The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

by Susanne Alleyn

11

  "His throat cut and his tongue torn out," Aristide said at last.

  "It looks bad, doesn't it?" said Desmoulins. "I mean, I supposed it was just a formula. Anyone would. You don't expect anyone would really take an extravagant oath like that seriously, to the letter. It's mostly rituals and trappings."

  "Tell me, do all of you Masons know each other?"

  "Know each other?" Desmoulins echoed him. "Maybe you've been listening to hysterical rumors. We're not a vast web of secret c-conspirators who want to overthrow the Church and establish our own heathen religion. Of c-course we don't all know each other."

  "But members of a lodge would?"

  "To be sure; not intimately perhaps, if it's a lodge with qu-quite a few members, but at least by name and sight."

  "Do you know a Mason named Saint-Landry, who lives in this quarter on Rue de Savoie?" Aristide said.

  "No, I'm sure I don't. Who is he?"

  "He might be the corpse, except we don't know it absolutely, because now the corpse itself is missing." Desmoulins' eyes widened at that and Aristide forged ahead, not wishing to spend time in explanations. "Monsieur Desmoulins, you could do me a great service by asking among your fellow Masons and learning something about this man Saint-Landry, or simply his present whereabouts. You can leave a message for me with my friend Derville, if you need to." He scrawled Saint-Landry's name and address and also Derville's address on a scrap of paper the other pushed toward him. "I think it better if you tell no one any details, though."

  "We've a lodge meeting tonight," Desmoulins said. "I c-can ask a few questions then."

  They agreed to meet there, in the same modest caf?, the next day, and Aristide returned to Derville's apartment. Derville arrived shortly thereafter and whisked him away to the Palais-Royal and the establishment of a certain Monsieur Baudry who was, Derville told him, a most excellent and discreet reseller of fine clothing.

  After selecting a handsome burgundy silk suit for Aristide, and ordering the appropriate alterations, Derville invited him to dine and took him to a nearby restaurateur's. Cheap taverns, eating-houses, and food stalls were plentiful, meeting the needs of the working class who often had no way to cook in their overcrowded tenements, or of petty-bourgeois bachelors living alone, but a dining establishment that served fine dishes and was as comfortable and elegant as a rich man's own salon was a fashionable novelty. They enjoyed a good dinner, though Derville refused to respond to any reference Aristide made to the dead man and his possible ties to Freemasonry, claiming that he did not wish to lose his appetite.

  At last they returned to the apartment, for Derville had to change clothes for his evening at the opera. After the hairdresser and his assistant had left, and Derville had dressed to his satisfaction in a smart demi-gala suit of embroidered green satin and gone out, Aristide settled himself in the salon with a book. Some while later, after night had fallen outside, Renauld, the manservant, entered.

  "Monsieur, a visitor has arrived who wishes to speak with Monsieur Derville. I've told him monsieur is out."

  "What, he won't take no for an answer?" said Aristide.

  "It's not that, monsieur," Renauld said, looking uncomfortable. "He's known to me, you see, as his master has called here two or three times, and he says it's most urgent. In Monsieur Derville's absence, I thought I had better consult you before asking him to return later."

  "Who is he?"

  "The Marquis de Beaupr?au's man."

  "Moreau?" Aristide said, intrigued, wondering if any link could be forged between Beaupr?au and Saint-Landry.

  "Yes, monsieur, Moreau."

  "I know him. You'd better let him in."

  The manservant bowed and slipped out, and a moment later the valet entered, hat in hand. He frowned for an instant at Aristide, as though trying to retrieve a memory, and then his face cleared.

  "I know you, monsieur. You came to the house yesterday, with the inspector of police, did you not?"

  "Yes." He imagined that Moreau was attempting to decide who and what he was. After an instant's deliberation, he decided to tell the young man as much of the truth as he dared. "I'm a friend of Monsieur Derville's, but I'm also assisting Inspector Brasseur. What was it you wished to see Derville about?"

  "Well, monsieur, as you know, my master is the Marquis de Beaupr?au, and Monsieur Derville is one of his many acquaintances."

  "Good friends?"

  "I wouldn't say that, though they're on more than civil terms. Sociable, you might say. Monsieur de Beaupr?au has brought me here with him from time to time, when he's come calling with other gentlemen. So I thought perhaps Monsieur Derville might know something of my master's whereabouts."

