For the King (9 page)

Men kept to one side of the salon, women to the other. Roch wondered whether the two groups were going to mingle or even acknowledge each other in the course of the evening. An invisible partition seemed to divide them. He remained standing, surveying the room and its occupants. So
this
was high society. This party seemed a particularly stupid way to spend a night. He could have been sitting on a straw chair at one of the tables of the Mighty Barrel, playing checkers with his friend Mulard over a bottle of excellent Burgundy from Old Miquel’s personal reserve. Even dinner with Alexandrine and her father would have been a treat compared to this.

Roch’s reflections took a more pleasant turn when he saw Madame Coudert walk towards him. She wore a Greek gown of white muslin, trimmed around the hem with embroidery of the same color. A string of pearls rested on her black hair and pale forehead. More pearls circled her neck and cascaded in drops from her ears. She smiled at Roch in the same manner as in her mother’s bedroom. The simplicity of her attire, the soft glow of her pearls against her skin were a delight to the eye next to the gaudiness of the other women’s dresses and jewels. Blanche was pretty, very pretty. A delicate figure, tall yet graceful, perfectly proportioned limbs. Maybe that sight alone justified the waste of an evening.

At first, Roch observed her beauty complacently, but coldly, as he would have admired a painting, or a statue in a park. Then his thoughts took a more personal turn. He pictured her with her hair undone, flowing freely down her back, and her pearls, unstrung, hitting the floor one by one, bouncing on the shiny parquet with little tapping noises. Then he imagined the pleasure he would feel in slowly unlacing her gown, which already exposed her shoulders and throat, and pulling it down to her waist. Now her long black curls rested between her bare, white, round breasts. He was ready to follow his reverie further when he realized with dismay that she was leading a stout man towards him.

“Chief Inspector Miquel,” she said, “I am delighted to see you here tonight. Allow me to introduce my husband, Monsieur Coudert.”

Roch frowned when he heard the word
Monsieur
instead of
Citizen
and eyed Coudert with increased unfriendliness. The man could not be any younger than fifty. His hair, straight and short, was the same gray as his eyes. He looked carefully, earnestly, but without hostility at Roch and bowed.

“Good evening to you, Citizen,” said Roch, who bowed slightly in turn. Indeed he did not find the directness of Coudert’s gaze unpleasant, and might have liked the man but for the fact that he was Blanche’s husband.

No man went over to the women, except Coudert, who paid the ladies a few perfunctory compliments. Then a lackey announced
la Signora Casaretti
, and a very handsome woman, greeted by excited whispers, entered the salon. From then on Coudert dedicated himself to this new beauty, from whose side he did not stray for the whole evening. The rest of the women were left to themselves.

It seemed to Roch that every man in the room was either a general, a banker or a senator. He had nothing to say to anyone and, after the Couderts left him to attend to their other guests, nobody seemed to pay him the least attention. The musicians, a string quartet, finished tuning their instruments and the concert started.

He took a chair in the part of the salon occupied by other men and tried to listen. He was in no way adverse to fine music, but this did not seem a congenial setting to enjoy it. He rose as soon as tepid applause announced that the first piece was over.

As he was ready to leave the salon, he felt a gentle tap on his elbow. He started and turned around, his heart beating a little faster in the hope that it would be Madame Coudert. Indeed she slipped her delicate hand, gloved in white satin, under his arm. An intimate, almost tender gesture. She was smiling at him once more.

“Are you leaving us already, Chief Inspector?” she asked. “You are going to miss Beethoven’s
Sonata Pathétique
.”

“With great regret. Duty calls me away.”

Her lips seemed to pout, but there was a mischievous glimmer in her eyes. “And you were going like this, without taking leave of me? I hope you spent a pleasant evening.”

“Quite. I thank you for your invitation.”

“You found my party dull, did you not?”

What was he supposed to say under the circumstances? He did not feel like lying. He looked straight at her and made no response.

“Well,” she continued, “I find it rather dull myself. Except for the music, of course.” Her eyes sparkled. “
That
was beautiful, was it not?”

