The Whispering of Bones (18 page)

“And how is Bertamelli?” Charles asked. “Is he well? Are you pleased with him?”

Michele Bertamelli, a fourteen-year-old from Milan, had been Charles's rhetoric student and a spirited dancer in the college ballets. Now—partly owing to Charles's help—he was Beauchamps's youngest Opera dancer.

Beauchamps sighed rapturously, as though seeing a holy vision. “He's magnificent. Simply magnificent. I could fall at his feet, his technique grows so exquisite. At least, I could fall at his feet on the days when I am not considering killing him for one thing or another.”

Charles grinned. “A familiar set of choices where Bertamelli is concerned. Please give him my greetings and say that I am glad to hear such a good—well, mostly good—report of him.”

Seeing that the diversion to dance threatened to go on, La Reynie looked at Charles and nodded toward the Lunel gates. Charles ignored him.

La Reynie, exasperated, said, “If we are through with Opera business, is there anything more you can tell us about the Lunel family, Monsieur Beauchamps?”

“Nothing. I wish you luck. Paul Lunel's killer deserves to hang. Or worse.” He bowed, Mlle de Subligny looked down her nose at La Reynie and curtsied like a duchess, and they went together to Beauchamps's double doors.

La Reynie pulled on the bell beside the Lunel
porte cochère
. After a long wait and another pull that nearly wrenched the rope from its mooring, steps sounded on the cobbles.

The inner shutter was lifted from a small grille and round eyes peered at them. “Who's there?”

“Lieutenant-Général La Reynie. Open the doors.”

The shutter banged back over the rectangle, bolts slid, and the right-hand half of the big door was pulled back. They went into the courtyard and the very young groom bowed awkwardly and looked around the court, as though hoping to see someone who would tell him what to do next. To Charles's surprise, La Reynie said kindly, “The next thing,
mon brave
, is to take us to the door.”

With a grateful look, the little groom scuttled across the cobbles, leaving his charges to exchange grins and follow. The imposing house of honey-colored stone was straight across from the double carriage doors, flanked by a carriage house with open doors on one side and a stable on the other, into which another groom was leading a sweated bay horse. The boy pounded on the house door as though he were a siege army. A fat red-nosed man, wearing a suit of good black cloth that proclaimed him a high-ranking indoor servant, flung the door open angrily. When he saw the visitors, he composed himself with an obvious effort and the boy fled toward the stables.

“
Bonjour
, Monsieur La Reynie,” he said, bowing. He seemed not to see Charles.

“My companion and I must speak with your master,” La Reynie said, and waited until the man had bowed very lightly to Charles. “I judge, by the fact that a carriage is in your carriage house and the horses are being stabled, that he has returned. Please tell him that I am here, and Maître Charles du Luc also.”

“I regret,
mon lieutenant-général
, that I cannot do that. As you say, Monsieur Lunel is only this moment arrived from the country. With his mother. They are fatigued from their journey. And they are in mourning, as you well know. They are seeing no one.”

“Do they not care who killed their son and brother? Whether they do or not, they will see me. Go and tell them.”

Stiff with offense, the man left them on the step and disappeared into the house. La Reynie pushed the door wider with his stick and went in, Charles behind him. The high-ceilinged foyer with its floor of red and white patterned stone was full of light. They heard a door close, and then voices approached from beyond the dark red velvet curtain between the foyer and the next room.

“It can't be helped.” The light tenor voice sounded tired and resigned. “Of course I must see him.”

“But the other—”

“Never mind. Bring them in and go back to work. I'll see to this.”

The servant pushed the curtain aside and exclaimed in anger when he saw La Reynie and Charles standing in the foyer.

“As your master just said,” La Reynie told him, “never mind. We have taken the liberty of not waiting on your doorstep, Monsieur Lunel,” he said, raising his voice.

A stocky, strong-featured man of about thirty pushed the curtain aside and stood framed in the archway. His suit and coat of mourning black were wrinkled, and his dark brown wig was windblown. With a look that sent the furious servant quickly away through a side door, the young man said, “Monsieur La Reynie. You must forgive my servant Laurent. He was very fond of my brother and cannot seem to pull himself together.” He bowed, ignoring Charles as the servant had done. “How may I help you?”

