Game of Patience (37 page)

“And then—then Ferré informs on Aubry, and Aubry immediately concludes that it’s Rosalie who has betrayed him, because he already knows she deceived him once, played him false. I wonder …”

“What?”

“Never mind; I’d have to confirm it first. But any love he once felt for Rosalie has now curdled into hatred, just the way people tend to hate most those whom they once loved, if the love goes sour. And so he takes his petty revenge by treating her contemptibly when she appeals to him for help… .”

“But you’re saying,” said Brasseur, “that Juliette Vaudray didn’t take her own revenge by murdering Célie Montereau?”

“No—she was there in Saint-Ange’s apartment, all right, and saw the bodies, but she didn’t do the murders. She made a few mistakes when she told me how she’d killed Saint-Ange. Killing Célie wasn’t part of her revenge upon Aubry …”

Brasseur suddenly snapped his fingers. “The letter! To Aubry! She admitted herself to writing it! If Aubry was the murderer after all, then it’s perfectly likely that that letter did tell him about Célie’s secrets.”

“Yes,” Aristide said. “Yes, of course.” He stopped short, thinking furiously. “Revenge … my God, yes … it’s possible … it all fits …”

“What is it?”

“A—a sort of revenge I’d never have imagined.”

Aristide rushed out of the commissariat and hailed the first cab he saw heading toward the river. “Rue de l’Université. Hurry!”

#

Citizen Montereau was not at home, the maître d’hôtel protested. Citizen Montereau and the young master had retreated to the country for at least a month. If the citizen would like to leave his card, and return another time—

“What about Madame Laroque?” Aristide demanded. “Surely she’s at home. I am an agent of the police, and I must speak to madame.”

Cowed, the maître d’hôtel gestured a lackey toward the staircase. Aristide followed him to the old lady’s chambers, as the clocks chimed noon, and brushed past the protesting maid.

Madame de Laroque was dozing in her chair, frail chest gently rising and falling beneath her cashmere shawl, the black-and-white cat asleep in her lap. Wrinkled eyelids fluttered open as he repeated her name. “Eh? Who’s that?”

“Ravel, madame. We spoke together some weeks ago, after Célie’s death.”

“Oh yes,” said the old lady, blinking and fixing him with a dour glare. “Have you found the monster who murdered her?”

“I’m close to doing so, madame. But I need your help.” He crossed the parlor to the wall where the portrait hung. “This portrait, madame—you told me it was of your great-nephew, Marsillac de Saint-Roch. Who was killed in a duel some ten years ago?”

“That’s correct.”

“The young man who killed him was one Philippe Aubry.”

She nodded. “Yes. He stayed at my little château once, with his aunt, before it all happened. An agreeable boy, I must admit, from a good family; though none of them had two sous to call their own.”

Aristide drew a deep breath. “Aubry challenged Marsillac because of a woman, didn’t he?”

“If you could call her a woman. She was a chit of a thing, fifteen years old, a little nitwit straight out of the convent.”

“And Marsillac—”

“Had seduced her, of course. She was going to be married to a marquis, an excellent match, and Marsillac seduced her two months before the wedding. But it seemed Aubry and the girl had had an understanding.”

“You mean a love affair.”

“Well, an affair of the heart, certainly. Aubry was a strait-laced little prig, for all his impetuosity: the sort who announces that he sleeps alone by choice. He declared afterward that he’d fought Marsillac not as a rival, because he wouldn’t have any woman who’d surrendered so easily to a scoundrel, but to avenge the girl’s honor, because Marsillac had ruined her. I imagine it was really his own pride he was avenging, though.” She paused and Aristide gestured to her to go on.

“That was when the truth came out, publicly, about what Marsillac had been doing with her—in my own house, I may add!—and the girl immediately took the veil. It was the only thing she could do, after such a disgrace. So I daresay Aubry’s illusions about her were rudely shattered.”

Sometimes they spin pretty illusions,
François had said, using nearly the same words,
and when the illusion shatters, they become capable of anything.

