Pyrexia – Chapter 21
Enjolras had no way of knowing if Montparnasse actually intended to meet with him. He could easily have changed his mind since that morning, found some new distraction to amuse him; or perhaps he'd never had any intention of seeing Enjolras' again at all. For all his desperation the night before, all his solicitousness just after waking, Enjolras knew that he ultimately meant very little to the younger man. Perhaps Montparnasse had already departed from the realm of what was real to Enjolras, returning to the world of memory and regrets he had once occupied.
He had become so convinced of this, that Enjolras found himself startled and elated when he saw Montparnasse come around the corner. His movements were languid, unhurried, and they seemed to convey a certain brazenness, as if his mere presence on the street during the daylight hours was a kind of challenge.
Montparnasse touched the brim of his hat in greeting. He had changed clothes since the morning, from one gaudy array of colors into another. Enjolras thought it unseemly to meet a business prospect in such a suit as would put a peacock to shame, but he held his tongue on the matter. Truthfully, he was very glad to see Montparnasse just then.
"Shall we go?" Enjolras said, and Montparnasse gave him a sly smile, as if he had sensed Enjolras' unease and was laughing at him for it.
Enjolras stopped a public carriage and handed the driver the address. Montparnasse was silent on the ride, and Enjolras did not attempt to engage him, for he could think of nothing for them to discuss that was suitable to be overheard. The driver took them across the river, stopped twice to ask directions from a passerby, and then turned down a narrow street between two tenements.
For the first time, Enjolras was seized with doubt. It was nearly dark now, and the looming buildings on either side cast a gloomy pall over the street. He glanced at Montparnasse, but found nothing in his expression to indicate wicked intent.
He was on his guard all the same, as the carriage pulled to a stop in front of an unmarked door. Enjolras paid off the driver, making sure to display the lightness of his purse as he did so.
Montparnasse seemed hesitant to go ahead.
"I was thinking," he murmured. "I suppose it could all just be a joke, right? Maybe someone set all this up, just to see if we'd really come all the way out here…"
"That seems very unlikely," Enjolras said, but he was touched by the same unexpected pity that had moved him the night before when Montparnasse confessed his fear. "There's no way to know unless we go in."
"Yes. I have to, now that you're here. You haven't left me with any choice."
"I have forced nothing on you."
"You have. You just don't know…" Montparnasse seemed ready to say more, but then he only shook his head with a jerk and started toward the door.
He knocked once, then again, and when no one came he tried the handle. The door was unlatched, and it swung open easily beneath his touch. The room beyond was sunk in impenetrable darkness, and within, all was silent.
"See? It was all a joke, just like I said. Well, we might as well give them their punch line, then," Montparnasse said, and strode resolutely inside.
Enjolras tried to display the same steadfastness, but he knew as soon as he set foot inside that something was not as it should be. He hung back by the door, which admitted a little dim light, and listened to Montparnasse bang around in the darkness. He was cursing in a low monotone, as if he found it the proper response to the occasion but took no satisfaction in it.
At last, a flame sputtered to life, and Montparnasse was standing before him holding a candle in one hand. "Don't come in any further."
"Why?" Enjolras said. "What has happened?"
"I don't know exactly, but I know death when it's near." He turned and went back inside, and, against his advice, Enjolras followed.
"Death? Whose death?"
"I can't tell yet."
The interior was a cramped room, unfurnished save for a small table with a single candle on it and an empty space where its pair, which Montparnasse now held in his hand, had once stood. There was an accumulation of splintered wood and other debris against the walls, as if the room had formerly been used for storage and cleared hastily.
Montparnasse was walking around the perimeter, casting the light of the candle into the corners. In the one furthest from the door, he seemed to find what he was looking for in the form of a heap of newish-looking rags. He grabbed them by a corner and gave them a tug and they spilled their contents heavily upon the floor.
The light fell upon the dead man's face, and Enjolras recoiled. He had seen it only for a moment, but he knew that the corpse was the stranger, Vulich. His eyes had been open, glassy; they had shown dully, as if cataracted, in the glow of the flames.
"What happened here?" Enjolras demanded, as Montparnasse knelt close to the body. "What are you doing? Get away from him."
"You talk as if I've done this," Montparnasse said. "He's barely cold. It's only been a few minutes, half of an hour at the most."
Enjolras backed away another step. His back struck the doorframe and he felt a cold tightening in the pit of his stomach. He had seen his share of corpses before, at the funerals of distant relatives he had attended dutifully in his younger years, but never had he come upon death in such an uncompromised state.
