Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House (34 page)

“How did you manage … to pry this fellow … from the depths of that barge?” Frank gasped, as we approached Winkle Street

“The Bosun's Mate,” I replied. “Mr. Hawkins is deserving of our deepest thanks and praise. He freed Monsieur LaForge and carried him to safety.”

“Safety? I begin to think this man shall never be safe until he has England at his back.”

Mr. Hill stood ready by the great oak portal of Wool House; he had found and lit a candle. We slipped through the door like wraiths or shadows, too swift to be clearly discerned in the pitch-black streets; the crowd's attention, in any case, had returned to the quayside where the longboats were approaching with their soggy burden of Southampton's own.

LaForge was laid on one of the old straw pallets and covered with a blanket. He moaned, and turned his head in restless dreaming; I thought perhaps his eyelids flickered, but it may have been only a chimera of the candle flame. Mr. Hill bent swiftly to feel for his pulse.

“Genevieve,”
said a faint voice at our feet; and with a sharp intake of breath, I saw that LaForge was once more in his conscious mind.

I crouched near him and placed my hand on his brow.

“Ah, Genevieve.”
He sighed.
“Tu vives encore. “

“It is all right,
monsieur
—you are safe now, and we shall not let you come to harm. You may be assured of that. You are among friends.”

He frowned.
“Cette voix—je la sais. Mais ce n 'est pas la voix de Genevieve.”

“It is I, Miss Austen. I am here with Mr. Hill and my brother and another man who saved you from the burning ship.”

Mr. Hill had been busy at the hearth to the rear of Wool House; he had tindered flame, and set a pot of water to boiling, and now appeared at my side with a hunk of day-old bread. “Soak it in water,” he commanded, “then try if you can to persuade him to swallow a morsel.”

I did as I was bid. After a litde, LaForge was persuaded to eat; he appeared to recover somewhat of his strength with every sodden bite; but still he lay with his eyes closed, the symmetry of his features marred by a sharp crease between his eyebrows, as though he suffered considerable pain. He looked thinner and more drawn from his ordeal with poison and neglect than I could have imagined. Inwardly cursing Sir Francis Farnham, I bent myself to my task.

My brother had found a stool, and propped himself upon it. I slipped the last of the soggy bread into LaForge's mouth; he lay back on his pallet. Presendy the surgeon and the Bosun's Mate joined us with steaming tea, which we accepted gratefully.

“I should like to know, Captain Austen,” said Mr. Hill over the rim of his cup, “exactly what has occurred. Whom do you suspect of murder, and how does our friend LaForge come into it?”

We told him, then, the worst of our fears of Sir Francis Farnham, and the collusion of Phoebe Carruthers, not excepting the gentleman's motive for defaming Tom Seagrave, the possible use of the Admiralty's telegraph to transmit spurious orders, and the accidental insertion of Nell Rivers in the affair.

Jeb Hawkins, in comprehending how tangled was the plot in which his girl found herself, muttered beneath his breath and flexed his broad hands, as though he should like to seize the Baronet himself.

“You have no proof of anything, of course,” said Mr. Hill pensively. “I should not like to attempt to arraign Sir Francis on so wild a charge. The equipage with the bloody gauntlet might be traced on Wednesday night— the coachman paid to disclose what he knows—”

“I have considered that,” I interrupted. “What if the coachman was Sir Francis himself, suitably disguised? He had only to lure poor Chessyre into the carriage, let Mrs. Carruthers down at a suitable spot, drive to a darkened alley, and employ his garrote.”

“No one should be the wiser,” Mr. Hill admitted. “The same is true of our suspected poison. It is impossible to show that Sir Francis introduced something noxious to a particular Wool House pasty; your men of the Navy should declare that the food was rotten, and be done.”

“Something might be learned of those sealed orders,” suggested Frank. “We might enquire at the Admiralty— as friends among friends, you understand—what purpose they thought to serve by sending Seagrave on a wild-goose chase. And if no one admits to taking our meaning—”

“Wild-goose chase?” interrupted Mr. Hill.

“Seagrave was ordered to stand off the coast of Corunna,” I explained, “to take off an agent of the Crown and bear him back to England. But no one answered his signal, and after three days he turned for home.”

