Game of Patience (3 page)

Aristide crossed the room to the sofa and gazed at the floor, frowning. He could see no bloodstains on the parquet or on the edge of the burgundy and rose carpet.

“The man was killed instantly?” he asked the surgeon. “Not much blood?”

“No, no blood. Bullet straight to the brain, and lodged there. It’s not often you see such a neat job of it,” Prunelle added. “Usually, with a musket ball or similar projectile, the bullet exits the cranium—”

“Blood and brains all over the place,” muttered Brasseur, grimacing.

“—but this seems to have been quite a small bullet from a small firearm. Probably the same gun that killed the young woman.”

“Perhaps a pocket pistol,” said Brasseur. “Could have been double-barreled, one shot for each.”

“Like this,” Aristide said, twitching aside his frock coat to reveal the tiny pistol, smaller than the length of his hand, that he kept tucked in his belt to ward off footpads.

“Saint-Ange had a pistol,” Didier said, marching to a low cabinet lacquered in the Chinese style, on top of which the dead man and woman’s personal possessions had been laid out. “It’s here, with his effects.”

“Where’d you find it?” Brasseur demanded. “In its case? In his hand?”

“Almost under the sofa. Might have fallen from his hand when he was shot.”

Aristide lifted the pistol. It was large and heavy, a gold-inlaid pattern ornamenting the grip. He sniffed at the muzzle, scenting the familiar tang of scorched powder, and handed it to Brasseur. “Doctor, this has been fired. Could it have inflicted the wound that killed him?”

“Certainly not. A ball from that, at close range, would have made a nasty mess of his head.”

“He was shot at close range?”

“Go see for yourself. Shot right through the forehead, an inch or two away at most.”

“Dueling pistol, I’d guess,” Brasseur said, with a closer look at it. “Expensive, too. A housebreaker wouldn’t have overlooked it, nor those trinkets, either,” he added, with a nod toward a side table where a gold snuffbox sat on a silver tray between two silver candelabra. “The servant will know, but at a glance I’d guess nothing is missing.”

“Saint-Ange had money on him,” said Didier, returning to the cabinet. “No robbery here. And over there, in the cabinet in the bottom of the buffet, we found a case with a matching pistol in it. Looks as if the pistols were his, all right.”

Aristide glanced at the marble-topped buffet. A single half-empty wine glass stood on it, surrounded by a few deep crimson splotches, a fine film of dust floating on its ruby surface. “Was the cabinet door open or shut when you found it?”

“Open, I think.”

“Then why is it shut now?”

“I suppose one of my men shut it after we searched it.”

“Death of the devil!” Brasseur exclaimed. “When will you blockheads learn to leave things as they were? Don’t you understand how much you can learn, sometimes, from something as trifling as that? Or do you do your best to make a mess of the scene?”

Aristide pointedly ignored Didier and strode out to the landing to turn back the sheet covering the dead man’s face. The neat round bullet wound in the center of the corpse’s forehead marred the man’s sharp good looks. Though the skin was scorched and blackened from the explosion of the gunpowder, the wound had scarcely bled.

“Brasseur,” Aristide said suddenly, “look at this.” He brushed aside a few strands of the man’s long, sandy hair. “This mark on his temple. What do you make of it?”

“Looks like a slight scrape or a scratch,” Brasseur said, joining him and laboriously kneeling. “Scarcely bled, though. Doctor?”

“I was wondering if you would find that,” said Prunelle smugly. “I barely did myself. And there’s a hint of bruising. Feel the wound; the cranium is thin at that spot, and something cracked the bone like a porcelain coffee cup.”

Aristide prodded lightly at the dead man’s temple. Beneath his fingertip, the bone gave way.

“Something struck this man hard, shortly before he died,” continued the police surgeon. “Dead bodies don’t bruise or bleed. The blow itself might have killed him, after ten or twenty minutes, if the bullet hadn’t finished him off first.”

“It’s likely,” Aristide agreed, running his fingers carefully through the dead man’s hair in case the wound extended farther beyond the hairline.

“What do you think struck him?” Brasseur said, turning to the surgeon. “Fire iron?”

