Game of Patience (16 page)

He strolled inside the Café Février and lingered over a demitasse of coffee, savoring the gilt-framed mirrors and crystal chandeliers that shimmered in the candlelight, a haunting reminder of a more refined way of life now seemingly gone forever. A dog-eared news journal abandoned on a table beckoned him. Thirty-three of the agitators involved in the previous month’s uprising at the Grenelle military camp had been sentenced to death and shot, while the English occupiers had been driven out of Corsica, thanks to the occupying army in Italy. The war, that ill-conceived war that once had threatened the very existence of the young Republic, was at last turning in France’s favor, with the armies led now by such fresh, talented men as General Bonaparte. It was indeed a new era, Aristide reflected, not without a touch of mingled relief and regret; the dazzling, decadent world of the old regime would never return.

He recognized a familiar face as he looked up from the journal. Not far from him, Young Sanson sat alone, elegant in a well-tailored coat with velvet collar and crisp muslin cravat, a newspaper and a half-empty liqueur glass before him. Their eyes met and they exchanged gazes for a moment before Sanson turned away. Aristide rose.

“Would you care to keep me company?”

“You’re the police agent,” Sanson said. “Sorry; I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Ravel.”

“Of course you won’t have forgotten mine.” Sanson hesitated and at last took his glass and joined Aristide at his table. “Well, why not. Do you come here often, then?”

“Now and then. I supposed you spent your evenings more often at the tavern on Rue des Lavandières.”

Sanson nodded. “I used to live not far from there, when I was still in the National Guard. But sometimes one wants something a bit more civilized.”

The waiter arrived with another glass of anisette for Sanson and they sipped their drinks in silence. Aristide covertly observed his companion.
The executioner dresses better than I do,
he thought with a flicker of amusement.

“What do you want this time?” Sanson asked, after setting down his empty glass.

“Nothing but a comrade, I assure you.”

“You could find more congenial comrades than I.”

“I don’t choose to.”

Sanson absently turned his glass in his fingers. The man had fine hands, Aristide mused, long and well-shaped, the deft, sensitive hands of an artist or a surgeon rather than a hangman.

“Listen,” said Sanson, “I don’t know why you think you want to befriend me, unless it’s some kind of morbid curiosity; but you ought to know that men like me don’t have friends.”

Aristide stirred. “The Revolution has changed things—”

“It might have changed our status under the law, but it didn’t change people’s hearts. Some people still shy away from my father and my uncles and me, as if we’d give them the plague. I don’t imagine you’d want the son of a
bourreau
working for you, or dining at your table, or marrying your daughter.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference to me, if he were a decent man.”

“I beg your pardon,” Sanson said after a moment more of uneasy silence. “I’m being damned rude, and I apologize. I’ve gone for most of my life expecting people to snub me, so I’ve grown accustomed to giving back as good as I get. But I, of all people, shouldn’t strike at a hand offered me in friendship. Let me buy you a glass.”

“Coffee will do. Thanks.”

“Like you, I imagined the Revolution would change things, but in the end …” Sanson shook his head and beckoned a waiter over to order, then turned back to Aristide. “When I was a boy, I wanted to be a cavalry officer with a fine uniform and a magnificent horse. Then I learned what my father was, and his father before him, and
his
father, five generations back, and I also learned no military academy would have me. But thanks to the Revolution, I realized I did have a chance at some other life. I joined the National Guard, and for the first time in my life people were treating me with real respect.” He paused, savoring the memory.

“I made captain after we went on some expeditions in the country, and I thought I might fulfill my dream of being a soldier after all. I enjoyed it, I truly did. The pay wasn’t bad and I had my own lodgings—I transferred to a permanent posting in the city later on—and I was living like any other man with some money in his pocket. People treated me as an equal; though you can be sure I didn’t go about announcing whose son I was. Thank God Sanson’s a common name.”

Aristide looked at him, imagining the handsome young officer he had been, proud and self-assured in his smart blue-and-white uniform. “What happened to change your mind?”

