Bones of Paris (9780345531773) (33 page)

It was a cavern, half again as long as it was wide. Its ceiling, as much as fifteen feet in the center, rested on stone pillars left behind by quarry-men. Other bits of stone, waist-height, protruded from the walls holding tall church candles on them, adding an unexpected honey aroma to the smells of perfume and gin and cigarettes. The room was already crowded, despite his early arrival, with a hundred or so people happily enjoying the unusual venue.

As he stepped into the artificial cave, a full glass was pressed into his hand and a series of things hit his eye: the moon, the fog, and the Lord of Death.

The moon was full and somewhat larger than life, painted on the roof of the cave along with a velvety black sky and an expanse of stars. The fog covered the floor of the cavern, a weird, low-lying mist that
swirled around the ankles of the partygoers. As a knot of guests on the other side of the room unraveled and moved away, he traced the phenomenon to its source: a broad silver tureen atop a waist-high protrusion of stone, boiling over like an untended pot, except cold and insubstantial.

But it was the walls that made him stand with his glass untasted, jaw dropped.

The walls on either side of the door were covered with tapestries: floor to ceiling, snugly fitted together, thick enough to soften the din of conversation. The colors were slightly faded, but the images clear: groups of life-sized figures in Renaissance clothes moved through streets, gardens, and grand rooms, dancing. Here was a panel of peasants kicking up their heels under some trees at the side of a wheat field; there was a gilded room with lords and ladies in a stately pavane; next came what looked like a dance class of children. Leaps and slow glides, embracing or separated, they danced—and with them, in every panel, danced a skeleton holding either a musical instrument or a scythe.

Halfway around the room, the tapestries changed, giving way to startlingly modern panels of the same size and theme: dancers with Death. As Stuyvesant approached, he realized that they were all by different artists, a few of whom he recognized. The first panel, for example, could only be Matisse, and he thought he could pick out a Magritte and one by the Italian de Chirico, but many of them were strangers to him, and few of the panels were signed.

He worked his way around the room, oblivious to the crowd behind him. The farther he went from the entrance, the less complete the walls were, with several panels little more than sketches. But all showed people dancing with Death, and most of them were linked in some fashion—an arm from one painter’s dancer held a drink in the next painter’s panel; a skeleton’s trombone turned into the lines of a feather boa when it crossed the border.

At the far end of the cavern, Stuyvesant looked at his glass, which somehow had become empty. This room was going to be incredible when it was finished.

Four panels from the room’s entrance, the tapestry’s biggest skeleton
stretched from floor to ceiling, raising a scythe nearly his height. That was where the fog-emitting pot stood, and beside it Dominic Charmentier, Le Comte watched with a little smile as a group of women eddied forward, exclaiming at the cold steam, trying to scoop it up in their diamond-ringed hands. Above his shoulder, Stuyvesant noticed for the first time, the reddened clouds of the tapestry had been disturbed to insert the face of a clock, its hands decorative like those far, far upstairs.

A voice came from near Stuyvesant’s shoulder.

“That’s called dry ice—isn’t it extraordinary?”

He turned: Sarah Grey, wearing a dark red gown with a high neck and elbow-length black gloves, a red-and-black bandeau with a diamond pin in it encircling her pale hair. Unfortunately, at her side was Émile Doucet. Stuyvesant nodded at the cop and told Sarah, “You look drop-dead gorgeous.” At her reaction, he added, “And you look even prettier when you blush.”

That made her go pinker yet, and she laughed, that gorgeous, incongruously deep sound that caused Doucet to drop her arm abruptly and head for a nearby platter of iced sea-creatures. “Oh, Harris, that suave American sweet-talk. You look very handsome yourself.”

“That’s what my tailor tells me.”

“In a completely unbiased opinion, I’m sure. Have you decided not to risk the punch?”

Was she looking at his fist, or his glass? “Which punch is that?”

“The source of the fog.”

“Ah—a drink. Is that where it’s coming from? I thought I was seeing things.”

“Terribly
Hound of the Baskervilles
, isn’t it? Dominic heard of this American company that manufactures the stuff, and had me send for one of their contraptions. I’m told it’s only carbon dioxide, but it burns like the dickens if you touch it, and it reacts violently to water—or, as you see, fruity punch. Great fun—it bubbles like a witch’s cauldron and belches out that smoke.”

