Authors: Susanne Alleyn
“You weren’t done,” said Brasseur, who was accustomed to his frequent rounds of patience.
“Sometimes you can see, halfway through, that the game can’t be won.” He shuffled the cards, thrust them back into their drawer, and rose. “I’m going to get some dinner. Care to join me?”
“No, I’d better be off. Didier’s is on duty tonight and Marie’ll make me sleep on the landing if I miss supper again. Good night, then.”
#
Aristide went alone the next afternoon to the great house on Rue de l’Université, where Montereau received him in his private study, his complexion sickly with grief and fatigue. As Aristide summarized their investigations, Montereau frequently glanced at the portrait of Célie that hung on the opposite wall, black crepe draped about it. Though suspecting that Montereau had scarcely heard what he was saying, Aristide concluded with the description he had assembled from Feydeau’s statement and Rosalie Clément’s suggestions.
“A young man,” he concluded, “between twenty-five and thirty, dark-haired and good-looking, probably well-off, and with an ardent, emotional, romantic temperament. A man who is idealistic and sentimental, at least where love and women are concerned.” He handed Montereau one of the letters. Montereau read it through, speechless.
“I know of no one among our present acquaintance who fits your description. No one who could have written this. The young men of our acquaintance are steadier, shall we say; more practical, or mundane, than that. That is to say, I believe young Joubert-Saint-Hilaire once fought a duel over a girl, but everyone knew it began as a drunken brawl in a brothel.” He shook his head. “I wish I could help you.”
#
“
A lady’s waiting for Citizen Brasseur, in his office,” an inspector told Aristide when he arrived at the commissariat late the next morning, shaking away raindrops from his hat. “She wouldn’t reveal her errand.”
“A lady?” Aristide echoed him, raising an eyebrow.
“And a message. Perhaps you’d make sure he reads it.”
Brasseur returned at that moment from resolving a noisy dispute between two street peddlers and impatiently unfolded the letter. “Hmph. Saint-Ange’s corpse is still at the Basse-Geôle… . ‘The remains and effects continue unclaimed although the commissaire has given authorization for the deceased’s next of kin to take away the body… . In another twenty-four hours it will be necessary to send away the body for burial for reasons of public health… .’ What the devil do I care about some corpse? I wish those two ghouls wouldn’t harass me with this nonsense.”
Still clutching the letter in one hand, he strode away to his office. Following him, Aristide discovered a veiled woman in black waiting in an armchair. She rose as they approached, and lifted her veil.
“Citizeness Villemain,” Brasseur said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Especially so soon after Célie’s funeral,” Aristide added. “I hope it wasn’t too distressing for you. How may we assist you?”
“I think perhaps I can be of some service to you, citizens. The young man you spoke of—the one who may have done this … this dreadful thing—I told you I knew of no one except for Citizen Feydeau.”
Brasseur shook his head. “We questioned Feydeau. He’s not the man.”
“It did seem rather improbable. But I’ve been trying to remember everything I knew about Célie when we were girls. And I did recall one thing: when we were both home from the abbey, just before I was married, we used to sigh over her father’s private secretary. He was young, about twenty-one, and remarkably handsome. Being girls of fifteen and seventeen, we adored him.”
Aristide thought back to his errand of the day before and recalled a fleeting glimpse of a man in a black wig copying letters at a desk in the library, a man who could not have been described as either young or handsome. “I saw no such man at Montereau’s house.”
“No, you wouldn’t have. Célie’s father dismissed him. We learned, much later, that he’d been dismissed because he had been mixed up in a scandal a few years before. He’d killed a man in a duel, and Célie’s father doesn’t approve of dueling.”
“I see,” Aristide said. “He must have been still in his teens at the time of the duel, which certainly indicates a passionate temperament… . You think this could be a man with whom Célie would have fallen in love?”
Hélène Villemain smiled apologetically. “The age is right. He would be about twenty-eight or twenty-nine now. His surname was Aubry. He was of good family, I recall, but very poor.”
