Authors: Susanne Alleyn
Aristide shook his head. “Citizeness Villemain couldn’t imagine such a thing, and neither can I. In all honesty,” he added, between mouthfuls, “I’d sooner expect it of Célie, rather than her mother. She must have been just the sort of sentimental, credulous girl that a bounder like Saint-Ange—good God.”
They stared at each other over the cooling dish of chicken.
“What became of the child, we asked ourselves. The answer was right before us. The old lady told me that Célie adored the boy, far more than an elder sister might be expected to.”
Brasseur smacked his palm down on the tabletop, setting the dishes to rattling. “The Villemain woman said Montereau was away in Russia during Célie’s so-called illness. He never knew a thing.”
“If her husband was away for a good long time, all Madame Montereau had to do was pin a pillow under her gown for a few months … perhaps her maid was in on it, too. You couldn’t carry it off now, not with the little wisps women are wearing these days, but you could have done anything under the sort of gowns they were wearing in ’eighty-nine or ’ninety.”
“Who’s to say Montereau doesn’t know everything?” Brasseur suggested. “Say you’re a middle-aged nobleman with a nice tidy fortune, and a pretty daughter, but no son. You desperately want an heir, but there’s no sign of any more children. Then what should happen but your daughter confesses she’s been indiscreet and is in the family way. Mightn’t you seize the chance to provide yourself with an heir, and preserve your daughter’s reputation, all at the same time?”
Aristide nodded. He meditated a moment, tapping his fork on the table. “Perhaps. It
could
be done in the strictest secrecy. I wonder …”
“And if Montereau had a secret to keep, mightn’t he have had a motive—no, that’s no good. We know where he was that afternoon and evening, dining with three friends at Méot’s. I asked Méot myself, and he swore up and down that Montereau had been there for hours on
décadi
.”
A puffing messenger boy rapped on the door, shuffled in, and dropped a folded note on Brasseur’s desk. “We’ll return to this shortly,” Brasseur said, and unfolded the note. With a grunt he thrust it at Aristide. “From Montereau.”
#
Citizen Commissaire:
You ask me about my former secretary. His name was Philippe Aubry and I employed him from February of 1789 to January of 1791. His family was ancient and respected, though penurious.
I dismissed him from my service when I learned he had killed a distant kinsman of mine in a duel several years previously, when he was only seventeen years old. The unhappy affair, I understand, was conducted in an honorable manner and no prosecution resulted from it (the hapless young man’s family, for the sake of his posthumous reputation, chose not to press criminal charges against Aubry). I could not and cannot, however, overlook the fact that Aubry was responsible for the death of one of my relatives, that the affair was most scandalous in all respects, and that dueling is illegal; and that therefore I was sadly deceived in Aubry’s character.
I believe he became entangled in politics after leaving my employ, and was attached to the Rolandist party until the unfortunate Jacobin coup of June 2, 1793. I know nothing more of him.
#
“Philippe Aubry,” Aristide repeated.
“You think this is the fellow?”
“Citizeness Clément said he was one of the Brissotins’ hangers-on. If he’s as sentimental and pompous as his letters, it’s likely he agreed with every bloated word that dropped from old Minister Roland’s mouth. I think this is Célie’s admirer, certainly.”
“Well, Philippe Aubry, whoever and wherever you are: Are you a murderer?” Brasseur scrawled a brief letter and shouted for his secretary.
“Dautry, consult our section registers for any trace of this Aubry. If you have no luck, I want copies of this letter sent as soon as possible to the commissaires of the following sections …” Rising, he frowned at the map of Paris pinned on the wall. “Tuileries, Place-Vendôme, Champs-Élysées, Unité, Mucius-Scevola, Ouest, Théâtre-Français, Fontaine-de-Grenelle … that should do for a start.”
“The more genteel sections?” Aristide said, glancing over Brasseur’s shoulder. He returned to his chair and leaned back, tapping his fingers on the arm. “Brasseur … I think our friend François might be adept at flirting with chambermaids.”
Brasseur chuckled. François, they had agreed long ago, was one of the cleverest spies in Paris.
