The Left Hand of Justice Read online

  “I meant the part where it was you and me against the world.”

  Corbeau sighed. Slowly the fighting urge began to drain away. She did remember that part, and not without fondness. But it was too late and too much water under the bridge. “We’ve tried that, Soph. It never quite works out, though, does it?”

  “Only because you’re a tyrant.”

  “And because you won’t do as you’re told.”

  They glared at each other for a moment. Sophie cracked a smile and looked away, shaking her head.

  “What about Maria Kalderash?” Corbeau asked.

  The smile faded. Sophie set her jaw in the defiant way that Corbeau knew well.

  “If you’re looking for a murderer, Inspector, look no further than that witch.”

  “Wait. Who said anything about a murder? What do you know?”

  “All I’m saying is that if anyone would want to do Hermine harm, it would be that woman.”

  “Why?”

  Corbeau could think of a handful of reasons, all neatly presented in Javert’s dossier. But Javert had put the articles together. Javert had an agenda. Additional information would help Corbeau to better evaluate where fact left off and Javert’s desire to arrest Dr. Kalderash began.

  “Hermine brought that Gypsy chit up from the gutter and right into her house. She introduced those ridiculous contraptions into society and made Kalderash’s name synonymous with fashion. Then when it came time to return the favor, the good doctor begged off on some high-and-mighty scruples.”

  “What did she want Kalderash to do?”

  Sophie looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure. But whatever it was, she wouldn’t do it, and Hermine was furious. That’s why they parted ways.”

  “Sounds like Madame Boucher had more of a reason to turn murderer than the Gypsy,” Corbeau said.

  Sophie frowned. Clearly she hadn’t realized that this was the logical conclusion of her statement. “I’m just telling you what happened, Inspector. That woman stabbed Hermine in the back. There was bad blood between them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if whatever happened, the Gypsy was behind it.”

  “I see.”

  “Now I’ve told you everything I know,” she said, smoothing down her redingote and trying to sound pleasant again. “Won’t you come back to my rooms, Elise? Let me spoil you for an hour or two.”

  Corbeau regarded her for a long moment. Sophie had passed her some good information, though she’d had to argue it out of her. She was also disturbed by how close Sophie seemed to be to the situation. If this were only a bit of tittle-tattle she’d picked up here and there, she’d have no cause to get so worked up over it. And she was far too impressed with Madame Boucher to be entirely objective.

  On the other hand, there was a chance that, given time and the proper inducements, Sophie might remember something more. Corbeau’s head pounded. Sophie laid a hand on her forearm.

  “And later, if you’re really interested, I might be persuaded to tell you where the Divine Spark is meeting this very night.”

  Corbeau snapped to attention. A look of victory crossed Sophie’s face, and she covered Corbeau’s hand with her own.

  “You wouldn’t lie about something like that.”

  “Never.”

  Corbeau exhaled heavily. Most agents persuaded their informants with coin. Of course with Sophie, she was never sure who was bribing whom. She lifted Sophie’s palm to her lips. “Just this once. I mean it. I’ll be by in a couple of hours, but right now I have something to take care of.”

  Chapter Five

  Maria had awakened before the rain. The early hours of that cold November morning had greeted her with darkness, chill, and the tingling, metallic smell that always reminded her of blood. There had been too much blood, hers and other people’s, spilled over stupid things recently. And violence had followed her all her life—which is why she had sat up in her narrow bed, beneath the sloping ceiling of her converted attic bedroom on the Rue des Rosiers, and resigned herself to the new day even before it had truly begun. Violence was coming. It was no time to be lazy.

  Pulling a quilted velvet robe over her nightdress, she padded toward the stairs. The robe had been one of her first purchases in Paris. One of her only luxuries. Spending half her life up to her elbows in metal and grease, and the other half on the run, left little room for nice things. Still, the robe was comfortable and soundly made. It had served her well.

  She navigated the stairwell one-eyed and in the dark. The loss of both depth perception and light made even a well-traveled staircase treacherous. She went slowly.

