She led the way downstairs to an unheated salon, where heavy, faded velvet curtains seemed to shut away the last traces of the feeble autumn daylight. The Maison Deluc had been someone’s fine town house fifty years ago, but the opulence of the paneled rococo salon was now threadbare in many places. Empty ovals above the windows and the pair of dingy white double doors spoke of overdoor paintings sold one by one, and the paint was flaking from the fingers and noses of the cherubs lurking in the moldings.
A small puff of dust rose from the upholstery as Rosalie sat down on a well-worn sofa. “Now. How can I help you? Would you care for some coffee? I can ask the cook for some, if you’d like.”
“Thank you, no,” Aristide told her, imagining what sort of coffee was probably served at that down-at-heel boardinghouse. He looked about him at the threadbare room, thinking how the shabby young woman opposite him seemed to belong there, with her unmistakable air of proud, faded gentility. “How did you and Célie meet, citizeness?”
“In the gardens of the Luxembourg; we met there frequently, walking, and eventually became friends.” She leaned forward, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “What happened? I’ve not seen her for several days. Did she fall ill? Was it an accident?”
“She was murdered.”
There was no way to soften the brutal word, no matter how he might try.
“Murdered . . .”
“Though she seems not to have been the intended victim; they found her in the lodgings of a man she scarcely knew, his own body nearby. No one we’ve questioned thus far has had any motive to harm her.”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” Rosalie said promptly. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Citizeness, did Célie ever talk to you about a love affair?”
Rosalie clasped her hands and gazed at the moth-eaten carpet at her feet, her brow puckered. Her eyes glistened in the faint light from the window and she quickly wiped away a stray tear that slid down her cheek. “Yes,” she said at length. “She did. She confided in me, now and then. I was married once, you see, and I suppose she looked to me for advice, as someone older, with more experience, who wasn’t too drearily middle-aged.”
“Her friend Citizeness Villemain is married, and a little older than she. Wouldn’t Célie have confided in her?”
Rosalie shook her head. “Perhaps not. All those people--the ex-aristocrats, the ones who still have money and influence--they all know each other. If she’d told her friend anything, it might have reached her father, in time; while nothing she told me would have gone farther than this house.”
“Go on.”
“Well . . . she told me, after swearing me to silence, that a certain young man had been secretly courting her, and had asked her to marry him.”
“What did she tell you about him?”
“Oh, the usual things girls say about their sweethearts: how handsome he was, and what a gentleman he was, and so on. I didn’t believe all of it, of course. But she did say he had been active in ’ninety-two and ’ninety-three, with the Brissotins. Evidently he was always talking about them, and their lofty principles, and their great love of their country; that they were incompetent statesmen didn’t seem to matter. Of course Célie also thought all the Brissotins were terribly tragic,” she added. “There’s nothing like being decapitated for your ideals, to ensure that your memory will be cherished in the hearts of sentimental young women.”
“She might have imagined otherwise,” Aristide remarked, “if she’d known them.”
“You knew them?” Rosalie inquired, surprised.
“A few. They were human beings, like the rest of us; no better, no worse. Better orators, perhaps. And they did die well.” He fought away the stark memory of blood and rain in the Place de la Révolution. “Please . . . I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“There’s not much more to tell you. I believe he was arrested after the second of June, when so many of the Brissotins and their hangers-on were arrested; but he managed to escape, and spent the next year in hiding, until Robespierre’s fall. Then all at once he was in favor with Tallien and Fréron and that lot, and his fortunes began to improve.”
“Do you know why?”
“No, Célie never said what he was or did. Only that she was sure he had a fine future ahead of him.”
“Did she tell you the name of this young man?”
“She spoke of ‘Philippe,’ ” Rosalie said promptly. “I don’t think she ever mentioned his surname. I’m sorry.”
“It’s something,” Aristide said. He could think of nothing else to ask her. She rose to show him to the door.
