Chapel Noir (22 page)

24.
Morgue Le Fey

When the slabs are empty and there is no show to see, they are apt to complain that death allowed itself an intermission that day, without thinking of their good pleasure
.
—VICTOR FOURNEL

If anything would have encouraged me to reconsider my rash decision, it was the severe disapproval the booksellers exhibited on hearing the title
Psychopathia Sexualis
.

For the first time in my life, I regretted that I had learned no Latin, although I realized that the word
sexualis
had unsavory overtones that made the word
psychopathia
even more mysterious and sinister.

Finally, one of these ancients deigned to excavate a musty cardboard box at his feet. He plucked the offending volume from it like a
Burgermeister
of Hamlin producing a dead rat.

The book itself was in surprisingly fine condition, considering the decrepit bookseller and stock.

Irene pounced on it, then read a random section. She frowned and turned a page, then another, her frown deepening.

My misgivings were immense. “Are you having difficulty reading it?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, abruptly shutting the book with a clap like small thunder. She paid a few sous for it and tucked it tight under her arm.

“I thought you could read German well.”

“The typeface is one of those maddeningly intricate Germanic fonts, like reading
The Book of Kells
. I will peruse it later,” she decreed. “Now, Nell, what does your lapel watch read? Heavens! Almost eleven. We must hurry across the Pont de l’Archevêché to the morgue.”

As if anyone living would rush to visit the morgue.

My heart lifted to see children at play in the lovely gardens of the quai. French children are quite charming, possessed of somber, intelligent faces even in frivolous moments. English nannies were quite as much the fashion here as French maids were in London, and I breathed a sigh of pure nostalgia as we passed through the budding flowers, and the flowering buds of French family life.

I would carry this enchanting picture with me as we plunged into the hurly-burly brutality of the Paris Morgue.

Luckily, our escort was a giant of a man, and we both spotted him pacing before the main building at the same instant. But it was the building that made the deepest impression, as it had before.

The Paris Morgue was, like the French flag and the French national motto, based on a trefoil.

I knew from previous experience that the door through which the bodies came was at the rear, near the river.

The public came to pay its calls on death from the front.

And this I had never confronted. This façade was as straightforward as death: a main building and two wings in miniature of itself, each with a Greek pediment. Heavy frontal pillars reminded one of cemetery markers at military attention, and above them on the main building were inscribed the words
“Liberté, Egalité, Fraternit
é.” A quantity of narrow chimneys poked up from the side building roofs like rifles on parade.

The French Revolutionary motto struck me as particularly appropriate for a holding place of the dead, for where does any of us find perfect liberty, equality, and brotherhood, save in death?

Of course the French tricolor fluttered in the wind at the center of it all.

I have been known to harbor an English prejudice or two against things French. Yet I must say that it is particularly French, and specifically Parisian, to elevate death to the level of an exposition. On the one end of the river Seine, the Gypsy carnival of
l’Exposition universelle
transpired on the Champ de Mars under the pierced shadow of the Eiffel Tower. On this end of the river Seine, behind the Gothic bulwark of Notre Dame cathedral, this modest low building erected on a principal of three, like the Trinity, acted as mortuary, mausoleum, and public spectacle for
le tout Paris
.

The City of Light could be very dark indeed at times.

Bram Stoker spied us and hurried forward, tipping his hat as he arrived.

The crowds were quite astounding. Except for the occasional horse-drawn omnibus—high affairs with glittering wheels, the back ones much larger than the front, and curved stairs at the rear leading to the second level; how only two or three beasts could pull such dozens of passengers I have no idea—the people came on foot, though one glimpsed the sole hansom cab or bicycle among the throng.

One sees workmen in crude corduroy trousers and loose, Gypsy-like blouses. Gendarmes in taut blue jackets spangled with brass buttons in military rows. Old women carting baskets as ladies tote reticules. Children in short pants and full short skirts, charming as pastels in Montmartre. And respectable women, young girls even, dragging along reluctant male escorts as if their fathers, brothers, husbands were as good as tickets to the opera or ballet in serving as entree to this macabre display.

“I don’t know what to expect,” I murmured once we three had exchanged greetings.

Mr. Stoker cleared his throat. “I have never viewed the dead with female companions. Florence, of course . . .”

Irene picked up his unspoken thought. “I recall that the drowned man you rescued in the Thames and carried home to Cheney Walk in Chelsea upset her.”

“Drowned. Dead, despite my brother Thornley’s best efforts to revive him. I’ll never forget my brother’s working over the poor sopping wretch on our dining-room table . . . Florence never forgave the dining-room table for serving as hospital bed and then, plainly, a bier. She wanted to move, and soon after we did.”

“It is handy to have a brother who is a doctor,” Irene commented, eyeing me significantly.

The
man’s words came back to haunt me: “I could not allow him to enter an arena where one with his skills was so suspect.”

If Sherlock Holmes’s physician friend was in danger of suspicion in Whitechapel, what about the physician brother of a gigantic man who kept ungodly hours and possibly patronized French brothels?

Could Bram Stoker have learned enough of surgery from his brother to perform the crude explorations committed upon the dead prostitutes?

And were we about to explore the Paris Morgue with the very man who had perpetrated these internationally infamous slaughters?

I saw that no matter what we saw on our visit to the morgue, the most important observation I could make would be of the behavior of our eminent guide to the horrors within.

The crowd radiated the air of a holiday expedition. I heard English chattered among the French, and saw many girls as pink-cheeked as our new acquaintance Elizabeth. Thank God that she was not with us today! Despite any sordid scenes she had seen in the
maison de rendezvous
and finally on its gruesome
siège d’amour
, this virtual zoo of death was something no young woman should experience willingly. Bram Stoker stood behind us, a hearty wall of vested English tweed I was glad to have as buttress, while we shuffled our way into the main chamber.

Five rows of people were shepherded along the glass barrier that bisected the room as neatly as a surgeon’s scalpel making an incision, save this was an architectural division.

Bram . . . I mean, Mr. Stoker, had shepherded us in his own imposing way, and we were the among the “fortunate” few who could pass with our noses right up against the glass.

I glimpsed a green curtain pulled open its full width at both extremities, and in between . . . ah, it seems an affront to commit a description of what I saw to handwriting on a page: two rows of twelve stone slabs, each surmounted by a body, naked save for a bit of loincloth.

The shock of such a sight is impossible to impart. I felt as if dashed with ice water, then consumed by fire. Was my heart beating? So strongly that it felt as if savage hands were drumming upon my skin. A roaring in my ears turned every word of French or English around me into Hungarian. My feet seemed unconnected to the floor, and my head seemed to bounce against the high ceiling.

Such nudity had only been glimpsed in paintings before, and then I had quickly glanced away. I cannot say whether the male or female form was more shocking, save that they both were white as paper. And so still. Some looked as though they could wake and walk in the next minute. Some looked as though only the undertaker’s art held flesh and bone together.

And yet . . . the face and form of death was so fascinating, so horrifying, that I could not take my eyes off of them. What separated them from me? Besides glass? Minutes? More likely hours. Then days. Not long before they had stood upright, clothed, had breathed, laughed, cried, cursed. Then died. And now they lay for all to see, nothing protecting them, no one standing between them and curious strangers.

It was blasphemy to gaze upon them. It was cowardice to look away.

Irene’s gloved hand squeezed my elbow.

I glanced into her eyes, so bright and animated, and read their message.

I turned my head to look up at Bram Stoker.

His face was ablaze with a look of unholy wonder, as if he read a book that had never been written before.