The Launching of Roger Brook

by Dennis Wheatley

The doll was certainly a fearsome monstrosity. It differed only from the later caricature of John Bull in having a cocked hat instead of a squat topper. A Union Jack waistcoat covered its great protruding paunch, its forehead was so low as to be almost entirely lacking and a most alarming row of upper teeth protruded from its gaping jaws.

  Roger was about to repudiate the charge indignantly, when he thought better of it since he was now being hunted for murder and his young protectress believed all Englishmen to be bloodthirsty by nature, to disclose that he was one himself might easily throw her into such a panic that she would abandon him and turn him over to his enemies.

  ‘Well! Tell me of yourself!’ she demanded. ‘I am all agog to hear about this killing of which you are accused. What is your name?’

  Had Roger but known it the fate of nations hung upon his reply, and the simple fact that a young French girl, already budding into glorious womanhood, was still sufficiently amused by dolls to carry one, was in a few years’ time to have immeasurably far-reaching effects on European politics. Had it been otherwise he would have told the truth about himself and given his real name. As it was, he decided to stick to the story to which he was now well accustomed through his journeying with old Aristotle Fénelon these past three months, and he replied:

  ‘My name is Rojé Breuc, and I am a native of Alsace. I ran away from my home in Strasbourg to seek adventure early last July. I have since been following the road with a journeyman-doctor whom I met with in Le Havre.’ He then went on to describe the Doctor’s murder that evening and how a rascally teacher, named Joseph Fouché, who acted as an informer to the police, was attempting to pin the murder on to him.

  The coach had meanwhile crossed the river Vilaine by the single bridge in the centre of the town, passed the Cathedral of St. Pierre and entered the Rue St. Louis. Halfway along the street it halted, until at the shouts of the footmen a pair of great gates in a high wall were thrown open, so that it could drive into a spacious courtyard.

  Roger just had time to say: ‘May I know the name of the beautiful young lady to whom I owe my life?’ when the coach pulled up before a broad flight of steps leading to a heavily carved pair of double doors.

  ‘I am Athénaïs de Rochambeau,’ the girl replied, ‘and this is the Hôtel de Rochambeau, the town house of my father, the Marquis.’

  On the footman opening the door Roger sprang out and handed her down. The double doors of the mansion had now been opened and, going up the steps together, they entered a wide, lofty hall. It was paved with marble, and a splendid horseshoe staircase of elaborate iron scrollwork, picked out with gold, led to a landing, then divided again to sweep towards the upper floors. At either side of the doorway stood three tall footmen with powdered wigs and dressed in the same violet and gold livery as the lackey who had accompanied the coach. They stood there like statues, rigidly immobile, but a seventh servant, considerably older and dressed in a more, sombre livery than the others, came forward, bowing almost to the ground before Mademoiselle de Rochambeau.

  ‘The coach is to return to the Rue de Nantes, to pick up Madame Velot, Aldegonde,’ she told him. ‘Meanwhile, take this gentleman somewhere where he can tidy himself, then bring him to the small salon. He is to dine with us.’ Without deigning to glance at either the major-domo or Roger, she lifted the front of her full skirts a little and tripped upstairs as lightly as a bird.

  Monsieur Aldegonde gave Rogter one swift glance of appraisal, noted that his clothes were of cloth, which now showed the wear of his eleven weeks’ wanderings, and that he wore no sword, gave the very faintest sniff of disapproval, and bowed very slightly, as he said: ‘This way, Monsieur. Please to follow me.

  He led Roger between two of the eight great pillars that supported the gallery round the hall and threw open a door concealed in the panelling under one side of the staircase. It gave on to a small room in which there was a marble washbasin, towels and a variety of toilet articles laid out on the shelves of a shallow recess.

  Roger washed, combed his hair and brushed down his clothes. As he did so, he wondered with some misgivings what would happen next. He was still shaken and immeasurably distressed by the old Doctor’s death, and he knew that he had only escaped capture by a piece of remarkable good fortune. But he was now acutely anxious as to what view Mademoiselle de Rochambeau’s father would take of the matter. Would he support his beautiful little daughter’s high-handed action or promptly hand his unexpected visitor over to the police?

