Game of Patience (28 page)

“She might if her affections weren’t returned. What revenge could be sweeter than to murder the girl you hate with a jealous passion, and then to see the man who had rejected you—rejected you for
her
—suffer hellishly for the crime?”

“And Aubry is too much of an upstanding little gentleman to tell you the truth and send a woman to her just punishment.”

“Because he did rush out to Saint-Ange’s apartment, after reading the letter that said ‘your darling Célie will soon be lost to you,’ and discovered them lying dead, just as you suggested … it fits. By God, it fits. He’s shielding her, because it’s the sort of thing a virtuous ass would do. Brasseur can look into this … he’ll have to see the commissaire of the Fontaine-de-Grenelle section, in order to question her … we’ll have to learn if she has an alibi for the tenth of Brumaire.”

“What about Grangier and his damned round hat?”

“Grangier was half-drunk! Perhaps it
was
Aubry he saw, but his eyes weren’t focusing. Perhaps he imagined the hat. Perhaps he fell asleep after seeing a perfectly harmless stranger run downstairs, hours earlier, and dreamed the whole thing. And Hélène Villemain stole in while he was sleeping, and nobody saw her in the house. It’s easier than you think.”

“Would she have followed Célie to Saint-Ange’s?” François said dubiously.

“I suppose she would have followed her anywhere, if she’d had murder in her heart.”

“But this is ridiculous!” Rosalie suddenly cried, hammering both fists on the table and rattling the crockery. “Listen to yourselves!”

“Is it?”

“Yes! It’s preposterous! You’re constructing an elaborate theory on a hopelessly shaky foundation. Why would she murder that Beaumontel woman, if it was a
man
that Citizeness Beaumontel saw in the Palais-Égalité? It’s plain: Aubry killed Célie, and then he killed the witness to keep her from fingering him, and then he prudently made himself scarce! What other explanation is there?”

“I wonder,” Aristide said softly, “if your private opinion of men has perhaps influenced your perceptions. If you’re still smarting from a wounded heart,” he added, as gently as he could, “you may feel less kindly toward Célie’s young man, and more cynical about other people’s amours, than you otherwise might. Are you sure you aren’t merely seeing a villain in every good-looking young man who professes love to a young woman, because you see the girl you were in Célie?”

“So you’re going to denounce this woman with nothing more than this mad speculation?”

“I don’t denounce anyone. I offer Brasseur a theory of what might have happened. If he finds it plausible, he’ll have her taken in for questioning.”

“And what if she can give an account of herself for the time of the murders?”

“If so, I imagine she would be released. If the evidence against her is insufficient.”

“But there’s no other evidence against her, is there?”

“In truth, no,” Aristide admitted, “except for the fact that she had known and admired Aubry some years ago.”

“That’s rubbish! How could you arrest her when you have no evidence but such a stupid idea?” Rosalie sprang to her feet and stormed away.

He caught up with her in a few strides, seized her wrist, and jerked her about so that they were face-to-face once more. “All right,
enough!
What is it you’re not telling me? Why don’t you tell me why it is that you can be so cocksure about what’s true, and what’s rubbish?”

“Let me go!”

“First answer me.”

“Let me
go!
” she snapped, flailing at him. The other patrons began to turn from their dinners to stare at the commotion. He managed at last to seize both her wrists, and held her in place.

“Why the devil are you so intent on finding Aubry guilty?” he demanded, suddenly enlightened. “What do you have against him? What aren’t you admitting? Perhaps that you did know Aubry, before Célie ever told you about her sweetheart?”

She stopped struggling as the merest gleam of alarm flickered in her eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I think you’re lying. What haven’t you told me?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“What is it between you and Philippe Aubry?” he insisted, loosening his grip on her wrists as she put up no resistance.

“Nothing. Let me alone.”

“Not until you start telling me the truth.”

