Game of Patience (38 page)

“Now you possessed Célie’s secret, that she had lost her virtue years before to a seducer, and what was more, had had a child by him and—with her mother’s connivance—had successfully deceived the world as to the child’s true identity.”

Rosalie drew a quick breath. “How—”

“I’ve known that for some time. One only had to look at Saint-Ange to see the resemblance.”

“She was terrified it would come out … the scandal would have ruined her whole family.”

“You knew Célie’s secret now,” he continued, “and all you could think of was the satisfaction it would bring you to fling it in Aubry’s face. In that heartless letter of his, he laid extraordinary stress upon the innocence and virtue of the girl he intended to marry. How better to hurt him than to tell him he was a colossal fool, that his precious, perfect Célie had been deceived and traduced just as you had been, was no more a virgin than you had been? So on the tenth of Brumaire, you wrote to him—anonymously, I suppose—and told him the truth about Célie, and that Saint-Ange was the man who had had her and who was extorting money from her to keep her secret safe—what better proof than that? ‘Go to Saint-Ange, on Rue du Hasard, and ask him about it yourself,’ you probably said. And then you found an errand boy in the street and sent the letter off to Aubry, enjoying your revenge.

“But I don’t think you savored it for long. It must have occurred to you rather quickly, once the first flush of triumph had faded, that Aubry was not one to closet himself away and brood over the world’s villainy. You remembered that the moment he learned Marsillac had had you, he flew off in a blind rage to challenge him. And suddenly you feared what he might do. But it would never do to go and warn Célie against him, for then it might all come out again, the sordid old tale, who you were, and what you had just done. Better to try to prevent Aubry from doing anything rash. You sent another street boy to his house to intercept him, but he had already left.”

He paused for breath. She watched him, expressionless.

“There was only one place where he could be. He’d gone to confront Saint-Ange, of course, and offer him challenge, just as he had confronted Marsillac. You decided to follow him, in disguise, and stop him, or warn Saint-Ange, whatever was necessary. You hurried to Rue du Cocq and threw on one of the men’s suits you kept hidden there, and a hat to shadow your face. Then you sped to Rue du Hasard and ran into the house, past the porter, up the stairs to Saint-Ange’s apartment, but they were already dead.

“I expect Aubry went merely to threaten Saint-Ange and challenge him to a duel; but by great ill luck Célie herself was there, paying Saint-Ange, and in his rage and misery Aubry simply snapped. He was carrying a loaded pistol, and in his delirium of fury he killed her. Perhaps he almost imagined that he was killing you, whom he believed to be the source of all his past misery and hardship, rather than Célie. Then—well, shooting Saint-Ange was no more than disposing of a bit of filth. And twenty minutes later, you arrived, and found you were too late.”

Aristide paused and gazed at Rosalie. She said nothing.

“It all made sense,” he added quietly, “as soon as I wondered if the young man whom the porter saw had, in fact, been two different people. The light was failing, and he’d had some brandy, and Aubry is not much taller than you are. Two slim, dark-haired young men wearing dark coats look much alike if you only get a glimpse of them, and you’re not paying them much attention.”

“You have no proof that I was not the one who killed them.”

“No. Except for your own nature.”

“My nature?” she echoed him with a wry smile.

“You hate men for how they’ve used you—but you couldn’t have murdered Célie. She’d been a victim, as you once were, of a callous libertine. You must have seen yourself in her as soon as she confided in you. You might have been bitterly resentful of her, but you could never have made her your victim. After all,” he added, “you began to throw suspicion on yourself as soon as we detained Hélène Villemain, whom you didn’t even know, but who was as innocent as any newborn kitten. You couldn’t bear the thought of a blameless woman being wrongly accused of Célie’s murder, and took steps to ensure her release. You sent those rather amateurish anonymous letters to Commissaire Brasseur yourself. They were sent from the district post office in the same section as Rue du Cocq.”

“And if Philippe were guilty and not I, why would I allow myself to be executed for his crime?”

Aristide paused for an instant. “Of course I wondered about that. At first I supposed that if you wanted to see Aubry suffer as much as he had made you suffer, years ago, with his moral arrogance and his self-conscious rectitude and his intolerance and priggishness, you would be delighted to see him condemned and executed for what he had done. And you did keep trying to steer my suspicions toward him, because you knew perfectly well he was guilty. You did a masterful job of it—not giving me too much information, not enough to draw attention to yourself; just enough to set us on the trail.

“But as I grew to know Aubry a little, you see, it occurred to me that because of those very qualities, that lofty rectitude of his, he might torment and punish himself far more cruelly than any court ever could. The guilt of having murdered the girl he loved, and the hideous chagrin of discovering his precious moral integrity was a sham … I think it might be worse for him to live with that than to die for it.”

Rosalie nodded. “You’ve seen through him quite well.”

“And the one thing worse even than that would be to see someone else, some innocent person, suffer for his crime, and yet to lack the courage to come forward and confess. Because he’s a physical coward, you know. Rushing out and fighting a duel in the heat of passion is one thing; facing the scaffold is quite another. His terror of death, and of the shame of public execution, is so great that I believe he would let you die in his stead, thinking that you’re sacrificing yourself for love of him, and then suffer the torments of Hell for the rest of his life because of it. And that,” Aristide concluded, “that is exactly what you want.”

She looked up at him calmly.

“You may believe that if you wish.”

“I believe it because I know that you were already indifferent to your own life before this whole business began. And I believe it because I can think of no other plausible reason why you would confess to murdering Célie, and yet forbid me to reveal that you were the hotel murderess; why you would destroy all the evidence at Rue du Cocq except that which would condemn you for Célie’s murder. Because for your revenge to be absolute, Aubry must believe you are a lily-white innocent under the law, guiltless of any crime.”

