‘I know this place well,’ Nicolas said, exaggerating slightly. ‘If Mauval is around, we need to be careful because he’s dangerous. The best thing is for me to go into the Dauphin Couronné on my own and try not to arouse any suspicions.’
‘I wouldn’t think of letting you go on your own,’ Bourdeau answered. ‘We’d do better to wait here for reinforcements. Remember what happened in Faubourg Saint-Marcel. We mustn’t make the same mistake twice. Let’s wait for the officers.’
‘No. Time is short and our best weapon is surprise. You’re the key to my plan. I know from La Satin that the house has a secret exit leading into the garden. I want you to station yourself there. If Mauval is inside he’ll avoid a direct confrontation. He slipped through our fingers this morning and he must be convinced that we’ve come in large numbers. So he’ll try to escape through the back. That’s where you’ll nab him. You’re the one I’m worried about. Be on your guard. He’s a treacherous devil. We’ll send the coachman off to fetch help.’
After being suitably instructed the man turned the carriage around and Nicolas and Bourdeau went their separate ways. The young man headed off towards the Dauphin Couronné. He knocked on the door several times. A spy-hole with a grille opened and he was subjected to close scrutiny by a person he could not see, who eventually opened the door. Nicolas was expecting to see La Paulet or the little black girl and was surprised to find instead a tall, elderly woman swathed in black veils, her face plastered with a thick layer of ceruse, with garish rouge on her cheeks. Her trembling hands, covered with floss-silk gloves, rested on the pommel of a cane. The overall effect was of a widow or even a nun who had swapped her convent clothes for more secular dress. She raised her head and gave him a sidelong glance.
‘Good day, Madame. I’d like to speak to Madame Paulet.’
‘Monsieur,’ she replied in a husky, simpering voice, ‘Madame Paulet is in town at the moment, attending to business. Perhaps you would like to wait for her. She shouldn’t be long.’
She bowed and stepped back a little to let him in. He recognised the hallway and as he expected was shown into the yellow drawing room. Its appearance had not changed. The shutters were closed and hidden by heavy curtains. The room was poorly lit by a single candlestick placed on a pedestal table. What had seemed on his first visit to be the height of luxury now struck him as vulgar and dirty. In the shadows he noticed the parrot cage and went up to it, intrigued by how calm and quiet the bird was. It was then that he noticed it had been replaced: instead of the feathered creature there was a china imitation.
‘Monsieur will have known Coco, I assume,’ said the old woman, seeing his surprise. ‘Alas, he has left us! He died of shock. He was a funny little creature who talked so well. Too much, sometimes.’
She cackled and went towards the door.
‘I must go. I have things to do. Madame Paulet won’t leave you waiting for long.’
Nicolas sat down in a daffodil-yellow bergère. He could have decided to force his way in and search the house from top to bottom, with the risks that might entail for the young woman being held prisoner. But as the old woman did not know him it was better to wait patiently for La Paulet and make her admit to what she had done. That would also give the reinforcements time to arrive.
After about ten minutes he stood up, went towards the fireplace and looked at himself in the mirror. He had aged and was looking tired and drawn. As he continued to stare at himself he suddenly felt a sort of tingling between his shoulders. A shudder ran through him. He could sense that someone was looking at him. He moved imperceptibly to the side and eventually in the right-hand corner of the mirror he saw the old woman’s face as she moved silently towards him. She had thrown back her veils to reveal a doll-like face but her eyes were now wide open, and in their green glint Nicolas recognised Mauval and could see his murderous determination. He knew even before seeing the weapon that his enemy was about to thrust a sword into him. He stood stock still, not moving a muscle. He had to avoid doing anything that showed he was on his guard.
In an instant he knew what could save him. As a hardened player of soule he had learnt how to dive to the ground and take a fall. He had to reverse the situation and put his aggressor in a position of uncertainty. Admittedly Mauval’s advantage was that he had Nicolas in front of him but, if he lost sight of him, then they would be back on an equal footing.
