Finally, barefoot and shivering, Monsieur Aulard dragged himself out of his warm bed. His head felt like a rotten apple. His apartment looked as bad as he felt. The source of the noise was coming from the front door. He fumbled with the lock until he finally managed to open it. Two Yanns and two Têtus floated before him. They were swaying back and forth, overlapping each other.
Something was missing from this unsettling picture. There should be a third person.
“Where’s Topolain?”
Têtu walked into the apartment, followed by Yann. Even half awake and with a thumping headache, Monsieur Aulard could see that the dwarf was in a bad way.
“My dear friend, are you unwell?” He looked back at the door, expecting to see Topolain come panting up the stairs behind.
“Topolain’s dead,” said Têtu with a sob.
“Dead!” repeated Monsieur Aulard. “Dead? Not Topolain! He was larger than life. How can he be dead?”
“A bullet,” said Têtu, his face collapsing as tears appeared in his watery red eyes. “He was shot like a dog.”
“No, no, no! Mort bleu! Yann, speak to me, tell me this is a nightmare!” He grabbed hold of the boy’s flimsy coat so that the sleeve came away from the armhole with an unforgiving ripping sound.
“Count Kalliovski shot him,” said Yann.
“But why would Count Kalliovski kill Topolain?” His teeth were beginning to chatter. He pulled his housecoat tight around him and abstractedly went over to the fireplace, throwing a few wet coals onto the burning cinders. It had the immediate effect of puffing clouds of smoke back into the chamber and he started to cough as Yann opened the window.
The bitter coldness of the air cleared the smoke and Monsieur Aulard’s head too, long enough at least for him to realize that he was in deep trouble. He sat down heavily on an armchair whose horsehair insides were spilling out. It creaked alarmingly under the weight of his hangover.
“The trick must have gone wrong. It must have been an accident.”
“It was no accident,” said Têtu. “The count knew exactly what he was doing. He tampered with the pistol.”
“But why would Count Kalliovski, who is famous and respected, murder a mere magician?”
It was the question Yann had been asking himself all the way back to Paris, a question Têtu up to now had refused to answer.
"Because,” said Têtu wearily, “Topolain recognized Kalliovski, and instead of keeping quiet he let his tongue get the better of him. Topolain knew him from a long time ago, when he was called by another name.” He spoke so quietly that Monsieur Aulard was not sure that he had heard him correctly.
Yann could see that if Kalliovski was a fraud he would want no one knowing it. Still, Têtu’s explanation raised more questions than it answered. He put a half-frozen pan of wine on the fire to boil, searched through the mess to find some glasses, and cleared the table as Têtu took one of the loaves from out of his jacket, where it sat before them like a golden brown sun.
At the sight of the loaf, Monsieur Aulard’s attention wavered from his immediate grief. “Where did you get that?” he asked.
“From the Marquis de Villeduval’s kitchen.” Têtu broke off a piece and handed it to him.
The hot wine and bread worked their magic on Monsieur Aulard. With a huge sigh he went to get dressed, reappearing with his wig placed lopsidedly on his head, his waistcoat buttons done up wrong, and his shirt hanging out.
“I have a full house, all tickets sold and no performer!”
“You’ll have to find someone else,” said Têtu.
“Mort bleu,” said Monsieur Aulard. “I tell you, if I weren’t so kindhearted, I would have you two thrown onto the streets for your failure to protect Topolain. Why, he was one of the greatest magicians France has ever seen!” He wiped his eyes and, putting on his heavy outer coat and scarf, opened the front door, letting in a blast of icy wind from the stone stairwell. “You can’t stay here, you know.”
"Don’t worry, we’ll soon be gone,” saidTêtu. “Count Kalliovski is after us too. We had trouble getting out of the château alive.”
“Mort bleu! You know who he is too, don’t you?”
“Yes, for my sins, I do.”
“Who is he, then?”
“That,” said Têtu, closing his eyes, “would not be worth my life to tell you.”
