The Man who Killed the King

by Dennis Wheatley

  But M. de Kock was much more interested in finance than in the fate of France, and constantly reverted to it. Even before he had made the cynical remark, “Governments come and go, but money goes on for ever!”, it had become apparent to Roger that, although he gave himself out to be a banker, he was really a speculator. His trouble was that for a long time past the currency of France had been behaving very trickily, and looked like increasing its trickiness soon to such a degree that even the clever M. de Kock would not be able to see a trick ahead.

  The abolition of the feudal system had automatically destroyed the wealth of the nation and rendered inoperative the old means of collecting all but a fraction of the former taxes, with the result that the new masters of France had soon found themselves at their wits’ end for money. In this dilemma they had hit upon the expedient of assessing the value of the property confiscated from the Church and the émigrés, and issuing a new paper money, termed assignats, to that amount. The theory was that as these confiscated lands were sold to smallholders, assignats to the amount of each purchase would be called in to be burnt, and in this manner sufficient funds would accrue to carry on the Government and finance the upkeep of the fighting services.

  From the beginning the cautious French tradespeople and peasants had looked askance at this revolutionary type of cash, and shown the greatest possible reluctance to accept it in payment for their wares; with the result that the assignats had soon fallen to a discount. In normal times that might, in due course, have rectified itself; but as the Government became more and more socialist in character fewer and fewer people felt inclined to put their money into property. In consequence the assignats were not being taken up, and their value was becoming ever more dubious.

  Yet they had become a factor which could not be disregarded in the life of the nation, because the Government no longer paid its contractors, its officials, or its troops with anything but paper. Nobody wanted them, but everybody who was obliged to earn a living had to take them, then passed them on to someone else for the best value they could get. Widespread speculation in them had resulted and, although the Convention had decreed a six-year prison sentence for anyone convicted of selling assignats below their face value, and a similar penalty for any shopkeeper caught giving better value for coin than for paper, the illicit traffic in them had grown to alarming proportions. Gentlemen like M. de Kock had been buying them for as low as four paper francs to one silver one, then swiftly converting them into good stocks, such as those of the French East India Company, or Bills of Exchange on London, Vienna and Amsterdam. His present trouble was that he had been compelled to fly from Paris with half a million francs’ worth of assignats still unloaded; and, although he had bought them advantageously, he feared the civil war which now threatened between the Convention and the Federalists might cause the bottom of the market for them to drop out altogether.

  In the nightmare world of death, persecution and poverty that France had become, Roger and Athénaïs could feel little sympathy for the speculator; and they were glad when, a few days later, they were relieved of his presence. One evening two Breton sailors came to the inn and took a glass of cognac with the landlord in a small room at the back of the house. Roger would not have known of their visit had he not chanced to be passing and caught sight of them through the window; one was a bearded giant of a man, the other of medium height with a thin face that had deep laughter-wrinkles round the mouth, and bore a decided likeness to that of King Charles II. The resemblance was not surprising, as he was, in fact, the Earl of St. Ermins, a direct descendant of that monarch. In spite of the stubble on his chin and a woollen stocking-cap that dangled over one ear, Roger recognised him instantly. As His Lordship’s wife, the beautiful Georgina, had played so great a part in Roger’s life, he was greatly tempted to go in and enquire news of her; but he needed no telling how important it was that everyone engaged in these secret operations, including himself, should keep their real identities concealed; so he walked on to join Athénaïs in the orchard. Next morning he was not surprised to find that the inn was once more empty of guests except for themselves.

  For three more days it remained so, then on the 9th of July a newcomer appeared in the dining-room. He was an elderly man with a big paunch, a gentle expression and kind, pale blue eyes. He told them that his name was Jean Poussaye, and that he had been one of the Queen’s musicians. Later that afternoon they learned that he was one of the many people in whom Marie Antoinette’s kindness had inspired a humble love and lifelong devotion, and that it was on that account that he had got into trouble.

  He had been sitting in a café that he had long frequented near the Hôtel de Ville, when two men at an adjoining table had begun to repeat the most infamous slanders about the Queen. Such stories were not new to him; but on this occasion, for some reason for which he could not account, something had seemed to snap in his brain. He had rounded on the men, called them liars, gone on to denounce the Revolution, and ended up by shouting “Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine!”

  The two men had endeavoured to seize him, but a big fellow at another table had intervened, knocked them down, hustled him round a corner and carried him off in a hackney coach that happened to be passing at the moment. On learning that his name and address were known at the café, his new friend had said that unless he left Paris that night he would certainly be arrested, and probably lose his head. The mysterious stranger had then provided him with a permit to leave the city, secured him a place in the St. Malo coach, and given him instructions on how to reach Le Homard Rouge from there. He was greatly saddened at the thought of having to go into exile, but knew that only a freak of fortune had saved his life by sending his unknown rescuer to the café at that hour. He was a bachelor, so he had no immediate family to cause him anxiety; but had had to abandon all his possessions and was now almost penniless.

  Roger pressed some money upon him for immediate necessities when he reached England, and Athénaïs strove to comfort him with the assurance that a good musician would find no difficulty in earning a living there; then their talk turned to the prisoners in the Temple.

