by T. F. Banks
“But that could have been a ruse. Perhaps the count and his beautiful young mistress planned to return to France together and leave the countess and her children behind to suffer forever in… England.”
Morton reached for his wine goblet. Arabella had arrived with a fine, dark Bordeaux-the first of the legal wines to cross the Channel. It was from an admirer, she'd told him, making Morton only slightly uncomfortable. But when a woman had as many admirers as the acclaimed Arabella Malibrant, one must make peace with it. Morton sipped his wine and tried not to think of its source.
“I suppose anything is possible.” Beyond a certain point he found that this kind of speculation offered little return. He needed to speak with the Count d'Auvraye, find out where the man had been during the night of the murder, discover why he had cast Angelique Desmarches aside. Morton needed to take the measure of the man and watch him as he answered questions. There were many things Morton would need to learn before he could begin to speculate.
“Do you know what I do find odd?” Morton said suddenly. “The dressmaker, Madame De le C?ur; she claimed not to know Angelique Desmarches well, though her grief at the news belied this.”
“We both noted that.” Arabella plucked her wine goblet from the small side table that Morton had moved within her reach. He often felt like a creature utterly without grace beside her.
“Indeed we did. But Angelique Desmarches's servants told me that Madame De le C?ur or her daughter came to visit often-at times when they had no business to transact.”
“They might have been collecting bills, or trying to.”
“But Madame De le C?ur said specifically that Madame Desmarches paid her bills on time. Do you remember?”
“I don't, but I would never doubt your memory, Henry.”
Arabella returned her glass to the table in a rustle of silk, enticing Morton's mind for a moment to things more romantic.
“If she was a friend of the poor woman who was murdered, why did she not say so?” Arabella asked.
“I have wondered the same thing.”
“Fear of Bow Street?”
“She did not seem afraid. When first we arrived, I believe she was a little disdainful, as though vexed that a mere Runner would dare disturb her.” Morton closed his eyes and tried to recall the conversation to its smallest detail. After a moment he opened his eyes. “There is something odd there. I believe I shall speak to Madame De le C?ur again.”
“I will do it for you, if you like,” Arabella said. “Perhaps she was less than truthful with you, Henry, but you are more intimidating than you realise.”
“I was a perfect gentleman.”
“Indeed you were-a perfect gentleman of six foot three inches height, twelve plus stone. Not to mention that you represent the law of a foreign land.” She smiled. “Leave Madame De le C?ur to me. I think her daughter was rather pleased to have me appear in their establishment. Do you remember she paid me a very fine compliment?”
“Did she indeed? Odd that you would remember that.”
“ ‘Man can be cured of every folly but vanity. ’ ”
It was a quote, clearly, but not one Morton recognised. He took a guess. “Dr. Johnson?”
“Rousseau!”
Morton nodded and took up his glass again.
“You are in low spirits this evening, my love,” Arabella said.
“Am I? It is this murder, I suppose,” Morton said, knowing it was a lie. The visit to his half-sister was at the heart of his mood, and he knew it. How bold she had been to write him! They had more in common than just appearance-he felt that. Yet they were separated by barriers as invisible as borders, and as real.
He opened his mouth to tell Arabella of the letter he had received and the subsequent meeting with his halfsister. But for some reason he could say nothing.
CHAPTER 9
Before knocking at the door of the Count d'Au-vraye's house in Spanish Place, Henry Morton and Jimmy Presley had words with their watcher. Harold Farke had spent the dark hours in the shadows of an elm tree a discreet distance up the way, in Manchester Square. The shutters of most of the houses were closed, their inhabitants gone to the country for the summer, and there was little chance of him being observed or troubled. And Farke was a man who made a fine art of seeming a nondescript but somehow natural prop to almost any scene.
“An old cove came in p'raps an hour after Mr. Presley left me. I figure him to be your count. Came in his coach and didn't go out again. He ought still to be there.”
“Good. Were there others?”
