Bewildered by the easy familiarity, Charles moved again, trying to see La Reynie’s face without interrupting him. The lieutenant-general was smiling a little, looking with affection at the hunched figure in the corner. The woman was sitting on a low stool, working at something held in her lap. The frayed gold embroidery on her tattered velvet underskirt caught the candlelight, and her scarlet taffeta bodice had alien yellow sleeves. Her patched black overskirt was so threadbare it hardly needed to be open in the front to display the underskirt’s gold thread. Ragged saffron lace was wrapped around her withered neck, and a turban of stained blue satin, intricately wrapped with more of the saffron lace, covered her hair. Charles wondered if her parents had named her Queen, or if that had come later. In her bizarre way, she looked regal enough.
“Back to business, Reine,” La Reynie said. “Why did Henri Brion leave Procope’s before closing?”
“Why do men leave, Nicolas? Because they have somewhere more important to go.” She lifted her gaze suddenly. Her face was a maze of lines, and Charles thought she was at least sixty. But her vividly green eyes were as young as new beech leaves.
“Please,” La Reynie said softly. “I need to know.”
“Then know that he left with two men. Not willingly, I thought. But he went. They walked him out the door between them, pretending he was drunk-he wasn’t-and then they took hold of his arms and he had no choice at all.”
“Where were you, to see this?”
“Outside. By the door.”
“You were begging.”
“Yes, Nicolas, begging. Looking cold and pathetic and making a nice bit for my supper. Not as much as I used to make, of course. But still needing the charity of men in order to eat. But isn’t that the fate of women?”
“Did you recognize the men who took Brion? Or hear what they said? Where they were taking him?”
Reine bent over her lap again, and Charles saw that she had a small knife and was working carefully at a piece of wood.
“I don’t know where they took him. They walked toward the river. One man I knew. Monsieur Claude Bizeul, a goldsmith.”
La Reynie said sharply, “A goldsmith? Are you sure?”
The old woman didn’t speak, seeming absorbed in her carving, and to Charles’s surprise, La Reynie waited patiently.
“Oh, yes, Nicolas, I am very sure,” she said at last, still not looking up. “Claude Bizeul is white haired now, but he has kept his figure admirably. His companion I’ve seen here before, but I don’t know his name. He is a younger man, dark haired. Taller.”
“And they went toward the river? You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Where does this Monsieur Bizeul live?”
Her hand stilled. “I will have to think on that.”
“Think well, Reine.” But he didn’t press her. Instead, he turned to the woman kneading dough. “Did you see any of this, Renee? Do you know these men?”
She shook her head and reached up to tighten the white linen kerchief she wore over her brown hair, fumbling with the knot at the nape of her neck. “I was back here, how could I see them?” she said, returning to her kneading as if she had her enemies under her hands.
“You were not, you were still at your Martine’s house,” the cook said laconically, without looking around.
The woman flung her head up and spat over her shoulder, “What if I was? Who cares where I was?”
La Reynie glanced at Reine, listening intently from her corner, then turned back to Renee. “Ah, yes, you worked in the Mynette house,” he said to the younger woman, making it a statement, not a question. “How could I have forgotten that?” His tone made it clear to Charles, at least, that he had not forgotten for a moment.
Renee leaned on her fists in the dough, her breath coming short. “Yes, I worked there. And if I could find the animal who murdered her, I would tear his throat out. Whoever he is, he came there to kill her. Don’t bother thinking he was some ordinary thief she interrupted as he was about his black business. Your commissaire made me search the whole house and nothing was taken. Nothing!”
Flames leaped as a log broke in the fireplace, and Charles saw that Renee’s eyes were the same vivid green as the old woman’s. Her face, though, was round and plain, while the old woman had bones a duchess would pine for. Charles suddenly remembered where he’d seen Renee’s smoke-blue skirt, good-quality wool, much better than a kitchen servant would have.
“You were Mademoiselle Mynette’s maid,” he said, moving so that she could see him. “I had a glimpse of you yesterday morning at the Mynette house, when the commissaire was questioning you.”
La Reynie nodded at Charles and stepped a little aside. Taking his cue, Charles said courteously, “I am Maitre du Luc. I know the Brion family. Before you found Mademoiselle Mynette yesterday morning, did you hear anything unusual, anyone in the street, or at the door?”
Suddenly shamefaced, Renee shrugged and looked away, biting her lip. Charles remembered M. Callot saying angrily that the maid had been the worse for drink when she found Martine.
“I think you did hear something,” Charles said, watching her.
She turned back to him, her eyes glistening with tears. “I heard-I thought I heard-someone call up to her from the street. But I didn’t get up to see.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I was heavy with sleep.”
“With drink,” the cook said laconically from the fireside. He upended his glass and refilled it.
“Hush, Giuseppe,” the old woman said sharply. “Let her be!”
“And being understandably tired the night before from all your work-I’ve heard that the other Mynette servants had already left-perhaps you forgot to lock and bar the street door?” Charles read the answer in her sullen face. “You were alone in the house with Mademoiselle Mynette, were you not?”
“Except for the boy who turned the spit in the kitchen and laid the fires. The others went like rats from a foundered ship. They knew that paper she needed was gone, and if she didn’t get it back, how would she pay them?”
“Did any leave with pay owing to them?”
“No! She had her faults, but she would have fasted to a bone before she let any go unpaid.”
Charles was sure that Martine Mynette would have done exactly that. “But grudges can still be held unfairly. Who were the servants who left?”
Renee’s eyes, suddenly calculating, went from Charles to La Reynie.
“There was Paul Saglio. The footman. My young mistress turned him out when her mother was ill. She wouldn’t tell me exactly why, but it wasn’t hard to guess. Monsieur Saglio was much too free with his hands,” she said resentfully. “With Mademoiselle Martine’s mother lying ill, he thought there was no one to protect her.” Her eyes flashed and she picked up a knife lying beside the bread board and shook it at Charles. “If I’d seen him, I would have made him a capon, you may be sure of that. And he would never have bothered another woman!”
Charles regarded her thoughtfully. “So you are saying that this Paul Saglio likely went away angry at Mademoiselle Martine. Where did he go?”
“Vaugirard, most likely. He always said he knew someone there who could get him a better place, if he wanted it.”
Then it shouldn’t be hard to find him, Charles thought. The village of Vaugirard was only a few miles south of Paris. “Did anyone else leave with a grudge?”
“The gardener, maybe. Tito he’s called.” Renee glanced at Reine and said, “He left in the autumn. And good riddance.”
“Why?”
“He was a liar.”
A rustling came from the corner. “You’ve told me he was just soft-witted, Renee,” the old woman said reprovingly.
“That, too. He was always saying people took things from him. What did he own? Nothing. What would anyone take from him? Anyway, he left.”
“Why did he leave? And what is his surname?”
Renee dealt her dough a hard slap and turned it over. “He’s Tito La Rue. Late one night at the start of November, I found him opening Mademoiselle Martine’s bedchamber door. Mademoiselle Anne was already ill, but