Nicolas suddenly threw himself onto the pedestal table. The piece of furniture collapsed, knocking over the candlestick. Nicolas deftly put out the candle. The room was now in total darkness. As he touched the ground, Nicolas had pushed the pedestal table towards his aggressor in the hope of confusing him and slowing his progress. He rolled to the side. Silence hung over the room like a pall.
For a moment he considered shouting out to alert Bourdeau, but he immediately thought better of it. Would his deputy hear him and could he get into the house? Mauval would have taken every precaution. He was annoyed with himself for falling into this trap and decided that the first thing he had to do was protect himself from behind, and so avoid being pinned to the wall like a butterfly on a board.
Crouching near the fireplace, he groped around and felt some cold metal rods: fire tongs. He managed to get hold of them and, taking care not to knock anything over, hurled them across the room. They brushed the chandelier, which tinkled discreetly, then there was a snapping sound and a chiming of crystal. One of the wall mirrors must have smashed and fallen down. There was a rustle of fabric, a thud and the sound of a piece of furniture being knocked over. Nicolas prayed to heaven that his adversary did not possess a tinder-box. He reassured himself, however: the first person to strike a light would reveal himself.
With his back to the wall, Nicolas settled down to wait. There was a serious risk of him becoming drowsy and losing his bearings in this fearsome place. He was under no illusions. This was a fight to the death: Mauval could not afford to let him live. He still clung to the faint hope that Bourdeau would intervene in time, or that the watch would arrive in great numbers.
The curious thought occurred to Nicolas that he was like Phineas tormented by the Harpies. Would Zetes and Calais arrive in time to get him out of this predicament? This idea gave him food for thought. According to tradition the blind old king had only a staff with which to fight off the monsters that might attack him. He had a sword. All of a sudden he had the idea of combining defence with attack, making use of a stratagem suggested by this mythological reference.
He slowly unsheathed his weapon, placed it on the floor and then just as cautiously removed his frock coat. Moving to the right, he felt his way along the wall until he reached the window near to the parrot cage. Occasionally he stopped, his heart pounding, to peer into the threatening shadows in an attempt to find out whether Mauval, too, were planning something. It was likely that he had chosen the same way of protecting himself by staying with his back to a wall, probably near the door.
At last Nicolas felt the marquetry table on which the cage stood. He went closer, opened the mesh door and took out the china bird. He put it down on the table, then froze at the sound of distant creaking floorboards. This noise was followed by the scraping sound of furniture being pushed or dragged. He needed to act as quickly as possible and use speed to surprise his aggressor. He draped his frock coat over the cage as if making a scarecrow, and tested its weight to be sure he could brandish it. What was to follow would require the perfect coordination of extremely difficult movements but Nicolas felt relieved: he had weighed up the pros and cons and now the die was cast.
After putting down his sword, he took hold of the cage by the middle and lifted it up. He took the china parrot in his right hand and immediately hurled it violently across the room; Coco’s death had not been in vain. At the same time as he heard it shatter against a wall, he distinctly felt his enemy make a sudden move, knocking over another piece of furniture. Then holding the cage covered by his coat in one hand and his sword in the other, he moved forward,
finding his way along the wall on his right. On that side at least he was protected against any attack. Moving sideways he attempted to reach the door. A blade swished through the air and slashed his coat. There was Mauval.
For a moment the shock of it took his breath away. Nicolas had the feeling that he was not going to be able to reach the door to defend himself in broad daylight in an honourable combat. If there were no way out, then chance alone or the hand of God would direct the battle and decide the outcome, which would reward neither courage nor skill. For some unknown reason, fate would determine the result of this absurd uniting of their two destinies.
Nicolas took a large stride to the left. He assumed that Mauval had understood he intended to get to the door. He was anticipating the next attack that logically should come from his right. Not content to merely teach him the rudiments of fencing, the Marquis de Ranreuil had also introduced him to chess. He remembered that you always needed to think five or six moves ahead before deciding where to put your pieces. The problem here was that he was only vaguely aware of his opponent’s positions.