"What happened to him?" Enjolras asked, though he scarcely wanted to know.
"He was murdered."
"Are you certain?"
"It's hard to mistake such things," Montparnasse replied, with a note of wry humor that Enjolras didn't like under the circumstances.
"Then the killer might still be here."
"No, no, he's long gone. I can tell by the work he's done here. One clean thrust of a knife between the ribs. I don't even think he saw it coming. Whoever did the deed knew exactly what he wanted when he set out."
Montparnasse stood up, wiping his hands on a handkerchief. Enjolras was not close enough to see if they were stained with blood.
"His purse is gone. I don't think it was a simple robbery, though. M. Vulich, whoever he may have been, seemed more than capable of defending himself against common cutthroats. Damn it all, though. I suppose this means I don't get my reward after all…"
"How can you speak so casually?" Enjolras said, his voice a rasp.
"How can you be so worked up? It's not as if you knew the man. He was the one who came looking for me. And see now where it's gotten him…"
"I suppose you would say the same of me, if it were I lying there," Enjolras said.
Montparnasse's expression darkened. "Don't. Why do you always have to say things like that? It's like you know the exact words that will upset me the most. Listen, he came around asking about dangerous men and he got what was his due. It's that simple."
"There's nothing simpler than a knife in the back."
"No, there isn't," Montparnasse replied. "Come on, let's go."
A moment ago, Enjolras would have agreed with the suggestion without a second thought, but now he hesitated. "Wait. Tell me the name of the man he was looking for."
"Why?" Montparnasse said, eyes narrowing.
"Because you said you knew. And I want to know, too. In spite of…"
"You won't like the story, I warn you." Montparnasse sighed. "I suppose it can't be helped. I first met the man about two years ago. It was just after you…" Here, he paused to correct himself. "It was after you and I split up. I wasn't quite ready to be back on my own, so I spent a few days wandering around, picking up a little money where I could, but the old allure was gone. That old thrill that used to come when you look into a man's eyes and say, without words, 'If you wanted to live as much as I do, you would find some way to stop me'… I can see I have disturbed you."
"Not at all," Enjolras said, and, surprisingly, it was the truth. He had so long now been party to Montparnasse's peculiar breed of darkness that nothing the man said could particularly shock him.
Montparnasse regarded him warily, and then went one. "I went to this place I used to visit a lot. Kind of a cafe, where a gentleman with some money and a boy with some need might come to an arrangement. I thought I was no longer of the right age for that kind of foolishness, but I wasn't there long when a man sat down. He was older, with a kind of military look to him, but you could just tell by the way he talked, the way he gave you the roving eye, that he was more mercenary than anything. He started to talk, but he didn't name a price. He just kept on like that, talking and talking. And then, all of a sudden, I was talking too. He had a way of drawing out your secrets. He would ask a question, and you would think a lie, or an evasion, but before you could put it to words, there would be the truth. You'd hear yourself say it, and not know why."
Enjolras had come away from the door. His eyes, for the first time, were not fixed on the dead man but on the living one.
"I told him everything," Montparnasse said. "Or near enough. I told him about the people I'd killed. I told him I'd had someone to pay the bills, but that he'd thrown me out. I even told him I was thinking about getting into some honest work, which was something I hadn't even known myself. And then he gave me a kind of stern look, and he said, 'That seems a waste of a prodigious young talent.' He made me a promise, then. He said he'd do a favor for me, but some time in the future I might have to do a favor for him."
"A favor?" Enjolras said. "Did he mean…?"
"He passed my name on to some men he knew. Real professionals, a big step up from the kind of syndicates I'd been dealing with even in my best days. I'd had a bad turn in the past and I wasn't sure I wanted to work for a gang again. But a few days later, there was a knock on the door, and three men standing there telling me to pack my things and go with them. I couldn't really refuse…"
"And you think this man had something to do with it?"
"I know it," Montparnasse said. "Because I took one look at those men who called themselves Patron-Minette, and I thought, yes, these are people he would know. Not that he was a thief himself. No, he had a polished way around him. He was a man who was plenty used to getting other people to do his dirty business for him, though."
"But how do you know he was the one M. Vulich was looking for?"
"Because I took one look at M. Vulich and I knew that he was the type of man that old Russian would know, too."
"You didn't say he was a Russian," Enjolras said. He felt a fresh knot of dread forming in the pit of his stomach.
"Yes," Montparnasse said. "But I think he had been away for quite some time. His French was quite good. He said his name was Razumov."