Ça va être du gâteau
Weirdo, geek, historical anthropologist, living with a penguin lover in the shower, and a pre-schooler with more energy than thermonuclear war.
Dear friend who has found their way here from Mastodon: welcome!
This site has been neglected for far too long, but should start up again before the end of 2023. Back in the days long before the pandemic, it was the dumping ground for fanfic, but hopefully, it will return to its proper purpose as my blathering space.
Please be patient with this humble tired stealth academic.
Read here or click through
When faced with strange happenings and inexplicable poisonings, former Police Detective William Murdoch and all-around genius James Pendrick see their new Paris life turned upside down. They must turn to uncertain allies and use all resources at their disposable to solve this mystery before someone loses their life. Could this all be linked to the sudden arrival of long-lost friends in the City of Lights?
4.
The crime scene had been vacated. Two soldiers still stood guard, but the gendarmes had taken the gathered evidence back to the station, along with the bicycles. Murdoch and Pendrick were stranded on the other side of La Chapelle. Walking back at a brisk pace would take some twenty minutes, but it afforded them a little time to discuss the events of the morning. A scant three hours before, they had been fumbling with a glass shard. Now, they were dealing with the most puzzling of deaths.
Pendrick, as usual, read Murdoch’s mind. “So, are we thinking this is murder? The old lady certainly believes so.”
“I’m inclined to as well. It’s too early to know for certain, of course. The only violence on the body looked to be self-inflicted, but two men stood for some time in full view of the scene, of that I’m certain. At a minimum, they are witnesses.” Murdoch described the path and shoe prints, the crushed grass beside the train wall. He stopped walking suddenly, turning to his partner: “I sense foul play, but I can’t say in what way.” This is what troubled him the most in the affair. The foreboding. The last time he’d sensed something of the sort, their world had soon been irretrievably turned over. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Pendrick chuckled: “And you hate it! We’ll get facts soon enough. Let’s make sure we go with Guillaume to visit the spiritist this afternoon. We’ll get autopsy results tomorrow perhaps. And I’ll add your details to the diagramme when we get back. See? Facts.”
Murdoch felt a smile move to his lips. Of course, Pendrick understood his dilemma. They knew each other so well. “If we have the time, let’s run chemical tests on the jar before we go. Hopefully, there’s residue.”
“Exactly. Facts.” With Pendrick’s hand on his shoulder urging him on, they began walking again. “The question is: are the body’s finger marks still legible? The man shredded his hands trying to climb the wall. I don’t think you saw, but there was flesh imbedded in the stone. It wasn’t just blood.” Pendrick raised a hand at Murdoch’s unasked question. “Yes, I took a sample. A rather large one.” Pendrick’s expression underscored how little he was exaggerating.
“Oh. Well, if the skin you found has a wide enough area, perhaps we could find finger marks ourselves.”
Pendrick’s eyebrows rose in emphasis: “We will.” So the sample was indeed large.
“We’ll have to.” Murdoch shook his head. “I don’t trust Headquarters to do a proper analysis if the fingers are too damaged. They don’t have the motivation. You know how Bertillon is. If it’s too difficult, he’ll tell them to drop it.”
As brilliant as the Signaletic Service system was, Murdoch did not entirely trust it. It left too much room for interpretation. And to prejudice. Back in Toronto, he’d quite successfully used Herschel's and Galton’s research, as well as Vucetich’s methods in dactyloscopy, to complement the Constabulary’s anthropometric files. Bertillon, on the other hand, was adamant that his identification system was infinitely more scientific and precise than ‘puny skin ridges’. He used them for identification if he had to, but remained dubious. He did not think them as foolproof as the more modern anthropologists believed, and as Murdoch knew from experience. The fact finger marks had almost entirely been studied by Germans and Englishmen – and, worse, by Americans and Argentinians! – had much to do with Bertillon’s reticence, not doubt. Not French enough. Adding the fact photographs and concrete measurements were easier to understand for France’s political leaders than epidermal ridges ever could had allowed Bertillon’s system to become fully institutionalized. And there lied Murdoch’s problem. For French-born citizens, measurements were fairly straightforward and often remained unannotated. But those with foreign origins, immigrants and descendants alike, were categorized by type in their files. Some files actually read ‘Gypsy measurements.’ As if all Italians and Germans looked alike. As if all those of the working classes bore the seeds of criminality. On the other hand, finger marks never could indicate race or creed.
“We’ll convince Bertillon to include them in the signaletic files soon enough. If not him, then Lépine. That’s why he signed off on us. Lépine may be the least humble man in the world, but he’s intelligent enough to recognize when he’s wrong.” Except that Police Prefect Louis Lépine was more interested in order than justice and the Bertillonnage system got convictions. Sadly, the Signaletic Service’s ample files also allowed for wide-scale control of those deemed undesirable. No doubt, soon, every resident of France would have a descriptive file if Lépine got his way*.
