Duval and the Italian Opera Singer

by Michele McGrath

  “He might have been paid for his part in the kidnapping already and he’s using that to live on.”

  “Even so, he’d still have to go out for food.”

  “He might use a runner.”

  “I dropped enough money into various hands. If he has, we’ll know about it soon.”

  “Any woman in his life?”

  “Not a regular one. He goes to Manon’s place from time to time but none of the girls like him. He’s surly and treats them roughly, so they try to avoid him if they can. If he never returns they’d be happy.”

  I sat back in my chair. How disappointing. If Lefebvre had found nothing, then there was likely enough nothing to be found. He had the ear of most of the villains and sufficient money to make them talk. Either Evrard had discovered a very secure hiding place or he had indeed left Paris.

  “What do we do next?” I asked.

  “I think we should pay a nice friendly visit to Madame Evrard.”

  “To find out if she has a visitor living with her?” Lefebvre nodded. “Hardly a social call considering how we parted from her, tied up and lying on the ground! Evrard will know by now that we rescued the boy from her house, so he won’t go there.”

  “He might. She’s the only one we are certain he still visits. She already knew he had been in trouble and she helped him. Clichy is his old home and he may have friends there…”

  “Enemies more like.”

  “Probably. Who knows? Remember —people often do stupid things when they’re running away from something nasty. Anyway, do you have a better suggestion?”

  I did not, so in the end I agreed to make the journey. Renardin needed time to think about his fate and we had been told not to approach the Lavalettes. With no other obvious line of enquiry to follow, we hired horses and rode out of the city to Clichy.

  We approached the ramshackle cottage carefully, leaving the horses at a distance and then creeping forward making use of the bushes and ditches for cover. We separated when we got close. As we had done before, Lefebvre stayed at the back of the building and I watched the front. Nothing much happened for a long time. Then the old lady came out to throw some slops onto the midden. A little later, she pulled vegetables from the ground. The house chimney smoked and that was all.

  I felt weary and stiff as dusk began to fall. We had two options, I thought. We could enter the place and search it or return to Paris. Then I heard the sound of footsteps approaching. When I moved to find a better view, a man was walking towards the cottage. It was not Jacques Evrard because he was too small. The old woman had no close neighbours and the lane ended at the river, so he had to be coming to see her. The only other reasons I could think of were going to shoot rabbits or fishing but he carried no gun or anything which might be fishing tackle. I turned and made my way nearer to the cottage, hoping to overhear what the pair said to each other. Unfortunately, I would have to circle round in order to get very near. There was no cover on this side. I did not have enough time to make an approach from the other direction where I had less chance of being seen.

  The man shouted, “Mère Anne, where are you?”

  A shuffling and the door opened. The man went inside. Voices murmured but their words were muffled. I almost jumped out of my skin when a hand slipped over my shoulder and tightened around my mouth. Lefebvre! He motioned me to come away and I followed him into the lane.

  “You nearly gave me heart failure,” I complained.

  “You’re getting slack, mon vieux. I’d never have caught you like that a year of two ago.”

  “Concentrating too hard is my excuse! Did you have any luck?”

  “No, or I would have stayed put. Do we have any idea who this man is?”

  “He’s not Jacques Evrard that’s for sure but he might have news of him. You stay here and keep an eye on the old lady; I’ll follow her visitor and see where he leads me.”

  “You think he may be a messenger from Evrard?”

  “Possibly, but on the other hand he could have simply come to buy vegetables from her.”

  “Pshaw!”

  The man came out soon after, carrying a basket which he had not brought with him. Either he was bringing food to the fugitive or my other guess was correct, although dusk is an unlikely time to be doing the shopping. I followed him, again using the bushes and trees to hide me from his sight. I found it relatively simple, for he did not prove to be observant. He never looked behind even when we entered the town which forced me to break cover and saunter after him. He made his way to the back door of what I took to be an alehouse, from the smell. I crept up to the window and rubbed away some of the dirt to see inside. The basket sat on the table. A middle aged woman rooted through its contents keeping up a commentary as she did so. Then she looked at the man who stood beside her, nodded and said,

  “ Ça suffit.”