  Her home was modest, and the common areas were tidy—although since Hermine had driven her business away, the areas that once welcomed visitors were gradually but inexorably giving way to her research. And research was messy. The hallway, though, remained sparse: a few icons on the walls—more to remind her of home than for the sake of any religious sentiment—and a lamp on a spindly table. But the front room, which she had once kept neat for her customers, was now a shambling, cluttered extension of her basement lab.

  She took the hall lamp from its stand, lit it, and set it on the edge of the desk before the front window. Her Eye was on the table, where she’d left it before retiring. Despite the soft leather band, the apparatus was heavy, and by the end of the day, she was ready to sacrifice sight just to be rid of it. She carefully wiped clean the smooth skin the doctors had pulled over the naked socket. Chief Inspector Vautrin hadn’t realized the Gypsy to whom he was teaching a lesson had official sanction to be in Paris. The physician he’d summoned had done a good job covering the damage, but Maria was still waiting for an apology.

  She wiped the woven metal that sat between the device and her skin, then buckled the band around her head. The cool mesh met her face with its usual electrical sizzle. She was accustomed to the sensation by now, but it was never comfortable. The Eye clicked and whirred, and the room flickered into three dimensions of color, shadow, and light.

  Like the table against the adjacent wall, Maria’s desk was invisible beneath stacks of notes, journals, and books. She’d managed to restrict the tools to the basement, but only out of necessity. Customers no longer filed in and out of the front room, not since Hermine had slandered her name and her work to the empty-headed aristos, who had, at one time, vied to be first to strap on her latest toy. It was just as well. The recreational prosthetics had helped her keep a roof over her head and stash away a suitcase full of money for the next time she had to flee and start anew. But she’d found the work meaningless and trite. She was glad it was over.

  The plans for the Left Hand of Justice lay across her desk where she’d left them when her head had started pounding and she’d grown weary of looking at them. The Eye fixed on the long sheet of paper, edges curling up beneath the books she’d used to weight the corners down. The lenses turned to adjust themselves to her small, neat handwriting. Justice. It was a joke. The thing was at the root of all of her troubles, and it hadn’t even been built yet. A weapon like that should never be built. It had been idiotic to even draw up the plans, but the idea had possessed her one night in the wee hours: an intellectual exercise based on Ampère’s discoveries about electricity and magnetism. These forces could connect with the spiritual energy that ran through all living things—her prosthetics had proved it over and over. But could the technology be harnessed in such a way as to create a tool that would operate through force of will? She had to know.

  Writing it all down had been her mistake.

  Her next mistake was not destroying the plans the minute she’d committed them to paper. As soon as Javert had seen them, the project was out of her hands. That had been more than a year ago. She’d run to Hermine. Now Hermine was gone, and as sure as the sun was rising, it wouldn’t take long before the finger would point at her. It always did. Any time misfortune confounded weak and superstitious minds, those minds would find someone to blame. And blame liked nothing better than an outsider. A foreigner. A wom
an with a basement full of tools no one knew how to use, and a mind full of knowledge few people could comprehend.

  Thunder cracked through the dawn like gunfire. Outside, the clouds burst open with a wet crash.

  Last night’s fire had died down to coals, but the coals were still bleeding heat. She crossed to the fireplace and added a handful of kindling. Slowly, gently, she teased the flame back to life. When it was strong enough, she added a few larger pieces of aromatic wood. More expensive than coal, but so much more pleasant.

  Too many people were after the plans. She should throw them on the fire right now. But she couldn’t bear to. Instead, she would hide them until her bags were packed and she had some idea where to go when she’d left Paris behind. Carefully removing the books from the corners of the long paper, she rolled the plans up and tucked them under her arm. A piece of glass ground under the sole of her slipper as she turned. Last month’s issue of Annales de Chimie leaned against the broken windowpane near the brick that had broken the window. So much for Hermine’s influence protecting her. The minute Maria had left, it seemed the whole city had turned against her.

