The Emperor's Assassin (16 page)

“Someday you'll need this,” he said, “and that'll be a sorry day for you, as we don't care for old farts neither.”

“You lot don't care for none but yerselves,” Williamson muttered, but averted his eyes.

Morton and Presley climbed four stories up a narrow, creaking wooden staircase. The air at the top was close and warm and strongly pungent with the sour fumes of urine, as if people had relieved themselves in the hall or in the stairwell, or the place were full of unemptied chamber pots. Outside the room at the end of the cramped corridor, Morton called out Boulot's name and told him in French to open. There was no response. Impatiently, Presley hammered hard on the flimsy door.

The faintest clicking sound alerted Morton, and he thrust Jimmy Presley violently aside. At almost the same instant the foot of the door was shattered and there was a loud report, stunning their ears in the narrow space. Startled, the two Runners gazed at each other for an instant. Morton looked down and saw in the floor a hole the size of a man's eye.

“Cor!”
shouted Jimmy Presley, anger quickly replacing alarm. Both men hurriedly pulled out their batons.

Before they could attack, however, another voice could be heard crying out, on the other side of the door. Morton put a restraining hand on his young partner's arm and gestured to him to hold his peace.

“Ce n'est pas comme vous pensez! Fichez-moi la paix!
” someone howled, from within the chamber.

The Runners waited, listening intently.

“Ce n'est pas moi! Je sais rien de tout!”
The voice subsided now to a mournful wail.
“C'est vrai, c'est vrai.”

Presley looked questioningly at Morton, but Morton held up his finger to be patient.

The voice now let out a long torrent of slurred French, only some of which Morton could follow.
It's true, it's true
, it said, again and again,
they…she…it wasn't me…I told them nothing…
and other incoherent protestations that the Runner lost entirely. Then whoever it was began to weep.
“Je suis en enfer!”

There was a solid thump, as of an object being tossed down on the wooden floor. And the clink of a bottle against the rim of a metal cup.

When nothing more came for several long moments, Morton shrugged at Presley and raised his voice. “Bow Street! You, within there! Open this door and throw your weapon out!” Presley stepped quickly over to the other side of the doorway.

“
Bow
Street?” asked the unseen man, groggily.

“Your firearm!” repeated Morton. “Heave it out to us.”

“I meant no harm,” muttered the voice, now in passable but also slurred English. “It fire…
par hasard.
By accident. I meant you Anglais no harm. Why—why are you here?”

“Your
weapon
!” bellowed Jimmy Presley. “Throw it out here before we break down this bloody door and smash your pate!”

A pause, and the door swung open, inward. Morton glanced cautiously around the jamb and saw a booted foot kicking ineffectually at a pistol on the floor. He
stepped swiftly into the room and bent and picked up the gun.

The place was dim, its single window shuttered tightly. There was an even more powerful mixture of odours here, the acrid smell of gunsmoke drifting above a deeper layer of food and stale air and urine. The room was larger than Morton expected and piled with small wine and brandy casks and other boxes, most with their tops pried off and apparently empty. A disorderly bed was heaped up with clothes and books and other matter, but the man, dressed in a filthy linen shirt, was slumped on the floor beside it, his back against the wall. Ranged around him was a little thicket of brandy bottles, mostly empty, and several plates, on which lay old breadcrusts and dried-up scraps of cheese. A second pistol lay amongst them. The man watched impassively as Jimmy Presley took that as well and gently let the cock down.

“Loaded and primed,” he said to Morton.

“Monsieur Boulot, I think?” asked Morton with sarcastic politeness, as the two Runners peered down at him.

The man bent over as he struggled slowly to get to his feet, and in the glint of light from the corridor Morton could see the irregular red blotch on his half-bald head. Short but powerfully built, perhaps in his early thirties, he had not shaved in days.
“C'est moi,”
he groaned, and tottered as he came upright, so that the Runners reached out to steady him. “I must… apologise,
messieurs
, but I have no chair to offer you. But you could sit here on my bed.”

He sat on it himself, heavily, and something, perhaps made of china, cracked audibly beneath him. The two Bow Street men remained standing.

“What in hell do you mean, shooting at us?” Presley demanded.