“Citizen? You might do me one favor, if you can: learn when she’s to be buried.”
“Tomorrow, they told me.”
She glanced down with a brief, bitter laugh at her shabby white gown. “Oh, damn, I’ll have to borrow something to wear . . . I don’t even have a black gown. . . .”
Abruptly she dropped into the nearest chair and hid her face in her hands, shoulders trembling. Aristide paused a moment, wondering if he should send for a servant, but at last decided she would be better alone with her grief, and let himself out.
#
13 Brumaire (November 3)
Aristide prowled about his room the next morning, half-dressed, with the nagging sense that he had overlooked something. Taking up the nearest book, a small, worn volume of English plays, he settled in the shabby, comfortable armchair by the hearth but soon found he could not attend properly to Congreve’s witticisms. At last he extracted an old pack of cards from beneath a litter of newspapers and letters from his sister, flung himself down at his writing-desk, and, pushing aside his breakfast tray, began to lay them out. A round or two of patience, he had found, concentrated his thoughts and occupied his restless hands.
Philippe.
How many hundreds of young men named Philippe lived in Paris?
A hanger-on of the Brissotins: that was something. Mathieu might even have known him . . . had Mathieu ever spoken of an earnest, sentimental youth named Philippe?
The columns of cards before him stretched across the desktop. Impossible that the pattern would work itself out. Impatiently he pushed them together, shuffled them, and began again.
Philippe. If only he had a surname, matters would be so much simpler.
And what was it pricking his memory? Something Brasseur had said. . . .
His landlady interrupted his musings by rapping on the door and entering without awaiting his answer. “Message for you,” she said with an arch smile. “Let me clear away that crockery. Is there anything you need?”
“More coffee, if you please.” He waved absently at his breakfast tray and an odd cup atop the bookshelf and unfolded the note she handed him. It was from Brasseur, asking him to come at once to Rue Traversine.
He finished dressing, gulped down the coffee Clotilde brought him, and hurried down Rue de la Loi to the commissariat. Brasseur greeted him with a broad grin and gestured to a dusty, padlocked metal box on his desk.
“Can you guess what I’ve got here?”
“Judging from how smug you look, I’d guess . . . is it Saint-Ange’s hoard?”
“Right you are. Or at least that’s what I expect. They found it under a floorboard in his bedchamber last night. Why don’t you and Dautry be my witnesses.” He struggled with the lock for a moment, trying several of his picklocks, until at last it gave way.
Half a dozen neat packets of letters and papers, secured with string, lay within, beside three thick bundles of high-denomination assignats and a small leather bag. Brasseur upended the bag and whistled as dozens of gold louis spilled out.
“Looks like squeezing the wealthy is a profitable business. You’d get thousands in paper for this--I haven’t seen this much gold since ’ninety-one.”
Aristide glanced over the packets of letters and riffled through one without untying it. “None of them addressed to Célie Montereau. It wasn’t compromising letters, then. What hold did he have over h
er, do you suppose?” A name caught his eye and he took up another bundle, reading the address on the first letter: To Citizeness Beaumontel, care of Citizeness Delvert, florist, Rue du Faubourg Honoré near Rue d’Aguesseau.
“Brasseur, I promised this woman I’d return her letters, if we found them.”
“They’re needed as evidence,” Brasseur said.
“You’ve got the others. Proof enough that Saint-Ange was in a dirty line of work.”
“What if this Beaumontel woman had something to do with the murders? You can’t just go handing her back the evidence.”
“Honestly, she seemed scared to death, but I doubt very much that she had a hand in the murders. Even though Saint-Ange was making her life hell, I can’t see her shooting him, or even persuading anyone else to do it for her. That timid sort of woman is the perfect victim; she’d never dare take the offensive. And you wouldn’t be able to make her testify at anyone’s trial--that would reveal her little amour, and she’s far too frightened of her husband to ever admit anything. She’d willingly risk prison first.”
