The Emperor's Assassin (19 page)

“Who's there? Bow Street!”

At the top of the stairs they found that the voice of the woman, gasping and shrieking incessantly, came from the nearest of three open doors. Morton strode in. A bedchamber. A woman sitting on a chair, rocking, crying, her mouth contorted. Lying on his back on the silkencanopied bed, his hands spread out on each side, his head bent as if he were gazing down in fascination at his
own bare chest, the white-haired corpse of the Count d'Auvraye. In his chest a round red hole.

“Surgeon! Send for a surgeon!” bellowed Presley back down the stairwell.

But Morton knew, as surely as if he'd seen a guillotine fall, that d'Auvraye was dead. He felt for a pulse in the neck, and though the body was still warm with life, no heart beat.

“The other chambers,” Morton said. The two Runners went down the hall, tense with readiness. But the rooms were empty—ordinary, sunlit, empty.

“This mustn't have happened more than ten minutes ago,” Presley said. “How far can they have gone?”

“Not far. Go out and see if you can find anyone who saw them and where they went.”

Presley nodded.

As his younger colleague ran back down the steps, Morton returned to the Count d'Auvraye's bedchamber. The young woman, gasping convulsively, looked up at him, desperate, her face swimming in tears. She was wearing housemaid's garb, Morton noticed.

“You are safe,” he tried to reassure her. “You are safe. We are the king's men.”

At this, the maid suddenly found her legs and with a wild cry leapt to her feet and rushed after Presley. Morton did not try to prevent her. He could hear her feet pounding rapidly downward.

“But you must not leave the house!” he called after her. For a moment more he looked at the dead man. The count was clad in a green silk-damask dressing gown, which had sagged open to reveal his motionless chest. On the floor beside the bed were the spilled and shattered contents of a breakfast tray, and the tray itself. Nothing else seemed out of order.

He went out of the room. From the bottom of the stairs the Barnes constable called up.

“Sir? This one's still alive!”

Morton clattered down the stairs. He and the constable and one of the bystanders lifted the man as gently as they could and laid him on his back on a long ottoman in the adjoining room. But there were two wounds in his chest, and the blood was coming fast. They applied hastily fashioned cloth compresses, but these were deep fountains, and nothing seemed to help. The man's eyes were squinted closed, in pain, and he was trembling. But he made no sound at all.

“What is his name?” Morton turned and demanded of the press of people who had edged into the room, despite his commands, and were watching.

“Armand, sir. French fellow—the count's butler.”

Morton bent urgently over him.

“Armand, there's a doctor coming,
un médecin
. We shall save you, bear up now, bear up,
tu vas vivre
.” The man made no response. It was not clear he had even heard. “Now Armand, if you can speak. If you can tell us, who was it did this?
Qui a fait ça?
Did you know them?” But now suddenly the butler's eyes did spring open, staring wide. He began to cough violently, spraying droplets of blood up onto Morton's face and neckcloth, and then to choke, in slow, retching, horrible convulsions. He was still choking a few moments later when the surgeon hurried in. Five minutes after that he was dead.

As the surgeon straightened, Morton slapped his hands together once in angry frustration and spun away.

Presley returned about an hour later. “It appears they went down the river,” he said, bleakly.

“Then they must have passed us!”

Presley nodded his head, chagrined. “Not a few boats went by while you slept.” He shrugged helplessly. “We pulled downstream a fair piece, but the tide's changed and swept them on toward the city. They might have gone ashore anywhere.”

“Un bòtiment,”
Morton said to himself.

“A
what
?” There was always a touch of disapproval in the young man's voice when his friend spoke French. Certain kinds of knowledge did not reflect well on their possessors.

“A ship, Jimmy. That's what Boulot said, and I thought that's what he meant, but he was drunk. He must have meant a
bachot
—a wherry. His friends were saying they could not do it without his help.” Morton put his hands over his burning eyes for a moment. “And the other word I understood was
assassiner
—assassi-nate—but I did not understand it well enough.”

“Then you think it was our drunken Frenchman?”

