The Cemetery of the Innocent

Adèlle appeared just when he expected her. He'd checked his pocket watch by the light of the streetlamps a few moments before, and found it to be nearing midnight; an excellent time for little waitresses to be heading home.

The alley was dark, although not so dark as he would have liked it. Years of waiting hidden in deeper shadows than this had sharpened his vision to the keenness of a razor. The eyes of Couteau, "the Knife of Paris," could pierce darkness as easily as his blades pierced hearts. Little Adèlle pulled her coat-the coat Pierre had sent her from Spain-tightly about herself, shrugging deeply into its warm folds. Couteau shook his head. How thoughtless of Pierre. To send her his coat as a remembrance had a sentimental charm, but it hung off her tiny frame, obscuring her charming person with the unattractive drapery of a dead man. Couteau no longer thought of Pierre with impunity for what else he had sent his sweetheart. When first he'd seen Adèlle, he'd hated the man's memory for leaving her with such murderous burdens; but no, Pierre had been no killer. He hadn't the brain for it. He'd only been a common fool, unaware of the blood that he would cause to be spilt.

Adèlle passed by Couteau, unaware of his eyes in the darkness. She hummed to herself the chorus of a Huguenot hymn. Couteau waited until she had passed out of the alley before he matched her footsteps in pursuit.

Down the dark Rue St. Denis he followed her, slowly away from the now-quiet marketplace of Les Halles. Around them the citizens of Paris slept in their homes and above their shops. Adèlle made a bundled figure before him, and he might have felt he were following an old grandmother were it not for the gloss of her hair as she passed beneath the streetlamps. At last, she reached the intersection of the Rue St. Denis and the Rue au Fers. Couteau did not breathe as he waited to see where she would go. For the last few nights, she had stayed on St. Denis, where he could not risk waking the neighborhood and being interfered with. Tonight, however, Adèlle chose to take a short cut.

Couteau smiled. How many people would have been able to suppress a shudder at such a sight? For the smile of Couteau was like a Damascene blade as he watched Adèlle Chaton turn into the Cimetière des Saint-Innocents-the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents.

Couteau had gone to the little café where Adèlle worked every night for a week. He had always chosen a corner table, and always sat with his back to the wall, leaning back in his chair with his long hands folded over his lap and his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. Couteau had no soft edges; every inch of his spare frame was as sharp as the glare often darting in his dazzlingly blue eyes, but both were concealed; the sharp frame by dark garments of a loose fit, the sharp gaze by the shadow of his hat brim.

He had occupied his corner table silently, bothering no one, not even the waiter who brought him the coffee he ordered but didn't drink. He didn't go to the café to be refreshed; and if that had been his intent, Adèlle was such a joy to look upon that he would have needed nothing else. With pleasure, he had watched her sweetly bantering with customers at the front of the café. She always waited the front tables, doubtless because the owner realized her brightness would lure Parisians to his establishment like moths to a flame. Then, in the evenings, Couteau would disappear behind her in the shadows, watching her as she made her way to No. 10, Rue Berger. Her little window wore yellow curtains. Couteau had never much cared for the color yellow, but even the little flowerpot on Adèlle's windowsill grew yellow daisies as bright and sunny as the girl who cared for them.

It was no shame, Couteau had often thought, when troubles and pain came among the deceivers and vile folk. Those who stole or killed for pleasure alone deserved whatever harm befell them. It was quite a shame when trouble and pain came to good little girls like Adèlle.

Once they were inside the cemetery, getting ahead of Mademoiselle Chaton was easy. There were shadows in abundance for him to slink through, and although the girl was hurrying through the chills of the December night, she was little and had small strides. He leaned against the lip of the bowl of the fountain and waited for her to draw near. With her face turned toward her boot-tops, she did not even see him until he said, "Mademoiselle Chaton-a word, please."

Her head jerked up as though pulled from above by a marionette's string. The moonlight made her face white; whiter even than it had become when she heard her name spoken. Couteau watched the dark eyes grow large as she stared at the shape before her. "Who is it?" she asked. Only a hint of tremor in the last syllable spoken. Adèlle kept her fear very well concealed. Admirable, Couteau thought.

He took a step toward her. She took a step back, and before she could even turn her shoulders away from him he knew her intent and stopped her by saying, "Do not run, Mademoiselle Chaton. I pride myself on my skill with throwing-knives."

He watched her swallow the gasp that almost came out. Brave girl. Very evenly she asked, "What do you want?" and then, still maintaining the image of calm, she added, "I haven't any money, Monsieur, or I would give it to you now. I am only a poor girl."

