The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

by Susanne Alleyn

24

  The footman let them out through a small door that led to the rear courtyard of the palace. Beyond it lay the gardens, in all their clamor and color, bright with lanterns that banished the winter dark. They passed the porter, who opened the gate for them without a word, and stepped into the busy foot traffic along the colonnade.

  "At least Moreau will be pleased," Aristide said at last, "now that we know Beaupr?au is alive and well." He was silent for a moment more as they trudged along.

  "Brasseur," he said suddenly, "we have to consider the likelihood that this Masonic nonsense may all be, as we originally thought, the work of someone who wishes to discredit the Freemasons. Or even of someone who simply wanted to lay a false trail."

  "And you and I," Brasseur grunted, "like good bloodhounds, went bounding after that trail in the approved fashion. Hell and damnation-"

  "We might not have, though," Aristide said, "if Beaupr?au hadn't complicated matters. After all, a few crude symbols, haphazardly scattered about, do not necessarily make a Mason. I think that, without monsieur's interference, we'd have suspected fairly soon that the trail led nowhere."

  He stopped and faced his companion. "Isn't it possible that the solution to this murder is actually a very simple one, dressed up in irrelevant, outlandish trappings so that we wouldn't see how straightforward it really was?"

  "A moment of your time, messieurs?" someone said behind them, before Brasseur could reply. Aristide turned to find Beaupr?au himself, wrapped in an overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat shadowing his face, leaning against a column.

  "Monsieur?"

  Beaupr?au stepped forward and doffed his hat. "I wished to apologize to you both, gentlemen, for leading you on such a wild-goose chase. And to you in particular, Monsieur Ravel, for despatching one of the duke's agents to warn you away from me and my household-though clearly the man didn't do his job as effectively as he should have. Regrettably, it was all necessary. I trust there's no lingering ill will between us?"

  Aristide glanced at Brasseur and, after an instant's pause, they both inclined their heads in the slightest of nods.

  "Inspector," Beaupr?au continued, lowering his voice, "I also trust that this matter of my cousin-for which I do not apologize-is now closed."

  "If the duke says it is, I suppose I have to accept it," Brasseur said stiffly.

  "Let me assure you once again, nonetheless, that I had nothing whatsoever to do with Saint-Landry's death. He was my brother in Freemasonry and my friend. I want his killer brought to justice as sincerely as you do."

  "Any ideas about who might have done it?" said Brasseur. "Somebody in your lodge, maybe, who sniffed out your little plan to stir things up?"

  "I cannot conceive that any member of the Lodge of the Sacred Trinity would wish to work against such a plan, much less murder Saint-Landry. He was universally respected, and well-liked."

  "It's only permissible to murder non-Masons, then, is it?" Aristide snapped, before he could prevent himself.

  Beaupr?au shot him a scathing look. "For the sake of the greater good-"

  "Please, Ravel-monsieur," Brasseur said, holding up a hand, "the matter's closed, as you say, whether we like it or not. Monsieur, is it possible that it was someone outside your own lodge, then? Some other Freemason who thought you gentlemen were going a bit too far?"

  Beaupr?au sighed. "Inspector Brasseur, in the days since I?took steps to conceal Saint-Landry's whereabouts, I've come to the conclusion that I overreacted at hearing what Monsieur Derville had to tell me. I've searched my memory and I cannot think of any possible way in which an outsider could have learned of our strategy regarding Count Cagliostro and the-the jewel. The four of us who discussed these matters-no," he added, as Brasseur opened his mouth to speak, "I'm not telling you the names of the others-"

  "Joubert, the bookseller," Aristide murmured, as if to himself. Beaupr?au darted him a sharp glance before continuing.

  "Our sacred word of honor bound the four of us to silence. No one could have learned of our plans regarding the diamonds. Besides, no sane Freemason would commit such outrages as the desecration of churches or the needless violation of a corpse. The principle of Freemasonry is that it makes good men better. If I were you, messieurs, I'd cease such fruitless investigation and try to learn who else had a motive to see Saint-Landry into his grave."

  "Oh, we have, you can be sure of that," Brasseur said, bristling. "The police aren't quite as stupid as you think, monsieur. It wasn't anybody in his household."

  Beaupr?au smiled slightly. "I'm sure none of the ladies could have done the deed themselves. But I ought to advise you, I know from experience that Madame Saint-Landry is not quite the demure wife that she appears."

  "I suspect," Aristide said, suddenly enlightened, remembering encounters with Eug?nie, "she once cast her eye your way, monsieur?"