  "His whereabouts?" Aristide echoed him. "You mean he hasn't returned yet?"

  "That's just it, monsieur. Monsieur de Beaupr?au's nowhere to be found, and I'm beginning to worry. He didn't come home yesterday evening when I expected he would, and he sent no message, nothing."

  This can't be a coincidence, Aristide thought, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Two men missing now, one of them likely dead?

  "Moreau," he said slowly, suspecting he already knew the answer to his question, "is Monsieur de Beaupr?au a Freemason?"

  "Yes, monsieur."

  "Has he been behaving out of character lately?"

  Moreau hesitated for an instant before replying. "You might say that. He's been spending a good deal of time, recently, off with some other members of his lodge. He hasn't taken me along, and there's not much that he doesn't share with me, so they must want whatever they're doing kept very secret. Do you think that could have something to do with all this?"

  "Do you know the name Saint-Landry?"

  "Saint-Landry? Yes, he's one of the gentlemen from monsieur's lodge."

  "You're sure that Monsieur de Beaupr?au is really missing," Aristide said, without much hope, "and not just occupied elsewhere?"

  "It's been too long, monsieur; he'd have sent word by now. He's considerate that way, and wouldn't have left the household at sixes and sevens like this."

  "There's no chance he could be with a friend who unexpectedly turned up in Paris, or?spending a few days with a fascinating new mistress?"

  Moreau shook his head. "Not without sending me a message, which is what he always does if he's detained. This morning I went to all the places where I thought he might have been, but I couldn't find any sign of him. Mademoiselle S?dillot, his mistress, she said he'd visited her on Monday evening, and he took his leave toward midnight, and then he might have vanished into thin air, for all the traces I can find of him. Now I'm trying to call on all the gentlemen he knows, in the hope that one of them might have seen him since."

  "I'm sorry, Moreau," Aristide said, "but Monsieur Derville is out and won't be back until three or four in the morning, I suspect. If you came back tomorrow, not too early-"

  "Monsieur," Moreau said suddenly, "I hardly like to ask it, but?that waistcoat you and the inspector showed me?it must have been connected to a police matter?"

  "Yes, I fear so."

  "I saw stains on it that hadn't quite washed out. They were bloodstains, weren't they?"

  "Why do you say that?"

  Moreau smiled slightly. "Monsieur, I've been taking care of Monsieur de Beaupr?au's wardrobe, among other things, since I was sixteen. I've cleaned up his riding clothes-and mine-after a day's hunting, many times, and I know what an old bloodstain looks like. Was that waistcoat off a dead man? Was that why the inspector was asking about it?"

  Aristide nodded, wondering if Brasseur would approve of how much he was disclosing, although Moreau seemed perfectly capable of working out the facts for himself.

  "You remember, monsieur," the young man continued, "I couldn't find Monsieur de Beaupr?au's waistcoat in his wardrobe. It's foolish, I know, but I fret about his safety sometimes, and I do get all sorts of wild ideas. Monsieur Alexis-Monsieur de Beaupr?au, that is-he's a bit reckless. He's the finest man that ever lived, but he is one to
take chances, and he's never feared anything in his life. So he might be anywhere, you see."

  "How old is Monsieur de Beaupr?au?" Aristide inquired.

  "Twenty-nine, monsieur."

  "The dead man was older, I'm sure of it."

  "You saw this dead man for yourself?" Moreau said, excited. Aristide nodded. "Monsieur-I pray you-you could do me a tremendous service, if you would, by easing my mind. Come back with me to the H?tel de Beaupr?au and take a look at monsieur's portrait, and tell me if that's the man you saw or not." He clapped a hand to his forehead and shook his head. "I might have shown the portrait to both of you when you called, but it was early yet, Monsieur de Beaupr?au had only gone out Monday evening and I wasn't so concerned about him then?"

  "Of course I'll come," Aristide said. He shouted to Derville's servant that he might be out rather late, and hurried down the dark staircase after Moreau.

  "You're Beaupr?au's valet," he said, after they had seated themselves in a chilly fiacre for the ride to the Left Bank. "Surely a man has no secrets from his valet?"

  Moreau smiled in the gloom beneath the lantern that swung above them. "I probably know him better than anyone. As I said, there's not much he doesn't share with me. That's why this has me so troubled."

