Game of Patience

by Alleyn, Susanne

  Thibault scratched his head and gazed around him. “All right, well, I came up the stairs …”

  Aristide nodded. “Go out to the landing, please, and do exactly what you did then.”

  Thibault obediently returned to the landing. After a moment Aristide heard him say, “I took out my latchkey, but then I found the door was open, so I came inside. I thought Saint-Ange had forgotten to lock it the night before, since that’s part of my job, of course.” He tiptoed into the foyer and shut the door behind him. “Then I went along here and into the salon, to light the fire. I’d built a fire the day before, but the weather was fine and he’d said it wasn’t necessary to light it. But I knew he’d want a fire when he woke up and took his breakfast. So I came in here,” he continued, entering the salon, “and there was the young lady, lying right in front of me.” He knelt near the center of the carpet. “I touched her to see if there was any help for her, but she was cold as a stone … then I saw him, over behind the sofa. I could just see his boot sticking out.”

  “Célie Montereau was lying right in front of you?” Aristide echoed him. “Show us exactly where she was lying.”

  “Here,” the manservant said, gesturing. Brasseur nodded.

  “That’s what Didier said, more or less.”

  “But Didier moved the body, like a fool,” said Aristide. “Thibault, would you lie on the carpet in the position in which you found the young lady? It seems ridiculous, I know, but this is important.”

  Thibault grinned weakly and obeyed. “She was lying on her back, so.” He arranged himself, knees slightly bent, arms askew, one hand raised near his head.

  “And this is precisely where she was lying, and her position, to the best of your recollection?” Aristide said. “Her head here, and feet there?”

  “Yes, citizen.”

  “Célie was shot first,” Aristide said to Brasseur. “She had to have been.”

  “We ought to have seen it,” Brasseur agreed.

  “If she’d been a witness to that struggle between Saint-Ange and the attacker, she might have run for it immediately and escaped; or she might have frozen, cowered, tried to hide as best she could. But instead she’s right here, nowhere near any piece of furniture large enough to have hidden her or protected her. She was standing when she was shot, and she saw her murderer. Brasseur, be the murderer and come in here from the foyer. You’re holding a pistol at your side.”

  Brasseur retreated and then advanced, holding an imaginary pistol. Aristide stood in the center of the room, his back to him. “Célie is pleading with Saint-Ange to take pity on her. There is a rap—or pounding—on the door. Thibault is out. Saint-Ange sets his glass of wine down on the buffet, goes to the door himself, and opens it. Célie turns toward the newcomer, as anyone does when someone enters a room.” He turned to face Brasseur and raised both hands to his face in a fearful gesture. “Probably she recognizes him, takes a step toward him. Shoot me.”

  Brasseur raised his arm and crooked his finger. “Bang.”

  “The pistol is four or five feet away,” said Aristide, “impossible to miss, but not close enough to leave powder burns on her gown. She is shot through the heart and dies within seconds.” He took one halting step rearward, recoiling from the pretended force of the shot, and collapsed backward to land crumpled on the carpet, knees bent and hands outflung.

  “That’s it,” Thibault exclaimed. “That’s how she looked. Right there.”

  “Then,” Aristide said, sitting up, “the murderer kept on—Saint-Ange went for his pistols—we know the rest. But the murderer came for her. Perhaps he followed her here. He entered, found Célie, and shot her. Célie was his first target, not Saint-Ange. She wasn’t expecting him and she put up no resistance in the bare instant she had.”

  Brasseur nodded. “So … who would want to deliberately kill Célie Montereau, then? This secret sweetheart of hers? Because Saint-Ange had told him the dirt on her? He kills her in anger, a pure crime of passion, and then does away with Saint-Ange for being a bloodsucking swine?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Thibault, are you sure Saint-Ange had no visitors on décadi besides his mistress, and that he didn’t go out except to take luncheon with her?”

  “Positive, citizen.”

  “What about letters?” Aristide said. “Did Saint-Ange write any letters on the day he died, or during the previous day or two?”

