The Left Hand of Justice Read online

  “If you want a story, talk to the chief inspector.”

  The wind stretched out her words, chopped them up. It’d be interesting to see how the chief inspector would tell it, though it would never happen. As much as the man liked to see his name in print, whatever he had planned for Lambert wasn’t going to make the papers. It wouldn’t even appear in the internal documents that Corbeau would be expected to file.

  She walked faster, but it only seemed to make the other woman more determined. Corbeau smirked as she heard high heels clip-clop over the cobblestones behind her. The woman had better watch out. One didn’t want to turn an ankle in this neighborhood.

  “Bernadette!” the woman shouted.

  Corbeau stopped. Bernadette Moreau—she hadn’t used that name since Vidocq had inducted her into the Sûreté. Turning, she exhaled with a mixture of relief and exasperation as she recognized the figure tottering out of the gloom toward her, darting around broken pavement and black puddles. “I told you never to call me that, Sophie.”

  “You’ve been avoiding me for a month.” The woman pouted as she took Corbeau’s arm and began to pull her along. “I’ve missed you.” Her dress, coat, and reddish-blond hair were immaculate despite the hour. A cat-and-canary smile flickered at the edges of her painted lips. She might sell information to every leftist publication in Paris, but apparently it didn’t mean she didn’t like to be taken care of.

  “I’ve been busy,” Corbeau said.

  “Would it have killed you to wake me up when you left? A month ago?”

  Corbeau felt a sudden wave of loneliness and guilt. An unkind person might say she was leading Sophie on by continuing to go home with her from time to time—except it had been going on so long, Sophie couldn’t possibly have expectations beyond the occasional bout of mutual physical relief. Could she? After all, she had accused Corbeau more than once of using their back-and-forth as a way of avoiding anything of deeper significance. It was probably true, but Corbeau didn’t have room in her life for anything significant. And the sex was enjoyable for both of them.

  Corbeau touched the fur collar of Sophie’s coat. Had it really been a month already? It seemed that just last week she was ducking out of Sophie’s well-appointed apartment on Rue St. Dominique. She supposed it was about time they found each other again.

  “You knew I wouldn’t stay,” she said.

  Sophie regarded her for a moment then slipped her arm free. She cleared her throat. “This is the third incident in this area in a week.” She flourished a pencil and a small notebook. “Has the great Elise Corbeau any theories?”

  “None that I’m ready to share with the press.”

  “How about with an old friend?”

  Corbeau let her gaze travel over the other woman’s neat features, her perfectly arranged hair and spotless clothing. She could have gone home with her right then—back to Rue St. Dominique, to Persian carpets, Turkish sweets, and heady perfumes. Some pampering and a long nap would do her good about then. She just had to say the word—it was written all over Sophie’s face.

  But they’d been playing that game for years. If it hadn’t stuck by now, it wasn’t going to. It wasn’t fair to either of them to keep their connection limping along like this. And all things considered, Corbeau really could do without the reminder of her past.

  “I know better.” Corbeau spun around and began to walk again. Sophie fell into step with her—no easy feat, considering how much longer Corbeau’s legs were and how much more adequate to the task her footwear was. “Whatever I say to you will end up in whatever rag you sell it to, and Vautrin will have my head. He’d have had it a long time ago if the prefect’s office hadn’t stopped him.”

  “Why does the prefect’s office care about you?”

  Sophie stumbled on a loose cobblestone. Corbeau grasped her elbow before she tumbled into the muck. Sophie took the opportunity to insinuate herself beneath Corbeau’s arm, pencil and paper at the ready.

  “Don’t know,” Corbeau said. Sophie’s small, tightly corseted waist felt right beneath her hand. “But I don’t trust it. Javert is a man of the cloth and His Majesty’s appointee. Once I’ve done the favor he’s bound to ask of me, I’m sure I’ll be out on my ear.”

  “I heard he’s trying to rebuild the Bureau of Supernatural Investigations. Care to comment?”

  “If he is, it’d be news to me.”

