Authors: Susanne Alleyn
Aristide blinked. Did anyone ever see the blade in the midst of its fall? Yet there it hung, at rest at the bottom of the uprights, smeared with glistening red, and blood was weeping between the boards of the scaffold onto the sawdust below.
“I am guilty! Lesurques is innocent!” shouted Courriol as hands reached for him and swung him down from the cart. He struggled a moment, twisting about to shout once again to the crowd as the executioners marched him toward the waiting plank. “Lesurques is innocent!”
Aristide watched, motionless. Here, at least, simple justice had taken its course.
But God help us all,
he thought,
if the criminal court has condemned a blameless man.
“Lesurques is—”
The crowd grew silent as Lesurques climbed the steps. Upon reaching the platform he paused.
“I am innocent of this crime. May God forgive my judges as I have forgiven them.”
For the third time, the great blade scraped and thudded home.
Aristide thrust his way past the gawkers and at the edge of the square paused, gasping for breath. At last he found an upturned skiff on the riverside and dropped down on it, elbows on knees, staring into the murky shallows of the Seine. Had the police he worked for, so determined to keep the peace, instead been so horribly wrong?
He clasped cold hands before him, shivering suddenly, not from the chill river breeze alone. Men made mistakes; it was the natural way of things. Impossible that you would never make a mistake, accuse wrongly, perhaps unwittingly destroy a life …
He sat brooding a while longer, watching the stray raindrops ripple across the river as it slid silently past.
Forget this,
he told himself at last.
You can do nothing about it. Even if you could somehow learn the truth, and clear his name, he will still be beyond help. There is nothing you can do.
He sighed, pushed himself to his feet, and turned his steps westward along the quay, letting the walk and the chill breeze calm him.
Like a great ship, the Île de la Cité parted the river, the cathedral at one end of the island and the Law Courts at the other. As Aristide passed along the shore of the Right Bank, the brooding medieval towers of the Conciergerie, the ancient prison attached to the Law Courts, caught and held his gaze. All his misgivings returned in a rush.
What if I, too, in my time, have sent innocent men to that place, and even to the executioner?
Aristide dreamed of the execution for a second night, heard the shouts, the thud of the blade, and woke sweating and trembling at dawn, as his small mantel clock chimed seven. Grateful for the common, raucous noise of morning, carts and peddlers in the street below, he stared at the fine web of cracks in the plaster ceiling above his bed alcove as the twilight slowly brightened. Swiftly he thought back through the murders he and Brasseur had solved during the ten years past—or had thought they had solved. Could anyone ever be so completely sure he was right? The evidence had borne them out—but still …
Someone pounded on the door, jerking him back to the present. He struggled out of bed and pulled on his culotte and stockings as the pounding continued.
“Ravel, for heaven’s sake, wake up!”
It was Brasseur’s voice. Aristide unbolted the door to the landing to find his friend’s fist poised for another hammer-blow as his landlady hovered behind him with a breakfast tray.
“I didn’t want to let him upstairs, citizen,” she protested, “not at this hour.”
Brasseur scowled at her and she hastily pushed aside a few books and broken quills on Aristide’s writing-desk, set down the tray, and scuttled away. Brasseur’s broad shoulders and bayonet-scarred face had led more than one timid witness into wondering if he were being questioned by a brigand rather than a district police chief.
“Ravel, I need you. I have a double murder on my hands.”
“
Double
murder?”
“And this on top of the hotel murder a month ago,” Brasseur added, stepping inside and shutting the door. Aristide poured cold water into the basin on the washstand and splashed it on his face as Brasseur continued. “This one looks like a crime of passion, Didier said. No robbery evident.”
“Didier’s there, is he?” Aristide said.
“Well, I had to send somebody.” Brasseur glanced about the crowded room, at the litter of books and dirty coffee cups left on top of shelves, a wrinkled cravat hanging about a candlestick on the desk, coat tossed carelessly over a chair. “Doesn’t your landlady keep things tidy for you?”