“I am… sincerely…
désolé
& sorry, for that,” Boulot pronounced with drunken care. “It were… purely accidental,
je vous assure
. I think, you know…I think I drink too much, and I get ideas, so I have…my pistols, by me. I shoot at phantom. But if you must take me…to prison, for this. Then, I am ready.”

“Maybe we will,” said Presley gruffly.

“Whom were you expecting?” Morton wanted to know. Boulot raised bloodshot eyes to him.

“It was a dream,
monsieur la police
. Or…I should say,
un cauchemar
. A nightmare.
Comme ma vie
,” he added in a bitter undertone.

“It was no nightmare, monsieur. You expected someone. You were crying out something about a woman, about you not saying anything to someone. What did you mean?”

Boulot blinked at him a moment, as if registering the fact that Morton understood French, or perhaps just trying to remember what he
had
said. “I was raving,” he replied. “Nothing is real.”

“I think you were talking about Angelique Desmarches,” Morton said. “You know she's dead, don't you?”

Boulot's eyes went empty. He seemed to be more in control of himself now, however much he had imbibed. He wiped his wet cheeks with the back of one thick hand and slowly shook his head. “It was not 'er.”

“But you do know who she is?”

“If you want to… arrest me, gennlemen,” he replied with a kind of weary, theatrical, drunken self-pity, “do it. I am guilty,
oui, oui
, I am a man of a thousand crimes! Just tell me which ones I must confess to.”

“The murder of Angelique Desmarches.”

“That I did not do.” A grimace ran quickly over his pale face. He looked up at Morton and shook his head emphatically. “It is true what I say: I am not a good man. In my life I have cheated, and lied, and abandoned the people who loved me. But that,
non, jamais
, never.”

“So you have not that on your conscience? But you say you are in hell, monsieur. ‘
Je suis en enfer
.’ Why is that?”

“Does this look like heaven to you?”

“You visited the house of the Count d'Auvraye the same day Madame Desmarches died. What were you doing there?”

Instead of answering, Boulot watched Jimmy Presley, who had put the pistol in a pocket and was unfastening the shutters. He flung them open, letting in a flood of evening light and making the Frenchman squint and shy away in pain. The younger Runner began rooting about in the disorder of the room, searching.

“What were you doing there?” demanded Morton again, more sharply.

“I had some… things. I thought
le comte
might be interested.”

“You sell smuggled French goods, Monsieur Boulot, but I don't think that is why you visited the count.”

The man gazed up at Morton, his eyes unfocused.

“Pardon, monsieur?”

“After your visit, the count cast off Madame Desmarches. What did you say to him? Did she have another lover? Were you her lover?”

“Was
I
?” Jean Boulot laughed, a harsh, barking explosion, his mood suddenly shifting. “Eh,
monsieur la police
, do I look like I could possess a woman like that?” He bent over in sardonic hilarity. “Ah,
oui
, I had somuch
to offer her! My fortune, my reputation”—he gestured fancifully around the room—“
mon château
.”

“So you knew her. You knew her looks, her character, her connections.”

“Knew her? From afar,” replied Boulot. “Let us say that.” His little outburst of merriment subsided.

“What did you tell the count, dem you! Do you want us to haul you into Bow Street and see what you have to say to the Beak?”

“Oui,”
said Jean Boulot. “I want that.”

Morton folded his arms and frowned at the man. Presley concluded his hunt, getting up from looking under the bed, his face a perfect mask of fastidious working-class disgust. His eyes indicated the slovenliness on all sides.

“Pig,” he said bluntly to Boulot.

“Call me name” was the listless reply. “Arrest me.” Boulot leaned his head in his hands, as if he were trying to keep it from spinning, and stared blankly ahead.

“I think you are a Bonapartist,” said Henry Morton. “I think you hate the count and resented him his beautiful mistress.”

Boulot gave a very brief grunt of sour laughter. “These things are crimes, now? Ah,
oui
—I am guilty. I am guilty, like million men of my nation, to have love a man, who gave us… such conquest, such dream. But if I am
Bonapartiste
, after he come back from Elba, why I stayed here? I don't love Bonaparte any longer. But I still love France. I want to see France again. My home!
Non, non, monsieur la police
, Jean Boulot lost his faith. He lost it long ago. He lost it with the hundred thousand brave men who died in the snow on the road from Moscow. He lost it when the man who was to end
tyranny put a crown on his own head and made himself the greatest of all tyrants.”

