The Man who Killed the King

by Dennis Wheatley

  For half an hour he had fought his case with the most dogged tenacity, using every argument he could think of which might retrieve the situation. He had told the whole truth about himself and produced a Letter of Marque that he carried from Mr. Pitt; but, as he had feared, that testimonial failed to shake the Queen, because he had already disclosed to her that he was a British agent before he had brought about Don Diego’s death. To his plea that, had she two years ago given him her co-operation when he requested it, there would have been no necessity for him to seek help from the Jacobins, she replied that, while her course had been the only one she could take with honour, his had been that of a vile intriguer. Then the King, who for all his shortcomings was no fool, had pointed out that had Roger in the present case been open with them, whatever their views of his past conduct they would have known where they stood, whereas he had attempted to deceive them by posing as Barnave’s foster-brother; and since Barnave had been a party to that deceit, it could only be assumed that they had combined to lead the Royal Family into a trap.

  Barnave had protested his own loyalty most vehemently, but had had to admit that he knew nothing about his confederate except what Roger had told him; and his own past record as one of the most fiery extremists during the first Revolution now told heavily against him.

  As a last resort Roger had urged that since Barnave and himself had both at one time enjoyed the confidence of the Sovereigns, they at least deserved that they should now be given the benefit of the doubt, and that the King and Queen would do better to give it to them than to remain where they were and patiently wait to be murdered. To that the Queen seemed inclined to agree, but a moment later his hopes were dashed. The King, running true to form as ever, took the wrong decision and declared:

  “I still have faith in the French people. I am convinced that they will never harm me.”

  Then Roger had lost his temper. Ignoring the respect due to Royalty, he had spoken to King Louis of France as man to man. He told the kind, weak, ineffectual monarch that his own irresolution was entirely to blame for the miserable plight in which he found himself and the state of anarchy to which his country had been reduced; that his death would mean no great loss to anyone, and if he chose to get himself killed that was entirely his own affair, but that at least he might show some concern for the lives of those supposedly dear to him.

  The King had taken it all with his usual placidity; his protuberant eyes did not even show a gleam of anger as he said only a trifle sharply, “Monsieur, I am the best judge of my own affairs.”

  But the Queen had gone white to the lips. Almost choking with fury she cried, “How dare you! How dare you so insult His Majesty! Leave us this instant! Go, and never let me see your face again!”

  So when Roger had shut the door of the Princesse de Lamballe’s apartment behind him he knew that once and for all he had cooked his goose with Marie Antoinette. He had proved himself right and Mr. Pitt wrong about her present lack of friends inducing her to turn a blind eye on the past and receive him back into her good graces; she was far too proud and courageous a woman to stoop to such a cheating of her conscience. Had he had the time and opportunity he might perhaps have won her round by some carefully-thought-out explanation, but by his outburst he had now robbed himself of even that possibility; for in rounding on the King he had struck her in her most tender spot. She knew better than anyone her husband’s hopeless inability to make up his mind, and the awful consequences it had brought upon them, upon their dearest friends, and upon hundreds of thousands of their loyal subjects. In openly declaring it in front of her children and her ladies, Roger could have done no worse for himself had he slapped her face. Too late he realised that by his act he had opened up a gulf between himself and the Queen that could never be bridged in a lifetime.

  As he drew up his knees a little of the water splashed over the edge of the tub, but he was much too preoccupied with his gloomy thoughts to notice it. It occurred to him that as he had said his piece to the King after producing Mr. Pitt’s letter he had, at the moment of his outburst, been to some degree an official representative of His Britannic Majesty’s Government. That highly prized line, Mr. Roger Brook knows my mind upon this matter, and is commissioned by me to speak upon it, now took on a new and horrifying significance.

  It was possible that, if the Queen survived the present crisis, she might speak of the incident to the British Ambassador and require him to report it to the Prime Minister. But no! From that final catastrophe at least he would be spared. He had spoken the truth, and the Queen knew it; shame would restrain her from repeating to anyone what he had said. But she might simply say that he had been insolent to the King without specifying in what way. If she did, when Mr. Pitt heard that Roger had used his name as a passport, then given offence to the very people whose confidence he had been sent to win, he was going to be extremely angry.

  That thought did not worry Roger unduly. There had been previous occasions on which the Prime Minister had been extremely angry with him, but all had been forgiven and forgotten when he had eventually returned home triumphant. The thing that did worry him was that on this occasion there now seemed no possible chance left of his achieving even a partial success. The central themes of his mission—to induce the Royal Family to go to Brittany, then to persuade the Queen to let him take the Dauphin to England—now appeared about as likely of achievement as if he had wanted to get them to the moon.

  For a moment he wondered if he ought to go back to England and confess defeat, but swiftly dismissed the thought. In an initial report he must admit that there was no longer any prospect of his succeeding in the main object of his mission, in case Mr. Pitt did find somebody else whom he thought suitable to attempt it. Meanwhile there was the fifteen hundred pounds’ advance to be worked off, which could now only be done by purveying ordinary routine intelligence. That seemed a sad come-down after his spectacular hopes of a few hours ago, but, in the hotbed of trouble that constituted Paris at present, there was always the possibility that he might uncover some potent new development of which it would be valuable for the Prime Minister to know.

