Napoleon's Police

by Michele McGrath

  “What do you want? Can't you see we’re closed?” she asked sharply, starting to shut the door in our faces again. Gilbert put his foot into the jamb.

  “We’re not here to buy bread from you, Citizeness. We’re police agents and we would like to speak to you about what happened when the bomb exploded.”

  “I won’t talk to you. Go away and leave me in peace!”

  “Don’t you want to find the swine who killed all these people? We’re searching for them and we need your help. Wasn’t your own daughter one of those unfortunates?”

  “My Marianne!” she wailed and seemed to crumple up. Tears flooded down her face, but she pushed open the door and stood aside, letting us enter. The room she showed us into was a poor place and none too clean. Little or no housework had been done since the tragedy. Dirty dishes lay around and the hearth was heaped with smouldering ashes. The fire had never been cleaned out for days and was barely alight.

  An older woman got to her feet, as we came in. Her face reddened with anger. “Why can’t you leave her alone?” She raised her fist and snarled at us.

  “Don't, Jeanne. I let them in,” the other woman managed to say through her sobs. She sank down onto one of the stools. Jeanne put her arm around her comfortingly, but she continued to scowl.

  “It’s dark in here and we brought something to show to both of you. Can you give us some more light, if you please?” Gilbert asked and the old woman got up and pulled another lantern off one of the shelves. She lit it with a spill from the sultry embers of the fire. The tallow inside the lantern flared up and gave a feeble light. I wiped the table clear with my sleeve and spread out the drawings. I pushed the dirty plates aside and held the corners of the papers flat with some beakers. Citizeness Pensol, the girl’s mother, peered at them and shook her head.

  “You don’t recognise any of these men?” Gilbert asked

  “No, I’ve never seen them before...”

  “Oh, but look, Elisabeth!” Old Jeanne interrupted her. “That’s the man who paid Marianne to hold his horse for him, I’m sure it is.”

  Jeanne leaned over Citizeness Pensol’s shoulder and stabbed her finger down at one of the men. It was one Lamballe hadn’t recognised; the one with a bushy beard.

  “Give it to me,” Citizeness Pensol pulled the drawing towards her and held it closer to the lantern light. “No. I don’t know him. You were the one who saw these men, Jeanne, not me. I only glanced up the road to watch for you, because I didn’t think you’d get through the crowd carrying all those baskets. Once I spotted you coming, I went back inside.”

  “You're right, of course. You weren’t with us; I’d forgotten.”

  Gilbert glanced at me and asked, casually enough, “What’s this about Marianne holding a horse?”

  “Marianne was looking after a horse and cart when the bomb went off...” Jeanne said, with a shudder. “Otherwise, she’d have been home and safe.”

  Citizeness Pensol shrieked and dropped the drawing onto the table. She fell back into a chair, her hands over her face. Her friend put her arms round her protectively, hugging her close and rocking her like a baby. “Now look what you’ve made me do!”

  “Calm yourself, Citizeness, I beg you,” Gilbert said to the mother, and he turned to her defender. “I’ve only made you do what everyone must. We want no more girls like Marianne blown up by scoundrels in this city. The First Consul’s alive, so the plot failed and those swine will try again,” he told her severely. “We've got to make sure that doesn’t happen. Now tell me everything you remember. It's important or I would go away and leave you in peace.”

  The woman took a deep breath. She straightened up and then she began to tell her tale,

  “Marianne and I were coming back to the shop. We’d been delivering bread further down the road. Old Phillippe in the alehouse sold out, because so many people had come to see the First Consul. He wanted to make as much money from the crowds as he could. Phillippe is a good customer and Elisabeth told us to take some loaves over to him. People were blocking both sides of the road and we had to fight our way through, walking almost in the centre of the roadway. A cart came past and stopped ahead of us. Two men climbed down, the driver and another man who'd been sitting in the back, smoking. One of them asked Marianne if she would like to earn a few sous. She said, ‘Yes, of course’. He wanted her to hold his horse for him, while he and his friend fetched something from one of the houses.”

