CHAPTER 7

The Paris Morgue lay behind the great Notre-Dame cathedral on the Île de la Cité, in the middle of the Seine. It was a monument to the secular processes of death, built in the shadow of a cathedral that celebrated the Resurrection and the Life. And that was one of those ironies that occurred in any great city, when space runs out and buildings are forced to rub inappropriate shoulders. As Irene dismounted from the cab and paid the driver, it was difficult for her to judge whether the streaming crowds were more interested in religion or in gawping at corpses.

Ogling the dead seemed a very odd sort of attraction to her. Yet gendarmes outside the morgue’s three-arched marble entrance held back the crowd, corralling them into a queue that filed through the leftmost arch, then out again through the rightmost arch: the central door of the three stayed closed. Above it, words gleamed coldly in the morning light, given an extra sparkle by the frost: liberté! égalité! fraternité! Street vendors serviced the crowds, offering food and newspapers.

All the classes of society seemed present, from elegant men and women about town in top hats and well-cut overcoats or furs and capes and muffs, to the middle and working classes in more practical—and more patched—clothing. The only similarity was that everyone had bundled themselves up against the cold. The wind snaked viciously along the Seine as if it was following the water, and the people waiting for admission clapped their hands together and shifted from foot to foot, unwilling to stand still in the biting air.

Irene joined the queue, caution urging her to blend in rather than shove to the front and persuade the gendarme there to let her jump the line. Her clothing was unfashionable—the skirt too full, the jacket too stiffly cut, the waist not tight enough—but not enough to make her dangerously obvious. Especially given the wide cross-section of society waiting to get into the morgue and view the corpses there. So she waited in line and listened to the gossip around her. Nothing particularly unusual—politics, anarchists, the price of bread, the new bicycle fad, an upcoming balloon ascension, the ballet at the Paris Opéra, the new play by Maurey at the Grand Guignol …

When she was waved into the morgue, the mingled smell of ammonia and lye caught at her throat and made her cough. She wasn’t the only visitor doing so. Some were already hurrying over to a stall in the corner of the large room to buy throat pastilles and cigarettes. But most of the crowd were more morbidly interested in the morgue’s main attraction.

The corpses.

Personally, Irene would rather spend her time with a good book. But on either side of the large central hall, behind thick glass windows, lay tilted slabs with bodies displayed on them—some naked, with their clothing hung behind them, others still clad. In the dense cold of the building, even harsher than the winter frosts outside, the dead lay still and serene behind glass, their flesh as pale and unchanging as marble. The bystanders stared at them, discussing them, nobody bothering to lower their voices in respect. Parents held up their children to look at the anonymous dead. After all, the theoretical purpose of this display was to identify these bodies—every bystander, young or old, was only doing their civic duty by scrutinising them in detail, by speculating on who they might be and what brought them to this place …

At least Irene could be sure that Ren Shun wouldn’t be on display with these other bodies. He was, after all, an identified corpse.

She needed to find Vale and Mu Dan: they must be deeper inside the morgue. More gendarmes were guarding the doorways that led beyond the main central hall. She approached one of them hopefully. “Excuse me, monsieur—I am here to see the English detective.”

Her target looked blank. His companion, on the other hand, brightened. “Ah! You mean the one from Scotland Yard?”

“The very same,” Irene agreed. After all, it would be straining probability for there to be two English detectives wandering around the morgue at the moment. “Did he tell you that I would be coming?”

“Indeed, madam. He said that a lady would be joining him shortly.” The gendarme lowered his voice. “Your name, if you please?”

“Irene Winters,” Irene said quietly. Nobody except the gendarmes seemed to be in earshot, but how could one be sure?

The gendarme nodded and turned to his colleague. “Yves, I’ll escort this lady—I’ll only be a moment.”

Further inside the morgue, away from the public display room, the temperature became slightly more tolerable. Other people passed them in the corridors—gendarmes, labourers with heavy aprons, young men carrying textbooks and discussing medicine, an elderly lady with a mop and bucket—but nobody looked twice at them.

The gendarme led the way up a flight of stairs and paused to glance in an open doorway. Irene looked over his shoulder: it was a small lecture theatre with a marble table in the middle, sited to catch the light from the two large windows. “The hall for dissections, madam,” the gendarme explained. “Ah! We have him.”

Vale and Mu Dan looked up from their conversation. “Your colleague, monsieur!” the gendarme announced, as though he’d just fetched Irene from the other side of Paris in person.

“Ah, Winters,” Vale said, not getting up from his seat. “You took your time.”