“He had something to do with it, I'll wager, he and his Bonapartist friends.”

“And just minutes before we got here!” exclaimed the younger man. “A trice sooner, and we'd have had them! The nerve! In broad daylight!”

“Not just in broad daylight, but as the tide turned. They couldn't have done it before—not and escaped by the river. Look here.” Morton led him through the stillopen door and pointed at the red trail down the outside steps of the house. It was smudged from being trod on but visible yet. “One of them was wounded, and not just a scratch, by the look of it.”

As Presley bent to examine the trail, Morton went on:

“I have assembled everyone who might have aught to tell us. We'd do better to talk to them now, while it's fresh in their minds.”

The younger Runner rose. “Shall I start with them outside?”

“Aye. I will see what can be got from the servants.”

The village constable hovered, uncertain. Morton turned to him.

“Mr….?”

“Wainwright, sir, Silas Wainwright.”

“Mr. Wainwright, if you would be so good, perhaps you can attend me as I interview the women. I'm sure they will be reassured by the presence of a familiar face.”

“Thank you, sir,” stammered back the constable gratefully. “Anything I can do, sir, to be of assistance.”

Morton led him through into the small parlour at the back of the building. Here the domestics of the house sat waiting; this was a larger establishment than that of Angelique Desmarches, and there were half a dozen people in the room. Most of them had small crystal glasses in hand, held with an odd, unfamiliar primness. In the centre of the carpet, on a small pedestal table, lay a wooden-stocked flintlock pistol. Morton recognised the thin-faced, bow-mouthed young maidservant from upstairs, calmer now, eyes red but no longer weeping. Beside her sat an older woman, with an arm protectively round her shoulder. As Morton came in, this latter woman released the younger and rose.

“I am Mrs. Barkling, sir. I have taken the liberty of dispensing some sherry-wine for the female domestics, as a prop to them, given the circumstances.”

“I am sure it is justified, ma'am. I will vouch for you, if asked.”

Mrs. Barkling's eye was steady and her voice strong and deep. She wore a coarse grey-blue smock and an apron over her stocky figure, and Morton's observant glance caught a piece of white sticking-plaster on the bottom of one of her ears.

“I am normally a downstairs maid, sir. But I do some cooking and other work when the count's proper chef is up in London with the family, and I generally have charge of things. We are ready to tell you what we saw. Miss Boynton and I saw the most, so perhaps you will wish to begin with us.”

“Let us do that,” Morton said. He remained standing, using his great height to advantage. He could be an intimidating presence when necessary.

“Gladys?” As the cook turned to the younger woman, her voice softened. “Are you up to it, my girl?” The maid swallowed and nodded dimly.

“Begin with your name,” Morton said.

“Gladys Boynton,” the young woman said hoarsely.

“And where were you when this all began, Miss Boynton?” Morton asked softly. “What did you see and hear?”

“I was serving the count his breakfast, sir,” she began, punctuating her discourse with deep gasps, as though still unable to catch her breath after what had happened, “and suddenly I heard two very loud reports downstairs. I—I dropped my tray.” She took two long deep breaths. “At almost the same moment the door was flung open, and a man strode into the chamber.” She covered her eyes, gasped several times. “He raised a pistol and… and he just…sh-sh—” Sobbing interrupted her, and Mrs. Barkling gravely comforted her, slipping her arm again around the younger woman's frail shoulders, while the others watched with blank sombre faces.

“He just sh-
shot
him, without so much as a word, and th-then &” Her tears were even stronger now, as some greater crisis in her story seemed to have been reached. Morton leaned forward, his bowels tightening. Another young woman, another violent intruder. “And th-then, he… produced another pistol, and
pointed it at me
, and—” Again she had to pause, as Morton waited, his face set. “I th-think he was going to…to do something… but then Andrea, Mrs. Barkling, that is…was calling up from below the stairs… and he stopped… and he went down… and there was another shot…and I thought he had killed her… and I can't remember any more!”

