Authors: Susanne Alleyn
“Does he. To call on friends?”
“I expect so. He goes often to the theater, too. A cordial young gentleman, he is.”
“Let me be sure I have the right man,” Aristide said, consulting the list of names. “This is one Philibert Aubry, lieutenant in the Municipal Guard?”
The porter shook his head. “No, the young man who lodges upstairs is Philippe Aubry, and he’s no soldier. Something to do with the government, though somebody told me he was an aristo before the Revolution.”
“Many ex-nobles are active in the government, aren’t they?” Aristide said vaguely, rising. “Director Barras, even. Well, evidently we have the wrong address. Come along, Brasseur.”
“Got him,” said Brasseur, with deep satisfaction, as soon as they had turned the corner to the Cour du Commerce. “I think this calls for a modest celebration, and here we are at the back door to Zoppi’s. What do you say to a glass of something before we visit the local commissariat?”
“What now?”
“We set a watch on the house, with the commissaire’s cooperation, and engage someone to gossip with the servants. Discreetly. It wouldn’t do to frighten off the bird before we’re ready to trap it.”
“I’ll do it,” Aristide said.
“You?”
“I want to do it. I want to lay hold of this swine, if he’s the one, and see him on his way to the Grève. Give me enough to buy some old clothes and I’ll start day after tomorrow.”
“All right, if you’re so eager. Come on, let’s have that drink.”
#
Collecting information from strangers was easier than it seemed, if one was a passable actor. Aristide visited a few peddlers in his own quarter who sold secondhand clothing and outfitted himself in a shabby old brown coat and waistcoat that had seen their best days ten years before. A day’s worth of razor stubble on his face, and a battered, once-respectable three-cornered hat and a pair of scuffed shoes secured with laces, not buckles, completed his costume of an unemployed domestic servant, alcoholic and down on his luck.
Fearing the porter at Aubry’s house would recognize him, he hauled François away for a day from his pursuit of the maidservants on Rue de l’Université. While François passed the time around the corner with the porter, Aristide lounged about in the Cour du Commerce, listening to the rhythmic clack-bang from a nearby printer’s shop and gazing at the bills stuck on the walls advertising theatrical performances, fashionable shops, and miracle cures. From time to time, in keeping with his disguise, he assisted well-dressed women across the gutter of black, viscous mud that ran down the center of the street, receiving a few deniers for his service.
By midafternoon when François rejoined him, the narrow street was in shadow and the November breeze had a bite to it. “That was easy,” François muttered, leaning nonchalantly against the wall beside him. “The porter’s name is Deschamps and he’d talk your ear off if you let him. Misses his family back in Switzerland, and panting for someone to pass the time with. Even stood me to a shot of brandy.”
Aristide rubbed icy hands together, wishing he had included a pair of gloves in his disreputable costume. “Well?”
“Philippe Aubry. Second floor front, bachelor with one manservant. Third son of some country baron. Works for none other than Director La Revellière-Lépeaux himself. Calls himself an undersecretary. But a tag like that can mean just about anything.”
Aristide raised an eyebrow. The information tallied, more or less, with what Rosalie Clément had told him.
“A spy in high places?”
“Looks like it. The sort who hangs about fashionable salons, eats and drinks plenty of whatever he’s offered, and reports everything he hears to the boss.”
“Go on,” Aristide said.
“He’s been in and out of the house, Deschamps says. He came into the foyer while I was having that glass. Deschamps is the accommodating sort … you know, ‘Is there anything you need, citizen,’ ‘Let me help you with that parcel, citizen,’ always with his hand out for a sou or two. But Aubry hurried up the stairs without more than a ‘Good day.’ Looked struck with a case of nerves, if you ask me. Walks fast, won’t meet people’s eyes, paler than he ought to be.”
“What about Aubry’s manservant?” Aristide inquired. He caught sight of a cocoa seller and ambled over to his handcart, François slouching along behind him.