“Things happened,” Irene said briefly, “most of which are relevant. Excuse me a moment.” She pressed a coin into the gendarme’s hand with a smile and closed the door on him. “Is this place secure?”

Mu Dan shrugged. She snapped the notebook she was holding shut and tucked it into her jacket. “I believe so. What has happened?”

“An attempt to assassinate His Majesty Ao Ji,” Irene said. She put down her briefcase with relief. A hotel’s worth of statements was heavy. “Unsuccessful. Three men, apparently anarchists. Two of them died in the assault, and the third one had a heart attack or stroke or something while Ao Ji was questioning him. Ao Ji said that he was under Fae influence. I have his possessions for you to examine, Vale.” She considered whether to mention Kai and decided to keep her mouth shut until she knew a little more about Mu Dan.

“We have made some progress,” Vale volunteered. He nodded towards a set of cabinet doors on the opposite wall. “Mu Dan and I have examined Lord Ren Shun’s body. And we concur with the local coroner—he was killed by a knife thrust from behind, directly to the heart. His assailant was approximately the same height as him. There are no signs of drugs in his system, and no head injuries or bruises on his wrists. Or any other injuries at all, which is interesting. I would conclude that he was taken by surprise and had no chance to resist.”

“As would I,” Mu Dan said firmly. “Though of course one cannot judge what mental effects he may have been subjected to.”

“Please,” Vale said, with a wave of his hand. “You have been telling me for the last half-hour that only weaker dragons can be affected by Fae manipulation in that way.”

“There may be exceptions,” Mu Dan said. “And if a truly powerful Fae was involved—”

This was clearly an ongoing argument that had already been through several iterations. “Perhaps I’d better tell you what happened,” Irene cut in hastily. She fished out the anarchist’s possessions from her purse and deposited them on the desk in front of Vale, as she quickly ran through Ao Ji’s statement and the brawl.

Both Mu Dan and Vale listened with sharp interest. The room seemed to grow quieter as Irene reached the part about exactly what Ren Shun had heard.

“Are you certain about this?” Mu Dan finally asked.

“I’m certain Ao Ji told me that that was what Ren Shun had told him,” Irene replied.

“Cautious phrasing,” the dragon mused. “Are you a lawyer as well as a Librarian, Miss Winters?”

“No,” Irene said pleasantly. “I just feel that at the moment, given the possible consequences if anyone jumps to the wrong conclusions, we need to be very clear about the distinction between facts and hearsay. And you can call me Irene, if you like.”

Mu Dan blinked, a little taken aback. “Thank you. I … take your point. I have no wish to trigger a disaster. But if we can’t trust His Majesty’s word, then who can we trust?”

“I’m not questioning His Majesty’s word,” Irene said quickly. This was a minefield. She didn’t want to say something that would accidentally insult either Ao Ji or Mu Dan. “I’m just noting for the record that it would be really nice to have some more information about what Ren Shun heard, and from a more direct source.”

Vale had been quiet, sorting through the anarchist’s possessions and holding them up to examine them. “Actually, Winters, there is something we had not yet shared with you.”

Irene stiffened. “What?” she demanded.

“A note from Ren Shun’s inner waistcoat pocket. Mu Dan has it. Unfortunately it is in Greek—apart from one English word, hell—and has been stained by both blood and water. My Greek dates back to schoolroom days, and Mu Dan has none at all, so we have not yet made a great deal of sense of it.”

“You might have said something earlier,” Irene snapped.

“The assassination attempt was more urgent,” Mu Dan said soothingly. “One must prioritise. Can you read Greek?”

“I can,” Irene said, extending her hand hopefully. “And while we’re at it, was Ren Shun killed where he was found, or was the body moved?”

“Moved,” Vale said. “It was clear enough from the lack of blood in the room. He was deposited there after his death. The stains on his clothing suggest that the body was brought into the hotel during the blizzard that night: snow was trapped in the folds of his coat and shirt and influenced the flow of blood from the wound as it melted.”

“That does make it look more like an attempt to incriminate the Librarians and damage the negotiations,” Irene said.

Mu Dan tilted her head thoughtfully. “I suppose some prejudice on your part is only natural.”

The mixture of worry and anger that had been fermenting inside Irene for several hours finally came to a boil. “Yes,” she said, her hand falling to her side. Her voice was cold. “I suppose it is. After all, I’m only looking at a situation where my organisation, my family, may be accused by both sides of trying to sabotage peace negotiations on a worldwide scale. Is worldwide the right word? Forgive me if I don’t actually have a convenient word for ‘affecting multiple worlds from one end of the universe to the other,’ I don’t normally deal with situations on this scale. It’s entirely plausible that a mere human like myself might be worried by this sort of thing. And I suppose it’s quite reasonable that I might be swayed by personal emotions in a situation where my parents are currently hostages and could be killed if the Library is blamed for this.”