Farke hardly moved as he spoke, lounging against his tree, eyes still coolly fixed on the house across the way. He merely shifted the splinter of wood he was chewing from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Oh, aye. Several folk came, and a few went again.
Gennl'men mostly, and two young ladies. They stayed, and a couple of the other gennl'men stayed, too. Lights on till nigh on one o'clock in the morn.”
Morton dropped a couple of shillings into the man's jacket pocket and murmured, “Commendable, thorough work, Harold. Off you go, now.”
“Ye know where to come at me, if ye need me.”
“How many young ladies does the fellow need?” grunted Jimmy Presley, as Farke drifted away and the two Runners turned to contemplate the count's house.
Morton laughed. “I wouldn't expect they're mistresses, Jimmy. Not openly, here, in his town dwelling. After all, there are other explanations. Besides, I'm reliably informed he has his daughters living here as well as his countess.”
“Bloody French hareem.”
“Nay, that's the Turks you're thinking of. All foreigners are not the same, whatever they may have told you in Cheapside. Let's go have a word.”
Morton had half-expected the Comte d'Auvraye to treat the Bow Street Runners as a kind of tradesmen, to be let in at the servants' entrance, then ushered discreetly through to his office, the way the squire of an English country manor did his tenants. But apparently the police had a different kind of status in the France that d'Auvraye wanted to keep alive. If gentlemen of the police came to call, on the king's business, a certain formality was in order, and the household was expected to present itself.
And they did. After a brief interval waiting in a small gilt-and-white retiring room off the front hall, Morton and Presley were ushered into a salon-red-carpeted, richly furnished-in which the count stood amidst his family, as if posing for a group portrait. He bowed, and the two Runners responded in kind, awkwardly enough. There were no handshakes. Morton's quick glance took in some large bright paintings in what looked to be the style of Watteau, and a couple of small marble statues on wooden stands.
“Monsieur Morton, Monsieur Presley, I am Gerrard d'Auvraye. Permit me to introduce my intimates.” His voice was gravely polite, slow, and only slightly accented. The man himself was above fifty years of age and dressed with subtle splendour in a costume in which silver predominated and that would not have looked out of place in a royal court. He wore a full powdered wig and a short goatee. “May I present Madame la comtesse d'Auvraye.”
Morton bowed in the direction of a small, black-eyed lady, also sumptuously dressed in blue silks. She barely raised an eyebrow in response, her face a rigid, powdered mask. If le comte felt that he must present his family to the men from Bow Street, Morton had the distinct impression that his countess felt differently.
“My daughters, Mademoiselle Honoria and Mademoiselle Celestine.”
Two rather fine-looking young ladies, both taller than their mother and dressed in English fashion, performed curtsies.
“I believe you have a box at the theatre, Mr. Morton,” the dark-haired one offered.
“I regret to say that I do not, Mademoiselle Honoria, but I attend often.”
The young woman glanced at her sister, as if to say, An odd pastime for a police constable.
“My son and heir, Monsieur Eustache d'Auvraye.”
A slim, thin-faced, mustachioed young ma
n, he looked much like his mother but had an even more impenetrable air of lofty reserve. His bow was so formal as almost to be a parody, Morton thought. But then, he was not the best judge of such things.
“My cousin, Monsieur Henri Pellerin, of La Rochelle, who is doing us the honour of an extended visit.”
A pale, rather flabby middle-aged gentleman, less well dressed, all deference.
“And finally, my private secretary, Monsieur Rolles.”
A short man, clad more in the English fashion, with a sharp face and a few long strands of hair combed over his almost completely bald pate. His bow was quick and efficient.
“Monsieur Rolles and I will receive you in my own cabinet, if you will be so good as to follow.”
He led them through another door, leaving the assembled family without further ado. As they proceeded sedately down the carpeted hallway, Morton tried to imagine the people in the room they had just left. Were they relaxing now? Dispersing to their several pursuits? Or did they merely sit down in those uncomfortablelooking chairs and grimly await the next summons of paternal authority?