“No one answered the good Seagrave's signal,” supplied Etienne LaForge weakly from his position on the floor, “because the agent of your Crown had already been seized by Captain Porthiault, and locked in a cabin of the
Manon.”

We turned as one to stare at him. His shrewd brown eyes—replete once more with the humour I had always discerned in them—roved across our faces. “Did you not wonder why I demanded to remain on British shores? It is death to me to return to France!”

“You
are that agent?” I gasped, finally comprehending. “But why did you not inform us earlier?”

“Because such an admission, from a prisoner of war, should sound fantastic; and because I did not know whom I could trust.” With effort, he propped himself weakly on one elbow. “May I beg you,
mademoiselle,
for a litde of that tea? I have had nothing hot to drink in days.”

“Of course.” I hastened to procure another cup. LaForge drank it down entire while his rescuers kept silence in the sharpest suspense. At last he set aside the tea and sat fully upright. His voice, when next he spoke, gained in timbre and strength.

“You must understand, above all, that nothing in my plan went as I had hoped when I fled Paris. I did not reveal myself to you when first I came to Wool House, because I have already escaped death too many times to invite it willingly. The wisest course was to wait, and watch, and turn to advantage what I could. When I heard of the good Seagrave's court-martial, I thought to bargain my way to safety by telling what I had seen during the batde for the
Manon.
I did not comprehend,
hein,
that by accusing the man Chessyre, I should
tomber de Charybde en Scylla”
¹

“Are you, in fact, a surgeon?” I enquired curiously. “Is any part of your testimony the truth?”

LaForge shrugged, “I told you,
de vrai,
what I had seen. As for my profession—a man may be anything his circumstance demands,
mademoiselle.
Certainly I have studied physiognomy in my day; I have worked among some of the finest men of science that Paris may offer; I am no stranger to the scalpel and saw. I have also killed a chicken and eaten him for my dinner from time to time—but if you would ask whether it is as a
butcher
that I earn my bread …” He smiled, and said nothing further.

“I think,” Frank said sharply, “that you owe us a complete explanation, Monsieur LaForge.”

“If you will give me another cup of that excellent tea,” the Frenchman returned, “I shall be happy to oblige.”

The tea was fetched, and placed in his hands; his back propped against a pile of empty sacks that served as a Wool House pillow; and the four of us ranged around him expectantly, Frank with his face to the door and an expression of wariness on his features.

“I was not always as you see me now,” LaForge began. “I shall not wear at your patience with tales of my youth in the Haute Savoie—of my father, Gaspar, Comte de la Forge; or of my mother Eugenie; I shall say nothing of how they spent their winters paying court at Versailles, and were counted among the blessed of France. You know enough of the fate of such people in our Revolution—you have heard, even in England, of the guillotine. I will begin only with myself as I was in 1792, an orphan of thirteen years, sent to live with my maternal uncle—Eugenie's younger brother, a captain of Grenadiers. He had a fine revolutionary fervour, Hippolyte; he had a fine revolutionary bride, and a fine revolutionary daughter—a girl named Genevieve, my cousin.”

“Aha!” I murmured.

His brown eyes found my face. “Genevieve was a sort of perfection, to a boy of my turbulent history. She was younger than myself by seven years, a child of sweetness and laughter who grew, with time, into a beautiful young woman. My uncle, in turn, grew into one of the Emperor's most respected officers. He died last year at Jena—but by that time, Genevieve's hand had been sought in marriage by every
notable
in France. My cousin had refused them for years—I like to think because it was me she loved. But then the Emperor himself came to call.”

“Buonaparte already possesses an empress,” I observed. “And thus we must assume his attentions were dishonourable.”

“The Empress Josephine cannot bear children,” LaForge replied. “Napoleon is mad for an heir, you understand; he talks of nothing but divorce. There are some who claim he has debauched his own stepdaughter, the Princess Hortense, in order to get a child of Josephine's blood—but I will spare you the sordid-ness of court intrigue.
²
It is enough to know that he paid his court at my Genevieve's feet, and that Napoleon was the death of her.”

“Your cousin was not flattered by the Emperor's esteem?”

“She took him in such dislike, that her father considered a complete break with his sovereign in order to protect his child. But he was embroiled in Austria, you understand. He wrote to urge my protection for Genevieve—and when I learned of his fears, I threw up my studies at the Sorbonne and fixed myself at my cousin's side.”

