Deadly Descent (5 page)

“Comtesse de Beaumont? Confide in an
entertainer
?” remarked Saint-Martin hesitantly, unable to grasp how these two women might have a meeting of minds.

She raised her hands in protest. “No
ordinary
entertainer, believe me! but a charming, cultivated lady. In public we acted out what people expected of us, as if on stage. Deference from her, a certain reserve from me. Between ourselves she was Pauline. I was Marie. Like sisters eight years apart. There was even…a family resemblance. Losing her was hard.” She dabbed at her eyes.

Saint-Martin allowed her a quiet moment, then asked, “And what of her daughter, Anne?”

His aunt brightened. “I got to know her, riding together early in the morning at Chateau Beaumont. Impetuous. Took risks. She'd jump a stream that sensible riders would wade through. Still, she was a loving daughter. Devoted to Antoine. She liked nothing more than to perform with him. Pauline had educated her, trained her to act as well. She played Puck in the family's production of Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream
.”

Gazing at the stage, Saint-Martin recalled a willowy green-clad girl dashing through narrow passages in the boxwood, a bright red tassel whirling from her cap.

The comtesse smiled with amusement. “And Antoine was Bottom the Weaver.”

“What kind of man
was
Dubois?”

Aunt Marie tapped her cheek with the tips of her fingers, then gazed inwardly, as if recapturing the man's image. “He had black curly hair and a well-formed, muscular body. A lively face, full of sunshine, and quick to smile. Never violent. I can't imagine he would kill himself or anyone else.”

A summer face, thought Saint-Martin. How would Dubois look in life's winter weather? In love or war, even decent men sometimes acted like savages. On the other hand, the comtesse was a good judge of men, and she knew Dubois. Soon it was time for him to leave. At the door he assured her, “Before going to London, I'll look more closely at the case. I understand, however, all the evidence pointed to the man. He left behind a confession.”

***

Alone in the carriage returning to Paris, lulled by the clippety-clop of hooves striking stone, Colonel Saint-Martin let his mind drift back to his youth, to the golden-hued summers at Beaumont. Young cousins and their friends were singing, dancing, playing blindman's buff on the lawn, picnicking in the garden. He felt a pang of regret. They had long since disappeared into the social niches he chose to avoid.

He looked lazily out the carriage window toward a setting sun. His nostalgia for the good times at Chateau Beaumont began to mix with a new, unbeckoned thought. A wraith-like, slender form glided gracefully past his mind's eye. “She would be in her late twenties now,” he murmured, stroking his chin. “Curious. I can't remember her face.” The carriage swayed rhythmically like an infant's cradle. He closed his eyes and saw, dancing toward him, a bright red tassel.

Chapter 5

Searching for Anne

London was bustling on a late Friday morning in a haze of smoke and spring mist. Tradesmen's carts and fashionable coaches packed Jermyn Street as Colonel Paul de Saint-Martin stepped out of a hackney cab. The driver tipped his hat and pointed to a narrow building with an elegant bay. A small engraved brass plaque on the wall quietly announced the ground floor tenant, Mr. Edward Barnstaple, Esq., Solicitor. Saint-Martin glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes early. He sighed, he hated wasting time. But it was best to wait. He shouldn't give Barnstaple the impression he was eager. The open doors of St. James across the way caught his eye, calling him from the clamor of the street.

Once inside the church he felt his irritation vanish. A pale spring light slanted through the tall clear glass windows, illuminating the spacious room to a cool, soothing ambience. He sat in the back, let his eyes drift upward, and delighted in the richly ornamented, barrel-vaulted ceiling. Excellent plasterwork. He noted a fine limewood carving above the altar, a pelican feeding her young.

“By Grinling Gibbons,” remarked the sexton, walking up the center aisle toward him with a mop and a pail in his hands. He had a ruddy, good-natured face.