  Aristide covertly took his measure. Moreau seemed about the same age as his master, a good-looking young man in his late twenties. "Are you very close, then?" he inquired.

  "Like brothers, monsieur. We grew up together, he being an only son with four sisters. I'm an orphan; my father was the coachman at the estate, and then my parents and my sister died of the smallpox when I was seven, and monsieur's father, the old marquis, he brought the two of us up together, so Monsieur Alexis would have some company. I played with Monsieur Alexis, went riding and hunting with him, shared his lessons, everything."

  "Everything?"

  "They treated me like their own. I ate with Monsieur Alexis in the schoolroom, and my bedchamber was next to his at the ch?teau at Andrez?. We even played together at amateur theatricals with his sisters, when we were lads, before the young ladies went off to school at the convent. Monsieur Alexis was as good as any actor I've seen on the stage in Paris."

  Aristide nodded. He had been wondering why the valet, whose cheerful, open, courteous manner made him instantly likable, spoke and carried himself like a man of much higher station. "So you're friends, then, as well as master and servant."

  "As much as a nobleman's son and a servant's son could ever be. Brothers in the country, you might say, where it's informal, and we rag each other over everything?and master and servant in city society, and I'm not ashamed of it. I went with him to America, even."

  "To the war?"

  "He was an officer, though he's resigned his commission now. He didn't want me to come; he said it would be dangerous, and that I had no need to risk my life over there. But I wasn't going to be separated from him. He's my family, you see?my brother," he repeated softly.

  They alighted in the broad, cobbled courtyard of the H?tel de Beaupr?au. Moreau led Aristide around the side of the mansion to a terrace and an inconspicuous, narrow flight of steps that led down to a sunken path and a door below ground level. "This way, monsieur; we'd better go through the kitchens and up the back stairs. Though nobody's likely to see us; madame is in Rouen, and we won't be having any visitors, not till tomorrow afternoon anyway." He gestured at the windows high above them, which were draped in black.

  "The household is in mourning?" Aristide said, trying to recall if he had seen any black draperies the day before.

  Moreau let out a soft chuckle. "Just since early today, but only for form's sake. It's monsieur's cousin, the Vicomte de Castagnac. I'd wager everyone in the family heaved a great sigh of relief to learn Castagnac finally breathed his last. Black sheep of the family," he added, in response to Aristide's curious glance, "spendthrift, runs up gambling debts, drinks too much, picks up nasty diseases from whores, forever a burden and an embarrassment?you know the sort." He pulled a ring of keys from a pocket and unlocked the door.

  Aristide followed him inside and through a short tunnel that ran beneath the terrace above and into the dark corridors of the kitchens, storerooms, and servants' halls in the cellars. Faint cracks of light flickered from beneath a few doors, where he could hear servant girls gossiping, amid splashing and the clatter of cooking pots. After Moreau had paused to light a few candles on a pewter candelabrum, they climbed a bare, narrow stone stairway and emerged from a door camouflaged by cleverly carved woodwork into a twilit foyer. Moreau continued through a salon, in which Aristide could make out the silhouettes of a harp and various pieces of graceful Louis XV furniture, and onward into another, smaller parlor that the servants had not yet swathed in mourning black.

  "There," Moreau said, crossing to a full-length portrait of a young officer in uniform, that hung on the wall above a sumptuous buffet topped in green malachite. "That's Monsieur Alexis." He raised the candelabrum higher to illuminate the portrait.

  Aristide took the candelabrum and examined the painting. The Marquis de Beaupr?au, posing beneath an enormous, gnarled tree and resting one hand on the hilt of his sword, had an intelligent, pleasant face and looked lean and athletic. Behind him stretched a wild landscape that did not look like anything Aristide had ever seen.

  "He had that painted four years ago, before we returned from America," Moreau said, behind him. "It's the countryside in Virginia. He loved America?thought it was like no place else on earth."

  "I'm sorry," Aristide said at last. "Or rather, I'm glad; for your sake. This is not the dead man I saw. They're little like, and the man I saw was older."

  "Thank God," whispered Moreau.

  So the dead man was most likely the absent Saint-Landry, as Aristide had suspected. He looked again at the painting, and then abruptly back at Moreau. Something about the eyes, the shape of the mouth and chin?

  His curiosity must have evidenced itself, he realized, for the young man quickly nodded, with a hint of a self-conscious grin.

