Game of Patience (23 page)

Aubry started and cast a swift glance at the porter.

“Your portrait could describe this man before you, could it not?” said Geoffroy.

“What I mean to say is,” Grangier stammered, “this citizen
might
have been the man. He’s about the same height and so on. But I’d had a glass or two of eau-de-vie and it was getting dark, and I couldn’t swear to it. I think it was somebody else I saw.”

“Citizen Grangier.” Geoffroy leaned his elbows on the table before him and pressed his fingertips together. “Will you, or will you not, testify that you saw this man?”

Grangier glanced from the judge to Aubry and back again before reluctantly replying. “No, citizen. He could have been the man, but I couldn’t take my oath on it.”

Damnation,
Aristide said to himself, mentally removing Grangier from the ranks of witnesses for the prosecution to those of the defense.
And what if,
a small persistent voice within him whispered,
what if he is speaking perfect truth, and Aubry is not the man who rushed down those stairs from that scene of death?

Judge Geoffroy dismissed Grangier and sat for a moment in silence, staring down at the dossier before him.

“Citizen Aubry,” he said at last, “I doubt any man here has forgotten a certain recent crime, or the notorious trial and verdict that resulted from it. And each of us holds his own opinion as to whether justice was done, or whether an innocent man was put to death, because of testimony by witnesses who may have been deceived in their identification. For myself, I cannot find it in my conscience to send a man to trial on a capital charge, on the strength of such circumstantial evidence alone. Philippe-Marie-Joseph Aubry, I find insufficient evidence here to hold you on suspicion of murder at this time. You may go.”

The gendarmes stepped away from Aubry. He stood motionless for an instant, letting out a long, sighing breath. Aristide turned away from the spy hole and glanced at Brasseur.

“Now what?”

“We go on looking for evidence,” said Brasseur, with a gloomy shrug. “And we don’t let that pretty-faced whelp out of our sights.”

Aristide eyed him for a moment, envying his friend his phlegmatic confidence. “What if he
is
just as innocent as he says?” He shook his head, frustrated, and strode from the room.

“
Aubry,” Aristide said, reaching for his sleeve, when the young man had broken away from the handful of well-wishers surrounding him in the corridor outside the magistrate’s chambers.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I’m the man who tracked you down.”

“Haven’t you done enough, then?” Aubry said, brushing past him toward the door. “Keep away from me.”

Aristide kept pace with him as he flung open the door and hurried down Rue des Arts. “If you’re innocent, tell me the truth and allow me to find the real murderer.”

“I’ve been
telling
the truth.”

“No, you haven’t. Where were you, really, on the evening of the tenth? You must have been somewhere,” Aristide added brutally, “if you weren’t on Rue du Hasard, shooting Célie Montereau. If it wasn’t you Grangier saw, who was it?”

“How on earth should I know?”

Aristide drew a deep breath and forced himself to pause a moment before replying. “You damned fool, you’re not making this any better for yourself. They may have released you today, but that doesn’t mean the police won’t pick you up again as soon as they can collect more evidence against you.
Somebody
shot those two people. If you weren’t the man with the round hat whom the porter saw, then probably the man with the round hat shot them. So if you can think of any other young men who would have a motive to murder Célie, for whatever reason, you had better tell me now.”

“A round hat,” Aubry said. He gestured Aristide aside into a narrow side street, out of the busy foot traffic. “That man mentioned a low-crowned round hat. I don’t own a hat like that.”

“That’s scarcely evidence.”
“But it’s the truth. I detest the style. Ask my servant. It wasn’t I.”

“Who might it have been?”

“I haven’t the least idea.”

“What about this woman, this Émilie?”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Aubry said uneasily.

Aristide sighed. “For God’s sake, is that what this is all about? Are you too embarrassed to state where you were on the tenth because you spent the evening at a brothel?”

“No!”

“Aubry, I’ve studied you,” Aristide told him. “I knew what you were before I knew your name. I know you present a certain face to the world, of a man who wants to believe the woman he loves is pure and saintly. I imagine you’d like to believe that of yourself, as well, but in truth … perhaps you have baser tastes.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aubry said, keeping his voice level.

“I don’t know or care what sort of revolting amusements you may enjoy in private,” Aristide continued relentlessly, “though I can understand you might be reluctant to have them made public. But if faced with a choice of temporary discomfiture or the guillotine, I know which I would choose.”

“I wasn’t at a brothel!” Aubry insisted. “I just went for a walk. The—her letter upset me, and—and I went for a long walk to sort out matters in my head.”

“If this prostitute knew your address, then she must know you rather well. Where can we find her?”

Aubry began to pace, hands balled into fists at his side. “She—I don’t know anything about her. She’s just a girl I picked up one evening. She—wrote me to accuse me of cheating her, that half of the notes I’d given her were counterfeit.”

“Were they?”

“I’ve no idea.” He leaned back with an fretful sigh against the nearest wall, arms folded, the great dark eyes wide and troubled. “I didn’t do this. I loved Célie and I’d never have hurt her. Why must this have anything to do with me? Couldn’t an enemy of this man Saint-Ange have killed him?”

“And then killed Célie because she witnessed the murder?”

“Yes, exactly.”

Aristide shook his head. “The evidence suggests otherwise. Do you know where I can find this Émilie? Where did you meet her?”

“At—at the Pont-Neuf. I took her home with me.”

“Did your servant see her when you brought her home?”

“No. I’d given Brelot the evening off.”

“What about the porter?”

“I—I don’t know. I don’t think he saw us.”

“Why,” Aristide said, “were you so upset, when she accused you of cheating her, that you required eight hours of fresh air to sort matters out?”

“Wouldn’t you be upset if you were accused of passing bad notes? They guillotine counterfeiters. Or—or she might have been working up to extorting payment from me. Whores do that.”