"I know," Couteau replied. He took another step toward her, and although she stiffened, she did not attempt to run.

"You seem to enjoy your life as a waitress, Adèlle -if I may be so bold as to call you Adèlle?" She did not move, not even to blink. Couteau bowed slightly, as if accepting her gracious permission. "Well, Adèlle, as I was saying; you are not rich, but you have a good job for hard times like these, no?"

Still she was motionless.

"I would like you to answer me." Couteau's tone was genuinely respectful, but insistent.

"Yes, Monsieur," she replied, her voice small, but steady.

"Good," he replied. "Yet you perhaps hope to move into a better sphere someday? Perhaps you will be an important woman, in an important circle, courted by important men?"

Adèlle shook her head slowly.

"You are confused?" Couteau asked. "You cannot imagine why I ask these things?"

She nodded.

Couteau had been slowly edging closer to her. Now he was very near by her side-near enough to feel her warmth. "You have something very important in your possession, Adèlle. I wonder if perhaps you expect to make yourself an important woman with it."

Adèlle shook her head again, but Couteau saw that she was beginning to suspect how she came to earn his attention.

"We shall soon have a new Empress, Adèlle." Couteau leaned closer so that his voice was a mere hiss in her ear. But for the heaving of her chest, she might have been a statue. "Eugenie, daughter of the Countess of Montijo. You know of her, perhaps? Her mother of course was the beautiful Manuela Kirkpatrick, and her father-."

Adèlle involuntarily drew a breath. Couteau's mouth formed a thin line of displeasure. "So you have read it," he said.

"Read what?" Adèlle's reply was far too quick.

"Her father, according to the records, was Manuela's husband, the Count of Montijo. But perhaps if that letter you have says the name of that famous writer, Prosper Merimèe-."

"The countess did not even know Merimèe when her daughter was born!" Adèlle protested.

"Little waitress," Couteau said reprovingly, "be careful. You should not know so much about who knows who. It looks suspicious." He tilted his head slightly. "Besides, should someone have evidence that said otherwise, that perhaps said that the countess and Merimèe had met in Paris before they met in Spain," Couteau sighed. "Why would anyone doubt? Merimèe would doubt less than anyone. "Remember to distrust," he tells us."

Adèlle through this monologue had begun slowly shaking her head.

"You have the note, Adèlle, I know that you do."

"I don't," Adèlle said. "I-I know nothing about it."

"You lie," Couteau said. "That you lie is your only fault, do you know that, Adèlle? Besides, it is too late. Eugenie knows that you have her suicide note."

"Suicide?" Adèlle stopped shaking her head and looked at him. "Is she--."

"No, it is years old," Couteau said. "Eugenie is even now poised to become the bride of Louis-Napoleon. A great many people object to the marriage; powerful people who think her an unfit bride for the Emperor. After all, she has no powerful connections, no great fortune to add to France's treasury. Yet when the lady is so fair and winsome, these obstacles cannot stop the marriage." Couteau reached for Adèlle's arm, and each of his fingers wrapped around her slender wrist with the steel strength of a fetter. "Yet a note-a note written in her own hand-a note she wrote at eighteen, explaining how a horrible discovery had disappointed all her hopes of glory and led her to drink poison-such a note could ruin all the secrecy and all the beautiful lies that Eugenie and her mother have so carefully constructed. Such a note could prevent the marriage, and history books in a hundred years would have no mention of the almost-Empress Eugenie, the illegitimate ex-love of Napoleon III."

A little sob escaped Adèlle's throat, and Couteau realized that she was crying.

"Your Pierre did not know the importance of his little trinket when he gave it to you to hide for him," Couteau said more gently. There was no need for him to tell her of the punishment meted out on poor Pierre when his theft had been discovered. Adèlle believed he had died in Spain of influenza, trusting as she was. "He was only hoping," Couteau continued, "that someday there would be money from a wealthy Spanish family to keep him quiet. Money, perhaps, to bring home a bride."

"I would not have married him," she replied despairingly. "Not if he meant to use it for such extortion."

Did she lie again? Couteau clutched her wrist with a bit more force-not enough to hurt her, but firmly-and held her closer to him. "What did you mean to do with the note?"

"I-I thought that I would return it to her at first, but I did not know who she was. Then I saw her name in the papers and I did not know what I should do with it." Adèlle sighed, and the warmth of her breath touched Couteau's cheek.

"Eugenie would have killed you," Couteau told her softly. "She intends to have you killed now."

Adèlle jolted, and briefly tried to struggle away from him.

"Stop that," he ordered, and she did.

