Déjà Vue
"Free, and to none accountable, preferring/ Hard liberty before the easy yoke"
Paradise Lost
He had a natural disposition for seasickness, but treating his body as a mere appendix had become such a habit over the years that it hardly mattered now. Thus, he almost failed to be relieved when he exchanged the boat for firm ground again in Dover.
He and his escort were met at the quai by the same escutcheoned carriage which had transported them through London. It, too, had travelled across the Channel in the boat's guts.
There was little talk on the drive through the country. The men had nothing to communicate to him other than what he already knew, and they left it to their superiors to elucidate him further. Their knowledge of his nearly perfect understanding of French inhibited any conversation they might have started among themselves.
Holmes did not mind. He had positioned his elbow in the window, so that his lower face rested against his index, a good attitude for him to think. There was no thought wasted on his purchases which probably continued their lonely existence on a London sidewalk, or on the dinner at Simpson's that was not going to take place. His mind was entirely focused on the problem at hand.
A good many years ago, Sherlock Holmes had rendered the French government a great service. A man in the pay of a certain arch-criminal had stolen a certain painting of universal fame, and he as well as the great Bertillon had been called in to retrieve it. In the end it had been he, Holmes, who had succeeded in identifying the thief and in obtaining the stolen artwork, because he had seen the larger picture, because he had made the connection between this incidence and others, tracing them back to an english professor of mathematics. For this feat, he had been rewarded with a gleaming medal and la bise by the Président of the Republic, and everybody had been happy.
Governments had changed since these days, but faith in Holmes had remained, deeply seated in the memory of the leading men. Other things, however, were not what they used to be at the time. The great Bertillon, for one, was dead. So was the professor of mathematics. He could be safely counted out, if he had not developed some devilish means for resurrection from his watery grave. The fact remained that Holmes was called in under fairly similar circumstances, secretly, to retrieve an object of great value before news of its theft could reach the public.
And this time, the scandal would be a political one. The object in question did not in fact belong to the Third Republic, it had been a loan to the Louvre by another world famous museum: The tower of London jewel house.
His memory was remarkable, but he had to concentrate in order to activate impressions of his last visit to this royal hoard, which lay a good many years in the past. Reclining deeper into the corner of the carriage, he summoned the object in question before his inner eye: A little less than six inches in diametre, it weighed 42,3 ounces, and was the shape of a hollow ball, its material pure gold. There was a band running around its midst and a half arch on top, on which had been mounted the symbol of the Christ. The decoration consisted of 375 pearls and 402 precious stones in total.
The King's orb was a gracious contribution of her Majesty Queen Victoria to a temporary exhibition of royal insignia housed by the Louvre. After the savage attack of a raving maniac who had smashed in the showcase and superficially damaged the gem, the director and the government had agreed to mollify the royal wrath of the giver by entrusting an art restorer of high repute with the orb before returning it to the exhibition. As it turned out, both the restorer and the orb had since then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
So much for erstwhile information. He would learn more in due time. As they reached the outskirts of the metropolis, Holmes allowed himself some private musings - neglecting his short sojourn connected with the Mona Lisa theft, he hadn't visited in ages - and conjured images of the Paris of fourty years ago. His perspective had been a different one, his eyes level with hands and bags and purses, and he had developed a knack of knowing who was about to pick-pocket, and who was about to be pick-pocketed. Grandmère, walking by his side with her enormous bustle and eternal umbrella, closely holding his small fist in hers, would be surprised and amused by his clever way of foretelling events that concerned their fellow walkers, and of laying open his reasoning to her. The world had been unambiguous and uncomplicated back then, it seemed to him.
But Paris, like London, was likely to have undergone changes. Life had accelerated everywhere, had become more complex in ways that could not have been predicted these many, many years ago. He would have to adapt his methods, or he was doomed to lose his hold of affairs and to fail, eventually. Holmes frowned, biding his time and pondering the various courses of action open to him.
oooOOOooo
I don't really like the leg o' mutton sleeve, but that's my problem, I fancy. If I had not exhibited a certain dexterity in achieving the effect, I would have been spared constant employment in this task, but such is my job, and that's just tough. Madame appreciates me for it. I afford her time to look after the finery, to trim decorations to perfection. There she is, bending over the tailor's mannequin, her dark fringe hiding her eyes from view, a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth as per usual.