“Madame, what was the name of the girl—the girl whom Marsillac debauched?”

“Vaudray,” she said, with a soft sigh. “Juliette de Vaudray.”

You treacherous bitch, the next time I’ll kill you.

She had known him since they were almost children, known his character intimately. Aubry had killed a man already, because of what he had seen as her weakness; she had known he was capable of killing, and from a duel incited in brokenhearted rage it was only a step to half-crazed, passionate murder … but her own rancor and misery had blinded her, for a fatal instant, to the consequences of her own spite.

Madame de Laroque sighed, breaking into Aristide’s thoughts. “A charming boy, as I said. But prone to fly into a passion when provoked. Though it’s all forgotten now.” The cat woke and yawned, gaping a wide pink mouth. “People forget so fast,” the old lady added, absently scratching the cat’s head. “Imagine what I thought when I came to live here with Honoré and Josèphe, and saw young Aubry sitting cool as you please in Honoré’s study! Of course Honoré dismissed him when I—”

She straightened and pushed the cat from her lap as one hand gripped the arm of her chair. “Young man, are you about to tell me that Philippe Aubry was the man with whom Célie was in love?”

“Did Monsieur Montereau not tell you?”

“Bah, Honoré never tells me anything. He thinks I’m too old and frail. But yes … yes, it’s the likeliest thing in the world. Young Aubry was the sort of high-minded ninny she’d have adored … and I daresay he was ready to fall in love with another pretty, innocent young creature who wouldn’t disappoint him this time.” She peered up at him, her old eyes bright. “Was it the same sorry tale, then? Was Célie not as pure as she seemed?”

Aristide shook his head. “I fear not.”

“And so he learned of it, and killed the man who had defiled her … and this time killed her, too?”

As simple as that, he thought, ten minutes later, as he hurried back to the courtyard and the waiting fiacre.

And the bitter, unhappy woman who once had been Juliette de Vaudray, who discovered too late what she had done—she had known Aubry, known his guilt, known his character; and when it had become apparent that, through her own actions, Aubry would escape the nets of justice, she had chosen to punish him in her own unique fashion. A punishment that was, for her, all at once revenge, atonement, and deliverance.

Aristide glanced at his watch. It was nearly two o’clock.

An empty cart waited in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice, the single horse standing patiently, flicking away flies with its tail. Sanson’s assistant Desmorets leaned against the cart, arms folded, head lowered, staring at his feet. Aristide hurried past him to the door at the bottom of the steps.

He encountered Sanson near the prison clerk’s office. The executioner turned at the sound of his footsteps.

“Good day,” Aristide said, wincing at the banality of the words as soon as they had left his lips. Sanson nodded. Like Aristide, he wore only black, save for his cravat. Aristide could not help thinking it suited him, though he looked taut and wretched; or perhaps “haunted” was a better word. It was rumored that executioners found it especially distressing to put a woman to death.

“They tell me you’ve been visiting her,” Sanson said, his voice hoarse, scarcely above a whisper. “Are you going to see her?”

“I’ve already been; I’m returning.”

“How is she?”

“Very calm, the last I saw.” He met Sanson’s eyes for the first time and was startled at the torment he saw in the young man’s pale face, in the bluish shadows beneath his eyes that spoke of disquiet and sleepless nights.

“Sanson … this woman—I’ve often spoken with her. She’s not afraid. She’s sick of life; I can’t say I understand her despair, but I do know that she
wants
death, that she welcomes it.”

“Should that cheer me?” he said. “Make the job easier?”

“No, of course not. Forgive me.” Aristide stole another glance at his watch. Half an hour; all he needed, he thought.

#

“
You’re late,” Rosalie said dryly as Aristide entered her cell. “I was beginning to think you’d lost your nerve again.”

She had rouged her cheeks and lips, and smudged a little lampblack about her eyes until they shone large, dark, and lustrous. Her long hair fell about her shoulders. She was wearing shirt and breeches and gleaming riding boots, with unbuttoned waistcoat and collar hanging open.