  “None,” Thibault said promptly. “He didn’t give me any to post; besides, he was a careless writer and a hard man with quills, he was, and he was always spattering ink on his desk or having me trim his quills for him or cut him new ones. When I went out on the tenth, the last time I saw him, his writing-desk was still neat as a pin the way I’d left it. He hadn’t been doing any writing.”

  Brasseur exchanged glances with Aristide and sighed. “We’ll have to talk to the whole Montereau household again. Perhaps the boy noticed something else… .”

  Children notice things, you know.

  Yes, Aristide thought, children noticed things. Children noticed when things were out of place, when the safe, reassuring routine of life was disrupted by something that was not as it ought to have been, or something missing from its place, or someone who ought not to have been there. He closed his eyes for an instant.

  The boy Théodore. In Célie’s bedchamber. What was it he had said, and then hesitated, as if he had said too much? Something about Célie’s jewelry, her mother’s ring—it’s not here, and it’s …—and then he had stumbled over his words and added something trivial about the ring.

  “Let me speak to the boy alone, first,” he said.

  It’s not here, and it’s—not in a certain other place, either? A private hiding place, perhaps, a cache more secure than her jewelry case, where all manner of treasures or secrets might be hidden?

  #

  A lackey at the Hôtel de Montereau looked Aristide over, dubious, as he climbed from the cab. “Are you a friend of the family?”

  “Police. I need to speak with the boy.”

  “This is a house of mourning. The family is receiving friends—”

  “I think Citizen Montereau will receive me,” Aristide said, thrusting his police card at the man. “I need only to speak with the boy, not to invade the salon.”

  Montereau came down to the foyer to meet him, puzzled, but offered no objection to a visit with Théodore after Aristide explained his purpose. “Well, at such a melancholy time … the distraction will be good for him, poor child.”

  Aristide followed a servant girl upstairs to the nursery. The boy scrambled up from his chair as a dyspeptic-looking young man hovered at the rear of the room. “Citizen policeman! Did you catch him? Did you catch the man who hurt Célie?”

  “No, I fear not,” Aristide said. “Not yet. But perhaps you can help me find him. I hope you are well?”

  Théodore clasped his hands behind him and stared at his shoes. “Papa said Célie’s in Heaven now. They buried her yesterday. I had to walk with Papa, behind the carriage that took her away.”

  Aristide recalled another black-clad boy, rigid with misery, hands clutched painfully behind his back, waiting for the funeral procession to set out. It had been a long, long journey to the cemetery on the day they had buried his mother.

  But there had been no funeral for his father.

  … And the remains consumed in fire, and the ashes scattered to the winds …

  “I know,” he said softly. “I know what it’s like, following someone’s coffin.”

  “Lots of Célie’s friends were there, and Papa’s friends. They’re here today, too. Citizeness Villemain gave me some macaroons when Papa wasn’t looking.”

  “That was kind of her.”

  His aunt … his aunt had given him some candied ginger that day. Strange that he had nearly forgotten.

  “Théodore, do you want to find the person who killed your sister?”

  The boy nodded vigorously.

  “Then I hope you’l
l tell me something. The day before yesterday, when you told us you had seen Célie taking away her jewelry, I think you were going to say something else. Were you going to say that Célie had a secret place where she kept her special treasures, and her jewelry wasn’t there, either?”

  Théodore grimaced and sucked his lower lip between his teeth. “No.”

  “Come,” Aristide said, steering the boy outside into the passage by the stairs and closing the door. “Your tutor can’t hear us here. We’re all alone. You do know where your sister kept her treasures, don’t you?”

  Théodore shook his head as a faint blush crept into his cheeks.

  “You can tell me. Whatever it is you want to keep secret, I promise you I won’t tell your father, or anyone.”

  Théodore remained stubbornly silent. Aristide thought rapidly back to his own boyhood, to the hazy, uneventful years before his world had dissolved in calamity, wondering as he did so of whom the boy reminded him. Perhaps himself, he mused.

  “It’s natural to be curious, you know. Did you see Célie hide something while you were hiding yourself in a cupboard?”

