Authors: Susanne Alleyn
“Exactly,” Aristide said. “Not even a weedy fellow like me could fit into that coat. It belongs on a small, slight figure, easily the person whom Grangier saw, and who presumably did the murders. Don’t you see it yet?”
Brasseur gaped at him for a moment.
“Her brother!” he exclaimed with a hoot of exasperated laughter. “Of course he resembled her. It was she all along!”
“
She
was ‘the man in the round hat.’
She
was the man whom Grangier saw!”
“The devious little …” Brasseur said, not without admiration. “You realize what this means, don’t you? Though Grangier said he didn’t know her… .”
“He was looking at a pretty, feminine woman wearing powder, rouge, and a pink gown. You know how unreliable most witnesses are; they think they saw one thing when in fact they saw another … the president asked him if he recognized a woman. Why should he connect her with the young man he’s sure he saw?”
“But if they can bring her before him in
these
clothes, in this coat I should think,” Brasseur said, taking up the green redingote again, “and the hat, I’ll wager you he’ll recognize her.”
“Her counsel will raise an unholy fuss.”
“That’s the public prosecutor’s dilemma, not mine. My job is just to find the evidence. Good God, Ravel,” he added, “I’ve been hunting for a woman who wears men’s clothing. D’you think she could be the hotel murderess as well?”
Aristide stared at the grimy wall, remembering a conspicuous coat he had seen on a slight, slim figure one evening at the Palais-Égalité.
“The coat’s not here,” he said at length. “A blue striped coat with overlong tails, such as an
incroyable
would wear. And Rosalie Clément is dark. The person I saw was fair; and your witnesses said the woman at the hotels was fair-haired.”
“A wig?”
“See for yourself. There’s no wig here, just shirts, cravats, gloves, and such.”
Brasseur poked a hand thoughtfully through the tidy pile of linen and at last straightened, dusting off his knees.
“Well, if she’s already on trial for murder … they can only guillotine her once. And this case is easier to prove than the hotel murder, God knows. We can always pursue it if she’s acquitted of this one.”
“I daresay more women go about in male disguise, from time to time, than we’d like to think,” Aristide said. “It’s a man’s world, after all; disguise must offer them such freedom. You and I couldn’t imagine it.”
Brasseur handed Aristide his hat. “You go home and get some sleep; you look worn out.”
After Brasseur had departed, leaving a guardsman behind to keep watch outside on the landing, Aristide lingered alone in the tiny room and gazed about him, frowning. It was an ugly possibility, but one he had to confront: though if Rosalie was indeed the hotel murderess, then where were the blond wig and the coat, that ostentatious striped coat calculated to draw attention from a woman’s features?
He gazed again into the brazier and took up a flake of ash that trembled in his fingers before disintegrating. You could still see the smooth surface on a bit of burned, curled paper, he thought; this was lacier than paper ash. Cloth?
If she had cut up and burned the telltale wig and coat, then this was what remained of them. Though there would have been many more ashes than a mere handful. He threw open the window and leaned outside, gazing across the tiles that sloped, layer upon layer, at either side. To his right, in the sheltered corner formed by the next dormer projecting from the roof, out of the wind, lay a few wisps and flecks of black that the rain had not yet reached.
#
The morning session was slow in starting. At length the president and Faure, the public prosecutor, took their seats and the trial resumed.
“Citizen President,” said Faure, “owing to the extraordinary nature of some evidence that has just come to light, the prosecution has an unusual request to make of the court. The police yesterday discovered a secret domicile let by the accused, which contained a number of significant garments. The prosecution requests that the accused be ordered to dress in these garments for identification by a certain witness.”
President Gohier frowned. “Have you proof the prisoner let this lodging?”
“The landlord of the house in question has given a signed statement, and is present and ready to testify.”
“Call the witness,” said the president. Barbier entered and was sworn: Jean-Baptiste Barbier, owner of a furnished lodging-house on Rue du Cocq, in the Section des Droits de l’Homme.
