by Judith Rock
Her lips smiled back, but her small black eyes were cold as she said, “Naturally we have no quarrel. You will find, if you stay so long, that we close and lock our door at six, exactly as required. Would you care to sit by the fire, monsieur? There is a table there.”
Charles waited for La Reynie to explain that they were there on business, but the lieutenant-general only looked questioningly at him, as if a table by the fire or not were the extent of his worries on earth.
“That would be a great gift, madame,” Charles said sincerely.
Eyes followed them as the woman led the way to a warm corner hung with red-and-blue tapestry. She beckoned the waiter to them, curtsied again, and returned stiff-backed to her post. The turbaned and gowned young waiter had liquid dark eyes and a scattering of pockmarks. He bowed elaborately.
“What is your pleasure, messieurs? I can offer you coffee of the best, or chocolate in the Spanish style, or spiced limonade. Or one of our frozen waters, since you are sitting so warmly. We have anise, orange, cinnamon flower, frangipani, and barley. And our cakes and wafers are the freshest and most toothsome in Paris!”
La Reynie ordered coffee and cakes for two, and the waiter sped gracefully away.
“What about the beggar?”
“Wait. We’ll watch a little first. The word will be out that the body has been found. We may not be the only ones wanting to speak to Reine.”
“Ah.” To keep up the appearance of polite, nothing-saying talk, Charles said, “I know Signore Procopio is Sicilian. Are the rest of them Sicilian, too?”
“Yes, mostly. Procopio’s relations. It’s always a good idea to employ relations, because you can pay them nothing. Very Italian.” La Reynie grinned. “Also very French.” He raised his eyebrows slightly at Charles. “And now let us survey our fellows. When our coffee comes, we will enjoy it like tired men glad to be silent and listen to others talk. Before we move on to other things.”
As Charles let his gaze wander the room, he realized that no pipes were in evidence. “No tobacco here?” he whispered, surprised.
La Reynie shook his head. “No. In some others, but not here. I don’t think the French will ever hide themselves in a reeking fog of tobacco smoke as the English do. Also, Procopio welcomes women-escorted, of course-and women will not come if the air is foul.”
This morning, though, there were only men at Procope’s.
“Recognize anyone?” La Reynie asked softly.
Charles shook his head. “Do you?”
La Reynie looked surprised, for once. “Of course I do, I recognize half of them. For what that’s worth. Probably not much. Most of our fellow idlers have probably done nothing worse than lie to their wives and refuse to pay their tailors.”
The coffee arrived, along with small almond-flavored cakes. Charles had drunk coffee before, but not often. He breathed in its fragrance and drank deeply, sighing with pleasure as he set his cup down and thinking that this was worth penance. He picked up a cake and went back to watching the room. Most of the interest in the newcomers had subsided. Aside from two or three men eyeing them and leaning toward each other as they talked, their presence didn’t seem to be much bothering anyone. La Reynie took off his cloak and turned his chair so that he could stretch his black-stockinged legs in front of him. He sipped his coffee contentedly, seemingly oblivious of everything else.
Charles ate a cake and scanned the wall across from them without moving his head. The instinct that had kept him alive during the Spanish Netherlands war was telling him they were being watched, and too intently. From the barely open door, he guessed, which probably led to the kitchen. Seeming to study a shelf above the door that was lined with glowing copper pots graduated in size like a fertile man’s family, Charles murmured to La Reynie, “Someone beyond that door across the room is very interested in us.”
“Ah. Yes, I see, very nice.” La Reynie nodded appreciatively at the pots. “One would like to see them at close range.”
“One would. Shall we pay a visit to the kitchen?”
“We were already going to. That’s where Reine will be, if she’s here. But we should go now, before our interested friend disappears. The necessity is through there, anyway. After you, maitre.”
“You are too courteous, monsieur.”
