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“Yes,” he says. “And created a miracle. I died. Or seemed to. I was immobile for two days. In one stroke of luck, Liliane regretted what she’d done and kept my body at home, not telling anyone what had happened. But I remained dead. Or so it seemed. Finally, on the third day—and this part of the story she just told me today—she wrote a note confessing what she had done and took the potion herself.”
“At which point you woke up.”
“Exactement. And I found her dead. I was heartbroken. But I was also young again. Well, as young as you see me now. My hair was still gray. The lines around my eyes remained. I was no spring chicken, but I felt strong and alive. I was also frightened and my mind remained fogged for a long time. I was afraid people would think that I had killed Liliane in revenge. And if they didn’t, what would they make of my transformation? We were long past the legal persecution of witches, but ordinary people had never lost their fear of the unexplained. So, I packed a few bags and disappeared.”
“What happened to Liliane?”
“Like me, she woke up. In her case, during her funeral preparations. Her revival caused the exact uproar I had avoided. The police were called. François Grillet, the police official with whose wife I had conducted my affair, arrived first at poor Liliane’s resurrection. Unfortunately, he knew about the affair by this time and recognized Liliane as the lover of his greatest enemy. So, he took this woman who shouldn’t have been alive and stabbed her in the heart.”
“And because she’d popped out of the casket, he could claim anything he wanted.”
“You understand these monstrosities so well, James,” he says before settling back against the sofa. “Well, after that, no respectable mortician would have anything to do with Liliane’s apparently dead body. She was taken to a paupers’ cemetery to be interred in a mass grave with the lost and forgotten. But, like me, on the third day she awoke before she could be put into the ground. She understood what had happened and knew that she could never live in normal Parisian society again. She escaped and crossed the continent for decades, using the alchemical techniques she learned from me to pay her way. In fact, she only went back to France as a refugee when Herr Hitler breathed his last. She’s been living there ever since.”
I flex my Kissi hand, feeling the sheer strangeness of it for the first time in a year.
“It’s a nice story, but you’re leaving out something.”
“Am I?”
“The part where you kill François Grillet.”
He laughs.
“See? You do understand.”
He takes a long breath.
“The story of la femme revenante was everywhere. When I heard about what Grillet had done to Liliane, I surmised what had really happened. So, one night while the gentleman was in bed, I crept in and cut his throat. When I was recognized and men came for me, I killed them too. I’d seen the grave once, thought that I had lost my great love to it, and was not about to be sent to the next world by such curs.”
I watch him, sprawled on the sofa, half drunk and with tears in his eyes.
“You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”
“Who can say?” he mumbles.
“I do. You’re in love with the woman who murdered you.”
“It sounds strange when you say it like that. But it was so long ago. Time has healed so much of what happened between us.”
I shake my head.
“This is all very sweet. Very Romeo and Juliet. Just be careful, man. Don’t do something stupid that’s going to get you poisoned again.”
He sits back up.
“I’m not foolish enough to make that mistake again.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
Vidocq pushes back his hair and wipes the tears from his eyes.
“Thank you. I’ve never been able to tell anyone the whole story before. It’s good to get it out.”
“Are you going to tell Allegra?”
“No,” he says. “Even after all this time, one remains ashamed of the mistakes of one’s past. I hope, James, that you will take pity on a very old fool and keep my secret.”
He looks at me until I nod.