He nodded. She looked around at her guests and pursed her lips. “Mama says that society was much more polished before the Revolution. Gentlemen devoted themselves to the ladies. Conversations were animated, brilliant. Dinners would turn into balls on a whim, guests would play the pianoforte and sing, suppers were improvised.” She giggled. “It sounds like people had so much fun then.”

He looked into her eyes. “I really cannot tell. My father is a tavern keeper. He knew little of fine society before the Revolution. Even now he tends to stay away from the most fashionable salons.”

She blushed slightly and bowed her head. “I will not detain you any longer. It was a pleasure seeing you again.”

A few guests were walking in their direction. Blanche dropped her white lace fan and put her hand to her mouth to muffle a little cry of dismay. Roch bent to his knee to pick the object off the floor. His face brushed against the flimsy fabric of her skirts as he rose.

“See how clumsy I am!” she said.

He ran his forefinger on the mother-of-pearl sticks of the fan and admired for a moment the carved pattern of leaves, flowers, butterflies and ribbons. It was an object of exquisite beauty, fortunately unbroken in its fall. He returned it to her. Their hands touched. He felt something being slipped into his.

“Thank you, Chief Inspector,” she said. “I am much obliged.”

He almost ran down the stairs and out of the Coudert mansion, fingering the tiny slip of paper in his pocket. This party had not been a waste of his time after all. Lovely Madame Coudert would be his. She was already his. Yet, despite his feeling of triumph, he could not help being somewhat disappointed. Perhaps he had expected her to be less forward. But then he no longer knew what he had expected.

He paused under the yellow glow of the next streetlamp. The note, in an elegant script, read:
Madame Bercelle’s millinery shop, at the sign of the Five Diamonds, Rue du Pélican. The day after tomorrow. Three in the afternoon.

He grinned.
Women
, he thought.

13

R
och had gone to the Five Diamonds at the appointed time, and found Blanche already there. Those two days spent waiting for her had increased his desire to the point where it had become almost unbearable. Thankfully she had not dallied with him. She had let him undress her in haste. He had found her as beautiful as he had expected, maybe even more so. He had done all of the things of which he had thought at the musical evening, then other things of which he had dreamed since, and then more. She had not put up any show of mock shyness, and seemed to share in his passion. They had been lovers since, and his need for her increased with each of their encounters.

He shook himself. All that had happened before the Rue Nicaise attack. His affair with Blanche, more than anything else in his life, now seemed to belong to another, ancient, happy, carefree era.

Roch went to L’Hôtel-Dieu Hospital to have Captain Platel sign his statement. None too early. The man was still conscious, but drenched in sweat, shaking with fever. His leg had been amputated above the knee. Much to Roch’s relief, he did not ask again about Widow Lystère. Someone must have told him of her fate. Roch left the hospital promptly.

Just outside, a girl in rags was singing a ditty in a powerful, shrill voice:

Passersby stopped to listen to the little street singer. Roch threw a copper coin at the red and white kerchief spread at the girl’s feet and pressed on, impatient to reach the Five Diamonds millinery on Rue du Pélican.

From the street he glanced inside at several
grisettes
, shopgirls, seated at the counter, who were sewing ribbons, lace, feathers and silk flowers onto bonnets. The young woman closest to the window looked up from her work and smiled at him. He had noticed her during prior visits and would normally have tarried to smile back, for the simple pleasure of gazing for a moment at her pretty face. He was in no way adverse to
grisettes
, though they made so little money at honest work that they tended to be rather demanding in all matters financial. But that day he ignored the shopgirl. He pulled a key from his pocket and opened a door to the side of the shop.

He followed a narrow passage and ran up a flight of stairs. Before he could knock, the door opened and Blanche threw herself into his arms. She pulled him into the room. It was furnished with a large bed, draped in faded blue silk, two matching chairs, a bidet in the corner and a dressing table. In its drawer Blanche kept a hairbrush, a curling iron and a box of hairpins.

