Читать книгу The Poisoners - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 6

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Their destination was a small house close to Notre- Dame, which was occupied by one Maître Perrin. This man, who was an obscure clerk in the Parliament of Paris, was one of the few friends whom young Desgrez—who had been in Paris only two years—knew in the capital. A good-natured bachelor with an excellent housekeeper, he had offered the young couple a little party on the occasion of the bride's birthday.

Solange Desgrez had been married only three months and her cheerful good-humour, her pride and pleasure in her new estate, her quiet devotion to her duties and her young husband, had greatly touched the generous heart of Maître Perrin, who had lived in Paris for so many years without achieving or even remembering the ambition of forty years ago that had sent him from Brittany to the capital.

The old clerk was, in his way, as content as the young wife; he liked his little house, his good housekeeper, his cosy post, his sufficient salary and his little circle of friends. His tolerance, his fondness for society and his eagerness to be amused by odd, racy characters made his circle of acquaintances a wide and somewhat eccentric one.

"I expect we shall see some strange people there to-night," remarked M. Desgrez as he pulled the elaborate iron bell in front of Maître Perrin's door.

"Oh, yes, he has some such diverting friends," laughed Solange, ready to be amused and pleased with everything, "and his food is very good and his wine is of the best!"

"Yes," smiled M. Desgrez, "and when that wine has gone round a little, we sometimes hear some strange stories. But perhaps to-night there will be some music, which keeps everyone more or less in order, and we shall leave early."

The thick yellow candles were already lit in the lawyer's modest but comfortable room, and a log fire burnt sturdily under the hooded chimney-piece. An excellent supper of game, pies, roast fowl, stuffed meat, marzipan, fruit and sweetmeats stood upon the polished table—and the bride's place was garnished with a pretty wreath of waxed flowers, through which was drawn Maître Perrin's gift to Solange, a pair of white gloves with a silver monogram embroidered on the backs in small heads.

The pleasure and gratitude of Madame Desgrez were interrupted by apologies for her soiled dress. There was no doubt about it, the blue and silver taffeta was ruined, though the neat old housekeeper with sympathy and dismay did what she could with warm water and a clean cloth. The filth of the Paris gutters, which ran, choked with refuse, down the centre of the street, had left unsightly stains upon the delicate fabric.

M. Desgrez was reticent about the accident, and no one pressed him—such mischances were common enough in the Parisian streets. Solange, with a delicate sense of propriety, followed her husband's lead; she said nothing about Mlle. de Fontanges or the sapphire bracelet; and the company, after roundly cursing the state of the Paris streets, the insolence of the aristocrats and the costliness of wearing apparel, sat down to enjoy Maître Perrin's feast.

The young police officer's narrow grey eyes ran with amusement and interest over the company; he was interested in his work and eager for promotion, ambitious, keen, shrewd and industrious, and though it was commonly believed that Paris was the best policed capital in Europe with a minimum of crime and criminals, yet Desgrez always hoped that something might occur that would give him an opportunity of proving his worth. He had made himself tolerably well acquainted with the life of Paris, both that which showed on the surface and that which flowed beneath; he had a shrewd knowledge of the Court personalities, Court politics and intrigues; he did not disdain to gather from humble sources, such as members of the loyal regiments, members of the King's own special police force and even servants employed in aristocratic mansions.

At a first glance, the people who had gathered to do honour to Madame Desgrez appeared commonplace, if amusing; there were two dry, middle-aged lawyers of the same secure position and mediocre gifts as Maître Perrin himself; there was a third man, who was a wool merchant in a small way, and his pretty young wife, who aped Court fashions; there was Madame Vigoureux, wife of a ladies' tailor; there were a few other members of the small bourgeoisie, whom the young Lieutenant's experienced eyes passed over as nonentities, and there was the Widow Bosse, whom he had met before, and who kept, he knew, a small perfumer's shop, which supplied the more ambitious citizens' wives with soaps and perfumes, that were cheap imitations of those used by Court ladies.

This woman amused the observant young man, because of her affected airs of gentility, her talkativeness, her mechanical coquetry, the extravagant styles of lace and furbelows with which she decked her middle-aged charms.

As he obliquely watched her now across the loaded table, he thought to himself: "She must be making a good deal of money. The clothes she is wearing are very expensive."

Feminine garments were uppermost in his mind then be cause of the accident to Solange's birthday dress; he knew what that had cost; the Widow Bosse's gown of crimson silk gallooned with gold braid must have been double that price; she had a fair string of pearls round her plump white throat, too, and one or two fashionable rings, a bag of brocade at her waist, while the cloak over the chair had a collar of glossy sables. How was it that this little shopkeeper could dress so well?

As the talk and laughter grew louder, M. Desgrez whispered this question to his host, leaning slightly forward across his wife.

