For the King (28 page)

A woman opened the door on the third floor as soon as he knocked at the door. There was no way of arriving by surprise up those creaky stairs. The first thing Roch saw, and smelled, was the rabbit cage against the far wall.

“Police!” he said. “Are you Citizen Jourdan?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Roch nodded at the pretty girl standing behind the older woman. “And who is this?”

“This is my daughter Marie-Antoinette. Toinette, we call her.”

Toinette smiled and curtseyed to the policemen as if this were a social occasion. She must have been born only a few years before the Revolution, and at some point, during the Terror, it must not have been easy to be called
Marie-Antoinette
, like the
ci-devant
Queen.

“Do you know a man named Pierre de Saint-Régent, or Pierrot?” he asked the mother. “Over thirty, blue eyes, long pointy nose, hair braided in
cadenettes
, slight build?”

The older woman shook her head. “No, Sir, I don’t know anyone by that name.”

Roch looked carefully at her. In fact, she was not as old as she seemed at first glance. It was that wrinkled, emaciated face, and most of all those hollow eyes, devoid of any expression but fear.

In the rabbit cage, the male, unfazed by the arrival of the policemen, hopped behind one of the females and proceeded to mount her with short, hurried strokes. “Pray what is
this
?” asked Roch, pointing at the animals. “Do you know, Citizen, that it is against the law to raise livestock within city limits? I am going to issue you a citation. These rabbits will cost you a fine of 300 francs.”

The look of fear in the woman’s eyes became frantic. “Please, Sir, I’ve never seen so much money. If I can’t pay the fine, I’ll go to jail, and then what’ll become of my poor Toinette?”

“Then perhaps you could answer my questions.”

“Oh, I will.”

“What about that man Pierrot? We know for a fact that he lives here with you. He is wanted on account of the Rue Nicaise attack.”

Citizen Jourdan did not seem surprised. “Well, Sir,” she said, “a Monsieur Pierrot did rent a room from me at times.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know, Sir. I haven’t seen him in a while.”

“How long?”

“I can’t remember, Sir.”

“How did you meet him?”

“Another man brought him here in the middle of December.”

“What other man?”

“I don’t remember, Sir.”

“And you housed this Pierrot here, without reporting him as a boarder to the police? You broke the law, Citizen.”

“But he wasn’t really a boarder, Sir. He didn’t stay here much. He’d agreed to pay me twenty
sols
a day, and God knows we need the money. He said it’d only be for a few weeks.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I don’t remember, Sir.”

“Please step outside with your daughter while we search your lodgings.”

Roch walked to the other room and saw a pile of men’s clothes on one of the beds. He looked as Inspector Alain inventoried shirts, clean and soiled, cravats, handkerchiefs, stockings, a pair of slippers and a coat, the pockets of which contained twenty-five silver coins of six francs, some small change and a letter.

Roch read it.

Gideon. George’s war name. The Prefecture’s experts would compare this letter to the known samples of his handwriting. The date of the letter, the 19th of December, was only five days before the Rue Nicaise attack. There was no postmark. George would never be so imprudent as to correspond with his accomplices through the Post Office. It was common knowledge that the police opened many letters, which were copied, and so cleverly resealed that their recipients often did not suspect the tampering that had taken place.

The lodgings contained nothing else of interest. Roch invited the Jourdan women to reenter.

“We are taking this to the Prefecture,” he said, pointing at the sealed bundle of Saint-Régent’s belongings. “By the way, we found more than 150 francs in your boarder’s pockets. Did you know he had all that money?”

The older woman remained silent, but Toinette opened her eyes wide. “You don’t say! When you think that he owes Mama over fifty francs for room and board . . .”

“Here is what I am going to do, Citizen,” Roch told the widow. “I will leave with you twenty-four francs of his money as partial payment for his rent. We are taking the rest of his things. And your daughter is coming with us.”

The woman wailed. “Oh, you can’t do that, Sir. She’s too young.”