“What happened? Last year my father decided to retire; he sat me down and asked me about my plans, because he could hand over his office directly to me, if I wanted it. Was I sure I wanted to be a soldier, and did I think there was a future in it for me. Did I think, if the monarchy ever returned, that I’d be allowed to hold onto the rank I’d gained. He didn’t
want
me to become an executioner, God knows, but in his heart he felt I had no other choice, no more than he’d had. ‘Accept the position and be guaranteed a good income,’ he said. ‘The prejudice against us will always exist.’ Prejudice might keep me from advancing any farther; it might even, someday, take away my military rank.” He sighed.

“Well, the old man is a realist; he’s had to be, these forty years. So am I. I resigned my commission and sold my dreams for a mess of pottage; though, unlike Esau, I surrendered to my birthright instead of giving it away. And here I am, no different from my ancestors, no matter how hard I’d tried to escape their legacy. People who once were proud to shake my hand now shy away from me. It’s been that way for five hundred years; you can’t understand what it’s like.”

“Can’t I?”

Sanson frowned. “You told me you weren’t one of us.”

“I’m not. But I think I understand as well as you, what it is to be whispered about, and shunned and insulted, merely because we’re our fathers’ sons. And later to be denied our choice of a place in the world, a place we might otherwise deserve through our own merits, because we’re our father’s sons.”

“Not an executioner,” Sanson said at last. “The other way round?”

“Yes,” Aristide said without meeting his eyes, “the other way round. The one thing more contemptible than the
bourreau
.” He pushed away his coffee cup. “Now you may tell me, if you like, that I’m not worthy of your friendship, because I’m my father’s son.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your pity, just as you don’t want mine; but I’d like your friendship.”

Sanson nodded. “Maybe I’m too thin-skinned about it at times. But if you’d gone all your life with fingers pointing at you …”

“I have,” Aristide said. “Not all my life, but long enough.”

“My father, he even used to use an assumed name sometimes when he went outside our quarter, so no one would know who he was. It was worse then, of course, in the ’sixties when he was young. Finally he decided to brazen it out; he claimed that as an officer of the law courts he deserved a title of nobility as much as any magistrate, and wore a blue brocade coat and a dress sword, like a duke. And then the royal prosecutor told him he shouldn’t wear blue in public, because it was the color of nobility and he, of all people, wasn’t entitled to it. God in Heaven!”

“What did your father do then?”

“Told the fellow exactly what he could do with his blue, and wore green brocade instead. Listen, do you ride?” he added, as Aristide smiled.

“For pleasure? Now and then, when I have the chance to.”

“I often hire a good saddle horse and go riding in the Bois, or Monceau, or out to Saint-Denis. You’re welcome to join me if you have an afternoon free.”

“Thanks,” said Aristide. “I’ll keep it in mind. If I have an afternoon free.”

“
So far I’ve reports from six different sections, of eighteen people whose name may or may not be Philippe Aubry,” said Brasseur, glancing up from his desk as Aristide wandered into his office the following morning. “And I’ve some interesting news about that hotel murder last month.”

“Still not interested in looking at it,” Aristide said automatically, “if that’s what you’re about to bring up. Or have you found the woman?”

“No, Didier hasn’t come up with anything, but I’ve just had a complaint from a hotelier on Rue Montpensier who claimed a man and woman came in together last night, asked for a room, and then had words. The woman suggested they have champagne sent up, and the man didn’t want to go to the extra expense for a whore. She insisted, and the man refused, and suddenly she calls him a rude name and walks out.”

“And the woman was wearing men’s clothes?” Aristide said, amused, taking the report Brasseur handed him.

Brasseur nodded. “Exactly. Though the clerk couldn’t describe her, worse luck.”