Abruptly Rosalie wrenched herself away from him and fled out of the common room to the busy street beyond. By the time he reached the door, cursing at having let himself be deceived by her sudden docility, she was gone.

Rosalie was nowhere to be found when Aristide asked for her at the Maison Deluc an hour later. Leaving instructions that he was to be sent for as soon as she returned, he hastened to Rue Traversine to lay his new theory of the affair before Brasseur.

No message arrived for him and at last he returned to Rue des Cordiers at half past eight, in the middle of supper, determined to corner Rosalie and have his questions answered. A flustered maidservant assured him that Citizeness Clément had not been seen since that morning. He stalked away, fuming, imagining what Brasseur would say to him: perhaps, “Funny how all our witnesses keep disappearing, isn’t it?’

#

Rosalie had not returned by the time Commissaire Fabien questioned Hélène Villemain two days later at the commissariat of the Fontaine-de-Grenelle section. She seemed calm, though astonished at being summoned by the police for questioning.

“Citizeness, where were you on the afternoon of the tenth of Brumaire?”

“I must have been at home,” she replied. “My husband was away in Douai for several days. I don’t often go out when he’s away from Paris.”

“You’re not sure? You must have considered where you were at the moment when your friend was murdered.”

She let out a soft breath. “Yes, I remember now. I was at home, reading a comic novel. I remember thinking, later, how dreadful it was that I must have been laughing at the moment when poor Célie died.”

Aristide gnawed at his lip, watching her, suspecting they had erred once again. Rosalie still had not returned to the Maison Deluc. Where could she be, and what was it she knew? If only, he thought, he could put Philippe Aubry and Rosalie Clément together in a small room—then he would soon have some answers.

“Can your servants confirm this?” the commissaire inquired.

“Well,” Hélène faltered, “it was
décadi
; they always have the afternoon and evening off on
décadi
… aside from the kitchenmaid. Most of them were at the theater. Fanette would have been in the scullery, scouring the pots, but otherwise I think I was alone after my luncheon … from three o’clock until perhaps half past ten.”

“What about a nurserymaid?” Fabien asked. “Wasn’t she there with your children?”

“No, both my children are still with wet-nurses in the country.”

“So no one but your kitchenmaid can vouch for your whereabouts on the afternoon and evening of the tenth,” Fabien said. “Did this girl ever come out of the scullery that afternoon?”

“I doubt it. I assure you, Commissaire, I didn’t do this dreadful thing. Célie and I were like sisters. Why would I have wished her ill?”

“You were in love with one Philippe Aubry some years ago, were you not?”

Hélène laughed. “A girlish infatuation. Scarcely love. I was seventeen. I’ve not thought about Aubry for years.”

“Infatuations have led to murder before this,” the commissaire said dryly. “Did you write to Citizen Aubry on the tenth of Brumaire?”

“Certainly not.”

“Kindly write down your name and address,” said Fabien, pushing paper and inkwell toward her. Puzzled, she did as he requested.

The porter Deschamps inspected her handwriting, brow furrowed. “No,” he said at last. “I don’t think it’s like the letter I saw. This is smaller writing. Maybe,” he added timidly, “if the writing said ‘To Citizen Aubry, Cour de Rouen,’ just like it did on the letter, I’d remember better?”

“Do as he says,” Fabien instructed Hélène. As she took up the pen again, an inspector slipped into the office and murmured a few words in the commissaire’s ear.

“What? Well, send her in.”

The inspector went out and returned with Rosalie. Aristide stepped forward, astonished, but she ignored him.

“Citizen Commissaire,” she said, marching up to his desk, “I have a statement to offer that will resolve some of your questions, I think. My name is Rosalie Clément and it was I who wrote to Citizen Aubry on the tenth of Brumaire.”

“You, citizeness?” he echoed her. “What, then, was the subject of this letter?”

