Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #211 Read online

  "And Monsieur Zenith?” asked Le Bec as the car hummed smoothly under the arches into the square leading to their offices. “What has happened to him?"

  "He has become a kind of gentleman adventurer, working as often with the authorities as against them and spending much of his time in tracking down ex-Nazis, especially those with stolen wealth, which he either returns in whole to their owners or, if it so pleases him, pays himself a ten percent ‘commission'. He will now sometimes work with my old friend Blake. His adventures will take him across parallel universes where he assumes the name of ‘Zodiac'. But he still keeps up with his old acquaintances from the criminal underworld, mostly through a famous London thieves’ warren known as ‘Smith's Kitchen’ which now has concessions in Paris, Rome and New York. If anyone has heard a hint of the business here, it will be Zenith."

  "How will you contact him, chief?"

  Lapointe smiled almost to himself. “Oh, I think Blake will confirm I know where he will be later this morning."

  * * * *

  III

  Familiar Names

  * * * *

  A broken rosary, a silver crucifix bearing the initials j.c., a few coarse, brown fibres, some photographs of the corpse seen earlier at Les Hivers ... One by one, Commissaire Lapointe laid the things before him on the bright, white table-cloth. He was sitting in a fashionable café, L'Albertine, situated in the Arcades de l'Opéra whose windows looked into a square in which a beautiful fountain played. Outside, Paris's haut-monde strolled back and forth, conversing, inspecting the windows of the expensive shops, occasionally entering to make purchases. Across from him, sipping alternately from a small coffee cup or a glass of yellow-green absinthe, sat a most extraordinary individual. His skin was pale as alabaster. His hair, including his eyebrows, was the colour of milk, and his gleaming, sardonic eyes resembled the finest rubies. Dressed unusually for the age, the albino wore perfectly cut morning dress. A grey silk hat, evidently his, shared a shelf near the cash-register with Lapointe's wide-brimmed straw.

  "I am grateful, Monsieur, that you found time to see me,” murmured Lapointe, understanding the value the albino placed on good manners. “I was hoping these objects would mean more to you than they do to me. Evidently belonging to a priest or a nun—"

  "Of high rank,” agreed Zenith continuing to look at the photographs of the victim.

  "We also found several long black hairs, traces of heavy red lipstick of fairly recent manufacture."

  "No nun wore that,” mused Zenith. “Which suggests her murderess was disguised as a nun. In which case, of course, she is still unlikely to have worn lip-rouge. It was not the young woman's?"

  "Hers was from an earlier age altogether.” Lapointe had already explained the circumstances in which the corpse had been discovered, as well as his guess at the time and date when she was murdered.

  "So we can assume there were at least two people involved in killing her, one of whom at least had knowledge of the multiverse and how to gain access to other worlds."

  "And at least one of them can be assumed still to be here. Those footprints told us that part of the story. And some effort had been made to wrest the rosary from her fingers after she had arrived in Les Hivers."

  "The man—shall we assume him to be a priest?” Monsieur Zenith raised the rosary as if to kiss it, but then sniffed it instead. “J.C.? Some reference perhaps to the Society of Jesus?"

  "Possibly. Which could lead us to assume that the Inquisition could have been at work?"

  "I will see what I can discover for you, Monsieur Lapointe. As for the poor victim...” Zenith offered his old acquaintance a slight shrug.

  "I believe I have a way of discovering her identity also, assuming she was not what we used to call a ‘virtuous’ girl,” said Lapointe. “I have already checked the police records for that period and no mention is made of a society disappearance that was not subsequently solved. Therefore, by the quality of her clothes, the fairness of her skin, condition of her hair, not to mention her extraordinary beauty, we must assume her to be either of foreign birth or some kind of courtesan. The cut of her clothes suggests the latter to me. There is, in that case, only one place to look for her. I must inspect our copy of De Buzet."

  Zenith raised an alabaster eyebrow. “You have a copy of the legendary Carte Bleue?"