  He began to consider in what rôle it was likely to repay him best to take up this more nebulous work of general investigator, and it suddenly struck him as extraordinarily appropriate that, having been confronted with this crossroads in his affairs, he should, at the moment, be as naked as God made him.

  On leaving the Tuileries numerous reasons had decided him to walk straight round to Madame de Flahaut’s: he was itching to get himself clean and that was the nearest place at which to do it; he did not want any of the servants at La Belle Étoile to see him disguised as a sweep, so was loath to return there in broad daylight; Madame de Flahaut’s maid had seen him arrive the day before dressed as a gentleman and depart looking like a sans-culotte, so she would not be unduly surprised if he returned only a few shades grimier than when he had left, and lastly he felt sure that Madame de Flahaut would do her best to repair the damage she had done to his appearance.

  In the event, the maid had burst out laughing at his blackened face, then demurely apologised for being “disrespectful to the gentleman”. To consolidate her good will, Roger had grinned, offered to kiss her for luck, then slapped her bottom and sent her off laughing again to rouse her mistress. The lovely Adèle had appeared, still dewy eyed and languorous from sleep; but she had quickly shaken herself into wakefulness, ordered a bath to be prepared for Roger in her dressing-room, and promised him that when he had finished his ablutions her maid should manicure his nails while she turned his short hair into a cluster of curls, which would make him look quite respectable.

  So a wide choice lay before him—he could leave Madame de Flahaut’s apartment in his own well-made clothes and with his hair in the new style termed à la Romaine, which many better-class Frenchmen with democratic views were now affecting; he could go out once more as a sans-culotte of villainous appearance; or he could strike a mean between the two, by having his
hair plastered down and wearing the old hat and cape he had bought from the man in the Jardin des Tuileries to offset his own coat, shirt, breeches and boots.

  His natural inclination was to adopt the first course, and by posing once more as a Whig journalist endeavour to win the confidence of some of the more respectable deputies. But the memory of his recent parting with Barnave gave him pause. Before going downstairs they had decided that it would be better if they left the Palace separately, and after they had commiserated with one another on the failure of their plot, Roger had asked his fellow conspirator where they could meet again. Barnave, still greatly agitated, had replied:

  “It is useless for us to do so. Three days in Paris have been enough to convince me that I was a fool to return at all. The control of affairs has already passed out of the hands of men who are even moderately intelligent and honest. Narrow-minded bigots, sly, unsuccessful lawyers, empty-headed windbags, vain, pompous pedants and crazy fanatics have succeeded in ousting the men of ’89 who were of solid worth. And it will not stop there; evil ever makes a stalking-horse of folly. In a year, or less, you will see these people ousted in their turn by the Marats, the Dantons and the Santerres—the men who are by instinct criminals, but know their own minds and will stick at nothing to achieve their personal ambitions. Knowing that I have not the power to stop this awful thing I can at least spare myself the agony of witnessing it; so I intend to return to Grenoble tomorrow.”

  If Barnave was right—and Roger feared he was—the future lay in the hands of the men who controlled the mob. He had already scraped an acquaintance with Santerre, so his best prospects now appeared to lie in following it up. Besides, another attack on the Palace might develop at any hour, and the fury with which Marie Antoinette had dismissed Roger had not lessened his desire to serve her. Perhaps, as a sans-culotte, he might repeat his rôle of the previous day, and even find some pretext at the last moment by which to divert the mob from its intended victims. There was, too, a possibility that if the King and Queen were assassinated their children might be spared. In that case it was of the first importance that he should be on hand to learn at once what was to be done with the Dauphin. By swift action in the confusion that was certain to follow the murder of the Sovereigns there might even be a chance of spiriting the boy away, so, after all, drawing the Ace of Trumps from the pack for Mr. Pitt. The more he thought about it the more certain he became that, whatever might happen that day, his best course now was to develop the rôle of a fanatical revolutionary from Alsace.

  Much refreshed by his bath, he dried himself, put on a morning robe that had been laid out for him, and joined Adèle de Flahaut in her boudoir. Feeling certain that he must be hungry, she had had a meal prepared for him. While he did justice to the tempting array of good things on the tray that her maid brought in, he told her that he believed there would be another attack on the Palace, and had decided to go there again dressed as a sansculotte, but that he thought on this occasion he need not assume quite such a villainous appearance as on the previous day.

  He felt that Santerre could have formed only a vague impression of him, and his object was not merely to get himself taken on as one of the big brewer’s trusty bullies, but also to win his confidence. His chances of quickly doing so would obviously be better if he were to represent himself as having at least a rudimentary education; but the whole problem was immensely complicated by the fact that if he succeeded he was certain to come into contact with other revolutionary leaders who might remember him as the Whig journalist.