  Sophie opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say a word, a freshly painted fiacre pulled to a stop in front of them, spattering their skirts with a rancid stew of sewage and rainwater. Sophie flinched back with a little shriek, and the door opened.

  “Inspector Corbeau,” a man said from the darkness of the carriage. “Thought I’d find you here.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Corbeau muttered.

  Claude Javert, the prefect of police, leaned forward into the doorway. He was a sharp-featured man in his fifties with precisely trimmed salt-and-pepper hair and a thin mustache. He perched on the edge of his seat, long limbs folded like an excitable insect’s. His smile and the lively intelligence in his eyes made him seem benign, but the impression was deceptive. Javert’s ability to verbally eviscerate his enemies was matched only by his enjoyment of doing so.

  Corbeau saw him register the newsmonger and the arm still around her waist. But he didn’t comment.

  “We haven’t much time, Inspector. Get in.”

  Corbeau stood before the open door of the fiacre, blinking in the bright light of the carriage lamps, while Sophie melted back into the shadows. High-level functionaries of the King were no friends of the Left. Best for everyone if she slipped away before the prefect could put a name to her face.

  How had Javert known Corbeau was there? What did he want?

  It didn’t matter. She had no choice now but to go with him.

  Steeling herself, she stepped onto the carriage’s metal footstep and slid onto the smooth leather bench. The door of the fiacre clicked shut beside her. A clap of thunder shook through the wood, and rain suddenly rushed down onto the street below. Prefect Javert rapped the carriage roof with the handle of his umbrella. Above them, the driver whistled and slapped the reins across the horse’s back, and the carriage began to roll.

  *

  “Your timing is impeccable, Monsieur,” Corbeau said as she watched Sophie scurry for cover. She turned back to him. “How did you know I’d be here?”

  “I looked first at Oubliette, but they told me you wouldn’t be back until you’d settled a little matter of a broken chair and a bottle of red Bordeaux. Hmm. An agent in your position should know better than to be caught in establishments like that. And brawling like a common…” He shook his head. “Not at all the image the Sûreté wishes to project.”

  “What I do on my own time is my own affair, Monsieur.”

  “To the contrary, Inspector. The King considers public morality to be a top priority. And as a representative of His Majesty, your public comportment is most definitely his affair.”

  It was true, and there wasn’t anything Corbeau could say about it. Every week, it seemed, Vautrin passed down another list of places, people, and activities forbidden to agents of the Sûreté. It was almost as much fun for him as his surprise inspections of the proof agents were required to produce on demand that they had recently confessed their sins to a priest. She was surprised the man hadn’t resorted to bed checks.

  Javert frowned, peering closer. “That’s a nasty bruise. You ought to get some raw meat on that.”

  “Sure. The minute my salary allows me to afford meat.”

  “I’ll look into it. We can’t very well have you running to Jacques every month.”

  Corbeau was grateful that the darkness inside the carriage hid her embarrassment—embarrassment that made her want to shrink into the fine leather upholstery when the prefect tossed a small fabric pouch in her direction. The pouch landed on the seat beside her with the unmistakable clatter of coins. Ignoring it, Corbeau said, “You still didn�
��t answer my question.”

  “You’re not in a position to ask questions, Inspector. But if you insist, I knew that if you were half the officer your records suggest, you’d be on top of these disturbances. And I wasn’t disappointed.”

  “I’d ask how you found out about tonight’s disturbance, but if Chief Inspector Vautrin knew about it, all of Paris probably did.”

  Javert cocked an eyebrow. “Vautrin was there?”

  “He and his priest hauled the victim off in a carriage, ranting about the devil’s mark.”

  The prefect narrowed his eyes. “But you were investigating an uncontrolled flare of spiritual energy, correct?”

  Corbeau frowned. Like Vautrin, Javert had been chosen in part because of his well-known religious convictions. She wouldn’t have expected him to admit the possibility of spiritual energies, no less use terms Vidocq had coined.

