts, but no bodies.”
“I tell you they were up there. You don’t see them? A talking head or two?”
Theo took out his smartphone and snapped some pictures of the contents of the attic. He had wanted to believe in Egon’s story and was disappointed in equal measure for himself and for his friend, but it seemed little more than a nightmare, a delirium brought about by too much drink or too little company. “The assembly has disassembled. They were sad to see you go. I’m coming down.”
On his way to the hatch, he tripped when his foot struck an object on the floor and kicked it across the room, two pieces parting and skittering in different directions. Theo crawled on his hands and knees to fetch them. Two pale blue shoes, women’s heels, one whole and one broken. Kay had worn such a pair. He cupped them in his hands the way he had once held her feet.
16
A half-eaten baguette stuffed with jambon and mozzarella sat on Foucault’s desk. He set the shoes next to his sandwich and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. Theo and Egon eased into the chairs facing him, anxious to begin, but they were all waiting for Thompson to arrive. The shoe with the broken heel leaned against the upright shoe. In the stark light of the police office, Theo was more convinced that the pair had belonged to Kay. The policeman regarded them indifferently, as if they were ordinary shoes and not a clue to her disappearance. He seemed more interested in his interrupted lunch.
“You must forgive my colleague,” Thompson said as he entered the squad room. “If he doesn’t get fed by a certain hour, he gets crabby and fickle.” He came around the desk to shake hands with his visitors. “What’s this I hear about shoes?”
They told him three versions of the story. In the first, innocently enough, they had returned to the toy store, remembering how Kay had loved it so, and seeing it abandoned, they tried the door and rummaged around inside, and came across the discarded pair of shoes. “I am almost certain,” Theo told the detectives, “that these are the ones she was wearing the night she vanished. She liked to wear them with her yellow sundress.”
“But why would your wife have gone into the toy shop after midnight?” Foucault asked.
“It was on the route between the cirque and our flat. I don’t know, perhaps someone was after her and she needed a place to hide. Perhaps that’s why she broke a heel, she was running away from him.”
“A very distinctive color,” Thompson said, picking up the broken-heeled shoe. “If these are hers … The right size, I assume?”
“I don’t know what size she wore—we had only been married a short time, so it is hard to say.”
Foucault finished chewing another bite from his sandwich. “But you don’t know for certain. Could be a random pair of lost shoes.”
The second version peeled back another layer to the story. Egon began with a confession—that he had gone back alone and broken into the Quatre Mains well after Theo had left town. That he had found the matchbook with the cryptic SOS. Theo dug the matchbook from his wallet and handed it to Thompson.
“‘Help,’” the detective read aloud. “‘Get me out of here.’ Is this your wife’s handwriting, Mr. Harper?”
“Hard to say. Normally, she didn’t print like that; in fact, I don’t think I ever saw her printing.”
Thompson handed the matchbook to Foucault, who inspected both sides with mild curiosity. “Have you ever been to this Les Déesses in Montreal? Some sort of gentlemen’s club, monsieur?”
“Of course that’s her handwriting,” Egon said. “Just as those are her shoes. I’m telling you, she was at the Quatre Mains.”
The sergeant flipped the matchbook next to the shoes. “It could be a clue. Or it could be a joke. A random bit of trash in an abandoned store. Perhaps this is a note from a stripper to one of her customers? Les liaisons dangereuses.”
Thompson asserted his authority. “We will look into it, obviously. But unless you could be sure there is a connection to your wife—”
“I tell you she was there,” Egon insisted. “The place is haunted. I heard them. I seen them.”
“Seen whom?” Foucault asked.
“The puppets. The ones who took her.”
“He doesn’t mean it,” Theo said. “Just his imagination running away.”
The third version was the true story. Egon told them the whole thing from the beginning. How he had found himself homeless and nipped into the shop for a few nights out of the cold. How he had discovered the broken toys and puppets in the attic. How they had seemed to be alive and threatening, and how he went to New York to fetch Theo to see for himself. “As sure as I’m sitting here, those things were alive. And they have something to do with the disappearance of Kay Harper. There was a book of scripts in the attic, with all their weird plays and so on.”
Egon dug out the notebook and opened it to the final page, handing it to Thompson. “Her initials written in the back, plain as day. KH. Find the puppets, you find the girl.”
Straining to catch every word, Thompson had been listening intently, his elbows on the desk. Now, he leaned back in his chair and switched his attention to Theo, his face fallen with sympathy. “Puppets?”
“Look, I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t on some level believe that there’s a connection at play. It was her favorite spot in all Québec. Maybe she did venture inside and lost her shoes. Maybe the owners of this Quatre Mains have something to do with it, or could provide some explanation about the notebook, the matchbook, the shoes. Lord knows, it is more than you have been able to find in all this time.”
In a loud clear voice, Foucault chided him. “We’ve turned the Old City upside down. We have spent more time on this case than many, monsieur. It’s not that we have given up, but puppets—”
“You’ll forgive my sergeant,” Thompson said. “Of course we will look into the matter. I’m sure we can find something about the proprietors of the Quatre Mains. Track them down, eh, Foucault? Though I must say, the fact that Monsieur Picard was camping out illegally in the building does not help matters.”
