Free Doctor Death by Lene Kaaberbøl

her.
    “I am sorry,” she whispered. “I am sorry.”
    We helped her to her feet, and my father relinquished the chaise longue so that she might lie there and recover.
    “With your permission,” I said. “It would help if I loosened your corset a bit.”
    “The dress would not fit,” she gasped. “It has an eighteen-inch waist. No, this is fine. I am feeling better now. At least Louis is not dead. At least not that.”
    She was not vain, I suddenly understood. All the trouble she had taken with her appearance, including the inhuman discipline it required to have an eighteen-inch waist at her age, and after having given birth to child, too . . . all of that was not due to any excessive devotion to fashion but was rather an attempt to guard the only capital she had. Her beauty was her profession.
    He is just a little boy of nine. Desperation aged her face, and I couldn’t feel envy or outrage at her choice of survival strategy, only compassion for the loss she had endured.
    I caught the Commissioner’s gaze and knew that he had seen the holes in her logic, as I had. Marie Mercier’s little Louis might not be among the dead that had been found and reported to the Commissioner’s office this week. But unfortunately that did not necessarily mean that he should still be counted among the living.
    “I must get back to the police station,” she said, and moved to rise. “As he is not dead. They must find him for me.”
    But the Commissioner stopped her. “Why not rest a little longer, madame, and let me arrange for the police to come to you this time?”

    Police Inspector Clarence Baptiste Marot was not pleased to have his Sunday spoiled because of a runaway street urchin. He listened with ill-concealed impatience while Marie Mercier yetagain described her nine-year-old son. Once that was accomplished, the Commissioner managed to convince Madame Mercier to go home to her mother’s to await news. He accompanied her downstairs and hailed a hansom cab, so she would not need to wait in the rain.
    When he came back upstairs, Marot’s irritation had erupted. He directed a wave of indignant reproach at the Commissioner. Phrases such as “inexcusable interference” and “gross waste of police resources” flew through the air, accompanied by badly veiled insinuations as to the reason for the Commissioner’s personal involvement.
    “That woman is no better than a simple street whore,” he hissed with such force that small pearls of spit lodged in the fringes of his bushy mustache, “and we will no doubt catch her delinquent offspring with his hand in some good citizen’s pocket one day, and that will be that. Case solved. I certainly hope she has rewarded you well for your efforts, because you will not be reaping any benefits for it elsewhere!”
    I have never seen an aggressive walrus butt its head against a boulder, but I believe I have a fair idea of what it would look like. The two men were of a similar age, height, and weight, but in temperament they could not have been more different. The Commissioner simply stood there waiting with a gravitas all his own, and this more than anything else finally robbed the inspector of the last of his composure.
    “Have you nothing to say, man?” he exclaimed.
    “Only if you are done,” said the Commissioner.
    “What?”
    “I just want to draw your attention to the date of the young man’s disappearance.”
    “He is not a young man, he’s a nine-year-old street urchin.”
    “Who disappeared last Sunday and has not been seen since.”
    “And?”
    “I permitted myself an interview with Madame Brunot.”
    “Madame who?”
    “Father Abigore’s housekeeper. The poor woman is still shocked by her employer’s death and is desperately anxious about her future. Once the new priest is installed, she risks losing both her position and her place of residence. By no means easy for a woman past sixty.”
    “What has that got to do with the case?”
    “Nothing. I am