  “Vautrin shares the Church’s opinion that any spiritual action not originating with the Church is from the Evil One,” Corbeau said. “He also shares His Majesty’s opinion that the police should be an arm of the Church.” Corbeau would have thought Javert shared that opinion, but instead, here he was, throwing around Bureau terminology as if he had coined it.

  Javert shook his head, frowning. “Were Monsieur Vidocq still with us, this never would have happened.”

  She wanted to say more—for instance, to point out that Javert himself was responsible for Vidocq’s resignation. Had he named anyone else commissaire de police—anyone other than the one man whose mutual antipathy with Vidocq was legendary—Vidocq would still be chief inspector, the Bureau of Supernatural Investigations would still be in existence, and Gustave Vautrin would still be mucking out stables in some distant gendarmerie garrison.

  But the prefect’s office was the only thing standing between her and unemployment. She’d already said too much.

  “You blame me for the new CP,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “Speak frankly, Inspector. At this point, my need for your services is far greater than any pleasure I might derive from punishing insult, I assure you.”

  Corbeau drew a deep breath, anger slamming against the desire for self-preservation. Diplomacy had never been her strong point, but she’d learned quickly, working in the Byzantine hierarchy of the Department of the Interior, to hold her tongue.

  “By God, Inspector, what happened to your neck?”

  Corbeau flinched as he reached out to touch the tender spots where Vautrin had tried to crush her windpipe with his baton. Shock and pain drove discretion from her mind.

  “If you admired Chief Inspector Vidocq as much as your words suggest, you would have appointed your dog commissioner of police before Monsieur Duplessis,” she spat. “And you’d have appointed your dog’s fleas chief inspector before Gustave Vautrin. Duplessis is merely incompetent, but Vautrin is willfully pulling down everything Vidocq built, in the name of religion and his own vanity.”

  For a moment, the only sounds were the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves on the pavement and the drumming of the rain on the roof of the carriage.

  Then the prefect laughed.

  “You don’t know how refreshing it is to hear honesty from one’s subordinates. Though I must point out that I was only responsible for Duplessis—not my first choice, by the way, but my hands were tied. Vautrin is the CP’s fault. If it means anything, I tried any number of inducements to get Monsieur Vidocq to stay. The loss of the Bureau of Supernatural Investigations will be felt most grievously in weeks to come, I’m afraid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. These incidents—a cluster of outbursts among a diverse population in a small area—you can’t tell me it’s at all usual.”

  “So you know about the other ones?”

  Javert nodded.

  “And you think they’re related?”

  “Don’t you?” he asked.

  And yet he hadn’t chosen to share that information with Vautrin, who had thought Armand Lambert possessed by the devil. Was it because Vautrin would have ignored the information? Or did Javert have a different agenda? Corbeau crossed her arms over her chest and settled herself more firmly against the high, padded back of the bench. Just how much did Javert know about the supernatural phenomena the Bureau had investigated? Aside from the Bureau’s own records, safely under lock and key in Vidocq’s possession—and a few texts rumored to be floating around Rome somewhere—Corbeau knew of no other documentation of the things they were discussing.

  “These events are so unusual, in fact, that you’ve been investigating them against Vautrin’s direct orders. Or what would have been his orders, if he’d had any inkling of what was going on. Of course something tells me if it wasn’t this, you’d find something else to do against Vautrin’s orders.” Humor twinkled in his eyes.

  “I’m doing my duty,” Corbeau said.

  “The chief inspector would probably beg to differ.”

  Corbeau fingered the bronze pin on the lapel of her coat. The pin was stamped with the Bureau insignia of bell, book, and candle. It was just a symbol now—a reminder of how far she had come—of what a girl from the slums could accomplish with brains and persistence. The pin was meaningless now but still a part of her. “I swore to protect the people of Paris from all threats natural and supernatural. Bringing the chief inspector his coffee does not further that goal.”