Aristide stared at her a moment. “Forgive me, but do you intend to wear those clothes? To exhibit yourself in male costume?”

“The great advantage of being condemned to death,” she said calmly, “is that you’re free to do anything you wish. What more can they do to me?”

“They’ll call you brazen, a whore, a lesbian. Are you sure you want that?”

“I should like to die in the clothes in which I had my revenge.”

Aristide turned. “Gilbert, do you think we might have a half hour alone together, in privacy?”

“I’ll be at the end of the corridor,” Gilbert said, and stumped away. “My hearing’s not so good, you know.”

“Rosalie …” Aristide began, when Gilbert had vanished into the gloom.

“Thank you for returning.”

“I talked to Madame de Laroque just now,” he said after a moment’s silence. “She told me all about you—or enough to allow me to reason out the rest.”

She cast him a quick sharp glance.

“It was you whom René Marsillac de Saint-Roch ruined, and whom Aubry loved; for whose honor he fought Marsillac and killed him in 1785, and ruined his own career and future, at least until the Revolution unexpectedly provided him with new prospects. Madame de Laroque told me that once Aubry had fled the country, he declared, in a letter he sent to Marsillac’s family, and yours, and all the news journals that would print it, that he had killed Marsillac for your sake but that you had proved to be a corrupt, wanton, deceitful whore, and that he wouldn’t have you for all the wealth of the Indies.” He paused. An ugly crimson blush crept into Rosalie’s cheeks.

“I don’t suppose it made any difference to Aubry,” Aristide added, “that you hadn’t been a willing victim of seduction, that Marsillac had raped you as surely as if he’d held a pistol to your head. To somebody like Aubry, a woman should have died rather than give up her ‘honor.’
” He thrust cold hands in his pockets and paced the length of the cell, turning to face Rosalie once more.

“You disguised yourself in coat and breeches and murdered Célie because you were bitterly jealous of her, and Saint-Ange died because he was a witness to your crime.”

“Yes.”

“No,” Aristide said.

“That’s the truth!”

“No, it’s not.”

“The porter recognized me.”

“Yes; he identified you as the young man he saw rushing up the stairs toward Saint-Ange’s apartment. He was right, of course. But the young man came twice; let’s not forget that.” He gestured to a chair. “Why don’t you sit down? This may take a little while.”

She did not sit down, but leaned against the back of the chair, her eyes never leaving him as he paced back and forth.

“It was such a simple affair, really,” he said. “A simple, obvious crime of passion, a trail easy to follow. A matter of people behaving exactly as anyone might have predicted they would. It should have been resolved within the fortnight. Until you muddied the trail.” He paused, waiting for her to insist once again that she had committed the crime herself, but she said nothing.

“Aubry sent you that letter,” he continued. “Because he hated you for, as he thought, betraying him not once but twice. First with Marsillac—breaking his heart and making a fool of him by becoming Marsillac’s whore—no matter that Marsillac had terrorized rather than seduced you into submitting—and ruining his future by driving him into fighting that rash duel.”

Rosalie nodded. “To Philippe, nothing was ever
his
fault.”

“And then you betrayed him, or so he decided, by giving him up to the authorities in ’ninety-three, this time putting his very life in danger. But why did you keep his letter? If a former lover had sent such a letter to me, I’d have burned it, praying that the flames would scorch his vitals to cinders.”

“To remind myself how much I despised him,” she said with the faintest of smiles.

Aristide nodded. “Yes, I suppose you might. Then, I think, not so long afterward, Célie asked you for help. She didn’t dare ask anyone who might have revealed her secret to her father. She confessed to you that she was in trouble, that Saint-Ange was extorting money from her, and why, and where she went to pay him. And she told you, whether intentionally or inadvertently I don’t know, that Aubry was her secret fiancé. I don’t suppose she had the faintest idea who you were, or that you and Aubry shared a past.