Yes, he recognized a certain person in the chamber, that young lady. She was a lodger of his. She lived in Amiens, or so she said, and only came up to Paris perhaps once a month. Two or three times he had seen a young fellow going to her lodging, or coming out of it, late at night. She claimed he was her brother. All the personal property found in the room was the property of the citizeness, or perhaps of her brother. There were only two keys to the room; Citizeness Clément—Vaudray—had one, and he kept the other himself.
“Citizen Prosecutor,” said the president, “having established to the satisfaction of this court that the items in the room in question are the property of the accused, or the property of a man allegedly the brother of the accused, what is the request of the prosecution?”
“That the accused don a certain suit of clothes found in this lodging, presented as evidence, for the purposes of identification,” said the public prosecutor, bobbing from his chair. Maître Tardieu leapt to his feet.
“May I remind the prosecutor, and the court, that it is illegal to compel an accused person to undertake any action which may furnish evidence against him.”
“So it is,” said the president. “Have you no other evidence against the accused, Citizen Faure?”
“There is the evidence of the garments themselves,” Faure declared, indignant. “The eyewitness Grangier is sure to identify them. The prosecution merely asks the court to allow these garments to be worn by their owner in order to facilitate—”
“Citizen President!” cried Maître Tardieu.
“If necessary,” the prosecutor continued, doggedly, “the prosecution requests permission to hold the garments against the accused’s person, in order to demonstrate that they are of the proper size—”
Rosalie rose to her feet. “I have no objection to the public prosecutor’s request.”
“Citizeness,” Tardieu cried, “I must protest! The prosecution wishes you to incriminate yourself.”
“I can’t deny that the clothes were found in a room I’d let,” she said, smiling, “and Citizen Faure seems determined to have his own way. Citizen President, if I may be allowed somewhere to change my clothes in decent privacy?”
Aristide gnawed at his fingernails. A dull throbbing hammered at his head and he closed his eyes. What could have prompted her to cooperate with the public prosecutor’s demands?
A quarter hour passed. Suddenly a murmur rose from the spectators’ benches and rippled about the chamber as Rosalie returned.
“Christ!” François hissed beside him.
In male attire she seemed lean and boyish. The suit fit her slender body and long legs faultlessly. Buttoned across her breast and hanging gracefully in a cutaway from her slim hips, the green redingote’s long lines concealed her feminine figure. Hat in hand, she strolled into the center of the chamber.
“Death of the devil,” François muttered as Aristide pressed cold fingertips against throbbing temples. Rosalie unpinned her hair, shook it loose, and clapped the hat on at a debonair angle. The president rang his bell for silence as the public prosecutor recalled the witness Grangier.
“That’s the one!” Grangier exclaimed before the president could address him. “See, I wasn’t dreaming. I know his face.
That’s
the young fellow I saw on the stairs the day Citizen Saint-Ange was killed! The man with the round hat!”
“I object, once again,” shouted Maître Tardieu over the clamor that rose at Grangier’s words, “to the accused’s being compelled to incriminate herself!”
Rosalie doffed the hat, bowed gracefully to Grangier, and sauntered back to the dock. The astonished gendarmes drew back to let her pass.
Gohier informed her that she might withdraw to change her clothes, but she smiled. “That won’t be necessary. I’m quite comfortable as I am.”
Tardieu darted an anguished glance at her. She ignored him and leaned forward on the rail before her.
“Citizen President, I won’t waste any more of the court’s time. It’s plain the game is up. I am guilty.”
Aristide drew in his breath as about him a hissing whisper of many voices grew and crested and died away.
“It was I, not Philippe Aubry or anyone else, who murdered Célie Montereau and Louis Saint-Ange. Nor do I have a brother; the clothes are mine. I am guilty; make an end of this.”