“Pardon me,” Foucault said. “I cannot believe we are talking about these dolls, but I do not want to insinuate anything at all.”
As he heard their patronizing apologies, Theo realized just how far gone he was. Of course, they were humoring him, and he would have felt the same in their place. Puppets. To say it aloud made him realize just how preposterous Egon’s theory had been. And just how crazy he was to believe in such fairy tales.
“We will contact you should anything come of our investigation,” Thompson sa
id. “In the meantime, let me ask you to leave police work to the police. Under no circumstances are you to go back to the Quatre Mains. Or any other abandoned buildings. Could be dangerous.”
Out on the sidewalk in front of the police station, Egon hunched against the wind and lit a smoke. They stood there not speaking to each other, each wondering how such a solid story had produced such disappointing results. A few stray snow flurries danced in the air, and when Thompson came charging through the door, he was bundled for the cold. He grinned when he saw them and hurried over.
“I was hoping to catch you before you left,” he said. “I wanted a word in private. My sergeant is something of a natural skeptic.”
With a flick of his wrist, Egon tossed the cigar into the street. “So you believe us?”
“Let’s take a ride,” Thompson said. They drove through the winding streets of the Old City, quieter in late October, free of the summer tourists. Halloween decorations hung from the lampposts, ghosts and witches in colonial garb crowded into the public squares, jack-o’-lanterns dotted the second-story balconies where once had hung baskets of flowers, and in the shop windows, silhouettes of bats and black cats, a few posters advertising special street performances of the Fantômes. He parked the car on the corner nearest to the Quatre Mains, and they walked to the shop. The glass rattled when he tried to open the front door.
“Locked tight as a nun’s chastity belt,” Egon said. “Enter from the rear, like I told you.”
Theo looked right and left down the empty street. “Shouldn’t we seal off the crime scene? Put up some of that police tape?”
“So far the only crime is breaking and entering. And I don’t suppose you’ll want me to arrest you for that.”
Single file, they slipped down the alley and found the back entrance. With a twist of the knob, the door opened. Stale air pressed down upon them, and the abandoned room looked shabby and desolate in the pale afternoon light.
“This was the workshop,” Thompson said, “where they made the dolls and puppets. Where you brought your broken treasures to be fixed.”
“You know this place?” Theo asked.
“From when I was a boy. In its heyday, the Quatre Mains was known far and wide, best toys in Québec.” He led them through the beaded curtain into the main room and paused, conjuring memories. “Every child loved the Quatre Mains. You could find things here that were nowhere else. My maman bought me a set of the Irish Guards here, tin soldiers, I see them clearly as yesterday. Made in England. And my little brother would beg my father on a Saturday morning to come to town for the puppet theater they ran in the tourist season. Punch and Judy most of the time, but every once in a while, something special. Magical.” In the dust on the countertop, he wrote the name Nico with one finger.
“They called the puppeteer Quatre Mains because his performances were impossible, as though he had four hands to keep so much in motion. Him and his wife, that’s it. Just the two of them hidden from view, and there could be six or eight marionettes on stage at once. I was a devotee, but Nico adored the puppets.”
He found a twisted set of sticks and wires and worked an invisible doll. “Halloween was his favorite. This time of year, the puppeteers would do a show filled with ghosts and goblins which would have made you believe. Afterward, late at night lying in bed, Nico would talk about the puppet show and swear to me which ones were just toys and which ones were real. Alive.” He walked over to the staircase and stopped on the first step. “Silly boy.”
The upper rooms appeared less menacing with Thompson’s escort. With no fanfare, he climbed the chair and lifted himself into the attic. Theo followed, leaving Egon in the bedroom below.
“You found the shoes up here? Funny place to leave shoes.”
“Nearly broke my neck tripping over them.”
Leaning over the edge, Thompson asked Egon where he had found the matchbook.
“In a pile of dust in the workshop. But you must believe me, that place up there was filled with mad puppets and broken toys come to life.”
“They seem to have flown the coop.” Thompson stood up and gave a desultory look at the open boxes. “I will have Foucault make a full inventory. You never know, something may have turned up. Tell me, Mr. Harper, did you ever finish translating that book of yours? Who was that fella with the strange name?”
“Muybridge? No, I have a little ways to go.”
“You must persevere, Mr. Harper, and not give up.” He lowered himself from the attic and held the chair for Theo to follow. Clapping the dust from his suit, Thompson cast a quick glance around the room. “This must have been where the puppeteers lived. My brother would have loved to have seen it.”
Egon stepped between the two other men. “The notebook was up there as well. With all their plays and scripts. The one with the initials KH in the back.”
“We’ll look into that as well, monsieur. Could be something, but we often make clues out of coincidences.”
They retreated down the stairs, following the trail to the back room. At the doorway, Theo grabbed him by the arm. “Tell me, Inspector Thompson, what happened to your brother who loved the puppets?”
