* * * * *
Marguerite Fournier answered the door at the apartment on Rue de Savoie. "Is Madame Saint-Landry at home?" Brasseur demanded.
She shook her head. "I believe she's not at home to visitors-"
"But she's at home?" he repeated. "Official police business, madame. Where is she?"
"She must be resting in her boudoir, monsieur. I've not seen her, but Mademoiselle Saint-Landry and I only returned a short while ago."
"Any callers since then?"
"Only Monsieur Derville, who arrived about ten minutes ago-"
"Where are the servants? Did they let anyone in while you were out?"
"None of the servants seem to be here, monsieur," Marguerite said, stepping aside to let them in. "Madame Saint-Landry must have given them the evening off, for what reason I have no-"
"Where's her boudoir?"
She blinked, scandalized. "I beg your pardon?"
"Her boudoir!" Brasseur insisted. "Quick, madame!"
"He comes here, says anything that will get him inside," Aristide said feverishly to Brasseur as they strode through the foyer, past Sophie and Derville who appeared, looking bewildered, from the adjoining parlor. "Perhaps he claims that he has a message from Beaupr?au for madame-they know him and let him in-Eug?nie sees who it is, doesn't want the servants to overhear anything compromising, and promptly gets rid of them-they were alone here, Brasseur-"
They hurried through the salons, Brasseur close behind Aristide with Marguerite and Sophie scuttling after them. Marguerite pointed to a door at the far side of a daintily decorated little antechamber.
"Madame Saint-Landry?" Aristide said, rapping on the door. "Moreau?"
No one answered him. He rapped again and tried the handle, without success. Brasseur gestured to Marguerite.
"You have a key? Open it."
Aristide pushed past her as the door swung open. Behind him, Brasseur swore and Marguerite sucked in her breath with a sharp gasp.
Eug?nie Saint-Landry lay on a day bed beneath the window, eyes staring, mouth slack, one arm flung wide. The blood had soaked into her gown, and into the upholstery and cushions beneath her, in a vast crimson blotch. She had been stabbed, he judged, at least a dozen times.
Moreau lay in a huddled heap on the floor beside her, the kitchen knife clutched in his hand. Aristide touched his shoulder and turned him slightly; his blood, too, had gushed out from his throat, his chest, his wrists, and stained everything around him. The metallic reek of it rose to Aristide's nostrils like the smell of the slaughterhouses and he swallowed back a sudden twinge of nausea.
A sheet of paper, smudged with blood, lay on the dainty lady's writing-desk in the corner of the room. He paused a moment to close Moreau's half-open eyes, then went to the desk, took the note, and silently handed it to Brasseur.
" 'Madame Saint-Landry shares my guilt in the death of her husband,' " Brasseur read, " 'but the law might never have touched her. She gave me to know, by word and deed, that she loved me. Now I know she lied. She loves another, and she lied to me until I committed that terrible crime for her sake. This she admitted to me a quarter hour ago, when I challenged her with it. She laughed at me, saying that I would not dare denounce her, for fear of justice; that if I did, I would be the one to suffer and she would escape the penalty. But she has paid for her lies. We both will pay the price, as it should be. May God forgive me for all I have done and am about to do. Adieu.' Signed Gabriel Moreau."
He paused a moment, looking down at the bodies.
"Poor lad?"
Aristide did not reply. Instead he left the room, stumbling past the weeping Marguerite, and Sophie, white-faced and staring. Derville, coming up behind her, slid his arm about her shoulders and bent to murmur something in her ear. Aristide exchanged a frigid, silent glance with him as he passed and at last found his way through the salons and out the door to the unlit staircase beyond.
A moment later Brasseur, carrying a candle, joined him on the landing. "I'm so sorry, Ravel."
"It's better than the executioner and the wheel," Aristide whispered, avoiding his eyes. "At least-this way-there was some justice done?"
"There's no reason you should stay here," Brasseur said after a brief silence. "Listen," he added, taking hold of Aristide's shoulder in a firm grip, "laying hold of a murderer is never pretty, and this affair ended up uglier and sadder than most. But you'll mend." He pressed a coin into his hand. "There's a brandy seller at the quay by Place St. Michel, last I saw. Go get yourself a stiff drink. Maybe two."
Aristide nodded. Brasseur gave his shoulder an encouraging squeeze before reaching for the door handle.
"Go on. Have a drink and go home, get some sleep. But come by my headquarters in a day or two; you're owed some pay."
"Pay?" Aristide repeated dully. Grief choked him for a moment. At last he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes and nodded again as he felt for the stairs.
In the street, the hurrying passers-by swirled about him in the half-light of the overhead lanterns. He paused for an instant by the courtyard gate and drew in deep lungfuls of the icy air, ridding his senses of the stink of blood, and then trudged away toward the quay where the river flowed ever onward through the dark.
The Cavalier of the Apocalypse Page 43