Charles drained his coffee bowl and set it down. Rising, he walked casually toward the slightly open door. It shut with a snap. He told himself that even in these times, most people would not do a cleric serious damage. Whatever the truth of that, the invulnerable feeling coffee seemed to give him was rising into his head, and he pushed the door open harder than he meant to. It slammed against the wall and bounced back into his hand. Which told him that the watcher was not behind the door.
“I beg your pardon,” he said genially, and stepped into the kitchen.
An aproned man squatting beside the fireplace with a long-handled fork in his hand stared at him and went back to poking a roasting chicken. A frowning woman of thirty-five or so stood at the central table, kneading dough. But Charles still had the feeling that someone was watching him. Sensing La Reynie at his back, he let go of the door and stepped farther into the kitchen.
“The necessity, monsieur, if you please?” he asked the man at the fireplace.
“In the yard.” He gestured with his fork.
“You first, maitre.” La Reynie moved up beside Charles. See who’s out there, his eyes added.
As Charles crossed the room, shadows moved in a corner. He tilted his head slightly toward the movement and kept going.
Behind him, La Reynie circled toward the corner, chatting affably to the cook and the woman. Charles went out into the cluttered back court, stopping the outer door’s swing so he could hear what went on in the kitchen. He surveyed the yard. A man unloading barrels from a cart and rolling them across the snowedged cobbles and down a ramp to the cellar paid him no attention. Charles looked swiftly into the privy beside the kitchen door, found it empty, and went back inside.
La Reynie, holding a rusted iron candlestick with a tallow candle in it, was standing in front of the corner where the shadows had moved. The man with the fork had dragged a stool in front of the fire and set a carafe full of dark wine beside it. He was sipping from a large glassful as he kept loving watch over his chicken. The woman at the table had stopped kneading her dough and was scowling at La Reynie.
Drifting toward the corner, Charles put himself between her and the lieutenant-general.
“… then when and where did you last see him?” La Reynie was saying, still looking into the corner.
“Thursday evening. Here.” The voice was a woman’s, old but still melodic, like a cracked viol that could make you imagine its past glory.
“At what time?”
“He left just before the absurd hour you force Monsieur Procope to close, mon cher.” The woman’s laughter played suddenly up and down the scale. “Come, Nicolas, it is not the old days, you cannot herd people into their houses at dark, like they were cows.”
Mon cher? Nicolas? Charles shifted, trying to see the woman, and waiting for La Reynie to put her scathingly in her place.
But he didn’t. He laughed. “That never did work well, did it? As you know better than any of us, Reine.”
The woman laughed deep in her throat. “Curfews were never worth a cabbage, and the ones who made them were the worst at keeping them. You certainly were.”
Bewildered by the easy familiarity, Charles moved again, trying to see La Reynie’s face without interrupting him. The lieutenant-general was smiling a little, looking with affection at the hunched figure in the corner. The woman was sitting on a low stool, working at something held in her lap. The frayed gold embroidery on her tattered velvet underskirt caught the candlelight, and her scarlet taffeta bodice had alien yellow sleeves. Her patched black overskirt was so threadbare it hardly needed to be open in the front to display the underskirt’s gold thread. Ragged saffron lace was wrapped around her withered neck, and a tu
rban of stained blue satin, intricately wrapped with more of the saffron lace, covered her hair. Charles wondered if her parents had named her Queen, or if that had come later. In her bizarre way, she looked regal enough.
“Back to business, Reine,” La Reynie said. “Why did Henri Brion leave Procope’s before closing?”
“Why do men leave, Nicolas? Because they have somewhere more important to go.” She lifted her gaze suddenly. Her face was a maze of lines, and Charles thought she was at least sixty. But her vividly green eyes were as young as new beech leaves.
“Please,” La Reynie said softly. “I need to know.”
“Then know that he left with two men. Not willingly, I thought. But he went. They walked him out the door between them, pretending he was drunk-he wasn’t-and then they took hold of his arms and he had no choice at all.”
“Where were you, to see this?”
“Outside. By the door.”
“You were begging.”