Roch looked sternly at her. “Then stop protecting a scoundrel who took advantage of you. He lived in your home and ate your food without giving you a
sol
, while his pockets were full of money. Answer me. Where is he?”

The woman moistened her lips, opened her mouth, and seemed to hesitate. Roch waited, but no sound came. The two women had to be separated, or the mother would never talk.

“All right then,” he said. “I am arresting Toinette.”

Tears were rolling down the older woman’s face. “Then please arrest me with her. Please, Sir. We’ve never been apart.”

“No. You need not worry about Toinette. I will make sure she is treated well.”

The Widow Jourdan was now sobbing.

“Have you a neighbor or friend,” asked Roch, “someone who could keep you company tonight?”

“I’ve an elder sister, Marie-Luce,” intervened Toinette, patting her mother’s shoulder. “She’s married and lives on Rue Lazare. But she doesn’t get along with Mama too well, you see.
You let that rotten child govern you
, she always says, speaking of me.”

Roch thought that Marie-Luce was probably right. “I will have her fetched to keep you company,” he told the widow. “And I will leave three Inspectors with you as well.”

Toinette seemed chatty enough. He felt sure that, once separated from her mother, she would talk. He stepped back to let the girl go first out of the lodgings. They were already halfway down the first flight of stairs when he heard Widow Jourdan’s plaintive voice. “An’ about those rabbits?”

“I don’t care,” he shouted from the stairwell. “Eat them.”

On his way to the Prefecture, Roch was hoping that Saint-Régent had been caught at the other address provided by Short Francis. But no, Piis told him, there as well the police had been too late. Likewise, Limoëlan was no longer in the room above the pastry shop, though a long blond wig had been seized on the premises. In both places the lodgers had been arrested.

Roch had Toinette brought to his office. He imagined what Bertrand would say of the situation. After Madeleine Vallon, after the schoolgirls from the Convent of Saint-Michel, he was making a specialty of questioning ingénues.

Roch, in an effort to hide his somber mood, smiled at the girl. “This is a pretty dress you have, Toinette.”

She blushed under her freckles, more from pleasure, he imagined, than from shyness. “It is, isn’t it? Monsieur Pierrot gave it to me.”

“He did? That was kind of him.”

“Oh, but it’s an agreement we had. You see, Mama found on the street a pug dog. It looked like it was lost. A little bitch, so pretty. I called her Mirza, ’cause once, on the street, I’d heard a lady call her pug Mirza. Mama complained that we hadn’t any money to feed her, but I said that she was so small, she wouldn’t eat much. And I’d always wanted to have a pug dog. So Mama saw that I was right, and she agreed to keep her. But when Monsieur Pierrot saw Mirza, he went wild about her, and he said he wanted to buy her to give as a present to a lady of his acquaintance. So Mama asked me if it was all right if we sold Mirza to Monsieur Pierrot, because we needed the money so much. So I said that he could have Mirza, but only if he bought me a new dress. And he did!”

Toinette, pursing her lips, complacently straightened the folds of the skirt.

“Certainly Monsieur Pierrot has good taste,” said Roch. “So what is the name of this lady of his?”

“Oh, but he wouldn’t say, no matter how often I asked about her. He jus’ said she’d be mighty pleased with Mirza.” Toinette leaned towards Roch, her eyes shining with excitement. “And not only that, but he’d a collar specially made for Mirza
by a jeweler
. Monsieur Pierrot showed it to me. It was all real sterling silver, lined with green leather, with three little bells, and a medal with an inscription that said
To My Lady
. And the bells and the medal were all sterling silver too.”

Roch nodded. “Fancy that! Monsieur Pierrot must be very much in love with his lady. And he stayed at your lodgings all the time?”