Morton let the count enter his room, then turned to murmur confidentially to the secretary: “Monsieur Rolles?”
“Monsieur?”
Morton indicated Presley with a brief gesture of his head. “My… man,” he said quietly in French, “is not normally… present at my interviews. I wonder if he mightn't be entertained in the kitchen, till we are done?”
Rolles bowed and beckoned for a footman. Jimmy Presley, as he and Morton had planned, was led off to see what he might glean from the servants.
The count's private study was dark, formal, and ornamented more with statues and tapestries than with bookshelves. Rolles closed the door gently behind them, and the three men took straight-backed library chairs in a circle in the midst of the room. Morton had a chance now to study the Count d'Auvraye's face more closely. It was a fine face, with a noble brow and wellproportioned mouth, complemented by the exceedingly closely groomed white goatee. He shone, somehow, with the glow of self-conscious dignity and old prestige, like a Van Dyke portrait. But there was, even so, something slightly static and heavy about him, some absence of lively apprehension, as if all his breeding and education had been unable to prevent a certain obtuseness. Morton recalled Darley's assessment of the man-a ponderous thinker. Morton wondered if Lord Arthur was being overly kind.
Rolles spoke first.
“Monsieur, le comte d'Auvraye has condescended to see you on such short notice out of his profound respect for the king whom you serve and for the nation that has rendered our beloved France such signal services of late, at so great a cost of her best blood. However, the calls upon monsieur le comte's attention are many and pressing just now. His time is very short. I am sure you can appreciate the need for brevity today.”
Morton smiled perfunctorily. “I shall try to oblige monsieur le comte.” This, however, was not entirely candid. Whenever Henry Morton heard that someone's time was short-and he heard it often enough in the course of his duties-he in fact tended to find himself settling more comfortably into his seat, in readiness for a prolonged stay.
Rolles bowed his head in polite gratitude, while the count, very erect in his chair, continued to gaze at them with a fixed and wordless solemnity. “In what manner can we be of assistance to you?” asked the secretary. Morton wondered if the absence of expression on the faces of the two men before him was so complete because it was studied.
“Comte d'Auvraye,” Morton began, “you are acquainted with a young woman of your own nation, Madame Angelique Desmarches.”
“You assume,” began Rolles, “an acquaintance that-”
“Thank you, Monsieur Rolles,” the count interrupted, “but I believe we may speak in all frankness. I know Madame Desmarches, yes.”
For the moment Morton kept his tone scrupulously civil.
“May I presume, then, to ask the nature of your acquaintance with her?”
This question, which might have produced bluster in an English house, seemed not outwardly to trouble the two Frenchmen.
“Madame Desmarches at one time enjoyed my protection.” The count shifted slightly as he spoke, clasping his hands upon his knee. The phrase was stiff enough, of course, but Morton heard a measure of pride in d'Auvraye's voice. Pride, and perhaps… affection? But there was something else, too, that he was not quite able to conceal as he made this admission. Something different. Undercurrents of grief, perhaps disappointment, some still-raw anger.
“You are the owner, then, of the house at number 3, the Hampstead Road?”
A slight pause. This was cutting rather closer. “I am.”
“And a frequent visitor at this dwelling?”
Now, however, Monsieur Rolles interposed, with delicacy. “Monsieur Morton, I am sure you can appreciate that one does not ask a gentleman to speak of such matters in any specific detail.”
Morton had no intention of listening for long to this sort of cant. But he was still interested in the ambiguity in the count's attitude toward his onetime mistress.
The count sat up suddenly, as though he had just wakened. “Monsieur Morton,” he said a bit breathlessly, “why are you asking about Madame Desmarches?”
“She was found dead two mornings ago, monsieur le comte.”
The man's hauteur fell away like a shroud slipping off a body. He turned to his secretary, eyes glittering with tears. He opened his mouth but could produce no sound but a rasping breath.