“I was Célie Montereau’s friend. I merely wrote to him because he and Célie had quarreled the day before. The silly child ran to me and cried in my lap, because they’d had some sharp words about keeping their engagement secret, and I decided to give him a piece of my mind. That’s all.”

“Why didn’t you reveal this to the police straightaway?” he demanded.

“Because—because I was frightened of getting myself mixed up in a case of murder.”

Aristide studied Rosalie. Despite her tranquil expression, her hands were clasped tightly about her reticule, the knuckles white.

“I simply told Citizen Aubry that the quarrel had left Célie terribly unhappy. I thought he had behaved unkindly, and I wished him to apologize to her. It was a trifling matter.”

“If you would write the words ‘To Citizen Aubry, Cour de Rouen,’ on this paper,” Fabien said after a moment’s consideration. She did as he asked and he handed both specimens to Deschamps.

The porter peered at the writing in the light from the nearest window, dimming now in the twilight of a winter afternoon. “
This
could be the same, Citizen Commissaire. I remember the writing on the letter was bold and a bit untidy.”

Rosalie turned to the commissaire. “It was I. This citizeness had nothing to do with any of this affair.”

“According to this dossier, Aubry has never mentioned your name,” said Fabien. “Do you claim you are acquainted with him?”

“No. I wrote to him as a stranger.”

“He claimed that the woman who wrote to him was a certain prostitute.”

Rosalie shrugged. “Not, perhaps, the most tactful of subterfuges,” she said, “but evidently he was trying to keep a lady out of this, as a gentleman would do. Why not ask him?”

“Citizen Aubry isn’t here,” Fabien told her. “He’s not responded to the summons to testify.”

“I know. He’s unaccountably vanished. Don’t you think that’s highly suspicious?”

“I understand that Aubry was questioned some days ago in regard to this affair, and released,” said the commissaire. At last, with a sigh, he adjusted his spectacles, bent to his papers, and added a few notes more. “Citizens, I thank you for your testimony. Citizeness Villemain, I thank you for your cooperation, and I see no reason to inconvenience you further.”

#

“
I’ve never been so glad to be mistaken,” Aristide told Hélène, after she had shyly thanked Rosalie for coming forward. “If you’re not offended by the sight of me, may I help you to a carriage?” He escorted her outside, then returned and glanced about for Rosalie, at last discovering her at the other end of the chamber, with Fabien’s secretary.

“They want a signed statement from me,” Rosalie told him before he could demand where she had been. “I may as well wait here until a copy is ready, rather than come back tomorrow. Are you going to go and hunt for Aubry now? And what about that poor woman at Monceau?”

“You know,” he told her, “that your own statement, that the letter was innocuous, eliminates any motive for him to have murdered Célie. And if he didn’t murder Célie, then he certainly had no motive to harm Citizeness Beaumontel.”

“Who’s to say he didn’t learn the truth in some way other than a letter?” she retorted. “I’ve never doubted for a moment that he did it. Perhaps that silly quarrel of theirs set him to sniffing about and asking questions about her. He might have concluded on his own that she had something to hide—”

“Where the devil have you been, Rosalie?” Aristide interrupted her. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“I needed to think things out, without you badgering me, so I spent the night at an acquaintance’s flat. I didn’t want to get mixed up in this—but I didn’t want you to make trouble for Citizeness Villemain, either. Are you satisfied now?”

He looked at her for a moment, wondering if she had told him everything, but at last lifted her hand to his lips. “Shall I escort you home?”

“Better you should spend your time finding Aubry, and finding proof of his guilt. I can blunder my way home without any help. Thank you,” she added with a faint smile.

Aristide bade her farewell and trudged back to the Right Bank and Rue Traversine. Brasseur was at his desk, frowning at a letter. “This arrived half an hour ago, by the local post. Postmarked this morning, from the Droits de l’Homme section. What do you make of it?”

It was addressed, in an crude, childish hand,
To the citizen who is investigating the murders at Rue du Hasard.
Its contents were brief: