22
"I hope you're now going to tell me what the devil this is all about?" Brasseur demanded as Aristide returned to the porte-coch?re and the porter closed the wicket gate behind them.
"I know what happened. At least-I know what's been going on here. But-"
"Ravel!" someone said behind him. Thinking that perhaps Moreau had hurried after him and hailed him, he turned. Immediately a short, powerfully built man stepped out from the shadow of a standing carriage and grasped his arm.
"Monsieur Ravel, don't make any fuss, now, and kindly come with me, if you please."
"What?"
"Just come with me, please," the man repeated, in a hoarse undertone that Aristide thought he recognized.
"I think you're mistaken," he said, fumbling in his pocket for the police card Brasseur had given him. The man, though dressed inconspicuously in a drab suit, was not wearing the customary black of the police. "I'm working for Inspector-"
"We know who you're working for," the man said, keeping a firm grip on Aristide's arm. "Would you just come along this way."
"Here, what do you think you're doing?" Brasseur snapped, holding up his own card. The man glanced at him and scowled.
"You're Brasseur? Well, you can either quietly remove yourself and keep your mouth shut, or you can come along with your nosy friend here."
Aristide and Brasseur exchanged a glance. Feeling it was wiser not to resist, Aristide allowed the man to propel him the few steps to the closed carriage. The man thrust him inside, stood aside to let Brasseur follow him, climbed in himself, tugged down the blinds, and thumped with a cane on the roof to signal the driver.
"You're the same friendly fellow who warned me off the other night," Aristide said, after several minutes of oppressive silence as the unlit carriage jolted along. "Who are you working for? Not the police, I imagine."
"I expect you'll find out shortly," said the man. He folded his arms and leaned back without further words. Brasseur glowered but said nothing.
The carriage proceeded onward, at the usual slow pace of the crowded city streets, for a quarter hour. They must be driving along Rue St. Dominique toward Rue des Saints P?res, Aristide thought, but shortly the carriage swerved northward. Soon afterward, the familiar clamor of the city streets grew suddenly softer and the clatter of the hooves and wheels rang hollow on a wooden bridge. Finally, after another quarter hour, the carriage rolled to a stop in what he guessed, from the echo of hooves on cobblestones, must be an enclosed courtyard. The man threw open the carriage door and gestured them out, but before Aristide could look about and deduce where he might be, his captor had seized his arm once more and was pushing him toward the nearest door, a small one at ground level.
"Follow me, please, messieurs," the man said, once they were inside. Baffled, Aristide followed him through a long, dark corridor and finally upstairs to the first floor, where a few candles burned in sconces here and there. He could tell at once from the delicate boiseries on the walls, the carved details of the panels and central trophies not painted but gilded, that they were in a very grand mansion indeed, but his captor remained uncommunicative and merely led the way through three opulent formal rooms.
The man stopped before a pair of high white double doors. A waiting footman, whose buckled shoes and powdered peruke must have cost more than Aristide's entire wardrobe, silently opened one door as Aristide's companion stood back.
"In there. I'll be right out here, by the way," he added, "so don't try anything silly."
"I wouldn't dream of it." Aristide entered the room, trying to tread lightly as the intricate oak parquet beneath his feet gave a series of loud creaks.
"I could have that repaired, of course," said a man's voice at the far end of the chamber, "but I find it useful for announcing guests. Ravel, is it?"
"Yes, monsieur." He approached, mystified, Brasseur behind him, until he could see the other man clearly in the candlelight. The man who had addressed him stood at a bookcase in the opposite wall, a book in his hand; richly clothed in an embroidered silk suit and elaborate wig, he was tall and handsome, though his patrician features were growing blurred from good living and the advance of early middle age. Aristide thought he seemed vaguely familiar, but could not place him.
"My, my," said the man, "another fish in the net? I suppose you'll be Brasseur?"
"Inspector Brasseur of the Eighteenth District," Brasseur growled.
"I understand you both have been meddling in matters that shouldn't concern you," the man continued, unimpressed.
"Forgive me, monsieur," Aristide said, wondering who he could be, "but I'm only trying to clear my name. Inspector Brasseur told me that-"
"Yes, yes, I hear there's some misapprehension regarding you. Nothing more, I suspect, than a matter of a commissaire who is, perhaps, better suited to other aspects of the law." The man replaced the book on the shelf and seated himself in an armchair, without inviting either of them to do so. He had, Aristide thought, the urbane, supremely confident air of an aristocrat accustomed to having his own way in all things. "Therefore: if I assure you that you will no longer be under suspicion for any criminal matter, will you agree to cease interfering with my friends and their business, and other affairs that should be none of your concern?"
Aristide gazed at the man, furiously trying to remember where he had seen his face before. Whoever their mysterious host was, it was clear from his house and his manner that he was a grand seigneur, a powerful aristocrat, probably with connections at court, whom it would be dangerous to cross. At last he decided to speak frankly.
"Monsieur, if you mean the murder of Monsieur Saint-Landry, then, no, I won't promise you I'll stop investigating it. If, however, the Marquis de Beaupr?au is one of these friends of whom you speak, then I'll certainly agree to cease prying into his business, because I already know what happened."
"Do you, now? What is it you claim to know?"
"I know we've managed to solve the wrong murder."
Despite the well-dressed man's composed, unreadable demeanor, Aristide was sure he saw him blink. "The wrong murder?" he echoed, with a delicate lift of his eyebrows. "What on earth do you mean?"
"The murder of the Vicomte de Castagnac."
A pace or two behind Aristide, Brasseur cursed softly.
"The Vicomte de Castagnac?" the man said.
Aristide nodded. "He was the cousin of Monsieur de Beaupr?au's father-"
The man waved a languid, perfectly manicured hand. "Yes; I'm acquainted with the name. And what has he to do with this Saint-Landry?"
"Nothing at all, in life."
"You're beginning to test my patience, Ravel," the man said, a faint frown playing across his smooth features. "Kindly explain yourself."
Aristide hesitated, wondering why he should explain what was strictly a police matter to a man whose name he did not even know, but Brasseur, behind him, tapped his elbow.
"Go on, tell him whatever you can," he murmured. "He'll have our skins if we don't cooperate."
The aristocratic man smiled but said nothing. Brasseur, evidently, had recognized him, but Aristide was no more enlightened than before. He paused for an instant, setting his thoughts in order, and nodded.
"If you'll be patient with me, monsieur?we have to go back to the day that Inspector Brasseur and I began investigating this whole affair. I think this is what happened." He clasped his hands behind his back to keep himself from fidgeting and began, feeling absurdly as if he were fourteen years old and back at St.-Barth?lemy, practicing Latin declamation before a class of yawning, squirming schoolfellows.
"Jean-Lambert Saint-Landry was found murdered, his throat cut, early in the morning on the tenth. Inspector Brasseur and I saw Saint-Landry's corpse again at the Basse-Ge?le de la Seine, the next morning. The attendant there pointed out some strange marks on the body that seemed to refer to Freemasonry, and also showed us that someone-presumably the murderer-had cut out Saint-Landry's tongue." He paused briefly as a gleam of surprise flicke
red in the aristocratic man's eyes.
"At that point, monsieur, the corpse was unidentified. So we tracked the man's identity down by way of his clothes. Monsieur Derville, an acquaintance of mine, knows who all the best tailors are, so we showed him the dead man's waistcoat and he gave us the name of the tailor most likely to have created it.
"We didn't know it at the time, but Derville recognized the waistcoat as one that might belong to Saint-Landry, who was a close friend of his. Wanting to be sure before he brought such frightful news to Madame Saint-Landry, he secretly went to the morgue himself to see the body. He recognized Saint-Landry immediately. What's more, because Derville is a Freemason himself, he recognized the marks on Saint-Landry's body, and the fact that his throat had been slit and his tongue torn out, as signs pointing to Freemasonry. He feared they were either the work of a deranged member of the fraternity, or of someone who wished to cast blame on the Freemasons for the murder of one of their own-for Saint-Landry was not only Derville's friend, he was a brother Mason and, in fact, the Worshipful Master-that's the president-of the lodge of which Derville was a member-"
"I'm well acquainted with the titles and symbols of Freemasonry," the man said coolly. "Pray continue."
"Yes, monsieur. As I said, Saint-Landry was the master of the Lodge of the Sacred Trinity, and Derville was a junior member of that same lodge. Recognizing the Masonic symbolism connected to Saint-Landry's murder, Derville grew worried and went to ask the Senior Warden of his lodge what it might mean, and what should be done.
"If the Marquis de Beaupr?au is one of your intimates, monsieur, then I expect you already know that it's he who is Senior Warden at the Lodge of the Sacred Trinity, and also that he's a man of the most advanced and liberal ideas. Beaupr?au, and many of his closest friends at the lodge, have one fixed idea above all: that France is sorely in need of reform." The aristocratic man smiled slightly, but said nothing, and Aristide continued.
"Nearly everyone would agree that we need a strong and decisive king to initiate those reforms, in the face of all the opposition he'd undoubtedly receive from the nobility and clergy who want to keep a firm grip on their privileges; and plenty of people are hinting that the Duc d'Orl?ans would make a much better?"
He stopped, feeling his face grow hot, and swallowed hard. A quick glance out of the tall windows at his left immediately confirmed his suspicions; below him, beyond the gated rear courtyard, lay the brightly lit gardens of the Palais-Royal. Now he could recognize his host's features from the dozens of cheap portrait prints he could see every day hanging for sale, together with those of the king and queen, from any book stall. "Forgive me, monseigneur," he said, after a moment's uncomfortable pause. "I'm addressing the Duc d'Orl?ans himself, am I not?"
Orl?ans nodded, watching him. "Please continue; your story is most intriguing." Aristide struggled to collect his thoughts and the duke raised his eyebrows again. "I believe you were saying that certain people are whispering that I would make a better king than my undoubtedly well-meaning cousin Louis."