  Having made himself as presentable as possible Roger came out and waited for some time in the hall until, eventually, the major-domo returned and led him upstairs. The whole of the first floor appeared to be one long suite of rooms, each being of splendid proportions and magnificently furnished, their walls hung with Gobelins tapestries and the parquet of their floors polished to a mirror-like brilliance. After passing through two of them the major-domo ushered him into a third, somewhat smaller than the other two and panelled in striped yellow silk.

  As the door opened Roger nerved himself to meet the Marquis, but at the first glance he saw that he was not yet called upon to face this ordeal. There were four people in the room; an elderly Abbé with graceful white locks falling to the shoulders of his black cassock; a portly woman of about forty, well but soberly dressed; Mademoiselle Athénaïs and a handsome boy who, from his features, appeared to be her brother.

  Athénaïs waved a little white hand negligently towards the woman: ‘Madame Marie-Angé Velot, my governess, whom we left behind in the Rue de Nantes; and this is my brother, Count Lucien de Rochambeau.’

  Roger made a leg to the woman then bowed to the boy, who returned his bow a little stiffly. The young Count’s features were in the same cast as his sister’s but distinctly heavier, his eyes, although also blue, lacked the brightness of hers, and both his nose and mouth were much thicker. Roger put him down as about two years younger than himself, and formed a first impression that he was of a somewhat sullen nature and dull-witted. However, with formal politeness, Count Lucien said:

  ‘I have not the pleasure of knowing your name, Monsieur,’ and added, half-turning towards the priest, ‘but I should like to present you to my tutor, Monsieur l’Abbé Duchesnie.’

  As Roger and the Abbé exchanged salutations Athénaïs said, quickly: ‘Monsieur is one, Rojé Breuc, a native of Strasbourg. As I was telling you, they are after him for a killing. I have given orders that he is to dine with us, and over dinner he shall entertain you with his story.’

  At this announcement the governess and the Abbé exchanged a somewhat disturbed glance and the little Count, eyeing Roger’s clothes disdainfully, said in a haughty voice: ‘Was it necessary to invite Monsieur to eat with us, sister? Surely Aldegonde could have attended to his wants, and he could have told us his story afterwards.’

  ‘Hold thy tongue, little fool,’ replied the girl, tartly. ‘Thou would’st do better to spend more time studying thy books and less in thinking as thy sixty-four quarterings.’

  But evidently Madame Marie-Angé Velot was of the boy’s opinion for she said: ‘I hardly think, Mademoiselle, that Monseigneur your father would approve.’

  ‘My father, Madame, is in Paris,’ snapped Athénaïs. ‘And in his absence I am the best judge of what takes place here.’

  ‘Even so, Mademoiselle,’ hazarded the Abbé, ‘I feel sure Monsieur Breuc would find himself more at home below stairs, and I support the suggestion that he should be conducted there.’

  Athénaïs stamped her small foot. ‘I’ll not have it! I found him; and he is mine, to do what I will with!’

  Roger, now flushed with mortification at this unseemly wrangle as to if or no he was fitted to eat at their table, was about to declare hotly that he was an English Gentleman and as good as any of them, when he was saved from this imprudence by the door opening to disclose Monsieur Aldegonde, who cried in a loud voice:

  ‘Monsieur le Comte et Mademoiselle sont servis!’

  Athénaïs looked at Roge
r and said with extraordinary dignity in one so young: ‘Monsieur Breuc, your arm, if you please.’

  With his most courtly bow he proffered it to her; then, following the pompous Aldegonde, who held aloft a six-branched silver candelabra to light them, they traversed the big rooms again and crossed the landing to enter a lofty dining-room. At the table in it five places were laid and behind the chair set for each stood one of the tall footmen. Athénaïs took one end of the table, motioning Roger to a seat on her right, while her brother took the other. The Abbé said a short grace and the meal began.

  The dishes were lighter and more varied and sumptuous than anything that Roger had encountered in England, but his good table manners soon showed the Abbé and Madame Marie-Angé that they had been wrong to judge him by his worn cloth suit as fitted only to eat downstairs in the kitchen, and both of them began to regard him with more friendly attention.