The man stopped near Saint-Martin and gestured with the mop to a marble baptismal font, carved to the shape of a tree of life. “That's Gibbons' too.” Beneath its branches, Eve tempted Adam with an apple while the serpent slithered up the trunk. The sexton nodded proudly at the sculpture. His eyes shifted to the visitor and narrowed with wary curiosity.

The colonel confessed he was French. This was his first visit to an English church. The sexton swiftly took his measure, then smiled kindly, and bade him welcome. “I'll leave you to your prayers,” the man said, taking a fresh grip on the mop and pail. He was soon out of sight. A door closed and the church was quiet again.

This brief encounter gave a lift to Saint-Martin's spirit. Since his arrival in London, his days had been spent tediously seeking ways to curb traffic in stolen goods between England and France. He hadn't accomplished much. He learned that British magistrates cooperated poorly among themselves. Why should they do better with foreigners? The most he could hope for was an easier exchange of information between the two countries. He sighed softly. His adjutant, Georges Charpentier, was probably enjoying himself, refreshing his acquaintance with the city's underworld and flirting with buxom barmaids!

A door opened and the sexton reappeared, singing snatches of a hymn. The colonel smiled. The week in London had not been all drudgery. Captains Gordon and Porter, his former prisoners in America, had taken him to a concert almost every evening. And, on Saturday, they had joined the colonel's acquaintance, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, at the Drury Lane Theatre. The American diplomat was on a visit from his post in Paris.

That evening, Mrs. Siddons had taken on the role of Lady Macbeth. A memorable performance. She had played the part, not as a cruel, shrieking harridan—a common fault of the London stage, claimed Gordon—but as a woman of refined sensibility, driven mad by her tragic choice of violence.

The sexton walked through the church again. Moments later the bell tolled eleven. Saint-Martin shifted in his chair; he would wait a few more minutes. Locating Mrs. Dubois' daughter had proven more difficult than expected. He had privately engaged a Bow Street Runner. The search led to the office of Barnstaple, the solicitor who looked after Anne's affairs. In a curt note he had agreed to a meeting in his office, but he had refused to reveal where she lived. Saint-Martin asked himself, why keep that secret? Could she be in prison? God forbid! He rose from the chair and looked for a sanctuary lamp until he recalled he was in a Protestant church. He reverenced the altar anyway and waved to the sexton as he left.

The solicitor's office was small. Piles of books leaned precariously against one another on the floor. A clerk sat on a high stool at a desk by the only window. His pen scratched monotonously. Barnstaple received Saint-Martin with a cool, inquiring gaze, warming to him slowly as he discerned that the Frenchman was a cultivated person of high rank. The colonel, for his part, discovered the solicitor hid a canny mind behind a cherubic countenance. When the two men had settled into tall leather- covered chairs facing one another, Saint-Martin explained the purpose of his visit.

At the news of Antoine Dubois' death, the solicitor appeared shocked. He had known the man and liked him. He disclosed that his stepdaughter, Anne, was living with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Brown, a wealthy Quaker family, at their country home near Wimbledon. “Their children are deaf,” he offered, then added with smiling approval, “She's caring for them temporarily.”

Barnstaple called the clerk off his perch and ordered tea, as if he had said enough about his client.

The lawyer's remarks, however, had merely piqued the colonel's curiosity. “Enlighten me, Sir, I had thought Miss Dubois was an actress.”

“Cartier, my dear colonel. Anne Cartier. She has kept the name of her father, Henri Cartier, Mrs. Dubois' first husband.” The solicitor explained that Miss Cartier, a gifted young woman, had excelled in a variety of theatrical professions, including vaudeville. Last September, having been persuaded of her talent for instructing deaf children, Mr. Thomas Braidwood had hired her to work in his institute at Hackney. Barnstaple's eyes grew bright with admiration. “She talks with her fingers as fast as an auctioneer's patter and the young people seem to understand.”

“And what, may I ask, Sir, is her financial situation?”