  “Was the cart empty?”

  “No. There were some goods in it covered with sacking.”

  “A barrel, perhaps?”

  “Might have been. The size and shape would be right, but it might have been piled-up boxes. I’m not sure.”

  “Very well. Continue.”

  “‘We’ll only be gone a few minutes,’ the man said to us. ‘We’ll be back long before the First Consul comes. The horse is docile. She won’t pull away from you; you’ll have no trouble with her.’ Then he and his friend walked off. I said I would take the baskets back to the shop and I left Marianne there. I’d only got through the door, when the bomb went off. I was thrown to the floor with wood and glass all over me. Poor Marianne didn’t stand a chance in the open street so near to the explosion.”

  The mother wailed again.

  “Can you leave her?” Gilbert asked Jeanne, nodding to the hysterical woman. “We need to ask you some other questions, without any interruptions, and we don’t want to cause her any more distress.”

  “Only if you fetch someone else to sit with her. Go and ask Marthe to come down here. She lives on the first landing above us. The right hand door. She should be in at this time of day.”

  I duly fetched the woman. She made no difficulties about coming. This was obviously not the first occasion she’d sat with the mother since the tragedy happened. She knew what to do and Citizeness Pensol seemed glad enough to be left with her.

  We took Jeanne Simon to the nearest tavern and filled her up with strong ale, which she preferred to wine. Among the other irrelevancies we learned from her, was that she came from Alsace. So I suppose it was logical that she drank ale. The drink loosened her tongue anyway and she certainly had enough to say for herself. We found out what a kind and dutiful daughter Marianne had been to her mother. She told us what a good business the shop was before the bombing. She described all the types of bread they made. She’d even have given us the recipes if Gilbert hadn’t stopped her. At one point he rolled his eyes with frustration. We didn’t get much more information of value from her, for all our trouble and the money he spent. The only relevant thing was the fact that the man, who had spoken to her, had a ‘refined’ accent.

  “Like a gentleman”, she said. Apparently she knew what she was talking about. She’d come to Paris as a servant to one of the nobles from her home village. She would have gone on to tell us more, except Gilbert had heard enough. He got up from the table, thanked her for her help and said goodbye. He gave her enough cash to keep her happy for the rest of the evening, and we hurried away.

  “God, if you exist, please protect me from chattering women in future!” Gilbert muttered as we left. “I want witnesses to talk to me, yes, but only if they stick to the point without rambling. I don’t need their whole life history.”

  I couldn’t have agreed with him more.

  Chapter 8

  “Their plan didn’t succeed,” I mused as we walked along the street. “The First Consul survived.”

  “No, something went wrong. A bomb’s a messy way of trying to kill somebody, unless the victim is in an enclosed place. This plot was better than most and would have worked if they'd got their timing right.”

  “I wonder what really did happen.”

  “I suspect someone panicked and lit the fuse too early. Holding your nerve when you’re waiting for something like that isn't easy.”

  “How did they know the First Consul intended to go to the opera that evening?” I asked, speaking my thoughts aloud.

  “He told someon
e he wanted to see the new production and the newspapers printed the fact. Crowds wait for him wherever he goes nowadays and word got out early enough for them to gather in numbers. We won’t get much further trying to follow that line of investigation.”

  “The plotters had to find out the route he would take from the Tuileries to the Opera House. They needed some idea of when the carriage would reach the bomb site. Otherwise the whole thing was pointless.”

  “As, indeed, it proved to be.”

  “They thought they'd succeed or they would have found some other method to destroy him. They also calculated how long they needed to escape.”

  “True. So?”

  “In the army we always sent out scouts before a sortie. If I were going to plant a bomb, I’d check two things first. How far the site is from the palace and at what speed does the First Consul usually travel. I’d probably hire a coach and make the journey myself several times. I'd time everything as closely as possible.”

