* * * * *
He threw aside caution and went straight to Brasseur's headquarters, striding through the anteroom with his satchel and flinging the door to the office wide. To his annoyance, Brasseur found Derville's confession highly entertaining.
"What a merry dance they led us on!" he exclaimed, after he had ceased chuckling. "Despite all, Ravel, you have to laugh?"
Aristide, thinking of his last glimpse of Sophie, did not feel in the least like laughing, but at last permitted himself a faint, sour smile.
"I really ought to have Monsieur Derville up before the commissaire for hindering the investigation," Brasseur said at last. He blew his nose and sat up straighter in his chair. "Although, as you say, he couldn't possibly have known that Beaupr?au was going to make off with the corpse. And, I suppose, that lets Derville off as a possible murderer. He wouldn't have done all that nonsense if he'd cut Saint-Landry's throat himself."
"At least we know Beaupr?au's alive, or he was on Wednesday, at any rate," Aristide said absently.
"So what the devil is he up to? Why steal the body? What good does that do anyone?"
"Perhaps he wanted to keep it from being identified."
"After you and I, and my men, and the morgue attendants, had all seen it? And with the clothes, we were already halfway to identifying it. He'd have done better to steal the clothes, not the corpse."
Aristide reached for one of the glasses of red wine that Brasseur had poured out for them. "You're perfectly right. So why do you steal a body if it's not to prevent identification?"
"Because?because something about the victim could identify his killer?" Brasseur suggested.
"What? How? And that would mean Beaupr?au knows, or suspects, who the killer is. Unless he did it himself."
"That's scarcely likely," Brasseur pointed out, pouring himself another half glass, "after the murderer went to such trouble dressing up the scene with occult symbols and such. Why do all that, just crying out for attention, and then go to even more trouble stealing the corpse?"
"No, no, of course you're right." Aristide clawed at his hair and pushed it impatiently away from his face. "Unless?unless he killed Saint-Landry-or thought he killed him with a blow to the head-and then someone else, after Beaupr?au had gone, had come in and finished him off, with the slit throat and the tongue and and the symbols and so on? We still don't know who's been setting those fires."
"Masonic symbols?" Brasseur growled. "Beaupr?au's a Mason of high rank?it can't possibly be a coincidence, can it? Curse it, if Beaupr?au didn't do it, he must at least suspect who did?"
Aristide thought for a moment, staring at the glinting of the firelight as it reflected off the decanter on the desk between them, and suddenly looked up. "Brasseur-what if Saint-Landry's body wasn't stolen to prevent identification, but to prevent anyone else from seeing and recognizing those Masonic symbols that were left on him? We suspect they were mixed up in something dangerous together-fanning the flames of the diamond necklace affair-and it probably got Saint-Landry murdered."
"And Beaupr?au is doing his best to conceal the Masonic connection by stealing Saint-Landry's body?"
"Exactly. He must have disposed of it somehow, so that it won't be seen again. He may be the only one who knows where it is, not to mention who actually committed the murder."
"Yes, and he's got a title, too," Brasseur grumbled, "so he's practically immune from prosecution unless we have rock-solid evidence against him, and without the body we've got no proof at all; Commissaire Le Roux probably wouldn't even let me try to put him in front of poor Bouille for identification, unless Beaupr?au agreed to it himself. I can't just go to the H?tel de Beaupr?au, with nothing but a wild theory, and start digging up the garden for lost corpses."
"He couldn't have buried Saint-Landry in his own garden, or anyone else's," said Aristide. "It's been too cold; the ground is frozen solid."
"But if he hasn't been buried, he ought to have turned up before now, in the river, in a ditch, in a cellar, in a public privy, somewhere!" Brasseur pushed his wineglass away and sighed. "I'd also like a theory about Saint-Landry's murder that I could put before the commissaire, without worrying that I'd end up in the Bastille myself?"
"But if you did have the body, and proof that Beaupr?au stole it, would that be enough to bring Beaupr?au in for questioning, if you can find him?"
"It might be, though a fellow with money and a title can get away with quite a lot," Brasseur grumbled. "But where in the name of all the saints is it?"
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The Cavalier of the Apocalypse Page 27