They were on rue Pajol, fast approaching the corner of rue Marc Séguin, when Pendrick blurted: “I hate we don’t have time to swing by home. Something tells me we’ll return late tonight. I’d rather get a couple more apples for when we miss dinner.” Even as he spoke, they walked past their street. “So, did it look to you like the man had vomited on his shirt? That’s what it looked like to me, but you were closer.”
“The yellow stains, yes. Perhaps bile? I’m guessing you did not find any puddles of that sort when you mapped out the scene.”
“Nothing, no.”
“Neither did I. It may not be significant, unless it’s indicative of poisoning. I’m more interested in figuring out why the man behaved the way he seemed in the last moments of his life. Toxins. Drugs. Something caused such a response.” Clicking his tongue, Murdoch discarded his current train of thought. “We shouldn’t speculate.”
The men shared a looked and Pendrick broke is a wide smile. “Facts! Only facts for us!”
They were still laughing when they entered the station’s stables.
* It did happen, in 1912. The system still exists today! I'm in it! But the files also include fingerprints.
Click through or read below.
When faced with strange happenings and inexplicable poisonings, former Police Detective William Murdoch and all-around genius James Pendrick see their new Paris life turned upside down. They must turn to uncertain allies and use all resources at their disposable to solve this mystery before someone loses their life. Could this all be linked to the sudden arrival of long-lost friends in the City of Lights?
Murdoch was walking back at a brisk pace. Marcel Guillaume was conversing with a military officer, the body already gone. Pendrick himself was done with the site diagramme and was presently spooling his measuring gallon. He would transcribe the information onto larger paper back at the station, adding what details Murdoch had gathered. But now, Murdoch walked with intent. He stopped a couple meters back from the gathering, scrutinizing. Guillaume noticed too, nodding ascent, but continued his own conversation. Picking up both evidence bags, Pendrick joined his partner. Something was up.
Despite the many disadvantages of their lowly positions within the Gendarmerie, the fact of the matter was, they were afforded quite a bit of independence. So long as their paths of investigation did not directly interfere with Guillaume’s – and as long as they reported their findings promptly – Pendrick and Murdoch could essentially do whatever they deemed necessary to bring cases to a close. After all, the entire point of their working at La Chapelle was to test if their detecting approaches could work within Paris’s modernizing Criminal Police system.
As it was, it did not take long for Murdoch to focus in on an elderly woman, stooped and perhaps worried. Presenting himself with his pseudonym, William Gagnon, he asked her about picking nettles. The elderly lady, a Madame Branchu, was among the few onlookers remaining at the scene after the body was taken away. She had stared at both him and Guillaume, pointedly, for as long as she’d been there. When Pendrick approached, she indicated she didn’t think she liked the company, turning her nose at the soldiers still on site. Not a particularly surprising comment. As with a majority of the elderly working classes in the city, she was suspicious of the military, remembering all too well how government troops had massacred their brothers, husbands and sons during Paris’s many failed revolutions in the last half-century. Their own neighbour, Madame Meyer, was much the same and equal in her own losses.
Seeing the elder lady’s reluctance to speak in public, Pendrick took over the conversation. Giving her his most glowing smile, he suggested they might walk her home. In this field, Pendrick was much better equipped than his partner. His blond hair, gently tanned complection and English-accented French gave him a clear advantage over Murdoch, whose own looks were much closer to the Parisian norm. Madame Branchu blushed and eagerly took Pendrick’s extended arm.
They walked slowly, in deference to her, while he showered her with his charms. She lived close-by on the rue du Pré-Maudit and they reached number 12 in less than twenty minutes. By then, Madame Branchu was giggling like a girl in love. She shared a modest logement with her son’s widow and a host of grand children. The younger Madame Branchu was absent, currently working for the poulterer at the Marché de l’Olive. A ragged-looking teenager met them as they arrived, her hair falling out of a loose bun, holding two siblings by the collar, toddlers attempting an escape by the open front door. The elder Madame Branchu asked her to make coffee for the guests. The girl left the front room, a child under each arm. Then, her grandmother sat heavily and spoke without prompting: “Yes, I saw the body this morning.”
Pendrick stiffened in surprise, Murdoch too. The old woman laughed and patted the latter’s knee with a gleam in her eye. “I am old, dear boys, seventy-two years old! I don’t have time for prevarication, so yes, the man was already dead when I went harvesting this morning.”
Pendrick was charmed all over again. If only everyone were as pragmatic as she! Murdoch’s expression changed as he took in their conversation’s new state. He stated: “Madame, my colleague Monsieur Beckett and I need to know any detail you might remember about this morning. Tell us what you saw, please.”
She adjusted her skirts while choosing her words. “Well, I got up early, at Matins... I mean at about five, the same time as my daughter-in-law. I helped make breakfast – we had yesterday’s soup – and then I left for the wall. One can find nettles in a few places in the neighbourhood, but none are as healthy as those that grow wild near the train passage. I like to go early, when the plants are still wet with dew. It’s easier to choose the best leaves that way.”