Rosalie smiled.

“This is all very interesting … but if it had happened that way, why would I not have simply declared to the police, or to a judge, straightaway, ‘I told Philippe Aubry the ugly truth about Célie and Saint-Ange, which would have enraged him, made him angry enough to kill’?”

“For two reasons I can imagine … One, because even your testimony might not have convinced a judge and jury. You didn’t actually see him commit the murders. No one saw him, and the porter would always be ready to swear that it was not Aubry he’d seen. All the evidence was circumstantial; and most judges are being more cautious since Lesurques was executed. Even with the truth laid bare, there might not have been enough evidence to convict Aubry. He might still have escaped punishment.”

“And the second reason?”

Aristide ceased his pacing and dropped into the nearest chair, head bent and hands clenched between his knees.

“You couldn’t bear to confess the truth, to confess your part in it,” he said, staring down at the floor. “You couldn’t bear that everyone would know
your
actions had driven him to murdering Célie, and then Sidonie Beaumontel. If you’d told the truth, every particle of it, from writing that letter to the moment you found them dead, you couldn’t have borne that shame, knowing what Célie’s family would have thought of you, what everyone would have thought of you. I think … I think you’d rather die to absolve yourself of their deaths, though you never touched them, than live a lifetime—or even a week—with the guilt.”

“Do you think that’s so very compelling a motive?” Rosalie said.

“Oh, yes.” He glanced up at her for a moment and swiftly looked away again. “I know exactly what sort of torment is devouring you. Because
I
live with that guilt, and know how bitter it is.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You see … my mother died, and my father became a murderer, and died on the scaffold, because of me.”

“You!”

“I was only nine. It was childish chatter. I had no idea what it implied, that Monsieur Godeau had been visiting frequently while my father was away, and that once I’d seen him in the house, half dressed, early in the morning. So I babbled it all out to my father when he came home from one of his journeys. He deduced the rest, and lay in wait for them, and then he killed them. But it was I who killed them, really, and him, too… .”

He thrust the chair aside and returned to his pacing, still not daring to meet her gaze. “I’ve never told that to a soul. I’ve lived alone with that guilt for almost thirty years. You try to reason your way out of blame, to convince yourself that you acted innocently, that it might have come about no matter what, that committing murder was someone else’s choice, not yours; but you can never free yourself of that burden. I live every day haunted by the terror that someone, somehow, will learn it was my fault. And I think you must believe yourself as guilty of Célie’s death, and Citizeness Beaumontel’s death, as I believe myself guilty of the death of my parents.”

Rosalie stared at him. At last she sat down in the chair he had pushed aside, with a long sigh.

“Are you now going to tell all this to the prosecutor and the president?”

“No.”

“Thank you.”

“I think it was Montaigne who wrote, ‘Some defeats are more triumphant than victories.’ Why should I deny you what you wish?”

“You’re right,” she said. “If I’d never unleashed my spite and told Philippe what I knew about her, he would never have done what he did, and that other woman would still be alive, too … I’m as guilty of Célie’s death as if I’d pulled the trigger myself. I would have killed myself right there in Saint-Ange’s apartment, I was so sick with shame … or given myself up for the hotel murders and let them guillotine me … if only I hadn’t wanted, more than anything else, to see Philippe punished for what he did. But instead he managed to evade justice, so I had to do it, somehow …”

He turned to her, in time to see the first tears glimmering in her eyes. She squeezed her eyelids shut, to no avail. A great painful sob escaped from her and she pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.

He touched her shoulder. “Weep if you want … There’s no one to hear you, not even Gilbert.”

She stumbled toward him and clutched unseeing at his shoulders, her slender body shuddering with sobs.

“I thought revenge would bring me happiness … I wanted to make them all as wretched as they’d made me, I wanted to ruin them and take away their lives as they ruined me and took away the life I should have had. And I thought that when I tasted revenge, I’d be happy at last, because I’d won. But I’m not … I was happy for a moment, and then it meant nothing; then I was empty, and purposeless, like a broken pitcher, and there is nothing any more in this world that I want, and nothing I can feel but a black cloud that surrounds me and chokes me… . Oh God, I want to die and find peace, and even an hour is too far off… .”

She buried her face in the folds of his coat. He held her tightly, saying nothing, smoothing her hair. Gradually her sobs abated and for a long while she huddled against his shoulder. He felt her body’s warmth through his shirt, and the beating of her heart.

Doors opened and closed a long way off, the creaking and thudding growing louder. Rosalie stepped away from him and sat at her small table to repair the ravages her tears had made to her powder and rouge. Calm once more, she rose and pulled on her coat, brushing away the last specks of dust before the mirror.

Footsteps sounded, steady, light, approaching. Aristide looked at his watch. Quarter to three: they were early.

For a moment all was silent but for the muffled sound of voices, and then the footsteps again in the corridor. The lock clicked and the door creaked open. Rosalie turned from the mirror.

Sanson had come alone, without clerk or priest or assistant trailing him. He doffed his hat.

“Forgive me.”

Brasseur claimed he had sometimes seen condemned criminals, hardened men who had preserved their sang-froid all through trial and prison, collapse at their first sight of the executioner. But Rosalie had not collapsed; she had not even paled, but stood staring at him, the color rising in her cheeks.

“Forgive you?” To Aristide’s astonishment, she gave Sanson a smile of pure joy. “I knew you would come, at last.”

He seemed to wince.

“You don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

“It’s my duty to come here today,” he told her softly, “my curse that I must come here for you.” He reached out as if he would touch her cheek, her hair, but swiftly drew back his hand. “Haven’t you guessed, even now?”

“Guessed?” she echoed him, staring at him, somber and pale in his black coat and spotless white cravat.