The Left Hand of Justice (6 page)

“Well…now…” She self-consciously tucked a strand of steel-colored hair back beneath her frayed scarf. “What’s a woman to do? You were much better at paying your bills when you were a bum, you know.”

“Of course back then you always complained about the ‘element’ my business attracted.”

“Would have broken your mother’s heart. All that knowledge twisted and turned to immoral purpose.” She cocked her head, thoughtful. “Though I can’t say she’d have liked your current activities any better. Police work, indeed.”

“You have to admit it does keep people on their best behavior knowing the Sûreté is about.”

“Except when it’s the Sûreté turning the place on its ear.”

Corbeau closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. “I’ve just paid for that and more.”

“Well…now…” Marie smiled and patted her arm. “I suppose you have made up for it. And you’ve done so much for that poor woman in the Montagne Ste. Geneviève. How is her little boy?”

Corbeau exhaled a breath of relief. Marie was one of the few people who still knew her from the old days. She’d been a friend of Corbeau’s mother. Corbeau had practically grown up in the warmth of the wooden walls and the glow of the wall sconces. The café was a refuge whose loss Corbeau would have felt acutely. “A nuisance. But he’s doing well.”

“I’m glad. It was bad enough, him running under the wheels of that wagon. I never thought a little one like that would survive an amputation on top of it.”

Corbeau was grateful Marie hadn’t reminded her Joseph had been running because Corbeau had been chasing him. The fumes from her tinctures and potions had been slowly curdling her common sense, pushing her natural suspicion toward a deadly paranoia. When six-year-old Joseph’s curiosity had led him to peek through the window of Corbeau’s basement lab that day, he’d been lucky the carriage had gotten him before Corbeau had. Vidocq had kicked down the door of her lab the next day.

“Joseph’s a tough little weasel,” Corbeau said.

Marie narrowed her eyes at the uncharacteristic emotion in her voice. She caught her eye. “You’re doing right by that family, Elise. Your mother would be proud.”

Corbeau sighed. “I won’t be doing it for long if prices keep doubling every time I take a breath. If His Majesty doesn’t give our salaries a bump soon, I’ll be sleeping on the floor of Joseph’s bedroom—and I’ll still be paying that place off, poltergeists and all.”

Marie smiled kindly and patted her arm again.

“Come to the bar and I’ll fix you some breakfast. On the house. You look terrible, by the way.”

Corbeau followed her across the traffic-worn floorboards to the bar at the back. Leaning Javert’s umbrella against the bar, she slid onto one of the stools. She grimaced at her reflection in the long mirror on the wall. Bruises shaped like Vautrin’s fingers were blooming on her neck. They matched the black eye Jacques’s man had given her. Not the most attractive look, but at least she hadn’t lost any teeth. She ran her fingers through her hair until it no longer looked like a bird’s nest and took a clean cloth napkin from the pile on the edge of the bar to wipe the dirt from her face. A little banged up, but not bad for twenty-eight, she thought. A proper wash, and she’d be good as new. She turned up the collar of her coat and winked at her reflection.

“Jacques hasn’t sent anyone else, has he?” Corbeau called. She used the mirror to give the place a quick once-over.

“Pfft. After what you did to the last one? Besides, I don’t think drooling thugs wake up as early as honest citizens such as ourselves.”

After a bit of shuffling behind the kitchen doors, Marie reappeared with a slice of buttered bread on a plate, a wedge of cheese, and a small cup of strong coffee. The bread was stale, but it calmed the burn in Corbeau’s stomach. The mere smell of the coffee began to clear her head.

“That’s better, yes?” Marie asked.

Corbeau smiled gratefully around a mouthful of cheese. She flipped another coin onto the lacquered wood in response and took out the papers Javert had given her, spreading them across the bar in front of her. Nodding her understanding, Marie pocketed the coin and drifted back into the kitchen.

As she took the clippings from the envelope, Corbeau admired the clean, thick paper. The envelope had seen a lot of use but had a lot of use left in it still. Javert’s notes were likewise written on expensive stock. He had taken great care quartering and tearing the sheets of paper inside—paper covered on both sides with perfectly straight lines of his small, neat hand.

