French Kiss by Eric Van Lustbader

Author:Eric Van Lustbader
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Fawcett Columbine
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

They were in a house three streets away. Chris had tried to talk to M. Asprey at the gallery, but he had raised a cautioning finger. He had brought them here, to a two-story house of low ceilings, stone walls, tile floors. Downstairs, where they were, there was a kitchen, a small living room with a gigantic hearth, and in back a bath.

But, to a great degree, it was taken up with M. Asprey's studio: an artist's easel on which was a blank canvas, a stool with a palette, a wooden box crammed with a jumble of oil and acrylic paint tubes. Below, on the floor, metal cans of turp.

The majority of the space was devoted to a handmade workbench above which hung a galaxy of marionettes in the making.

Half in shadow, they stared down at the human inhabitants with peculiar, incurious eyes.

"I have been waiting for you."

There was a devil, a twin of the one who was menacing the Puss 'n Boots in the gallery's window, hanging in a corner of the workshop. He was incomplete, the bones of his skeleton half on, half off. Somehow this conspired to make him even more threatening.

"Monsieur Haye told me that, if he should die, you would come." M. Asprey pulled at some strings, and the devil nodded his partly composed head as if in assent.

There were the remains of a fire in the stone hearth. Chris stared into them as if in their configuration he could, like the Romans who had inhabited this country long ago, divine the future.

"If he told you I'd be coming," Chris said, "he also told you that I'd be asking about a dagger. A very special dagger."

"That's right," M. Asprey said, holding up the harlequin Puss 'n Boots that he had taken from the gallery window. He looked at it as lovingly as if it were his daughter. "This is my first creation," he said, "and, therefore, my most beloved."

He took a razor blade and made one quick vertical incision down the back of the harlequin. From inside it, he pulled out an object. "This is what Monsieur Haye wished to keep safe for you," he said, holding out the dagger. La Porte ŕ la Nuit.

Chris took it and examined it in the light. It felt unnaturally heavy, as if it were made of some unknown metal. "Do you know what this is?"

"I know that it was made by a master craftsman," M. Asprey said. "I know that it is very valuable."

Chris nodded. "To some."

On the windowsill outside, a black cat padded slowly by. For a moment it sat staring at them, licking the fur of its forepaws, then it went on. From the open window he could hear the call to vespers, echoing through the walled village, wafting upward from Our Lady of Benva Church. Soon the Magnificat would begin.

"The blade is made of Imperial jade," M. Asprey said. "I have never seen a single piece of such size. I could not even begin to calculate its value.

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