"Oh," whispered Maître Perrin with a wink, "the Widow Bosse? Yes, she is very handsomely set out, is she not?" he added with an air of mystery. Then, lowering his voice still more and leaning behind Solange's fan of mirror glass and dove's feathers, he whispered: "She tells fortunes, you know, and casts horoscopes."

"Does the?" whispered Solange gaily. "Then I will do the same. I swear I know as much about such things as she does, or as anyone can about such nonsense."

Maître Perrin shook his head and winked again deliberately at M. Desgrez. "We know better than that, don't we, Monsieur? No, no, it is not a business that a pretty young woman like you, Solange, can meddle in."

"But if it does no harm, it is an easy way to earn money!"

Her husband glanced down the table to where the florid widow, who had already drunk several glasses of wine, was noisily laughing with her neighbour, the tailor's wife.

"Fortune-telling and casting horoscopes," he repeated. "You are wrong, Solange, such practices may do harm."

But Maître Perrin smiled indulgently. "No, no, don't be so severe on the good woman. She is a pleasant creature enough, though she trades a little on human credulity. She only promises handsome husbands to old maids and good fortune for their children to married women, a little bit of good luck to the unfortunate, and then she sells them a ball of soap, a flagon of scent, and everyone is satisfied."

"She's drinking far too much wine," whispered Solange to her husband, lifting her fan to her mouth. "Why doesn't someone tell her? I think she's really very disagreeable."

The young man did not reply; he was studying the Widow Bosse, who certainly had a peculiar physiognomy; from the smooth contours of her round face rose a delicate, beak-like nose out of all proportion to her small baby mouth; her eyes, blue and prominent with a slight cast in one of them, gave her a fascinating expression; her complexion was a brilliant pink and white and owed little to artifice, and her feeble chin rolled in lines of fat to her plump neck; her hair, rather thin, was well pomaded and hung in small spiral ringlets in a fashionable style across her forehead and on to her white, slightly humped shoulders.

Desgrez thought (and laughed at himself for it) that she was like a cruel caricature of Mlle. Fontanges, the lady who had ruined Solange's frock and given her the sapphire bracelet.

The Widow Bosse became conscious of the young man's gaze and, calling to him down the table with embarrassing clumsiness, challenged him to drink her health. This he did with grave courtesy.

The Widow swallowed her wine, smacked her moist rosy lips and filled her glass again. Her neighbours tried, in a joking way, to restrain her, but with a sudden flash of temper she threw them all off. Again her plump white hands glittering with the ostentatious jewellery closed round the glass; when she had again emptied it, she stared in a hostile fashion at Desgrez and challenged him, leaning forward and shouting down the table.

"What are you staring at me like that for? Who do you think I am? Do you suppose, because you're in the police, I am afraid of you? I must say, Maître Perrin, this is funny company you ask one to meet! Come, young man, what do you think of me, after you've taken such a good look?"

Everyone had had sufficient wine; the entire company looked at Desgrez, who answered gravely:

"I think you are charming, Madame. I was admiring your beautiful satin dress, your exquisite furs, your sparkling jewels, your brocade bag and gold braid—and I was thinking what a clever business woman you must be to be able to earn all these fine things for yourself."

The Widow Bosse laughed and touched her thin curls, highly gratified.

"I do quite well for myself, it is true," she boasted with tipsy self-assurance. "A poor woman who's left quite alone has to, hasn't she? Yes, I do better now than I did when my husband, God keep him, was alive."

"By selling perfumes and soaps, Madame?" asked the young Desgrez, "or by telling fortunes?"

"Fortunes!" echoed the Widow Bosse, and her voice rose to a metallic cackle. "Yes, I tell some pretty fortunes. Come round and have yours told, my fine young man—or rather—let your wife come!"

"Indeed, I should like to," began Solange, but her husband silenced her with a smiling glance, while he continued, leaning forward and speaking to the laughing widow:

"How far can you see into the future, Madame, and how many of your predictions come true?"

"All of them," she said, shaking a fat white finger at him, "all of them! There's no woman who's come to me to complain of her husband who can say I never helped her."

"By the cards?" asked Desgrez with a careless air.

"By what else?" put in Madame Vigoureux. "She tells fortunes, by the cards, by a tray of sand and by a bowl of water. I have been there myself, it is most amusing."

"Especially," leered the Widow Bosse, "when a lady turns up spades." She reached out her hand for the dark bottle of claret, which her neighbour snatched out of her reach. "I shall soon be able to retire," she boasted. "I shall buy myself a château in the country and a handsome young husband, and keep a coach and four horses. Yes, three more pretty dears who want to be widows and my fortune will be made."

The company laughed; everyone save Desgrez and his wife was a little flown by wine; Maître Perrin, comfortably warmed by food and drink, smiled cosily:

"What nonsense she talks, La Bosse."