  A smile twitched at the edges of the prefect’s lips. He drew a gold case from the interior breast pocket of his heavy coat. Inside was a row of Spanish cigarettes—an unexpected luxury in the hand of a public servant. She took one between her fingers and held it between her lips while he struck a lucifer. The violent shower of sparks made her jump. Why did he think it necessary to intimidate her with such a display when he surely carried a tinderbox like everyone else? But she bit back her remark, brushed the particles from her skirt as if she encountered sulfur matches every day, and let the rich aroma of Turkish tobacco fill her lungs.

  As Javert lit one for himself, Corbeau imagined his bony fingers holding a quill to illuminate some ancient manuscript. Vautrin had washed out of seminary, Corbeau knew. But Javert, she had heard, had spent a couple of decades as a Jesuit before finding his calling intellectually stifling. Now he spent his days overseeing the broader affairs of the prefecture of police. Which again raised the question: why he would involve himself with the street-level goings on of a defunct sub-agency of a sub-agency?

  “Inspector?”

  “You’re the only one who still calls me that. When Vautrin took the helm of the Sûreté, he made no secret that there was no longer a place for criminals or women.”

  “Vautrin’s terminology is of no interest to me. I call things as they are. Or,” he said, drawing deeply on his cigarette, “as they might well be called again.”

  Corbeau’s heart raced. Was there actually a chance that she might regain her position at the Sûreté? Not wanting to seem too eager, she crossed her legs and leaned back against the smooth leather. She exhaled a hot plume toward the ceiling of the carriage and regarded him through a smoky veil.

  “The Church speculates about angels dancing on pinheads,” Javert said. “But the Bureau had actual, day-to-day experience of the supernatural. I knew Vautrin would shut it down, reassign the officers or let them go. But when it came to you, Inspector, I put my foot down. I made it clear you were not to be touched.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “All of the Bureau’s agents saw action, but you were the only one who had experienced the supernatural on both sides of the law. You had a broader vision. You knew what it all meant, not from theory, training, or someone else’s dogma, but from personal experience.”

  Corbeau blanched at the reminder of her criminal past. She’d worked hard to live it down, and having Javert mention it so casually—especially in light of her discoveries that morning—was like having a bandage removed before the scab was complete.

  “This is why Chief Inspector Vautr
in resents you so. He spent his whole time at seminary waiting to have a supernatural experience and never did. And then he meets you, convicted criminal and daughter of a witch, who can’t escape the supernatural no matter how hard she tries.”

  Fury bubbled beneath Corbeau’s embarrassment. Witch had been the term the neighbors had used when the culmination of their own misery had pushed them to find a scapegoat. By the time the mob came to drag her mother from their miserable little set of rooms, they had completely forgotten the infants she had safely delivered, the poultices and the healing tinctures she’d provided for much less than their worth.

  Clearly unaware of her discomfort, Javert said, “I had to call in quite a few favors to keep you on. I hope you won’t let me down.”

  Tendrils of smoke drifted up from the corners of his mouth as he regarded her through clear gray eyes. Corbeau had the impression she was a chess piece, and Javert was figuring out the most advantageous place to put her. It wasn’t the best position to be in. On the other hand, if the prefect was hinting about reinstating her, she should at least be willing to hear him out.

  “What do you need from me, Monsieur?”

  “I want you to put the Montagne Ste. Geneviève out of your mind for the moment and have a look at this.” Javert bent down to pull a paper envelope from the satchel near his feet. He handed it to her. “You’ve no doubt heard of Hermine Boucher,” he said as she flipped through the collection of notes, sketches, and newspaper clippings inside.

  “The prophetess of the Church of the Divine Spark?”

  She withdrew an article written a year earlier, about a makeshift clinic the group had built near the ruins of the Bastille. The organization had acquired a physician, the article stated—a physician skilled in addressing spiritual as well as physical complaints. They took no money for their work, which had endeared them to the public, though their attempts at spiritual healing had drawn condemnation from the local bishop and the King. In the accompanying sketch, Corbeau recognized Madame Boucher, whose athletic, almost mannish build and taste for the light, loosely corseted gowns her mother might have favored had been a gift to cartoonists and satirists alike.