Charles gave them each a few coins and he and Damiot took their leave. As they rode away from the house, Charles told Damiot what the cook had said about Tito La Rue.
“I think I need to find this gardener. To eliminate him, if nothing else. And he’s the only other name we have just now. What exactly did the servants say about what Saglio was doing on Friday morning?”
Damiot shifted uncomfortably in his saddle and reached under his cassock to pull at his breeches. “Dear God, it’s sixteen hundred eighty-seven, why hasn’t someone invented a comfortable saddle?” He stood up in his stirrups, twitched his cassock out from under him, and sat again. “They say he was here, up well before daylight, packing food for their mistress to take with her to Paris, and then cooking a five-course dinner for the friends she brought back that afternoon. I think it’s true, because the maidservant said she spends her days running from his unwanted attentions. She’d be glad to help fork him into hell.”
“Well, it seems that he’s not a murderer-at least not lately-but based on what I saw and smelled in the kitchen, he’s a good cook.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Me, too.”
They left the village behind and turned onto the dirt track, back to the Faubourg St. Jacques. Tito La Rue, Charles thought glumly. With a description that could suit half the young men in Paris and a name as common.
“I want to stop at Procope’s before we go back to the college,” Charles said to Damiot. “Maybe the kitchen woman Renee knows more about this Tito than she said before.”
“Then we should turn around and go up the rue Vaugirard to the old St. Andre gate. Otherwise we’ll have to backtrack when we get to the city, and I’m not riding a step farther than I must.”
Flamme shook the reins as Charles turned him, obviously hoping for another run, but Charles held him to Boeuf’s slow pace. The road was full of traffic now, a steady stream of people and carriages heading from the city to Vaugirard, to celebrate the holiday in its taverns with cheap local wine. Charles heard angry murmurs from a few people who passed them, and ignored more than a few hostile glances, but that was all. They soon left the village’s vineyards and fields behind, riding past country houses and gardens, which gave way to houses and shops built wall next to wall. When they reached what was left of the old city walls and the gate, Charles looked at Damiot, surprised by his silence. Judging from the man’s pinched lips, he was in real pain.
“We’ll have some coffee at Procope’s before we talk to Renee,” Charles said recklessly. “Pere Le Picart gave me money, and I’ll tell him that spending some of his coins was the only way to save you from death by horse.”
“Which will be Gospel truth,” Damiot muttered.
They reached Procope’s back courtyard by the narrow lane that ran behind the cafe. As they were tethering the horses, Renee came out of the kitchen with a basin of apple peelings.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle, and a bonne annee to you,” Charles said, and jumped aside as she threw the peelings. Not at him, as he’d first thought, but at the waste pile behind him. Nonetheless, there was no welcome in her expression as she looked from him to Damiot.
“Madame won’t let you into the coffeehouse. The customers are arguing about that song and some are saying Jesuits killed Mademoiselle Martine and her mother and the notary, too. If you go in there, there’ll be a riot. So go away.”
Renee turned back toward the kitchen and tried to close the door on them when they followed her. Charles grabbed the door’s edge and held it open.
“The song is a lie; we have killed no one. But we are trying to find out who did, and we need your help.”
“I have already helped you.”
She struggled for a moment to shut the door, then shrugged and let it go. Inside, the silent cook seemed not to have moved from his stool beside the fire where Charles had last seen him. He glanced at the Jesuits without interest and went on eating a piece of pungent cheese. Two glasses of wine stood on the floor beside him. Reine wasn’t there.
Renee picked up one of the glasses and faced them. “What do you want of me?” Her eyes were as hard as green pebbles.
“Anything more you can tell us about Tito La Rue.”
“Why?”
“We have seen Paul Saglio, and-”
Her eyes lit with hope. “Did he ask about me?”
“No,” Charles said ruthlessly.
She looked away and drained her glass.
“Renee, it seems certain that Saglio did not kill Mademoiselle Martine Mynette. But he thinks this Tito may have killed her.”
She made a sound like steam escaping from a pot. “Saglio is a spider. He is an animal. Tito had been gone a month and a half. He would never have come back to the house as long as I was there. He knew I’d make him regret it!”
Charles made a noncommittal sound and watched the cook by the fire pour white wine into a third glass for Damiot, who was eagerly holding out his hand. Renee took her glass to the cook to be refilled.
Charles said, “How long had you worked for Mademoiselle Anne Mynette?”
“About three years.”
“And how long had Tito been there?”
Renee sighed and drank deeply. “Since he was a child, eight years old. It was like this. Therese, the cook in the Mynette house, the thief I told you about-she said that Mademoiselle Anne took him from the foundling home to be her servant. It was an act of charity. She gave him a way to earn his living and a better growing-up than he would have had.” She shrugged. “But she soon discovered he was a liar, Therese said. Mademoiselle Martine was about four years old then, and she always wore around her neck a little red heart on an embroidered ribbon. And-”
“Mademoiselle Brion told me that this necklace was missing when you undressed Mademoiselle Martine for her coffin.”
“Yes. Mademoiselle Brion was running everywhere, looking for it. I didn’t see how a trinket could matter when my mistress was lying there dead. Well, as I was telling you, when Tito came to the Mynette house as a child and saw Martine’s necklace, he grew very angry. He said it was his and tried to snatch it from her neck! Mademoiselle Anne beat him for it and almost sent him back to the foundling home. But she gave him another chance and he turned out to be a good worker, so she kept him. And finally the little liar stopped saying such foolish things.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“No.”
“Paul Saglio described him as middling tall, dark haired, and well fleshed. Is that right?”
She shrugged. “I suppose so. Yes, that’s-”
She broke off as the liquid-eyed waiter Charles had met when he was there with La Reynie burst into the kitchen. “Madonna says chicken pies,” he yelled at the cook. “She says fruit pies! Cakes and cream, she says, maybe that will quiet them!” He gasped as his eyes fell on Charles and Damiot. “You! No! Go, go,” he hissed, waving his arms at them. “If the signores in the cafe find you, they will kill you for murdering everyone! Go!”
Beyond the door, a surge of argument rose and chairs scraped across the floor. The counter woman screeched furious reprimands. Then, “Luigi what are you doing? Get out here!” Her voice was coming toward the kitchen. Casting dignity to the winds, Charles and Damiot ran for the courtyard and their horses.
“What a pleasant rest,” Damiot said darkly, as they rode along the lane toward the Fosses St. Germain. “I hope we can get back to the college without more of that.”
“We’re not going back yet; we’re going to the Foundling Hospital. Where is it?”
“We’re going home.”
“You go home. Where’s the Foundling Hospital?”
“I cannot go back to the college without you; the rector will have my head.”
“Then take us the quickest way to the Foundling Hospital.”
“No. I am your superior. Going there is pointless. This Tito was there years ago; who will remember him? And what good would it do, if they did?”
