Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes Read online

  “Non! Monsieur. Monsieur…” she insisted, following me, in fact blocking my path as I turned away.

  “Elle mourra,” she said.

  I was taken aback. A strange phrase which I instantly translated:

  It will die.

  For some reason this gave me pause. She gave me pause. What would die? What was she telling me — or warning me of — and why? I felt a prickling sensation of unease across my shoulders, a vestigial memory awakened of the supernatural talents of gypsies….

  The beggar girl thrust the flower at me again, her arm outstretched. “Elle mourra,” she repeated.

  It will die.

  What a fool! She meant that if she did not sell the flowers in her basket by the end of the day they would have to be thrown away and wasted. Laughing at my own stupidity, I took the lily and urgently dug into my pocket for change, but by the time I looked up from my palm she was disappearing into the Place Louis-Lépine. She glanced back from under the trees, the sunlight catching the corners of her eyes like the dabs of a paint brush. Then she was gone. Her act — the simple gift of a flower to a complete stranger — done.

  That night the boys and I went to the Café Dauphine, not far from our lodgings in the Rue Quincampoix, and sank several “nightcaps”. They lost themselves happily in their cups, but, intoxicated in quite another way, I could not concentrate on a word they said.

  The next morning, after dressing, I suggested we walk through the Marché aux Fleurs, the flower market on the Place Louis-Lépine. The twins humoured me, with no idea my stomach was churning at the prospect that I might not see the girl again. But there she was, standing at her stall, in sturdy workman’s boots, cardigan tied sloppily round her waist, woollen balaclava under her second-hand bonnet, ruddy cheeks and pink knuckles, full lips spare of the gaud of make-up, nattering in a Parisian dialect incomprehensible even to my ear, giving the uncouth males around her a run for their money.

  “All right,” said Olaf. “Hi-ho. Go and speak to her, then.”

  “I have no idea what the deuce you mean.”

  “Do you not?” He laughed, sticking his hand in his waistcoat and making a mime of a beating heart. “I thought he was interested in the botany here,” he said, nudging his brother. “But obviously it’s the biology he’s got his eyes on.”

  “Rot.”

  “Own up, Yorkie, old boy. It’s not a crime, for Heaven’s sake…”

  I turned on my heel, not wanting to show them my cheeks were flushed.

  We spent the rest of the day touring the Louvre, but I was beginning to grow sick of their company. Nothing to account for this, other than the fact that their jocular presence prevented me openly seeking the flower seller for fear of incurring their puerile taunts. Yet it was a preoccupation that refused to leave my mind. I was simply unable to banish it.

  “My gosh. He really is sickening for something, this lad,” said Olaf later, sipping strong black coffee of the kind only palatable in France. “I think Cupid’s arrow has really struck its target this time…”

  I was tempted to punch him on the chin. As it was, I grabbed my coat and returned to the Marché aux Fleurs, buying her a silly gift along the way in reciprocation for the flower she had given me.

  It was late afternoon by now and the working day almost at an end. She did not see me at first. I loitered like a felon, content to observe the way she folded the brown paper to make bouquets and made gay little ribbons of rope or twine. Her grace was an attribute that captivated me. She captivated me. The hand upon her hip, the sway of her shoulders, the toss of her head. The ragged edges of her skirts skimming the cobbles. The wisps of reddish hair curling from the soft cleft at the back of her neck. In the end I could not disguise that I was staring at her — and finally our eyes met. I thought suddenly she might find me foolish, but as soon as she laughed and made a little curtsey I felt at ease. I handed her my gift. She looked at it with astonishment bordering on awe, the expression on her face utterly delightful.

  “Je m’appelle Sherlock,” I stammered, like a schoolboy.

  “Sheeur-loque,” she attempted, waiting for me to continue the conversation, but I could not. My courage punctured by the stray guffaws of some hefty-looking laborers, I lowered my head with embarrassment. In defiance of their ridicule she kissed my cheek. I can remember the warmth of her lips even now, as if a Lucifer had been struck inside me. I felt all at once weak at the knees and as powerful as a steam train. And, even as I fled stupidly, thought: if my next breath were to be my last, I shouldn’t care.