“Good God, Aubry, I’m more astonished at the bachelor who
hasn’t,
at one time or another, brought a whore to his apartment. Do you always construct an ox out of an egg?”

“She upset me,” Aubry muttered.

“So you still can’t say where you were that evening, or produce a witness?”

“I tell you, I just walked about. I was very disturbed. I had a drink of eau-de-vie from an old spirit peddler near the Jacobin Club; an old hag with a cask. Ask her.”

“One peddler, a fortnight ago? You’re asking a good deal. You realize, don’t you, that the moment the police discover any further evidence they can use against you, you’ll be back in front of the magistrate again, and the next time he may not be so lenient. You had better offer a stronger alibi than a long, solitary ramble.”

“How am I supposed to prove a negative?” Aubry said. “Why should I have provided myself with proof of where I was? Please, for God’s sake, believe me. I know it looks bad—”

“I know perfectly well that the evidence, what evidence we have, points toward both your guilt and your innocence,” Aristide said. “Listen—nothing terrifies me more than the thought of mistakenly causing a man’s death. I
want
to believe you’re telling the truth, and that some proof, somewhere, can vindicate you. To be honest, I don’t think I like you much; but if you’re innocent, you shouldn’t be punished for something you didn’t do.”

Aubry stared across the alley, blinking away the tears glittering in his eyes in the shaft of watery autumn sunshine that lanced across him. “I loved Célie so much,” he whispered.

“No doubt you did,” Aristide said, more softly. “But thus far, all you have in your favor is that our eyewitness refused to identify you. And I fear, in the end, that that may not be enough to keep you out of prison. If you can’t tell me anything else that would prove you were elsewhere when Célie and Saint-Ange were murdered, then I can’t help you. You’re sure you have no idea who this young man with the round hat could be?”

“None.”

“A relative of Célie’s? A jilted suitor? An enemy?”

“Célie couldn’t possibly have had any enemies.”

“She had one,” Aristide said.

#

“
You look dreadful,” said Rosalie, that evening in Madame Deluc’s parlor. “What’s the matter?”

“Judge Geoffroy interrogated Aubry today… .”

“So? Why do you look as if you’d just lost your dearest friend?”

“That’s not amusing—”

“Oh, God,” she said, coloring. “I’m sorry.”

“Never mind.”

“You do look ill. Perhaps you ought to get away from Paris. Take a holiday in the country for a few days.”

“I can’t take a holiday. Not while this affair is still unfinished.”

“Unfinished?” she echoed him, startled.

“The porter from Saint-Ange’s house wouldn’t identify Aubry. Judge Geoffroy let him go.”

“What?”

“He wouldn’t identify him. Or couldn’t. He saw a stranger who rushed into the house at the right time, but he wouldn’t swear before the judge that Aubry was the man.”

She stared at him, wide-eyed, her lips trembling. After a long silence she drew a deep, sighing breath. “We must talk, in privacy. Will you come with me to the Port Salut tavern?”

At the nearby tavern he followed her to a table for two and threw himself down in the nearest chair as she ordered a glass of red wine from the servant girl. “You prefer coffee, don’t you,” she added, turning to him. “Or perhaps you want something else. Wine? Eau-de-vie?”

When the servant had gone to fetch their order Rosalie leaned across the table and fixed him with an accusing glare. “Now. What happened?”

He described Aubry’s interrogation from first to last. Their drink arrived in the midst of his tale and he immediately gulped down half a glassful of brandy, taking perverse pleasure in its fierce burn.

“Dear God,” she muttered when he had finished.

He poured himself more brandy and sipped at it, rolling the stinging liquid on his tongue. “I never did like a case based only on circumstantial evidence, no hard proof … especially with a capital crime. But since this Lesurques affair …” He shook his head, restless. “I think the law made an appalling error there. And I am as fallible as anyone else … it’s not cut and dried by any means … what if Aubry is innocent as well?” He drank down the rest of the glass and leaned back with a long sigh. “I can’t help wondering about it. The case against him made perfect sense—but the porter couldn’t identify him. I’ve been so sure; building a theory, following the trail … but still there’s always the possibility I’m wrong. We can try to dig up more evidence … but how could I live with myself if an innocent man, another innocent man, were executed because of my blundering?”

Rosalie knew better than to attempt to console him with a banal platitude. “Are you still sure Aubry did the murders?” she asked after a long silence.

“No.” Aristide rubbed his nose and held out his glass for more brandy.

“You’re trembling,” she told him.

“The damned porter should have been able to identify him, and he wouldn’t. But who else could it have been? Why couldn’t he say ‘This is the man’?”

She splashed a little of the amber liquid into his glass. “Is this porter so important? No one else saw the man? No one at all?”

“Not that we’ve been able to discover.”

Rosalie closed her eyes and leaned her head on her clasped hands for a moment. “But he
is
guilty. He
must
be.”

“God!” Aristide exclaimed, his fingers hovering at his lips, too uneasy even to bite his nails. “It’s such a hideous, sordid, pitiful little affair… .” He clenched his fist, grateful for the faint bracing pain of the ragged fingernails biting into his palm.

“You’ll have a nervous attack if you don’t watch yourself,” Rosalie told him after a long, suffocating silence.

“That starry-eyed young man who believed his sweetheart was a goddess, or a saint,” he added, scarcely hearing her, “and that poor, silly, sentimental girl who’d strayed and tried to pretend it never happened—”

“Ravel.”

“—and now someday, if we’re lucky, some poor wretch will pay on the scaffold for her death …”

Rosalie touched his arm and took the glass from his hand. “You’ve too much on your shoulders. I tell you, you need some time to clear your mind.”