“You sure it’s not poisonous?”

“Wouldn’t that be a coup for the Grand-Guignol—killing off half
the arts patrons of France? No, I’m assured that so long as no one eats it, and there’s decent ventilation, there’s no risk. Although the company sent along a helpful list of symptoms to watch out for.”

“What are those?”

“Increased pulse, reduced sight and hearing, shortness of breath, drowsiness.”

He cocked his eye at the crowd around them. “In other words, the same symptoms as we’re all going to be feeling, anyway.”

“Yes, it’s probably a good thing we have a limited supply. Harris,” she said, “have you met Cole Porter? Cole, this is an old friend of mine, Harris Stuyvesant. He’s from New York.”

“We have met, haven’t we?” Porter said, offering his hand.

“Last year,” Stuyvesant agreed. “At Bricktop’s.”

“That’s right, the man with the Lindy Hop. He doesn’t look like it, but this friend of yours can really dance,” he told Sarah.

“I remember. Pardon me, I have to see what Dominic wants.”

As she moved across the room, her fiancé abandoned the oysters to drop in behind her. Stuyvesant’s eyes followed them—and with that shift in perspective, the room fell into place: for a moment, that shiny-headed fellow and the dyed-blonde who might have been his daughter (but probably wasn’t) merged into the tapestry behind them. Three regal ladies, one of them with a lorgnette to her eye, continued the line of dancers in the paintings on either side; one of the gyrating tapestry peasants danced face to face with a slim young man in a faultless evening suit.

Stuyvesant blinked and looked at his glass.

“Powerful stuff, isn’t it?” a voice asked. Cole Porter, eyeing Stuyvesant over the top of his own drink.

“You got that right,” Stuyvesant said. “Jeez. These walls are really something.”

“The first time you’ve seen them, too?”

“Yep.”

“Do you live here in Paris, Mr. Stuyvesant?”

“No, just passing through. Looking for a girl.”

“Of course you are. Anyone in particular?”

He took out Pip’s snapshot, and heard the familiar refrain: vaguely familiar,
haven’t seen her in a while
. “What’s she done, that you’re looking for her?” the composer asked.

“She’s gone missing. I’m an investigator—I was hired to find her.”

“Hope you’re not looking for me, too.” Porter’s flip tone was jarring, but Stuyvesant put away the photograph and returned the man’s light jest.

“Why, are you missing?”

“I’m in New York at the moment, working hard on a play.”

“I see.”

“Supposed to be,” Porter added, “only there’s nothing but interruptions over there, so I told everyone I was going upstate to work, then got on a ship for Paris. Before we docked, I’d finished most of what I needed to do. I’ll go back next week, with nobody the wiser.”

“I promise not to tell.”

“Besides, I didn’t want to miss the chance to see this place. I’ve seen Le Comte’s famous clock several times, but it’s rarer to be offered a view of his infamous tapestries. They’re something, aren’t they?”

“Why ‘infamous’?”

“Oh, the usual melodramatic tripe, putting out the eyes of a painter after he’s done your portrait, cutting off the fingers of weavers when they’ve finished a masterpiece. You know, stories that send a trickle up a person’s spine. Makes me almost wish I wrote songs like that.”

“You heard
The Threepenny Opera
? Now, there’s one for the dark songs.”

“Brecht and Weill, right? In Berlin?”

“Yeah. Everyone in it’s a criminal. Even the hero’s named Mackie the Knife, and he’s a murderer and rapist.”

“Not quite what I need for
Fifty Million Frenchmen
, but thanks for the tip.”

However, before Stuyvesant could deliver his other suggestion—
a distant vice in the darkness
—the composer was pounced upon by an American heiress wearing more pearls than clothing, who called everyone in earshot “darling.”

He slipped into a gap around the punch table, accepting a cup of the pink liquid foaming with fog, and stifled the urge to cough.

The crowd grew, and dancing began in the center of the space—the quartet dove into a flurry of notes that it took Stuyvesant a minute to recognize as a jazz variation on the Saint-Saëns
Danse Macabre
. The figures on the walls shifted with the shadows, seeming to dance. It became difficult to move. Stuyvesant took up a position at the side of a stone pillar, to be out of the way but also to keep an eye on Dominic Charmentier. The man did not himself dance, but he circulated, dipping into one conversation after another, summoning drinks trays, moving on.

