Murder in July

by Barbara Hambly

  ‘And you’re sure it was de Gourgue?’

  ‘Reasonably so,’ said the old violinist. ‘Like a plump version of the Beautiful Philippe, but six inches shorter and with a half-grown Van Dyke and spots. And one could scarcely mistake that heinous black-and-yellow waistcoat he wears—’

  ‘Ah!’ said January, recollections from the previous winter’s engagements dropping into place. ‘That’s the fellow.’ He barely remembered the face of the wearer – glimpsed across the lawn at a Venetian breakfast at which he’d played – but the gaudy embroidery of ebony and daffodil (and Charbonnière’s sotto voce comments thereupon) were unforgettable.

  For a time he watched Carnot catch a delicate rim-light on Medea’s curls, on the knuckles of the hand she clenched at her breast. Thinking of Anne in Saint-Lazare, and of the difficulties of proving a negative.

  At length he crossed to the dormer where Ayasha had resumed her seat, and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘My nightingale, I suspect that a journey to Etamps is in order.’

  January’s fingers stilled on the keys of his piano, and he sat for a long time looking into the darkness past the candle’s single flame.

  Remembering.

  The smell of linseed oil, the voices of friends. The warmth of Ayasha’s shoulder through the faded print cotton of her dress – that blue-and-black frock that two years later he was to pack in a trunk with all her other clothing and throw into the Seine in the wake of her death.

  Pain constricted his heart, then opened it like a red-and-black flower.

  Gone. Not just Ayasha, but that time, those days, the taste of Carnot’s cheap wine and the way the sunlight came through his studio windows. That time is gone.

  And all the days with her, with them, that I would have had.

  The rattle of hooves in the Rue Esplanade outside had nearly stilled. The only sound, from far off to the north across Lake Pontchartrain, was the dull grumble of thunder. Closer to, the whine of a mosquito which had escaped Rose’s vigilance as she’d closed up the house at sunset.

  They visited Anne at Saint-Lazare the evening before they left.

  The evening had been hot, like this one, and Anne, restless as a caged panther. ‘An officer came and questioned me.’ Her glance passed from January’s face to Ayasha’s, half contemptuous, half-scared. ‘He asked me about Daniel, about Daniel’s “little friends”, as he called them. I said of course I knew he had lovers, everyone in Paris knows it. Some of them I like, some I don’t, but I certainly didn’t think shooting any one of them was going to stop him from running after every pretty boy he sees. I liked Philippe, the few times I met him, and he was never anything but polite to me. This man carried on as if I spent my nights in tears of mortified pride and my days in plotting revenge, like a character in one of those awful novels Mother’s always reading!’

  While she was speaking she paced the length of the room three times – three of her long strides, the sea-green silk of her skirts billowing gently. ‘Bad enough I should get an hour’s worth of such nonsense from Armand, every time he’s in here! And Mother.’

  A pile of fabric was heaped on the end of the bed, fashionable pale-pink silk, and with it a huge square sewing box of tortoiseshell and ebony. January guessed that some member of her family had brought her embroidery to occupy her time. Since the nuns would have taken away even the small scissors that such a kit would have included, there probably wasn’t much she could have done with it anyway. The inmates of Saint-Lazare were permitted an hour’s decorous stroll in the prison yard once per day. Nothing, to a girl of Anne’s violent energies.

  ‘Mother …’ Anne’s voice changed from anger to a kind of grieved despair. ‘She blames herself, for not keeping Papa from marrying me to Daniel. Not because he chases boys – I don’t think Mother even knows what a boy-chaser does when he catches one! – but because he’s a Jew. Such stuff! As if anyone who married a Jew was bound to come to a bad end.’ She slapped the heels of her palms together as she spoke, turned her head from side to side, the strong, auburn tendrils that framed her face catching a little in the sweat on her brow.

  ‘I would have laughed, if she hadn’t been so … so eviscerated by all this. I spent over an hour comforting her, promising her it was all a mistake. That I’ll be all right, that of course I didn’t do it … She was almost sick with weeping, poor dear … And Madame Sonnet, that frightful woman who attends her, kept shaking her head and offering her smelling salts and asking me, “How could you do this to her, Anne?”’

  ‘We’ll get you out,’ said January, hearing behind the torrent of her words the fear she wouldn’t acknowledge, even to herself. ‘Do you know Celestin de Gourgue?’