“You say that now,” muttered Jimmy Presley, “now the British army's dished him up.”

“We hear something different, monsieur,” said Morton.

“From who?”

“Who was it you were expecting, when we arrived?

Who were you asking
to leave you in peace
?”

“Who? You. The world.”

Presley and Morton's glances met. Presley's angry energy posed the obvious question. Beat it out of him?

The young Runner was ready.

But Morton decided against it.

“We'll be back when you're sober. You want our pro tection, don't you? That's why you'd like us to haul you over to Bow Street. But you'll have to start singing to get it.” He raised the discharged pistol he still held. “If you cooperate, we might even give these back to you.”

“I'll never be sober,” Boulot mumbled, morosely eyeing his confiscated weapon.

Out in Paul's Court again, Morton and Presley consulted.

“We should have brought him in, Morton,” said Presley. “He could have killed somebody. He might still do it, too.”

“We might bring him in yet, Jimmy. But Boulot is deathly afraid of someone. I think if we keep a good watch on him, we'll soon find out who, and that will be information worth having.”

“Maybe the royalists are going to kill him for what he did to their woman. They'll save Jack Ketch some hemp, maybe.”

“Do you think that husk of a man could apply a
thumbscrew to a woman and then throw her out a second-floor window? He can't even piss straight into a chamber pot. But he knew Angelique Desmarches, and he visited the count the night she was killed, and I would have the truth out of him.”

Their little group of urchins assembled again.

“Oy, constables! Oy!”

Presley was going to drive them off, but Morton gestured for him to wait.

“And what is it now, young sir?” Morton asked.

The boy with the topper half as high as himself glanced about as though not wanting to be heard by some. “That Frenchy, Boo-low? I can tell ye summat about him!”

“Well, what is it?”

“The blunt first, yer honour! The blunt first.”

Morton shook his head sceptically but tossed him twopence more. “Mind it be good.”

He of the hat snatched the coins with uncanny quickness. “Here 'tis, yer honour. Boo-low used to tip us some pennies to keep quiet about him livin' hereabouts and to give him warning if there were any askin' 'bout him.”

“I'll have my coppers back if you can't do better than that.”

The child shook his head, almost flinging off his enormous hat with the motion. “But there have been some others 'quiring after him, yer honour. This very morn. Some Frenchies, one bigger 'an you, and another sadlookin' one.”

Morton and Presley looked at each other.

“I wonder what business they had with Boulot?” Presley asked.

“None, yer honour. They couldn't find him, and we wouldn't tell.”

“Then why did you tell us?” Presley asked.

“Because that Frenchy's always half seas over now, and he wouldn't give us a copper for what we done.” The child's indignation was exquisite.

“So you saw a chance to gain a little by us,” Presley said. “Your loyalty is heartwarming.”

At this the child merely looked confused.

Morton bent down to bring his face a little nearer the boy's. “Keep an eye out about this man Boulot, and I'll give you more than you've seen today.” Morton fished in his waistcoat pocket and dropped two more coins into the child's small filthy hand.

“Aye, yer honour!” The boy beamed.

“I want to know of anyone who comes here looking for Monsieur Boulot, or anyone who visits him. Can you manage that without everyone on the street knowing what you're up to?”

“No one'll hear a word from us,” the urchin swore, glancing around at his friends, who all nodded furious agreement.

“Good. Tell me your name, child.”

“William, yer honour. Wil to me mates.”

“Deal square with me, Wil, and we'll get along like kin.”

The boy's face all but lit up. “Aye, yer honour, and when I'm a flash man, you can count on me to tip you t'all the doin's up and down Maiden Lane!”

Morton smiled sadly. “I admire your desire to better your state, William.”

He and Presley left the little knot of aspiring criminals and carried on down the street.

Morton stopped after a few paces. “Jimmy, keep an eye here for a few hours, will ye? I've some calls to pay, but I'll send along someone from Bow Street for relief. If
some Frenchmen were looking for Boulot and he's frightened out of his wits, it sets me to wondering.”