A whiff of the tobacco reaches my nose, and it crinkles slightly. Personally, I don't smoke, unless I feel somebody is not taking me seriously - mostly the tradespeople who think a girl like me can easily be taken to the cleaner's. In such a case, the casual request for matches can have a miraculous effect.
A woman always has to fight for recognition. Being sweet and handsome is all very well, but it's just not enough in our days. You have to know how to be hard, as well. Madame relies on me. She knows she can trust me to conduct negotiations about prices and delivery schedules. Supplies from Cambrai, Vichy, Brussels, Paisley, Madras, Benares and Hongkong reach our studio every week. It is important to keep accounts of expenditure and of revenue, if you want to run a profitable business.
But even that is not enough. You can be as apt as you like with your needle, you can be as smart a business person as ever there was - all that counts as nothing in our trade if you aren't in step with the times. In order to make money, you need to know what people want, not only right now, but what they may want tomorrow, you have to try and anticipate it. I keep my eyes and ears open. Fashionable magazines build heaps on my bedside table. I attend the social functions and pleasure events of good society, I talk to the people there. I have the right background to do this.
The other girls dislike me for it. They resent having somebody on the team who is brighter and quicker than they are. In their midst, I stand out like the only black sheep in a flock of white ones, and they feel it. In consequence, I am shunned at work. I don't mind, as I work better on my own, and madame doesn't gives me any of the coarse tasks anymore. She is the only one who addresses me now and then - nothing personal, only talking shop.
The girls fall silent when they see me approaching. Perhaps they have been pondering new ways of punishing me for having a deft hand and a head on my shoulders. Or perhaps they have been making unflattering assumptions about my private life. I don't have a single friend or confidante among them. They avoid me in our luncheon breaks. Never have they asked me out to accompany them in their pitiable pastimes, which they usually enjoy together, as a clique. Like I care.
The sleeves consist of ruffles, stitched together they make a puffy, padded impression of the upper arm. The look is completely ridiculous, but in Paris it is the dernier cri. It needs concentration, which is why I don't realize at first that madame is standing behind me until she touches my shoulder.
"Il y a un visiteur pour vous, Mademoiselle Morris. C'est encore le commissaire de la Sûrété."
Her dark eyebrows are raised in disapproval. I dispense with pointing out that a call from the police can hardly be counted as a particular pleasure that I am not entitled to enjoy during work hours.
"Oui, Madame."
She takes on my job, and I briskly step into her little office, resolved to keep this as short as possible. A familiar figure is waiting for me in the back of it, uncomfortably looking at the dessins of fashionable female undergarments displayed on Madame's sketch board. It is André Delage, superintendent of the Paris official forces. We mutually incline our heads as casual acquaintances will in a hurried situation.
"How do you do, Mademoiselle Morris?"
"Commissaire." I give him a look that speaks my mind more clearly than my words do. "What can I do for you? I must ask you to hurry this conversation, since we are very busy right now."
I emphasize this bit with a look over my shoulders, into the room where my employer is doing my work. Delage clears his throat.
"Very sorry to incommodate you, Mademoiselle, but I am afraid we can't be very quick about his. In fact, I must ask you to accompany me to headquarters. You are required to make a statement…"
"Comment?" I fancy myself mistaken. "Commissaire, that is impossible. I gave you that statement twice already, and it was recorded by the minute writer. There is nothing I could add to it - "
He half-raises an apologetic shoulder. "I am most unhappy to interrupt you yet again, Mademoiselle, but this request is coming from superior places. Apparently, there has been a change along the lines of investigation. I must ask you to come immediately, and to repeat your statement to the new investigator."
I fling my head to the side, pouting, taking a second to think.
"If you wish, I will clarify the necessity to your employer…" Delage tentatively suggests, but I shake my head with decision.
"No, no, commissaire, leave that to me. If it has to be, we should get over with it as quickly as we can. Just let me grab my hat and pâletot, and we can be off."
