In a small room near the Quai Desaix, two men read late into the night.
A lamp smoked, worse than Chief Inspector Limodin’s pipe. The vile domestic blends he chose, in a virtuous effort to deny profit to Channel smugglers, offended Prefect Dubois’ senses. But without the extra light, the reports swam before his weary eyes.
“Here is something,” Limodin said.
Dubois removed his spectacles. “How many does this make?”
“I haven’t an inkling. If you wanted me to keep a tally, you should have said so at the start.”
He took the papers with a sigh and laid them atop the stack on his desk. “I feel compelled to tell you there is such a thing as being too outspoken, even for a policeman.”
“That, too, comes late.”
“What makes this something something?”
“Well, read it. For me to summarize would be a waste of my talents.”
Dubois decided they’d been shut up together too long. They were like the miserable married couple who were too poor to divorce and so had taken to hounding each other into the grave for sheer spite.
“This is dated day before yesterday.”
“It didn’t come far. The nearness to Paris alerted me. If there’s anything to it, we haven’t time to waste.”
As Dubois read, boots crunched gravel directly below his window. The noise was like a maul breaking up ice, monotonously and in rhythm. The Prefecture’s courtyard had been commandeered, as had all the other vacant ground in the city, for the drilling of troops. Was that a bull treading on its own testicles? No; just a master sergeant bawling commands in an indecipherable soldiers’ dialect.
When he finished the report Limodin had handed him he went back over it more slowly, sliding his spectacles across the dilapidated lines like a convex glass.
“This was written by someone with a quill between his arse cheeks. Does this say Formerie or Rochefort?” He stabbed a purple-stained finger at the page.
“Neither. It’s Pontoise. A charming village, if you like them mired in the Dark Ages; it’s very near here, as I said. In addition to his wretched penmanship, his instincts must be unreliable, or the Police Minister wouldn’t have thrown him in our laps. Blaq is the name; a spy assigned to the local constabulary.”
“If I had a tenth of the Ministry’s resources, I’d have every bag-snatcher in the city behind bars.” There had been an epidemic of late, no doubt caused by the distraction of war; the papers were calling, quite literally, for Dubois’ head. “Even if his story can be credited, two dead highwaymen outside Paris doesn’t fall into either jurisdiction.”
“Still, a highwayman without a face presents points of interest. The village constable said it was as if he’d been hit with a mortar, or something equally explosive.”
The Prefect’s mouth twisted under his smudge of moustache. “Another infernal machine?”
“A coincidence probably. But how many others have come to light?”
“What do you know of assassins?”
Limodin frowned. “They climb to balconies with daggers clamped between their teeth and slit the throats of doges. Don’t ask me what a doge is. My mother read to me from novels. Is that what this is about?”
“Perhaps. A pipe dream, the Police Minister said. Rather too quickly to ignore. For once he seemed to have let the mask slip. ‘One man may succeed where a band has failed.’ His words.”
“Likely a misdirection.”
“And yet it made good sense.”
“It would explain two dead men, one with his face blown away. The doctor corroborated that at the scene.”
“Don’t speak of the wisdom of country doctors,” Dubois said. “Some would treat an ingrown toenail by amputating the leg, and the wrong one at that. What would even an able one know of explosives? Pontoise is not Toulon.”
“Still, it’s one of the villages travelers pass through on the way here from the Channel. It may be significant.”
“You place too much faith in geography.” Dubois, who rarely ventured outside the city, distrusted maps, which seemed to exist with the specific intention of misdirecting him. “I suppose one of us should have a talk with this Dr. Milieu.”
“Eslée.” Limodin spelled it.
“Are you sure?”
“When I was a boy I earned a franc a week making deliveries for a druggist. His scribble was worse than this. Shall I go?”
“No. I will. There’s no telling what the dregs of Paris will get up to when they learn the bulldog chief inspector is away.”
“Meaning you get the holiday while I stay here and grub through Citizen Fouché’s leavings.”
“At least you’ll be making more than a franc a week.”
“I’m asking a favor,” Eslée told Marianne Deauville. “I can’t tell you why.”
She frowned at her sewing. “I already did you the favor of making chowder for your patient. Now you want me to give him room and board.”
“Please respect my wishes in this matter. I wouldn’t impose if I didn’t think it important.”
“Then the answer is no.”
He breathed in and out. He’d begun to see why the men of the village were intimidated by her intelligence.
“I’ll say this much,” he said. “That man Blaq who hangs around Malroux’s office is a government spy. He suspects me of harboring a criminal. He’ll be watching my place, and if he thinks he has the evidence he may come in with an arrest warrant. My patient’s recuperating faster than I thought possible, but any rough handling at this point—”
“I’m to harbor him, then. It’s all right if I’m the one being handled roughly.”
“If we’re careful, you won’t fall under suspicion. Our situation, yours and mine, is hardly a secret in this village. My visiting your house won’t be thought irregular. Meanwhile I can continue treating him.
“You’ll be reimbursed for the expense of feeding him,” he continued, “and I’ll come by to check on him daily. Surely no one will question the frequency of my visits after all this time.” He smiled wickedly, hoping to draw off her annoyance with ribaldry.
“And so you seek my cooperation by informing me I’m compromised.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He never knew when her prudish streak would surface; another time, a bawdy joke would make her laugh like an uninhibited child. Women! What was one to make of the race?
“It’s only a few days. He agreed to a week’s rest, and he really is coming along remarkably; almost supernaturally. If I had an ounce of academic ambition I’d publish a paper on this case.”
“Would this have anything to do with two dead bandits on the road outside town?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I altered a dress for Citizeness Beloit, the wife of the baker. The ventilation duct goes straight to Malroux’s office upstairs. There isn’t a runner in the country who spreads news as fast as village gossip.”
