the despairing music coiled around his heart.
Chapter 29
La Salle. La Salle. The name beat in time to Charles’s footsteps like a funeral drum. Who was she? If La Salle was really her name, which he doubted. Whoever she was, what was her connection to Antoine Doute? She had a connection, of that he was certain, though his certainty was irrational and fragile, woven from glimpses of her petticoat: red, rose red, bloodred now in his mind’s eye. It was full dark now and the streets were as close to quiet as Paris streets ever seemed to get. Someone’s Nemesis, Le Picart had called him, and Charles felt like Nemesis as he descended on the Place Royale and strode through the south gate beneath the Pavillon du Roi. A carriage rolled in front of him along the gravelled roadway that divided the arcaded, nearly identical houses from the square’s garden. In the garden, a few murmuring, laughing strollers still crisscrossed the paths around Louis XIII’s statue. An outburst of coarse laughter made him turn to see an obvious fille de joie dart from the ground-floor arcade and run like the wind toward the square’s ungated north-west corner. Her bare-scalped customer pounded behind her, yelling for help and pointing to his long, expensive wig, which the girl carried aloft like a trophy.
Charles left them to it and walked along the roadway, past the arcade’s closed shops and the lanterns burning by house gates. He descended abruptly from tragedy to farce: Nemesis didn’t know which house held the poisoner. Or what she looked like, except that she was small and wore a gaudy petticoat. Hoping for inspiration, he kept on doggedly around the square, looking up at the big windows glowing with candlelight and watching the gates. He supposed he could ring at every house, but a strange Jesuit asking for a servant girl would raise a flurry of questions, maybe warn his quarry and give her time to escape by a back way. His frustrated sigh was answered by a gasp from a dark stretch of arcade.
“Who’s there?” he demanded and immediately felt his face grow hot. A gasp in the dark could have reasons that were none of his business. A stifled sob followed the gasp.
“Who’s there?” he said more boldly. “Is something wrong?” Offering help was certainly his business.
Frere Fabre emerged from the arcade, his red hair shining in the light from the windows. His face was a mask of misery.
For a moment neither of them moved. Then Charles grabbed the boy, twisting his cassock into hard knots. “You followed me. Why?” Fabre turned his head away and Charles shook him. “Why?”
“When you went out, maitre, I was afraid you knew, but you went into that house on the bridge. I came here, anyway, but I didn’t warn her, I swear it! I meant to, but I couldn’t!” The boy covered his face and sobbed in earnest.
“Didn’t warn who?”
“Agnes.” Fabre tried to wipe his face on his cassock skirt and Charles released his hold. “When I got here, I kept remembering Maitre Doissin. And that it might have been Antoine. And I-” He shook his head wordlessly.
“Frere Fabre, who is Agnes?”
“My sister. My half-sister, her surname is La Salle. She’s Mme Doute’s maid.”
Charles stared at him, bereft of speech.
“You saw her at Philippe’s funeral, maitre. I was talking to her.”
“Yes,” Charles managed to say, “I remember. I didn’t know she was Mme Doute’s maid.”
Fabre nodded at the nearest gate. “She’s been here most of the summer with her mistress. The house belongs to Mme Montfort, Mme Doute’s sister.”
“Mme Doute didn’t go to Chantilly with Philippe’s body?”
“She said the journey was too much for her. She made M. Doute leave her here.”
“So you knew it was your sister who had left the gaufres. That’s why you were so upset and tried to confuse what Frere Martin said.”
“Forgive me, maitre!” Fabre’s face was full of anguish. “I told myself it had to be an accident, a mistake, she couldn’t have meant to do it!”
“You saw her leave the package?”
“Not leave it, no. I’d just polished the handles and the knocker on the big doors. For Wednesday’s performance. I took most of the cleaning things inside and when I came back for the rest, Agnes was turning away from the postern. Her back was to me and she had on a mourning veil, but I knew her by her red petticoat. She had her overskirt lifted away from the street.” He laughed unsteadily. “She wouldn’t put off that red petticoat if she was mourning a husband, let alone her mistress’s stepson. I didn’t call out to her because I didn’t have time to talk-once you get Agnes started, you’re stuck.” He looked pleadingly at Charles. “Why would she want to hurt Antoine? Maitre, she couldn’t have known the gaufres were poisoned!”
“She bought the poison herself,” Charles said. “I talked to the apothecary who sold it to her.”
“He’s lying! Or wrong. He must be, please, maitre-”
“You saw Maitre Doissin die, Frere Fabre. A hard death. You saw your sister leave the postern just after the poisoned gaufres were left. Agnes must at least explain herself. Will you go for the police? Ask someone where the nearest commissaire lives and bring him, or one of his men.”
It was the best he could think of. He couldn’t leave Fabre here to warn Agnes. And if Fabre didn’t come back-well, that would be information, too.
The boy gave the gate a last anguished look and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “I’ll go.”
To Charles’s relief, Fabre returned quickly, bringing a man in the night watch uniform of plumed hat and blue jerkin laced with silver. The man was built like a bull, with hard eyes and a mouth like a trap.
“This is Monsieur Servier,” Fabre panted. “He is-”
Servier cut across the social niceties. “What’s going on?”
“I am Maitre Charles du Luc, from the College of Louis le Grand, monsieur. A tutor died there this afternoon. From poison. Which you may already know, since our rector notified your lieutenant-general. The tutor ate poisoned gaufres intended for a little boy, Antoine Doute. The woman who left the gaufres is Agnes La Salle, maid to Mme Lisette Doute. Mme Doute is the boy’s stepmother and she is staying here with Mme Montfort, who is her sister. I want you to question the maid and the stepmother. The maid was recognized just after she left the cakes, and I know where she bought the poison.”
Servier’s eyebrows rose as he eyed the gate. “You know Montfort’s related some way to the Guises,” he growled.
“The king’s law runs here, not the Guises’, monsieur. And God’s law runs everywhere.”
“Just so you know whose broth you’re stirring. The commissaire’s not going to like this. He’s already had a murder tonight-an apprentice did for his master and they’re all in his house, witnesses, widow, accused, you should see it.” Serious offenders and witnesses were usually questioned first by the neighborhood commissaire, no matter what the hour.
Servier hitched up his belt, which supported a light sword and a small pistol, and took the pieces of a heavy wooden baton from under his cloak. He assembled them into a long, thick weapon, pulled the Montforts’s bell rope, and followed up the pull with a volley of baton blows on the gate. Running feet approached and a grille slid open.
“Tell your master that M. Servier of the watch wants to see Mme Doute and the woman Agnes La Salle.”
“My master is not at home.”
“Then tell your mistress. But first open the gate.”
The man started to bluster and Servier lifted his baton in front of the grille and slapped it loudly against his open palm. The grille slammed shut, bolts were slid back, and the gate began to open. Servier wrenched it wide and strode into the cobbled yard, Charles and Fabre behind him. The servant’s eyes grew round when he saw their cassocks.
“Please,” he said, “wait here.” He backed toward the tall, beautifully carved house door across the court.
“We’ll wait inside, if you please,” Servier said. “Or if you don’t.”
With a helpless gesture, the man hurried ahead of them to the door of the beautiful brick house, whose upper