  As he gave Adèle an account of the storming of the Tuileries, one half of his mind was revolving around this new conundrum. Barnave and Camille Desmoulins were the only Jacobins he had known at all well. The one was no longer a danger but the other was still in the front rank of the extremists, and there were also quite a number of moderate and Royalist ex-deputies who were almost certain to recognise him if he appeared again in the political arena. Fortunately, he had always deliberately kept his background as nebulous as possible, and most of these acquaintances believed him to be a Frenchman by birth who had adopted English nationality only because he had been taken to England when quite young and educated there. When it had appeared necessary, he had made vague allusions to his relatives in Strasbourg or to an English godmother who had brought him up, and there was no reason to suppose that any of the deputies he had known in ’89 had any idea where he had been living during the past two years. It was, therefore, most unlikely that anyone would challenge the statement he had made to Santerre, that he had recently arrived from Alsace. But there remained the tricky business of bridging the gap between his former social status and that of a sans-culotte.

  Obviously he would have to make up for Santerre some history of himself which would not seriously conflict with what his old acquaintances in the Jacobin Club believed about him, and it seemed that this could best be served by a hard-luck story. There would be some nasty fences to get over, but the first would be the worst; and, prompted once more by his belief that audacity pays, he decided that he would slough off the hideous chrysalis of a sans-culotte before Santerre had it firmly in mind that he had ever been one.

  As soon as he had finished his breakfast he told Adèle that he had still further modified his ideas about his dress, and that his purpose could best be served by assuming the appearance of a professional man who for some time had been roughing it. She agreed that he would certainly be more comfortable in such a guise and left him to hunt through a wardrobe of clothes that her husband kept there for use on his occasional visits to her apartment.

  The final result was that when Roger took leave of her he was wearing his own boots, which had been roughened with emery paper to make them look ill-cared for, woollen stockings, an old cloth country suit of the Count’s, which fitted him nowhere and had had the moth in it, and the well-worn beaver hat that he had bought the previous evening. The stain Adèle had used the day before to give him a black eye had not yet entirely washed off, although it was fainter, and he had decided against shaving, and against having his short hair curled; so she had plastered it down flat for him with a dressing of macassar oil.

  On leaving the Tuileries he had paused for a moment to rid himself of his sweep’s brushes by slipping them into the waiting carriage, and to have a word with Dan. Being still uncertain then of his future plans, he had told his henchman to return to La Belle Étoile and not to worry if he did not hear from him for a day or two, and there were no other commitments to prevent him from setting about establishing his new identity at once by taking up residence in the St. Antoine quarter.

  As it would have been out of character to arrive in the slums in a hackney coach, Roger walked the mile and a quarter eastwards to the great open space where the eight mighty towers of the Bastille had once frowned down on a rabbit warren of filthy courts and tenements. For weeks after the storming of the fortress the mob had amused itself by attempting to demolish this ancient symbol of tyranny, but it was so vast that little impression had been made upon it until the municipality of Paris had put the work into the hands of a qualified contractor. Months of systematic demolition had at length reduced it to scores of pitted mounds of rubble from which masses of weeds and even small trees were now sprouting. On reaching its western edge Roger enquired for the Axe and Facies, and received directions which ten minutes later brought him to the inn. It was a rambling building, situated on a corner, and was a considerably larger place than he had expected. Entering the taproom, he asked a potman for Citizen Jereau.

  The man slouched off and returned a few minutes later with a short, thick-set, middle-aged fellow who had a shock of red hair and a slight cast in one eye. When Roger had stated his business, Jereau said:

  “Citizen Santerre told me to expect you last night, but he described you as a sans-culotte. I meant to give you a bed in my doss-house at the back, but you seem a cut above that. I can find you a room to yourself if you can afford to pay.”

  “Ah,” la
ughed Roger, “borrowed plumage makes fine birds of us all; although as a matter of fact I look more like my normal self this morning than when he saw me. As to terms, I am in pretty low water at the moment, but I could run to a franc a night if that would suit you.”

  Jereau nodded, and took him up to a back room on the second floor. It was a dim and squalid place. Instead of glass, the panes of its solitary window were made of oiled paper, the iron truckle bed had on it a straw-filled palliasse; for bedding there were no blankets, let alone sheets, but only a soiled coverlet. Some hooks in a corner screened off by a tattered curtain did duty for a wardrobe, and an old sea chest with a cracked mirror on top sufficed for a dressing-table; one rush-seated chair and a pail completed its furniture.

  Mentally, Roger shuddered at the thought that for several weeks he might have to make his home there, but he showed no sign of disgust. Producing some small silver, he carefully counted a week’s rent in advance into the dirty palm that his landlord extended, then asked where he could find Santerre.

  “He makes this his headquarters; so he will be here presently,” replied the red-headed Jereau. “In the meantime, how about taking a glass of something for the good of the house?”

  It was barely nine o’clock and not much over an hour since Roger had finished breakfast, but he felt it would be tactless to reject the suggestion; so they went downstairs and the landlord produced a jug of wine newly drawn from a cask in his cellar. It was a vin rosé and, although inexpensive, fresh and palatable. Jereau said that it came from the Rhône Valley, where he had a relative who sent him several casks of it each year, which gave Roger a lead to mention mythical relatives of his own in Alsace who also produced a good wine. Their talk then turned to the events of the previous day, and they were still discussing the invasion of the Tuileries when Santerre came in accompanied by several other men.