Aristide could feel the familiar queasiness, that dread mingled with triumph that always accompanied an arrest, swelling in the pit of his stomach. He glanced at Brasseur, silently listening to the evidence, and suppressed the temptation to seize his friend’s arm and cry, “Wait--despite everything, I might be wrong--the police and the magistrates have been wrong before--dear God, don’t let us send an innocent man to prison and trial, perhaps to his death.”
“Do you deny you knew the late Citizeness Montereau?”
“Of course not. I was once employed in her father’s household.”
“And you were promptly discharged without a recommendation when Citizen Montereau learned of your past?”
Aubry stiffened. “The duel he’ll have told you about was conducted in an honorable fashion, with witnesses. He’s trying to call me a murderer. He wants to soil my name with a crime that was no crime!”
“Calm yourself, citizen,” said Geoffroy. “Have you forgotten that dueling is, and was, illegal?”
“It was an honorable duel,” Aubry repeated, stepping forward to grasp the ornately scalloped edge of the judge’s table. “Citizen Judge, Montereau has held a grudge toward me for years--he wants to call me a shoddy adventurer--”
“Citizen, control yourself! Do you deny you cherished tender sentiments toward Célie Montereau?”
Aubry swallowed hard. “When I knew her in 1789 and 1790, she was still almost a child. I treated her with courtesy, as my employer’s daughter, but otherwise she meant nothing to me.”
“Did you write this letter to Citizeness Montereau?” Geoffroy said, handing it to Aubry. Aubry did not answer.
“Citizen Montereau has already identified your handwriting,” said Geoffroy irritably. “His identification can be readily confirmed by comparing the handwriting in these letters to that on papers belonging to Director La Revellière-Lépeaux, which were written and initialed by you. Pray don’t waste our time. Perhaps you would like to change your account of your relations with the late citizeness?”
“Yes, damn you,” Aubry whispered, his face working with suppressed emotion, “yes, I wrote these letters.”
“Perhaps you were intent upon making love to the girl without her father’s knowledge, and marrying her for the sake of her undoubtedly ample dowry?”
“That’s a damned lie. I loved her. I loved her more than anything on this earth!”
“So you do not now deny you harbored a tender passion for her?”
“No.”
“And were your sentiments returned?”
“Yes.”
“You were, in fact, lovers?”
“Not in a carnal sense,” Aubry said, reddening. “I don’t approve of such relations before marriage. I would never ask that of a reputable woman.”
“But perhaps you believed the young woman had betrayed your affection with another,” said Geoffroy. Aubry made a slight movement.
“No.”
“And overcome with rage, you confronted her, and the man you thought to be her lover, and killed them both.”
“No!”
“The police official who brought you here for questioning has testified that you showed no surprise at being accused of Citizeness Montereau’s murder.”
“That’s a lie! Of course I was surprised--I didn’t do it. But I knew she--she was dead. Word travels fast in the circles I move in. Everyone knew about it.”
Aristide shifted position and hazarded another glance at Aubry. The young man was livid and trembling, though whether with fear, anger, indignation, or anguish he could not tell.
“I loved Célie! I’d never have hurt her!”
“Even when she had deceived you, or was unfaithful to you?” inquired the judge, silkily.
“I loved her. . . . Oh God, I loved her . . .” Tears began to spill down Aubry’s cheeks and he hid his face in his hands, shoulders heaving.
“Calm yourself. Do you deny you went to Rue du Hasard, in the Butte-des-Moulins section, on the evening of the tenth of this month, with the purpose of murdering Célie Montereau and Louis Saint-Ange?”
“Yes. I deny it. I would never have hurt Célie!”
“Can you give an account of your whereabouts on the said evening?”
“I--I went out. For a walk.”
“Your servant states that you did not return until two o’clock in the morning. You went out for an evening stroll lasting eight or nine hours?”
“Yes. I--I just walked. Here and there. I went to the Tuileries Gardens for a while.”
“Did you see anyone there whom you knew, who can corroborate your story?”
