The Isle of Devils (38 page)

“Iain. Iain Harrier.”

“Was he born in ‘Frisco?”

Her brow furrowed slightly. “I have never been fond of that hideous shortening of the name of my fair city, Constable.”

“My apologies, Madame,” said he, bowing his head slightly.

“Apology accepted,” she smiled and the crease in her forehead vanished as quickly as it had come. “The answer to your question is ‘no.’ He was born in the north of England, Durham I believe. My grandparents had him late in life. His older sister, who I have never met, remained behind when they
immigrated
to Philadelphia in the eastern United States. But when he was a young man, almost still a boy really, the great Californian gold rush commenced, and like so many others he chased his dreams westward.”

“So he was a miner?”

“Yes, amongst many other things. He had many loose partnerships over the years, and it seemed like his partners were always successful in their pursuits, unlike so many others, whose dreams died in those hills. First there was Mr. Doran, now said to be the richest man on the Pacific Slope. For a while he worked with Senator Neil Gibson, who has now become known as the ‘Gold King,’ though my father never much liked the man’s manners. My father never had their level of success, of course, but it was moving in the Senator’s company that he met my mother.”

“And your mother, does she still reside in San Francisco?”

A hint of tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “No,” she replied tightly. “She was carried off two years ago from diphtheria. I am now alone in the world.”

“Excepting your husband, of course,” replied Dunkley.

Lucy’s eyes briefly darted to mine, “Yes, yes, of course. Hector is a great comfort to me.”

“How did you meet Mr. Dubois?”

“Hector was engaged in some business in the city. As you may know, he is a lawyer and was sent out from Paris by his firm to draw up some contracts with the gold companies in San Francisco. He was invited to one of the balls that I was attending, and he was bold enough to ask me to dance. We got along splendidly and decided that there was no sense in waiting.”

Dunkley’s eyebrows rose. “Truly, you married in San Francisco? What about Mr. Dubois’ relatives?”

“That is where we are going now, to meet his family in Paris. I must admit that I am a tad nervous, though Hector assures me that I have no reason to be.” During this whole exchange, she held the constable’s gaze, and never once looked in my direction.

“The Doctor here tells me that your father, Iain Harrier, fought on the side of the Union in the American Civil War?”

Lucy’s eyes darted over to me, as if to gauge what else from our garden conversation I had shared with the constable. “That is true,” she said tightly.

“And he died in one of the great battles?”

“Yes,” was her simple reply, as if she did not trust herself to say any
thing
more.

“You must have been very young?”

She nodded. “I was. But I have an excellent memory, Constable. The calming sound of his voice, the gentle strength of his arms, has never left me.” After those words her reserve broke and a sob escaped her lips. She extracted a handkerchief from her bag and dabbed at her eyes.

The constable gave her a moment to gather herself and then continued. “Would you be surprised, Madame, if I told you that the murdered man had fought on the side of the Confederacy?”

Her eyebrows rose in surprise “A Frenchman fighting for the South? You must be mistaken, Constable. The French were neutral during our terrible war.”

“Officially, yes,” said the constable, nodding. “But the Emperor, Napoleon III, had both economic interests and territorial ambitions that led him to support the Confederacy. For one, the Union blockade led to a
‘famine du coton,’
that crippled the textile industries of Normandy, from where Mr. Dumas hailed. Secondly, do not forget that the French planned to create a new empire
in Mexico, which would have been easier with a splintered and weakened nation to their north, rather than a strong United States.”  

It may have been my imagination, but her eyes appeared to tighten at this piece of information.

If the constable noted this, he gave no indication and continued on. “Not all of the Emperor’s ministers concurred with this, however, and under pressure from the British, the French ultimately concluded that a Confederate defeat was close. Therefore they eventually abandoned any efforts to aid the South. But the French certainly had observers on the ground and it is possible that, until very close to the end of the war, some of them actively aided the Confederates. We have evidence to suggest that Mr. Dumas could have been one of them.”

Lucy continued to look skeptical of this. “And if he was?” she shrugged.

“Then perhaps you killed him to avenge your father?” suggested the constable. 

To my surprise, she laughed bitterly at the constable. “Constable Dunkley, can you possibly be serious? General Lee led over thirty-thousand men into Antietam, and over twenty-thousand survived. Are you proposing that I have a dastardly plan to hunt down and murder twenty-thousand men? That may take me quite a while!”

I was equally taken aback by the constable’s response, for I had thought him rather lacking in humor. But he laughed in grim agreement at this suggestion of Lucy’s, and then he turned to me. “You have been awful quiet, Doctor. Do you have any questions for Mrs. Dubois?”

My mind was a blank, as it often was in her presence. But I had enough of my wits about me to realize that complete silence on my part would look suspicious in the eyes of the constable, especially considering the significant part that I had played in the inquiry of the other guests. Finally, something came to me, though it was a trivial matter with certainly nothing to do with our case. “I do have one question. When I first met you three days ago, Madame Dubois, I noted a small ink stain on the right sleeve of your gown. I was wondering how that occurred?”