"Nonsense, indeed!" cried the Widow, rising. "I tell you I've only got three more poisonings to do and I shall be a very wealthy woman." She staggered and lurched back into her chair, clutching at the table edge.

"She ought to go home," protested Madame Vigoureux. "She has had too much to drink and she does not know what she is saying."

"Poisonings, indeed," laughed one of the lawyers. "I sup pose she is thinking of that filthy syrup she sells that my wife uses for her complexion."

Madame Bosse now began to weep, her round, fat white elbows on the table, her plump fingers knuckling her prominent eyes. She was a poor honest woman, she declared, and it was a shame to make a jest of her and to bait her. She did nothing but sell scents, soaps and complexion washes and tell the cards for a few friends.

Madame Vigoureux comforted her, and Maître Perrin led the conversation to general talk of the extravagances of the Court, the last arrogance of the well-detested royal mistress, Madame de Montespan. Her insolence and her extravagance grew to greater heights with every day; she had been the King's favourite for twelve years and her influence over him seemed greater than ever; it was really astonishing, just as if the woman knew charms or witchcraft! The little people eagerly gossiped about the great people, turning over their vices, faults and peculiarities with greedy and spiteful zest.

Lieutenant Desgrez listened keenly. He often discovered a good deal of truth in the chaff and scandal and gossip, and it amused him to hear these petty creatures, their tongues loosened by wines, exposing their own jealousies and malices by commenting on those of others.

The character of Madame de Montespan, the gorgeous Queen of the Left Hand, was torn to pieces without compassion. She was declared to be old, raddled, venomous, vile-tempered, an adept in making furious scenes, careless in her dress, unclean in her person, a proper witch.

Desgrez smiled to himself; he had seen the lady driving in her golden coach with six white horses through the allées of Versailles, and he knew how untrue were these mean slanders.

Solange made a little grimace at him behind Maître Perrin's head; she wished to go home, she did not care for this atmosphere of drunkenness, ugly gossiping, flushed faces, raucous voices; she had had enough of her birthday party; Maître Perrin was charming—but some of his friends! Her husband understood, and rose from the table.

It took them some time to make excuses and farewells; within half an hour they were out again in the now dark Parisian streets which were lit only by lamps set at rare intervals over the house doors. The wind had increased in strength, a few drops of rain fell now and then from the torn, hurrying, invisible clouds.

"There is a stand for hired coaches by the Cathedral," said Desgrez. "We will take one."

Solange protested against the extravagance, but the young man insisted. The streets were not only filthy, but not safe after dark.

"You don't want me to be murdered trying to protect you, do you?" he said, kissing her smooth cheek on which the wind blew cold and which the rain wetted.

A shabby vehicle was found; the worn-out horse took them slowly homeward; in the foul-smelling darkness of the worn interior Desgrez put his arm round his young wife.

"It has been a hateful day for you, my dear. First your pretty dress was ruined, then, your birthday party—well, it was not what you should have had, not what I should have wished to have given you. I am sorry I took you there. Maître Perrin is not careful enough whom he invites."

"Oh, no," protested the happy girl, with her head against her husband's shoulder. "I was quite content—indeed, I found it amusing—though perhaps next time we'll make a little feast at home, just the two of us, with a good fire and bottle of wine you have chosen, and dishes that I have cooked, eh, Charles?"

He kissed her again on the forehead where the fair curls fell from beneath the hood; Solange was a handsome young girl, twenty years of age, with that straight, brilliant beauty of her countrywomen which in later years turns to hardness of outline and fixity of colouring. The racial likeness between herself and her husband was strong; though they were in no way related, they might have been cousins. They were alike, too, in character, cool, brave, shrewd and capable.

"Would you like to do something for me?" whispered Desgrez as the wretched vehicle trundled on its way, jolting them now together and now apart as it bumped over the Paris stones.

"Anything in the world, Charles—of course, you know it."

"Well, I want you to go to the Widow Bosse and have your fortune told."

"That, surely, is a waste of money," replied Solange disappointed. "I thought you were going to ask something difficult."

"I think this may be difficult before we have finished. I do not want you to go as yourself. You must put on some disguise. As a police officer's wife you will have to become used to such things. I do not think she observed you very well to day. I have seen her before, have you?"

"No."

"You will be able, perhaps, to alter your voice, your hair—" He paused, thoughtful. "Yes, I should think it can be done. You must go to her, you must make some little purchase, you must ask to have your fortune told."

"Yes, said Solange, when her husband paused. She was impressed by the gravity of his voice.

"It might be a chance for us, I don't know. When she begins to tell the cards you must take your opportunity and do exactly as I tell you. We will have a rehearsal so that nothing can go wrong?"