Aristide shrugged. “She’d love to.” He wolfed down a few mouthfuls of breakfast, sour, gritty bread with a spoonful of lard scraped across it. So again there was no butter to be had. “If Clotilde had her way, she’d tidy this place up so well I’d never find what I need.”
“Are you ready, then? I’ve a cab waiting. It’s not far.” Brasseur headed for the stairs as Aristide gulped down a cup of milky coffee—at least half of it roasted chicory, he thought with a grimace—and struggled into his coat.
Only a single black-clad inspector on guard at the front door of the house indicated anything amiss on Rue du Hasard. The building was a modest five-story apartment house, too small for a carriage gate and central courtyard, built, Aristide guessed, within the past thirty years. Inside the ground-floor passage that led to a small backyard and common privy, a stone staircase spiraled upward at their left, opposite the door to the porter’s lodging. A few stucco moldings ornamented the walls and ceilings in the now outmoded rococo style.
Inspector Didier approached them, his expression grim.
“Commissaire Brasseur—second floor, if you please. They sent word you were coming.” Didier caught sight of Aristide and they exchanged frigid glances. “Him, too.”
Aristide gave him a cool nod and followed Brasseur into the foyer and up the two flights of stairs. Two guardsmen passed them, a draped stretcher between them. “The other’ll be down in a moment, Commissaire,” one of them told Brasseur as they edged past him along the narrow staircase.
“Wait a moment!” Brasseur said as they continued. “Who told you to take away the bodies?”
The man jerked his head at Didier, who had trailed them. “The inspector here.”
“For God’s sake!” Aristide said, turning on Didier. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Didier reddened. “I’m doing my job!”
“Surely Brasseur’s told you never to move the corpse? Of all the—”
“Enough, Ravel,” Brasseur grunted. “Obviously the damage has been done. You men, you bring that up again and wait with the body here on the landing. Damn it, Didier, leave a murder scene intact until I’ve seen it—and that includes the corpse. You ought to know better.”
“Sorry, Commissaire,” Didier muttered. He darted a venomous glance at Aristide. “Dr. Prunelle was done inspecting them. I did take notes.”
A fat lot of good they’ll be,
Aristide thought. He turned his back on Didier and climbed to the next landing. The inspector sullenly pointed the way through a door hanging ajar. Aristide glanced at the lock and latch. They were intact, the wood of the door unsplintered.
“It’s the man’s apartment,” Didier said. “Him on the litter. Louis Saint-Ange. Age thirty-eight, according to his papers; property owner, lived on his rents.”
Aristide noticed the smell as soon as he stepped past the door, the acrid scent of powder smoke in a closed chamber. Then he caught a glimpse of the girl on the stretcher as they drew a sheet over her face, and the memories that for three decades he had tried to forget came flooding back, sharp as daggers. He halted in the foyer, gazing at the scene.
It was the apartment of a comfortable bachelor, a man of fashion and taste. Two chairs, back and seats upholstered in rich crimson brocade, lay on their sides, as did a table that had once held a gilt clock. Candelabrum, inkwell, paper, sand shaker, blotter, and quills had been swept from the mahogany writing-desk. Ink lay across the rose-colored carpet and the scattered writing paper in a broad black splash like spilled blood.
Half a dozen colored engravings hung on the walls, daintily salacious scenes of plump, blushing, scantily clad maidens squirming in the clutches of smirking young Adonises. Three of the framed engravings hung crookedly; a fourth lay on the floor at the base of the wall, its glass shattered. Books and a pair of small bronze sculptures lay tumbled from overturned side tables.
The smell—yes, the smell of stale, burned powder was exactly the same as he remembered, the same caustic tang in the air assailing his senses.
She
had lain dead, too, so small in her thin chemise, sprawled across the floor, the other nearby. And a huge shadowed figure had loomed above them, shaking hand still clutching the pistol, a colossal ogre to his nine-year-old eyes staring terrified in the smoky twilight.
