Читать книгу The Poisoners - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 15

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Desgrez did not attempt to disguise from his wife the importance and difficulty of the work upon which he was engaged, or the near escape from death he had had in the attack made on him in the Impasse des Fleurs; nor did she disturb him by fears or lamentations. Since she had married him and come to Paris she had known the nature of his work and what she was likely to have to face; she permitted herself only one sigh: "I wish I had not helped you to enter into this unhappy business!"

Then, with her head resting on his shoulder and his arm round her waist, she asked him one favour; it was much the same as the favour that he had asked M. de La Reynie.

"Will you, Charles, if there is ever a chance, allow me to help you?"

Desgrez looked earnestly at his young wife. "I did not bring you to Paris, Solange, to involve you in this sort of business. It is ugly and sordid, and it may be dangerous."

"I know, but I did come to Paris to be with you in every thing. I want to help you. I have already, you say, helped you a little."

"More than a little," he replied, "and there may be some things in this matter that only a woman can undertake. You must understand, of course, that even M. de La Reynie him self can see only a little ahead. He's like, and so am I, a man in a fog—only a foot or two of the way is visible."

"Remember that I am a stranger in Paris," said Solange coaxingly. "There is really nothing for me to do. I have no friends, and few acquaintances whom I care about. You cannot allow me to sit here alone hour after hour wondering what has happened to you You know, too, that you can trust me—I am not foolish nor am I sentimental or hysterical. If you confide any secrets to me, they will be safe."

"I know," he replied gravely. He was by no means blinded by his affection for Solange; he did indeed know her character, which was much the same as his own.

These two, united by so strong an affection, understood each other perfectly. Desgrez knew that his wife had an active mind and that enforced leisure would be almost intolerable to one of her temperament. Before, therefore, he bade her good bye, he promised her seriously and gravely that, if there was an opportunity for her of helping him in his work, he would gladly accept her assistance.

Fortified by the strong, sincere love and friendship of Solange, which was the deepest reality of his life, the young Lieutenant of Police proceeded to the Louvre. The weather was ugly, there had been no sun over Paris for days; sheets of grey rain still continued to fall into the swollen river, which was beginning to lap the embankment and to overflow on to the cobbles of the streets.

Desgrez paused a moment to look at the long, impressive facade of the Louvre, which stretched along the banks of the Seine in a formidable monotony of pedimented windows and straight doors.

The great palace, which had been built by the extravagant Valois Kings, was in the form of a quadrangle, one frontage lying along the river, the other enclosing courtyards and gardens; gardens also lay either side of the facade facing the Seine. Behind the elegant balustrade Desgrez could see the statues, looking livid in this winter light, standing wet and gleaming under the leafless trees. Here and there an arbutus, an ilex or a laurel, retained the dark green of its foliage, and through the thick leaves dripped water into fishponds and founts.

Desgrez could see, not far from the palace, the warm-coloured bricks of a modern orangery where exotic plants were kept during the winter; he wondered if that had been the scene of the attack on Mademoiselle Jacquetta. Avoiding the arched entrance to the noble gates that pierced the palace frontage, which was reserved for the King and personages of importance, Desgrez went, as La Reynie had directed him, to a side door, the third from the main entrance to the palace, and there pulled the elaborate bell of wrought iron.

He felt rather a childish and foolish sensation of elation at the importance of his commission. It was highly satisfactory to him, a raw provincial, to be able, so soon after his arrival in Paris, to enter the Louvre and to concern himself in the affairs of those attached to the Court. In the eyes of the young Norman Lieutenant of Police, as in the eyes of every French man, the King was a very great man indeed—revered at home, feared abroad, successful in the field as in the cabinet, a model of courtesy, patron of the arts, a personality that flashed, glittered and dazzled like a diamond.

Desgrez knew the King's faults, which were open enough to all his subjects. Charles Desgrez judged His Majesty to be a little vainglorious, extravagant in everything, from the magnificent, almost incredible, palaces he built down to the lives of his subjects, who perished by hundreds of thousands in his successful campaigns. He knew him, also, to be a man who, though religious to the point of bigotry, lived with a licentiousness that was an example not only to his subjects but to all Europe, for Louis XIV set the fashion all over the civilized world. Desgrez was only one of the many Frenchmen who did not condone the King's notorious and blazing infidelities to his gentle wife, or his subjection to Madame de Montespan who, cold, haughty, grasping and bitter-tongued, seemed to have no qualities beyond her high birth and her imperious beauty to fit her for her magnificent though shameful position as Queen of the Left Hand.

Desgrez deliberately put the King out of his mind; he had to concentrate on the matter before him; M. de La Reynie had furnished him with the dossiers of both Mademoiselle de Fontanges and Mademoiselle Jacquetta, one of her maids.

The first named lady was an orphan and lived under the nominal guardianship of an uncle, an intriguing and unscrupulous man, who was believed to have sent his beautiful ward to Court in the hope that she would catch the King's fancy. Her likeness to Louise de La Vallière, who had been now for ten years in a convent, was considered by all who had seen both these women remarkable, and it was common talk that Mademoiselle de Fontanges' uncle had hoped that the fair gentle girl would soon displace the powerful favourite in the King's affection.