  She found a jar of glue underneath some newspapers, as well as the piece of plain paper in which she’d hidden the plans when she’d liberated them from Javert. Checking the front-door lock, she returned to the attic with these objects, the plans tucked carefully beneath one arm.

  Her bedroom was her sanctuary, and she would miss it. A wine-colored Persian carpet lay over the floorboards. It had come with the house, as had the wardrobe that stood on the opposite wall. There was a vanity table—seldom used—and a low chest of drawers. So much storage. Maria had left Romania with the clothes on her back and had—always to Hermine’s chagrin—not done much to replace them. Having few possessions made it easy to keep tidy. And to move the wardrobe back from the wall. And to leave when, inevitably, her situation turned against her once more.

  She knelt beside the wardrobe and smoothed the plans along the floor before folding the paper into quarters. She laid the plans on the parcel paper, painted glue around the edges of the paper, and pasted it carefully to the back of the wardrobe. Then she pushed the wardrobe into place again. It wasn’t perfect, but it would be good enough. An intruder would probably search the lab, the front room, possibly the kitchen. Even if they searched the attic room, it was unlikely they would think to look there.

  She twisted the lid back onto the jar of glue and wiped her fingers on the rug. She set the jar of glue onto the vanity table and glanced longingly at her bed, her natural eye burning, her head light from lack of sleep. There was a book on the end table. Perhaps if she just—

  She sprang up at the sound of footsteps in front of her house. The sky was just beginning to go gray. It was too early for visitors, too early to even be walking the streets. Her hand went to her robe pocket, where she found a small silk bag with bones and herbs. She rubbed the little bag between her fingers, feeling the delicate twig-like bird bones and the organic brittleness of the herbs. The footsteps shuffled again, and for a moment Maria thought the intruder had changed his mind. The spring-coiled tightness in her stomach eased.

  And then came a firm knock upon the door.

  *

  Dr. Maria Kalderash lived in a two-story house set into a wall of shops and apartments along the Rue des Rosiers. The area was home to a variety of immigrants and exiles outside the city wall. All in all, a fitting place to find an outcast. Outside, most of the windows were still dark, the doors firmly bolted from within. But later that day, the area would come alive with a hundred different languages, and carts bearing comfort foods from distant homelands would spring up like mushrooms on both sides of the narrow, twisting street.

  As Corbeau passed through the gray stone canyon, she was greeted by the familiar sounds of a neighborhood waking: the jangle of keys in a lock, the creak of a window opening overhead, the self-conscious scrabble of the cesspool cleaners as they collected each building’s refuse into barrels to transport to the drying yards. A sudden clap of thunder shook the air. Corbeau sighted Dr. Kalderash’s door and hurried across the muddy street just as the rain began again. Pressing as close to the house as Javert’s umbrella would allow, she rapped on the door. She heard no answer for a moment, then cautious footfall in the hallway. The door cracked open.

  “Yes?”

  Dr. Kalderash stood no higher than Corbeau’s shoulder, but even in the diminished light of the early morning, in the unexpected vulnerability of her dressing gown, her presence filled the doorway. Corbeau’s breath caught in her throat. Heat rushed to her cheeks, and she felt the same disorienting sense of awe she had felt when she’d beheld the inventor’s picture in Javert’s carriage. Dr. Kalderash blinked her natural eye—large and liquid brown—while the mechanical one clicked and whirred as if it, too, was taking Corbeau’s measure.

  It was a startling combination—a full, pleasingly feminine face, an expression of rightful suspicion, metal, and dark hair cropped shorter than Corbeau had ever seen on a woman. And there was the Eye: a surprisingly elegant nest of gears and lenses attached to a decorated leather band that buckled around the back of the inventor’s head. It left Corbeau stumbling for words.

  “I have some bread and cheese if you want it,” said Kalderash.

  “What?”

  Kalderash’s suspicion had softened to pity, and Corbeau realized what she must have looked like. Her face was battered and swollen. Her coat was soaked, her hems muddy, her hair a straggly, tangled mess.