  ‘Philippe’s brother?’ Anne frowned, and gave a little shrug. ‘Tin-Tin, Philippe called him … I’ve met him. A spotty little dumpling with a beard like a couple of socks hanging on a clothes line! Papa spoke of making a match between us at one point, but in the end hadn’t the money to make the running, even with a younger son. I expect they’ll marry him to that frightful de Taillefer girl, now that he’s the heir. I can’t see Louise de Taillefer letting the next Comte de Belvoire get away from her daughter, no matter who— You’re not thinking Tin-Tin did this?’

  ‘He was in Paris during the rioting, beautiful lady.’ Old Lucien, who had accompanied January and Ayasha to the prison, spoke for the first time. ‘And in the Gazette, his parents are claiming that he wasn’t.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. For one thing, he can’t hit the side of a barn—’

  ‘Philippe was shot at close range,’ said January. ‘My baby sister could have hit him at that distance.’

  ‘For another …’ Her words tailed off.

  January waited, in her silence. After a time Ayasha asked gently, ‘Do you think him capable of it? I hear he’s heavily in debt from gaming.’

  Another long silence as Anne thought about it. Thought about the new king’s eagerness to enlist the old nobility to his side. About the ‘honor’ of the de Belvoire family, which would tolerate anything but a ‘catamite’ as the head of the family – even, possibly, a fratricide. At length she whispered, ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  Etamps itself lay a day’s journey from Paris by diligence. Daniel provided the ten francs that comprised the fares for January, Ayasha, and Lucien Imbolt – the only one of the party who knew the new vicomte by sight – plus the cost of lodging and food. ‘A fine thing when I’ve been reduced to the status of a reference book,’ grumbled the old violinist, but January knew he was pleased to have the excuse to retire from playing for the professional danseuses at Au Mandragore. In his youth the old man had been first violinist of Queen Marie Antoinette’s personal orchestra, and he still (he said) had his pride.

  Daniel had given January the names of as many of the de Belvoire servants as he could remember from Philippe’s references to his childhood. The young man’s own valet had followed his master’s body back to the family hôtel and from there had presumably been re-absorbed into the Comte’s household. ‘Very much the old family retainer,’ had sighed Daniel. ‘He would have slit his own throat before allowing Philippe to stir from the house with so much as a speck of dust on his sleeve, and he looked through me as if I were Banquo’s ghost. Philippe told me once the man held that his – Philippe’s – bedroom preferences were his own affair, but apparently took him severely to task about being seen around town with a Jew. Extraordinary.’

  Thus when the overloaded diligence had deposited them in that trim cobblestoned town, the three investigators knew to take rooms at the Porcelet Ailé in the Rue St-Martin, where Lucien presented himself as the former valet of the Vicomte de Chamarande (whose family had fled the country in 1789 and never returned), accompanied by his daughter and her husband. On any given evening, at least two of the de Belvoire servants made the two-mile walk from Noisette-le-Comte to the Porcelet, and it was a relatively easy matter to lead the conversation from enquiries about the Chamarandes to gossip concerning the de Belvoi
res.

  ‘A horror, it is,’ murmured Bertrille, the chambermaid who assisted Madame de Belvoire’s ‘dresser’ in the repair and embroidery of that lady’s clothing. ‘Poor madame! She acts so brave, but you look at her eyes and knows she weeps the night through.’

  ‘She won’t let that little witch get away with it.’ Bertrille’s bosom friend from the laundry thumped angrily on the table, at which Ayasha – who had joined the two girls in the corner by the fireplace – refilled both their wine cups. ‘You can bet on that.’

  January, inconspicuously playing écarté with Lucien at the next table, sorted his cards and watched them over the top of his hand.

  ‘Did she mean to murder him?’ inquired Ayasha breathlessly. ‘Or was it her husband—’

  ‘Oh, she meant to murder him, all right.’ Bertrille nodded grimly, a buxom Venus with a lace cap over her dark curls. ‘Liane – that used to be La Ben-Gideon’s maid – says as how that woman hated Philippe. Not that ordinarily I’d believe one word Liane says, the stuck-up bitch, but she was there after all …’

  ‘Madame Ben-Gideon’s maid?’ Ayasha’s startle and stare were perfectly genuine. ‘How …?’