Rolles stood immediately and reached out to support his employer.
“Our interview is at an end,” the secretary said.
But the count held up a hand, and Morton did not move. It was a long moment before the count could collect himself, and then he turned to Morton. “How did this happen?”
“That is what I wish to learn, Count d'Auvraye. She was found dead a little distance from her home-”
“Could it have been…a suicide?” now Rolles quietly asked.
The count crossed himself. “May God forgive her.”
“It is true that she looked troubled that day-and I believe you know why. But I do not think that self-murder explains her death, messieurs. Nor do I think it was an accident.”
The count shook off his secretary and rose from his chair, unable suddenly to be still. He walked a few paces, restlessly clasping and unclasping his hands. Then he turned back to Morton, blinking quickly.
“Then what, monsieur, was the cause of Madame's death, if I may ask?”
“It seems likely that she died of a fall, but from the window of her home. Her body was then moved to a small sand pit and placed so that it appeared she had thrown herself or fallen onto some rocks.” Morton paused to let these words sink in. The count considered this information, the look of sadness on his face unchanging. Morton glanced at Rolles, who sat on the edge of his chair, eyes fixed on his employer, like a little dog who feared being left behind.
“Monsieur le comte,” Morton said, “I am informed that a man of yours visited Madame Desmarches's house on the day of her death, to evict her.” He turned to the secretary, his voice still polite, but his eye a little harder. “This, I presume, was you, Monsieur Rolles?”
Rolles dipped his head. The count turned to face Morton.
“You ordered Madame Desmarches from her house with but a single day's notice, monsieur le comte? It is my duty to ask why.”
The count raised his eyes again. “It was not kind of me, monsieur. It was not just. I acted in anger. In fact, I commanded that she be dismissed upon the very hour, but Monsieur Rolles, who has the truest instincts of a Christian gentleman, took it upon himself to offer her the shelter of that house for another night, so that she might properly arrange for her departure. When my choler had passed, I respected this decision.”
“I salute Monsieur Rolles's humanity-”
“Monsieur Morton,” Rolles interrupted, “I can assure you that the count has not been to the house of Madame Desmarches in
several days. He has not seen her at all.” He glanced at the count, as though wondering if he were overstepping himself. “Only I have been to see Madame Desmarches, and that is why immediately I suggested self-murder… because I saw Madame when she received the count's decree.” Again a glance at the count as though in apology. “She was disconsolate.”
“I see. And you, Monsieur Rolles? Where were you, the night of the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth of July, this two nights past?”
The man looked more than surprised that Morton would even consider asking him. “Why, I was here, in my chamber, preparing monsieur le comte's correspondence.”
“And who can confirm this?”
The man looked utterly confused. “I-I don't know. I shall have to ask the servants. I was alone, as I often am.”
Morton turned to the count, but Rolles answered for his master, as though having to account for his presence were too great an indignity.
“Monsieur le comte was with your sovereign, monsieur, attending the fete at Carleton House, upon the express invitation of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent. Men of the highest standing will be able to vouch for his presence there. At some hour near upon midnight he returned here and retired.”
Morton looked to the count.
“That is correct,” d'Auvraye said softly.
Well, Morton thought, John Townsend knew the Prince Regent personally. The old Runner would be able to verify the count's claim.
“Who would have wished to harm Madame Desmarches, Count d'Auvraye?”
The count shook his head, his gaze rising to the ceiling for a few seconds. “I cannot say, monsieur. She-she was a woman of great beauty and charm.” The man put a hand to his brow, hiding his eyes a moment.
Long ago John Townsend had impressed upon Morton that it was not his duty to be respectful and considerate in such situations. It was his duty to find out the truth.
“Why did you cast her off, sir?”
It took d'Auvraye a long moment to answer, but finally he looked up. “She betrayed me, monsieur. She betrayed me.”
