And it was this, of all things, that pulled my gaze, drew it as unwillingly as my body had been swept through the crowd. I moved, back the way I’d just come, pushing my way past arms and backs, stepping on feet, ignoring grumbles and curses in French. Someone knocked my bonnet from my head, and it was lost beneath the tramping feet. But I did not stop until I was pressed into the little iron fence that separated me from the glass.
Three bodies lay on display, slabs tilted to the crowd and heads propped up for our inspection. What the people had come to see was undoubtedly in front of me, a woman, bare-chested and cruelly cut. The part of me that was aware knew I was horrified by this, but the rest of me could comprehend nothing, because the body to her left had turned me into something made of stone, stone that melted in an instant from a rocklike numbness to fiery, liquid pain.
My chest squeezed, my throat clamped closed; I wanted to cry out, and could not. A woman in the crowd jostled me from behind and I pushed her back, hard, barely aware of what I was doing. All I could think was that I knew the head, the arms, every feature of the swollen, blue, and now lifeless face that lay on the slab behind the glass. I knew every flower of the horrible waistcoat, now mud-stained and dripping water to the floor from where it hung.
It was Mr. Babcock.
17
It was late when the hired carriage rolled to a stop before the red doors.
“We are arrived, Miss Tulman,” Henri Marchand said. I nodded and sat up straighter, trying to rouse myself enough to climb out of the carriage without his help. I’d made a scene in the morgue, given the crowd their money’s worth, I’d wager, until Henri Marchand found me and took me back to that hateful little office while we waited for the police. Mr. Babcock had been found in the Seine, in the “dead nets” as they called them, strung across the river to keep the city’s rubbish from flowing downstream. There were no signs of violence on his body, so his death was being considered an accident, but I knew better. Mr. Babcock had never done anything “by accident.” Someone had taken his life from him, and the noisy grief I had suffered in the shabby morgue office was as much about the utter wrongness of it as the pain of losing my dearly loved friend.
Obviously Henri had thought to send a note ahead because, before he had finished speaking to the driver, the red doors burst open and I was in Mary’s arms. Mary got me inside, locked the door behind us, and then took me up the stairs, her own eyes red and swollen. She turned to me on the landing, my hand still in hers.
“You’ve got to be going to the attic, Miss,” she said, holding her voice low. “Mr. Tully is —”
“Is he all right?” I was late. Horribly, horribly late. Again. I had been consumed with my own grief when I should have been worrying about my uncle. “Has he hurt —”
“No, Miss. He’s angry, but he ain’t hit his head or the like. It’s strange. It’s still playtime, been playtime ever since you was gone, Miss. He’s all out of sorts and can’t think of nothing else. But he does need you, Miss, and I’m sorry you can’t even be taking a moment, but first …” She drew a deep breath. “You have to be telling me. Do you know? Do you know who …” She couldn’t finish.
I shook my head. I was frightened almost out of my wits, and I still didn’t know exactly whom I should fear, other than everyone. I put a foot on the next stair, but Mary’s hand pulled me gently back.
“One more thing you ought to know, Miss. Mostly I’ve been with Mr. Tully today, you understand, but I’ve been keeping a sharp eye to the window, and that man, the one by the lamppost, well, he was leaving sometime in the afternoon, and then sometimes I was downstairs, Miss, and …”
“Of course, Mary.” I didn’t expect her to stay above stairs every hour of the day. She dropped her voice to a hoarse whisper.
“Well, I was in the kitchen, getting Mr. Tully some things to eat, and that little Marguerite was there, and Mr. DuPont, Lord love him — that little girl is a wonder with the man, Miss — and I told them I was that fond of toast, which is why I was making so much, and …”
“I understand.”
“And I noticed a young man, Miss, at the back door, talking real low with Mrs. DuPont, and …”
My body jerked. “What do you mean? What sort of young man, Mary? English or French?”
“I weren’t certain, Miss, and when I was asking the old bat when she came into the kitchen — she acts like I ain’t allowed in the place, Miss, which sets my teeth on edge, as you can —”
“What explanation did she give?”
“She said it were the boy delivering groceries, only I didn’t see no groceries, Miss, so when I was back upstairs again I just took a peek through that funny little window, you know, Miss, the round one that looks out over the back into that garden what belongs to all the houses, and there she was again, Miss, talking to a man, only this was a different one than the first time. And she gives him a little package and off he goes.”
“A package?”
“That’s right, Miss, and it happened again, only with the same man what didn’t have the groceries before. And again later in the day. I’m not knowing how many times I didn’t see, Miss. But I thought you was needing to know.” Mary’s lip trembled slightly. “Whatever are we going to do, Miss?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her or myself that I just didn’t know.
“Late!” my uncle shouted. “You are late, late, late, and late!”
He was standing in the middle of his workshop, his fists clenched, all glare and shadow from the light of the gas lamps. I was struck suddenly with the impression of a nursery, only with hammers and files and pieces of metallic humans instead of tin horns and toy soldiers. I listened to Mary carefully locking the storeroom door behind me, and tried to pull myself together. It was amazing that Uncle Tully had not gone into a full-blown tantrum when I missed my appointed time that evening. He’d taken apart several of the room’s wooden chairs, but that appeared to be the worst of it. I could not let him see the terrible state I was in lest he decide to reverse his progress and have a tantrum now.
“I’m very sorry, Uncle,” I said, straining to find my normal voice. “Sometimes it is hard not to forget.”
He considered this as I pretended to straighten my skirt. “That is true, Simon’s baby,” he said. “Sometimes I forget. But I waited already. And the girl was unhappy.” I glanced at Mary, wiping her cheeks as she shut the bookshelf door and hurried away toward the little stove. “I waited for twenty, and then I waited more. …”
“I know you did, Uncle. You are so good at that now. I think it is splendid that you were able to wait so long. Marianna would be so pleased.”
He fidgeted while he thought about this, plucking at the jacket. I watched him waver, then all at once tip to the side of contentment. “That is just so, little niece. Just so. But come, come here quickly. Hurry up!”
I followed him over to the box that had made the blue “lightning,” created from the parts that Mr. Babcock had brought him. I turned my face just slightly away, so my uncle would not see the fresh pang of grief the thought had brought me. Uncle Tully was bouncing on his toes.
“It is a new toy! A new toy, Simon’s baby! Now watch,” he demanded. “It is new. Watch!”
I stood obediently while he pushed his little clock-key lever; the blue fire shot between the poles as before, and then, suddenly, a bell began to ring on the other side of the room. I spun, startled, thinking Mary was behind us, but there was no one. Mary was still at the stove, kettle in hand, her mouth slightly open, staring at a little bell that hung from a panel on the workbench. Its clapper was going back and forth, as if a hand were shaking it. Only there was no hand. There was nothing at all. My uncle let go of his lever, and the bell went still. I turned to look at him, my mouth a similar shape to Mary’s. Uncle Tully clapped his hands.