  "That woman," Beaupr?au declared, "would cast her eye at anything in breeches. She certainly tried to appeal to me with that wide-eyed, helpless gaze of hers, until I made it abundantly clear to her that, while I found her desirable-and who would not?-I would never betray my friend and fellow Mason in such a fashion. But I assure you that she's not the kind of woman who is content for long with an earnest, dependable, stolid sort of husband, a man of simple tastes, like my late friend." He bowed. "Ever your servant, messieurs. Good evening to you and good luck."

  "A moment, monsieur," Aristide said as Beaupr?au turned away. "Please satisfy my curiosity-why did you disappear as you did, with no word to your household? Merely to confound the police?"

  Beaupr?au smiled. "To be sure. I was spending a few days, as I often do, in my mistress's company. From there I went on to my lodge, where Monsieur Derville found me and told me about Saint-Landry's death. After we took steps to conceal my unfortunate friend's remains, I concluded that, since I'd already been absent from home for two days, it would obscure matters quite nicely, and thwart any possible attempts on my own life, if I were to inexplicably disappear for a while. So I told Mademoiselle S?dillot to say she hadn't seen me to anyone who asked, spent a few hours lying low at Joubert's printing works, and then came here, in secret, late Wednesday night, and appealed to Monsieur d'Orl?ans' hospitality. Nothing more than that."

  "Oh, hell," Brasseur said wearily as Beaupr?au melted into the crowds. "I don't like being taught my job by a self-righteous little sprig of the nobility who's going to quote The Social Contract at me with every other sentence, but he's probably right. All the Masonic symbolism-it could have been so much window-dressing, after all."

  "Someone wanted us to go haring after mad Freemasons," Aristide agreed as they trudged along the colonnade toward the passage to Rue St. Honor?. "And one mad Freemason-or one obsessed with an ideal, at least-inadvertently obliged him by hopelessly confusing matters."

  "A couple of credulous fools, that's what we are?"

  "So what about the alternative? Could it have been madame all the time?"

  "If Beaupr?au is right," Brasseur said, "and Eug?nie Saint-Landry is actually far from being a grief-stricken widow?but people rarely do away with their spouses just because they're tired of them. Usually there's an incentive, like a lover, or a prospective bride with a fat dowry, or else the husband might have been a wife-beating brute-"

  "Mademoiselle Sophie insisted that her brother was the best of men. Between Sophie and the companion, Marguerite, who seems devoted to Eug?nie-if Saint-Landry had treated his wife harshly, I think we'd have learned of it. No, I suspect Saint-Landry was exactly the dull, decent, earnest, honorable man that he seemed. And Eug?nie probably grew bored to death with him and his preoccupation with Freemasonry and his cheeseparing little economies?come to think of it, she's refused to even think of letting the household go into formal mourning until quite recently, you know."

  "Because she doesn't believe her husband's dead."

  "Or so she says. It's also a convenient pretext to have the freedom to slip out and meet a lover. She'd be much more confined, for several months at le
ast, as a new widow. Perhaps it is, indeed, as simple as that."

  Brasseur nodded. "All right, so madame may have found herself a fancy man. But a woman doesn't often kill her husband, or persuade her lover to kill him, simply because she's warming someone else's bed. We'd have a murder every hour if that was so."

  "She must have had some other incentive as well," Aristide agreed, "something that suddenly became significant enough to be a motive for murder. Money?"

  "Didn't you say that his fortune, aside from madame's dowry, goes to Mademoiselle Sophie?"

  "Yes; that can't be it."

  "And the Masonic symbols? If they were there to lay a false trail, how'd she know about them?"

  "Eug?nie's a Freemason herself-or at least a member of some ladies' society that probably models itself very closely on the Freemasons. Sophie told me. With a little basic knowledge, it's easy enough to scrawl a few random symbols that might mean anything. Or perhaps the lover is a Mason."

  Brasseur shook his head, disgusted, as they reached the foot passage out of the gardens. "We never looked too closely at her, you know, because this Masonic business distracted us good and proper. If she's the one, she's cleverer than she looks?"

  "What now, then?"

  "We follow her. Or rather, you follow her."

  "I?"

  "Well, I could put one of my other subinspectors on it, but, as you might have guessed from the way I trust you, you're by far the brightest of them. Why not you? All you have to do is look like someone with a reason to be loafing about on the street. Put on a shabby old suit of clothes, don't shave, and be sure you're not seen."

  "Wednesdays and Saturdays," Aristide said suddenly.

  "Eh?"

  "Wednesday and Saturday afternoons-someone mentioned that those are the days that Madame Saint-Landry goes out to the meetings of her ladies' society. Tomorrow's Wednesday, isn't it?"

