The Affair of the Bassin Les Hivers

II

“I suspect our murderer had good reason to dispose of the corpse in this way,” declared Lapointe. “My guess is that her face and body were both too well known for her to be simply dropped in the Seine, while the murderer did not wish to be observed moving her through the streets of Paris, either because he himself was also highly recognisable or because he had no easy way of doing what he needed to do. And no alibi. So, if not one himself, he called in an expert, no doubt a person already known to him.”

“An expert? You mean such people understood about metatemporal transcience in the 1820s?”

“Generally speaking, of course, very few of our ancestors understood such things. Even fewer than today. We are not talking of time-travel, which as we all know is impossible, but movement from one universe to another where one era has developed at a slower rate in relation to ours. Needless to say, we are not discussing our own past, but a period approximating our own present. That’s why most of our cases take us to periods equivalent to our own 20th or early 21st century. So we are dealing here with a remote scale, far removed from our own. Another reason for our murderer to put as many alternative planes’ scales between our own and theirs.”

Lapointe was discussing the worlds of the multiverse, separated one from another by mass rather than time. Each world was of enormously larger or smaller scale to the next, enabling all the alternate universes which made up the great multiverse to coexist, one invisible to the other for reasons of size. Not until the great French scientist Benoit Mandelbrot had developed these theories had it become possible for certain adepts to increase or decrease their own mass and cross from one of these worlds to the other. Mandelbrot had effectively provided us with maps of our own brains, plans of the multiverse. This in turn had led to the setting up of secret government agencies designed to create policies and departments whose function was to deal with the new realities.

Now almost every major nation had some equivalent to the STP in some version of its own 21st century, apart from the United States, which had largely succeeded in refusing to enter that century in any significant sense and was forced to rely on foreign agents to cope with the problems arising from situations with their roots in the 21st century.

“But you are convinced, chief, that the murderer is French?”

“If not French, then they have lived in France for many years.”

Used not to questioning his superior’s instinctive judgements, Le Bec accepted this.

As their electromobile sped them back to the Quai d’Orsay, Lapointe mused on the problem. “I need to find someone who has an idea of all the metatemporals who come and go in Paris. Only one springs to mind and that is Monsieur Zenith, the albino. You’ll recall we have worked together once or twice before. As soon as I get back to the office, I will put through a call to Whitehall. If anyone knows where Zenith is, then it will be Sexton Blake.”

Sexton Blake was the real name of the detective famously fictionalised as Sir Seaton Begg and Lapointe’s opposite number in London.

“I did not know Monsieur Zenith was any longer amongst us,” declared LeBec.

“There is no guarantee that he is. I can only hope. I understood that he had made his home in Paris. Blake will confirm where I can find him.”

“I understand, chief, that he was in earlier days wanted by the police of several countries.”

“Quite so. His last encounter with Blake, as a criminal, was during the London Blitz. He and his old antagonist fought it out on a cliff house whose foundations were weak. The fictional version of the case has been recorded as The Affair of the Bronze Basilisk. Zenith’s body was lost in the ruins of the house and never recovered, but we now know that he returned to Jugo-Slavia where he fought with Tito’s guerillas against the Nazis, was captured by the Gestapo before he could smoke the famous cyanide cigarette he always kept in his case and was found half-dead by the British when they liberated the infamous Milosevic Fortress in Belgrade, HQ of the Gestapo in the region. For his various efforts on behalf of the allied war-effort, Zenith was given a full pardon by the authorities and in his final meeting with his old adversary Sexton Blake, both men made a bargain-Blake would allow no more stories of Zenith to be published as part of his own memoirs and Zenith would not publish his memoirs until fifty years after that meeting which was in August 26, 1946. Both men have been exposed to the same effects which conferred longevity upon them, almost by accident. That fifty years has now, of course, passed.”

“And Monsieur Zenith?” asked Le Bec as the car hummed smoothly under the arches into the square leading to their offices. “What has happened to him?”

“He has become a kind of gentleman adventurer, working as often with the authorities as against them and spending much of his time in tracking down ex-Nazis, especially those with stolen wealth, which he either returns in whole to their owners or, if it so pleases him, pays himself a ten percent ‘commission’. He will now sometimes work with my old friend Blake. His adventures will take him across parallel universes where he assumes the name of ‘Zodiac’. But he still keeps up with his old acquaintances from the criminal underworld, mostly through a famous London thieves’ warren known as ‘Smith’s Kitchen’ which now has concessions in Paris, Rome and New York. If anyone has heard a hint of the business here, it will be Zenith.”

“How will you contact him, chief?”

Lapointe smiled almost to himself. “Oh, I think Blake will confirm I know where he will be later this morning.”