“She may be a spy herself. Blaq thinks I’m connected with what happened. Even if he’s right, the death of a known highwayman and of his probable accomplice are scarce reason to endanger the life of a third man who may or may not be involved. At all events my only concern as his physician is to bring him back to health.”
She manipulated the needle industriously, concentrating on her work in the light of her parlor, where a haze of discarded thread carpeted the floor.
“How will you get him here, with Blaq watching day and night?”
“Not at night; even a rat must sleep. Then he’ll be spelled by Giroud, if I’m any judge of how the Police Ministry works. I’ve been treating Giroud’s weak bowels for years. He’s good for an hour at most before he scuttles round the corner to use the necessary room in the tavern. He’s good then for twenty minutes; enough time to deliver Meuchel to your door in his own dog cart, return it and his mare to my carriage house, and re-establish myself in my consulting room as if I’d never left.”
“Meuchel is your patient?”
“That’s what he says. I know what you’re thinking. Austria is an old ally of the English, and the name may as well be Austrian as German. But a man can’t be condemned on the basis of just his name.”
“If you think that, you slept through the Terror.” She bit off a piece of thread. “You must think you know me very well, to enlist me in this game of cat and mouse and ask me to put up a stranger in my home.”
“I know you’re brave as well as merciful. Also that you’ve kept poor León’s bayonet all these years, and sleep with it under your pillow; although you’ll see for yourself this stranger is still too weak for you to need it.”
She rethreaded the needle, and for a few moments stitched so furiously her hand was a blur, the thimble on the opposite thumb flashing in the strong sunlight coming through the window. Then she stopped.
“I suppose you’ll want to move him tonight.”
“I’d do it now, if Blaq weren’t on duty and if I thought the neighbors wouldn’t see. There’s no telling when he’ll pounce.” He hauled out his old pewter watch. “In fact, I should be getting back, in case he decides to break in, warrant or no. It’s all just a matter of his own certainty. Fouché will hardly stand on principle if he’s satisfied with the results.” He kept his tone from rising. He didn’t dare hope her remark was a sign she’d help. Marianne was a deliberate chess player who considered every alternative before making the simplest move. And she usually won.
“Fly back, then, to your precious patient. I’ll expect you any time after dark. You’ll find the back door unlatched and one lamp burning. And me waiting—with poor León’s bayonet.”
He stood up abruptly, almost overturning his chair. “You’re a heroine, Citizeness Deauville.”
“And you’re a little shit. But I still hope you’ll make me an honest woman someday.”
And for as long as it took Eslée to walk back to his house, he thought that might happen after all; he could do worse, and in fact had.
Then he spotted Blaq’s drab gray presence in the doorway of the tanner’s across the street and remembered how much he resented anyone bearing witness to his comings and goings.
The Widow Deauville was under no delusions that Charles Eslée would ever link his name to hers, short of desperate measures on her part. A confirmed bachelor couldn’t conceal his condition beneath the litany of the divorced man. But he was her only prospect, and she had no doubts about her determination to wear him down. (Just getting him into bed had been a rigorous campaign, months in the execution, a severe test of her pride. Yet she’d prevailed.) If that meant agreeing to an impossible appeal, so much the better for its impossibility. It was one more arrow in her quiver.
She hadn’t played hostess to an overnight guest of either gender since before poor León had marched off to defend the Republic. She’d offered countless times to make breakfast if Charles would stay until morning (wretched cook that she considered herself, she could improve upon the greasy fare in the tavern where he dined daily), but he had old-fashioned notions about protecting her honor and always left by twilight at the latest.
Now, as night fell, noticeably later than only a few days before, she chose personal vanity over domestic appearances and reached for a pot of rouge instead of a broom.
No one, after all, had ever commented upon the cleanliness of DuBarry’s chambers, and that lady had commanded the attention of a king.
She sat naked before the mirror on her dressing table and filled in the tiny fissures at the corners of her eyes with powder; wishing she could afford the ingenious enamel she’d heard the ladies of Paris employed to disguise the tracks of age. Mediterranean rouge, applied sparingly and cunningly blended with a fingertip, counterfeited the blush of youth, and so far there wasn’t so much gray in her roots it couldn’t be dissembled with a grease pencil.
Men. Boys, really. They worried about their honor, their wives, their mistresses, their business affairs, whether they were being swindled by their bankers, their sexual abilities; their lives, if they laid their wagers carelessly in the game of politics. What did they know of the importance of beauty, the only currency exempt from devaluation, if one could but maintain it year after year?
Her neck, at least, was unlined, becomingly long and slender. Her arms were slender as well, the underflesh firm, and she’d made her peace at last with the pale cicatrix of the smallpox vaccination Eslée had insisted upon giving her. She was no wraith, but men were loath to embrace a rack of bones.
Her breasts—she hefted them and let them fall, frowning at their irresiliancy, the way they flopped like sacks of meal—were a problem that would increase with time. But then, the ladies of Paris were getting on as well, and she had faith they’d provide some solution, either of engineering or dress. She herself, wizard with a needle that she knew herself to be, lacked the vision to create, had only the skill to follow patterns drafted by others.
But the goods were good; Charles seemed never to get over the novelty of her casual display of them in broad daylight.
Not that she cared if they were accepted by her impromptu guest; if she stooped to offer them at all.
Impossible. Men who resisted robbery were brawny oafs, placing their purses before good sense. This one had been lucky, that was all. She’d bring him down to earth by treating him as a baby mouse, motherless and bald, too inept to feed itself or stir from its own filth.
Meuchel, was it? She would call him Moule: her little molly-coddle.