The chamber echoed with footsteps as the spectators rose from their benches and pushed forward, craning their necks for a closer glimpse of her. President Gohier angrily rang his bell but the crowd pressed on, unheeding.
“Citizeness,” said the president, “tell the court, if you please, how you committed these murders.”
“Certainly.” She straightened and rested her fingertips on the rail. “I was once in love with Philippe Aubry, some three years ago. Because of a terrible misunderstanding brought about by my late husband, Philippe discarded me, but I never ceased loving him. When I learned he’d returned to Paris, I went to him to remind him that he had once loved me. Not only did he turn me away, but a few days later he sent me a letter, the letter that’s already been read here, in which he repulsed me in the most contemptuous terms.
“This past summer Célie Montereau told me she was secretly engaged to be married. On the the ninth of Brumaire, she asked me for advice, and told me that Saint-Ange was extorting money from her because of an indiscretion in her past. In her distress, she also told me her fiancé’s name; it was Philippe Aubry. I was furious, though I didn’t show it, to learn he might prefer a naïve child like Célie to me.
“I believe I went mad with jealousy then. I couldn’t bear any more. The next day, I wrote to Philippe and told him I knew he was in love with Célie, and that he had better look out for her safety. I wanted to hurt him as much as possible. Then I went to the room I’d let on Rue du Cocq and disguised myself in a suit of men’s clothing, which I frequently wore for my own protection when I walked alone in the city; and took a small double-barreled pistol that I kept for the same reason, and went to Rue de l’Université and followed Célie when she left her father’s house.”
“Why did you keep the room on Rue du Cocq?” inquired the president.
“I let it to store my costume, and to have a private place in which to change my clothes. My landlady,” she added, with a dry smile, “is narrowminded and given to prying through her lodgers’ effects, and I fear she wouldn’t have taken kindly to discovering articles of male attire in my room. She would have assumed, incorrectly of course, that I’d let a man into my room. She would have asked me to leave the boardinghouse; and it was all I could afford, and I was reasonably comfortable there and didn’t wish to risk eviction.”
“Very well; continue.”
“I followed Célie to Rue du Hasard, where she had gone to pay Saint-Ange. I climbed the staircase after her to Saint-Ange’s apartment, but she had already gone inside and the door was shut. Then my nerve failed me and I ran downstairs and out of the house. I walked through the neighboring streets for perhaps a quarter of an hour.
“At last my jealousy grew so strong that I returned to the house, climbed the stairs to the landing, and knocked on the door. Saint-Ange let me in. I walked straight inside, saw Célie, and shot her. But Saint-Ange had seen everything. He tried to get away, and pushed some furniture in front of me, but my pistol had two barrels and I shot him, too, to defend myself and silence him.”
Aristide glanced up sharply, frowning, remembering a contused wound and the evidence of a pistol aimed coldly and deliberately, from a finger’s breadth away, at the center of a man’s forehead.
“Then I crept quietly down the staircase and returned to Rue du Cocq. After I changed my clothes again, I went back to the Maison Deluc for supper and I threw my pistol into the river as I crossed the Pont Nôtre-Dame.” She withdrew her hands from the rail and straightened. “That’s all. Is that sufficient?”
“But how do we know,” the president demanded, “that you’re not merely shielding Citizen Aubry, whom you claim to have loved, and who has also been suspected of this crime?”
“Faith, would I choose to shield the man who wrote me that letter?” She laughed sourly. “I know every word of it. ‘I wish only that your path and mine should never cross again,’
” she recited. “Are those the sort of words to inspire self-sacrificing love in a woman’s heart? I assure you I don’t do this out of love for Philippe Aubry. But I don’t want this process to drag on, and I don’t wish to see anybody punished with death for a crime that wasn’t his.”
“Very well,” said the president, after a moment’s deliberation. “The jury may consider the accused’s testimony as it pleases. You realize, citizeness,” he continued, “that you are confessing to premeditated murder, a capital crime.”
She nodded, once. “I understand perfectly.”