The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

by Susanne Alleyn

4

  Tuesday, 10 January

  Aristide saw nothing more of Brasseur over the next few days, but the following Tuesday a brisk knocking roused him not long after the winter dawn. He opened the door to a rough-looking, black-clad man whom he did not recognize.

  "Monsieur Ravel? I work for Inspector Brasseur, and he said you're to come with me."

  Aristide stared at him, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Are you sure you have the right man? What have I done?"

  "You're not under arrest, monsieur," the man said woodenly. "But Inspector Brasseur believes you might be of some help to him."

  "Let me dress, then." He broke the skin of ice in the washbasin, splashed some frigid water on his face and hands, and pulled on his clothes, mystified. Brasseur would just have to find him sleepy-eyed and unshaven, he thought grudgingly. Whatever could the fellow want from him?

  In his shabby black suit, he realized he must have looked as if he were merely one more police official. A few early-going laborers gave the two of them sour glances as they climbed into a waiting fiacre; in the opinion of many, particularly in the poorer quarters, the police existed to make trouble for ordinary folk who wanted only to be let alone. Let their house catch fire, however, Aristide mused, or let them be cheated at the horse market or learn that their unmarried daughter was expecting, and they would avail themselves of the services of the police quickly enough.

  The morning was foggy and gray, with an icy breeze that bit through his thin overcoat. The fiacre rattled northward, toward the heart of the city. Aristide recognized the dome of the Sorbonne as they passed. At last they alighted near one of the bridges to the ?le de la Cit?, by the high iron gates of a small, dismal churchyard. Six- and seven-story apartment houses rose up all around the church, the walls facing the cemetery blank and windowless to keep the inhabitants from emptying their chamber pots onto consecrated ground. Below them, a narrow rectangle of gabled stone arcades, the charnels, surrounded the half-acre of stony earth.

  The gates, usually chained and padlocked at that early hour of the morning, stood open. A ragged beggar woman crouched beside them, mutely thrusting out an open palm.

  "Where are we?" Aristide said, dodging the beggar.

  "Churchyard of St. Andr? des Arts," said his escort, stepping back and gesturing him inside. "If you please, monsieur." Aristide glanced dubiously at him, but the man merely pointed toward a few figures moving about.

  He carefully picked his way forward across the uneven ground, past dog droppings, limp tufts of last summer's weeds, a few yellowed bones poking through the frozen soil, and a handful of mossy, weather-beaten stone crosses and monuments that leaned drunkenly, a fine glaze of ice glistening on them. The usual pungent smell of decay was absent here, though the oldest cemeteries of Paris were disastrously overcrowded from five or six hundred years of constant use; in the past century, they had been packing in the burials far too close to the surface of the rancid earth. This churchyard, Aristide thought, small, central, and ancient as it was, had probably been closed to burials for decades for reasons of public health.

  Brasseur's voice rose nearby and he moved a few paces closer, curious.

  "See, I don't give a damn whether you're in league with a band of thieves or with every pervert in Paris," Brasseur roared at a glowering sexton, thrusting his police card into the man's face. "Last chance: Who paid you to leave the gate unlocked last night?"

  "I didn't mean no harm," the man said sullenly. "It wasn't no thief. Thought he wanted to meet one of his fancy boys here, didn't I? Thought maybe he wanted someplace quieter for his indecent doings than the public gardens."

  "You thought he wanted to arrange a tryst in a cemetery in the middle of the night, did you, when it's been cold enough all month to freeze your balls off?"

  "I didn't know and I didn't care. I've got four brats to feed, and the price of bread's gone up half again what it was a month ago." The sexton jerked a thumb backward at the stone monuments. "And they're past caring what goes on at night. Where's the harm?"

  "Describe him."

  "It was dark. Didn't get a good look at him."

  "Well? You must have seen something."

  "He wore a cloak and a wide-brimmed hat."

  "What else? Young, old, tall, short, what?"

  "Tallish, youngish, sounded high-class."

  "High-class clothes?"

  "Couldn't tell under the cloak. He didn't want to be seen, see?"

  "When?"

  "Day before yesterday, in the evening. He came by as I was locking the gates and said there was forty sous in it for me if I'd do him a favor by forgetting to do it next day. I lock the churchyard up at sunset, like the law tells us to-"

  "Except when somebody greases your palm to forget," Brasseur finished for him. "All right, get out of here. And if I hear you've been forgetting to lock the gates again, I'll have your skin."