  "One of the two known to exist. The property of the Quai d'Orsay for almost two hundred years. Of little value, of course, in the general way. But now—it might just lead us to our victim, if not to her murderers."

  Monsieur Zenith extinguished his Turkish cigarette and rose to leave. “I will do what I can to trace this assumed cleric and if you can discover a reasonable likeness in La Carte Bleue, we shall perhaps meet here again tomorrow morning?"

  "Until then,” declared Lapointe, standing to shake hands. He watched with mixed feelings as the albino collected his hat and stick at the door and strolled into the sunlit square, for all the world a flaneur from a previous century.

  Later that same day, wearing impeccable evening dress as was his unvarying habit, Monsieur Zenith made his way to a certain unprepossessing address in the Marais where he admitted himself with a key, entering through a door of peeling green paint into a foyer whose interior window slid open and a pair of yellow, bloodshot eyes regarded him suspiciously. Zenith gave a name and a number and, as he passed through the second door, pulled on a black domino which, of course, did nothing to disguise his appearance but was a convention of the establishment. Once within, he gave his hat and cloak to a bowing receptionist and found himself in those parts of the catacombs made into a great dining room known to the aristocrats of the criminal underworld as La Cuisine de Smith. Here, that fraternity could exist unhindered and, while eating a passable dinner, could listen to an orchestra consisting of a violinist, a guitarist, double-bassist, an accordionist and a pianist. If they so wished they could also dance the exotic tango of Argentina or the Apache of Paris herself.

  Zenith took a table in an alcove under a low stone ceiling that was centuries old and blew out the large votive candle which was his only light. He ordered his usual absinthe and from his cigarette case removed a slender oval, which he placed between his lips and lit. The rich sweetness of Kashmiri opium poured from his nostrils as he exhaled the smoke and his eyes became heavily lidded. Watching the dancers, all at once he became aware of a presence at his table and a slender woman, whose domino only enhanced her dark beauty, an oval face framed by a perfectly cut ‘page-boy’ style. She laid a hand lightly on his shoulder and smiled.

  "Will you dance, old friend?” she asked.

  Although she was known to the world as Una Persson, Countess von Beck, Zenith thought of her by another name. He rejoiced inwardly at his good fortune. She was exactly whom he had hoped to meet here. He rose and bowed, then gracefully escorted her to the door where they joined in the rhythms of The Entropy Tango, that strange composition actually written for one of Countess Una's closest friends. In England, she had enjoyed a successful career on the music hall stage. Here, she was best known as a daring adventuress.

  Arranging their wonderful bodies in the figures of the tango, the two carried on a murmured conversation. When the final chords rose to subtle crescendo, Zenith had the knowledge he had sought.

  At his invitation, Countess Una joined him, the candle was relit and they ordered from the menu. This was to prove dangerous for, moments after they began to eat, a muffled shot stilled the orchestra and Zenith noted with some interest that a large calibre bullet had penetrated the plaster just behind his left shoulder. The bullet had flattened oddly, enough to tell him that it was made of an unusual alloy. Countess Una had recognised it, too. It was she who blew out the candle so that they no longer made an easy target.

  They spoke almost in chorus.

  "Vera Pym!"

  Who else but that ruthless mistress of Paris's most notorious gang would ignore Smith's rules of sanctuary, respected even by the police?

  But
why had she suddenly determined to destroy the albino?

  Zenith frowned. Could he know more than he realised?

  * * * *

  IV

  Fitting the Pieces

  * * * *

  Commissaire Lapointe was unsurprised by Zenith's information when they met at L'Albertine the next morning. Vera Pym (believed to be her real name) was the acknowledged leader of a gang which had in its time had several apparent leaders. Only Pym, however, had remained in control of the Vampyres throughout their long career. She was one of a small group capable (to one degree or another) of moving between the worlds and living for centuries. The rank and file of her gang, for all their sinister name, had no such qualities. Some did not even realise she was their leader, for she generally put her man of the moment in that position. Occasionally, she changed her name, though generally it remained a simple anagram of her gang's. And she had many disguises. Few were absolutely sure what she looked like or, indeed, if she was always the same person. Several times she had been captured, yet she had always been able to escape.

