17
Aristide stared at Derville as he abruptly fell silent.
"You told Beaupr?au?"
Suddenly great pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. He seized Derville's coat collar and forced him backward until he was up against one of the square stone pillars that supported the arcade.
"It was you, wasn't it? The man who came to the morgue. The first one, who came in the morning, looking for the body of a mythical servant. Because you recognized that waistcoat when Brasseur showed it to you and told you it belonged to a dead man. But Saint-Landry was more to you than just a family friend. You're a Mason, too, aren't you? You've been lying to me all along!"
"For God's sake," Derville said, "let's not stand here quarreling in the midst of the traffic." He twisted away and marched to the half-dozen empty tables that stood in front of the nearest caf?. "Yes, I'm a Freemason," he declared, flinging himself down in a rickety basket-seated chair. "After seeing Saint-Landry's body, and what was done to it, I thought it would be safer if you didn't know."
"Are you a member of the Lodge of the Sacred Trinity?" Aristide demanded, suddenly enlightened. A waiter approached them and he gestured the man away with a glare. "Is that how you knew Saint-Landry? No wonder you kept stalling me when I asked you about friends who were Masons-and I suppose that's why you wanted to come along with me and find out what Desmoulins' friends might know."
"I knew Saint-Landry long before I became a Mason and joined his lodge."
"And when Brasseur showed you the waistcoat, and you realized it probably belonged to a friend-either Saint-Landry or Beaupr?au-you sent Brasseur and me off on a wild goose chase to the wrong tailor, to buy yourself some time while you went to the Basse-Ge?le to see for yourself if that corpse could be one or the other of them. Am I right?" Derville nodded infinitesimally and Aristide continued.
"And you knew it was Saint-Landry right off. What's more, the attendants could hardly hide the manner in which he died; and you, being a Mason, and recognizing the dead man as the head of your own lodge, feared that the throat-cutting, the tongue, and the marks in his flesh were significant. That's what happened, isn't it?"
"All right, all right," said Derville. He slouched down into his chair, scowling, and thrust his hands into his pockets. "It was for Eug?nie and Sophie's sake; I only wanted to know who the dead man was. I just wanted to slow you down for a couple of hours, while I made sure, so if it was Saint-Landry, I could break it to them gently?but when I saw those wounds, I panicked. So I went to the lodge-which isn't far from here-and looked for the most senior member-"
"Beaupr?au."
"Yes. He's Senior Warden, under Saint-Landry. That means he's second in command."
"I should have known." Aristide tugged his notes from a pocket and glanced over them, disgusted. "Beaupr?au must have been the well-dressed man in the blue coat and silk waistcoat whom Bouille described."
Derville nodded. "He was wearing a blue coat that day."
"So you found Beaupr?au at your lodge. And you told him Saint-Landry was dead, with a slit throat, what's more, and a Masonic symbol carved into his flesh, and asked him what ought to be done. And then Beaupr?au, for his own reasons, must have gone off to the morgue like a shot, with a couple of friends, and stolen the body." He paused, with a glance at Derville, who shrugged.
"I expect so. He didn't say anything to me beyond 'I'll take care of it.' I'm a very junior member, Ravel-he wouldn't have included me in whatever it was he was hatching."
"Do you realize what a damned mess you've made of everything?" Aristide demanded. "Obstructing a police investigation into a murder-"
"Understand my position, will you?" Derville said. "Look?I told Beaupr?au that Saint-Landry was dead, in the morgue, with a cut throat, because I didn't know what else to do. If Saint-Landry had been run over by a carriage or stabbed by a footpad, it would have been different?tragic, but accidents happen. I'd have told Sophie that her brother was dead, because I thought she ought to hear it from a friend rather than from some police official, and that would have been an end to the matter; but that cut throat scared me more than I want to say. His throat cut from ear to ear?I took that oath when I was initiated, and you saw for yourself how ?taillot and Varenne reacted when you spoke of what had been done to him. Any other Mason you care to question would be just as uneasy as I am to hear that someone may have taken the oath literally."
"And what has Beaupr?au done with the corpse of his friend and fellow Mason?"
"I haven't the faintest idea." Derville leaned back in his chair and stared at him, one eyebrow slightly raised. "That's your job, isn't it, to unravel this pretty mess?"
Aristide shot to his feet and shoved his chair aside. "Oh, go to the devil," he snapped, and stalked off.