Game of Patience

by Alleyn, Susanne

  “Plenty deny it now, who were proud of it three years ago.”

  “I was never a talebearer,” he repeated, “for the public prosecutor’s office or the Committee of Security or anyone else.” That was not entirely the truth, though he had preferred to call himself an “agent” of Danton in 1792 and 1793, when the ill-conceived war against Prussia and Austria had proved disastrous for France and many people had whispered of foreign plots to undermine the Revolution. Rumors and hysteria, most of the whispers, while distrust and uncertainty had been at their height; but he and Brasseur could testify that not all of them had been groundless… .

  “I’ve no cause to have loved Robespierre’s government,” he added. “My dearest friend—”

  He abruptly realized it was likely that the man before him had been present himself at Mathieu’s death. They exchanged level stares.

  “Forgive my poor manners,” Sanson said at last. “I don’t like myself on execution days, and after I’ve been drinking to forget them, I like myself even less.” He pushed back his chair. “I thank you for the wine. Good evening. I won’t embarrass you by offering you my hand to shake.”

  “But I offer you mine,” Aristide said, rising.

  Sanson gazed for a moment at Aristide’s outstretched hand. At last he pressed it, muttered a good-bye, and strode away.

  CHAPTER 5

  12 Brumaire (November 2)

  “Nothing new yet on the Rue du Hasard affair?” Aristide inquired as he wandered into Brasseur’s office.

  “Nothing as of this morning,” Brasseur grumbled without looking up from the reports and letters strewn across his desk. “You needn’t have come in.”

  “Ah, well, what better have I to do?” Aristide tossed his hat on a bench. Hands clasped behind him, he looked over the dossiers in their cardboard folders, crammed onto the rows of shelves that covered one whitewashed wall of the small chamber. Most of them were the tawdry, humdrum records of petty thieves and confidence tricksters, crooked merchants, registered prostitutes; but a few evoked memories of shared chases and challenges. He turned to Brasseur, about to murmur, Do you remember the Martin affair? when he thought instead, Did we really get the right man there? He sighed, thinking back to a few occasions when a murderer had gone to the scaffold although they had never found indisputable proof of his guilt.

  A junior inspector thrust his head into the office and Brasseur glanced up impatiently. “Commissaire, Inspector Didier sent me over. They’re holding a woman who went up to Saint-Ange’s apartment half an hour ago.”

  “Well, well,” said Brasseur, brightening, “seems I spoke too soon. What’s she look like? A whore?”

  “Nicely dressed, young, looks scared to death. Should they bring her over here?”

  “Good God, no,” Aristide said, retrieving his hat. “She’s probably harmless. Let’s keep it discreet.” Brasseur grunted and gestured him out.

  #

  “She’s in the porter’s room,” Didier announced, with a sullen glance at Aristide. “The commissaire did say we were to hold visitors for questioning.”

  Aristide brushed past him, Brasseur’s secretary following. Within, a petite, veiled woman perched on the edge of a rickety chair like a terrified bird.

  “Out, if you please,” Aristide told the inspector who waited beside her. “Good day, citizeness,” he continued when the man had left them and he had shut the door in Didier’s face. “My name is Ravel; I represent Commissaire Brasseur of the Section de la Butte-des-Moulins, and this is his secretary, Citizen Dautry.”

  “Am I under arrest?” the woman quavered. “I haven’t done anything …”

  Aristide sighed. “Did the inspector give you that impression? I apologize. I merely need answers to a few questions. Your name?”

  “Marie-Sidonie Beaumontel, née Chambly,” she whispered. She pushed an identity card toward him bearing an address in the prosperous faubourg Honoré and quickly looked away, shivering. “Please—I don’t know what I can tell you. I … I was merely visiting a friend.”

  “The friend you were visiting was Louis Saint-Ange?” Aristide said. She nodded. “I must inform you that Citizen Saint-Ange is dead.”

  “Dead!” she gasped. “But I—I don’t understand.”

  “Saint-Ange was murdered two days ago.”