  “Merci.”

  As he started to go out the door, she called after him,

  “Try Francine. She’s just finished. Enjoy yourself.”

  I had to smile. Vegetables for fun. Such a small price to pay. I hoped Francine would enjoy herself too.

  There was nothing here that was suspicious. Unless they used some kind of code, Francine for Jacques for example, this man was not protecting our quarry. Why should they use code? They would hardly expect me to be lurking under the window, watching them.

  I started to walk back to join Lefebvre. It had become fully dark by now and the track was badly rutted so it took me longer than I expected. I suddenly found myself stepping into what seemed to be a black hole. I could not regain my balance and I fell, rolling down a slope and landing on top of a bush with one foot dangling into water. I missed the cottage and found the river instead! If the branches hadn’t stopped me, I would be swimming or more probably drowned. I cursed and started to pull myself up, searching for handholds and digging my toes into the loosely packed soil. Just below the top of the bank, something splashed behind me. I froze and listened. There came a creaking and another splash. Someone was rowing a boat up the stream. Would they see me as they passed? Hurriedly I pulled myself onto firm ground and lay flat, panting a little while I waited.

  “Now!” a voice said. More splashing of oars.

  “Got it.” I risked lifting my head. A figure was climbing up over to my right, blacker than the darkness of the night. A sudden flash, as if a lantern had been uncovered and then quickly closed again.

  “Come on!”

  A shuffle. At least two figures, then another. Three, plus anyone else they had left in the boat, all heading towards me. I did not dare roll back down again lest I made some noise and alert them. I lay still as far from the path as I could and buried my face in my arms. I kept my hands hidden too. White skin can sometimes be seen even on a dark night. Luckily, they passed me by. As soon as they had gone a certain distance, I got up and moved after them, my right foot squelching with the river water.

  A sudden blaze of light. The cottage door had opened and shut again almost at once. Where was Lefebvre? I started to creep around the back. It was difficult to find my way in the dark and I would have stumbled into the privy if I had not been alerted by the smell. It was bad luck that, just as I was passing the place, the door suddenly opened and the beam of a lantern fell over me. The man carrying it spotted me immediately. He cried out and jumped at me. I was unarmed except for my pistol and I did not have time to reach for it before he was on top of me. A heavy brute well used to fighting. I took several blows that drove the wind out of me before I managed to roll away. Then I kicked him in the right place. By that time, the others were outside. If Lefebvre had gone, I had no chance, I remember thinking. Then a shot was fired over my head which hit one of the men, spraying me with his blood. The pistol came flying at another one. I saw Lefebvre leap into the fight before a boot caught me a blow behind my ear and knocked me silly for a while.

  All I wanted to do was lie down. I kept enough sense though, even in my muddled state to realise that if I slept
in the middle of a struggle, I would probably sleep for ever. Providing an additional meal for the river fish was not something I had in mind. The odds were three to two already. Lefebvre would not be able to fight them off alone and he would never leave me. So I staggered to my feet, looking dazedly around. I saw Evrard’s mother about to brain Lefebvre with a cooking pot. I ran at her and pushed her aside with the result that the blow did not land where it was intended. Instead it hit the arm of one of her visitors. The crack as his bones broke echoed in the gloom. He let out a howl that must have been heard in Clichy if not in Paris itself. I fell on top of the old woman which put her out of the tussle. I dragged myself up and looked round. Besides the woman and the man with the broken arm, someone lay stretched out on the ground, not moving. A terrible fear took hold of me.

  “Jean?” I shouted, hoping the still figure was not him. No answer.

  Another shot, some distance away.

  I stumbled across and rolled the man onto his back. There was enough light from the open door for me to see. As soon as I lifted his head, I knew it was not Lefebvre. This man was much heavier. A surge of pure relief swept over me. I got to my feet and pulled out my pistol, although everything seemed to have gone suddenly quiet.