LaForge paused, and sipped his tea.

“I had loved her for years, of course; but I could not hope for her heart in return. I was nothing—my estates had been seized, my patrimony hidden. I was not the Comte de la Forge, as I should have been, but a man of science labouring in obscurity. All seemed well, once I returned to my aunt's household; but then my uncle was killed at Jena not three months later.

“Genevieve was determined to see in his death a vengeful murder. She could not believe that her father must fall like any soldier in batde; the cannonball that sundered his frame must have been sent with diabolic purpose. It was her fault, she believed, that her papa lay dead; he had been crushed by a ghoul who was determined to have her virtue.”

“Another reader of horrid novels,” Frank murmured in my ear.

“I did not comprehend the depths of my Genevieve's despair. The Emperor paid a call of condolence upon his return to Paris; he kissed my cousin's hand, and uttered phrases of comfort for her ears alone. Later I learned the import of his words: since my uncle had died without a son, his fortune was entirely forfeit to the state, and my aunt and cousin would be thrown into the street. Unless, of course, Genevieve could find some way of earning her bread …

“She came to me that night and begged me to take her from Paris. She would go anywhere I liked, as long as we were far from the Emperor's clutches. She had not reckoned, however, with my sense of honour: I could not abandon my uncle's fortune to the rogue, without attempting to fight. I told her I would contest the forfeit of the estate, on behalf of my widowed aunt and Genevieve; we would try what the law might do. Later, while the household slept, Genevieve threw herself from her bedroom window.”

“How horrible!” I exclaimed.

LaForge stared at me, his eyes implacable now. “I had no love for the Empire. It had cost me all that was dear. But I could take my revenge. My uncle had long been intimate with the Emperor's closest counsels. He knew all of Napoleon's plans, his perfidious intentions with regard to Europe. It was within my grasp to hand these to the only power capable of crushing the Monster: the Crown of England.

“I returned to the Sorbonne and requested the aid of a person I shall not name—a fellow man of science, who knew a good deal of British politics. He sent a message to your Admiralty, which has always been in command of certain funds disbursed for the purpose of buying information. I did not require recompense. I required the satisfaction of seeing the Monster's ambitions thwarted wherever he turned. I waited a few weeks in apprehension and impatience, and at last I was instructed how to act I must take my uncle's maps and papers, and embark upon an expedition of science—a survey of the flora native to the Pyrenees. While thus employed, I must cross over the mountains into Portugal and make my way by degrees to the coast. An English ship would await me there.”

“Except that your message was intercepted,” suggested Frank, “and instead of a British ship, you were collected by the
Manon”

“Indeed. You know it all. I was seized by Porthiault himself and locked into a cabin, without so much as a word to the
Manon's
crew. I feared the worst—my plot exposed, my uncle's name besmirched, his fortune confiscated, and my aunt degraded. My trial and execution would prove a sensation; but of that I thought nothing. I believe my most bitter sensation was one of regret. I had intended to avenge the death of Genevieve—and I had failed.”

“And then Seagrave attacked,” my brother said.

“—Barely six hours after I was pulled off Corunna! One of the first British balls destroyed the wall of the cabin in which I was held; I freed myself from my bonds, dashed out onto the deck, and was handed a weapon as a matter of course by the frenzied crew. I used it to despatch Captain Porthiault; he was the only man on board ship who knew the truth of my crimes. Then I descended to the cockpit hold, and made myself useful in attending to the wounded who collected there, for the
Manon
had sailed without a surgeon.”

LaForge set down his teacup with an air of finality.

“I believe we understand the rest,” said Mr. Hill.

Jeb Hawkins stood and extended his hand. “I should like the honour of shaking yours, mon-sewer, as a cool-headed cove and no mistake.”

The Frenchman smiled faintly, and grasped the Bosun's Mate's paw.

“But, Monsieur LaForge,” I attempted, “would you suggest that the Admiralty
intended
for Captain Seagrave to take you off Corunna? And that the interception of your communications by Captain Porthiault was merely a dreadful mistake—the engagement of the
Manon
an extraordinary piece of luck on your part—and the whole episode of Chessyre's treachery a matter of happenstance, rather than design?”