  “If you can sew, I’ll have work for you toward the end of the day.”

  “I’m sorry, there must be some mistake. My name is—”

  But suspicion had returned. Kalderash’s eyes widened with panic. Corbeau followed her gaze to the insignia pinned to her lapel. “Wait,” Corbeau said.

  Had the inventor trafficked with the Bureau before? It would have to have been recently, and Vidocq hadn’t mentioned it. Corbeau pushed through the door just as Kalderash tried to slam it shut. She grabbed for the inventor’s wrist, but Kalderash twisted, gave her a push, and fled down the hall. Tossing the umbrella aside, Corbeau sprang after her. The hallway wasn’t more than five long steps. As Kalderash’s hand reached for the back doorknob, Corbeau dove. They hit the floor hard, skidded across the worn floorboards, and crashed to a stop against the door in a tangle of hard-muscled limbs, damp skirts, and velvet.

  “I just need to speak with you.” Corbeau panted as she pulled herself on top of the struggling woman. She twined her legs around the inventor’s and held her arms down. Kalderash was strong for her size, and Corbeau had to hold her wrists against the floor so she could catch her breath. Corbeau’s pulse raced. The thrill of physical pursuit had been one of the better parts of police work—and her favorite part of affairs. It had been a long time since she’d experienced either. She found the comparison disconcerting. Swallowing hard, she calmed her breathing.

  Javert would have considered Kalderash’s flight an admission of guilt and hauled her off forthwith. But Corbeau no longer had the authority to make an arrest. Besides, it had seemed that Kalderash had reacted to the Bureau insignia specifically, rather than to the general idea of police.

  “My name is Elise Corbeau. I’m a detective inspector of the Sûreté. I’ve come to ask you a few questions about your acquaintance, Hermine Boucher.”

  The inventor stopped struggling and stared back up at her, her natural eye wide, the lenses of the mechanical one frantically adjusting and evaluating. Her scars weren’t as disfiguring as Javert’s description had led Corbeau to believe—just two raised, pinkish lines across tea-colored skin. Her lips were lush and dark. Corbeau became acutely conscious of the soft flesh bruising beneath her fingers, the heart beating rapidly through the velvet robe, and the mingled scents of cinnamon, machine oil, and fear. Corbeau cleared her throat.

  “Just a few questions. Please, Doctor.” She sat up, slightly embarrassed, and freed the inventor’s hands. When Kalderash still did
n’t move, her embarrassment went from personal to professional. The Paris police had no love for Gypsies. Perhaps Corbeau had misread the situation. Perhaps Kalderash would have run from any government official—especially if she had crossed their paths when she first arrived in Paris. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Corbeau rolled off and sat next to her on the floor. “But I’m not leaving without your statement.”

  Kalderash slowly pulled herself up. She patted her cropped hair into place and adjusted the Eye. Her hands were trembling, but she nodded.

  “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  “The front room.”

  Corbeau rose and brushed herself off. She held out a hand, but Kalderash waved it away and rose slowly to her feet.

  Even if Kalderash was innocent, Corbeau thought, as she followed her back down the hall, she had more reason than most to fear the police. The scars that marred her round face—even the blinded eye—might well have been the work of Corbeau’s colleagues. Her chin-length hair could have grown out from a shearing, a favorite police method for welcoming Gypsies to Paris. Something else lay behind her hostility as well—something Javert would never understand. It was difficult enough just being a woman, with all the attendant expectations of family, society, and church. But the moment-by-moment grind of being a woman in a man’s sphere was enough to make anyone hostile.

  The original Sûreté had been a network of reformed criminals like herself. Quite a number of women had been employed as informers. A few, like Corbeau, had specialized knowledge that allowed them to carve out a place for themselves as agents and eventually, in her case, as a detective inspector. But that didn’t mean that everyone accepted her presence. From most, grudging tolerance was the best she could expect. Corbeau would have bet money that Kalderash had experienced much the same in the scientific sphere.