  “Yes. That’s a good point and can be checked. I’ll get someone to find out if any of our suspects hired a coach. Go on.”

  “I’d pick a spot where I could see him leave the Tuileries then I'd signal the others to light the fuse. I’d also find out how long the fuse takes to burn. I’d test it first, some place where no one would notice me and I’d buy several lengths to experiment with.”

  “I thought fuses burned at a standard rate?”

  “They do, but dampness can delay them and the wind makes them burn more quickly. The weather is always a factor.”

  Gilbert nodded. “Yes, you would understand such things, of course.”

  I grinned. “I’d be dead several times over if I didn’t.”

  “Continue.”

  “I'd hide the fuse inside the cart, so no one would put it out.”

  “Jeanne Simon said the goods were covered with sacking and one of the men sat in the back, smoking.”

  “Sacking would do, provided it didn’t catch fire and give the game away too soon. I’d want to be long gone before the damn thing went off and I’d be careful there were no obstructions which could trap me. I’d calculate the time I needed to push through the crowd and turn a couple of corners out of the way.”

  “Would these people be clever enough to plan so carefully?” Gilbert looked at me in amazement.

  “You said yourself, this plot was better than most and nearly succeeded. They must have planned it well. They made preparations and took some time over them. It would be interesting to know the precise moment when the First Consul decided to go to the opera.”

  “I’ll send someone to find out.”

  “The plotters had to visit the Rue Saint-Nicaise beforehand to test the timings,” I continued, “so somebody may remember them.”

  Gilbert nodded. “If strangers kept coming and going in an area, it’s unusual enough to be remarked on. We’ll come back tomorrow with the sketches and ask, but I must make my report now. Then we can both go home. I’m tired and that old woman’s addled my wits with her twittering or I might have thought of such things for myself. You did well to draw my attention to them. I’ll be able to reason better in the morning.”

  Back at the Ministry, we found Fournier still at work, reading through a thick stack of papers.

  “What are you doing here at this hour?” Gilbert asked him. “I thought Petit had the duty tonight. Don’t you ever go home?”

  “I’m not leaving until my wife cools down,” Fournier said, pulling a face. “She's cross with me again, so I'm skulking here, going through all this dross.” He flung the papers contemptuously on the table. “Set of prattlers who’ve seen nothing helpful and want to tell us so in hundreds of words.”

  “What’ve you done to upset your poor wife now?”

  “She doesn’t like me to stay out all night and I have several times since the bombing. She says she's afraid to be at home on her own, with these monsters running around the streets of Paris. As if they’d be interested in her! Also she wonders just what I get up to. Why she assumes I’m more likely to be unfaithful to her in the night than in the middle of the day, I can't imagine. You’d think she’d realise the importance of this investigation, but her brain’s addled, like most women.”

  “If I was your wife I’d wonder what you got up to as well, night or day!”

  Fournier grinned. “I’m innocent, me. Look where I am now, right here, working, just as I told her!”

  “I’ll vouch for you tonight, if you need a character witness, but why don’t you do the poor woman a favour? Go home and hold her hand, whisper sweet things in her ear for a change.”

  “She’d definitely be suspicious if I did that! She’d be certain I had some little floozy tucked away somewhere and follow me to find out who she is. This job is hard enough without a jealous wife tailing after me. I’ll go home in an hour or two. With luck she’ll be snoring by then and never find out what time I got in.”

  “A bit of advice for you, Duval. Don’t get married or you’ll end up under the cat’s paw like Fournier here, or me for that matter.”

  “Your cat’s pretty, at least.” Fournier laughed. “You should meet Gilbert’s wife; she’s not only good to look at, she’s nice as well. I can’t imagine what she sees in such a coarse fellow.”

