Sunday, 5 March
The next morning Hero walked the grand allées and winding paths of the Jardin des Plantes, looking for Pierre-Joseph Redouté. The air here was gloriously fresh and clean, and all around her was an explosion of spring, with an achingly blue sky above and only faint puffs of white clouds on the horizon.
Ancient and vast, the botanical gardens lay on the Left Bank of the Seine, slightly to the southeast of the Île Saint-Louis. The Jardin had been begun in the early seventeenth century as a medicinal garden for Louis XIII, but the Bourbons had long ago thrown it open to the public, and Redouté was known to spend his Sunday mornings here, sketching or painting. She finally came upon him seated on a folding canvas stool beside a bed of gold-laced polyanthus, a sketch pad propped on one knee and a drawing pencil in hand. So intense was his concentration that he didn’t glance up until Hero was almost upon him.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Redouté,” she said cheerfully, her smile friendly. It wasn’t the “done thing” to accost a famous artist in the park without a proper introduction. But when it came to murder, Hero had no patience for such social niceties.
Redouté stared at her a moment, then let out a sigh and said, “I know why you’re here.”
Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. “You do?”
He was a man somewhere in his fifties, his gray hair lanky, his nose long and straight, his chin lightly cleft, his expression kindly and good-humored. As she watched, his soft brown eyes crinkled with the suggestion of a smile. “It is Lady Devlin, is it not?”
“It is, yes,” she said, returning his smile. “Do I take it Angélique de Longchamps-Montendre warned you I might wish to speak with you?”
He shook his head as if not understanding. “What does Madame de Longchamps-Montendre have to do with anything?”
“She’s the one who suggested I talk to you.”
“Ah.” He glanced off across the orderly garden beds to a nearby butte crowned with a magnificent cedar of Lebanon. Something she couldn’t quite read flickered across his features, and he said, “Actually, it was Henri Sanson—although now that I think about it, he suggested I might expect to see your husband, Lord Devlin.”
Sanson again, thought Hero. Aloud, she said, “I’m told you knew Dama Cappello.”
He nodded, his chin falling to his chest as he gazed down at the delicate black-and-gold flowers nestled in the litter of winter-browned leaves before them. “She was an amazing woman, Sophia Cappello, brilliant and talented, and yet so openhearted and good. Her death grieves me a great deal.”
“How did you meet her?”
“Through the Empress Joséphine. They both loved roses, you know—roses and gardens in general.” He sighed again. “The gardens at Malmaison have deteriorated dreadfully since Joséphine’s death, but Dama Cappello has been allowing me to paint her own gardens out at the rue du Champs du Repos. She sent me a note just the other day telling me her plum trees were about to bloom and inviting me to come capture them.”
“When was this?”
“That she sent the message? Thursday afternoon. Why? She said she’d just arrived back in Paris to find the orchard coming into bloom, and she wanted to make certain I didn’t miss it. I’d been planning to go tomorrow, but . . .” He gave a faint shake of his head.
“So why don’t you?”
“How can I, under the circumstances?”
“It’s what she’d want, don’t you think?” Hero was silent for a moment, watching him deftly add more shading to his sketch. Then she said as casually as she could, “So you knew Sophia Cappello had been out of town?”
“Oh, yes. I believe she was in Vienna, visiting the maréchal.”
“She was. But then she went to Italy. Do you know anything about that?”
“No. Sorry.”
Hero wasn’t convinced she believed him. “How much do you know about Dama Cappello’s politics?”
He gave a tight-lipped smile. “I served as an official court artist to Marie Antoinette and yet still managed to survive the Reign of Terror and be honored with the patronage of both the Empress Joséphine and Marie-Louise. Do you know how? I’ll tell you,” he continued without giving her a chance to answer. “By keeping my nose out of politics. My friends understand that and are kind enough to leave me out of all that nonsense.”
“Was Sophia Cappello your friend?” said Hero.
He paused for a moment, a faint faraway look creeping into his kindly face. “I like to think so, yes.”
It occurred to Hero that Sophie had accumulated a strange collection of friends for a countess: a botanical watercolorist, a novelist, a divorced empress, and the hereditary executioner of Paris. But then, as Angélique had said, Sophie hadn’t really considered herself a countess anymore.
Hero deliberately focused her attention on the purple violets scattered amongst the feathery little cushions of moss at her feet. “I’m told she quarreled with someone recently about roses. A count, I believe.”
He glanced over at her. “You mean Aravena?”
“Who?”
“Niccolò Aravena—the Count of Cargèse, to give the man his full name and title. He has an estate just outside of Paris. Or I suppose I should say one of his estates is there. He has another in Corsica.”
“Why precisely did they quarrel?”
Redouté shrugged. “Some people are simply quarrelsome.”
“By which I take it you mean the Count?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Not Sophie.”
Sophie, Hero noticed. Not Dama Cappello or even Sophia, but Sophie. She suspected Redouté didn’t even realize what he’d said.
“There must have been more to it than that,” said Hero.
“Not much. Aravena has the Empress’s and Dama Cappello’s interest in and love of roses, but his is a selfish love. He wishes to possess, not to share. And he is—or should I say ‘was’?—intensely jealous both of their collections and their knowledge. It’s his ambition to be known as the premier rosarian of France, and he isn’t above practicing all sorts of underhand trickery to achieve that end. He frankly hated them—hated them both.”
Hero drew a quick breath scented with damp earth and green growing things and the sweet perfume of jonquils blooming somewhere just out of sight. “Do you think he hated Sophia enough to kill her?”
“Oh, surely not,” he said.
But Hero saw the flare of doubt in his eyes and knew he did not discount the possibility.