“Nico? Funny, he’s why I became a policeman. He’s why your wife’s disappearance bedevils me. My brother vanished when he was eight years old. Nicholas.”
“Did you ever find him?” Theo asked.
“No,” the detective said. He put a steadying hand on Theo’s shoulder. “Which is not to say that we won’t find Kay.”
* * *
Every puppet needed a person to bring the body to life. A hand would no longer do. Not even the Quatre Mains at the sticks would work, for none of them could be called a marionette. They were giants now. The newness of their size astonished them, as though the whole world had been transformed. What was once large was now small, and what had been small was of little accord.
The farm girl lifted Kay from her perch in the barn to carry her to the school bus waiting outside. She swayed in the girl’s arms, unsteady as a mast in a storm. With a grunt, the girl flipped her to a horizontal position and toted her on board, laying her next to the other puppets in the back of the bus. Most of the seats had been removed and a row of berths had been installed on each side, and the giant puppets rested in the makeshift bunk beds. Kay flinched when the Good Fairy was laid atop her, though she was light as a bird’s nest. The people loaded the Queen from the back emergency exit. Her body took up nearly a third of the length of the bus.
Through the Vermont countryside they rambled, along the artery that twisted its way south between the Green Mountains. Kay could just see enough through the window to feel at home, the landscape reminding her of the place where she first fell in love with the world. The trees had dropped their leaves, save a few papery brown stragglers, but the sun shone gloriously, and the crisp air flowed in from open windows. A minivan followed the bus, and behind that, a pickup truck with Nix and Noë resting in the bed. The convoy passed cows lunching in the fields and roadside apple pickers, over hill and dale, and came at last to a crossroads town all done up for Halloween. They parked by a plain white Congregational church with a cemetery adjacent, the rows of gravestones casting long shadows in the slant light. Across the road stood a ruined mansion, weatherworn and gray, and as she was unloaded from the bus, Kay could not help but think of death and decay, all wrapped in the peacefulness of an ordinary day in late October.
He must be wondering where I am.
Some students from the college near town had been recruited to assist in the pageant, girls in dreadlocks, sandals, and skirts. A barefoot boy, a pair of young apostles in matching beards. Gathered around in a half circle, they listened to a quick tutorial from the Quatre Mains and memorized their parts, how to move, where to march. They selected their favorites, fumbling with the puppets as they sought the right balance, testing how to make them move, clapping their great hands together with a swing of the rods. At the head of the line, Deux Mains took on the part of roly-po
ly Mr. Firkin. The Quatre Mains had the Devil, the college girls the Three Sisters, a boy for Nix, a girl for Noë. The Irishman was beneath the Old Hag, the farm girl was Kay, and the second beard was the Good Fairy. On either side Stern and Finch lifted the colossus of the Queen, and on they marched, at Firkin’s whistle, down an easy hill and onto the Main Street proper.
Dressed in their Halloween costumes, schoolchildren from across the county had been bused in for the occasion. They sat on the curbs, wide-eyed. Behind them on the sidewalks their parents, some with babes in arms, and their teachers stood for the procession, mingling with the shopkeepers and the townsfolk gathered for the annual festivities. From the little witches and ghosts, skeletons and monsters rose a bright cheer as the puppets swung into view, and the marching band from the high school broke into “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” heavy on the brass and percussion. Trimmed in black and orange, the whole town pulsed with joy and surprise. Each dog they passed erupted into barks or whimpers, as if they could tell what was behind the still and placid faces. On the corner where the two major roads intersected, a camera crew from WCAX in Burlington jumped into action, and as Kay moved closer, she could hear a blond woman in a jack-o’-lantern sweater report on the proceedings, gushing at the flair of the Good Fairy, her voice rising an octave at the majesty of the Queen.
They came to the end of the parade at the town parking lot, the children in full pursuit. Arms and shoulders aching from the trek, the college kids shed their puppets, but the puppeteers stayed in character, the Devil babbling strange spells, Mr. Firkin twirling like a top, and the Old Hag reaching out with spindly arms to wrap each munchkin in a terrible embrace. Hoofing it with her cameraman, the reporter stopped to interview the Queen.
“Last show of the season,” the Irishman told her, as he stepped out from beneath the puppet. “We’ll start again in April. Can’t have these paper folks out in the winter elements.”
Squeals of laughter rang out, and toddlers wandered in crazy circles. Kay sidled over to a clutch of third graders, the girls and boys wary at first, but with the adults’ urging, one dared to approach and touch the hem of her paper skirt. The rest of the children, seeing no danger, swarmed over, posing for pictures holding the puppet’s oversized hand. One bespectacled girl smiled at her through a mouth of teeth and gaps. “Is she real?” she asked. Kay bent closer to better hear her. “Are you alive?” The farm girl shook Kay’s head from side to side and slunk off to another gaggle of children. The thrill of performing and the chaos of strangers filled her with a long-forgotten delight. She felt almost human again.