  “You mind your own business,” Gilbert said and turned to me, grinning. “I introduced my wife to this old lecher in a moment of madness. Unfortunately Françoise enjoys his company, so I see more of him than I’d like!” I laughed at their banter but I also wondered about Françoise. Perhaps Gilbert would introduce me to her too, one day.

  “You got anything?” Fournier asked us.

  Gilbert told him what we had found out.

  “Sounds like some success then, which is better than me. We’ve wrung everything out of the witnesses and none of my snitches report as much as a whisper. This lot are clever, but maybe you’ll be able to find out more now.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Gilbert settled down at the table and began scribbling furiously. He asked me a few questions to clarify his own recollections. He didn't take long. Then he laid down his pen and sanded the ink.

  “You say the man who bought the horse is a Breton?” Fournier asked him.

  “So the merchant, Lamballe, said. One of them certainly spoke that way. Plots like this tend to be hatched among people who come from the same part of the country, as you know. Remember the Girondins? Why do you ask?”

  “I'll tell you, but first answer this. The corn merchant and the blacksmith were both in the Temple district?” Gilbert nodded. “There’s a tavern on the Rue Paradis where a lot of the customers come from Brittany.”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “One of my snitches told me, a few months ago. He said you couldn’t think for the burr of their accents. I remember because his own language isn’t too choice, even for a Parisian. I was amused but I wasn’t looking for Bretons at the time, so I didn’t do anything further.”

  “Well, perhaps we’d better do something now.”

  “Not unless you want to scare any plotters away. My face is known. So is yours, for that matter. All the thieves and villains in Paris found out a long time ago who we work for. If we walked into that tavern, we wouldn’t find out a thing and the word would go round what we were up to. No, send Duval.” And he pointed right at me.

  I felt myself stiffen with surprise. “Me?” I squeaked.

  Fournier nodded. “You're new. No one realises you’re working for us yet. They will later, but a decadi or two isn’t enough time for the information to reach a place like the Temple. You can walk into this tavern and pretend to be just one more customer who needs a drink. You’re definitely the one to go.”

  I had a sudden thought about the man with Lefebvre the last time I met him. He had seen me come out of the Ministry, but perhaps Fournier was right and the news hadn’t reached the Temple area yet. I didn’t mention the incident to Gilbert and Fournier, because I’d been somewhat
indiscreet on that occasion.

  “I haven’t got a Breton accent. I’m from Grenoble,” I objected, seizing the first excuse which came into my head.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Fournier said, dashing my hope of a reprieve, “not all traitors are Bretons. A lot are, I grant you, but plotters come from all over France. No one will speak to you openly, but you might be able overhear something in passing. Most police agents are Parisians, so your accent should, if anything, lull suspicions. Act as if you are sympathetic to their point of view. Say the right things and someone might get careless. Don’t you agree with me?” he asked Gilbert.

  “I do. You’re certainly the one to go, Duval, although it’s unlikely you’ll find out anything significant. These men know they’ll be executed if something slips, so they’ll keep their heads down and hold their tongues. They may not even be in the city or use this tavern of Fournier’s. It could be the wrong place entirely, but all taverns are full of gossip. People overhear things and sell the information. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t solve many crimes. As well as being unknown, you’re the only one of us who might recognise them. It’s a small chance, but one we can’t neglect. I’ll go back to the Rue Saint-Nicaise and continue our enquiries alone. You find some Bretons, preferably guilty ones.”

  “What a triumph if you found the plotters, a newcomer like you,” Fournier said, smiling at me slyly. “Why, the First Consul would no doubt kiss you on both cheeks, he’d be so grateful.”

  “I’d rather he didn’t,” I said fervently, a sudden memory flashing into my mind. “His breath stinks!”

  “How do you know that?” I could hear the startled surprise in Gilbert’s voice. I’d spoken about my time in the army, but I hadn’t mentioned the fact I’d met Bonaparte except to Fouché. Obviously he hadn’t told anyone else or Gilbert would surely know by now.