“N-no. I don’t think so.”
“Have you any proof whatsoever of this long excursion? A bill from a café? A waiter who might remember your face? Can you name any witness who might remember you?”
“I--I don’t think so.”
“In short, you have no proof that you were elsewhere at the time of the murders,” said Geoffroy, turning to his notes. “What was the substance of the letter you received on the tenth of Brumaire?”
“Nothing,” Aubry muttered, after an infinitesimal pause. “Nothing important.”
“Still, I imagine it wasn’t a blank sheet of paper?”
“It--it was from a lady. A private matter.”
“A lady? Citizeness Montereau?”
“No! A--a courtesan.”
“Her name?”
“Émilie. I don’t know her surname or anything about her. I swear to you, I never did this! Someone is falsely implicating me--Montereau has hated me for years--or perhaps it’s a political matter, someone who wants to injure Citizen La Revellière-Lépeaux by defaming me--”
Judge Geoffroy announced that the accused might retire for a moment to collect himself, and meanwhile called the witness Grangier. An usher returned with the porter from Rue du Hasard, looking hideously uncomfortable in an ancient, moth-eaten worsted coat. He thrust his dilapidated three-cornered hat under his arm and repeated his description of what he had seen in the early evening of the tenth of Brumaire.
“Do you recognize this man?” Geoffroy said when the usher had escorted Aubry into the chamber once more.
Grangier peered at Aubry, squinting and frowning. Aubry stood stiff and motionless, avoiding his scrutiny, his face unreadable.
“No, Citizen Judge,” Grangier said at last, “I don’t know him.”
Aristide straightened and glanced at Brasseur, who met his eyes, scowling. A denial from Grangier was the last thing they had expected.
“Look at him again,” said Geoffroy, “and be sure of your testimony. Have you ever seen this man before?”
“No,” Grangier said after a moment. “I don’t think so.”
“Is this not the man you saw running past the door of your lodging on the evening of the tenth?”
The porter stepped closer. At last he grimaced and turned back to the magistrate. “It might have been, Citizen Judge. But I couldn’t swear to it.”
“Describe again the man you saw on the night of the murders.”
“He was young,” mumbled Grangier, “and he had long, dark hair and a dark coat and hat, and boots. That’s all. Young and dark and thinnish.”
“That might describe a great many men,” said the judge. “Pray be more precise. How tall was the man you saw? How did he wear his hair?”
“About as tall as me, or a little less,” Grangier said promptly. “His hair was tied back with a ribbon--and--and his hat was round, with a low crown.”
Aubry started and cast a swift glance at the porter.
“Your portrait could describe this man before you, could it not?” said Geoffroy.
“What I mean to say is,” Grangier stammered, “this citizen might have been the man. He’s about the same height and so on. But I’d had a glass or two of eau-de-vie and it was getting dark, and I couldn’t swear to it. I think it was somebody else I saw.”
“Citizen Grangier.” Geoffroy leaned his elbows on the table befo
re him and pressed his fingertips together. “Will you, or will you not, testify that you saw this man?”
Grangier glanced from the judge to Aubry and back again before reluctantly replying. “No, citizen. He could have been the man, but I couldn’t take my oath on it.”
Damnation, Aristide said to himself, mentally removing Grangier from the ranks of witnesses for the prosecution to those of the defense. And what if, a small persistent voice within him whispered, what if he is speaking perfect truth, and Aubry is not the man who rushed down those stairs from that scene of death?
Judge Geoffroy dismissed Grangier and sat for a moment in silence, staring down at the dossier before him.
“Citizen Aubry,” he said at last, “I doubt any man here has forgotten a certain recent crime, or the notorious trial and verdict that resulted from it. And each of us holds his own opinion as to whether justice was done, or whether an innocent man was put to death, because of testimony by witnesses who may have been deceived in their identification. For myself, I cannot find it in my conscience to send a man to trial on a capital charge, on the strength of such circumstantial evidence alone. Philippe-Marie-Joseph Aubry, I find insufficient evidence here to hold you on suspicion of murder at this time. You may go.”