  “Jean!” I cried again.

  A shuffling.

  “Here, Alain.” He stepped out of the bushes, panting hard.

  “Where’ve you been?”

  “Chasing the one who ran away but he was too quick for me. He’s in the boat with another man. They pushed off before I could get down the slope to stop them. I fired after them but I think I missed. Not enough light. Are you hurt?”

  “Dizzy that’s all. You?”

  “I’ll live but that’s more than I can say for Jacques Evrard I’m afraid. My first shot did for him but I thought he was about to kill you. If we can’t make the pair who are left talk, then we’ve had it.”

  Neither the old woman nor the man with the broken arm were in any shape to walk and I wasn’t myself. So Jean went to town and hired a cart big enough for all of us. In the meanwhile, I looked round the cabin and searched Jacques Evrard finding only a few small coins and a long knife that I put in my pocket. We put both our captives into the vehicle as well as Jacques Evrard’s body. Then we drove back to the city, our horses tied behind and happy to be heading to their stables again. Once we arrived at the ministry, we took the pair to separate cells and I sent for a sawbones to attend to the injured man. His arm was badly broken and it must have hurt like the devil. When I came into the cell again, he was white and shaken and in no state to be defiant. I got rid of the doctor and then Lefebvre and I started on him. It took even less time than Jacques Evrard to persuade him to talk. Coming too close to his broken arm, which was now strapped to a piece of wood, was sufficient. We didn’t have to touch him at all.

  He told us that his name was Aubin and he was a friend of Jacques. They’d grown up together in Clichy and, at a guess, had been involved in a few criminal activities there. They’d got away before they were arrested and, like so many people, had ended up in Paris. Although they’d drifted apart over the years, they knew where each other lived. Jacques had come to him and asked him for help to leave the city. Aubin was a boatman, ferrying goods along the Seine, so he had hidden Jacques on the boat and headed down the river. He had expected to go to the estuary where it should be possible to find a fisherman who would take Jacques to the Low Countries. He would be unknown there and presumably safe.

  “Sensible,” I grunted. It was a good plan and could have worked.

  “Why did you stop in Clichy then, where both of you were known?”

  “I didn’t want to, but Jacques insisted,” Aubin replied. “He wanted to see his mother.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought he was that good a son.”

  “He wasn’t. She was keeping something for him that he said he needed to pick up, a bag, not sure what was in it. He asked her for it and she gave it to him. Then he went out to use the privy and the rest you know.”

  I glanced at Lefebvre and he raised his eyebrows.

  “What happened to this bag?”

  “No idea. I was too busy getting my arm broken.”

  “The old lady did that to you with her pan, we didn’t.”

  I motioned to Lefebvre and we left the cell. We walked past the guard and when we could not be overheard, I said,

  “This bag was important enough for Evrard to risk retrieving it. Take some men and lanterns. Go back there and find it and anything else she may have hidden. Take the place apart if you have to. There may be nothing there but if we leave the cottage empty, someone is sure to call on the old lady. When she doesn’t answer, they’ll go inside and I wouldn’t put it past them to take whatever they find. While you’re doing that, I’ll see what I can get out of the old witch.”

  “Wouldn’t I be better making her talk?”

  “You’d frighten her into fits. I don’t want her to die before she even opens her mouth.”

  Lefebvre cursed but he nodded and strode off. I couldn’t help grinning. He didn’t like riding and would be most likely be extremely saddle sore in the morning. I went in to see Evrard’s mother.

  As soon as I opened the door, she flew at me, her nails rasping at my face. Fortunately she was too small to reach my eyes, but I had bleeding grooves down both cheeks that Eugénie would hate. I grabbed her hands and forced her backwards until she tripped on the palliasse and sat down with a thump.

  “Murderer!” she screamed at me.