“So you arrived at the Thiers wall before six this morning?” Pendrick asked, pulling our his notebook. She nodded her ascent. A time line was emerging.
“Please tell us,” Murdoch prompted, “what did you notice, once you saw the body? Did you walk over to it?”
“Oh! Goodness no! I didn’t want to get involved with the military! Too much trouble there! Once I saw the poor man, I finished my collecting as quickly as I could. Had I known civilians would be involved, perhaps I would have called the police, but I could not know then.” After a deep breath she continued, “There were no insects around the body, no smell, no bloating. It was a fresh corpse, I could tell from a distance. You see, I wash all those who pass on in this street, to prepare them for viewing. I have seen my fair share of the dead in my time. The poor man had not been dead long, I am certain of it.
“Also his eyes. You saw them, Monsieur Gagnon. He died in fear.”
Both Pendrick and Murdoch nodded. There was no forgetting the man’s tortured face. “Beside the presence of the body, did you notice anything else unusual?”
“No,” she added, sounding doubtful. Pendrick guessed she was pondering a different answer. Then, she looked to have reached a decision, perhaps reluctantly: “Yes, one thing. This.” From the folds of her apron, she pulled a small pharmacist’s jar. There was no label, but the small ceramic container and its cork stopper were in perfect condition, not even scratched. “One can find a lot of things near the wall, but a pot like this is rare. It was left opened and empty, like that, on the ground, where the grasses were walked over.” Turning to Murdoch she added, “You know where, I saw you find the path.”
Pendrick was confused, “And you took the jar. If it was so unusual, why not leave it there for the investigators to find?”
Madame Branchu seemed equally confused, “A jar like this can be useful. It’s a shame to throw them away. I wasn’t going to leave it there for someone else to take. I was going to wash it and put perfumed powder in it, for my grand daughter’s birthday.”
She had whispered the last sentence, since they could hear the girl in question walk back up the corridor with a tray. “Thank you my dear. Please go back to the kitchen now.”
The girl said nothing, but stiffened in displeasure and shot them all a rebellious look before turning and walking off. “Don’t mind her, she’s a good girl, but fancies herself a grown woman. All of fourteen, can you imagine?” Madame Branchu shrugged, “No matter.”
Pendrick searched for a way to ask her for the jar, but the elderly woman surprised them again.
“I guess now you’ll want it in evidence, as ‘proof’. Is that the word? To do all sorts of science with it?”
He felt his mouth drop in shock. What did the woman know? She chuckled and waved away their questions. “Oh, dear boys, of course I know all about you two. The Canadiens working for the police. From what I hear, despite everything, you’re probably the only two trustworthy men at the Commissariat, the only ones who are willing to listen and not judge us low folks for our social class when trouble arises.”
It was Murdoch’s turn to blush bright pink and sputter in gratitude as her words sank in on them. Despite everything? That was not quite good news. She had revealed that their hopes for an anonymous police career were as moot as their previous attempts to keep their relationship secret from their neighbours. As police specialists, they had managed to stay out of the newspapers, which was good. But it seemed that word had spread to the populace, far beyond their street, all the way to the other end of La Chapelle, that not only did they work for the Criminal Police, they were also “inverts,” in the polite parlance. Pendrick could not help but laugh at the futility of it all.
“Well, yes, good Madame, in fact we would like to examine it at the station. If you can part with it, of course.”
Still blushing, Murdoch pulled one of his ever-present handkerchief from his inner jacket pocket. “Please.”
The old woman, her swift wit now in full display, hesitated only a moment before placing the small container in Murdoch’s hand. Then she moved to her coffee cup on the tray and changed the subject. Murdoch tried to ask a few more questions about the crime scene, but she would have none of it. “Now, finish your coffees and shoo,” she insisted. “You have a killer to find.”
Read here or click through.
When faced with strange happenings and inexplicable poisonings, former Police Detective William Murdoch and all-around genius James Pendrick see their new Paris life turned upside down. They must turn to uncertain allies and use all resources at their disposable to solve this mystery before someone loses their life. Could this all be linked to the sudden arrival of long-lost friends in the City of Lights?
Murdoch was puzzled. They were heading directly to the Thiers fortification wall. As they approached, they made their way through a smaller civilian gathering than expected to join two Guardians of the Peace from their station, Leroux and Varney, beside whom they dropped their bicycles. Dark blue frocks and white sticks on display, the two stood keeping the crowd back along the boulevard. Still, the obvious reason the onlookers were fewer and more orderly than usual were the some ten soldiers from the nearby bastion, armed with bayonetted rifles. They were standing guard close behind the fence marking the Military Exception Zone, which ran parallel to the high stone fortifications that circled the entire city, footed by a pock-marked military road used for troop transport.