To my surprise, she seemed taken aback by the question, and no answer was immediately forthcoming. Eventually she composed herself, “You are most observant, Doctor. Only one man in a thousand would notice such a trifle,” she replied. After this, she paused for a moment, as if hesitating before completing her thoughts.

But Dunkley was too impatient to allow her to finish. “Come now, Doctor. Do you have any questions that pertain to the case, and not the lady’s attire?”

I nodded again. “Yes, I have one more. When you first arrived at the Globe Hotel, I overheard your husband’s conversation with Mrs. Foster. He seemed quite upset that the two of you would have to share a room,” I choked up a bit at this painful thought, but pressed on through it. “I can assure you, Madame, that if you were my wife, the opposite would be true. I could never bear to let you leave my side.” 

It may have been my overactive imagination again, but I thought I saw a hint of tears appear in the corners of her eyes. She sat quietly, staring back at me, but made no attempt to respond.

Dunkley simply frowned, plainly unaware of the undercurrents in the room. “Was there a question in there, Doctor?”

“Yes,” said I, my heart heavy with sadness at our impossible situation, “I thought this was an odd behavior for a newly wedded couple. Do you have an explanation, Madame?”

She licked her lips, and then finally replied. “Indeed. You see, Doctor, Hector is a raucous sleeper. The passages of his nostrils are not straight and he makes a terrible sound when he sleeps. As a physician, you must know of what I speak. This noise makes it difficult for me to rest, and so Hector kindly attempts to sleep apart from me, whenever possible.” She glanced over at the constable. “Once we discovered that the two rooms that we reserved had become one, we contemplated changing our accommodations to the Hamilton Hotel. But ultimately, I decided that the attractions of St. George’s were too great to forbear,” her gaze swung back to me and our eyes locked. “And thus we remain here, despite the troubled sleep that has plagued me for the last three nights.”

“And so you plan to depart as soon as this investigation is concluded,” I asked heavily.

Her lips pursed together tightly. “That is correct, unless we are stranded here by another hurricane. ‘Alas, the storm is come again! I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past.’”

I recognized her final words as lines from Shakespeare. Either she was an accomplished actor and a deep conspirator, or she was the most glorious creature I would ever meet.

“Thank you very much for your time, Mrs. Dubois,” said the constable, concluding the interview. “If you would be so kind as to send your husband in to see us next?”

“Of course, Constable,” she replied while looking at him. And then one last time her gaze swung back to me. “Anything for you.”

She rose gracefully from the settee, smoothed out the creases in her dress, and then quietly glided from the room. My eyes never left her tall, slim figure, until the door closed firmly behind her, as if it was snuffing out all the hopes of my heart.

§

I sat there, blankly staring at the closed door, my mind a tumult of thoughts and emotions. I sensed that Constable Dunkley was saying something to me, but I failed to register it. Eventually however, my trance was lifted by a sharp rap upon the door, followed promptly by the appearance of Monsieur Dubois.

I glared with ill-concealed dislike at the man, with his clean-shaven, smart, alert face. My brain knew it was not his fault that he had married Lucy before I ever had the opportunity to meet her, but my heart could not be reconciled to the man. It was perhaps this base feeling that led to me once again suspect something sensitive or weak about his mouth. His black hair and grey eyes seemed to me unbecoming in their inexorable darkness. I compared him to me in height and in breadth and found him lacking. I silently mocked the golden pince-nez that lay on a thin black cord around his neck. Even his dress bothered me, for it was far too somber and quiet, with its black frock-coat, dark trousers, lacking even a touch of color about the grey neck tie. It was if he expected that he would be attending a funeral. He carried a small case in his hand, which he set next to the table before lowered himself into the settee with an unconcerned ease that I found distasteful. He took a tortoise-shell box from his pocket and took a pinch of snuff.

“
Bonjour
, gentlemen, how may I help you?” said the man with a broad smile that disclosed perfectly white teeth. “I shall be happy to give you any information in my power.
L’homme n’est rien, l’oeuvre tout.
”

To prove to the man that he had no greater facility for languages, I responded in kind, “
Bonjour, Monsieur. Battre le fer pendant qu'il est chaud
.”

The man’s immaculately groomed eyebrows rose in surprise. “Your French is excellent, Doctor.”

“As is your English, sir,” I rejoined, with as much pleasantness as I was able to inject into my tone.

“May I see your papers, sir?” asked Constable Dunkley, irritably. He was clearly not happy to be excluded from the conversation thus far.

“
D’accord
,” replied the Frenchman, reaching into his coat pocket and handing them to the constable.

After studying them for a longer time than usual, Dunkley looked up. “You are Mr. Hector Dubois, born 1849 in Nîmes, France?”