  Théodore stared back at him. “How did you know?”

  “Was it a cupboard, then?”

  “Behind the curtains.”

  “I once did the same thing at your age. When my grown-up cousin Amélie came to visit. I was an abominably curious little boy and I hid in the wardrobe because I wanted to see what she looked like without her chemise on.”

  Théodore stifled a conspiratorial giggle before gazing at him wide-eyed. “You promise you won’t tell Papa?”

  “Certainly. It’s none of my business how you educate yourself.”

  Théodore stared at him, uncomprehending—after all, Aristide told himself, the boy was only six—and he summoned a smile. “I promise I won’t tell your papa.”

  “All right,” the boy admitted, “well, I saw it once. The secret hiding place. It’s in her writing-desk.”

  “This is important, Théodore,” Aristide said. “I need to see the secret drawer, and whatever is inside it.”

  “All right,” said Théodore, after a moment’s deliberation. “But there isn’t any treasure in it. I looked yesterday, when Papa said she—she’d gone to Heaven and wasn’t coming back. It’s just some old letters in there.”

  “Letters?”

  “In the stories about bandits, like Cartouche, they always hide gold.”

  “I need to see these letters. Let’s visit Célie’s boudoir, shall we?”

  His hand in Aristide’s, Théodore led him to the dainty green bedchamber and pointed at the desk that stood between the two tall windows. “There. You pull this out”—he unlocked a drawer and pulled it out of the desk, then reached into the empty space—“and then you feel up with your hand and slide up the secret door to get inside. It’s behind that little cupboard on top, you see, but you can’t get into the secret part from the cupboard. You have to go from the drawer.” He withdrew a dusty arm, a packet of folded papers in his fist. “See? Just letters. You can have them.”

  “You’ve been more than helpful, Théodore,” Aristide said, pocketing them. Compromising documents were best kept out of the reach of inquisitive relatives until one could determine their usefulness. “You needn’t tell anyone about these. Let’s keep this our secret, shall we? A secret between you, and me, and Célie?”

  “I miss Célie,” Théodore said abruptly. Two tears trickled down his cheeks and he rubbed them away, sniffling. “I wanted to write something about Célie today, but Citizen Tourneur won’t let me. He says it’s nothing to do with my lessons. I hate him. And he says I’ll have to study Latin and ciphering and all kinds of horrid things when I go to school. I’d rather be a soldier than study Latin. Do you know Latin?”

  Aristide nodded. “Yes, I studied it, and I wasn’t much good at it. But one needs to know Latin if one is going to study law.”

  “But you’re not a lawyer. You’re a policeman. Maybe I could be a policeman, like you,” Théodore said hopefully.

  Aristide found himself smiling. “Well, you wouldn’t want to be the sort of policeman I am. I’m more of an errand boy for my friend the commissaire, and I go about everywhere and ask questions, especially when it might be inconvenient for a police inspector to barge in. But if you want to be a commissaire of police like Citizen Brasseur, you might do well to become a lawyer first. Then the Ministry of Police appoints you to the position, you see.”

  “Was Citizen Brasseur a lawyer?”

  Caught in my own argument, he reflected ruefully. “No, Brasseur was a soldier for a long time. But I think you ought to keep on studying, no matter what. Army officers need a proper education, too, if they’re to lead men and ride on fine horses.”

  Théodore pouted for a moment, shifting from one foot to the other as he considered the alternatives. Amused, Aristide watched him as they walked back to the nursery. The boy did not, after all, so much resemble Célie as he had first supposed, though he had Célie’s fair, reddish-blonde hair. He could not recall having seen any portraits of the late Madame Montereau, and wondered once again of whom the boy’s features reminded him.

  “I must go now, but it was a pleasure to meet you again, Théodore.”

  Théodore shook his hand and bowed solemnly. “Good day, citizen.”

  A charming boy, Aristide thought as he took his leave, and properly reared. The future of the house of Montereau was in good hands.