Murdoch and Pendrick followed Guillaume closely. The former addressed him in French, so as to keep public the procedures from that point on: “Is the army giving us this case? Why?”
“It seems that even the soldiers know we’re the experts here! In any case, the victim is civilian.” Guillaume smirked and jumped the rickety fence, expecting to be followed.
“Are we sure it’s a crime?” chimed Pendrick in his heavily accented French. He really did sound like an American when speaking Molière’s tongue. Murdoch found it quite endearing.
Pointing to an open, flat area hidden by brambles, Guillaume shot back, “Certainly looks like it to me!”
Murdoch and Pendrick approached, careful not to smudge possible tracks left in the yellow Parisian soil. The Provisional Investigator was right, the scene was gruesome enough to count as suspicious. Murdoch crossed himself, sending a prayer for the lost soul left alone on the ground. Then as one, the Canadiens reached inside their murder bags; Murdoch pulled a magnifying glass and a measuring gallon, while Pendrick took a notebook and pencil.
Murdoch could not lie, he loved this! Despite the gruesome circumstances, he was in his true element: he circled the body slowly, eyes sharp, voice certain, stating out loud the details of import for Pendrick to write down. The body lied nearly halfway between the Porte de la Chapelle-Saint-Denis and the Porte d’Aubervilliers, two meters off the military road. The male, moustached and in his early 1930s by the looks of him, was prone on his front, his right cheek in the dirt, right arm extended, hand apparently pointing toward the railroad track that crossed the wall into the train passage less than 20 meters away. The deceased was in a frightful state: face and hands covered in angry rashes, eyes looking forward, bloodshot and frozen open in death, mouth bloody, clothed ragged, hat missing. Murdoch asked gendarme Massot who’d been trailing them with the camera to take a photograph of the entire body and a close up of the head. Marcel Guillaume, standing five meters away on a foldable footstool, called out for the man to also take a photograph of the deceased’s point of view. “Might at well record what he was looking at.” Murdoch nodded in agreement.
A perched Marcel Guillaume at a crime scene was not an unusual sight. He claimed that a higher vantage point allowed him to take in the entirety of an incident site. He’d been known to barge into some citizen’s upper floor apartment to look upon the aftermath of brawls to murders to demonstrations. Here in the military exception zone, a short stool was the best he could manage, but as with everything Guillaume aimed to lord over all his purview. He started dictating his observations to gendarme Braun who stood below. Murdoch paid them no mind ––they would discuss the case together and compare notes later at the station –– and he kneeled at the corpse’s head, joined by Pendrick. The latter spoke under his breath, in English. “This is strange. I know he looks like he was trying to crawl toward something, but his face is frozen in fear.”
Murdoch shot a scolding look at his partner for his choice of language and responded louder in French, “You’re right. He could have been crawling away from something.”
Standing, they walked four steps to the body’s feet. The gravelly dirt had been disturbed in a clear path, which they followed for approximately 15 meters, leading in a broad curve toward the fortification. “It looks like he dragged himself from the here to there and then simply stopped... What is that?” Murdoch hurried to the limestone wall, Pendrick at his side.
Hand prints. The stone was covered with pairs of trailing bloody hand prints, as if someone had tried to climb the vertical surface and shredded his hands raw in the process. “What was he doing?” asked Pendrick.
Murdoch’s insides liquified. The circumstances of this death proved darker by the minute. “The question is what was he trying to escape?”
They turned as one hearing the ambulance arriving. They were running out of time. Murdoch placed a reassuring hand on his partner’s partner’s shoulder. “Can you make a diagramme of the entire scene, please? I’ll go back to the body. I want to look at it more before they take it away.” Handing Pendrick the measuring gallon, he quick-marched back to where Guillaume was readying to turn the corpse on his back. Murdoch extended his hands to help. “Prêt? Sur le compte de trois.”
On three, they rolled the body. Lividity had set in and the man’s left arm stayed rigid on his side, his head at an angle. The deceased’s frightful state was in clear evidence. The dead man was wearing a dark grey suit of the kind worn by the Nouveau Riche. The front shirt and collar were dotted with dried blood and what looked like a greening yellow fluid as was the dirtied beige waistcoat. “Perhaps bile or vomit,” Guillaume mused. The Investigator patted the body’s sides and pockets, finding a broken smoking pipe, some tobacco, quite fine, a once-white handkerchief, but no wallet, nor watch. On a hunch, Murdoch inserted his fingers in the watch pocket of the waistcoat, finding a folded over calling card, which said:
Pierre DEULLIN, éditeur.
Sciences occultes, spiritisme, théosophie.
Rue de Savoie, 3.
Guillaume gave the former detective a fond smile: “Well, we know who we’ll be visiting this afternoon, don’t we! Now Massot, photograph the face, will you.”
