He takes me by the elbow, draws me down a corridor. We pass into a room with yellow calico curtains and a horsehair settee and . . . and, most troubling of all, a pianoforte. I reach for middle C. It pings back, in perfect tune.

"What do you want? " Vidocq grumbles. "The morgue keeper's family has to pass the time, don't they?"

We enter a room with no f lowers, no pianos. No furniture, not even a window. Only a black marble slab, draped in white cambric, and two candles, blazing in sconces.

Vidocq grabs one of the candles, walks to the head of the table, and peels back the sheet to reveal the slumbering head beneath.

"I don't believe you two have met," he says, in a voice dry as shavings. "Dr. Carpentier? Monsieur Chretien Leblanc."

CHAPTE R 4.

The Missing Fingernails It's Vi d o c q's little coup de theatre, of course, and it depends for its effect on shock, which is the one response I can't provide.

To a medical student, after all, a body is a body. The only surprise in this case is to find Chretien Leblanc's body still here. Under normal circumstances, he would have been borne straight to Vaugirard or Clamart or, if money were wanting, the potters' field at Pere-Lachaise. It's clear enough Vidocq wants me to have this private audience, and nothing more can happen until I do, and so at last I do ply myself against this face, oily with candlelight. The bush of hair inside his Roman nostrils and the chin cleft, deep enough to hold a thumb, and the threads of blood worrying his sealed eyelids. The scalp has shrunk back to reveal a grubby stripe of gray beneath Leblanc's blackened locks, but the whiskers are still neatly combed, the brows trimmed, and his pores breathe out the sweet-sharp scent of pomade.

"Maybe fifty-five, fifty-six," says Vidocq. "We can't be sure." He's standing so close behind me that his chin actually tickles my shoulder as he talks. "Ring any bells, does he, Doctor?"

"I don't know him."

"You're sure?"

"A bsolutely."

Vidocq grunts. Laces his hands behind his head and tips himself

back against the wall.

"He didn't leave any family. Took us two days just to find someone

who could identify him. Thank God for creditors, Doctor! A shoemaker on the Rue Dauphine came round to swear a complaint. Said

some bastard named Leblanc had stiffed him on a pair of boots and

skipped town. 'Skipped town? ' I said. 'Gone to a better world, more

like it.' Well, wasn't the shoemaker fit to be tied? He took one look at

that body and said, 'Damn your soul! Where am I supposed to get my

seven livres now? ' "

Vidocq chuckles. "I'd have been happy, naturally, to pay him out of

Leblanc's private funds, but the wallet was long gone when we found

him. The clothes, too. Leave a body lying around long enough, every

last article goes. Even the gold crowns. No," he says, his voice trailing

down. "I'm afraid the only personal effects left on Monsieur Leblanc

were his drawers."

He leans over the cadaver. "There there," he murmurs, and in a

gesture startling and soft, he runs his hands through the strands of

perfumed hair. "You can imagine, Doctor," he says, looking up. "I

come across a few corpses in my line of work, Doctor. Robberies gone

bad, usually. Sometimes a victim protests too much. Or the thief 's a

bit of an amateur. Something goes wrong, he can't cut the purse free,

he panics. Or the victim knows the thief and has to be-" He looks

up at me. "It's quick, usually. And clean. This was less quick and less

clean."