  She sat frozen in her seat for a moment before hiding her face in her hands. Aristide let her sob for a few minutes, drumming his fingers on the table before him, and silently handed her a handkerchief when her own grew sodden. At length she calmed and lifted away her veil. Beneath it she was ashen, with dark smudges beneath her eyes, her face powder blotched and streaked with tears.

  “Was Saint-Ange extorting money from you?”

  She went even paler beneath the remains of her powder. “Was he?” Aristide repeated. “We need to know.”

  “Please—if my husband hears a breath of this, my life won’t be worth a sou.”

  “You can trust our discretion.”

  “You—you don’t think I murdered him?” She clutched at his arm. “I swear—”

  “Citizeness … please, tell me the truth.”

  She swallowed but said nothing. Aristide sighed and gestured to Dautry to cease writing. “Very well. Perhaps the commissaire couldn’t, in good conscience, do this; but I can.” He took Dautry’s notes and dropped them in the fire, but not before he had made a mental note of her address.

  “You’re right,” she said after a moment of silence. “He was demanding money from me. He—he knew I had a lover … I don’t know how he knew … I’m married to a man seventeen years my senior. He treats me well enough, but he’s horribly suspicious; he sees infidelity in every word I exchange with another man. Until eight months ago I’d never given him reason to be jealous.”

  “But you’ve fallen in love?”

  “Yes—with a younger man, who is kind and sympathetic. I was lonely, and I broke my marriage vows … I—I kept his letters. I was a fool. I ought to have thrown them on the fire after I’d read them. But I couldn’t.”

  Aristide nodded. “And Saint-Ange got hold of these letters?”

  “I don’t know how. I knew him slightly, but he’d never been a guest at my house. One day I received a message, telling me to meet him at a certain café, and it enclosed one of Fernand’s—one of my lover’s letters. I went to their hiding-place—beneath the lining of my jewelry case—and the letters were gone. I don’t know how he could have taken them. Not even my maid knows where I kept them.”

  “What sort of woman is your maid?”

  Madame Beaumontel frowned, puzzled. “Victoire? She’s an ordinary sort of woman, not terribly clever perhaps, though I’ve no complaints about her work.”

  “Is she young and pretty?”

  “No, not especially; she’s older than I, about forty.”

  “I ask because usually it’s a lady’s maid who unwittingly allows men of this sort to do their work. Before you found the letters were missing, was Victoire behaving in an unusual manner? Was she more animated, perhaps?”

  “I think—yes, she was. She was looking pleased with herself.”

  Aristide nodded. “Then you may count on it she’d found a lover. Plain, unmarried women of that age are usually susceptible. Tell me, how long did she behave in this fashion? Not long?”

  Madame Beaumontel frowned. “I was so distressed I scarcely noticed her behavior … but yes, she suddenly became preoccupied … and then ill-natured and morose.” She drew a quick breath. “Oh, no—do you mean Saint-Ange was the man?”

  “I expect so. As I said, a woman of that age is an easy target for a seducer. He probably flirted with her on her afternoons off, made love to her; she secretly let him inside the house, and one night, while she was asleep, he crept into your boudoir and searched for anything incriminating.”

  “But how could he have known that—that I had a secret to protect?”

  “Well,” Aristide said, “young, pretty wife, middle-aged husband …
there’s usually a lover somewhere. And I’m sure Saint-Ange was a practiced observer of human nature, since he evidently depended on extortion for his livelihood. Did you think you were the only one paying him to keep a secret?”

  She stared at him, speechless. “Gossip must have been his food and drink,” he continued. “If you say you’d known him—”

  “We had met a few times, at the theater, and at the homes of friends.”

  “Then he would have had his suspicions. He needed only the proof. No doubt he knew all the places where women think their secrets will be safe. He stole your letters and promptly deserted Victoire, having no further use for her.”

  “Oh, the beast,” she whispered. “Poor stupid Victoire.”

  “So he demanded money in exchange for the letters?”

  “Yes. He asked for far more than I had. My husband is wealthy—he owns two foundries and they make cannon for the army—but he rarely gives me money. Saint-Ange wanted fifty louis in gold. I told him I would bring him what I could. Today … today was the fourth time I’d come. I thought I should never be free of him.” She broke off, eyes pleading. “Have you found the letters?”