  The sexton shambled off toward the church, spitting behind a tombstone as Brasseur turned away. A moment later Brasseur saw Aristide and approached him, offering a hand, a silent subinspector clutching a notebook dogging his footsteps. "Good morning, Monsieur Ravel. It's kind of you to come at this hour."

  "Your agent gave me little choice, monsieur inspector," Aristide said. "What is it you want from me?"

  "Ah. Well, to be honest, I wanted your opinion on something. You're an educated man?"

  "I don't know how I could help you," Aristide said, looking about. Brasseur pointed toward the rows of covered charnels, fourteen feet high, that formed the walls of the cemetery. Every Parisian churchyard that was still admitting burials excavated hundreds of decades-old bones each year from the old mass graves and systematically moved them into the charnels, to make room for the fresh corpses of the city's poor that soon refilled the twenty-foot-deep trenches.

  "There, monsieur. The western side. Maybe you could give your opinion as to what the devil those signs mean?"

  Aristide followed him to the charnels. Before him, daubed on the stone arch in dull reddish brown, was a symbol he thought he recognized.

  "Would you know what that is?" Brasseur inquired, behind him.

  "It?it's a compass and square, I believe," he said. "It's a symbol the Freemasons use, or so I've heard."

  "You're not a Freemason yourself, monsieur?"

  "No. I'm not one for ceremonies and rituals."

  "A Masonic compass and square," Brasseur repeated, jotting down a few words in a small notebook as the subinspector began scribbling his own notes. "I thought so, too, but I might have been mistaken. Come to think of it, that fire at St. M?dard, it was laid out in something like a hollow square, but it could have been that compass-and-square pattern just as well, with the two sets of arms overlapping, don't you think?"

  Aristide thought about it, surprised, and at last nodded.

  "That's very helpful, monsieur," Brasseur continued. "Those Freemasons, they don't often like the police, you know, and they wouldn't spare the time of day for the likes of me. What about that, then?"

  Aristide followed his gaze and discovered, to his shock, a five-pointed star laid out on the ground, a crude circle ringing it, the lines composed of long human bones. "Good God!" Irresistibly he raised his eyes to the open charnel behind it. Near the peak of the roof, it was obvious the neatly stacked bones had been disturbed.

  "Would you say that's a Masonic symbol, too?" Brasseur said.

  "I?I believe so. A pentagram. Monsieur, as I said, I'm no Mason. Wouldn't it be more useful to ask a genuine Freemason for his opinion, or a scholar well-versed in ancient mysticism and so on?"

  "Maybe, maybe not. If a Mason is behind this nasty bit of work, they won't be too willing to lend us a hand, will they? What I hear is, they protect their own." He turned about and gestured Aristide onward. "One more thing, monsieur."

  Aristide followed him and the secretary to a nearby section of the charnels that was clear of bones but crowded with several uniformed guards of the city watch. The arcade reminded him st
rangely of the Palais-Royal and he glanced away, fixing his gaze on a battered old stone cross bearing the nearly illegible name of some noble family that had probably died out a century or two before.

  "Here, monsieur. If you'd just take a look and tell me what you think."

  Steeling himself for another macabre display, Aristide turned back to the charnel. At a word from Brasseur, the men moved aside to reveal a rough square of cloth on the ground. Brasseur strode forward and with a single swift movement flung aside the sheet.

  "Any ideas?"

  Aristide stared. Before him lay, not dry bones, but the sprawled, supine body of a man, his throat cut, shirt drenched in blood.

  Though he wanted to look away, Aristide's gaze was drawn irresistibly to the wound, gaping obscenely like a vast grin, and the severed vessels of the neck. After an instant, he spun about, pressing his hand to his mouth.

  "For God's sake!" he exclaimed, after drawing a deep breath and deciding he was not, after all, going to be sick. "Was that necessary?"

  Brasseur said nothing, but gazed at him, meeting his eyes. Aristide stared back, indignant. After a moment, Brasseur looked away, sighed, and muttered to himself, "Ah, well, it was worth a try."

  "What was worth-" Aristide began. Suddenly the meaning of it all-Brasseur's bringing him there, his casual questioning, his sudden revealing of the corpse, and his searching gaze-became clear to him. "You bastard," he said, before remembering it was not wise to insult the police. "You think I did this, don't you?"

  Slowly Brasseur nodded. "It crossed my mind."