La Reynie stepped aside and presented Charles with a flourish. “This is Maître Charles du Luc. He and I have come to speak with you about your brother.”

Lunel gave Charles the slightest of nods. To La Reynie he said eagerly, “You have found his killer,
mon lieutenant-général
?” His strained face was lit with hope.

“I regret, no,
monsieur
. I must speak with you, and with
madame
, your mother. The more I know about your brother, the better chance I have of finding his killer.”

Lunel hesitated. “And may I ask what Maître du Luc's part is in this?”

“But surely that is obvious,
monsieur
. Your brother was on the verge of being a Jesuit novice. Maître du Luc and his brother Jesuits have, in a way, lost a brother, too.” La Reynie smiled as though he had explained everything. “May we go now to your mother?” He moved toward the gracefully curved stairs.

“I will go first and warn her,” Lunel said quickly. “She is devastated by my brother's death and may be lying down.”

“But of course.” La Reynie stood aside and watched Lunel mount the stairs. Charles half expected him to follow, but the
lieutenant-général
stayed where he was. When Lunel was out of sight, he said softly to Charles, “After we are settled and talking, excuse yourself to the privy. Have a look around, especially down here. Say you're lost, if someone sees you. See what the servant who dislikes us so much is doing. And who those belong to.” He flicked a glance at the outdoor cloaks and the amber-headed stick on the foyer's side table.

“You suspect the servant?” Charles said softly.

La Reynie shrugged. “More information is always better than less.”

Lunel's returning footsteps sounded. “My mother invites you to come up.”

They followed him up gracefully curved stone stairs to a light, welcoming
salon
. A faded woman in her fifties lay half reclining in a chair covered in green velvet, a soft gray blanket spread over her black skirts. Her son made the introductions, Charles and La Reynie bowed, and she inclined her head to them.

“Forgive me for not rising. As you see, I am something of an invalid just now.” Her oval face was pale and lined but showed the remains of beauty. She kept her eyes on her folded hands, and Charles had to strain to hear her low voice. “What do you want to know about my darling Paul?”

“Were you happy when he decided to become a Jesuit,
madame
?” The
lieutenant-général
pulled up a small footstool and sat as near her as courtesy allowed.

Lunel had withdrawn beyond his mother's chair. Charles remained standing near the door, where he could watch everyone.

“I will be frank with you. No, I was not.” Mme Lunel picked up a snowy handkerchief lying in her lap and smoothed its lace edges. “But my husband had given him permission to enter the Society of Jesus, and it was not for me to prevent him. His going was a great grief to me. Poor Paul, he could have gone any time since last April, but he waited, hoping, I think, to win me over to his plan. But that he could never do. I told him so, and he decided to enter with the new novice class in October, after the feast of San Rémy.”

“May I ask,
madame
,” La Reynie said, “what your objection was?”

A small muscle moved in her cheek and she looked briefly at him. “If you have a son, do you want him to be a”—she looked down—“a religious?”

“Not greatly. But I hope for his happiness.”

Charles heard the small catch in La Reynie's voice, though he didn't think the others did. Even if they had, they wouldn't know what Charles did, that the
lieutenant-général
and his son were estranged.

“I did want his happiness,” she flared. “But do children necessarily know what their happiness is?”

No one spoke, and a tense silence grew.

Finally, La Reynie said, “I know that word reached you that Paul did not arrive at the Novice House. Why did you not come back to Paris and search for him? It seems you made no response to that news at all.”

Madame Lunel looked reproachfully at Alexandre. “Word did not reach me that Paul was missing. Only later, that he was dead.”

La Reynie was also looking at Alexandre Lunel. “And why was that?”

