Now they were climbing a steep bank. The infernal mule quivered with eager anticipation. Eslée stepped down and gathered its halter. It balked, infuriated by disappointment, but he exerted all his strength and it resumed climbing with a snort.
“Now, what is that fellow about?” said Malroux.
Eslée looked up. A gaunt creature in a tricorne hat and long black coat stood atop the rise, holding a handkerchief over the lower part of his face. The doctor thought him a highwayman: the constable’s third party, not a victim at all.
Then he recognized stooped shoulders, the rodent cast of his features when he lowered the cloth. Blaq, that was the name. He haunted the bakery in Pontoise, where a flight of steps led to Malroux’s office; some kind of government functionary.
A spy, no doubt. Malroux had said as much.
How important their little village had become, to warrant the attention of this fellow and Giroud, the clerk who never clerked.
The constable spurred his horse to the crest. “Why are you here? I left you to guard the bodies.”
“They started to stink. The flies—”
“Which did you not expect, the stink or the flies?”
“You were gone two hours!”
“All the more reason to anticipate nature. Did I say, ‘Stay here two hours, then do as you please’?”
“No, but—”
“Did I say, ‘Stay here, until these fellows begin to smell and the flies arrive’?”
“See here! I—”
“That’s when the vermin come to dine, which as I made clear was the reason I told you to remain. I didn’t invite the doctor to see the place where the bodies were, before they were dragged away and devoured by wolves, but where they are.”
A dirty flush stained the other’s dead cheeks. “Take care, Malroux. I answer to Paris.”
“And Paris will hear you deserted your post in a death investigation. What will you say when you’re asked to defend yourself? ‘Citizen Fouché, they began to smell. The flies!’ He doesn’t shrink from such unpleasantness.”
“You dare to insult the Minister of Police?”
“Forgive me. I meant only to insult you.”
“I warn you, sir!”
“Gentlemen.” Eslée joined them, his hand on the mule’s bridle. “I wish to experience the smell and see these flies for myself.”
The constable had given the village gravedigger directions to the site. This round, ruddy fellow arrived, singing to himself, as Eslée was finishing his examination. The man pulled his wagon off the road and sat watching from the driver’s seat, munching peanuts from a sack.
The corpses had bloated under the sun, and there were certainly flies and stench enough to go round. Malroux and Blaq stood several yards upwind.
The doctor smelled only garlic. A clove was a handy thing to bring along on such errands: crushed and applied round the nostrils, it was better than carbolic.
He poured alcohol into his palms, rubbed them together briskly, then returned everything to his bag and joined the men from the constable’s office. Malroux had lit a pipe against the stench; the exhaust seemed to cause his companion as much distress as the other. It was a powerful blend.
But then, yellow-gray was Blaq’s natural coloring. Eslée suspected long exposure to potash, a lye-based caustic commonly used in fumigation. An indoor rat, this, who would live to be no one’s grandfather.
“The man you call Crusher was not shot,” Eslée announced.
Malroux smoked. “You’re certain?”
“He was stabbed; gutted, actually. The wound was made with an edged weapon and there was no ball to extract.”
“Bayonet? Saber? The other fellow wears the rags of a uniform.”
“Did you find either weapon?”
“No. But the man belonging to the horse and wagon might have taken it with him. What about the gentleman without a face? His musket was fired. Perhaps he missed, and Crusher emptied his pistols at him at close range. We have the pistols, and both were discharged.”
“You are the policeman, and know about such things. I found shards of lead; but even if both balls shattered on contact, I don’t see so much destruction of tissue by ordinary loads. As you said, it’s as if a mortar struck. Then again, there is this.” Eslée opened his hand. A ball of lead lay in the palm. “I found that in the chest of the man in the uniform. I think it accounts for one of the Crusher’s shots. That leaves only one ball in Uniform’s face. But what a ball!”
“You’re part policeman yourself, Doctor.”
“Or criminal,” Blaq suggested. “For a country practitioner he knows a great deal about violent death.”
Eslée ignored him. “Crusher wasn’t slain by a saber or bayonet. The gash is vertical, directed upward from the point of penetration. Such wounds are usually delivered at extremely close range with a short blade.”
“The man incriminates himself with every word.”
“I studied in Paris, Citizen Blaq, from before the Terror through Thirteen Vendémiaire. The university didn’t lack for cadavers.”
Malroux took his pipe from his mouth. “You were present at Thirteen Vendémiaire?”
“The aftermath. It’s no small thing to separate the maimed from the dead after forty cannon are fired into a crowd.”
“What happened here, Doctor?”
“Again, I’m not a professional investigator. As you suggested, these two waylaid a man traveling with a horse and cart. Whether they fell out between them, or had the tables turned against them, perhaps you can supply the answer.”
“I should have stayed a postmaster.”
“You may need this.” Eslée thrust his palm closer.
The constable’s pipe had gone out. He bent and knocked loose the plug against his boot. “You may keep it as a souvenir, Monsieur le Docteur. It’s an ordinary ball, as you said. I must look for an infernal machine in a package no larger than a pebble.”
Eslée tightened his lips, as if to prevent anything incriminating from escaping. “Put it out of sight,” the man had said, relinquishing his pistol. “You don’t know what a danger it is in ignorant hands.”