Delage's face relaxes gratefully. "Of course, Mademoiselle. Dépêchez-vous, s'il vous plaît."
oooOOOooo
They dropped him at the Hôtel Le Meurice where he had been booked for two reasons: First, because on the Rue Rivoli in the 1st Arrondissement there was no way he could be more central, and second, because it was run by Englishmen, and apparently deemed the most suitable place in town for him - for him, who had spent nights in all possible and impossible places, from the odd Yorkshire byre to the sewers of Lisbon. But who could complain about an establishment where, when he had been in Paris as a young boy, Queen Victoria had resided on a state visit. On which occasion she had probably left her regalia safe at home.
He quickly unpacked - which for him meant to clutter his possessions wildly across the room - rang for the page to order the Paris newspapers of the past week, and was updated by the time the escutcheoned carriage stopped at the imposing white building bordering on the river Seine. He was ushered up the stairs, through a long fleet of marble halls, and finally shown into a lofty, rather comfortable parlour, where a number of venerable elderly men greeted him enthusiastically.
"Ah! Monsieur Holmes! We are saved."
The Third Republic veterans thronged around him, the people he had worked with before. He fell victim to the greetings due to an honoured man, cordial embracements and the dreaded bise. There were also some fresh faces, the head of the Sûrété for example, and the Louvre director was also a new man. They were possessed of a comparative reserve, and he silently blessed them for it.
"You will understand, Mr. Holmes",the president of the ministerial council, Alexandre Ribot, addressed him as soon as the niceties were over and the gentlemen had been seated, " that we were most eager to restore to Her Royal Majesty her possessiooon in such a state that she would 'ave no reasooon to regret her benevolence toward our great museum. This is why we sought to employ the most dexterous pair of 'ands available in the whole of Paris…."
"A little bit too dexterous it would seem, Your Excellency", Holmes returned quietly, lighting a cigarette without asking permission. " The treasure, I am informed, is gone."
The new director of the Louvre, a man by name of Étienne Sorel, politely coughed.
"Monsieur Holmes, I have known and co-operated with Madame Zhao for ten years. She possesses, if you will take my take my word for it, a character beyond suspicion. Her devotion to things of artistic value and to the process of repairing them, shows, in my opinion - "
Holmes raised his hands in a placating manner, and the director fell silent. He had a happy talent for such gestures, achieving a satisfactory effect with little effort.
"Monsieur Sorel. There is hardly any use in putting the cart before the horse. I would like to be presented with the events in the order in which they occurred. From the newspapers, I could derive that the vandalism at the Louvre two weeks ago was committed by a person of the anarchist conviction. Is this in accordance with the facts, gentlemen?"
The gentlemen exchanged slightly sheepish glances. Finally, president Ribot, the most eminent personage of the party, took it upon himself to reply.
"It is not in fact known who this vandalising subject was or what his aim in causing a riot in the exhibition might have been. Certainly he had no intention of stealing the King's orb, maniac though he probably was. After smashing its showcase and pushing it from its pedestal, he melted into the crowd and was quite untraceable."
Holmes nodded slowly. "But you chose to inform the papers that the assault was planned and carried out by one or several extreme anti-royalists. You went so far as to say that the perpetrator had been captured."
"Political considerations were a factor in making this decision", the president returned, displaying an expert's patience for the layman. "Our country, Mr. Holmes, has been involved in scandals of various sorts during the last decade. If at all possible, we would like to discontinue this series."
"Indeed." He smiled a little to himself. " Of course I am not as involved with political affairs as you are, president, but I seem to remember a number of them. The Général Boulangers coup some years back...the Panama scandal...and now you have the Dreyfus affair...rather nasty, that."
"Quite so". The president's lips were firmly set. "You see that in order to preserve public peace, it is sometimes better that not too many details should transpire. People will feel unnecessarily insecure if they are told this fellow is still at large. Unnecessarily, because we can't even know whether he will strike again at all."
"Being ignorant of his motives", Holmes helped him.
"Precisely", Ribot snapped. "But this man is not our concern now. What the French government wants you to do, Mr. Holmes, is to retrieve the King's orb, so we can avoid exposure before all the world!"
