Page 109 of The Bone Code

“Not to mention your humility.”

“And that.”

“Impressive.” It was.

“What’s this about a death mask?”

“What?” The quick segue surprised me.

“Your abrasive caller is working on some kind of death mask?”

“Anne is not abrasive.”

“OK. Your loud caller.”

“You really want to hear about the mask?”

“Beats listening to you snoring.”

“I don’t snore.”

Vislosky did that guffaw thing again, a sort of choking gurgle in her throat.

I provided a brief overview. Polly Beecroft’s odd request. The three photos. The uncanny resemblance between Beecroft and her twin sister, Harriet, and between the Beecroft twins and their grandmother and great-aunt, Susanne and Sybil Bouvier. The mysterious disappearance of Sybil in Paris in 1888. The resemblance of all four women to the death mask found in Harriet Beecroft’s home.

“So what’s Annie Abrasive’s world-shattering breakthrough?”

“She found the mask on the web.”

“Everything in creation is on the web.”

“Do you want the full story?”

“What the hell. We’ve got another four hours to kill.”

“It turns out this girl’s death mask isn’t all that rare. During the early years of the twentieth century, hundreds of copies were made and sold, primarily in France and Germany. People hung her face on the walls of their homes as decorative art.”

“That’s morbid.”

“She was known as L’Inconnue de la Seine. The Unknown Woman of the—”

“I’ve heard of the river.”

“Apparently, people were enchanted with the ‘sublimity of the young lady’s smile.’?” Hooking air quotes.

“The chick was dead.”

“Sincerely so. According to most accounts, in the late nineteenth century, probably during the eighteen-seventies or eighteen-eighties, the woman’s body was recovered from the Seine near the quai du Louvre and taken to the Paris morgue for identification. Hold on.”

I snatched up my phone and scrolled to Anne’s email.

“At that time, the Paris morgue was located behind Notre-Dame, at the eastern tip of the Île de la Cité, quai de l’Archêveché.” Goingfull French to annoy Vislosky? “Unknown bodies were displayed for public viewing in the hopes someone might recognize a deceased.”

“Maybe we should try that.”

“The Paris morgue was a big deal back then. I’ve read that thousands visited every day.”

“Nothing like corpses to bring out a crowd.”