"Yes, monseigneur. They are. And as Monsieur de Beaupr?au is linked to a thousand other highly placed and influential people through Freemasonry, or one of its variants, he knows both you-as Grand Master of all the Masons of France-and Count Cagliostro. Through Cagliostro, he learned of Cardinal de Rohan's possible plan to buy, as the queen's proxy, the court jewelers' diamond necklace. He-and Saint-Landry-urged Cagliostro to advise Rohan to enter into the scheme, never dreaming that it would end in a far greater scandal than the relatively minor one they'd planned."
"And how does the Vicomte de Castagnac come into this?" Orl?ans inquired.
"He doesn't, monseigneur, not yet."
"And yet you claim he was murdered."
"Bear with me a moment more. As I said, Derville told Monsieur de Beaupr?au about Saint-Landry's murder, and I think Beaupr?au panicked. Saint-Landry, as Worshipful Master of the lodge, was close to Beaupr?au and was part of the scheme to influence Rohan's decision, and when he suddenly turned up brutally murdered, with the symbols of Freemasonry on him for all to see, Beaupr?au immediately feared that someone-some outsider-knew about the plot. So he stole the body: not to keep the body itself from being identified, but to keep the symbolism of the wounds from being identified, and thus doing away with any connection between Saint-Landry's murder and a conspiracy among a handful of high-ranking Masons.
"Of course, now he had the dilemma of-"
"-what to do with the body," said the duke, nodding.
"Yes, monseigneur, exactly. How do you rid yourself of a corpse, with its throat slit, in the middle of Paris in January during a particularly harsh winter, when the ground is like iron, and ensure that no one will ever see it again?"
He fell silent. Orl?ans coughed gently.
"Well?"
"I've only been sure since this afternoon, monseigneur, just a few minutes before that amiable gentleman in the gray coat brought us here. But I do know that Monsieur de Beaupr?au, in the past, has conducted business with a certain Fragonard, an anatomist. He was sacked from the Royal Veterinary School fifteen years ago and now earns his living preparing anatomical curiosities for wealthy collectors. Perhaps you've heard of him?"
"Cousin of Fragonard the painter? Yes, I believe I have a small specimen in my own collection."
"Is it too much of a stretch of the imagination, monseigneur, for Beaupr?au to conceive of ridding himself of a corpse by delivering it to Fragonard-the same man who dissected and preserved his sister's pet monkey a few years ago-who, naturally, would proceed to make the corpse completely unrecognizable?"
Orl?ans frowned. "Surely Fragonard's suspicions would have been raised when he received a corpse with a slit throat."
"Yes. That's what baffled me. It's one thing to buy cadavers from hangmen or grave robbers; quite another to collude with murderers by obligingly disposing of their victims. I'm not sure that even Fragonard, who is more than a little eccentric, would have gone that far, and I expect Beaupr?au wondered about that, too. But then, I think, chance favored Beaupr?au. His cousin, Castagnac, must have been out making the rounds of the fleshpots, and came blundering into the stables in the small hours of the morning, just as Beaupr?au and his companions were secreting Saint-Landry's body away. They told me at the H?tel de Beaupr?au, you see, that Monsieur de Castagnac had died in an accident; that he'd been found early the next day with his neck broken, his horse beside him, in his own stableyard."
"And did he die in such a manner?"
"I don't know, monseigneur. But it seems very convenient that Castagnac should die in a fall just when Monsieur de Beaupr?au had a corpse to dispose of. And there, you see, lay the solution to the problem: the best place to hide a dead body, where no one will question its presence or think of looking at it again, is in a tomb."
Orl?ans nodded. "Ah."
"With Castagnac dead-I'm sure to the great relief of his family-Beaupr?au and his friends could simply switch the bodies. Hide Saint-Landry's body in the hayloft for a day or two-no difficulty with that in this icy weather-and then, after Castagnac's coffin was closed, merely reopen it, take Castagnac out of it, put Saint-Landry in, and nail down the lid again for good, to respectably shut him away forever in the Beaupr?au family vault. And then, well disguised as a resurrectionist or hangman's assistant-according to his valet, Beaupr?au was a talented actor in private theatricals in his youth-he could easily do away with Castagnac's body by delivering it to Fragonard's workshop. Fragonard, not recognizing him after three or four years, suspecting nothing, would willingly pay him for it and proceed to turn it into medical specimens or even one of those skinless horrors that he produced at the Veterinary School.
"I saw the body myself; Fragonard told me it was the body of a man who had been hanged. But it was also, certainly, the body of a man who had led a life of excessive drunkenness and debauchery, and I gather Castagnac's reputation was well known. What's more, Monsieur de Beaupr?au's valet accompanied me to Fragonard's works
hop, and I'm sure he recognized the corpse, though he said nothing, probably out of loyalty to his master."
"So you think," said Orl?ans, "that Monsieur de Beaupr?au murdered his cousin in order to hush up the manner of Saint-Landry's death?"
"Yes, monseigneur. As I said, Castagnac's 'accidental' death seems really too convenient."
Orl?ans nodded. Suddenly he rose to his feet, strode to a door concealed amid the gilded boiseries, and threw it open.
"Inside. Now."
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~