“Name’s Brelot. Deschamps pointed him out to me. Want me to follow him when he goes out?”
“We both will. Try to get him into a tavern if you can. He’ll be the one with the goods, if there’s anything to tell.” He sipped at the cup of hot chocolate the vendor handed him. It was a vile, muddy brew, as he had expected, but he was grateful for the heat of the tin cup in his chilled fingers.
“Got a sou to spare?” François said, eyeing the vendor’s charcoal-heated copper vat hungrily. “I haven’t had any dinner today—hoy! That’s him. Aubry.”
Aristide gulped down the last of the chocolate, thrust the cup back at the man, and peered down the street. His first thought was that Rosalie’s perception had been extraordinarily acute. The young man hurrying past them had delicate, almost feminine features and a clear complexion, scarcely marred by the unhealthy pallor that surely was not natural to him. Long eyelashes framed large, dark eyes beneath thick, dark, waving hair. Aristide could well believe that such a pretty fellow could have captured a susceptible girl’s heart.
Aubry strode toward the gate leading out to Rue des Cordeliers. Despite his comeliness, as Aubry neared him Aristide could tell that he stood scarcely above middle height. Aristide considered himself tolerably good-looking, in an austere sort of way, but he became painfully aware of his own lank, gray-flecked hair and somber mien and for an instant found himself absurdly pleased that he was half a head taller than Aubry.
François was hissing something in his ear. “I said, d’you want me to go after him? Make sure he doesn’t run?”
“He won’t, if he hasn’t already. The servant’s the one I want.” Aristide turned about, ready to slink into the Cour de Rouen and watch the house, but instead, to his dismay, found himself face-to-face with Rosalie Clément.
“Citizen Ravel!” she exclaimed. “I thought it was you, though I couldn’t quite believe it. Whatever are you doing in in those frightful clothes?”
Oh, damn,
Aristide said to himself, and promptly seized her arm and led her away toward the Rue des Arts gate, praying that François would ignore them and continue to wait for Brelot. “Forgive me,” he muttered to her as he hurried her beneath the archway to the swarming street beyond, “but you’ve come by at an inopportune time. I’d rather not be recognized.”
She stared at him round-eyed for an instant before comprehending and clapping a hand over her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry! Have I spoiled everything?”
“No, it’s all right. Perhaps you can help me. Does the name Aubry mean anything to you?”
“No, I don’t think so.” A few strands of dark chestnut hair, escaped from beneath her neat linen bonnet, danced about her face in the damp breeze as she shook her head. “Is that Célie’s ‘Philippe,’ then?”
“It’s probable.”
“You’ve found him? Are you going to arrest him?”
“If it’s likely he committed the murders, and we can collect enough evidence.”
“Citizen,” she said abruptly, “will you send word to me when you have him? I want to see him—to see him get everything he deserves for what he did. I want to see him writhe.”
He paused for an instant, taken off guard by her naked rancor. She glanced up at him.
“Célie was my friend. Wouldn’t you want to see your friend’s murderer pay for his crime?”
“We don’t yet know that it was he who murdered her,” Aristide reminded her.
“Who else could it have been?” she snapped. “Don’t be obtuse. Only lovers can turn so violently from love to hatred. Who else could possibly have wanted to hurt her?” She glared at him for a moment, looking away as her lower lip trembled. “I want justice for Célie. If I can do anything to help you find this man and make him pay, I’ll do it.”
“That’s generous of you,” said Aristide, “but I think we have it well in hand.”
“Nevertheless, if there’s anything I can do—asking questions, whatever it is you do,” she added, with a quick sardonic glance at his costume, “and if I can be of help, don’t hesitate to ask me. You know where to find me.”
She gave him a quick nod and without further words vanished amid the passers-by on Rue des Arts. Aristide gazed after her for a moment, thoughtful, before slouching back into the more tranquil Cour du Commerce. François had disappeared. Guessing that François had spotted Brelot and followed him, and that he need not loiter about in the cold until François had reported his progress with the manservant, he thankfully strolled out to the quay and turned his steps homeward.