  Aristide shook his head. “Not yet. If the police find them, I assure you the commissaire or I will take great pleasure in handing them back to you ourselves.”

  “And now we can guess why the dead girl was there,” said Dautry, after Madame Beaumontel had left them, discreetly veiled once more.

  “Well, he couldn’t have secured such a comfortable income from a few rents.” Aristide grimaced. “Go on back to headquarters. I’ll come by shortly, after I lambaste Didier for overstepping his authority.”

  “He won’t take kindly to you telling him off.”

  “I really don’t care. When will that man remember it’s no longer 1793?”

  #

  Aristide returned to the commissariat and elbowed his way to Brasseur’s office through the midmorning crush of inspectors, clerks, complainants, and the inevitable half-dozen men and women of all sorts and conditions who were presumably spies with information to sell, waiting furtively or patiently on benches in the outer chamber. He found Brasseur looking much more pleased with himself than before.

  “Here’s another stroke of luck. The girl from Rue du Hasard’s been identified.” He waved a creased form at Aristide. “Just as you suggested; she’s no cheap slut. Her father visited the morgue at the Basse-Geôle yesterday and identified her; her name is Célie Montereau.”

  “Montereau?” Aristide echoed him. “Wasn’t there a member of the National Convention named Montereau, an ex-aristocrat, quite wealthy …”

  “The same. Honoré-Charles-Éléonor Montereau, formerly the Comte de Soyecourt. We’re to question him this afternoon, after a visit to the morgue to see what they have to say there. In Montereau’s mansion in the faubourg Germain if you please. You’ll have to show me how to mind my manners in a house like that.”

  “My uncle was a lawyer, not a duke,” Aristide said absently as he followed Brasseur through the clamor of the antechamber. Brasseur grunted.

  #

  It was market day outside the Châtelet and their hired fiacre rolled slowly through the disorderly cluster of farm-carts and stalls, where leather-throated vendors hawked their wares. Cabbages, turnips, onions, and apples lay stacked in careful pyramids beside cheeses, sausages, and jumbled heaps of old clothes and shoes, the tattered castoffs of the prosperous. Amid the bustle, the beggars shuffled or crouched in corners, mutely stretching out grimy hands.

  The fiacre left the marketplace behind and approached the looming walls of the Châtelet to halt in a gloomy, vaulted passage of sooty masonry that provided a public way through the center of the old fortress. To their left, a small door led to the Basse-Geôle de la Seine, the morgue where unidentified corpses and victims of violent death were sent. Leaving Dautry, who refused to accompany them inside, behind in the cab, Brasseur exchanged a few words with the dour clerk on duty. They passed through a grille that the clerk unlocked for them, and the faint odor of spoiled meat drifted to their nostrils as they descended a short staircase.

  The stagnant smell was far stronger in the chill, lamplit cellar below, hanging like fog over the half-dozen shrouded figures lying on their stone tables. A second clerk, a pop-eyed man with a long, mournful face like a bloodhound, straightened as they approached, tugged a sheet back over a corpse, and plunged his hands into a basin of dirty water.

  “Morning, Bouille,” said Brasseur. “Do you have anything more for us about the Rue du Hasard murders?”

  “Here’s my report,” said the concierge with a quick swallow from his pocket flask. Aristide glanced over Brasseur’s shoulder. Deceased, female, had been identified by her father as Marie-Célie-Josèphe-Élisabeth Montereau, age twenty-two years and five months, in good health and well-nourished, bearing no scars or highly individual features. Examination of the corpse had revealed a wound consistent with a single shot to the heart from a small firearm, as stated in the police surgeon’s report. Deceased had worn one chemise of good linen, one gown of white muslin bearing no marks or repairs (other than such damage caused by the shot that had killed deceased), one rose-pink carmagnole jacket of lightweight wool showing little wear (other than the aforementioned damage), one pair red leather shoes without high heels and showing little wear, one pair thread stockings showing little wear, one scarf of pink cashmere… .

