"Rearrangement? "

"Well, consider the medical literature. Bidaut-Mauger has found

THE BLACK TOWER 165.

that children, regularly beaten, can manifest all the signs of brain damage even when the cerebellum and cerebral cortex are intact. The slowness, the inattention, all those symptoms we associate with idiocy might simply be a way of-detaching from hostile surroundings."

"Detaching," he says, reaching into his pocket for a handful of pistachios. "So much so they forget what happened to them?"

"Hypothetically."

"So you're saying Louis the Seventeenth would have developed amnesia."

"I'm saying he could have survived only by excluding certain parts of his past from his consciousness. Parts of his identity, even."

Chewing, half smiling, Vidocq shakes his head.

"Christ in heaven."

"What?"

"You believe, Hector."

"No . . ."

"I can see it on your face. You think he's the real article, don't you ? "

The faintest twitching then in Charles' hand, as if he were going to protest the turn of our conversation.

"I don't know what he is," I say.

And once again, I'm filled with a surprising longing for my father. I want him to be, yes, in this very carriage, telling us everything that happened behind the Temple's thick stone walls. . . .

Vidocq pries apart another pistachio shell, pops it into his mouth.

"Something you haven't yet considered," he says. "What if our boy here is making up his symptoms?"

"I think that would require more sophistication than he has."

"Ha! If you'd ever been conned, you'd know how complicated simple people can be. This Monsieur fellow, for instance. Is he a genius or an idiot?" He folds out his hands in an agnostic attitude. "A public assassination. That's an awfully good way of calling attention to yourself, isn't it?"

"Well . . ." I stif le a yawn. "Maybe you forced his hand." "Oh, yes? And how'd he know old Vidocq was making for SaintCloud? Did you tell?"

"I didn't know I was coming myself."

The air is fragrant with pistachio and mud and spores-and Vidocq's own scent, unmistakable, hastening the decay of everything round it.

"Well," he says, "we've got one advantage on our side. Monsieur killed the wrong man. What's more, he doesn't know he killed the wrong man. And that gives us time."

"To do what? "

"Find our other assassin, Herbaux. That's my job. Your job is to figure out what that father of yours knew. Damn him for being dead," he adds, in an undertone.

"What about . . ."

I nudge my head toward that sleeping figure.

"Monsieur Charles? You're right, he will need somewhere to stay. And I've just the place for him."

"An apartment, you mean?"

He nods. "In a very fine establishment in the Latin Quarter. The Maison Carpentier."

CHAPTE R 2 4.

A Vicomte Expires Unexpectedly T en minu tes befo re the cariole reaches the Barriere du Maine, Charles crawls from the chrysalis of his coat. Stretches his arms, rubs his eyes.

"Are we there?"