The prefect’s salary was doubtless larger than her own, but she was willing to wager not by enough to afford Spanish cigarettes and expensive paper. Many of Corbeau’s colleagues had taken second jobs. But Javert was high enough on the ladder that such an infraction would be noticed—noticed and not tolerated. Yet he didn’t strike her as a man who lived beyond his means. The discrepancy vexed her, but she would have to tuck the question away for later.

Right now, she had a case before her for the first time since Vidocq had resigned.

Javert had organized the papers starting with the clipping showing Madame Boucher at the party where she’d last been seen. She rubbed the newspaper between her fingers. Unlike Javert’s paper, it was cheap and thin, and left a grayish residue on her skin. A few pages later she found the police report. Interesting. The report contained a summary of the events as told to one of Vautrin’s new hires by members of Hermine Boucher’s staff. First, Corbeau would have expected Vautrin himself to take the report for what would surely become a high-profile case. Second, she would have expected to find extended interviews with the driver and footman, who would have been the last people to see Madame Boucher, rather than a few sentences summarizing what other employees had said. The driver wasn’t even mentioned. Corbeau went through the notes again and again, but found no further interviews or investigation of the employees. Corbeau shook her head. Sloppy work from an inexperienced officer. It was going to cost the investigation.

Disgusted, she laid the report aside and started another pile for newspaper clippings. Several concerned Dr. Kalderash, ranging from her work with the Church of the Divine Spark to dark speculations about her origins and secret spiritual practices. One such piece referred to Kalderash, rather insultingly, as a “Gypsy necromancer.”
Dangerous talk to titillate the masses
, Corbeau thought. It was more likely than Kalderash trafficking with the dead that whoever had sold that particular tidbit to the paper had thought to gain a few extra sou in shock value. Still, she would have to be careful when interviewing the suspect about her practices. The Church might not see a difference between summoning spirits and pretending to see the future in tea leaves, but when it came to arresting a woman for a serious crime, that could make all the difference in the world.

She found a few interesting articles about a free clinic opening near the Montagne Ste. Geneviève. The Church of the Divine Spark had funded its construction, and Dr. Maria Kalderash would serve as the primary physician. Most of the articles hailed Madame Boucher as some sort of saint. A few expressed doubt about Dr. Kalderash’s qualifications, as well as about the “spiritual” care that the clinic would provide along with basic medical services.

Kalderash’s departure from the Divine Spark seemed to be of much greater interest to the gossip-slingers than her charitable works. One long article, a masterpiece of prurient speculation, blamed Kalderash for everything from the closure of the clinic to the latest cholera outbreak. The article consisted of the same piecemeal assembly of information purchased bit by bit from different unnamed, unverifiable sources—people like Sophie, who lurked in cafés, parks, and places of amusement with open ears and ready pencils. Despite the unabashed glee with which the author had documented the destruction of Dr. Kalderash’s professional reputation following her falling-out with Madame Boucher, the collected snatches of gossip contained some solid information.

Nobody was quite certain when Maria Kalderash had come to Paris—though surely the information could be found somewhere in the bowels of the Palais de Justice. She had burst onto the social scene a year and a half earlier with the introduction of the Gin Liver, a small, removable device the size of a potato, which filtered alcohol out of the body as quickly as a person could drink it down. It had become wildly popular with a certain class of rakish young men and had made Dr. Kalderash, by all accounts, fabulously wealthy herself. A companion device, the Discreet Lady’s Stomach Bypass, allowed young women of breeding to eat to satisfaction while siphoning off any sort of unseemly excess before it attached itself to their nubile forms. The article made no mention of how the devices connected to the body. Corbeau made a note to find out.

As she followed the clippings back through time, a story began to emerge. At some point, a little less than two years earlier, the widow Hermine Boucher had discovered an obscure inventor whose immense talent apparently made up for her foreign birth, dubious dearth of connections, and appalling lack of money. Despite these differences—and the scandal of Dr. Kalderash’s heathen blood—the women became inseparable. Boucher funded Kalderash’s growing business—creating cosmetic enhancements for the vain and deep-pocketed—and used her share of the profits to start her church.