  "I never-"

  "What I said about there being a lot of funny sorts about," Brasseur calmly interrupted him, "freethinkers and such?well, they're usually young, educated, thwarted fellows like yourself, with a lot of ambition and nowhere to go, who have a bone to pick-if you'll excuse the expression, just here-with the folk in charge. And often they're Freemasons, even if they joined only to make the right connections and find a patron. With you so handy at one of the fires, and living right in the quarter near a couple of them, and then what you told me about your father-I thought I'd keep my eye on you."

  A frigid breeze gusted across the cemetery and Aristide shouldered himself more snugly into his overcoat, feeling a chill from more than the breeze. "Because I might hold a grudge against the Church and the king."

  "That's it, monsieur."

  "And now you don't think I do?"

  "Oh, no, lad, I'm pretty sure you do. But I'm pretty sure, also, that you didn't kill that fellow. You see, Monsieur Ravel," he continued pleasantly, turning away from the corpse, "when you have your suspicions of somebody and you put him right in front of what you think he's done, if he really did do it he usually reacts in one of two ways. He either flinches back and changes color and can't help looking guilty, because he thinks we know everything and we're just about to nab him; or else he smirks and looks terribly pleased with himself, because, like most criminals, he's a conceited little prick, and he thinks we're fools and that he's going to get away with it."

  "And I did neither."

  "That's right."

  "I might be one of the few who can manage not to betray themselves either way."

  "Yes," Brasseur said, "you might be, at that. But I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Just for the record, though, where were you last night around midnight?"

  "Arriving home from the Caf? Manoury," Aristide said promptly. "I left at half past eleven."

  "And you live down by La Salp?tri?re, don't you? That's a good half-hour walk. Any proof you got home when you say you did? Anybody see you who knows you?"

  "No, of course not; not at that hour."

  Brasseur eyed him. "Well, it's no worse an alibi than I'd expect. Now if you were suddenly to give up your lodgings and disappear, I'd begin to wonder. But if you stay put and don't give me any cause to ask questions, then I think we can afford to let you run along home now."

  "I'm free to go?"

  "Lord, yes. Or-wait-I'd been meaning to ask you about something else. Know if the skull and crossbones means anything besides a pirate flag?"

  "I've no idea. Why?"

  "Because those little heaps of bones," Brasseur said, pointing to the bones at the corpse's head and feet, "got dislodged while those fools from the Guard were tramping around the place, looking for a murderer who'd been gone for hours-"

  "When?did it happen?"

  "The sexton found him at about five, but he was already stone-cold. Sometime in the middle of the night, I gather. I'd guess those bones were arranged at first more like a pattern of a skull and crossbones, wouldn't you say?"

  "It's possible."

  "Another Masonic symbol, maybe. But if you say you don't know?well, no need to stand about in this miserable cold. Get along home."

  Aristide took three steps toward the gate before pausing and glancing over his shoulder. Something about the horrid corpse fascinated him, despite his qualms. "Who is he?" he said suddenly. "Do you know?"

  "Our victim here?" Brasseur said, half amused at his sudden curiosity. "No. Hasn't any papers on him, and he's been robbed, maybe by the murderer, or else some passing lowlife saw the open gate and just seized his moment to strip him down to his waistcoat."

  The scavengers would probably have taken the shirt and waistcoat, too, Aristide thought, if they had not been so sodden with blood.

  "No overcoat, hat, pocket-book, jewelry, peruke, or shoes," Brasseur continued. "Those are the first things to go, of course, since they're easy to lift." He sighed. "They got the coat and culotte, too, even though it takes a bit more time and effort to undress a corpse. But what's left seems to indicate a bourgeois with some means, or a gentleman; that should make it easier. Eventually he'll be missed, and his family, if he's got any, will come looking for him at the morgue. If he's from out of town, then heaven help us. Might never be identified."

  After the first shock had passed, Aristide found he could look at the corpse, though he avoided glancing at the bloody throat. As Brasseur had mentioned, the man wore no wig, coat, breeches, or shoes and the sight of his underlinen and stockinged feet seemed oddly pathetic on such a cold morning.

  "Why?"

  "Why kill him? I've no more idea than you do, monsieur. Though I'd make a guess that he interrupted our madman in the middle of his deviltry." He pointed at a small pile of kindling that lay at the base of one of the old stone crosses. "See the flask there? It's half full of lamp oil. Looks as if the fellow who's been setting these fires was just about to light another, and the other man came to the churchyard and stumbled on him, and got killed for his pains."