“He didn’t come very often at first. But we saw him on Christmas Eve, in the morning. That day he gave me twelve
sols
to go buy ten feet of wick.
Get the thickest you can find, Toinette,
he said,
I’ll show you something funny
. So when I came back with the wick, he made a little heap of gunpowder on the mantel of the fireplace, with a length of wick next to it. I was scared at first.
Don’t light it, Monsieur Pierrot!
I cried,
you’ll wreck the mirror. It’s already cracked, and then Mama’ll be in trouble with the lan’lord
. But he said,
Don’t worry, Toinette, I know what I’m doing
. He pulled his watch—it was a fancy watch, all gold, with several little dials—and he said that the powder must explode in two seconds, no more. Then he lit the wick with his tinderbox. The powder made a funny little pop that made me jump. But he was right: the mirror wasn’t ruined, at least not more’n before. But he wasn’t happy, ’cause he could tell by his watch it wasn’t as fast as he’d have liked. So he cut the wick shorter and shorter until the powder popped in just two seconds.” Toinette giggled at the recollection. “He’s a pleasant man, Monsieur Pierrot. He made Mama laugh, and she doesn’t laugh often.”

Roch smiled. “So your Mama liked him too?”

“Oh, yes. She said that she couldn’t tell me his real name, jus’ that he was a nobleman, from the West, and that he’d come to Paris to do something very important for the King, and that we should help him as best we could.”

Toinette seemed sincere in her naïveté. She was really no more clever than she looked. “Very interesting,” said Roch. “What else happened on Christmas Eve?”

“Monsieur Pierrot left before the morning was over. And he didn’t come back until several days later. He arrived after dinner. But he was so altered! He looked all pale. He had trouble walking. But he wouldn’t go to bed. He asked Mama for a candle and ink and paper. Mama told me she couldn’t go to sleep, with him being in the same room behind the curtain, because he stayed up all night writing. He went out the next morning for about an hour, and he returned, very sick-looking, and after that he didn’t go out for several days. Then he began to feel better, and he went out once in a while. He was never dressed the same way, sometimes like a gentleman, and sometimes like a beggar, almost. And sometimes he took his dinner with us, and sometimes elsewhere. But he came back to sleep at our place every night.”

So Widow Jourdan had lied. She had given Saint-Régent shelter for weeks on end after the Rue Nicaise attack.

“And when was the last time you saw Monsieur Pierrot?”

“Jus’ last night.”

“Last night!” Roch stared at Toinette. If Short Francis had been questioned in a timely manner, Saint-Régent would have been caught already. No, instead, precious time had been wasted on the search of Francis’s most intimate recesses, on the Prefect’s aimless questioning and on such dallying. Roch had to bite his lip to repress a rush of fury against Dubois.

“So what happened last night?” continued Roch, trying to bring his voice under control.

“A man came asking for Monsieur Pierrot.”

“A man?”

“A tall, thin man, with gold spectacles, and dark hair, cut very short, still shorter’n yours. He wore a fine blue coat too. He didn’t say his name. He jus’ said he was a friend of Monsieur Pierrot, and he needed to see him right away. Monsieur Pierrot looked mighty surprised to see him, and none too happy either. They locked themselves in the other room. I heard Monsieur Pierrot’s voice raised. That was the first time because, like I told you, he’s so pleasant usually. Then he left with the tall man.” She sighed. “And he took Mirza with him. Now can I go home to Mama, please?”

“Tomorrow perhaps. You have been very helpful, but we may need you yet. In the meantime, I will make sure you sleep in a decent place tonight.”

Roch had Toinette sign her statement and dismissed her. He was confident that the girl had told him all she knew, but her mother had much more to say. Toinette’s absence might prompt her to reconsider the advisability of protecting Saint-Régent.

He rubbed his hands over his face. The stubble on his cheeks felt rough under his palms. The dull pain of a headache had settled behind his eyes. The past two nights, the one spent preparing the arrest of Short Francis at the Convent, and the other listening to the man’s questioning, had been exhausting, more so than the mere lack of sleep could explain. It was certainly infuriating to have missed Saint-Régent by a matter of hours. And time was not stopping for Old Miquel. Barely nine days remained now.

Hopefully Carbon’s arrest would pacify Fouché while the hunt for Saint-Régent continued. Roch decided to go home. He could not go on any longer without rest, and he needed to reflect on the evidence that had been gathered so far.