"Who needs lips?"
Gaspard Louis Bertin was a former childhood tutor of Aloysius and Diogenes Pendergast. He taught natural history and zoology officially, but was also steeped in the local lore and legends of New Orleans, including the arts of Vôdou and Obeah. Aloysius referred to him as maître, while Cornelia Pendergast regarded him as being the most scandalous of the Rochenoire staff.
A Frenchman, Bertin was a thin, short man, favoring swallowtail coats decorated with amulets and charms, including one which appeared to be a shrunken head on a gold chain. He walked with a cane, the head of which was carved into a grinning skull, and was fond of cigarillos smoked through a mother-of-pearl holder.
Bertin was easily agitated, and in extreme instances required a concoction he called "sipping syrup", consisting of lemon-lime soda, vodka, codeine in solution, and a watermelon-flavored Jolly Rancher candy.
|
“He was pretty frigging 'disobliged.'” — Spoilers for Cemetery Dance follow. |
|
Bertin was a practitioner of and an expert on the Obeah faith and of voodoo. When Journalist Bill Smithback was murdered by a man believed to be a zombii during the events of Cemetery Dance, Pendergast enlisted his help. He flew from Louisiana to New York and entered the Ville des Zirondelles Obeah Cult with Pendergast and Vincent D'Agosta, where he physically confronted the cult's hungan, or sorceror. Bertin believed that the hungan placed a death conjure on the group following that encounter.
He was allowed to examine certain artifacts removed from the compound, along with Vôdou items that had been recovered from Smithback's slab at the morgue and the crypt of Smithback's alleged zombii killer. Bertin was baffled by the evidence, claiming he had never seen anything like them; his confusion was later validated when the artifacts were proven items from the morgue and crypt proved to be fakes.
The excitement of the investigation proved too much for Bertin and, claiming he was becoming ill from the death conjure, he returned to New Orleans.
Four years later, Pendergast received a death notice in the mail, informing him that Bertin had passed away peacefully at home. Pendergast and Constance Greene traveled to New Orleans to attend Bertin's funeral, where they discovered that Bertin had actually been poisoned.