The gendarmes stepped away from Aubry. He stood motionless for an instant, letting out a long, sighing breath. Aristide turned away from the spy hole and glanced at Brasseur.
“Now what?”
“We go on looking for evidence,” said Brasseur, with a gloomy shrug. “And we don’t let that pretty-faced whelp out of our sights.”
Aristide eyed him for a moment, envying his friend his phlegmatic confidence. “What if he is just as innocent as he says?” He shook his head, frustrated, and strode from the room.
CHAPTER 17
“Aubry,” Aristide said, reaching for his sleeve, when the young man had broken away from the handful of well-wishers surrounding him in the corridor outside the magistrate’s chambers.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“I’m the man who tracked you down.”
“Haven’t you done enough, then?” Aubry said, brushing past him toward the door. “Keep away from me.”
Aristide kept pace with him as he flung open the door and hurried down Rue des Arts. “If you’re innocent, tell me the truth and allow me to find the real murderer.”
“I’ve been telling the truth.”
“No, you haven’t. Where were you, really, on the evening of the tenth? You must have been somewhere,” Aristide added brutally, “if you weren’t on Rue du Hasard, shooting Célie Montereau. If it wasn’t you Grangier saw, who was it?”
“How on earth should I know?”
Aristide drew a deep breath and forced himself to pause a moment before replying. “You damned fool, you’re not making this any better for yourself. They may have released you today, but that doesn’t mean the police won’t pick you up again as soon as they can collect more evidence against you. Somebody shot those two people. If you weren’t the man with the round hat whom the porter saw, then probably the man with the round hat shot them. So if you can think of any other young men who would have a motive to murder Célie, for whatever reason, you had better tell me now.”
“A round hat,” Aubry said. He gestured Aristide aside into a narrow side street, out of the busy foot traffic. “That man mentioned a low-crowned round hat. I don’t own a hat like that.”
“That’s scarcely evidence.”
“But it’s the truth. I detest the style. Ask my servant. It wasn’t I.”
“Who might it have been?”
“I haven’t the least idea.”
“What about this woman, this Émilie?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Aubry said uneasily.
Aristide sighed. “For God’s sake, is that what this is all about? Are you too embarrassed to state where you were on the tenth because you spent the evening at a brothel?”
“No!”
“Aubry, I’ve studied you,” Aristide told him. “I knew what you were before I knew your name. I know you present a certain face to the world, of a man who wants to believe the woman he loves is pure and saintly. I imagine you’d like to believe that of yourself, as well, but in truth . . . perhaps you have baser tastes.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aubry said, keeping his voice level.
“I don’t know or care what sort of revolting amusements you may enjoy in private,” Aristide continued relentlessly, “though I can understand you might be reluctant to have them made public. But if faced with a choice of temporary discomfiture or the guillotine, I know which I would choose.”
“I wasn’t at a brothel!” Aubry insisted. “I just went for a walk. The--her letter upset me, and--and I went for a long walk to sort out matters in my head.”
“If this prostitute knew your address, then she must know you rather well. Where can we find her?”
Aubry began to pace, hands balled into fists at his side. “She--I don’t know anything about her. She’s just a girl I picked up one evening. She--wrote me to accuse me of cheating her, that half of the notes I’d given her were counterfeit.”
“Were they?”
“I’ve no idea.” He leaned back with an fretful sigh against the nearest wall, arms folded, the great dark eyes wide and troubled. “I didn’t do this. I loved Célie and I’d never have hurt her. Why must this have anything to do with me? Couldn’t an enemy of this man Saint-Ange have killed him?”
“And then killed Célie because she witnessed the murder?”
“Yes, exactly.”
Aristide shook his head. “The evidence suggests otherwise. Do you know where I can find this Émilie? Where did you meet her?”
“At--at the Pont-Neuf. I took her home with me.”