She took a step towards Mu Dan. “I am going to cooperate in every way possible to find out who did commit this murder, and to stop a war happening. But please excuse me if I have a certain … natural prejudice … about hoping that the Library is innocent.”

Mu Dan blinked. Her eyelids flickered like a snake’s. “Your parents,” she said. “Forgive me. I will not say that I spoke unjustly, but I did speak harshly. I offer you an unqualified apology.”

Irene reined in her temper. A genuine apology from a dragon was rare. Dragons did not back down, and especially not to anyone else who wasn’t a dragon. Mu Dan had come halfway to meet her by giving her an unqualified apology. It was Irene’s duty as a Librarian—and an adult—to respond. “I accept your apology,” she said. “I will try to control my prejudice. We all will need to, I think. I hope the Fae member of our team will do the same, when they join us.”

Mu Dan sniffed, but managed to control her own prejudice and refrained from actually saying anything rude out loud. “When they get round to contacting us.”

“If we must be fair to whoever it is, we have hardly been easy to find,” Vale said. He put down the last of the coins from the anarchist’s purse. “Our next stop should probably be the Grand Hôtel du Louvre. That is where the Fae delegation is staying, I believe?”

Mu Dan shifted her weight uncomfortably. “You might have a better reception if you attended without me,” she said. “But on the other hand, I would not like to be derelict in my duty.”

And on the third hand, Irene reflected, the Grand Hôtel is going to be heavily weighted towards chaos. And as a creature of order you’ll be uncomfortable—at the very least—the moment you walk through the door.

“This investigation of ours is going to be awkward whatever we do,” she said. “Are we going to leave the Fae representative outside the Ritz if we go back there to question any of the dragon delegation? Or are we going to leave you outside the Grand Hôtel du Louvre whenever we visit the Fae? Just how far are we prepared to go in making concessions? And how far should we go?”

Vale sat back. “My opinion, Winters, is that we should make absolutely no concessions at all. They have hired me to conduct an investigation. That investigation will be on my terms. And if neither side is prepared to tolerate the presence of the other’s investigator, then I question the ultimate validity of this peace treaty.”

“You may have a point,” Mu Dan admitted. She changed the subject. “Have you learned anything from the assassin’s possessions?”

“Very little,” Vale said regretfully. “Certain peculiarities of his teeth, given that he was in the habit of chewing his pocket change. His flick-knife was well-cared-for, and also well-used, suggesting frequent violence. Possibly one of the local street gangs—the Apaches, as they’re called.”

“Native Americans?” Mu Dan asked. “I haven’t been able to do more than scan this world’s history, but I hadn’t expected to find them here in Paris …”

“The term is used to refer to the entire criminal subculture here,” Vale said. “That at least is the same as my world. Burglars, pickpockets, ruffians, and especially the street gangs. I am not sure of the derivation; no doubt Winters can research the matter if you are curious. In this case, it merely indicates that he is a recognised and violent inhabitant of the Paris streets. Sadly, it is not an indicator to a specific gang. If I may continue?”

Mu Dan nodded.

“His cigarettes are a brand that I am not personally familiar with.” That point clearly irritated Vale. “But from the packet I would assume they are local to Paris—to this Paris—and cheap. I will be able to learn more from the bodies when they are brought here for autopsy. The local police may be able to identify them. Incidentally, Winters, should I be concerned about how they died? Are there likely to be awkward questions?”

“It should come down to physical trauma while attempting murder,” Irene said. “And a heart attack or stroke for the one whose possessions you have there. Any irregularities about body temperature will probably have faded by the time they are examined.” She felt a certain regret (though not quite guilt) that the deaths had occurred at all. Humans drawn into battles between dragons and Fae rarely fared well.

Irene pulled herself away from brooding. The best way to stop any further deaths—and to keep her parents safe—was to find out what was going on and ensure the peace deal went ahead.

A half-remembered guide to problem-solving flickered through her head. Write down the problem. Think very hard. Write down the answer. Not very helpful.

A fist crashed hard on the door—then, without even a pause for reply, the person on the other side shoved it open.

A bulky gendarme shoved his way in, followed by three of his fellows. They were more neatly dressed than the one who’d guided Irene earlier: the brass buttons on their tunics and the insignia on their caps flashed brightly, and their trousers were creased to perfection. Unfortunately, they also seemed a great deal less friendly than their fellow. “You’re the English detective?” the one in the lead demanded.