  "Yes, monsieur. I've wondered about the resemblance myself. The old marquis was always good to my family, more generous than he needed to be. But they're all of them dead now, so there's no use asking awkward questions."

  "But when you say that you and Beaupr?au are like brothers?"

  "I expect it's truer than we know. But no two brothers could be closer, monsieur, and Monsieur Alexis feels just the same way. He's always said to me that even though he pays me to shave him and take care of his wardrobe and run his errands, I'm his friend first of all, and I shouldn't consider myself any less of a man than he is. 'You're as good a man as any other, Gabriel,' he says sometimes, 'and should deserve the happiness every man deserves.' And I think he truly believes that. He's very well read in all the modern thought, you see, and he believes all men ought to be equal, equal in rights and under the law." He abruptly paused and looked away, blinking hard.

  "Forgive me, monsieur," he said a moment later, self-possessed once more. "I've no other family-he means the world to me. So if anything has gone ill with him?"

  Aristide was spared having to fumble for a reply when Moreau continued. "Monsieur, do you think it's possible that these two matters are connected-the dead man, and Monsieur Alexis's disappearance?"

  "I'm beginning to fear it's not a coincidence," Aristide agreed.

  "The waistcoat you showed me?this dead man who wore it ordered his clothes from Monsieur Alexis's tailor, I've no doubt at all about that. It's possible they knew each other. Society's not large. And with this man dead, and Monsieur Alexis missing?maybe Monsieur Alexis?"

  "Murdered him?" Aristide said as the young man's voice trailed off.

  "No!" Moreau exclaimed. "No, monsieur, I'd swear by all the saints that he did not. He couldn't do such a thing. But I'm beginning to fear that somehow he might be mixed up in this affair, that?that the same person who killed the owner of that waistcoat might have murdered him-God will it isn't so," he added, hastily
making the sign of the cross, "-or tried to. Maybe he's hiding from these people."

  "Why might he hide from them?"

  "Because they know something, monsieur? Something they shouldn't? Or they're mixed up in something crooked and he found out about it? Or he's mixed up in something?"

  Aristide was silent for a moment as he pondered the young man's words, but Moreau raced onward.

  "Are you thinking, monsieur, that the dead man was Monsieur Saint-Landry that you asked me about? I know he bespoke his wardrobe from Monsieur Yvon, just like Monsieur Alexis."

  "It's possible."

  "Then we ought to consider that they were both caught up in something dangerous, monsieur. After all, they're members of the same lodge, and who knows what those Freemasons might be up to?" Moreau put a hand to his waist and Aristide heard a muffled jingle. "I have the keys to Monsieur Alexis's private study. Perhaps if we were to take a look around?if we could find any letters, any clues to what might be going on?"

  Heaven only knows what I'm supposed to be looking for, Aristide thought as he followed Moreau through more shadowed salons. The faintest glimmer of light showed from beneath a pair of double doors as they passed, and Moreau paused to cross himself. "Monsieur de Castagnac," he whispered, as Aristide glanced at him. "In there, with Madame de Saint-Aubin keeping vigil, since Monsieur Alexis isn't here. He's to be buried tomorrow. This way, if you please."

  Beaupr?au's study was lined with books, many by authors who Aristide knew were often banned for their criticism of the monarchy and the Church. He spotted finely bound copies of The Social Contract, In the Year 2440, The Picture of Paris, Christianity Unveiled, The Private Life of Louis XV, The System of Nature, The Philosophical Dictionary, The History of Madame du Barry-the latest scandalous, subversive bestseller-and The Spirit of the Laws. Sharing space with works on natural history by Buffon and Daubenton, a complete set of the Encyclop?die, including the volumes printed without royal approval, took up an entire wall.

  They glanced over the bookshelves and sorted through half a dozen papers on Beaupr?au's desk and in a drawer, but found nothing of significance. Moreau tried the keys he carried in the other drawers, but they would not turn.

  "I suppose he must have a few things he'd want kept private, even from me."

  Aristide did not answer him. A tiny, windowless antechamber led off from the study and the recessed, mirror-backed shelves that lined it seemed to hold at least a dozen objects that glinted in the flickering light of their candles. "What's this?"

  "What's what, monsieur?"

  "This anteroom."

  "That's Monsieur Alexis's private collection. He's interested in scientific curiosities."

  " 'Scientific curiosities'?"