Monsieur Aulard arrived at the theater and started to make inquiries to see who could fill Topolain’s place for the evening performance. He sat at his desk and opened the bottom drawer, where he found what he was looking for, a none-too-clean glass and a bottle of wine. He pulled out the cork and poured himself a drink. It tasted good. He closed his eyes, taking another sip.
He opened his eyes with a start. There, sitting in the chair before him, was someone he had never seen before, but who he knew at once was Count Kalliovski. It was as if the devil himself had appeared from nowhere.
The shock made him choke on his wine, spraying it over his desk. Desperately he tried to recover himself.
"Mort bleu, you gave me the fright of my life,” he gasped. Pulling out an overused handkerchief, he wiped his mouth and then the desk. “I didn’t hear you, monsieur!”
“Where are they?” demanded the count.
“Where are who?” said Monsieur Aulard, hurriedly refilling his glass.
The count’s hand in its black leather glove moved effortlessly toward the stem. With his fingers spread, he pinned the glass firmly to the table. “You know very well who I am after. The boy and the dwarf.”
“I know no such thing,” said Monsieur Aulard, trying to summon up much-needed indignation. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me where Topolain is.”
“Topolain is dead. I’ll wager you’ve been told as much by the dwarf. It was I who pulled the trigger. A most unfortunate accident,” said the count with emphasis.
Sweat was beginning to form on Monsieur Aulard’s forehead. The room felt uncomfortably hot.
Kalliovski leaned forward and stared menacingly at him. “I need information.”
Monsieur Aulard felt an icy trickle of sweat creep down his back.
“You will tell me where they are hiding. I know you know where they are,” said the count, standing up.
“I assure you I do not. I haven’t seen them,” said Monsieur Aulard. Each word he spoke sounded shakier than the last.
“You have until the curtain goes up at seven to tell me,” said the count. “If you fail”—here he gave a mean, thin-lipped smile—“if you fail, I hope for your sake that you have made peace with your Maker.”
The door closed behind him as poor Monsieur Aulard waited to make sure that he had gone. Then, grabbing hold of the bottle, he drank what was left.
It was three o’clock and still snowing when Monsieur Aulard trudged up the stone stairs to the front door of his apartment. It swung alarmingly back and forth on its hinges.
“Hello,” called Monsieur Aulard, his heart beating so fast that he thought it might give out altogether. There was no answer.
“You been popular,” said his neighbor, a lady with a face like a ferret, sticking her head out of her front door. “A big man with a cloudy eye came looking for you and your friends.”
“What friends?” said Monsieur Aulard.
“The boy and that there dwarf. He said he knew them.”
Monsieur Aulard took out his wine-stained handkerchief and wiped the snow away from his face.
“He said he knew where to find you.”
Monsieur Aulard, dry-mouthed and terrified, pushed open the door. The apartment looked worse than it had this morning. His possessions had been thrown across the room, papers scattered, the table knocked over, and glasses smashed. Even his mattress had been pulled from the bed. Iago, his feathers all ruffled, was hiding in a cupboard. He looked wretched. Monsieur Aulard stroked the parrot’s head and put him back on his perch. Then he sat down in his armchair, and, feeling a piece of paper beneath him, pulled it out to see that it was a poster for the
greatest show on earth, with Topolain and the People’s Pierrot, the first walking, talking, all-knowing automaton.
“I am ruined,” wept Monsieur Aulard. “The only time I have a success in my theater, it vanishes in a puff of smoke.”
Finally, exhaustion overcame him and he fell fast asleep. He woke with a start, changed, and made his way miserably back to the theater, terrified of telling the count that this time he truly did not know the whereabouts of the boy and the dwarf.
Monsieur Aulard arrived at the theater just before seven to be told that he had had no visitors and that no one had asked after him. He went up the stairs to his office and opened the door. The room was dark. Why had no one bothered to light the lamp? he thought irritably, fumbling for the tinderbox. He stumbled, steadying himself on his desk. In the dark he could see an unfamiliar shape.
“Who’s there?” he called.
He lit the wick.