Vale rose to his feet. “I am. I’m working with Inspector Maillon on the murder at Le Meurice.”

“It’s Inspector Maillon himself who’s sent us to fetch you along for an interview,” the gendarme said. He chewed on his moustache for a moment, his gaze assessing Irene and Mu Dan. “And we’ll bring your little chickens along as well. I imagine he’ll want a word with them too.”

Mu Dan tilted her head at the vulgarity, her eyes hot with anger. “I arrived in Paris after this murder took place, so there is nothing I can tell Inspector Maillon about it. I am staying at the Ritz. If Inspector Maillon wishes to speak with me, he may call upon me there.”

The gendarme snorted. “Perhaps you haven’t heard, madam, but Paris is a republic these days. We don’t have time for this sort of high-flown behaviour. If you won’t come along willingly, you’ll be put under arrest.” He turned to his comrade. “Albert, the handcuffs, if you please!”

Well, that escalated rapidly. Irene would normally have used the Language to convince the gendarmes that they had some sort of signed and sealed permission to leave—but that effect would eventually wear off and only arouse more suspicion in the long run. “I’m sure my friend didn’t mean it in that way,” she said quickly. “There’s no need to take such measures.”

“I’m in charge here, madam,” the gendarme snarled. “I’ll take whatever measures I consider necessary.” Behind him, his fellow policemen squared their shoulders, and one of them—Albert, presumably—pulled a heavy pair of handcuffs from inside his tunic. “You, madam …” he said, pointing at Mu Dan. “Your wrists, now. We do not tolerate disrespect to the police.”

“That would be quite true,” Vale said, “but there is one point I feel I should mention.”

“And what is that?” the gendarme demanded.

“You’re all impostors.” His fist took the gendarme on the point of the jaw, sending the other man staggering backwards, his arms pinwheeling as he tried to regain his balance and his eyes glazed over.

With a roar the other three gendarmes charged at Vale, drawing their truncheons. Vale caught his cane up from the desk and retreated backwards, stabbing it into one man’s stomach and then cracking a second across the forehead with it. “Winters, we want to question these men!” he called.

That sounded like an excellent idea. “Uniform caps, cover your wearers’ eyes!” Irene ordered in the Language. “Truncheons, split!”

The three men cornering Vale were abruptly weaponless, as their truncheons shivered apart in their hands, and inconvenienced by their uniform caps obscuring their vision.

Mu Dan grabbed the fake gendarme who’d been addressed as “Albert” by the scruff of his neck, her lips drawn back in a snarl, and literally lifted him off his feet before tossing him across the room. He hit the wall with a crash, shaking his head as he slid down to sprawl on the floor and his set of handcuffs tinkled to the ground beside him.

The first gendarme—the commander of this little kidnap squad, Irene assumed—had managed to refocus his eyes. He grabbed a whistle from his belt and blew on it. The resulting squeal tore through the air, loud enough to be audible rooms away. “Assistance!” he shouted. “Criminals! Assault! Anarchists!”

Heavy feet came trampling down the corridor outside, and more gendarmes burst into the room, looking around for targets, and—naturally—fixed on the non-gendarmes in the room. Time moved with the slowness of panic as Irene backed away towards the wall, holding up her empty hands in an attempt to demonstrate how harmless she was. Although she’d managed to affect this many people’s minds with the Language—with some difficulty, admittedly—she couldn’t do anything too public with the Language here. It might have consequences all the way from getting them arrested to wrecking the entire peace conference.

Vale shouted something, but it was lost in the confusion and yelling. More gendarmes were closing in on him. Mu Dan had retreated towards the wall, apparently unwilling to engage in fisticuffs with half of the police of Paris, but with no other convenient tools to handle the matter. The first kidnapper had edged over to his unconscious friend and was dragging him upright. Liquid ran out onto the floor from where a bottle in the man’s tunic had broken. Irene could smell it from several paces away. Chloroform.

A combination of fear and anger ignited in her brain and gave her an idea. She didn’t know the word in the Language for ammonia, but … “Gas stink, intensify a dozen times,” she shouted.

Her words were lost in the general clamour, disregarded by the gendarmes and the kidnappers—but the air heard her. She barely had enough time to pull up her coat to cover her mouth.

The stink was like acid—it cut through any attempts to ignore it, burning the nasal passages and lungs worse than swallowed salt water. Combatants on both sides stopped fighting, bending over to cough and clutch at their throats.