  “I didn’t murder your son.” If looks could kill, I would have been writhing in my death throws at her feet. “It’s true,” I continued. It was true but only because I had been taken by surprise and Lefebvre had fired his weapon before me.

  “What will become of me now? My man gone and both my sons.”

  “Have you any other family?”

  “A daughter in Argenteuil who never visits me. She’s married to a good-for-nothing.”

  “Tell me what I want to know and I’ll take you to her.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “What have you got to lose? Your sons are dead, nothing will hurt them now. Think of yourself. I can make life very difficult for you if you don’t talk. You were involved in the boy’s kidnapping and in fighting with a police agent. You won’t like the hulks, ma mère, they do horrible things to women aboard them and your age won’t save you. Speak to me, then you’ll be safe with your daughter and we won’t bother you anymore. I’m going to leave you for a few moments now but I’ll be back.”

  By this time my stomach was rumbling, so I set a guard on her cell and left. She was a nasty old piece but I felt a little sorry for her. She’d lost most of her family during this case. I hoped she would be sensible and talk to me without further persuasion.

  Bread, cheese and wine at the Rose made me feel a lot better, when I returned to the Ministry. Madame Evrard had not been fed or given any water by my orders, so I carried a jug of wine and a beaker with me. She fell on the liquor and drank two beakers before I refused to pour her any more. Then I started to question her.

  I rapidly came to the conclusion that the old woman’s brains were addled. She would jump from one subject to another and I could not follow her. I found no difficulty in making her talk. In fact she became garrulous. Unfortunately, there was little sense in what she said. I tried all the tricks I knew and none of them worked, so I learned almost nothing.

  What I did learn was that both her sons called on her from time to time, for different purposes. Sometimes they stayed with her for a little while but they never told her why they did so. Sometimes they left things with her and would come back for them later. Sometimes they met people in her house, Aubin, for instance, the rogue. Always in trouble when he was growing up, he led her lads into bad ways; damn him to hell. I did not get any more out of her. No doubt her sons told her as little as possible and I did not blame them. I would not have done so either. She did not possess the wits
to ask me questions and the less she knew the better. I did not think she had anything more to tell me. If she was acting a part, then she was the best actress I had ever met and should be earning money on the stage. I would wager a fair amount, though, that she was a simple woman who had been used by her sons for their own ends. So I arranged for her to be fed. One of the messengers would drive her to Argenteuil in the morning and deliver her to her daughter as I had promised.

  After she had left, I debated what to do next. Aubin had given us a clue but I did not want to question him further until I knew what the bag contained. If it held anything incriminating, he would almost certainly speak in order to keep his head upon his shoulders. We had already found out that he lacked courage. I thought of going to the prison and talking to Renardin, but too little time had passed since his incarceration. He would not be sufficiently intimidated as yet and, besides, I wanted Lefebvre with me. In the end, I decided that I would report to Réal. This had to be done sometime, so I would do it while I was had nothing better to do.

  Halfway up the stairs to Réal’s office, a hand grabbed my shoulder. I twisted and looked into the angry face of Laurent.

  “I want to see you, Duval. In the office, now!”

  Reluctantly I turned and followed him.

  “Since when do you have the authority to commandeer several of my men, a messenger and a cart without asking for my authorisation, Duval?”

  “Since I was ordered to investigate this special case. I was told it was of the utmost importance and that I could give any necessary orders.”

  “But not without informing me first.”

  “This investigation is important and has to be kept confidential. I am not allowed to tell you the details or to seek your permission for any of my actions. Speak to Réal or even the Patron if you don’t believe me.”

  Réal would support me if only because he detests Laurent too. That has been obvious for ages. I really thought Laurent would have a seizure. It was an interesting sight and one I observed with a certain amount of satisfaction. Laurent has always tried to make my life difficult and sometimes he has managed to force me into mistakes, for which I was later blamed. I wondered whether I would be held responsible if he dropped down dead at my feet. It was a blame I would shoulder willingly.