“Did your servant see her when you brought her home?”
“No. I’d given Brelot the evening off.”
“What about the porter?”
“I--I don’t know. I don’t think he saw us.”
“Why,” Aristide said, “were you so upset, when she accused you of cheating her, that you required eight hours of fresh air to sort matters out?”
“Wouldn’t you be upset if you were accused of passing bad notes? They guillotine counterfeiters. Or--or she might have been working up to extorting payment from me. Whores do that.”
“Good God, Aubry, I’m more astonished at the bachelor who hasn’t, at one time or another, brought a whore to his apartment. Do you always construct an ox out of an egg?”
“She upset me,” Aubry muttered.
“So you still can’t say where you were that evening, or produce a witness?”
“I tell you, I just walked about. I was very disturbed. I had a drink of eau-de-vie from an old spirit peddler near the Jacobin Club; an old hag with a cask. Ask her.”
“One peddler, a fortnight ago? You’re asking a good deal. You realize, don’t you, that the moment the police discover any further evidence they can use against you, you’ll be back in front of the magistrate again, and the next time he may not be so lenient. You had better offer a stronger alibi than a long, solitary ramble.”
“How am I supposed to prove a negative?” Aubry said. “Why should I have provided myself with proof of where I was? Please, for God’s sake, believe me. I know it looks bad--”
“I know perfectly well that the evidence, what evidence we have, points toward both your guilt and your innocence,” Aristide said. “Listen--nothing terrifies me more than the thought of mistakenly causing a man’s death. I want to believe you’re telling the truth, and that some proof, somewhere, can vindicate you. To be honest, I don’t think I like you much; but if you’re innocent, you shouldn’t be punished for something you didn’t do.”
Aubry stared across the alley, blinking away the tears glittering in his eyes in the shaft of watery autumn sunshine that lanced across him. “I loved Célie so much,” he whispered.
“No
doubt you did,” Aristide said, more softly. “But thus far, all you have in your favor is that our eyewitness refused to identify you. And I fear, in the end, that that may not be enough to keep you out of prison. If you can’t tell me anything else that would prove you were elsewhere when Célie and Saint-Ange were murdered, then I can’t help you. You’re sure you have no idea who this young man with the round hat could be?”
“None.”
“A relative of Célie’s? A jilted suitor? An enemy?”
“Célie couldn’t possibly have had any enemies.”
“She had one,” Aristide said.
#
“You look dreadful,” said Rosalie, that evening in Madame Deluc’s parlor. “What’s the matter?”
“Judge Geoffroy interrogated Aubry today. . . .”
“So? Why do you look as if you’d just lost your dearest friend?”
“That’s not amusing--”
“Oh, God,” she said, coloring. “I’m sorry.”
“Never mind.”
“You do look ill. Perhaps you ought to get away from Paris. Take a holiday in the country for a few days.”
“I can’t take a holiday. Not while this affair is still unfinished.”
“Unfinished?” she echoed him, startled.
“The porter from Saint-Ange’s house wouldn’t identify Aubry. Judge Geoffroy let him go.”
“What?”
“He wouldn’t identify him. Or couldn’t. He saw a stranger who rushed into the house at the right time, but he wouldn’t swear before the judge that Aubry was the man.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed, her lips trembling. After a long silence she drew a deep, sighing breath. “We must talk, in privacy. Will you come with me to the Port Salut tavern?”
At the nearby tavern he followed her to a table for two and threw himself down in the nearest chair as she ordered a glass of red wine from the servant girl. “You prefer coffee, don’t you,” she added, turning to him. “Or perhaps you want something else. Wine? Eau-de-vie?”
When the servant had gone to fetch their order Rosalie leaned across the table and fixed him with an accusing glare. “Now. What happened?”
He described Aubry’s interrogation from first to last. Their drink arrived in the midst of his tale and he immediately gulped down half a glassful of brandy, taking perverse pleasure in its fierce burn.
GAME OF PATIENCE (Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries) Page 17