The impostors made a break for the door, shoving past choking and confused gendarmes and out into the corridor. Irene cast around for help, but Vale was trapped by the crowd on the other side of the room, and Mu Dan was coughing even worse than the average gendarme, tears streaming down her face. No assistance would be coming from either of them.

Irene thrust her way through the mob of gendarmes, following the impostors’ trail. “Stop!” she shouted after them, breaking into a run as she made it out into the corridor and the population density shifted from impossibly packed to merely crowded. “Stop there, you impostors! Thieves! Murderers!”

The still-coughing kidnappers didn’t slow down, and sadly nobody tried to stop the gendarme impersonators on Irene’s behalf. She caught up her skirts and speeded up, dodging a group of students and two more gendarmes who were trying to work out what was going on. “Excuse me,” she gasped as she swerved past the old lady cleaning the morgue corridors, barely avoiding getting tangled up in her mop and bucket. Trampling feet behind her indicated that she was being followed too. Good, additional gendarmerie might be useful. The chase was leading towards the back of the building. Dare she hope that she’d managed to corner the kidnappers?

Sadly, no. There was a back door. Irene stumbled through it just in time to see the last of the kidnappers vanishing down a narrow stairway a short distance down the road, which seemed to lead into the bowels of the earth. She grabbed one of the gendarmes who’d managed to catch up with her by his sleeve. “Where does that go?” she demanded.

“To the sewers,” he coughed.

Irene was prepared to chase armed attackers along the street, but common sense urged her not to go plunging into the unknown sewers of Paris. Especially when the kidnappers might have regrouped and be waiting for her. “Damn,” she muttered.

“There are regular tours, if madam wishes to see the sewers?” another gendarme piped up hopefully.

The first one sighed. “Jacques, shut your mouth. Madam, would you kindly accompany us back inside? There are a few questions we would like you to answer.”

“That will not be necessary,” a new voice said from behind them.

Irene turned to see Vale and Mu Dan, in the company of a gendarme with significantly more braid on his cap and tunic than the regular variety. His moustache was also notable for its vigour and ferocity, spreading out over his cheeks and into his sideburns like a grey tidal wave.

“I am Inspector Maillon,” the new arrival said. He clicked his heels together, took Irene’s hand and kissed it in a pro forma sort of way, then turned back to Vale. “Your associate is brave, but most unwise … To go chasing after anarchists as though they were a pack of ducklings. We have had too many disappearances of young women lately.”

“She was overcome by righteous anger,” Vale said soothingly. “I am certain she would never be so reckless normally. Now, about this new anarchist incident at the Ritz—I understand the bodies are being brought straight here for autopsy?”

Inspector Maillon nodded with enthusiasm. “How fortunate to have you on hand! I was most impressed by your testimonials. Together, I am sure we shall root out this nest of infamy.”

Vale nodded. “If you will allow me a moment with my colleague here?”

He drew Irene to one side, together with Mu Dan. “I believe I can be of more immediate use here, where I can examine the bodies and have access to the inspector’s records,” he said quietly. “Madam Bradamant gave me some false identification papers to explain my presence and accredit me as a representative of Scotland Yard. I’ll take your documents to review as well, Winters. In the meantime, I suggest you go on to the Fae hotel, find out what they have to say, and collect their representative. I’ll join you as soon as possible.”

Mu Dan was already nodding, but Irene shook her head. “I’m not convinced this is a good idea,” she said. “What if this group tries to kidnap you again?”

“I think it more likely that Mu Dan here was their target,” Vale said. “And forgive me, madam, but you are certainly the most distinctive of the three of us.”

Mu Dan twitched a shrug, and the diamond-headed pins in her hair flashed. “That may be true, but now they know who you are too. If you’re assaulted when I should have been with you—”

Vale glared at them both in irritation. “Do the two of you wish to wrap me in cotton wool? It would appear that nowhere in this city is safe. We can hardly go round in a trio all day. I am forewarned now, Winters. I will not be taken by surprise again. And I was not the one attempting to pursue four attackers single-handedly.”

Irene realised that he wasn’t going to give way on this point. “Very well,” she said. “I suggest we meet up at Le Meurice—it’s neutral ground. You’ll just have to pay your courtesy call to Ao Ji after we’ve discussed the situation.”

“Agreed,” Vale said, and walked back to Inspector Maillon before Mu Dan could argue the point.

Irene turned to Mu Dan. “It seems the Grand Hôtel du Louvre is our next stop. I hope they’re ready for us.”

“Are you taking leadership of this investigation, Irene?” Mu Dan enquired warily.

“Inasmuch as someone has to,” Irene said, “yes. Yes, I am.”