“I’d think she would be quite memorable—”

“Oh, yes, the clothes. Breeches and riding boots, striped satin coat, a tall hat. But he was so busy ogling a woman showing off her legs and her arse in a pair of tight breeches, that he scarcely noticed the
woman
. All he could say was that she was fair-haired, pretty, in her twenties. And sounded like a lady. Till she called the fellow a stingy prick.”

“A lady?”

“Well-bred. Not like a common streetwalker. But he didn’t notice one damned thing else. Not the color of her eyes, shape of her face, nose, nothing. It’s not much to work with. I doubt he’d be able to identify her if we put her in front of him—without the men’s clothes, that is.”

“And if you do find her, and parade her before him in male costume,” Aristide said, nodding, “any defense counsel worth his salt can play merry havoc with the case, claiming mistaken identity, that the witness is identifying the clothing and not the woman. And of course he’d be right.” He sighed and read through the report.

“Blue striped satin coat,” he said, rereading the witness’s statement. “Cut high, with long tails. And a tall hat … my God, Brasseur, I think I saw her myself!”

“You? When?”

“Last night, at the Palais-Égalité.” He searched his memory, recalling a slender, fair-haired figure in the crowd. The face … the face was a blur, a hazy recollection of youthful features. He shook his head. “I scarcely paid attention, and she was a good few paces away. Damn! I wasn’t close enough to recognize her for a woman; I supposed she was merely one more strutting
incroyable
, some rich army contractor’s brat.”

“Never mind; perhaps we’ll get lucky again. At least no one died last night, and that’s something.” Brasseur patted the heap of reports on his desk. “Pull up a chair; let’s find Philippe Aubry.”

“It would have been too much to ask that this Aubry should live in your section,” Aristide grumbled twenty minutes later, glancing up from another letter that reported an “Aubry, P.” on a section register. “Why can’t these commissaires at least write down a full name in their records?”

Brasseur grunted. “Never mind. Toss out the ones you can.”

“Aubry, Ph.-L., physician, age forty-seven, Fontaine-de-Grenelle section. I think not. Aubry, Ph.-J.-B., age fourteen, same address, clearly his son. What about you?”

“I’ve found one who’d be the right age. Aubry, P.-M.-J.,
rentier,
age twenty-eight, Cour de Rouen, Théâtre-Français section. Now ‘
rentier
’ covers a lot of possibilities; plenty of people claim they’re living on rents from their property if they have an income they don’t want anyone to look at too closely.”

The clock struck noon. Aristide took up the last letter from the heap at his left. “P. Aubry, son of J.-N. Aubry, age four. I think we can safely eliminate him.”

“So what are we left with?” said Brasseur.

“I have three who could fit our description. You?”

“Just the one. So it’s four, all told. Tomorrow we’ll pay visits to these gentlemen, shall we?”

#

Brasseur closed the door on Philippe-Nicolas Aubry, apothecary, of the Section de la Place-Vendôme, who was stout, sandy-haired, pockmarked, and blessed with a wife and howling baby. “Well, damned if I can imagine that silly girl falling for
him
.”

“Will that be all, then?” inquired the peace officer from the local commissariat, who had accompanied them. “I’ve my rounds to make.”

They parted company at the street corner. “Hmm,” Brasseur said, consulting the list of names, “let’s see; the Tuileries section is closest. Fancy a walk?”

Ph.-M. Aubry of Rue Froidmanteau, however, proved to be not Philippe Aubry but Philibert Aubry of the Municipal Guard, a gigantic young man with menacing mustaches. They retreated, with apologies.

“Cour de Rouen?” said Brasseur, glancing at the list.

They flagged down a passing fiacre and jounced across the Seine to the Théâtre-Français section, where the porter at Cour de Rouen informed them that Citizen Aubry was not at home.

“Does he often go out?” Aristide inquired pleasantly, settling himself on a bench in the arched public passage through the ground floor of the building to brush the dust from his sleeves.

“Usually he spends
décadi
at home, or taking the air in the gardens. But he hasn’t been home so much this past week. Now he does go out in the evening a fair bit, to be sure.”