He heard a blade being driven into the tapestry on the wall. He had to resist the temptation to respond. He had a different plan and decided to remain where he was. The cage was not very heavy, but the added weight of his frock coat made it unbearable and he felt his arm getting numb and beginning to tremble. Soon he would get cramp. He began to swing it backwards and forwards to produce a slight noise and specifically to deceive Mauval with the resulting displacement of air. Suddenly there was another thrust where he was not expecting it, to his left. It grazed his shoulder, making him let out a cry that he had the presence of mind to transform into the moan of someone who has been wounded. He ducked immediately and the next lunge went just over his head. He stood up again and rattled the cage loudly. Mauval had presumably come nearer to finish off his victim. He must have been able to sense the frock coat in front of him, and as he had not suffered a counter-attack might believe that Nicolas were seriously wounded. His sword sank into the coat between two bars of the cage, without touching the young man. Nicolas swung round sharply, trapping Mauval’s weapon. Since he now knew precisely where his adversary was, he struck out with the point of his sword and felt the weapon slide over a hard obstacle then enter a body. He heard a long sigh and the sound of something collapsing in a heap. For a moment he suspected a ruse similar to his own. He began to move towards the door again, fearing another attack. But nothing came and eventually he reached the handle and turned it feverishly. The door opened and, after drawing aside the velvet curtain in front of it, he was bathed in the red glow of sunset entering the hallway through the bull’s eye above the door.
As he turned back towards the drawing room, Nicolas noticed amidst the overturned furniture a motionless, shapeless mass on the floor. Taking a candlestick and lighting it, he went further into the room. The mirrors that faced one another showed countless reflections of his image. He cautiously approached the body huddled up under its veils, felt it with the tip of his sword and then nudged it with his foot. The corpse rolled over to reveal Mauval’s face. His green eyes were now staring vacantly, and beneath its grotesque coating of make-up his devilish face looked angelic once more.
Though emptied of feeling, the eyes seemed to gaze accusingly at Nicolas who could not bear their stare; he closed them. He observed the precision of his sword-stroke, which was straight to the heart. And yet only chance had guided his hand. It was at this moment that he realised he had killed a man. All the tension of the struggle dissolved and an immense weariness came over him. Admittedly all he had done was defend his own life but nothing, no possible argument, could dispel the feeling – the remorse even – of having taken the life of a fellow human being, and he knew already that this feeling would haunt him for ever. At the same time he knew that from then on he would have to learn to live with the pain and the memory of it.
The young man tried to pull himself together and set off in search of Bourdeau. At the end of the hallway a door opened onto a pantry extended by a closet that led into the garden. He came across Bourdeau who was waiting there, looking anxious.
‘Good God, Monsieur, you seem very pale. So I was right to worry. What happened to you?’
‘Oh! Bourdeau, I’m so pleased to see you …’
‘I can see that. You look like a ghost, not that I’ve actually ever seen one. You’ve been a very long time.’
‘I killed Mauval.’
Bourdeau made him sit down on the stone sill at the base of the house.
‘But you’re wounded! Your coat’s torn and you’re bleeding.’
Nicolas felt the pain just as the inspector pointed out his wound.
‘It’s nothing. Just a scratch.’
He then launched into a graphic account of his fight with Mauval. Bourdeau nodded his head as usual and patted him on the shoulder.
‘You’ve no reason to blame yourself. It was him or you. That’s one blackguard less. You’ll get used to this sort of encounter. On two occasions I’ve had to defend myself in similar circumstances.’
They went back into the house. Nicolas led the inspector into the main drawing room. Bourdeau commented admiringly on the precision and cleanness of the sword-stroke, to Nicolas’s considerable embarrassment. After the inspector had searched him, they took down one half of the stage curtain from the little theatre and threw it over Mauval’s body. In addition to a few louis d’or and a snuffbox decorated with a miniature of Louise Lardin, they found an opened note. The sealing wax had been broken. In Nicolas’s own handwriting it bore the sentence: ‘The salmon is on the riverbank’, which Nicolas immediately recognised. It was the password he had given La Paulet if ever she needed to contact him discreetly. On a scrap of paper they also found Monsieur de Noblecourt’s address. As Bourdeau remarked, here was proof that the man clearly had evil intent towards Nicolas.
