Chapter 12
Sebastian had hired a pair of sweet-going bays and a sporty phaeton for the duration of his stay in Paris. But he hadn’t had the heart to leave his young groom or tiger, Tom, behind in London. And although the tiger had no use for foreigners in general and the French in particular, Tom was adjusting surprisingly well to his sojourn in the city.
“I’m ’earin’ there’s a lady was found dead ’ereabouts last night,” said Tom when he brought the carriage and pair around from the livery stable a short time later. He was small and sharp faced, with a shrill cockney accent, a gap between his front teeth, and brown hair that had a tendency to stick out in all directions. “Did ye ’ear about it, gov’nor?”
Sebastian hopped up to the high seat to take the reins, then paused to look back at his tiger’s eager young face. He’d never known exactly how old Tom was, for the boy was vague on details such as his age and even his last name. When they’d first met, he’d been an orphaned pickpocket living by his wits on the street; now he had ambitions of becoming a Bow Street Runner. There was far more to their relationship than the simple one of master and servant, and Sebastian realized the boy deserved to be told the truth.
“You’ll probably figure it out eventually,” said Sebastian, “so I might as well tell you now. The lady who died last night was known here in France as Sophia Cappello, but her real name was Sophia Hendon.” He paused, then added, “My mother.”
Tom stared at him, his mouth slightly agape.
Sebastian said, “I know I can trust you to keep that detail to yourself.”
Tom closed his mouth and nodded vigorously. “Oh, aye, m’lord.” He swallowed dryly, then said softly, “Was she really murdered?”
Sebastian gathered his reins again. “She was. And I don’t intend to rest until I get whoever did it.”
In the flat light of the cloudy day, the hôtel particulier on the rue du Champs du Repos looked aloof and drawn in upon itself, with a cold wind flattening the foliage of the bulbs in the formal parterres beside the entry court and banging a loose shutter somewhere out of sight. Limping badly, the dark-haired, one-legged, one-armed ex-soldier opened the heavy wrought iron gates for Sebastian, his face closed and unreadable as he swung the gates shut again with a clang.
“Might as well go ahead and stable them for now,” Sebastian told Tom as they drew up before the portico. “We’re going to be here awhile.”
“Aye, gov’nor.”
Hopping down, Sebastian turned toward the house to find Geneviève Dion standing at the open front door, watching him. The aubergine-colored silk gown and colorful shawl she’d worn the night before had been replaced by a ruthlessly plain black mourning gown with a black shawl and black cap. “I’ve warned the servants you’ll be wishing to speak with them this morning, my lord,” she said as he walked toward her. “And I’ve had a fire lit in the small salon in case you’d like to make use of that room?” Her voice rose at the end of the sentence, turning it into a question.
“Yes, thank you. I think I’d like to start with her ladyship’s abigail.”
“Francine?” Madame Dion cupped her hands around her bent elbows and held them close to her sides. All traces of the emotions she’d shown the previous night were now gone, ruthlessly tucked away behind that stoic, unreadable facade so many residents of France had perfected over the past twenty-six years of war and dangerous turmoil. “But she’s not here, my lord. Since they’d been gone for so long, her ladyship gave the girl permission to visit her family for a few days. Francine left yesterday evening.”
“Where does her family live?” he asked, thinking perhaps the girl could be sent for if they lived close by.
“Faubourg Saint-Antoine, my lord.”
“Ah.” It was a rough, impoverished neighborhood, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Lying on the eastern edge of the city, the faubourg was known for its textile workers and furniture makers, and for having been the source of the furious sans-culottes who’d spearheaded the Revolution’s bloodiest journées. “In that case,” he said, swinging off his greatcoat as he turned toward the small salon, “let’s begin with the coachman, shall we?”
Sophie’s coachman was a tough, wiry little man with thick graying hair, deep-set, narrowed eyes, and a face weathered to the texture of old boot leather by exposure to the elements. Clad in rough trousers and a dark coat, he limped into the room, bringing with him the scent of horses and hay, then stood just inside the door with his hat in his hands. He said his name was Noël Caron and that he’d been a soldier under Napoléon until he lost half his left foot to frostbite in Russia.
“You’re lucky that’s all you lost,” said Sebastian, standing beside the fire.
The coachman nodded, his chest lifting on a quick intake of air. “Nearly seven hundred thousand of us crossed the Neman River with the Emperor that June, and less than thirty thousand of us came back.”
He said it matter-of-factly, as if it were merely an interesting number, like the daily haul of the fishermen on the Seine or the amount of revenue taken by the Crown from the taxes levied on wine and other goods coming into Paris. As if the loss of human life on such an unfathomable scale and the grief of the mothers and fathers, the wives and lovers and children, left to mourn all those dead men were of no import. But Sebastian caught a glimpse of the faraway look that had crept into the old soldier’s eyes, that veil of numbness that closed down thought and memory, and he understood. Sebastian himself had spent six years fighting King George’s wars from Italy to the West Indies to Portugal. He understood all too well that men see things and do things in war that can never be examined too closely by those who survive. Not if they are to preserve both sanity and humanity.
They talked for a time of soldiering, about the lighter moments, the kind of moments that men can bear to remember and sometimes even laugh about. Then Sebastian said, “I understand you drove her ladyship somewhere last night in her carriage.”
“Oui, monsieur,” said Noël.
“Where did she go?”
He ran his tongue along his lower lip. “Asked me to take her to the Place Dauphine, she did.”
“And did you?”
The coachman shook his head. “Non, monsieur. We were crossing the Pont Neuf when we come up behind an ironmonger with a balking mule. Took him a bit to get the beast going again, and then just when I’m ready to move on, her ladyship says to me, ‘No, Noël; stay a moment longer.’ So I did.”