Slowly and terribly, the dead body of Topolain was revealed, sitting in his chair. Around his neck was a thin line of dried beads of blood. In his lap was the sawn-off head of the Pierrot, its glass eyes glinting in the lamplight.
Monsieur Aulard’s scream could be heard all the way through the theater and out on the rue du Temple.
chapter nine
Têtu and Yann had left the apartment earlier that morning, not long after Monsieur Aulard, for they knew that was the first place Milkeye would look for them.
The apartment block was never quiet. The lives of its inhabitants seemed to spill out onto the landing rather like the stuffing of Monsieur Aulard’s chair. A terrible fight was taking place between a husband and wife on the floor below, witnessed and commented on by the other tenants. There was a cacophony of sounds: shouting, screaming, babies crying, dogs barking, the background noise of lives lived on the edge of existence. In such chaos Yann and Têtu went down the stairs almost unnoticed.
At the bottom sat a child of about seven, who looked older than his years, thin and half frozen.
“Best you go inside, mon petit.”
The boy stared at the dwarf, terrified. He didn’t know what to make of the strange fellow who conjured up a loaf of bread from out of his coat. He looked at it in disbelief before grabbing it and running up the stairs. Only when safely out of reach did he lean down over the wrought-iron banister and shout, “Thank you, monsieur.”
It had been one of those twilight days when the gloom of night still lingers on. The sky was so heavy with snow that it appeared to have collapsed under its own weight onto the buildings below. It was not a day for having your sleeve come adrift from your coat. Even the church bells had a muffled half-heard sound. No one was out by choice in these icy streets, with the snow piled high against the sides of the buildings, so that the walkways were narrow and treacherous.
The months of December and January had produced a bitter harvest, a crop of starved and frozen corpses, the money it brought in lining the pockets of the coffin-makers.
The lights and smoky warmth of Moet’s Tavern seemed like a slice of heaven in this frozen city. As usual, it was full of hot-headed youths and men arguing over the state of the kingdom. Têtu found a table tucked away in the corner out of sight. Here he ordered the dish of the day for himself and Yann. Only when his fingers finally felt that they belonged to him again did he begin to sew the sleeve back onto the boy’s coat.
Yann felt not only that his coat had come apart but that his world had been torn to pieces. Everything had changed the minute the pistol had gone off, killing Topolain.
What he knew about the past amounted to no more than a few facts, bright beads from an unthreaded necklace, reluctantly given to him by Têtu, who refused to join them together. He had no father that he knew of; his mother had been a dancer in a circus, and had died soon after he was born; Margoza, his surname, was the name of a village of which Têtu had fond memories. His survival had been due to Têtu, and Têtu alone.
What he knew about the dwarf was not much more. He had once been a jester to a king; which king, he wouldn’t say. He had traveled the world with a dancing bear. All that had happened a long time before he had found himself with a baby to care for. Never once had he mentioned Count Kalliovski, or who he might be. So why now had the count tampered with the pistol? What exactly was it that Topolain and Têtu knew?
The more Yann thought about it, the more certain he was that there was one question that, if answered truthfully, might string together all the beads on the necklace.
“Who is Count Kalliovski?”
Têtu shrugged his shoulders.
“One day I will tell you,” he said finally, cutting the thread with his teeth. He shook out the coat and handed it back to Yann.
“I’m old enough to know right away.”
Some secrets are best kept, Têtu thought to himself. “Yannick, you know I love you as if you were my son. Don’t you trust me?”
“I do.”
“Then believe me, I will answer all your questions, but not now. Now is not the time. Now is not the place.”
The food arrived and they set to eating.
Three tables away sat a group of young men, one of whom had a nose that looked as if it had been in an argument with a fist. His skin was pockmarked and he was talking loudly about the rights of citizens. He had no doubt drunk more than a skinful of wine, for he kept standing up and shouting out: “Citizens, the wind is changing! The old regime will be blown away. All is dust, all is dust!”
His friends quickly pulled him back down onto his seat.
“I have the right to say what I damn well please,” he shouted, glaring at another man sitting alone at a table. “Don’t you agree, citizen?”