“Nay, good lass, good, 'tis well done. There was no more.” Mrs. Barkling gave another reassuring squeeze with her arm before removing it, while others in the room sniffed and dabbed at their eyes in sympathy.

“Now, Miss Boynton,” said Morton, “did you know this man who came into the room?”

She shook her head.

“Are you certain that the Count d'Auvraye and he had no words, no words at all?”

“Yes—I mean no, they had none. The master and me just stared at him, so surprised we were.”

“And what did he look like?”

The attempt to recall the scene was obviously upsetting, and tears rose again. “I don't know! He were big!”

“I believe I may have seen him better, sir,” said Mrs. Barkling, and even smiled grimly. “I'll warrant I did.”

“Yes. Thank you, Miss Boynton.” Morton looked thoughtfully at her, as she dried her tears on Mrs. Barkling's proffered apron. He turned to the older woman.

“Mrs. Barkling, then, if you please. Perhaps from the start.”

“Very good, sir.” The contrast of the cook's voice and manner with that of young Gladys could hardly have been greater. Mrs. Barkling's self-possession was complete. There was even an edge of resentment in her tone as she told her story, a resentment whose source Morton could not quite discern. Was it the usual dislike of the Runners? Yes, probably, but something a bit more, as well. Something habitual, and just slightly contemptu-ous—part of the attitude with which this formidable woman faced the world.

“I had come up from the kitchen, sir, from the cellar, after finishing the count's omelette, and I was standing at the back garden door for a breath of air. Just here.” She pointed out the place, behind and around the corner from where Morton sat. “I heard Armand speaking to someone in the front hallway. He spoke in French, sir, which I don't understand. But he sounded surprised, which made me heed. His voice rose at the end, as if he were asking a question. The last word of what he was saying was
monsieur
, and 'twas a short sentence.”

“Was he angry? Frightened?”

“No, sir. Surprised.”

“Did the other answer?”

“Not so as I heard. Not in like manner.”

“Can you recall any of the other words Armand said, or what they sounded like?”

“I should not like to venture, were it a matter of evi dence before the bar, sir.”

“But merely as a guess, to assist us in our enquiries?”

“Very well, as such, then. I believe the other sounds may have included something like
poor-kwah
and
zeesee
.”

“Pourquoi êtes-vous ici, monsieur?”
ventured Henry Morton, after a moment's thought. “Did it sound like that?”

Mrs. Barkling's estimation of Morton's abilities seemed to rise. “Indeed, sir, it was very like that. And what does that mean, sir, if I may ask?”

“ ‘Why are you here, sir? ’ Please go on, ma'am.”

“Then there were two loud noises, shots, and I heard someone fall down the steps. Directly I went back downstairs and fetched my small cleaver, which lay on the cutting-board below, as I had been using it for the onions. 'Twas the first thing to come to hand, although there were better implements in the rack, I expect. While I did so, I heard a third report, from higher up in the house. As I came back up, I could hear Armand groaning in the front hall.”

“You did not stay in safety, in the kitchen?”

Mrs. Barkling's indignation rose. “Miss Boynton was upstairs, sir! I called to her as I came, telling her to hold fast and I would soon be there. As I came into the drawing room, I could hear the man coming down the stairs. I feared the worst, sir. I mean, that he'd done some harm to Gladys.” It was not fear that Morton saw in her bluntfeatured face now, but anger, the hunger for battle rising in her again as she remembered.

“Pray, continue.”

“The man and I reached the doorway from the drawing room together. We faced each other. There were no words between us, sir, as it was perfectly clear what both of us were about. He had pistols in both his hands, and he raised the one in his right hand and pointed it at my face, while at the same instant I struck at him with my cleaver. I hit his arm, here”—she patted her fore-arm—“and at the same second his pistol discharged and
took off part of my ear.” Morton could see now the proof of this, dark stains on the back of her collar that were out of view before. He could see burns on that side of her cheek, too, from the closeness of the muzzle-blast. Mrs. Barkling had obviously tidied herself, washed off the black powder, and put on a fresh apron to cover most of the blood, but the angry red marks on her face remained.