Once that was done, and the ambulancemen were taking the corpse away for examination, Marcel Guillaume announced he wanted to speak to the boys who’d found the body. Murdoch felt a pang at his side. Less than two years ago, it would have been him that would have approached the two very young lads, barely old enough to wear shorts, holding onto a gaunt woman’s skirts, perhaps their mother or an aunt. But no longer a detective, he had to contend himself to physical evidence, to the prosaic. Banking down his jealousy, he resolved to look in the direction where the body was pointing, toward the railway tracks.
For the first four or so meters from where the body had lied, the ground revealed nothing unusual, dried leaves and random stick were strewn about, bits of decayed labels and slivers of torn advertisements, a flattened and rusting food tin. But then the vegetation grew denser, first with taller grasses, then with nettle bushes. Two things were obvious to his eye. Firstly, someone had been here recently to harvest nettles, likely in the early morning. More than a dozen plants had had their leaves freshly cut, the stalks still seeping sap, and the tall grasses were broken and flattened all around. Someone had walked about in search of the best leaves, then left in a clear path leading directly to the perimeter fence. Murdoch knew that many older ladies in the neighbourhood, including his neighbour Madame Meilleur, used nettle infusions to sooth their aches due to rheumatism. This particular scene was not, therefore, suspicious. Secondly, however, another path was obvious from his current viewpoint. One, perhaps two persons had also made their way through the vegetation, this time in a direct line from the railway tracks, only to stand side by side near the nettles but far enough away not to get stung. Indeed, two sets of prints were clear in ground where the soil was slightly damp and had preserved the shape of their shoes. Two men. They had stood there, looking towards where the deceased had been found, not moving around much, then seemingly they had left through where they had come.
For an instant, his near perfect memory provided him with an image of the last time he’d walked through grasses in search of clues to a crime. Two years ago in Toronto, when James Gillies had taken his lover. Turning, he looked back to see Pendrick was safe and sound, measuring the hight of the topmost handprints left on the fortification wall. Dismissing his momentary flutter of panic, Murdoch realized that from this position, whoever had stood in the grass had had a perfect view of not only the crime scene, but almost all the way to the Porte des Aubervilliers. A perfect vantage point, but also a somewhat hidden one. If, as he thought, the events took place the previous night, and if these men were crouching, the deceased might not have seen them at all. But the deceased had seen something. He had been reaching for something, had he not?
Knowing he could not answer these questions yet, Murdoch gave a last look to his lover then turned his attention back to the ground, concentrating on finding what evidence was left behind. He chose to preserve the path by walking half-a-meter to the right of it, using his hand to bend the grasses slightly so they would not block his view. He reached the stone wall flanking the rail tracks in minutes without finding anything of import. The wall was not as high here than farther toward the boulevard, barely two meters high, soil and mulch having accumulated along it. In this spot, someone would not have found it difficult to climb over it, something Murdoch demonstrated to himself post haste. Jumping just enough to find purchase, he pushed himself on top it to look over. The railway tracks were some three meters below, but someone with a ladder could have climbed up this way quite easily.
But why? Why not simply make their way from the boulevard. It’s not as if the military zone was respected, on either side of the fortifications. The shacks and houses built on the zone outside the walls numbered in the hundreds. On this side, chickens, children and old ladies passed through regularly, despite the efforts of the soldiers on guard. So why risk the train tracks? What in the world had happened here last night?
He needed to find a woman about nettles.
Read here or click through.
When faced with strange happenings and inexplicable poisonings, former Police Detective William Murdoch and all-around genius James Pendrick see their new Paris life turned upside down. They must turn to uncertain allies and use all resources at their disposable to solve this mystery before someone loses their life. Could this all be linked to the sudden arrival of long-lost friends in the City of Lights?
Of course, James Pendrick was not one to dwell too much on past travails. The Future, and how diligent work in the Present would bring it forth, was entirely more interesting. Ordinarily, that is. In the aftermath of the Gillies Affair, as he privately called it, Pendrick was forced to admit that specific portions of the recent past occupied a disproportionate part of his thoughts. Thankfully, he no longer felt torn apart by those horrible events, by all he had lost. He had found his way out of the dark places he's allowed himself to inhabit this time last year. Now, on most days, he rooted himself firmly in the present. It would be the hight of hypocrisy to claim that all was well, but for the most part, he was in good spirits.
James Pendrick, formally Toronto's greatest civil engineer and once millionaire, was now a near anonymous forensic specialist working in the underfunded or overlooked commissariat of the yet-developping neighbourhood of La Chapelle, in Paris's tawdry 18th arrondissement. A far cry from Canada's rich and famous. Though this lowly condition should have brought his ego to its knees, Pendrick had found a kind of solace here that had eluded him in Canada. In Paris, he had found solace and certainty in someone other than himself.