Yann had been watching all this intently and did not at first notice Têtu wrapping his scarf about him and putting on his hat.
“Where are you going?”
“I have someone to see. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You are to wait here for me. If Milkeye comes looking for us, make yourself scarce.”
Têtu set off purposefully, walking away from the Marais across the Pont Marie toward the left bank, where he stopped as he had done several times before to make sure that no one was following him.
He knew that he had to get the boy out of Paris. It was too dangerous for him to stay. The only hope of doing so lay with a friend of his, the English banker Charles Cordell. He walked on, remembering the night all those years ago at the theater in Le Havre, a memorable evening all around, for it was the first time that Topolain had successfully performed the bullet trick and the first time Têtu had met Cordell. The two of them had struck up an unlikely friendship. Their mutual interest, to begin with at least, was magic, for Cordell fancied himself something of an amateur conjurer.
Cordell soon realized that prejudice made people underestimate the dwarf. Têtu was not taken seriously, so he was told things other men would never have heard. Ladies confided in him, young men spouted their views. The dwarf listened to the gossip of the coffeehouses, the prittle-prattle of the salons, and the oratory of the clubs. Cordell, like Têtu, knew that these places were where the real intrigue lay.
The two would meet regularly at the Café Royal, where Têtu would tell Cordell all he had heard and seen. This information gave the banker a clearer idea of what was going on and how best to advise his clients.
The snow was still falling as Têtu made his way toward the rue du Dragon, with its grand, imposing houses. They had a smug quality, as if they had folded their arms across their frilled façades, and looked down judgmentally from tall disapproving windows onto the tree-lined boulevard below.
Têtu stood waiting for what felt like a lifetime before a housekeeper came hurrying out, carrying a lantern.
“Is Monsieur Cordell in?”
“Is he expecting you?”
“No, I came on the off-chance. I need to see him urgently. Will you say that Têtu is here?”
The housekeeper went inside, closing the door behind her. Têtu stood waiting, stam
ping his feet and blowing on his frozen hands. The door opened again and he was shown into the hall. His teeth were chattering as the housekeeper took his coat, hat, and scarf. The snow that had formed itself into frozen clumps on his stockings was melting onto the wooden floor. He stamped the rest off his shoes as he heard the door above him open, and looked up the stairwell at Charles Cordell.
Têtu had never been more pleased to see his friend’s grave, bespectacled face staring down at him, and for the first time since the murder the night before he felt a glimmer of hope.
“Why, my dear friend, you look half frozen,” said Cordell, coming forward with his hand outstretched.
“I need your help. I am in a great deal of trouble,” said Têtu. And before he had even been taken into the elegant drawing room he had told Cordell the story of Topolain’s death.
“This is a great loss,” said Cordell, taking Têtu over to the fire and bringing out a bottle of cognac. “So . . . Kalliovski . . .”
Têtu nodded. “I have been a complete idiot,” he said angrily. “I let my guard down, believed we were safe after all these years. Fool, fool that I am not to have known who he was. I, of all people, should have suspected. I walked straight into a trap.”
Têtu got to his feet as if sitting still was impossible, and started to walk up and down the room. “I knew he was a master of disguise, yet I too was nearly taken in by him. Do you know what gave him away? His hands, his large, ugly hands.”
He made a sound that could have been mistaken for a laugh, though Cordell heard it as pent-up fury.
“Yes, his face may be smooth and ageless, but you can never change your hands, they never lie,” Têtu continued.
“May I ask why you are so afraid of Kalliovski?”
“Sometimes you meet someone you know is touched by evil. Kalliovski is such a man. I believe he came originally from Transylvania. We met when Topolain and I were working in St. Petersburg, where he made his money by cheating at the card tables. He was a cheap trickster, a gambler. He was interested in us because of the magic; we didn’t much like him, stayed out of his way. But he became obsessed with a friend of ours, a young dancer. In the end, in fear of her life, she ran away from him and we went with her. The idea was that we would protect her, for we had seen what he was like when he didn’t get what he wanted.”