Twice, he saw one of the girls in black bring Charmentier a fresh drink, on a separate tray.

The third time, he looked around for Sarah, spotted Doucet, and looked down, finding her bent head-to-head with a bird of a woman. He migrated across the floor towards her, earning Doucet’s disapproval but Sarah’s smile.

She introduced him to the small woman, a clothing designer called Coco, and asked him if he was having a good time.

“Just great, thanks. Say, what’s your boss drinking?”

“Dominic? It’s probably apple juice. Why?”

“Doesn’t he drink?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Your boss is an odd duck,” he said mildly.

She fixed him with a look. “Harris, I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your questions to yourself when it comes to Dominic. It doesn’t make my job any easier.”

His eyes met Doucet’s, as disapproving as hers. When Sarah turned to shout a bit more at the bird-like woman, Doucet moved to speak in Stuyvesant’s ear.

“She’s right, you know. Your obsession with M. Charmentier wears at his patience.”

“My obsession with M. Charmentier may solve a murder.”

“M. Stuyvesant, do not make Sarah’s life any more difficult for her.”

“Me? You’re the one ignoring—”

Even in the tumult, their voices attracted Sarah’s disapproval. “Boys, if you can’t play nicely together you’ll have to leave the party!” Her scolding was only mock on the surface. She waited, and when neither of her self-appointed escorts would retreat, she pointed a commanding finger, first past Stuyvesant’s left shoulder, then past Doucet’s right: the two men exchanged a glance, then turned on their heels and plunged into opposite parts of the crowd.

She was not the only person to find Stuyvesant’s questions irritating. This was the cream of Paris society, from both Right and Left Banks: any gathering that combined Josephine Baker (in a surprisingly demure gown) and Natalie Barney (in a man’s evening wear), an ex-President of the Banque de France, and three of the fourteen painting members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts was a party to be reckoned with. And although he managed to slip questions about Pip into conversations with a couple dozen people—“Hey, come to think of it, I don’t suppose you’ve seen this girl?”—soon Sarah appeared in front of him and told him that she could see it was a mistake to invite him, and if he didn’t stop, she would have him escorted out.

Which wouldn’t have been so bad if Doucet hadn’t been at her shoulder at the time.

In any event, people were getting too tipsy to focus, so he left the picture in his pocket and went out onto the marginally clearer space in the center of the cavern that had become the dance floor, where he could keep an eye on Dominic Charmentier.

Midnight approached. The tumult grew. Charmentier kept drinking his apple juice, his smile growing ever more condescending. Doucet shadowed Sarah, but after she snapped at him like a mother dog with a half-grown puppy, he did so from a distance.

The band played on. The dance got wilder. Dust sifted down from time to time, but the pillars held and the artificial moon stayed attached to its ceiling.

Around half past eleven, he stood quenching his thirst in the perimeter of the room when Sarah appeared at his elbow. Looking around,
he found Doucet a dozen or so feet away, watching with a sour expression.

Stuyvesant bent over Sarah to bellow, “You’ve put together a great party!”

“I’m glad you’re having fun,” she replied. Her short hair had gone curly in the rising humidity, her face glowed with warmth.

“I was trying to decide how much of your boss’s weird interests came from growing up in a house with bones in the cellar.”

Her face tightened, but she answered. “I’ve heard him wonder the same thing, himself.”

“Amazing how beautiful they are, those bones in his hallway.”

She glanced sideways, and decided that he was merely making conversation, not conducting an interrogation. “I know. Have you taken the public catacombs tour?”

“A long time ago. It made me a fan of cremation.”

She laughed, that low-pitched chortle that did such compelling things to the base of his spine, but before the conversation could develop, one of the black-gowned girls came up to Sarah and spoke in her ear.

“Sorry, I’m needed,” she told him, and dove into the crush.

With a hard look in Stuyvesant’s direction, the cop followed.

He wasn’t sure how it happened. It was shortly after midnight, following plenty of both alcohol and irritation, when he looked over the crowd and saw Doucet, leaning forward and giving Sarah orders.

That’s how it looked, anyway. And the man’s big hand on Sarah’s arm looked like the hand of a bully.