  At their request he retold his story, giving additional details. His eleven weeks in France had improved his French out of all recognition, so that although he still had a noticeable accent he could talk with unhesitating fluency; and since he was by nature a born raconteur, he kept the small company enthralled through several courses.

  Athénaïs both fascinated and intrigued him. He thought her quite the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and could only compare her in his mind to a fairy, from the top of a Christmas tree. It may be that she put the idea into his head herself as she seemed fond of fairy stories and made frequent references to them, chaffingly remarking that she felt sure he must be a Prince in disguise, or at least, a miller’s youngest son, since they always leave home in search of dragons to kill and end up with a Princess for their bride.

  Yet he found it extraordinarily difficult to place her satisfactorily. She was so small and slight of build that she could well have been taken at first sight for no more than thirteen; moreover, she frequently showed the most abysmal ignorance on many matters of common interest, and spoke with the petulant, dictatorial manner of a spoilt child. But, against this, the air of dignity and authority that she equally frequently assumed, and her rather surprising fund of knowledge upon certain subjects, suggested that she might easily be a physically undeveloped seventeen.

  Roger had yet to learn the reason for these strange anomalies, which were by no means uncommon among young people of her class in France at that time. Among the French nobility family life had degenerated to such an extent that it was the common practice for parents to leave their offspring during the whole period of childhood in the care of servants on their country estates, or often, even put them out to board with some almost illiterate family. There they were left, rarely seeing their parents and frequently entirely forgotten by them, until they reached their teens. They were only then belatedly given tutors and governesses, to fit them for the high stations in life they were to occupy; but, once they emerged from the sad neglect to which they had been subject, they were given rich clothes, money, fine apartments and a horde of servants to wait on them, and were, in fact, expected to behave like grown-ups with the full exercise of the authority over all inferiors which was assumed to be theirs by right of birth.

  Athénaïs de Rochambeau was at this time actually fourteen and a quarter, while her brother Lucien was just one year younger, and it was a bare two years since they had been removed from their foster-parents to begin their education; yet in those two years they had both learned to regard themselves as people of great importance in the small world they occupied, and born to be obeyed. Normally, despite the fact that he was the younger of the two, the boy would have been the dominant partner of the pair but, as Roger had rightly assessed, he was a dullard, so she, conscious that she was one of the greatest heiresses in Brittany, had made herself the pivot round which the life of the great mansion revolved during her father’s absence.

  They had reached a marvellous confection of violet ice-cream topped by a mass of spun sugar when the Abbé said to Roger:

  ‘And what is it your intention to do now, Monsieur Breuc?’

  ‘I hardly know, Monsieur l’Abbé,’ replied Roger, but having by now had a chance to sort out his ideas to some extent he went on: ‘After some little thought, this man Fouché may realise that, as I could have no possible motive for murdering my poor old friend, his case is a weak one and decide not to pursue it. If that occurs, as I pray it may, I feel under a natural obligation to arrange for Doctor Fénelon’s burial. Then, too, I am most anxious to return to the Du Guesclin for the purpose of recovering the purse I dropped. It may still be lying in a dark corner of the passage or, if someone has picked it up, unless they are downright dishonest, they will have given it for safe keeping to the landlord. Yet I greatly hesitate to go there until I feel a little more confident that I’ll not be putting my head in a noose. Would you, Monsieur l’Abbé, do me the favour of giving me your advice?’

  ‘I am no man of the robe,’ the old priest replied, ‘so ’tis outside my office to offer an opinion on legal matters. Yet it does seem to me that this purse containing fifty-four louis would have been motive enough to incite a young man in your situation to the crime, had he the nature of a murderer. According to your own account you fled with it, and I should not have thought it usual for one so many years junior to his partner to be entrusted with the whole resources of a partnership.’

  ‘There was an especial reason for that,’ Roger broke in quickly. ‘As I have told you…’

  The Abbé Duchesnie raised his hand. ‘I know, I know, my young friend. I do not seek to question your own explanation but, as I understand it you have no one whom you can bring forward to give evidence of the Doctor’s habits, and I am simply putting to you the view that the police may take of this matter.’

