“That’s what all of Parisian society would like to know. It is an incredible story, is it not? In my opinion, it should come as no surprise that a man reared by two women should be prone to hysterics.”

The look on his face was hard to read. If I had known the man better, I might have called it triumph. Inside this body, I suspected, behind those startling eyes, lurked a familiar malevolence: Mehevi.

Artopoulos continued, apparently unaware of my discomfort. “Of course as the only member of the society, I had to take care of the burial myself. I even paid, out of my own pocket, for a plot in the Montparnasse cemetery. I took the liberty of interring them together in a crypt crowned by a fine pink-and-gray marble plinth under the name of the Baudelaire Society.” Yes, all remaining doubts had by now vanished. I was certain this was Mehevi. My nemesis had laid his trap. Somehow he had crossed from the body of the sacrilegious sea captain into that of an exotic dandy—and now he was enjoying himself immensely. Had he guessed who I was? The turn of conversation suggested he harbored his own suspicions, at the very least.

“And what of Madame Roeg?” I asked as casually as I could muster.

“We have heard nothing. Disappeared for good I think. For all I know she simply abandoned her life and went wandering.” Artopoulos looked reflective. “It happens from time to time. Someone will set off one day, and never come back. I’ve heard of some nomadic cultures whose religions revolve around this kind of peregrination. The alienists call it ambulatory automatism.”

He turned his attention back to his lobster. He ate quickly, packing his mouth with food and then chewing like a rabbit. I, on the other hand, had lost my appetite altogether. Noticing this, Artopoulos stopped eating and looked up at me with his mouth open, his fully laden fork hovering near its entrance. “What is the matter?” he asked, putting down the fork. Again, I felt the intensity of his gaze.

“Pardon my ignorance, but what is an alienist?” I asked, deflecting the conversation to a safer subject.

Artopoulos was visibly surprised. He lifted his eyebrows so that they formed two perfect circumflexes. “Damnation, man, where have you been for the past twenty years?” I noticed there was a little morsel of lobster flesh spiked in his mustache.

“Forgive me.” An alibi sprang unbidden to my mouth—the inherited talents of the born liar. “My education consists of four years at a seminary in Rome.”

The eyebrows rose higher still into the middle of his forehead. “How extraordinary. And what finally drove you from the seminary?”

“A crisis of faith.”

He laughed. “How charming! And pray tell, what was the nature of this crisis of faith?”

“I began to question the catechism. I began to doubt the existence of the soul.”