The Best British Mysteries 3 - [Anthology]
Page 2
‘That’s enough to send her to the guillotine!’ Jean-Jacques obeyed, the tears running down his face. ‘We’ve got to get her out of there! You’re a lawyer - come and tell them that she wasn’t even there. If someone stands up for her, we can make them realise it’s him. They’ll catch him with the cheeses, and that’ll be proof.’
Carton shook his head. ‘It won’t be so easy.’ In spite of the heat there was a coldness settling inside him. ‘Philippe will have thought of that...’
Jean-Jacques half rose to his feet, leaning forward over the table. ‘We’ve got to do something! We’ve got to help! She didn’t take them. There has to be a way to prove it!’
Carton rubbed his hand wearily across his brow, pushing his hair back. ‘It isn’t about them,’ he tried to explain. ‘It’s about reporting Philippe. The cheeses are gone. He can’t afford to be blamed, so he’s blaming her. If they can’t find them, who’s to say which one is guilty?’
Jean-Jacques straightened up with a jolt. ‘Exactly! No one at all! Come on! We’ve got to hurry. For that matter, who’s to say there ever were any? Citizen Fleuriot can’t admit to having lost them without admitting to having had them in the first place! It’s perfect. Hurry!’
Carton stood up and went after the rapid and highly agitated figure of Jean-Jacques. There was a kind of logic to it. The only trouble was that logic counted for very little in Paris these days.
Outside the street was hot and the sour smells of rubbish and effluent assaulted the nose. The air itself tasted of fear. A wagon rumbled by, half empty, a few casks in the back. An old newspaper stirred a little in the gutter and settled again. There was a group of Revolutionary Guards at the corner, laughing at something, muskets slung idly over their shoulders, red, white, and blue cockades in their hats.
Jean-Jacques was almost at a run, and Carton had to increase his pace to keep up with him. They had not far to go; there were district headquarters and prisons all over the place. Carton’s mind was racing, trying to think what to say that would help Marie-Claire now, and not simply make it worse. He would have to offer some explanation as to why Philippe was blaming her. And it would have to be a story that left no guilt with him! If only Jean-Jacques would slow down and allow more time to think!
They passed a woman on the corner selling coffee, and a group of laundresses arguing. There were people in queues for bread. Of course they were far too late! Or perhaps it was for the candle shop next door, or soap, or any of a dozen other things one could not buy since spring.
Then they were at the prison. A huge man with a red bandanna around his head stood outside the doorway, barring their entrance. Jean-Jacques did not even hesitate. ‘I have business with Citizen Duclos,’ he said confidently. ‘Evidence in a case.’ He waved his arm in Carton’s direction. ‘Citizen Carton is a lawyer...’
‘We have no need of lawyers!’ the man with the bandanna spat. ‘Justice gets no argument here.’
‘Never say that, Citizen,’ Jean-Jacques warned, glancing over his shoulder as if he feared being overheard. ‘Citizen Robespierre is a lawyer!’
The man with the bandanna rubbed the sweat off his face and looked nervously at Carton.
Carton cursed Jean-Jacques under his breath. ‘We have our uses,’ he said aloud.
‘Go in, Citizen.’ The man ushered them past.
Jean-Jacques obeyed with alacrity, Carton with great reluctance. The place seemed to close in on him as if the walls were human misery frozen solid. Their footsteps had no echo, and yet there were sounds all around them, snatches of voices, cries, someone weeping, the clang of a door slamming shut. He had been here only minutes, and he was already longing to leave, his body trembling, his stomach knotted tight. He thought of Charles Darnay locked in the prison of La Force nearly a year now, not knowing if he would ever leave, and Lucie outside, every day trying to see him, imagining his suffering, helpless to affect it at all.
Jean-Jacques had reached the official in charge and was speaking to him. He was a lean, ferret-faced man with a scar on his shaven head, and most of his teeth missing. What hunger and injustice there had been in his life one could not even guess. He gestured to Carton to come forward.
Carton obliged, his hands slick with sweat, his shirt sticking to him. How had he ever allowed himself to get caught up in this? It was insanity! He stood in front of the man with the scar and forced himself to speak.
‘Citizen, I have certain information you may not have been given regarding a matter of hoarding food. Cheeses to be exact.’
‘We know all about the cheeses, and the bacon.’ the man replied. ‘We have the hoarder in custody. She will be dealt with. Go about your business, Citizen, and leave us to do ours.’
Jean-Jacques was fidgeting, wringing his hands, moving his weight from one foot to the other. It was hopeless, but Carton was terrified he would say something and so involve both of them. It did not need much to make people suspicious.
‘Ah!’ Carton burst out. ‘Then you have recovered the cheeses! I was afraid you would not!’ He saw the man’s expression flicker. ‘Which would mean you had not caught the principals in the act.’
Jean-Jacques froze.
The man scowled at Carton. ‘What do you know about it?’ he demanded.
Carton’s brain raced like a two-wheeled carriage cornering badly. ‘I think you are a just man and will need evidence,’ he lied. ‘And if goods are in the wrong hands, then the matter is not closed until that is put right.’