“Well, perhaps Montereau can tell me more about this man.” Brasseur hastily wrote a note, sealed it, and sent Dautry to find a messenger. “Did he have dark hair?”
Hélène blinked. “How did you know? Dark hair, and great dark eyes. We liked to think he was a poet, because he looked as a poet should have looked. He was so handsome; we both imagined ourselves head over heels in love with him.” She blushed, ducking her head. “What a ninny I was.”
“Not at all,” Aristide said with a brief smile. “By the way, I understand you were kind to young Théodore during the funeral procession.”
“Did he tell you that? I felt sorry for the poor child. Funerals are such a dreary business.”
Hélène left them as Brasseur turned his attention once more to the letter from the Basse-Geôle. “I don’t see any reason why Saint-Ange’s body shouldn’t be released for burial. Do you?”
Aristide dropped into the nearest chair. “Montereau doesn’t seem to care. If he chooses to disregard the remote kinship …”
The word “kinship” seemed to echo in his mind like the clang of a bell. He scowled, trying to grasp an elusive thought. Something he had just said, something dropped casually in conversation with Hélène and Brasseur. Something about … funerals … and Saint-Ange. Saint-Ange’s dead face flashed before him, cadaverous but undeniably handsome. Something … someone … who reminded him of Saint-Ange?
A sudden extravagant, impossible idea striking him, he jerked to his feet again and gazed blankly at the vast map of Paris pinned on the whitewashed wall opposite him. The lines and letters swam into a blur. It was preposterous … and yet …
He snatched up his hat and plunged into the corridor. “Citizeness! Citizeness Villemain, could you spare another hour?”
She turned, surprised. “If you wish.”
“I should like you to come with me to confirm—or possibly deny—an implausible observation that’s suddenly struck me.” He shook the hair away from his face and thrust his hands in the pockets of his coat. “I warn you, it’s probably a fool’s journey. And it may be distasteful and distressing to you.”
“If it will serve to find Célie’s murderer—what is it you want me to do?”
“Just come with me, please,” he told her, taking her arm. “I won’t tell you where we’re going, or why, because I’d rather you arrived with no preconceived notions.”
Fantastical conjectures whirled through his thoughts as their fiacre jolted through the streets. He was undoubtedly dreaming, he told himself, the result of too much time and commiseration spent on that damnable pair of murders—yet he could not shake off the sense of inevitability hovering about him.
“Where on earth are we going?” Hélène inquired, as the cab slowed at the corner of Rue Denis and he directed the driver to continue to the Châtelet and along the public passage through the center of the fortress. They arrived a moment later at the small door in the passage, dark and close beneath the overcast sky.
“I’m not surprised you’ve never seen this place,” Aristide said as he climbed out of the cab and offered her a helping hand. “This is a lesser-known, and generally avoided, door to the cellars of the Châtelet. The Basse-Geôle de la Seine. Where most victims of accidental or violent death are taken until their bodies are claimed. I’m about to ask you to look at a corpse. Will that distress you?”
“I’ve seen corpses before.”
“At funerals, I expect, neatly laid out in coffins; not week-old corpses stripped of their clothing, waiting until the state can bury them. There is a considerable difference. Have you a scented handkerchief with you?”
Speechless, she drew a handkerchief from her reticule and clutched it as he escorted her through the heavy door. Bouille, the pop-eyed concierge, met them in the murky vestibule, inquired their business, and with a lugubrious sigh unlocked the grille to the lower chamber. The stench rose up to meet them and Aristide fumbled for his own handkerchief as they descended the steps. Pausing now and then to twitch aside a sheet and glance at a tag tied to a wrist, Bouille led them among the silent forms.
“Where do they all come from?” Hélène whispered, shivering. Their footsteps echoed from the stones. “They can’t all have been murdered?”