  "But why slit his throat?" Aristide objected. "Surely, if you're interrupted while you're setting a fire, and you have to stop the man before he raises the alarm, you're not going to take the time to pull out a knife from beneath your coat. You'd snatch up the first thing at hand, a stick of wood, say, and knock him senseless with it. And you wouldn't kill him, necessarily. Cutting his throat seems?excessive."

  "Unless he recognized you, of course," said Brasseur.

  "Very well, unless he knew you and recognized you. But still, you'd want to act quickly. He could be gone by the time you got hold of your knife. And if this madman is an educated man, as you suggest, then he's not of the class who would normally carry a knife at all. A pocket pistol, perhaps, or even a sword, but not a knife."

  "You've a point there," Brasseur conceded. He gestured to the secretary to continue taking notes. "Well, then, say it happened your way. You're kneeling over a pile of kindling and fiddling with a tinderbox or a pot of hot coals. Stranger walks in and bumps up against you and demands to know what the devil you're doing on top of his family monument."

  "Why does he walk in? What would a bourgeois be doing in a graveyard in January in the middle of the night?"

  "You're suggesting they planned to meet here?"

  "Especially if one of them bribed the sexton to leave the gate unlocked after dark."

  "
That might have been just to make it easier for himself."

  "Were there gates left unlocked at the other cemeteries, or do you think someone climbed the wall?"

  "No, he seems to have climbed the wall the rest of the time," said Brasseur. "Go on: You're the madman and the other fellow sees you. Maybe he was just passing by and noticed the flame, and came in to satisfy his curiosity."

  "I jump to my feet," Aristide said, suiting the action to the word, "and grab whatever's nearest. A stick, my firepot, a broken piece of stone-even a bone-and I go for him. He mustn't escape to raise the alarm and get me arrested. I take a good swing at him and perhaps we struggle for a moment." He examined the stony ground and found a few blurred, trampled marks in the loose gravel amid the pebbles and dead weeds. "Were those there, or did your men make a mess of the place?"

  "A bit of both, I expect," Brasseur said, nodding. "Go on, then."

  "We struggle. Finally I get the better of him and stun him with a good blow to the head." He paused. "Though if all I want to do is make my escape?"

  "Then, as you said, why cut his throat?"

  "Why, indeed, unless I have some other motive?"

  "Well," Brasseur said, "you're absolutely right about what happened. The police surgeon was here about half an hour ago, and what he told us was, once you took the medical Latin rubbish out of it, that the man had bled to death, but he had a fine bloody bump on the side of his head that would probably have knocked him out before his throat was cut." He stopped and looked hard at Aristide. "You may be too clever for your own good, Monsieur Ravel."

  "If I were the guilty party," Aristide retorted, "do you think I'd hang about, explaining to you what must have happened?"

  "You might," said Brasseur, "if you were one of those smug fellows who thinks the police are fools. But," he added glumly, "I don't think you are. For one thing, the man who committed this murder would have got some blood on him, and here you are still wearing your only suit of clothes, with no bloodstains to be seen."

  "Thank you?I think."

  "So that leaves us," Brasseur mused, "with the alternative. The victim wasn't murdered because he had the bad luck to stumble over our fire-setting madman; the madman meant to do for him all along. That would fit with the unlocked gate. This time, he wanted the gates unlocked so that the other man could get in without any fuss. Yes, I think the meeting was prearranged, and our man knocked the victim out and then cut his throat to be sure."

  "Or what if," Aristide said abruptly, "the dead man was actually the man who was setting the fires?"

  Brasseur wheeled about and stared at him for a moment. "Death of the devil. Never thought of it that way. You're saying he could have been killed to stop him from setting his fires and smearing his daubs on the church walls."

  "Why not?"

  "That throws a whole new light on it, doesn't it? Looking at it the other way round, if these symbols are Masonic, like you suggested, then either he's doing it because he's a fanatical Mason and freethinker and hates the Church and the king and everything they stand for-"

  "Or else he hates the Freemasons and wants to throw suspicion on them, destroy their reputation, brand them as sacrilegious heathens," Aristide finished for him. "And either way, other Masons might have killed him in order to defend their reputation."

  Brasseur grinned and clapped him on the back.

  "You've a fine head on your shoulders, Ravel! We could use you in the police."

  "Thank you, no. I have other plans." And, Aristide thought, they did not include hanging about a gory corpse in a churchyard on an icy January morning. "Good day, monsieur."

  "Right, you're going to be the next Voltaire, aren't you."

  Aristide heard Brasseur softly chuckling behind him as he bowed and strode out to the street.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~