“Do you know why she asked you to pause there?”
“She didn’t say, my lord. But when I glance back at her, I see she’s watching this family that’s down in that stretch of grass and trees below the bridge—you know the place? Looked like a couple of little boys with their parents and an older man. Then some foulmouthed fiacre driver behind us starts hollering for us to get moving, and she tells me to go on across the bridge, that she’s changed her mind about going to the Place Dauphine.”
“What time was this?” asked Sebastian, sharper than he’d intended.
The coachman looked thoughtful. “Don’t think I could say exactly, monsieur. Half past five? Maybe six? Thereabouts.”
Sebastian felt a hollowness yawn deep within. The Earl had come to the Place Dauphine to see them the previous afternoon, and they’d decided to take the boys down to the end of the island to look at the river. Is that what happened? Sebastian thought with a sick thrum of certainty. Had Sophie seen them there? Had she recognized Hendon and perhaps Sebastian himself and decided to drive on, intending to come back later after the Earl had gone?
Sebastian felt the blood begin to pound in his temples. “So where did she go?”
“Had me take her to the inn that’s right there on the quay, the Vert-Galant. And then she told me I might as well go home and stable the horses, because she was going to be a while and she figured she’d just take a fiacre when she was ready.”
Sebastian stared out the window at the house’s windblown forecourt, at the line of chestnut trees bordering the high stone wall, their dark branches lifting against the white sky. He was familiar with the Vert-Galant, which lay virtually at the foot of the Pont Neuf on the Left Bank. How long had she tarried there? he wondered. Until dark? Until she thought it likely Hendon was gone? And then what? Had she decided to walk the short distance from the inn to the Place Dauphine? Had someone seen her on the bridge and attacked her? Why? It would make sense if she’d been robbed.
But she hadn’t.
He studied the coachman’s deeply lined face, the watchful eyes that had seen half a million of his compatriots die hideous deaths in the snow and ice and numbing cold of Imperial Russia. “I’m told you also drove her ladyship on her recent journey.”
A wary expression tightened the coachman’s features. “Oui.”
Sebastian shifted his position to lay one arm along the mantelpiece. “I can understand your reluctance to discuss a subject her ladyship may have asked you to keep quiet. But there’s a possibility that her death is related to that journey, and any information you can give me about it could help explain why she was killed. Do you understand that?”
The man hesitated a moment, then swallowed hard. “Oui.”
“Where did she go?”
Noël twisted his hat in his hands, his gaze sliding away from Sebastian’s. For a moment Sebastian thought he meant to refuse to answer. Then he blew out a harsh breath and said, “Vienna. We were in Vienna, monsieur.”
“With Marshal McClellan?”
“Oui.”
“The entire time?”
Noël shook his head. “After that we went to Italy.”
Sebastian heard a strange humming in his ears that he knew had no real outside origin. “Where in Italy?”
“We tried driving south by way of Graz and Trieste, but there was danger of snow in the mountains. So we took a ship.”
“To where?”
A tic started up beside the coachman’s left eye. “To Piombino.”
Sebastian was suddenly intensely aware of the wind buffeting the house’s thick stone walls, of the fire crackling on the hearth beside him. Piombino was an ancient Tuscan seaport that lay some fifteen or sixteen miles from the island of Elba. And he knew with awful certainty where Sophie had been and why she had been there. “She went to Elba, didn’t she?”
The tic beside the man’s eye intensified. “I wouldn’t know, monsieur. I stayed in Piombino.”
“You know,” said Sebastian.
But the man simply stared back at him, his face shuttered.
After a moment, Sebastian said, “How long were you there, in Piombino?”
“Less than a week.”
“Then what?”
“We caught another ship, from Piombino to Cannes. Then we came north to Paris. It was a long journey, monsieur. We were gone months.”
“I can imagine,” said Sebastian. “And you would have me believe you have no idea what she was doing in either Vienna or Italy?”
The coachman stared woodenly back at him. “It was none of my business, monsieur. My job was to drive the horses and see her ladyship safely from one place to the next. And that I did.”
“So you did,” said Sebastian. But he found himself thinking of that disastrous retreat from Moscow; the long, hellish nightmare of exhausted, starving men freezing to death by inches as stragglers were picked off and cut down by the endlessly circling Cossacks. How had that brutal experience affected the man’s attitude toward Napoléon? he wondered. Toward the restored Bourbon kings?
Did it matter?
“You say you’ve been with her ladyship now for more than two years?”
“Oui,” Noël said guardedly.
“So you must know something of her friends—her friends and her enemies. Who do you think killed her?”
The coachman’s gaze met his with a flare of alarm. “How would I know such a thing, monsieur?”
“Guess.”
“I could not. I am a simple coachman, monsieur. I mind my own business, the way I should.”
Sebastian studied the man’s slack jaw and widened eyes. Part of his reluctance to talk doubtless came from loyalty to his late mistress. But Sebastian suspected the man was also frightened. And why wouldn’t he be? What coachman in today’s France would not be deeply afraid, knowing he’d just conveyed his mistress on a clandestine visit to Elba?
Elba, for the love of God.
“Thank you,” said Sebastian, and let the man go.
He spoke to the other servants after that—to a footman named Guillaume who’d also been on that strange journey to Vienna and Italy but claimed to know no more than the coachman. To the rest of Sophie’s footmen and housemaids, to her cook and scullery maids, even to the gardeners and a young stable boy named Léon. With the exception of the stable boy, every male in Sophie’s employment had been maimed in some way by the wars. Sebastian wondered if it was simply a reflection of how few unmaimed men were left in France or if she had deliberately gone out of her way to employ ex-soldiers.
All claimed to know nothing.