The Black Tower Read Online Free PDF Page A

“The fatal blow must have come— here —just beneath the left rib cage. A longish sort of thrust, perhaps from a—a—”
    “A poignard, I’m guessing. Or a dirk.”
    “Now this is curious.” My fingers step across Leblanc’s hairless torso. “See these lacerations? No more than an inch in diameter. By my count, there are a good half dozen on the chest alone.”
    “Four more on the back,” says Vidocq.
    “Fairly shallow. No more than half an inch, as far as I can tell. You might have done as much with a dinner knife.” I frown, run my index finger across the scapula and back to the neck. “I could almost…”
    “Yes?”
    “Assuming he didn’t inflict these himself…”
    “Yes?”
    “I might almost believe they wanted him to bleed. Before they killed him.”
    Taking the candle from the sconce, I move the light across him in rippling pools.
    “Is this how the body was found?” I ask.
    “Not exactly. We had to clean it up a bit. There was a goodly amount of dried blood, especially around the fingers.”
    “The fingers?”
    “Mm. The right hand. Couldn’t even see it at first for all the damned blood. Look for yourself, Doctor.”
    He watches as I raise Leblanc’s fingers to the light. The piano has fallen silent now, and the only sound is the buzzing of the flies and a distant trickle. And the windings of an étude.
    “The fingernails,” I say at last. “Three of them are missing.”
    “Not just missing,” Vidocq answers, smiling grimly. “Pried loose.”
    He drops a small buckram bag on the marble table. Three ragged patches of cuticle scatter into the light.
    “We found them when we went back to the scene. I’m sure Monsieur Leblanc was loath to part with them.”
    One of them is resting in my palm now. Hard. Like a flake of amber.
    “Oh, the memories,” says Vidocq. “I once saw Bobbefoi do that to one of his pals in the bagne . With a saddler’s awl. You never heard such screaming. Bobbefoi figured the fellow for being a police spy, but he got the wrong man. Lamentably.” He strokes Leblanc’s brow. “There there, old bear. We’re almost done.”
    “The knife wounds,” I say. “The fingernails…”
    And in this moment, the music from the adjoining room seems to twine with my own thoughts, drawing them into their natural key.
    “They tortured him, didn’t they? Before they killed him.”
    Vidocq shrugs, takes a couple steps away.
    “Torture’s a simple business, Doctor. You either want your man to hurt or you want him to give .”
    “But what would Leblanc have to give?”
    “A name, maybe. The name of the very fellow he was going to see.”
    And with that, the remains of Chrétien Leblanc’s fingernails are obscured by the piece of paper that Vidocq showed me less than an hour ago. How different it looks to me now.
     
    DR. HECTOR CARPENTIER
     
    No. 18, Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève
     
     
    The great Vidocq is yawning now. No need to suppress it. He lets it pop his jaw open and swell his neck column and flush his lungs out.
    “Don’t think I mentioned,” he says at last. “We found the paper in a tiny leather pouch. He’d tied it round his waist and tucked it in his drawers, if you can believe it. You could have searched him all you like, you would’ve been hard-pressed to find it. Not unless you had him on a slab in the Paris morgue.”
    His fingers lock round one another and pulse in tiny motions.
    “Leblanc lived on the Rue de Charenton, we know that much. A good long walk from your neighborhood, Doctor. My guess is he was being followed from the moment he left his apartment.”
    “Then why didn’t they—”
    “Oh yes, I had the same question. Why didn’t they just follow him straight to your house? Tell us, old cod.” He runs a finger round the dead man’s ear. “Why didn’t they? Did you catch them on your tail? Maybe you threw them off the scent, is that it? Went in circles, took a wrong turn or two. Maybe you even tried to save yourself by making