  Over breakfast Olaf said there was nothing like someone else’s tragedy to raise his spirits. Peter asked if love was a tragedy, then? His brother told him in a pitying tone that he’d led a sheltered life. Refusing to enter into their badinage, I combed my hair fastidiously in the mirror and sped to the flower market without a word, determined that this time my shyness would not get the better of me.

  Now, those who have followed my exploits later in life will know I have been confronted on occasion by scenes of unutterable horror — at the risk of disappointing you, this was not one of them. In fact the sight of her stall bolted up when all the others were open gave me at first only a mild sense of disappointment. She was not there — today — perhaps for good reason. I had no cause, at first, to believe anything untoward had happened. No reason at all. And yet … my heart told me otherwise.

  The longer I conversed with the stall-holders, showering them with inquiries, the more the grip of foreboding took hold. My only response was a series of immensely irritating Gallic shrugs. Nobody knew where she was. Nobody even knew her name. How on earth could that be?

  The questions multiplied. By the time I returned to the apartment I was beside myself, fretting visibly, but received no real sympathy from the twins. Yes, Peter could see I was upset, but in his naivety wondered why. Olaf on the other hand could only belittle my concerns.

  “Isn’t it obvious? She shut up shop to go off with a man. Brazen hussy.”

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “Why not? How do you know? How could you possibly know? You’ve only just met her.”

  “She’s not a hussy, I know that much.”

  “Rich men. Tourists. Poverty-stricken women on their own have to make a living in all sorts of ways.” He saw me glaring at him, and held up his hands. “I’m just telling you the possibilities.”

  “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t,” I said through tight lips.

  The following day I returned to the market, hoping against hope that a different scene would greet me. It did not. The padlock on the sorry-looking flower-stall was firm. A fat knife-sharpener scraped at his stone. The laborers unloading carts joked and whispered, rolling up their sleeves to show off their biceps to giggling waifs. What were they concealing? What did they know? I was determined to return, and return until I saw her — or know the answer why.

  Two more days passed before I sat the brothers down and told them my absolute fear that some terrible calamity had befallen her. And that, in order to prove or disprove my conviction, I had resolved to visit the Paris morgue.

  Now it comes…. Dear Lord, how I have postponed many times describing this, the most painful part of my narrative. Not that the details are vague — far from it. The images in my mind are pin-sharp and all too hideously indelible. I venture, should all my memories slip away tumbling like rubble down a slope as my life grows interminably longer and more brittle, this scene alone will remain. I even pull my dressing gown around my shoulders now, as I feel the icy chill of those walls upon my body…

  Imagine a gentleman’s convenience with the dimensions of a palace. The same white tiles on every surface. The same overwhelming sibilance. The same residual smell of toxic substances masked by acrid disinfectant. We passed under pebbled-glass gratings through which could be seen the feet of Parisians going about their daily work, oblivious to the macabre and poignant scenes below.

  Mentally, I urged the line to move faster
. A woman up ahead was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, her backdrop a haze created by several hoses dousing the bodies. The cadaver of a large, hairy man with half his head missing silenced some dandies come for whatever perverse thrill they sought from the experience. If I was not sickened by that, I was sickened by what I saw next. For, amongst the dead, arranged with uniform indignity upon marble slabs, lay the flower girl’s corpse.

  It knocked the air out of me and Peter caught my elbow. What was most shocking was the exhibition of every inch of her pale, untarnished skin. Skin I had never touched, yet presented here for the entire public to see. Had she been touched? Had they touched her? Rage clouded my vision. But when the callous spout passed over her, spraying water and giving the illusion of movement across her flesh, I could bear it no longer. I dashed forward, plucking the strand of hair thrown into disarray over her face by the hose.

  “For pity’s sake, Sherlock…”

  I shook my head vigorously. Lifted her ice-cold hand to my lips.

  A moronic attendant shoved me back towards the line, barking that it was forbidden to touch the corpse. “Ne touchez pas le cadavre! Écartez-vous du cadavre!”