  ‘Oh, she’s working for Madame la Comtesse now.’ Bertrille preened herself a little at being the custodian of such information. ‘Thieving gadoue – helps herself to madame’s purse and hints that it’s me that’s taking the money, or poor Giselle, my sister that works in the ironing room … Yes, madame hired Liane just as soon as the police realized it was Madame Ben-Gideon that did it. And she’s right to say, that it’d go worse for any maid, if she stood up before the juge d’instruction and said what she knows. A girl’s got to look out for herself.’

  ‘Yallah!’ exclaimed Ayasha. ‘Yet to speak against her mistress …’

  ‘Oh, she did it, right enough.’ The laundress – Vig was her name – Régenérée Vigeur – nodded, and downed her wine, which Ayasha thoughtfully and immediately refilled.

  ‘That rat dog from the Paris Sûreté – Quicherat – said there was no question she’d done the deed … He said he knew it was done with her pistol. Huh!’ snorted Bertrille. ‘As if a woman of her sort could hold onto a man, even a pédé like that, even if she didn’t have competition …’

  ‘Poor Philippe,’ murmured Vig. ‘So handsome he was, and so sweet …’

  ‘A waste of good looks,’ added Bertrille. ‘That old tante Ben-Gideon was the one who led him into buggery in the first place.’ This, January knew – from Daniel and Philippe both – was simply not true. ‘It should have been him that woman shot, not poor Philippe. Madame says that before Philippe met him, he was as fine a man as any in the nation.’

  Ayasha made a shocked noise, and offered in corroboration a completely fictitious anecdote concerning a younger brother (also imaginary) who had been similarly corrupted. ‘My cousin Zuliema, who was betrothed to him, swore revenge on the old bugger who did it, but of course her parents kept a close eye on her and married her off to someone else.’

  ‘Exactly!’ agreed Bertrille. ‘Though myself, I say it serves Marie de Chouvigny right – that’s the girl they were trying to make Philippe marry. Nasty spoilt little wretch … Now they’re trying to make the match with poor Tin-Tin, Philippe’s brother. No wonder he disappeared on them!’

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘Yes!’ The maid rocked back on her bench with delight, and Ayasha topped up her cup again. January struggled not to lean closer to listen. ‘I thought I’d piss myself, laughing!’

  ‘Now, honey,’ protested Vig, ‘you know poor madame is frantic—’

  ‘Madame de Taillefer is the one who’s frantic,’ giggled Bertrille. ‘And her ferret-faced daughter. Oh, look, here’s Fleurette and Jeanne …’ She half-rose, waving to acquaintances – also maidservants, by their dress – who entered arm-in-arm with a couple of crimson-liveried footmen, and Ayasha wasn’t able to lead the conversation back to the murdered heir and his absconding brother without appearing obvious about it.

  Subsequent gossip, about the town and in the inn the following evening, confirmed these facts. Celestin de Gourgue had gone off to Paris, driving himself in his own English curricle, on the twenty-sixth of July – Monday, the day before the rioting had started. He had still been absent on the evening of the twenty-seventh, when, January estimated, his brother had been killed. Philippe’s body had appeared on the barricade sometime before dawn on Thursday morning, the twenty-ninth … the same day that young Celestin had returned to Noisette-le-Comte in the afternoon.

  News had reached the family of Philippe’s death late the same day, and two days later, on the thirty-first, Celestin had evidently hitched up his own horses when the grooms were occupied elsewhere, and had driven away without a word to anyone. He had not returned.

  ‘Got a mistress?’ inquired Lucien casually, and the footmen for whom he’d bought a drink laughed.

  ‘Fat chance he’d have to find one, with old père Delabole hanging ’round his neck.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ opined the younger footman, Robert, ‘his lordship wouldn’t be sorry to see it if Celestin did have a mistress … not while they’re tryin’ to bring it off with the marquis’s daughter, of course. You can’t say he would, Serafine,’ he added, when his older companion clucked reprovingly. ‘You heard his lordship, often an’ often, say as how it was a grief to him that Philippe, bein’ the heir, favored beef over ewe-lamb. Last time Philippe was home – the older son,’ he explained (unnecessarily) to his new acquaintances, ‘that just only ten days ago was murdered by the wife of the Jew bugger he’d took up with – last time Philippe was home I thought his lordship was going to murder him himself, shoutin’ so’s you could hear it clear down in the hall …’

  ‘My guess,’ provided the older footman, shaking his head, ‘is young Tin-Tin can’t keep money in his pockets long enough to make it worth any tart’s while to become his mistress. Goes through the ready like a rat through cheese. Minds what he’s told out here, of course, but every time he’s in town he comes back with his pockets to let and no idea how it happened, poor fish. His lordship rants about it, but pays up – to get back at madame, I’d say. Philippe was her white-headed boy, and God forbid his lordship should admit to her that his favorite lad is bait for every elbow-shaker in town.’