  #

  “Here,” he said, dropping the letters on Brasseur’s desk. “Confirmation. The first one’s from Saint-Ange, dated ten weeks ago. He asks for a hundred louis for his discretion regarding ‘a certain delicate matter.’ ”

  “A hundred louis!”

  “He’ll take five hundred thousand francs in paper if she has no gold, though.”

  “Accommodating fellow.” Brasseur read it through, squinting in the candlelight—the day had turned rainy and overcast—and muttering to himself. “Not signed.”

  “No. No signature, no specifics about the delicate matter. He’s covering his tracks.”

  Brasseur turned toward the door to the adjacent tiny office where his secretary worked. “Dautry! Get me a sample of Saint-Ange’s handwriting. What about the others?” he continued, to Aristide. “Also demands from our late unlamented friend?”

  Aristide shook his head. “Different writing. Two or three dozen cloying love-letters, all alike. Listen to this.” He crossed to the window and unfolded another letter. “‘My dearest love, you have not written to me for five days now. Imagine how I suffer! Take pity on your beloved, and if I cannot see you, at least let me feast my eyes on the words your dear hand has written to me. Tell me all you do, and say once more that you love me, and do not torment me in so heartless a manner. You know how tenderly I love you. You know how you have enslaved me, and how I wish only to remain fettered by those bonds of love. Send me a letter, and a kiss, and I will know you have not forgotten me. I am your slave always. Your Philippe.’ Dated two months ago, but others are more recent. The Clément woman told me the young man’s name was Philippe.”

  “Pompous sort of ass, isn’t he?” said Brasseur.

  “My cousin Margot would have said as much,” Aristide agreed. He handed Brasseur the letter and glanced through the rest. “God, his style is painful. But Margot has an excellent sense of humor. She once had a young admirer who sent her letters like these, and she laughed at every one of them before throwing them on the fire. She said some of the girls she knew, though, the mawkish sort of female who weeps over novels, would be enthralled by such rubbish.”

  “You think Célie Montereau was that sort of girl?”

  “I imagine so. I saw her books: English novels and some repellently sentimental poetry.”

  “Hmph,” said Brasseur with a glance at the small, crowded bookshelf by his desk. For his own pleasure he read, besides the newspapers, only epic poetry and the plays of Corneille, Racine, and a selection of classical Roman autho
rs in translation; dramatic tragedy, he claimed, kept petty human affairs in 1796 in their proper proportion.

  “Margot said such girls usually want to be the heroines of novels themselves. They long for romance, peril, and a happy ending with a wedding. Put a good-looking, smooth-tongued, unscrupulous young man in front of them, and they’ll be on their backs before you can blink.”

  Brasseur nodded sagely. “My eldest’s like that. It’ll be the devil’s own job keeping her honest in a year or two. Do you think Célie’s young man had already had her?”

  “God knows. So the question now becomes, who is he? And did he kill her? Could he have killed her in a fit of jealousy because of the secret Saint-Ange discovered?”

  “We’ve no evidence that he saw any strangers that day, or wrote to anybody,” Brasseur grumbled. “If this man learned the dirt, he didn’t learn it from Saint-Ange.”

  Aristide gathered up a handful of the letters and glanced over them again, shaking his head. “Brasseur, if the murderer had confined himself to burning Saint-Ange’s brains, I’d say good riddance and hunt no further. But the man who could kill that poor, silly, harmless girl—” He sighed and thrust the letters in a pocket. “I’m going to talk to the Clément woman again.”

  #

  Rosalie Clément read two of the letters Aristide handed her and paused to shake out her crumpled handkerchief and blow her nose. “Oh, it’s too pathetic. Poor Célie.”

  “Do you think he was sincere in his declarations of love,” Aristide said, “or merely playing a part to dazzle her?”

  Rosalie read another of the letters. “On the whole, I’d guess he was sincere. Célie might not have been able to tell the difference between sincerity and affectation, but I think I could. For one thing,” she added dryly, “a cynical man would have written more gracefully. But the question you ought to ask is: Why was she keeping this whole business so secret?”

  “I don’t understand,” Aristide said, wondering how much else he did not know about young women in love.