  I felt another harsh prod against my chest and launched at him and would have killed him, had not Olaf’s tall frame stood separating us. The man backed away from my fiercely blazing eyes and spat in a drain.

  “It’s time to go,” said Peter softly. “You need to sleep and you need to get out of this damned awful place.”

  My eyes were red raw and I had no idea how much time — minutes or hours — had passed and what had occupied them but my devastation. I was sitting on the floor near the foot of the slab with the rain from the hoses dripping down the walls.

  “My dear fellow,” I heard his brother’s voice. “Peter’s right. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Go. Go, if you want. Both of you. I’m going to stay.”

  The next full hour I spent alone with my — how can I use the word? But I shall — beloved.

  Presently the gas dipped lower and I heard footsteps and the rattle of keys. It became apparent I was the last visitor in the place, and was compelled to tear myself in agony from her side. I walked, leaden, to the stairs, but once there the terrible urge for one final glance overcame me.

  There was no doubt — but at first there had been only doubt, so unerringly, absolutely strange was the picture before me. A man — was it a man? —stood over the bier: an elderly man with snow-white hair covering his ears, a pair of tinted pince-nez perched on the bridge of his nose, a black cape covering his entire frame, bent over the corpse, owlish head hovering but inches above her, as if smelling the bouquet of a fine wine. Toad-like, barrel-chested and with spindly legs, he made no sound — there was no sound but from the water of the hoses. His hands moved in alacritous gestures, almost those of a mesmerist. As I watched, dumbstruck, he went about his odious theatrics as if I were invisible. Was I invisible, and this a vile construction of my harried mind? If so — what did it mean? Why had I not seen him before, or heard his footfall?

  Immediately I hurried to the nearest morgue attendant — the one who had manhandled me. But no sooner had I caught his arm and turned to look back than I saw, open-mouthed, that the apparition was gone.

  “Excusez-moi. L’homme aux cheveux blonds,” I gabbled. “L’homme qui etait là-bas, habillé en noir. Cest qui?”

  The morgue attendant looked entirely baffled. “L’homme, monsieur?”

  “Oui. L’homme. Le vieux avec les lunettes.”

  The attendant looked over a second time then shook his head, opening the iron gate for us both to exit. “Je n’ai vu personne,” he said.

  I have seen nobody.

  The twins tried to placate my anxiety with stiff alcohol and poor explanations, suggesting it was a visiting doctor or anatomist, but nothing they came up with accounted for the manner of the figure’s intense interest, or the diligence being applied to the macabre task. I could see now from their faces their answer was that I had seen something whilst the balance of my mind was unhinged. I laughed bitterly. Olaf said that I must know as a biologist that, when a person suffers a shock, their powers of observation become temporarily unreliable.

  “Not mine,” I said. “I assure you. Not mine.”

  Come the morning, Peter reminded me our tickets on the ferry were for noon. He said he and his brother fully intended to return to England at the prescribed time. I said very well, but I was afraid I could not join them. My studies were of scant importance to me now, and my trickle of inheritance would be enough to sustain me. In any case, I wasn’t worried if it didn’t. The point was, I could not live with the mystery. The mystery of the girl about whom no-one cared or grieved but me. The mystery of the girl over whose corpse a vile old man bent in sensual enquiry. The mystery of the girl who, out of nowhere, said to me:

  Elle mourra.

  It will die. The flower will die…. But also — my God, why had I not thought it before? My stomach knotted as I watched the ferry depart—

  She will die.

  I returned to the morgue, where the flower girl’s corpse still lay naked, nameless and unclaimed, convinced more than ever that this flesh-and-blood ghoul was somehow implicated in her death.

  The same odious morgue attendant recognized me from the night before, and seemed keen to avoid me. Minutes later I saw a few coins placed into his hand by one of the bereaved and he tugged his cap, which told me this rogue’s silence could be bought cheaply — and had. I gravitated to the other, slightly more savory employee at the wooden booth next to the stairs and described the man in pince-nez, whilst pointedly pressing coins into his palm. After which he whispered, yes, he had seen him, too. Several times.