  From having regained some degree of optimism Roger was suddenly cast back into the depths of gloom. He realised now that the good food and wine and rich surroundings had given him a false sense of security and that in the cold light of impartial examination his case must look very black indeed. The Doctor had died by violence and he, Roger, had made off with what would undoubtedly be assumed to be his partner’s money.

  Madame Marie-Angé saw his look of misery and, being a good-natured, motherly woman, strove to comfort him, by saying:

  ‘I do not see what this Monsieur Fouché has to gain by fixing the assassination on Monsieur Breuc.’

  ‘Why, to prevent it being fixed upon himself, Madame,’ promptly replied the Abbé.

  ‘But he could equally well say that the Doctor took his own life to save himself from being arrested,’ urged the governess. ‘’Twould be beyond reason vindictive in any man, however ill-natured, to send another who had done him no harm to the rope.’

  ‘A thousand thanks, Madame!’ Roger exclaimed eagerly. There is much in what you say. And in my own mind, I feel confident now, that Fouché called “Murder” after me not so much with a view to getting me hanged, but to have me stopped so that he might secure the purse.’

  ‘Is he likely, though, once having made the charge, to withdraw it?’ pessimistically remarked the Abbé.

  ‘’Twould be easy for him to say that people had misunderstood his cries,’ Madame Marie-Angé retorted. ‘He could claim that by his cry of “Murder” he had meant no more than that a violent death had just occurred, and that those who heard him had confused it with his shouts of “Stop, thief”!’

  ‘By so doing he could save himself from the sin of perjury and avoid the burden of attending at a lengthy trial,’ the Abbé agreed. ‘And as you, Madame, have very rightly pointed out, there seems no particular cause for him to carry vindictiveness to the point of endeavouring to bring about our young friend’s death.’

  Athénaïs shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘You have admitted, Monsieur l’Abbé, that you know little of such matters, and I know nothing. Why should we not send for the notary—what is his name—Maître—Maître___?’

  ‘Léger,’ supplied the Abbé.

  ‘Yes, Maître Léger. Let us su
mmon him and find out.’

  She had no sooner had the idea than she turned to Aidegonde and ordered him to send a messenger with instructions that she required Maître Léger to wait on her at once. Then, having toyed a little with the desserts, they all retired to the yellow salon to await the lawyer’s arrival.

  Within a quarter of an hour Maître Léger was announced. He proved to be a man of about sixty and something of a dandy. His green suit was of cloth but very well cut, with padded shoulders and silver buttons. His cravat and wristbands were of fine lawn and his hair, which had been black, now being flecked with grey had the smart appearance of having been lightly dusted with powder. Beneath a broad forehead he had a pair of lively brown eyes, a very sharply pointed nose and a firm, thin mouth.

  Having bowed to Athénaïs he thanked her deferentially as she waved him to a chair.

  ‘In my father’s absence, Monsieur, I require your services,’ she began at once, and with a slight turn of her head towards Roger, went on: ‘This is Monsieur Breuc of Strasbourg. He is accused of killing some old man. Please see to it that the charge is withdrawn.’

  The lawyer coughed. ‘I am entirely at your disposal, Mademoiselle; but I am sure you will permit me to remark that the law is made by the King, and is therefore above and beyond us all. Once set in motion its processes cannot be stopped by a mere request, even should the request be made by such a distinguished personage as Monseigneur, your father. However, I will assuredly do all I can if I may be permitted to know the full circumstances of the case.’

  Without replying Athénaïs waved her fan in Roger’s direction and he once more related the nerve-racking sequence of events that had befallen him earlier that evening.

  When he had done, Maître Léger slightly inclined his handsome head. ‘If all that you have told me is correct, I think there is a fair hope that you are mistaken in your belief that Monsieur Fouché intended to charge you with the Doctor’s murder. It seems to me more likely that his attempts to have you stopped were actuated by his desire to get possession of the money-belt, and that in your own excitement you confused his cries announcing that a killing had taken place with those calling upon the other occupants of the inn to stay your flight.’