Authors: Susanne Alleyn
“But what became of Célie’s child?”
“Who knows?” said Hélène with a sigh. “It may have been stillborn, or died soon after birth. If not, I expect Madame Montereau handed it over to some petty bourgeois family or hard-up country squire who was to adopt it. I doubt Célie’s father ever knew anything of it; I recall he was away in Russia, something to do with the Foreign Ministry, for most of Célie’s ‘illness.’ Come to think of it, she and her mother went to the country for a month for her health, or so they said, and she was completely recovered by the time he arrived home.”
“Now
that’s
a secret you don’t want to see exposed,” said Brasseur. “You don’t imagine he found out about it, and—”
“And murdered his own daughter for the sake of the family honor?” Aristide said. “No, unless I’m sadly mistaken, he’s not the man to do that. And he said he was at Méot’s, which can be confirmed easily enough. But Saint-Ange must have learned of the existence of this bastard child. A rumor of a youthful indiscretion might be laughed off, but living proof of an indiscretion is not so easily hidden.”
“Poor Célie,” murmured Hélène.
“Did you ever have any idea who this lover—or seducer—might have been?”
“None at all. I told you she had grown more self-confident in her manner. But at the same time, she grew cool toward young men. She must have resolved never to make the same mistake again.”
“It would surprise you to know, then, that she was secretly in love?”
She stared at Aristide for an instant. “Yes, it would. Who?”
“We were hoping you could tell us. Do you know anyone to whom she might have been attracted? Someone like ‘the hero of a novel,’ as you said?”
“No. That is … I know of one young man, the son of a banker, who might be the sentimental sort. Célie knew him; we often met him at the theater. Feydeau de la Beyré. I believe he lives somewhere near the Place Vendôme, by the Boulevard.”
“Probably a comfortable bachelor apartment, if he’s a wealthy young sprig of a banking family,” said Aristide, as Brasseur scribbled down the name.
“But if he and Célie were in love, I don’t see why she would have preserved such secrecy. I doubt her father would have objected to him as a son-in-law. He is rich, of respectable though not noble family, and I’ve never heard anything against him.” She rose. “Please, call on me if I can be of any more assistance. And, Commissaire—find whoever did this.”
Montereau’s coachman had provided Brasseur with an address for Célie’s other friend, Citizeness Clément, who lived in a cheap boardinghouse near the Sorbonne. While Brasseur returned to the Right Bank and his reports, Aristide turned his own steps toward the Latin Quarter.
“I keep a respectable house here,” the landlady repeated for the third time, over her shoulder, as she led Aristide to the fifth-floor attic and sourly scratched on the door. “If one of my lodgers is mixed up in something illegal, I’m sure I know nothing about it, nor do any of the other lodgers. They’re quiet, respectable folk. I’ll thank you not to let it be known that somebody from the police has been asking questions in my establishment. Citizeness Clément! A person is here to see you!”
Aristide assured her his visit was no imputation on her character and shouldered aside her assertions of law-abiding propriety as the door opened a crack, revealing a pale, unsmiling young woman. “Are you Citizeness Rosalie Clément?” he said. “I represent the police of the Butte-des-Moulins section.”
“What do you want?” she demanded, eyeing him. “And what are you doing here on the Left Bank? Don’t you inspectors stay inside your own sections?”
“I’m not an inspector, citizeness; merely an unofficial agent of the police. I’m trying to learn all I can about Célie Montereau.”
“Why on earth should the police be inquiring about Célie?”
“Do you not know? Has no one told you, sent a message?”
She shook her head. “About what?”
“Citizeness Montereau … is dead.”
“Dead!”
“You didn’t know?”
“Dear God, no. I suppose no one thought to tell me. I—” She bowed her head for a moment as she fumbled for a handkerchief. “I … I didn’t move in the same circles as Célie’s other acquaintances.”
“Were you close?”
“We were good friends,” she continued, more calmly, “though perhaps not as intimate as she and her school friend were.”
The landlady nodded. “Citizeness Montereau called quite often. She arrived in her own carriage,” she added. “The other lodgers were most impressed.”
“Perhaps you can help me,” Aristide said to Rosalie. “May I come inside?”
“Certainly not,” Rosalie said with a glance at the landlady. “Citizeness Deluc wouldn’t approve at all.” He heard a subtle undertone of laughter in her voice, despite the tears she tried to blink away, as she continued. She was more attractive than he had thought at first glance, and her dark eyes were intelligent. “But I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if we had a decorous conversation in the parlor.”
She led the way downstairs to an unheated salon, where heavy, faded velvet curtains seemed to shut away the last traces of the feeble autumn daylight. The Maison Deluc had been someone’s fine town house fifty years ago, but the opulence of the paneled rococo salon was now threadbare in many places. Empty ovals above the windows and the pair of dingy white double doors spoke of overdoor paintings sold one by one, and the paint was flaking from the fingers and noses of the cherubs lurking in the moldings.
A small puff of dust rose from the upholstery as Rosalie sat down on a well-worn sofa. “Now. How can I help you? Would you care for some coffee? I can ask the cook for some, if you’d like.”
“Thank you, no,” Aristide told her, imagining what sort of coffee was probably served at that down-at-heel boardinghouse. He looked about him at the threadbare room, thinking how the shabby young woman opposite him seemed to belong there, with her unmistakable air of proud, faded gentility. “How did you and Célie meet, citizeness?”
“In the gardens of the Luxembourg; we met there frequently, walking, and eventually became friends.” She leaned forward, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “What happened? I’ve not seen her for several days. Did she fall ill? Was it an accident?”
“She was murdered.”
There was no way to soften the brutal word, no matter how he might try.
“Murdered …”
“Though she seems not to have been the intended victim; they found her in the lodgings of a man she scarcely knew, his own body nearby. No one we’ve questioned thus far has had any motive to harm her.”