Lunel averted his gaze. “It was my fault,” he said disconsolately, “and I've been doing penance for it ever since, I assure you. I—well, I confess I also was not pleased with Paul's decision. I wanted him to go into the law, like me. Like our father. I took it badly when he chose his own path. Seventeen seemed so young and I felt—oh, I don't know—rejected, I suppose. Which was very childish of me.” He glanced at Charles. “I found his ‘vocation' hard to credit, but who am I to say whom God is calling?”

Charles nodded uncomfortably, thinking of Amaury de Corbet and his own doubts about Amaury's vocation.

Lunel went on. “When I learned that Paul hadn't arrived at the Novice House, I thought—no, to be honest, I hoped—that he'd changed his mind.”

One of La Reynie's black eyebrows was climbing steadily as he listened. “You never feared that some ill fortune had come to him?”

“I should have, I see that now. But a strong, healthy, peaceable young man who sets off in daylight to go a short way—what could happen to him? I thought he'd gone to some friend's house to, well, hide for a little. Because of the embarrassment of changing his mind. He always minded what people thought of him.”

“So you saw him go?” La Reynie said.

“No, not even that. He said he didn't want me there when he left; he refused my company on his walk to the Novice House. He said it would make going too hard for him, even though he wanted to go. So I went to stay with friends to let him have his way. I went with a very heavy heart, I can tell you.”

“Oh? Who did you stay with?” La Reynie said, as though the answer didn't much interest him.

“A good friend who lives a little way south of the city. The family name is Coriot.”

“Didn't your servant know where to find you? Why didn't he send you word there instead of sending to the country?”

Lunel smiled sadly. “I forgot to tell him I was going there first. I was only there for two days and then I went to Chaillot, to our mother. That's where I found the message from the Novice House about Paul's absence. It was addressed only to me, and when I read it, I thought that my brother's nerve had failed him, that he had come to his senses and was lying low with his own friends until his embarrassment passed and he could come home and admit his mistake. I didn't tell my mother because I didn't want her to get her hopes up. I—I'm sorry.” He looked pleadingly at his mother.

“I knew how she would worry if I couldn't tell her where he'd gone.” His shoulders slumped. “I will blame myself all my days for not telling what I knew. If I had, it might have saved his life.” His sudden look at La Reynie and Charles was full of anguish. “After it was discovered that he'd been killed, I sent to everyone I could think of, asking if he'd been there. But no one had seen him. Where
can
he have been those three weeks? And why, dear God,
why
would anyone kill a boy like Paul?”

His mother finally looked up, but there was no warmth in the look. “Softly, Alexandre. You thought you were acting for the best. We can't change things.”

La Reynie waited a decent moment and then said to Lunel, “I want a list of the families you contacted, a list of Paul's friends.”

“Of course. Though I don't see the good of that now.” He went to a bureau with an intricate crisscross pattern of black and gold in its dark wood and took a quill and paper from a small compartment.

“Madame,”
Charles said, “if I may ask, why did Paul's father not send him to Louis le Grand, if Paul had some inclination toward the Society of Jesus?”

The sound of Alexandre Lunel's quill scraping suddenly across his paper drew everyone's eyes. He muttered in exasperation, examining his pen. Then he smiled an apology over his shoulder. “Your pardon. I didn't see that the point was gone.”

As he rummaged for another one, his mother replied,
gazing out the window across from her chair, “When Alexandre here was a child, he was sickly, his eyes were weak. He could not go to school, so we hired a tutor for him. My husband felt that his education was very good, and decided to have the same for Paul. So they both stayed at home and studied. My husband had found a Jesuit tutor to teach Alexandre but was persuaded to try a young layman to tutor Paul. Which worked out very well. Though Paul was disappointed not to have a Jesuit. He'd heard so much about your missions,” she said to Charles. And added, “He had a silly idea of doing something like that after—”

“That's everyone I can think of,” Alexandre Lunel said, cutting her off and holding out his list to La Reynie.

“My thanks,
monsieur
.” La Reynie tucked the paper into his coat pocket and looked from under his brows at Charles.

Belatedly reminded of their agreement, Charles said, “If you will excuse me for a moment? I must—um—” To his annoyance, he felt his face grow red.