  "She has been a thorn in the side of the authorities for well over a century,” agreed Lapointe. “And, of course, she is one of the few we can suspect in this case."

  "What's more,” added Zenith, “she has recently been seen in the company of a man of the cloth. An Abbé by all accounts."

  "My God!” Lapointe passed a photocopied picture across the table. “Tell me what you make of that!"

  Frowning, the albino examined the picture. “Not much, I'm afraid. Is she...?"

  "The likeness is remarkably similar to our victim. Her name was Sarah Gobseck, a Jewess better known in her day as La Torpille."

  "A surprisingly unfeminine sobriquet."

  "I agree. But at that time a torpedo was something which lay in the water, half-hidden by the waves, until hit by a ship. Whereupon it would explode and as likely as not sink the ship. She is most famous from Balzac's History of the Courtesans."

  "Ah!” Zenith sat back, drawing on his cigarette. “So that's our Abbé! Carlos Herrera!"

  "Exactly. Vautrin himself. Which would explain the initials on the rosary. So he is here now with Madame Pym. Which also explains anomalies in his career as reported by Balzac. Vautrin is Jacques Collin, the master criminal, who vanished from the historical records at about the time our ‘Torpedo’ became an inconvenient embarrassment to more than one gentleman. Suicide was suspected, I know. But now we have the truth."

  "No doubt Collin also vanished into the 21st century, since Balzac becomes increasingly vague concerning his identity or his exploits and appears to have resorted to unlikely fictions to explain him. He knew nothing of La Pym, of course!"

  "But this does nothing to tell us of their whereabouts,” mused Zenith.

  "Nor,” added Lapointe, “how they can be brought to justice."

  For some moments, Zenith was lost in thought, then he glanced at his watch and frowned. “Perhaps you will permit me, Monsieur le Commissaire, to solve that particular problem."

  Lapointe became instantly uncomfortable. “I assure you, Monsieur Zenith, that while I appreciate all your help, this is ultimately a Police matter. I would remind you that you are already risking your life. La Pym has marked you as her next victim."

  "A fact, Monsieur Lapointe, that I greatly resent. Because of a promise I made to a certain great Englishman, I regret to say I have been forced to live the life of a bourgeois professional, almost a tradesman, and no longer pursue the life I once relished. However, in this case a certain personal element has entered the equation. I feel obliged to satisfy my honour and perhaps avenge the death of that beautiful young creature who, through no fault of her own, was forced into a profession for which she had only abhorrence and which resulted, at least according to de Balzac's history, in an unholy, early and wholly undeserved death."

  "My dear Monsieur Zenith, if I may make so bold, this remains a matter for the justice system."

  "But you are helpless, I think you will agree, certainly in the matter of Collin. He will evade you, as no doubt also will La Pym."

  "If so, then we will continue to hunt for them until we can arrest them and prove their guilt or innocence in a court of law."

  The albino bowed from where he sat. “So be it.” And with that he got to his feet and, making a polite gesture, bade the Policeman au revoir.

  Commissaire Lapointe immediately made his way back to the Quay d'Orsay where LeBec awaited him. He read at once the concern in his superior's face.

  "What's up, chief?"

  Lapointe was in poor humour and in no mood to explain, but he knew he owed it to LeBec to say something. “I'm pretty sure that Zenith has an idea of our murderers’ whereabouts and intends to take the law into his own hands. He is convinced that he knows who they are and how to punish them. We must find him and follow him and do all we can to thwart him!"

  "But, chief, if he can deliver justice where we cannot...?"