Aristide shook his head. “Most are bodies taken from the river. Suicides or accidental drownings. Bouille says the suicide rate has swelled shockingly over the past couple of years.” Life since the Revolution began had grown no easier for the poor, now enduring widespread unemployment, periodic food shortages, and runaway inflation. “Hence the stink,” he added. “No one smells like lily of the valley after a few days in the water.”
Bouille stopped beside one table, squinted at the tag, and waited stolidly by the shrouded shape. “I had better take a look first,” Aristide continued, “in the event it isn’t fit for a woman to see.”
He nodded and Bouille lifted away the sheet. Louis Saint-Ange’s corpse still wore a shirt; no one had claimed even his clothes.
The powder burns and the crust of dried blood around the bullet hole in Saint-Ange’s forehead seemed startlingly dark on the pallid, waxy skin. The flesh had settled on the bones, leaving the face gaunt and skull-like; despite the strip of linen that encircled the head and held the dead man’s jaws closed, the lips were beginning to sag away from the teeth in the macabre grin of decay.
Aristide studied the dead face for a moment. He had not, after all, imagined the resemblance.
“It’s disagreeable,” he said, turning away, “but not unduly distressing. Please look at this man for a few moments.”
Hélène tiptoed forward and gazed at the corpse. Aristide saw her shiver and swallow.
“Is this the man who was found with Célie?”
“Of whom does he remind you?” he asked her, disregarding her question. “Try to imagine him alive. Death has aged him, but try to see him as a good-looking man of my own age. Think back on all the faces you’ve seen of late.”
She frowned. Aristide watched her. The clammy, pervasive smell of sour flesh and rancid blood was becoming easier to bear.
Abruptly she turned to him, eyes wide in surprise.
“Théodore?”
“Yes,” Aristide said, “I thought so, too.”
“
But what can this mean?” said Hélène, after they had retreated to the public passage and she had drawn several deep, grateful breaths of fresh air.
“I can think of one explanation immediately,” Aristide said, “but it scarcely seems credible.”
“
Was
that the man who was found with Célie? I understand he was some sort of distant relative. It might be merely a family resemblance.”
Aristide shook his head. “No. Montereau told me Saint-Ange was a relative of his first wife. His second wife was Théodore’s mother, so there ought to be no resemblance. Unless it’s another sort of family resemblance… .”
“If Célie’s mother had had a liaison with …
no
. I knew her. I simply cannot believe it.”
“I did say it scarcely seemed credible.”
“But what can this have to do with Célie’s murder?”
“I’ve no idea. It’s something we must take into account, though. It may mean nothing; it may mean everything.” Aristide turned to her, unsmiling. “I hardly need to ask you to keep this intelligence to yourself.”
“But what about—”
“Montereau? What earthly use could there be in afflicting him further, by telling him his son may not be his son? Don’t awaken a sleeping cat.”
Hélène smiled at the old proverb and nodded. They rode silently through the heavy mist to Rue du Bac.
Aristide returned on foot to the Right Bank, hoping the cool November air would cleanse the clinging fetor of the Basse-Geôle from his clothes. Brasseur was eating his midday dinner at his desk when Aristide returned. “Join me?” Brasseur said. “This caterer is generous with his portions.”
Aristide took a deep appreciative sniff of the steam rising from the dish of chicken fricassee and roast potatoes as Brasseur spooned some onto a second plate. “One should eat to live, and not live to eat, according to Molière; but I don’t mind if I do.”
“So where did you go haring off to with the Villemain woman? The secretaries were most intrigued.”
“Ah. Now there’s a tale. I took her to the Basse-Geôle.”
“Eh?” said Brasseur, pausing with a gravy-soaked morsel of bread halfway to his mouth.
“I wanted to see if she, too, perceived the strong resemblance between the late Louis Saint-Ange and our young friend Théodore Montereau.” Aristide poured half a glass of wine for himself, adding: “You might shut your mouth before you catch a few flies.”
“But didn’t Montereau say—no, curse it, he told us Saint-Ange was related to his
first
wife—saints above, d’you think his wife had been playing in the muck with that young scoundrel, and passed the boy off as Montereau’s?”