“Of course they wouldn’t,” Rosalie said promptly. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Citizeness, did Célie ever talk to you about a love affair?”
Rosalie clasped her hands and gazed at the moth-eaten carpet at her feet, her brow puckered. Her eyes glistened in the faint light from the window and she quickly wiped away a stray tear that slid down her cheek. “Yes,” she said at length. “She did. She confided in me, now and then. I was married once, you see, and I suppose she looked to me for advice, as someone older, with more experience, who wasn’t too drearily middle-aged.”
“Her friend Citizeness Villemain is married, and a little older than she. Wouldn’t Célie have confided in her?”
Rosalie shook her head. “Perhaps not. All those people—the ex-aristocrats, the ones who still have money and influence—they all know each other. If she’d told her friend anything, it might have reached her father, in time; while nothing she told me would have gone farther than this house.”
“Go on.”
“Well … she told me, after swearing me to silence, that a certain young man had been secretly courting her, and had asked her to marry him.”
“What did she tell you about him?”
“Oh, the usual things girls say about their sweethearts: how handsome he was, and what a gentleman he was, and so on. I didn’t believe all of it, of course. But she did say he had been active in ’ninety-two and ’ninety-three, with the Brissotins. Evidently he was always talking about them, and their lofty principles, and their great love of their country; that they were incompetent statesmen didn’t seem to matter. Of course Célie also thought all the Brissotins were terribly tragic,” she added. “There’s nothing like being decapitated for your ideals, to ensure that your memory will be cherished in the hearts of sentimental young women.”
“She might have imagined otherwise,” Aristide remarked, “if she’d known them.”
“You knew them?” Rosalie inquired, surprised.
“A few. They were human beings, like the rest of us; no better, no worse. Better orators, perhaps. And they did die well.” He fought away the stark memory of blood and rain in the Place de la Révolution. “Please … I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”
“There’s not much more to tell you. I believe he was arrested after the second of June, when so many of the Brissotins and their hangers-on were arrested; but he managed to escape, and spent the next year in hiding, until Robespierre’s fall. Then all at once he was in favor with Tallien and Fréron and that lot, and his fortunes began to improve.”
“Do you know why?”
“No, Célie never said what he was or did. Only that she was sure he had a fine future ahead of him.”
“Did she tell you the name of this young man?”
“She spoke of ‘Philippe,’
” Rosalie said promptly. “I don’t think she ever mentioned his surname. I’m sorry.”
“It’s something,” Aristide said. He could think of nothing else to ask her. She rose to show him to the door.
“Citizen? You might do me one favor, if you can: learn when she’s to be buried.”
“Tomorrow, they told me.”
She glanced down with a brief, bitter laugh at her shabby white gown. “Oh, damn, I’ll have to borrow something to wear … I don’t even have a black gown… .”
Abruptly she dropped into the nearest chair and hid her face in her hands, shoulders trembling. Aristide paused a moment, wondering if he should send for a servant, but at last decided she would be better alone with her grief, and let himself out.
#
Aristide prowled about his room the next morning, half-dressed, with the nagging sense that he had overlooked something. Taking up the nearest book, a small, worn volume of English plays, he settled in the shabby, comfortable armchair by the hearth but soon found he could not attend properly to Congreve’s witticisms. At last he extracted an old pack of cards from beneath a litter of newspapers and letters from his sister, flung himself down at his writing-desk, and, pushing aside his breakfast tray, began to lay them out. A round or two of patience, he had found, concentrated his thoughts and occupied his restless hands.
Philippe
.
How many hundreds of young men named Philippe lived in Paris?
A hanger-on of the Brissotins: that was something. Mathieu might even have known him … had Mathieu ever spoken of an earnest, sentimental youth named Philippe?
The columns of cards before him stretched across the desktop. Impossible that the pattern would work itself out. Impatiently he pushed them together, shuffled them, and began again.
Philippe
. If only he had a surname, matters would be so much simpler.
And what was it pricking his memory? Something Brasseur had said… .
His landlady interrupted his musings by rapping on the door and entering without awaiting his answer. “Message for you,” she said with an arch smile. “Let me clear away that crockery. Is there anything you need?”
“More coffee, if you please.” He waved absently at his breakfast tray and an odd cup atop the bookshelf and unfolded the note she handed him. It was from Brasseur, asking him to come at once to Rue Traversine.
He finished dressing, gulped down the coffee Clotilde brought him, and hurried down Rue de la Loi to the commissariat. Brasseur greeted him with a broad grin and gestured to a dusty, padlocked metal box on his desk.
“Can you guess what I’ve got here?”
“Judging from how smug you look, I’d guess … is it Saint-Ange’s hoard?”
“Right you are. Or at least that’s what I expect. They found it under a floorboard in his bedchamber last night. Why don’t you and Dautry be my witnesses.” He struggled with the lock for a moment, trying several of his picklocks, until at last it gave way.
Half a dozen neat packets of letters and papers, secured with string, lay within, beside three thick bundles of high-denomination assignats and a small leather bag. Brasseur upended the bag and whistled as dozens of gold louis spilled out.
“Looks like squeezing the wealthy is a profitable business. You’d get thousands in paper for this—I haven’t seen this much gold since ’ninety-one.”
Aristide glanced over the packets of letters and riffled through one without untying it. “None of them addressed to Célie Montereau. It wasn’t compromising letters, then. What hold did he have over her, do you suppose?” A name caught his eye and he took up another bundle, reading the address on the first letter:
To Citizeness Beaumontel, care of Citizeness Delvert, florist, Rue du Faubourg Honoré near Rue d’Aguesseau.
“Brasseur, I promised this woman I’d return her letters, if we found them.”