Taking the candle from the sconce, I move the light across him in

rippling pools.

"Is this how the body was found?" I ask.

"Not exactly. We had to clean it up a bit. There was a goodly amount

of dried blood, especially around the fingers."

"The fingers?"

"Mm. The right hand. Couldn't even see it at first for all the damned

blood. Look for yourself, Doctor."

He watches as I raise Leblanc's fingers to the light. The piano has

fallen silent now, and the only sound is the buzzing of the f lies and a

distant trickle. And the windings of an etude.

"The fingernails," I say at last. "Three of them are missing." "Not just missing," Vidocq answers, smiling grimly. "Pried loose." He drops a small buckram bag on the marble table. Three ragged

patches of cuticle scatter into the light.

"We found them when we went back to the scene. I'm sure Monsieur Leblanc was loath to part with them."

One of them is resting in my palm now. Hard. Like a f lake of amber. "Oh, the memories," says Vidocq. "I once saw Bobbefoi do that to

one of his pals in the bagne. With a saddler's awl. You never heard such

screaming. Bobbefoi figured the fellow for being a police spy, but he

got the wrong man. Lamentably." He strokes Leblanc's brow. "There

there, old bear. We're almost done."

"The knife wounds," I say. "The fingernails . . ."

And in this moment, the music from the adjoining room seems to

twine with my own thoughts, drawing them into their natural key. "They tortured him, didn't they? Before they killed him." Vidocq shrugs, takes a couple steps away.

"Torture's a simple business, Doctor. You either want your man to

hurt or you want him to give."

"But what would Leblanc have to give?"

"A name, maybe. The name of the very fellow he was going to

see."

And with that, the remains of Chretien Leblanc's fingernails are

obscured by the piece of paper that Vidocq showed me less than an

hour ago. How different it looks to me now.

DR. HECTOR CARPENTIER No. 18, Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve The great Vidocq is yawning now. No need to suppress it. He lets it pop his jaw open and swell his neck column and f lush his lungs out.

"Don't think I mentioned," he says at last. "We found the paper in a tiny leather pouch. He'd tied it round his waist and tucked it in his drawers, if you can believe it. You could have searched him all you like, you would've been hard-pressed to find it. Not unless you had him on a slab in the Paris morgue."

His fingers lock round one another and pulse in tiny motions.