“Well said, Chief Inspector. Shall we get down to business, then?”
“I perceive you are somewhat lax in discipline,” Gerard said with a glance at a pair of constables strolling into the station house, laughing and joking between themselves. They stopped and stared when they saw the Frenchman, before continuing, snickering and murmuring to each other. Chief Inspector Gerard frowned. “You allow your officers to wander in whenever they feel like it?”
Sergeant Dickerson’s ears buzzed. The impudence of this French fop! Why, if he could only speak his mind, he’d show him a thing or two . . .
To his surprise, Hamilton just smiled. “I’m sure there are many differences between us, but I hope that doesn’t mean we can’t work together.”
“No, of course not,” the Frenchman replied stiffly, with a brisk tug at his crisp uniform. His brass buttons were polished to a bright sheen, the crease in his dark blue trousers razor sharp. Most amazing to Dickerson were the creamy white gloves, without a single stain upon them. He didn’t know how anyone could pass through the streets of Edinburgh without attracting any of the soot, grime, and filth spitting forth daily from its chimneys, foundries, and slaughterhouses.
Gerard glanced around the room at the constables seated at their desks or loitering about the tea station. “Is it possible to speak somewhere more private?”
“Voudriez-vous passer à une autre chambre?” Hamilton said.
The Frenchman’s face cracked into a stiff smile. “Vous parlez fran?ais?”
“Un petit peu.”
“I am glad to see the language of philosophers is not entirely without representation among the barbarians.”
Sergeant Dickerson glared at their visitor. He was about to regale Gerard on the subject of Scottish philosophers, when Hamilton threw him a warning glance. Dickerson pursed his lips but remained silent.
“I daresay you may be surprised by what you find here,” Ian remarked calmly.
Dickerson was amazed at Hamilton’s composure in the face of French insolence as he followed them to the small room at the back where the lads enjoyed the occasional furtive nap. Dickerson himself had fallen asleep on the little cot more than once.
“Here we are,” Hamilton said, offering Gerard a chair while he perched on the side of the room’s only desk. “We can talk here undisturbed.” Sitting on the cot was out of the question, so Dickerson had to content himself with leaning against the wall, which only increased his rancor toward the Frenchman.
“Bon,” Gerard said, removing his gold-braided cap before lowering himself into the chair. “I see no reason the entire constabulary of Edinburgh need hear our conversation, n’est-ce pas?”
“I understand that you have a series of crimes bearing a striking similarity to our recent stranglings.”
Removing his gloves, Gerard smoothed a hand over his perfectly oiled hair, giving off a whiff of peppermint pomade. “I have studied your newspaper accounts, and they bear every mark of ours as well. I must say, your journalists are given to rather—baroque expressions.”
“Do you believe the Paris and Edinburgh crimes to be the work of one man?”
“C’est possible. Perhaps two men—or women.”
“Ye can’t be serious,” said Dickerson. “A woman’s not capable of—”
“One must never come to a premature conclusion,” Gerard responded, pulling a small notebook from his jacket pocket. “I have here the details of our murders—there were three in all, within the space of two months, last autumn.”
“And then they stopped?” said Ian.
“Complètement. We hoped the perpetrator had died or been imprisoned for another crime. Alors, I am sorry to learn he may have simply crossed the Channel.”
“May I see that?” asked Dickerson. Gerard raised an eyebrow before handing it to him. Seeing to his dismay that the writing was of course in French, the sergeant handed the notebook to Detective Hamilton. “Can ye translate this, sir?” he asked as he failed to ward off another bout of violent sneezing.
“You might want to reconsider your dog acquisition, Sergeant,” Hamilton remarked as he gazed at the document. “I see one of the crimes took place in the neighborhood known as Pigalle—the red-light district?”
Gerard nodded. “Any manner of dissipation or vice you wish can be found there for a price.”
“Men as well as women?”
“Bien s?r,” Gerard replied, his face expressing distaste. “But the victims were respectable men, one of them a banker with three children, another a well-known doctor of medicine.”
“The French newspaper accounts make no mention of playing cards left at the scene of the crimes.”
Chief Inspector Gerard smiled. “Ah, yes—some information must always be kept from the public, do you agree?”
“Indeed.”
“So did he leave cards?” Dickerson asked, about to burst from curiosity.
The French detective gave a secretive smile and reached into his inside breast pocket, drawing forth two playing cards, which he placed on the desk: the ace and two of clubs. The design was identical to the ones in their evidence room—the same leering skeletons, one for each number on the card.
“Et vous?” Gerard said. “What do you have?”
Ian’s unsmiling eyes met his. “The three and four of clubs.”
“And the design?”
“The same.”
Chief Inspector Louis Valeur Gerard threw up his hands. “C’est ?a. It’s the same killer.”
“But you said you had three victims—yet only two cards?”
“He left nothing on the first victim. And yet all of the other aspects of the crimes are identical.”
“I believe you are correct, Chief Inspector, in believing it is the same perpetrator.”
“But why leave no card on the first victim?”
“It may be he was in a hurry, fearing discovery. Or perhaps he had not yet conceived of leaving his ‘calling cards,’ as it were.”
The conversation continued, but Sergeant Dickerson barely heard them. He was too busy staring at the cards on the desk in front of him, the skeletons dancing and cavorting as he tried to imagine what kind of fierce joy this fiend found in the strangling of young men.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
There existed in Edinburgh a tribe of men and women who plied their trade in darkness, whose livelihood depended upon the setting of the sun. Their movements were illuminated by gaslight, half in shadow, glimpsed from the corner of the eye by their fellow citizens, as in a dream. They had their own rules, regulations, and rituals, known only to them; secrecy was their constant companion, silence their motto.
They were the lamplighters and night watchmen, thieves and brigands, pickpockets and prostitutes, and they lived in the spaces between waking and sleeping, their existence as deep and still as a held breath.