The man leaned toward him. He smelled of stale wine and sweat. ‘Where are these cheeses, Citizen? And how is it you know?’ His eyes were narrowed, his lip a little pulled back from his gapped teeth.
Carton felt his body go cold in the stifling heat. Panic washed over him, and he wanted to turn on his heel and run out of this dreadful place. Memories of past prison massacres swarmed in his mind like rats, the priests hacked to death in the Carmes in September of ninety-two, and the women and children in the Salpetrière. God knew what since then.
‘We know where they were taken from, Citizen, and when!’ Jean-Jacques broke in. ‘If we put our heads together, find out who knew of them, and where they were, we can deduce!’
The man scowled at him, but his eyes lost their anger, and interest replaced it. ‘Wait here,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll go and find out.’ And before Carton could protest, he turned and strode away, leaving them under the watchful eyes of two other guards.
The minutes dragged by. There was a scream somewhere in the distance, then dense, pulsing silence. Footsteps on stone. A door banged. Someone laughed. Silence again. Jean-Jacques started to fidget. Carton’s fists were so tightly clenched, his nails cut the flesh of his hands.
Then there were more screams, high and shrill, a man shouting, and two shots rang out, clattering feet, and then again silence.
Jean-Jacques stared at Carton, his eyes wide with terror.
Carton’s chest was so tight he was dizzy. The stone walls swam in his vision. Sweat broke out on his body and went cold when his wet shirt touched him.
There were footsteps returning, rapid and heavy. The man with the scar reappeared, his face bleak. He looked at Carton, not Jean-Jacques. ‘You are wrong, Citizen lawyer,’ he said abruptly. ‘The woman must have been guilty. Maybe she gave the cheeses to a lover or something.’
‘No!’ Jean-Jacques took a step forward, his voice high. ‘That’s a lie!’
Carton grabbed his arm as the man with the scar put his hand on the knife at his belt. Jean-Jacques pulled away so hard he lost his balance and fell against Carton’s side. Stumbling.
The man with the scar relaxed his hand. ‘It’s true,’ he said, staring at Jean-Jacques. ‘She attacked Citizen Duclos, then tried to escape. The innocent have nothing to fear.’
Jean-Jacques gave a shrill, desperate cry. It was impossible to tell if it was laughter or pain, or both.
Carton’s lips and throat were dry. ‘Did you get them back?’ He had known this would be hopeless
, whatever the truth of it. He should never have come. ‘Maybe she was just...’ He stopped. There was no air to breathe.
The man with the scar shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter now, Citizen. She was shot running away. Your job is finished.’
He smiled, showing his gapped teeth again. ‘I guess you won’t get paid!’
Jean-Jacques let out a howl of grief and fury like an animal, the sound so raw even the man with the scar froze, and both the other guards turned toward him, mouths gaping.
‘Murderers!’ Jean-Jacques screamed. ‘Duclos stole the cheeses, and you let him murder her to hide it!’ He snatched his arm away from Carton’s grip and lunged toward the man with the scar, reaching for his knife, both their hands closing on the hilt at the same time. ‘Her blood is on your soul!’ He had forgotten that in Revolutionary France there was no God, so presumably men had no souls, either.
The other guards came to life and moved in.
Suddenly Carton found his nerve. He put his arms around Jean-Jacques and lifted him physically off the ground, kicking and shouting. His heels struck Carton’s shins and the pain nearly made him let go. He staggered backward, taking Jean-Jacques with him, and fell against the farther wall. ‘I’m sorry!’ he gasped to the man with the scar, now holding the knife with the blade toward them. ‘She was his sister. It was his responsibility to look after her.’ That was a stretching of the truth. ‘You understand? He doesn’t mean it.’ He held Jean-Jacques hard enough to squash the air out of his lungs. He could feel him gasping and choking as he tried to breathe. ‘We’re leaving,’ he added. ‘Maybe we didn’t really know what happened.’
Jean-Jacques’s heels landed so hard on his shins that this time he let go of him and he fell to the ground.
The guards were still uncertain.
Philippe Duclos could appear at any moment, and Carton and Jean-Jacques could both finish up imprisoned here. Ignoring his throbbing leg, Carton bent and picked up Jean-Jacques by the scruff of his neck, yanked him to his feet, and gave him a cuff on the ear hard enough to make his head sing - please heaven - and rob him of speech for long enough to get him outside!
‘Thank you, Citizen,’ he called to the man with the scar, and half dragged Jean-Jacques, half carried him, to the entrance and the blessed freedom of the street.
He crossed over, turned right, then left down the first narrow alley he came to before he finally let go of Jean-Jacques. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘But you can’t help.’
Jean-Jacques shook himself. ‘Let me go back and get her.’ His voice was thick with sobs. ‘Let me bury her!’
Carton seized his shoulder again. ‘No! They’ll take you too!’
‘I haven’t done anything!’ Jean-Jacques protested furiously. ‘For what? For coming for my sister’s corpse? What are you, stone? Ice? You English clod!’