  Brasseur glanced quickly over the second sheet, the report on Louis Saint-Ange, rolled the papers into a tube, and tapped it against his lips. “Nothing much new here.”

  “Might I see the girl?” Aristide said.

  Bouille shuffled to one of the draped forms and folded back the sheet. Aristide gazed at the pallid, pretty young face, calm and inscrutable in death, and raised a hand to brush away a stray thread that had fallen across her cheek.

  Bouille glanced at his notes. “Do you want to see the other one? We’re done with them, and the identification’s in order. The relatives can claim them whenever they like.”

  “Who formally identified Saint-Ange?” Brasseur asked. “His servant?”

  “Hmmm … Barthélemy Thibault, domestic official, identified him; and the girl’s father, Citizen Montereau, confirmed it.”

  “Montereau!”

  Bouille nodded. “We showed him the second corpse, just as a matter of form, and Montereau recognized him. Seemed very surprised. Claimed he was a relation.”

  “Well, well.” Brasseur wrote a few lines in his notebook. “Nothing else?”

  “Sorry. Be sure to tell the relatives they can claim the bodies,” Bouille reminded them as they retreated. “Daude’s done with the inventory of the clothing and effects. He’s very efficient that way.”

  Very efficient, Aristide thought, as they climbed the steps out of the corpse-stink.

  CHAPTER 6

  After a quarter-hour at the Basse-Geôle, neither Aristide nor Brasseur felt inclined toward more luncheon than a roll and a stiff two-sou glass of cheap brandy, commonly known as eau-de-vie or “water of life,” from a street hawker. They continued to the faubourg Germain and, telling the cabman to wait, alighted from their fiacre in a spacious, cobbled courtyard. A groom hurried forward to lead the horse to a marble watering-trough.

  The manservant who led them inside wore no aristocratic livery, but the republican austerity of 1793 and 1794 seemed to have made little other impression on the ex-Comte de Soyecourt’s manner of living. A chilly, elegant marble foyer led upstairs to a series of richly furnished antechambers and salons, hung with satin curtains and decorated with delicate carved and painted paneling, where silent servants were hanging black draperies over windows, mirrors, chandeliers, and clocks. Montereau rose from a writing-desk to meet them as they entered the library.

  “Citizen Commissaire? They told me at—at the Basse-Geôle that someone would call. Coffee for the citizens, Michel,” he added, to the lackey.

  Aristide took stock of Montereau as Brasseur
introduced himself and Dautry pulled out his notebook. The dead girl’s father was thickset and dark, lines of grief marking what would have been in better times a good-natured, though harassed, countenance beneath an untidy powdered wig.

  “This is all so terribly sudden,” he said, hastily thrusting away a handkerchief. “To be occupying myself with offers for her hand one day, and then to order her coffin the next; but this … she was in excellent health, I never suspected …”

  He absently scratched his head, pushing his wig askew, and rubbed his eyes. An amiable untidiness seemed to be the essence of Montereau’s temperament, Aristide thought. Though his black silk frock coat was finely tailored, its cut was some years out of fashion and it hung on his sturdy shoulders as if he had been wearing a peasant’s smock.

  Aristide seated himself on the nearest chair. Brasseur gingerly lowered his large frame onto a graceful Louis XV sofa and perched on the edge. Across the ceiling above them, simpering cherubs surrounded a pair of nude pagan gods who reclined among rosy clouds. Brasseur glanced upward, blushed, and tried to look as if he saw such suggestive opulence every day.

  “They told me my daughter had been murdered,” Montereau said. “Who—who could have done such a thing?”

  “We hope to find that out, Citizen Montereau,” Brasseur told him, “but it looks as if she was just the victim of bad luck, in the wrong place at the wrong time. When was the last time you saw your daughter?”

  “Décadi, in the morning. The day she disappeared. We—we breakfasted together as we usually did. Then I went to the Tuileries to meet—pardon me, the National Palace—to meet some friends; I joined them for dinner at Méot’s, and didn’t return home until nearly eleven o’clock that evening.”

  Aristide nodded. Méot was a fashionable and expensive restaurateur near the Palais-Égalité and Montereau’s presence there could be easily verified.