  On account of his devotion to the Queen, M. Poussaye had kept himself well informed about the progress of the martyrdom of the Royal Family, and had fallen into the habit of going to a café near the Temple two or three times a week. There, he had developed an acquaintance with some of the kitchen staff and others whose duties enabled them to give him news of the prisoners. He said that they were well, but that the Queen was reported to have aged greatly since the death of the King, and that the poor lady had recently been dealt a new and savage blow. On the 3rd of July the Dauphin—as he was still called, although by the death of his father he had become Louis XVII—had been taken from her to live on the upper floor, in the apartments previously occupied by the King, with the uncouth Citizen Commissioner Simon and his squalid wife.

  After they had been discussing the prisoners for some time, Athénaïs remarked how extraordinary it was that, considering the many thousands of brave and loyal men there were in France, no attempt had been made to rescue them.

  Roger laughed a little bitterly, and said, “M’dear, had you been in the Temple, as I have, and seen the horde of guards with which they are surrounded, you would realise the hopelessness of such a task.”

  M. Poussaye looked at him with his kind blue eyes for a moment, then announced, “Nevertheless, an attempt has been made—and quite recently. The authorities are apparently anxious that nothing should be known of it, but I had it in confidence from one of my friends at the café only a few days before I was compelled to flee from Paris. A woman posing as a dressmaker to the Queen was caught smuggling a note to her. It concerned a plan for her rescue hatched by the Baron de Batz and an English woman named Lady Atkyns. The woman they caught was also English and her name was Mrs. Brook”

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE GOOD ASSASSIN

  That night Roger set out for Paris. M. Poussaye would give no further infor
mation about the abortive attempt to rescue the Queen; but his positiveness that a Lady Atkyns had been concerned in the plot placed it beyond reasonable doubt that the Mrs. Brook, who had been caught smuggling in a note while posing as a dressmaker, could be no other than Amanda.

  As Roger rode through the summer darkness he was torn by a tempest of conflicting emotions. Uppermost was dire distress at the thought of his dear Amanda being subjected to the humiliations and filth of a Paris prison and, worse, in imminent danger of being guillotined. Yet he was furious with her for having got herself into such a situation, and was filled with passionate regret at having had to tear himself away from Athénaïs. But with Athénaïs he was also intensely angry, as he felt that she had behaved extremely ill; for, instead of accepting the fact that it was his duty to go instantly to his wife’s rescue, she had made a terrible scene about his leaving her.

  Then, on top of all this, there was the highly annoying knowledge that in being forced to return to Paris at this particular juncture he was doing the very thing that caution had counselled him to avoid. The issue between the Federalists and the Convention now had all France in a ferment, but it was still impossible to guess which side would come out on top. “Out of sight, out of mind” was, in this instance, a sound old proverb, and if he had been able to keep out of the political scene for another few weeks he could then have re-emerged in his old rôle or that of one who had “seen the light” and become a moderate. As it was, his only hope of rescuing Amanda lay in his being able to make use of his status as a Commissar. That meant nailing his flag to the mast at the height of the crisis—a commitment which, should the Federalists triumph, might easily entail his finding himself in one of a string of carts carrying Danton, Robespierre and their friends to the scaffold.

  The one and only positive attraction offered by his enforced return to Paris was the knowledge that he would once more be in the vortex of the cyclone. During the past three months he had given a very great deal of thought to saving all sorts of people from a premature death, but very little to the affairs of Mr. Pitt. Apart from the three weeks’ holiday, to which he felt he had been amply entitled, this was through no fault of his own, as he had had to accept the mission or throw in his hand altogether. But while he was in Brittany he had been in no position to secure information that would be of any use in Whitehall, and, knowing that the Prime Minister set a considerable value on his reports, his inability to continue them had, when he had had the leisure to think about it, worried him considerably. It was, therefore, some small comfort to know that he would soon be in a position to send his master an appreciation of the new crisis as seen from its centre.

  To speculate upon its possible outcome at the moment was pointless, as he had so little up-to-date information to go upon, while to worry himself sick about Amanda was equally futile, so his thoughts reverted to Athénaïs.

  She had taken the line that since Amanda had mixed herself up with a group of conspirators, and they had escaped while she had not, it was for them to get her out of her mess, and that since they possessed sufficient resources and daring to contemplate rescuing the Queen, they should be perfectly competent to rescue Amanda. She had recalled to Roger the vow he had made her in her cellar at Bécherel to regard her as his wife while in France, and Amanda as a mistress acquired while in England. So firmly had she established this idea in her own mind that she went to the length of asserting that Amanda had poached on her preserve by coming to France at all, and that although she had done so in ignorance, that was no reason why he should sacrifice his French marriage for his English one. Finally she had burst into a storm of tears and implored him not to leave her, insisting that if he once did so she would never see him again.