‘I am alive,’ Carton responded. ‘And I mean to stay alive. And yes, coming for her corpse would be quite enough for them to blame you, and if you used a quarter of the brain you’ve got, you’d know that.’
Jean-Jacques seemed to shrink within himself.
Carton was twisted inside with pity. He refused to think of Marie-Claire’s bright face, her vitality, the dreams and the anger that had made her so vivid.
‘Come on, friend,’ he said gently. ‘There’s nothing we can do, except survive. She’d want you to do that. Come and have some wine, and we’ll find a little bread, and perhaps someone will have onions, or even a piece of sausage.’
Jean-Jacques lifted up his head a little. ‘I suppose so.’ He sighed. ‘Yes - survive. You are right, she would want that.’
‘Of course she would,’ Carton said more heartily. ‘Come on.’
They started to walk again, crossing the river and turning south for no particular reason, except that neither of them was yet ready to sit still. Finally they came to a wine shop with the door open. The smell of the spilled wine inside was inviting, and there was room to sit down.
The proprietress was a handsome woman with a fine head of black hair, long and thick like a mane. She stared at them, waiting for them to speak.
‘Wine?’ Carton asked. ‘Start with two bottles. We have sorrows to drown, Citizeness. And bread, if you have it?’
“You would feed your sorrows as well?’ she asked without a smile.
‘Citizeness...’ Carton began.
‘Defarge,’ she replied, as if he had asked her name. ‘I’ll bring you bread. Where’s your money?’
Carton put a handful of coins on the table.
She returned with a plate of bread, half an onion, and two bottles. Half an hour later she brought another bottle, and half an hour after that, a fourth. Carton kept on drinking - his body was used to it - but Jean-Jacques slumped against the wall and seemed to be asleep.
Citizeness Defarge remained, and in the early evening brought more bread, but by then Carton was not hungry
Jean-Jacques opened his eyes and sat up.
‘Bread?’ Carton offered.
‘No.’ Jean-Jacques waved it away. ‘I have worked out a plan.’
Carton’s head was fuzzy. ‘To do what?’
‘Be revenged on Philippe Duclos, of course! What else?’ Jean-Jacques looked at him as if he were a fool.
Carton was too eased with wine to be alarmed. ‘Don’t,’ he said simply. ‘Whatever it is, it won’t work. You’ll only get into more trouble.’
Jean-Jacques looked at him with big, grief-filled eyes. ‘Yes, it will,’ he said with a catch in his voice. ‘I’ll make it work...for Marie-Claire.’ He stood up with an effort, swayed for a moment, struggling for his balance. ‘Thank you, Carton,’ he added formally, starting to bow, and then changing his mind. ‘You are a good friend.’ And without adding any more he walked unsteadily to the door and disappeared outside.
Carton sat alone, miserable and guilty. If he had really been a good friend, he would have prevented Marie-Claire from setting out on such a mad plan in the first place. He had spent his whole life believing in nothing, achieving pointless victories in small cases in London, and now here writing pieces that did not change the Revolution a jot. It carried on from one insane venture to another regardless. The Paris Commune, largely ruled by Marat, whatever anyone said, made hunger and violence worse with every passing week. France was at war on every side: Spain, Austria, Belgium, and England. Since the hideous massacres last September when the gutters quite literally ran with human blood, Paris was a city of madmen. Charles Darnay was a prisoner in La Force, and Lucie grieved for him ceaselessly, every day going to wait outside the walls, carrying their child, in the hope that he might glimpse them and be comforted.
And here was Carton sitting drunk in Defarge’s wine shop, sorry for himself, and ashamed that Jean-Jacques called him a friend, because he had no right to that name.
* * * *
Two days later, on July 12, Carton was back in the Café Procope, taking his usual midday bowl of soup when two soldiers of the Revolutionary Guard came in, red, white and blue cockades on their hats, muskets over their shoulders. They spoke for a moment with the proprietor, then walked over to Carton.
‘Citizen Carton,’ the first one said. It was not a question but a statement. ‘You must come with us. There is a matter of theft with which we have been informed that you can help us. On your feet.’
Carton was stunned. He opened his mouth to protest, and realised even as he did so that it was totally pointless. It was his turn. Sooner or later some monstrous injustice happened to everyone. He had been informed on and there was no use fighting against it. He obeyed, and walked out between the guards, wondering what idiotic mistake had occurred to involve him. It could be something as simple as the wrong name, a letter different, a misspelling. He had heard of that happening.
But when he got as far as the Section Committee prison where Marie-Claire had been shot, and walked along the same stone corridor, with the smell of sweat and fear in the air, he knew there was no such easy error.
The soldiers left.
‘Now, Citizen Carton,’ the man with the scar began, taking his seat behind a wooden table set up as if it were a judge’s bench. Carton was left standing. ‘This matter of the cheeses that were stolen. It seems you know more about that than you said before. Now would be a good time to tell the truth - all of it. A good time for you, that is.’
Carton tried to clear his brain. What he said now might determine his freedom, even his life. Men killed for less than a cheese these days.