Brasseur grunted and extracted six letters from the packet before handing it back to Aristide. “We’ll keep back a few of them, then, just in case. You can always give them to her later.” Aristide nodded, thrust the packet in his coat, and went outside.
#
“You!” Sidonie Beaumontel gasped, stopping short in the glover’s doorway. “How did you find me?”
“You gave me your address, if you remember,” said Aristide. “I simply followed you here when I saw you leave the house. I have something of yours that you’ll be glad to get back.” He reached into his coat but she thrust her hands in front of her, palms outward, her glance darting anxiously from side to side.
“Stop! Not here. Someone might see me.” She hurried out to the busy Rue du Faubourg Honoré, Aristide following a few paces behind. Three streets farther on, she paused and turned. He passed the letters to her and she swiftly crammed them into her reticule. “How can I thank you?”
“My pleasure, citizeness. I suggest you burn those as soon as you can.”
She nodded. “I won’t be such a fool a second time.”
“Good day, citizeness.” He tipped his hat and turned, pausing as she spoke again.
“Citizen--have they found who--who did it?”
“The murders? Not yet.”
“Do you--have you any idea . . . ?”
Her cheeks were flushed and her hands moved in nervous birdlike little jerks. She knows something, Aristide thought. And she did have reason to wish him dead. . . .
“We’re looking for a man in his twenties, long, dark hair, slender.” He watched her, unsurprised by her tiny gasp as he repeated the description of the stranger. “Do you know such a man? Have you seen him at Saint-Ange’s apartment?”
“No . . .”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She glanced at him, clutching at her reticule. “I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “I wish I could help you.”
Aristide wondered suddenly if the dark-haired young man could have been her illicit lover. Frederic--no, Fernand, that was the name; though she had been careful not to mention his surname. Fernand, in penning letters to his mistress, had taken care to sign them only “Your friend” or simply “F.” Here, perhaps, in fearing for her safety should her husband learn of their affair, was a man with cause to murder Saint-Ange. . . .
“Citizeness,” he said, “I must speak with your friend.”
“My friend?”
“You know who I mean. The man whose Christian name is Fernand.”
She paled and shrank back. “Must you?”
“It’s essential. I need his name and address.” She hesitated and he continued, merciless. “I don’t like forcing you to this, but we have to pursue every angle. The police still have six of his letters to you. Once we’ve investigated your friend and cleared him of suspicion, we’ll return them to you, but not before.”
“But--you don’t think he--he looks nothing like the man you described--”
“Can you sleep easily, knowing that an innocent young woman may have died in order to conceal your love affair? Wouldn’t you rather know he had nothing to do with it?”
She swallowed and nodded. “All right. Fernand Lafontaine, number twelve, Chaussée d’Antin. But you’ll find him at the Ministry of Justice; he’s one of the chief clerks. Please, I beg you--give me back those letters as soon as you’re able; and whatever you do, just don’t let my husband know of any of this. . . .”
She scurried away. Aristide gazed after her, frowning.
What is it she’s not saying?
#
He pondered Sidonie Beaumontel’s behavior as he strolled back eastward along Rue Honoré, dodging smart carriages on their way outside the city to the parklands of Monceau or the Bois de Boulogne. Was she simply fearful that, having had a powerful motive herself to be rid of Saint-Ange, she might be suspected of his murder?
Or had she seen something once, or someone, during a previous visit to Saint-Ange’s apartment? Something or someone she had noticed without meaning to, something that had meant nothing at the time?
A quarter hour’s brisk walk took him to the Place Vendôme and the Ministry of Justice. After showing his police card to several undersecretaries and officials, he at last came face to face with Lafontaine in a sumptuously gilded and mirrored office, a relic of the old regime.
“I don’t believe I’ll have to inconvenience you for long,” Aristide said, eyeing him. Sidonie Beaumontel’s lover was somewhere between thirty-five and forty, lean, tall, and red-haired. It was remotely conceivable, Aristide thought, that Lafontaine might still be the murderer of Saint-Ange and Célie Montereau, but it was impossible that he should be the slight, dark young man whom the porter had seen on the stairs. “Where were you on the afternoon and evening of the tenth of this month, three days ago?”