“Yes, Nicolas, begging. Looking cold and pathetic and making a nice bit for my supper. Not as much as I used to make, of course. But still needing the charity of men in order to eat. But isn’t that the fate of women?”
“Did you recognize the men who took Brion? Or hear what they said? Where they were taking him?”
Reine bent over her lap again, and Charles saw that she had a small knife and was working carefully at a piece of wood.
“I don’t know where they took him. They walked toward the river. One man I knew. Monsieur Claude Bizeul, a goldsmith.”
La Reynie said sharply, “A goldsmith? Are you sure?”
The old woman didn’t speak, seeming absorbed in her carving, and to Charles’s surprise, La Reynie waited patiently.
“Oh, yes, Nicolas, I am very sure,” she said at last, still not looking up. “Claude Bizeul is white haired now, but he has kept his figure admirably. His companion I’ve seen here before, but I don’t know his name. He is a younger man, dark haired. Taller.”
“And they went toward the river? You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Where does this Monsieur Bizeul live?”
Her hand stilled. “I will have to think on that.”
“Think well, Reine.” But he didn’t press her. Instead, he turned to the woman kneading dough. “Did you see any of this, Renee? Do you know these men?”
She shook her head and reached up to tighten the white linen kerchief she wore over her brown hair, fumbling with the knot at the nape of her neck. “I was back here, how could I see them?” she said, returning to her kneading as if she had her enemies under her hands.
“You were not, you were still at your Martine’s house,” the cook said laconically, without looking around.
The woman flung her head up and spat over her shoulder, “What if I was? Who cares where I was?”
La Reynie glanced at Reine, listening intently from her corner, then turned back to Renee. “Ah, yes, you worked in the Mynette house,” he said to the younger woman, making it a statement, not a question. “How could I have forgotten that?” His tone made it clear to Charles, at least, that he had not forgotten for a moment.
Renee leaned on her fists in the dough, her breath coming short. “Yes, I worked there. And if I could find the animal who murdered her, I would tear his throat out. Whoever he is, he came there to kill her. Don’t bother thinking he was some ordinary thief she interrupted as he was about his black business. Your commissaire made me search the whole house and nothing was taken. Nothing!”
Flames leaped as a log broke in the fireplace, and Charles saw that Renee’s eyes were the same vivid green as the old woman’s. Her face, though, was round and plain, while the old woman had bones a duchess would pine for. Charles suddenly remembered where he’d seen Renee’s smoke-blue skirt, good-quality wool, much better than a kitchen servant would have.
“You were Mademoiselle Mynette’s maid,” he said, moving so that she could see him. “I had a glimpse of you yesterday morning at the Mynette house, when the commissaire was questioning you.”
La Reynie nodded at Charles and stepped a little aside. Taking his cue, Charles said courteously, “I am Maitre du Luc. I know the Brion family. Before you found Mademoiselle Mynette yesterday morning, did you hear anything unusual, anyone in the street, or at the door?”
Suddenly shamefaced, Renee shrugged and looked away, biting her lip. Charles remembered M. Callot saying angrily that the maid had been the worse for drink when she found Martine.
“I think you did hear something,” Charles said, watching her.
She turned back to him, her eyes glistening with tears. “I heard-I thought I heard-someone call up to her from the street. But I didn’t get up to see.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was heavy with sleep.”
“With drink,” the cook said laconically from the fireside. He upended his glass and refilled it.
“Hush, Giuseppe,” the old woman said sharply. “Let her be!”
“And being understandably tired the night before from all your work-I’ve heard that the other Mynette servants had already left-perhaps you forgot to lock and bar the street door?” Charles read the answer in her sullen face. “You were alone in the house with Mademoiselle Mynette, were you not?”
“Except for the boy who turned the spit in the kitchen and laid the fires. The others went like rats from a foundered ship. They knew that paper she needed was gone, and if she didn’t get it back, how would she pay them?”
“Did any leave with pay owing to them?”
“No! She had her faults, but she would have fasted to a bone before she let any go unpaid.”