  ‘My brother,’ said Lucien, ‘would frequently be obliged to go into hiding – once he even went the length of traveling to Italy, of all places – because the owners of some hell or other had their strongmen out after him because of gaming debts. But I can scarcely see that sort of situation befalling the son of the Comte de Belvoire.’

  Young Robert shook his head. ‘His lordship said, next time little Tin-Tin ran himself “up the river Tick”, as the English say, he could look out for himself, and God knows what happened in that couple of days when he was home …’

  ‘Likelier that he’s shamming,’ opined Serafine. ‘My brother used to do that all the time: “You said you’d throw me out, well, I’ll take you at your word and vanish.” It was usually enough to bring Papa to heel, for of course Maman would give him no rest til he’d taken Jacques back. Joined the army he did, at last,’ he added sadly. ‘Died at Waterloo, at Chateau Frichermont, and left his poor wife three months gone with child … Hullo!’ He turned, as two more men entered the tavern, also in the wine-red livery of the Comtes de Belvoire. ‘Old Potato-Nose let you off the chain, then?’

  ‘Gone to Blanquefort.’ The shorter of the newcomers, a sharp-faced Gascon, named the nearby country home of the Vicomtes de Beaujeau. ‘Not back ’til moonset, most like.’

  ‘And good riddance to the lot of ’em,’ sighed the other. ‘Lord, what a fuss-budget that lad Brancas is!’ He turned toward the serving girl and January, sitting near the hearth listening to Lucien’s conversation with Robert and Serafine, barely had time to duck back deeper into the shadows.

  The taller, younger lackey in crimson Belvoire livery was Daniel’s former footman Laurent.

 
TEN

  During the few days spent in Etamps, the three travelers made it their business also to walk out to the chateau of Noisette-le-Comte, and linger among the coppices of the eponymous hazels long enough to catch glimpses of the household. In addition to the footmen and maids, whose notice they assiduously avoided, January got a good look at the Comte de Belvoire, a powerfully-built man whose nose did indeed resemble a potato, and whose country tweeds couldn’t quite disguise the fact that he was running to fat. On the occasion of January’s observation, his lordship was shouting at a groom, and when the man protested, lashed him with the riding crop he carried. A little later Lucien pointed out the whole of the holiday party, as the comte assisted the ladies into a varnished crimson landaulet. ‘The tall lady in the stripes is Madame la Comtesse,’ murmured the violinist. Even at a distance of twenty yards, her resemblance to Philippe was striking. ‘That’s Madame de Taillefer with her, a connection of hers through the Rochechouarts – dazzling in her youth, I’m told, who’d think it now? The girl in white’s Taillefer’s daughter—’

  ‘I told you she looked like a ferret,’ put in Ayasha, and though January tried to be generous in his judgments of others he had to admit his bride had a point.

  ‘Butterball Senior and Butterball Junior,’ the old man continued, ‘are the Marquis de Taillefer and his son the Vicomte de Brancas … Not going driving, are we, gentlemen? Well, I shouldn’t like to be trapped in a vehicle with Mesdames la Marquise et la Comtesse either, not to speak of that whining girl of Taillefer’s. She has a voice that can cut glass like a diamond, you know. You could hear her above the din at every ball they attended last season.’

  ‘That was her?’ January remembered the voice, at least, but only brief glimpses of the girl’s thin back.

  ‘That was her.’ Last of all a dark-haired maidservant climbed into the carriage, bobbing curtsies in every direction and with almost acrobatic adeptness, considering she was burdened with a straw basket containing silk fans (January saw her hand one to Madame la Marquise), a straw-wrapped jar (Wine? Lemonade?), a book, and three parasols.