"Yes. Eugenie takes no risks: she hires me, 'the Knife of Paris,' to dispatch the thief's sweetheart, for I have never failed, never been captured, never been questioned, and never left anything behind." Couteau's tone as he recited his reputation revealed no pride, but no shame either. "But I will not kill you, Adèlle."

Her black eyes fascinated him with a parade of confusion and hope. "Why?" she asked.

Couteau's gaze dwelt on her face a long time, longer than would have been permissible in public, long enough certainly to have drawn a deep blush were she not so frightened. Finally, his eyes flickered away and lit upon a stone angel atop a nearby gravestone, pure and holy in the clean December moonlight.

"We are in the Cemetery of the Innocent," Couteau said, so quietly that even in the stillness of the night Adèlle could barely hear him. "I have killed many bad people; many thieves, adulterers, blackmailers. Men, yes, and women too. But I have never killed one who could have deserved burial here." He looked back at her. "I never will."

She shuddered under his grip; not from fear now, but from cold.

"Give me the note, Adèlle."

She reached a nearly-steady hand into the front panel of her coat. He heard several stitches popping as Adèlle pulled open a sewn-up hidden pocket. A moment later, she produced the note.

Couteau plucked it from her fingers and held it aloft. The moonlight was obscure at best; but his eyes were truly amazing organs, and he was able to identify the handwriting of the future empress. "Very good."

With careful deliberation he slid the letter into his own pocket. After ensuring that it was secured, he suddenly tightened his grip on Adèlle's wrist and violently pulled her against him. She cried out briefly, but he hissed into her ear his instructions, confident that she was listening.

"Now get out of Paris immediately and never return. Change your name, disguise yourself as you travel, and hide away in an obscure village. Do not think of betraying what you know, for although no one else with think you still live, do not forget that I am the Knife of Paris, and I will always know where you are."

She was crying again. "I cannot, Monsieur. I cannot leave."

"You must!" He shook her like a doll as he said it. "She will send others!"

"I haven't any money!" She cried. "I am indebted to my landlord-I am not paid until next Thursday--I cannot get passage in a mail coach, or even buy bread for the journey-."

"Stop." At his command, she fell silent, although tears continued to slide down her cheeks. Couteau had wondered if this would be the case. The little waitress might have had a few francs saved against a time she would need it; but he had also to consider that she might be unable to afford much thought for the future. Beneath his fingers he was acutely aware of her softness, her delicacy. Adèlle Chaton was the only pure thing Couteau had ever touched.

"I will give you what you need for the journey," he said, his voice so low that it reverberated in his throat. "If-."

Adèlle's face charmed him with its hesitant hope. "If what, Monsieur?"

"If I may have your permission to kiss your cheek."

He felt the muscles in her arm relax. A question he could never answer appeared in her eyes. Doubtless she would think about this moment for years to come. She would remember it with perfect clarity long after the glow of her life and youth had dimmed-and wonder.

Finally, Adèlle turned her cheek to him.

In both the arcing of a blade and the giving of a kiss, Couteau's execution was swift. Almost before she felt the pressure of his lips it was over, and Couteau was releasing her wrist. He produced a billfold and handed it to her without removing so much as a franc for himself.

She began to protest; but he silenced her again. "It is only five hundred. A fortune to you, but a mere nothing to me." He looked away. "Now go."

Adèlle clasped the billfold in her hands and held it to her chest. Fear and cold both urged her to flee, but she did not. She gave Couteau a searching look. He turned back to face her; even as she regarded him he sought to memorize her features arranged in that expression. The image would be a comfort in any shadow of his future.

"God bless you, Monsieur," she finally said.

He nearly laughed aloud. "I very much doubt it, Mademoiselle Chaton."

"God forgive you, then." With that, she turned and ran away, disappearing into the night like a silvery coin slipping away through black waters.

Couteau remained until the sound of her footsteps echoed away into nothing.

Slowly he turned to walk out of the cemetery. The hand that had shed so much blood now tenderly reached to touch the lips that had kissed a little waitress. He cursed the cold when he felt his hand tremble.

Back on the Rue St. Denis, Couteau turned to cast a last look over the Cemetery of the Innocent, where stone angels silently guarded the graves of the dead.

He turned away again, and this time did not look back as he made his way up the street. There was still much to be answered for, much to be buried if Adèlle were to escape safely, and he would see it all done. Although he could never let her know, Couteau meant to protect her, cover her footprints, and see her safely into a new life, as though he were her fallen guardian angel.

"God forgive you," she had said.

Couteau's lips were still warm from the kiss.

"Perhaps," Couteau said to himself.