Charles was sure that Martine Mynette would have done exactly that. “But grudges can still be held unfairly. Who were the servants who left?”
Renee’s eyes, suddenly calculating, went from Charles to La Reynie.
“There was Paul Saglio. The footman. My young mistress turned him out when her mother was ill. She wouldn’t tell me exactly why, but it wasn’t hard to guess. Monsieur Saglio was much too free with his hands,” she said resentfully. “With Mademoiselle Martine’s mother lying ill, he thought there was no one to protect her.” Her eyes flashed and she picked up a knife lying beside the bread board and shook it at Charles. “If I’d seen him, I would have made him a capon, you may be sure of that. And he would never have bothered another woman!”
Charles regarded her thoughtfully. “So you are saying that this Paul Saglio likely went away angry at Mademoiselle Martine. Where did he go?”
“Vaugirard, most likely. He always said he knew someone there who could get him a better place, if he wanted it.”
Then it shouldn’t be hard to find him, Charles thought. The village of Vaugirard was only a few miles south of Paris. “Did anyone else leave with a grudge?”
“The gardener, maybe. Tito he’s called.” Renee glanced at Reine and said, “He left in the autumn. And good riddance.”
“Why?”
“He was a liar.”
A rustling came from the corner. “You’ve told me he was just soft-witted, Renee,” the old woman said reprovingly.
“That, too. He was always saying people took things from him. What did he own? Nothing. What would anyone take from him? Anyway, he left.”
“Why did he leave? And what is his surname?”
Renee dealt her dough a hard slap and turned it over. “He’s Tito La Rue. Late one night at the start of November, I found him opening Mademoiselle Martine’s bedchamber door. Mademoiselle Anne was already ill, but not yet so desperately ill. She’d fallen asleep and Mademoiselle Martine had gone to bed, too. I was just going to my own bed when I saw him. I chased him downstairs and outside, and he spent the night in the garden shed. When I told Mademoiselle Anne the next day, that was the end of him.”
“Was he angry at being dismissed?”
She snorted. “No, he wept and pleaded with Mademoiselle Anne to let him stay. Even if he is soft-witted, he’s a man and he knew
what he was doing!”
“Where did he go?”
She shrugged and shook her head. “Who knows? If you want to know about all the servants, there was also the cook, Therese, her name is. After Mademoiselle Martine’s mother grew ill, Therese started taking things. Little things, but worth something. But she is an excellent cook, so Mademoiselle Martine only warned her. And locked the jewelry and silver away. Therese pretended to be very insulted and went home to her mother in St. Denis. To sell what she’d stolen.” Renee pummeled her dough.
Servants could be punished severely for attempting assault on a mistress or for stealing. Tito and Therese had gotten off lightly and would have known it, would have had every reason to be grateful. Mentally dismissing the light-fingered cook along with the lusty gardener, Charles said, “So only Paul Saglio seemed truly angry at Mademoiselle Martine Mynette. Yet the others left. All except you.”
“I’m loyal, me.” Muttering under her breath, Renee wiped her hands on her apron and went to the fire, where she plucked the cook’s glass from his hand and drained it. Without a word, the cook took it from her and filled it again. Renee stalked back to her dough.
Well, Charles thought, loyal or not, there was little need to ask why she’d stayed with Martine Mynette. And little need to wonder if she might have killed her young mistress herself. Why would she destroy the soft nest she’d found for herself? In a disintegrating household, Renee would have been well fed and free to drink herself to sleep every night under a good roof, with no one the wiser. Charles looked questioningly at La Reynie, who shook his head slightly and glanced toward the door into the coffeehouse. They thanked the women and the cook and took their leave, but before they reached the door, Reine called out, “Nicolas, you will find Monsieur Bizeul the goldsmith at the Sign of Two Angels, on the rue Christine.”
La Reynie walked back to where she sat. “What else do you know about him?”
She looked up from her carving and smiled, revealing missing and blackened teeth. “Much that was of use to me. Nothing that would be of use to you.”