“This past décadi?” Lafontaine echoed him. “I was . . . I was outside Versailles, visiting my sister at her country cottage. What’s this about?”
“Your sister can vouch for your whereabouts?”
“Of course. So can her husband, and their cook. You say you’re an agent of the police? What on earth do you want with me?”
“Louis Saint-Ange,” Aristide said, watching him closely. Lafontaine merely gazed at him, puzzled.
“Who is Louis Saint-Ange?”
Either Lafontaine was an exceptional actor worthy of the Comédie-Française, Aristide thought, or else Sidonie had kept her predicament from him. “I expect Citizeness Beaumontel will tell you shortly,” he said. “If you’ll give me your sister’s name and address, we’ll no longer trouble you.”
Lafontaine’s brief statement in his pocket, Aristide left the ministry, thinking hard. All the likely trails that led from Saint-Ange seemed to be petering out to nothing. Perhaps they had been deceived in thinking that Saint-Ange had been the murderer’s target, and Célie Montereau merely an unlucky bystander.
The girl had been concealing a damning secret, a secret that might have inspired murderous rage in one who felt betrayed in love or honor. Might the truth, he wondered, be the other way round?
CHAPTER 9
14 Brumaire (November 4)
“Brasseur,” Aristide said the following morning, after a peace officer had been dispatched to interview Lafontaine’s sister and brother-in-law, “I’d like to see Saint-Ange’s apartment again, and ask his servant some questions. I think we’re following a false scent here.”
“If you want,” grunted Brasseur, fetching the key from a drawer, “but why do you say that?”
“Our ‘leads’ seem to lead nowhere. I think you’ll find that Lafontaine was speaking the truth and has a sound alibi. Have you found any evidence at all that Saint-Ange had a mortal enemy who also had the opportunity to murder him that day?”
Brasseur shrugged. “Several people who wished him in Hell, but . . .”
“Have you interrogated
all the people whose letters and papers he was holding hostage? Did any of them seem capable of murder? What about his mistress?”
“I can’t say they did,” Brasseur admitted. “His mistress is right out of it; she went straight to her own apartment to meet another gentleman friend, and we’ve got the friend’s sworn statement, and her maid’s, that she was very much occupied from half past four till the next morning.”
“And Saint-Ange’s victims?”
“Well, one of the women had already had it out with her husband and they’re divorcing; another fellow, a bank clerk who’d embezzled to spend money on a high-class whore, he drowned himself in the river a fortnight ago. Not that that bothered Saint-Ange much, I suppose,” he added sourly. “The others were all rich women who’d been indiscreet at one time or another. One of them seemed like the sort who might turn to murder, but she’d been with a whole raft of friends all that day who can swear where she was. The rest, I expect they were just like your Beaumontel woman: born victims, timid, terrified that their husbands should find out. They’d never have told anyone about Saint-Ange, much less shot him themselves.”
“So that leaves us with the other alternative, doesn’t it?”
They walked the short distance to the Palais-Égalité, collected the manservant Thibault, who had found work in the household of a nearby bachelor, and continued to Rue du Hasard. The porter Grangier, Aristide noticed, was now perched dutifully on a stool in the foyer, though slouched back against the wall and comfortably snoring.
No one interrupted them as they climbed the stairs to Saint-Ange’s apartment. Brasseur peeled the official seals from the door and unlocked it.
“We’ve been pursuing the idea that someone must have come here with the intention of killing Saint-Ange, as he richly deserved,” said Aristide, as he strode through the foyer and into the salon. “That Saint-Ange was the target, and the first to die, and that Célie Montereau was merely an unlucky bystander. But what if she wasn’t?”
GAME OF PATIENCE (Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries) Page 8