Roch recognized the fragrance of carnation and lily of the valley. Blanche would leave a little perfume bottle open, probably to mask the odor of the room, the mercenary smell of a place where too many had passed and no one lived. Yet Roch forgot about the mixed scents, about the roundish stains on the chairs and the flowery coverlet. He wrapped his arms around Blanche and kissed her greedily. He realized how much he had missed her during those three days since the attack.

“I was so worried about you the other night,” he whispered. “I thought of you that night at the Opera, of what could have happened to you.”

She shuddered. “Oh, you are an angel, but I was in no danger.”

Roch had never felt such comfort in her presence. After the charred, torn, bloodied, tortured flesh he had seen during the past two days, it was a delight to behold her white skin. He undressed her slowly, with unspoken apprehension, as if afraid that each item of clothing he was peeling off her would reveal a heartrending gash or burn. No, of course, she was smooth, intact, unblemished, flawless. Naked on her side on the bed, she glowed like mother-of-pearl.

He stripped in a hurry, impatient for their skin to touch. He straddled her on his hands and knees, caressing her with his entire body. That was the time when he would decide how to take her. He usually liked to ponder all options at his leisure, but now he did not hesitate. He pushed on her shoulder to roll her from her side to her back. He needed to feel her mouth, her tongue, her breasts, her hands, to see her face, all the more beautiful when he was inside her, to lose himself in the darkness of her eyes.

He was not rough, not gentle either. He was relentless, insistent. Soon she held her breath and shuddered. He felt her contract around him. Yet he did not pause. He was only becoming more aware of every part of her he could reach. After a few minutes her spasms returned. She was now moaning aloud, almost sobbing.

There was no holding it. It sprung from his loins, up his spine to explode in his skull. Each pulse felt like a bolt of white light, blinding him from within. A yell, deep from his stomach, tore through his throat. For a moment he remained frozen in an arc of pain and pleasure. Then he rolled over on his back, shaking, empty, his eyes closed, not knowing whether the next breath would come.

Thankfully she did not speak or try to touch him afterwards. It would have been unbearable. He struggled to get hold of his own mind.
La petite mort
. The little death indeed. Never before had it felt so like the real one. There was none of the light-headed glow of drunkenness that usually followed his first taste of pleasure.

When he opened his lids at last, Blanche’s eyes were on him, wider than ever.

“You frightened me,” she said.

He shrugged and smiled faintly. “Perhaps I frightened myself too.” He raised himself on one elbow, brushed his lips against hers and sat up on the bed. She rested her head on his thigh. It would normally have been the beginning of more play. She would have toyed with him, teased him tenderly under the guise of cleaning him. She always knew how to bring him back to life, eager for more of her.

Not this time. He stopped her. The memory of the Rue Nicaise attack intruded upon his thoughts. He could not reconcile her beauty with the horror he had witnessed over the past days. He took her head between his hands and pushed it back gently onto the pillow. Then he took his time spreading her hair like a black fan against the whiteness of the linen.

“What is the matter?” she asked.

“Thanks to you, Blanche, I forgot about this Rue Nicaise business for a moment, but it is back.” He closed his eyes. “I have seen terrible things, things I can’t forget.”

She shivered. “Those poor people. I dream of them at night. I see their shadows standing right behind me when I look at myself in the mirror.”

He bent to caress her cheek. “Poor Blanche. It must have been terrifying that night at the Opera, not knowing what horror to expect next.”

She threw herself against his chest. “This dread has never left me since. Oh, Roch, I see death everywhere now.”

He closed her arms around her and rocked her like a child. “The shock will pass, dearest. The assassins will be caught, and they will pay for their crime. Then everyone in Paris will be safe again. You too, my Blanche.” He ran his finger over her lips.

“Are you certain of it? How is your investigation progressing?”

His jaw tightened. “I can’t discuss it, of course, but yes, we are making good progress. The assassins will be caught, and they will finish their days on the guillotine, as they deserve. Which reminds me that I should go back to the Prefecture, little as I wish to leave you.”