Though the names of Boucher and Kalderash had peppered the pages of the scandal sheets for quite a while, discussions of the beliefs and practices of the Divine Spark were conspicuously absent, though Javert’s notes addressed themselves to this organization. By Javert’s account, Madame Boucher’s interest in the occult had begun following the death of her husband. That wasn’t uncommon. Corbeau remembered numerous occasions when neighbors and acquaintances had sought out her mother’s assistance to contact a recently departed loved one. But rather than fading over time, Madame Boucher’s interest deepened. She began to gather others around her, to style herself as some sort of medium. Shortly after Dr. Kalderash joined her entourage, Javert’s unnamed sources reported that the group had taken a political bent, setting itself, philosophically at least, against the Church and the reactionary King. It was here that Javert’s speculations left off.

And then, at some point last winter, Kalderash’s name, which had been linked inextricably with that of Madame Boucher in the papers, had suddenly disappeared from mention. It was as if the inventor had been called into existence on Boucher’s whim, then dismissed when the whim had changed.

Hermine Boucher had kept some very prominent company, Corbeau thought. As dizzying as such a meteoric rise into society must have been for someone like Kalderash, who had likely grown up around caravans and campfires, it must have been humiliating to be dropped so unceremoniously. The effect upon her business must have been even harder to bear. Lives were ruined when people like Hermine Boucher called an end to a fashion.

“Hmm,” Corbeau said. Maybe Javert was being honest with her. If the women had been lovers, their falling-out would have been devastating on a very personal level as well. Stabbed in the back in business, friendship, and love. Many people would kill over just one of those.

“Sounds like someone’s working hard,” a voice said behind her.

Corbeau turned, quickly gathering up the papers in front of her. “You following me, Soph?”

But Corbeau felt a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. The woman’s presence was inevitable, for one thing. For another, Sophie was another of the few remaining faces from the old days. If they’d met as adults, Corbeau wouldn’t have allowed a gossipmonger within ten feet of her. But Sophie had kept her confidences well—better than Corbeau would have expected. With breakfast inside her, and a long nap in sight, everything was looking a lot less bleak. Leaning on an elbow, Corbeau looked at her first lover, and the smile crept all the way across her face.

Sophie smiled back. Morning’s light made it easier to appreciate the care she had taken with her appearance. Her cream-colored silk gown was untouched by the rain. Over it, she wore a long, form-hugging crimson redingote decorated with rows of silver buttons that gave the over-garment a smart, military look. She had removed her very expensive coat and hung it near the door with her umbrella.

“God, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“And you just look sore.” Sophie gestured toward her bruised face. “Have your misdeeds finally caught up with you?”

Corbeau nodded. She wasn’t ready to discuss her scuffle with Vautrin or what it might have meant. Her past might have been off limits, but Sophie considered police business fair game. Better she should blame the bruises and scratches on Ugly Jacques—at least until Corbeau figured out why Vautrin was so keen on personally presiding over exorcisms on the wrong side of town.

Corbeau flinched when Sophie’s cool fingers traced the goose egg on her cheek, but she bit back the sharp remark that had been her first instinct. She’d spent her adolescence fending for herself in the fetid little streets around the Bastille; it had taken a long time to learn to let someone take care of her. The people she’d allowed had been few and far between. But after the night she’d had, even she had to admit that a little babying would do her good.

As if reading her mind, Sophie laid a hand on her cheek and said, “Why don’t you come back to my rooms and rest for a bit? I’m sure Vautrin can get his own coffee for one day.”

“What, no drinks first? No banter? What kind of girl do you think I am?”

Sophie’s smile softened. “The kind who could use a hot bath and a few hours’ sleep between silk sheets.”

Corbeau laughed in spite of herself. “You do know, then.”

The well-tended fingers traveled down her neck, down her arm, and rested on her wrist. Sophie had rubbed tinted oil into her fingernails. They glowed a warm, translucent red. “Only that, if you like. No expectations, Elise.”

Their fingers found each other and tangled. They had agreed years ago: no promises, no expectations. The times they’d tried to make it more than that had been disastrous. But neither fact ever made it easier to leave in the morning. All the same, the pull of Sophie’s sweetly scented flesh was almost irresistible—flesh that she knew almost as well as her own. She had known so little safety in her life. The safety of the familiar, even if it wasn’t perfect, called to her.