“I think we might send him along to Rue de l’Université to work his way into the Montereau kitchens,” Aristide continued, scribbling a brief note and sealing it, “and learn a few trivial facts about the family. The sort of thing any lackey might gossip about over a cup of hot chocolate or a glass of the master’s brandy. I do feel an itch to satisfy this abominable curiosity of mine.”
#
He had a reply from François before the day was out. Continuing on foot from the Panthéon, for his cab driver refused to go farther after dusk into the congestion, dirt, and stink of the faubourg Marcel, Aristide followed the tortuous, ill-lit back streets to Rue Geneviève and continued down the hill toward Rue de l’Arbalète, as his friend’s note directed him. He paused, hoping he had not lost his way in the tangle of alleys and passageways, just as a sturdy figure shouldered itself through the shabby pedestrians and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
François did have another name, but he was unaccountably reluctant to divulge it. Nor had Aristide ever discovered exactly how old François was. He suspected the young man was little more than twenty, though he possessed the sharp wits and audacity, as well as the powerful build, of a man ten years his senior.
“François. Look here, I have a very discreet job for you—”
“All business, aren’t you. Come on, let’s have a drink first.” He slapped Aristide on the back and led him to a nearby wine shop, all but deserted in the twilight. “What’ll you have?”
“Despite your invitation, I suspect I’ll be the one to pay for our wine; so you’d better be content with something straight from the cask.” Aristide pointed François to the far end of one of the trestle tables, avoiding the handful of roughly dressed men, evidently regulars, who clustered about the meager fire, smoking and playing cards. After ordering a jug of cheap red wine from the scowling counterman who slouched toward them, he glanced dubiously through the smoky gloom at the carter who snored, head cradled on his arms, at the other end of the table.
“He’s not doing any eavesdropping,” François said with a grin. He sidled along the length of the bench, daintily picked a pack of cards from the sleeping man’s coat, and returned to Aristide. “I’ve been polishing my talents since I saw you last.”
“At picking pockets?”
“Huh. This fellow wouldn’t wake up unless you lit a fire under his rump. No, I meant my talents at card playing. Care for a game?”
“Certainly not,” Aristide said, amused. “I imagine you’d have me plucked like a chicken in half an hour.”
“So, about this job.” François shuffled the cards and fanned them. “I don’t suppose it requires card playing? Here, take one.”
Aristide chose a card at random. “I fear not.”
“Too bad.” François took it back, shuffled vigorously, and cut the pack. “That your card? Liberty of worship, otherwise known as the queen of wands?”
“Of course it is. And you’ve plainly become accomplished at slipping cards into your sleeve.” As François took possession of the wine jug, Aristide absently began to lay the cards out on the scarred, wine-stained table. “But I need a pair of eyes, not a cardsharp. What would you say to spending a few days idling in the company of servants in a wealthy household?”
“Pretty girls?” said François, tossing back a glass and pouring himself another.
“A few,” Aristide admitted, thinking back to the domestics whom they had questioned at the Hôtel de Montereau. “But for heaven’s sake control yourself. How are you to ask questions of everyone if you’re in bed over the stable with the kitchenmaid?”
“Eh, I see your point. Well, it’ll be a sad temptation, but I suppose I can steel myself against it. So what am I asking while I flirt with the girls?”
“The address is the Hôtel de Montereau on Rue de l’Université. Some may still call it the Hôtel de Soyecourt; the master is the ex-Comte de Soyecourt. I want to know some unimportant little facts about the family, facts any chambermaid could tell you if she’s inclined to gossip: for example, if a distant relative, a fellow of unsavory reputation named Saint-Ange, was a frequent visitor, oh, six or seven years ago. And whether or not the late lady of the house kept the same lady’s maid all during her pregnancy—not the last pregnancy, mind you, not the one that killed her, but when she was pregnant with the boy, Théodore, who is now six years old.”
François scribbled a few words on a dirty scrap of paper and nodded. “Lady’s maid. Easy. Any chambermaid’ll be ready to gossip about the other servants, or why somebody else got sacked. What else?”