"Yes, I can see your point." He fell silent for a moment, furrowing his brow. "Pray, what damage exactly was done to the treasure? Would it not have been better, for matters of diplomacy, to commission an english restorer?"
"But Madame Zhao is a recognized authority on the subject of precious minerals!" Sorel again sailed in. "Quite a number of the stones and pearls had come off the orb, and the gold band around its equator was dented. It was the least we could do to call in the most skilled expert to be had. This is not a question of disrespect towards England, quite on the contrary."
"And not a french craftswoman, I perceive", Holmes mused. "Chinese, I presume?"
"Cantonese, to be quite correct. A difficult person to deal with, but a great artist, and most certainly no thief."
"So what is your theory, Monsieur Sorel? As to the disappearance of both woman and treasure, I mean."
The director hesitated. "I...I know my colleagues here think...but her flat was found in such a state as to insinuate abduction…"
"...and which could easily have been achieved for the very purpose!" Monsieur Simon, head of the Sûrété, interrupted. "I have seen a good many of such cases, Mr. Holmes, and I find them to show a pattern that is fairly universal. For example, if you will permit, many people seem to have an idea that criminals breaking into a house will tear out all the drawers and turn them upside down. Well, if it is a random search for valuables, this may be so, but in a case of theft with abduction, it would be more productive for them to make their victim turn over the precious item, and then to abscond with both. Also, the orb is more likely to have been in Mme. Zhao's workshop, rather than among her personal things."
"Madame lived alone, I presume?"
"Oh, yes."
"Are there any relatives that could be questioned?"
"Not in Paris. Her family is living in Asia, she came to Europe a solitary immigrant."
"What about friends?"
Simon shrugged. "She saw a good deal of her dressmaker. Took a fancy to her, we are told. Otherwise, she seems to have been a rather lonely elderly lady. No friends to speak of, only business acquaintances and such."
Holmes nodded. "I would like to see her, if possible. The dressmaker, that is."
"I have already sent Superintendent Delage, who has so far conducted the investigation, to get her. As it happens, she was also the last person to have spoken to Madame Zhao before her disappearance."
"Good. I would like to have access to all data that have been compiled so far. How long has the lady been missing?"
"Since Tuesday last."
"That makes it four days. The trail is cold already."
He rose impatiently, paying no heed to protocol or the eminent men in his company. "Monsieur Simon, I wish to see the relevant documents. Everything that can be learned about Madame via the official channels. Quickly, if you don't mind."
"Certainly, Mr. Holmes…" Simon hurried to comply with the detective's orders. A little befuddled, the great men watched their retreating forms, talking and gesticulating.
oooOOOooo
In Simon's office, Holmes took the liberty to take a seat behind the desk, swiftly leafing through all the papers its owner handed him. Within short time, he knew that Madame Zhao had immigrated in 1869, that she had become a citizen of France in 1884, and that she had been receiving commissions by the Louvre since about that time. Her address was the Rue de Ronsard 176, Appartement 6, Montmartre. There was also a birth certificate from 1832, issued by a registry in Shantou in the Chinese province of Canton.
The Sûrété had also got hold of the portfolio she had once applied with to the Academy of Arts. There were many drawings and etchings that testified to a calm, deliberate hand, all strokes even and controlled, every speck of colour a calculated effect upon the canvas; even at this early stage of her career. An artist, undoubtedly.
He found himself more interested in her work than he thought he would, and was a bit startled when Simon addressed him.
"Monsieur Holmes? Superintendent Delage just returned to the house. The dressmaker is with him, ready to make a statement to you."
"The…?" He raised his eyes from a delicate engraving of ginko leaves on a copper plate. "Of course, yes. Why don't you call her in?"
Simon opened the door to the antechamber and gave a curt sign to somebody. Then he came back to be seated next to Holmes, crossing his legs and opening a file with the record from earlier statements.
The door opened and Holmes' heart rate suddenly accelerated: Kitty Winter entered the room, risen from the dead for the second time within a few weeks.
Hi guys!
You seem concerned this is another bleak story - its not! There will be a happy end, this time. However, I said nothing about easy! We have some way to go yet….
Love, Mrs. F