Free The Alchemy of Murder by Carol McCleary Page B

broke the darkness ahead as they followed Michel.
    “That’ll be the lamp of my partner, Henrí,” he said.
    How these netherworld workers found their way through the dark maze of stone tunnels was a mystery to match the one surrounding the Sphinx. But when they came upon the hanging lantern, Henrí was nowhere to be seen.
    “He’s been here,” Michel said. “May have gone up for a bite.” Michel pointed at an opening in the tunnel ceiling. “That’s the waste hole.”
    It was an ordinary round hole above the river of sewage.
    Paris, being an ancient city, still disposed most of its waste directly through a hole from the ground floor of apartment buildings. Residents carried their chamber pots to the hole to dump. The hole Michel pointed to was the outlet for a tenement house in the impoverished neighborhood where Black Fever first erupted.
    “Did any frogs die in this area when the fever broke out above?”
    Michel shook his head. “No, Monsieur, not that I ever saw. But I did see dead rats.”
    The health director came up beside them as the sewer worker shined his bull’s-eye lantern up at the hole. He stepped on a frog and looked down at the bloody mess and grinned to his assistant. “Doctor Pasteur has always professed that microbes attack us like an eleventh plague of Egypt. Now we know he is wrong. It is another plague of frogs that God has sent.”
    His assistant found the humor appealing, or considered it expedient to do so, but neither Pasteur nor Roth gave it any thought. Pasteur was busy telling Roth where to obtain samples to be placed into sterilized glass bottles in the leather case he carried from a shoulder strap. When Pasteur worked he fell into a deep concentration and was not tolerant to interruptions.
    “We should also take one of the frogs,” Roth said, grabbing one of the slimy creatures. “Perhaps the miasma is from their bad breath.”
    Pasteur was concentrating too intently on the environs of the sewer to react to Roth’s witticism, but the sarcasm did not pass the director whose look told Roth he wished he could quash him underfoot as he had the frog. Pasteur turned his attention to the sewer worker and asked about life under the city.
    “It’s dangerous work,” Michel said. “When it rains, the waters can roar through the tunnels like flash floods. Even with normal water levels, you can slip into the channel and be swept under in a second.” He turned and stared at the cunette as if he wondered whether Henrí had been swallowed by it.
    “Are the smells worse in the summer?”
    “Much worse. Sometimes gas forms that can explode if you strike a match to light a pipe. Factories pour chemicals down the sewers that can burn a hole in your skin or make a fire in your lungs when you breathe.”
    “But you’re not afraid of miasma?”
    “Monsieur Doctor, I’ve been working in the sewers for over twenty years. If these vermin you gentlemen talk about haven’t gotten me by now, I don’t suppose I taste good to them.”
    Twenty years in the sewers. And his father before him. Not an unusual practice to follow one’s père into a profession. Even an executioner was a hereditary occupation in France.
    Human excrement came through the ceiling opening and plopped into the water. The director pointed down at it.
    “Monsieur Pasteur, you should take some of this merde back to your laboratory and examine it under your microscope. Perhaps you will find in it the plague of microbes that you believe threatens the city.”
    “It’s a puzzle,” Pasteur said, completely ignoring the director. He had the faraway look of a swami in a trance when he fell into deep thought.
    “Merde is a puzzle?” The director raised his eyebrows.
    Pasteur stared at him as if he had just become aware of the man’s presence. “No, no, the frogs.”
    “The frogs?”
    “Of course!” He snapped. “Haven’t you been observing the frogs and the rats, Monsieur Director? Why do the frogs live and the rats