  "Then all our civilisation stands for nothing, LeBec. Already the Americans and the English have adopted the language of the blood feud in their foreign affairs, demanding eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth—but that is nothing more or less than a reversion to the most primitive form of law available to our ancestors. France cannot follow the Anglo-Saxons down that road and I will do all in my power to make sure we do not!"

  "And yet..."

  "LeBec, for twenty centuries, we have steadily improved our civilisation until our complex system of justice, allowing for subtle interpretation, for context, for motive and so on, has become paramount. It is the law I live to serve. Zenith, for all he behaves with courage and honour, would defy that justice, just as he used to, and I will have no part in it. Though I lack his resources and knowledge—even, perhaps, his courage—I must to stop him. In the name of the Law."

  Understanding at last, LeBec nodded gravely. “Very well, chief, but what are we to do?"

  "Our best,” declared Lapointe gravely. “I suspect that Countess von Beck, your own distant cousin, is still helping him in this. For that reason, I put a man to follow her. If we are lucky she will lead us to Zenith. And Zenith, I sincerely hope, will lead us to the murderers—to Vautrin and Vera Pym—while there is still a chance of our apprehending them."

  "Where are they going, chief? Do you know?"

  "My guess is that, since they failed to kill Zenith last night, they will attempt to return from whence they came. But how they will make that attempt remains a mystery to me."

  * * * *

  V

  Zenith's Resolution

  * * * *

  Una Persson's car had been seen heading up the Boulevard Voltaire towards the Boulevard du Temple, carrying at least two passengers, so it was for the Marais that the Policemen headed in their own Citroen ECXVI, perhaps the fastest car in France, powered by three enormous super-charged batteries. The sleek, black machine had them outside the Cirque d'Hiver within minutes, but from there they had to run towards the canal and down the steps to the great basin by now, at twilight, alive with dancing neon and neurotic music. There at last Lapointe caught a glimpse of his quarry and pointed.

  Zenith, as was appropriate, wore white tie and tails, carrying a slender silver-tipped ebony cane, an astonishing sight to LeBec who had never seen him thus. “My God, we are pursuing Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers!” joked Lapointe's assistant.

  The Commissaire found no humour in this. “This could be a dangerous business, lad. There was never any profit in making that man one's enemy. He was once the most dangerous thief in Europe and Europe is lucky that he gave his word to an old friend to forsake his life of crime or he would still be causing us considerable grief!"

  Suitably chastened LeBec panted. “What is he? Some kind of vampire?"

  "Only in legends. And not in any way associated with Vera Pym and her gang.” Lapointe continued to push his way through the crowd as the evening grew darker. “At least, I have some idea now where he is heading. There must have been
a gateway created by the murderers..."

  Crossing the old wooden bridge over the basin, they saw what had brought the crowd here. It was a huge black barge of the kind once used in the canal folk's funerals, two decks high. “It came up out of there—not ten minutes ago!” said an underdressed young woman wearing garish face-paint. “It just—just appeared!"

  Lapointe stared into the still-mysterious maw of the underground canal. “So that's where they've been hiding. A veritable water-maze,” he muttered. “Hurry, LeBec, for the love of God!"

  At last, they had forced a passage through the crowds, back to the tall looming house in rue Mendoza where the corpse of Sarah Gobseck had been discovered. As Lapointe had guessed, the two ahead of them had abandoned their own car and were hurrying towards the entrance of No.15 into which they swiftly disappeared.

  By the time Lapointe and his assistant had reached the door, it was locked and bolted. Much time was wasted as they attempted to rouse the residents and gain access.

  Now, at the very top of the building, they could hear a strange, single note, as of an organ, which began to drown almost all other sound and made communication difficult. As they neared the fifth floor, they became aware of a violent, pulsing light filling the stairwell below. It seemed to pour through the skylight and have its origins on the roof. The air itself had an unnatural quality, a strong smell of vanilla and ozone which reminded Lapointe irrationally of the corniche at Bourdeaux where as a boy he had holidayed with his family.