He viewed it as personal growth. Before, even in his happiest days with William in Toronto, Pendrick never entirely trusted that he'd build his entire future with the love of his life. Even with the wedding rings they both wore around the neck, even with the promises they'd made and the difficulties they'd conquered, Pendrick had never fully banished the idea that he would find himself alone again. Perhaps because prison would separate them. Perhaps because public opprobrium would prevail. Or simply, perhaps, because William Murdoch would no longer wish to live a life his God deemed a capital sin and would leave him to save his immortal soul.
But William Murdoch hadn't gone. Quite the opposite. William had nursed him back to health through the bleak winter in that godforsaken French Canadian village, while his injured shoulder festered only lightly less than his mood. As fugitives, William had stuck to his side, steadfastly, got him through the darkest times in the previous year, when neither of them could even find comfort in the use of their real names.
Now, they were living legally in the City of Lights, using pseudonyms, yes, but only to facilitate their work for the Gendarmerie. Their future was assured and their almost-marriage strong.
It was simply that their life was now so small! There resided his issues. James Pendrick was not used to small. He was a visionary, a genius. He'd been one of the world's most promising inventor. His misplaced trust in Sally Hubbard had cost him his fortune, but not his greatness. His biggest flaw, trusting those who showed similar enthusiasm in invention, would certainly have led him further astray without Murdoch's guidance. They were stronger together, but the glory that was his due, the thrill of world-wide recognition, the accolades befitting his successes would now be out of reach, likely forever. He and Murdoch would be together until the end, of that he was certain, but at the cost of anonymity, at the expense of renown.
Some days, it made the walls too narrow, his skin too tight.
But he could live with it. He would live with it. James Pendrick could weather anything. With William Murdoch at his side, he could win at anything, even a small life.
Which is why he and Murdoch were currently cloistered in their dank "office," a room at the back of the commissariat's stables, ignoring the stench, attempting to use refraction and precision photography to distinguish finger marks on a piece of curved smoked glass taken from a murder scene, so they could send them for identification by Alphonse Bertillon's Signaletic Service at Headquarters. The air was proving entirely too dusty for their purpose. They could see the cursed finger marks, but they remained obscured and out of focus.
"We need a lens with a higher vergence," Murdoch grumbled.
"Obviously," Pendrick responded with equal frustration, pulling out his new copy of Molesworth's Pocket-book Formulae, flapping its tiny pages to the correct section. "If we give Guillaume a request for a specific lens with a precise convecture, he might convince Pontailler to pay for it, without going to Bertillon." The Pocket-book's binding was not yet quite broken in, the only thing he missed about his old copy. It had finally given up the ghost soon after they took their position here, a year ago, when a thick section had flown out of his hands directly into an odorous puddle of horse urine. Finding a replacement had proven more difficult than expected. They had discovered that of the half-dozen engineering bookstores the city housed, none carried books in English, only French and German. Of those two general bookstores which sold to readers of the English language, only one had agreed to track down a copy. It was not even the latest printing, but rather the 1886 edition, used. Pendrick did not mind. He had procured his original 1872 copy un adolescence, when he'd first discovered a passion for large-scale engineering. This was an expanded and revised version, without having gained much bulk. It lived in his inner jacket pocket. This Pocket-book was already heavily annotated, with inserts and marginalia in his own hand, copied from his ruined edition. Flipping to his notes on lenses, tucked in the section on curvature formulae, he handed the book to his companion.
This. This is what made life worth living. His partnership with William Murdoch. Waking with him in his arms in the morning, blearing-eyed but smiling. Sharing meals, looks, touches. Loving. Marvelling, every day, every moment, at his keen intellect and intractable focus. Like now, Murdoch was deftly juggling equations, writing figures in his perfectly neat hand, arriving at the correct answer as always. In this glowing presence, how could anyone not experience wonder, delight, love? Desire this man?
Putting away their equipment and the evidence files strewn about allowed Pendrick to gaze upon his lover at several angles. From the evidence cabinet, the curve of William's biceps, bulging under his rolled-up sleeves. From the microscope shelf, the surety of his hands -- how he cherished these hands! From the photography nook's curtain, the width of the man's shoulders, the taper of his back at the waistline. And lower still.
But now was not the time for such carnal thoughts. "The Lab," as everyone at the station called it, was for solving mysteries, criminal and scientific both. Setting up the workspace at the onset had been expensive, but Quai des Orfèvres has footed the bill with minimal fuss, thanks to Bertillon's support. However, any additional equipment had since required endless forms and requisitions, the reams of paper French bureaucracy was famous for. Their own wages didn't go very far, but it often happened they had to pay for what they needed out of pocket, then hope for reimbursement later.
Murdoch arrived at the correct refraction index and focus length just as Pendrick closed the last drawer. In that instant, Provisional Investigator Marcel Guillaume popped his head through the door way, shouting in English: "Hop hop! You're needed!" before disappearing from view.