  "Let's see if that's really where she's going, shall we?" Brasseur said, frowning as they dodged a pair of prostitutes who were quarreling loudly over territory. "Girls! Enough of that. Break it up, now. I don't care whose patch it is, see?" The women glowered and slunk away as Brasseur clapped Aristide on the shoulder. "Come on, Ravel. Let's call it a night; you look worn out."

  Wednesday, 18 January

  Insisting that his black suit made him detectable a mile off, early the next morning Brasseur escorted Aristide to an old-clothes vendor in the neighborhood and bought him a snuff-stained, frayed moss-green coat that had apparently been handed down, some years before, from a bourgeois master to a servant, and finally discarded even by the servant. "Now you look more like the average odd-job man," he said, looking Aristide over, and thrust a decrepit three-cornered hat at him. "D'you always wear your hair undressed?"

  "Usually." Aristide inspected the hat, which was of doubtful cleanliness, and hoped that no stray lice lurked in it.

  "Tie it back, then, as carelessly as you please. You want to look different enough so that no one'll pay attention to you at the first glance."

  Well, I certainly look different, he mused glumly as he caught sight of his new, unshaven, seedier self in a shop window on the quay, before turning down Rue Pav?e toward Rue de Savoie. He took up a post near the corner and lounged against the nearest wall, not far from a pair of similar loiterers who made desultory conversation. Such odd-job men were all over Paris, idlers without regular employment who earned a few sous a day by hailing public carriages, lugging parcels, delivering messages, carrying well-dressed ladies across muddy streets during rainstorms, or lighting tipsy late-night revelers home through the ill-lit streets.

  At about ten o'clock, Marguerite Fournier and the cook left the house. They returned an hour later, their market baskets full. Aristide had been lounging on the street for some two hours, he guessed, hands in pockets, jingling the small coins he had earned from hailing a fiacre for an elderly lawyer hampered by a cane, when at last the courtyard gate opened. It was not Eug?nie who appeared, however, but Sophie, with the ever-present Victoire. She wore a plain dark gown beneath her cloak and seemed silent and pensive. He watched her pass, a queer tight feeling in his chest.

  An hour and a half later, they returned. Before they turned the corner, he made a rapid decision and stepped out to intercept them.

  "Mademoiselle-"

  "No, thank you," she said mechanically, before abruptly pausing and staring at him. "Monsieur Ravel?"

  "Might I have a private word with you?" he said. "Only for a moment."

  "I don't think it would be proper," she began, but he shook his head.

  "It's nothing to do with that. Please?" He gestured and at last she moved a few paces away, out of the maid's hearing.

  "I only?I thought you ought to know that your brother's body has been buried, with a proper ceremony and a priest, in consecrated ground. That's all I can tell you."

  "I don't understand," she said. "Where is it, then? Can I visit his grave?"

  "No. I'm sorry. But I did want you to know that much, so you could be easy in your mind about the-the state of his soul. And so on," he concluded lamely.

  She glanced down at her skirts. "Thank you. I-I've been to the dressmaker," she added hastily. "My black gown needs to be altered. Eug?nie is finally admitting that Lambert may be dead."

  "Don't ask any questions, but a certain powerful personage will ensure that the courts declare your brother's death to be official, so your legal affairs can be taken care of before?"

  "Before my marriage?"

  "You're marrying him?"

  "Yes." She looked away, avoiding his eyes. "I still don't understand."

  "I can't tell you anything more. I'm sorry."

  "Why are you here?" she said suddenly. "You didn't come here, dressed like that, and wait in the street for a couple of hours just to exchange three sentences with me. Or did you?" she added, with a sort of desperate anger.

  "Do you really need to ask me that?" he said, trying to keep his voice level. "If I'd thought it would have done any good-but since I've become untouchable-"

  "Please-don't," she said. "That's all over with now. I do care for you, you know that, but it wouldn't work, it would never work. Didn't I tell you that I have distant cousins near Bordeaux? What if they recognized your name?"

  "Oh, they'd recognize it all right," Aristide said bitterly. "The Tourtiers know exactly who I am. You're right-why should you take my family's disgrace upon yourself?" He wheeled about, ready to stride off.

  "You're spying on us for the inspector, aren't you?" Sophie said, behind him. "Is it Eug?nie you're watching? Do you think she murdered my brother, after all? You can't think that I would have?"

  He hesitated, unsure of what to tell her.

  "I must go," she said, after an uncomfortable moment of silence. "But Eug?nie will be leaving at about half past three to go to the Order of the Dove?or so she says," she added, over her shoulder, before hurrying away.

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