The solicitor hesitated a fraction. “She lives modestly on what she earns and on income from her mother's legacy that I administer. Her paternal grandparents are also alive and helpful.”

“From her name, I assume she's unmarried.”

“That is true,” said the solicitor as if embarrassed by his client's spinsterhood. “She's attractive and charming. Simply disinclined to marry until the right man appears.”

Saint-Martin remembered she was in her late twenties. Surely, English women usually married at a much younger age. He shifted uneasily in his chair. The solicitor was holding back something about Miss Cartier. Granted, he was speaking to a stranger, but his manner seemed more guarded than one would expect even of a cautious solicitor. Saint-Martin left the office convinced he had better probe more deeply into Anne Cartier's life.

***

Georges Charpentier, Colonel Saint-Martin's right-hand man, sat at a small table in The Sussex, a chophouse on Jermyn Street. Noonday patrons crowded the long, narrow public room. Pink-faced waiters scurried between the tables, taking orders. Voices rose and fell. Dishes clattered. Huge trays of steaming food sailed by the Frenchman's nose, casting a rich aroma of boiled cabbage, roast beef, and spilt ale.

Waiting for the colonel, Georges eavesdropped on conversations nearby. It was an old vice he put to good use during investigations. In a short while he was amusing himself, silently mocking a blathering lawyer's solution to London's crime problem. More public hangings of thieves, the fool had proclaimed. On the back of a menu, the Frenchman rapidly sketched a caricature: first a gallows; then the lawyer hanging from it, his eyes looking toward Brest and Bordeaux and his long tongue lolling out; and finally, a caption,
Primus inter pares
, the first among equals.

When the Frenchman had enough of this sport, he leaned back in his chair and glanced into the mirror to his left. “Georges Charpentier,” he said to himself, “you are a handsome devil!” He raised the arched brows above his lively blue eyes, brushed imaginary hair on his bald pate, and admired a pair of large, slightly pointed ears. Forty-five years old? He refused to believe it. Though short and thickset, he was still as agile as a cat. His broad mouth broke into an approving grin.

He turned in the other direction, toward the lunchtime crowd near the entrance. The colonel should come through the door soon. Georges pictured his superior's erect bearing, his level, unblinking gaze. Noble, every inch of him. He was the king's officer even out of uniform, provost of the Royal Highway Patrol for the Paris region. Georges lowered his eyes, studying odd patterns in the battered surface of the table, letting his mind drift back to the Seven Years War. He was with the colonel's father at Minden. August 1, 1759. A battlefield of dead and dying men under a pall of smoke, stinking of gunpowder, offal, and blood. General Saint-Martin lay bleeding beneath his horse. Died of his wounds three years later. Then the general's funeral. Young Paul, a slim lad, barely eleven, by the side of his pale, trembling mother.

“Such is life,” Georges murmured softly. He steepled his fingers and turned another page in his memory. After the war, he'd been a trooper for a few years with the Royal Highway Patrol in Normandy, then in Paris. Finally, chief investigator for Antoine Raymond Sartine, Lieutenant-General of Police. Georges smiled with pride. Sartine! The
master
of detection. Nothing escaped his eye. Or his ear. He used to say, “Whenever you see three men speaking together, one of them is mine.” Not precisely true, of course, but close enough to the mark.

A burly waiter interrupted Georges' musing. “Will you have a drink while you wait?”

Flashing his best smile, the genial Frenchman asked for an ale. Sartine had taught him to treat servants well. In a short while, the man returned and set a foaming pewter mug on the table. Georges pressed a penny into his hand.

Locking his fingers around the mug, Georges stared into the dark amber liquid, conjuring up Colonel Paul de Saint-Martin. Green as grass at the start three years ago. Provost! A post secured thanks to the reputation of his father and the good will of his distant uncle, Baron Breteuil, Minister for Paris.