How Guillaume annoyed them both! While the man was an undeniably excellent detective, he was the hight of arrogance to those few yet under his supervision. He was earnest and deferential towards his hierarchical superiors. But to his subordinates, he fancied himself the unerring authority. Said subordinates included Murdoch and Pendrick, unfortunately, even has they both had once been his obvious superiors, if not in position, at least in experience. Patrolmen and Guardians of the Peace out of the station took Guillaume's superiority with resigned equanimity, as if it was perfectly expected. For Pendrick and Murdoch, however, Guillaume's unquestioning self-assurance, the man's unshakable ego, grated a little more every day. Pendrick knew, in the privacy of his thoughts, that part of his own reaction was fuelled by his ego, still bruised from their flight from Toronto. He could not deny his instinctual recognition of the lesser parts of himself in the soon-to-be-Inspecteur. But the man was not yet one, let alone a Commissaire, even if he already acted as such. Nor was he a detective genius like William Murdoch, who Pendrick knew to be Guillaume's true superior in every way that counted.
So it was with a groan and a knowing look that Pendrick and Murdoch fastened their sleeves, put on their jackets and hats, grabbed their "murder bags," and took their bicycles to follow their hierarchical superior's light carriage northward on rue Philippe-de-Girard, toward the city wall.
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The following is taken from a recently defended Master’s cognate in History entitled « The Consequences of Flight : The Rediscovered Diary of a Canadian Homosexual in the Late-Victorian Era. »
Excerpts from the Conclusion
[...] It is unfortunate that Murdoch's diary ends so abruptly, mid-sentence. This fact, and the loose leaf entry dated from October leads one to believe there is a second volume, location unknown. That the lone volume transcribed here was conserved at all is a miracle all of its own. [...] Above all, the journal's very existence as part of the Ogden Fonds at the Ontario Provincial Archives reveals the Murdoch and his colleague and friend Julia Ogden were at some point in contact after 1900. When exactly this occurred and under what circumstances is a mystery. [...] No correspondence between the two as survived, so far as we have identified. This is no proof of its nonexistence, however.
Much further research, notably in the Pendrick family archival fonds, housed both in Toronto and Vancouver, should lead to more revelations. Sadly, such extensive research was simply out of the purview of a Master's degree's cognate essay. The same must be said for research in French Archives, especially in administrative, judiciary and police fonds. From what can be deduced, there should be a record of Murdoch and Pendrick's residency permits, both under pseudonyms and their real names. Salary records must exist. Did they move up the ranks of the judiciary police nascent forensic service in the shadow of Marcel Guillaume's meteoric career? Did they join Bertillon's office, situated in the famed labyrinthine rooms under the rafters at Quai des Orfèvres? Such research, both across Canada and in France, would be possible in the course of a PhD project. It is our hope to continue to unravel the lost lives of William Murdoch and his lover James Pendrick. [...]
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The following is taken from a recently defended Master’s cognate in History entitled « The Consequences of Flight : The Rediscovered Diary of a Canadian Homosexual in the Late-Victorian Era. »
The Murdoch Diary, part 2:
Paris
7 July and 17 October 1900
7 July, Sunday
We decided we will no longer visit the Exposition. We have seen all the inventions we care about, with the exception of the telescope, but it is no matter. We decided the frustration brought by missing out on the presentations of those discoveries are likely to be much smaller than that of avoiding those men of science who would recognize James. We hope to continue to take in lectures whenever possible. One can hide in a crowd. However, our Sunday afternoons will now be spent at St Geneviève library^1^ reading scientific journals and the past week's foreign papers. Much more satisfying.
To wit: on July 2^nd^, Zeppelin's men successfully tested a prototype airship^2^. A rigid-framed, fully dirigible airship! What a time to be alive; the time of human flight is upon us. With this type of vehicle, Man will soon fly around the world, like Verne imagined, but in comfort and luxury. Imagine, one day, we might even return to Canada, across the Atlantic through the air.
James, who is looking over my shoulder, reminds me that we are yet ignorant of what physical effects or medical consequences would occur from prolonged, high-altitude flight, and that [end of manuscript]
[Partially-torn loose leaf inserted between pages 94 and 95.]
[Front of leaf] 17 October [Wednesday]
James noticed a short news item in an American newspaper, not the Times, that has sent him in a tizzy. Apparently, two men in Ohio^3^ are attempting controlled, heavier-than-air, manned flight. They have already constructed a glider. James is attempting to ascertain how different from Lilienthal's glider^4^ theirs is. In any case, he has been useless since Sunday, leaving me to take the brunt of analysis. Thankfully, it is a light week.
[Back of leaf]
Pain
Lait
Encre noire
Beurre
Boeuf
Onions et al.^5^
Thé -- 352, St. Honoré^6^
Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, one of Paris's oldest and biggest fully public libraries, was founded in 1851 and is still situated on Place du Panthéon in the 5^th^ arrondissement.