Remembering the main purpose of their raid on the Dauphin Couronné, they rushed up to the second floor. Of all the doors leading off the corridor, only one resisted their efforts to open it. In response to their banging Nicolas could hear muffled wails. Bourdeau moved his companion aside, took a tiny, carefully crafted metal rod out of his pocket and inserted it into the lock. After a few unsuccessful attempts he managed to loosen the bolt. Lying bound and gagged on two straw mattresses on the floor were La Paulet and Marie Lardin.
When they had freed them from their bonds, Marie began to sob uncontrollably, like a child. La Paulet, her broad snub-nosed face now bright red, seemed to be choking, and her ample bosom was heaving as she cried out plaintively. Eventually she managed a few faltering steps, looking down at her swollen feet.
‘Oh! Monsieur, we are so grateful to you.’
Her face took on a frightened look and she glanced anxiously around her.
‘Don’t worry, Madame,’ said Nicolas, who had noticed her expression. ‘But you have some explaining to do. You are party to a crime. This young woman has been abducted, forcibly taken to your establishment, kept locked up in appalling conditions and threatened with being sold into a life of infamy. For the least of these crimes, Madame, you could be branded with a fleur-delis on the steps of the law courts and imprisoned for life. So you see how important it is for you to be honest. Tell the truth and it will be taken into account, I give you my word.’
‘Monsieur,’ replied La Paulet, taking his hand and squeezing it repeatedly, ‘I know you’re a gentleman. Have pity on a poor woman forced against her will to take in this poor little lamb.’
She looked towards the corridor for a second time.
‘That monster did the whole thing.’
‘What monster?’
‘That devil Mauval. I’m just the poor supplier. I’m good to my girls. I’m well established and have a quality clientele. I’ve always paid my dues to the police. And if there is illegal gaming it’s with Commissioner Camusot’s blessing. I lost my temper the last time you came. But, my dear young man, you pushed me to the lim
it. Just ask Mademoiselle how I defended her tooth and nail when I discovered she was Commissioner Lardin’s daughter. I wouldn’t hear of it. And then that Mauval beat up the errand boy to steal my message from him. He feared you might come and wanted to set a trap for you. I was adamant that I’d have nothing to do with it, and then he hit me …’
She showed him her bruised cheek.
‘Then he threw me in here, just as you found me. If that’s not proof enough of my innocence, what is?’
‘It’s only proof that you were afraid of things going too far,’ Nicolas remarked curtly.
Between sobs Marie confirmed part of what La Paulet had said. They were interrupted by a great commotion. A sudden fear overcame the madam. After whispering something in Nicolas’s ear, Bourdeau went downstairs. The reinforcements they had expected had arrived at last. The inspector had asked his superior to detain the two women while Mauval’s body was being taken away. It was better for the moment to keep his death secret. When La Paulet enquired about his would-be assassin, Nicolas remained evasive. He was convinced that she had told him almost all she knew as honestly as she could. La Satin was right, she wasn’t an evil woman, even if her trade put her on dangerously familiar terms with the world of crime.
The three of them, he and the two women, stayed in the room without saying a word. Nicolas did not want to question Marie in front of someone else. After a considerable time Bourdeau came back and signalled to Nicolas that all was clear. They left the Dauphin Couronné, Bourdeau in one carriage with La Paulet, and Nicolas in another with Marie. The young woman had calmed down, although she let out the occasional long sigh. She looked at Nicolas admiringly.
‘Please forgive me, Mademoiselle, but I must ask you a few questions.’
‘Please allow me first to thank you, Nicolas. I realise that the girl passed on my message …’
She gave him a sidelong glance.
‘Do you know her well? Have you known her long?’
The Châtelet Apprentice Page 30