“And I want to know where the boy was born.”
“Funny questions you have. What’s all this leading to?”
“It may be connected to the death of a young woman, the daughter of the house. She was twenty-two years old; whatever foolish errors she may have committed, she didn’t deserve to die. Help me find her murderer.”
#
When François had left him, Aristide sat in the wine shop for a half hour more, gazing at the pyramid of oaken casks at the far end of the common room. This grimy tavern, sure to become noisy with local chatter as the evening regulars drifted in, was no place to sit and think, nor yet to spend a leisurely, solitary hour or two. He did not yet want to return to his own lodgings; Clotilde, his landlady, a handsome widow not far past forty, tended to clumsily pursue bachelors. She had taken a special interest in him ever since he had made the mistake, three years before, in a rare impetuous moment, of sharing her bed for a single night. Though he liked her well enough, he knew she would be there as usual in her parlor, like an amiable spider lurking in its web, with a coquettish smile and a bottle and a cozy fire, and he was not in the mood for feminine companionship.
At length he rose, as the shop began to fill with customers, and set off northward over the hill of the Panthéon and toward the Seine. He briefly debated visiting the Café Manoury, in the hope that he might encounter one of a handful of old acquaintances, but at last decided against it in favor of the bright lights, clamor, and restless, anonymous crowds of the Palais-Égalité.
Twenty minutes’ walk brought him to Rue Honoré, busy with fashionable diners and theatergoers, and the Palais-Égalité, once the mansion of the dead king’s cousin before the Revolution, its enclosed gardens and arcades now the liveliest public ground in Paris. A few whores waiting beneath the trees, bolder than the rest, called out to him as he ambled through the garden, emptier now that many of the cafés had taken in their tables for the winter. He bought a cone of sugared almonds from a girl carrying a tray of sweetmeats and strolled on. Pimps, flower sellers, and sideshow barkers strove for his attention.
The enclosed gardens, once known as the Palais-Royal in the dead-and-gone days of Royalty, had grown more riotous than ever since the Terror had ended two years previously. The shopkeepers had already hung their shutters for the night, but the cafés, restaurants, dance halls, theaters, gambling parlors, brothels, and sideshows remained open to serve the vast, pleasure-hungry clientele that had grown rich and come to prominence during the Revolution. Now that most of the old aristocracy had fled or were remaining discreetly unassertive, the speculators and war profiteers had scrambled to take their place and buy their abandoned town houses, flaunting fortunes suddenly made from army contracts, the purchase and resale of confiscated estates and church lands, and other methods that were best not inquired into.
Aristide paused to glance, amused, at the garish bills outside the tiny, disreputable theater where the Wild Man of the Indies pranced about, roared unintelligibly, and abandoned himself to “the mysteries of Nature” with a squealing girl twelve times daily (nineteen shows on
décadi
). The Wild Man of the Indies, Brasseur had told him once, was actually a blacksmith from Marseilles, but whom did it hurt to claim otherwise?
Fashionable couples pushed past him along the arcade, wearing garments that would have seemed as bizarre as the Wild Man to the Parisians of a decade ago. He glanced wryly down at his own plain black redingote and waistcoat as a slender boy clad in an outlandish striped coat and tall hat sauntered past, through the jostling crowds. At thirty-eight he had no desire to ape the outrageous fashions of the spoiled and prodigal eighteen-year-olds who could scarcely remember the old regime. Under the insouciant corruption of the Directory, the governing body that had replaced the National Convention after the Terror’s end, the Palais-Égalité swarmed with such fantastic creatures, the voguish youths widely nicknamed
incroyables,
“unbelievables,” and their scantily draped, loose-living female companions. To them, Aristide thought, 1789 was a lifetime ago, a distant era of history growing faint on the far side of an unthinkably deep chasm. When those young men had been schoolboys, a mere seven years ago, who could have thought that before they were grown a revolution would sweep through France, overturning monarchy, church, and age-old custom, executing a king and queen, exiling nobility, and elevating bourgeois merchants and lawyers to sudden, intoxicating wealth, prestige, and power?