Murdoch is referring to Ferdinand von Zeppelin (1838-1917) and the LZ-1 (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin 1), the first prototype airship was tested over Lake Constance on July 2nd, 1900. The flight was considered a success despite it being cut short after 18 minutes due to structural failure. It was designed by Theodor Kober (1869-1930), constructed by Carl Berg (1851-1906) and piloted by Hauptmann Hans Bartsch von Sigsfeld (1861-1902). This was the first step in the development of Zeppelin's well-known airships before the Second World War.
The reference to Ohio and a glider indicates Murdoch is referring to Wilbur (1867-1912) and Orville Wright (1871-1942), who tested their very first prototype in 1900, ahead of their first motorized flight in 1903.
Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896) is regarded as the first human to make repeated, documented, successful flights with gliders, from 1894 to his death from injuries incurred in a crash.
Interesting that this undated grocery list, in Murdoch's own hand, is entirely in French with the exception of the spelling of onions, in French "oignons".
Paris city books for 1900 show this to be the address of Forster et Compagnie, a tea seller, situated in the first arrondissement near Place Vendôme.
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The following is taken from a recently defended Master’s cognate in History entitled « The Consequences of Flight : The Rediscovered Diary of a Canadian Homosexual in the Late-Victorian Era. »
The Murdoch Diary, part 2:
Paris
4 July 1900
4 July, Wednesday
The world turned upside down again. Here we are in Paris, our talents and our names recognized, at least behind closed doors. I must admit, reluctantly, the Guillaume pulled through for us. Granted, it is mostly to his benefit, but we can not and will not complain. Officially, when in public, we remain Beckett and Gagnon, but the names now serve as a kind of cover. However, to the Police, with permission of the Sûreté headquarters, we are ourselves again. Monday, James and I took the position of "specialists" at the Police station, working out if its stables. We will earn 22 hundred francs a year each, as much as most street patrolmen. There is no room for advancement outside of Marcel Guillaume's own. Where he goes, we go. We are his Canadiens and will work as forensic analysts, all around tinkermen and soundboards for him. Guillaume remains a provisional investigator for the time being, but should soon replace the station's inspector when he himself replaces Mr. Pontaillier^1^ upon his retirement as police chief. Probably next year if the rumours are correct.
We and Guillaume serve as a kind of experiment. Last week, we were summoned to Pontaillier's office by no other than Bertillon^2^, with a representative from the "Première section du Deuxième bureau de la Première division,^3^" who would not give us his name, and in the presence of Guillaume and Duponnois. Bertillon explained he hoped to expand his anthropometric department to include the full use of detecting techniques and new technologies. The Sûreté is dubious at best but trust Bertillon. They are willing to disregard our "moral inferiority^4^" in order to exploit my own investigative experience in Toronto and James's engineering acumen, so long as we remain in the shadows. We were given a week to decide, as he there was a choice to be made.
Our new life is both simpler and greatly stimulating to the intellect, similar enough to my life in Toronto, but with James taking a larger part. We cycle in the morning to Phillipe de Grand street and untangle the physical evidence Guillaume brings us. When not occupied by evidence (everything but finger marks, which still go directly to Bertillon's office) we busy ourselves reconstructing the many surveillance devices James and I perfected back home, with the key difference that none may now be associated with our names. Any report we draft are signed by Guillaume. Our discoveries are his. Our devices are Bertillon's.
I find myself sanguine about our prospects. With this position, I am once again a police officer, if tangentially, and I serve the law. I never cared for renown and have avoided fame. None of my supposed inventions were anything other than expansions on others' ideas. The ultraviolet light James and I finished this morning is only an application of Wood and Ruben's research^5^.
James is less enthused by the forced anonymity. Public recognition of his genius is important to him, as the last months have demonstrated. He thinks, however, that we may use our position as a means to invent apparatuses we could patent ourselves, using the facilities at our disposal here. I see him scheming and the glint in his eye, the one that drew me to him all those years ago, has returned. He shows genuine interest in the forensic sciences and the thrill of criminal investigation. This morning, unprompted, he mused the we might make ourselves useful after all. I can only agree.
Very little information about Pontaillier remains in the public record. Both when he was commissaire at Pantin (a Paris suburb) and later in La Chapelle, neither city books, nor newspapers give his first name. Systematic research in Police records was not within the purview of this cognate essay.
Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), renown French criminologist, generally recognized as an inventor of biometric analysis, he applied photography and anthropological measurement to law enforcement (known as the Bertillon system or Bertillonage), creating an identification system based on physical characteristics.
In the 1900 Paris Préfecture de Police organizational structure, the first office of the second section of the first division is responsible for the case files of individuals under arrest and the expulsion procedure files of foreign nationals under arrest.
Certainly a reference to homosexuality.
Most likely, Murdoch is referring to Robert William Wood (1865-1955), an American physicist, and Henrich Rubens (1865-1922), a German physicist, both renown for their separate and common research at Berlin University on the light spectrum, including ultraviolet. Wood would continue his research on ultraviolet light, as well as ultrasounds, at Johns Hopkins University.