A note from François, thrust underneath his door, awaited him the next morning.
Found Brelot—went to cabaret—getting friendly. Meet me Cour du Com. 9 o’clock. F.
That would be nine o’clock in the evening, of course; François never rose before noon if he could help it. Aristide considered several ways of passing the day, after a quick stop to report his progress to Brasseur, and at last decided upon a visit to Rosalie Clément.
She was just leaving the boardinghouse after the midday dinner when he arrived and tipped his hat to her.
“I wished to apologize for my rather abrupt behavior yesterday.”
“Why should you apologize? I stupidly intruded.”
“There’s no harm done, at any rate. Might I walk with you?”
“Come with me if you like,” she said indifferently. “I’m going for a stroll in the gardens.”
They crossed Rue Jacques and passed through the gates by the boarded-up seminary of St. Louis to the public gardens of the Luxembourg Palace. She chose a path beside a long row of graceful horse-chestnut trees, leafless now in gray late autumn. “Do you walk here often?” Aristide said, searching for something to say to her.
“It’s pleasant, and it’s nearby. Sometimes I feed the sparrows. My life is not very eventful.”
“It must be dull in that boardinghouse,” he agreed. “You said you were once married. Widowed?”
“Yes.”
“You seem quite young—was he killed in the war?”
“He was guillotined in 1793.”
The word
guillotined
sent an icy pang lancing through him and he swallowed hard. “Forgive me—if I’ve said something I oughtn’t, reminded you—”
“Not at all.”
“But your husband …”
“It was a marriage of convenience only, and he wasn’t an agreeable man. I know it sounds completely callous to say it, but there it is. He fully deserved it. I’m afraid I couldn’t conjure up any tears when I learned he’d been shortened.”
He recognized some of his own nature in her lack of sentimentality, her prickly pride, and her evident distaste for the company of fools. “I didn’t quite know what to make of you when I questioned you the other day,” he said at last, “but Célie Montereau’s maid was right: you come of gentlefolk, don’t you? Or even the aristocracy. You have that certain”—he was about to say “chilly,” but substituted a more politic word instead—“that certain stoic manner about you.”
“What if I do? Blue blood doesn’t count for much these days, unless you have money. And though he had the dubious distinction of being embraced by Sainte Guillotine, my late husband was just a wealthy lawyer—whose property was confiscated when they cut his head off, worse luck.”
She would be pretty, he realized, with some paint to enhance her dark eyes and soften the sharp angles of her face, and a well-cut, fashionable gown instead of the dowdy India cotton print dress painstakingly altered from the style of three or four years ago.
“I’m sorry.”
“That he was guillotined,” she inquired, “or that the government took everything?”
“I lost a friend in ’ninety-three—he died with Brissot—”
She laughed. “Oh, no. I’m sure your friend died for his republican principles. My husband, however, died because he’d been caught arranging some affairs for royalist acquaintances who’d emigrated: selling their property and sending gold abroad, of course taking his own fat commission out of it. He imagined he could profit nicely from the Revolution. Well, he discovered otherwise, and they guillotined him as he deserved.
I’m
certainly not sorry about it, except for his lack of foresight in not looking out for his fortune when he fell under suspicion.” She nodded and turned away to sit on a bench beside a bed of faded, weather-beaten chrysanthemums. “Good day, citizen.”
He recognized a polite but firm dismissal when he encountered it. “I’ll send you word when I know anything more about Célie Montereau’s death,” he told her, and left her alone with the sparrows.
François met him, camouflaged once more in his squalid coat and hat, in the Cour du Commerce after darkness had fallen, and together they waited for Brelot to appear. At last a sturdy, curly-headed young man sauntered out the door, whistling, and François slouched easily along behind him through the murky back streets until he ambled into a tavern near Place Maubert. Aristide allowed them fifteen minutes to become reacquainted over a glass and then followed them inside.