  When he could get a word in he had put forward the argument that, even had she been his wife in the sight of God, and Amanda no more than a relative of his who was in dire peril, surely she would not stand in the way of his going to that relative’s assistance. To that she had perforce to agree, but she then proposed that she should go to Paris with him. Feeling that she could only prove a serious embarrassment to him there, he had flatly refused to let her; but he had compromised by suggesting that she should join him there as soon as he had had a reasonable time to rescue Amanda from trouble.

  As he had put that idea forward, he had shuddered at the thought that Amanda might already be dead by the time he reached Paris; but he could only hope for the best, and felt that if she was still alive he should, somehow, be able to arrange for her escape within a fortnight, and have her out of the country in well under three weeks. In consequence, it had been settled that Athénaïs should join him a month hence—at the end of the first week in August; and as he was most averse to saddling himself with any entanglement, however entrancing, at the Cushion and Keys or La Belle Étoile, he had given her particulars of Talleyrand’s house out at Passy.

  It was many months since he had visited it himself, but during the past year he had, on four occasions, sent Dan out there with sums of money, so that old Antoine and his wife should want for nothing. The last time he had done so had been just before leaving Paris, and Dan had then reported that they were well and had suffered no molestation; so it was reasonable to hope that matters continued unchanged there. It had, therefore, been agreed that only in the event of Athénaïs finding the house at Passy unoccupied, or in other hands, should she communicate with him through Dan at La Belle Étoile, and that he would warn old Antoine to expect her between the 7th and 10th of the coming month.

  At the time, he had thought her behaviour unbelievably callous; but now he began to make allowances. The French, as he had had ample opportunity to observe, were much greater realists than the English. They were, as a rule, more selfish, but, notwithstanding, they were not subject to the unconscious hypocrisy with which English people so often muddled the issues in which they were concerned. French people generally knew what they wanted and saw no reason why they should disguise their feelings; Athénaïs wanted him, and felt that she had an extra-legal claim to him as long as he was in France. Obviously, it had never even occurred to her to pretend otherwise. At the root of her attitude lay the unusual circumstances of their union. Had they met only for the first time three weeks before in Rennes, they might quite well have become lovers after he had rescued her, but then her mental attitude to him would have been entirely different. It was the fact that she had built a romance about him when young, been married to a man for whom she had felt only deep affection, had lovers who had appealed to her senses but not her mind, then found in him, when they met again, all her old dreams realised. He could not but feel both forgiving and a little humble as he recalled how the once-proud and intolerant Mademoiselle de Rochambeau had knelt clasping his knees, while she declared that he was now the only person left in the world that she had to live for, and begged him not to desert her. Now that he was calmer himself, he felt that few things said during an emotional crisis could not be excused by such a deep and desperate attachment.

  His journey to Brittany, with Madame la Guillotine trundling behind him, had taken him over a fortnight; but he made the return trip, riding all-out, in under four days. On entering the capital late on the evening of the 13th of July he found it in a ferment, and was not long in learning the reason—Jean Paul Marat had just been assassinated.

  It transpired that the assassin was a young woman named Charlotte Corday, who had come from Caen. She had succeeded in securing an interview with Marat on the pretext of giving him details of the activities of those moderate deputies who had fled to Normandy and were organising the Federalist forces there. Marat’s loathsome disease made it necessary for him to spend a good part of his day in a hip-bath containing an infusion of medicinal herbs. While seated in it he wrote the leading articles for Les Amis du Peuple on a board placed across its top, and often received visitors between periods of work. Mademoiselle Corday had been shown in to him while he was so situated; she had talked to him quite calmly for some moments, t
hen produced a dagger from her bosom and, with unerring aim, plunged it in his heart up to the hilt.

  The sans-culottes crowded the narrow streets howling for vengeance, screaming that they had been betrayed, and wildly asserting that this was another plot of the aristos to murder them and their wives and children. But Roger had other things to think of than the sudden demise of the blood-lusting maniac who had been their chief patron. Pulling up outside the first large café he came to, he gave a lounger his horse to hold and, going in, asked to see the issues of the Moniteur for the past fortnight.

  The Revolutionary Tribunal had not been long established and, as yet, was sending to the scaffold only people convicted of serious crimes against the New Order; so the lists of executions were not lengthy. Roger swiftly opened up one paper after another, glanced at it and pushed it aside. As he reached the last he was able to throw off the nightmare forebodings that had haunted him for the past four days—Amanda had not been executed. Having lavishly tipped the waiter and his horse-holder, he rode on to La Belle Étoile.

  It was over a year since he had been to this old haunt of his, although during the whole of that period he had kept his rooms there, and for most of that time Dan had occupied them. His neglect of the inn had been deliberate. He knew that, in spite of the fact that the Blanchards must disapprove of his apparent politics, they were entirely to be relied upon, and that by his never being seen at their hostelry, no one would think of looking for him there should he wish to use it as a hiding-place in an emergency. Now, he had decided to spend the night there, because he wanted to see Dan—firstly, about Amanda and, secondly, to learn if there had been adverse comment on his failure to return to Paris—before exposing himself to possible questioning by his Revolutionary associates. For the latter reason he had sought to make himself less conspicuous and liable to recognition by removing his plumage and sash before entering Paris.