  “Comment s’appelle-t-il?” I asked.

  The man’s eyes darted shiftily right and left. He coughed into his hand, turned the register towards me and ran a grime-encrusted finger down the line of signatures forming a column on the left.

  “Dupin,” I read aloud.

  It meant nothing to me. The only “Dupin” I knew was a mere fictional character, the brilliant detective in Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Murders in the Rue Morgue, a supremely far-fetched fantasy in which a devotee of the so-called science of “ratiocination” works out that the culprit in the gruesome murder of a mother and her daughter (whose throats were cut and bodies mutilated) is in fact, amazingly, the pet Orangutan of a sailor, trained to shave its owner with a straight-razor. I recalled the tale only vaguely and dismissed the connection as quickly as it occurred to me.

  “Do you know anything about him?” I asked in French. “His profession?”

  “Détective,” came the terse reply.

  I smiled and gave him a few more centimes for his trouble. The old man of the morgue was disguising himself, clearly. Or he was a detective named Dupin, the factual basis of Poe’s story; or, again, a detective who took the name from Poe. All were possibilities, and all unedifying. The words came back to me:

  Elle mourra.

  In what dreadful capacity could the girl have known that she would die? And if it was her expectation, how could it feasibly be any kind of accident? Did the white-haired man know? Indeed, did he execute the deed? Was this man the murderer? What was his connection to her if not? And why did he visit this place of the dead with such incessant regularity … for now I saw Dupin in the ledger on page after page, back, long before she met her death, long before I even met her…

  I was only aware of the footsteps on the stairs when they abruptly stopped. I spun round and saw a shadow cast by gaslight upon the stone wall, hesitating, frozen before descending. I recognized the fall of the cape, the cut of its upturned collar, the spill of the cravat. The very frame was unmistakable, albeit faceless. It ran.

  I was up, after it in an instant, but the bats’-wings of the cape flew upwards to the light with supernatural speed for a man of his advanced years. By the time I emerged into the street, breathless and blinking into the sun, I saw o
nly the door of a carriage slamming after him. I hailed another, almost getting myself trampled by hooves as the reins were pulled taut. We gave pursuit, my head in a whirl, my heart pounding as I urged my driver at all costs not to lose our quarry.

  After ten or fifteen minutes, to my relief I pinpointed the distinctive St-Médard church on my right and that gave me my bearings. Leaving behind the medieval-looking streets of Mouffetard, we eventually turned from the rue Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire into the rue Cuvier, which I knew to border the famous Jardin des Plantes. My transportation pulled to a halt and I climbed out, paying swiftly in order not to lose sight of the man I pursued.

  To my astonishment, at a leisurely pace he entered the Ménagerie, France’s largest and oldest public zoo, created during the Revolution for the unhappy survivors of the one at Versailles — those not devoured by the hungry mob — and a new population of animals rounded up by the armies of the Republic from far-flung lands abroad. He walked on an unerring path, seemingly impervious to the hooting calls of jungle birds and the pacing of lions. I followed until he came to a halt, his back to me, looking through the bars of a cage.

  I approached him from behind, careful not to surprise him unduly until I was directly upon him, then yanked him round to face me.

  The countenance of a negro grinned at me, his smile radiant in a sea of ebony. His curly hair had been covered by the hat and scarf, his age — which explained his athleticism — not much more than my own.

  “My name is Adolphe Le Bon,” he said in immaculate English, with a pitch as basso profundo as I have heard in my life. “At your service, monsieur.” He touched the brim of his top hat. “A gentleman said to give you this.” He handed me an envelope from his inside pocket. “Bonjour. Or should I say; Au ‘voir?”

  Whereupon he strolled away, in no particular hurry, and I found myself considering the contents of the letter unwrapped in my fingers — a jumble of proof-readers’ symbols and numbers amounting to nonsense — whilst gazing through the bars at the rubbery, wizened visage of an aged and enfeebled Orangutan.