Georges took a long draft from his mug, silently commending the English for their ale. He felt good. He had travelled over some rough patches in his life, but now fortune smiled on him. He lifted the mug in a salute to the colonel. Aristocrat, to be sure, but a fine man to work for. Respected subordinates and listened to them, worked hard, and learned fast. He gave Georges an office of his own and comfortable quarters in the provost's residence. And opportunities to earn commissions! They made a good team.

The lawyer holding forth at the nearby table raised an angry voice again above the din. A young waiter fled in confusion. Pity anyone who had to serve him, Georges thought. Behind that bluster hid a small, mean spirit. In comparison, Paul de Saint-Martin was a gem. An imperfect one, Georges granted, for the colonel took his privileges complacently. But he was high-minded and kind. Georges looked around the room, searching for his colonel's match. He found none until Saint-Martin himself came through the door.

“What have you learned from Barnstaple, Sir?” Georges asked, rising from the table. He pulled out a chair for his superior.

“Let's order first, then talk.” The colonel looked at the luncheon crowd zestfully attacking heaped plates of food. “I'm starved.”

“Here's the menu,” said Georges.

The caricature caught Saint-Martin's eye. He stared, puzzled for a moment, then grinned. “Remarkable! Your verdict on the chef?”

Georges laughed with a glance toward the pompous lawyer. Saint-Martin followed the gesture, nodded, and chuckled.

Although the Frenchmen had not yet found anything on an English menu that they cared for, they ventured to order steak pies, Stilton cheese, and small beers. Over lunch, Saint-Martin summed up the impression he had gained of Anne Cartier. “Favorable thus far. But I want to know more about her before I extend an invitation from Comtesse Marie. Barnstaple's holding something back.” For a few moments he studied his beer, then turned to his adjutant. “Inquire about Miss Cartier at Sadler's Wells, among her neighbors in Islington, and with Braidwood in Hackney.”

While the colonel spoke, Georges leaned forward, attentive, taking up the scent. After a few questions, he pushed back his chair. “I'll find out by tomorrow what kind of woman we're dealing with.” He rose to his feet and hurried out the door.

***

Late the next afternoon, as a light drizzle fell upon the city, Colonel Saint-Martin walked from the French Embassy, where he was staying, into Saint James' Park. He badly needed exercise. To his surprise, he found much of the park laid out like a French formal garden, but it was poorly tended. Cattle grazed in a clearing. Brush grew up beneath the tall elms, blocking his view and offering cover to mischief makers. In the evening, he had heard, the park turned into a swarming hive of soldiers and prostitutes.

At the long east-west canal, where he planned to meet Charpentier, his pace quickened. As had his interest in Anne Cartier. Working for the Quaker family spoke well for her virtue. During the war, he had met members of that sect in Philadelphia and had found them to be serious-minded and dependable. Barnstaple's reticence in her regard was perhaps only a lawyer's caution.

The colonel circled the canal once with these thoughts before spying the square figure of Charpentier hurrying toward him. As they met, the adjutant's brow creased with concern. “Sir, I've learned from the young lady's neighbors…she's been in a bit of trouble.”

Saint-Martin felt his heart sink. “What's she done?” They set out together on the canal path.

The adjutant's eyes twinkled. “She whacked a gentleman named Jack Roach with a chamberpot.”

“What?” the colonel exclaimed, irritated at what seemed misplaced humor. Taking the hint with aplomb, Georges put on a sober face and recounted Miss Cartier's expulsion of Roach from Sadler's Wells.

“More courage than sense,” said Saint-Martin dryly, wondering if the rashness of her act was typical. Then noting his adjutant's eyes widen eagerly, he asked, “There's more to the story?”

“Indeed. Roach became annoyed.” Georges mimicked the bully, scowling fiercely and shaking his fist. “One night he attacked her at the entrance to her cottage near the theater. She shoved her stick between his legs and almost neutered him! Down he went, howling.”