steady himself. When he could speak again, he said more quietly, “When Isabel and I arrived here, Martine’s maid was screaming. She’d just come down and found her. The idiot woman reeks of wine.” Callot wiped his eyes and jerked his head at an alcove to the right of the stairs. “I sent the kitchen boy for the commissaire.”
The sergent stood at the alcove’s entrance now, and beyond him was a tall man in a commissaire’s long black legal robe and black hat. A clerk scribbled at his side, taking down the testimony of a sobbing woman in a smoke-blue skirt.
“The commissaire is still questioning the sot of a maid,” Callot muttered. “Much good that will be to him. Dear God, who would do this?”
Charles patted the old man’s arm and went to Isabel Brion. Seeing that she was kneeling in blood, he pulled her gently to her feet. She looked up at him, her face drowned in tears.
“Maitre du Luc? How could this happen? Poor Martine, she never harmed anyone!” She covered her face with her hands.
With his arm around her for fear she would fall, Charles led her to a carved bench against the wall and settled her on it. Then, hoping his face showed nothing of the storm of pity and anger that raged inside him, he went back to Martine’s body and bent over it. The barest of touches told him that while the front of the bodice was soaked in blood, the skirt was hardly stained. He leaned closer, studying the ragged rip in the right side of the young woman’s neck. Swiftly, closing his ears to Mlle Brion’s gasp of surprise, he raised Martine’s upper body so he could see her back. There was blood there, but it could as easily be from the blood pooled on the floor as from another wound. But that would not be sure until the body was undressed. There was, at least, no other visible wound. Charles started looking for the blade. A small knife, he thought, but deadly sharp. If the blade hadn’t ripped open the great artery, the wound in her neck would have been much too small to kill her. He combed the floor and the staircase, looked under the bench, but found nothing. There were blood splashes, though, on the plaster wall nearest her body, which made Charles think that the murderer had almost certainly been splashed himself. Even so, the man had been self-possessed enough to take the weapon away with him. Charles leaned down and touched Martine’s hand. It was cooling-she would cool quickly on the cold floor-but some of her body’s warmth was still there. Not long, then. She had been alive to see the morning, if not the light. He went to the open house door and looked at the elaborate lock. Then he saw the iron key, as long as his hand, hanging beside the door. He went back to Isabel.
“Mademoiselle, did the maid have to unlock the door to let you in?”
She hesitated. “No, she didn’t. When we heard her scream, my uncle pushed on the door and it opened.”
Charles nodded. “Another question, mademoiselle. Did Martine Mynette’s mother have an uncle who was a Jesuit?”
“Oh. Yes, she did. But he died a long time ago. Before Martine and I were even born, I think. I remember my father saying that he was a teacher at Louis le Grand.”
It was the answer he’d expected. “Thank you, mademoiselle. Shall I find your great-uncle and ask him to take you home?”
“No. No, I thank you, but I want to stay here. Martine was my dearest friend. When they will let us, I will help the maid do the last things for her.”
Charles had to swallow before he could speak. “You are a good friend to her. I will pray for you and for Mademoiselle Mynette. If you will allow it, I will come tomorrow to see you and Monsieur Callot.”
She nodded, and he took his leave of her. He went to where Martine lay and looked once more at her still face. Then he left the house, deaf to the growl of angry talk as he passed the crowd around the gate. He walked quickly, numb with grief for this girl he’d met only yesterday, blackly full of anger at whoever had destroyed her. Before he reached the college, snow came. It settled on his shoulders, stuck to his eyelashes, and half blinded him. It comforted him, silencing the streets and seeming to shroud the houses in cold white mourning.
Chapter 5
“Dead?” Pere Le Picart looked up from his desk. “Dear Blessed Virgin,” he whispered. And then, “God forgive me.”
It was Charles’s turn to stare. Then he understood. The girl had been the unexpected and unwelcome obstacle between the college and the Mynette fortune. Which the college badly needed. Le Picart had no doubt been trying not to think about-let alone hope for-the only two things that would remove the obstacle: failure to find the lost donation entre vifs, or the girl’s death.
Le Picart let his held breath go. “How did she die? Some sudden illness?”
“Sudden, yes. But no illness.” In spite of the rector’s small fire and the worn red-and-green carpet on the floor, Charles huddled deeper into his cloak, cold to the bone, though not from the snow. He took a deep breath. “She was stabbed.” He crossed himself.
Le Picart did likewise, his eyes wide with horror. “Ah, no! May God receive her soul,” he whispered.
“I should also tell you it is definite that Martine Mynette’s adopted mother was the Anne Mynette you spoke of,” Charles added.
Le Picart looked down at his clasped hands, braced on the desk as though for an ordeal. “The police were there?”
“The local commissaire and a sergent, yes.”
“Do they suspect someone?”
“I don’t know, mon pere.” Charles sighed. “I was crossing the Place on my way to the Brion house when I saw a crowd outside the gate of the Mynette house. I went in, and the commissaire was questioning a maid. From what I learned, it’s obvious how the killer got in. The house door was not locked or barred when the maid found the girl’s body.”
“A thief, perhaps, and she interrupted him?”
“Perhaps.”
For a long moment, the only sound was snow against the window. Listening to its soft patting at the glass, like some small creature wanting in, Charles tried to think how to say what he had to say.
A log broke in the fireplace and the rector straightened in his chair. “Whoever it was, we must find him.”
Charles looked half fearfully at Le Picart, wondering if the man had read his mind. “Yes, mon pere. We must.” He realized too late the fervor in his voice.
“I wonder if our reasons for thinking so are the same,” the rector said cautiously.
Charles looked at the window and the gray snow light. “Martine Mynette had no family,” he said carefully. “There is no one to see that justice is done for her.”
“There is Lieutenant-General La Reynie and his police.”
Charles said nothing.
“I think that more than just this girl’s murder is wringing your heart. Was she beautiful?”
“I want to see her killer found. Is that wrong?”
“That depends on who is speaking-the bodily man grieved for a beautiful young girl, or the Jesuit caring for a human soul.”
To Charles’s dismay, he felt blood rising to his face. He bowed his head, thinking that it might well take him the rest of his life to sort the one from the other.
“Don’t bother to dissemble, Maitre du Luc, I don’t have time for it. Outrage is useful in getting at facts. But if you want to see clearly the facts you find, you will have to call some degree of dispassion to your aid,” Le Picart said. “Our need to find this girl’s killer is more urgent than you probably realize. If the man who killed Martine Mynette is not found, the Society of Jesus will be accused of her death.”
Charles’s head came up and he suddenly remembered the angry muttering in the crowd outside the Mynette house. “Because now the Mynette money will come to us?”
“Yes. And even more because smoldering hostility to the Society is never very far below the surface in Paris. Parisians never forget anything, and all they need is a small spark to light the past into flame.”
“And Martine Mynette’s death is more than a small spark,” Charles said flatly.