Dr. Prunelle inspected the irons by the fireplace and turned the poker over in his hands, frowning, before replacing it. “No, I’d say the weapon was round. These squared edges would have left a mark.”

“Prunelle,” Aristide said sharply. His searching fingers had found a sticky spot on the back of the corpse’s head. “There’s another wound here.”

He rose, as the police surgeon knelt beside the body, and returned to the salon, glancing around him. “There,” he said, beckoning Brasseur over, just as Dr. Prunelle coughed.

“There
is
a contused wound, on the back of the skull… .”

“A wound that could have been caused by falling against some heavy object?” Aristide pointed to the buffet and to the small smudge of brownish red, inconspicuous among the dried wine stains, at the beveled corner of the pink marble. “I’d guess that’s blood. The murderer hits him, he staggers, falls backward, strikes his head on the edge—shaking the buffet enough to slop some wine from the glass—and goes down.”

“Why do it?” Brasseur demanded, to no one in particular. “That is, why knock him unconscious with a killing blow, and then burn his brains?”

“Who knows?” Aristide absently gnawed at his thumbnail. An abominable habit, he reminded himself. “He came in,” he began at last. “Or she … but we’ll say ‘he’ for simplicity’s sake, and this looks more like a man’s crime … the murderer was admitted, probably by Saint-Ange himself—” He paused, staring about the salon, thinking. Abruptly he strode to the wall on which the engravings hung, gazing at the empty space where one picture had crashed to the floor. The wall was covered with an expensive paper in an ornate pattern of Grecian columns and dark green acanthus leaves, in the new fashion that had begun to supplant the carved and painted rococo paneling or boiseries of the past century.

“What’s that you’re looking at?” Brasseur said after a moment.

“A bullet hole. From Saint-Ange’s gun, I expect. Here.” He brushed his fingertips across a hole partially disguised by the pattern of the wallpaper. Bending, he picked up the fallen engraving in its frame and held it against the wall. “You see? A tear and a hole in the print, where the glass was shattered.” He rehung the print on its peg. “See here, it’s plain: Saint-Ange recognized his murderer and defended himself as best he could, pushing furniture in the murderer’s way. He was trying to get to his own pistols, there in the buffet. They might have struggled. Saint-Ange at last got hold of a pistol and fired at his attacker—but he missed, and the bullet hit the wall.”

“Missed?” said Brasseur. “—Of course; no blood at that side of the room.”

“In the struggle, the murderer either fired at Saint-Ange and missed—we should look for bullet holes in the opposite wall—or else he didn’t want to waste his shot in the chance of shooting wide. So instead, after Saint-Ange fired—these dueling pistols are only single-shot—he pursued him, and swung his own pistol at Saint-Ange’s head—so”—clutching an imaginary pistol, Aristide swung his arm in a wide arc—“
Crack
—and Saint-Ange loses his balance and stumbles backward, and hits his head on the buffet, and falls to the floor, stunned, where the murderer shoots him.”

Brasseur snapped his fingers. “That’s it—a gun barrel, or the grip. Round, solid.”

The surgeon stirred. “The skin is severely scorched about the bullet wound. The gun was held against his head, or no more than a finger’s breadth away, when fired.”

Kneeling behind the sofa, Aristide closed his hand once more around the imaginary pistol and lowered it slowly to the spot where the dead man had lain. “Saint-Ange is unconscious … now the murderer has ample time to reload if he needs to, and aim, and bring it down, close to his head, so, before squeezing the trigger …” He jerked his hand up with a sigh. Something was not right with the little drama he had fashioned.

“That wound … it’s too perfect.”

“Perfect?” the surgeon echoed him.

“You’ve come here in search of an enemy, with murder in your heart,” Aristide said, “and you’re frantic to get it over with, cover your traces, and flee before someone finds you. You’re probably shaking with rage, or fear, or at least agitation and fatigue from the struggle.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“Of course you want to kill your intended victim, who is lying helpless before you. But do you squeeze off a shot at his heart or head and run for it … or do you take the time to aim your pistol, probably while your hand is trembling, so precisely and symmetrically at his forehead?” He gnawed at his thumbnail again for a moment, frowning. “This precise, deliberate killing means something. It has to.”