“Ravel?” said Brasseur, behind him. He drew a quick breath.
It’s not she,
he told himself,
it’s not she
. It’s not she, and he is not here, standing trembling above their still-warm corpses; here is only death, and silence, and the dispassionate aftermath. These are strangers here, and someone, some other stranger, has murdered them, and you are here to discover who did this.
“Ravel?”
“I’m all right.” He stepped forward, into the salon.
“Bullet wounds on both of them,” said Dr. Prunelle, the police surgeon, catching sight of Brasseur as he pulled his coat on. “Undoubtedly mortal. Judging from the rigor mortis they died late yesterday afternoon.”
“Between four o’clock yesterday and seven o’clock this morning,” said Didier, “according to the servant. He was out for the night and found them when he came back.”
“I repeat,” Prunelle said severely, “judging from the degree of rigor mortis that has set in, they were killed yesterday afternoon or evening. Eight o’clock at the latest.”
Aristide paused beside the dead girl on the stretcher and drew back the sheet. Her mouth hung a little open in a sweet childlike face. Someone had closed her eyes and death had smoothed her features, had dissolved the astonishment or terror that must have distorted them at the moment of her sudden, violent death. His mother’s face had borne the same blank expression.
“Damn it,” he whispered, and with an effort thrust aside the memory, thankful the girl looked nothing like his mother. She was young, little more than twenty, slight and fair-haired, and her gown and fashionable short jacket with long cashmere scarf were of good cloth and well made. Blood had oozed and spread in a broad red-brown stain across the front of the jacket and the bodice of her gauzy white day dress.
“Any papers?”
Didier shook his head. “No. No identity card.”
“No wedding ring, either.” Her hands were soft and well kept.
“All she had was a watch and fifteen sous in her pocket. No other money, no notes at all. And not even a latchkey on her.”
“She wouldn’t have a key,” Aristide said, fingering the fine muslin of her gown. “For heaven’s sake, look at her hands and her clothes.” Fashionable girls called their revealing gowns “Grecian,” in accordance with the new fad for all things classical, but in late autumn the thin draperies were unfortunately more suited to the sunny hills of Attica than to damp and chilly Paris. “She has plenty of money, or her family does, even if she has none on her. A girl like this doesn’t need a key to her own house; that’s what servants are for.” Ignoring Didier’s resentful glare, he moved around her to gaze at her in the light from the tall window.
“She was crying … tears have dried on her cheek.”
“Begging the murderer to spare her?” said Brasseur.
“But he killed her anyway… .”
“It looks as if this Saint-Ange was the murderer’s primary victim, though. It was his apartment, after all. The girl may just have been in the way.”
Aristide nodded. Though he had supposed Brasseur stolid and unimaginative when he had first begun to work with him, he had soon realized his friend’s patience and tenacity were the ideal foils for his own nervy, febrile imagination.
“Each victim was shot with a single bullet,” said Dr. Prunelle. “The one that killed the girl went horizontally, straight through her corset; she must have died quickly.”
“No powder burns on the cloth,” Brasseur said, peering at the girl’s bodice. “Well—we can’t do much about her until we know who she is.”
“The servant says he’s never seen her,” ventured Didier, “or rather, he claims women often visited Saint-Ange, but she’s not one he’s seen here before.”
“What sort of women?”
Didier grunted. “He brought home plenty of women of a certain sort, whores or just good-time-girls, living almost next door to the Palais-Égalité like this.” The pleasure garden of the Palais-Égalité, just a few steps from Rue du Hasard, was renowned not only for its dozens of fashionable shops, cafés, restaurants, gambling-parlors, and theaters, but also for its brothels.
“And manifestly this young woman is not of that sort,” Aristide said. “So where does that leave you?”
“Where were the bodies when you found them?” Brasseur asked, forestalling Didier’s reply.
Didier pointed. “The girl was about here, near the middle of the room, lying on the carpet; Saint-Ange was over there, on the floor behind the sofa. It pretty well concealed him.”