The Snake Stone

29

Auguste Boyer’s impression that the Turks were an impassive race was confirmed by Yashim’s stony inspection of what remained of Lefevre’s body. The face had been washed, and now presented a more terrible sight than it had at first, covered with blood and gobbets of torn flesh. The Turk, Boyer noticed, studied it with a patience that was almost obscene; at one point he seized the head by the ears and turned it so that the horribly exposed eyeballs fixed on Boyer himself, over a grinning row of bloodstained teeth. When Boyer turned back, Yashim was examining the body’s hands and feet, which seemed lifelike compared to the ravaged corpse to which they had been attached. It was the orderly, by a gesture, who suggested that Yashim might like to view the entire corpse. Even then, examining the appalling carnage of the wound, he only pursed his lips.

“The good doctor-” Yashim suggested, straightening.

“Dr. Millingen will be here shortly,” Boyer said quickly. And not, he thought, a moment too soon: he wanted urgently to put the horror in the hands of a competent professional.

“Strange, the way the dogs go for the face,” Yashim mused. “Too well exposed, I imagine. Nose gone, chin torn away, yet they haven’t touched the ears at all.”

Boyer felt the nausea returning. Yashim followed him out of the room, standing aside when he realized that Boyer was silently retching into his handkerchief.

“I don’t quite understand why the body was brought into the embassy,” Yashim said, after a suitable pause.

Boyer pointed wretchedly to a leather satchel. “The watchmen found that with-with the body. As I said, the bulk of his remains were underneath some planks and beams, on a building site around the corner from here. The dogs…” He trailed off again. “The stuff in the bag was scattered around. I suppose the murderer was looking for money. Anyway, the watchman recognized the foreign script. He couldn’t have known it was in French, of course. I suppose he thinks we’re all the same, really, and we were closest.”

“Yes,” Yashim said. “I suppose. It was a coincidence, all the same.” He voiced the thought that had been nagging him ever since the cafe. “You weren’t expecting him here, were you?”

“Lefevre? I wouldn’t think so, monsieur.”

“Because it was night?”

“Because-” Boyer hesitated. “Well, we wouldn’t expect to see him. And in the night, of course.”

“But Monsieur Lefevre was not quite comme il faut?”

Boyer took a deep breath through his nose. “He was a French citizen,” he said.

Yashim looked at the satchel again. He remembered Lefevre tearing it open three nights ago, scattering its contents across his floor. Once again he felt the unbidden affinity with the dead man, the burden of a special duty. He had not liked him. But Maximilien Lefevre had feared for his life, and had trusted Yashim to save it. That, in Yashim’s mind, had become the obligation of hospitality: a task he’d failed, by a grotesque margin.

The satchel still contained the books Lefevre had shown him, along with an unbound copy of Le Pere Goriot by Balzac; its spine was rough and the stitching was beginning to come apart. There was also the shirt he had worn two nights ago; it was dirty around the cuffs and collar and smelled of the dead man’s sweat. Some underwear. Yashim returned the books to the satchel, with the dirty laundry. He wiped his hands on his cloak.

“Nothing else? Just the bag?”

“That was all the watchmen brought in.”

A footman walked downstairs and murmured something into Boyer’s ear.

“We can go up to the ambassador now, monsieur.”