“Revenge?” said Brasseur.

“Possibly. Something to do with the girl, even?”

“Could be … though it looks as if the girl was simply killed to silence a witness.”

“Wouldn’t she have run for it as soon as the murderer came in and the fun began?”

Brasseur shrugged. “Women just freeze sometimes when they panic. She might have cowered there, too frightened to move. And then the killer shot her.”

“Revenge for an injury … punishment for a crime …” Aristide returned to the the corpse on its stretcher and gazed at it a moment longer, reflecting. “Yes … Saint-Ange must have been the one he wanted to kill. Look at the wound, Brasseur, right in the center of his forehead like the mark of Cain. Branded like a felon. Our murderer wanted this man dead for some private, profound reason—not merely dead, but executed.”

Aristide turned away at last from the dead man. “Didier, have you found the murderer’s pistol?”

“No. Must have taken it with him.”

“You say Saint-Ange’s manservant discovered the bodies?”

Didier jerked his head toward a door in the salon. “He’s in the dressing room. He’d gone out on errands for his master at about four o’clock yesterday and was gone all night. When he returned, he found what you see.”

“Did no one else see or hear anything?”

“We’re inquiring now. Half the house is untenanted. The rent’s high in this quarter.”

“And there are plenty of empty mansions for the wealthy to buy cheap,” added Brasseur, “if you do have the money to live in style. Who’d want to live in a flat when you can have some duke’s fancy town house? Well, go on,” he told Didier.

“The apartment below is vacant, so no one seems to have heard the struggle or the shots.”

“But the servant’s absence, combined with Prunelle’s opinion, gives us the time it happened, within an hour or two,” Aristide said. “Unless you suspect the servant?”

Didier shrugged. “Not likely. What motive are you thinking he’d have?”

“I agree,” Aristide said, ignoring Didier’s deliberate insolence. “Unless there was something between him and the girl, but that does seem improbable.”

At a nod from Brasseur, the waiting guardsmen carried the two bodies down the stairs. Aristide knelt on the carpet, gazing about him.

“Brasseur.”

He held up a fragment of paper between his forefinger and thumb. It was a tiny triangular scrap, cream colored with a black band and narrow black stripe edging the two shorter sides, and frayed on the third edge. He rose and dropped it into Brasseur’s outstretched palm. “What do you think?”

“Looks like a piece torn off an assignat,” Brasseur said instantly. He pulled a folded banknote from his pocket, glancing from one to the other. “Look there: you can see the printing in the corner, p-u-n, where it says ‘The law punishes the counterfeiter with death.’
”

“You said Saint-Ange had money on him, Didier? Was it in his pocket?”

Didier nodded. Aristide surveyed the effects laid out on the lacquered cabinet: pocketbook, handkerchief, the girl’s reticule, a few copper coins and prerevolutionary silver écus, a thick bundle of assignats in various denominations. “Why not try leaving things as they were, instead of insisting upon your precious inventory?” he added, shuffling rapidly through the notes. Didier glowered.

“Procedure—”

“Quite a lot here,” Aristide said, ignoring him. “Several hundred thousand livres’ worth.”

“A few louis’ worth in gold, I expect,” Brasseur grunted, “what with the value of paper money these days. I swear, the stuff’s fit only to wipe your arse.”

“Ah, here, I think.” Aristide held up a worn, crumpled five-livre note. One corner was missing and the words at the frayed edge matched the scrap of paper he had found.

“It’s only a guess, but I’d venture that this note, and probably others, changed hands recently, if a piece of it was lying on the carpet. He thrusts a handful of notes into a pocket, a frayed corner tears off and falls. When had the room last been swept?”

“The manservant will know,” said Didier. “Did you wish to question him now, Commissaire?” He went out and returned with a short, dark man of about forty-five.

“So,” Brasseur said, consulting Didier’s notes, “you are Barthélemy Thibault, domestic servant, in service with Saint-Ange for two years?” The man nodded. “And you left this house at about four o’clock yesterday to attend to some errands.”