Irregular Verbs by Matthew Johnson Read Free Book Online Page A

system of colour-coding the skulls: a dab of red paint for executed criminals, green for natural deaths, and a cheery bright blue for suicides. In the corner of the room Allard sat at the only desk with open space on it, carefully measuring a Lombroso bust with a pair of calipers and recording the results.
    Louverture picked up a skull from the table nearest him; it had a spot of red paint and the words
Meurtrier—Nègre
written on it. “It is not my skull I am concerned with today,” he said.
    “But it is such a fascinating specimen,” Allard said in full sincerity. He had asked Louverture repeatedly to let him make a detailed study of his skull: on their first meeting he had, without introduction, run his hands over Louverture’s head and pronounced that he was fortunate to have the rational faculty of the Frank and the creativity of the Negro.
    “Could we stick to the matter at hand?” Louverture said.
    “Of course, of course.” Allard put down his calipers, turned his full attention to Louverture. “My sketch won’t be ready for an hour or so, though.”
    “Never mind that. What can you tell me about the man who wrote the letter?”
    Allard picked up the notes he had been consulting, peered through his pince-nez as he flipped through them. “He is most likely not a habitual criminal, so he will lack the prominent jaw we associate with that type. He also likely possesses a need for self-aggrandizement—a man of whom more was expected, perhaps, with very likely a prominent forehead. The need for attention suggests a second child or later, so look for a round skull overall—”
    “I wasn’t aware you could tell birth order,” Louverture said, putting the skull in his hand back on the table.
    “You haven’t been keeping up with the literature. It was in last Pluviôse’s Journal—the mother’s parts, not yet stretched with birth, pinch the first child’s head, rendering it more pointed than later children. All else being equal, of course.”
    Louverture nodded. “Yes, of course. And—the race—?” He was accustomed to tip-toeing around the subject; most of his colleagues seemed to feel they were doing him a favour by treating him as white to his face and black behind his back.
    “A tricky question,” Allard said, apparently feeling no discomfort at the topic. In fact he was likely the least prejudiced man in the Corps, genuinely seeing black and white as scientific categories. “What we know shows significant forethought, which suggests a Frank or perhaps an Anglo-Saxon; the apparent motive, however, is irrational, which of course suggests a Negro. On the whole, I would tend to favour one of the European types. Why? Do you suspect . . .”
    “It’s nothing,” Louverture said, letting the unspoken question hang in the air. It was the reason he had been given the case, of course: the fear that this was the work of irrationalists, believers in religion and black magic. The vodoun murders of three years previous had brought him here from Saint-Domingue, and though they had earned him his office and reputation, he had often heard whispers that like follows like.
    “I can give you a sketch for each race, if you like,” Allard said. “It will take a bit longer, of course.”
    “Take your time. The sketch will be of little use until we have a suspect to compare it to.”
    Allard nodded abstractly, his attention returned to the model head in front of him. “As you say.”
    Louverture tipped his cap in farewell, stepped out into the hallway and headed up the stairs towards his office, wondering how he might conduct an investigation in which he did not have a single lead. A cryptic threat to an unidentified woman, an unmailed letter delivered by an unseen hand. . . . Clouthier’s canvass would turn up nothing, of course; if the culprit did not want a ransom, he might just as easily take a poor woman, or even a prostitute.
    By the time he reached his office Louverture had decided that