"That leaves her," M. de La Reynie had said, "unprotected, you will perceive. She has not been very well educated and her mind is not strong. Her heart is good, her training has been religious, she is at Court alone and exposed to the strongest possible temptations."

So much for Mademoiselle de Fontanges! Desgrez remembered her as she had leant from the window of her painted coach and offered with so much courtesy and kindness the bracelet of sapphires to his wife.

Jacquetta was an Italian girl, who had been educated in France. M. de La Reynie did not know how or when she had entered the employment of Mademoiselle de Fontanges. Her father, Agostino Malipiero, had recently come from Turin; he was trained in chemistry and his daughter had secured him the position of apothecary to Mademoiselle de Fontanges. He did not live in the palace but had a shop along the quai, but he was frequently at the Louvre on the excuse of seeing his daughter and of attending to a small menagerie that Mademoiselle de Fontanges kept, for he was supposed to be very skilful with animals, not only in looking after them when they were sick, but in training them to perform those tricks that the idle ladies of Court found so amusing.

Desgrez was admitted to the Louvre by a manservant, to whom he explained his business. He was expected and without delay taken up to the apartments of Mademoiselle de Fontanges in one of the long galleries facing the river. These handsome but rather gloomy chambers were decorated in the magnificent heavy style of the Valois and were situated in an angle of the vast building. A light, outside staircase led from them to the riverside gardens. This the servant, who seemed a confidential major-domo, hastily explained as he ran over with Desgrez the story of the attack on the little Italian girl, which had so distressed his mistress.

He had scarcely finished this whispered tale when they reached the door of Mademoiselle de Fontanges's private apartment and Desgrez found himself looking with respect and compassion at the young girl whose name, perhaps all unknown to herself, was passing from lip to lip in Paris with various accents of derision, sympathy or amazement.

The girl was alone and seemed extremely agitated; Desgrez judged her to have little courage or control, little discretion or wisdom. She was seated in a high, crimson chair trimmed with fringed braid before the hearth, on which burned perfumed logs.

The chamber was ornate and heavy; massive carvings of fruit and flowers surrounded dark and gloomy portraits. The chill light of the wet afternoon fell through the tall windows, from which dark curtains had been looped back.

The girl in her dress of pale grey satin with her light, almost silver hair knotted with a pearl-coloured ribbon, with her pale face and her large light eyes slightly reddened by weeping, looking ethereal against this sombre background, like a wind-flower in the blackness of a pine forest. She did not recognize Desgrez as the man to whose wife she had given the bracelet: neither quick nor clever, she took the young man, who was wearing his uniform, for an agent of police and nothing more. Desgrez, inwardly smiling, saw that she accepted him as a mere automaton, an official without personality.

She stammered, speaking vaguely, even incoherently, over the story of the attack on her maid. The young man soon courteously interrupted.

"There is no need, Mademoiselle, for you to distress your self with that story. We have heard it all."

She seemed relieved and Desgrez's smile deepened—how little she understood! He had a full account of her and her maid and her maid's father in his pocket, and both he and M. de La Reynie had a shrewd idea as to the truth about the crime of the night before.

"May I see this Mademoiselle Jacquetta, may I take her deposition from her own lips?"

"Alas," replied the lady in deep and almost uncontrollable distress, "she is dying! M. Aquin, the King's physician, has been with her—he thinks there is no hope, she has already received the last Sacrament."

"Nevertheless, Mademoiselle," said Desgrez firmly, "it is my duty to investigate this atrocious crime. Consider, Mademoiselle; a young lady who is an attendant on one of Her Majesty's maids of honour goes out in the palace gardens to select some fruit from a greenhouse. The palace, during the residence of His Majesty, is guarded by numerous sentries. The gates are locked, the walls are high, yet some villain is lurking within, who, for no purpose as it seems, so maltreats this poor young woman that she is about to die of her in juries."

The tone in which Desgrez spoke these words caused Mademoiselle de Fontanges to look at him in quick apprehension and frowning bewilderment.

"M. de La Reynie is responsible for the policing of Paris," continued Desgrez, "and I am his representative. Pray, Mademoiselle, let us lose no time. Take me to the bedside of this unfortunate young girl."

Mademoiselle de Fontanges pulled the silken rope that hung by the side of the massive fireplace. A page almost instantly appeared.

"Take this police officer to Mademoiselle Jacquetta," she said faintly. Then, as if distracted: "No, I will come too. I should like to be present."

"That is as you wish," replied Desgrez. "I have no instructions, Mademoiselle, on that point, but if I had the honour to be your friend or adviser, I should suggest that you remain here."

"Ah!" exclaimed the girl, sitting down again in the fringed chair from which she had risen. "You do, then, suspect some mystery?"

"My business," said Desgrez, "is to investigate, not to suspect."

He followed the page down the corridor, Mademoiselle de Fontanges staring after him in what seemed to him an agony of indecision.