  "Well?if you have a strong stomach, monsieur, I'll show you." He stepped close to Aristide and raised the candelabrum high above his head, then slowly passed it across the shelves. Aristide stared.

  "Mordieu!"

  The shiny objects were tall glass vials. Within each one a monstrous creature-a two-headed grass snake, a tiny piglet with a stunted fifth leg dangling from its shoulder, a hideously deformed human fetus with almost no head-floated in clear liquid. He glanced up and down and saw a few more monstrosities, including a malformed calf's skull boasting a single enormous eye, that set his stomach to churning before he quickly stepped backward.

  The specimens on the next row of shelves were less bizarre. The ivory-white, perfect skeleton of a snake, wired together and spiraled about a leafless branch, seemed ready to slither out of its glass case. In another case, a pair of mummified bats stretched their leathery wings wide, tiny sharp teeth gleaming in half-open mouths.

  "Where on earth did all this come from?"

  "The old marquis bought most of them. He enjoyed studying natural philosophy. Monsieur Alexis and I spent some very interesting lessons, when we were boys, looking over those creatures! This one's more recent, though. Monsieur Alexis bought it himself, or rather he paid to have it preserved." Moreau turned and pointed to a bell jar, which appeared to hold a dun-colored, shriveled doll.

  Aristide peered into the jar and saw a tiny, desiccated mummy, frozen forever in the midst of dancing a macabre jig. Little more than a foot and a half tall, it gaped at him with blank eyeballs the color of a dead leaf, and a wide, ghastly, lipless grin full of yellowed teeth. Its skinless flesh peeled away from it in papery flaps, revealing shrunken tendons and muscles, bluish veins, and the traces of bone beneath. It could have been, he thought, an image straight out of an anatomist's textbook, if there happened to be schools of surgery in Hell.

  "That's Coco," Moreau said, behind him. "Ingenious, isn't he?"

  "Coco?" He looked more closely and realized a moment later, at the sight of the thumbs on the withered little feet, that the thing had once been a monkey.

  "He belonged to Ma'm'selle Isabelle-that's Monsieur Alexis's favorite sister. He bought her the monkey. The poor creature suddenly took cold and died a few years ago. Monsieur Alexis was fond of him, and he'd paid quite a lot for him, so perhaps he didn't want to simply dispose of him on the nearest rubbish heap. He hired a man who makes specimens for surgeons to preserve him."

  "Well," said Aristide, turning away thankfully from the shelves of vials, "I don't think we can learn anything more here. You'd better let me out before one of the other servants finds us."

  "If they did," Moreau said, "they wouldn't have anything to say about it. They know Monsieur Alexis trusts me." He locked the study door behind them and guided Aristide back to the servants' entrance.

  "I'm sure Monsieur de Beaupr?au will return safely," Aristide said, lingering a moment in the doorway at the end of the tunnel. "But if you should need help, look for me, or leave a message for me, at Monsieur Derville's lodgings; or you can always try to reach Inspector Brasseur at his headquarters on Rue des Amandiers, in the Eighteenth District, near St. ?tienne du Mont."

  "Yes, monsieur. You've taken a lot off my mind; I thank you." They shook hands and Aristide hastily crossed the courtyard and dodged out through the wicket gate before the porter could inquire his business.

  The street beyond was empty and almost completely dark, but for the wan moonlight. A few thin cracks of light spilled from curtained windows in the mansion across the way, and a pair of swinging lanterns glimmered faintly from a carriage that was retreating northward into the gloom, toward the amusements of the Right Bank. Aristide had gone only a few steps when a thickset, shadowy figure abruptly loomed up before him and seized him, thrusting him backward against a wall.

  "Drop it, monsieur."

  "What?" Aristide gasped.

  "I said, drop it," the man repeated in a guttural whisper, keeping hold of Aristide's lapels. "Shut your trap and disappear. Keep your long nose out of things that don't concern you. Understand?"

  Aristide could see almost nothing of his attacker, except for a hat well pulled down above a muffler and a heavy overcoat. "Who are you?"

  "You just can't stop asking questions, can you? Well, if you keep on, it'll be the worse for you."

  "But-"

  "Nobody wants to see you hurt, monsieur, but you ought to stay away from the H?tel de Beaupr?au."

  He emphasized his words by giving Aristide a rough shove against the stone wall behind him, before melting into the darkness.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~